Ammonite (48 page)

“Uaithne laid the path. Uaithne brought you together before me. Before
me
, I say.

For Uaithne is my tool, no more. A flawed tool. One that would twist in the hand of any who lean upon her promises, and break.”

She did not look at Uaithne, but caught the eye of Aelle, of Marac and Scatha sitting together, of Borri. She had their attention. There was no sign of the Levarch.

Dead? Then Aoife would be leader, Aoife who was staring at the grass between her mount’s legs.

Lift that head, Aoife, look at me.

“You seek death, and I say to you: it comes. I am its herald and its shepherd. But you are my tribe, you will die as and when I decree, in the way I shall set down. And I tell you now: this is not the way. For this throwing of yourselves upon strangers is merely seeking death of the flesh.” She waved her hand dismissively. “A small thing, an easy thing.”

The energy that had been building inside her climbed to the back of her throat, so that she could barely contain it. She rose in the saddle and lifted both hands, palms out. A peremptory gesture demanding attention. “It is
not
the death I have traveled the void to witness!” She slammed the sentence home with a double palm strike to the air. The Echraidhe jerked.

“My journey was hard beyond belief!” All the rage she felt at having been held captive and treated as something inhuman came pouring forth, making her words twist and roar. “The death I demand of you will be harder still! It means nothing to me that you prepare to die one by one in blood and heat. Nothing. I demand of you something more, much, much more. I demand of you the Great Death. The death of change.“

She saw a small movement, so tiny she almost missed it: Aoife, lifting her head.

Yes, Aoife. Look at me, listen to what you would not hear before
, The sun was warm on her back now, and the smell of olla overpowering, but she did not care, she was carried away on a tide of her own power and her words were hammer blows.

“The death of change,” she said again, “the death of your way of life, the death that is not just an ending but a great and terrible new beginning.
This
is what I ask of you!”

Oh, she had them now. They breathed with her, blinked with her, sat their horses as still as rocks.

“This, then, is my demand.” And now her words were implacable. “That you lay aside this crusade, that you move your grazing grounds south and west, that you leave Tehuantepec to the snow scuttlers and creeping plants.” She softened slightly.

“You are not stones to endure the wind and the ice, you are people. You need light, warmth, food for your children. You need others of your own kind from whom to choose lovers and friends. Ah, but the finding of them will change you.”

She surveyed the silent women. Uaithne’s eyes glittered.

“You,say ‘Tribe before self,’ and mean ‘Tribe before anything’, because deep inside your selves you have a barren place that wails, ‘Nothing is real but the tribe, there is no one here but us.’ You are wrong.” She spoke directly to Aoife now, who was studying her intently. “Lift your eyes from the barren place and open your ears, see and hear the world I have made ready for you. You will find a place where your herds will grow sleek and fat, where your children’s hair will be glossy and their eyes bright, where you will not have to listen at night for the breath of the ice wind and the coming of the goth.”

Silence.

“It waits for you, if you but have the courage to face this greatest death of all.

This death of change.”

Aoife frowned, and for one moment Marghe thought she had gotten through, that the tribeswoman had heard, but then Uaithne’s laughter splashed over them all like cold, bright water.

“Death,” she said lightly, “is no thing of doubt and struggle, but a thing of heat and bright and red glory.”

The wind rose again as Uaithne spoke, and stirred the hair on the back of Marghe’s neck. The air seemed to hum with it.

Uaithne laughed again and pointed behind Marghe. “And there is our death, come to greet us. We must ride to meet it.”

Marghe twisted quickly in her saddle. The hum was not the wind.

Forty or more Mirrors, visors glittering and black armor dusted with pollen like the exoskeletons of alien insects, crested the rise in a lazy, bunched swarm. Sleds hummed, one on each side of the closely packed Mirrors, one behind. In front of them, her back to Marghe, was a single rider. Thenike. When the Mirrors started forward, Thenike did not move. The Mirrors shifted direction; Thenike shifted to meet them. One woman facing down forty.

Thenike
. Later.

“No,” Marghe said to Uaithne, “not this time.”

“Oh, yes,” Uaithne said, and couched her spear.

Marghe pulled the reins out from under her thigh and wrapped them around the pommel. The humming changed behind her but she did not dare turn. She breathed deeply, slowly, and sent oxygen fizzing through her arteries into her long muscles.

This was not Tehuantepec. She would be ready this time. This time she would fight.

She would never give in again.

But Uaithne was not charging. She lowered her spear, slid it into its sheath. For one dizzying moment, Marghe thought she had won after all. But then Uaithne laughed again, snatched out her knife, and in what seemed like one movement pulled White Moon’s horse toward her and slit the Mirror’s throat.

Blood gushed shockingly red. The Mirror’s mount whickered and sidled; blood pattered on the grass.

Uaithne clamped her red, red knife between her teeth and took up her spear in one hand, her reins in the other. Then she thumped her heels into her horse’s ribs and was charging across the grass, the tip of her spear coming up, up, pointing straight for Marghe’s throat.

Behind Uaithne, the tribal line rippled and tightened. Marghe could not spare a glance for the answering tightening she expected from the Mirrors.

She did not move. She had put everything into her words, and now all that was left were her hands, and it was all going to end in blood.

But then she saw movement behind Uaithne: Aoife, whirling something around her head, straightening her arm with a snap. For a moment nothing happened, and Marghe thought that Aoife, accurate to nine nines of paces with her sling, had missed.

Then Uaithne
oofed
as though someone had hit her in the back, and the creamy line of scalp showing through the part in her hair bloomed red, redder than her braids. But she managed to hang on and was still coming, and behind Marghe, muffled by the growing hiss of the wind, no doubt the Mirrors were readying their weapons; Aoife had left it too late. Nothing could stop the blood now.

Marghe watched as Uaithne’s horse came on, hooves thundering, foam flying from its muzzle. She tightened her thighs, ready to lean, to kick; felt capillaries opening in.her shoulders, ready for the strike and twist that would send the spear spinning.

But Uaithne’s knuckles were white, and she was slipping, slipping.

Two lengths from where Marghe sat her mount, Uaithne slid sideways and fell in a jumble of weapons and limbs. The riderless horse swerved, passing close enough to spatter Marghe with warm saliva. Uaithne tumbled loosely over the turf to the feet of Marghe’s mount.

Marghe jumped from her saddle, panting, trembling with the adrenaline and the effort of not smashing her heel into Uaithne’s unprotected throat. She knelt. Uaithne tried to lift her head.

“No. Shh. Keep still.”

But Uaithne blew a red bubble of laughter at Marghe’s concern, and died.

The grass was making Marghe’s knees itch, but she did not move. She did not know what to do. She had been ready and Uaithne had… She looked at the body before her. Uaithne had died. The woman who had been about to try to kill her could not hurt her anymore. She did not know how to feel. Everything seemed a long way off.

Something nudged her shoulder: Uaithne’s mount, come back for its rider. The grass hissed in the soft morning breeze, then stiffened as the breeze blew hotter and harder. The storm was coming.

Marghe blinked. Everything was quiet, too quiet. Was this shock? She climbed slowly to her feet, expecting the world to burst in on her with sound and fury and mayhem. Nothing happened. She looked around. The Mirrors were still bunched tightly, like a straining muscle. Thenike sat before them, as immovable as rock. The line of tribeswomen was stirring, the horses tossing their heads restlessly; some spears were couched, stone heads catching the sun, and some were held loosely.

The tension in the air was thicker than the scent of olla. The wind rose. She breathed carefully; her trembling eased.

Marghe stood alone on the grass between the two hosts for what seemed like an age, while the wind flicked the manes and tails of the two horses and filled her mouth with rushing noise. Then Aoife swung down from her saddle and began to walk toward her, empty-handed, alone. The Mirrors stirred, and a figure detached itself from the ranks, flipping up her visor as she walked. Danner. Also empty-handed.

When Danner passed Thenike, the viajera dismounted and followed, leading her horse.

They all stopped in the middle and looked at one another. The wind was hot and hard now, like the heat from a blast furnace. Thenike laid a hand briefly on Marghe’s shoulder.

They were waiting for her, Marghe realized, but her brain felt empty, numbed by the two sudden deaths and the driving wind.

In the end, it was Thenike who spoke first. “The storm’s coming. We need to take shelter. The grass is too dry.”

Wind. Singing Pastures. Marghe made the effort. “I know a place,” she said slowly. “All rocks and scree. There’s a cave, and a ravine. No danger of fire there.

It’s big enough for all of us.”

Danner looked warily at Aoife. “If tribes and Mirrors can shelter together.”

Aoife looked down at the loose tumble of hair and limbs and blood that was Uaithne, then back at the line of Echraidhe and Briogannon, where what was left of Captain White Moon was still tied to the saddle. When she turned back, she fixed flat, hard eyes on Marghe. “My soestre is dead.” Then she turned that empty gaze on Danncr. “And one of your kin. If more are to die, it should not be in a grass fire.”

Danner licked her lips; it was not a very reassuring answer.

Marghe felt sorry for both Danner and Aoife. They were leaders, both of them, solid, conscientious members of their respective societies who were suddenly faced with having to adapt to something new and utterly against their beliefs.

She smiled. Uaithne was dead, and she had been ready. Everything seemed so clear and simple to her now: the tribes could do nothing while their Levarch treated with the enemy over the body of their dead kin; the Mirrors would not dare attack while their commander was in what appeared to be a hostage situation.

The others were looking at her. “Thenike, how long before the storm?”

“It’s upon us. Any moment.”

“Then we’ll have to hurry. Danner, Aoife, you will walk to the Echraidhe line and bring back both Captain White Moon and her mount, and a mount for each for yourselves—you can ride, can’t you?” she asked Danner.

“Yes.”

“And bring back one of the Briogannon, one of their leaders. Aoife, you will tell your people to follow us. Danner, you will tell your Mirrors to precede us, due south. While you are bringing White Moon and the mounts, Thenike and I will secure Uaithne to her horse.”

Danner and Aoife looked sideways at each other.

“Danner. You have a cling?”

Danner looked puzzled. “Yes.”

“Give it to me.” Danner peeled it loose from her belt and handed it over. “Hold out your arm.”

“What—”

“Hold out your arm. Your left. Aoife, you hold out your right.” She bound the arms together at the biceps. “Just in case. I’ll take it off when you both get back here in one piece. Now go.”

Danner took a hesitant step, which Aoife copied, then another. Marghe watched while they pulled each other warily, one step at a time, toward the mounted line.

When they were about halfway there, Thenike put a hand on Marghe’s shoulder, turned her around gently, and held her face between the palms of her hands. “You told a good story.”

I was ready
. “I did, didn’t I?”

They smiled at one another, and Marghe wrapped her arms around Thenike and let her breath go in one long, deep rush.

Getting Uaithne’s body onto her mount was hard; the horse sidled and snorted and laid its ears back at the smell of blood and excretia. But they managed eventually.

It was Ojo who came back with Danner and Aoife, and who held the leading rein of White Moon’s horse. Marghe was tempted to cling all three of them together, but decided to trust them. She directed Thenike to take the lead rein from Ojo, and to walk in front of the three leaders; she herself walked behind them, leading Uaithne’s horse.

Ahead, the Mirrors turned and moved south at the march. Behind, the tribes stirred and started at a walk.

All the time, the wind rose, buffeting them in the saddle, and when Marghe had to give Danner directions to pass on to her Mirrors via comm, she had to shout against a gale that wanted to whip away her words like so much smoke.

Marghe kept them heading for the cave and the gully. Shelter first. Then they would talk.

In the end, the talking was done at Holme Valley.

When the five leaders had emerged from the cave, they found acres of grassland seared black, still smoking, turning dusk into evening. It was stifling.

Danner touched a stud at her collar. Her suit stopped humming, and she took off her helmet in a spill of cold air. “It’s too hot to leave those bodies unburied. We need to get them bagged and cooled immediately.”

After several strained hours in the cave, standing between two hundred women who would find it easier to fight than talk, Marghe was irritated by Danner’s attitude, but it was Thenike who spoke.

“They’re not ‘bodies’!” Marghe had never seen Thenike so angry. “They are what’s left of your captain and Aoife’s soestre. They were real. They had friends, mothers, people here who will pause in the middle of their next meal and miss that unique laugh or the sight of a familiar hand resting on a table. Their deaths helped to buy this.” She gestured at the gathered forces, still standing apart suspiciously, but not fighting. Not fighting. “They should be buried out there, where they died.