The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (54 page)

I looked up at the witch’s army on the crater wall—those twice-
dead veterans of sorcerous war. My allegiance went to them completely,
such that it made the hair stir on my neck to see that demon column—
shields and axes high—come foaming up the mountainside at them.

“Let them come to you!” Hylanais from astride her winged demon
called down: “Wrack and dark ruin upon you both!” and she gestured
obscenely, first at Gothol on his raft, then at Zan-Kirk astride his
monster.

Come they did, and hurtling up the steep terrain those subworld
soldiers—so variously limbed and bodied—looked agile as insects
swarming up a wall. They looked every bit as swift as the dead that
were avalanching to meet them, and deploying to fill the whole slope
below Rainbowl.

You must keep in mind, Shag, how moon-drenched it was, how
stark white-and-black; the twice-killed soldiers, bare bone showing
everywhere, plunging down against the muck-dark demons baying
their hunger as they climbed....

But the collision of their ranks astonished every combatant—
living, dead and demon alike. For as those warfronts, those harrows
of hammering steel, collided high on the slope, the astonishment of it
filled every eye for sixty leagues around, and half a dozen other cities
saw it.

For colors bloomed as blazing rich as any tropic jungle at full
noon—this in the night, mind you, in moonlight only!

The battle lines seemed to merge and swell as impossible night-
blazing colors erupted everywhere from the hillside. From our post
just below Rainbowl’s wall we saw what caused this profusion. For
as every demon with one of the dead collided, the both of them
exploded into a branching, blossoming skeleton, its every bone a limb
that flowered, blossomed purple, saffron, blood-red and cerulean....

Branching and budding and blooming, a rainbow growth overspread
that battlefield, and climbed the Flume’s mighty legs. A forestation of
hues that blazed even in darkness, knit from every shape of branch,
leaf, tendril, limb and frond.

So like an earthquake was this efflorescence to my astonished
mind, that it was almost detachedly I watched as Gothol’s raft—
the Narn-son’s wrath proclaimed in his raised fist—and Zan-Kirk’s
hairy-winged mount both plummeted to the earth. As he plunged,
Gothol stood mute. The warlock barked one hoarse curse at his mate:
“Forever the dark then, witch!”

On impact came their writhe of metamorphosis...and both those
grim, dire men were...flower trees!—their legs gnarled roots, and
their arms all blossoms scooping up the moonlight and the air....

And as these two, so the hosts they led also rippled with mountain-
wide metamorphosis, and their forest of lifted blades and brandished
lances were trunks and boughs and branches multifoliate, and the
screams and butchering grunts of war sank to the wide whisper of
foliage rattling, muttering and whispering in the night wind off the
sea....

The Sojourners, that watching host which filled the sky—all those
faces softened with something like assent, and then grew vague, grew
smoky, and dispersed, and left just moon-drenched night behind.

I stood still staring, straining still to see that host of unsuspected
witnesses, straining still to feel their cosmic fellowship—undreamed
of, and then so briefly known.

“Would you not like to see where they have gone?” Though softly
spoken, the depth of Yanîn’s voice at my ear caused me a tremor.

I weighed my answer. “I would like to, but only if I could certainly
return here from there. For this strange world is marvel enough for
me.”

We two looked about us. Shaggy with blossom the whole upper
Flume had grown. The crater wall and its under-slope, that had been
so starkly stony for so long, was growing even as we watched, growing
ever more richly encrusted with color and form. Judging by the vernal
riot of blossoming, foliate and fronded forms emerging everywhere,
there was just no telling what might spring up next....

JANE YOLEN

Both the hunted and the hunter pray to God.

T
he
Moon
hung
like a bloody red ball over the silent battlefield. Only
the shadows seemed to move. The men on the ground would never
move again. And their women, sick with weeping, did not dare the
field in the dark. It would be morning before they would come like
crows to count their losses.

But on the edge of the field there was a sudden tiny movement,
and it was no shadow. Something small was creeping to the muddy
hem of the battleground. Something knelt there, face shining with
grief. A child, a girl, the youngest daughter of the king who had died
that evening surrounded by all his sons.

The girl looked across the dark field and, like her mother, like her
sisters, like her aunts, did not dare put foot on to the bloody ground.
But then she looked up at the moon and thought she saw her father’s
face there. Not the father who lay with his innards spilled out into
contorted hands. Not the one who had braided firesticks in his beard
and charged into battle screaming. She thought she saw the father
who had always sung her to sleep against the night terrors. The one
who sat up with her when Great Graxyx haunted her dreams.

“I will do for you, Father, as you did for me,” she whispered to the
moon. She prayed to the goddess for the strength to accomplish what
she had just promised.

Then foot by slow foot, she crept onto the field, searching in the red
moon’s light for the father who had fallen. She made slits of her eyes
so she would not see the full horror around her. She breathed through
her mouth so that she would not smell all the deaths. She never once
thought of the Great Graxyx who lived—so she truly believed—in
the black cave of her dressing room. Or any of the hundred and six
gibbering children Graxyx had sired. She crept across the landscape
made into a horror by the enemy hordes. All the dead men looked
alike. She found her father by his boots.

She made her way up from the boots, past the gaping wound
that had taken him from her, to his face which looked peaceful and
familiar enough, except for the staring eyes. He had never stared like
that. Rather his eyes had always been slotted, against the hot sun of
the gods, against the lies of men. She closed his lids with trembling
fingers and put her head down on his chest, where the stillness of the
heart told her what she already knew.

And then she began to sing to him.

She sang of life, not death, and the small gods of new things. Of bees
in the hive and birds on the summer wind. She sang of foxes denning
and bears shrugging off winter. She sang of fish in the sparkling rivers
and the first green uncurlings of fern in spring. She did not mention
dying, blood, or wounds, or the awful stench of death. Her father
already knew this well and did not need to be recalled to it.

And when she was done with her song, it was as if his corpse gave
a great sigh, one last breath, though of course he was dead already
half the night and made no sound at all. But she heard what she
needed to hear.

By then it was morning and the crows came. The human crows as
well as the black birds, poking and prying and feeding on the dead.

So she turned and went home and everyone wondered why she
did not weep. But she had left her tears out on the battlefield.

She was seven years old.

Dogs bark, but the caravan goes on.

Before the men who had killed her father and who had killed her
brothers could come to take all the women away to serve them, she
had her maid cut her black hair as short as a boy’s. The maid was a
trembling sort, and the hair cut was ragged. But it would do.

She waited until the maid had turned around and leaned down to
put away the shears. Then she put her arm around the woman and
with a quick knife’s cut across her throat killed her, before the woman
could tell on her. It was a mercy, really, for she was old and ugly and
would be used brutally by the soldiers before being slaughtered,
probably in a slow and terrible manner. So her father had warned
before he left for battle.

Then she went into the room of her youngest brother, dead in the
field and lying by her father’s right hand. In his great wooden chest
she found a pair of trews that had probably been too small for him,
but were nonetheless too long for her. With the still-bloody knife
she sheared the legs of the trews a hand’s width, rolled and sewed
them with a quick seam. All the women of her house could sew well,
even when it had to be done quickly. Even when it had to be done
through half-closed eyes. Even when the hem was wet with blood.
Even then.

When she put on the trews, they fit, though she had to pull the
drawstring around the waist quite tight and tie the ribbands twice
around her. She shrugged into one of her brother’s shirts as well,
tucking it down into the waistband. Then she slipped her bloody
knife into the shirt sleeve. She wore her own riding boots, which
could not be told from a boy’s, for her brother’s boots were many
times too big for her.

Then she went out through the window her brother always used
when he set out to court one of the young and pretty maids. She
had watched him often enough though he had never known she was
there, hiding beside the bed, a dark little figure as still as the night.

Climbing down the vine, hand over hand, was no great trouble
either. She had done it before, following after him. Really, what a
man and a maid did together was most interesting, if a bit odd. And
certainly noisier than it needed to be.

She reached the ground in moments, crossed the garden, climbed
over the outside wall by using a twisted tree as her ladder. When she
dropped to the ground, she twisted her ankle a bit, but she made not
the slightest whimper. She was a boy now. And she knew they did
not cry.

In the west a cone of dark dust was rising up and advancing on
the fortress, blotting out the sky. She knew it for the storm that many
hooves make as horses race across the plains. The earth trembled
beneath her feet. Behind her, in their rooms, the women had begun to
wail. The sound was thin, like a gold filament thrust into her breast.
She plugged her ears that their cries could not recall her to her old
life, for such was not her plan.

Circling around the stone skirting of the fortress, in the shadow
so no one could see her, she started around toward the east. It was
not a direction she knew. All she knew was that it was away from the
horses of the enemy.

Once she glanced back at the fortress that had been the only
home she had ever known. Her mother, her sisters, the other women
stood on the battlements looking toward the west and the storm of
riders. She could hear their wailing, could see the movement of their
arms as they beat upon their breasts. She did not know if that were a
plea or an invitation.

She did not look again.

To become a warrior, forget the past.

Three years she worked as a serving lad in a fortress not unlike her
own but many days’ travel away. She learned to clean and to carry,
she learned to work after a night of little sleep. Her arms and legs
grew strong. Three years she worked as the cook’s boy. She learned
to prepare geese and rabbit and bear for the pot, and learned which
parts were salty, which sweet. She could tell good mushrooms from
bad and which greens might make the toughest meat palatable.

And then she knew she could no longer disguise the fact that she
was a girl for her body had begun to change in ways that would give
her away. So she left the fortress, starting east once more, taking only
her knife and a long loop of rope which she wound around her waist
seven times.

She was many days hungry, many days cold, but she did not turn
back. Fear is a great incentive.

She taught herself to throw the knife and hit what she aimed at.
Hunger is a great teacher.

She climbed trees when she found them in order to sleep safe at
night. The rope made such passages easier.

She was so long by herself, she almost forgot how to speak. But
she never forgot how to sing. In her dreams she sang to her father on
the battlefield. Her songs made him live again. Awake she knew the
truth was otherwise. He was dead. The worms had taken him. His
spirit was with the goddess, drinking milk from her great pap, milk
that tasted like honey wine.

She did not dream of her mother or of her sisters or of any of the
women in her father’s fortress. If they died, it had been with little
honor. If they still lived, it was with less.

So she came at last to a huge forest with oaks thick as a goddess’
waist. Over all was a green canopy of leaves that scarcely let in
the sun. Here were many streams, rivulets that ran cold and clear,
torrents that crashed against rocks, and pools that were full of silver
trout whose meat was sweet. She taught herself to fish and to swim,
and it would be hard to say which gave her the greater pleasure. Here,
too, were nests of birds, and that meant eggs. Ferns curled and then
opened, and she knew how to steam them, using a basket made of
willow strips and a fire from rubbing sticks against one another. She
followed bees to their hives, squirrels to their hidden nuts, ducks to
their watered beds.

She grew strong, and brown, and—though she did not know it—
very beautiful.

Beauty is a danger, to women as well as to men. To warriors most
of all. It steers them away from the path of killing. It softens the soul.

When you are in a tree, be a tree.

She was three years alone in the forest and grew to trust the sky,
the earth, the river, the trees, the way she trusted her knife. They
did not lie to her. They did not kill wantonly. They gave her shelter,
food, courage. She did not remember her father except as some sort
of warrior god, with staring eyes, looking as she had seen him last. She
did not remember her mother or sisters or aunts at all.

It had been so long since she had spoken to anyone, it was as if she
could not speak at all. She knew words, they were in her head, but
not in her mouth, on her tongue, in her throat. Instead she made the
sounds she heard every day—the grunt of boar, the whistle of duck,
the trilling of thrush, the settled cooing of the wood pigeon on its
nest.

If anyone had asked her if she was content, she would have nodded.

Content.

Not happy. Not satisfied. Not done with her life’s work.

Content.

And then one early evening a new sound entered her domain. A
drumming on the ground, from many miles away. A strange halloing,
thin, insistent, whining. The voices of some new animal, packed like
wolves, singing out together.

She trembled. She did not know why. She did not remember why.
But to be safe from the thing that made her tremble, she climbed a
tree, the great oak that was in the very center of her world.

She used the rope ladder she had made, and pulled the ladder up
after. Then she shrank back against the trunk of the tree to wait. She
tried to be the brown of the bark, the green of the leaves, and in this
she almost succeeded.

It was in the first soft moments of dark, with the woods outlined
in muzzy black, that the pack ran yapping, howling, belling into the
clearing around the oak.

In that instant she remembered dogs.

There were twenty of them, some large, lanky grays; some stumpy
browns with long muzzles; some stiff-legged spotted with pushed-in
noses; some thick-coated; some smooth. Her father, the god of war,
had had such a motley pack. He had hunted boar and stag and hare
with such. They had found him bear and fox and wolf with ease.