Children of Earth and Sky (58 page)

But at some point it became clear that plans for a marriage and the union of two farms were being made difficult by Milena, who was being difficult because of Neven.

Not that she'd be able to refuse her father, but Zorzi was an unhurried man and he was being patient. He also appeared to have reservations about Jorjo's family, going back a long way, and
so perhaps he might not have entirely minded if the big young stranger had chosen to stay with them.

Neven would never know if that was so. After the snow melted and the first buds and flowers appeared, he said at the end of a midday meal that he would stay through ploughing and planting and be on his way.

Milena had given him the dregs of the broth and half portions of cabbage two evenings running, but never said a word. He did feel a little sorry, but Dimitar seemed decent, and there were reasons for those two to be together. Not everyone could go out into the world chasing dreams and difference, especially a girl.

It seemed to him that people must pass through each other's lives all the time, touch them, be touched by them. Leave something behind, maybe, like a star that fell—you became a memory. Teacher Kasim, for example. Kasim was that for him. And Koçi, too. And Skandir, that day above the road, having his life spared by that man. That was more than just a memory.

He wondered how long he'd remember these farms, the sound of the wind, owls in winter nights, killing wolves with Zorzi and his sons with the moons shining on hard-packed snow. Milena's body curved over the table as she poured soup for all of them, or standing beside the well towards the river at day's end, looking at something in the distance no one else could see.

He left before dawn one morning, the last stars still in the sky. He'd told Zorzi at twilight, coming in from the spring field, and they'd exchanged a farewell. He didn't tell Milena that night, but he did receive her father's permission to leave her a gift: he was going, it was all right.

He had a silver Asharite neck chain with a silver star. He wasn't going to wear it any more. He looped it over the handle of her bedchamber door and left.

He spoke Sauradian like a native by then. He
was
a native, he
told himself on the road as the sun rose behind him. And he did know where he was going now, after all. Probably always had, he thought.

—

HE WAS ATTACKED
three days later.

He'd known he was being tracked all morning. You might leave the djannis, everything you'd known, change your life (or try), but you didn't leave your training behind so quickly.

Three men had been moving with him, north of the road. He thought they might be hadjuks; the land kept rising, and high ground was their country. He hoped they were hadjuks.

They came down exactly where he'd thought they might, where the slopes came close to the rough ribbon of road, with scrub and bush and a copse of trees for cover.

Not enough of that.

“Stop there!” he shouted in Osmanli. “Unless you are in a hurry to die.”

They didn't stop. He hadn't expected them to. He was one man in a lonely place, and he had, at the very least, a sword and bow they could take. They stood up to be seen and came forward, spreading out. Two of them carried heavy guns. Most people, he thought, would raise their hands in surrender now, or kneel, seeing hadjuks with guns. Hoping to be robbed only, escape with their lives.

“I don't think we'll be the ones who die here,” one of them said. He had a long beard and a wool cap.

“Bad thought,” said Neven. “I don't like hadjuks, as it happens.”

“Is it so? How do you feel about guns, pretty boy?”

“I think they aim badly and misfire often. I think those are old and I doubt you know how to reload at any speed.”

They stopped walking. His calm causing that. Then the one who had spoken took aim.

“Let's find out,” he said.

They did. Neven really had been one of the best with a bow in Mulkar. A natural eye, the archery teacher had said, not a man quick to praise.

He killed the one levelling the gun first, as they'd been taught, and the explosion of its firing sounded as the hadjuk died, convulsively twitching his finger.

The other two sprinted forward. One fired his gun, which was pretty much a waste of effort if you were running, it would just be noise. Neven didn't even bother to duck down (you were taught to drop, men tended to aim high). He had time for the arrow that took this one, too.

For the third he could have used his bow again—djanni archers were trained to speed, it was
why
bows were still better than guns, usually—but these were hadjuks, and he wanted to engage with one of those, kill him with a sword, see him fall from close.

This was done, this happened.

Silence, after. It could often seem quieter after loud sounds ended, Neven thought. There had been a wing and flap of birds from trees when the guns went off (he recalled that), but there was this stillness now.

It ought not to be so easy to end a life, he thought. He wasn't regretful, they had come down to kill him. But even so: they had been breathing, thinking of a woman, their herds, the brightness of the sun at midday, they were hungry or tired or excited, and now they were none of those things.

It was likely, he thought, that others might come now from the hills, having heard the guns, so he picked up his pace after cleaning his sword and checking if the hadjuks had anything he could use.

There was a little food. His own boots were better than theirs (they were poor men, ragged—not a life of ease, he thought). They had knives, but so did he. He left the guns. They were heavy, and he didn't like guns. He did retrieve his arrows.

The second man wasn't dead yet. Neven looked down at him where he lay fighting for breath beside the road.

“This was for Antunic,” he said. He bent and pulled out the arrow. “For my father and my brother.” He straightened and watched as the man died.

He carried on. Days and nights. You were careful here, of men and wolves at night. He saw deer at the edge of the trees. Wild boar. A bear once. It rained, there was sunshine. The road turned to the south. He'd hoped it would. He'd have had to strike out off the path had it not. He wasn't entirely sure where he needed to go. He asked people when he came upon them—when they didn't flee at his approach. There were few farms. He'd reached wilder, hillier country as he continued south. Mountains to the west now, in the distance. Sheep and goats grazed. He hunted rabbits and game birds. The road dwindled and disappeared. He walked open country. He suspected he might have to go more to the west at some point but he didn't know where.

—

IT WAS NEARLY
summer when he found it.

He spoke one morning to a brother and sister minding their flock. Caused them to understand he meant no harm, despite the bow and sword. He didn't know if they believed that, but they didn't run away. Or they were defending their sheep, showing courage.

The brother was aggressive, trying to make himself feel braver. Neven understood how men (and boys) did that.

“Don't challenge me,” he said to him. “I have no ill intent.”

“Do you even know how to use that bow? Did you steal it?”

“If I stole it, I'd have had to do so from a djanni. Look at it.”

They wouldn't know a djanni bow here, he realized.

“Show us, then!” the brother said. “Hit that tree.” He pointed south. Neven didn't turn.

“I did say don't challenge me. I see where you keep your knife. Don't do it. You can't stab me while I shoot at some tree. You can't.
I can kill you both, and your friends on the ridge. I don't want to. I just have a question, then I'm away.”

“Bartol, leave it alone. I think he means it.” The girl's voice was surprisingly calm.

Her brother looked at her—there was an obvious resemblance—then back to Neven.

“What's your question?” he said gruffly.

“I'm looking for a village called Antunic.”

“Why?” the girl asked, surprising him again.

No reason not to answer. “I was born there.”

“Then why don't you know where it is?” she asked.

“I was taken by hadjuks as a child.”

“We're hadjuks,” she said.

“Cilya!” her brother said sharply.

“He said he wouldn't hurt us.”

Neven nodded. “I won't. I just want to go home.”

“You won't find much,” she said.

It wasn't, as it happened, very far. He arrived towards sunset the next day. There was a west wind, high clouds.

—

NOTHING HAD BEEN REBU
ILT.
No one lived here. Neven had thought there'd be a new village settled, that some might even be here who remembered his father, his grandfather. Might even remember him as a child. Vuk Gradek's little boy. He had wanted his language skills to be flawless, for when he came home.

He looked around the emptiness left behind and he felt so hard a sadness he wanted to weep.

He swallowed, spat into the grass. This wasn't the way he'd imagined it would be. There were blackened ruins of houses you could walk past and look into. One of these would have been their own. He had no idea which. Ash was everywhere, you'd have thought it would have all blown away by now. Weeds and wildflowers. The wind blew, he rubbed grit from one eye.

There were sheep grazing nearby watched by another pair of shepherds and their dog. They eyed Neven warily. Asharites, he saw, as the brother and sister had been the day before. This was currently Asharite land, it seemed. He knew the borderlands went back and forth, over and over.

He had left his necklace with Ashar's star at the farm, looped on Milena's door. He knew nothing about the faith of the sun god, but he was going to be a Jaddite now.

That decision he'd made when he left the army. They had taken him away, taken everything
from
him. You could try to find your way back, step by step along springtime roads, muddy fields. He was doing that. Had done that. He looked around. A hawk overhead. The sun—Jad's sun—setting over the mountains.

He tried to imagine—to
remember
—fires in the night here. Or anything from before. There was something, but not enough. Nothing clear, or sharp. He felt terribly alone. There was nothing to stay here for. He had only the one place left he could think to go to now. He might die there, but it was the last link he had.

He wondered if an Asharite army was headed for Woberg this spring even as he stood here. Red-saddle cavalry and new cannons (new serdars for the artillery) and the djannis in their regiments marching towards glory in the khalif's name.

It had indeed been a drier spring. They could have reached the fortresses, in fact, but no army was headed north that year. The forces of Ashar had gone east instead. There was rebellion there. It needed dealing with.

It would take more than a season to do that. Hard fighting in desert places would stretch Asharias to the limit for years. There was no thought of Woberg Fortress, of conquering in Jaddite lands during that time. The disgrace and death of Cemal, the khalif's expected heir, a perception of weakness, these had shaped instability among the eastern tribes.

(The artist Pero Villani, whose words had begun all this, in the
Palace of Silence in Asharias, was painting Duke Ricci of Seressa that same spring.)

Neven Gradek built a small fire in the village where he'd been born, and he stayed awake through the night beside it, as you needed to in such an open place alone, keeping it burning to ward off wolves, watching the moons cross the sky and the wheeling of the stars. In the morning he went west, towards the mountains and a pass through them, headed for Senjan, where his sister had said they'd fled, through the borderlands.

—

DADO
WAS ON WATCH
alone by the tower outside Senjan's walls. (His real name was Damir, but no one called him that, however much he tried to make them.) He ought to have been
in
the tower, up top, but he was someone who'd always hated feeling enclosed.

The emperor, may Jad defend him, had offered to send more imperial guards for their defence, and weapons and goods (and payment!) for Senjan's great heroes. They were badly depleted since the events of last spring, and they'd accepted fifteen soldiers. With their own numbers so low, and uncertainty as to the future, it was necessary.

But this year it was said that the Osmanlis were marching east, not west—for reasons he didn't understand. But it did mean that if there were raids on the border they'd as easily be
from
Senjan through the passes. And the Seressinis, may they be cursed to have their limbs fall off (
all
their limbs, including the fifth one, his father always added), were not in any position to make trouble right now.

Not after a hundred Senjani had died in the service of Jad while destroying the khalif's great cannons and a very large number of the best soldiers and officers he had.

Senjan was—for a moment, a springtime, a year—truly a place of heroes, known as such through the Jaddite world. The High Patriarch himself had sent them commendations, with a relic for
their sanctuary—and a ship's hold of food! It seemed that prayers were being chanted in Rhodias itself each evening for the courageous Senjani who had died in the far northeast in the god's name and to his eternal glory and their own.

Dado's father had said he didn't know much about eternal glory, but it had been a decent spring, no denying. He'd lost two sons (Dado's older brothers) with Hrant Bunic. There wasn't a family in Senjan that wasn't mourning someone, but they were heroes, those boys and men, and Senjan had always known what Jad needed it to be. That was why they'd marched out a year ago, a hundred of them, wasn't it?

So, on a warm, lazy day, Dado Miho, alone on guard outside the wall, was sitting on the grass, leaning back against the tower, eating cold meat and drinking ale when he saw a man come down from the wooded eastern slope.