Moongather Page 3

  Finally he sat back on his heels, dropped the rag in the basin. “Clean the rest of your body, child, then put those on.” He pointed at the back of the cart; her best trousers, tunic, belt and cloak were there. “Your mother sent them.” He stood. “Don’t dawdle. Join me when you finish.” He walked away and pulled himself onto the driver’s seat of the cart, his back to her.

  When she climbed up beside him, he flicked a whip at the vinat’s haunches and they started off across the tundra.

  THE WOMAN: II

  The precipitous walls of chalk confined the tappata to a worm of salt water poking into the side of the Earth’s Teeth, the chain of mountains hugging the shore from Oras south to the Aranji gulf where the great round bulge of Sankoy thrust out into the Ocean. The water was rising in the channel, going faster as the tide came roaring in. Winds fell over the top of the cliffs and mixed with the strong air currents following the water from the sea, tangling in a confused knot that twisted and turned unpredictably.

  Serroi fought to hold the boat in the center of the tappata, blessing fervently the builder since all that kept her from crashing a dozen times was the stability and responsiveness of the small craft. She sailed through the deepening shadow under the cliffs, beginning to smell green from the mountains as the side drafts picked up the scent of growing things and mingled this with the tang of the salt air.

  A mellow brazen note sounded above the noise of wind and water, then was repeated several times. Serroi blinked and leaned forward, listening intently as the boat swept around the first section of an elongated double curve. A bell. And close. When the boat nosed into the second half of the curve, the bell no longer sounded but fragments of shouts drifted to her. The tappata widened suddenly, the cliffs beginning to move back and fall away. She dropped the sail, riding the slowing surge of the tide, her eye-spot throbbing with its danger-warning.

  About a dozen boat-lengths ahead of her the right-hand cliff broke off. Beyond the white chalk a rolling grassy meadow rose gradually toward the mountains. As the boat crept forward, still drowned in shadow, the battle scene unreeled before her, a section of wall lengthening like a ribbon pulled from a slot—then the fisher village separated itself from the cliff.

  Heads lined the top of the wall and thrust out from window slits in the gate towers. Three fisher bodies were sprawled outside, one bristling with a dozen crossbow bolts, the other two slashed to bloodied rags. A little farther out, two smaller darker bodies lay in pools of drying blood, skewered by fish spears.

  The setting sun gilded the shouting, milling groups of macai riders gathered on a rocky knob just out of bowshot from the village. They were small dark men, their bodies wrapped in leather straps, boiled leather shields on their backs, sabers brandished high or swinging along their thighs. Kapperim. Serroi sucked in a long breath, exploded it out. A raid at Moongather? Here? Something was wrong. They were too far north, too far from their burrows in the mountains behind Sankoy, something was stirring them up. She licked her lips, uneasily aware that this could fit in all too well with what had happened in Oras. That could mean the Nearga-Nor’s reach was a good deal longer than she’d suspected, something she didn’t want to think about. She searched the knob for the Shaman but saw only the Warleader, a bearded man whose leathers were set with thousands of tiny mirrors that caught the sun and clothed him in a web of golden light.

  Five raiders broke away from the others and rode at top speed down the slope. When they reached the flat ground in front of the village wall, they reined the macain back on their haunches, swung slings over their heads and lobbed smoking globes into the village. Wheeling their mounts, they raced away, shouts and shrill curses following them.

  The globes sailed back outside to burst on the ground, sputtering, fuming and finally subsiding. Out on the tappata, Serroi wrinkled her nose as wisps of the stinking smoke reached her.

  A flight of arrows and a few fish spears streamed after the Kapperim. Though most of them glanced off the shields on their backs, two raiders fell from their saddles, one with an arrow through his leg, the other skewered just above the waist by one of the fish spears. The wounded Kappra dragged himself onto his knees and started crawling uphill, but another spear took him in almost the same place as the other, the lower back. He sprawled on the grass, twitched a few times, then was still.

  Serroi’s boat emerged from the cliff shadow, slowing even further as the tide-drive lessened. Several raiders yelled and pointed at her. The Warleader waved an arm glittering with light, sending three men plunging to the edge of the tappata. They waited for her to come within range, ignoring the fisher arrows that skittered around and off them. When she was close enough, they raised their bows and sent quarrels skimming at her.

  Serroi slipped the tether over the tiller and sank behind the boat’s side, watching the bolts hiss past. One clunked into the mast and bounced back onto the deck; one cut the air two feet behind the stern, hit the water, skipped twice, slowly sank as the heavy point pulled it down. The third hit the side of the boat close to the waterline, slid along it, sank. Serroi snorted with contempt and sat up.

  The Kapperim saw her head and loosed another flight. She ducked again, scornful of their marksmanship but not ready to tempt their luck. Sitting crouched on the deck she strung her bow, worked the weaponbelt around until the long case rested in her lap. She flipped it open and counted the arrows. Twelve shafts left. Not enough. Have to pick my targets. She lifted her head above the rail and frowned at the men on the knob.

  They were backing away, forming a ragged half-circle about a fire. Four Kapperim rode forward and one by one thrust torches into the fire. As soon as they were blazing, the men whirled them about their heads, howled their war challenge, jerked their macain around, raced down toward the walls. One rider fell when an arrow from the village caught his mount in an eye. As he tumbled from the saddle, another arrow socked into his chest. Two of the Kapperim reached the walls and flung their torches against the planks of the great double gate. The third stopped a little way out, whirled the torch over his head and flung it in a high wheeling arc over the wall. As it swung through the air, the flame raced the whole length of the handle. The moment it cleared the wall, a fisher sprang up, caught the torch, shrieked as the fire ate into his hands. Refusing to let go, screaming obscenities, he hurled it into the tappata where it rocked up and down on the water, burning furiously. The fisher stared at white bone coming through charred flesh, moaned and dropped from sight. The other torches flared up with unnatural swiftness, the wood of the gate already beginning to smoke and blacken.

  A small man, naked except for a greasy leather apron, stood hunched over a replica of the village. A tiny fire licked slowly higher and higher at a miniature gate. Body strained, the Shaman was chanting sonorously, his voice in its lowest register. Eye-spot throbbing, Serroi knelt on the deck, nocked an arrow, then was on her feet, feeling for her target, feeling the flow of the wind, breathing slowly, deeply, centering herself. Ignoring the shouts from the bank, the quarrels flitting past her, she loosed the shaft. The arrow sang through the air, swung through a high arc, sliced into the greasy naked back of the Shaman. He fell over his model, extinguishing the tiny fire.

  The fire eating at the gate snuffed out and the torch in the water sizzled to blackness and sank.

  On the bank the Kapperim howled with rage and spurred their macain until they came up with the boat. This time two of their bolts flicked by less than an inch from her head and the third skinned her arm. She ignored them and loosed a second arrow at the Warleader. The light-gilded figure on the knob went rigid. His head dipped down as if he stared at the shaft protruding from his chest, then he toppled off his mount, his fall like the sun suddenly going out for the raiders. She heard screams and curses from the bank, then the quarrels were thick above her as if the shooters were too blind with fury and grief to notice that she was no longer standing, too blind to do more than shove the bolts in and shoot them out. Then the bombardment stop
ped.

  She rose to her knees. On the knob the Kapperim milled about, wailing the death chant for their leaders. On the village wall fishers were cheering, a small boy had climbed the bell tower and was swinging on the broken rope, the successive peals of the huge bell a roll of triumph booming out over the meadow, nearly drowning out the sorrowing yips of the raiders. The charred gate split in the middle and the village men swarmed out, shooting a rain of arrows from their longbows, hurling spears at the wailing, disorganized raiders. Serroi dropped the anchor overside and sat watching the melee, her part in the raider’s rout completed.

  The confusion out on the grass increased. Demoralized by the death of their leaders, a death coming so suddenly it was like evil magic to them, under attack by the reheartened villagers, the Kapperim scooped up their dead Shaman and Warleader and fled into the band of trees hugging the mountains’ feet. Left behind, dead and dying raiders lay on the grass and abandoned macain were snuffling around, tearing up tufts of grass, chewing placidly now that their riders no longer prodded them into irritated rebellion.

  Serroi ran a bit of leather along the bowstave, smoothing a few roughened spots in the wax as she watched the fishers move among the downed Kapperim, cutting the throats of those who still lived. After a few minutes of this, she set the bow aside, worked the anchor loose and drew it back in the boat. When the boat had enough way on, she swung it around, raised the sail, and began tacking back toward the line of boats drawn up on the bank of the tappata in the shadow of the village walls. It was near full dark, the shadows long on the grass, the western sky filled with rags of crimson and amber as clouds gathered for another storm. The tappata was quieter, the tidal surge leveling off. She angled the boat into a last tack, drove its nose up onto the mud slope.

  When She bent to pick up her bow, her head swam and dark blotches danced before her tearing eyes. Sinking down on her heels, knees shaking, head throbbing from fatigue and the fumes of the wine, she clutched at the rail to steady herself until the dizziness receded. She could hear the voices of fishers as they gathered on the bank but she paid them little attention while she clipped the bow to its Strap and shifted it around until the stave lay diagonally across her back. The heels of her hands pressed against tired eyes, she knelt a moment longer, gathering the remnants of her ebbing strength, then shoved herself to her feet and dropped overside into the mud.

  A growing number of fishers moved about on the patchy grass at the top of the bank, waiting for her, exchanging muttered comments, scowling at her, not looking particularly grateful for the help she’d given them. They were a surly lot toward outsiders, these inbred villagers. She smoothed her hair down and started up the incline, frowning as her feet slipped on the gelatinous mud that coated her soles and caked in a thick lump under her instep. When she reached firmer ground, she scrubbed her boots vigorously across a patch of wiry grass, inspected the soles, knelt and used a handful of the grass to rub the rest of the mud away, ignoring the men who were waiting for her until she was satisfied that her boots were as clean as she could make them. She wiped her hands on another bit of grass, then rose to her feet to confront the man standing a step ahead of the others.

  The Intii—the fisher headman. That much she could read from the pattern of scars running across his forehead, thanks to her Biserica training. The Valley scholars had gathered fragmentary reports about the fishers and woven them into a sketchy picture of their lifeways, enough to give Serroi some confidence in her ability to deal with them in spite of their reluctance to accept outside contact. Obviously not going to speak first, he waited for her to explain herself, growing impatient as she scanned his face without saying the words he was silently demanding. He was a lanky long man, grey-streaked brown hair and beard twisted in elaborate plaits, thin lips pressed into near invisibility, eyebrows like hedges drawn down over hooded hazel eyes. Behind the hair his weathered face was a mask carved from nut-brown cantha wood, unreadable except for a general aura of shrewdness and strength:

  She straightened her shoulders, fixed her eyes on his, said firmly, “As meie of the Biserica, under Compact I ask a night’s shelter and help on my way. What is expended will be repaid without the need to ask.”

  His eyes traveled over her plain leather tunic, knee-length divided skirt, her battered dirty high boots, the weaponbelt slung around her hips, widened a little as he noted the absence of a sword. “Meien travel two by two,” he said finally, the fisher lilt twisting the words until she had a hard time understanding him. He looked past her at the boat; from the set of his face she thought he recognized it, something he confirmed when he spoke again. “Ferenlang’s boat, how come it here without him?”

  “The boat was borrowed.”

  “Borrowed, woman?”

  “Meie, Intii,” she snapped, suddenly furious at his stubborn resistance. Fingers trembling from fatigue and anger, she jerked the thongs loose on her money sack, pulled out a handful of coins and threw them at his feet. “Pay for the usage of the boat and for the fisher who returns it. Forget the rest, I’ll sleep under the trees where the dark lives that prowl the night show more courtesy than men.”

  The Intii contemplated the coins scattered in a ragged line in front of his toes, then fixed his eyes on her face, not about to be hurried into decision either by anger or insult. He rubbed a bony thumb along his lower lip, looked from the tip of her unstrung bow thrusting up past her shoulder to the boat, from the boat to the rocky knob where the Shaman and Warleader had fallen victim to her marksmanship. The silence lengthened, broken by the sounds of shuffling feet and more muttered comment from the men gathered behind the Intii. “A meie without a sword?” he said finally, another quibble, though this time his voice was more thoughtful than accusing.

  Serroi swallowed a sigh; the prospect of hot food and a bath was the only thing keeping her from carrying out her threat and leaving the man to his tortuous reasonings. “You will have noted my size.” She spoke with exaggerated patience, knowing this could annoy him, unable to swallow her resentment at the way she was being catechized. The way she was dressed, the skill with which she handled the bow, what the hell else could she be but a meie? “I haven’t the reach for effective swordplay though I’m trained in sword use; must I prove this on one of you?”

  To her surprise, the Intii’s thin mouth curved in a tight smile. “If you’re half as quick with sword as you be sharp with bow, I think I’d lose the man, meie.” He wheeled and with a few brisk words ordered the shifting crowd to disperse and take care of work left unfinished at the onset of the raid. He stood silent beside Serroi until the last straggler had passed through the gate, then he chuckled and relaxed, a different man away from his followers. “You’re a stingy fighter, little meie; two arrows and raid’s a rout.” He glanced over his shoulder at the line of boats, shook his head, tongue-clicks underlining his disgust. “Fishers and we never thought of using boats. Next raid, we clean their guts; those bows of theirs, they got no range.”

  Serroi frowned. “This is the Moongather year and only one more week before the Gather’s complete. I’ve never heard of Kapperim raiding this close to the Gather—or this far north with winter on the way.” Wearily she moved her shoulders, rubbed at the back of her neck. “Any idea why they’re breaking custom?”

  “The stink in Sankoy. Worse’n fish a week out of water. We don’t fish south any more. What I hear, Kapperim’re part of the stink.” He smoothed the toe of one sandal across the gritty earth, his face thoughtful. “Could be they’re opening a way for the Sankoy stink to spread.” Pulling the mantle of the Intii back around his shoulders, speaking with grave formality, he said, “What do you require, meie of the Biserica?”

  Once again Serroi straightened her back, squared her shoulders, answering with equal formality, “This I require, Intii of the fishers. A macai from among the abandoned.” She nodded at the dark blotches wandering about the rolling meadow, their shapes lost to the descending night. “A hot meal, a bath, a bed and in the
morning supplies for my journey.”

  THE CHILD: 2

  Letting her short legs swing, Serroi watched the hairy haunches of the vinat ripple as the beast pulled them steadily over the pathless tundra. They were traveling west, cutting across the migration route of the vinat herds and the windrunner clans that followed them. Narrowing her eyes, she sneaked a glance at the tall silent figure sitting beside her, the reins resting loose in lax fingers. He’d been kind enough, but after her first glow faded, she was afraid to trust that kindness without trying it some more. Her five years had been enough to teach her how little she could depend on outside herself. Though she was beginning to understand that the world had patterns she could learn if she watched them long enough, each spring was still a revelation to her; she wasn’t sure, even now, that the sun would keep coming back, but could remember enough times when it had to be reasonably certain spring would come again. In the same way, she’d come to expect pain and spite from humankind and see momentary kindness as a trap for her stumbling feet.

  Still, she had fallen into hope, seduced by the beauty of the man and the music of his voice. It seemed to her as she continued to sneak looks at him that no one so beautiful could be cruel or indifferent, that the man’s outward appearance must reflect his inner nature. She smoothed her hands over the supple leather of the cushions. Smiling timidly; she asked, “How may I call you?”

  When he didn’t answer, she shrank back into her own silence, afraid she’d offended him. Some moments later he looked around, black eyes coming back from vast distance, warming with visible effort. “Your pardon, child?” The soft deep voice wooed her back from her fear, cradling her in its music. She wanted to snuggle against him, be comforted by him, but she didn’t quite dare. There was a barrier unseen and undefined between them; she sensed her affection would not be welcome, at least not now. Later, when she knew more of him, perhaps she could move closer. She needed to be touched, to be given the casual physical affection she’d received from her animals.