She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve nursed a lot of men — no need for shyness.’
‘Humour me.’
Tsking, she took his weight so that he could limp off a few steps.
‘Good,’ he said, his voice taut. ‘Thank you.’
‘Fine. Call if you fall down.’ She walked away.
‘I most certainly will.’ He unlaced the front of his pants and eased his bladder. How embarrassing that when you were wounded you couldn’t even get up to see to the most basic of things. He resolved not to be wounded again.
Slowly, very slowly, he tottered back to camp. Lyan came and took his arm. ‘I should lie down,’ he gasped. He’d broken into a cold sweat. She eased him back down.
‘I will call for their healers,’ he heard her say as through a roaring waterfall.
When he next awoke he felt much better. The stabbing pain was gone from his side. It was late afternoon. Dorrin dozed in the shade nearby. ‘Hey, lad. How are you?’
Dorrin jerked awake, sat up. ‘I’ll get Lyan.’ And he ran off.
After a moment Lyan jogged up, wearing only a sweat-soaked shift and trousers, her sheathed sword in one hand. ‘You are awake.’
‘Yes. What happened?’
Her face grew serious. ‘A needle of obsidian was left behind in your side. It was digging in, slicing you up. They found it and drew it out. The old lady used her teeth for that, by the way.’
‘I’ll have to thank her.’
‘Better?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ She cleared her throat, then motioned to his throat. ‘That necklace you wear. A remembrance, perhaps? From a girl?’
He raised a hand to touch the smooth amber stone at his neck. ‘From a friend. He was of the Thel Akai. An ancient race. Giants, some name them. You have heard of them?’
‘You mean a Toblakai? We know them in the north.’
‘Related.’
‘Ah.’
‘What were you doing?’
Lyan peered down at herself, jerked. ‘Oh, yes. Practising.’
He nodded. ‘Good.’ He thought the view from down here looking up at her was wonderful and she seemed to see something of this in his expression.
She gave him a sour face. ‘Rest. I’m not done.’ She walked off.
He eased back, then frowned; he smelled something disagreeable. He realized it was him: he smelled to the heights of stale sweat and urine — and worse. He must have had a touch of fever. Of course: Lyan’s taking care of me and I stink like a pig.
Yet he was too weak to get up to wash himself. For now. He shut his eyes. Great Wind he was hungry.
At dawn the next morning he decided to try to get up. With Lyan’s help, he managed. She’d fashioned a kind of crutch from one of the poles of the travois and with this he hobbled off into the tallest grasses to squat for his toilet. This took a great deal of time, and by time he’d managed to straighten he was sheathed in sweat from the effort of bending down. But he was standing. He hobbled back to camp.
That day he limped about, regathering his strength. In the afternoon Dorrin came running up, pointing to the south. ‘Look! Look what’s coming!’
Kyle squinted, shading his gaze. Up a slight valley between two gentle rises came one of the Silent People leading three horses. Kyle stared, amazed. Gods. Horses! Rare as pearls on this continent. Where’d they come from? What were the Silent People doing with them?
The one leading the horses was the old man from the challenge. He nodded to Kyle. ‘You are recovered.’
‘Getting better.’
‘Good.’ He gestured proudly back to the horses. ‘You can ride, can you?’
‘Yes.’ He looked to Dorrin. The lad nodded vigorous assent. ‘Yes we can.’
‘Good. We Silent People do not. These are yours, then.’
‘Ah, may I ask … how did these come into your possession?’
The old man was untroubled by the question. ‘Foreigners bring them from their houses that float. They land them and try to ride through our lands — but they still do not escape our blades.’
Kyle blew out a breath. ‘I see. Well … we thank you for the gifts. They will aid us greatly.’
‘Very good. Fare well, then. Remember us to the ancients. Prove your worth and bring honour to us all.’
Kyle inclined his head. ‘I will try. Fare well.’
The old man walked away. Lyan already had a hand on the neck of the biggest of the three, a broad roan. ‘That one’s mine,’ Kyle called.
‘No she ain’t. I’m heavier than you in my armour, so she’s mine.’
Kyle just shook his head. He wasn’t about to argue with her over that subject.
* * *
Aiken was out hunting birds when he saw the smoky ochre cloud to the south. A storm, but one unlike any he’d seen before. He shouldered his bow and ran for the village.
When he arrived many of the elders were already out peering to the south. They were quiet, and to Aiken they appeared strangely troubled by a mere storm. He found his mother standing before their hide and pole hut. ‘A storm!’ he announced, excited. He’d always enjoyed storms: the lighting and thunder of gods battling overhead.
‘I see, little grub,’ she answered distractedly, her gaze still to the south. ‘Get inside.’
‘But Mama!’ She clenched his arm and thrust him within. ‘Mama!’
A warband ran past the hut, led by Hroth Far-seer. They ran with their knives in their hands.
‘Who is it?’ he asked, now wondering if perhaps he should be afraid.
‘Stay within,’ his mother barked. She pulled her blades from her belt, and ran.
A rumbling and crackling reached him, as of thunder, and a dark wall burst over the hut obscuring almost all the light. Dust washed within, choking him. Of course! A dust-storm! He’d seen one of these before. But what was there to fear? Save the animals wandering lost?
Footfalls sounded all about, sifting and thumping. He heard the crack and grating of weapons clashing, gasped breaths, hisses of pain, and the grunt of mortal blows taken. He stared out of the opening, now an ochre curtain of shifting and gusting dust. Blurred shapes ran past, wrestled, duelled.
He recognized the outline of his own, and was chilled by the hoary shapes they battled: cloaked in wind-blown rags, skeleton thin, some bearing armour of animal bones.
The demons of his people’s legends. The demons of dust. Come for them at last, as their oldest myths warned.
Then he screamed as a shape darkened the doorway. His mother burst within. Her head was bloodied, her hide trousers slit at the leg, streaming blood. She scanned the hut, her eyes wild, found him, took his arm and thrust him amid piled hides and blankets.
Tears streamed down her face. ‘Quiet, love,’ she croaked, hoarse.
‘Mama — what …?’
‘Quiet now as a woodlouse, yes?’
She pressed her hand over his face, left behind a smear of warm blood, pulled the hides over his head.
Through a gap in the layered hides he watched her feet as she crossed to the doorway. From her stance he could see she was crouched, blades ready. The feet shifted, scuffing. He heard blades clash and scrape, heard his mother growl and gasp. The feet shifted anew, weakly. Blood came running down one leg. Something hissed through the air and his mother’s feet tilted and she fell.
New feet entered the hut. Inhuman. Earth-brown bone and sinew in tatters of thick leather hide. The skins were yanked aside and he stared up at a demon face of bone, dark empty sockets, and naked amber teeth. Riding atop the head of patchy hair was another skull of some sort of gigantic horned beast.
‘This one?’ the demon asked someone outside.
‘Nay — the scent is too thin. Come, they are fleeing.’
This demon thrust him back into the hides, stalked from the hut, was swallowed by the swirling dust. Aiken crawled to his mother. She lay staring sightlessly skyward, thrust through the chest. He rested his head upon her breast, and weeping, gently closed her staring eyes.