Though Jegrai had his own tent, he had neither wife nor sister to tend it for him. Though Aravay had her own tent, which had been his father's, she found time to tend to his. The arrangement worked well, for she could bring him the scouting reports—if they were less than urgent—with his dinner.
So she had tonight. The light from the lantern hanging from the centerpole cast a gentle glow that made her seem as ageless as a Wind Lord. She handed him the covered bowl of thin stew she had brought from her fire, and knelt beside him while he ate.
"The wizards are of a surety aiding land-folk over the pass," Aravay said softly. "So all the scouts say."
Jegrai flexed his aching shoulders and leaned back against the tentpole. He had ridden out with a raiding party, but what they had brought back with them was firewood; a singularly awkward prey to carry. "These land-folk either will or will not return; it is of no consequence. If we do settle here, our own folk will make up for those who flee. How do the folk care for this new camp?"
"They do not like the mountain at our back, but the pasturage and good water make up for it," his mother replied. "My son, you are worried. Have you learned something which troubles you?"
"Aye," he brooded for a moment, then concluded that Aravay might as well know the worst. "We can go no further. It is as I feared. Beyond the western pass lies a land that is well ruled, and strong. It is called Yazkirn, and governed by princes. They have ignored our presence because they care not overmuch for these lands; they are hard to reach and tax, and besides, contain the wizards. But—should we force our way over the pass, it would be up with us. They would come to the defense of their land, and crush us. If they even think we have become a threat, they will come to us, and I think we would have no chance."
The fire in the fire-pot flared, and Aravay's eyes showed her alarm, though nothing else did. "How came you to learn this?" she asked, cautiously.
"That merchant we let pass. I questioned him myself; promised him no despoiling in return for truth." Jegrai sighed. "I have some skill at reading men, I think. He told truth. We are in the cooking pot. . . ."
"Unless we can gain the favor of the wizards."
"Aye." He bit his lip, and told her what he would tell no other living soul. "They frighten me, Mother—and they fascinate me. They can call the lightning, for every prisoner we have taken has tales of it, tales so unlikely I think they can only be true. They have used it—imagine this, Mother—to gain metals, and to level great rock outcroppings, and to change the lay of the land about their fortress! And if they can call lightning to do that for them, it should be the work of a single thought to use it to start a fire in the grasslands where we cannot escape it."
Only once in Jegrai's memory had the Vredai been caught in a grass fire. They had lost a third of the herds, and many lives, and there were men and women among those left who still bore the ugly keloid scars from it. It had been in the first year of the drought, and the memory still gave him nightmares when storms passed overhead.
"The stories I hear say they are very wise," his mother replied thoughtfully, her hands busy with plaiting a new riding quirt. "And that they do nothing without good reason. And that they are no friends to the kings over the mountains."
Jegrai sat straight up. "That is something I had not heard!" he exclaimed.
His mother looked up and smiled at him. "The kings over the mountains drove them here, or so it is said," she told him serenely. "And wizard or no, I have never yet seen the man who does not thirst for revenge."
"So-ho. A reason to ally to us. Their magic—and our -warriors . . ." Jegrai fell silent, considering the possibilities.
"You have ever been a Khene who respects good advice when you can get it, my son," his mother said demurely, breaking the long silence.
He roused from his thoughts and gave her a half smile. "If there are strange gods to have the blessing of, and wizards to come upon my side—it would be folly to foul my chances, no?"
"And you have never been foolish, not even as a child." Her eyes darkened with affection; then a sadness passed across her face. "The Shaman wished me to tell you that there is no change with Yuchai."
Jegrai cursed under his breath, and his food lost its savor. He started to push his bowl away, then recalled how little they had, and finished it grimly.
"My son—I speak as a mother." Aravay put her hand over his, and her eyes were soft with concern. "I cannot see how Yuchai's hurt is your doing, nor does his mother blame you for it."
"You cannot—but I can," he replied harshly. "The boy follows after me with his heart in his hand. He strives to copy all I do. He wishes so much to have my approval that he would do anything to get it. There was no need for him to have joined the scouts. He was barely within the age. I could have told him he must wait a year. But I was a scout at fourteen summers, so therefore he must do likewise—I should have forbade it. He is not the rider nor the fighter that I was at twelve, much less having the skill I had at fourteen. But I could not find it in my heart to tell him no. And this is the result of my ill-judgment. Bones broken, and flesh torn by the stakes in that pit, and a blow to the head from which he may never awake—and it is only by the grace of the Wind Lords that those people have honor enough not to poison the stakes. It is only by their grace that he is not dead already."
"Jegrai—" Aravay said, after a moment of brooding silence. "I wonder—the Holy One was a healer—and if the wizards are of his kind, could it be that they could help young Yuchai?"
He started, for the thought had not occurred to him. "It may be—it just may be. All the more reason to ally with them. And may the Wind Lords grant it be not too late!"
CHAPTER THREE
Kasha shaded her eyes from the brilliant afternoon sun with one hand while she clung to the polished wood of the Fortress flagpole with the other, and strained up on her toes as high as she dared.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," Teo complained from the window below her, his uneasiness plain in his voice. "It makes me dizzy."
She grinned down at him, perfectly comfortable on her tower-top perch. He squinted up at her; from here his blocky face and wide shoulders made him look a little like a granite statue that had never been completely finished. Hladyr bless, she thought impatiently, I've got both feet planted on the pole-socket. What's to be nervous about?
"Why should it make you dizzy?" she asked mockingly. "It's not you that's up here!"
He shivered visibly and looked away. "I can't help thinking about how Benno fell from up there."
"Benno was a thirteen-year-old fool who didn't live to see fourteen because he was a fool," she retorted, reveling in the brisk east wind that was playing with the short strands of her hair. "He climbed up right after a storm when the slates were slippery, and he didn't have a rope on him. I do, because I'm not a fool."
"We know you aren't a fool, Kasha," Zorsha replied. "You keep forgetting Teo saw him fall."
So did I, and so did you, she thought, but didn't say. People die; it happens. You learn from it, but you try not to let it live in you forever.
"Now that you're up there," Teo said, carefully not looking at her, "can you see them?" He tugged at his neat little beard with his right hand; an unconscious gesture that showed how nervous he was.
She squinted at the eastern end of the Vale. "Maybe . . . I can see a big dust-cloud, anyway. That'll be their horse-herd." She groped for the far-glasses looped around her neck, and put them to her eyes. It wasn't easy adjusting them with only one hand, but unlike Benno, she wasn't out to prove what a great daredevil she was. The blurs of green, white, and brown finally leapt into clarity.