Bound in Blood

XV Winter’s Eve

The hanging man moved restlessly in the breeze under his oak bough, his feet barely clearing the tall, sere weeds that had sprung up between the River Road’s paving stones. His body had been encased in boiled leather, molded to his limbs and sealed with wax. Only his gaping mouth and distended nostrils remained open to the crisp afternoon air.

“So this is a watch-weirdling,” said Jame to Jorin and the rathorn colt, who leaned forward to snuffle suspiciously at the dangling figure, then to back off, shaking his head.

“No, he doesn’t smell very good. The point is that he’s supposed to smell us, or rather any iron on us, tack or weapons, and give warning to the Merikit village.”

They edged past. No wind blew, but the figure turned with them, gape-mouthed, creaking. The colt’s saddle was buckled and riveted with steel. For that matter, Jame wore her favorite pair of scythe-arms sheathed across her back. However, no sound issued from his desiccated throat. That was because Chingetai hadn’t properly closed his borders the previous Summer’s Eve in his grand grab to secure the entire Riverland.

Jame wondered if to be a weirdling was an honored post, or one reserved for criminals. Despite Index’s language lessons, she knew precious little about the people she was now approaching, except that their menfolk conducted elaborate rites to which the Four apparently paid attention, especially since she had failed to participate in them as the Earth Wife’s unlikely Favorite. Why did Mother Ragga want her on hand tonight? Generally, the Merikits’ rites corresponded to equinox and solstice, neither of which this was. However, they and the Kencyrath both were on the brink of winter, a significant time. There must be some ritual overlap.

Ahead to the left were the ruins of Kithorn. As she passed, Jame peered through the gatehouse into the empty courtyard. The weeds had grown high there between the flagstones since the equinox. Perhaps she was wrong and nothing was going to happen on Winter’s Eve. Perhaps this would be a purely social call unless, of course, someone tried to kill her.

An arrow thudded into the earth between Death’s-head’s front hooves. He recoiled onto his haunches, making Jame very glad of the high cantle that kept her from sliding off over his rump. With his head down and his forelegs up, he presented a front of solid ivory to his unknown assailant, but his ears flickered back and forth, an indication that he wasn’t sure how serious a threat this was.

Excited chatter burst from the bushes ahead, as if a nest of sparrows had been disturbed.

“ . . . ever see a horse do that?” one voice said, and another “ . . . tell you, it’s a rathorn! They say the Favorite rides one.”

“More often falls off, I hear.”

Two young Merikit emerged from the shrubbery. Both wore green tunics, trousers, and short cloaks, with golden chains around their waists, necks, and arms. Both had long, tawny hair and blue-gray eyes. The one carrying the bow, however, was a girl and the other a boy, the former around fourteen, the latter somewhat older.

Death’s-head came back down to all fours with a grunt and regarded them as curiously as they did him. Perhaps it was a good thing after all that Jame was riding him rather than the skittish Bel. Not that she had had much of a choice: sneaking down to the Mount Alban stables before dawn that morning, she had found Index curled up asleep in front of the Whinno-hir’s box stall, determined that Jame not leave without him.

Another time, she thought guiltily, she would bring the old scrollsman along, but not for this first encounter. She dismounted. On the ground, it felt strange to still be looking down on anyone, even if only by half a head, after so long among the Kendar.

“Hello. My name is Jame.”

“I’m Prid,” said the girl. “This is my cousin Hatch.”

“We’ve met. You plopped that accursed ivy crown on my head and shoved me into sacred space last Summer’s Eve.”

The boy grinned. “Better you as the Favorite than me.”

“Can I ride your rathorn?” asked the girl.

The colt bared his fangs and hissed at her through them. Both children retreated a step.

“I guess not,” said Prid in a rather smaller voice.

“You two were guarding the southern approach by yourselves?” Jame asked as they walked together toward the village, the colt wandering after them as if by accident.

“Not guarding so much as watching. The real threat are the Noyat to the north.”

“Hmm. Just the same, don’t underestimate Lord Caineron. I hear he’s getting fed up with your cattle raids.”

They both laughed. “Oh, he could never find his way into our hills. The land protects us, at least to the south.”

They might be right. Jame was well aware that she could never comfortably have made the fifty-some miles from Mount Alban since morning without the land’s help. Hopefully, that was a good omen for this visit.

“We saw you on the equinox,” said Prid. “You did look silly wearing that yackcarn mask.”

“I’m sure I did. It’s one of my talents. But I didn’t see either of you in the audience.”

“Oh,” said Hatch, “we were up on the keep’s wall. We aren’t supposed to attend openly until we come of age, except that Father keeps pitching me in.”

“He would have again if you hadn’t run away.”

“This time, I’m glad you did,” said Jame, remembering Sonny Boy’s fate with a shudder. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen any Merikit women there at all.”

“That’s because those are men’s mysteries.”

Prid snorted. “Men playing fools, more like. Gran Cyd says they have to find some way to make themselves feel important between wars, hunts, and bedtime. We women have more sense.”

“Huh. You won’t be a woman for years yet, if ever. How many housebonds do you plan to take?”

Prid tossed her tawny mane. “None. I’m going to be a battle maid and fight and hunt and take whatever lover I choose, not keep house as some dull, old lodge-wyf.”

“Otherwise,” Jame asked, “how many husbands . . . I mean housebonds . . . are you allowed?”

“Oh, as many as Gran Cyd permits and I can keep happy. How many wyves for you, Hatch?”

“Maybe one, if she ever grows up. Otherwise none. If I become a bard or shaman, I can sit by any fire I choose. Only women own property, you know,” he added to Jame. “Prid, you could be one of them. Just become a war-wyf like Gran Cyd.

“ ‘Just’! I may be of her blood, but there’s only one Gran at a time.”

“I’m confused,” said Jame. “Isn’t Chingetai the chief of the Merikit?”

Prid laughed. “He’s Gran’s first housebond, but there’s talk that she’s thinking of divorcing him after the mess he’s made of things.”

“So you do admit that the men’s mysteries have some effect!” Hatch exclaimed, and elbowed her in the ribs for emphasis.

“D’you want me to jab this bow into your eye? What good are any rites if they don’t bring the yackcarn to us? You know we’re like to starve this winter without them. Just the same, there are rules.” She turned to Jame, trying to sound very adult and knowledgeable, obviously repeating what she had heard. “Chingetai messed up in the first place by making you the Earth Wife’s Favorite and then, worse, by denying it. I mean, if Mother Ragga doesn’t object, why should he?”

“D’you mean Chingetai is only chief on his wife’s say-so? Oh, priceless!”

Hatch grinned. “He doesn’t think so.”

“As if he had anything to say about it. If we go to war, Gran Cyd leads us, the way it’s always been, or one of her daughters after her. Or granddaughters.”

“Only women own property,” Jame repeated thoughtfully. “So, with all these housebonds running in and out, who owns the children?”

They both looked at her pityingly. “Why, the wyf who bore them, of course. And she names the father as it pleases her. Why? How do you do things down south?”

“Much differently,” Jame admitted wryly. “Possibly not as well.”

They rounded a bend in the path and Jame got her first look at the Merikit village, not that she immediately recognized it as such. On a hill between the Silver and a lesser stream rushing to join it stood a wide, roughly circular earthen bulwark topped by a wooden palisade. Within were a multitude of hillocks, each surrounded by a wattle fence containing a variety of livestock. Plank roads wandered through this patchwork of miniature fields. One large building stood out on the hill’s top, round and thatched. Smoke rose out of its central hole, murky below, white where it climbed into the dwindling sunlight. Already, the valley floor lay in shadows.

Jame now saw that a multitude of lesser smoke columns drifted upward with it in the still air, each from its own hillock, as the evening chill settled.

Outside the palisade rose other plumes of smoke.

As they passed close to one, she saw the sunken lintel and uprights of a doorway at the foot of a short flight of sod steps. Prid called down into the darkness, and was answered with a swarm of girls roughly her own age. Meanwhile, Hatch had roused a similar seething of boys from the next lodge.

All clambered into the light, saw the rathorn, and descended on him with whoops of delight.

Death’s-head snorted and backed away, stepping delicately, as if besieged by an army of clamorous mice.

Go, Jame told him silently.

With that, he turned tail and fled, pursued by cries of disappointment.

Jame only hoped that he wouldn’t run afoul of his tack. Since he had first accepted the saddle and hackamore, he had chosen to treat them as if they didn’t exist, which was fine as long as he didn’t tangle his legs in the reins or roll on the saddle, which would surely break its wooden tree.

“What are these?” One of the children was fingering the sheathed blades that crossed her back.

“My scythe-arms, good for chopping up noisy little brats.”

They whooped with glee at this. Surrounded by a shouting mob, a nervous Jorin pressed against her thigh, Jame entered the village. People emerged to stare at her—many women, some men, all wearing brightly colored woolens. Many were also ornately tattooed on the face and hands, which was all the bare flesh she could see until they passed what was clearly a bath lodge. Yes, the older Merikit males were tattooed everywhere a needle could reach, and not shy about showing off their body art.

The planks of the road rang hollow under her boots.

“There are tunnels underneath,” Prid told her, raising her own voice to a shriek in order to be heard.

“So that we can get from lodge to lodge in the winter,” added Hatch, almost as piercingly.

Both were clearly proud of their village, with good reason. Yards and streets were scrupulously clean, lintels inlaid with gold and silver. They passed an open forge with a brawny female smith and heard the click of looms under the earth. Everyone seemed well scrubbed and well dressed. Even the dogs looked happy.

As they passed the central lodge, there came the one discordant note: while below something large and succulent was being roasted, mixed with its scent was something else, mock-sweet and choking.

Bad meat, thought Jame, but quickly forgot it as they approached a larger, more ornate lodge than most, its sunken walls decorated with serpentine forms and round-faced imus. It might almost have been the Earth Wife’s house. In its low-cast shadow, the children at last fell silent. Prid took her by the hand and led her down the steps with Jorin close on her heels.

Inside was a long chamber with earthen benches along the sides heaped with furs. A fire burned on a similarly raised hearth, venting its smoke out a hole in the roof. Flickering light fell on walls lined with bright-woven tapestries, their images picked out with scarlet, copper, and white bronze. At the far end of the room, Gran Cyd of the Merikit sat in judgment.

Firelight stirred embers in her long red hair, two braids of which twined around her head, right to left, while a third intricate plait of many strands descended from the left-hand side to coil at her feet. Her sandals were gilded, her tunic and mantle purple with a filigree of silver. Strong, white arms lay on the rests of a chair as golden as the chains clasping her neck and wrists.

“No one else can beat Chingetai at arm wrestling,” Prid whispered.

Regarding that broad, white forehead and those smoky green eyes, Jame suspected that here was a woman who bested her man in more ways than he knew.

The argument before her lay between two housebonds and their wyf. The older was claiming the night with her, the younger protesting that he never got a chance, although he was the best trapper in the village. Let Gran regard her own hall. Half the pelts here were his gifts.

“So, do you court your wyf or me, Chun of the Soft Furs?”

The older man laughed; the younger gaped, but recovered.

“I would be honored by the friendship of your thighs, Fire Matron, but they would consume me. Grant me only my due; I ask no more.”

“Why do you come to me for that which only your wyf can grant? Nessa Silken-hair, with whom would you lie tonight?”

The girl—and she was hardly more than that—had been stifling a giggle. “Ardet grows too possessive and domineering. He chases the others off, but most nights all we do is sleep. Besides, his feet stink.”

“You wish to divorce him, then?”

“For smelly feet? No, lady. He can be kind when not crossed, and he makes the best butter in the village, worth much to me in trade. Only let him take his turn with Chun or take another wyf if I cannot satisfy him.”

Prid snickered. “He has tried for years to find another hearth,” she whispered. “He even visits the girls’ lodge, for some of us will have houses to keep when we come of age. Maybe he was handsome, once.”

“You,” said Jame, “are cruel. Pity the man for his butter’s sake, if nothing else, but never go with him; I don’t trust his eyes.”

Some arrangement apparently had been made for the three departed together, if not amicably, at least without trading blows. Ardet glanced at Prid as he passed, and a predatory expression, meant to look friendly, flickered across his face. She stuck her tongue out at him.

Jame had been aware throughout of a man sitting across the fire from her, his face in the shadows. Now he leaned forward. Even without the painted tattoos, she recognized that scarred upper lip, now twisted unpleasantly in a scowl.

“You led the horse raid on Tentir.”

“You cut my brother’s throat.”

“You shot my cadet.”

“And neither of you may claim blood rights while under my hospitality.” Gran Cyd gestured them forward. They came, warily, side by side.

“Nidling of the Noyat, why are you here?”

“I came to negotiate with your lord, lady. We hill tribes needn’t be at each other’s throats, not when there are others ripe to cut.”

“Such talk of cutting. We raid where we please, but without killing if possible. Why raise more enemies of the blood? You already have a potent one, here.”

“This?” He jerked his head toward Jame. “Should we run scared of a mere female, moreover one who comes under false pretenses?”

“If by pretense you mean that she is the Earth Wife’s Favorite, that was no doing of hers. If you class her as ‘mere female,’ here is another one speaking to you.”

He made a gesture of dismissal. “No offense intended, but I came to discuss serious matters with your lord.”

Gran Cyd leaned back. Sparks snapped in the smoldering green of her eyes, but her deep voice remained calm. “No offense taken—yet. My housebond Chingetai is on the hunt, but will return for the night’s feasting. We welcome you to stay until then.”

The Noyat bowed, turned, and left.

“And now,” said Gran Cyd, “for you.”

Jame also bowed, adding a salute to a reigning lord.

“So you are the Earth Wife’s true Favorite.” The Merikit leaned her head on her hand, examining her guest. “How do you find it?”

“Very strange, lady.”

“No doubt. And why do you grace my lodge on this of all days?”

“I’m not sure what day this is, besides Winter’s Eve. At the equinox, the Earth Wife told me to come, and so I have.”

“Ah. Mother Ragga explains less than one would like, does she not? Then you had better speak to her.”

Gran Cyd rose, towering a good, regal head and a half over the Kencyr. Nidling of the Noyat was a fool. She drew back a tapestry to reveal a familiar door down several steps. Jame descended and, not to her great surprise, found herself in the Earth Wife’s lodge. Rather more unusual was to discover Mother Ragga with her ear to the floor, her ample rump in the air, snoring. Jame stepped down carefully onto what was left of the earth map. Most of it presumably was in Marc’s hands by now to aid in rebuilding the stained glass window, but Mother Ragga had left the land north of Restormir intact.

Jame knelt by her head and shook her gently.

She snorted, yawned, displaying a great expanse of empty gum, and stretched.

“Oh, it’s you. At last. Wait a minute.” She inserted a stubby finger into her ear and rooted out clotted dirt. “Hard work, listening. Dry work.” She picked up a bowl, drank deep, and wiped her mouth with a sigh. Jame smelt the crisp tang of strong ale.

“Look ye.” The Earth Wife pointed to a pile of black basalt. “Here’s Burny’s blasted volcano. Here at its foot is a valley six fathoms deep in ash, or was before the equinox downpour. Then it turned into mud like quicksand. Nasty, nasty stuff. It’s taken the past three weeks for it to dry out and solidify. Any time now, probably tomorrow, the yackcarn herd will figure out that it’s no longer trapped and will start running.” Her dirty finger traced a path down to where two ruts converged. “Here.”

“Let me guess. That’s the Merikit village, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. On my advice, Gran Cyd told Chingetai to take his hunters north to divert them. Instead, the stupid man went south to raid the Caineron herds. By stock and stone, he and M’lord Caldane deserve each other.”

“So why am I here? Surely you don’t expect me to divert a stampede on my own.”

Gummy eyes glimmered at her out of a bird’s nest of gray hair. “Oh, you’ll think of something. You always do. Now go meet your neighbors.”

Prid and Hatch were waiting outside with a throng of their friends when she emerged. All of them wanted to show her off to their mothers, so she made a fine progress through the darkening streets from lodge to lodge, attended by a twittering horde of children.

A few of the lodge-wyves greeted her with suspicion, one or two with disbelief, but most seemed to find her Favorite’s rank a fine joke.

One, fair-haired and plump, was stirring a pot full of something bubbling and savory that made Jame’s empty stomach growl. She dropped the ladle with a squeak when her twins pulled the guest inside to greet her.

“Look, housebond, a visitor, and by the Four t’is the Earth Wife’s Favorite himself! How honored we are!”

“Er . . . ” said Jame. “Likewise.”

“And such smooth cheeks!” She stroked one. Jame backed away, feeling her face redden. She had been courted by women before, but never so openly.

“Oh, and look!” She had seized Jame’s braid. “Only one, and that straight down the back! What, a virgin to both bed and battle?”

Right-hand braids for children sired, left-hand for men killed, Jame remembered.

The two girls who had brought her here giggled. So did the mass of round faces crowding the doorway behind them.

The lodge-wyf rubbed against her like a cat, nearly knocking her over. “Come back tonight and favor me, silken boy.”

A figure emerged from the shadows, glowering. “Tonight is ours, false wyf, or”—the dark face split into a grin; here too was a woman although dressed like a man—“return and favor us both.”

Jame bolted.

Up top, the twins were laughing so hard, as was everyone else, that their eyes and noses ran. “They were only teasing you. Ma and Da have only wanted each other since they were in the maidens’ lodge together.”

“And, from what they said, I suppose that the Favorite has the pick of the village.”

“Oh yes. To bear a Favorite’s child is great good fortune—usually.”

“The last two Favorites weren’t much . . . er . . . favored.”

Prid grinned. “But then they were Chingetai’s picks, not the Earth Wife’s or Gran Cyd’s. Even those who did have their children didn’t give them credit. Chingetai was furious.”

“I bet he was,” Jame muttered. “But tell me: you said the village faces starvation, yet in every lodge women and men are cooking.”

“It’s all for the feast tonight. After all, some supplies won’t last the winter so we eat them now, in honor of our ancestors.”

Jame had seen small shrines in nearly every lodge—simple things, usually, with a candle and a swag of field flowers, sometimes with a favorite weapon or tool weighing down the whole.

“The dead are fortunate to be remembered.”

Hatch laughed. “Well, they don’t like it when we forget. D’you remember last year when Grunda brought nothing to the feast?”

The children crowed with laughter. “Great-grandpa Grundi made her sit on his lap all evening, or so we heard. She’s such a pig, though, that she probably crumbled his poor, old thighs.”

“I don’t understand. He came . . . out?”

“Why, so do they all, except for a few who just want peace. We give them that at night’s end.”

Jame was considerably puzzled by all of this, but supposed that she would learn in time.

By now it had grown dark. Torches sparkled by every door, mirroring the starry sky, and a bright circle of them surrounded the central lodge.

Shouts sounded and the bellow of cows. Chingetai had returned, victorious, from his cattle raid. He met Gran Cyd before her lodge amid cheers, but she folded her arms and tapped her gilded foot.

“My housebond. You were supposed to hunt to the north, not raid to the south.”

He threw his arms wide, as if seeking the village’s judgment. “Is this my greeting? See what fine beasts I have brought to enrich your herd! As to the north, how many days would you have us freeze on the heights, empty-handed? I tell you, the yackcarn have gone south by a different route this year. We will raid and trap and hunt all winter to fill your pots. Trust me!”

“Every time you say that, something terrible happens. In the meanwhile, we have guests.”

The Noyat shoved his way to the fore, swelling like a bullfrog with importance, but Chingetai waved him off. “No talk. Tonight, we feast!” He turned his back, pretending not to see Jame.

Merikit were streaming toward the central lodge, bearing steaming pots and laden platters.

Infants were tugged off to bed.

The children set up a whine. They wanted to attend too, but weren’t old enough. Prid returned to the maidens’ quarters outside the pale, although she would clearly rather have stayed with Jame to greet the dead. Jame was sorry to see her go. She felt swept away in a tide of strangers, not all of whom meant her well.

The interior of the lodge was an amphitheater with steep steps plunging down in dizzying concentric rings to what must have been almost the foot of the hill, barely above water level. Earthen ledges provided seats, each one backed by a kind of wicker cell some three feet square. Those above sat either cross-legged or with their feet propped on the box below.

Jame found herself beside the twins’ Ma and Da who welcomed her but, to her relief, had put aside their teasing ways. Torches threw twisted bars of light on a silent, hunched figure in the cell under her boots. The amphitheater filled with some six hundred adults sitting in family groups with spaces between them—for latecomers, Jame supposed. Voices rose in a roar as Merikit shouted back and forth across the echoing space.

Below, an ox turned on a fire-spit. Tungit and the other shamans sat so close to the flames that Jame could see the sheen of sweat on their tattooed, half-naked bodies. Chingetai was there too with other village notables, judging by their rich, no doubt stifling clothes. So was the Noyat guest.

Ale, mead, and beer passed from hand to hand around the benches in huge silver ewers. Jame accepted some ale in the wooden mug that Ma considerately supplied. The heady odor of the brew, the heat, and the light made her head spin. She opened the collar of her jacket, then closed it again as Ma leaned in to her, giggling.

Gran Cyd strode out onto the hall floor, magnificently in scarlet wool threaded with red-gold to match her much-braided, flowing hair. She raised her voice like a trumpet and the hall hushed to hear.

“We are born, we live, we die, and life goes on. The tribe is one. The tribe is immortal!”

Mugs began to beat the benches in time to her words, a solid, unified thump that shook the earth.

“Hear me, my Merikit! Hear and repeat: Now is the season, now is the weather, for the living and the dead to feast together!”

Thump, thump, thump, went the mugs, and voices rose to shout with her:

“Now is the season, now is the weather, the living and the dead feast together!”

At the last word, a roar, the torches flickered as one.

Jame turned to ask Da a question, and found sitting beside them a dark figure that hadn’t been there before. All around, the gaps had filled and most if not quite all of the wicker cells stood open. Rathillien swung on the hinge of the seasons, life to death, death to life. Now she placed the smell. It was the sour, acrid breath of the watch-weirdling, multiplied by hundreds.

“This is my mother’s uncle,” said Da, introducing them.

“He looks . . . er . . . well, considering. Is this what happens to all your dead?”

“No, unfortunately. The trick is to catch their last breath and seal it in with them. Sometimes we aren’t quick enough.”

And sometimes, thought Jame, they probably suffocated someone prematurely. Was that so different, though, from those Highborn who chose the pyre when they felt themselves to be failing? She saluted Da’s great-uncle, who appeared to be among the lucky ones.

Somebody had put a bowl into her lap and others kept plopping things into it, a wide range of food, all mixed up. As hungry as she was, Jame felt edgy about eating it, especially when an ox’s boiled eye bobbed to the surface.

Da plucked out the latter and brandished it. “One of two! One of two! Who else joins our lucky crew?”

Someone on the other side of the lodge waved back. “Two of two! Two of two! Good fortune both to me and you!”

The lodge echoed like a cave by the sea, voices rising and falling, many laughing, a few grown maudlin, weeping on a leather-encased shoulder or patting beloved features sealed with wax.

Da shouted something.

“What?”

“I said, the smoke and drying herbs help, but occasionally one goes soft—you know, like a big, bagged pudding. They don’t come out much, though. Too embarrassed.”

Jame put aside her bowl.

Was it so much worse, though, than the way her own people treated their dead? They thought they were being kind too, with their pyres and banners, never mind the souls trapped by blood in the latter. Did one cling to the dead for the deads’ sake or for that of the living? There had to be some way to do justice to both.

The wicker cage behind her was rattling.

“It must be for you,” said Ma.

With some trepidation, Jame unlatched the door and found herself nose to nose with the Earth Wife. Behind her was not the far wall of the wicker cell but the interior of her own lodge.

“I fell asleep,” she said, with ale strong on her breath, slurring her words. “They’re coming! Stock and stone help me, they’re almost here!”

“Who is?”

“Why, the yackcarn, of course! They’ll be at the valley’s mouth within minutes. I tell you, I’ve never heard them run so mad before! They’ll trample everything in their path.”

“Which, of course, includes us.”

“Tell Gran Cyd. She has to get everyone inside the palisade.”

“I will. Here.” She scooped up Jorin, who had been nosing at her abandoned bowl for tidbits, and thrust him into Mother Ragga’s arms. “Keep him safe.” Ounce and Earth Wife tipped over backward into her lodge. The wicker door clattered shut after them.

Jame turned and took in the merrily seething hall. How best to reach the floor and Gran Cyd? There was only one quick route that she could see. Over the startled cries of her hosts, she started jumping down from bench to bench, landing on heads, shoulders, and black bundles that cracked like twigs under her weight or occasionally squished. The last bit she floundered to fall sprawling at Gran Cyd’s feet. The floor juddered under her hands.

Nidling was jeering at her. Chingetai stared openmouthed, caught between astonishment and outrage.

“Lady, listen to the earth. The yackcarn stampede is almost on top of us!”

Gran Cyd raised her black brows, but she dropped to a knee and placed a hand on the trembling ground.

“Where are the children?” Jame asked.

“The youngest are in their mothers’ lodges. The elder . . . ” She rose quickly. “Chun, Ardet. Bring in all the younglings and shut the gates. Favorite, go. Do what you can to slow the herd.”

Jame nodded and charged up the benches to more protesting cries.

“Either go down or come up,” came one plaintive wail. “Only stop stepping on us!”

She burst out into the cool night air beyond the steam issuing like smoke from the door of the overheated lodge. A moment to fill her lungs and to clear her head, then she started running down the booming plank road.

What in Perimal’s name d’you think you’re doing? demanded the rational part of her mind.

Buying time to rescue Prid and the others.

How?

I have no idea.

Feet pounded after her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the Noyat charging up behind her. Good. She could use the help.

The next moment he had tackled her. She skidded on her hands, picking up splinters. He grabbed her hair and slammed her face into the wood. When he turned her over and lunged to throttle her, she wrapped her legs around his waist and jerked him backward, breaking his nose and grip with a palm strike.

She should kill him for Anise, now that he had broken the rules of hospitality by attacking her first, but that might not be easy and it would take time.

Jame kicked free, scrambled up, and raced for the gate. It was shut. She forced it open a crack and slipped out. The meadow grass clung to her ankles as she ran—forty yards, fifty, sixty—until she could see movement ahead. Dust boiled up toward the gibbous moon like smoke from some mighty conflagration. When she stopped, panting, she could feel the earth tremble through the soles of her boots. The entire end of the valley seemed to be in motion, full of distant, approaching thunder. They appeared to be far away when she first saw them, but then she realized that what she had taken for distance was size.

Four-foot horn spreads, shaggy shoulders twice her height, cloven hooves tearing up the earth with every grunting stride . . .

I’m dead, she thought.

Hooves pounded closer, and there was Death’s-head with streaming mane and tail, white lightning on a darkening plain. He circled her just out of reach, again and again. Oh, for Perimal’s sake . . .

“Stop it!” she shouted at him, and he slowed. She grabbed his mane and, swept off her feet, scrabbled for a stirrup. Here. Up. Into the saddle.

He whirled to face the oncoming stampede, snorting, his ears pricked. Would he stand or flee? Her will counted with him, but how he fulfilled it was entirely his affair.

A racing figure behind caused her to twist in the saddle.

“Prid, run!”

A white face glared back at her. “I will not.”

“Then up.”

The girl hesitated, eyeing the colt as he danced on sharp, impatient hooves. There was no time for her to reach the gate’s shelter.

“You wanted to ride the rathorn. Now or never.”

Prid answered with a half-sob, and leaped. Her foot came down on Jame’s. She swung herself onto the colt’s back behind the saddle, her arms flung around Jame’s waist.

“Hold tight. Tighter.”

Death’s-head had reared back on his hocks. Jame felt his barrel quiver between her legs. From here, he could leap in any direction, fight or flee or stand. The yackcarn roared down on them, towered over them. The rathorn screamed. The scent of terror rolled off of him in a carrion stench, making Prid gasp. As best she could, Jame extended her own immunity to the girl and flung herself forward to grip the colt’s neck.

The yackcarn herd split around them. Horns scythed past. Ropes of slather swung from gaping jaws. Shaggy shoulders and flanks threatened to sweep them off their feet. The colt screamed and slashed with horn and fang, almost knocked off his feet by the sheer weight of the oncoming horde. One beast swerved at the last moment. Its horn plowed into the earth and it cartwheeled. The rathorn jumped back with a shriek, nearly throwing both riders. The creature’s massive body slammed to the ground before them, and others piled into it.

Then they were past. Jame hung, breathless, to the colt’s sweating neck. She could feel Prid’s body tremble as it pressed hard against her back, and the child’s arms clenched around her waist. They were surrounded by dead, dying, or winded yackcarn as if by sheer, shaggy walls of quivering flesh. Somewhere, a calf bleated for its mother.

“Well,” said Jame to Prid, fighting to catch her breath. “Now you can say . . . that you’ve ridden . . . a rathorn.”

The stampede had swept on but, its spearhead broken, had passed on either side of the walled hill village. Less fortunate beasts had crashed through the low roofs of the outer lodges as if into pitfalls and weltered there, bellowing. Merikit lined the edges, spearing downward. All the others, led by Chingetai, pursued the main body of the herd with arrow and lance and gleeful shout.

Men ran past from the north end of the valley to the south, on the heels of the herd, toward the gate. Noyat. A raid. Planned or opportunistic, it didn’t matter: Chingetai had left his womenfolk unguarded.

Or perhaps not quite.

Still, dark figures stood before the gate, rank on rank of them. The dead had indeed come out, watch-weirdlings all on this night.

The attackers faltered. Would they turn? No. The gate creaked open behind the sentries, pushed by a lone man with a scarred lip and a broken, bloody nose. The invaders surged forward, cutting down the dead where they stood.

“Off,” said Jame to Prid.

As the child slipped to the ground, she unsheathed her scythe-arms and donned them, all the while trying to restrain the colt, whose blood was up. Brier had showed her how to shift the short blade up her arm so that its first band gripped her elbow and its second, her armpit, thus giving her some use of her left hand.

Prid was running back to the village. “I have to find my sisters!” she called over her shoulder, and slipped through the gate as she spoke.

Jame plunged after her, cursing the Noyat Nidling. Trinity-triple-dammit, never trust a man who won’t deal with women as equals, much less who sanctions the mutilation of horses.

She tried to guide the colt with her legs, but as usual he read the intent in her mind and interpreted it as he pleased.

Ahead of them, two looters ran out of a lodge clutching armloads of furs. They dropped their booty as the rathorn bore down on them, but too late. Horns, hooves, and blades cut them down as they ran

Shrieks sounded from another lodge. Death’s-head stopped so short at the door that Jame was launched through it. There she rolled over her lethal blades and rose to find Da motionless on the floor in a spreading puddle of blood while Ma fought with a Noyat whose intention was all too clear. He looked back toward Jame. She nailed his leer to his face with a blade through one eye and out the back of his skull. As she freed the steel with a foot braced against his forehead, Da sat up, spitting blood and teeth.

“Go,” she said, not very clearly. “We’re all right. They’re after Gran Cyd. Go.”

Jame plunged back up the steps. There couldn’t be too many raiders—maybe three dozen from what she had seen—but they had the advantage of surprise and confusion. A strike at the Merikits’ heart . . .

The cry of a child distracted her. Ardet had Prid down and was tearing at her clothes. Not all enemies come from outside. Jame kicked him away. The battle maids descended on him in a horde, shrieking and slashing as Jame backed off. God’s claws, she should simply have cut the wretched man’s throat.

Death’s-head pranced by below, head and tail up, blood spiraling down both of his horns. Hopefully he was killing the right people.

Jame reached into the melee and pulled out Prid. “Da said that they’re after Gran Cyd. Come on.”

The children unraveled, leaving a mangled something on the ground, and streamed after her.

The Merikit queen stood before her lodge, a long-bladed knife in either hand, red-gold hair flying free. Her festival robe was slashed in a dozen places, her white arms streaked with blood. Noyat swarmed around her, darting in and out to strike or to be stricken. Half a dozen lay groaning or silent at her feet.

The children whooped and descended. Thin arms and legs wrapped around brawny limbs, tangled, and pulled them down. Someone screamed piercingly. Jame used wind-blowing to slide through the chaos, afraid to use her weapons without a clear target. Back to back with the queen, she shook down her short blade for maximum effect and waited.

Not for long. A big Noyat charged her with a spear, counting on its superior length. She parried it with one blade and hacked it short with the other. The Noyat looked very surprised, even more so when her return strike slashed his throat.

At her back, Gran Cyd was hard pressed. Her opponent had bulled his way inside her guard and locked knives with her. Jame lowered her scythe-arms and stabbed backward. The spurs passed on either side of the queen’s waist and buried themselves in her attacker’s belly. For a moment, all three of them were locked together. Here came another Noyat. Jame kicked him back with both feet. The impaled raider screamed as her weight dragged the spurs downward, disemboweling him.

Shrieking, the children’s mothers arrived, armed with whatever their lodges could supply. Men’s curses turned to howls. Pots, pans, and kitchen cleavers flashed in the firelight, adding their metallic clang to the general uproar. One man with a pot jammed on his head reeled back and forth as the women beat on it with soup ladles. Suddenly, the invaders were running. The dead they left behind, the rest they dragged with them. Jame saw the man with the scarred lip glance back at her, hatred in his eyes, and then he was gone.

“Well.” Gran Cyd sat down and surveyed her troops. “Well.”

Jame sank down beside her, panting. “Very much so, I think, all things considered. You Merikit do know how to throw a party.”

More shouts brought them to their feet, but it was only Chingetai returning victorious from the hunt.

The dawn of Winter’s Day came in a luminous wash across the sky.

On the east bank of the Silver on top of two hillocks, two fires burned, pale in the descending light, hot and hungry below where the night burned away.

Men danced around the northern fire where their enemies—both the dead and the dying—burned. A great victory, they cried, and a no less glorious hunt. All would eat well that coming winter. As for the Noyat, now they would know that the Merikit were no easy pickings. If they came again, they came to find another pyre.

A quieter group of women gathered around the southern fire, some weeping, others stony-faced, surrounded by silent children. If these flames rose higher, it was because their tinder was drier.

“The dead have lost the last breath of life.” Gran Cyd tossed a handful of fragrance herbs on the blaze. “Faithful to the tribe in life, no less loyal have they proved in death. We mourn their final passing. We will never forget them.”

Soft voices called out their names, each family remembering their own.

It was like Autumn’s Eve, Jame thought. She didn’t belong here—and yet, oddly, she did. They had all fought in the same cause, to protect the innocent, although it seemed strange to think of Prid and her sisters that way with their enemies’ blood proudly painted on their faces. She understood that they were still too young officially to claim their kills.

“Sit,” said Gran Cyd, and Jame gratefully sank onto the stool that someone had provided. It had been a long night.

She felt fingers on her hair and jerked awake. The queen was loosening her braid. “How many did you kill?”

Jame tried to remember. Only the Noyat whom she had eviscerated came to mind. Surely there had been more.

Gran Cyd combed out her long hair and began to divide it. “Add to that the ones accounted for by your rathorn,” she said, as if Jame had spoken, “and the dead whom the lodge-wyves and the children can’t. Add my own; I have too many braids already.”

Ma presented her with a brimming bowl of Noyat blood, turned dark and gelid. Jame made herself sit still as Gran Cyd braided each left-hand plait, then slathered it with the greasy fluid.

“Twenty. A good night’s work. And no, after the first time you don’t have to plaster it this way. But wear these braids anywhere on Rathillien and we of the hills will know what they mean.”

“Thank you. I think.” Would the randon at Tentir also know, or the Mount Alban scrollsmen? If so, ancestors only knew how they would regard her night out.

“And this too I tell you, Favorite.” The queen bent to speak softly in her ear, with a laugh in her voice. “We are all agreed: any child conceived on this Winter’s Day or Night will also be credited to you, and worth a right-hand braid each. Let Chingetai chew on that!”