Shadow of the Horsemen (Kalie's Journey) Read online

  This night, the men and women ate separately. Kalie was about to ask Cassia if this was because of the battle, or some other reason, when she heard her name called from the men’s side of the fires.

  “A woman? Telling the tale of a battle?” she heard some warrior demanding as she reached their gathering

  “You haven’t heard her,” Kahlar was saying. “Ah, Kalie! Come show these fools that in Kahlar’s clan, even the women are better storytellers than they!”

  Grateful that she had given some thought to that very subject, Kalie moved to the center of the gathering and surveyed her audience. Most were drunk, or working on getting that way, but were still in the early stages. Not ugly yet, at least. Then she noticed a low, animal-like moaning coming from just beyond the firelight punctuated by even more animal-like laughter, and revised her opinion. The only survivors of the outlaw band—four or five half starved women—were providing entertainment for the victorious warriors.

  Then Kalie turned away, willing herself not to think about it. These men were waiting for entertainment from her as well, and she ought to be grateful it was of another kind. If she was lucky, they might settle for stories.

  Wetting dry lips with a dry tongue, for no one offered her a drink, Kalie began, pitching her voice to carry over the festivities. “It was on a day in early spring, when the two mightiest of the clans of Aahk were on their way to the great summer gathering that they were set upon by savage men who knew no honor…”

  Chapter 3

  Kalie watched the flowers fade and die as they walked. The grass was turning brown. And the sun’s warmth, so welcome just days ago, was beginning to feel oppressive. In her homeland, it would be the second full moon of spring. They would be celebrating the planting of grain and the harvesting of the first fruits.

  It had been five days since “The Battle of Spring Trail” as Kalie had named her story. The name had stuck—further proof of her growing status. She had been called to tell the story every night since the battle, and in all that time, had not been raped. Nor had there been any repercussions of her words to Riyik. She thought perhaps that Brenia was avoiding her, but that might just have been a result of the many women she knew in Zavan’s clan who were now filling her time.

  Kalie also spent time with the women of Zavan’s clan. From them she learned that Dara, who had been living with that clan when Kalie had last seen her, was no longer living at all.

  “She was a strange one,” said one of the women, making a sign against evil. “Never did learn how to talk properly.”

  “Never learned how to do anything,” said another. “But she had stopped fighting like a madwoman, and seemed like she was going to adjust. Then, on the night of Midwinter, she just walked into the snow and froze to death.”

  “She was trying to escape?” said Kalie.

  “Escape?” the woman looked baffled. “Why would she attempt such a thing? And in the dead of winter, no less!”

  “She took nothing with her,” said another woman, more helpfully. “No food; not even her blanket.”

  “Which direction was she walking?” Kalie asked, but she already knew.

  “West,” said the first woman.

  Kalie nodded. “Toward her home.”

  One of them shot Kalie an evil glare. “Those women from the west are unnatural beings! They should be put to death before they curse us all!”

  “Hush, Tilka,” said the oldest of them. “It was only one of them, and evil spirits can attack anyone.”

  “What happened?” Kalie whispered, almost forgetting to breathe.

  “Nothing!” snapped the one who told her about Dara, but the one named Tilka shook off her hand and spoke up.

  “It was the one called Traea. Just before we left our winter camp, she went mad and killed everyone in her tent. Her good master, his wife—“

  “You mean Gorik?” Kalie cried. “And Goat-Dung?”

  The women turned on her, horrified, but Kalie could only laugh, though tears leaked from her eyes. “That’s what she called his wife. And I’m surprised any of you know her name, since no one in that tent bothered to learn it.”

  “She killed their son as well!” cried Tilka. “Their only surviving child! He was to be married this summer to Salia’s niece.” She nodded toward the first speaker. “Traea was to go with him as his concubine, and slave to his new wife! To show such kindness to a worthless barbarian and be repaid with death—“

  “Kindness?” Kalie cried. “If such treatment as she received is called kindness, I’d say she repaid it very well indeed. But then, she had excellent teachers.” She met Tilka’s gaze with a look of hate that equaled that of the horsewoman.

  “We must not speak of such things!” said Salia, stepping between them just as Tilka seemed ready to strike. “We dare not invite something so evil back by speaking its name. There have been ill omens enough already.”

  Tilka turned away from Kalie and nodded slowly. “A two headed goat born among Boraak’s flocks, and ravens circling healthy animals. And who’s to say that the madness that seized that horrible slave isn’t still loose.”

  “The priests cut up her body and scattered the pieces to the four winds,” said the third woman in a soothing voice. “Whatever spirit claimed her is long gone.”

  “Perhaps not,” Kalie taunted. “Perhaps she was simply bitten by a rabid animal, and he still lives to attack again.”

  “You mean a dog?” asked Salia.

  “No, I mean one of your men!” Kalie turned on her heel and walked away to begin her mourning.

  She never again spoke to those three women, but she spoke with others from Zavan’s clan. She learned that Alessa had been sold to a warrior from another tribe, and knew she would probably never see her again. Kestra was expecting a child they told her. The women claimed she rarely spoke and that she was sullen and withdrawn. She made no attempt to make friends, but was at least trying to be a good wife, utterly devoted to her fine husband.

  Kalie shuddered, grateful that she could put off seeing Kestra. Her clan had traveled briefly with Zavan’s clan, until grazing became poor and they decided to make their separate ways to the summer pastures.

  She learned nothing else about her friends, but heard other, important news. The most interesting was a confirmation of a rumor Kalie had heard a few moonspans ago on the night of the winter solstice: the disappearance of one of the Twenty Clans of Aahk. Chief Yuraak had indeed, taken his clan west in search of the riches that Haraak had spoken of when he brought Kalie and the other women to the grasslands.

  Some warriors whispered fierce denials that Yuraak was capable of such treachery—others denied that he was capable of that much independent thought or planning. Kalie thought of those she had left behind in Riverford: farmers who had seen firsthand what the warriors of Aahk were capable of, and had learned the hard way the need to slay a beast who threatened flocks—or their own children. Craftsmen who were designing defenses for villages when she had left the previous year. If Yuraak and his band of twenty or so warriors survived the winter and reached the Goddess- lands at all, they would receive a very different welcome than Haraak and his men had. Kalie hid her smile as she continued walking. “One gone, nineteen to go,” she thought.

  “We will arrive at the summer campsite in just a few more days,” Cassia’s words broke into Kalie’s musings as they walked together behind Altia. The dust was becoming a problem, and Cassia had warned Kalie it would get worse. That justified the women’s veils, she thought, but not the heavy layers of felt clothing.

  “How are you feeling?” Kalie asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Cassia, a little too quickly. She covered her belly with both hands. “I’m going to make it. He is going to make it, this time.”

  “Have you felt any more movement?”

  “Not since yesterday but…” Cassia stopped walking. Her fingers tightened over her womb, and her face lit up with wonder. “There!” She grabbed Kalie’s hand and put it over her
belly. “Can you feel it? Like a butterfly!”

  Kalie smiled. She had missed the big moment, but didn’t doubt that it had happened.

  “I’ve never carried one this far,” Cassia whispered. “Never to where I could feel him move.”

  “You’ve still a long way to go—with little enough chance of bearing a living child!” snapped Irisa, walking by with her four-year-old son riding on her back, her four month old baby wrapped in a shawl beneath her breasts. She looked exhausted. Yet what choice did she have but to carry on—and make life unpleasant for everyone else?

  “Perhaps if you spoke of hope, rather than curses,” said Kalie, “others might help you with your own brood, Irisa.”

  “I need no help with my sons.” Irisa grinned as she emphasized the last word. “Not from a barren slave, nor a barren wife.” Cassia’s face lit up with rage this time. Kalie grabbed her hand to distract her, and shook her head. Sparring with Irisa now was the worst thing she could do for her baby—as Irisa well knew. “But perhaps, if you do manage to carry that baby a little farther, your breasts might begin to flow with milk. Then you can be wet nurse to Maalke’s youngest son after yours dies—and finally be of some use to us!”

  Cassia gasped, and Kalie caught her other hand to prevent her from physically attacking Irisa. It was an unbelievably bold thing for a concubine to say to a wife. Even Altia’s eyes went wide with shock. But she said nothing. Her son was growing towards manhood, and she would likely have no others. Better for her if the two women who still might steal her husband’s affections fought each other.

  “Think of your son,” Kalie whispered urgently to Cassia. “Irisa doesn’t matter—and never will!”

  “Goat dung!” Cassia spat as she passed Irisa with her head high, affecting not to notice her.

  That evening, while Kalie and Varena took on extra chores so that Cassia could rest, Riyik strode into Maalke’s camp and spoke with him. She did not hear what transpired, but a few moments later, Maalke approached her with a satisfied grin. “Kalie, you are this warrior’s for the night. He must truly enjoy your stories.” The whole household roared with laughter at his jest, but Riyik looked away, almost as if he were…embarrassed?

  “Come, let us walk,” he said, leading her through the cool grass, to a low hill well beyond the camp. Riyik crested the hill, then sat down on the gentle slope on the far side which faced away from the camp. He motioned for Kalie to do the same. Privacy, Kalie thought as she stared into the empty shadows falling across the still green steppes beyond. Not something most of the men cared about when it came to taking women.

  “I just wanted to talk to you,” Riyik said. Then he actually moved away from her, and turned so he could face her.

  “Why?” she asked in stunned disbelief.

  “I have been…bothered about what you said when I…rescued you… during the raid.” Kalie said nothing, only stared hard into Riyik’s eyes. He looked away.

  After a long silence, he said, “Not all men here take women against their will. I do not.”

  Kalie laughed. “I think perhaps my kinswomen from Riverford might disagree.”

  Riyik looked as though she had slapped him. “I took no one on that journey! Although, I can see how you might not remember. We thought Haraak had killed you that first night.”

  “It would have been better if he had,” Kalie said, although, as she struggled to remember, it seemed Riyik had acted as a guard the whole time, not indulging himself as the others had—a fact that had seemed strange to her, even then. But was that really any better?

  “I wanted you to know that.”

  “How do you know?” Kalie asked quietly.

  Riyik, who was about to speak again, stopped short. “What?”

  “How do you know that you’ve never taken a woman against her will?” Kalie asked, knowing she should be treading carefully. But she was very interested in Riyik’s answer.

  “I…think that is something a man would know, don’t you?”

  Kalie shook her head. “No, I do not. You live in a world where a woman’s life may be snuffed out at a man’s whim. How, then, can you ever know what a woman wants or feels? If she doesn’t scream and fight you, might it not be because she’s too afraid? Or thinks it’s her duty? Or that it simply never occurred to her that she was human enough to have feelings or desires of her own?”

  “You seem to think as little of our women as of our men!”

  “Less!” said Kalie. “For they labor to maintain their own enslavement…” She broke off, shaking her head as if to clear it.

  “Perhaps you only see your own unhappiness, and are angry at them for not sharing it.”

  Kalie smiled. Finally, someone worth talking to—and it had to be a man!

  “Unhappiness is one thing this land always has plenty of. And the women here share it very well.” She rubbed the scar on her chin, where Altia had struck her with a sharp bone during her first days in Maalke’s tent.

  Riyik looked away. “Life is harsh everywhere.”

  “Not like this. Did my world seem so harsh to you?”

  Riyik laughed. “Your world seemed…insane to me! Such wealth! Yet no one to manage it! People with more possessions than I could imagine, yet acting…almost unaware of what they had!”

  “With that last part, I agree,” said Kalie. “I have journeyed the length and breadth of that world—farther than your fastest horse could travel in twenty days!” Riyik’s brows rose in disbelief, but he did not interrupt. “And throughout it all, no one ever really…thought about it. Oh, we thanked the Goddess for all Her gifts, we honored the Earth and everything that came from it…but no one ever realized how precious it all was, because no one knew that it could be any different. That just a little to the east, were monsters who created nothing of their own, and lived only to steal and to maim and to destroy what others had.”

  “Is that how you see us?” Riyik seemed truly shocked.

  Kalie smiled, showing her teeth. “Please, master, tell me how else I might see you.”

  Riyik was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I suppose, knowing what I do now, there is no other way you can see it. And for that I am truly sorry. Living as a slave to a man like Maalke—a wife like Altia ordering you about.” Riyik yanked out a handful of grass from the hillside and flung it into the wind. “You deserve better than that.”

  Kalie felt as if the universe had suddenly shifted, and for a moment she did not know where she was. “Everyone deserves better than that!” she whispered hoarsely.

  “I can’t speak for everyone, and I can’t say I agree. But there is much that is good in our world. And much that is beautiful. I would like to show it to you. Perhaps…perhaps we could help each other.”

  “How?” She was on her guard again.

  “You could…” Riyik seemed to experience a coughing fit. Then, taking a deep breath, he said quickly, “You could live in the tent I must soon establish. You could care for my son.” He paused. “You could be my wife.”

  Kalie just stared at him.

  “I must take a wife. Yarik needs a mother and you have done so much for him already. I owe you a great deal; much more than Brenia has given you in payment.” His rain gray eyes seemed genuinely troubled, and for all her cynicism, Kalie could see no guile in them. “I cannot give back what you have lost, Kalie. But I can give you this: you will have your freedom, and status here in my world.”

  “Freedom?” Kalie tasted the word on her tongue. “That means… what? That you would buy me from Maalke?” Riyik nodded. “Then marry me according to the customs of your people?”

  Again Riyik nodded. “I cannot promise you love, as Aahken women are so fond of hearing a man speak of. I still love Yalina, my wi—Yarik’s mother. Yet you do not seem interested in love as our women do. Is that yet another difference between our women and yours? You do not dream of love in marriage?”

  Kalie smiled. “No. Strangely, both our worlds speak a great deal of love, in stories and
songs. But here, women dream that a man’s love that will save them from the misery that is a woman’s life. Among my people…it is very different. I can’t explain it. We have love—it is your notion of marriage we do not have.”

  To her further amazement, Riyik laughed. “I might have known! And whatever your notions of love, you, I think, will never love anything in this land. Although, perhaps, over time, you may come to. Perhaps, if we had children of our own…”

  Kalie wanted to spit in his face for those last words, yet to her surprise, found she could not. This man, and yes, she had to see him as a man, not a beast, was opening up to her and, of all strange things, trying to be kind and helpful. To pay him back with cruelty would be of this world, not her own.

  “I cannot marry you, Riyik.” The words were out before she knew it, but as soon as she said them, she knew they were right.

  Riyik stared at her in shock, as Kalie had stared at him just moments before. “Why not?”

  “Because you are my enemy!” This was not the right way to explain. Strangely, it might not even be true.

  An image danced before her eyes: Kestra lying with her “husband”; welcoming his embrace, despite all she had seen and endured. Is that how it happened in this world? Would she, herself, strike such a bargain with Riyik?

  In that moment, Kalie was certain of one thing: if she ran to this man for protection, like some princess in one of their tales; if she let herself be lulled by his kindness into accepting his people’s ideas of marriage and family, she would lose her way forever. And one day, years from now, while she was busy trying to convince herself she hadn’t betrayed her people or herself—her world would fall to these conquerors.

  She had to find a way to explain.

  “Riyik.” If he was offended by her familiar use of his name, he didn’t show it. Even her habit of looking directly into his eyes brought no anger. “You offered me my freedom?”