Riding the Serpent's Back (47 page)

“You have maize and goats,” said the officer. “We will take half of what we find. You have men, too. We will take thirty of your fittest into voluntary conscription until your village’s debts are paid off by their labour.”

“If you do that,” said Shenethra, “then our village will die.”

But already, Red could hear screams and shouting coming from around the village. As he had listened, Red worked out that there could only be about forty men between the ages of fifteen and fifty in the entire village.

He glanced outside, past the hessian screen hung across the hut’s door. They already had a dozen or so men rounded up in the centre of the village, and they were forcing four more to haul sacks of maize and beans out from the store.

He stepped back from the doorway. He had spotted a pair of soldiers heading for the hut.

Suddenly, old Eshi Mei woke from his slumber and looked around, bewildered. “Eh, Rose? You said what?” he said, in a voice far too loud.

Red hurried across to where the old priest lay on his mat on the ground. “Shh,” he said, putting a hand on the man’s brow. “It’s okay.”

The soldiers must be near now, he thought. At any moment they would pull back the door covering and see him cowering there. He went to the back of the hut to where another flap concealed a way through to the village’s small shrine. Beyond the shrine was a screen of thorn scrub which might conceal him.

He ducked down and went through the gap.

When he straightened there were two soldiers standing before him. They had come to the shrine first, perhaps to see if there were any offerings worth looting, or maybe just to pray.

They were as surprised as Red was. They stepped back in fright, then hurried forward to seize him by the arms.

“You can’t do this!” Red protested, as they helped him out of the shrine. “I’m the village priest. You can’t do this to me.” Then, belatedly, he added, “You can’t do this to
any
of us!”

Then he looked across and saw another soldier in the door of the hut, holding Eshi by the arm. The soldier sneered at Red and said, “If you’re the priest, then who’s this old goat?”

Red looked at the old man, in his stained priest’s smock, then he looked down at himself. He was wearing only shorts and a holed vest. “But I
am
a priest,” he insisted. “We both are.”

The soldiers laughed, and then pushed him roughly over to the centre of the village to join the growing group of men.

Red watched as the village was ransacked before the eyes of its inhabitants. People’s possessions were hurled out of the huts, children and women chased out into the open. One hut was left partly demolished when a man fought back and was knocked into its central support.

The day grew hotter as they were left waiting in the open. Red looked at the open wagons in which the conscripts would be transported. Heading south into this kind of heat, it would be a hard journey, wherever they were to be taken.

The whole village watched as about thirty goats were driven up a ramp onto one of the wagons until they were packed so tight they couldn’t move. A dozen of the villagers were picked out and made to distribute the sacks of maize and beans amongst the remaining three wagons, leaving room, Red noted, for the cargo of men.

Then the officer in charge of the raiding party trotted over on his horse to survey the gathered males of the village. In response to his gestures, soldiers picked men out of the crowd and prodded them towards the wagons.

As the group in which Red stood diminished, he felt more and more exposed. He watched, in increasing horror, as the officer was forced to start picking teenaged boys and men well into their fifties to fill his wagons.

Finally, the last wagon was full and Red stood in the group of eight men who were to be left behind. He looked at his fellow rejects and all were either old or sick or feeble.

He looked down at himself. He was thin, true enough, and neither tall nor wiry. But surely he wasn’t in as bad shape as those around him.

The soldiers were preparing to leave, and the officer rode over to where Shenethra Loe stood, tears flowing freely down her face. “You can consider the first instalment of your taxes paid,” he told her. “You can tell those who are either hiding or out with the herds that we will be back. And when we return I will expect these sorry individuals—” he gestured at the eight rejects with his thumb “—to be fattened up and stronger, otherwise they’ll never be up to the work.”

Red watched the soldiers ride away from the village with their haul of food and men. He was in such a state of shock that he felt the urge to run after them and insist he wasn’t as feeble as they assumed.

But he stopped himself. He might be self-destructive, but he was not a complete fool.

~

They received word less than a month later that the press gangs were back in the area. Immediately, the people of Atrac set about dismantling their village.

“We are descended from a nomadic race,” Shenethra told Red. “Our ancestors offended the gods by abandoning the traditional ways and we have paid for that insult with the loss of our sons and husbands. We must return to the ancient ways. If our every act and every breath is a pious one then we can hope that the gods will forgive us.”

Red knew that, whatever their reasons, the villagers were right to migrate. He had heard stories of two other villages in the region that had been unable to meet the new demands from Tule. The soldiers had taken every man, woman and child apart from the sick and the old, who had been left to die. Those who resisted had been slaughtered and their hearts had been cut out. Some even said that these heartless corpses had been raised from the dead, as was the way in legend.

“What about Eshi Mei?” he asked, as the villagers took down their homes.

“We cannot take a priest of the Embodied Church,” said Shenethra. “We cannot risk perpetuating the offence our ancestors caused.” In that case, they could not take Red either.

And so he stood in the empty village, watching his neighbours leaving. They had taken everything they could, and what was left – even the huts themselves – had been dismantled and burnt in a huge pyre which still flared as they left. All that remained with Red was the priest, Eshi Mei, and his sorry little hut with the lean-to shrine at the rear.

When the villagers had finally disappeared over the double hill that protected the village, Red went for his horse. He tied it at the front of Eshi’s hut and fetched the old priest from his sleeping mat.

The old man looked around at what remained of the village, then he looked at Red, incomprehension in his eyes.

“They’ve all gone,” Red told him. “I’m taking you somewhere safe.” He pointed at the horse, and added, “It would be a lot easier if you would ride.”

Eshi was looking around at the abandoned village again. “My home,” he said, in a sad voice. He stepped towards the pyre, then stopped and looked back.

Red realised what he wanted and went to fetch a burning stick from the flames. He handed it to the priest, who turned and hesitated for so long it nearly went out. Then the old man thrust it into the dry, thatched wall of the hut that had been his home for thirty years or more.

Flames flared from the wall, spreading rapidly. They waited until the whole thing was ablaze, then Red helped Eshi up onto the horse’s blanketed back and they headed slowly away from the village.

~

He had planned to dump the priest in the first decent settlement he came across, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Now, as the lights of Totenang clustered on the skyline ahead of them, he felt certain he had done the right thing in coming back to his home city. He had to see the place again, if only to make good his farewell to the fine city.

He was certain he would be unrecognisable by now. His hair had grown long and ragged and, in what he strongly suspected was a direct response to the humiliation of not being considered man enough even to be conscripted, he had grown a wispy beard. The outdoor life had made him stronger too, and perhaps a little less cocky and brash. Even his waistline had filled out since he had stopped wearing a corset.

He would take the priest to the college. He was certain the True Church would show mercy on one of its own. He might even return the horse, he thought.

The first houses of the city rose around them, gaslight and lantern-light spilling out onto the road.

Red had forgotten about the spikes. There seemed to be even more than on the last occasion he had passed along this street, and nearly all bore a grisly trophy. All part of the price Pieter had accepted for the treaty he had signed with Lachlan Pas.

They stopped before the last of the posts.

Red peered up at the man suspended from its sharpened tip. A soldier, executed in full uniform. An officer.

It was Captain Deni Eliazar.

Punishment for his part in Red’s escape? Or for some other offence against the Embodiment? Eliazar had never been hesitant in expressing his disapproval of certain things – Red recalled the reluctant part the captain had played in the interrogation of Senator Carmen, all that time ago. Perhaps Eliazar really had committed some crime against the Church, or even against Pieter, himself.

They walked on.

~

The Hangings were quiet tonight. Red had hoped for one last taste of the atmosphere of his home city before leaving again, but instead the whole place seemed subdued. If a city could be described as sullen, then that city was Totenang on this night.

At the Embodied College, Red helped Eshi Mei down from the horse.

Red hammered at the door of one of the residential blocks. When a young votary answered, he said, “This old man seems confused. I found him with his horse a short distance away. From his clothes I could see immediately that he was a priest and so I thought you might be able to help him.”

The votary looked reluctantly at Eshi. “I...” he said, then stopped.

Red squeezed Eshi’s arm, and backed away. The old priest looked from Red to the votary, and said, “Rose? You said
what?
”

As he hurried away, Red heard the door shut. When he looked back, he saw a boy leading the horse around to the college stables and he knew the priest had been granted refuge.

He thought he should feel some kind satisfaction at having helped Eshi Mei, but all he felt was tired and depressed. He walked alone through the streets of Totenang and wondered what he should do next.

Maybe, now that the heat was off, it was the time to head east into the mountains, or north to the Rim. He could find a small, provincial city and carve a new, more sheltered niche for himself. He remembered the cruise, when he had taken Jess Compney and dreamed of setting up an inn with her. He had plenty of experience of pandering to the whims of the rich: perhaps he could find a backer and set up a hotel somewhere in the lakes. He should leave the city immediately, that was certain.

But first of all, he decided, he needed a drink.

~

He chose a route through Totenang that took him past the Lizard’s Tail inn. The place looked the same as when he had worked for Pieter and it had been the favourite watering hole of the junior members of staff.

He resisted the impulse to go inside. Perhaps when he had been younger he would have taken the risk, just to see if he could get away with it, but recent experience had matured him greatly. He was too old to take such foolish chances any more.

He returned to the Hangings district of the city. Strangers were more commonplace here: if he was noticed it would just be assumed he was in from one of the barges at the docks.

One last drink in Totenang, he decided, and then he would move out to make a fresh start. Somewhere in the north, he thought. By the sea. He had reached the stage of life where he must make sensible decisions about the future.

He went into a bar and ordered a rye and water.

Four ryes, a spiced brandy and a double gin later, he was beginning to think of moving on. So many bars in Totenang. So many last drinks.

No, he decided. That would be foolish. He would stay where he was.

“Another spiced brandy!” he called to the girl at the bar. “And one for yourself!” The girl looked absolutely beautiful, he thought, although it was a beauty she had acquired some time after his arrival. He seemed to remember that was some kind of warning sign, but it was so long since he’d indulged himself in this manner he couldn’t be sure.

He couldn’t remember very much at all, now that he thought about it.

When she came over with his drink, he was surprised. He couldn’t remember ordering it.

She had two drinks, he saw. Perhaps she wasn’t the barmaid after all. She smiled and said, “I’m Cherry.”

For some reason he found that terribly funny. He stopped himself laughing when he saw that Cherry was merely smiling, humouring him. “I’m Eshi Mei,” he said. “I’m a priest. Or I was. But I gave it up when I gave the horse back.”

She was smiling more broadly now, clearly trying not to laugh.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “It really is!”

Later, in another bar, everything was somewhat blurred. There was a burning sensation in his stomach, a dull ache between his eyes. A space had been cleared on the floor, where a man was crawling about like a baby.

A huge woman who seemed quite literally to be steaming with perspiration picked up a broom from the ground and thrust it at Red. “Your turn, Eshi,” she bellowed.

He vaguely remembered what he had to do. He placed the rounded end of the broom handle against his forehead, stood the thing on the ground and started to run around it in a tight circle. “The rhyme!” someone cried. He had forgotten about the rhyme.

“There once were three maids from Laisan,” he chanted, spinning so fast that the room heaved all about him. “Two goats, a horse and a man. A moke and a goose, a snake and a moose, and a bargee that smoked as he sang.”

Hands pushed at him and he couldn’t tell if they were trying to topple him or keep him upright. “There once was a priest from Divine...” All the faces seemed to be spinning around him, as if he was fixed and the room itself moving. “Raised his smock and sang ‘This is all mine!’ But for a drink and a prayer, and a...a...’”