“Well done, fool. Speaking without thinking: continue with it, you’ll rise to sentek like a star crossing the heavens …”
Heldo-Bah rushes to catch his friends, and contrition enters the young soldier’s face; he has enough pride of rank left, however, to call, “But you can’t go there — we’ve surrounded it, they’ll not let you near!”
Heldo-Bah, the added weight of Keera’s bag scarcely slowing him, bellows back, “We’ll just brave that risk!” as he moves on, through the sealed, ghostly huts, and into the shadow world of the woodland morning.
The northeastern is in many ways the most important of the Bane settlements, for it has always been the belief of the Groba that, should the Tall ever determine the location of Okot, they will enter by way of this less direct approach. And so, for several years, the residents of the settlement have been witness to the construction of a stout palisade just beyond the outer limit of their several rings of huts: the Groba’s attempt, in pursuit of the Lunar Sisterhood’s vision, to offer at least the appearance of a defense. But Okot as a whole is too vast and ill-arranged a community for even its tireless builders to enclose it in one palisade; and so, half a mile to either side of the large gate in the wall that guards the northeastern route into the central square of the town, the fortification simply stops. It has ever been the ambition of the Groba Elders to continue its construction, but both the builders and the current commanders of the Bane army are hard-pressed to see the reason for any more of a show than has already been constructed — and they are confident that the palisade would be but a show, should the Tall army ever arrive in force with their engines of war.
Keera reaches the westernmost end of the palisade, covering the mile’s distance from the lime-sealed healers’ huts in mere moments. But here she hesitates: the upper flames of the enormous pillar of fire ahead are already visible. Her anxious pause allows Veloc and Heldo-Bah to catch her up, and Veloc lays hold of her right wrist.
“Sister,” he says, himself filled with anxiousness. “I beg you, let us go in first. If nothing else, let Heldo-Bah go. He knows how to manage these boys that the Groba calls soldiers, and he knows Ashkatar† well—”
“Although I’m not entirely sure how much help that will be,” Heldo-Bah murmurs, making sure that Keera does not hear.
“—and he can prevent any more confrontations that eat up precious time,” Veloc goes on, giving Heldo-Bah a warning glance. “He can ensure that we get news without delay. Correct, Heldo-Bah?”
“Of course,” Heldo-Bah answers, his gentler tone reflecting a change in his heart. “Keera — I will. I pledge it.”
Keera had thought to be the first to the flames; all through the run from the river, she had become ever more determined to confront whoever has control of the disastrous state of affairs. But now, faced with the sight of fire scorching the leaves of the forest ceiling—
For the first time in their lives, her brother sees her lose heart. This cannot be happening, says her visage; and yet it is …
Keera clasps her hands before her face. “But I—” She searches the morning sky for the Moon, the deity who, it seems to her, hides in shame behind the western trees. “But I was ever faithful!” she cries, and correctly: she has always been among the most devout of Bane women, outside of the Lunar Sisterhood, and yet now she watches the flames consuming the home that she made in accordance with the tenets of her faith, and in which she taught her children to be similarly devout …
Veloc looks to Heldo-Bah, as he puts his arms around his sister. “I will bring her presently,” he says to his friend. “Go, and learn what you can.”
Heldo-Bah nods, dropping his own foraging sack, along with Keera’s, and heads off down the palisade; although his own trepidation makes him approach the scene of evident destruction at half-speed. Even this is fast enough, however, to cause the first soldiers to become visible just as he comes within sight of the burning huts themselves.
At the approach of two pallins (and why, in the Moon’s name, Heldo-Bah asks silently, did they feel it necessary to adopt the ranks and organization of the accursèd army of Broken?), Heldo-Bah hears a crack, and sees that groups of soldiers are felling unburned trees to create a cordon of emptiness around the conflagration and prevent its spread: for, despite the moistness of a spring morning in the green wilderness, fire as hot as this is strong enough to spread through any woodland.
“Stay back, forager!” one of the pallins coming along the palisade calls out with authority, trying, like all the Bane army, to keep some semblance of order and prevent such torturous bewilderment as Keera is now experiencing from becoming fully fledged panic throughout Okot. Nevertheless, the unpleasant familiarity of being spoken down to causes Heldo-Bah to reach, imperceptibly, for his knives. He can see that the soldiers are covered in sweat and ash, and that their bodies are burnt, in several spots fairly badly.
“We act on the orders of the Groba!” a second pallin shouts.
Ready to let his knives fly at any moment, Heldo-Bah asks the soldiers: “And what makes you think I’m a forager, you scaly little snakes?” (It is a popular taunt: Bane soldiers are mocked, even by children, for the resemblance of their armor to the scales of a snake.)
“Don’t test us,” the second soldier says. “The only members of the tribe still returning to Okot are foragers — you’re the last of them, I expect. And while you’ve been running home, we’ve been tending to the welfare of the tribe.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Heldo-Bah replies, smiling. “Burning down homes, a most imaginative method.” He nods toward the huts. “What’s become of those who lived here?”
“Why do you ask?” answers the second soldier, who, though young, is meaty enough to think that he might give this forager a good thrashing — even though he has apparently seen the filed teeth in the newcomer’s mouth. “I know who you are, Heldo-Bah, and you’ve certainly never lived here.”
Heldo-Bah nods, and even laughs once. “Which only shows what an infant warrior you are, for all your scaly skin. Answer my question.”
“Most are dead,” says the first soldier evenly. “Those who have survived are in the Lenthess-steyn, being cared for by the healers.”
“Have you kept some kind of record of who has died?” Heldo-Bah asks. “Or would that be too inglorious an activity for young heroes?”
A third voice joins the fray, coming from the direction of the men felling trees; a booming, commanding voice, full of a self-assurance that, unlike the younger men’s, bespeaks hard years of experience:
“There was no time for lists, Heldo-Bah,” the voice says. “The plague kills too quickly — and it spreads even faster …”
Approaching the forager is a formidable Bane. He is clearly older than Heldo-Bah, his muscles are yet ponderous and tough: not chiseled like an athlete’s, but built thick by the vigorous demands of battle. His black beard is inseparable from his bushy, unkempt hair, yet, unlike the younger soldiers, he wears a fine suit of genuine chain mail, and a knee-length tunic bearing the device of a panther charging through the horns of a crescent Moon. In his right hand, he holds a thick leather whip; and at the sight of both man and whip, Heldo-Bah smiles, but not wickedly; then a hint of genuine affection makes its way into his voice: