Paul Cook - Brother of the Dragon

No one spoke, but several elders exchanged unhappy looks. “Arkuden,” Adjat finally said, “what if your sister is dead, and her nomads are no better than Zannian’s raiders?”

“Then we’ll have to think of something else.”

“Do we have time for all that?” Lyopi wondered.

“I think it’s a good idea!” Tepa said suddenly, and everyone stared. The old beekeeper had fallen into a deep melancholy since the loss of his friend Jenla. Speaking now, his usually gentle face flushed with fury. “I remember the Arkuden’s sister well. With a hundred followers — with fifty! — Karada could settle this Zannian and his pack in no time.” He stood up. “Arkuden, I’ll go. I’ll find your sister and bring her and her people back here!”

Udi put a hand on Tepa’s arm. “No, father. The Arkuden needs you here. I’ll go.”

“So will I.”

They all turned to see Beramun standing outside Lyopi’s door. The girl wore a hooded calfskin cape to keep the drizzle off. A long spear leaned against her shoulder.

“May I come in?” She addressed her question not to Amero or the elders, but to Lyopi. The older woman waved Beramun in.

“You know the danger,” said Amero. “Hunting humans on foot is what the raiders do best, and they have yevi to help them.”

“Is it any safer here?” Beramun replied grimly. “When the food runs out and we’re all too weak to wield a spear, what will become of us then?”

“You’re not one of us,” Lyopi said. “What’s to stop a nomad like you from gaining the open plain and never coming back?”

“Lyopi!” Amero exclaimed.

“If I wanted to run, I could have left any night,” Beramun said. “As for this scouting trip, you’ll need more than just Udi and me, but I know six or seven others who’re ready to go as soon as you give the word.”

One by one, they all turned to Amero. He looked away, lost in thought for a moment, then held out his hands.

“Help me up.” Lyopi and Montu boosted him to his feet. His wounded thigh burned unmercifully, but he gritted his teeth and kept himself upright.

“Udi, pick eight in all. Choose good runners over good trackers this time.”

“Aye, Arkuden.”

“Let Beramun be one of the eight.”

The young woman, who’d matured considerably since the night her family had been killed, smiled at Amero.

“Don’t look so grim,” she said cheerfully. “We’ll find your sister, and we’ll be back.”

Udi and Beramun left to collect the rest of their expedition. Beramun waved jauntily as she disappeared into the evening rain.

“I’m sending her to her death,” Amero murmured.

Lyopi rolled her eyes. “Nothing short of a mountain falling on her can kill that girl,” she replied tartly.

Amero swayed, his face growing even whiter, and she slipped her shoulder under his to prop him up. “You should worry about yourself and the rest of Yala-tene. Beramun can take care of herself.”

He shifted his weight off his bad leg. Lyopi’s arm around his waist steadied him. In the face of her calm good sense, Amero felt very weak and foolish. Like the ache in his leg, his futile love for Beramun seemed to fade only when Lyopi was near.

Clouds closed in, filling the valley with heavy, wet fog. Everything became damp. Leather softened and stretched, wood swelled, and a coughing sickness spread among the idle raiders. To boost morale, Nacris had a score of stolen oxen slaughtered and the meat distributed to the men. The hides she ordered sewed into a large tent for her son, who held nightly revels there with his captains amid heaps of fresh fruit, vegetables, and beef from the stolen stocks of Yala-tene. No matter how many war stories were told or how much wine was drunk, conversation always returned to the same subject: how to take Yala-tene.

“Fire’s the way,” one of Zannian’s young roughnecks stated. “Tie tufts of dry grass to our darts, light them, and fling them over the wall!”

“If you can find any dry grass in this valley, I’ll eat it,” said another raider as water dripped from every seam in the tent. “Besides, our darts can’t make it over the walls.”

“Fear’s what will do it!” said an older warrior. “I say we line up all the prisoners we’ve taken and chop their heads off, one by one, until the mud-toes give up.”

“Idiot,” Hoten growled. “Why would they give up when they see how harshly we treat our captives?”

“To save the lives of their kinsmen!”

“Idiot.”

Slumped on a pile of furs, Zannian toyed with the bones left on the trencher in front of him. His black eye was now greenish-yellow, the healing remnants of the bruise caused by Amero’s blow. His head still ached periodically, and large draughts of wine didn’t help. The stalemate in the valley gnawed at him. They had beaten the mud-toes in pitched combat more than once, yet the villagers wouldn’t give up. How could he deal with such stubborn, impudent enemies?

His war captains were bereft of inspiration. He listened to them argue — silent, disappointed, dispirited.

“Sometimes I think you’re the best man here,” he muttered to Nacris, seated on his right.

“I am the best man here,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”

“What do you think we should do?” asked Hoten, resting his rough hand on hers.

“Nothing.”

“Well, my men are surely good at that,” Zannian said sourly.

“A certain kind of nothing,” she said loftily. “I’ve given our plight some thought. Have you ever hunted mink?”

He shook his head. “They taste like rats.”

She leaned over and rapped her knuckles on the side of his skull. Zannian snarled a warning. None of the assembled raiders so much as snickered, but Nacris wasn’t intimidated.

“You hunt mink for the fur,” she said. “You can’t spear them, or you’ll ruin the pelt. The way to take mink is to trap them in their burrow.”

Hoten was intrigued. “Go on,” he said.

“There are always two holes to their burrows, sometimes more if the mink has kits. You stop up all the holes but one, and there you wait.”

“And gig the nasty creatures when they come out,” said Zannian, bored.

She smote the arm of her litter with her fist. “No! I told you that would spoil the pelt. You make a sliding noose of elk hide, and when the first mink pokes its head out, you snag him! They have wicked teeth, so you keep your distance and keep the noose tight, until the mink stops fighting.” Nacris lifted a clay cup of Hulami’s purloined wine to her lips. “Then you wring their necks.”

“What has this to do with Arku-peli?” Zannian asked.

“We must encircle the town completely and cut them off from everything outside their walls. What keeps us out will also keep them in.”

“We don’t have enough men for that,” said a raider scornfully.

“Listen, blockheads,” Nacris said more loudly. “We don’t have to ring the town with a living hedge of riders. We stay out of reach of the villagers inside, and with mounted patrols we cut off any hunting parties or scouts they send out. Before summer’s end, they’ll be like the mink in the noose, tired and choked. And then we wring their necks.”

After more half-drunken debate, Nacris’s stratagem was grudgingly approved. Zannian ordered detachments of raiders sent to block the three passes on the east side of the valley. Nothing would be allowed in or out. Once the eastern passes were closed, the ring around Arku-peli would be as tight as an elkhide noose.

“With men in the eastern passes, why not also seize the heights overlooking the town?” asked Hoten. “From there we could do as we like to the people below, walls or no walls.”

“I was in Arku-peli twelve years ago, before the wall was built,” Nacris said. “The mud-toes have tunnels deep in the mountain. They’ll fight hard to deny us the heights, like a mink biting the hunter unwise enough to shove his hand in the den. If we did take the cliff tops, the villagers could take shelter in the caves. We’d spend a lot of blood for little advantage.”