“Ashkatar,” he says, nodding. “I’d have thought to find you at the Den of Stone,” he continues, mentioning the cave at the center of Okot that is the meeting place of the Groba.
“Yantek Ashkatar,” the impressive Bane replies, reflecting the same trace of comradeship with his own slight smile, and a pleasant narrowing of his dark eyes. “I see your manners are no better than ever, Heldo-Bah.”
“And I see you’re still playing at soldiers with the children,” Heldo-Bah says, angering the larger of the two pallins; but the man called Ashkatar holds a hand up, and indicates the burning huts.
“All right, men,” he says. “Back to your posts. I’ll attend to this fellow.”
The two soldiers reluctantly move along the line of the palisade toward the flames. Yantek Ashkatar looks into the distance over Heldo-Bah’s shoulder. “You three are the last home,” he says. “You could not have been close. I assume that Keera and Veloc are with you?”
“Yes. And we want word of Keera’s family.”
“I wish I had it for you,” Ashkatar sighs. “There simply wasn’t time. We’ve already burned the dead — are burning them still, in pyres downriver. But as to just who’s been burned — I honestly don’t know …”
There are not many in the Bane community for whom Heldo-Bah has any use, fewer still among those that command the tribe; but one of those is Ashkatar, and the respect is rooted, characteristically, in a shared experience of conflict against the Tall. The incident took place when they fought side by side among many other Bane warriors to prevent Broken soldiers from crossing the Cat’s Paw and advancing into Davon Wood, an attempt that was the result of the particularly bloody murder of a group of Tall children by several Outragers. Those killings had been a reprisal for the beating of a Bane trading party inside the city of Broken by a group of drunken merchants; a beating that Heldo-Bah and Veloc had witnessed, just as they had witnessed, from a helpless distance, the singularly disproportionate Outrager attack on the children. The two foragers had raced back to Okot, choosing a shorter route than the Outragers knew of and arriving to tell the Groba the truth of the situation before the Outragers had an opportunity to lie about it. Although Veloc played his part in the subsequent effort by the young Bane army to hold the Tall soldiers at the Cat’s Paw, it was Heldo-Bah who approached Ashkatar with a solution: after a bloody night, during which Ashkatar’s men learned more than one way to kill Tall soldiers without being seen, the officers commanding the Broken force were greeted at dawn by the sight of the three guilty Outragers’ heads, placed on spears and smuggled into the Tall camp.
Notes were left with the heads, saying that these were in fact the men responsible for the children’s deaths, and that the Bane would consider the matter closed if the Tall did likewise; and so a battle that might have gone on for months was cut short by the tenacity of the Bane commander and the imagination of the tribe’s most despised forager. In the years since, Ashkatar and Heldo-Bah have often crossed paths; and it is Ashkatar who frequently defends the forager against attempts by the High Priestess and her knights to run Heldo-Bah out of the tribe altogether; and that is why, when the two meet, it is as if they were only slightly estranged brothers.…
Ashkatar cracks his six-foot whip, producing a sound as lethal as the snapping of the falling trees nearby. “Damn the Tall … If they want us dead, why don’t they face us? Instead, they spread this vile pestilence …”
“You think the Tall responsible?” asks Heldo-Bah.
Ashkatar lifts his mailed shoulders. “There are some peculiar reports, from other foraging parties — you’ll have to compare whatever you’ve seen against them.” The Bane yantek looks beyond Heldo-Bah once again, this time nodding a greeting. “Ah. Veloc — Keera. Good. The Groba is anxious to see all three of you.”
Keera has begun to collect her wits, in the manner of those who have been expecting, for longer than their spirits can bear, to hear dreaded news: unsteadily, but using the ordinary duties of daily life as an anchor. She carries her own sack, while Veloc has the other two hoisted onto his shoulders. As Heldo-Bah takes his, Keera speaks:
“Yantek,” she asks quietly. “Have you heard of my family?”
“We haven’t been able to keep careful records, Keera,” Ashkatar answers, true gentleness in his voice. “Or records of any kind.” He approaches to take her sack onto one of his own shoulders, and then, tucking his whip into his belt, puts his free arm around her; clearly, Keera finds the press of his weighty limb comforting. “Some survived — but the disease simply kills too quickly to allow us to take note of just who. And it continues spreading, even after the host is dead. We had no choice but to burn the bodies. Those who were exposed but are not yet ill, have been taken to one chamber of the Lenthess-steyn—many of the healers lived, thank the Moon, and are attempting to determine why some, like themselves, are unaffected, but others die. The ill are in the uppermost chamber, receiving what care can be given — which is very little. And in the deepest chambers, more healers have been picking at the dead for two days, to know where the plague strikes in the body — the mechanism of how it kills.” The yantek stares into Keera’s face intently. “More have died than have lived, Keera.”
At this, Keera gasps. “May I — go and look for them?”
Ashkatar considers the matter. “Will you not let the healers try to find them? You are our finest tracker, Keera. If I’m any judge, we will need you, in the hours to come. The Groba has asked for you, as I say, specifically.”
Keera has been shaking her head from almost the instant Ashkatar began to speak. “I cannot — I cannot meet with the Groba and speak of this as a ‘problem.’ I must find them, I must know, ere I go mad with the fear of it …” She thinks to bury her face in her hands; but she will not break yet; certainly not in front of the commander of the Bane army.
“Then you enter the Lenthess at your own peril,” Ashkatar replies, nodding. “Should you display signs of illness, you will be kept there. It’s all we can do. Come — Veloc, Heldo-Bah, you as well. We go to the square.” The four walk past the soldiers who are hard at work with axes. “Linnet!” Ashkatar bellows.
An unusually tall Bane (unusually tall, that is, for a Bane who is not also an Outrager) turns: he has stripped to his waist, and his powerful muscles glisten in the heat of the blaze. “Yantek?”
“Assume command, here. I must take these foragers to the Groba. You have your orders.”
“Yes, Yantek — although the fire grows hellish hot, and spreads too fast. If we cannot contain it—”
“I’ve told you already, Linnet — if you cannot contain it, then direct it. Toward the northern huts. They have been sealed, and want only pitch and oil to draw the flame. See to it.”
“Aye, Yantek. The Moon’s blessing go with you,” the younger man says. He glimpses Keera’s horrified face. “The Moon’s blessing, lady …”
Keera nods in confusion, leaving Ashkatar to say, “And with you — may it go with all of us, now …”
Ashkatar leads the way through the forest tangle, emerging on the main path into the village far enough downhill that the group does not run the risk of being struck by those burning tree limbs that, when they become fiery embers, break off and hurtle toward the Earth in dangerously large pieces, which burst apart on the forest floor. The flames rising from the twenty-odd huts have now joined, some forty feet above, to form one massive column of flame which seems to be pulled upward — as if some deity is sucking the life from Okot, and especially the northeastern settlement; some capricious, cruel god, Keera cannot help but continue to think, until a more pragmatic fact occurs to her: