Speaking Bones, page 23
Çami stopped cranking.
The spirit portrait was complete.
The glow was fading from Takval’s face. The tolyusa had given him a last burst of strength, but now the tide was ebbing. He was fading away before their eyes.
“Now,” he rasped. “Now.”
Théra wouldn’t let go of his hands. Her body was racked by sobs.
“My breath, you must do it now. Take my breath into your lungs; take my blood into your veins; let my fading life add to your strength.”
Adyulek began to speak in a solemn, faraway voice.
“Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz, daughter of Nobo Aragoz, you have served the Agon people as pékyu faithfully. The time has come for you to mount the cloud-garinafin.”
Takval nodded. “I accept the judgment of the Every-Mother.”
“Who do you designate as the next pékyu, to speak and fight as you have done?”
“My wife, Théra.”
Adyulek turned to Théra. “Who comes with fear and trust of the gods in her heart, love of the people in her actions, pride in our land in her spirit? Who comes to claim the duties of the next pékyu?”
With a tear-choked voice that could barely be understood, Théra spoke as she had been taught. “I am Théra Garu, daughter of Kuni Garu, son of Féso Garu. I came to the Agon people as a princess of Dara; now I wish to serve them as the pékyu.”
Thoryo, fulfilling her role in the ceremony, repeated Théra’s words in pure Agon so that the gods would be without doubt.
“Without breath, there is no spirit. Without blood, there is no strength. Without death, there is no life,” said Adyulek. “You have no lineage traceable back to Afir; you are no shaman nor warrior; you must rectify these faults to be the pékyu.”
There was only one way for Théra to do so by the custom of the scrublands, only one way for her to gain the trust of the people she would lead.
The old shaman pressed a bone dagger into Théra’s hands; Théra shook uncontrollably, like a leaf in autumn.
“Let’s demand sacrifices of each other,” said Takval, barely a whisper. “Let’s accept each other’s sacrifices. My breath, lead my people, which is also your people, to victory.”
“Théra,” intoned Adyulek, “will you become the pékyu?”
Still shaking, Théra dragged the blade of the dagger through her left palm, drawing blood. The pain of the wound seemed to infuse her with a new awareness, and her body stilled.
Everyone watched her, holding their breath.
With a sudden, anguished scream, Théra raised the dagger and plunged it deep into Takval’s chest, right at the center of the charcoal circle on his naked chest that had been drawn to show the location of his heart.
Even knowing what was supposed to happen, Thoryo nearly fainted at the sight. Çami caught her and held her up.
Takval’s body buckled like a bow being strung, but he did not cry out. Théra’s right hand held the dagger in place as blood spurted from the wound. She brought up her left hand, placed it gently on his chest, letting the hot blood cover her hand, letting his blood commingle with her own.
A pékyu must know what it feels like to bleed as well as to kill.
They looked at each other, and there was so much longing and despair and hope and pain that the others could not bear to watch.
Slowly, Théra leaned down and locked her lips with his in a deep kiss, taking his breath into her lungs as his heart stopped beating.
Takval’s eyelids drooped and closed; his body relaxed.
With infinite gentleness, Théra let go of Takval and sat up.
“I am Théra Garu Aragoz, wife of Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz. I claim kinship to Afir by blood and breath. I have taken a life and incorporated its strength into mine. I now serve the Agon people as pékyu.”
With great difficulty, Thoryo repeated Théra’s words in perfect Agon.
Adyulek stood up and exited the ice cave.
Théra fell down and wrapped her arms around the cooling body of Takval, crying inconsolably. Thoryo and Çami waited, knowing this was not the time to offer comfort.
Outside, Adyulek was making some kind of announcement. Her voice was too faint to be heard.
But then the cave walls shook as the assembled rebels, Agon, Dara, and the ice tribes of the north, shouted in unison: “The pékyu is dead! Long live Pékyu Théra Garu Aragoz!”
* * *
As spring thawed Ukyu-Gondé, the rebels in Nalyufin’s Pasture also emerged from their winter preparations.
Several rebels had died during the difficult and bleak winter. Their bodies, along with Takval’s, had been preserved in ice. These were now encased in Dara-style coffins fashioned from local materials. The Agon abhorred the foreign custom, but they accepted Pékyu Théra’s explanation that the corpses of their comrades would become the implements of their enemy’s destruction, and to fight on beyond death was a fate all warriors craved.
Two coffins, larger than the others, were decorated with the death masks of Théra and Takval.
In actuality, the coffin with Théra’s mask contained no corpse at all. Instead, one found inside a waterproof barrel of seacow hide, reinforced with bone hoops, packed tightly with all the remaining firework powder in Théra’s possession, along with sharp-edged gravel, stones suitable for slingshots, and even some rusty metal shards. The idea was to launch a hailstorm of deadly missiles when the bomb finally exploded.
To trigger the bomb, Théra settled on a design based on the fire starter of the Adüans, which she and Zomi had studied back in Dara when they were searching for the secret of garinafin fire breathing. The device had become popular among the Agon in Kiri Valley, and she thought it would be easy to make such a thing.
But where would they find a baby garinafin canine tooth on Spotted Heifer?
The problem stumped Théra and her advisers until Gozofin, skilled with arucuro tocua, came to the rescue. He built a piston out of a sled dog’s femur and rib—a complementary set of hollow tube and straight rod that, when slammed home, generated sufficient heat in the compressed air to start a fire. A sprinkling of firework powder in the femur provided kindling, and then the rib and femur were installed respectively in the upper and lower halves of the coffin, carefully aligned to allow one to slide smoothly into the other. Keeping the plug and the cylinder separated with a wad of dried ice-shark flesh, Gozofin then wrapped strong bundles of sinew around the two and twisted the sinew to add tension. As soon as the wad of ice shark flesh, tough and resilient, was removed, the tensed sinews would snap the rib into the femur, creating the spark to detonate the bomb.
As Théra watched Gozofin demonstrate the arucuro tocua fire starter, her mind returned to the first time she had seen the living bones in action, that long-ago day in Kiri Valley when Kunilu-tika and Jian-tika’s bone creature filled her with wonder and love for her new homeland. Tears streamed from her eyes as she tried in vain to assure Gozofin that he had done nothing wrong.
The other large coffin held Takval’s body.
All the decoys, including the four smaller coffins, were weighed down with stones so that they would not appear out of place compared to the heft of the bomb-laden coffin. Knowing that Cudyu was cautious and would suspect booby traps, Théra planned on the smaller coffins being opened first, perhaps by someone Cudyu thought of as disposable. That was why they had to be filled with real corpses to assure Cudyu that there was no danger. But since Cudyu was also vain and obsessed with the crafting of his own mythology, Théra gambled that the Lyucu pékyu would personally open the larger coffins, thereby bringing about his own demise.
Since she couldn’t be sure Cudyu would leave her own coffin to the last, it was vital for Takval’s body to be packed into the other decoy coffin, as a final layer of deception. But in addition to such practical considerations, Théra also found the gesture poetically appropriate. It felt right to have Takval present at the scene of Cudyu’s defeat.
You promised you would bring me to Taten in the spring, she thought, her heart aching. You’ve always kept your word.
A group of ice tribe warriors then carried the coffins by dogsled to the edge of Nalyufin’s Pasture, where icebergs calved every spring. There, they tested crevasses and cracks until they found a mountain of ice about to fall into the sea. Using heated stones, they melted deep shafts into the ice so that the coffins could be entombed.
Their hard work had only begun. Once the iceberg calved into the sea, herding it in the right direction was not something a few warriors could accomplish. But by now, Kitos’s stand against the Lyucu the previous winter had become legendary, and hundreds of bone-and-skin canoes from dozens of ice tribes heeded Kitos’s call for help. Without understanding the full plan, they disregarded their own needs during the busy spring hunting season and put their trust in Kitos. Like ice fleas swarming after a star-snout bear fearful of their tiny but irritating bites, the fleet of tiny boats nudged the iceberg slowly but inexorably into the ocean current heading south, toward Péa’s Sea.
Meanwhile, Kitos and Thoryo departed with a small band of warriors toward Taten, and Théra led the remaining rebels to a spot northeast of Taten. Each group had their own separate parts to play in Théra’s scheme.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN “FEEL MY BREATH AGAINST YOU…”
TATEN: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE TENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (WHEN THE LYUCU MUST LAUNCH THEIR NEW INVASION FLEET TO DARA).
By the time Tovo got his startled mount under control and surveyed the scene below, all was chaos.
The explosion had instantly killed Cudyu as well as a large number of shamans and garinafin-thanes closest to the platform. Projectiles from the death-dealing burial box shot deep into the rows of the lower-ranking thanes, and many had been blinded, maimed, or injured. The survivors rolled around on the ground, howling in agony.
As Lyucu commanders thronged in confusion, the leaderless naros and culeks scattered in terror, stampeding to get away in case another bomb was waiting for them.
Tovo knew that he had to restore order right away. The fear that had lain dormant in his heart all these months—that Takval’s rebellion had not, in fact, been snuffed out in the frozen wastes of Nalyufin’s Pasture—flared back to life. What if this was only the first blow in a general assault on Taten?
But with the terror also came the growing thrill at a possibility he had barely dared to imagine before.
He ordered his mount to fly lower.
The pékyu is dead. Who will be the next pékyu?
* * *
In the general confusion that followed the explosion, nobody noticed Thoryo, disguised as a masked wolf-thane, running away from the assembly.
Naros and culeks, drawn by the loud noise, emerged from tents all over Taten and converged on the scene of carnage. Thoryo found it as difficult to move through the thickening crowd as a fish swimming upriver.
In truth, she wanted to join them. Even knowing the cruelty of the Lyucu thanes, her instinct was to go and help, to tend to the wounded.
But she had a mission. She whistled loudly.
Dogs as large as horrid wolves emerged from the tent assigned to her. Barking, howling, snarling, they barreled through the crowd until they were next to her. She climbed onto the back of one, and the pack of dogs shoved Lyucu warriors aside as they forced a path out of Taten.
A group of Dara captives staggered from one of the tents. Their guards had deserted them in the general pandemonium. Emaciated, scarred, flinching at every noise, it was all they could do to stare, slack-jawed, at the bedlam all around.
“Get on! Get on!” Thoryo shouted. She whistled loudly; the dogs stopped and crouched.
The captives couldn’t understand why a Lyucu thane with a pack of giant dogs was urging them to ride with her. Too many unexpected things were happening all at once. But she was speaking to them in the comforting syllables of Dara—that meant she could be trusted, didn’t it?
Thoryo would have liked to find and save all the captives from Kiri Valley in Taten, but there was simply no time. As she whistled and trilled, the dogs carried her and the rescued captives toward the garinafin pens.
* * *
The grooms congregated at the gates of the garinafin compound dove out of the way as the pack of giant barking dogs charged inside.
The head groom, who had tumbled to the ground from the violent entrance, scrambled back to his feet. He blinked, uncomprehending, at the shivering Dara captives riding the dogs. Then he noticed the wolf-thane among them.
“What happened, votan? We heard a thunderous noise, but…”
Thoryo ignored him. She looked around frantically until she found Ga-al, dozing nearby in the corner of the enclosure reserved for cargo garinafins. “Yee-haw!” she shouted.
Instantly, Ga-al’s eyes popped open. He stretched out his neck and stared intently into space.
On the far side of the corral, among the war mounts, Alkir also stretched out his neck and stared intently into space, as though in response to some silent call.
“Why have you brought these slaves here?” demanded the head groom. “What is going on?”
Paying him no heed, Thoryo coaxed the Dara captives off the dogs and then directed the dogs to form a protective ring around the huddle. After months of maltreatment, the captives would be of no use in the coming confrontation. She had to keep them safe.
Neither Ga-al nor Alkir had made any noise. But by now all the garinafins in the pens were snorting and lowing, looking agitatedly about as though sensing an impending attack.
“Get your beasts under control!” Thoryo spoke to the head groom imperiously. “Stop asking questions!”
The head groom had no idea why everything seemed to be going wrong. The Agon grooms shrank away from the agitated garinafins, unwilling to risk being trampled. The head groom had to dispatch the Lyucu overseers to calm the agitated garinafins, but they were having no success.
Unnoticed in the general confusion, Radia and Toof snuck away from the other grooms and made their way toward Alkir and Ga-al.
“Yee-haw!” Thoryo shouted again.
The two garinafins stretched out their necks in mute concentration.
Doors to the underground cells where the juvenile garinafins were shackled slammed open. Young garinafins stumbled out of their dark prison, blinking in the bright sun, keening and whimpering. Around their necks, some still wore the remnants of their sinew bonds, which Toof and Radia had sawn through the day before.
The adult garinafins, seeing their offspring suddenly free, called out in joy and distress. Soon garinafins were lumbering across the enclosure in every direction, calves rushing to their parents, sibling ambling to join sibling, none heeding the shouts of the grooms and the whips of the Lyucu overseers.
Seated on her dog, Thoryo clapped her hands together happily.
Finally, it dawned on the head groom that this was all somehow the wolf-thane’s doing. He pointed at Thoryo and screamed, “A witch! She’s a saboteur!”
The giant dogs snarled, enlarging their defensive ring around the huddled captives to include Thoryo. Kitos and the ice tribe warriors dashed over and joined them. Though they had no weapons other than dung shovels and carrying poles, they brandished these threateningly, daring the Lyucu to approach.
For the moment, the Lyucu overseers weren’t too concerned with the out-of-control garinafins. Most of the beasts were busily licking and nuzzling their young, paying no attention to the human conflict in the middle of the compound. Even though they now had their offspring back, none of the garinafins seemed to be thinking of escape or turning on the Lyucu. Habits of obedience, instilled through a lifetime of terror and confinement, could not be shaken off so easily.
The head groom was confident that the unthinking brutes, directionless without their pilots, could always be muzzled and brought to heel later. It was far more important to take care of the traitorous wolf-thane witch first.
“Wedge formation. Charge!”
Armed with bone axes and clubs and garinafin-hide shields, the Lyucu overseers gathered into a dense, triangular battle-throng and charged at a steady pace toward Thoryo and the ice tribe warriors.
A sled dog broke from the ring and ran at the Lyucu. The warriors stopped and crouched in defensive poses. With a snarl, the dog leapt. A naro’s head disappeared into its jaws.
Thoryo screamed.
But none of the Lyucu reacted to the demise of their comrade. Methodically, they converged on the dog, axes and clubs ready.
Incredibly, the warrior with her head inside the dog’s mouth remained on her feet. Arms waving about blindly, she grabbed the front paws of the dog and wrestled the much larger creature, holding it in place.
The dog tried to clamp down, but found that it couldn’t. The naro’s head somehow refused to yield against the pressure. The dog then tried to spit out the half-swallowed naro, but the naro had become lodged in its throat. As the dog moaned and shuffled helplessly in place, its teeth and claws useless, the other Lyucu slammed their axes and clubs against its massive body in coordinated waves, killing it after a few rounds.
Only after the dog was dead did the other Lyucu pry open its jaws to release their comrade. The skull helmet, its antlers hardened with the woody ribs of the gash cactus, had protected her head from being crushed and also caught in the dog’s throat.
The woman adjusted her helmet, ignored the blood oozing from wounds in her arms and shoulders, and rejoined the other Lyucu as though nothing had happened. Even Kitos was impressed by this display of discipline and martial prowess.
The Lyucu were seasoned warriors, and a few overgrown dogs and shovel-wielding ice fleas didn’t frighten them. They had put down slave rebellions before and would do so again.
Ripping off her skull helmet to reveal her face, Thoryo sat up as tall as possible on her dog-mount and shouted at the Agon grooms cowering behind the charging Lyucu.
“In the name of Théra Garu Aragoz, wife of Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz, now serving the Agon people as pékyu, I command all the children of Afir to rise up and reclaim their freedom!”
The spirit portrait was complete.
The glow was fading from Takval’s face. The tolyusa had given him a last burst of strength, but now the tide was ebbing. He was fading away before their eyes.
“Now,” he rasped. “Now.”
Théra wouldn’t let go of his hands. Her body was racked by sobs.
“My breath, you must do it now. Take my breath into your lungs; take my blood into your veins; let my fading life add to your strength.”
Adyulek began to speak in a solemn, faraway voice.
“Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz, daughter of Nobo Aragoz, you have served the Agon people as pékyu faithfully. The time has come for you to mount the cloud-garinafin.”
Takval nodded. “I accept the judgment of the Every-Mother.”
“Who do you designate as the next pékyu, to speak and fight as you have done?”
“My wife, Théra.”
Adyulek turned to Théra. “Who comes with fear and trust of the gods in her heart, love of the people in her actions, pride in our land in her spirit? Who comes to claim the duties of the next pékyu?”
With a tear-choked voice that could barely be understood, Théra spoke as she had been taught. “I am Théra Garu, daughter of Kuni Garu, son of Féso Garu. I came to the Agon people as a princess of Dara; now I wish to serve them as the pékyu.”
Thoryo, fulfilling her role in the ceremony, repeated Théra’s words in pure Agon so that the gods would be without doubt.
“Without breath, there is no spirit. Without blood, there is no strength. Without death, there is no life,” said Adyulek. “You have no lineage traceable back to Afir; you are no shaman nor warrior; you must rectify these faults to be the pékyu.”
There was only one way for Théra to do so by the custom of the scrublands, only one way for her to gain the trust of the people she would lead.
The old shaman pressed a bone dagger into Théra’s hands; Théra shook uncontrollably, like a leaf in autumn.
“Let’s demand sacrifices of each other,” said Takval, barely a whisper. “Let’s accept each other’s sacrifices. My breath, lead my people, which is also your people, to victory.”
“Théra,” intoned Adyulek, “will you become the pékyu?”
Still shaking, Théra dragged the blade of the dagger through her left palm, drawing blood. The pain of the wound seemed to infuse her with a new awareness, and her body stilled.
Everyone watched her, holding their breath.
With a sudden, anguished scream, Théra raised the dagger and plunged it deep into Takval’s chest, right at the center of the charcoal circle on his naked chest that had been drawn to show the location of his heart.
Even knowing what was supposed to happen, Thoryo nearly fainted at the sight. Çami caught her and held her up.
Takval’s body buckled like a bow being strung, but he did not cry out. Théra’s right hand held the dagger in place as blood spurted from the wound. She brought up her left hand, placed it gently on his chest, letting the hot blood cover her hand, letting his blood commingle with her own.
A pékyu must know what it feels like to bleed as well as to kill.
They looked at each other, and there was so much longing and despair and hope and pain that the others could not bear to watch.
Slowly, Théra leaned down and locked her lips with his in a deep kiss, taking his breath into her lungs as his heart stopped beating.
Takval’s eyelids drooped and closed; his body relaxed.
With infinite gentleness, Théra let go of Takval and sat up.
“I am Théra Garu Aragoz, wife of Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz. I claim kinship to Afir by blood and breath. I have taken a life and incorporated its strength into mine. I now serve the Agon people as pékyu.”
With great difficulty, Thoryo repeated Théra’s words in perfect Agon.
Adyulek stood up and exited the ice cave.
Théra fell down and wrapped her arms around the cooling body of Takval, crying inconsolably. Thoryo and Çami waited, knowing this was not the time to offer comfort.
Outside, Adyulek was making some kind of announcement. Her voice was too faint to be heard.
But then the cave walls shook as the assembled rebels, Agon, Dara, and the ice tribes of the north, shouted in unison: “The pékyu is dead! Long live Pékyu Théra Garu Aragoz!”
* * *
As spring thawed Ukyu-Gondé, the rebels in Nalyufin’s Pasture also emerged from their winter preparations.
Several rebels had died during the difficult and bleak winter. Their bodies, along with Takval’s, had been preserved in ice. These were now encased in Dara-style coffins fashioned from local materials. The Agon abhorred the foreign custom, but they accepted Pékyu Théra’s explanation that the corpses of their comrades would become the implements of their enemy’s destruction, and to fight on beyond death was a fate all warriors craved.
Two coffins, larger than the others, were decorated with the death masks of Théra and Takval.
In actuality, the coffin with Théra’s mask contained no corpse at all. Instead, one found inside a waterproof barrel of seacow hide, reinforced with bone hoops, packed tightly with all the remaining firework powder in Théra’s possession, along with sharp-edged gravel, stones suitable for slingshots, and even some rusty metal shards. The idea was to launch a hailstorm of deadly missiles when the bomb finally exploded.
To trigger the bomb, Théra settled on a design based on the fire starter of the Adüans, which she and Zomi had studied back in Dara when they were searching for the secret of garinafin fire breathing. The device had become popular among the Agon in Kiri Valley, and she thought it would be easy to make such a thing.
But where would they find a baby garinafin canine tooth on Spotted Heifer?
The problem stumped Théra and her advisers until Gozofin, skilled with arucuro tocua, came to the rescue. He built a piston out of a sled dog’s femur and rib—a complementary set of hollow tube and straight rod that, when slammed home, generated sufficient heat in the compressed air to start a fire. A sprinkling of firework powder in the femur provided kindling, and then the rib and femur were installed respectively in the upper and lower halves of the coffin, carefully aligned to allow one to slide smoothly into the other. Keeping the plug and the cylinder separated with a wad of dried ice-shark flesh, Gozofin then wrapped strong bundles of sinew around the two and twisted the sinew to add tension. As soon as the wad of ice shark flesh, tough and resilient, was removed, the tensed sinews would snap the rib into the femur, creating the spark to detonate the bomb.
As Théra watched Gozofin demonstrate the arucuro tocua fire starter, her mind returned to the first time she had seen the living bones in action, that long-ago day in Kiri Valley when Kunilu-tika and Jian-tika’s bone creature filled her with wonder and love for her new homeland. Tears streamed from her eyes as she tried in vain to assure Gozofin that he had done nothing wrong.
The other large coffin held Takval’s body.
All the decoys, including the four smaller coffins, were weighed down with stones so that they would not appear out of place compared to the heft of the bomb-laden coffin. Knowing that Cudyu was cautious and would suspect booby traps, Théra planned on the smaller coffins being opened first, perhaps by someone Cudyu thought of as disposable. That was why they had to be filled with real corpses to assure Cudyu that there was no danger. But since Cudyu was also vain and obsessed with the crafting of his own mythology, Théra gambled that the Lyucu pékyu would personally open the larger coffins, thereby bringing about his own demise.
Since she couldn’t be sure Cudyu would leave her own coffin to the last, it was vital for Takval’s body to be packed into the other decoy coffin, as a final layer of deception. But in addition to such practical considerations, Théra also found the gesture poetically appropriate. It felt right to have Takval present at the scene of Cudyu’s defeat.
You promised you would bring me to Taten in the spring, she thought, her heart aching. You’ve always kept your word.
A group of ice tribe warriors then carried the coffins by dogsled to the edge of Nalyufin’s Pasture, where icebergs calved every spring. There, they tested crevasses and cracks until they found a mountain of ice about to fall into the sea. Using heated stones, they melted deep shafts into the ice so that the coffins could be entombed.
Their hard work had only begun. Once the iceberg calved into the sea, herding it in the right direction was not something a few warriors could accomplish. But by now, Kitos’s stand against the Lyucu the previous winter had become legendary, and hundreds of bone-and-skin canoes from dozens of ice tribes heeded Kitos’s call for help. Without understanding the full plan, they disregarded their own needs during the busy spring hunting season and put their trust in Kitos. Like ice fleas swarming after a star-snout bear fearful of their tiny but irritating bites, the fleet of tiny boats nudged the iceberg slowly but inexorably into the ocean current heading south, toward Péa’s Sea.
Meanwhile, Kitos and Thoryo departed with a small band of warriors toward Taten, and Théra led the remaining rebels to a spot northeast of Taten. Each group had their own separate parts to play in Théra’s scheme.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN “FEEL MY BREATH AGAINST YOU…”
TATEN: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE TENTH YEAR AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF PRINCESS THÉRA FROM DARA FOR UKYU-GONDÉ (WHEN THE LYUCU MUST LAUNCH THEIR NEW INVASION FLEET TO DARA).
By the time Tovo got his startled mount under control and surveyed the scene below, all was chaos.
The explosion had instantly killed Cudyu as well as a large number of shamans and garinafin-thanes closest to the platform. Projectiles from the death-dealing burial box shot deep into the rows of the lower-ranking thanes, and many had been blinded, maimed, or injured. The survivors rolled around on the ground, howling in agony.
As Lyucu commanders thronged in confusion, the leaderless naros and culeks scattered in terror, stampeding to get away in case another bomb was waiting for them.
Tovo knew that he had to restore order right away. The fear that had lain dormant in his heart all these months—that Takval’s rebellion had not, in fact, been snuffed out in the frozen wastes of Nalyufin’s Pasture—flared back to life. What if this was only the first blow in a general assault on Taten?
But with the terror also came the growing thrill at a possibility he had barely dared to imagine before.
He ordered his mount to fly lower.
The pékyu is dead. Who will be the next pékyu?
* * *
In the general confusion that followed the explosion, nobody noticed Thoryo, disguised as a masked wolf-thane, running away from the assembly.
Naros and culeks, drawn by the loud noise, emerged from tents all over Taten and converged on the scene of carnage. Thoryo found it as difficult to move through the thickening crowd as a fish swimming upriver.
In truth, she wanted to join them. Even knowing the cruelty of the Lyucu thanes, her instinct was to go and help, to tend to the wounded.
But she had a mission. She whistled loudly.
Dogs as large as horrid wolves emerged from the tent assigned to her. Barking, howling, snarling, they barreled through the crowd until they were next to her. She climbed onto the back of one, and the pack of dogs shoved Lyucu warriors aside as they forced a path out of Taten.
A group of Dara captives staggered from one of the tents. Their guards had deserted them in the general pandemonium. Emaciated, scarred, flinching at every noise, it was all they could do to stare, slack-jawed, at the bedlam all around.
“Get on! Get on!” Thoryo shouted. She whistled loudly; the dogs stopped and crouched.
The captives couldn’t understand why a Lyucu thane with a pack of giant dogs was urging them to ride with her. Too many unexpected things were happening all at once. But she was speaking to them in the comforting syllables of Dara—that meant she could be trusted, didn’t it?
Thoryo would have liked to find and save all the captives from Kiri Valley in Taten, but there was simply no time. As she whistled and trilled, the dogs carried her and the rescued captives toward the garinafin pens.
* * *
The grooms congregated at the gates of the garinafin compound dove out of the way as the pack of giant barking dogs charged inside.
The head groom, who had tumbled to the ground from the violent entrance, scrambled back to his feet. He blinked, uncomprehending, at the shivering Dara captives riding the dogs. Then he noticed the wolf-thane among them.
“What happened, votan? We heard a thunderous noise, but…”
Thoryo ignored him. She looked around frantically until she found Ga-al, dozing nearby in the corner of the enclosure reserved for cargo garinafins. “Yee-haw!” she shouted.
Instantly, Ga-al’s eyes popped open. He stretched out his neck and stared intently into space.
On the far side of the corral, among the war mounts, Alkir also stretched out his neck and stared intently into space, as though in response to some silent call.
“Why have you brought these slaves here?” demanded the head groom. “What is going on?”
Paying him no heed, Thoryo coaxed the Dara captives off the dogs and then directed the dogs to form a protective ring around the huddle. After months of maltreatment, the captives would be of no use in the coming confrontation. She had to keep them safe.
Neither Ga-al nor Alkir had made any noise. But by now all the garinafins in the pens were snorting and lowing, looking agitatedly about as though sensing an impending attack.
“Get your beasts under control!” Thoryo spoke to the head groom imperiously. “Stop asking questions!”
The head groom had no idea why everything seemed to be going wrong. The Agon grooms shrank away from the agitated garinafins, unwilling to risk being trampled. The head groom had to dispatch the Lyucu overseers to calm the agitated garinafins, but they were having no success.
Unnoticed in the general confusion, Radia and Toof snuck away from the other grooms and made their way toward Alkir and Ga-al.
“Yee-haw!” Thoryo shouted again.
The two garinafins stretched out their necks in mute concentration.
Doors to the underground cells where the juvenile garinafins were shackled slammed open. Young garinafins stumbled out of their dark prison, blinking in the bright sun, keening and whimpering. Around their necks, some still wore the remnants of their sinew bonds, which Toof and Radia had sawn through the day before.
The adult garinafins, seeing their offspring suddenly free, called out in joy and distress. Soon garinafins were lumbering across the enclosure in every direction, calves rushing to their parents, sibling ambling to join sibling, none heeding the shouts of the grooms and the whips of the Lyucu overseers.
Seated on her dog, Thoryo clapped her hands together happily.
Finally, it dawned on the head groom that this was all somehow the wolf-thane’s doing. He pointed at Thoryo and screamed, “A witch! She’s a saboteur!”
The giant dogs snarled, enlarging their defensive ring around the huddled captives to include Thoryo. Kitos and the ice tribe warriors dashed over and joined them. Though they had no weapons other than dung shovels and carrying poles, they brandished these threateningly, daring the Lyucu to approach.
For the moment, the Lyucu overseers weren’t too concerned with the out-of-control garinafins. Most of the beasts were busily licking and nuzzling their young, paying no attention to the human conflict in the middle of the compound. Even though they now had their offspring back, none of the garinafins seemed to be thinking of escape or turning on the Lyucu. Habits of obedience, instilled through a lifetime of terror and confinement, could not be shaken off so easily.
The head groom was confident that the unthinking brutes, directionless without their pilots, could always be muzzled and brought to heel later. It was far more important to take care of the traitorous wolf-thane witch first.
“Wedge formation. Charge!”
Armed with bone axes and clubs and garinafin-hide shields, the Lyucu overseers gathered into a dense, triangular battle-throng and charged at a steady pace toward Thoryo and the ice tribe warriors.
A sled dog broke from the ring and ran at the Lyucu. The warriors stopped and crouched in defensive poses. With a snarl, the dog leapt. A naro’s head disappeared into its jaws.
Thoryo screamed.
But none of the Lyucu reacted to the demise of their comrade. Methodically, they converged on the dog, axes and clubs ready.
Incredibly, the warrior with her head inside the dog’s mouth remained on her feet. Arms waving about blindly, she grabbed the front paws of the dog and wrestled the much larger creature, holding it in place.
The dog tried to clamp down, but found that it couldn’t. The naro’s head somehow refused to yield against the pressure. The dog then tried to spit out the half-swallowed naro, but the naro had become lodged in its throat. As the dog moaned and shuffled helplessly in place, its teeth and claws useless, the other Lyucu slammed their axes and clubs against its massive body in coordinated waves, killing it after a few rounds.
Only after the dog was dead did the other Lyucu pry open its jaws to release their comrade. The skull helmet, its antlers hardened with the woody ribs of the gash cactus, had protected her head from being crushed and also caught in the dog’s throat.
The woman adjusted her helmet, ignored the blood oozing from wounds in her arms and shoulders, and rejoined the other Lyucu as though nothing had happened. Even Kitos was impressed by this display of discipline and martial prowess.
The Lyucu were seasoned warriors, and a few overgrown dogs and shovel-wielding ice fleas didn’t frighten them. They had put down slave rebellions before and would do so again.
Ripping off her skull helmet to reveal her face, Thoryo sat up as tall as possible on her dog-mount and shouted at the Agon grooms cowering behind the charging Lyucu.
“In the name of Théra Garu Aragoz, wife of Takval Aragoz, son of Souliyan Aragoz, now serving the Agon people as pékyu, I command all the children of Afir to rise up and reclaim their freedom!”
