Carnivores of Light and Darkness (12 page)
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Simna listened to it all in silence, occasionally nodding sagely as Ehomba made his points. When the herdsman finished, the swordsman grinned crookedly up at him and commented, “That’s some story.” He sidled closer and lowered his voice, as if there were someone besides bugs and birds present to overhear. “Now really—what are you up to? You’re after treasure too, aren’t you? Everyone’s looking for treasure. Or you’ve been given some secret assignment by a high wizard, or better yet, by a banker. There’s a lot of gold at stake here. I can tell. There has to be, or you wouldn’t have come this far and gone through everything that you have already.” He gave the taller man a comradely nudge in the ribs. “Come on, Etjole. You can tell old Simna. What are you after, really?”
Ehomba did not look over or break stride. Another steep-sided ridge loomed ahead, clad in its familiar coat of rain-forest green. “What I told you was the truth. The whole truth. There is nothing else.”
The swordsman chortled aloud. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. One of the better liars I’ve encountered in my time. But not the best, not by a long shot. See, I’ve been around, Etjole. I can tell when a man’s having me on and when he’s telling the truth just by studying the way his cheeks twitch and his lips quiver. I look them right in the eye and I can tell. You’re good, but you can’t fool me.”
Stolid and determined, Ehomba strode on. “You are right,” he replied imperturbably. “I cannot fool you. You are too perceptive for me.”
Simna beamed, well pleased with himself. “See? I knew better! Now then, what is it that you’re on to? A sunken merchant vessel laden with scarce trade goods? A spice merchant’s caravan on its way from far Narinchu? A pirate’s abandoned lair, or jewels guarded by the spirit-wraith of a dead queen?”
“Something like that,” Ehomba replied noncommittally. The ridge ahead looked less imposing than the last several he had crossed. Perhaps the mountains were beginning to subside. It would be good to travel on level ground once again. He was tired of climbing.
Simna pouted. “Fine then! Be that way. Keep the truth to yourself. I’m sure you’ll tell me when the time comes.”
Frowning, Ehomba looked over at him. “Tell you? Do you think you are coming with me? I thought you were bent on finding Damura-sese?”
“One expedition at a time,” the swordsman replied. “Truth be told, bruther, when speaking of directions, ‘south’ is pretty generalized and offers little in the way of direction. You, on the other hand, seem to have a definite destination in mind.”
“Not as definite as you seem to believe.” Ehomba kicked aside a fallen branch that was decorated with spotted blue liverworts.
“More definite than mine, anyway. Wherever it is, Damura-sese isn’t going anywhere. So I had this notion that I might tag along with you for a while.” He indicated the knife at his belt and the remaining longsword slung against his back. “I can hold my own against any half dozen men in a fight, keep a dragon at bay, satisfy three women at once, outdrink the biggest primate in a tavern, and ride all day and all night while asleep in the saddle. I’m a boon companion with more stories to tell than any two professional guides, better songs than a tintinnabulation of troubadours, and I won’t run out on a man in a tight spot. You’ll do well to keep me in your company.”
Ehomba could not repress a slight smile. “If you can handle that sword as well as you do your tongue, truly you would be a good man to have at one’s back in a fight. But I do not need, or want, any company.”
“Oh.” Simna was momentarily crestfallen. But his irrepressible good spirits rapidly returned. “Want to keep all the treasure to yourself, eh?”
The herdsman’s gaze rolled heavenward. “Yes, that is it. I want to keep all the treasure to myself.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ll only expect for what I’ll earn. So you won’t mind if I keep company with you for a little while?”
“It may be more than a little while,” a somber Ehomba informed him. “As to you ‘tagging along,’ much as I might wish to do so, I cannot very well prevent it. I think you are like malaria: It can be made to go away for a while, but it always comes back to make a man sick and uneasy.”
Simna lengthened his own jaunty stride. “Flattery’ll get you nowhere, cattle-man. So this fortune you’re on the trail of, how big is it? Are we after gold, or works of art, or what?”
By evening Ehomba was almost ready to use the spear on his tirelessly garrulous new companion, but he was too weary. Simna ibn Sind prattled more than a convocation of women gathered for the village’s annual coming-of-puberty ceremony. The herdsman finally compared it to a forlorn steer bulling in the fields. Eventually and with an effort of will he was able to largely tune out the drone of the peripatetic swordsman’s voice.
Briefly, he considered abandoning the man while he slept. Attractive as he found the imagery, however, he could not quite bring himself to do it. Since he could not courteously lose the fellow, he decided that he would have to find some way to tolerate him. The prospect did not concern him overmuch.
Once they had trudged another couple of hundred leagues or so north without encountering any sign of treasure, he decided, Simna ibn Sind would undoubtedly dissolve their little company of his own accord.
XII
H
IS SUPPOSITION WAS CORRECT
. N
OT ABOUT
S
IMNA IBN
S
IND
, but about the lay of the land ahead of them. There were more jungle-clad ridges, but they continued to grow smaller and less difficult to surmount, the rain forest that flourished on their flanks thinning out even as the knife-edged ridge tops became more manageable.
IS SUPPOSITION WAS CORRECT
. N
OT ABOUT
S
IMNA IBN
S
IND
, but about the lay of the land ahead of them. There were more jungle-clad ridges, but they continued to grow smaller and less difficult to surmount, the rain forest that flourished on their flanks thinning out even as the knife-edged ridge tops became more manageable.
Then, without warning, there were no more tree-crowned summits to ascend.
They found themselves standing on the last ridge top looking out upon a sea of grass that stretched, utterly unbroken, to the northern horizon. No rocky knoll poked its stone-crowned head above that perfectly flat green-brown plain. Not a single tree thrust its trunk or lofted its branches over the endless emerald sward. Unobstructed sunlight did not glint off isolated lakes or ponds, or flash from the mirrored surface of some lazily meandering stream. There was nothing, nothing but the grass.
“The country ahead looks like it’s going to be easy to cross but difficult to hunt in.” Simna held his chin in his hand as he studied the terrain spread out before them.
“It may not be so easy to cross, either,” Ehomba commented. His eyes glistened. “What wonderful country!”
His companion gaped at him. “Wonderful?” He stretched out an arm to encompass the endless overgrown meadow. “You call that wonderful? There’s nothing there but Gopuy-bedamned grass!”
Ehomba looked sideways at Simna. “I am a herdsman from a dry country, my friend. To one responsible for the wellbeing of cattle and sheep, forced to move them from place to place just to keep them from starving, this would be an earthly kind of paradise. Not all people see riches only in gold.”
The swordsman eyed the tall southerner tolerantly. “You really
are
a simple guy with simple needs, aren’t you?” Ehomba nodded, and the other man responded with a sly, knowing smile. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Etjole. I’ve crossed paths with some shrewd, closed-mouthed types in my time, but you’re right up there with the best of them! How long do you think you can fool me with this ‘simple herdsman’ routine? Grass my ass! We both know what you’re after, and you’re not going to get rid of me that easily! It’ll take more than cheap, obviously phony claims of ignorance to fool Simna ibn Sind!” He edged nearer.
are
a simple guy with simple needs, aren’t you?” Ehomba nodded, and the other man responded with a sly, knowing smile. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Etjole. I’ve crossed paths with some shrewd, closed-mouthed types in my time, but you’re right up there with the best of them! How long do you think you can fool me with this ‘simple herdsman’ routine? Grass my ass! We both know what you’re after, and you’re not going to get rid of me that easily! It’ll take more than cheap, obviously phony claims of ignorance to fool Simna ibn Sind!” He edged nearer.
“Come on, Etjole—you can tell me now. What is it you’re after, really? A lost city like Damura-sese, only even richer? A bandit’s abandoned cache? Clandestine merchant gold?”
Ehomba sighed tolerantly. “It is a shame, Simna. Having so narrow a vision, you must miss much of what goes on in the world. You are like a horse with blinders.”
Annoyed, the swordsman stepped back. “Okay, okay. So don’t tell me. I know you must have your reasons, and that you’ll make everything clear when the time comes.”
“Yes,” Ehomba assured him candidly, “everything will become clear when the time comes.” He started down the slope. The last slope, for which he was grateful. Clambering over the jungle-wrapped ridges had been as tiring as it was dangerous. Seeking to change the subject, he said, “I would think you would know this country. Did you not come from here?”
Simna shook his head. Extraordinarily agile, he had an easy time picking his way down through the last trees. Where Ehomba had to step carefully, the stocky swordsman would simply hop or leap to the next clearing.
As they descended, the grass grew nearer—and taller. And thicker, and taller, until it became clear to both men that the country ahead was no ordinary veldt, and the grass they were approaching almighty unlike its humbler cousins elsewhere. They were unable to appreciate its true dimensions, in fact, until they were standing at the very bottom of the ridge.
“Nine feet high.” A contrite Simna stood before the wall of solid green. “Maybe ten. How in Gerooja are we going to get through
that
?”
that
?”
Stolid as ever, Ehomba regarded the seemingly impenetrable barrier. “We have blades. We will cut our way through. Make a path.” He nodded skyward. “I can navigate by the stars. A lone herdsman out in the pasturelands learns early how to do so.”
“That’s all well and good, it is,” Simna snorted, “but do you recall the panorama from the top of the ridge?” He nodded back at the slope they had just descended. “This extends farther than a man can see.” Taking a couple of steps forward, he felt of the nearest blade of grass. Soft and fibrous, it was as thick and wide as his hand. “You know how long it will take us to cut a league or so deep into this? If the plain reaches beyond the horizon, it could take us months just to cut a path halfway through. And what are we going to eat while we’re doing it? I’m no grazer.”
“There must be game,” Ehomba commented. “Surely so much rich forage does not go unutilized.”
A skeptical Simna waved at the wall. “Hunt—in this? How can you hunt something that might be standing right behind you without being visible? And anything that does live in there is bound to travel through it faster than a man.”
“What would you have us do?” With his spear, Ehomba gestured toward the top of the ridge. Back the way they had come. “Retrace our steps? Over every ridge and canyon? Or go back the way you came, toward the east?”
“I didn’t say that.” A frustrated Simna slumped down on a moss-covered rock and cupped his head in his hands. “Of course not. An ibn Sind never retreats. But I don’t like our prospects for advancing, either.”
“We could camp here until inspiration strikes.”
The swordsman managed a weak grin. “You mean like a rock to the head? If I thought it would do any good, I’d take the blow myself.” He eyed the unbroken, ten-foot-tall rampart of green. “I can resign myself to the necessary cutting. It’s the problem of finding food that worries me.”
“We will manage.” Reaching back over his shoulder, Ehomba unsheathed the sky-metal sword, the exposed blade gleaming grayly in the muted sunlight and glinting off the strange, sharp, parallel lines etched into the metal. Bringing back his arm, he prepared to begin the arduous task of cutting a lane through the overgrown veldt.
“Just a moment there, if you please.”
Pausing with the blade held over his head, the herdsman turned toward the sound of the voice. So did Simna, who had been steeling himself to join in the path-cutting effort.
Emerging from the towering greensward just to their right was a man—or a close relation. Stepping out from between two ten-foot-high blades, he turned to confront them, sharp-eyed and unafraid despite his small stature. He was maybe three feet tall, slim to the point of emaciation, with high pointed ears, eyes that were small round circles of intensity, a bare snub of a nose, and a cone-shaped head that more than anything else resembled small blades of grass slicked up in the manner of some dandified courtier and glued together to form a perfect point. He wore nothing but a green loincloth that had been braided from strips of grass, and went barefoot. Fastened to his loincloth by a single loop was a comparably sized scythe of sharpened bone.
Like his loincloth and his surroundings, he was bright green, from pointy head to tiny-toed foot. No wonder they hadn’t seen him until he had elected to emerge from hiding. Looking upon him, Ehomba decided their visitor might be a hundred years old, or two, but certainly no less than fifty. Of course, he was using the only referents he knew, which were human. The small green manikin was surely something else.
This their unexpected visitor proceeded to confirm, in prompt response to Simna’s diplomatic inquiry of “What the hell are
you
?”
you
?”
The figure drew himself up to his full, if unprepossessing, height. “I am Boruba-Ban-Beylok, sangoma of the Tlach Folk, the People of the Grass.” He glared at Ehomba. “The grass gives life, the grass gives protection, the grass is the carpet on which the world treads. We do not take indifferently to its wanton cutting.”
Hand on sword hilt, an uneasy Simna studied the impenetrable wall of high green and wondered if the blade might have found itself cutting down something more mobile and less indifferent than grass. There could be a hundred tiny green warriors hiding in there, a thousand, and he would not have known it. His senses were acute, but he saw and heard nothing. As near as he could tell, the only intruder that was rustling the grass was the wind. But he was on full alert now, trusting in his unassuming companion to defuse the situation. Simna was smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut, aware that his chronic intemperance was more likely to exacerbate than ease the confrontation.
Ehomba lowered his blade but did not put it up. Instead, he let it hang loose from his right hand. “I was not being wanton.” With his other hand he gestured at the green escarpment. “We are traveling to the north. The grass is in the way. If we could fly, we would choose that method of travel. But we are only human, so we must walk. To walk, we must make a path.”
Boruba-Ban-Beylok shook his head disapprovingly. “Human you are, to think always of going through things. Never around.”
“Very well.” Ehomba was perfectly agreeable. “We will not cut the grass.” Simna stared at his friend, but continued to keep his opinions and suggestions to himself.
Approaching the greensward, the herdsman pushed one blade of grass aside. Another was immediately behind it. “Show us how.”
“You mock me,” the little green sangoma snarled. Or at least tried to snarl. Like the rest of him, his voice was not very deep.
“Not at all,” Ehomba replied. “I do not know how to go around the grass. If that is what you wish us to do, show us how. We will be glad to comply.” He swung his blade in a short arc. “Cutting grass of any height is hard work. I would be delighted to be able to avoid it.”
“And so you shall,” the sangoma informed him, “if you can answer for me three riddles.”
With a heavy sigh, Simna resumed his seat on the rock. “I knew there was a catch in this somewhere. When you’re dealing with sangomas and shamans and witch doctors and spirit women, there’s
always
a catch.” Resignation underlay his words. “Sometimes it’s deeds that have to be performed, or a magic crystal that needs recovering, or a sacred icon that has to be returned to its altar. Or bridges to be crossed, wells to be plumbed, cliffs to be scaled—but it’s always something.”
always
a catch.” Resignation underlay his words. “Sometimes it’s deeds that have to be performed, or a magic crystal that needs recovering, or a sacred icon that has to be returned to its altar. Or bridges to be crossed, wells to be plumbed, cliffs to be scaled—but it’s always something.”
“What happens if we cannot answer your riddles?” Ehomba asked quietly.
The sangoma took a short hop forward. He was smiling now. “Then you’ll have to go back the way you came, you will. Have to go back, or a fate worse than any you can imagine will spring out at you from between the very blades of grass you seek to pass and rend you to fragments small enough for the beetles to feast upon, rend you with fang and claw and poison stinger.”
Alarmed by this augury, Simna rose and retreated until he could stand with his back against a solid rock that protruded vertically from the base of the ridge. He held his sword at the ready and redoubled his continuous scrutiny of the green barrier.
If Ehomba was at all taken aback by the naked threat, he did not show it. “Ask your three riddles, then, Tlach-man.”
Clearly enjoying himself and his role as ambassador of confrontation, Boruba-Ban-Beylok rubbed tiny green hands together as he primed himself. As they made contact with each other, the sliding palms generated a sound like bark being sanded. The sky did not darken and thunder did not roll—the Tlach sangoma was not a very big sangoma, after all—but the crests of the nearest grass blades tilted forward as if eavesdropping on the proceedings, and the rustling within momentarily grew louder than the slight breeze alone could have inspired.
“Listen close, listen careful, human.” Trenchant green eyes stared deeply into Ehomba’s. “First riddle: In the morning comes the sun, in the night comes the moon. But what comes at midday and is midwife to both? Riddle second: A fish is to a frog as a heron is to a crow. What is a Tlach to? Third riddle and last: The name of a man is how a man is known to others, but by what other means may he introduce himself?” With a confident smirk, the sangoma rested his hands on skinny green-skinned hips and waited for the tall trespasser to respond.
Observing scene and byplay, Simna had already resigned himself to finding a way back through the mountains. Sick as he was of climbing and descending, of fording rock-filled jungle streams and fighting off bugs and thorns, he struggled to accommodate them in his mind. Because it was clear that his simple, kindly friend, while a boon companion and pleasant fellow, was no towering intellect. In contrast, Simna was highly conversant with puzzles and conundrums of many kinds and origins. Quick-witted as he was, though, the solution to the three riddles of the Tlach was beyond him.
He eyed the impossibly lofty wall of grass apprehensively. If as seemed certain Ehomba failed to answer the riddles and they attempted to press on through the high veldt, Boruba-Ban-Beylok had all but promised them encounters with apparitions unpleasant. He studied the green escarpment intently, searching for signs of the brooding monstrosities the sangoma had assured them were lurking within, waiting for the right moment to spring upon unfortunate travelers. Just because he could not see anything did not mean there was nothing there. If it was green, like the sangoma, it could be standing right in front of them while remaining virtually invisible.
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