Shadow of the Horsemen (Kalie's Journey)

  Shadow of the Horsemen

  Book 2 of Kalie's Journey

  By Sandra Saidak

  Published by Uffington Horse Press

  San Jose, California

  Copyright © 2012 by Sandra Saidak

  Excerpt from In the Balance by Sandra Saidak copyright © 2012 by Sandra Saidak

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Kindle Edition

  Published by Uffington Horse Press, San Jose, California, USA

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming story collection In the Balance by Sandra Saidak. The excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  ISBN: 978-0-9846991-2-4

  Learn more at: www.sandrasaidak.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Grasslands of southern Russia, circa 4000 BC

  Somewhere near the front of the line, the lead warrior called a halt. Kalie sank gratefully down in the soft grass and waited for the water skin. She had lost count of the days they had traveled from the winter camp, and didn’t know how many they had left to walk. But for now, she didn’t care. She was too busy marveling at the transformation in the world around her.

  The barren steppes which had so oppressed Kalie since her arrival had turned into a vast garden. Wildflowers of every hue stretched as far as she could see. Even the grass, so hard and brittle the rest of the year, was fresh and green and filled with the scents of earth coming alive.

  “Here, Mother. I brought you water—and some more flowers!” Varena gave Kalie the leather-wrapped sheep’s bladder of cool water. She took it and smiled at the tug she felt at her heart every time Varena called her that.

  Varena, the daughter of a slave woman, had been orphaned as a young child, and left to the abusive care of jealous wives. When Kalie had arrived here as a slave the previous summer, it was with a plan to bring down the cursed beastmen who had killed so many of her kin, and harmed her in ways from which she had never recovered. Creating a family was not part of that plan. Yet, quite against her will, Varena’s loneliness and innocence had awoken things in Kalie she had thought to be long dead. So she had adopted Varena—not that anyone in the clan acknowledged the relationship.

  Kalie drank, and handed the bag to the next woman. Irisa took the bag, daggers in her eyes for the humiliation that a slave was served before herself. As concubine to Maalke, Irisa should have been served just after Maalke’s two wives, Altia and Cassia. But Kalie’s healing magic had caused Maalke’s barren second wife to conceive a child for him. So, for the moment, Kalie’s status eclipsed Irisa’s.

  “What are these called?” Kalie asked, examining a cluster of delicate white blossoms clinging to a stick-like stem.

  Any answer Varena might have given was lost in the cruel blow Altia struck from behind. “Others still wait for water, slave!” she roared. “Finish your task, then, check on the animals.” She seated herself in what little shade the tall grass and westerly sun provided and began fanning herself with a scrap of leather.

  “They’re called lady’s slippers,” said Brenia, drawing Kalie away from her rage at Altia. To show it would only encourage Maalke’s senior wife to mistreat Varena further.

  “How about these?” Kalie pointed to tiny yellow clusters growing on a low bush near where they rested. While Brenia was high ranking woman of the tribe, and the wife of a warrior, she had always been kind to Kalie—an anomaly in this land.

  “Mustard. We should pick as much we can. It has uses in healing, as well as cooking,” said Brenia, whose interest in healing matched Kalie’s. Perhaps another reason a wife of rank dared to be friends with a slave.

  There were now two clans traveling to the spring pasture together. Chief Kahlar’s clan—Kalie’s home since she had come here as a slave last summer— had met up with another of the Twenty Clans of the Tribe of Aahk about five days ago. Led by a low-ranked chief named Boraak, this clan was seriously depleted after a harsh winter and a brutal pestilence. Boraak had only a handful of seasoned warriors to contribute to the tribe’s protection on the slow march to their summer gathering.

  In addition to being the most beautiful time of year, spring was also the most dangerous. Sheep and goats, weakened by the harsh winter, could travel but slowly, and needed all the rich grass and flowers they could consume if they were to continue to feed the masses of humans who depended upon them. It was important for clans to avoid competing for the same grazing lands until the strengthened herds met at the wide summer pastures, when many would be slaughtered for the feasting, trading and rituals that characterized the summer.

  But until all Twenty Clans of Aahk were reunited in their full strength, they were vulnerable to attack. Outlaw gangs, hoping to establish themselves as tribes in their own right, with horses, flocks and women taken from lone clans unlucky enough to cross their paths, were a constant threat. So were other tribes, eager to increase their wealth. Each day, Kahlar and Boraak sent their swiftest warriors riding in search of news of their fellow clans, and any signs of danger lurking on the empty grasslands. So far, no other Clans of Aahk had been spotted. Tension grew, and spoiled the mood of more than just Altia.

  Kalie refused to let anything ruin her enjoyment of this wonderland. She gathered flowers as she walked, asking after their names and uses, just as if she had been back among her own people.

  During the next stop, she sat with Cassia, Brenia and several other ranking women, telling a story as she wove a garland into Varena’s honey colored hair. While the girl was still thin and pinched with want, the spring air had brought color to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. Even her hair, a dull blonde all winter, was shining. The flowers further enhanced her beauty.

  “Enjoy them while you can, Kalie,” said Brenia, passing around a skin of water. “The flowers last less than the turning of one moon. Long before we reach the summer lands, the grass will be brown, the sun hot, and the flowers long gone.”

  “Like in your story about Shara and the Bird,” said Varena, fingering the necklace Kalie had given her the time she first told it. How she loved being the special slave of a special slave, Kalie thought with bitter humor. It was not what Kalie had wanted for Varena when she had adopted her, but at least it made her happy. And in this, Varena was better off than her half- sisters.

  Many of the women and girls mingled more freely on the march than they had while confined to their tents all winter, visiting with friends from Boraak’s clan whom they hadn’t seen since the summer. But Altia kept her two daughters marching demurely behind their mother. While they walked haughtily in front of the slaves, Kalie could see they would have preferred to be off on their own, seeking out their friends. Varena, no less Maalke’s daughter than the other two girls, was a slave, because her mother had been one. Ironically, in some ways this gave Varena more freedom than her half-sisters. No one worried about a slave-girl’s reputation or how demurely she carried herself. Varena could speak with whomever she chose, although she spoke with few people besides Kalie. A slave like Varena did not wish to call herself to the attention of anyone who could hurt her.

  Which was nearly everyone.

  Kahlar gave the order to resume moving. As always, the women were quickly on their feet and the men on their horses, moving at the speed of their slowest animals within moments. Everything they owned
was carried on the backs of the women or walked on four legs beside them. Kalie adjusted her pack, bending beneath its weight like the others, but still intent on the scenery around her. She wove another garland as she walked, thinking to offer it to Cassia, but knowing Maalke’s wife would never do something so frivolous as wearing flowers. Fine, thought Kalie, deciding to keep it for herself. She didn’t care how she looked to the beastmen, and it would remind her of home.

  As if her thought had conjured her, Cassia dropped back from her place behind Altia to walk beside Kalie. “You don’t seem like the same woman who arrived in my tent last summer,” she said with a smile, her hands clasped protectively over her belly. The gentle curve beneath them was just beginning to speak of life.

  “What do you mean?” Kalie twisted a delicate pink flower into her garland. “Oh, by the way, what do you call these?” She held up a bunch of impossibly blue flowers.

  Cassia laughed. “That! When you first came here, you’d have eaten dung before you said one good thing about this land! Now, you can’t stop talking about the flowers! You don’t even complain about how heavy your pack is, or that the men don’t help us carry anything.”

  “Oh, I still find all that as vile as ever,” said Kalie. “But this transformation of the landscape has given me so much to think about.”

  Cassia looked interested, so Kalie continued. “When we first came here, we talked among ourselves about what could make people so brutal. Alessa thought—“

  “Is that the healer you’ve mentioned? The one who was given to Nelek of the Wolf Tribe?”

  “Healer, yes. She was Maris’s apprentice.” Kalie laughed at herself. As if the name of Maris meant anything here! “She thought that the harsh environment was the main cause of the …difficulties…people have in working together or sharing resources equally.

  “But when I see this…” Kalie swept her hand to encompass the whole landscape. “I can’t believe it doesn’t have some impact! How could anyone experience such beauty; such proof of the Goddess’s love, and still behave as inhuman monsters—“

  Cassia laughed. “I guess you are still the same woman,” she said.

  Kalie laughed as well. Then she noticed Brenia walking nearby, listening intently. The older woman was still beautiful, Kalie thought, but her age was showing more clearly in the harsh light of day than in the dimness of her well-kept felt tent. She carried her two-year-old son, Barak, on her hip, between his bouts of proving he could walk like a man on the march. Behind Brenia walked Elka, carrying Yarik, whose first tentative steps with the leg braces Kalie had made for him had been interrupted by the demands of the journey to the summer camp.

  Like Tasine, the old slave woman Kalie had come to love, Brenia’s slave, Mara, had died early in the journey to the summer pastures , leaving only Brenia and her husband’s concubine to manage his tent and serve his needs. But Elka walked brazenly beside Brenia as though she were as much a wife to Hysaak as Brenia. And while custom demanded that Hysaak provide his first wife with at least one new slave before taking a second wife, he showed no signs of doing so.

  Instead, speculation ran high as to how long it would take the comely blonde woman—so much younger than Brenia—to replace her altogether. Already, people said, Hysaak was completely besotted with her. There was also much speculation about when her brother Riyik would take a wife and reclaim his crippled son from his brother-in-law’s tent.

  “Do you really think the presence or absence of flowers can change the way people are?” Brenia asked, seemingly unconcerned about the gossip.

  Kalie paused to appreciate the question, which was probably the most thoughtful one she had heard so far in this place. “I don’t think it’s any one thing, but, yes. I think small things like that can make a big difference. And if you add up enough small things…”

  Cassia rolled her eyes. “You think too much, Kalie! When you talk about the People of Aahk, you act like…like a warrior examining a horse he is thinking of buying—but you’re not buying something! You’re here! This is your home for the rest of your life! What good does all this examination and comparing it with your old home do?”

  Brenia nodded. “I’m surprised you still have such fond memories of that place. If your men couldn’t protect you, what use were they? Here you are among the greatest warriors the gods have made. Surely, that is a better thing, is it not?”

  Kalie smiled. Brenia, though kinder and more intelligent than most of the nomads Kalie had met, was still a woman of Aahk. She accepted violence, warfare and slavery as facts of life. As such, she would always be a puzzle to Kalie. Yet in her heart, Kalie never gave up hope that someone like Brenia might actually understand her answer—if she could come up with the right one. She was thinking so hard that it took longer than it should have for the signs that something was wrong to reach her thoughts.

  Altia’s two daughters returned from drawing water from one of the small springs they had passed. But Varena had been with them as well. Now there was no sign of her, and while her two half-sisters giggled over some secret with their heads together, Kalie noticed a flash of blue fire from something they held between them: it was the beaded necklace Kalie had given Varena.

  “Where is Varena?” Kalie demanded, looming over the two children. They looked at her, then at their mother, clearly expecting her to come and take charge of this unruly slave. Already at their young age, they knew to disregard anything a slave might require, but Kalie was not acting like a slave. And a large, angry woman was something they were used to obeying.

  When Kalie moved closer to the girls, her manner clearly threatening, they scurried ahead and grabbed hold of Altia’s robe, finally pulling her attention away from the woman with whom she was gossiping.

  “What is it?” Altia demanded impatiently, as their entire part of the line began to slow.

  “I am looking for Varena,” Kalie said simply.

  Altia bristled at Kalie’s lack of “mistress” in her words. It was one of the few retaliations Kalie’s new status afforded her, and she couldn’t force herself to give it up, even during times—like now—when she probably should.

  “I sent all three of you for water,” Altia said, glaring at her daughters. “Where is the other one?”

  The girls shrugged and looked away, as they fell in place behind their mother.

  “They have the necklace I gave her,” Kalie said, noting that the bauble had disappeared.

  “Slaves do not own jewelry,” said Altia. “Or anything else.”

  Kalie looked down at the two girls. “How did you come by that blood on your hands?” she asked the elder. “Are you hurt?”

  Altia began to look concerned. “Go look for her!” she ordered Kalie. “If she’s wandered off, or gotten too lazy to keep up, you can be sure she’ll get a proper beating!”

  Kalie headed off for the spring.

  She found Varena in the grass, not far from the faint whisper of coolness that was the tiny spring. She was curled into a tight ball, lying on her side, and only faint, pathetic whimpers reached Kalie’s ears, though she was by then only a few steps away. Even when alone, it seemed, a good slave knew how to keep silent.

  “Varena, what happened?” Kalie turned her over carefully, searching for injuries. One eye was swollen shut, and she had scratches on her face, and on her arms, where her robe had been torn. Kalie began to breathe again when she realized that none of the marks were serious.

  For a frustratingly long time, the girl was silent. Only after Kalie began to gather up chamomile and some tiny healing flowers that grew in the shadows of the grass, and then pound them into a paste did Varena throw herself into Kalie’s arms and wail, “They took my necklace! The one that you gave me!”

  “Shh, I know,” said Kalie. “Here, hold still.” She removed her veil and dipped it into the spring, then washed Varena’s injuries and applied the soothing, antiseptic paste. Varena’s sobs slowly abated into hiccups. “Why did they beat you so?”

  Va
rena’s good eye opened wide. “I wouldn’t let it go without a fight!”

  “That was silly,” said Kalie, marveling at the brutality that even children were capable of in this place.

  Varena looked away. “I never owned anything like it before. And…I was afraid you’d be angry at me for losing it.”

  “You thought I’d blame you for being robbed?” Kalie hugged the girl, careful not to hurt her further. “Why do people here always blame the victim?”

  Varena didn’t answer, nor did Kalie expect her to. Finally, after making sure they both drank their fill from the spring she stood. “Come,” she said. “We must hurry to catch up with the others.”

  “Do we have to go back?” Varena’s voice was barely a whisper. “Can’t we just leave? And go live among your people? You said we would!”

  Kalie’s breath caught in her throat. Why had she promised such a thing? She was lucky to still be alive after such careless speech! She looked at Varena, noticing yet again how she stood on the brink of womanhood. And if her life as a slave girl was bad, the life of a slave woman was infinitely worse.

  Kalie had been only a few years older than Varena when she had first been captured by this tribe and made a slave. She still didn’t know how she escaped; much of her memory was still a darkness lit by occasional nightmares. A few years after her escape, the tribe of Aahk had begun to invade her home to the west, with an interest in staying. Kalie, who had never fully recovered from her ordeal as their captive, knew only that she had to find a way to stop them. So she and group of women, possibly as mad as she no doubt was, had volunteered to be part of the tribute the warriors had demanded in exchange for sparing their town.

  Kalie had believed herself safe behind her wall of hatred, and capable of doing anything she had to if it meant destroying these monsters. But then she had met Varena. It hadn’t taken the girl long to break down Kalie’s defenses, and now Varena was her daughter. There were days when all Kalie wanted to do was to take the girl and run back home to the Land of the Goddess, where she would never know the pain of rape, and slavery could someday be a distant memory.