’s Crossing

THREE Dewara

The seasons turned and I grew. In the long summer of my twelfth year, it had taken all of Sirlofty’s patience and every bit of spring that my boyish legs possessed for me to fling myself onto his back from the ground. By the time I was fifteen, I could place my hands flat on my mount’s back and lever myself gracefully onto him without scrabbling my feet across him. It was a change that we both enjoyed.

There had been other changes as well. My scrawny, petulant tutor had been replaced twice over as my father’s requirements for my education had stiffened. I had two instructors now for my afternoon lessons, and I no longer dared to be tardy for them. One was a wizened old man with severely bound white locks and yellow teeth, who taught me tactics, logic, and to write and speak Varnian, the formal language of our ancient motherland, all with the liberal use of a very flexible cane that never seemed to leave his hand. I believe that Master Rorton’s diet consisted mostly of garlic and peppers and he nearly drove me mad by constantly standing at my shoulder watching every stroke of my pen as I hunched at my desk.

Master Leibsen was a hulking fellow from the far west who taught me both the theory and practice of my weapons. I could shoot straight now, both standing and mounted, with pistol and long gun. He taught me to measure powder as accurately by eye as most men could with a balance, and how to pour my own ball shot as well as maintain and repair my weapons. That was only lead ball, of course. The more expensive iron shot that had helped us defeat the plainspeople had to be turned out by a competent smith. My father saw no reason for me to be using it up on targets. From Master Leibsen I also learned boxing, wrestling, staves, fencing and, very privately after many entreaties on my part, to both throw and fight with knives. I relished my lessons with Leibsen as much as I detested the long afternoons with Master Rorton of the foul breath.

I had one other teacher in the spring of my sixteenth year. He did not last long and yet he was the most memorable of them. He stayed briefly, pitching his small tent in the shelter of a hollow near the river and never once approached the manor house. My mother would have been both terrified and offended if she had known of his presence, scarcely two miles away from her tender daughters. He was a plains savage and my father’s ancient enemy.

On the day I was to meet Dewara, I rode out innocently with my father and Sergeant Duril. Occasionally my father invited us on his morning rounds. I thought my ride that morning was such an outing. Usually it was a pleasant ride. We would move leisurely, lunch with one of his overseers, and halt at various cottages and tents to consult with the shepherds and the orchard workers. I took no more than I would usually carry on a pleasure ride. As the spring day was mild, I did not even take a heavy coat, but only my light jacket and my brimmed hat against the bright sunlight. The sort of country we lived in meant that only a fool set out on any ride unarmed. I carried no gun with me that day, but I did have a cavalry sword, worn yet serviceable, at my hip.

My father rode on one side of me, with Sergeant Duril on the other. It felt odd, as if they escorted me somewhere. The sergeant looked sullen. He was often taciturn, but his silence that day was weighted with suppressed disapproval. It was not often that he disagreed with my father about anything, and it filled me with both dread and intense curiosity.

Once we were well away from the house, my father told me that I would meet a Kidona plainsman that day. As he often did when we spoke of specific clans, my father discussed Kidona courtesy, and cautioned me that my meeting with Dewara was a matter for men, not to be discussed later with my mother or sisters, nor even mentioned in their hearing. On the rise above the plainsman’s camp, we halted and looked down upon a domed shelter made from humpdeer skins pegged to a wicker frame. The hides had been cured with the hair on so that they shed water. His three riding beasts were picketed nearby. They were the famous black-muzzled, round-bellied, striped-legged mounts that only the Kidona bred. Their manes stood up stiff and black as hearth brushes and their tails reminded me of a cow’s more than a horse’s. A short distance away, two Kidona women stood patiently next to a two-wheeled cart. A fourth animal shifted disconsolately between the shafts of the high-wheeled vehicle. The cart was empty.

A small smokeless fire burned in front of the tent. Dewara himself, arms folded on his chest, stood looking up at us. He did not notice us as we arrived; he was already standing, looking toward us, as we came into view. The man’s prescience made the hair on my arms stand up and I shivered.

‘Sergeant, you may wait here,’ my father said quietly.

Duril chewed at his upper lip, then spoke. ‘Sir, I’d rather be closer. In case I’m needed.’

My father looked at him directly. ‘Some things he cannot learn from me or from you. Some things can’t be taught to you by a friend; they can only be learned from an enemy.’

‘But, sir—’

‘Wait here, Sergeant,’ my father repeated, and that closed the subject. ‘Nevare, you will come with me.’ He lifted a hand, palm up, in greeting and the plainsman below returned the sign. Father stirred his horse to a leisurely walk and started down the rise to the Kidona’s camp. I glanced at Sergeant Duril, but he was staring past me, mouth set in a flat line. I gave him a nod anyway and then followed my father. At the bottom of the rise, we dismounted and dropped our horses’ reins, trusting our well-trained mounts to stand. ‘Come when I motion to you,’ my father said softly. ‘Until then, stand still by the horses. Keep your eyes on me.’

My father approached the plainsman solemnly, and the old enemies greeted one another with great respect. Privately, my father had cautioned me to treat the Kidona with the solemn deference I extended to any of my tutors. As a youth, I should bow my head to my left shoulder when I first greeted him, and never spit in his presence or show my back to him, for such were the courtesies of his people. As my father had bid me, I stood still and waited. I could almost feel Sergeant Duril’s stare on us, but I did not look back at him.

The two spoke to one another for a time. Their voices were lowered and they spoke in the trade language, so I caught little of what they said. I could tell only that they spoke of a bargain. At length my father gestured to me. I walked forward and remembered to bow my head to my left shoulder. Then I hesitated, wondering if I should offer to shake hands as well. Dewara did not offer his hand, and so I kept mine by my side. The plainsman did not smile but looked me over frankly as if I were a horse he might buy. I took the opportunity to appraise him as bluntly. I had never before seen a Kidona.

He was smaller and more wiry than the plainsmen I was familiar with. The Kidonas had been hunters, raiders and scavengers rather than herders. They had regarded all the other peoples of the plains as their rightful prey. The other plainsmen had dreaded their attacks. Of all our enemies, the Kidonas had been the most difficult to subdue. They were a hard-natured people. Once, after the Gernian horse troops had defeated the Rew tribe, the Kidona had swept in to raid the demoralized people and carry off what little was left to them. My father spoke of them with head-shaking awe at their savagery. Sergeant Duril still hated them.

During his raiding years, a Kidona man would eat only meat, and some filed their front teeth to points. Dewara had. He wore a cloak woven from narrow strips of light leather, perhaps from rabbits. Some of the strands had been dyed to form a pattern like hoofprints. He wore loose brown trousers and a long-sleeved white robe that came just past his hips. It was belted with a bright strip of beaded braiding. He was shod in low boots of soft grey leather. His head was uncovered, and his steel-grey hair stood out from his head in a short stiff brush that reminded me of a dog’s lifted hackles, or perhaps his horse’s mane. At his hip hung a short curved blade, the deadly bronze swanneck of his people, as much tool as weapon. The hilt was wrapped in fine braids of human hair in varying shades. When I first met him, I thought they were battle trophies. Later he would explain that such weapons were passed down from father to son, and that the braids of hair were the blessing of his ancestors passed down with the swanneck. Such a blade was sharp enough to be flourished in a battle charge, but sturdy enough to chop meat for the pot. It was a formidable weapon and a utilitarian tool, the finest weapon a Kidona could use without resorting to iron.

After perusing me in silence, Dewara gave his full attention back to my father. They bargained in fluent Jindobe, haggling over the fee the plainsman would charge to instruct me. It was the first time I understood that teaching me was what this encounter was about. My fledgling knowledge of the trade language meant that I had to listen carefully to understand their conversation. First, Dewara demanded guns for his people. My father refused him, but made it a compliment, saying that his warriors were still far too deadly with their swannecks, and that my father’s own people would turn on him if he offered the Kidonas distance weapons. That was perfectly true. My father did not mention that the King’s law forbade the selling of such weapons to any plainsmen. Dewara would have thought less of him if he had admitted bowing to any rule but his own. Curiously, he did not remind the Kidona that the use of iron would cripple his magic. Though I am certain the man needed no such reminder.

Instead of guns and powder, my father offered loom-woven blankets, bacon, and copper cooking pots. Dewara replied that the last time he had looked, he himself was not a woman to care about blankets and food and cooking. He was surprised that my father bothered about such things. And surely a respected warrior such as my father could obtain at least powder as he wished. My father shook his head. I kept silent. I knew that the law forbade selling gunpowder to any plainsmen. They finally came to an accommodation that involved one bale of the best western tobacco, a dozen skinning knives, and two sacks of lead ball suitable for slings. Despite his expressed disdain for such things, I saw that what really finalized the bartering was my father’s offer of a hogshead of salt and one of sugar. Many of the conquered plainspeople had acquired a taste for sugar, an item almost unknown in their diets before then. Added to the previous goods, they made a handsome fee. I risked a sideways glance at his women and found they were gleefully nudging one another and talking behind their splayed hands.

My father and Dewara finalized the agreement Kidona-style, by each tying a knot in a trade thong. Then Dewara turned to me and added a personal codicil to the contract in gruff Jindobe. ‘If you complain, I send you home to your mother’s house. If you refuse or disobey, I send you home to your mother’s house with a notch in your ear. If you flinch or hesitate, I send you home to your mother’s house with a notch in your nose. I teach you no more then, and I keep the tobacco, salt, sweet, knives and shot. To this, you must agree, stripling.’

My father was looking at me. He did not nod, but I read in his eyes that I should assent. ‘I agree,’ I told the plainsman. ‘I will not complain or disobey or refuse your orders. I will neither hesitate nor flinch.’

The warrior nodded. Then he slapped me hard in the face. I saw the blow coming. I could have dodged it or turned my head to lessen it. I had not expected it, and yet some instinct bade me accept the insult. My cheek stung and I felt blood start from the corner of my mouth. I said nothing as I straightened from the blow. I looked Dewara in the eye. Beyond him, I saw my father’s grim look. There were little glints in his eyes. I thought I read pride there as much as anger.

‘My son is neither a weakling nor a coward, Dewara. He is worthy of the teaching you will give him.’

‘We will see,’ Dewara said quietly. He looked at his women and barked something in Kidona. Then he turned back to my father. ‘They follow you, get my goods and go back to my home. Today.’

He was challenging my father to question his honour. Would Dewara keep his end of the bargain once he had his trade goods? My father managed to look mildly surprised. ‘Of course they will.’

‘I keep your son then.’ The look he gave me was a measuring one, more chilling than anything I had ever beheld. I’d endured my father’s stern discipline and Sergeant Duril’s physical challenges and chastisement. This look spoke of colder things. ‘Take his horse. Take his knife, and his long knife. You leave him here with me. I will teach him.’

I think that if I could have begged quarter of my father then without humiliating both of us in front of the plainsman, I would have. It was as if I stripped myself to nakedness as I took my sheath knife from my belt and handed it over to my father. I felt numb all over, and wondered what Dewara could teach me that was so important that my father would leave me weaponless in the hands of his old enemy. My father accepted my knife from me without comment. He had spoken of the Kidona ways of survival and understanding one’s enemy as being the greatest weapon that any soldier could have. But the cruelty of the Kidona was legendary, and I knew that Dewara himself still bore the scar of the iron ball that had penetrated his right shoulder. My father had shot him, manacled him with iron and then held him as prisoner and hostage during the final months of King Troven’s war with the Kidona. It was only due to the cavalry doctor’s effort that Dewara had survived both his wound and the poisoning of his blood that followed it. I wondered if he felt a debt of mercy or of vengeance toward my father.

I unbuckled the worn belt that supported the old cavalry sword. I bundled it around the sword to offer it to my father, but at the last moment Dewara leaned forward to seize it from my hands. It was all I could do to keep myself from snatching it back. My father stared at him, his eyes expressionless, as Dewara drew the blade from the sheath and ran his thumb along the flat of it. He gave a sniff of disdain. ‘This will do you no good where we go. Leave it here. Maybe, some day, you come back for it.’ He took a tight grip on the hilt and thrust the blade into the earth. When he let go of it, it stood there like a grave marker. He dropped the sheath beside it in the dust. A chill went up my spine.

My father did not touch me as he bade me farewell. His paternal gaze reassured me even as he told me, ‘Make me proud of you, son.’ Then he mounted Steelshanks and led Sirlofty away. He rode away along a gentler path than we had come by, out of consideration for the women who followed him in their high-wheeled cart. I was left standing beside the Kidona with no more than the clothes on my back. I wanted to gaze after them, to see if Sergeant Duril abandoned his watch post and followed them, but I dared not. For all the times I had resented the sergeant’s eagle-eyed supervision, that day I longed for a guardian to be looking down on me. Dewara held my gaze, measuring me with his steely grey eyes. After what seemed a long time, for the sound of departing hoofbeats and wheels had faded, he pursed his lips and spoke to me, ‘You ride good?’

He spoke broken Gernian. I replied in my equally awkward Jindobe, ‘My father taught me to ride.’

Dewara snorted disdainfully, and again spoke to me in Gernian. ‘Your father show you, sit on saddle. I teach you ride on taldi. Get on.’ He pointed at the three creatures. As if they knew we spoke of them, they all lifted their heads and gazed at us. Every single one laid its ears back in displeasure.

‘Which taldi?’ I asked in Jindobe.

‘You choose, soldier’s boy. I teach you to talk, too, I think.’ This last comment he delivered in the trade language. I wondered if I had gained any ground with him by trying to use the trade language. It was impossible to tell from his implacable face.

I chose the mare, thinking she would be the most tractable of the three beasts. She would not let me approach her until I seized her picket line and forced her to stand. The closer I got to them, the more obvious it became to me that these were not true horses, but some similar beast. The female did not whinny, but squealed in protest, a sound that did not seem horse-like at all to me. She bit me twice while I was mounting, once on the arm and once on my leg as I swung onto her. Her dull teeth didn’t break the skin but I knew the bruises would be deep and lasting. She snorted, plunged and then wheeled in the midst of my mounting her. With difficulty, I managed to get a seat on her. She turned her head to snap at me again and I moved my leg out of reach. As I did so, she wheeled again, and I felt sure she was deliberately trying to unseat me. I gripped her firmly with my legs and made no sound. She plunged twice more but I stayed on her. I tried to ignore her bad manners, for I did not know how Dewara would react to me disciplining one of his mounts.

‘Keeksha!’ Dewara exclaimed and she abruptly quieted. I did not relax. Her belly was round and her hide was slick. The only harness she wore was a hackamore. I had ridden bareback before, but not on a creature shaped like her.

Dewara gave a grudging nod. Then he said, ‘Her name is Keeksha. You tell her name before you get on, she knows obey you. You don’t tell name, she knows you are not allowed. All my horses are so. This way.’ He turned to one of the other taldi. ‘Dedem. Stand.’

The beast he spoke to put his ears forward and came to meet Dewara. The plainsman mounted the round-bellied stallion casually. ‘Follow,’ he said, and slapped his animal on the rump. Dedem surged forward, leaping out in an instant gallop. I stared in surprise, and then copied him, giving Keeksha a slap that set her into motion.

For a time, all I could do was cling to Keeksha’s mane. I jolted and flopped about on her back like a rag doll tied to a dog’s tail. Every time one of her hooves struck, my spine was jolted in a different direction. Twice I was sure I was going to hit the ground, but the mare knew her business better than I did. She seemed to shrug herself back under me. The second time she did it, I abruptly decided to trust her. I shifted my weight and my legs, swaying into her stride and suddenly we moved as one creature. She surged forward and I felt that we almost doubled our speed. Dewara had been dwindling in the distance, headed away from the river and into the wastelands that bordered my father’s holding. The land rose there, the rocky hillsides cut by steep-sided gullies prone to sudden flooding during storms. Wind and rain had carved that place. Spindly bushes with grey-green leaves grew from cracks in the rocks carpeted with dull purple lichen. The hooves of his mount cut into the dry earth and left dust hanging in the air for me to breathe. Dewara kept his horse at a dead run across country where I never would have risked Sirlofty. I followed him, sure that soon he must rein in his mount and let the animal breathe, but he did not.

My little mare steadily gained on them. As we entered rougher country, climbing toward the plateaus of the region, it was harder to keep them in constant view. Hollows and mounds rumpled the plain like a rucked blanket. I suspected he was deliberately trying to lose me, and set my teeth, resolved that he would not. I well knew that one misplaced step could break both our necks, but I made no effort to pull Keeksha in and although her sides heaved with her effort, she did not slow on her own but followed the stallion’s lead. Her rolling gait ate up the miles.

We had been climbing, in the almost imperceptible way of the plains, and now emerged onto the plateau country. The flats gave way to tall outcroppings of red or white rock in the distance. Scattered trees, stunted and twisted by the constant wind and the erratic rains, offered clues to watercourses long dry. We passed disconnected towers of crumbling stone like rotted teeth in a skull’s jaw or the worn turrets of the wind’s castle. Hoodoos, my father called them. He’d told me that some of the plainspeople said they were chimneys for the underworld of their beliefs. Dewara rode on. I was parched with thirst and coated with dust when we finally topped a small rise and I saw Dewara and his taldi waiting for us. The plainsman stood beside his mount. I rode Keeksha down and halted before him. I was grateful to slide from her sweaty back. The mare moved three steps away from me, and then dropped to her knees. Horrified, I thought I had foundered the beast, but she merely rolled over onto her back and scratched herself luxuriously on the short, prickly grass that grew in the depression. I thought longingly of my waterskin, still slung on Sirlofty’s saddle. Useless to wish for it now.

If Dewara was surprised that I had caught up with him, he gave no sign of it. He said nothing at all until I cautiously asked, ‘What are we going to do now?’

‘We are here,’ was all he replied.

I glanced about and saw nothing to recommend ‘here’ over any other arid hollow in the plains. ‘Should I tend to the horses?’ I asked. I knew that if I had been riding Sirlofty, my father’s first admonition would be to look after my mount. ‘A horse soldier without his horse is an inexperienced foot soldier,’ he’d told me often enough. But Dewara just wet his lips with his tongue and then casually spat to one side. I recognized that he insulted me, but held myself silent.

‘Taldi were taldi long before men rode on them,’ he observed disdainfully. ‘Let them tend to themselves.’ His expression implied I was something of a weakling to have been concerned for them.

But the Kidona animals did seem well able to care for themselves. After her scratch, Keeksha heaved herself to her feet and joined Dedem in grazing on the coarse grass. Neither seemed any the worse for their long gallop. Had I put Sirlofty through a similar run, I would have walked him to cool him off and then rubbed him down thoroughly and given him water at careful intervals. The Kidona taldi seemed content with their rough forage and the grit they had rubbed into their wet coats. ‘The animals have no water. Neither do I,’ I told Dewara after a time.

‘They won’t die without it. Not today.’ He gave me a measuring look. ‘And neither will you, soldier’s boy.’ Coldly he added, ‘Don’t talk. You don’t need to talk. You are with me to listen.’

I started to speak again, but a brusque gesture from him quieted me. An instant later, I recalled his earlier warnings about what he would do if I disobeyed. I sealed my dry lips and, for lack of anywhere to perch, hunkered down on the bare earth. Dewara seemed to be listening intently. He bellied quietly up the side of our hollow, not so far that his head would show over the lip of it, and lay flat there. He closed his eyes and was so still that, except for his expression, I would have thought him sleeping. His intensity warned me to keep still in body as well as voice. After a time, he sat up slowly and turned to me. He gave me a very self-satisfied smile; the row of pointed white teeth in his mouth was a bit unnerving. ‘He is lost,’ he said.

‘Who?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Your father’s man. Set to watch over you, I think.’ His smile was cruel. I think he waited for an expression of dismay from me.

Instead, I was puzzled. Sergeant Duril? Would my father have commanded him to watch over me? Would Duril have done it on his own? Some of my doubts must have shown on my face because Dewara’s look became more considering. He came to his feet and walked slowly down the sloping bank toward me. ‘You are mine now. The student pays best attention when his life depends on it. Is it so?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, feeling certain it was true. I wondered uneasily what he meant.

For a long time, it seemed he meant nothing at all. He hunkered down on his heels not far from me. The taldi grazed on the dry forage. The only sounds were the wind blowing over the plain and the occasional crunch of a hoof as the animals shifted and the ceaseless chirring of small insects. In the hollow, the air was still, as if the plain cupped us in the palm of its hand. Dewara seemed to be waiting, but I had no idea for what. I felt I had no choice save to emulate him and wait also. I folded my legs and sat on the hard ground, my face and eyelashes still thick with the fine dust from our ride, and tried to ignore my thirst. He stared at me. From time to time, I met his eyes, but mostly I studied the fine pebbles on the dirt in front of me or gazed at the surrounding terrain. The shadows grew shorter and then began to lengthen again. At last he stood, stretched and walked over to his mount. ‘Come,’ he said to me.

I followed him. The mare sidled away until I said, ‘Keeksha. Stand.’ Then she came to me and waited for me to mount. Dewara hadn’t waited for us, but at least this time he was walking Dedem instead of galloping away. For a time we trailed him, and then he irritably motioned me to move up and ride beside him. I thought he would want to talk, but that was not it. I suspect he simply didn’t like having someone at his back.

We rode on through the rest of the afternoon. I thought he was taking us to water or a better camping site, but when we halted, I saw nothing to recommend the spot. At least our previous stopping place had offered us shelter from the relentless wind. Here, outcroppings of reddish rock nudged up out of the scant soil. Released, the ponies dispiritedly went to browse on some leathery-leaved shrubs. They, too, seemed to think little of Dewara’s choice of a stopping place. I turned in a slow circle, surveying the surrounding terrain. Most of what I could see was very similar to what was right at my feet. Dewara had sat down, his back propped against one of the large rocks.

‘Should I gather brush for a fire?’ I asked him.

‘I have no need of a fire. And you have no need to talk.’

That was our evening’s conversation. He sat, his back against the rock, while the shadows lengthened and then night flowed slowly across the land. There was no moon that night and the distant stars sparkled ineffectually against the black sky. When it became apparent that Dewara was not moving from where he sat, I found a place where a ledge of rock jutted up from the sand. I scratched out a hollow in the sand beside it, a place big enough for me to lie with my back against the rock, mostly for the warmth that it would hold after the sun went down. I lay down, cushioned my head with my hat and crossed my arms on my chest. For a time I listened to the wind, the horses and the insects.

I woke twice in the night. The first time, I had dreamed of smoked meat so vividly that I could still smell it. The second time it was because I was shivering. I shouldered deeper into my hollow, for there was little else I could do. I wondered exactly what I was supposed to be learning, and then fell asleep again.

Before dawn, sleep vanished and I opened my eyes to lucid awareness. I was chilled, hungry and thirsty, yet none of those things had awakened me. Without moving my head, I shifted my eyes. Dewara had awakened and was standing, a blacker shadowing against the steel grey sky. As I watched, he took another stealthy step toward me. I lowered my eyelids, keeping them only a slit open, wondering if his sight was keen enough to know I was awake. Another step closer. The man could flow like a snake on a dune.

I weighed my options. If I lay still and feigned sleep, I would have the element of surprise on my side. If I lay still and feigned sleep, he would have the element of being above me with his feet under him and his swanneck at his hand. I mentally tested all my muscles, and then came to my feet. Dewara halted where he stood. His expression was guileless. I kept mine as smooth. I bowed my head to my left shoulder and greeted him with, ‘It’s nearly morning.’

My voice came out as a croak. I cleared my dry throat and added, ‘Will we find water today?’

He fluttered his hands, a plainsman’s equivalent of a shrug. ‘Who can say? That is with the spirits.’

It would have been a silent blasphemy and a coward’s choice to let his words stand alone. ‘The good god may have mercy on us,’ I replied.

‘Your good god lives up beyond the stars,’ he replied disdainfully. ‘My spirits are here, in the land.’

‘My good god watches over me and protects me from harm,’ I countered.

He gave me a withering glance. ‘Your good god must be very bored, soldier’s boy.’

I took a breath. I did not wish to argue theology with a savage. I decided that the insult was to me, for having a boring life, rather than to the good god. I could let it pass, if I chose to do so. I said nothing, and after a long pause Dewara cleared his throat. ‘There is no reason to stay here,’ he said. ‘It’s light enough to ride.’

I had seen no reason to be there at all, but again, I smothered my opinion. I had been riding since I was a small child, but I ached in unexpected muscles from his beast’s odd shape. Nevertheless, I dutifully mounted up and followed him, still wondering what it was this man was supposed to be teaching me. I worried that my father was getting a very poor exchange for his trade goods.

Dewara led and I rode beside him. By noon, my need for water had surpassed thirst and was venturing toward privation. My sturdy taldi followed Dewara’s gamely, but I knew that she, too, needed water. I had employed every trick that I knew to stave off my thirst. The smooth pebble in my mouth had become more annoying than helpful. I had picked it up when I had dismounted to strip the fleshy leaves from a mules-ear plant. I chewed the thick leaves to fibres, and then spat them out. They did little more than moisten my mouth. My lips and the inside of my nose were dry and cracking. My tongue felt like a piece of thick leather in my mouth. Dewara rode on without speaking to me or betraying any sign of thirst. Hunger returned to pester me, but thirst retained my attention. I watched anxiously for the water signs that Sergeant Duril had taught me – a line of trees, a depression where the plants were thick and greener than usual or animal tracks converging – but I saw only that the land was becoming more barren and even stonier.

There was little I could do other than follow Dewara and trust that he must have some end in mind. When shadows began to lengthen again with still no water in sight, I spoke up. My lips cracked as I formed my words. ‘Will we reach water soon?’

He glanced at me, and then made a show of looking all around us. ‘It does not seem so.’ He smiled at me, showing no effects from our water privation. Without words, we rode on. I could feel the little mare’s flagging energy, but she seemed as willing as ever. Evening had begun to ooze across the plains when Dewara reined his mount and looked around. ‘We’ll sleep here,’ he announced.

The location was worse than the previous one. There was not even a rock to sleep against, and only dry browse for the horses, no grass at all.

‘You’re daft!’ I croaked out before I recalled that I was to show this man respect. It was hard to recall anything just then except how thirsty I was.

He was already off his horse. He looked up at me, his face impassive. ‘You are to obey me, soldier’s boy. Your father said so.’

At the time it seemed that I had no choice except to do as he said. I dismounted from the tubby little mare and looked around. There was nothing to see. If this was some sort of test, I feared I was failing it. As he had the evening before, Dewara sat down cross-legged on the dry earth. He seemed perfectly content to sit there and watch evening turn to full night.

My head ached and I felt my stomach clench with the nausea of unanswered hunger. Well, it would go away soon enough, I told myself. I decided I would make my bed a bit more comfortable than it had been the night before. I picked a place that looked more sandy than stony, at a good distance from Dewara. I had not forgotten his sneaking approach that morning. With my hands, I dug a slight depression in the sand about the size of my body. Curled in it, I could trap my body warmth during the chill of night. I was picking the larger rocks out of the bottom when Dewara stood and stretched. He walked over to my hole and looked at it disdainfully. ‘Planning to lay your eggs soon? It’s a fine nest for a sage hen.’

Replying would have required moving my cracked lips, so I let his jibe pass. I could not understand how thirst and hunger affected me so strongly and left him untouched. As if in answer to my thought, he muttered, ‘Weakling.’ He turned and walked back to his post and squatted down again. Feeling childish, I curled into my hole and closed my gritty eyes. I said my evening prayers silently, asking the good god to grant me strength and help me to discern what my father thought this man could teach me. Perhaps this endurance of privation was how he wished to measure me. Or perhaps this old enemy of my father planned to break his bargain with my father and torment me to my death.

Perhaps my father had been wrong to trust him.

Perhaps I was a weakling and a traitor to my father to doubt his judgment. ‘Make me proud, son,’ he had said. I prayed again for strength and courage, and sought sleep.

In the dark of night, I came awake. I smelled sausages. No. I smelled smoked meat. Foolishness. Then I heard a very small sound: the gurgle of a waterskin. My mind was playing tricks on me. Then I heard it again, and the slosh as it was lowered from Dewara’s mouth. It occurred to me that his loose robes could easily conceal such things as a waterskin and a wallet of dried meat. My sticky eyelids clung together as I opened my eyes. There is nothing darker than full night on the Midlands. The stars were distant and uninterested. Dewara was completely invisible to me.

Sergeant Duril had often counselled me that thirst, hunger, and sleeplessness can lead to a man making poor decisions. He said I could add lust to that list when I was a few years closer to full manhood. So now I pondered and then pondered again. Was this a test of my perseverance and endurance? Or had my father been deceived by his old enemy? Should I obey Dewara even if he was leading me to my death? Should I trust my father’s judgment or my own? My father was older and wiser than I. But he was not here and I was. I was too weary and too thirsty to think coherently. Yet I must make the decision. Obey or disobey. Trust or distrust.

I closed my eyes. I prayed to the good god for guidance, but heard only the sweep of wind across the plains. I slept fitfully. I dreamed that my father said that if I were worthy to be his son, I could endure this. Then the dream changed, and Sergeant Duril was saying that he’d always known I was stupid, that even the youngest child knew better than to venture out on the plains without water and food. Idiots deserved to die. How many times had he told me that? If a man couldn’t figure out how to take care of himself, then let him get himself killed and get out of the way before he brought down his whole regiment. I wandered out of my dream to sleeplessness. I was in the control of a savage who disliked me. I had no food or water. I doubted that there was water within a day’s walk of here, or that I could walk a full day without water. Grimness settled on me. I decided to sleep on my decision.

In the creep of dawn, I arose from my hollow in the sand. I went to where Dewara slept. He did not sleep. His eyes were open and watching me. It hurt even to try to speak but I croaked out the words. ‘I know you have water. Please give me some.’

He sat up slowly. ‘No.’ His hand was already on the haft of his swanneck. I had no weapon at all. He grinned at me. ‘Why don’t you try to take it?’

I stood there, anger, hatred and fear fighting for control of me. I decided I wanted to live. ‘I’m not stupid,’ I said. I turned away from him and walked toward the taldi.

He called after me, ‘You say you are “not stupid”. Is that another way to say “coward”?’

The words were like a knife in my back. I tried to ignore them. ‘Keeksha. Stand.’ The mare came to me.

‘Sometimes a man has to fight for what he needs to live. He has to fight, no matter what the odds.’ Dewara stood up, pulling his swanneck from its sheath. The bronze blade was gold in the rising sun. His face darkened with anger. ‘Get away from my animal. I forbid you to touch her.’

I grasped the mane at the base of her neck and heaved myself onto her.

‘Your father said you would obey me. You said you would obey me. I said that if you disobeyed me, I would notch your ear.’

‘I am going to find water.’ I don’t know why I even said those words.

‘You are not a man of your word. Neither is your father. But I am!’ he shouted after me as I rode off. ‘Dedem. Stand!’ At that, I kicked Keeksha into a run. Deprivation had weakened her as much as it had me, but she seemed to share my mind. We fled. I heard Dedem’s strong hoofbeats behind us. ‘It can’t be helped,’ I thought to myself. I leaned into Keeksha’s gallop and hung on.

The stallion was bigger and hardier than the mare. They were gaining on us. I had two objectives: to get away from Dewara and to find water before the mare’s strength gave out. I knew I would need her to get home. To those ends, I urged her to speed, guiding her back the way we had come. My somewhat rattled assessment of the situation was that by going back the way we had come, I knew that water was only two days away. A man can survive four days without food or water. Sergeant Duril had told me so. Yet he had added, kindly, that such survival was made more unlikely by exposure and exertion, and that a man who trusted his judgment after two days without food and water was as likely to die of foolishness as deprivation. I knew the horse could not run for two days straight, nor could I ride for that long. Yet my thinking was badly disordered by the fact that I was fleeing for my life, a new experience for me, and defying my father’s authority as I did so. The one seemed equally as terrifying as the other.

I did not get far. I had only a small lead over the Kidona. Urge the mare as I might, Dewara gained steadily until he was riding beside us. I clung grimly to Keeksha’s back and mane, for there was little else I could do. I saw him draw his swanneck and slapped the mare frantically, but she had no more speed to give. The deadly curved blade swiped the air over my head. I risked a kick at him, hoping more to distract him than unseat him. I nearly unseated myself as well, and I felt the mare’s pace falter. The shining metal swept past me again, and such was Dewara’s skill that, true to his threat, I felt the harsh bite of the blade as it passed through my ear. The act dealt me a scalp wound as well, one that immediately began to pour blood down the side of my neck. I screamed as the blade sliced through my flesh, both in pain and in terror. The shameful memory of that girlish shriek has never left me. Pain and the warm seep of thick blood down my neck became one sensation, making it impossible for me to assess how badly I was injured. I could only cling tighter to Keeksha and ride hard. I knew I had no chance of survival. The next pass of Dewara’s swanneck would finish me.

Astonishingly, he let me go.

It took a short time for me to realize that. Or perhaps a long time. I rode, my wound burning and my heart hammering so that I thought it would burst from my body. At any moment, I expected the swish of the blade and the quenching of light. The drumming of my own blood in my ears was such that at first I did not realize that his hoofbeats were fading. I ventured a glance to the side and then back. He was pulling his stallion in. As I fled, he sat, unmoving on his horse, watching me go. He laughed at me. I did not hear it, could not see his smile, and yet I knew it. He flourished his golden blade over his head and flapped his free arm derisively at me. The knowledge of his mockery seared me.

Shamed and bleeding, I fled like a kicked cur. I did not have the water in my body to weep, or I probably would have. My scalp wound bled thickly for a short time, and then crusted over with dust. I rode on. Keeksha’s pace slowed, and I lacked the will or energy to urge her to go faster. For a time, I tried to guide her, hoping to go back the way we had come, but we were already off course, and the little taldi was determined to have her own way. I gave in to her, excusing myself on the grounds that Sergeant Duril had often urged me to trust my horse when I had no better guide.

Afternoon found me slumping on Keeksha’s back, letting her pick her way where she would. Our pace was little more than an amble. I felt dizzy. The sky was a clear blue and the sun was bright and warm. My hunger that had abated for a time had returned, and with it a retching nausea very painful to my dry throat. I felt completely adrift. When I had followed Dewara, I had believed that there was some destination that we sought, and despite my doubts, I’d felt safer with him. Now I was as good as lost until nightfall and the stars came out. Worse, I was lost in my life. I’d disobeyed my father and Dewara. I’d put my inexperienced judgment above theirs, and if I died out here, I’d have only myself to blame. Perhaps it had been a test of endurance, and I’d fled it too soon. Perhaps if I’d tried to take the water from him, he would have been impressed with my courage and rewarded me with a drink. Perhaps my fleeing had earned me a coward’s death. My body would rot out here, insect and bird bait until my bones turned to sand. My father would be ashamed of me when Dewara told him how I had run away. I rode hopelessly on.

Midmorning of the next day, Keeksha found water. I claim no credit for helping her.

People who say our plains are arid are only partially correct. There is water, but for the most part it moves beneath the surface, and breaks through to the top only when the terrain forces it there. Keeksha found such a sike. The rocky watercourse she followed was dry as a bone that spring, but she kept with it until we reached a place where an outcropping of rock had forced the hidden flow up, to briefly break above ground as a marshy little pond, not much bigger than two box stalls. The sike stank of life, and was the virulent green of desperation. She walked into it and began drinking in the thick water.

I slid from her back, walked two steps from her and lay down on my belly in the muck. I put my face in the thin layer of water and sucked it up, straining it through my teeth. After I had drunk, I lay there still, my mouth open to the liquid, trying to soak my leather tongue and frayed lips back to a semblance of normalcy. Above me, Keeksha drank and then breathed and then drank some more. Finally I heard the heavy splashes of her hooves as she moved out of the shallow pond and to the cracked earth at the muddy edge of it. She began grazing greedily on the ring of grass that surrounded the sink. I envied her.

I stood slowly and wiped a scum of slime from my chin and then shook it from my hands. I could feel the water in my belly, and felt almost sickened by the sudden plenitude of it. I waded out of the muck and inspected our tiny sanctuary. The cut of the watercourse meant that we were below the windswept plain. I could hear the constant mutter of the never-still air above us. Our tiny hollow cupped silence. Then, as I stood still, the chorus of life slowly took up its song again. Insects spoke to one another. A dragonfly hovered over the water. The gore frogs that had gone into hiding during our splashing began to emerge once more. Bright as gobbets of spilled blood, they were blots of scarlet on the floating scum and stubby reeds of our pond. I knew a moment’s relief that they had gone into hiding at our arrival. They were toxic little creatures. When I was small, one of our dogs had died from picking a gore frog up in his mouth. Even to touch one caused a tingling on the skin.

I picked and ate some water plants that I recognized. They were something in my belly, but hunger growled around them. I found nothing that I could fashion into a vessel for carrying water. I dreaded the thought of the hunger and thirst I’d have to endure during my journey home, but not as deeply as I dreaded my confrontation with my father when I returned. I’d failed him. The thought made me return to the water’s edge. I washed the thick blood from my neck and ear. Notched. My ear would never be whole again. I’d carry the reminder of my broken promise to the end of my days. For the rest of my life, whenever anyone asked me about it, I’d have to admit that I’d disobeyed my father and gone back on my own word.

The mucky edges of the pond gave way to plates of roughly cracked earth that showed how the pond had shrunken since winter. I studied the tracks in them. When the ground had been moist, a little shrub-deer had visited the water. One blurry set of tracks could have been a big cat or the slopped prints of a wild dog. Beyond the cracked edge of the bare ground, dry grass stood in the skeletal shade of a dead sapling. I picked several double handfuls of the grass, and then approached Keeksha. She seemed apprehensive when I started rubbing the dust and sweat from her back and flanks, but soon decided she enjoyed it. It was not just that she’d found water for us. I did it to remind myself that the wisdom of my early training was to take good care of my mount. I should never have listened to Dewara about anything.

Afterwards, I made my bed among the grass tussocks, resolving to sleep the afternoon away, then awaken, drink as much water as I could hold, and then ride as the stars pointed me. I broke the dead sapling down, and broke the skinny branches away from it. It was a feeble weapon, but anything might come to water in the night. It was better than nothing. I placed it by my side as I lay down to sleep. As much as I dreaded confessing to my father, I also longed to be home again. I closed my eyes to the chirring of the insects and the peeping of the gore frogs.