Demon King (37 page)

“You might be grateful for several things,” Bakr announced at the beginning of the banquet. “First is we Negaret aren’t addicted to constant toasts, unlike other Maisirians. So there’s some possibility we may survive the evening and won’t wake with the drummers of the gods behind our eyeballs. Secondly, our priest died last year, and as yet no man of the gods has joined us, so there won’t be any long prayers to interfere with the gluttony. We feel terribly cursed.” Bakr tried to look pious, failed. I noticed only a few Negaret frowned at his levity.

“Third is we’re reprobates, every single one of us.” He waited, like any good jokester, for my puzzlement, then went on. “We no longer swill what’s supposedly the Negaret’s favorite drink. Which is mare’s milk, fermented in a treated stomach and mixed with fresh blood.” He grimaced, then said quietly, “I’ve always wondered if every people must have some sort of dish that no one can tolerate, merely to prove how tough they are. At any rate, my men and women now drink like civilized folk.”

He indicated a table laden with jugs. There were sweet wines and some brandies, but the favored tipple was
yasu
, which was made from grain fermented into a mash, then distilled. The clear liquor was flavored with various plants, such as citrus peel, fennel, dill, and anise. I’d gotten a gape of disbelief when I told Bakr I didn’t drink. Again, he proclaimed I was unworthy to be a diplomat, but there’d be that much more for him.

The meal began with tiny fresh fish eggs spread on tiny, hot biscuits. With that went hard-boiled eggs, onions, small spicy berries, or a bit of lemon juice. The second course was the livers of the antelope we’d killed that afternoon, sautéed with wild mushrooms, wild onions, and spices. Next were prairie fowls, stuffed with seasoned marsh rice. The main course was roasted antelope, larded with bacon. Served between these courses were vegetables, including an assortment of various mushrooms in soured cream, and a watercress salad in sesame oil.

The finale was a dessert of goat cheese, egg yolks, nuts, currants, cream, and fresh and glazed fruit.

I could lie and say I was comfortably full, but in reality I felt as if I’d just been slopped, and now should go look for a mudhole to wallow in. Bakr belched resoundingly, and motioned me closer.

“You see the hard, austere life of a prairie nomad?” he said mournfully. “Do you not pity our harsh existence?”

• • •

We were roused the next morning for the journey to Oswy. The Negaret were civilized — there was little conversation on waking, and we were given a hard roll and strong tea after washing, then set to work. When the Negaret broke camp, or set it up for that matter, everyone worked, from the
jedaz
to the smaller children. Within the hour they were ready to move.

I saw how much they used magic. The tents, for instance, were in reality no more than a scrap of felt, various bits of rope, and some toothpick-sized pieces of wood, all ensorcelled. Illey bustled through the clamor. When a tent was struck, he’d stop, say a few words, and the heavily piled felt would vanish and someone would scrabble for the tiny bits that were its essence. Their sleeping robes, lamps, pillows — all were tiny items that might have come from a rich child’s dollhouse.

“It’s a pity,” Bakr said, “nobody’s found a way to magic chickens and such, so we could dispense with the wagons altogether.” He turned to watch a goat being chased by two small boys and then, an instant later, two small boys being chased by the goat. “Yes. Goats especially,” he mused, rubbing his thigh where he might have been butted once.

Then there was nothing left but the cooking fires and the pots and pans, the cooks bustling about them. Now we ate a real meal: eggs served with a sauce that would have cooked them if they hadn’t already been hard-boiled, so it cooked my mouth instead, fresh-baked rye bread, sweet cakes, and more tea. The meal over, the kitchens were struck. Their iron pots were miniatures, as were the great iron plates for frying. Illey told me he didn’t have the magic to create those to stand firm against fire, so they traded in the cities for them, built by magicians whose incantations were pleasing to the fire god, Shahriya.

And then we marched.

• • •

After two hours’ ride, it began misting, but it was pleasant to ride down the last of the rolling foothills toward the plains that stretched far into the distance. Bakr moved up beside me and asked, “How many men, if it’s not a secret, did you leave Numantia with?”

“No more than what I have now.”

“That is very good,” he said. “Most men who attempt the mountains leave some bones as they go.”

“I guess we were lucky.”

“Yes, lucky,” Bakr said absently. “The reason I asked is that I’ve never heard of a diplomat traveling so light. They like to be surrounded with pomp and pissiness, I’ve observed from my encounters with the king’s emissaries. Or is it different in Numantia?”

“It’s no different,” I said. “I guess politicians are the same everywhere.”

We rode in silence, companionably, for a while. “Another odd thing,” he said. “If you were Maisirian, holding a rank as high as you do, everyone in your party would be an officer.”

“Who’d cut the wood and cook the meals?”

“The lowest-ranking
pydna
, of course,” Bakr said. “The Maisirians don’t like to be around the underclasses, the
calstors
and
devas
, except to order them to go out and die bravely. Soldiers aren’t much more than animals.”

“So I’ve read,” I said. “And no officer who thinks like that can lead well. Maybe not at all.”

“No,” Bakr agreed. “Which is why so many soldiers desert to become Negaret.

“We’re an outlet for the Maisirians, just like a covered pot on the fire must have a vent. A man or woman can’t stand his lord, well, instead of waiting for him with an ax, he runs for the frontiers. If he makes it to us — he’s Negaret.”

“How do you know a runaway will make a good Negaret?” I asked.

“If he lives long enough to reach us, he’ll be a good one,” Bakr said. “He’ll have had to elude his master’s hounds, make his way through territory where a captured runaway’s worth a bit of a reward, deal with wolves, bears, cataracts … He’ll be tough when he reaches us. Or we’ll find his bones in the spring.”

Such a newcomer would then be assigned to a work group around one of the Negaret communities. When a column like Bakr’s, which was called a
lanx
, came to trade, the runaway could join the
lanx
if he or she wished. “After a time,” Bakr said, “the man or woman is a full Negaret, and allowed to speak in our
nets
, our assemblies. That was what happened to me.” I was surprised. “Ah yes,” Bakr said. “The lowliest can become the highest. At our
riets
, any man may become a candidate for leader, or others may name him. Every adult votes, and so the new
jedaz
is chosen. If someone doesn’t like that
jedaz
, he’s free to leave, and join another
lanx.
This is also good, for it lessens dissent, and also the blood in one
lanx
doesn’t become too intertwined, so instead of warriors we might end with men who stumble around drooling and fucking chickens.”

“Was there no supreme leader?”

“Of course. King Bairan.”

“But no one great chieftain for the Negaret?”

“What do we need of them? Our towns have
kantibe
, mayors. They’re chosen by the town
riets.
Lately the king has been sending his own men to our towns to administrate Maisirian interests.”

“And do you like that?”

Bakr started to say something, then caught himself. “Of course we do, being all loyal servants of King Bairan,” he said blandly. “And if we didn’t, it’s amazing the terrible accidents that can happen when a Maisirian
shum
goes for a walk by the riverside at night. Thus far, when a regrettable thing like that’s happened, his replacement is far more gifted and sensible.”

“At least about riverside walks.”

• • •

We came out of the hills onto the
suebi.
It was just as the travelers had written, land that went on and on to an impossibly distant horizon. But it wasn’t desert, or flat, and such a belief would deceive the unwary to their deaths. The
suebi
was riven with deep ravines a bandit column or a company of cavalry could set an ambush in.

Sometimes the land was marshy, sometimes dry, and a traveler had to pick his way carefully to avoid being mired or drowning. There were forests, not high pines such as we’d left, or the jungles of Numantia. The trees were low, twisted, bent, with thick brush between them. And always there was the wind — sometimes gently sighing, promising marvels just beyond, sometimes roaring fiercely.

I loved the
suebi
on first sight, loved the stretch and beckon of the sky, greater than any I’d known, any I could imagine. Some of us it made cautious, careful. Curti became even more wary than before, but wary of what, he couldn’t say. At least one, Captain Lasta, was terrified by the grand reach. But being the brave man he was, he spoke of it but once, when we were musing about some clouds, and he said, harshly, he thought a demon was sitting up there, waiting to scoop up an unwary soldier, as a hawk hovers over a scurrying mouse.

In the days to come, that sky, and the
suebi
, would make many Numantians feel that way. And there would be more than enough hawks to provide deaths for poor mice.

• • •

It had grown colder while we traveled, and there was rime ice on the riverbanks, and my breath came frosty. Illey stood on a flat stone about fifty feet out into the huge river, which was almost a mile from bank to bank, with sandbanks rearing here and there. “Cast now,” he shouted, pointing at what I thought was nothing more than a ripple.

I obeyed, hurling the long harpoon with all my might. The river exploded, and a great gray shape, coiling like a serpent, reared. Its face was an ancient evil, bewhiskered, fanged. My shaft was buried just behind its huge, water-drooling gills.

“We have him,” Illey shrieked.

“Secure him well,” Bakr ordered, and the men who held the end of the line ran to a nearby tree and whipped several lengths around its trunk.

The monstrous fish smashed to the end of the line, and the tree bent nearly double. The fish jumped, almost clear of the water, and I gasped, seeing how huge it was, almost thirty feet long. It ran hard downstream, trying to pull the spear out, trying to break the rope. But the line held firm. Again and again the fish tried to break free, but to no avail, and then it rolled on its back and was dead.

The Negaret cheered and dragged the carcass ashore.

I turned to Bakr. “You’ve honored me greatly,” I said, “allowing me to cast that harpoon.”

He nodded. “You and your men have been good companions to us. Good to travel with. We sought but to return a piece of that honor.”

“I thank you, Jedaz Bakr,” I said, bowing.

“Enough of such horseshit. We have fish to clean and egg pouches to cut away. We’ll be awake half the night up to our crotches in fish guts,” he said, as uncomfortable with sentiment as I.

• • •

Lightning erupted across the sky from horizon to horizon, and thunder slammed as if the gods were rolling stone bowls. Karjan and I had walked out from the camp after the evening meal. Behind us were lights from the guttering fires and, very dimly, from the tents. I was lost in my thoughts when Karjan suddenly said, “Y’ know, wouldn’t be bad, bein’ like this always.”

I blinked back to the present. My servant had been taken up by a slender woman about his own age, the widow, I learned, of one of the
lanx
’s best warriors.

“You mean, as a Negaret?”

He nodded.

“Not at all bad,” I said. “No slaves, no masters. No jobs that make you do the same thing, day in, day out. Hunt, fish, ride — there’re worse things than life like this.”

“Guess I never was too good at bein’ civilized,” Karjan said. I saw his teeth flash behind his beard. “Best treat me well, Tribune. Or one day you’ll commission me or do somethin’ equally shitty, and I’ll be gone.”

“Run fast,” I said. “For I might be right on your heels.”

• • •

The next day, we saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon. The day after that, we rode into Oswy, and our time with the Negaret was over.

Oswy seemed to be two cities — one fairly clean, for a frontier town, the other shabby and mostly unpainted. The central street, very wide, very muddy, divided them. At first I thought one side held the well-to-do, such as they were, the other the poor, but Bakr corrected me. “On this side are the traders and those who give a shit about clean streets. On the other … the Negaret, who care more for the cleanliness of their souls and bodies, and spend as little time behind walls as they must.” Proof that worldly injustice is rife was that the Negaret side sounded with music and laughter, and the Maisirian traders were pinched-faced and ill at ease.

Bakr had pitched his tents beyond the city walls, which he said was required for Negaret bands, then he and his warriors escorted me to the
balamb
, or military governor. Oswy, the first city within Maisir on the main trading route, was too important to be ruled by a civilian
kantibe.

Balamb Bottalock Trembelie and his staff were waiting inside the gates of his sprawling compound. Trembelie was an odd-looking man. He must have been a fine bull of a soldier who’d spent too long at the trencher and not enough in the trenches. At one time he would have weighed 250, perhaps 300 pounds. But something had happened, perhaps a wasting disease he was only just recovering from, for his weight had fallen so quickly his skin hadn’t had time to shrink to its proper size. His jowls drooped, and the skin of his hands sagged in folds. He should have worn a beard, for he looked like a dissipated, petulant baby. He wore jewel-crusted red suede breeches and vest, with a silk shirt that ended at his elbows. His forearms bulged, not with fat but muscle, and I knew he could handle a heavy sword without effort.