fire scorching the leaves of the forest ceiling—
For the first time in their lives, her brother sees her lose heart. This cannot be happening, says her visage;
Keera clasps her hands before her face. “But I—” She searches the morning sky for the Moon, the deity who, it seems to her, hides in shame behind the western trees.
Veloc looks to Heldo-Bah, as he puts his arms around his sister. “I will bring her presently,” he says to his friend. “Go, and learn what you can.”
Heldo-Bah nods, dropping his own foraging sack, along with Keera’s, and heads off down the palisade; although his own trepidation makes him approach the scene of evident destruction at half-speed. Even this is fast enough, however, to cause the first soldiers to become visible just as he comes within sight of the burning huts themselves.
At the approach of two pallins (and why, in the Moon’s name, Heldo-Bah asks silently, did they feel it necessary to adopt the ranks and organization of the accursed army of Broken?), Heldo-Bah hears a crack, and sees that groups of soldiers are felling unburned trees to create a cordon of emptiness around the conflagration and prevent its spread: for, despite the moistness of a spring morning in the green wilderness, fire as hot as this is strong enough to spread through any woodland.
“Stay back, forager!” one of the pallins coming along the palisade calls out with authority, trying, like all the Bane army, to keep some semblance of order and prevent such torturous bewilderment as Keera is now experiencing from becoming fully fledged panic throughout Okot. Nevertheless, the unpleasant familiarity of being spoken down to causes Heldo-Bah to reach, imperceptibly, for his knives. He can see that the soldiers are covered in sweat and ash, and that their bodies are burnt, in several spots fairly badly.
“We act on the orders of the Groba!” a second pallin shouts.
Ready to let his knives fly at any moment, Heldo-Bah asks the soldiers: “And what makes you think I’m a forager, you scaly little snakes?” (It is a popular taunt: Bane soldiers are mocked, even by children, for the resemblance of their armor to the scales of a snake.)
“Don’t test us,” the second soldier says. “The only members of the tribe still returning to Okot are foragers — you’re the last of them, I expect. And while you’ve been running home, we’ve been tending to the welfare of the tribe.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Heldo-Bah replies, smiling. “Burning down homes, a most imaginative method.” He nods toward the huts. “What’s become of those who lived here?”
“Why do you ask?” answers the second soldier, who, though young, is meaty enough to think that he might give this forager a good thrashing — even though he has apparently seen the filed teeth in the newcomer’s mouth. “I know who you are, Heldo-Bah, and you’ve certainly never lived here.”
Heldo-Bah nods, and even laughs once. “Which only shows what an infant warrior you are, for all your scaly skin. Answer my question.”
“Most are dead,” says the first soldier evenly. “Those who have survived are in the
“Have you kept some kind of record of who has died?” Heldo-Bah asks. “Or would that be too inglorious an activity for young heroes?”
A third voice joins the fray, coming from the direction of the men felling trees; a booming, commanding voice, full of a self-assurance that, unlike the younger men’s, bespeaks hard years of experience:
“There was no time for lists, Heldo-Bah,” the voice says. “The plague kills too quickly — and it spreads even faster …”
Approaching the forager is a formidable Bane. He is clearly older than Heldo-Bah, his muscles are yet ponderous and tough: not chiseled like an athlete’s, but built thick by the vigorous demands of battle. His black beard is inseparable from his bushy, unkempt hair, yet, unlike the younger soldiers, he wears a fine suit of genuine chain mail, and a knee-length tunic bearing the device of a panther charging through the horns of a crescent Moon. In his right hand, he holds a thick leather whip; and at the sight of both man and whip, Heldo-Bah smiles, but not wickedly; then a hint of genuine affection makes its way into his voice:
“Ashkatar,” he says, nodding. “I’d have thought to find you at the Den of Stone,” he continues, mentioning the cave at the center of Okot that is the meeting place of the Groba.
“
“And I see you’re still playing at soldiers with the children,” Heldo-Bah says, angering the larger of the two pallins; but the man called Ashkatar holds a hand up, and indicates the burning huts.
“All right, men,” he says. “Back to your posts. I’ll attend to this fellow.”
The two soldiers reluctantly move along the line of the palisade toward the flames. Yantek Ashkatar looks into the distance over Heldo-Bah’s shoulder. “You three are the last home,” he says. “You could not have been close. I assume that Keera and Veloc are with you?”
“Yes. And we want word of Keera’s family.”
“I wish I had it for you,” Ashkatar sighs. “There simply wasn’t time. We’ve already burned the dead — are burning them still, in pyres downriver. But as to just who’s been burned — I honestly don’t know …”
There are not many in the Bane community for whom Heldo-Bah has any use, fewer still among those that command the tribe; but one of those is Ashkatar, and the respect is rooted, characteristically, in a shared experience of conflict against the Tall. The incident took place when they fought side by side among many other Bane warriors to prevent Broken soldiers from crossing the Cat’s Paw and advancing into Davon Wood, an attempt that was the result of the particularly bloody murder of a group of Tall children by several Outragers. Those killings had been a reprisal for the beating of a Bane trading party inside the city of Broken by a group of drunken merchants; a beating that Heldo-Bah and Veloc had witnessed, just as they had witnessed, from a helpless distance, the singularly disproportionate Outrager attack on the children. The two foragers had raced back to Okot, choosing a shorter route than the Outragers knew of and arriving to tell the Groba the truth of the situation before the Outragers had an opportunity to lie about it. Although Veloc played his part in the subsequent effort by the young Bane army to hold the Tall soldiers at the Cat’s Paw, it was Heldo-Bah who approached Ashkatar with a solution: after a bloody night, during which Ashkatar’s men learned more than one way to kill Tall soldiers without being seen, the officers commanding the Broken force were greeted at dawn by the sight of the three guilty Outragers’ heads, placed on spears and smuggled into the Tall camp.
Notes were left with the heads, saying that these were in fact the men responsible for the children’s deaths, and that the Bane would consider the matter closed if the Tall did likewise; and so a battle that might have gone on for months was cut short by the tenacity of the Bane commander and the imagination of the tribe’s most despised forager. In the years since, Ashkatar and Heldo-Bah have often crossed paths; and it is Ashkatar who frequently defends the forager against attempts by the High Priestess and her knights to run Heldo-Bah out of the tribe altogether; and that is why, when the two meet, it is as if they were only slightly estranged brothers.…
Ashkatar cracks his six-foot whip, producing a sound as lethal as the snapping of the falling trees nearby. “Damn the Tall … If they want us dead, why don’t they face us? Instead, they spread this vile pestilence …”
“You think the Tall responsible?” asks Heldo-Bah.
Ashkatar lifts his mailed shoulders. “There are some peculiar reports, from other foraging parties — you’ll have to compare whatever you’ve seen against them.” The Bane yantek looks beyond Heldo-Bah once again, this time nodding a greeting. “Ah. Veloc — Keera. Good. The Groba is anxious to see all three of you.”
Keera has begun to collect her wits, in the manner of those who have been expecting, for longer than their spirits can bear, to hear dreaded news: unsteadily, but using the ordinary duties of daily life as an anchor. She carries her own sack, while Veloc has the other two hoisted onto his shoulders. As Heldo-Bah takes his, Keera speaks:
“Yantek,” she asks quietly. “Have you heard of my family?”
“We haven’t been able to keep careful records, Keera,” Ashkatar answers, true gentleness in his voice. “Or records of