I shook my head in frustration. “I didn’t attack all four of the raid… I mean Paikans. The stories are wrong.”
“Of course they are. They’re always wrong. Stories are for the listener, Tana. And it is what the listener makes of them that truly matters. The men who saw you attack the Paikans, they told us they found their courage. If one woman could attack four horsemen, then they could do the same. For two days and two nights they plotted, and then finally… attacked!”
I couldn’t believe what I heard. But it had to be true, didn’t it? Or I wouldn’t be here. “And they succeeded?”
“They killed three of the Paikans and took their gold, their weapons, and their horses. Then one of them rode back to find you, where you were deep in the clutches of bramble sleep.”
“How long,” I asked. Jal waved a hand at me and ignored the question.
“When I saw them outside Mimastiva, they had you on a travois pulled behind a horse. They wanted to ride to Paika as fast as they could, so they gave me gold and a captive Paikan horseman. We will ransom him back to Paika for good coin.”
Up ahead the aurochs plodded forward. The wagon groaned and creaked along.
“How long have I slept?” I asked again, fearing the worst.
“Three weeks, I think. Maybe a month. It could have been far, far worse. You are lucky to be alive.”
I rubbed my arms. Would it be possible to find my family then, after a month? Or would they be scattered to even stranger lands? I bit my lip and looked at Jal. “The stories I have heard say the caravan is an expensive place to ride. Wherever I am, you can’t carry any goods for trade, right? What are you asking for the price of my passage?”
I asked that, while fearing the worse.
“I’m not after your body,” Jal muttered. “The coin and the prisoner your inspired friends gave me is enough. Or we would have left you asleep by the side of the road weeks ago. But you are right: no one in the caravan lies around. Well, unless they’re in a bramble sleep. I will move you to another wagon, and you will work. Everyone in the caravan helps the caravan. That is our way.”
I was relieved. “In Lesser Khaim I…”
Jal held up a hand to stop me. “Our needs are different than a town’s. I don’t care what you used to do. The caravan is a new life for you, until we reach Paika. Anezka says we need cooks in the lagging wagons to the rear. Or firewood scroungers. We need hagglers and movers with the trading teams, inventory managers to make sure nothing is being stolen…”
Now it was my time to interrupt. I thought about my fight with the raiders, and about the future I was reaching for. I was in a strange new land, and as Jal said, starting a new life.
I pointed at the wagon ahead of the fire crew. “Those men, with the arquebuses. Let me join them. I want to learn how to use those weapons. In Khaim there are just a handful of those old weapons, left over from the lords that once vacationed there, before the fall of Jhandpara. And here you have a team armed with them, it is very impressive.”
Jal made a face. “Impressive? The magisters of Jhandpara would call down rocks from the skies and fly over their enemies to rain fire on them. That was impressive. These things are just loud tubes.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, no, I suppose you are right. The arquebus would be an interesting weapon for a lady…” and I could see the word ‘executioner’ lurk behind his lips, but then falter as I stared coolly at him. “Tana, to wield,” he finished saying.
I looked at the road curving off into my future, filled with ruts and ropes of bramble. “Jal. The caravan goes all the way to Paika, then back to Mimastiva. You trade with them?”
“Of course. I am a man of trade,” the Roadmaster said. “I work with anyone willing to pay a fair price for my goods, and leave me to the spice road. But my allegiance is to no one city. Most of us abandon such loyalties after years on the road, as cities rise and fall, come and go. Many of the families on the caravan have always been in the caravan, and will never rest until they reach the halls of Sisinak, if Borzai wills it and your life’s trades have been judged honest. It is only there they will rest in the oasis markets, where the goods are never scarce, and the gold in your purse refills every night.” Jal chuckled.
“So you are no friend of the… Paikans.” I still had to hunt to use the right word. They had always just been known as ‘raiders’ to us in the north.
“I am no one’s friend, I am a trader,” Jal said. “If you doubt me, go see the Paikan chained away in our wagon. He will remain there until we get to Paika, and I negotiate a good price for his freedom.”
“I may well do that,” I said.
Jal raised his hands and clapped them together. “So. You want to use an arquebus. I will humor you. Bojdan!
Come here.”
One of the warriors looked back at us, set his arquebus down, then swung over the shields to drop to the road. He waited for the Roadmaster’s wagon to approach, then climbed easily up onto the deck and walked up to us. “Yes?”
He was tall, with curled hair and a thick mustache. A massive scimitar hung on his left hip.
“This is Tana, the lady executioner. She will work with you to protect the caravan.”
Bojdan looked me up, then down. “She is a woman,” he said.
“Your powers of observation are astounding, Bojdan. It’s a damned shame you aren’t in charge of accounts, or haggling. Yes, she’s a woman, it is plain for you and me to see. She is the woman who took on four Paikan soldiers by herself. Can you say the same?”
Again Bojdan regarded me. “Whatever you want, Roadmaster.”
“You’re correct, Bojdan. It is whatever I want. Take her back to a wagon with space to sleep, and teach her what she needs to know. And get out of my sight, by all the damned halls, get out of my sight.”
Bojdan smiled. This was banter for them, the bluster that men exchanged. He turned around. “Let’s go, Tana.”
Jal cleared his throat. “Oh, and tell Anezka that Tana will not be joining them at the rear of the caravan to help out. She will be disappointed, I’m sure, but she is a capable manager, and will carry on.”
I looked back at Jal. “Thank you.”
“Good luck…” and he seemed to think about something, then smiled and said, “Executioness.”
I shook my head and went back to fetch my things.
When Bojdan saw the axe, with the black stains in the handle, he nodded.
The muscular warrior and I stood, our backs to scrub, rock, and bramble, and waited for the caravan to pass us by.
“Do you know anything about the raiders?” I asked.
“The Paikans? Dogs. All of them,” Bojdan spat.
I liked the large man better for the reaction. “They took my family.”
“They all but own the coast and more ever north. Ask Jal sometime, he’ll piss himself complaining about the extortions they rip from him to ‘allow’ him to keep trafficking the spice road.”
“They burned Lesser Khaim,” I told him. “And my home.”
“They have reached that far north? They call what they do the Culling. They believe it is their holy duty. You’re lucky to live: they go after young women and children. Eliminate the breed cows, they say.”
I stared at him. “How do you know all this?”
“Their preachers are all over Mimastiva, these days,” Bojdan said. “Things will get worse in the East, now.”
“Why do they do it?” I asked. What bizarre blasphemy did they preach?
“They blame us for the bramble,” Bojdan said, and pointed at a small wagon with a single auroch pulling it. “The surviving Paikan of the four you faced is in that wagon…”
I cut him off. “I keep saying, I didn’t face all four of them. It was just one, and he knocked me to the ground easily. They hobbled me and left me.”
Bojdan nodded as we watched the wagon pass. For a moment, I thought about swinging aboard, and using my axe to kill the man inside. But Bojdan saw the thought crossing my face, and he smiled. “Don’t think about sneaking off in the night to come and kill him. Jal will know it was you, and you wouldn’t want to experience his anger if he were to lose his ransom.”