Their Master's War

One

There had been a madness, and the river crossing had become a place of horror and death. The teroes had sensed the blood of men and mounts, and they were circling in the hot iron-gray sky, gliding on leathery wings and uttering hoarse, raucous cries. The bolder ones had already started to land, flapping and stretching, their long beaked heads turning this way and that, always poised for instant flight but, at the same time, always moving toward the fallen prey with their scrabbling sideways gait. A mount thrashed and contorted in its final agony, snapping at the hideous gaping wound in its stomach. The huge Brana-ma hunting dogs had caused this particular animal's downfall. The flying reptiles retreated to a safe distance and crouched, waiting for its dying struggles to end. The mount clawed at the loose sand, trying to rise, but the effort was too much for it. It shuddered and died. The teroes started to close in again.

For a while, the waters of the scant, high summer river had run red, but now, once again, they sparkled clear. The awful stain of mortal combat had been borne downstream, and it had already become history. Har-kaan splashed through the shallows, staring with dull horrified eyes at the wreckage that was left by the fighting. There was blood running down the side of his face from where a spinning platee had sliced his forehead. An angry, throbbing pain still pulsed through his shoulder and extended all the way up to the nerve clusters in the back of his neck. The Brana-ma warrior, the one with the black and yellow diamond-patterned snake painted on his left cheek, had been looking to finish him with a single blow from his war club. It had been intended to crush his skull, but at the last minute, Harkaan had desperately pivoted from the hip and the club had smashed down on his shoulder. In shock from the pain and driven by the strange new instincts of madness, he had gutted the man with his glassknife. The warrior's blood still stained his breechclout, his leggings, and his beaded chest piece.

Some of the bodies sprawled as though sleeping. Others were twisted into grotesque and unnatural parodies of what they'd been when alive. Harkaan avoided looking at the expressions on their faces. A mount lay half in and half out of the water. Its neck was stretched out, and its powerful back legs angled into the air. Spears stuck up like sinister leafless reeds, their points buried in the river mud or the dry, bare ground. The harsh hot Lawka-a wind that made men so quick to anger was still blowing, making streamers of the ribbons that decorated the weapons.

It was hard to remember how or why the conflict had started. When the twenty young men of the Ashak-ai had left the village, they had been nothing more than a simple hunting party, wearing the bands of ocher paint that designated them as such. Even then, though, there had been an awareness that something was wrong. The dry season had gone on far too long. Wells had run dry, and streams had dwindled until they were little more than trails of drying mud. The hot winds blew relentlessly. The nights brought no relief. A terrible lethargy had set in, punctuated only by bursts of sudden, out-of-control anger. Game had become so scarce on the high plains that a hunting party could go out for days and return with nothing more than a single sobore. The reserves of meal and dried meat were dangerously depleted, and even water had to be rationed. The old people of the village had become so sere and brittle that they seemed in danger of blowing away. The children were wide-eyed with hunger, and very soon the bellies of the youngest would start to swell and and starvation death would be among them. The omens and portents offered no hope or consolation. Brood mounts dropped their eggs long before the appointed time, and two human babies were stillborn. The elders and the shaman spent long hours in the Lodge of the Spirits, offering prayers to the ancestors and even making supplication to Ka-La-Lan, the Mother of the Hunt, a deity who was never trivially bothered. No help came. If anything, the heat grew worse and the Lawka-a blew as hard as ever.

For the first four days out, the hunting party found nothing; it was as if all life had fled from the plains. The grass itself was dying. As the hunters ranged farther and farther afield, they were increasingly aware that they were starting to infringe the treaties by moving into the traditional hunting grounds of other peoples. It was a serious offense, but they had little choice. They could not return to the village empty-handed.

When they saw the cloud of dust for the first time, a great surge of hope welled up in the heart of each of them. The meetha herds had returned. The cloud was relatively small, and there was no way that any of them could pretend that it was one of the huge armies of the waddling, duck-billed fehlapods whose vast migrations took them across the high plains soon after the start of the rainy season, but it might be an isolated group, thrown off track by the unnaturally long drought. What- ever it was, it was certainly better than nothing. They could return to the village with both honor and the des perately needed fresh meat. It took another half day for the disappointment to fall on them. At first they resisted the unpleasant truth. It had to be a meetha herd. Finally they could deceive themselves no longer. The dust cloud was moving too quickly and with too much purpose. It couldn't be meetha causing it. If anything, it was a hunting party similar to themselves, most likely from the Brana-ma, also pushing to the limits of their accepted territory. Despite the gut-wrenching realization that there was still no game and probably none in the direction from which the other party was coming, a certain excitement spread through the Ashak-ai hunters. If they kept on going, there would undoubtedly be a confrontation with the young men of the other tribe.

This kind of confrontation wasn't uncommon, and it was conducted according to a time-honored protocol. The formal insults were exchanged, and then the warriors would engage in the largely simulated ritual violence of toucou, in which combatants would attempt to strike each other lightly with the blunt end of their stabbing spears. The worst that could happen was that a few tempers would be lost, heads might be cracked, or an arm or a leg might be broken.

The two parties had met at the Great Maru River* which had dwindled to a number of shallow rivulets that meandered between banks of damp sand. The riders of the Ashak-ai had halted at the top of a line of low bluffs that followed the outswing of the river's curve. Below them, across the riverbed, the Brana-ma also stopped. As the two hunting parties cautiously approached each other, a certain unease spread through the Ashak-ai. The Brana-ma-by then it was easy to recognize the tribal markings on their mounts-had a pack of large, semi-wild hunting dogs with them. And the Brana-ma them- selves wore the swirling black and yellow devil paint of a raiding party.

At first, the meeting had followed normal protocol, The insults were exchanged. Ga-Niru, the eldest of the Ashak-a hunters and the leader of the party, stood up in his stirrupss and yelled across the river. The young men of the Brana-ma must copulate with t.heir mothers and sisters! No normal woman would lie with them!"

The Brana-ma leader was a disturbing sight. His whole body was painted a uniform yellow-the paint of one who is no longer sane. But his reply was comfortingly normal.

And the young men of the Ashak-ai copulate with their dogs because their mothers and sisters are too filthy and hideous for even them to lie with."

Taunt and countertaunt had escalated until the leader of each party let out a bloodcurdling scream. They charged at each other.

Ga-Niru never had a chance. His stabbing spear was reversed in the position of toucou. The Brana-ma leader swung his war club in a lethal arc that ended by crushing the Ashak-ai's skull. The explosion of violence had been immediate. The two parties had hit head-on in the middle of the river in a flurry of clubs and spears. AD ideas of toucou were forgotten in the howl of rage. They killed and went on killing. At the end, the surviving Brana-ma had turned and run, but they had taken the remaining mounts with them. The Ashak-ai probably could have claimed some kind of moral victory, but by that time there were only three Ashak-ai on their feet.

As the Brana-ma fled the field, the yellow-painted leader reared his mount and screamed back at them. "You think that this is Brana-ma madness, Ashak-ai? This is the madness of the wind." He'd thrown back his head. "Sniff the air, Ashak-ai! Don't you smell the madness on the wind?"

The words still rang in their ears. No one spoke. No one had the words. Harkaan, Valda, and N'Garth had taken the lives of men, and their shame was immeasurable. They could hardly face each other. They had no idea how the madness had come upon them or why the Brana-ma had triggered such a deadly combat. In the grip of shock and pain, they were beyond even grief. Their only course was to retreat into what they knew was their obvious duty. First they checked that their comrades were really dead. There was no good news in this operation. Two of the fatally injured mounts, though, still panted and thrashed in pain. The young men had to finish these creatures, to whom they were almost as close as they were to their own families, by hacking through their thick scales with glassknives until they hit a crucial vein. The work was agonizing and dirty. If more of the hunting party had survived, they would have felt bound to remain until all the bodies were buried, even those of the enemy. As this was plainly impossible, they simply dragged their own dead into a single pile and lit thornbush fires at regular intervals around it. The fires would keep the teroes at bay for a while.

With their obligations to the dead at least minimally discharged, they seated themselves in a small, close circle. One by one, they removed the feathers from their topknots and took off their chest pieces. They were no longer worthy of these hunters' tokens. N'Garth had brought the spirit bag from Ga-Niru's fallen mount. He took out the painting sticks. With slow, methodical strokes, they painted their bodies. The design was stark and unmistakable: one-half black, one-half white. It was the symbol of the ultimate outcast. It identified them as killers of men. Harkaan and Valda sat very still while the paint dried on their skin. N'Garth had removed the prayer levers from the spirit bag. As he worked them through the complex sequence, rocking backward and forward where he sat, he recited the pattern of the dirge. The acrid smoke from the fires drifted around them. Finally they stood and, still without a word exchanged, started the long walk back to the village and whatever fate would await them there.

It took them twelve long days of thirst, hunger, guilt, and horror to walk back to the village. By the sixth day, even their grim determination had started to fail. They couldn't shake off the feeling that something was very wrong on the high plains. They were stumbling through the worst drystorm that any of them could remember. They had never seen the land and the sky in such furious conflict. The winds screeched and tormented, tearing and twisting the dust into shapes of tortured demons. Were they the dead demanding burial, even after the prayers and the lighting of the fires? Colored lightning split the sky, and in the brief periods when the wind let up, it was possible to see even more monstrous storms on the horizon. Was the world being consumed by violence? Through the dust, the moons appeared blood-red. More and more, it looked as if the insane Brana-ma leader had been right. There was a madness on the wind.

The storm still raged when they reached the village. It swirled dust between the lodges and tore at the coverings. The three expected that their approach would go virtually unnoticed, that they could creep in, and only after water and rest would they reveal their condition to the elders. They had assumed that most of the tribe, with the exception of maybe one or two unhappy, blanket-swathed lookouts, would be huddled inside the lodges, sheltering from the dust storm and nursing their hunger. Instead of lookouts, the three found that the black talis poles had been set out around the perimeter of the village. Their braids and tokens and bleached animal skulls streamed and spiraled in the wind. The black poles were the tribe's most potent symbols of power, and in more normal times they would signify that a major magic was being conjured by the shaman and the elders. But how could magic be conjured in the teeth of such a storm? The only other reason for raising the talis poles was that the village feared a most awful supernatural threat.

Within the village, a shock awaited them. More than half the tribe was standing in the open, buffeted by the wind and scoured by the dust, exactly in the center of the inner ring of lodges, clustered around the pylon. It was the most sacred and magical spot in the whole village. The elders and the shaman were in the middle of the group. The wind snatched at the elders' robes and the matted locks of the shaman. The young men who had not gone with the hunting party flanked them, standing stoically as though trying to pretend that the storm didn't exist. Less was expected of the maidens who huddled beside them and the children who clung to their mothers' skirts and howled, too young to have learned the code of suppressing. The whole tribe seemed to be defying the storm, waiting for the return of the hunters.

The chief of the elders, Exat-Nalan-Ra, regarded the three arrivals with eyes that were impossible to read.

"You have killed men."

Exat-Nalan-Ra's face was wrinkled and brown, a miniature representation of a battered arid landscape. The feathers that held his topknot in place were nothing more than worn bare quills. The gray hair itself was so thin that it almost seemed as if the violent wind would pluck it out by the roots. Exat-Nalan-Ra's body, wrapped in a dirty white robe, was equally ancient and frail, and he leaned heavily on his ceremonial staff, but the fathomless depths of his icy blue eyes hinted at the power that made him the unquestioned leader of the Ashak-ai.

Harkaan nodded. "We have killed men."

"Such a thing has not occurred in generations."

It was as if Exat-Nalan-Ra already knew about the battle at the river.

"It was not of our own choosing."

"That does not change the color of the blood on your hands."

Harkaan looked down at the ground, avoiding those cold blue eyes.

Exat-Nalan-Ra's right hand, the one that held on to the staff, trembled slightly. "You have no answer for that?"

Harkaan raised his head and reluctantly met the penetrating gaze. "I have no answer."

Exat-Nalan-Ra's attention moved on to N'Garth and Valda. "You have no answers either?"

They looked equally uncomfortable.

"We have no answers."

"Unless it was the madness of the Brana-ma."

"It's a terrible madness that costs a simple hunting party all but three of its number," the elder said.

"Their leader already wore the paint of the insane."

"So you blame it all on his madness?"

"He howled like an animal."

"And you felt no part of this madness? You only defended yourselves against it?"

All three hesitated. The eyes of the tribe were on them, and they felt naked. Harkaan finally found his voice.

"I felt it."

Harkaan felt himself in the grip of a dull, exhausted recklessness. The wind still tore at them, burning their skin and turning their eyes red and raw. With every gust, Exat-Nalan-Ra visibly swayed. Harkaan was slipping past the point where he cared what the tribe's elders intended to do with him. for them, and now they seemed to be receiving an odd respect.

The Lodge of the Spirits was little different from any of the other lodges, a low dome of shaped and stitched hides molded to a framework of split and curved canes. The real difference was in what lurked, invisible, in the smoky scented air, what entities watched from among the blackened relics, totems, and charms that hung from the roof or found solace in the patterns of beadwork that lined the walls. Marjooquin, the senior woman, tended the fire-that-must-never-die. She was quite as old and frail as Exat-Nalan-Ra, and equally determined. Her only concession to her great age was that she had Con-chela the maiden to assist her. As the three young men ducked into the lodge, she fed a handful of aromatic wood spills to the fire and nodded them toward three beaded cushions that had been set side by side as if in anticipation of their coming.

Only two of the assembly followed them inside. Exat-Nalan-Ra and Quetzyloc the master formally seated themselves at opposite sides of the circular lodge, facing each other, directly along the axis of the invisible line that ran from the pylon to the rising red sun. For a long time, they faced each other in silence.

Marjooquin sprinkled a handful of white powder over the fire, and it immediately burned a rich, deep blue. Harkaan had to fight to stop himself from choking in the resulting acrid smoke, but both of the old men inhaled it with grunts of obvious satisfaction. Marjooquin then tilled an earthenware cup with clear cold water from a ktrger stone jar and passed it to Conchela, who offered it first to N'Garth, then to Harkaan, and finally to Valda. After the three had drunk, the cup was handed to Exat- N.dan -Ra, who simply set it down in front of him, un tested.

They were handed a plate on which lay five lingor

Exat-Nalan-Ra looked at the other two. "You also tasted madness?"

Their faces were as blank as was expected. "I was mad." "And I."

Exat-Nalan-Ra turned to Quetzyloc, the master shaman. There was a whispered conversation. The other shaman and most of the other elders joined them in a huddled discussion. Harkaan glanced quickly at the other two. Even the death paint couldn't disguise their apprehension. The sky picked that moment to crack open in multicolored bolts of lightning. Exat-Nalan-Ra beckoned with his staff.

"You will all come."

The villagers stepped back, leaving a path that led straight to the Lodge of the Spirits, the holy sanctum that occupied pride of place in the inner ring of lodges, on a direct line between the pylon and the spot on the horizon where the red sun rose. Harkaan had only once been inside the Lodge of the Spirits, and then only for a brief moment at the culmination of his manhood trials. Now the three walked slowly forward. It was an occurrence without precedent. Nobody ever entered the Lodge of the Spirits without an elaborate and lengthy ritual of purification. They had neither eaten nor drunk nor even brushed the dust from their leggings. There was a single-mindedness about the crowd's urgency. No one had screamed out in grief for the ones who had not returned. Death and the wind overshadowed everything. The wind itself seemed to acknowledge this, dropping in a brief moment of respite. Exat-Nalan-Ra swung back the entry flap to the lodge. There was a strange new deference about the old man that had Harkaan completely at a loss. A minute earlier he had been imagining what kind of punishment the elder might have in store beans. The lingor was the plant of hidden truths. In the right circumstances, the swallowing of the bean could take a man to heightened realities. In the wrong circumstances, the lingor could drive a man to madness. Each of the three took a bean but made no attempt to swallow it. Quetzyloc placed a bean on the flat of his palm and moved his hand over it twice in a simple blessing. Then he broke the bean in two. He put one half in his mouth and extended his hand for the water. Exat-Nalan-Ra gave him the cup, and the master swallowed, then took the second half of the bean and a second swallow of water. Exat-Nalan-Ra repeated the procedure gesture by gesture. Marjooquin indicated that the three young men should do the same. They copied the blessing as best they could and placed the beans in their mouths; their water was served by the maiden.

For Harkaan, the interior of the lodge seemed to have taken on a golden luminescence. The spirits of the tribe were present in the air. He hadn't noticed before that there were tiny rock crystals sewn at intervals into the beadwork that lined the tent. Each one reflected the fire and the four oil lamps that hung from the roof. It was a moment of magic. He was inside a golden bowl of tiny burning stars.

The euphoria, though, was quick to fade. The fire sank down to an angry red. The air was no longer golden. It was the same red as the light during the battle at Great Maru River. Exat-Nalan-Ra's eyes glittered in the dark as he nodded his head.

"There is no mistake, and there can be no other explanation."

Quetzyloc also nodded, rocking backward and forward on his crossed legs. "There is no mistake."

"The Gods are coming. For the first time in five generations, the Gods are coming."

N'Garth shifted uneasily, and Marjooquin treated him to a fast look of disapproval. Neither Exat-Nalari-Ra nor Quetzyloc noticed the interchange.

"We cannot ignore the signs, and there is no other way that we can interpret them."

"The Gods are close at hand. We must accept that as fact and act accordingly."

"Everything has come about as told in song and legend, and even as written in the documents."

"The pylon hums louder every day."

"Exactly as it is recorded and exactly as it has been predicted."

"The plains are burned, the hot winds roll the dust clouds before them, and the dust obscures the suns."

"The lightning storm splits the sky."

"It is exactly as it is recorded and exactly as it has been predicted."

"In the final stages, the young men taste of madness and deliver death one to another."

"There is no doubt. It came to pass this way in record, and it will come to pass this way again."

"There is no doubt that the Gods are almost here."

"And we must perform their will in the manner of our ancestors."

"We must perform their will in the manner of our descendants long after we are dead."

"Now and forever, obedience without end." "So be it."

"I never thought I would live to see this."

In slow unison, the two old men's heads turned toward the three youths.

"Those who kill during the madness go to the Valley of the Gods. That is the law."

Harkaan could feel the other two stiffen. His own shock exactly matched theirs. Was this to be a punishment for having killed? Did they go to the Valley of the heavily embroidered leather. "It is time they were given the stone."

Exat-Nalan-Ra was given the bundle. He unwrapped it with the slow, emphasized movements of ceremony. When the wrapping was smoothed flat on the lodge floor, it showed a representation of the birth of the suns. Inside the bundle was nothing more than a medium-sized smooth black stone, a flattened oval that looked just like a million others that could be found on any streambed. Marjooquin indicated that Harkaan should pick up the stone.

"You will hold the stone between your thumb and forefinger, extend your arm to its fullest, and very slowly move it in a circle."

Harkaan did as he was told, feeling a little absurd. It was something of an anticlimax. After all this talk of Gods, he had at least expected some fiery, magic jewel. And then, just as he was pointing it at Quetzyloc, the tip of the stone suddenly glowed a bright, pulsing red. Har-kaan's first instinct was to drop the thing like a hot coal. He quickly realized that this was not what was expected of him. He also realized that even when the stone was glowing at its brightest, it gave off no heat at all. He moved his arm again, and the glow faded. He moved it hack, and the glow returned. He looked questioningly at...