Young Warriors (17 page)

“Well,” he said. His voice was deep and smooth, like dark honey. “Perhaps this is not the folly it looks to be.” His Dikurri accent was thick, but I could understand him.

Of course, peahen, I told myself. He sat with the chief. They must be able to talk.

He was asking me something. I turned to look up at him. “What?” I asked. My lips felt stiff.

“What do you wear under your dress?” he asked slowly, as if he knew I could only understand slow speech, just then.

“How dare you!” cried Mama.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Your daughter cannot fight in a dress,” he said kindly. “The women warriors of the Chelogu tribes fight entirely naked, in tribute to the Great Mother Goddess. I think your daughter may wear a
little
more than that, but a skirt will hobble her like ropes hobble a donkey.”

“She
is
a donkey,” my mother whispered, her lips trembling. “A stupid donkey who does not understand what she has done here.”

“She wears a breast band and a loincloth,” Iyaka said.

“If they are snug, that is enough,” said the Falcon. He asked me, “Can you remove the dress on your own?”

I plucked at my sash until it came apart. Someone pulled it away; then Iyaka took the dress from where it had fallen. I did not know why Mama was so upset. I raced in no more than this at every festival.

The Falcon crouched behind me and began to work the muscles around my collarbone with those iron fingers. They spread warmth and relaxation down into my arms. “What is your name, girl?” he asked me, his voice coming from behind me like a ghost's.

Ogin answered for me. “Kylaia,” he said, his eyes as over-bright as Mama's. “She is Kylaia al Jmaa.”

The Falcon picked up one of my hands and began to work on it. Across the arena, servants rubbed oil onto Awochu's shoulders. “Kylaia,” the Falcon said for my ears only, “who taught you to fight?”

I blinked at him like a simpleton. “The ostriches,” I said. “The killers of the plains.”

“She is mad,” Papa said abruptly. “I will make them stop it.
I
will fight him.”

The Falcon said, “It is in the gods' hands now, sir. But I do not think they have chosen badly.”

“Why do you help her?” asked my papa suddenly. “You sat with Chief Rusom.”

“I help her because we of Shang help those who defend the unjustly accused,” the Falcon replied. “A blind man could see who lied back there, and who told the truth. And I sat with Chief Rusom because I had just arrived in his lands, and it is polite for a warrior to meet his host.”

By the time the sun left no shadows, the Falcon had loosened the muscles in my arms, back, legs, and feet. I was as relaxed as if I had just finished a quick sprint to get my blood warm.

Someone struck a gong. It was time. I walked out to the center of the arena, ignoring the comments of the crowd. If they were properly bred, like the people of our village, they would no more laugh at a maiden dressed to show her body's skills than they would laugh at a woman giving birth.

Awochu met me at the center. Chief Rusom's shaman prayed. I ignored him. My eyes watched Awochu. He would want to hit me hard and fast, to get it over with, so he could enjoy my sister's defeat. I had said my prayers. Now it was time for me to take down this hunter who had come into my territory. He was stronger on his right side, the muscles of that arm clearer than the muscles of his left. He would try to grapple with me, as the young men did in unarmed combat. If he actually took hold of me, I would be in trouble. He was taller, stronger, heavier. He had fought in battle to earn his scars. He had fought with his hands.

Now Chief Rusom had something to say.

Awochu shifted on his feet for balance.

Someone struck the gong again. Awochu lunged for me. I pivoted to one side and ostrich-kicked him. The ball of my foot slammed him just under his ribs with all the speed and strength I had built up. He gasped and turned to grab my kicking leg, but I was already behind him. He was so
slow.
I did not understand that all those years of repetition had not just made me a fast runner. All that practice on wood and stone, as I pretended they were living lions and wild dogs, had made me a fast kicker, a fast mover, a fast hitter. With that speed, each blow and kick had also gained power.

I drove the ball of my other foot into Awochu's back, above his right kidney. He staggered away from me and fell to his knees. I lunged forward and hammered my linked fists giraffe-style into the side of his neck. Wheezing from pain, he grabbed my hands. I bounced up and swung down to drive my knee into his spine. He straightened with a strangled cry, letting me go. Then I wrapped my arm around his neck from behind, gripping my fist with my free hand. I pulled back, resting my knee against his spine for leverage. Choking, he clawed my arm, ripping my flesh with his nails.

“Confess,” I told him. “Tell the truth. Swear it on your mother's name, or I will cripple you.” I did not think I could do it, but it sounded like the right thing to say to a bully who had shamed my family before all the trade fair.

He tried to speak and could not. I eased my grip just a little.

“The gods have humbled me!” he shrieked. “They sent a demon into this girl child to shame me! Iyaka al Jmaa is an honorable girl!”

“Mention the magic,” I whispered. If he wanted to believe a demon had beaten him, I did not care. I only wanted my sister to get what was owed.

“I won't,” he said. I tightened my hold briefly, then relaxed it. When he could breathe again, he confessed to everything and begged his father for the fifteen cattle for my sister.

We did not trust Awochu's family to arrange things honorably. Instead my chief made Awochu and his father sign new words on the old marriage contract, saying that the agreement was ended and that the right price would be paid for the slight to my sister. Then the men of my village went with Awochu and his father to collect the fifteen cattle.

This I was told of later. As soon as I let Awochu up, my sisters came, wrapped me in my dress, and took me back to our tent, to clean up and sleep.

When I awoke, only a small lamp was burning in our tent. Light was also flickering through the cracks around the door flap. It was night, and the campfires were lit. I could hear the low murmur of voices outside.

I could also smell food. I got up, every muscle of my body aching. In my rage I had done more than I was used to, and my body was unhappy. Like an old woman, I crept outside.

The Shang Falcon sat at our fire with my parents, Iyaka, and Ogin, eating from the pot with one hand, as if he had eaten that way all his life. He nodded to me and said, “I have been talking with your parents about your future,” as though continuing a conversation we had already begun.

“I have no future,” I told him as I accepted a round of bread from Iyaka. I scooped food onto it and crouched between my parents. “Boys won't want a girl who gets possessed by demons.”

“You were no more possessed than I am,” said the Falcon. “Ogin told us about the way you watched animals, and the way you practiced fighting as they did.”

I glared at Ogin, who grinned at me and shrugged. “I am a hunter as well as a herder,” he said cheerfully. “If I cannot be quiet, I catch only grubs.”

The Falcon smiled. “And so I was saying to your parents, while the Shang school for warriors normally does not take a new student of your advanced age—”

“Advanced age!” I protested.

“Shang students begin training between their fourth and sixth years,” Papa said. “Let the man say what he must. Stop interrupting.”

“I believe they would take an old woman if she had your unusual skills,” the Falcon said to me. “In fact, I am so sure of it that I am willing to pay a proper bride-price for you. But you will not be my bride on our journey to Shang, you will be my student. You would be as safe with me as you would with your father.”

I scowled at him. “Are you buying me? I am no slave.”

He chuckled. “No,” he said, laughter still in his eyes. “This is an offering of thanks I give to your family, for the honor of being allowed to teach so inventive a young lady.”

“We believe him,” Mama said quietly. “We trust him. But you must choose.”

“He says you may visit, when you have finished the studies.” Iyaka smiled at me, but tears rolled down her cheeks.

Papa took my hand and kissed it. “I think you saved our family's honor today at high cost to your future,” he said, his voice as soft as Mama's. “Even less than a bride possessed by a demon will a young man like a wife who can kick his ribs in.”

I looked at the Falcon. “Why should I want to study the ways of warriors out of grandmother tales?” I asked him, feeling my heart beat a little faster.

He got to his knees and rolled a stone half the size of my head over in front of him. His eyes half-closed, he seemed to go away for a moment. I did not even see him cock his fist and punch the stone.

The stone broke in half.

For the first time since we had met Awochu in the street, I felt like myself again. “How did you do that?” I asked. “Will you teach me that? And what is your idea of a fair bride-price? If I am to be a Shang warrior, I must not dishonor my family with a few coppers.”

TAMORA PIERCE

TAMORA PIERCE is the
New York Times
and
Wall Street Journal
bestselling writer of twenty-two books of fantasy for teenagers, almost half of which (The Song of the Lioness quartet, the Protector of the Small quartet, and her most recent books,
Trickster's Choice
and
Trickster's Queen
) are set in the same universe as “Student of Ostriches.” The idea for the story came from her fans, who have requested more stories about the Shang warriors of that universe, and from a character mentioned in her book
Lioness Rampant—
Kylaia al Jmaa, the fabled Shang Unicorn. Tammy thought it would be fun to see how the Unicorn first set out on the warrior's path. She has long been fascinated by wildlife, as fans of her Immortals quartet know, and it occurred to her that it would not be unusual for an observant and imaginative girl to turn the animal behavior she saw into ways to defend herself. Once Tammy understood that, it was as if Kylaia stood beside her and dictated her story. “It's not an experience I have often,” Tammy says, “but it really rocked while it lasted!”

Tammy lives in New York City with her own wildlife: four cats, two parakeets, and her beloved Spouse-Creature, Web designer Tim Liebe.

Her Web site is
www.tamorapierce.com
.

SERPENT'S ROCK

Laura Anne Gilman

GULPILIL STOOD IN THE
middle of the red-rock canyon and
wondered how long it would take him to die.

“I stand against you, my brother, not because I wish you
harm, but because you and I cannot be in the same place at this
same time. I stand against you, my brother, not because I wish you
to be no more, but because I wish to continue.

“In the Long-Ago Time you knew your place and I knew
mine. But you walk across your place and into mine, and therefore,my brother, I must stand against you.”

He was repeating himself. Knowing you were going to die
might do that, he supposed, but it made his telling weaker, and
that was no good. The shaft of his spear was slick and useless in
his hands. He almost dropped it, but what then would he hold?

Not that weapons would matter, in the end.

Across the rocks, the shadows crept closer. When the shadows
overtook him, it would be time.

Four days earlier, the Great Serpent had shifted deep underground, and the earth had moved. Busy with fishing, the people thought little of it for three days after.

“Marwai!” Jinabu collapsed to his knees at the outskirts of the fish camp. “Marwai!” His skin was shiny-dark with sweat, and his thick black hair was matted against his neck.

Gulpilil was the first to reach him. Jinabu had taken Gulpilil's sister Malle back with him, last Gathering Time. Gulpilil had not seen them since then. But Jinabu had no time for the teenager, his gaze restlessly searching the growing crowd until the elder came forward, the others parting to give him room.

Marwai was ancient—some said as ancient as the sand— and there was nothing he did not know, no story he could not recite. Whatever had so driven Jinabu to a frenzy, Marwai would set right. Gulpilil knew that this was so.

The others began to drift away, back to bringing in the heavy stone traps, rebaiting them, and casting them into the shallow waters. Redshell did not keep well, but it was good in season. The dingoes would eat whatever the people did not, and make their coats glossy and their bellies firm until it was time to hunt the quick-leapers again.

Gulpilil's skill lay not in setting traps or in hunting the quick-leapers, but in fixing the traps and honing the spearheads. Stone moved under his hands as it had for the All-Father, they said. But Jinabu's anguish drew him, and so instead he followed the men to the stone overhang where Marwai built his fire, and spoke to those who came to him.

“You, boy, go back to your work.” Dundalli blocked his way. Dundalli was tall and strong, and his skin was covered in clay dust, making him look like a First Man only just carved from the red river-rock.

“I need—” Gulpilil did not know what he needed, only that he needed.

“You have other work to do. Someday you too will sit by the fire and listen to the stories others will tell. But that day is not now.” Dundalli was not unkind. But it burned bitterly to be sent away. His sister's man was there. What had happened to Malle?

“Sssst!”

Gulpilil didn't need to look up to see who was hissing at him. He joined Idimi where the other boy waited, on the hill that created Marwai's shelter.

“Someday they will catch you at this,” Gulpilil said, feeling his heart beat too fast inside his chest.

Idimi grinned, his teeth crooked from where the canoe paddle had hit him in the mouth five seasons before. “But not today. Come!”

The two boys crawled on their hands and knees up the hill. It was covered with tall grass, which was excellent for concealment, but the ground was studded with rocks, which weren't so good for crawling. Gulpilil's knees were bruised and torn by the time they got to where Idimi was leading him.

“Shhh,”
his friend said, his grin even wider. “Here. You go first.”

“Here” was a rock that jutted out of the ground a full handspan. It was two handspans across, rounded, and hollow like a reed. It, and three or four others, went all the way down into the overhang, bringing air—and carrying sound.

At first all they could hear was silence. Then a muttering, like the water in the middle of the night. Gawul, and his brother Bunjil. They had been born muttering, his mother once said; then her eyes got all round and bright, and they both had to smother their giggles over the stone chips they were smoothing for spearheads.

But their muttering sounded angry now. And scared. Gulpilil smoothed the ground by the stone-pipe and leaned his elbow on that spot, putting his ear closer to the stone's opening.

Jinabu was speaking, of shadows that moved on their own. Of the people—trusting the mountain to keep them safe, under siege from something they could not see. Of a monster, something terrible that came from the rock itself to attack them.

“What're they saying?” Idimi hissed, and Gulpilil batted his hand backwards blindly to shut his friend up.

“When the sun rose and the shadows fell, we went higher in the rocks, thinking that it would not follow. But it did. I was . . .” Jinabu took a sip of something and cleared his throat. “I heard the screaming. We—there were two others with me, and we saw it. Or saw what it left. And the remains . . . we could not identify who it had been. It follows us. It may have followed me even here—”

“You brought it among us!”

“It will come for us all! Don't you understand that? We have done nothing to offend, and yet it kills and consumes. Not the meat we had been bringing back, not the dogs—only the people. But Marwai is the eldest of us all, and we thought he might know some way to stop it. Before it takes us all down into the shadows, and the people are no more.”

There was silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire. Then Marwai spoke, and his words were dry and thin. And no one spoke against him. Not even Jinabu, his breathing harsh and blood-laced.

Gulpilil pushed himself away from the stone-pipe and stared at it in disbelief.

“What is it?” Idimi asked. “What did they say?”

The boats were drawn up on shore, the children sleeping. Normally there was only one watch-fire at either end of camp, to mark the way. But tonight five fires glowed under the dark sky. Men walked from one fire to another, nervous in a way they weren't before a hunt. More like when wind-storms came up in the dry seasons, or rain lashed down and set everything to mud in the growing time. Gulpilil sat by the water and listened to the men talk. They knew even less than he did. Only that something terrible had happened, something they had no defense against.

“Marwai will tell us how to protect ourselves,” they said. “There's a story for everything in that one.”

Gulpilil knew what they did not—that Marwai had no stories, no answers. That Marwai could not keep his own camp safe, much less save others.

His sister Malle, who sang like the night-bird while she worked. Who had been so happy when Jinabu's gaze fell on her, and who danced like grass-seed in the wind when their mother said she might go with him.

And now Jinabu was here, unable to take another step unaided, and no aid would be coming.

Marwai could do nothing for Malle. Nothing for the child she carried, whom Jinabu wept for as dead.

Gulpilil looked down at the spearhead he held in his hand. It was still rough, the edge unsharpened. As a weapon, it had all the dull spirit of the rock it came from.

But even a dull rock, if thrown hard enough, could hurt an enemy.

Gulpilil rubbed the spearhead between his fingers. He wasn't much of a thinker, but his mother was clever and his father had been a fine hunter. And he knew what he knew when he knew it. And what he knew was that Marwai would move the camp soon, abandoning the fish traps and the canoes far too early, moving his people up the coast, circling around the red rocks.

Something had opened somewhere when the Great Serpent twitched its tail. And something had come through that opening.

Gulpilil wasn't very good at thinking. You didn't have to be a good thinker to know that one boy could not stand against a creature the All-Father had let loose.

But Gulpilil loved his sister very much.

The sun emerged from the waters and began its climb back into the sky. Nobody noticed when one slight boy slipped away from the camp, too busy looking for something coming in to wonder what might be creeping out.

Gulpilil had taken with him one of the better red-rock knives and strapped it to his thigh with fish-gut cord. A spear, its shaft cut down for his arm's length, was in his hand, and two extra heads were in a gray quick-leaper pouch tied around his waist.

Once past the reach of the fires and the quiet sounds of men talking and water splashing on the shore, Gulpilil stood up straight, tied his thick black hair away from his face with the quick-leaper headband Malle had given him for his tenth birthday, and waited to let his eyes adjust.

Stretching out to his left were the hunting-plains. If he went across them, after a handful of days he would come to the black sands, where other tribes hunted and lived. When he was a man, perhaps he would trade his work for theirs; perhaps bring home a wife from their people.

He turned his face away and looked to his right, to where the red rocks rose from the edges of the plains, their jagged edges hiding paths, trails, and camps where the hunters and the stone-gatherers lived. He had gone there once with his father.

The thing that threatened his sister was there.

He was only a boy; he had no cause to go chasing after it when the elders would not.

But his sister was there.

Gulpilil went.

The time he traveled with his father, they carried water with them, and rolls of dried fish and wetweed. This time he had taken a skin of water, but it was only half full. There had been no food left out where he could take it; everyone was putting things away, packing up for when Marwai gave the word that they should leave.

He tried not to think that they might not be there when he returned.

He tried not to think that he likely would not return.

“I am Gulpilil, son of the Woman Who Thinks and the Man
Who Went Away. I am the shaper of stone for my people, and because of me they bring down the quick-leaper, the sharp-toothed
lizard, the fast-running dingo.”

His people were much for stories. He had none—yet. But this might be the way they would speak of him later. After it all was done.

Despite the grass he walked on, the air was thin and dusty. His mouth became dry, and he left off the storytelling. Later, perhaps. When there was something to tell, then he would begin again.

The sun rose farther into the sky and sweat began to form under his headband, running down his face. He took a sip of water and wished that the rocks were not so far away.

It occurred to him then that it might have been wise to learn more before he left. Jinabu would have told him what this thing was. Did it have claws? Teeth? Or was it magical, able to take the life from a man without needing to touch him?

In truth, Jinabu would have done what the other did— send him back to the women and children, telling him that he was not yet old enough to take counsel with the men.

The sun rose still higher, and Gulpilil thought for certain that the rocks were closer, rising into the sky in a jumble of red-and-gray striations . . . Yes, they must be closer if he could tell the colors one from the other. But they were still so far away, and his legs were sore and tired. He lifted the waterskin to his mouth and let just a bit of water trickle into his mouth, swishing it around so that every part of his mouth was wet. Only then did he let it slide down his throat.

“I am Gulpilil, son of the Woman Who Thinks and the Man
Who Went Away. I am the shaper of stone for my people, and because of me they bring down the quick-leaper, the sharp-toothed
lizard, the fast-running dingo. I am Gulpilil, Malle's brother, who
will take her from the shadow for the love of our mother, the
Woman Who Thinks.”

That was the proper opening of a story, yes. The who and the what and the reason for doing.

A noise behind him made him tighten his grasp on the skin, thinking there was someone who would try to take it from him. It happened, although not often.

“I am Gulpilil, the shaper of stone . . . ,”
he whispered for courage, turning around only to be knocked off his feet. The skin went flying, landing just out of reach.

A quick-leaper passed him, then came back again in lazy jumps that took Gulpilil's breath away. Only one, a red-furred male without his group, far on the edges of the grasslands.

“You're lost, my brother.” Polite was easier than fighting, his mother said. And one kick from this buck's leg could break him in two. Gulpilil reached for the knife on his thigh, then stopped. One knife, no matter how well made, was no match for a full-grown quick-leaper. Maybe in the hands of a grown man. Not wielded by a boy.

“I am no threat to you, brother.”

The buck paused, barely arm's reach away. Its sides were heaving, as though it had run far too quickly, even for it. Gulpilil rolled slowly onto his side, his gaze never leaving the long-muzzled face of the creature beside him. Its brown eyes looked at him curiously.

Fumbling blindly, Gulpilil's fingers closed on the waterskin, and he brought it forward slowly. The fur around the quick-leaper's mouth was stained with spittle, and the creature looked as parched as Gulpilil felt.

“Have some water, brother. Come, take some water . . .” Gulpilil squeezed some out into his palm, forming a cup as best he could and offering it forward.

The quick-leaper hesitated, rocking back on its huge feet, its tail—almost as long and heavy as Gulpilil himself— twitching nervously. Then it bent forward, and a heavy red tongue took up the water out of Gulpilil's palm. Its front paws, oddly frail-looking compared to the rest of it, twitched as it drank, and Gulpilil watched the sharp black claws carefully. Not that he had ever heard of a quick-leaper attacking unprovoked, but stories were told of the unusual far more often than of the usual.