The Golden Sword (7 page)

“I do not understand,” I said as he finished checking straps, boosted me up forward of the saddle, and swung up behind me.

“Chayin is a forereader,” he continued, turning Quiris on his haunches and setting him at a run after Chayin’s dust trail, just visible far ahead like low-riding fog. “He suffers from the forereader’s disease. When he underwent Tar-Kesa’s testing and took the cahnclor’s sword, he had not yet had a woman.” Foreseeing ability first becomes obvious at puberty, never before, and often not until some little while after. “Once he was invested, nothing could be done, for the chosen of Tar-Kesa is all-knowing.” He sighed and shook his head. “There was no peer from whom he could receive instruction. Therefore, he did not receive it.”

I considered this. I had never heard of a male forereader. I had been taught that male drives and the passive surveillance of the forereaders were mutually exclusive. I knew well enough what agony an untutored forereader’s life could be, for I had been called a latent, and schooled sufficiently to protect myself, should the talent come tardy upon me. Even with years more training that I had received, working forereaders face always the grim specter of forereader’s disease. One in seventy, it is said, succumbs to it and goes irretrievably mad. Now I knew why I had gotten such a chaotic reading from the cahndor; such confusion, such fear and hate. He saw only violence around him.

The neras passed under Quiris’ pounding tripart hooves, and soon we were close enough to Chayin to shout across the distance. Hael charged him to halt and wait for the jiasks to catch up. This the cahndor was willing to do. In the high moonlight, Saer was white with foam and dust.

“Know you,” said Hael in my ear, “the book of Khys?” as he slowed Quiris to a walk. The threx’s muzzle seemed to graze the ground in front of me. He blew dust clouds with his heaving breath. It had been a mad pace Hael set to catch his brother, who had so great a start, upon a threx carrying a lesser burden.

I shook my head. I had not delved deeply into the
Ors Yris-tera,
which holds the true wisdom of the board game.

“The dayglass was upon the board of catalysts, and within aspect of a human piece, the woman. Thus it works, through her, the will of the First Weather. In the citing of this arrangement of pieces, Khys said that in such times a material sign is always given at the outset. And it likens that sign unto starlight. It seems to me that what we have apth-wrapped within my saddlepack is such a material sign.”

I could see Chayin’s face, limned by the moonlight, as he leaned his forearms upon the grip of his saddle, watching us. I felt a stab of compassion for him. He and I faced similar struggles, both with powers we did not want and information we could not use, and for neither of us was there any alternative. A male forereader was surely as alone as a Shaper’s daughter on Silistra. And for our questions it seemed to me then the Day-Keepers had no answers. Somehow, seeing him and knowing, I felt less lonely. He struggled to resolve the law within and the stimulus from without, as did I. I sat straighter up before Hael upon Quiris’ back. I sent a gentle probe of strength and comfort, deeper than the cahndor would consciously feel.

The threx greeted one another. I have often wondered that such high-pitched sounds can come from out of those great beasts.

“I asked you if you saw yourself upon the board of catalysts, “ Hael reminded me softly. Saer slobbered upon Quiris. Quiris stamped, tossed his head.

“Perhaps. But one cannot know it,” I said.

“Perhaps one cannot know it, but one can surely do no better than one expects, either,” he answered, sidling Quiris against Saer until my knee brushed Chayin’s and we were but handbreadths apart. The cahndor’s face, previously abstracted as he toyed with his reins, changed when his eyes met mine. I dropped my gaze, wondering what part I played in the endless traps and tortures his mind made for him, what horrific futures incessantly threatened.

His hand under my chin raised my face to his, but he spoke to Hael, and his eyes searched the dark terrain over which we had just passed.

“Here they come. Good. We will need everyone. If you have a weapon within your pack you might choose in battle, get it out now. We will catch us some threx with sun’s rising, I think.”

Hael said nothing.

The cahndor reached back and unlaced one of his own packs and pulled forth two short golknives. He put one in his belt and handed the other toward me, almost absently. Hael reached around me to take it. Chayin snatched it back.

“Not for you. For her. She will not use it upon me. She must use it, though! So I have seen it!” And he pointed at me.

“No, Chayin,” said Hael gently. “You cannot arm a crell. And what against?”

The first of the jiasks sighted us and slowed his beast to a walk. I could make out the forms of three others.

The blade was still in the cahndor’s outstretched hand. The moon played tricks upon his face, and he had but dark holes for eyes. He leaned back in his shadow, tossing his head like an apth with sand in its ears. Then, once more he offered the blade, and his voice was strong and sure and clear.

“It is no matter what you think, Hael. I am apprised of what is to come, and in time you will be also. You shall not gainsay me. It is your life I would protect.”

I took the gol-knife. Hael did nothing, but I could feel the muscles cord in his arms. The jiasks were almost upon us, with their uncanny silence. It would be better to show an armed crell to them than open discord. Hael would rather take the chance that I would turn upon him than expose Chayin’s indisposition to the cahndor’s death-sworn men.

“Arm yourselves, and make all haste. Look well about you, for our enemies steal triumphant through the night. Upon your lives I charge you. Regain what is rightfully ours!” And he jerked Saer cruelly around and sped off toward the north. Quiris, anticipating his master, leaped to follow. Hael did not stay the threx’s headlong flight, but turned to peer behind him into the dark. My gaze followed his, and I saw the knotted jiasks milling in a circle; then the circle became a line of twos, and that line followed in our dust. Hael reined Quiris into an easy lope, fast enough to keep Chayin in sight, yet slow enough that the leading pair of jiasks soon came abreast of us. Quiris tossed his head and fought restraint, his ears flicking.

“Is the veil again upon him?” the jiask upon Hael’s right shouted.

“I know not,” Hael called back. Quiris leaped a shadowed depression before us that did not suit him, I was thrown violently forward at his jarring impact upon the far side. I hugged the threx‘s neck, and Hael’s hand upon my shoulder gave me aid as I righted myself. If I had fallen, then, with the jiasks’ mounts racing to pace us, I would have been pummeled lifeless by those metal-shod thundering hooves.

“Keep as close as you can, but not upon us! Be ready!” ordered the dharener, and his flat hand came down hard upon Quiris’ croup, and the black sprang away from the other threx as though they stood grazing upon sweet jer grass.

I had not imagined Quiris capable of such speed. The night roared around us as he strained to catch Saer. But it was not so easy to draw abreast of the cahndor. Slowly we gained upon him. I could see Chayin’s arm rise and fall upon his mount’s bunched quarters. Almost imperceptibly we closed the distance, Quiris’ superior stamina telling as the ground blurred by. A northern threx would have died of burst lungs long before Saer’s rider slid him to a halt atop a rock-strewn rise in the cold moonglow.

“Another nera, and I would have caught you!” called Hael as he brought Quiris alongside.

“I know it,” Chayin allowed, his eyes searching the flatlands ahead. Nothing bigger than a pandivver could cross that open ground unseen in the bright clear night. “Back down the slope, that they will not see our outline!”

Hael did this, and set our sweat-slicked threx walking in a long ellipse that he might not injure its legs standing still while so badly overheated. Chayin paced us.

“Only some few enths remain until sun’s rising, and the appreida is but thirty neras from here at the most. Where is your enemy, Chayin?”

“Even now they sneak stealthily through the webweavers’ appreis with their loot. This is the place where we will meet them, upon the plain, when the sky is greened before sun’s rising. It is as I have seen it. We are only early enough to rest the threx. We wait here.”

I heard Hael sigh softly. His body seemed to slump slightly in the saddle. We walked the threx and waited.

When the jiasks were all among us, Chayin set them to likewise walking their beasts in circles. He would not suffer them to dismount and charged them to maintain their readiness. Then he himself dismounted and crawled to the top of the stony rise and lay there, his head nestled upon his arms, watching.

After a time, we went to join him, leading Saer and Quiris as close as we dared to the ridgetop and tethering them to the scraggly harinder bushes that grew there in relative profusion. No harinder bush or even puny boulder was upon the plain below us. Nothing moved. I lay between Chayin and Hael, looking over the rise. I knew stinging embarrassment for the cahndor. He would be much shamed before us all if no foe appeared upon the plain. An enth passed, and still nothing stirred upon the silent expanse before us. No yit squeaked nor friysou cried. The sky was lightening, a presaging green haloed the peaks. The jiasks whispered and grunted behind us. There was much restlessness among them. Another enth passed. I wondered why Hael did not speak, put a stop to this ugly farce.

“There!” Chayin whispered. I sighted along his outstretched arm and could barely see a dust cloud rising. At first I thought it just a trick of anxious eyes, a quiver in the predawn light. Hael pulled himself forward an arm’s length, as if that short gain would bring the distance into clearer focus. A thousand breaths did I take, and still the dust cloud grew upon the horizon. Hael wriggled back the short distance he had gone from us. His face as he looked past me to meet Chayin’s eyes was painful to look upon in his joyous relief. He reached his left hand across me and grapsed Chayin’s shoulder, his fingers making valleys in the Shaper’s cloak the cahndor wore.

“Let us go down and do battle, brother!” the dharener said, and suiting action to words, hastened down the slope in a crouch.

Chayin put his hand upon my arm. “Go with him. May your gol-knife quench its thirst this rising.” And he pushed me gently before him toward the others.

As I mounted Quiris, and Hael swung up behind me, I entertained thoughts of death. Perhaps I could slay the dharener, make away upon the threx in the confusion of battle. The helsar was in Quiris’ pack. But I knew, somehow, that I would not.

Silent were the jiasks as single file they made their way over the rise and down the slope, together waiting in the dark pool of shadows at its base. Soundless, recurved swords of stra and steel were drawn and held low, that the glint of them might not warn our approaching victims. And still the dust cloud enlarged and the greening moved higher and higher in the sky, until the dust had dark shapes within it, and those shapes resolved themselves into mounted threx, a dozen or more.

And whispered orders formed the five pairs of jiasks into a spear point, with the cahndor and dharener at its tip. So close they were that I could see they carried neither spear nor shield, and still the cahndor did not stir his waiting men, though his arm was raised pointing to the sky. As I raised my eyes to his hand, that I might see the signal given, another thing, and strange, did I see. A M’ksakkan egg-shape glowed silent, like some speeding creamy comet across the sky: a Liaison’s ship surely, for no other may fly the gravitic-drive that hovers through the skies of Silistra. And yet there was no port in the Parset Lands for such a craft, and none due north, from whence it came. It danced for a moment motionless over the plain, then veered northeast and was gone. Chayin’s hand came down. As one, the jiasks of the Nemarsi swept down upon their prey.

Barely had I time to steady my seat after, Quiris’ first leap and ready the gol-knife in my hand, before we were’among them. Crouched low on Quiris’ neck, that I not impede the dharener’s longer blade, I found my knife of use first upon the gaping mouth of a threx who sought to clamp his jaws around my arm. Its pupils glowed gold and huge in white-walled eyes rolling in that deathly head. I split its nostrils, and it reared away in agony, giving the cahndor clear strike at his opponent’s armorless chest, which he made with the ease of a man slicing cheese. The first rays of the sun color-glowed the plain and fired the sparking swords, and the whole world was blood-soaked. I saw for a moment the fallen jiask before I followed him, tumbling upon the corpse as Hael’s mount kicked out with both hind feet at a new tormentor and whirled to meet an attacker coming up from behind. I disengaged from the corpse, up and running, lest I be trampled by the beasts as they tried to savage one another. I saw a riderless threx, unable to escape, so close-quartered was the fighting. His lifeless rider was wedged, head dangling down, between two live combatants’ threx. He had no top to his skull, and the gray pulp dripped upon the feet of the fighting men. Somehow I made my way to its far side, and, unthinking, squeezed behind Saer’s rear. I had just grabbed the mounting strap when I heard a great singing above my head. Chayin’s sword snicked the head from a man whose own blade was in mid-strike at my back. I dodged the free-falling weapon and caught it in my right hand by the blade near the hilt. I looked up and grasped Chayin’s arm as it was extended, to me, and he all but threw me upon the riderless threx’s back. Our eyes met for a moment. He laughed his joy and turned away, still smiling, to seek a new foe. I grasped the threx’s back with but the strength of my knees and thighs, the stirrups being so far too long I could not even use the strap loops. I grabbed the reins caught around the saddle grip just as the great dun beast reared and brought his steel-shod hooves down upon the neck of another threx, who thought to get him by the throat. And I saw Hael, badly pressed by two foes, Quiris bleeding. I slammed the flat of the short sword against the threx’s rear, and he fairly jumped upon the back of the nearest attacker’s threx. The man’s head turned, and I saw his startled expression as I plunged the gol-knife in my left hand into his throat, while his sword arm was raised to parry Hael’s blow. The quarters were too close for the short sword to have helped me, though I still held it in my bleeding right, along with the threx’s reins. The gol-knife was gone now, somewhere below in the dust, in a dead man’s neck.