Then the zeebas wheeled. The men were gone, leaving the Vardians to yell.
Yannul’s younger son was running toward the wagon from the fire.
Yannul said, “That was a Karmian sword. Karmian mail he had on, too.”
“What is it?” Medaci said.
“I don’t know. A small uprising. Olm, maybe.”
She looked at him, her lovely eyes all flames and rain.
“Go then,” she said. “See.”
Their telepathy was erratic and always surprised him. He kissed her, left her to explain to their son, and went to get a mount.
He followed the three Lans so close they paused for him a quarter mile from the camp, swords out, frowning.
Riding up to them, he thought, with a kind of dull laughter, This is Raldnor’s time all over again.
“Halt. Who are you?”
“My name’s Yannul. I’m a Lan, like you.”
“Yannul.”
They looked at each other. One said, “He would be the right age. His hair’s long. They say he wears it that way. But he’s in Dorthar.”
Another said, “Don’t be a fool. Of course it’s him. I saw his son at Zastis, in Olm. Talked to him. This is Yannul.”
They got around to asking Yannul, then.
“Yes,” he said, “I fought with Raldnor son of Rehdon.” They sat tense as drums and stared at him through the river-running night. “Now,” Yannul said, “what’s your story?”
After a while, they crowded under an overhang. He heard it better there, what had happened at Olm, and about the princess who was a priestess, to whom Anackire had sent a dream. They were going to the Zor. The main party were up in the foothills. But Olmish riders were still going about the villages, stirring others to follow.
Something of their vehemence struck tinder in Yannul; then it died. They were already entreating him to add the weight of his figurehead to their enterprise when he felt himself step inwardly away. I’m past all this. Heroes and miracles. I want the south, and security for her and the boy, and quiet.
“And your woman,” one said, “your wife—she’s Amanackire.”
He said something, afterward he could not remember what, but it sobered them down. He explained he wished them well. He said he was going to the Middle Lands.
One of them muttered, “Raldanash’ll need him. The Black Leopard of Free Zakoris one side, the bloody Salamander the other.”
There were some soaked awkward courtesies.
Not long after, he rode away, back to the Vardian wagons.
Medaci was seated under the awning now, by the fire, with their younger son, whose dark eyes shone. Yannul shook his head at them. Sitting down, he told softly what he had learned, what he thought of it. No Vardians came up to pry. Traders, they were inquisitive but also uneager to know too much of anything. Vardath’s main force was elsewhere too, after all.
“There are scarcely a thousand of them, mostly women and children, I’d surmise. If the snows come early, and they do up there in the mountains, they’ll die. More dignified than death for Karmiss, perhaps. Still death.”
“But Yannul,” Medaci said. “Yannul, Yannul.”
“What?”
“Your country,” she said.
“My country’s all this, not a sad little rebellion herding up a rock.”
“Your country,” she said again. “It’s everything you are. It’s almost your soul, Yannul.”
“Oh, yes. That’s why I left it. That’s why I fought with Raldnor for your people, when mine wouldn’t raise a sword.”
“And like your soul,” she said, “it was a part of you, wherever you went, or fought.”
“Then it’ll be with me in the Plains. Or Xarabiss. Or wherever.”
“No,” she said. “The day the curfew sounded at Amlan, you held me. You said, Lan is Lan no more.”
Yannul looked away. His eyes were full of tears and he chided himself.
“But the heart of Lan stays free,” she said. Something in her way of speaking made him gaze back at her. “We have no country,” she said. “The Amanackire, the Lowlanders, we are a race, but the land is Vis—we have no growing root, no physical soul but the vagrant spirit of our people and the star of the goddess.” He waited almost breathless. She had never spoken like this before in all the years he had been with her, lain with her, seen her carry and bear his sons, loved her. “But you made my people your people, Yannul. You made me your sister and your wife. And your land became my land. Yannul,” she said, it was only a whisper now, “the Zor, Free Lan, the mountains. Let’s go with them.”
She looked a girl again, no older than that day he first saw her in Dakan’s house. He was still gazing at her dumbfounded when their son said, “If Anackire called them. She won’t let them die. Can’t you see that, father?”
“Yes,” Yannul said vaguely, “I suppose I can.”
They traveled through the ashes of the night and all the next day. Yannul mastered the tracks and by-ways up into the higher foothills, which would take zeebas, and which must be taken on foot and the zeebas led. He had never come this way himself, but, a wanderer in his youth, he had been educated and not forgotten.
They had kept from their baggage only what was highly valuable or incorrigibly sentimental, paring down from the other paring down at the villa. The rest they sold for non-perishable foodstuffs. A group of the Vardians began to evince signs of wanting to accompany them, but had been dissuaded by their fellows. Farewells were coupled with good wishes. Ashkar go with you! some had called. Having acquired the tongue of the other continent while he was there, Yannul had spoken all along to the caravan in its own language, for which they respected him.
On the second night they ran into the three Lannic riders who had come to the wagon camp. They had now a bivouac of their own in a tall cave. There were five or six village men too, and seven women, and a quarrelsome pig. Everyone but the pig welcomed them heartily, without explanations.
They moved off before sunrise. The rain and storm winds, though making their own path treacherous, would help deter hunters. Apparently the Karmians were out on the lower hills, searching.
The guardian of Olm had been stripped of his drawers in the marketplace and given four blows with a rod. It had not done him good.
The first mountain flank, blue-gray, the hide of some primeval petrified beast, stretched dauntingly before them. Beyond, other mountains rose, a wall against the air.
There would be a pass, old as the hills themselves, partially choked by boulder-slips. Higher yet, there was an almost legendary way, carved hundreds of feet by nature, leveled by men. It was possible to get in and out of the Zor. The Zorians did so themselves, if seldom, peddlers, magicians, snake dancers, snakes.
They struggled all day, men, women, and zeebas, to climb that initial flank. The pig struggled not to climb it. At last, lamenting, the seven village women let it free. It cantered away, burping with rage, in a torrent of sliding stones.
They got over the flank in the sunset. The rain had paused. The sun descended blazing and red at their backs, laving the mountains before them.
After the sun had gone, pieces of it were seen to have remained, trapped in cracks and on spurs above.
They had reached the lower pass, and found the sprawling camp of Free Lan.
Safca started, nervous and defiant, meeting Yannul the hero. Even a momentary unworthy jealousy had filled her, for she had been both the mascot and the commander until now. They fury at herself—to be so petty. She seemed two persons, always at odds. But at least she was teaching herself how to have dialogue with her other self, to reason with it and tell it to be quiet.