Young Warriors (22 page)

Gwawl might have been smaller than the slaver, and he might well have trouble breathing beneath the man, but the slaver was now his shield, and both of the other men immediately turned to Kelyn.

She grinned at them, a fierce grin, and unleashed the ululating hunt cry that until now had only echoed through the mountains in practice—the cry that declared her prowess and confidence and intent. She didn't wait for their moves—she leaped at them, her stance as wide as she could manage in the ropes, and she turned the staff into her shield, whirling it so quickly that it became nothing more than a blur. “
I've
decided,” she snarled. “We can't spare any of us—but we can spare all of
you.
”

He snarled right back at her. “You bi—”

That's when Kelyn heard it. Another snarl altogether, deep and throaty and full of menace. She glanced at Gwawl, protected under his choking human shield, and dove for the overhang, miscalculating enough to land right on top of her befuddled pack mates. “Down!” she cried to them as they tried to heave her off. “Down, down,
down
!”

They stayed down. Kelyn twisted to look back to the clearing as a huge shadow passed before the overhang. A great webbed paw slapped one man, a hind paw scraped across the man on top of Gwawl, and the immense dappled white rock cat snatched the leader up in his jaws and bounded right out of the clearing.

Silence.

Kelyn sat up; the others disentangled themselves. Gwawl pulled his arms free, dragged himself out from beneath the dead weight of the equally dead man atop him, and crawled over to join the others. The fire had been kicked to embers; night was nearly upon them.

But the slavers were dead. The hunt pack was free.

Gwawl looked at Kelyn and murmured approvingly, “It takes more than brawn to make a powerful hunter . . . or warrior. It takes a clever turn of mind. And you saved the clumsy for last.”

Kelyn moved quickly into the clearing, using the last bit of fading light to grab knives from the slavers, and to snatch up the meat scattered beside the dead fire. She gave Gwawl one of the knives and they went to work on the ropes. She glanced at their stuporous pack mates. “Will they even remember what happened?”

Gwawl grunted as his ankle ropes parted, and stretched his legs with pleasure. “Who knows? Does it matter?”

“No,” Kelyn said, settling in for a long night of huddling beneath the overhang to watch over her drugged friends, guarding against the return of the rock cat. “It doesn't.”

Because she knew. And things would be different from now on.

Clumsy Kelyn could be her father's daughter after all.

DORANNA DURGIN

DORANNA DURGIN spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures— and with a new appreciation for the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and that she instills in her characters.

Dun Lady's Jess,
Doranna's first published fantasy novel, received the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award for the best first book in the science fiction, fantasy, or horror genre. She now has sixteen novels in a variety of genres on the shelves and more on the way; most recently she's leaped gleefully into the world of action-romance. When she's not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera, and works with horses and dogs. There's a Lipizzan horse in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house, and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that's just the way she likes it.

You can find a complete list of fantasy books, franchise tie-ins, and action-romances at
www.doranna.net
, along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos, and a link to Doranna's SFF Net newsgroup. And for kicks, her dog, Connery Beagle, has a LiveJournal (connerybeagle) presenting his unique view of life in the high desert of Arizona. Drop by and say hello!

AN AXE FOR MEN

Rosemary Edghill

THEY CARRIED SLEEPING TAR'ATHA before them, borne upon Her golden lions. Ten kings followed Her—the Sacred Twins who had danced with the bulls within the walls of Saloe for Her fame and delight.

But Saloe was no more.

Since before the beginning of the world, the tricolored walls of Great Saloe had stood tall before the Reed Lake, beside the Blue River. Her pillars of red orichalcum called down Ut-ash-atha from heaven, all for the glory of Sleeping Tar'atha.

Saloe was changeless. But Saloe changed.

It was in rain-time, the season that turned the plains dark and lush with pasturage for goats and horses. But that year there was more rain than Sais could remember ever having fallen before. For month after month, Tar'atha hid Ut-sin-atha in the sky by night, hid Ut-ash-atha in the sky by day. There was only darkness, and clouds, and rain.

And then, one day, there was the sound of the world breaking.

Water rushed down into the valley in a great flood. It shattered villages. It drowned the beasts in the pastures.

But Great Saloe was not destroyed.

Not then.

The people came to the city as the waters rose, begging for refuge, and the Lady of Saloe admitted them. Sais was only a very young Priestess of the Temple then, but she cherished the way in which the Lady of Saloe spoke as the voice of the Sleeping Goddess. Perhaps someday, if she too bore twin kings to Tar'atha, she would stand where the Lady of Saloe stood now and rule over the people with the same calm justice.

That had been three turns of the seasons ago.

Before the Reed Lake had turned entirely to salt.

Before it grew to cover the villages, the grazing lands, the fields. Before it grew to rise over the outer terraces of Great Saloe itself.

The rain had stopped, but the water kept rising.

And soon they realized that they must leave Great Saloe . . . or starve.

The Lady of Saloe dreamed an oracle and chose the most propitious day. They would leave at high summer and build a new city in the south. So Tar'atha ruled.

All the remaining people of the city gathered together their animals and their possessions. They built beautiful wheeled carts to carry them and wove lovely clothes to wear.

On the first day, the Ten Kings had led the sacred bulls, garlanded in wreaths of beaten gold, through the great gilded gates of the city. They were followed by a glorious procession: the shadow-women of the Sleeping Goddess, dressed in their most ornate gowns, their most elaborate aprons, bearing the golden image of the Goddess on their muscular shoulders. Behind them walked the Lady of Saloe, with the gold Crown of the City upon her head and the knotted Belt of Sovereignty about her hips, and behind her, Sais and the rest of the Priestess-brides.

But the sacred bulls had never been outside of the city in their lives. They balked as they were led down the long ramp outside the city gates, and when the feet of the first pair sank into the muddy ground outside the city, the creatures panicked.

Bawling and shaking their heads in terror, the sacred bulls stood fast and would not be moved.

It was a terrible omen. Sais could not see it, but she could hear the bellowing, and heard the whispered descriptions of the sight at the head of the column.

“Their throats are to be cut here,” the Lady of Saloe said at last. “Tar'atha requires this sacrifice to bring us good fortune on our journey.”

Sais felt a cold chill of dread creep over her. This was not the ancient ritual. Yes, the sacred bulls died for Tar'atha's favor, but the Twin Kings danced with them first, bringing them to the place of their death with stave and noose before slitting their throats with the stone knife, for no metal must ever touch their flesh. This was . . . wrong.

But the word was passed, and eventually the bellowing stopped.

The people moved on.

The beautiful gowns were quickly draggled with mud and water, for all the earth outside Great Saloe was wet and marshy now, salt-poisoned and dead. The ground was too wet for the wheeled carts to be able to roll over it, too wet for the people to simply drag them through the mud. At last they loaded as much of the food and their possessions as they could onto the horses and any other animal that could carry a burden, and left the rest behind. The sucking mud quickly stole away one of Sais's glittering golden sandals, and in a fit of temper she unlaced the other one and threw it as far as she could.

The golden image of Sleeping Tar'atha they kept with them.

They did not know where to go, or what they must do. They had lingered long, protected by the walls of Great Saloe, while others fled before them. The land had changed.

Tiny streams were great rushing rivers of bitter undrinkable water. Fertile grasslands were dying swamps, the grass yellowed and sere.

By the time Ut-ash-atha sank toward the Halls of Sleep the people were all sick and weary with walking, but a shepherd named Neshat had found a stream of water that was still sweet enough—just barely—to drink.

That night they finished all the cooked food they had brought with them out of Saloe. They lit their lamps, but the wind blew out the flames. It did not matter. Soon the oil would be gone as well.

That night Sais Dreamed.

She had not yet been admitted into the Sanctuary, where the Priestess-brides courted the wisdom of the Great Mother in sleep. Only last year had she begun to bleed as a woman. If the Salt had not come, this year she would have taken one of the Young Kings as a lover in the soft meadows of spring, courting the favor and fertility of Sleeping Tar'atha.

She was still virgin, and so she should not Dream.

But she Dreamed.

She stood within the walls of Great Saloe. Water filled the streets, rose over the steps of Tar'atha's Temple. In the distance, the villages that had once looked to Saloe for wisdom could no longer be seen: only the waters of the Reed Lake, growing vaster with each death of Ut-sin-atha. The Younger Son shone down into the Sacred Courtyard, turning the sacred pillar to a dull bronze.

And she was not alone.

A figure stepped out from behind the orichalcum pillar. It was a man unlike any Sais had ever seen.

He wore the dancing-kilt of the Young Kings, but his beard was the long red beard of a man. In his hand he carried the Axe of Sacrifice, which only the Lady of Saloe might wield. And upon his brow . . .

It was as if one of the Young Kings had grown to manhood and wore the horns of the sacred bulls upon his own brow.

She did not know what to do. This was a vision, Goddess-sent, but this was not the Goddess.

The Sleeping Goddess was the Mother of All, and in token of that, they depicted Her with Her sons, Ut-sin-atha and Ut-ash-atha—the Tar'athanis, the Sacred Twins who watched by day and night. And since Sais's world was but a mirror of Her dominion, the Lady of Saloe had Twin Kings as well: five pairs, like the fingers of a hand.

But never did the Young Kings live into the fullness of bearded manhood. Should one be taken by the Mother from the bull-court, his brother must accompany him to Her sky-hall at once: it was the Law of the City. And the bulls were fast, and agile, and clever. Only the young could dance with them, and live.

“You do not know Me, Sais,” the Horned One said. “I have danced for your pleasure and My Mother's many a time, and still you do not know Me. But you will. You will need Me, and what only I can teach you. Call upon My Name, when you are ready.”

With a startled gasp, Sais awoke, staring into the darkness. The images burned strong in her mind and her heart.

But they made no sense. A man? A god-man? A man who was a god?

It could not be. There was only the Mother, alone and One. The Mother and Her suckling babes.

But sleep did not come again that night.

Another day, their progress southward slower still. When they stopped at midmorning to eat—slaughtering the young and the weak of the herds to feed themselves—it took a long time to find fuel to cook the meat, and the people lingered over the food. Worse, they made the water palatable by mixing it with the jars of beer and honey-wine they had brought, and so they slept after they had eaten and did not move on again that day.

But Sais was too frightened to sleep.

When the sheep and the goats and the cattle are gone, what
shall we eat? When the grain and the fruit are gone, what shall
we eat? Why do not the Great Mother and the Lady of Saloe tell
us what we must do?

She knew she should tell the Lady of Saloe of her vision, but she was afraid. She sat among the slumbering Court and watched the herdsmen as they moved among the surviving beasts, trying to find them palatable grazing. Here and there a tuft of hardy new growth arose in the blighted earth, but most of the grass was yellow and dead with the salt that had risen through the soil. Among them she saw the shepherd Neshat, standing among his beasts.

Sais could look back the way they had come and still see—faintly, in the distance—the gilded towers of Saloe. And along the way, the swath of broken grass that marked their path. It glittered with those things her people had carelessly dropped or discarded—a sandal, a painted fan, a shawl, a child's ball.

The day is warm,
she thought.
But winter will come again.
Our looms are behind us in Saloe. How shall we clothe ourselves
when the cold winds blow?

“You will need Me, and what only I can teach you. Call upon
My Name, when you are ready.”

They had been on the road a handful of days when the first of the Young Kings died.

Sais had not Dreamed again since that first night, but she seemed to feel the presence of the Horned One with her always, waiting for the moment when she would do something she could as yet barely imagine. She was the youngest and most-untutored of Great Saloe's Priestess-brides. What could she do?

The way before them led through a marsh. They had looked for a way around it and found none. They must cross it or turn back. By driving the animals ahead, Neshat said, they could find the driest ground and the easiest way. And so it was: where cattle went, men could follow.

But one of the Young Kings turned aside, just for a moment, to pluck a clump of yellow flowers as a gift to the Lady of Saloe. There was so little beauty in the world now, but here in the marsh, flowers grew everywhere.

He put his hand upon a fallen tree to steady himself, and as he did, the trunk rolled aside, and an adder darted out from beneath it, sinking its fangs into his foot.

He died in seconds, gasping out his life, as his brother watched in horror.

The Lady of Saloe waited until they had all crossed safely to the far side of the marsh. Then she called for the Axe.

The Axe of Sacrifice and Tar'atha's golden image were all that they had managed to keep of the sacred things that had been Saloe's. The Axe was older than Great Saloe itself, it was said: its head was polished gray stone, smooth as a woman's skin, and its edge was sharper than any metal.

The dead king's twin came before her. He had known his fate from the moment his brother died. He knelt before her, consenting, and leaned back, offering his throat to the blade. In the shadow of Sleeping Tar'atha, the Lady of Saloe struck, sending him to the sky-hall to join his brother.

Their replacements should have been anointed at once and sent to dance with the sacred bulls in the bull-court. But the bull-court was gone and the sacred bulls were dead.

Things are changing,
thought Sais uneasily.

She did not mean their lives—those had changed on the day the Salt had come. She meant the way in which they were held upon the Mother's knees, and that was something Sais had not thought could change even if the Salt covered all the land below the Mother's sky-hall.

That day, when they stopped, she resolved to tell the Lady of Saloe of her vision and beg for her comfort.

But that comfort did not come.

“These are virginal fancies,” the Lady of Saloe told her implacably, when Sais had stumbled through her tale and brought it to its close. “What you speak of is not possible. An axe for men? It cannot be. Who have you told of this?”

“No one,” Sais said, stunned and surprised. To whom should she speak of such horrors, save the Lady of Saloe?

“Speak to no one—or never speak again. And Dream no more.”

But though she could promise not to speak, Sais could not promise not to Dream.

That night He came to her again. Once more she stood in Drowning Saloe, in the Birth-Room of the Young Kings. Their bodies were painted with the red ochre and the yellow, their faces painted as white as Ut-sin-atha's. Their bodies were bound with strips of fine cloth for their journey to the sky-halls, but she could still see the marks of the adder's bite upon the one and the mark of the Blade of Sacrifice upon the other, for his head had been carefully set upon his shoulders again with a collar of white clay set with the teeth of bulls.

And He was there.

He is no man,
Sais thought rebelliously, for the Lady of Saloe's scorn still lay heavily upon her.
He is the Son of the
Mother.

“Do you know Me yet?” He asked.

“You are the Mother's Son,” Sais said. She knelt before Him in reverence, though when she did, she knelt in icy water that came to her slender waist.

“My Mother is the Lady of All Beasts, and all that is wild and tame does Her reverence. Yet she has kept for Herself that which is tame, and given to Me that which is wild. You go now into My realms. Call upon My Name when you would accept My gifts.”

Once more Sais awoke in the night, her heart fluttering in terror.

Her gown was sodden to the waist, as if she had been wading in a pool. She wrung it out and sniffed at her fingers.

Salt.

But I do not know Your Name, Horned One! How shall I
call upon You?

The darkness gave no answer.