The Blackgod

talking with animation about something with a warrior near his own age. Hezhi noticed, however, that his eyes wandered the camp, fastening more than occasionally on the yekt.

“Is he trying to keep us in or keep someone else out?” she wondered, and Tsem's brow ridges bunched deeper. He did not repeat his earlier question, but Hezhi explained her meeting with Moss and Chuuzek. She skirted around the issue of why she had run off into the desert in the first place; she did not want to talk about that until she understood more. Tsem seemed content enough with that; after all, he had spent countless hours in Nhol following her at a discreet distance when she sought privacy by wandering the labyrinthine ways of the abandoned and ancient sections of the palace.

“I wonder what this means, this war?” Tsem asked.

“I don't know. I think that at the least, it means Perkar and Ngangata will receive a poor welcome when they return.”

“But what does that mean to us? To you?”

“I hope Brother Horse will tell us when he returns.” She paused. “I think Brother Horse believes me to be in some sort of danger.”

“That seems obvious,” Tsem replied. “But what sort of danger? What would these Mang want with you?”

Hezhi spread her hands to acknowledge her ignorance.

Tsem sighed. “I understood things in the palace. There I could protect you. Here … here I know nothing. We should leave this place, Princess.”

“And go where? There is nowhere we will understand better. And of course we cannot go back to Nhol.”

“Another city perhaps. Lhe, Hui…”

“Those are very far away, Tsem. How would we get there, just you and I? And when we got there, what would we do? They would not accept me as royalty there. We would have to live in their Southtowns.”

“Where do you say, then?”

Hezhi thought about that for a moment. “Here may be as good a place as any. Or…”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps with Perkar's people.”

Tsem grimaced at that. “His people are no better than these. Barbarians.”

“Well, then,” Hezhi grunted, dismissing the whole question with the back of her hand.

“You once said we might seek out my mother's people,” Tsem put in, unwilling to let the matter drop.

“Yes, I did, didn't I?” Hezhi said. “But where do they live? How would we find them? The two of us cannot travel alone. Can you build a fire, or kill game, or set a snare? I can't.” She looked up at Tsem squarely. “Back then, Tsem, it seemed as if the whole world was open to us. Now I see things in a different light.” She hesitated for just an instant before going on. “Yet there is something I can do, something to give us some choice, I think.”

“That being?” Tsem grunted, rolling his massive head back on his shoulders.

“Brother Horse says I have a gift for sorcery. It is the only thing I have, it seems.”

“You have me, Princess.”

Hezhi softened her voice and patted the Giant's arm. “And never doubt how much I value that, Tsem. You are my only true friend. But here, in this place, value is counted in terms of kin, and we have none. It is counted in horses, and we have none. It is counted in yekts and war honors and hunting trophies, and we have none. Nor are we likely to acquire any of those things.”

The Giant nodded ruefully. “Yes, I can see that.”

“But they also reckon worth in power, and that, perhaps, I have.”

“Witchery is dangerous, Princess.”

“Yes. Yes, but it is the only thing I have to make a place for us. And if we are ever to go where we will, we must have people willing to help us. We must have some way to pay them.”

“Or coerce them.”

“Yes,” Hezhi admitted softly. “I thought of that, too.”

THE village was not as Perkar and Ngangata had left it: it had bled out over the plain, filled it with color and life, horses pounding around makeshift racetracks, riotous noise. It was wild, barbaric, exciting—and not altogether unfamiliar. It had the quality of a homecoming or a hay gathering, though it was bigger, brighter, and more boisterous.

Where he and Ngangata rode, however, faces pinched tight in suspicion, even faces they knew, and by that Perkar understood that the news of the war had already come to Brother Horse's village. How could it not, with clans from the entire Mang world attending?

“It might have been best not to come here at all,” Ngangata gritted from the corner of his mouth.

“We have no choice,” Perkar muttered back, wondering how many warriors he and Harka could take before all of his heart-strands were severed. His sword made him much more powerful than mortal, but it did not make him invincible; the Blackgod had made that more than clear to him.

“If they attack me, I won't have you fighting with me. The war between their people and mine is not your concern.”

Ngangata shot him a scathing, raw look. “You may have forgotten this, Cattle-Man, but though I have no kin or clan amongst your people, it was still there that I was raised, and it was to your king that I swore my allegiance. Your people never gave me much, but what I got you will not take from me.”

Perkar stared for a moment, then nodded, blushing. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Feel free to die with me, then.”

“Thank you.”

It was almost as if that agreement were a signal for a handful of riders to rush up to them, shrieking. Perkar snarled and snatched for Harka.

“They are not attacking Harka said. “Not yet. Keep me ready. ”

Perkar eased his breath out then, and the riders parted around him, shouting, brandishing axes and thick curved swords. Perkar knew none of these, but like the riders at the stream, they had their war plumes on. Each wore a Human skin as a cloak, the empty arms and hands flapping like the wings of spirits.

He and Ngangata sat their horses as the riders circled them, enduring the Mang curses. At last, one of them parted out and brought his stallion stamping and gasping to relative stillness. He was a young man, thickly muscular.

“You!” he shouted at Perkar. “Cattle-Man. We will fight.”

Perkar avoided the man's eyes: meeting them squarely was considered an affront by the Mang. Instead he gazed up at the sky, as if wondering where the clouds were. “I have no wish to fight you, man,” he replied.

“We are here on the invitation of Brother Horse,” Ngangata added. “We are not here to fight.”

“I am not speaking to you, Brush-Man,” the warrior said. “And I do not care whose protection you are under.”

“It's true,” Perkar heard someone say. “They were hunting with us in the high country.” A few others echoed the sentiment.

“Hunting in the high country. Is that where he got my cousin, there?” He jabbed his thick fingers toward Sharp Tiger, and Perkar realized that if things could get worse, they had. They were Mang. Of course they would recognize the horse and wonder where its rider was.

Perkar was spared having to answer when a second man rode up beside the first. He was quite young, and his eyes were a peculiar color for a Mang—almost green. “Be still, Chuuzek. Brother Horse told us of these two.”

“Someone get Brother Horse,” someone else called from the side. “Bring him here quickly!” Perkar did not turn to see who it was, but thought he recognized Huu'leg, with whom he had hunted and shared beer.

“As I said,” Perkar repeated, “I have no desire to fight.”

The man who had been called Chuuzek glared at him. The crowd seemed split on the matter of their fighting; Perkar could hear many urging Chuuzek on, but others were as loudly proclaiming that such a breach of hospitality could not be tolerated. “What is your quarrel with me?”

“You are the pale man and the Brush-Man. You began this war,” Chuuzek proclaimed loudly, matter-of- factly.

Perkar could only stare, openmouthed. It was Ngangata who answered the charge. “Who told you this?”

“The gaan. The prophetG