A camp was made at the end of each day’s journeying, a little aside from the track. Seel would bless our setting out on it each morning, one hand on the serpent amulet.
Around us, the wild jumbled land ran away from the mountains. There were water pools in plenty, and glades of dark thin trees, but otherwise the summer heat pressed on us and drank us dry. I lived on goat’s milk, and did not like it much. I brushed Tathra’s hair in the first cool of dusk, before Ettook came in to her from the big evening meal around the fire, drunk, greasy, and belching.
I slept my nights in the open, which did not matter greatly in such mild weather, and yet it was a symbol of my little worth. None of the warriors troubled me; it was a rule with them not to lie with a woman once she showed her womb filled, though I had not noticed Ettook daunted by this ruling where Tathra was concerned.
My breasts grew larger and uncomfortable with milk, and I began to have pains in my back, and at the base of my spine.
“What is the matter?” Kotta said to me. Perhaps I had made an audible protest at the pain, but I did not think so. I told her my trouble, and she asked Ettook for a mule. It must have been the old argument—one more male for the tribe—for the mule was mine, and I rode after Tathra from then on.
Seel did not come near me, and if he had cast his spell, I knew nothing of it.
It was a monotonous traveling, but dullness can be preferable to certain other things.
On the ninth day out on the road, near sunset, there was some agitation among the warriors up ahead.
We were passing through a narrow gully, where the track took up the path of a dried-out stream bed.
Rocks went up on either hand, trees leaning over us from roots clawed into the rock side, and swaying darkly on the tops like plumes on a metal helm. Above, among those trees, the warriors had seen some movement, it appeared, not animal in origin.
Once this news trickled back to the van of women and goats, weak panic broke out among both. An enemy tribe, planning to attack us from the gully roof? Yet there was no attack then. We reached higher ground, and night came.
They made camp in the shelter of other rocks, and piled rocks around the three open sides as an improvised stockade, and lit brushwood fires on the inside of this. In the red light, warriors stood sentry, and there was a look on their faces of taut pleasure. It was good to fight. A sign of virility in the tribes of the valleys to have taken many women, fathered many sons, but best of all, to have slain many men. The women huddled near the main fire, chattering nervously as if purposely overacting fear in order to make their men’s bravery the more obvious. I sat at my post, a little way from Ettook’s tent, sewing without interest or accuracy at a bit of cloth. The cloth, in other hands, might have become a carrying bag of sorts, but it was, for me, only an excuse for labor. They did not like women in the krarl to be idle; this way I seemed employed, yet truly was not. Grouped at the wall fires, Ettook and his elder warriors were drinking and laughing.
Abruptly, hoof sounds opened the night. Silence fell in the camp. At once a man’s figure, a horse shape, flying mane and hair showed, caught in the flame glare. Shouted words I could not grasp, an arm upraised, and something flung over the stockade of stones to bite deep in the soil. The rider turned again, mount rearing, and was gone, swift as he had come. Ettook ran to the thrown thing, pulled it up, and shook it—a pointed stave about four feet in length, tied with strips of scarlet wool, and ringed three times with white clay.
“War spear!” Ettook cried with a fierce joy in his voice.
Shouts went up. The warriors leaped and lifted their arms. The women came closer together—except for one, the tall daughter of the seer. She rose and went among the tents for her father, and was soon back with him.
Seel raised a bony hand, and clutched the one-eyed serpent with the other.
“War dance,” he called out, and the warriors cheered.
As if it were a signal, all the women got to their feet and ran into their various tents, all but Seel’s daughter and myself. They did not see me in the dark tent shadow. Seel’s daughter carried over her arm a black robe, which now she put on her father. Over it were embroideries of many colors, barbaric depictions of sun and moon, tree and mountain, sea and fire. He shook out the wide sleeves, folded his arms, and began to intone some ritual chant which had no meaning for me. The warriors drew back in a half-circle, and into the space between the seer and Ettook and his men slunk the girl, hair like one of the flame tongues all around her. She spat on the ground left and right, and made a sprinkling action around the half-circle with her fingers. Seel’s chant came to an end, and his daughter ran at once to Ettook, and Ettook clasped her to him. That she was the symbolic intermediary between man and the power of magic was clear, that she would now give herself to the chief was also clear. Perhaps sexual arousement was integral in their war frenzy. The warriors’ feet began to stamp as Ettook’s large and uncouth hands traveled the snake-writhing body of Seel’s daughter.
“No, not for you,” a voice said, Kotta’s voice, at my shoulder.
I got up. I had no real wish to see their blood-lusts rise in the fire-lurid dark. We went among the shadows to the tent, and slipped inside.
“Had they found you, girl,” she said to me, “it would be a beating or worse, perhaps. Even Seel’s daughter must hide her eyes in her father’s tent when they’ve done with her.”
“When will they fight?” I asked.
“Tomorrow. Daybreak. It is man’s work.”
I laughed. “I too have fought and killed, Kotta. It is the work of fools, not men.”
And then I sat very still, for a great truth had come to me out of my own mouth, as if another spoke it. I had indeed killed, not only with sword blade but with thought, also. I, in my hubris, slew and wounded, and because of it my Power had left me. It was quite obvious to me in that moment.
I bowed my head and whispered, “What have I done?”
Kotta said nothing. She took up my sewing and began to unpick it.
After a while I said, “I am blind also, Kotta of the tribe.” I did not care what I told her, whether she believed or not. A slow procession of words came from my mouth, in which Darak and Vazkor, Asren and Asutoo, Mazlek and Maggur, the Sirkunix and the War March were inextricably mixed. She could not have understood, but she recognized the need in me to speak. When I was still, she, too, was still.
We sat quiet for an hour or more in the dark tent, while outside their feet thudded among the red flicker, and they invoked their gods and the savagery within themselves.
After that time, I lay back on the rugs to sleep, and it was then she spoke to me, as if our conversation had had no break.
“Now I will tell you something. Kotta was born blind to the krarl—in the last years of Ettook’s father, it was. A blind one is no use, as a cripple boy is no use, for he cannot ride to war. In a way, a blind woman is worse, for she may bear blind children, so I might not go to a man—had any wanted Kotta, which none did. But I was let live, for I learned my chores quickly, and could do most things as well, or better, than the womenfolk with whole eyes. And I learned to tend the sick, and help the women bear, so I am useful among the tents. Now tell me, one of Eshkir, why do you say Kotta is blind?”