Exile's Challenge (9 page)

“You fight bulls in the Levan, don't you?” Flysse asked.

“Yes.” Arcole nodded. “But not creatures like that. The bulls of the Levan …” He shrugged, kindling memories from a life that now seemed so distant it grew hazy as the horizon. “… They're smaller, and with wider horns. They're fast, but their shoulders are not so huge. I'd not much want to fight one of these—I think it would be impossible to get the sword past those shoulders. Surely, I'd not want to try.”

“
You
fought bulls?” Flysse was surprised.

“Have I not told you?” It was his turn to express surprise: surely he had told her everything about his life there. Certainly he had confessed his affairs and his duels, his gambling. They had agreed there should be no secrets between them, and since that night she had found him copying Wyme's maps in secret—a betrayal of her trust—he had hidden nothing.
Likely, he had only forgotten this: it was a small part of his past, unimportant for its foundation in the vanity he had learned to lose in her company.

Flysse said, “No; tell me.”

Arcole looked at the watchful animals—had Rannach said
buffalo
?—and then at Flysse. “Three times,” he said, and grinned. “The first was to see if I could.”

“And could you?” she asked.

He could not tell whether she approved or not; her face was unreadable. He said, “Yes. I'm alive, no? I was frightened.” He felt his grin fading. “God, but my legs were shaking and my mouth was dry. But I put the sword in and slew the beast.” He remembered, then, the cheers of the crowd, and added, proudly, “I was granted the ears.” Then, humbler when her expression did not change, “But it was only a small affair, in a private arena. And the bull was only a three-year-old, not the mature bulls the professionals fight.”

“Why?” Flysse asked.

Her voice was empty of intonation. Arcole had thought she'd be impressed—the bull might have been immature, but still it could have killed him—but neither her tone or her face suggested that. He shrugged and said, “A friend—Antonym de Chevres—bred the bulls for the ring, and wagered me five hundred golden guineas I'd not fight one.”

Still Flysse's expression did not change. “And the other times?”

“Those,” he said, “were for wagers resulting from that first—Antonym bet me a thousand in gold I'd not do it again, facing a full-grown bull. But I did.” He chuckled, remembering. “I hired a fighter called Manolito to train me, and we split the money. Antonym was amazed.”

Flysse said, “You might have been killed.”

“Yes.” Arcole shrugged. “But a wager's a wager, no? And it was the bull that died.”

He thought that surely that must impress her. God, but the bull had been massive, and even did they not fight bulls in Evander, still they knew of the Levanite tradition—how could she not be impressed? But her face remained impassive, even less expressive than the heat-hazed blankness of the mountains behind them.

“And the third time?”

“That was a bull called Escovar. No one wanted to face him because he'd horned two fighters; one died, and the other never fought again.” Surely she must be impressed with
this
. Even had she not heard of that battle, it must impress her. “Colign Murrie wagered five thousand, and I won.”

“Won?” she said.

“Yes.” He frowned. “I killed the bull: I won.”

“You put your sword into the bull and killed it,” she said.

Arcole said, “Yes,” wondering why she seemed not at all impressed with his bravery.

“After the—what are they called?—the picadors lanced the bull?”

So she did know somewhat of the ritual: he nodded. “Escovar gored two of their horses.”

“Did they die?”

He said, “One, I think,” no longer confident in his pride, feeling it slip away. “I'm not sure.”

Flysse looked at the impossibly distant horizon and sighed, nodded. “And then the—the ones with the little lances came in on foot.”

“The banderillas,” he supplied.

“Yes. They put those sticks with ribbons into the bull's neck, no?”

“To weaken it,” he said. “So that it drops its head enough you can get the sword over the horns.”

“And kill it.”

“Yes.”

“Did you eat it?” Flysse asked.

He shook his head. “God, no! That meat's too tough for eating.”

“So you killed it for money. Or to prove something?”

“Both, I suppose,” he said. God, why did he suddenly feel so embarrassed? Why did he want her approval so badly, that she turn her face toward him and smile; grant him … absolution? He spoke of a life left far behind, when he was different. He waited nervously for her response.

“I think,” she said at last, slowly, “that you should only kill animals to eat. Not for sport, or to prove anything. Only to
eat. The Matawaye”—she pronounced the title better than he—“don't kill like that.”

He thought on the doe they'd been eating and nodded: she'd been the slowest of the herd, and likely to fall to wolves or age, and Rannach and Kanseah had singled her out from the tenderer meat, leaving the younger, stronger animals to run free and breed. A natural culling, he thought; and felt ashamed of himself.

“I was young then,” he said defensively. “I'm older than that now.”

“Yes, I think so.” Now she did turn her head, but still her eyes searched his face. “But would you do it again?”

“You do not approve,” he said.

“No.”

“Then I'd not.”

She shook her head. “Not for my approval, Arcole. Rather because …” She gestured at the vast, wide land around them, at the shifting, slowly moving herd of buffalo. “Because you should not kill for sport, but only in need.”

“I've things to learn yet,” he said; meaning it, suddenly aware he stood on the threshold of an experience perhaps even greater than the land around them. As if contact with the Matawaye introduced him to far more than only a new country. Davyd understands it, he thought, and Flysse; and I must learn to. I must shuck off these old notions that belong to the past, and learn to live with this new country and its thinking.

He said, “I'm sorry.”

Flysse looked at him and smiled, and he felt suddenly like a child excused punishment.

“So do you forgive me my past sins?”

She ducked her head again, and he laughed; and said, “I learn from you, all the time.”

And they rode out around the great herd of buffalo, out across the wind-shifted grass, Rannach and Yazte and Kanseah drifting their horses rightward to form a living screen between the riders and the warily guardian bulls, Morrhyn and Kahteney escorting Davyd, Flysse and Arcole following.

Four more days they traveled across the prairie, living off the deer meat, which lasted them to the Summer Ground of the People, where all of them—the Commacht and the Lakanti and the remnants of the Naiche and the Aparhaso, and those few Tachyn who had forsworn the heresy of Chakthi and Hadduth—were gathered together in one great camp until the Maker or his prophet, Morrhyn, should tell them to scatter and spread over this new country.

It was not, Morrhyn thought as he rode toward the great camp, an easy destiny. Neither for him nor the strangers; but the Maker had shaped it, and so it must be. And doubtless the Maker would, in time, reveal it.

And meanwhile, he would do what he could. Which first, he was confident, meant giving Davyd the pahé root.

The People had not split into clans and scattered through the vastness of Ket-Ta-Thanne, as had been their habit in the lost homeland, but remained in a unified group, as if all their time here was Matakwa. The memories of disaster yet held strong, and no one clan would risk annihilation or the weakening of all to seek out individual territory. Even did Morrhyn assure them he owned no dreams of Breakers or other enemies, still they demurred, like buffalo frightened by a wolf pack and herding defensive.

Yet they had found a fine place, close by their entry point into Ket-Ta-Thanne, and was it not overlooked by the Maker's Mountain, they had raised a cairn of stones to mark the gateway. It stood twice a man's height, surrounded by poles bearing the clan totems, the base all spread with the thanks-offerings of the People—a monument in the great grass sea. The camp itself was spread out along a shallow valley that cradled a wide, slow-running river, the water the color of Grannach steel between the grassy banks. Lush grazing lay all around, and the valley walls were heavily timbered, the woods and the grass rich with game. Buffalo no different to those of Ket-Ta-Witko wandered the plains, and the warriors went out at need to hunt them. The People wanted for nothing here, not for the present—in time, Morrhyn supposed, they must deplete the stock of game to such extent that they be forced to wander farther afield, and then he anticipated they would separate, returning to the old ways, with each clan choosing its own grazing. By then, he hoped, they would know themselves safe.

For now, it seemed enough to live in peace, and he smiled
as they came down into the valley's eastern entrance and all the lodges of the People spread before them, turning in his saddle to observe the expressions of the newcomers.

They looked amazed, as if they stared at some great marvel beyond their comprehension. It was surely a marvelous sight, and for all there were not so many lodges as had graced the Meeting Ground of lost Ket-Ta-Witko, still they spread numerous over the grass, the symbols painted on the hides denoting the placement of the clans. The horse head of the Commacht and the eagle of the Lakanti were predominant, the Aparhaso wolf and the Naiche's turtle mingled together in lesser numbers; and scattered through them all were lodges decorated with newly painted symbols where those Tachyn who had forsworn Chakthi's heresy were adopted into the remaining clans. Morrhyn wished he commanded sufficient of the strangers' language that he might ask their impressions.

“By God, it's a city all of tents.” Arcole shaded his eyes against the sun. “Like an army bivouac; save I've not seen so large an army.”

“Nor one so peaceful, I think.” Flysse pointed to where children played and dogs wandered. “Look.”

She directed his gaze to the southern flank, where women moved industriously amidst thickets heavy with red berries, plucking the fruit to deposit in woven baskets. The breeze carried snatches of song.

“And there.” He in turn pointed, down the valley, where a vast horse herd grazed. “God, so many horses.”

“It's bigger than Grostheim,” Davyd said, staring enrapt, “and there are no walls.”

Then he laughed, amazed at himself, thinking that not so long ago he had felt at ease only behind walls, be they Grostheim's wood or Bantar's stone. At home behind walls and afraid of the open country—but no longer: he had changed, and this felt like coming home.

Still chuckling, he heeled his buckskin alongside Morrhyn's horse, too filled with wonder to remember that scant days ago such ambitious movement had terrified him.

“It's marvelous.” He flung out a hand to indicate the valley.
Then clutched abruptly at the buckskin's mane as the horse snorted and pranced—as yet, a gentle trot was the best he could manage. “It's … wonderful.”

Morrhyn nodded, beaming, Davyd's expression, his tone, interpreting the words. “It's our home,” he said.

Davyd, in turn, nodded. “Yes, home.”

Then gasped as the realization he had understood clearly struck him.

Morrhyn spoke again, and Davyd frowned, the words no longer clear. “Dream” he recognized, and “pahé,” which he guessed was somehow linked to dreaming, but little else. He shrugged, shaking his head in frustration. Morrhyn smiled and touched his arm, speaking again; but the words again stood just past a veil that clouded proper comprehension. He saw Kahteney watching them, his lean face grave, and wondered why he thought the Dreamer doubtful.

Morrhyn caught Kahteney's eyes on him and turned his smile to the Lakanti. “How else, brother?”

Kahteney shrugged and shook his head.

Morrhyn said, “Not yet, but in a while. I'd see them comfortable amongst us first, and only then give Davyd the pahé. And we dream first—as we agreed.”

Kahteney ducked his head. “As you will.” Almost, he added “Prophet,” but he knew Morrhyn felt no great liking for that title and so bit back the word. But still he wondered how the People might accept the introduction of a stranger, an unknown refugee from another world, to the sacred rituals of the wakanishas. Most, he supposed, would accept it because it was the Prophet's will—and Morrhyn, no matter his feelings on that subject,
was
the Prophet—but some would doubtless resent it. Chazde had selected him even before he received his manhood name, long before he was old enough to think of the warrior's braids, and that had birthed some measure of resentment amongst his companions; long gone now … but then childhood friends had eyed him as if he were a stranger, set apart from them by Chazde's decision. And he had grown in knowledge of the Ahsa-tye-Patiko.…
He smiled at the memory of childhood's hurt, his own brief resentment of the honor that made him different.