Shadow of the Horsemen (Kalie's Journey) (29 page)

Kalie had never been present for a full scale battle; one which was fought away from the camp, and in which every warrior was called to fight. What she would remember most was the deafening silence, as the pounding hooves of the departing army gradually died away, and over a thousand humans beings remained behind like statues in the dust.

Then the women began a high-pitched wailing. Some remained standing where they were, covering their faces and tearing the hems of the garments. Others hurried inside their tents, where their keening became eerily muffled.

Ignored again, Kalie knew she had to act, for lives depended on it. But for the life of her, she didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

Then, slowly, people began to gather around her. Varena, Katya, Larren, Mavra, Basha and even old, bent Agafa, standing as straight and proud as Kalie had ever seen…. All looking to Kalie for direction.

“Four men were sent to kill Riyik and the others,” she said. “Does anyone have a knife?”

“For what?” asked Mavra. “Do you think you can kill four warriors by yourself?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Kalie demanded.

“Killing one’s own is distasteful work,” said a powerful voice. “They will need much drink to make it palatable.”

Danica stood, holding two skins of kumis.

“Are those…?”

Danica grinned, showing her strong yellowed teeth.

“How did you get them? Kariik had them burned.” Kalie could still smell the foul odor.

“One of the men who followed your husband is my nephew,” the chief’s mother explained. “The guards thought nothing strange of a wailing old woman begging to see her kinsmen. Of course, they refused me. So, like any old woman, I fell shrieking to the ground—right on top of their pile of drinking skins. They were so busy cursing and shouting when they dragged me away, they failed to notice the two I slipped in my robe.”

“I always knew these awful clothes would be useful someday,” Kalie said, but she continued to stare suspiciously at Danica.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” the chief’s mother said. “I was being watched. If I had shown you any welcome…”

“I understand,” Kalie said, hoping she did, but knowing she was out of time either way. “Varena! Katya!” Kalie gazed down at her lovely daughter and the frightened, slip of a girl who cowered behind her. She considered that Katya’s fear might be more attractive to the men of this land than Varena’s blossoming beauty. But both would be risking a lot.

“I would not ask this of you if there were any other way…”

“There’s no time for this, Mother,” snapped Varena, taking both skins and thrusting one of them into Katya’s hands.

Kalie nodded. “Offer it to the warriors before they reach the prisoners. Show yourselves to them.” Varena cast aside her veil and outer robe and was shaking out her lustrous hair, but Katya dropped her kumis skin and fled, pulling her clothing tight around her as she ran.

Mavra shook her head and recovered the skin. “Never send a girl to do a woman’s job,” she told Kalie. Then she took Varena’s arm and the two of them hurried away. “Are you a virgin?” she asked the younger woman. Varena nodded. “All right. Here are some things you need to know…” The rest was lost as they hurried through the now silent camp.

Kalie turned to the others. “I still need a knife,” she said. “More than one, if possible.”

“Here,” said Basha, offering a small cooking knife. Danica gave her a better one.

Kalie flung aside her veil and heavy outer robe, delighting in the sudden coolness she felt. Then she hitched up skirts that could impede her progress and raced off to where Riyik waited.

Woman stared, their faces blurring as she ran past. What could possibly come of this crazy scheme, Kalie asked herself. Would four hardened warriors assigned to kill their own brothers actually stop to ogle young girls and drink drugged kumis just because Kalie wanted them to? It seemed ridiculous.

Yet when she reached the tent where the prisoners still sat, that was precisely what was happening. Mavra had exposed her breasts and was now pouring kumis over them, brazenly inviting one of the warriors to have a drink, while Varena more discretely held the other skin for another warrior. He grabbed it from her and drank noisily, while the man beside him pounded his shoulders good-naturedly, demanding a turn.

That took care of three of them. But Pulik was having none of it as he ordered the prisoners from the tent. He stopped in front of Riyik and raised his blade. Riyik stood motionless and stared at the man, daring him to strike.

Kalie ran toward them, feeling herself move, slowly as in a nightmare, but then Varena saw what was happening and shook herself free of the two men who were now fondling her breasts and ran to Pulik. She snaked around in front of him, smiling an invitation. Pulik, angry at the interruption, shoved her aside. But he stopped and looked around when he realized his men were no longer behind him.

Pulik turned and marched to the man who had, by now, nearly emptied the kumis skin. “The drink and the whores can wait!” he yelled, knocking the man to the ground. Kalie noticed how slowly the man staggered back to his feet, while Pulik roughly interrupted the warrior who was busy with Mavra. But the last man—the one who had first taken the kumis from Varena—was moving strangely, his arms and legs twitching. He stared around him with widened eyes.

Kalie finally reached the prisoners, many of who were struggling against their ropes, unwilling to die like trussed sheep. Riyik stood perfectly still as she cut the cords which bound his hands and gave him the knife.

“Have you got another?” he asked her.

For an answer, she drew the second knife and moved to the next man, slicing through the cords that bound him, and moving on to the next. Kalie could hear the blood pounding in her ears as she cut through the ropes, certain that a knife was even now poised above her neck.

Then she heard the wet sound of combat as knife met flesh, felt the splatter of blood, and her hand froze on the ropes of the man in front of her.

“Give me that!” the anxious prisoner snapped, pulling the knife from her with his teeth and finishing the job himself.

She couldn’t move until Riyik’s face swam into her vision. Even then he had to pull her to her feet; Kalie seemed to have forgotten how to do it on her own.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You did it; you saved us!”

With a gasp she remembered how to breathe; then she looked around. Two of the would-be executioners were lying dead from knife wounds, while former prisoners stripped their bodies of weapons. The other two men were writhing on the ground, eyes rolling. No one was willing to get near them

Kalie looked from Riyik to Alessa to Brenia, not sure who to hug first. Then Riyik caught her in a fierce embrace. “Barak is hidden in your brother’s tent,” Kalie told Brenia over Riyik’s shoulder. Then Brenia was trying to push Riyik out of the way to hug Kalie herself and the three of them nearly fell over rather than let go.

As Brenia ran to get her son, Riyik kissed Kalie firmly on the mouth and released her, turning quickly to organize his men. That finally woke Kalie up to her own responsibilities as the women she had left behind came panting into the clear area around the king’s tent.

“Gather supplies,” she told the women before they could catch their breath. “Food, water, blankets—only one blanket each. The nights are not so cold yet, and we will have to travel fast. Faster than you have ever traveled in your lives.”
    

They dispersed to their tasks. Danica remained. “We must take a share of the herds,” she said, surveying the penned animals. “But only enough to feed us on the journey. There must be enough left behind to satisfy…whichever side wins this fight.”

“And you think they will just let us go?”

“If we leave behind enough wealth? Possibly. Herds and women—most of the women will remain, you know?” Kalie nodded. “With all that, and winter coming, they may not feel the need to track down a handful of traitors and madwomen. But if you give them reason to fear us…then they may choose to wait many years before searching for us in the west.”

The two women stared at each other. “I made many little stars out of bone…” Kalie began.

“Yes, they were so pretty that I made some as well. So did all the women of my household, and many others besides.”

Kalie smiled at the strange twisting of fate. “Perhaps, Danica, you could gather them up, and bring them here?”

Then Riyik was by her side once again. “We will have perhaps thirty horses,” he said. “Enough to carry those who would otherwise slow us down. The rest will have to walk.”

Kalie nodded. “Can one or two be spared to carry supplies?”

“Possibly.” He looked around at the women who stood by their tents, staring open-mouthed at the madness that had taken hold of their camp. “We must hurry. Gather who you will, but get them ready to leave at once!” Then he kissed her again and was gone.

 
Kalie hurried through the camp, more interested in it than in finding those she sought. Whether or not she would ever again see the land of her birth, this day would be her last in the tribe of Aahk. She tried to see it as the Goddess would: with compassion and sympathy, or perhaps without any judgment at all.

She failed. All she could see was senseless waste: of potential and life and even the fragile beauty that sometimes lived in this endless land of grass.

Altia stepped directly in her path.

Kalie halted suddenly as Maalke’s wife caught her wrist. “I am told you are once again my husband’s slave,” the older woman sneered. “When the men return, we will leave for the west, and then all the worthless whores of your land will learn what it means to live as proper women.” She pulled Kalie toward her and slapped her across the face. “Dress yourself and get to back to my tent! After I give you the beating you’ve earned, you may begin your work.”

Kalie looked Altia up and down, and smiled. Then she drew back her free arm and punched Altia in the face with all her strength. The woman released her and fell flat on her back, legs flying up in a scandalous fashion.

Kalie couldn’t believe how good it felt. She leaned over the stunned woman, who lay gaping up at her. “You are right about one thing, Goat-Dung: I do have work to do. But I assure you, none of it involves being your slave!”

She looked around, knowing that her future would be determined in the next few moments. Women everywhere were staring at the scene, most too frozen with shock to be any threat to Kalie. Some were giggling behind their veils, but Kalie sensed a note of hysteria.

“Kalie! What have you done?” Cassia was in the crowd, rushing to Altia’s side, and potentially very dangerous. Despite her difficult childbirth, Cassia was as physically powerful as Altia, and much more determined to keep Kalie with her.

Strangely, as she looked down at her, all Kalie could feel was sadness. “I’m sorry, Cassia,” she said. “I had hoped this would be a joyous day for both of us.”

Before Cassia could fully comprehend what she was saying, Kalie turned and ran back to Kariik’s tent at the center of the camp. The stool he had occupied that morning stood empty, the only high ground available in this flat, Goddess-forsaken grassland. Kalie leapt on top of it. With her height an added advantage, she could be seen by nearly everyone in camp.

“People of the Horse!” she shouted. “Women of Aahk and woman of Malquor! The time has come for me to leave this place, and return to the land of my birth. I ask all of you who would be free; who would dream of a better life, to come with me!

“Come with me to a land without slavery, where a woman’s body belongs to her alone, and if any man were to hit you, he would be driven from the settlement by every member of the community!”

“What about when a woman hits you?” cried a timid blonde slave whom Kalie remembered from Varena’s rites of womanhood.

The woman next to her did just that, but the girl did not cower, nor even show she felt any pain, only looked at Kalie with a kind of desperate hope.

“She, too, would be driven from the community,” Kalie said. “Although, perhaps, if some of you who are wives choose to come with us, time must be set aside for you to learn not to hit, just as young children must learn. And those of you who were slaves must learn not to strike back, now that you have the chance.” She pointed to where Altia was being helped to her feet by two other women. “I just struck the woman who thought she had the right to hit me. I promise all of you, here and now, that—except for when I must do so to protect myself or one of you—I shall never again strike another woman. Although I know I will want to!”

Laughter spread through the crowd that now included most of the tribeswomen.

“Why would any wife give up all she has to follow a shameless whore out into the wilds to die?” demanded a harsh voice. “Our husbands will soon return and hunt you down! Then you will learn what happens to slaves who speak as you do!”

Kalie stared coolly into the fierce eyes of Leja, who with her pain-ravaged face, didn’t seem so fierce anymore. “Your husbands may return, victorious over their enemies. Or they may even now lie dead on the battlefield, as food for ravens. If that happens then you and your children will belong to the victors. While you wait to learn your fate, I shall leave here and fight for mine! The choice is yours.”