The Godspeaker Trilogy (16 page)

She had no idea how many highsuns she had slept through.

Her body felt trembly, she ate a piece of bread and a piece of cheese, even though eating hurt her face. She drank all the water in her leather flask, then took it with her as she fought her way out to the open hillside. Alone beneath the night sky she crept her way around the barracks wall and counted five closed narrow doors that might give her entrance. She found a water trough for the warriors’ horses along the track leading away from the barracks. She drank from it, then filled her leather flask to the top.

No-one saw her. No-one heard her. The world thought she was dead, a spirit walking, and looked straight through her to the stars.

When all her bread and cheese was eaten, and the cuts in her face were healed and dry, she crawled out of the thorny trees’ protection for the last time and walked in the newsun light to the barracks wall. Her skin was dirty, her body stank, her tunic and pantaloons were filthy, ripped and stained to stiffness with old dried blood. She looked like a she-brat who’d been running forever. She knew she was anything but beautiful .

It was exactly how she wanted to look. She thought even Abajai would not know her now. Yagji would walk past her in the street, his fat face wrinkled, moaning his complaints.

The barracks’ large gates weren’t yet open, they didn’t open till two fingers past newsun. But the other doors in the barracks walls opened earlier than that, she had seen it in the days she’d sat and waited. She walked around the wall till she found the first open door and looked through it into the barracks city.

She saw pens of goats and sheep, she saw crates of chickens, she saw slaughtered calves hanging on hooks and tubs of gizzards, overflowing. A row of tents, plain brown, not striped and pretty like Abajai’s Trader tent, marched up and down, she could see nothing past them. The ground was bare in places, beaten hard and flat by many feet. Coarse grey-green grass grew in patches. The air was thick with animal smells, with blood stink, with shouted voices from beyond the row of tents. The goats and sheep bleated, the chickens cackled, from somewhere else came the lowing of cattle, the bawling of calves. Scrawny dogs quarreled and hunted for scraps to eat.

A young boy stood beside the caged chickens. His godbraids were stubby and he wore no silver godbells. One braid was scarlet, so he was a slave. He wore nothing but a loincloth and a chipped dog-tooth amulet round his neck. He held a cleaver in one hand and a chicken in the other, he was trying to lay the chicken on a chopping block and cut off its head. The chicken was squawking and flapping its wings, the boy was afraid of it. He struck it with a clumsy blow and cut off a finger instead of its head. The chicken cackled and ran away.

A huge man came out of a tent to see what all the shrieking was for. He saw the boy with his blood-spurting finger and smacked him hard across his ear.

“Idiot fool!” the big man shouted. “Can’t even cut off a chicken’s head? What use are you when I’m shorthanded already?”

The boy was clutching his bleeding stump, he wasted a river of water down his face. Hekat stepped from outside to inside, she crossed the threshold into the barracks. She picked up the cleaver the fool slave-boy had dropped, she snatched a chicken from the nearest crate and cut off its head with a single blow.

The boy stopped crying and the big man stared. “Who are you, you ugly brat?” he demanded. “What do you do here, killing my chicken?”

She held out the chicken’s twitching corpse. “You wanted a chicken killed. I killed one for you. I am Hekat of Et-Nogolor.”

The big man laughed as he took the dead twitching chicken. “Are you now, brat? What happened to your face? Looks like a hunting cat wanted you for dinner.”

She had to look a long way up to his eyes. He was the biggest man she had ever seen. “My father married a woman who hated me for my beauty. My father died soon after. The woman who hated me cut off my godbraids, she cut up my face, she said she would sell me and see me die a wretched slave. I ran away from that woman. I ran away to Et-Raklion, Mijak’s city of cities. I can read, and I can write, and I can kill chickens with a single blow. I will serve the city Et-Raklion. I will serve Raklion, its glorious warlord. I will serve you, if you will let me. If I can stay here, in these barracks.”

The big man looked down at her. Blood dripped from the chicken’s neck, puddling by his feet. “Ran away from a miserable bitch, did you?” he said. He had a meaty face, his lips were thick, his nose was flat and his teeth were crooked. He wore seven amulets in his ears. “What’s to say you won’t run away from this place, too? Et-Raklion can he a miserable bitch and I was born and bred here, Hekat of Et-Nogolor.”

She met his suspicious glare unflinching. “The god sees my heart. My heart is in its eye. It knows Hekat will stay, it knows Hekat will serve.” She shrugged. “Hekat has nowhere else to go.”

The big man looked at the chicken she had killed. He looked at the boy with two thumbs, seven fingers and a bleeding stump. “Get to a barracks healer, idiot, he can dip that in hot pitch.” The slave-boy ran off, still sobbing with his stupid pain. “Hekat of Et-Nogolor,” the big man said, looking at her again. His eyes were narrow, wondering. “Can I trust you?”

“Hekat of Et-Raklion,” she told him. “I do not know Et-Nogolor.”

The big man’s eyes went wide, and then he laughed. “Hekat of Et-Raklion. Kill me all these chickens. Pluck them and gut them and spit them for roasting. Then we will talk about you serving me and the god in Mijak’s city of cities.”

She looked around. There was the tub for chicken heads and gizzards. There was the big sack for all their plucked feathers. There was the spit, threaded already. The chickens sat in their fastened cages, shitting and clucking and waiting to die.

“My name is Nadik. Fetch me when you’re done,” said the big man, and gave her back the chicken she’d killed. As he walked away towards his tent, Hekat lifted her head and looked to the godpost at the distant top of Raklion’s Pinnacle.

You have chosen me , she told the god. You have brought me to your city Et-Raklion. Now you must show me why I am brought . . . and what it is I will do for you here .

PART TWO

CHAPTER TEN

R
aklion, son of Ragilik, beleaguered warlord of Et-Raklion, closed his eyes and released a silent sigh as his high godspeaker’s rage scorched his skin like the god’s wrathful breath.

“Nogolor warlord’s insult must not go on breathing, Raklion,” Nagarak thundered. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter was godpromised to you, not Bajadek. Why do you stand here in your palace, in the sunshine? Why do you not lead your ten thousand warriors to the gates of Et-Nogolor and demand the city’s Daughter as was promised in the god’s eye?”

Raklion swallowed annoyance. Keeping his back turned and his voice calm, because shouting would only inflame the man further, he said, “If I am the one insulted, Nagarak, am I not the one who decides if the insult breathes, or must be smothered by ten thousand warriors?”

Nagarak stood behind him, in the shadowed doorway to the balcony of his private palace apartments. “You think my godspeaker pride is slighted.” The high godspeaker’s displeasure filled the measured space between them. “You think my tongue is dipped in spite.”

Raklion shrugged. “Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is still unblooded, her body cannot yet ripen with child. She has not left her father’s palace, she is not taken by Bajadek warlord. I hear rumors, I am told certain things, but no godpromised oaths are broken, Nagarak. I do not know Nogolor intends to give his girl-child to Bajadek. If I treat rumor as fact and ride with my warriors to Et-Nogolor, to take the Daughter before she is blooded, then I am the oathbreaker. I am the one who shatters the treaty with Nogolor. Surely that is Bajadek’s desire, he desires to provoke me into unwise action. He schemes to make of me a dishonorable man. Should I give him satisfaction? I think I should not.”

Nagarak stepped closer. “What you should do, Raklion, is listen to your high godspeaker. While you stand on your honor Bajadek drips poison into Nogolor’s ear. Nogolor listens, he is a weak warlord.”

Raklion glanced over his shoulder. “Weak or not he is a warlord with his own high godspeaker, who talks to him as you talk to me. My past is no secret, Nagarak. Perhaps his high godspeaker says I am not fit for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter.”

“Not fit?” echoed Nagarak. He sounded baffled. “Warlord, are you ailing? I made the sacrifices. I read the omens. Et-Nogolor’s Daughter is meant for you . Here is mischief brewed by a godspeaker of Et-Nogolor who has lost his way in the god’s piercing eye. He listens to the whispers of earthbound men . . . or demons.”

Moving to the edge of his palace balcony, Raklion looked down at the city sprawled about the Pinnacle’s base. His sunsoaked city, Et-Raklion the glorious, his concubine and his curse. Master of every creature who lived here, in truth he was their slave and slave to the savage demands of his god with no name. The great Raklion warlord: born a fruit of the city’s vine, steeped and pulped in his vinegar history.

Aieee, the god see me . Fingers gripping the balcony’s red stone balustrade till they were bloodless, Raklion bowed his aching head. He was forty-nine and had no son. His past was a shadow, stitched to his heels, it followed him into every corner and was visible in the darkest night.

Three warlords’ daughters have I killed in trying to bring forth a living son. I have sired seven and the god has inhaled them all as smoke. Is it to be wondered the warlords give their women to anyone but me?

He turned, resting his knotted spine against the stone railing, and looked into Nagarak’s cold, hard face. “It is possible you misread the omens.”

Nagarak was young to be a high godspeaker. Barely past forty. He was bones and skin and godbraids, his burning eyes were fixed upon the god. The black scorpion pectoral strapped to his naked chest glowed with flecks of gold and crimson, with the fiery passion of his devotion. Three seasons before he had walked unaided from the godhouse scorpion pit, the god’s choice for its next high godspeaker in Et-Raklion. Eight of his fellow godspeakers had died in that choosing, deluded by demons and lost to hell.

He said, “Raklion warlord, I did not misread the omens. The god intends Et-Nogolor’s Daughter for you. To permit Bajadek to entice her away is defiance of the god’s will. Do not defy it. All warlords are men unto the god. Men are stones, to be blasted to powder with its lightest breath.”

Raklion nodded. He often felt like breath-blasted stone. Long since he’d ceased to ask why the god took his women, took his sons, reduced his future to a crucible of blackened infant bones. All his prayers in the godhouse, the sacrifices he paid for, the tasking of his penitent flesh, none of that had made a difference. The god still refused him, he did not know why. Unless a man was a godspeaker chosen, the god was unknowable. And even then he sometimes wondered . . .

He also wondered if Nagarak understood what it was to be a warlord. Nagarak was wedded to a black stone scorpion, he had no use for fleshly things. “Do you tell me the god desires I should go to war?” he demanded. “Do you tell me I should smite the brother-city treaty with my hammered fist, smash it to shards like a clay pot and send the pieces to Nogolor in a leather pouch? If I do that, Nagarak, he will run to Bajadek like a man runs to his lover. They will kiss and they will fondle, I will have driven him into Bajadek’s eager embrace. Et-Nogolor’s Daughter will slip through my fingers as though the godpromise was never made.”

Nagarak banged his fist on his pectoral. “And if you do nothing , Raklion, Nogolor will take it as a sign of weakness, he will turn to Bajadek warlord’s strength. He and Bajadek do not hide their flirting, they flirt at highsun so you will see .”

“Nagarak, I have said already this is rumor unproven, I cannot —”

“No, not rumor. Truth from Trader Abajai. Do you distrust this Trader now, when for godmoons uncounted you have swallowed his words like wine?”

Raklion turned away, frowning. Trader Abajai was a useful man who dropped information like kernels of corn. Not all had sprouted over the seasons but a wise warlord picked up each one and inspected it, to be safe.

“I do not distrust the Trader,” he said at last. Particularly as, in the four fat godmoons since speaking with Abajai in the palace, others with business in Et-Nogolor had let him know they too had seen Bajadek’s warriors freely riding.

“Abajai has also told you of Mijak’s wide browning,” Nagarak continued, relentless. “Of which we have already spoken, and have many eyewitness reports to confirm. Now I say to you , warlord, the god tells me in the godpool, your brother warlords in their browning lands look on Et-Raklion with hungry eyes and hungrier bellies. If you do not fight for Et-Nogolor’s Daughter they will say you are weak. They will think to feed their bellies on the fat of Et-Raklion, they will call secret treaty in the Heart of Mijak and plot war against you.” Again his fist struck the black scorpion pectoral. His godbraids trembled, so many godbells and amulets it was hard to see the hair. “I tell you this, Raklion. A warning from the god.”

“And what does the god say of Mijak’s browning?” Raklion said. “Anything? Does it tell you why the underground waters slowly recede from my brother warlords’ lands, leaving only my lands green and fertile?”

Nagarak’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Not even a high godspeaker demands answers from the god. When you are meant to know its reasons it will tell me, and I will tell you.”

It was not enough. “I must know the god’s purpose, Nagarak. It seems to me I am punished with a lack of sons, yet favored with green and growing lands. Have I displeased the god or have I not? Tell me! How can I be warlord if I do not know?”

“You undergo a test of faith,” said Nagarak, after a moment. “To be endured without question. To question is to displease the god. A man who questions is food for demons, his godspark will be eaten, his flesh torn apart in the god’s eye.”

Throttling fear, Raklion pressed fingers to his throbbing eyes. I am faithful, I do not question . The browning of Mijak was a problem he must put aside, he had more immediate concerns. “And in the matter of Et-Nogolor’s Daughter. If I ride against Nogolor, spill the blood of a brother warlord without a sin committed against me, if I spill my warriors’ blood in that same spilling, do I not also displease the god? Nagarak high godspeaker, hear my heart. I am a true warlord of Et-Raklion. The scars of my body attest to this. But unless you say to me there is an omen that I must go to war with Nogolor warlord, and you show me that omen, I will not take ten thousand warriors to Et-Nogolor. I will not take so few as ten.”