Paul Thompson - Sister of the Sword

“On both sides,” put in Pakito.

“How do you know Karada won’t kill you, if the ransom isn’t paid?” Beramun asked.

Balif leaned toward her. His sky-blue eyes bored into her dark ones. In a voice deep and vibrant, he said, “You won’t let her kill me, will you?”

Startled, Beramun pulled back on her reins, halting her horse. The moving column flowed around her. Balif’s light chuckle, joined by Pakito’s booming laugh, came clearly back to her. Wrenching her mount’s head around, she rode back toward the rear of the band, her crimson face hidden in the swirling clouds of dust.

When Beramun finally returned to the head of the column, she found Karada surrounded by scouts. Trotting in the flattened grass behind the nomad chieftain’s horse was the girl Mara, her face and auburn hair yellow with dust.

“Have a good talk with Balif?” asked Karada as Beramun arrived. Beramun’s surprise was evident, and Karada added, “I know everything that happens in this band. A horse doesn’t stumble or a child cough that I don’t hear about it eventually.”

“I’ve never met an elf before,” Beramun said defensively. “I wanted to see what they’re like.”

“Stay away from Balif. He’s too wise for you, too cunning. Listen to him long enough and you’ll end up wanting to free him.”

“I would never do that!”

“Yes, you would,” Mara put in airily. “The Good People can change a mind or turn a heart around as easily as the wind finds a new course.”

Beramun had no chance to dispute this, as Mara added quickly, “Please, Karada, may I have a horse?”

“None to spare,” was the terse reply.

Mara, panting between the mounted nomads, looked so downcast Beramun felt sorry for her.

“Climb on,” she said, extending a hand. “We can ride double.”

Mara looked from Beramun’s outstretched hand to Karada’s stern face and back again. Without another word, she turned and merged back into the dusty stream of horses and dragging travois.

The dry wind switched directions, becoming damp and heavy as it blew down from the north. By late afternoon, the hazy white clouds had clotted into piles of mighty thunderheads, filling the northern sky. The nomads plodded on for a while, but night and the threat of rain finally convinced Karada to halt her people. While the first campfires were being laid, the clouds broke open and dumped a torrent of water, dousing all hope of warmth. Cold jerky and journey bread were everyone’s fare that night.

A few tents were dragged out and unfolded before Karada rode by and ordered they not be put up. The band would move out at first light, and she wanted no time wasted pitching and striking tents. Many grumbled at having to spend the night in the rain, but every nomad in the band knew their leader would be out in the weather herself, just as wet and miserable as the rest of them.

Beramun had lost sight of the chief when the rain closed in, so she wandered the camp, looking for some spot to spend the night. The elf prisoners had a novel method for beating the weather. Their cloaks were made with several small metal hooks and rings along their edges and could be joined together into a large, lightweight fly. As the rain poured down, the elves sat on the ground in a tight circle, facing outward, shielded from the worst of the downpour by their ingenious cloak-tent.

After a long search, Beramun spotted Karada’s wheat-colored horse tied to a picket line. Below the animal’s nose was a dark hump in the grass. Someone was squatting there, wrapped in a large ox hide. Beramun hurried over. She lifted one edge of the hide and shoved her head under.

“Room for another?” she asked, then saw it was not Karada under the hide, but Mara.

The girl said nothing but moved slightly to one side, giving tacit assent. Warily, Beramun crawled in.

It was dark as Sthenn’s heart under the hide, but with their knees drawn up to their chins, the two girls were able to stay dry. The air was heavy with cold rain and Mara’s palpable jealousy.

The silence stretched between them until Beramun asked, “Where’s Karada?”

“With that elf. She’s spent every night with him since he was caught.” Beramun gave a low exclamation of surprise, and Mara added, “Not alone. Pakito’s with them.”

“Oh.” Beramun dismissed the alarming fantasies she’d conjured up. “Is she afraid he’ll escape?”

She felt the other girl shrug. “Pakito says they argue about everything, from the best way to raise horses to who’s the best leader. This goes on until one tires and goes to sleep. Karada’s won every night. That elf sleeps first.”

Rain trickled down Beramun’s collar. She pushed away from the edge of the hide until her feet bumped Mara’s.

“Is it a game?”

“Karada doesn’t play games,” Mara said, her tone a mixture of pride in her leader and animosity for her own treatment. “It’s a fight. Karada is pitting her spirit against that elf s.”

In a comradely way, Beramun replied, “She’s in no danger, I’m certain.”

The sharp chime of metal sliding against metal, the sound of a dagger being drawn, froze the words in her throat. She tensed as a cold, bronze point touched her ankle.

“No one will harm Karada!” Mara announced. “Not while I live!”

Beramun was silent, unmoving and barely breathing. Her lack of response had the desired effect: the weapon was returned to its sheath.

“I think I’ll get some rest,” Beramun said mildly and curled up on the damp ground. A spot between her shoulder blades tingled at being exposed to one so troubled who carried a dagger, but Beramun felt she had Mara figured out. The girl worshiped whoever ruled her—first Tiphan, leader of the destroyed Sensarku, then her Silvanesti masters while she was a slave, and now Karada. Those her ruler favored, Mara would not harm, but woe to anyone Karada hated!

As she drifted off to sleep at last, Beramun reflected on Balif’s predicament. Being in the hands of his longtime enemy didn’t seem to worry him, and he didn’t appear to chafe at waiting as long as a year to see if his lord Silvanos would pay his ransom. Yet if he knew the danger he faced from this single, strange girl, things might be different. “That elf,” as Mara called him, might know true fear.

The rain pounded the walls of Yala-tene. It ran in streams down alleys, washing away the dust of many dry days. In the lane before the House of the Turtle, it also washed away a great deal of blood.

Within, Lyopi sat quietly by the fire, her tears spent. Her thick chestnut hair, freed from its usual neat braid, fell past her waist.

“Pitiless children,” she said.

“What?”

Two men knelt on the other side of the hearth, the flames between them. One was Tepa the beekeeper, oldest of the remaining village elders. With him was Hekani, a young man lately thrust into the position of leading the defense of Yala-tene. Not quite twenty, Hekani wore his brown hair in a long horsetail, in the fashion of the men who still wandered the savanna. Until the raiders invaded the valley, he’d never spent a night in Yala-tene. He was a wanderer who had dwelt in the tent camp outside the walls. Like the rest of the camp’s inhabitants, he traded, bartered, and hired out his labor for two days or ten. When the wanderers in the tent camp pulled up stakes and departed under threat of Zannian’s arrival, Hekani was the only one who’d remained. His common sense and loyalty had won the trust of the Arkuden and, even more difficult, of the Arkuden’s woman, Lyopi.

“What did you say?” Hekani asked again.

“The ones Zannian sent after Amero—they were barely more than children. How do you make children into such pitiless killers?”