The Blackgod

of the men and horses who stood dismounted in the valley, awaiting his command.

“But you, my friend, may call me Moss.”

XXX The Roadmark

PERKAR drew a sharp breath and stiffened when Harka suddenly hailed.

“What?”

“Fifteen men at least in the rocks ahead, ” the weapon replied.

“Within earshot?” he whispered.

“Shouring, I would think. ”

“Mang?”

“How should I know? I only know they haven't certainly decided to attack you. They are waiting for someone or perhaps guarding something. ”

Perkar noticed Hezhi staring at him. He flashed her a little smile.

“Just pretend we're talking about something innocuous,” he said softly.

“I thought we were,” Hezhi answered, recalling the conversation Harka had interrupted, about the merits of red cattle as opposed to brown ones.

“There are warriors up ahead of us.”

“They weren't there last night,” she assured him.

“Well, now they are. Ngangata, do you hear all of this?”

“Yes. I say we go back the way we came.”

“Too late for that,” Perkar said. “They surely know we're here. When I give the word, all of you bolt for the cover of those trees. I don't think we're in line-of-sight for bows yet, anyway—”

“You aren't going to fight them all by yourself,” Hezhi hissed.

Perkar smiled weakly and reached over to touch her hand. “I don't intend to fight them at all, unless I have no choice. These are most likely my people, considering where we are. But in times of war, rash, unplanned things can happen. If they shoot too hastily at one of you, it might kill you. If they make the same mistake with me …”

He said this with confidence he certainly did not feel. They rode in a gorge so narrow that only the merest sliver of sky lay above them. Would he heal if a boulder were pushed onto him? What if his legs were broken by some snare and they simply hacked him to pieces?

“If they make the same mistake with me,” he went on, “the results won't be as dire. If they attack me, you can all feel free to come to my aid, though some of you should stay back to protect Hezhi.”

“I'm not helpless,” she reminded him, not quite sharply but with considerable insistence.

Since their time alone on the peak five days before, the two of them had gotten along well. Very well, in fact. And so he answered that with a little smile, leaning close, so that only she could easily hear him. “Is that the only stupid thing I've said lately?”

“More or less,” she replied. “In the last few days, at least.”

“Then you should be proud of me.”

“Oh, I am. And be careful.”

He nodded assurance of that, then looked over his shoulder at the others in time to catch Ngangata rolling his eyes.

“What?” he called back at the half man.

“They could decide to come this way at any moment. You two had better save your courting for some other time.”

Perkar clamped his mouth on an indignant protest and dismounted. Trying not to think about what he was doing, he strode forward. The others clopped quickly into the trees.

Despite his efforts, he felt as if he were walking through quicksand. Only the gentle pressure of his friends' surely watchful gazes kept the appearance of confidence and spring in his step.

Fifty paces he went before a rock clattered nearby. He slowed up.

“I've come to talk, not to fight,” he shouted.

A pause then, and he heard some whispering in the rocks above and to his right.

“Name yourself,” someone shouted—in his own language.

“I am Perkar of the Clan Barku,” he returned.

More scrambling then, and suddenly a stocky, auburn-haired man emerged from the fallen pile of rubble that leaned against the cliff face.

“Well, then, you've got some explaining to do, for you ought to be a ghost, from what I hear.” He shook his nearly round head, and it opened into a broad grin. ”Instead you've turned Mang, it seems.”

“You have the advantage on me,” Perkar answered. “Do I know you?”

“No, but I've heard tell of you. My name is Morama, of the Clan Kwereshkan.”

Perkar lifted his brows in amazement. “My mother's clan.”

“Indeed, if you are who you say you are. And even if you aren't—” He shrugged. “—you are certainly a Cattle Person, despite those clothes, so we will welcome you.”

“I have companions,” Perkar said.

“Them, too, then.”

“Two of them are Mang; the others are from farther off still.”

To his surprise, the man nodded easily. “If you are Perkar—and I believe you to be—then we were told to expect that. You have my word and Piraku that they will not be harmed unless they attack us first.”

“I'll bring your promise back to them, then.” He started to go but suddenly understood the full import of the man's remarks.

“What do you mean, you were ‘told to expect that’? Who told you?”

“My lord. He said to tell you, lama roadmark.' ” Perkar did turn back then, a faint chill troubling his spine. Karak.

HEZHI lifted her small shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I'm not sure what I pictured,” she told Perkar. “Something like this. It looks very nice.”

Perkar chewed his lip. She knew he was probably trying to suppress a scowl with a show of good humor. “I know it isn't your palace in Nhol. But it has to be better than a Mang yekt.” He said this last low enough that Brother Horse and Yuu'han wouldn't hear; the two warriors were nervously walking about the bare dirt of the compound.

“That is certainly true,” Hezhi said. “I'm anxious to see the inside.”

“That will be soon enough,” Perkar told her, dismounting. “Here comes the lord.”

The “lord” was a rough-seeming man, tall almost to the point of being gangly, dark-haired, and as fair-skinned as Perkar. Nothing in the way he dressed signified his station to Hezhi, but she reminded herself that these were strange people with strange ways.

Perkar's people. It was the weirdest thing to see so many men—and women—who looked like him. Though she had always understood that somewhere there were whole villages and towns full of his tribe, she had always imagined that Perkar himself was somehow extreme, the strangest of even his kind. The Mang, after all, were the only other foreign people she had met, and aside from their odd dress, they much resembled the people she had grown up among. Unconsciously, she had thought of Perkar as she thought of Tsem and Ngangata—as another singular aberration.

These implicit notions of hers now vanished. Amongst the people of this damakuta she saw hair the light brown of Perkar's and some as black as her own. But two people had hair the same shocking white color as Ngangata's, and another had strands of what looked to be spun copper growing from his scalp. Eyes could be blue, green, or even amber in the case of the “lord” and two others she noted.

The damakuta—well, Perkar was right; she was disappointed. When he spoke of it in Nholish, he called it a “hall.” And so she had imagined something like a hall, or a court, like the ones in the palace. But this damakuta—first of all, it was wooden. For a wooden structure it was undoubtedly grand, and it certainly had a primitive charm with its peaked roof, hand-hewn shingles, and weirdly carved posts. To be fair, she realized that Perkar had described all of this—her mind had merely translated it into her own conceptions.