But the yadahl did not inspire Luterin Shokerandit to sing. He moved apart from his companions from Kharnabhar, his thoughts dwelling on his fair captive. Though she had been married, he doubted if she was as old as he, despite her assured manner; the women of the Savage Continent married young.
He longed to possess her. And yet his parents had committed him to many in Kharnabhar. Why should that make a difference to what he did here, in the wilds of Chalce? His friends would laugh at his scruples.
His memories returned to the night before the Sibornalese army had left the frontier town of Koriantura to head south. His contingent had been given leave. His friend Umat had tried to persuade him to come on the rampage, but no, he had hung back like a fool.
While the rest of them had gone drinking and whoring, Luterin had walked the cobbled streets alone. He had entered a deuteroscopist’s shop, set in a square next to an old theatre.
The deuteroscopist had shown him many curious things, including a small object like a bracelet, said to come from another world, and a tapeworm in a jar one hundred inches long, which the deuteroscopist had charmed from the entrails of a lady of quality (by using a small silver flute which he was prepared to sell at a price).
‘Have I the courage for battle?’ Luterin had asked the diviner.
Whereupon the old man had become busy on Luterin’s skull with calipers and other measuring devices before saying finally, ‘You are either a saint or a sinner, young master.’
‘That was not my question. My question was, am I hero or coward?’
‘It’s the same question. It needs courage to be a saint.’
‘And none to be a sinner?’ He thought of how he had not dared to join his friends.
Much nodding of the hairy old head. ‘That needs courage too. Everything needs courage. Even that tapeworm needed courage. Would you care to pass your life imprisoned in someone’s entrails? Even the entrails of a beautiful lady? If I told you that such a fate lay in your future, would you be happy?’
Impatient with his procrastination, Luterin said, ‘Are you going to give me an answer to my question?’
‘You will answer it yourself very soon. All I will say is that you will display great courage…’
‘But?’
A smile that pleaded forgiveness. ‘Because of your nature, young man. You will find yourself both sinner and saint. You will be a hero, but I think I see that you will behave like a scoundrel.’
He had recalled that conversation — and the tapeworm — all the way down to Isturiacha. Now he had become a hero, could he dare to be a scoundrel?
As he sat there, drinking but not singing, Umat Esikananzi grabbed him by the boot and pulled him forcibly nearer the fire.
‘Don’t be glum, old lad. We’re still alive, we’ve played the hero — you especially — and soon we’ll be back home.’ Umat had a big puddingy face rather like his father’s, but it beamed now. ‘The world’s a horribly empty place; that’s why we’re singing — to fill it up with noise. But you’ve got other things on your mind.’
‘Umat, your voice is the most melodious I ever heard, including a vulture’s, but I’m going to sleep.’
Umat waved an admonitory finger. ‘Ah, I thought as much. That fair captive of yours! Give her hell from me. And I promise not to tell Insil.’
He kicked Umat on the shin, ‘How Insil had the rotten luck to get a brother like you I’ll never know.’
Taking another swig of yadahl, Umat said cheerfully, ‘She’s a girl, is Insil. Come to think of it, she might be grateful to me if I took you by the scruff of your neck and made you get a bit of practice in.’
The whole group roared with laughter.
Shokerandit staggered to his feet and bid them good night. With an effort, he made for his own pitch, close by a cart. Despite the stars overhead, it seemed very dark. There was no aurora in these latitudes as there so often was in Kharnabhar.
Clutching his canteen, he half fell against the bulk of his yelk, which was staked to the ground by the tether burnt through its left ear. He went down on his knees and crawled to where the woman was.
Toress Lahl lay curled up small, hands grasping her knees. She stared up at him without speaking. Her face was pale in the obscurity. Her eyes reflected minutely the litter of stars in the sky above them.
He caught hold of her upper arm and thrust the canteen at her.
‘Drink some yadahl.’
Mutely she shook her head, a small decisive movement.
He clouted her over the side of the head and thrust the leather bottle in her face. ‘Drink this, you bitch, I said. It’ll put heart in you.’
Again the shake of head, but he took her arm and twisted it till she cried out. Then she grasped the canteen and took a swallow of the fiery liquor.
‘It’s good for you. Drink more.’
She coughed and spluttered over it, so that her spittle lighted on his cheek. Shokerandit kissed her forcibly on the lips.
‘Have mercy, I beg you. You are not a barbarian.’ She spoke Sibish well enough, but with a heavy accent, not unpleasant to his ear.
‘You are my prisoner, woman. No fine airs from you. Whoever you were, you are mine now, part of my victory. Even the Archpriest would do with you as I intend, were he in my boots…’ He gulped at the liquid himself, heaved a sigh, slumped heavily beside her.
She lay tense; then, sensing his inertia, spoke. When not crying out, Toress Lahl had a voice with a low liquid quality, as if there were a small brook at the back of her throat. She said, ‘That elder who came to you this afternoon. He saw himself going into slavery, as I see myself. What did you mean when you said to him that your Archpriest gave the only judgement possible?’
Shokerandit lay silent, struggling with his drunken self, struggling with the question, struggling with his impulse to strike the girl for so blatantly trying to turn the channel of his desires. In that silence, up from his consciousness rose an awareness darker than his wish to violate her, the awareness of an immutable fate. He threw down more liquor and the awareness rose closer.
He rolled over, the better to force his words on her.
‘Judgement, you say, woman? Judgement is delivered by the Azoiaxic, or else by the Oligarch — not by some biwacking holy man who would see his own troops bleed to serve his ends.’ He pointed to his friends carousing by the camp fire. ‘See those buffoons there? Like me, they come from Shivenink, a good part of the round globe away. It’s two hundred miles just to the frontiers of Uskutoshk. Lumbered with all our equipment, with the necessity for foraging for food, we cannot cover more than ten miles a day. How do you think we feed our stomachs in this season, madam?’
He shook her till her teeth rattled and she clung to him, saying in terror, ‘You feed, don’t you? I see your wagons carry supplies and your animals can graze, can’t they?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, we just feed, do we? On what, exactly? How many people do you think we have spread across the face of this land? The answer is something like ten thousand humans and ahumans, together with seven thousand yelk and whatever, including cavalry mounts. Each of those men needs two pounds of bread a day, with an extra one pound of other provisions, including a ration of yadahl. That adds up to thirteen and a half tons every day.
‘You can starve men. Our stomachs are hollow. But you must feed animals or they sicken. A yelk needs twenty pounds of fodder every day; which for seven thousand head comes to sixty-two odd tons a day. That makes some seventy-five tons to be carried or procured, but we can only transport nine tons…’