Gods of Nabban (53 page)

First thought said, here on the edge of war, did it matter? A problem for later. But Sia had cried freedom and left the folk who answered abandoned. Had Dan done any better? Hope took you only so far. They needed more than hope of their god.

“It's a difficult question,” Ontari said. “The prince's council is still debating how best it might be done.”

“I don't know these things,” Ghu said, very quiet. “I'm not come to be your emperor and make your laws. But there will be justice and freedom in this land, and the folk of this land must make it, the powerful and the powerless together, or there will be—” He hesitated.

“What, my lord?”

“Fire,” he said. “You can't treat the folk of the land as cattle forever. Someday they will remember they are human, and that they stand equal with their lords before the gods and the Old Great Gods. And if there is no justice in the land now, there will not be, then. Only fire, and blood, and death, and a new tyranny turning on the old. It grows already. Folk driven from the villages, folk run from their lords, folk with nothing left to lose, losing their humanity. Find them. Bring them in to us as free folk in more than name. Give them some beginning of what must be. Sia's promises were empty. You don't say Dan's have been any better. Ours must be.”

“How?” Ontari asked, bewildered, as if he were being asked to solve the problems of the empire single-handed. Perhaps he was.

“
I
don't know. I only know horses.” Ghu shrugged. “Some right in the land. Some recompense beyond food and shelter for their labour. The right to leave their masters. There's where you start. And with the ending of the buying and selling of people.”

“Give serfs and slaves rights to the land they work and be sure there will be landlords and masters who will see it mortgaged and sold for seed, and they will be serfs again in a year,” said Yeh-Lin behind, which was what Ahjvar was thinking. The land was the lords' and the villages' and the kings' under the gods at home . . .

“The shrines,” he said aloud. “The land is the god's and not for selling, held of him, not owned. Can the priests deal justly, as stewards of their god?”

“They're human,” Ghu said.

“Many are dead,” Ontari said. “Killed in their shrines for speaking against the empress's cult. Or they've run to hide, or they've abandoned the gods to serve the empress.”

“It's a place to start, though,” Ghu said. “Ahjvar is right. And the slaves must be free. There is land enough. The towns are great enough for those with other trades. They will have their places; they must. I say again, they must go or stay with those who've been their masters as they will, and with fair return for their service.”

“Prince Dan said so, but to do it—”

“Do it. There is wealth enough in this land.”

“Have you any idea . . . ? In the imperial treasury, maybe.”

“Then we will take the imperial treasury,” Ghu said. “Because I will have no slaves in my land, Ontari. And no one needs to wear six layers of silk.”

“My lord.” Another fallen at Ghu's feet? Those who truly were seeking their god knew him, but—no. This one seemed more to simply feel himself outnumbered, since he found the heir of the gods had the support of his hoped-for ally Daro Korat. They would all bear watching. Ahjvar did not like to have anyone armed and riding between them.

The gates of the camp stood open, their herald riding on towards the town. Yeh-Lin stirred herself, ordering more of her own riders ahead, engulfing them. A word from Ontari to his niece put Prince Dan's folk to the rear, which made Ahjvar's skin crawl, but he supposed those bee-coloured banners ought to follow, not lead. He did not trust, was all.

“Lord Ontari, pardon me . . .” Yeh-Lin turned a bright smile on the Dwei nobleman. “But before we come to the castle I need to report to the holy one all I've set in place since I took the town. If you would be so good . . .?”

Ontari made a courteous brief bow to Ghu and reined back to join the Grasslander wizard. Ahjvar closed Niaul in before Yeh-Lin could get between them, though perhaps she had not meant to try; she took position on Ghu's other side.

“I duelled and killed Zhung Musan's lieutenant with the town and all Choa as the stakes,” she said in Praitannec, without preamble. “It seemed most efficient. It was a fair fight, Nabban, my word on it. Daro Korat is on his feet and holding his lordship again, and the town in some order after the riots—”

“What riots?” Ahjvar asked.

She shrugged. “These things will happen. It's quiet now. Officers I don't think we can trust have been imprisoned—and I still do not know what those tattoos mean, but the few who bear them are among those I will not trust, save your wizard Nang Kangju who so mutilated himself to be rid of it. Most of the officers seem willing enough to follow their lords, though, and we hold, for now, the service of enough of their lords . . . they come to Daro Korat, most of them, not to rumour of the holy one, but that will do. The soldiers and townsfolk care little so long as someone feeds them. . . .”

Ahjvar let her talk, drifting.

“. . . I've formed a company of foresters and sent them to the western uplands with most of the draught-animals of the army. Zhung Musan at least saw those were fed, no matter how he neglected his men. And another company of those who know the rivers. They're working at that village—what do you call it? The one you can see from the castle. They were up to their waists in water half the time but none have drowned yet, and now that the flood is dropping all is going better, save moving the logs. I would dig a canal so far as the highway, at least, were I lord of the province. A short stretch; it could be done in a season.”

“Not this season,” Ghu remarked.

“No.”

“And why?”

“Why?” she echoed.

“Why build rafts?”

What rafts? He had not drifted so far away that he lost half the conversation, had he? Not this time. Their thoughts chased one another on some track he did not see.

“What rafts?” Ahjvar asked aloud.

“Can we live off this land that is already so warred over? We must move, we must keep moving, not sit here waiting for our enemies to come to us. We go over the river or down it, do we not, Nabban?”

“Maybe.”

“On rafts?” Ahjvar asked. “With horses?”

“No. But we can move no faster than our provisions, yet when we do move, when we know where to move, we must go with speed. We may need your style of warfare after all, dead king, or as close as we can come with our barefoot infantry. Look at these soldiers. Would you take them into the field?”

That was addressed to him.

They were come to the camp of Zhung Musan's army in the horsefair, inside a palisade still new and yellow, pales stripped of bark. The soldiers were a poor lot, thin and bandy-legged, for the most part, as if they'd grown up half starving.

“What? No. I wouldn't set them to herd sheep.”

“I have sent a party over the border into Denanbak, to see if we can trade some of the castle's store of silks for sheep and seed, in fact. Rather more valuable pound for pound than cloth to us, at present. There will be no trade with the caravans this year.” She considered. “I doubt they will return in time, and those caravans that have fled have lost most of their goods to Zhung Musan's expropriations already. They will not be back this year, maybe not next. We must gather what we can and hope that we can supply camps in the south from Shihpan and Alwu. Dwei Ontari is the man to deal with for that. But the town and the villages must also eat and, just as urgently, have flocks in the pastures again. Zhung Musan seems to have wanted to leave Choa a wasteland, incapable of rising again once he and the greater imperial army spread out into Alwu and Shihpan. I wonder what he did with the flocks and herds of Choa? He doesn't seem to have fed his own folk on them. Driven south, I suppose, though they'll be butchered and salted and fed to the lords and the empress's officers by now; nothing you can go raiding to bring home again, dead king. The central provinces and the south are all croplands, not pasture. I imagine meat will buy a great deal of love for the empress, for a time.”

“You think she'll come north?” he asked.

“Choa was clearly only the start of a greater campaign to retake the northwest. More would have come north with the summer. I think they will not, now.
I
would not. The southern tribes are causing trouble, for which we should be thankful. Regardless of what is happening around the Golden City, we must move what force we can down to the southern border with Shihpan and to the ferry above the Dragon's Gorge. We don't know if the empress may move against us out of Numiya or up from Vanai or what high lords may decide to act on their own against us, to seize what lands they can; we don't know how firm Dan's hold on Shihpan actually is, since his folk have apparently misplaced him.”

Ghu was looking dark and abstracted. Yeh-Lin fell silent, watching him. Frowned. “Is it well done, Nabban? I see nothing for certain, but—”

“Yes,” he said, focussing on her again. Gave her a nod. “Sheep. Good.”

And seed.

They needed to put some flesh on these men. They could do with cloth, too. Not silks, though. Ragged, dirty uniforms. The little armour, on those who held the gate—standing stiff and, yes, proud—was no more than lacquered leather breast and back and a helmet. Square shields were marked variously with the Zhung or Daro or Min-Jan characters, meaningless now. Such wealth pouring into Nabban, the great lake that fed and received the rivers of the caravan roads, and they could equip their soldiers no better? There was gold somewhere, and silk such as the castle's slaves spun and wove, and jewels and rare things. Most of these—boys, really—were armed with spear and knife, no more. Barefoot, some. Yeh-Lin had not been exaggerating in that. They were not only on formal display at the wooden gate in the palisade. They lined the broad road through the camp, drawn up in ranks—warned by Ti-So'aro. They were still assembling at the far side before the town wall. Officers and banner-lords and -ladies. Men and women who had served Zhung Musan. Spells drifting, like ash, settling around him, tickling on the skin, subtle and strong.

“Protections against arrows,” Yeh-Lin said, looking over at him. “Let her. Leave them.” The Grasslander.

“Don't trust your prize, old woman?”

“I could hardly swear each one to Nabban in person. They made their oaths generally.”

“It's all right,” Ghu said. “Trust Ivah, Ahjvar. She's my friend. She helped me in Marakand. It's all right.”

Trust the Grasslander, maybe. Trust these conscripted men and their masters? Not likely. Even Ghu watched them warily, still and deep, though the wariness was not fear. Sizing up a burden, Ahjvar thought. They were still themselves, or went so, rank on rank. Silenced the whispering, the muttering. An officer fell to her knees. Some young conscript right before them was scrubbing at his eyes with a grubby fist, hardly the only one in tears. What did they see?

A cloudy day and a sudden gust of wind driving a curtain of drizzle over them, and streaks of sun following.

Ghu simply—watched them. Each and every one, and saw them. Each and every one. Bowed gravely from the saddle. Then he rode on. Yeh-Lin did not find words again until they were riding through the town gate, and the road was barred—or at least filled, with lords and officers come to meet them.

“Any chance of alliance with the southern tribes?” Ahjvar asked. “I suppose there's no way of negotiating with them. All Nabban between us. What would we have to offer, anyway?”

“Barbarians,” Yeh-Lin said. “Buy them for a season, they'll come back wanting more the next year.”

The corner of Ghu's mouth lifted. “My mother,” he observed, “would have said the reverse, Dotemon. They've ceded and ceded their lowlands, and the border keeps creeping south.” Eyed her. “All Nabban between, and only the winds to bridge it? Maybe we should send an ambassador to offer them what they want, Ahj. Darru and Lathi and the old border kept.”

“That's—!” Definitely a yelp from Yeh-Lin. “Which old border?”

“The true one. The one the land knows. The watershed of the Little Sister.”

“Asagama and half Upper and Lower Lat on top of Dar-Lathi? They have been Nabbani since before my time, and Taiji—”

“Little of Taiji was ever Lathan. But the rest, yes.”

“No one will let you give away—”

“We will run our old courses again, hold our old names and new names . . .” Ghu's voice, very soft, trailed off. Ahjvar had thought he was teasing Yeh-Lin. No. “You'll go for me, Dotemon. Not yet. Not while we have Buri-Nai and her lie of the Old Great Gods yet to deal with. But when I send you to the queens, you'll go and speak as I have said.” He added, as if it somehow followed, “They never told me what my mother's name was. I wonder if anyone ever knew?”

“Nabban.” She bowed low. “As you will.”

In the town they cheered, the people, pinch-faced, crowding what was probably a market square. Cheered as though a conqueror rode in. Ghu paled, his mouth tight.

“They need to see you, Nabban,” Yeh-Lin said, and added, with a return of her usual manner, “Be glad I have cleared the gallows away and buried all the exposed dead.”

Ghu turned Snow abruptly and Ahjvar moved to guard him, not certain what he'd seen. Nothing of threat. Stone wall, with a burnt ruin of scaffolding about it and burnt beams and posts beyond. Children had climbed the wall, ruined or unfinished, and stared down. Ghu smiled up at them, and startled, shy, they stared, and then smiled back. He turned again, across the square and to the south, weaving through the crowd that shifted and flowed to be out of his way, not afraid, but cautious, and all the cavalcade that had preceded and followed them waited, watching.