The Broken God Machine (15 page)

The sword was made of steamed and twisted wood, not metal. Pehr was glad for
this fact, but not so glad that he was able to keep from crying out in pain and
anger as it came down hard upon the spot between his neck and shoulder. The
agony of it drove him to one knee, and he stayed there for a time with his head
down, panting.

“That was a kill,” Samhad told him, and he could hear the smile in the older
man’s voice.

“I know,” Pehr said. “Curse your eyes … I know.”

Samhad only laughed at this and held out a hand, which Pehr took. Even after
two years of training, it was a rare occasion when Pehr managed to best the man
who had become his surrogate father. More often than not, he walked away from
their sessions baring only the bright red weals left by the practice swords.
Still, he continued on, learning this new weapon and method of fighting, driven
by the need to add any skill that might help him as a hunter.

The swords – the real ones – were short and curved and made of metal. The
creation of a single blade took months of work, and once it was done it
required great vigilance to ensure the sword was properly cared for. Without
routine cleaning and oiling, it would corrode and become worthless. There were
few smiths among the plainsmen; this made the swords an expensive commodity,
and it would be years yet before Pehr could collect enough tral hides to barter
for one of his own. In the interim, he had made himself a new knife of bone and
fashioned a club from the knobby joint of a tral leg that was superior even to
the one he had lost in the jungle.

Samhad clapped him on the shoulder. “You are much improved from when you
started, Pehr, and I have trained for many long years. Don’t be
discouraged.”

“I’m not so terribly discouraged,” Pehr told him. “Mainly I’m lamenting the
bruise.”

“What was it your uncle used to tell you?”

“Painful lessons make good hunters,” Pehr replied. “Yes. Thank you for this
particularly … excellent lesson, Samhad.”

Samhad laughed again. “Come, there is dinner to be had and plans to be made.
I have heard word of a herd of tral, ten thousand head at least, not too many
days’ journey from here. Perhaps we should venture out to see them.”

“That would be a sight well worth the trip,” Pehr said, and he got to his
feet. The two of them headed for the tents. Night had nearly come, and there
was little point in further practice; it would soon be too dark to see.

Inside there was a meal waiting of fresh-roasted tral and pulped esquer root
mixed with butter and a kind of small, green onion that grew in abundance on
the plains. Pehr sat with his new family and ate, discussing the events of the
day and the plans for tomorrow. There was a grove of jesuva trees not far away
and Samhad wanted to take the opportunity to replenish their supply of firewood
before the tral moved on. The work would be laborious, but he and Pehr could
split many logs between them, and probably fill to brimming the space reserved
for wood in the wheeled cart in which they moved their belongings.

Pehr and Samhad were not the only ones with work to do; the women had hides
to tan, supplies to gather, clothing to make. Kissha and Mandia were now
thirteen years old and performed a wide variety of chores. Ketrahm, at eight,
held quite a few daily responsibilities as well. Ehella had given birth to a
second son – Trayin – during the winter, and it was good that the other
children were old enough to shoulder some of the load.

The family had been successful in the past two years, and it had allowed
Samhad and Ehella to acquire a second, smaller hide tent, where they slept with
the baby. Pehr and Tasha remained in the main dwelling with Kissha, Mandia, and
Ketrahm. With the meal over and the last evening chores finished, they split
apart now to sleep, and in only a short time Pehr found himself lying awake on
his cot, staring up through the hole in the ceiling at the stars while those
around him slept. He could hear grunting and soft cooing from the other tent,
Samhad and Ehella taking advantage of the time before the baby woke demanding
to be fed. To his left, Kissha and Mandia lay on identical cots, snoring gently
in identical tones. To his right, Tasha and Ketrahm were quiet, undisturbed by
dreams.

Pehr closed his eyes and tried to think of the sound of the sea, crashing
against the rocks of the lagoon at the edge of Uru, the world he had known.
When the sound of it would not immediately come to him, a great wave of
crushing sadness rolled over him, so strong that he had to stifle a sob. He was
losing them; Nani and Anna and Truff. Josep. Even Jace. The memory of the boy
whose body he had left in the circle of bone now seemed distant to him. Thin.
Like a ghost. They were fading into the past, as all things must that are no
longer reaffirmed by familiar routine.

He missed them. He missed his family, missed his village, missed the sea and
wanted to hear once more its steady roar. He was tired of the plains, tired of
tral meat and esquer root, tired of asking each man he was introduced to if
they had encountered any passes through the mountains, only to be met again and
again with slow shakes of the head. He wanted to eat red fish and corn, and lie
on the sand under the stars, and swim in the shallows. He wanted to be the boy
he had been before all of these terrible events had come to pass.

He knew he should leave, knew he should try to make his way back to where he
belonged, but it had become impossible to deny the truth: he feared returning
to the metal thing’s circle of death. He was afraid of the Lagos, and the
guardian, and most of all of facing Jace again. The boy would still be there,
even if by now he was only bone. Pehr did not know if he could face his
cousin’s silent judgment. Here on the plains, it was easy to simply let time
pass rather than brave the pain and danger of that grim circle.

Even should he do so, and survive the perilous journey back to his land, he
would be presented only with the opportunity to tell Nani that he had failed
her, and that her brother was dead. After that, what was there? He would join
the hunt, marry, father children, and grow old watching the women he loved be
wife to some other hunter and mother to that man’s children. Surely the plains
could offer more than that. And yet …

“I want to go home,” he muttered to himself, and then said it again. “I want
to go home.”

Worn out from the chores and the training, Pehr could feel sleep taking him.
He closed his eyes and willingly met its advances.

* * *

“My father asked again if I would not at least consider finding a man who
would take me as his wife,” Tasha said, smiling a little, and Pehr smirked,
shaking his head. They were walking in the tall grass, as they often did after
the evening meal, happy to be away from the smoky tent and the pestering of the
Tasha's siblings. She had her walking stick with her – a work in progress begun
long ago. Its head was decorated with partridge feathers, and its body was
covered in intricate carvings, added slowly and with great patience over the
years. If there was an object that she valued more in the world, Pehr couldn't
have identified it.

“Oh, yes?” Pehr asked. “What did you say to him this time?”

“That I was saving myself for a man who would brave the wasting disease of
the north just to pluck a single flower for me of a type that I had never seen
before, and that I would consider no other, and were he a truly loving father
he would understand my needs and respect them.”

“And his response?”

Tasha's smile became a rare grin. “He told me there were some who thought
such impertinent mouths deserved striking, and that I was lucky he was not such
a one.”

Pehr laughed. The idea of Samhad hitting one of his children seemed
impossible; the plainsman, gruff though he was, stopped just short of doting on
them.

“Never,” Pehr said. “Not him. Ehella, maybe …”

Tasha nodded, her grin fading, her eyes far off. “He favors you, you
know.”

Pehr did, but it felt unseemly to say so. “If you think so.”

Tasha rolled her eyes, coming back from her reverie a little. “Don't give me
your false modesty. It's plainly clear that, were you to propose to me, he
might leapt forth and accept for me before I could open my mouth.”

“But I'm not going to propose to you,” Pehr said, and he laughed again. “I
simply couldn't bear the rejection.”

Tasha sighed, ignoring the joke. “If there was a husband in my future, I
think you would make a fine one.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d want me. Are you trying to spare my feelings, Tasha?
I was only jesting about being hurt.”

She turned, raised an eyebrow. “No. Why wouldn’t I want you, if I were to
want anyone?”

“You're too smart for me. Everything for you is a puzzle, a great knot to be
unraveled in your mind and laid out flat, and most often when you attack such a
knot you succeed. I can't keep up. What would you need from a slow-witted
hunter's son who just wants to raise a family, keep them fed and safe, and
avoid angering the gods you don't even believe in?”

Tasha shook her head. “You are not slow-witted. You're … deliberate.”

“You're avoiding the question.”

“Only because you know the answer.”

He did. Tasha needed no man, and she never had. She understood objectively
that Pehr was everything most women of the plains would want in a husband.
Eighteen now, he had gained two inches in height, his body filling out and
growing more muscular. He had adapted to his new home. He would never again
lack for water on the plains, never go hungry, never find himself lost and
unable to navigate his way back to familiar landmarks.

Samhad had taught him much, and many of the other hunters had chipped in as
well. He was not a plainsman, and never would be, but he had become something
close enough to earn the respect of others his age, and the approval of those
older and wiser. His strength and skill and gentle nature made him an excellent
prospect for marriage, and Pehr would not have lacked for young women’s
attention, if not for the pretense that he was courting Tasha.

“I think Samhad is growing concerned,” Pehr said, and Tasha nodded.

“If we return to the southlands and you and I are not engaged, it will be
the end of the deception. His fondness for you is too obvious … if you were
really courting me, you would long since have asked me to marry. They might
believe that I, a semi-mad girl clearly stricken with some sort of brain fever,
had refused your advances, but if so then why would you continue to travel with
our family? No, the elders will insist you move on this winter. The tribe
always needs babies, and I am clearly not giving you any.”

Pehr could think of worse things than being forced to pursue a woman who
would actually deign to mate with him. Frustrated, he had sometimes considered
actually asking Tasha to wed, if only to force the issue and end the charade.
The illusion that he was courting her made pursuing any other girl impossible.
Was he to remain a virgin forever, alone and unmarried, the last of his
father’s line with no children to carry on his blood?

“If I am ordered from your family, I will return to mine,” Pehr said. “I
won't stay here alone, not even to meet a wife.”

Tasha shook her head. “You must not go.”

“So you've said for two years. What great service am I doing you, Tasha,
that you’re so insistent in keeping me at your side?”

She frowned at him. “Perhaps it's simply that you are my friend. Is that so
hard to believe?”

He nodded. “And you’re mine, though we make an unlikely pair, but I don't
think that's why you say I mustn't go.”

Tasha stopped in the grass and rubbed at her temples for a moment before
looking up at him. The sun was almost gone, and in the growing shadow he could
barely make out the strange tint of her eyes.

“Do you remember when you told me of the Great Destruction, and I became so
very excited?”

“I do.”

“I listen to all of the old tales, even though I believe most to be
nonsense, because there is a kernel of truth in every myth, every legend, every
story. Don't you find it odd that we would share the belief that long ago a
breaking of the world occurred? Don't you think it interesting that we both
call it by the same name? Pehr, don't you find it virtually impossible and
completely fascinating that we share the same language at all? How can it
be?”

Pehr shook his head. He didn't know the answer to that question. “It
has
vexed me in the past,” he admitted.

“There is a chance for you and me … a chance to do great work. I will be
ready when it comes.”

“Yet you've no belief in destiny.”

She shook her head. “There is no destiny. There is only fate. Or, rather,
something which some call fate, but which is really only a confluence of
streams.”

“I don't understand,” Pehr said. Tasha began moving again, the grasses
whispering as she passed through them, and for a moment he wondered if she
meant to leave him in confusion. Then she began to speak.

“Each person’s life is a stream,” Tasha told him. “Each plant, each bird,
each beast … all streams. These streams twist and turn. Sometimes they run side
by side for a time. Sometimes they merge. On occasion there is a confluence, a
great meeting of streams, and they come together as a river. Rivers can move
mountains and carve canyons. Rivers are agents of change that can impact the
whole world. That point where streams meet and where a river may be born … that
is a moment of fate.

“I don't know when the moment will come, or what we are to do, but I am sure
that it must be the two of us. I will wait for it, with you, and when it
arrives I will act.
We
will act. We will form a river, and that river
will reshape the world.”

Pehr considered this for a time. “I admire your conviction,” he said at
last.