After that Maggur was very silent, and Darak, when he came back and mounted beside me, looked grim and angry. It had been a long and unpleasant task. The sun was high above the yellow cloud.
“There’s a burnt offering for your fellow gods, goddess,” he said, jerking his hand at the black smoke. “Another burnt offering. They’d like a libation, too, perhaps,” and he spat, then rode away from me.
4
There were three days more before the day which was an owl, and I recall them very well: the cat, the dromedary, the ape. On the day of the cat, the blood stopped flowing from me, and the other symptoms of fever and weakness cleared with it. On that day, too, Darak had ridden on, ahead of the caravan and away from the road, with a few men. He was gone before I woke. I did not see him that day, nor at night. The day of the dromedary the caravan, too, wound off the road, the charge of Ellak now, and we made toward the distant mauvenesses I had seen on the eastern horizon since Kee-ool. To leave the road was a relief to me. The dreams stopped; but I had other nightmares now, things I could never properly remember when I woke in terror from them.
The evening of that day, Darak came back. He had been to light the beacon signal which would summon the tribal chieftains. He spent that night with his men, at some dice game, and later with one of the women. That night I dreamed too, in his tent, and I thought it was another of the old dreams, but it was not. I was beautiful then, my white hair roped around my head, and falling in five great plaits wound through with emeralds. I recollect this so clearly, but the rest not so well. I know they brought me Darak, and I had them flay him, and when I woke from this I was afraid and struggled to forget it.
75
The day of the ape, I did not attempt to ride with him. Maggur and I rode off alone into a few miles of thin woodland, where Maggur shot a deer, after crawling on his belly behind it for hours. I do not like the death of animals, and it sickened me then. But it was fresh meat for him and them; we were well received when we rode back in the dusk.
“Darak and I do not lie together now,” I said to Maggur. “Find me a tent away from his place; he may want to take a woman there.”
Maggur looked uneasy, but he found me one, and this was where I slept that night of the ape. There was the kind of misery on me that seemed only a numbness. I did not know what I would do, but it did not seem to matter. I slept deep, and did not recall my dreams when I woke.
The day of the owl, the caravan, at its slower pace, reached the beacon. Rocky hills rose ahead, and here there was one great rock, marooned like an island in the brown sea. On the crown of the rock the fire was smoldering up its thick red smoke. Around the base the tribal warriors and their chiefs waited. I supposed all these here were friendly to one another, in an alliance against other tribal enemies. Mostly they were naked to the waist, their bodies hard and dry-brown. Red and blue tattoos encircled their arms and necks, but on the breast was the symbol of the tribe. I could pick out six different emblems: a wolf, a lion, a bear, a tree done in green, an arrow with a red tip; but the strangest was a round disc, like the moon in an ancient picture, with a five-pointed star fixed in its center. They wore dark clothes and hard leather boots, no jewels except perhaps in a metal armlet. Maggur had said they believed jewelry to be a hindrance in battle; an enemy might catch a man by it, or by the hair-and this they wore very short, or else bound in a club at the back. The chiefs were not so different from their men. They had their standard-bearer near them, a sash of scarlet cloth or green or blue at the waist, and one or two wore some plain ring or armband which was a mark of their little kingship. The chief of the star tribe wore a gold circlet around his head with a white glassy gem, probably quartz, set in it. He seemed to be overlord of them all, and rode forward on his big brown horse to salute Darak like a fellow prince.
They spoke the same language I had heard in the village and the hills, but with a different accent and many corrupted or abbreviated words.
76
It was very formal, this talk between two kings. It was difficult to see if Darak were amused at all, for his face was iron-hard. I was not standing near but some way off, by my horse, yet suddenly the star chieftain’s eyes flicked around to me. He looked for a moment, then raised his right hand, incredibly saluting me too.
“Honor to you, warrior-woman,” he called, and he was not using the same tongue now. This was something older and more complex. I saw Darak’s head snap around to me. He would laugh at my embarrassment if I did not know how to reply, but I did. As with the villagers, I understood at once every pattern of the Plains speech, without thinking.
“And to you, my father,” I said clearly.
The chief nodded. He looked back at Darak, who seemed surprised.
“I did not know Darak Gold-Fisher had a tribal woman in his guard, and a warrior too. We have not had such a one born into our krarls for many years.”
I had realized they might think me one of their stock because I wore the shireen, and I wondered what they would make of my man’s clothes and the knives I carried. Apparently they held women who fought in high esteem, and treated them as men, which was a unique honor in such a society. It would not even be essential for a woman warrior to go masked; that I did only increased their respect for me.
It was etiquette now that Darak and his men ride to their encampment or krarl, and feast with them. Only then could any business transaction take place. As the chief and Darak began the procession, two of the star warriors came riding toward me. They gave the salute the chief had given.
The elder said: “I am Asutoo, the chief’s son. You will bring joy to us if you will ride by our side.”
I could not refuse. Besides, there was bitter enjoyment in me that I was receiving as much attention, if not more, than Darak. Maggur looked anxious as I went away between them, but I was safe enough.
They were both light-haired, handsome, younger than Darak, solemn in a way only the young can be solemn, yet matured by the hard life of the plains, and the battles they had fought. They carried many scars. Asutoo spoke courteously to me as we went along, the other was silent. He was a younger brother, it seemed, and as such must keep quiet. Asutoo asked me my tribe, and how I had spent my life, and what battles I had seen. I lied that my mother had left me for the hill wolves when I was born because I was sickly, as I
77
knew that the tribes exposed their weaklings. Later, villagers had taken me in, and I grew miraculously stronger with the years, and finally adopted the shireen, and rode with Darak, not knowing which was my tribe.
“Men are foolish,” Asutoo said gravely, “but the gods saved you, and gave you strength for your battles.”
He had been speaking in the tribal tongue, and he did not seem amazed that an outsider knew it. No doubt the gods had given me that too. I asked him what the disc and star represented.
He touched the tattoo on his chest, and said: “The sky sign of the gods. Above we see the stars which are the silver chariots of the gods. Sometimes they ride to earth in them, and the ground burns black. The father of the father of my chief was visited by the gods. They wore silver and must not be touched. Since then we have borne their symbol, and the chief takes the Star-jewel on his forehead.”
We reached the krarl in late afternoon light, where it lay, a safe three days’ journey from the High-Lord’s Way, the cursed road the tribes would not go near or travel, or even cross, except in the greatest extremity.
The camp was on lower ground, built around a large strip of water where gray-green trees grew. It was circled by a stockade of wooden poles, with men walking up and down, seven-foot spears in their hands. The six tribes had settled in one place. There were many hundreds of tents, all black; from a distance it looked as if an enormous flock of ravens had settled there. Goats and cows wandered freely, dropping haphazard dung. Some women, tiny as fleas, were washing clothes in the water. Most were cooking at a great ring of fires in the center of the krarl.