'They could have fought against that cursed army, eh? Instead of flying up there out of reach and watching as the rest of us got hit over and over and over again!'
Houses burned. Captives taken. Men killed. Storehouses looted. Children and elderly dead of sickness and starvation.
'How are you come into the Wild?' he asked.
The girl took up the tale. 'A sergeant discovered us hiding in the wine cellar and convinced the cohort captain to let us go. But after we traveled for some days, other soldiers harassed and chased us. They drove us in here. They killed them what would not go past the poles. We had no choice but to die at their hands, or hope to escape. We thought maybe we could walk a ways through the Wild and leave with none the wiser.'
'That one sergeant,' added the man with a weary kind of rage, 'she did more than the cursed reeves ever did by hauling you children out of your hiding place and getting you out alive instead of giving you over to be slaughtered. Those poor cursed hirelings and assistants who got left behind were killed outright. Folk I knew well, every one of them. Think of it! It was that one sergeant, enemy as she was, who saved us. Not the gods-rotted reeves.'
He had a debt mark at his left eye, easy to overlook because that part of his face had been scraped to bleeding.
'You'll not speak of my grandfather that way!' shouted the girl.
'Enough!' Shai glared until folk fell into an anxious silence. 'There are wildings in the trees all around you, ready to kill you with darts soaked in snake venom like what killed that poor lad.'
Some wept, shaken by fear. Others wore a look of glazed indifference, people pushed past their limit.
'Should we just lie down and die?' said the girl, her chin jutting in a desperate display of bravado. 'If the wildings are so cursed deadly — if they even exist except in tales — then why haven't they killed you?'
Their despair made him reckless. 'Because I'm not human. I'm a demon.'
'I never heard that outlanders are demons. They're just people, like us, only they look funny.'
'Hush, you idiot girl!' the man hissed.
Shai laughed. 'What's your name?'
She slanted a look at him as if she had just discovered that he was a young man and she was a young woman, and things might go as they might go if things went. As he felt himself flush under her bold scrutiny, she smiled, flexing her power to disturb him. She knew men admired her, even as ragged and hungry and dirty as she was. Surely she'd not been assaulted and abused in the last weeks. She showed no fear, as if the thought of such a threat had never occurred to her. 'I'm called Jenna. It's short for Jennayatha.'
Someone sniggered. Others hissed. He was meant to understand the reference, but he did not.
'I'm an outlander. I don't know your tales, if you meant to convey some meaning by your name, verea. Tell me more about Copper Hall. What happened with the sergeant?'
The tale was neatly told, for the Hundred folk did know how to spin tales from any least event, and this was a story that could easily become woven into a true tale to be told to grandchildren should any of these survivors survive to dandle grandchildren on their laps. Barrels of wine and cordial had distracted the first lot of soldiers come to explore the cellar, but a sergeant had shined a lamp's light onto the faces of frightened children and withdrawn without betraying their presence. She had returned and marched them past ranks of corpses to join village refugees and hall slaves who were to be allowed to live while the rest were put to the sword. Each word was a blow to Shai's hopes. How was he to reach Olossi if he could not reach a reeve?
'That sergeant was a hierodule once,' said the boy suddenly, speaking past his sister's grasp.
'A hierodule? What makes you say that?'
The lad looked around to make sure everyone was listening. 'She said she was an acolyte of the Merciless One. That's how she knew there were times to show mercy and times to withhold it. No use killing children.'
'That's what she said,' his sister agreed, canting her hips as if to mimic the way the other woman had sauntered. 'She had knives. And she ordered that lot around, didn't she? I liked her. Even if she was one of the cursed army.'
Maybe it was the way he'd had of sensing a coming storm when
he was up at the carpentry shop on Dezara Mountain. Maybe it was the way ghosts called to him. 'Did she say her name?'
'She called herself Zubaidit,' said Jenna. 'But if I were marching in that gods-rotted army, I'd call myself something different than my real name, just for being ashamed!'
'Which cohort? Is there any way to identify it?'
'They had a banner… six crossed red staves on black cloth.'
'That's right,' the man agreed, and others nodded. 'We saw those banners flying as they advanced. The soldiers what chased us into the Wild carried a banner with eight white nai blossoms on a green field. What will happen to us now, demon?'
'Can you return to your villages?'
Their laughter was harsh; their tears shamed him. 'How can we go back? They have the weapons. We have nothing.'
'Where did you last see the cohort with the six crossed staves?'
They spoke of landmarks, streams, a burned Ilu temple, the sea.
'Rest you here while I talk to the wildings. Don't try to run away. If you run, you'll be killed.'
He batted at the leafy curtain with his walking staff, thinking of the green snake that had bitten the lad. When no snake twisted, he ducked through. Wildings blocked his way in the gully. Above, Brah and Sis swayed on branches, their grimaces of dismay easy to interpret.
One of the wildings, an older woman, gestured. Must kill. Forbidden.
'Listen to me, honored one.' He, who had never spoken up in his long and dreary childhood, was learning how to speak. 'They are not your enemy. They were forced to cross into the Wild. This war is your enemy. The Star of Life army is your enemy. The corrupt cloaks — the Guardians who walked under the Shadow Gate — are your enemy. Once they have burned villages and killed folk who respect the old ways, what is to stop them from pressing their attack into the Wild?'
Her hands spoke sharply. We kill humans when they come across the boundary.
'Maybe the first ones. But more will come. They will chop clown and burn the forest. They are already breaking the boundaries elsewhere, killing the gods-touched who you call demons. By killing these villagers, you act as the army's allies. You bring your own death.'
They talked with hoots and clicks, with hands shaping words
too swiftly for Shai to make out transitions, and with their bodies: a shoulder might rise or a hip jut, an elbow swing and a knee bend. Folk in a council meeting could not speak so fast and say so much merely with words.
The day was cool, but his face was hot, and sweat greased the lids of his eyes as he blinked away stinging tears. The sight of these pathetic refugees had triggered the most terrible memories from those weeks when he had struggled to keep alive a cadre of children held captive by a cruel cohort of the Star of Life army. If he closed his eyes, Yudit and Vali's suffering was all he could see; yet with eyes open, he saw misery everywhere else.
The wildings stilled, and the oldest female stepped forward. They go safe.
'Thank you,' he whispered, suddenly dizzy. Brah and Sis dropped out of the trees to shoulder him up so he could breathe.
You who see ghosts, where now do you go?
Among the Qin he had learned that in battle, adaptability is better than strength. As Tohon would say, strength can always be overcome, if you can find a way to do it. A man who can change course when needed has less chance of running into a wall. Think fast. Strike where there is an opening. Maybe he hadn't saved Anji from Hari, but he had other goals. His own fears and weaknesses were nothing against the promise of an act that could change everything.
''A dart, a dart in my eye,'' he murmured; the memory of Captain Beron's ghost — speaking words only Shai could hear — was as powerful as a shout. ' ' How it stings.''
He met each gaze, because the wildings respected the acknowledgment of the individual. 'Copper Hall on the Haya road is burned. Nessumara is beyond my reach. It's unlikely I can make contact with the reeves. But I have another task. I'll find this cohort flying a banner with six crossed staves and give myself up to them, because they will be looking for gods-touched outlanders. I'll find Zubaidit. There's one thing I need from you.'
