Safca took out the stub of candle the guards had permitted and kindled it. Then taking up one of the empty lamps, she lit it in turn.
Men roused all about.
Even as the race of excitement, uninformed and random, spread over them, a Karmian came from behind a pillar, one last enemy she had not reckoned on. There was of course mixed blood in Kesarh’s army, though not many blond men at Olm. This one was, which made things seem worse.
“What’re you doing?” He caught her arm.
Safca, half blind with fear, raised her veil and smiled. She put her free hand to her hair, loosening it from its pins.
“The lordly captain sent me to spice your night.”
Her voice shook so it was a wonder he heard it. She shrank, even in this extremity, lest he should think her too unappetizing to be of use, but he grunted and began to pull her back behind the pillar.
“All right. But why light the lamp, brainless mare?”
He was already busy pawing her groin when she brought herself to do what she had known she must, and ran her hairpin in through his ear. The noises he made were muffled but hideous. They did not continue long. It was a fighter’s gambit she had heard Yalef mention, years ago.
Once the man fell, Safca fell beside him and vomited, trying to expel the heart from her body.
When she came to herself, one of the Lannic recruits was holding her head. She struggled away, and he said, “Lady, we saw. Did the guardian send you to such debasement, to play whore to our jail? Don’t fret. One of us’ll say we did it to him.” And there came a dull mutter of agreement. She looked up, her veil clutched to her mouth, and saw thirty or so men grouped around. “They’re only sending us to feed Free Zakoris,” said the Lan. “Better to die here.” Across his shoulders she saw the tail ends of whip marks and realized why he was too feverish to sleep, and too resentful to want life.
Safca got to her feet with help from the pillar. When they handed her water, she drank it.
“There’s no need,” she said, “to die.” They stared at her warily, knowing before she could tell them, the way the desperate sometimes will, that she was a messenger of reprieve. “If you’ve the courage, you can take the Karmians unaware and slaughter them.”
“But, lady, rid ourselves of these, and others will come. We’d be hounded, taken. And our families killed without mercy.”
“There’s one place they can’t hound us to,” she said. They waited. “The Zor.”
There was a great stillness.
A merchant’s son said to her, “The trek up there is hard. Impossible. How many would survive the journey? And what’s at the end? Ruins. The cold months are coming. We’d perish. We’d lose everything.”
“You’ve already lost everything,” she said, startling herself with her own crispness. “Kesarh Am Karmiss took it. Let’s attempt freedom. Or would you rather end in battle—battle with Leopard Zakoris, or with Dorthar, or any other land black Kesarh thinks he can engage?”
The growling noise came again, stronger.
The man drunk with fever said, “She’s risked her life to tell us this.”
Safca said, slowly, her voice gone deeper, thrilling herself, and them: “I had a vision. The goddess Anack instructed me to do this.”
In that moment she had them. She saw herself surrounded by men, some of whom were young and noble, and their faces were full of light that had come from her. She had never before caused any man to look at her in this way.
The jailer was already dead and someone took his sword. Minutes after, Safca’s frenzied screams brought the guards from above to unbolt the door, and she had the dubious joy of seeing them cut down.
Untrammeled, Lans swarmed through the stone house. There were sword racks farther up. They slew every Karmian they found, and later, spilling in the street, slew others. In the house across the way the Karmian soldiery had got wind of violence and put up barricades. Even as external Lans were beating these flat, the Lans inside, catching also the scent of what was happening, perhaps even by some sort of telepathy, took the invaders from the rear.
So it must have been in the Lowlands, Safca thought, the night about her full of running flames, cries and shouts. But before even the curiosity of this idea, which compared Lans to the Amanackire, could unnerve her, she was picked up bodily and carried by blood-stained men into the marketplace amid the torches. Someone was ringing the curfew bell. All about, Olm was gushing forth into the night.
When the Karmian command came from the palace they were murdered to a man.
High on an upturned cart, then, Safca must address the horde of people, their frightened faces, or the victorious faces of those who had already torn free.
What must I say?
But she already knew. She held out her hands to them and was unbearably moved by the night, the fires, the depth of what had sprung from her.
“Anackire,” she said, and there rose a peculiar sighing sob from the heart of the crowd. “Anackire has come to us, as she came long ago, and to all those who are oppressed. Anackire is in the mountains, the black-haired serpent goddess of Lan.”
Within five days they were ready, and traveling. Provisions and persons had come from some of Olm’s villages around about, villages that had seemed deserted and bare since the advent of Karmiss. Most of Olm moved toward the mountains. They even had a Zorish girl, a snake dancer, to act as their guide.
Those who would not go with them they left behind with token injuries, so the Karmians who came later might hold them blameless. The guardian was one of these. Even as the riot of townspeople evacuated Olm, he was scribbling dispatches, left-handed, for Kesarh’s High Command at Amlan, the other arm in a sling. He had begged the Lan with the sword to slice deep. Now the wound was festering nicely. No one would be able to blame the guardian.
The roads that led into the foothills were gentle. The rain held off at first. The Free Lans came on late flowers and wove garlands, and sometimes sang as they moved toward the Zor.
The rain, that was not necessarily Lannic gratitude, was coming down again when the Vardish caravan made camp in the hills. A cold wind was blowing, too; summer ending, with the world.
There had been trouble at Olm, they had been informed of it earlier. Just before sunset, a detachment of Karmian soldiery went clattering by, riding in that direction. The caravan took heed and crossed Olm from its inventory of stops.
It was a wretched night.
Huddled in one quarter of a wagon with their curtailed belongings, Yannul sat watching Medaci make beautiful beadwork with a slender bone needle. Their younger son was down at the fires under the awning, dicing with a Vardian boy.
Suddenly there was fresh clatter and noise. Three riders erupted into the wagon camp, dramatically fire-lit through the lines of rain.
Yannul thought for a moment they were Karmian pursuers, and his hand went to his knife. Then a man’s voice roared out:
“We mean no harm. I bring word to any Lan who may be here.”
There were no Lans that he could see, but undeterred, the spokesman shouted again: “The word is this—one part of Lan stays free. Any who would join Free Lan, come a mile east, to the rock with four trees. We’ll wait there one hour. A caution. Those who seek us seek in friendship. This”—and the man whipped out a sword, cleaving water—“waits for the tirr of Karmiss, or for any traitor.”