As we fled through the dark streets, Soldier’s Boy listened for the sound of pursuit. There was none, though we heard scattered gunshots behind us. “They are killing those you left behind,” I told him brutally, even though I was not sure that was so. “They are shooting the wounded where they lie.” Spink would not have allowed such a brutality, if it came to him to give the command, but in times of battle, men follow first the commands of their own hearts, and sometimes their officers are too late to rein them in.
A winter dawn, gray and bleak, was seeping across the eastern sky. Smoke curtained it, but soon the light would break through. Time for all Specks to be gone, if the attack had gone as planned. Soldier’s Boy had been delayed too long in the maze of the fort. His men would not have the cover of night to help them retreat. Neither would he. Clove had his head, the bit clamped in his teeth, and the big horse cared nothing for secrecy, only escape. He left the last of the scattered huts behind and galloped on over the wastelands. When he came to the end of the packed snow trail, Soldier’s Boy was finally able to pull him in. Clove pranced a few more steps, then abruptly halted, blowing and snorting. A long black streak of blood marked Clove’s sweaty neck. There was dried blood along his flank, too, an injury that Soldier’s Boy hadn’t noticed before. Heart thumping, lungs gasping, Soldier’s Boy looked back the way he had come and tried to think of his next move.
The red light of the flames was reflected in the smoke overhead, giving an odd orange cast to the day and to Gettys in particular. With the dawn came a wind. Ash and cinders rode it. Soldier’s Boy rubbed his sooty face, blinked, coughed, and turned Clove’s head toward the foothills. The big horse was tired now. Soldier’s Boy had to kick him to get him to move uphill through the unbroken snow. It offered them the closest cover. In the furrows and scrub brush of the foothills, Soldier’s Boy could become invisible while he worked his way back to the rendezvous. He was operating mindlessly now, not thinking of honor or victory or even defeat, but only the very practical question of how to live through the next ten minutes.
At the first substantial rise of ground, he pulled Clove in and looked back. Smoke was still climbing in tall columns from blackened ruins, and in half a dozen places flames still leapt strongly. The watchtower that overlooked the prison was burning well. High overhead, murders of crows coasted in on the wind. Above them and unmistakable even at that distance were the wide wings of the endlessly circling croaker birds. Always, the sounds of battle and the smoke of destruction brought such scavengers. They would not care if they feasted on Speck or Gernian or seared horsemeat. They’d all feed well on this disaster. He bared his teeth at them, full of hate, and then looked down again on the burning fort and town.
From his vantage, he could see that he had dealt both fort and town a significant blow, but it was not the complete destruction that he had yearned for. Folk would still find shelter there, and the walls of the fort, though scorched in many places and smoldering in one, were still intact. The cavalla troops stationed at Gettys would regroup and find themselves more fired by the night’s attack than daunted by it. He had failed. Failed badly. As he watched, a small band of mounted men, regimental colors aloft, came into view riding a circuit around the outskirts of the town. Prudently, he urged Clove over the hilltop and out of sight. He felt a coward as he fled alone. Where were his warriors? He’d disdained them a few days before, thinking they were not the troops he deserved to lead. Perhaps the truth was that they were exactly the sort of soldiers he had deserved, as green as he was, and as incapable at planning for all contingencies. He hadn’t led disciplined troops into battle. He’d led a raiding party. And if he was any judge at all of the Gernians, they’d mount a retaliatory force before the fires were even out. Time to get himself and whatever of his warriors he could find to safety.
He set his teeth. He’d abandoned his troops. Not willingly, but he’d done it. He scoffed at his own stupidity now. He’d thought he’d dash in, deal a resounding blow, vanish, and then come back to mop up. Instead, here he was, alone, and each of his warriors alone as well. All he could hope was that they would remember to return to the rendezvous point. When they got there, he would be waiting for them. That was the best he could do for anyone right now.
The day grew lighter as he pushed Clove through the untrodden snow in the shallow vales between the hillsides in a wandering path toward the rendezvous point. He hoped that his warriors would have the good sense to stay out of sight as they worked their own way back toward the forest of the ancestor trees. He tried not to think of them, on foot, in weather they were not accustomed to, weary, hungry, cold, and perhaps injured. He forced himself to ignore his own raging hunger and weariness and the cold that found every gap in his clothing. He would face it all when he had to. For now, getting to the rendezvous alive was his sole focus.
Twice his meandering course brought him closer to the road than he liked. At intervals, he heard angry horns blaring out to one another. The Gernian troops were up, mounted, and hunting for Speck stragglers. He tried to cheer himself by thinking of how adept the Specks were at blending into the forest, but I pointed out to him that what worked in summer did not in winter. Bushes were skeletons, bare of obscuring leaves now. Men left tracks in snow.
Midmorning was gone by the time Soldier’s Boy reached the place where they had all camped the night before. At first he was heartened to see that others had arrived there first. He recognized the horse that Dasie had ridden and a number of her warriors. He gritted his teeth to think that she had probably succeeded where he had failed; the town fires had burned well, and she seemed to have withdrawn her troops in good order. She sat on a fallen log, her wide back to him, in front of a small fire. He smelled cooking food and, despite his rumbling stomach, scowled at that; there should be no fires just now, nothing that might give a hint as to where they waited.
All such considerations were driven from his mind when one of Dasie’s feeders saw him. The man gave a cry of relief and leapt up from where he had crouched beside his Great One’s feet. He ran through the snow toward Soldier’s Boy and the beseeching hands he lifted to him were red to the elbow with fresh blood. He was crying out his words even before he reached Soldier Boy’s stirrup.
“I cannot stop her bleeding, Great One, and she says her magic is gone. They have shot her with iron! Quick, come quick, you must take it out and heal her!”
Such faith they had in him, and all of it misplaced. The warrior tried to take hold of Clove’s bridle with his bloody hands. The big horse had had enough. He threw back his immense head and even managed to rear slightly. Soldier’s Boy had already loosened one foot from the stirrup preparing to dismount. When Clove came down, he came off his horse, awkwardly. Miraculously, he stayed on his feet and didn’t twist his knee, but he staggered sideways in the snow before he stood. He brushed off the efforts of Dasie’s guard to support him. “Where is she shot?” he demanded curtly. “Show me.”
His heart had left his body in despair. He knew next to nothing of how to doctor a gunshot wound, but for now he could not show it. He followed the man to Dasie’s side. A simmering kettle of porridge sent up a wave of steam and aroma. He turned his face toward it, his eyes half closing of their own accord. He longed for it, his body gone mindless with hunger. The guard could see it. “Great One, see to her, please. While you do, I will prepare food for you.”
He should have told them to put out the fire immediately. Instead, he nodded numbly and turned toward Dasie. She didn’t look good. She gave him no greeting, but hunched round-shouldered on her log seat, her hands clasped over her belly. Her other feeder was on his knees before her in the snow, his warrior’s sword discarded. As Soldier’s Boy approached, the young man looked up at him, barely controlled panic in his eyes. With both hands, he held a dripping red cloth against Dasie’s lower leg. “I think the bone is broken,” he said, and his voice shook. “Can you heal her?”
No. “Let me look at it.”
Dasie still didn’t make a sound as Soldier’s Boy got down awkwardly on his knees before her. Her face was white, whiter than the cold would make it. All around her foot, the snow had been melted away by bright red blood. “Get me some rope, a string, a tie, a leather thong, anything I can bind around her leg. And bring a small stick, too,” he commanded her other feeder. To the boy who held the bandage, he said, “Keep it firm. Put pressure on it.”
“But that hurts her! Because it’s right on the break of the bone.”
“We have to keep her from bleeding to death. Hold it firm,” Soldier’s Boy commanded him. He saw the boy’s hands tighten, but gingerly, as if he gripped an egg. Not enough to stem the flow of blood. Irritably, he reached down to set his own hands over the feeder’s and push the grip tighter. Instead, reflexively, his hands jerked back from her injury. Iron. There was iron in there and it burned against his magic. He could only imagine the agony for Dasie, yet she sat silent and impassive. He had to admire her courage.
He looked up into her face. Her eyes stared straight ahead. “Dasie?” he said softly.
Her feeder shook his head. “She has had to leave us, to escape the pain. If we cause her too great a pain, it will pull her back. For now, she is in stillness.”
Soldier’s Boy nodded curtly. He did not entirely understand but decided that didn’t matter. The other feeder brought him, finally, a long strip of woven fabric and a stick. Dasie gave a small shudder and moan when he first touched her leg. He placed his tourniquet above her knee, and turned the stick. He watched, sickened, as the fabric bit deeper and deeper into her fleshy thigh. “Take away your hands. Has the bleeding stopped?” he asked the feeder who knelt beside him.
Slowly the man took away the cloth he held and then peeled off another sodden wrapping under it. The wound still oozed blood, but not as it had. Soldier’s Boy felt he could not kneel there another moment. “Clean it well and wrap it fresh. One of you will have to hold the stick as you do. Wait a little while, then loosen the stick and see if the bleeding has stopped. If it bleeds again, tighten the stick. The most important thing now is to keep her from bleeding to death.”
They looked aghast at him. The one holding the tourniquet spoke first. “Can’t you heal her with magic? She can heal all sorts of hurts with magic. Cannot you?”
“Not while there is iron in there. I cannot so much as put my hands to her wound. We need to get her back to the pass and then home, to where skilled healers can remove the bullet.”
Both her feeders looked frightened. “But…can you quick-walk her to the pass if she has iron in her? How will we get her there?”
“I will try my best. If I cannot quick-walk her there, we will use the horses to get her there as quickly as we can. More than that, I cannot do.”
Both feeders stared at him, one with his mouth hanging open in shocked disappointment. He had betrayed their trust, the looks said. It was not the first time someone had looked at him that way today. He pushed the memory of Spink’s face away and then tried to stand. He didn’t think he could until he felt someone take his arm and help him to his feet. He turned to see Sempayli.
“I am glad to see you reached here safely, Great One. I brought the others as best I could.”
And then he had to turn his head and see the men who had gathered round them as he tried to help Dasie. These were the men he had left to fend for themselves. They stood staring at him. Soot, smoke, and in a few cases, blood obscured their speckled faces. They wore the same expressions that weary soldiers always wore, no matter whose side they fought on, no matter if they had tasted victory or been drenched in defeat. They were cold, they were tired, they were hungry, and they had seen things that no man should have looked on, done things that no man should have to do. He had expected to see anger and disappointment in their faces as well, and the bitterness of defeat, but if they felt it, it did not show there. They were new to war-making. It was possible they did not know whether to consider it a victory or a defeat.
It came to him then that they had accepted his right to ride off and leave them to fend for themselves. He was a Great One, full of power, and he made his own rules. These were not Gernian soldiers, trained to have certain expectations of their leaders. There was no contract of command between him and these men. They had expected of him only what he had taught them to expect. He had told them, over and over, that they must obey him, that they must not run away from battle. But he had never told them that if things went against them, he would not desert them.
And so they had not expected that of him. It was not a Speck value. It was a Gernian value. And still it scalded him that he had not lived up to that value and that expectation.
“Perhaps, beneath it all, you are still more Gernian than you know. And unfit to command these warriors.” I pushed my words to the forefront of his mind.
“Be silent!” His hatred of me, of the Gernian part of him, buffeted me so strongly that I felt I spun in nothingness. It was all I could do to keep a firm grip on my sense of self.
When I gained access to the world again, time had passed. Darkness was around me. Soldier’s Boy quick-walked us through snowy forest. Behind us, Clove dragged a makeshift travois. One of Dasie’s feeder-guards led him. The other carried a torch beside it. Through Soldier’s Boy’s eyes, I peered around me into the darkness. We moved with a very small force, perhaps no more than a dozen men. Had his losses been that heavy? I thought I had seen more men than that by Dasie’s campfire, but perhaps—Even as my spirits rose, Soldier’s Boy dashed them. “You have been absent for days, fool. I quick-walked our force back to the pass. Then Jodoli helped me quick-walk a healer back to Dasie. The healer was able to get the iron out of her leg. Now we take her to where she can find warmth and food and rest.”
Something in his voice spilled his secret to me. “She’s still going to die. Her wound is poisoned.”
He struck me again, but not as hard. In the weakness of his blow, even as I spun in darkness, I read that he was cold, very hungry, and that his magic had been drained. More quietly than a spider, I righted myself and then pawed through his memories of his last few miserable days.
He had failed everyone. Nearly a third of his small force had been killed or captured. I’d been right about the troops. They’d tracked down and shot all the stragglers they could find. It had been sheer luck that they hadn’t discovered Dasie. When he had quick-walked the remains of his army to the pass, Kinrove’s first words to him had been, “But where are the others?” Soldier’s Boy had not even been able to answer. They had read it in his face.
Jodoli’s words had laid bare a great fear. “So we have failed. And now that they know of our war against them, they will turn their guns on us at every sight of us. We will not even be able to use the Dust Dance against them. We had only one chance to succeed, one chance to surprise and destroy them. It is gone. They will always be waiting for us now, and always with iron. The hatred and anger of the Plain-skins will never end now, not until they have hunted us to the ends of the earth.”
Soldier’s Boy had stood before him, his mouth filled with ashes. He could not deny even one of Jodoli’s statements.
Kinrove had smiled. There was sadness in his smile but also satisfaction. “You and Dasie were so certain that you knew a better way than my dance. What have you done to us? How many more dancers must I take now from the People to try to keep our ancestor trees safe?” He had looked at Jodoli then, and spoken only to him, dismissing Soldier’s Boy as a mage without wisdom. “I must leave you here, Jodoli, to bring our warriors home as well as you can. For I must go quickly now to my dancers, to add what strength I can to their work, and to prepare another summons to add dancers to my ranks. The fury of the intruders will give them some shield from my magic. If I do not block and quail them now, they will break through my barriers and ravage the ancestor trees simply to spite us. And they may hunt those who remain on the wrong side of the mountains, even to following our tracks here to our secret pass. I must go, and see if I can undo a little of the damage these two impetuous youngsters have done to the People.”
And, as simply as that, Kinrove had resumed his mantle of power and authority. The Greatest of the Great had turned and left them, quick-walking himself and a few of his key people away. In a moment, they had vanished, some taken in midtask. Jodoli hadn’t looked at Soldier’s Boy. Firada had come to stand at his shoulder, her eyes hard, as her Great One said, “I have much work to do here. Choose the healer you wish and I’ll help you quick-walk him back to Dasie. I will do what I can for the people here. But beyond that, I will have no extra strength to help you.” He turned his back on Soldier’s Boy and walked away.
Just as Soldier’s Boy thought that nothing could plunge him more deeply into despair, Olikea spoke from behind him. “So. We have failed. And I have lost my son forever to Kinrove’s dance.” He did not turn to face her. I felt his shoulders sag beneath the burden of her words. She came closer to him and he waited for her fury. But after a time, she touched his shoulder lightly and offered in a deadened voice, “I will make food for you. Before you have to go back.”
One word. “We.” Despite the sadness in her voice, despite her obvious resignation to his failure, she had said “we.” It was the tiniest speck of comfort he could imagine, but it was the only bit of comfort he had been offered. Tears stung his eyes. It woke a deeper shame in him, and added a more personal price to his failure. Despite his hunger, cold, weariness, and despair, it woke a spark of determination in him. He felt a resolve form in himself. If he failed in all other things, he would not fail in this.
I do not know if Soldier’s Boy was aware of me rummaging through his memories or if the moment came back to him on its own. “I will do what I must,” he said softly. He spoke as a man who fastens his courage to an idea, determined he will follow it through. “What are you planning?” I asked him, but he didn’t see fit to answer me. Instead, head down to the cold wind, he walked on. The dark forest rippled past us in the stuttering pace of his quick-walk. I could feel the magic gush from him with every step he took, like blood leaping from a nicked artery. He did not have much reserve left. I think he heard my thought.
“I’ll get us there,” he said doggedly. One of his men glanced back at his muttered comment, but said nothing.
Night was deep when we reached the pass. The camp we had made in the first sheltered section was nearly deserted. A fire burned to welcome us, and Olikea had been keeping soup hot over it. The moment we arrived, a dozen of Dasie’s feeders and guards converged on her. They had their own fire burning, and a bed of pine boughs and furs awaiting her, along with all sorts of savory foods. Soldier’s Boy watched them bear her away and felt rebuked by how they snatched her away from his stewardship. Obviously, they felt he had failed her; now that they had her back, they wanted nothing to do with him.
He bowed his head and turned to his own fire and Olikea who waited for him. She had built a pallet of boughs and blankets for him, not as elaborate as that prepared for Dasie, but more than adequate. She helped him to remove some of his outer garments and offered him soft warm slippers in place of the ice-crusted boots she pulled from his feet. She had warmed water for him to wash his face and hands, and a soft cloth for him to dry them. That such simple comforts could bring so great a relief! Silently, her face grave, she motioned him to sit down while she served the food. He was surprised to see both Jodoli and Firada seated there as well. “I thought you would have gone home,” he said brusquely to them.
Jodoli’s response was grave. “I thought you might need help to quick-walk Dasie and her feeders home. The last time I saw you, you seemed very tired.”
He was. Too tired to hold on to his anger. He sighed in resignation. “In truth, I would welcome your help,” he said simply.
Jodoli said, “In the morning, then.” And for a time, there were few other words as Olikea served all of them the soup she had kept warm for him. It was a good soup, thick and rich with meat and mushrooms. With every sip of it, Soldier’s Boy felt warmth and strength returning to his body. He glanced over at Dasie’s larger fire. Her feeders still clustered around her, bees tending their queen. Despite having her restored to them, they made a low hum that was anxious rather than comforted.
Dasie had scarcely spoken a word to him since they had met after the battle. Her feeders had told him several times that she had retreated to another place to avoid the pain of her injury. But even the removal of the iron from her leg had not summoned her back. He had seen the injury. The ball had hit the bone, shattering it, and then wedged amid the broken pieces. The healer who had removed it had taken out the iron, picked out small bone fragments, cleaned it, and bound the wound closed. The healer had not approved of Soldier’s Boy’s tourniquet, but had been glad to see that Dasie reacted when he pricked her toes.
“Now that the iron is out, she will begin to heal herself,” one of her guards had declared confidently. Soldier’s Boy was not so sure of that. He thought that her retreat into herself might not be solely because of her wound. The injury to her spirit might be more severe than that to her leg. He had heard tales of young soldiers who never recovered fully from their first sight of battle. From the little her guards had told him, their firing of the town and slaughtering of the residents as they fled had been “successful,” if that was a word to apply to such a task. Dasie had been active and enthusiastic in the setting of the fires, and had herself slain an innkeeper and his three grown sons when they had tumbled from their beds and come outside in their nightshirts to fight the flames.
But the guard had also spoken of a woman who threw an infant from an upstairs window in an effort to save her before she, nightgown in flames, leapt to her death. The guard had chased down two little boys who held hands as they fled barefoot through the streets. He had spoken with relish of his task, reliving that brief satiation of his hatred, and Soldier’s Boy had agreed with him that he had done exactly what had needed to be done. But he wondered now if Dasie had truly understood what her task would be and what she would witness when she had ridden down on Gettys. Specks were not by nature or culture a folk of violent confrontations. Even within their own villages and kin-clans, blows seldom settled arguments. He wondered if his plan had pushed her beyond her will to save her people. I felt little sympathy for her. She had looked on what her hatred had prompted. Good. Let her realize it.
“There was no other solution,” Soldier’s Boy said to me. “The Gernians forced us to it. We had tried everything else we could think of to make them go away or at least respect our territory. We had to do it.”
“But it did not go as well as you had planned,” Jodoli replied, thinking the words were intended for him. “This we have learned from the other warriors. They said that as they looked back, the town and the fort were still burning, but not in a way that would take it all to ash. So what will you do? Will you still wait for a time, and then surprise them again?”
Soldier’s Boy shook his head, a Gernian gesture. He suddenly realized that and stopped. “We will not surprise them again. We had but one opportunity to slip in among them and take them unawares. I’ve spent that, and not bought much with it. If we tried it again, we would find marksmen on the walls and a lookout in the tower. We would be slaughtered before we could even get close to them.”
“So,” Jodoli asked him after a long moment had passed. “What is our next move, then?”
Soldier’s Boy noticed the “our” and almost smiled. He could not decide whether to be offended or pleased. “Our” plan? Jodoli had not taken himself into any danger and had contributed little to the planning. But if he was willing to be seen as part of Soldier’s Boy’s plans, he should probably accept him as an ally. He bent his head over his bowl of soup and silently ate for a time instead of answering. I could feel the food enter his system, feel it replenishing his magic. Slowly he forced his thoughts back to their task. “What is our next move to destroy the intruders?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. The magic does not make it clear to me.” The others looked shocked that he would admit it. I felt only a satisfaction, cold and hard. I hadn’t known either what this magic was supposed to make me do. That Soldier’s Boy had finally and bluntly admitted his ignorance as well meant that, just perhaps, it was all some great mistake. All the Specks had been pinning such high hopes on him for so long, and perhaps they were all wrong. Perhaps the magic itself was wrong. Jodoli said the same old horrible words.
“But I have seen it, in my dreams. You are the one the magic has chosen. There was something you were to do that would drive the intruders away and save the People.”
Soldier’s Boy set the empty soup dish on the icy ground beside him. He was suddenly very tired. Tired and sick of this life that he had been thrust into. He spoke simply, plainly. “There were small tasks the magic gave me. I’ve done every one of them. I allowed the magic to look through my eyes. I gave a signal to the Dust Dancers who were sent to the city. I wrote copiously in a book, and when I left the intruders, I abandoned that book. I carried a stone, and when the time felt right, I passed the stone on. All simple, even stupid tasks. None of them made any difference. And twice now, I’ve done things not as the magic directed me but as I best thought would serve the People. Once, when I burned every bit of magic that I had to help the forest devour the King’s Road. And again, when I led every warrior I could muster against Gettys. Yet all I have done at the magic’s bidding and all I have done at my own bidding have come to naught. I have no more ideas. I think the task that all believe is mine is beyond me. So, instead, I will choose one that I think I can do and devote myself to that.”
I am not sure that Olikea was even listening to him. There was something dead about her, as empty as Dasie’s eyes. She’d given up on life and was going through the motions. She reached to take his empty bowl and refill it. Instead, he caught her hand. He held it, not as a man holds the hand of a woman he loves but as an elder brother might hold his little sister’s hand to assure her that he meant his words. “I’m going to bring Likari home to Olikea.” He glanced up at her face and changed his words. “I’m going to bring Likari home to us. If that is the only thing I can accomplish with my life and my magic, then I will do it. This is not a task the magic has given to me, but one I choose.”
Both of the women maintained a weighted silence, but I saw tears rise in Firada’s eyes. She leaned over to take her sister’s other hand. Jodoli seemed completely unaware of the importance of his offer to them. “And how will you do that?” he demanded harshly. “Kinrove has summoned him as a dancer and he has gone. We have told you. You cannot simply bring him back to us. He would not stay. He might not even know us.” He looked disgusted as he leaned back from the fire and the food. “Nevare, you speak too often of what you will do with your power, always thinking you know more than the magic. You and Dasie, so sure you could destroy Gettys, even if it was something the magic had not bade you do! And now, you will steal Likari back for us somehow. It is a cruel hope that you dangle before these women. The magic took Likari. How can you use the magic against itself, to take him back? Can a knife cut itself, a fire burn itself? NO! Will you ever learn that when you set yourself above or against the magic, you are wrong? That you are doomed to fail?” He shook his head and said in a lower voice, “Kinrove and I were fools, to allow ourselves to be coerced into helping you. We should have fought you with every means we had. Neither of us will make that mistake again. Whatever foolish idea you are harboring, do not seek to include me or my feeder.”
The rebuke was the harshest I had ever heard Jodoli speak. Soldier’s Boy smarted under the sharp words. He seethed with anger and indignation, but could not think of a reply. “I will not need your help,” he finally responded, but his words sounded childish, even to himself. His pride was pricked. What I felt most strongly was his determination to do something, anything, that would prove his worth to his followers. I wondered if he would try to pit himself against Kinrove. If he had Dasie’s backing, he might break the dance once more. It would be a stupid thing to do, was my opinion. They’d stirred up Gettys like a boy poking a stick into a hornets’ nest. Kinrove’s dance would be the only thing holding the Gernians back from tracking the Specks into the forest and annihilating them. Stopping Kinrove’s dance now would be a suicidal gesture for all the Specks.
As he and Jodoli glared at one another, a sudden howl rose from the group gathered around Dasie and her fire. It crested in shrieks of disbelief and pain. The sound paralyzed all of them for a moment, and then both Firada and Olikea leapt to their feet and ran to the other fire. Soldier’s Boy rose more slowly, looking toward the ululating feeders.
“What is it?” Soldier’s Boy demanded with dread.
“She’s dead,” Jodoli said flatly. “Dead in winter, worse luck for her. We will have to act swiftly.”
“I don’t understand.” Those were the words he spoke, but echoing within him were other words. Jodoli was right. It’s all my fault. I failed her, too. Independent of his weariness, a separate blackness rose at the edges of his vision; he feared he would faint. The harder he tried to improve things, the worse they became. Dasie had been a heroine to her kin-clan, and beyond. She had freed the dancers from Kinrove and then gone forth to fight for her people. For her to die now, before she could even return to them with the small triumph of the raid, would devastate her folk. Unbidden, a cowardly thought crept coldly through him. It could turn all the Specks against him. Then where could he go? To whom would he turn for shelter and sustenance?
Jodoli was not answering that, but another concern. “Winter is the worst time for a Great One to die. Her body will have to be borne back to the Valley of the Ancestor Trees. The trees are mostly dormant at this time of year; it will be hard for her chosen tree to take her in. It will be much more difficult to join her to her tree. Some of her may be lost.”
“Lost?” he echoed unwillingly.
“We will have to move quickly. The sooner she reaches her tree, the better. If there is still warmth in her body, that is best of all. I pray that when my time comes, I will die when my tree already embraces me and my kin-clan stands around me singing. Dasie must go to her tree almost alone, in winter with only a few to sing to her. Oh, this is not a good omen.”
Jodoli did not even go to the other fire to see if his assumptions were correct. Instead he did something that Soldier’s Boy had never seen him do before: attempt to dress himself, fastening his own cloak and hood that was still chilled and damp from his day’s journey. Before Soldier’s Boy could reach for his own garb, several of Dasie’s feeders converged on them. Soldier’s Boy felt he was almost wrestled into his clothing and boots. Olikea came to help them. All of the feeders were weeping as they worked; it did not make them gentler. Never had I seen Specks move so quickly and in such a concerted way. By the time Soldier’s Boy was ready, Dasie’s bundled body had already been reloaded onto the travois. When Soldier’s Boy sought to speak to Jodoli about what would happen next, the Great One sternly shushed him. “Do not distract her with words. Say nothing to draw her attention to us. Whatever anger you feel for me, set it aside. This is not our time. It is hers. Keep silent, and learn how a Great One goes to her tree.”
And so, in the cold and the dark of night, they left the scant shelter of the stony roofed pass and headed once more down to the forest of the ancestor trees. Jodoli led the way. The horse pulled the travois with Dasie’s body. Her two weary feeders who had stayed with her accompanied her again, along with those of her guards and feeders who had been in the cavernous pass. And Soldier’s Boy came last of all.
Jodoli set the pace for the quick-walk and Soldier’s Boy held it. Together they conveyed the funeral party through the night. It was not an easy task for Soldier’s Boy. This was his fifth quick-walk of this route in but a handful of days. I could sense that it was more difficult because they had to move Dasie’s dead body with them, but could not understand why it was harder to do that any more than I could grasp why it was possible to lead a horse on a quick-walk but far more difficult to ride one. Soldier’s Boy was tired, discouraged, and full of sorrow. He was grateful that Jodoli minded the magic of the quick-walk and that all he had to do was help maintain it. His legs seemed made of lead and his back hurt horribly. He kept feeling tiny sharp twinges to either side of his spine. Callously, I pictured for him a suspension bridge with the cables snapping due to overload.
“Leave me alone,” he retorted miserably.
After that, I rode silently.
The short winter day had lightened when we finally reached the valley of the ancestor trees. The day was cold, but not nearly as cold as it had been the night of our attack on the fort. There was a high breeze stirring the tops of the trees. Loosened snow fell in cascades and clumps, but for the most part the air was still under the interlaced canopy of branches, both needled and bare. Once we reached the edge of the valley, Jodoli stopped the quick-walk. Dasie’s feeders took over leading the way and we all trudged in a long chilled procession behind them. No one spoke. There were occasional birdcalls and the crunch of our footsteps on the icy snow and the sounds of Clove dragging the travois. Other than that, the others kept silent and Soldier’s Boy copied them. That battering of his inner thoughts was so loud that he could scarcely have paid any attention to conversation even if he had found the will to say something. Dasie’s feeders moved purposefully through the forest, and he followed.
They came at last to a section of the forest where the canopy was thinner. Several of the older trees were scarred by fire. Between two huge burned-out stumps, a smaller kaembra tree stood. Long ago, lightning had killed and burned two of the great kaembra trees, leaving a hole in the canopy overhead that had permitted enough sunlight to encourage this young tree to sprout between the trunks. A couple of other young trees grew closer to the edge of the clearing. The bark of Dasie’s tree was smooth and gray-green, its trunk only the diameter of a hogshead. A young tree, by Speck standards. Snow had settled deeply around it. Jodoli stood by Dasie’s body as her feeders and guards went to work moving snow. They used their hands and feet, scooping and kicking away the loose white stuff until the frosted layer of fallen leaves and moss that was the forest floor was exposed. Only when a ten-foot-diameter circle had been cleared at the tree’s base did they return to the travois for Dasie’s body.
Jodoli stepped aside and again Soldier’s Boy copied him. Dasie’s feeders worked with efficiency that was still respectful. With a sharp knife, one man cut her clothing from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. Several of her guards stepped forward to help drag her limp weight from the travois to the selected tree. Just before they set her with her back to the tree, one of her feeders ran his knife from the back of her head down her spine to the divide of her buttocks. The slash exposed meat but no blood flowed. With chill efficiency, the man opened the slash wider. Then, as they placed her against the tree, he worked to snug the open wound as firmly as he could against the tree’s bark. Jodoli spoke very softly. “Sometimes, in winter, when the trees sleep deeply, the touch of blood against the bark will waken them. So we hope for Dasie.”
They were binding her against the tree now, strapping her firmly in place with long strips of leather. Her legs were outstretched before her, and her arms tucked close to her body. One feeder secured her legs at the knees and ankles to keep them from spraddling while another finished tying her at throat and brow. When they were finished, they stepped back and waited in silence.
And waited.
There was a subtle tension building in that stillness. I was not sure what they were waiting for, but sensed the gravity of the moment. After an appreciable time had passed, one of her guard stepped forward. He met the eyes of her chief feeder and then offered his bared forearm and, in his other hand, a knife. “Perhaps fresh warm blood would awake—” he began, but in that moment, her other feeder gave a low and welcoming cry.
“There!” he exclaimed in relief. We all stared at Dasie’s body and I saw nothing at all. But a moment later, the corner of Dasie’s mouth twitched. I was not certain I had really seen it, but then her head subtly shifted.
Beside me, Jodoli breathed a sigh of relief. “The tree has welcomed her,” he proclaimed, and there was a flutter of movement among her feeders as they exchanged looks. Tears began to flow again, but they were like the tears shed when a difficult birth still yields a viable child. Anguish gives way to joy, and then to peace. Her feeders went quickly to work again. They shrouded her from head to toe in a woven blanket. This they doused with water from the waterskins and then shaped it to her body. “It will freeze that way,” Jodoli explained, “and seal her against the tree, so that scavengers do not carry off what rightfully belongs to the tree. This has gone better than I expected. I would have liked to see a livelier joining to the tree, but this is enough. Dasie has her tree.”
Her feeders and guards were busy again, now using the snow they had scraped away from around the tree to bury the wrapped body. Jodoli withdrew some little distance and Soldier’s Boy did likewise, but did not follow the Great Man. Instead, he walked to the clearing’s edge. He stared out into the pillared dimness of the forest canopied by the intersecting branches of the kaembra trees overhead. The day seemed darker when he turned his back to the little clearing, and the forest more mysterious. Almost he fancied he heard a soft voice calling him.
“Nevare. Neva-are.” A man’s voice. Soldier’s Boy turned his head rapidly from side to side, scanning the forest. He saw no one.
And then more clearly, “Never, you old sonovabitch, aren’t you going to say hello?”
Buel Hitch. His mocking tone was unmistakable.
Soldier’s Boy turned his head slowly to regard the tree next to him. It was a young kaembra, approximately the same age as the one that Dasie had just joined. Heart thumping, he took one step closer to it. He trod on something under the snow and stepped back hastily. It had not been a branch. Bone. A leg bone.
“It was a big honor they done me. Not a Great One nor a Speck. But her kin-clan knew I had served the magic as well as I could, and so they brought me here and gave me a tree. I never got to thank you, Nevare. So I’ll do it now. Thanks for keeping your word, even after you found out how I betrayed you. Thanks for letting the Specks take my body out of that wooden box and bring me here.”
“Buel.” Soldier’s Boy spoke the name aloud with me. I do not know which half of me was more shocked, the Speck or the Gernian, that my friend and my betrayer lived on here. Soldier’s Boy pulled the heavy mitten from his hand, and set the bare flesh of his palm to the tree’s bark.
“Careful!” Buel warned me, standing as clearly before me as if his bones still wore flesh. “It’s a young tree and I’ve only been here a few months. The tree’s pretty deep asleep, but if it starts to wake hungry, it’ll go for you, just like a snake after a rat. So. Well, look at you. Now who’s gone native, old son? Specks and all.”
Soldier’s Boy spoke to him. “I’m not who you think I am.”
Buel grinned. He didn’t look quite as I remembered him. He was taller, more muscled, and his hair was combed. I suddenly realized that I was seeing his own idealized version of himself. That was a breathtaking insight into Lisana. I might have startled Soldier’s Boy by sharing that thought, except that what Buel said next shocked me even more. He shook his head and the ghost’s grin grew wider.
“Oh, no, old son. Now you’re exactly who I think you are. Maybe even more so.” He cocked his head and then craned it down to look into my eyes, smiling all the while. And I suddenly knew that he saw me, as I was now, but that all that time, he’d been seeing Soldier’s Boy as well. He shook his head in sympathy. “Well, you’re still in a fix and no mistake, my friend. Maybe a worse fix than when last I saw you, though that’s hard to believe. You forgave me, didn’t you? Don’t you?” His smile had faded to an earnest look.
I was at a loss. Had I forgiven him? How could I? He’d killed a woman and made it look as if I had done it. He’d spread the whispers that had turned public feeling against me to the point where a mob had tried to murder me. He’d done it under the duress of the magic. Yet even knowing that—
Soldier’s Boy answered for both of us. “I understand you. Sometimes, when you understand a man that deeply, forgiveness becomes a moot point. You did what you were supposed to do, Buel Hitch. You did the magic’s bidding.”
Buel continued to stare at us. No. At me. Waiting. I spoke within Soldier’s Boy. “I don’t have to forgive Buel Hitch. He wasn’t who betrayed me. The magic did that.”
I felt Soldier’s Boy scowl and knew he had heard me. When Buel grinned again, I knew he had, too. “No matter who did it, Nevare, I’m sorry it happened. But I can’t be sorry for what it bought me. This.”
“You enjoy being a tree?” Behind me, the others were finishing their task. Dasie’s body was encased in the freezing blanket and covered now with a shroud of snow. Her feeders were caressing the snow as if they were smoothing a delicate coverlet over a sleeping child.
“Being a tree.” He smiled. “I suppose that’s one way of seeing it.” He sighed then, not the sigh of a man who is discouraged but rather as a man sighs with satisfaction at the completeness of his life.
“Nevare!” Jodoli called him. Soldier’s Boy turned to look at him, and the Great Man gestured. The others were gathering in a circle about Dasie and her tree. He was expected to join them.
As he walked away, Buel spoke after us, his words intended for me. He was not yet strong in his tree. His voice faded as we moved away from him, but the words he spoke reached me still.
“It’s worth it, Nevare. No matter what it takes from you. No matter what you have to give up. No matter what you have to do. It’s worth it. Relax into it, old son. Give way to the magic. You won’t be sorry. I promise.”
Soldier’s Boy gave a short nod. I held myself still and stubborn inside him. No.
He turned away from the tree and the huddle of snow that still, now that he looked at it, echoed the shape of a man’s seated body trussed to the tree’s trunk. The others were gathering around Dasie’s tree where a similar but much larger mound of snow marked her “grave.” Soldier’s Boy went over to them. As he plodded through the snow, Jodoli joined him. He spoke as if their quarrel had never been, or as if he had dismissed it as insignificant. “It is good that the tree took her in. She chose the tree years ago, when first she knew she would be a Great One, and has visited it yearly, giving it offerings of her blood to awaken it to her and claim it. Still, in very cold weather, it has sometimes happened that a tree does not accept the Great One’s body. Then there is little that anyone can do.”
“What happens now?”
“Now we will sing a farewell to her. Our songs will remind her of who she was, so that as she is taken into the tree, her memories remain strong. Of course, it should be her entire kin-clan here to sing her into her tree, rather than just two of her feeders and a handful of her guard. But we are here. Nevare, we would be very wise to honor her with very long songs, as long as we can sing, of everything that we know about her. Do you understand?”
“I think I do.” He meant it would be politically wise. “I will watch you and then I will do my best.”
“Very well. Let us join them.”
It was as unlike a Gernian burial as I could imagine. We formed a circle around the tree and held hands. This required baring our hands to the cold, as the skin-to-skin contact was deemed very important. A few moments after we had joined hands, I understood why. I could feel the magic flowing through the circle of linked hands with the same sensation of moving current as if we all held on to a pipe with water flowing through it, through us.
Her feeders began the songs, as was their right. It was not a song so much as a chant; it had no melody and it did not rhyme. The first man recounted everything he could recall of her, from the moment he had first met her to his days of being her feeder right up to her death. He chanted until his voice gave out and then on until he could barely croak out the words. When he finally could say no more, his fellow feeder took up the tale, again recounting how he had met Dasie and on through all the days and ways he had served her. He avoided repetition of events that the first feeder had covered. Even so, before her feeders were finished the brief day was ending.
But the cover of night brought no respite. The chant went on, passed from guard to guard to guard, with each fondling his memories of Dasie and trying to recall for the dead woman how she had looked and spoken, what she had eaten or worn, how she had laughed at a humorous event or mourned a sad one. Not all the memories were kind. Some spoke of her when she was a small girl and prone to cruelty to smaller children. Others spoke of her temper as a grown woman. Some wept as they spoke of Dasie and losing her, but as often they laughed or shouted as they recalled memories of her. One spoke in detail of her activities on the day of the battle. I cringed as he spoke of the deaths they had witnessed, and of those she had killed with her own hand. But the guard spared us no detail. All, all must be spoken to preserve it in the dead woman’s memory.
I learned far more of Dasie’s life than I had ever known before. When the telling finally reached Jodoli, Soldier’s Boy was already racking his brain for what he could add. Jodoli spoke of how he had met her when she was a Great One, and told in detail of the night when she had freed the dancers from Kinrove. He spoke of meals they had shared and gifts they had exchanged as Great Ones of the People. He drew his material out by adding details.
Soldier’s Boy’s feet and legs felt swollen, and he ached with cold. Only the magic flowing from hand to hand to hand made the experience tolerable at all. He felt his energy feed it but felt also how it drew strength from every person and circulated it back to him.
It was full dark when Jodoli finally fell silent. Cold had crept and flowed to surround them; Soldier’s Boy felt it was cracking the skin of his face. The hair inside his nostrils had grown stiff and prickly and he could barely feel his feet at all. Worse, he felt that there was nothing left for him to say, yet Jodoli had warned him that he must at least attempt to speak at length of Dasie.
It seemed they had left him little enough to speak of, and yet he acquitted himself well. He spoke of when he had first seen her at Kinrove’s encampment, and what she had said and how she had looked to him. He spoke of her freeing the dancers from Kinrove’s dance, and when he sensed how her guards and feeders loved to hear of her as a hero, he embroidered that moment. He also spoke of how she had hated him on first sight and threatened him, and this, I suddenly knew, was news to many of those gathered there. But as others had done before him, he did not skip or soften any details, not of that first encounter nor even when he was telling of how little sympathy she had shown when Likari had been summoned to be a dancer. He spoke of how they had prepared for the battle, and the moments before they had each parted to their assigned tasks and then how he had seen her, injured and staring, when they met again. He spoke of leaving her with her loyal feeders while he went to fetch a healer, and also of quick-walking her back to the pass where she had died.
And when he came to the end of his telling, the darkness was deep around all of us. Tiny sparkling stars showed overhead in the opening in the forest canopy, and an errant night wind blew snow against our faces. As he fell silent, the greater silence of the forest all around us swallowed us up and held us inside it. The magic still circled through our clasped hands but it could no longer distract Soldier’s Boy from his discomfort. His back and legs were stiff and sore, he was cold, and he was hungry. Worse, he knew that a long quick-walk awaited him before he could hope that any of those discomforts would be alleviated. But the others still stood in silence, holding hands, and so he kept company with them. He sensed they were all waiting but had no idea for what.
Everyone took a step closer to the tree and he lurched forward with them. And another, and another, until they were huddled close to the trunk of the tree and Dasie’s snow-shrouded body. The magic suddenly coursed more strongly through their clasped hands, pulling them close, binding them into one. Darkness vanished, to be replaced with a peculiar light; everyone there glowed with it, and the living trees of the forest were vertical columns of soft light. Every living thing gave off its own measure of it. He felt Dasie, felt her strongly centered in the tree. She was there, every bit of her, every moment of her life, every memory they had shared with her. She was newborn there, laughing with the growing awareness of this new life. Complete and at peace, she dimly gave thanks to us as she vanished into the satisfaction of her joining with her tree.
But there was more. Soldier’s Boy felt everyone there through the clasp of their hands, felt the life in the trees that surrounded them, and even the slow surge of the great earth life beneath his feet. It warmed him and filled him, and eased the sense of loss he had felt. For the time that it lasted, he was one with the forest of the ancestor trees, one with the Specks, one with the People. Tears stung his eyes. He did belong here. These were his people, and when his time came, his tree would be here waiting for him. It would be the second sapling that had grown from Lisana’s fallen trunk. There he would take root among this wisdom and shared life. As if his thought had summoned her, he felt a thread of Lisana in her connectedness to the greater whole, distant in the crowd, glowing with her own special light. He yearned toward her, but a different voice spoke to me.
“You see what I mean, old son? It’s worth it. This is what I can feel, all the time now.”
Soldier’s Boy paid no heed to Buel Hitch’s disembodied voice. Instead, he stretched and reached for Lisana and she toward him. For a long moment, their awarenesses brushed against each other, mingled, and then, like ember logs that fall apart from one another as the fire consumes them, crashed into separateness again. We all stood once more in icy darkness in a black forest. The distant stars could neither light nor warm us, and a cold wind was sweeping through the trees overhead, dusting us with secondhand snow.
“Her tree has taken her. It is time for us to go and leave her to it,” Jodoli announced.
And we did.