Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Page 2

  “She’s injured,” Jorda said, then bent to embrace the young courier. “Thank the Mother!” He closed his eyes as he bear-hugged Bethid, grinning inanely. Ilona, murmuring her own gratitude, shared a measure of his joy, but was now so shaky she wasn’t certain she could walk any farther.

  Mikal joined them, clasping Jorda’s arm firmly. Small Bethid, wrapped now in one big arm, was laughing. But the reunion was short-lived; Jorda untangled his arms and bent his attention to his diviner.

  “Come,” he said. “Ilona’s hurt—that arm wants setting. We’re going to her wagon.”

  Awareness attenuated. She heard Mikal and Bethid talking, expressing concern for her, sharing comments about surviving the storm. She felt distant, disoriented. The throbbing ache in her arm spread to engulf her body.

  “Here,” Jorda said, and swept her into his arms. “This will be faster.”

  Ilona wanted to protest, but held her tongue. She felt odd. She could make no sense of the day, of her surroundings. Held against Jorda’s broad chest, she gave over control of her body to him. She began to shiver uncontrollably.

  “She needs to get out of those wet clothes,” Bethid said as they walked. “I can tend to that, if you can find some dry ones.”

  “If we find anything at all, I will sing praises to the Mother,” Jorda replied, “though I may deafen you all. What have you seen of the settlement?”

  “Nothing yet,” Mikal said. “But we were some distance out, and we headed in this direction when Bethid recognized you.”

  “Surely something survived,” Bethid said. “Everything can’t be gone.”

  Ilona, held against Jorda’s big chest, wanted to disagree. But shock had set in, taking control of her body. Despite the distraction of her arm, she remained aware of her surroundings, of the sun upon her face. Aware, too, of the pain. Perhaps Jorda had the right of it; perhaps she was unable to read his hand because of that pain. She had never been injured before, save for bumps and bruises, or a few innocuous cuts.

  “Later,” she murmured, as her eyes drifted closed. I’ll try again later.

  Within moments as they walked, she heard Bethid’s breathy gasp of shock. “Look! Oh, Mother, this is a graveyard, not a settlement!”

  Ilona opened her eyes as Jorda carried her into what remained of the settlement. Indeed, little was left. The remnants, burned in part by Hecari warriors on a decimation mission—killing one person in ten, regardless of age and gender, where too many Sancorrans gathered—had succumbed to the storm. Killing winds, crimson lightning, skull-shattering thunder. And rain, hot rain, striking hard, merciless, heedless of petitions or prayers. The remaining tents had been blown down, blown apart, carried away. The loose dust of foot-stirred pathways was banished, leaving only hard-packed earth that still ran with cooling rain. Every blade of prairie grass was flattened into the mud made by standing water. And most of the grove, the wide-crowned, comforting trees that had served to shelter karavans, had been upended, shattered; raw, twisted roots torn free of the earth now reached skyward as if in supplication; broken limbs and branches were stripped naked.

  There were bodies. Humans who had not heeded the warning of Alisanos’ imminence, of the destruction and danger that threatened all in the deepwood’s path. For forty years the boundaries of Alisanos had been known and avoided. Danger was rarely considered in a generation unfamiliar with the peril. Though most of the tent village’s inhabitants tried to flee the storm as it swept down upon them, some were too late. Some were caught. Some, like the trees, had been battered to death.

  “Bethid,” said Mikal in a tone harsh with shock and grief, “you tend Ilona once Jorda has her settled. He and I will look for survivors.”

  Ilona, cradled in Jorda’s arms, felt a rumble in his deep chest. “Pray there are some.”

  She wanted to protest. She wanted to remind them that they were alive, the four of them; that Alisanos had tasted of them and let them go. But that was a selfish impulse and she chided herself for it.

  “Oh, Mother,” Bethid murmured. “Other than the oldest trees, most of the grove is blown down!”

  “But the wagons remain,” Jorda said. “Many of them—see? That one there, that’s Ilona’s. It may be lacking its canopy, but otherwise it looks whole.” He shifted Ilona slightly in his arms. “Almost,” he told her. Then, “Bethid, run ahead. Make certain her cot is clear of debris, and brew some willow bark tea. Mikal, look for wood suitable for a splint. Try the supply wagon—even tree branches would do.”

  Ilona wished to say they need not do so much for her, but her awareness had begun to fray at the edges. She was dreadfully tired. Her eyes insisted on closing.

  Jorda raised his voice. “And Mikal, perhaps you can check your tent and see if there are any bottles of spirits left intact. She will need it when I set this arm.”

  Ilona, who drank ale or wine and did not care for spirits, tried to override the suggestion. But there was no strength in her voice, and Jorda simply ignored the attempt.

  BENEATH THE DOUBLE suns of Alisanos demons gathered, and devils. And beasts and creatures. Some slithered, some walked, some dropped out of the trees. In brambles, in briars, shielded by dense vegetation, tangled groundcover, and thick, twisted tree trunks, they waited. Tails whipped. Eyes stared. Bodies trembled. Forked tongues tasted the air, lured by the scent of human flesh. In particular, the flesh of a newborn human.

  Rhuan could feel them on his skin, all the avid eyes fixed upon him. Hair rose on his arms and legs, prickled at the nape of his neck. He stood very still before the assemblage. He saw the glint of an eye here, the twitch of an ear there; heard the subtle susurration of muscles flexing, of bodies tensing to leap. He had been long out of Alisanos, bound to his journey in the human world, but he had forgotten none of the deepwood’s dangers, or its denizens.

  He stood before them all, holding a human baby. That baby was, wondrously, made mute by sleep. Behind Rhuan, the farmsteader’s wife had stopped moving. His attention no longer needed to be divided between baby and mother. Instead, he gave it all to the creatures, to the devils and demons, to the children of Alisanos.

  If he were to survive, perhaps it was time he summoned the arrogance of his sire, donning Alario’s certitude of power, the implacable aura and arrogance of sheer superiority. The primaries ruled their own in Alisanos, but even they could fall victim to the jaws of predators, to inhabitants who were power made tangible, inexplicably alive; to progeny born of the deepwood’s bones and blood. No one, no thing, born of and in Alisanos, was immortal, save for the deepwood itself. The battle to survive amid the deadly challenges of capricious Alisanos began again with each dawn, beneath the double suns, beneath the sepia sky.

  He raised the ruddy membrane that turned his eyes red. He let the heated flush of blood rise beneath his skin, deepen its hue. He stood his ground in the very posture he had seen in his sire, when Alario engaged in a battle of wills with the creatures, the demons, the beasts, who would pull him down if given the chance. Half of Rhuan was human; yet at this moment, the other half was completely, and incontrovertibly, Alario’s get.

  He used the language most familiar to demons, devils, and beasts. He had been raised to know several forms, from his milk-tongue, to the careful enunciations of adolescence, to the burgeoning of self-awareness, to the finding of one’s place amid all others as a young male. But he was dioscuri, and he knew additional tongues, additional inflections. Such things as marked him different.

  Rhuan summoned what he had witnessed in his sire; summoned the words and tones and postures of an Alisani primary, who held dominion among his own. Who was of the first litter of get whelped by Alisanos, thousands of years before.

  They knew what he was. They knew who he was: Alario’s half-human son, the first dioscuri born to Alario in three hundred years.

  He sought the eyes, captured them, held them with his own. He felt the first faint stirring in his genitals; the initial tingle of pure, concentrated maleness rising from hi
s skin. He entirely subjugated any part of him that questioned, that wondered, how he could do this thing; to do what he had never attempted before.

  “I say no. I say no. I say no. You cannot; you shall not. This is not for you.”

  But all of them wanted. Very badly, they wanted. From a hundred mouths came the hissing, the chattering, the guttural clicking sounds of denial, of warning; that much they allowed him. Heads tipped sideways. Bodies wove from side to side. Jaws dropped open, displaying tongues and teeth.

  “I say, I say: You shall not.”

  The child, cradled in a sling made out of his leather tunic, neither stirred nor made noise. She slept on, the infant; the girl-child they all of them hungered for. Sweetest flesh, human flesh, infant flesh. Such a rare delicacy had not appeared in Alisanos for forty years.

  Rhuan felt his lips drawing back from his teeth in a rictus of challenge. “She. Is. Mine.” Heat bathed his flesh, rising from his bones. He viewed the world from behind the ruddy membrane. Fingertips twitched, itched, as if he might grow talons. “You. Shall. Not. She is mine. I claim her. I name her my get. I shall raise her to be dioscuri, as I am, and to one day become a primary, as I shall. She is fated, this child. She is not for you. Not for such as you.”

  He held his tongue, his breath. He waited. He did not permit his gaze to waver, to flicker aside for even a brief moment. He maintained the posture of sheer superiority, that of an alpha male, a primary, a god, standing before them regardless of his shape. They could assault him. They could mutilate his flesh, shatter his bones. They could dismiss his posture, his attitude, the language in his mouth. It was a daily fight, this; a deeply ingrained acceptance of the need to dominate. To perservere. To be more than any of them.

  Enemies, all of them, but in this they were united. They scented the child. They wanted the child. They could, one or all of them, take that child. And he, Alario’s most recent dioscuri, would be taken down, torn apart, supped upon by those whom he, in this moment, dominated. Whom he had to dominate, were he to survive. Were any of them to survive, including infant and mother.

  Fear did not shape him. Fear did not fill his eyes, his belly, nor the words, the tones, in his mouth. Fear could not exist.

  “Go,” Rhuan said. “Go now, each of you. You are not wanted here. You have no business here.” And then, without turning, without breaking his gaze, he said to the woman, the mother, who waited in silence behind him, “Come here to your child, and draw one of my knives.”

  For a moment she did not move. And then Rhuan saw all the watching eyes shift focus, departing from him to make note of the woman. He heard her rise, heard her walk, heard the raggedness of her breathing. But she said nothing. She stepped up beside him. He could smell her fear. But she showed none of it.

  “Draw a knife.”

  She took one of his throwing knives from his baldric, shorter-hilted, shorter-bladed, than the horn-handled weapon at his hip.

  Rhuan, who held the infant, displayed the palm of one hand. “Cut me. Bleed me. Do not hesitate.”

  But the woman’s pause was long, was fraught with doubts.

  “Do it,” he told her, “or all is lost. Cut me. Bleed me. Now.”

  He felt her cool fingers close around his wrist, steadying his hand. “Just—cut?”

  “Just cut.” He showed nothing at all as the blade nicked his palm. “Deeper, if you please. Bleed me.”

  She cut him. She bled him.

  “And now,” he said, “something more, something difficult, something you will cry out against as a mother, but you must do it. It is the only way.”

  She was frozen beside him.

  “Do it,” he repeated. “Now. Waste no time.”

  He felt her disavowal, her denial, her despair.

  “I am fighting for her life,” he said, “not for her death. I promise you this.”

  She cut into the tiny palm, brought blood to the surface of the new, pink flesh. The child awoke crying.

  Rhuan closed his much larger hand over the tiny knife-cut palm. Felt against calloused flesh the softness of her palm, the perfection of her skin that now was scarred. His blood mingled with hers. Her cries increased in volume.

  To the creatures, to the beasts, to the demons and the devils, in the tongue that made him their superior, he declared, “She is mine. I claim her as my get.”

  Audrun, beside him, trembled. Tears ran down her face. She could not understand his words, but she understood his tone.

  “She is mine,” he repeated, with purposeful emphasis. “Go you, each of you, all of you: away. This girlchild was born in Alisanos. She is of Alisanos. She is not for you.”

  He stood his ground, and waited. And inwardly, he rejoiced; one by one, the children of Alisanos deserted him, disappeared into the shadows.

  The woman’s voice was unsteady. “What have you done? What have you done to my child?”

  In the language of the humans, he explained, “I have adopted her. She is now as much my daughter as she is yours.”

  Audrun recoiled. “Davyn is her father! Not you!”

  “What little protection there is, she now has.”

  “She is mine,” Audrun said. “Give her to me.”

  He might have protested. He did not. He handed the baby over, watched her settle into the arms of a visibly angry mother.

  “I do what I must,” he told her, “to keep my charges safe.”

  Chapter 2

  DAVYN HAD WEPT himself dry. His eyes, swollen by tears, stung now in the glare of the sun. No more wind. No more rain. No more blackened sky. And around him, filling the horizon, stretched empty, barren miles of untenanted grasslands, beaten flat.

  He had called his wife’s name, and the names of his children, until his voice broke. Now, as he offered prayers aloud, he spoke in a hoarse rasp.

  He had returned to the wagon, hoping against hope that somehow his family had made their way to it as well. Instead, he found it absent of wife and children, still canted sideways on its broken rear axle. The canopy had been torn free and carried away by the wind. Naked curving ribs jutted skyward. The Mother Rib now was empty of charms intended for protection, for luck. In the flattened grass near the wagon lay the bodies of two fawn-colored oxen, hides wind-beaten, eyes scoured from their sockets.

  Mother of Moons, but how was he to find Audrun and the children? The storm had scattered them all. Rhuan, the karavan guide, had taken the two youngest by horseback to what safety he could find; Ellica and Gillan, the eldest, had fled after him on foot. And Audrun … Audrun had disappeared in the midst of the storm, her hand torn from his.

  Davyn turned in a circle. Where? Where?

  The sun, so warm after the chill of the wind, beat down upon his body, beginning to dry his mudstained, sodden clothing and dirt-crusted fair hair. Beneath caked mud the leather of his boots was still damp and pliable; he dared not take them off lest they dry too rigid to put on again.

  Where?

  “Mother,” he rasped, “show me where they are.”

  Desperation crept up from his belly and lodged in his chest and throat. Gone. Gone. All of them. He was stiff-jointed with dread, with the immensity of his fear. He could see nothing, where he stood, beyond the horizon. Were he a bird, he could fly and see the land stretching below him.

  Fly. He could not. But the wagon stood upright, canted though it was.

  Davyn clutched at rain-soaked wood, pulled himself up into the back of the wagon. Inside, amid the tangle of storm-tossed possessions, were two narrow cots, a massive trunk, a chest of drawers he had fashioned for Audrun in their first year of marriage, and other belongings. He was a tall man, but no oilcloth canopy remained to hinder his height. Davyn climbed up onto the chest, balanced himself against the tilt of the wagon with a hand on one arching rib, blocked out the sun with his other hand, and stared across the land. He turned, searched. Turned and searched again.

  Where?

  Four children, lost. Audrun, gone. And no guide on horseback offeri
ng answers to his questions.

  North. South. East. West.

  A harsh, strangled sound broke from Davyn’s throat. For a long, excrutiating moment he battled freshening tears, struggled to tamp down panic. And then he began to think.

  There was food in the wagon. Waterskins. And now, in the brilliance of the day, he could see in all directions. He could orient himself. His sense of direction, overwhelmed in the storm, was restored again.

  Bless you, Mother. Thank you.

  Davyn began to gather the items that would be necessary for his journey.

  BETHID SAW THAT Jorda was correct: Ilona’s wagon was missing its colorful canopy, but the rest of it appeared to be intact, if in disarray. She jogged ahead, hastily dropped the folding wood steps, and pulled open the door. Bethid kicked aside various objects to clear a path for Jorda, and lifted a scattering of fallen possessions from the narrow cot. Part of her was aware that she paid no attention to neatness as she stuffed objects here and there away from the cot, but there was no time for such things.

  “Willow bark tea,” she muttered, kneeling down beside the cot. Beneath it was a many-drawered cabinet with brass pull knobs. Bethid began pulling them open one by one, inspecting the contents. She was no diviner and knew nothing of such objects as one might use, but herbs she was familiar with. The fourth small drawer contained a small drawstring muslin bag through which she smelled the astringency of the tea that, steeped, might offer surcease from pain. “I think Mikal’s spirits will do better …” Bethid tucked the bag into her belt, then cast about for a kettle.

  Jorda was at the steps. “Is there room?”

  “A moment …” Bethid looked this way and that. “Ah—here.” She rose quickly and made her way to the door, slipping out with the kettle in one hand and the muslin bag of tea plus flint and steel in the other. Ilona, she saw, was markedly pale but for a bluish bruise rising on her brow and left cheekbone, and unconscious. Bethid waved Jorda in and searched for a nearby fire cairn or ring. With trees upended all around her, branches stripped of leaves, she was even more aware of a funereal feeling. The world was upside down.