The Shasht War (34 page)

Nuza struggled to comprehend the idea that the priests might wish to kill the Emperor. In the Land, Kings ruled by custom and tradition and with reference to the wisdom of the Assenzi. There were no priests, though mots in search of holiness would remove to the fanes of the spirit. They would dedicate their lives to the quiet pursuit of meditation, and work to keep the fanes and temples in good repair. To imagine such mots and mors attempting to kill the King of Tamf was very difficult.

Moreover she understood how great Aeswiren's power was. She had lived within this vast structure for months. He was the man in whose name the whole huge machine of the empire churned onwards.

"Nice rooms," said Aeswiren, trying to turn the conversation to a more cheerful concern. "I hope you will be able to practice here."

Out the window the trees of the Shalba glittered bare and cold in the morning sun. On the right was the graceful vault of the tomb of Norgeeben. The gallery was a long space, ten feet wide, that ran along the side of the palace windows. The floor was smooth white marble.

"Thank you for your kindness."

Aeswiren stayed, drank tea with her, and did his best to converse. She peppered him with questions about his empire and its ways. She found slavery very difficult to understand. The many grades of slavery were confusing: house servants and noble eunuchs at the top of the chain, animal-slaves who scrubbed the public places at the bottom.

"But how can a person 'own' another person. It seems completely against the teachings of the spirit. We learn that each person is a unique being. Each person has a spirit that sanctifies him or her. Nobody can belong to another individual; although it can be argued that everyone should belong to everyone else, but only in the way of love and the spirit."

Alas, shrugged Aeswiren. If only such a thing could be true. "Our God is different. There have always been slaves."

Nuza shook her head after a moment. "Then they cannot be Gods. No god would sanction such a thing."

The mor had a way of driving straight to a point that no subject of Aeswiren would have considered. Men had always owned other men, men had always owned women. Thus it was in Shasht and always had been. The Gods had nothing to do with it. The Gods of Shasht had once been a cryptic crew, fond of festivals and sacrificial lamb. But that was long ago, before the coming of He Who Eats, the Great God.

Later, as the afternoon light turned golden, Nuza practiced in the gallery and Aeswiren watched, entranced. As he watched, his mind tore at the knotty questions that obsessed him.

This creature with its unhuman face, had yet beguiled him with grace of movement and then with its serious, sweet intelligence. He felt as if he were in the presence of an angel. No woman had so touched him, at least not since his second wife, the mother of Nebbeggebben, that evil child turned monstrous man.

No, he had not been lucky in his choice of women.

But this was not a woman, this was a mor, a being of another race, though female enough in her breasts and buttocks to stir the strangest erotic thoughts. The alien angles to her face, the soft grey fur, they might have put him off once, but now only attracted him even more. He was not a man of sentiment, nor in recent years had he been a man of passion, but this creature stirred him.

She finished her exercises and turned back to him.

"When I was brought here, there were seven other mots on the ship. I have not seen them since I arrived. Could I see them?"

Aeswiren bit his lip for a moment. "No. I am afraid they were killed by the priests."

Nuza closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

"You could not prevent this?"

"No. Nor did I know what I know now."

"So, I am alone in this city?"

"Well, actually, no. There are some other mots, but they escaped the priests."

Her eyebrows shot up and down.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know. My agents are trying to find them now. We want to take them to a place of safety."

"You don't know?"

"Not yet, but soon, I think. We had some word the other day. They were alive, safe so far."

"I want to see them!"

"You will, just as soon as I find them."

When they moored in Embun, the last stop before Shesh, Thru waited until the early hours of morning and then he rose and slipped over the side. Red Kemm was in the northern sky, the moon was rising in the east and looked enormous. He wore his boots, coat, and hat and carried a piece of cheese, some dried apples, and a chunk of bread left over from the evening meal. He also took the kitchen knife and a roll of twine.

Thru couldn't bring himself to say good-bye to little Riro, not because he feared Riro would betray him, but because he and the boy had become good friends and he knew that Riro would grieve over his going. Alas, there was no choice in the matter for Thru.

Alone in the dark muddy streets of the village, he felt acutely vulnerable. He kept to the shadows and back streets, avoiding the lanterns hung at the major intersections. All the time he kept a wary eye for the slave takers, who he knew roamed the night with their dogs and nets, hunting for slaves out of their homes after curfew.

After a couple of miles of dodging, he had a stroke of luck on a broad avenue, heading east. A large drive train of forty wagons and dozens of smaller carts headed for the zobbi hills. The entire road was dominated by drovers and drovers' boys whipping the animals to get the wagons rolling. Merchants and peddlers of every description filled the wagon train.

Thru simply joined the throng, and ran alongside the ox teams as if he were just another slave getting the oxen up to speed. No one appeared to notice him.

And so he walked right out of the village, even going directly past one gang of slave takers, with fierce man-hounds straining on the leash. These grizzled men, who scanned the wagon train for runaways, missed him completely, since he blended in among the ragged boys who scurried up and down the flanks of the train.

The moon rose ahead of them, and the houses gave way at last to open fields. It was a cheerless view, however, for the landscape was flat and empty of cover with no trees. Several miles away the mountains were dim masses of darkness against the sky.

The caravan trundled onward, the drovers talking to each other in the softer cadences of hill country Shashti, with a distinctive burr in the accent. Thru took up a position behind a wagon, walking with his bundle on his back just like many other slaves up and down the train. The road ran straight toward the hills. The drovers talked about a big festival that would be held the following week. Most of the wagons took provisions up to the zobbi of Cashu. Wealthy families would arrive shortly for the early winter festival of "First Snow." And of course everyone was betting on whether there'd be snow by then. Usually there was, but not always, which was good for the Almanac industry. It was also beneficial to the bookmakers. Gambling was endemic in Shasht.

"We be taking the festival at Heemp's House, over in the Gelmen Valley," said one drover behind him.

"A good board they set by all accounts," said another voice.

"That they do," said the first.

"Haw!" said a ragged slave passing Thru. "Lucky for those who get to eat in Heemp's kitchens."

The slave gave Thru a nudge. Thru looked sidelong at the grinning face.

"Be lucky if we even see some scraps!" said the man in a cheerful tone. Thru shrugged, the slave hurried on.

"You'll see no scraps from me, you scurvy dog!" called the drover.

The slave had seen nothing overtly strange about Thru in the dark. But dawn would bring a much greater risk of discovery. He had to sneak away before the light grew strong.

An hour went by and another. Still, they passed nothing but endless flat fields, bare of anything but stubble. It would be difficult to run without being seen. He began to despair when at last the road curved to the right of the valley and soon climbed into the hills.

After another mile the road grew steep, then began to curve back on itself as it climbed. Above them loomed dark crags.

Suddenly, picked out in a moonbeam, Thru saw a single tree, standing out of a crag. He took a breath, feeling just a little better for it.

A little later there were more trees mostly scattered on the ridgelines. The land by the road was given over to grass and sheep. Shepherd dogs barked back and forth. There was no likelihood of escape in such a bare setting. Thru began to grow concerned again.

Now the road turned about the base of a great crag. On top of the crag Thru saw a tower silhouetted against the light of the moon. The solitary structure was stark and forbidding. Thru wondered if it was a beacon for times of danger, or a military outpost against bandits that Riro had spoken of, who were said to terrorize the hills. Behind the crag a narrow bridge of rock and trees connected to the hills.

The road wound down into a narrow valley, where trees at last turned into a forest. But dawn could not be long in coming.

The road ran beside an unchanneled stream, its bed filled with great rocks. On the other side, the pines stood twenty steps from the road. Thru drifted over to the edge of the paved road. Ahead were stacked boulders and beside them a group of young trees. Fighting the urge to turn around and look to see if anyone was watching him, he stepped off the road and knelt down behind the trees as if to tie a boot lace. The wagons rumbled by on his left; no voice called to him; no one seemed to have noticed.

A cart pulled by a pair of donkeys rumbled by while two sleepy voices continued to argue about whether there'd be snow for the festival or not. Thru heard a reference to the
Old Style Almanac
, which predicted little snow for the coming winter. The crop of mulberries had failed, which meant no snowfall until well past the beginning of the month of Ribrack.

Thru took a breath and then crawled farther into the trees. Every moment he expected the shout from behind him, but it never came, and after a few seconds he was hidden in the pines. He halted, barely daring to breathe. Peering back through the branches, he watched the wagons roll along. No one had called an alarm.

Now he turned and ran, moving as quickly as he dared through the little forest of pines and birch. The trees thickened after a while and progress slowed. He searched for a game trail, but the ones he found ran parallel to the road and he wanted to climb the ridge. The going became difficult, pushing through tangles of branches and dead trees.

Then he came upon a place where bare rock rose in a staggered cliff, much collapsed with piles of huge boulders resting on one another like a child's discarded blocks.

Thru hid himself in the recesses, and listened for any sound of pursuit. Reassured after a full minute, he began his climb.

After an hour he reached a ledge, and dawn broke, offering him a view of the valley below. He could see the wagon train quite clearly, a line of brown and white, some miles to the north.

He sat on the ledge and ate some of the bread and cheese, plus a dried apple. He climbed farther, reached the top of the ridge, and examined the world below once more.

He was free. He sucked in a breath of clean air. He had taken another step toward the uncertain future. He resolved to die rather than allow himself to be taken captive again.

A week of living in the wintry hills had brought Thru to a fine understanding of hunger and cold. It was reminiscent of his days at Highnoth, only colder. But he had employed all the woodcraft he'd ever learned from his father, and with the stolen knife and the twine he'd staved off starvation with a few lean rabbits taken in his snares.

In the interim he scavenged for acorns and chestnuts, and even tried chewing bark and twigs. The country was bare. For a while he wandered east as far as the hills that looked down upon a near circular lake. Houses and fields were visible around the water and along the river valley that ran off to the south. He went back to the west and roamed across another range of hills until he could see a reek of smoke ahead. He crossed a road to get closer. From the next ridge he saw a large village in the valley below. He retreated back into the deeper hills.

Fortunately, he'd found a tight little cave, in a stratum of grey rock beneath a hill with a curious sharp tip, like a hook. He lined the narrow space with brush and dry leaves and wove it into a nest in which his body heat kept him from freezing to death at night.

The land was bare, though. He wandered the hills in search of food, but animals were scarce. Only a distant pack of wolves to the north howled. Once he saw a deer and it bounded away the moment it caught his scent. Not that it mattered, he had no means of killing a deer, except through a snare. At home any mot with a bow could find meat for his family's table on any day, within an hour or two in the woods. Here, in bony, picked-over Shasht, there was nothing.

The lake in the east drew him back. In the evening he saw lights in the great houses. Those houses had to be the zobbi. Somewhere in these hills lay the zob of Simona's family.

Inevitably hunger drove him back to the southern edge of the wilderness, where he gazed longingly on the flocks of well-guarded sheep on the hillsides. Large dogs guarded these sheep, and the smoke of the shepherds' fires a little farther off assured him of a hot pursuit if he dared to take a lamb.

He moved on, working his way cautiously across the bare hills toward the settlements. Nothing but scrub pine and saplings grew here, and these only in isolated places. Every other tree had been harvested for firewood, long before.

At an outlying farm he noticed poultry pecking in the yard. The smell of roasting meat and bread came from the ramshackle farmhouse. He closed in as carefully as he dared. A dog slept on the back porch, but Thru was safely downwind of the dog. The cooking smells were maddening. He got as close as he dared, without being seen by either the chickens or anyone in the house. Now he waited, hidden behind an old broken cart, watching the chickens and the house.