The Silver Lake (47 page)

They put in to Serin-Koy just before dusk. So close to Yildiz-Koy, the village conscript of twenty-four archers, fifty infantry, and twelve battle-seers had gone overland the day before, but Bayard was waiting for them on the wharf, having guessed their purpose in stopping. On deck, Yashar and Kemal took their leave of their new delinkon with little fanfare, the older man simply taking each boy in a great bear hug that made them gasp, the younger staring searchingly into their faces for a long moment.

“You’ll take care of Jaq, Delin?” he asked Spar seriously.

One fist wrapped tightly around the dog’s collar, the younger boy nodded.

Kemal smiled. “Well, that’s a relief. I have to admit that, even though the God loves him, I was always a little afraid for him on the battlefield.”

“You don’t have to be afraid for him anymore,” Spar answered firmly.

Kemal nodded, then, after giving him a brief hug and ruffling Jaq’s ears, turned to Brax. “Be safe, Delin,” he said earnestly. “Obey Bayard and Badahir. They could teach you a lot if you’re willing to learn.”

“I’m always willing to learn,” Brax answered stiffly.

“Yes, well ...” For a moment Kemal looked as if he might disagree, then he squeezed Brax’s shoulder with a distracted smile. “We’ll be back soon.”

Brax nodded, surprised by the sudden lump in his throat. “Don’t get killed, all right,” he said fiercely, scowling up at his new abayos to mask his concern.

“We’ll do our best.”

“You better, ‘cause I still don’t have that arrow deflecting trick down, you know.”

“I know. We’ll work on it as soon as we get back.”

“Good. Well. Good-bye.” Brax abruptly caught Spar by the shoulder and maneuvered him and Jaq onto the wharf without another word. As they took their place beside Bayard, the dog let out a single, loud bark and Spar dropped to one knee. Arms about the animal’s neck, he watched as the barge headed slowly back toward deeper water, then craned his head to look up at Brax. Unable to offer him any comfort, Brax just shrugged. He had no idea if they’d just lost two more abayon. He hoped not.

Two days later the village elders received a message. The collective relief force had reached Yildiz-Koy and its tall tower of Kumas-Hisar and had taken up their position between the fields and the hills. The scouts had fanned out across the plains but had returned with no word of the enemy. All was as quiet and peaceful as it had been for the last two years.

Holding court before a dozen children gathered outside Bayard’s forge, his delinkon Hadzi stated darkly that it hardly mattered.

“All they have to do is journey along one of the deeper gullies that follow the western ridge,” Badahir’s eldest bi-gender delos said in an ominous voice. “There’s places there permanently shrouded in mist and pockets of ancient power so thick no seer can pierce through them. The Yuruk could be creeping along there right now and no one would be any the wiser.”

The children glanced uneasily at each other, but Brax just bent to whisper a cynical comment in Spar’s ear and the younger boy snickered.

That evening, however, when the two of them climbed to the top of Orzin-Hisar—Jaq padding up the spiral staircase behind them—they were both unusually somber. Leaning against one of the shorter parapets, they stared out past the God-Wall, watching it shimmer with the bluish glow it took on in the setting sun, each one thinking his own thoughts.

They’d been coming up here several times a day since they’d arrived, partly to get away from Bayard’s noisy and chaotic household but mostly because Spar had become obsessed with the wall, staring intently at it for hours as if trying to memorize every nuance of its ever-changing facade. Or at least staring at it for as long as Brax would allow him to. The older boy was usually good for about half an hour before—growing bored—he’d make Spar come back down again. He’d been willing to let him climb up here alone, but ever since Spar had watched their abayon sail away from them, he’d become a little—Brax tried to come up with a gentler word than needy, and settled for clingy—and didn’t like having the older boy out of his sight. So that meant that every time he could convince him, the two of them made the long ascent to the quiet, breezy top of Orzin-Hisar.

Still, he supposed that if Spar had to stare at something, the wall was a better choice than the warehouse he’d been obsessed with all last winter.

“You mean the one we lifted those three bags of spices out of?”
his mind supplied.

His mind just sneered at him and Brax shrugged. He knew there had to be more to it than that, but Spar wasn’t ready to tell him yet and besides—he returned his gaze outward—it was pretty. At dawn the rising sun, reflecting off Gol-Beyaz, changed its nightly opaque indigo to that of a rosy orangey-yellow, then paled it to a nearly opalescent pink at its height, only to darken it once more to blue and back to indigo as the sun set behind the western hills. Last night at midnight, leaning against the parapet, half asleep, he’d marveled at the hints of green and purple and blue that sparkled like living stars across its face. It was as if the wall were alive, dancing and flowing to the rhythm of the sun and the moon.

Absently he’d wondered if the wall also changed color with the seasons, at the whim of the Gods, or as the fields and hills gave way to buildings and wharves. Back home he’d never even seen it—in fact he’d never even been farther north than the Western Trisect dockyards. The lake and village merchants that filled Anavatan’s many outdoor markets said it stretched a mile above the high stone walls of the city, but back home it hadn’t mattered. On the streets of Anavatan it was easy to ignore Gods, armies, enemies, and walls in the day-to day struggle to get by, but here it dominated every part of people’s lives; a physical reminder that there were other concerns besides bread.

Chewing at a hangnail on his sword hand, he sighed. Life used to be a lot simpler.

Estavia stroked a responding warmth through his mind reminding him that life used to be a lot colder, too, and he acknowledged Her point before glancing over at Spar.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “You figure a blacksmith’s delinkos who’s never been outside of Serin-Koy knows anything about ... anything?”

Standing in his usual position with one hand buried in Jaq’s ruff and the other cupping the delos-drum at his side, the younger boy quirked up the corners of his mouth but said nothing, continuing to stare out at the wall as if hypnotized.

Brax leaned over the parapet and spat an experimental wad of spittle at the ground. “Hadzi oughta shut up, though,” he noted with a scowl. “Everyone’s getting scared. Both Aptulli and Paus had nightmares last night.”

Spar nodded absently.

“ ‘Course it could be, yeah?” Brax continued, giving the other boy a questioning glance. “The Yuruk could be creeping along south, just out of sight behind the ridge and we’d never even know about it. Not if they’re hiding from the seers in some mind-blocking misty place like Hadzi says they are.”

His expression grim, Spar nodded again.

Rubbing his palm absently over the pommel of his sword, Brax grimaced. “Still, they have to come east eventually, and then we’ll see them—I mean, then Kemal and the rest will see them,” he amended, scowling darkly as he remembered once again about all the fighting he was going to miss. He straightened suddenly. “Well, I say let them come, the Warriors’ll crush every last one of them. They can even come here. I’m not afraid of them.”

Staring out past the wall at the distant hills painted a vivid orange and purple in the setting sun, Spar just shook his head at him.

The next day, Birin-Militia-Kaptin Badahir gathered the older children together in the central courtyard. A tall woman, with Bayard’s eyes and Kemal’s thick black hair, she’d earned her position in a decade of fighting the Yuruk. Now she stood in the center of the courtyard, her delinkos Coval beside her, looking self-important.

Brax tried not to glare at him.

“All right,” Badahir said when they were all, more-or-less, quiet. “Since none of you seem able to talk about anything else, let’s talk about the Yuruk. Good riders, good archers, but poor infantry. Anyone know why?”

Seated beside Spar and Jaq, Aptulli dutifully raised her hand.

“Yes, Kardelin.”

“‘Cause they don’t walk anywhere.”

The children snickered, but Badahir nodded her head. “That’s right,” she answered and the girl stuck her tongue out at the others. “The Yuruk live in small, mobile family groups. They follow their flocks and herds from winter pasture to summer pasture, relying on small, sturdy, plains-bred ponies to cross the vast expanse of territory they have to cover every year. It’s said their delon are taught to ride before they can walk. They’re known for their skills with the bow and the spear, so they might be a force to be reckoned with except for what? Ekrubi?”

Bayard’s middle delos looked up from the blade of grass he was methodically shredding and frowned. “Um ... ‘Cause there aren’t enough of them?”

Badahir smiled. “And here I thought you weren’t paying attention. Right. There aren’t enough of them. They maintain no more than a very loose, very temporary alliance with other Yuruk families, formed when they have a set objective. They have no council or leaders, so there’s no one to mold them into a solid disciplined, fighting force, and no hierarchy—that means nobody tells them what to do, Aptulli,” she added in response to the girl’s confused expression.

“Not even the Gods?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“They don’t have Gods, dummy,” Ekrubi sneered.
“Everybody
knows that.”

“Yeah, like everybody knows you peed your pallet last night,” she shot back. Her kardos made a lunge for her, but at Badahir’s frown, he returned to his place, muttering darkly.