Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 (2 page)

"Well, well," he said. "If it ain't the little Scorp what ran away like a rabbit when the Serps come for him."

"Hail, sunna Vikeram. Off yer turf, ain't yuh?"

"Hey, rabbit hunting, is all. The headman here—their First—he wantsa know if you're spyin' for the weenies out in the grass. Now you gotta know it don't matter what you say, cause I'm gonna tell him you are; and then he'll bugger you on the Spit. Just so's you know, sunna Nagarajan."

"I be no
sodbuster
scout," Teodorq said, using the simplest word-forms he could. The eternal tense was for something true nowand-always. "But I understand. You must use these others to slay what you could not."

Teodorq's sentence had been unjust, the tribal elders had been coerced, but the Serps wanted the head that was their due and Teodorq, disinclined to part with it, had struck for the east. The litter of dead Serps in his wake had made his return problematical.

Karakalan shrugged. "Whatever works. Don't matter none to me whether I use a bow, a knife, or an iron chief. Just so's yer as dead as my kid brother."

The First barked a command and the gray-beard spoke again slowly and distinctly to the Serp.

"Scuse me, rabbit. I gotta tell the chief what I want him to think you said." And then he spoke a few short sentences to the man on the high seat, who darkened at hearing them and struck the arm of his chair with his fist.

The graybeard held up a hand and gargled something at his boss; and the First made a disgusted wave with his hand. This was evidently a permission, and the old man again engaged with Karakalan. While they chattered in their slow and halting way, Teodorq glanced at the chief's daughter and saw her watching him with steady concentration. He winked at her, but she did not react.

Karakalan huffed his breath and said to Teodorq, "Baldy here wants to know what-all you learned in your peeking around. So why don't you'n me chat while I figger out what to tell him. Who's yer pet?" He bobbed his head toward Sammi.

"He's a hillman on a walkabout to see World."

"Hey," said Sammi, "Sammi speak for self." He faced Karakalan and jerked a thumb at Teodorq. "What he said."

The Serp snorted. "You gotta smart mouth for a hillman."

Sammi shrugged. "Rest of Sammi not so stupid, either. My butt smarter than some plainsmen."

"Tell me, Kal," said Teodorq, "why do they think I scout for the shortgrassmen? Can't they see that Sammi and me ain't sod-busters?"

"Yeah," Kal answered ruefully. "Me, too."

"I was wondering, seeing how you got those fancy wrist and ankle bangles."

Karakalan jingled his irons. "Threw me a party."

"Looks like they threw you, not the party. They got your sidemen in cages, too?"

The Serp bobbed his head no. "We was ambushed about a league west o' here. Teddy, you ain't never seen what them long swords can do to a man. Murtha's head flew clean off his shoulders. It bounced, Teddy. I swear to all four gods, it bounced."

"Sounds like you could use a friend here."

"Used up all my friends chasing rabbits."

The First growled something impatient. Kal listened, nodded slowly. "If you ain't a scout for the
sodbusters,"
he translated, "how come you come outta the grass."

"Sweet breath of Awāchi!" swore Teodorq. "Do those metal hats of theirs cook their brains? Where else could we come from? Anyone and his great aunt Matilda not wishful of either cliff-climbing or being gator-bait has to come past this here spot, and that there's a fact. If their heads weren't iron clean through they'd want to know what I seen in the kraals we passed through. That spy stuff works both ways and..." Here, he pointed to the three red stripes he had painted on his arm. "... I am a damn subadar o' scouts for the damn
Commonwealth of Suns.
So I know a thing or two about noticing shit."

"Commonwealth of Suns" was a foreign phrase on any tongue. Kal ignored the boast and grinned. "So you
are
a scout. Lemme tell the First."

But the graybeard had jumped to his feet, and turning toward the First, bowed low over his folded hands and let loose a long patter to which his chief listened with irritation passing into dismissal. He clapped his hands to match his graybeard's gesture then bellowed an order. The guards chivvied Teodorq and Sammi in the wake of the departing minister. The chief's daughter, with an amused smirk on her face, handed off her falcon to a huntsman and followed.

The
sawak
was a maze. The old man led them through cold stone corridors and up narrow spiral stairwells whose steps were set at irregular heights. Teodorq and Sammi stumbled a few times, eliciting laughs from their escorts. No doubt the twisting and turning was to confuse invaders, but the ironmen had never dealt with Teodorq's people. Plainsmen had a remorseless sense of direction and Teodorq built up a fair mental model of the
sawak
as they wound their way through it.

"Hey," said Sammi in the
sprock,
"Stairs always twist right-handwise going up."

Teodorq grunted. "Ya, these kettle-heads are clever putzes. Attackers forcing their way up can't swing those long swords o' theirs; but defenders coming down can. Between that and the stumbling blocks, this
sawak
of theirs is built to kill attackers."

"Right-hand ones, anyway," said Sammi. "Hillmen smart. Send southpaws."

Finally they entered a warren of rooms filled with a clutter that Teodorq found incredible to contemplate. There was a
gristle-bar
erect, paws open in embrace, an eagle perched wingspread wired to a stout branch. The carpet was the hide of the same striped cat that had graced the shoulders of the
kospathin.
Flowers lifted their fragrances from clay pots. Dried herbs of various sorts filled shelves of glass jars, on which were affixed slips of parchment with runes. On a tall table lay trimmed feathers with blackened points.

As they entered, Teodorq passed near a tree branch and the graybeard said, "Mind the tree-snake. It's poisonous."

Teodorq recoiled from the red-and-yellow serpent wrapped around the branch before he saw that it, too, was stuffed and mounted. The old man chortled. "Yes, I thought you understood the
plavver.
How long did you live among them?"

Teodorq judged dissembling no longer useful. "'Bout a year," he said. "We was snowed in during Big Winter and shacked up with Timberlake kraal. That's maybe two weeks easy riding west of Bowman's kraal, across the stony river."

The young woman had perched upon a tall stool. "Why the pretense in the hall of thrones?" she demanded.

Teodorq shrugged. "A man speaks more freely when he thinks none can hear." Then he turned to the graybeard and said in the
sprock.
"Like sunna Vikeram."

The graybeard smiled. "Yes. I had wondered when you used child-talk to deny being a spy."

"Ol' Karakalan is a Serp, which it means he ain't too bright. He learned your talk, but he never figgered that you were learning his."

"You wished I know your countryman dishonest in his translation."

"Sooner we got that outta the way, the better. Karakalan is okay, but he
is
a Serpentine."

"If you don't mind," the graybeard said, "let us continue in
plavver.
I learned some of your sprock, but I fear for now any discussion in that tongue would be too limited. By what name be ye known?"

Teodorq introduced himself and then Sammi. "Sammi here is on what his folk call a walkabout. Me, I had a disagreement with the Serps. They wanted my head, and I still needed it. And what're yer handles?"

That request seemed to surprise the girl, but the old man took no note. He named the girl the Figa Anya Goregovona Herpstonesdoor. The kospathin was her father. The old man called himself Wisdom Sharèe Mikahali Fulenenberk, and he advised the lord.

"And that means I must know all I can about the lands and peoples that you have passed through. Aya kospathin desires I first learn of the sodbusters that occupy our... our
fodanny valadenny.
The
plavver
has no word with the proper meaning. It means the lands whose use is entrusted to our kospathin."

"Yeah," said Teodorq. "Funny how often a tribe's home grass already got someone else a-grazing on it. Bowman said this here land been in his clan since creation time."

"That means," the girl said, "since his great-grandfather. Three generations are all they need to say 'thus hath it always been.'" She twisted her mouth to caricature the nasal drone of the shortgrass.

The old man took up one of the feathers and dipped it into a phial to blacken it. "Now, let us begin. What are the distances? Where are the hills and forests and rivers? What prowess at arms have the various folk you have met?"

"Sammi and me come a long way. The telling wants a long time."

Sharèe Mikahali wagged his hand. "Then we may as well start now. Unless you have other plans for the evening...? Tell me of the grassmen west of here."

"So you can compare it with what sunna Vikeram done toldja already."

"Of course."

"Well, Bowman and his crew are fixing to move out west. He's been building carts and wagons and stealing all the horses he can lay hold of. If'n you don't push him, he'll be gone before the Sperm shoots out."

The Wisdom paused, startled, his marking-feather half-raised. "The... Sperm?"

"Stupid plainsman means Consort. Enters Sun when in heat. Later Sun give birth."

The old man's eyes brightened. "Ah, you mean the Red Sun!" He scratched the paper briskly with his feather.

"You spilled that readily enough," said the princess. "I mean about Bowman's plans, not your sperm."

"Hey, babe, it's bad cess to the Timberlake folk west of the stony river that Bowman's gonna muscle in on 'em, but it ain't no skin off my nose."

"And what is meant by 'babe'?"

"In the
sprock,
it is a term of respect for important women."

Sammi coughed violently, but Teodorq offered his most winning smile and the princess accepted the translation.

"And if we do push him?" asked the Wisdom quietly.

"Ever seen a kid with a toy what he ain't playing with it, then some other kid comes along and picks it up? Give Bowman his space and he'll beat feet. He knows long run he can't win."

"And the homesteaders he has ambushed and killed?" said princess Anya. "The widows and orphans of his raids? Be they unavenged?"

"Meaning no disrespect, babe, but do you want that land or do you want revenge? All you have to do is wait a little while, and you'll have the dirt cheap. Better yet, let him steal some more horses or lay hold of a couple of your wagons and you'll get rid of him sooner. Can't really blame him for trying to hang onto what was his. Ain't it revenge enough to cut him off from his grandfathers' graves?"

"So, Wiz," said Sammi, "that make your king happy?"

The Wisdom turned to the mountain man, as if surprised to find him there. Sammi had a way of keeping still that allowed him to drift from the consciousness of others. "Our
kospathin
is not a 'king,'" said Sharèe Mikahali. "At least not as the sodbusters reckon kings. 'To every kraal, its king,' they say. But the true king is All Highest Eskandor, the Third of his Name, the Little Father of the North." Both he and the princess traced a sigil with their right hands, and Teodorq squirreled the information away in his memory.

The minds of men leave footprints in their words. If there was a true king, then there was likely a false one; and Teodorq could hazard a guess or two why Eskandor's man had come down off the cliffs to seize the short-grass. He wondered if other kospathins of this Eskandor could be found in freshly-built
sawaks
along the base of the scarp.

Likely so, he concluded. Something had pushed Eskandor's men off the plateau; though it was surely a long way to jump.

"Now," said Sammi. "What second thing?"

When the old man blinked, Teodorq spoke. "Yuh said the first thing your boss wants to know. So the second thing must be something
you
wanna know. And I ken what it is. Yuh surely perked up when I mentioned the Commonwealth of Suns."

A smile parted the Wisdom's beard. "There are no flies on you."

The non sequitur puzzled the plainsman until he realized that it must be a proverb among the iron men. "My saddle is cinched," he agreed, and that, in turn, puzzled the Wisdom.

The Wisdom pulled out a massive stack of parchments all bound together between covers of heavy board. He pulled out a straight razor and scraped the runes off a rugged sheet of parchment. Once the "scrape-paper" was clean enough, he wet his
pen
in the
ink-jar
and poised the feather's point above it. "Yes. The Commonwealth of Suns..."

He pronounced the words differently than had Jamly-the-ghost, but it was recognizably the same phrase. And it was just as recognizably a term alien to the iron tongue. The princess laughed and slapped her thigh like a man would. "Old man," she said, "you chase moonbeams."

But the old man was undisturbed. "I cannot take seriously the protests of one-I-once-dandled-on-my-knee." In the shortgrass
plavver
they were using, that was a single term. "Tell me, O Teodorq, how does one become a scout for the great band of stars?"

Teodorq cocked his head. "The great band of stars?"

"The swath of white that crosses the sky during the nightless Little Winter resolves into a myriad of individual stars when viewed through a special glass. In ancient times it was called 'the commonwealth of suns,' and still is by our liturgical language."

"Hillmen," said Sammi, "call it the Lactation, which means the milk from the breast of the Mother."

"And on the Great Grass," Teodorq added, "we call it the Treasure Fleet. Each of the individual stars in front is a Rider carrying a torch through the Great Night and behind them is a great heap of gems and golden beads they are bringing to World."

The Wisdom grunted. "Fleet?"