Waterborn

Ngangata nodded, and a stallion and a mare were brought up.

'The Giant has to go, too,' Perkar insisted.

'Is he alive?'

One of the Mang warriors knelt at Tsem's side. He spat something at Ngangata, who replied in the same tongue. Another steed was brought up, and three men wrestled Tsem up onto its back.

'They say he won't live out the night,' Ngangata explained. 'But they will bring him anyway, so that he can die on horseback.'

XII

The Song of Perkar

Tsem surprised everyone. He did live through the night, and a second, as they put leagues between themselves and Nhol. And, Hezhi reminded herself, the River. She felt a dull ache with each footstep of the horse, with each breath of the old Mang warrior she clung to. She was not certain what the cause of her pain was, whether it was the loss of Qey and Ghan and everything she knew or whether it was the thing in her crying out for its father, for her to awaken it again. During the third day, when they had to tie her to the saddle to keep her from leaping off and running back toward Nhol, it seemed certain to be the latter.

Midmorning that day, the company stopped and dismounted near a tree—an unremarkable cottonwood, gnarled and ancient, roots feeding in a meager wash. The desert stretched out and away from them, a pitted and striated landscape of rust and yellow sand.

'What are they doing?' she asked the old man—Brother Horse, he was named.

'Offering to the god of the tree,' he explained.

'The what?'

The men began burning bundles of grass; one placed a little bowl of something amongst the questing white roots of the tree.

'This is the first one—or the last, depending on which direction you're going,' Brother Horse explained. 'The god on the borderland, the edge of the empire of Nhol.'

'The edge of the River's hunger, then,' Perkar said from nearby on his own horse.

Brother Horse chuckled. 'Not the edge of his hunger, but the edge of his reach. From here on the desert lives again.'

'Then I shall offer, too,' Perkar said. He smiled at Hezhi, seemed happy. Dismounting, he joined the other men. She felt only a terrible anxiety, as if some unthinkable thing were about to occur.

When they remounted, rode past the tree, an appalling, wrenching pain pushed her violently into oblivion.

When she awoke—not sure how much later—the pain was still fading, like the sting from a hard slap. She felt for her scale. It was still there, still itching faintly.

'Ah,' Brother Horse said when he felt her stir. 'Let me have a look at you.' He called a halt, dismounted, reached leathery brown hands to help her down. Her feet felt light and sensitive on the hot sand.

'Yes, yes,' Brother Horse said, smiling at her and mussing her hair.

'What? Yes, what?'

'Well, you see, child, I can see gods—always been able to. When I first saw you I said 'Now, that girl has something in her.' I could see it in there, you understand?'

She nodded. As she could see her father, when he called the Riverghosts, perhaps.

'Well, it's still there, but it's gone quiet. Can you feel that?'

She felt a faint tickle of joy, despite herself. 'Yes,' she said, 'I think I can.'

'Good. Come on now, cheer up. The River has lost his grip on you, too, and your friend may live yet!' Hezhi actually felt herself grin.

'Back up!' Brother Horse ordered, boosting her up onto the beast's back. When he was mounted, too, he gave a great shout, one that frightened her and delighted her at the same time. The animal beneath her surged, and she was reminded of Tsem carrying her. Yet this was different, a rushing thing that she had not understood or appreciated during their midnight ride out of Nhol. The landscape raced by, the horse a half-tamed thunderbolt beneath her. She did not shriek herself, but she almost did, and felt a brief, almost terrible shining joy, somehow more solid and real than the joy of a goddess. She thought of the little statue, the horse-woman, and was her, proud, fierce. Free.

 

 

'Now tell me,' Perkar insisted, days later. A pair of boys and a girl laughed nearby, chased a wooden hoop across the red sand of the village square. Sparks swept up from the fire, twining up an invisible tree of wind to join the darkening sky. A cool dry breeze padded down from the mesa, breathed across them promises of autumn, coursed on east.

Perkar, Brother Horse, Ngangata, and a Mang warrior named Yuu'han gathered about the fire in what Brother Horse named a Wheel of Words. Hezhi sat outside of the circle as Brother Horse's eldest daughter, Duk, plaited up what little hair Qey had left her.

'Tell,' Perkar repeated. 'I don't believe that you just happened upon me.'

'Why not?' Ngangata asked. 'Isn't that the lot of a hero's friend?'

'Riding to the rescue? That sounds more like the hero to me,' Perkar rejoined. ''The Song of Ngangata.' I like the sound of that.'

'No songs about me, please,' Ngangata said.

'Well,' Brother Horse told them, 'you can sing a song about me, then.'

Perkar looked at both men in exasperation. Brother Horse grinned, took a drink of cactus beer, and finally relented.

'Your friend here was frantic when he discovered you gone, don't ask me why. He insisted that we follow you. I refused, of course—I am an old man, much too old to ride out against Nholish cavalry.'

'To be sure,' Perkar muttered sarcastically. 'Much too old to ride circles around them, widdershins and back.'

Brother Horse glowered at Perkar. 'How long did you beg me to tell you this story?'

'My apologies, ancient one,' Perkar said. 'Please continue.'

Brother Horse nodded with apparent satisfaction. 'I did agree to take Ngangata—at great risk to my own life— as far as a village I knew of, there to bargain with my great-nieces and nephews and other assorted kin for a horse to ride to Nhol. A half day's ride, a day walking. I guessed that the Woodpecker Goddess would not notice me in such a short time.'

He grinned, showing his yellowed, broken teeth to best advantage, quaffed another mouthful of beer. 'Well, of course, halfway there—just past Lies-in-a-Square Rock—there came a whirlwind and a sound of feathers, and my old heart stopped dead in my chest. I was beginning a dignified defense of my actions…'

'He was on his knees, begging,' Ngangata clarified.

'Dignified defense of my actions,' Brother Horse repeated with a wicked glance aside to the Alwa-Man, 'when I realized that the god standing before me was not Nuchunuh but a black god, feathered, yes, but not a woodpecker. It was Raven, I knew that right away.

''Lord Raven,' said I, 'to what do I owe my great fortune?' And he said, 'No doubt you define 'fortune' differently than I do,' and he stared at me with those yellow eyes of his.'

'Karak? Karak came to you?'

Ngangata nodded, while Brother Horse patiently drank some more beer.

'I'll shorten this up,' Brother Horse said, 'because I can smell supper nearly ready. Raven-god told me he had been watching us all, from afar, because it pleased him to do so. He said that I should assist Ngangata in reaching Nhol, since he had foreseen that we would be needed. In turn, I explained my infirmities…'

'He asked Karak what was in it for him,' Ngangata elucidated.

'I explained my infirmities,' Brother Horse continued stubbornly. 'When I was done, Raven asked me how infirm I might become if someone were to alert Nuchunuh that I was wandering about unprotected. I didn't like the