Tsuga's Children (22 page)

“Enough!” said the one who was evidently the leader of the group. He turned to the three children, his broadax raised, and said, “Put your weapons at my feet.”

Arn and Arel gave up their knives, then were searched and tied together on a three-foot thong with loops around their necks.

“So,” the leader said. “We’re in luck—all except Gort, that is!” The three unwounded men laughed loudly.

“I’ll kill them!” Gort said in a voice tight and husky with pain.

“Mori wants them alive,” the leader said.

“I’ll kill them before we get back!”

“You do, and Mori will have our hides drying on the racks,” the leader said. He looked to the east, where the sky had begun to show the cold light of a winter day. “We’ve nearly a day’s journey home. Mori will be pleased, now. We didn’t kill the woman, but we can say we did. Better one lie than three!”

“I’ll kill them!” Gort howled as he tried to get to his feet.

The leader knocked him back down with the flat of his ax. “We can’t wait for you this time, Gort. The way you’re bleeding, I doubt if you’ll make it anyway.”

The light had grown. Gort stared at the three men, who looked back at him indifferently. His rough face grew pale and gray as he understood. Hatred seemed to run in waves across his forehead and eyes and jaw. He looked colder than the eastern sky. But he said no more.

Jen had got herself loose, but before she could move, one of the men had tied a loop around her neck. He tied the three children on one thong, so that he had them on a leash.

“Are you all right?” Arn asked Jen, but heard no answer because he was slapped so hard he fell to his knees and could hardly see.

The men ate breakfast, each with a hot chunk of broiled meat impaled on his knife. Juice dripped down their chins and cheeks as they gnawed. The children were offered no food, but the man who held their leash allowed them to drink from the river as they began to cross it on the stepping stones. Jen had time to nod to Arn and Arel, to signal that she wasn’t hurt. But when Arel began to speak to her the man raised his hand threateningly and she remained silent.

Back at the fire, Gort sat alone, tilted to one side from the pain of his wounds, and watched them go.

All that day they walked toward the east, through forest and swamp and meadow, until they stopped on a small rise and looked down across a wide field at the village of the Chigai. The field was crisscrossed by fences made of saplings and stones, some of the enclosures trampled into mud, others still white with snow. The village itself, which looked huge, endless in its buildings and pens to Arn and Jen, gave off a steady and distant sound that grew louder as they approached. Before they knew what the sound was, it made them tremble. It was not human, but contained in its hoarse breathiness an emotion that humans could feel, and that was the fear of death.

“An east wind tells them the news,” one of the men said. “They can smell the blood of their own kind.”

“Roasts and ribs,” another said. “That’s all it means to me.”

“You can smell the stench of the slaughterhouse, can’t you?” the leader said.

Then they began to breathe it in the air, the sweet odor of carrion that seemed to coat their mouths and nostrils with a syrup, it was so smooth and pervasive.

“I get used to it in about a minute,” one of the men said.

“I still prefer a west wind,” the leader said.

As they came closer to the village, the lowing of fear and the stench of rotting flesh grew. The sun was setting, its rays red upon the poles of the stockades and the roofs of the wooden buildings. Beneath their feet the earth turned into deep, silky mud as they came up to the first tall gate in the barricade of vertical logs that surrounded the village.

As they approached the gate they saw a flurry of movement through the cracks in the barricade—gray fur, dark eyes and white teeth as the nearly hysterical howling of the half-wolves began. The fat red face of a man peered over the top of the gate. His mouth opened and closed upon yellow teeth, but nothing could be heard but the howling. The face disappeared and the wolves’ howls turned to cries of pain and fear as a whip cracked and thudded among them. The face reappeared. “Now,” it said. “What do you want?”

“We’re a patrol and we have prisoners for Mori,” the leader said.

“If you’re a patrol of Chigai, where are your wolves?”

“Dead, all three of them.”

“To catch three children?”

“Never mind your stupid jokes, sentry. Just open the gate and keep your wolves back,” the leader said.

The sentry sneered and climbed back down from his perch, and the gate swung open. The cowed half-wolves snapped their teeth and whined at them as they passed on into the village. The lowing of the cattle was like a harsh wind. Both Jen and Arel put their hands over their ears to try to keep out that long moan of helplessness. The mud of the streets sucked at the children’s boots as they walked. From doorways and windows people stared out at them, their expressions closed and fearful, though their eyes seemed to widen slightly at the sight of children on a leash. But then their faces closed again, as if to say it was none of their business.

The moaning of the distant animals was a pall over the village, and the heavy odor of blood seemed almost a cause of the dimming of the light as the sun went down. They passed many buildings that were shuttered, many that stood touching each other, as if crowding together, crouching in the dark, walled village against some enemy from outside. The houses stood in the trampled mud, their doorsills crusted with it. Reddish light from torches or fat-burning lamps shone from inside some of the houses.

They were taken to a large building in the center of the village. Logs had been placed in the mud in front of it to form a corduroy road for several guards to stand on. Torches flamed smokily on each side of the wooden doorway. The leader identified himself, and the thick doors opened on squeaky iron hinges to reveal a short hallway that led to another door guarded by two axmen who were so tall their heads nearly touched the ceiling. In the torchlight they seemed all hair, their own and that of the shaggy cattle skins they wore, all bound by leather belts and straps. The leader made a sign and one of the guards struck the door with the poll of his ax, a sound that rang of struck metal.

The door was opened from the inside by another guard. Inside was a large hall with a fire burning at its center, the smoke rising into a high ceiling gabled with log rafters. Around the hall on its dirt floor were stone benches and chairs where men sat, the highest chair a throne on which sat Mori in a cape of black cattle skin, his great arms gleaming. He motioned the party forward.

“So you’ve brought me three little yearlings, have you?” he said to the leader. “Now, that’s well done, so I won’t skin you alive. But where is Lado?”

The leader’s voice was shaky as he addressed Mori. “Sir, Lado is dead with an arrow through his neck.”

Mori’s eyes widened. He seemed to hesitate and get his breath before he spoke again. “And I believe there were two other men with you, and three wolves.”

“Tromo is dead of an arrow. Gort was wounded by this one’s knife.” He pointed to Arn. “And this one stabbed him once, too.” He pointed to Arel. “We had to leave him behind.”

“And the wolves?”

“All dead of arrows.”

“I trust you killed these expert bowmen?”

“Yes, sir. Except for this one.” He pointed again to Arn. “He killed one of the wolves.”

Mori looked down from his throne-chair at Arn. His eyes were hard and bright as he frowned. Arn was chilled by the power this one man seemed to have, yet he was surprised to feel so much fear in the air of the room, in its locked and guarded doors, and even in the muscular lean of Mori’s great shoulders. Though Arn was afraid, the fear he felt was not all his own.

“This is the child that came from under the mountain,” Mori said. “And that one is his sister.” He looked at Jen. “And the other is the daughter of Amu. Now I have them all. But tell me once again: Amu and his woman are dead? Did you feel their still hearts? Did you look into their dead eyes?”

“Yes …” the leader began, but he was interrupted by a shout from a corner of the room.

“Amu! Runa!” It was a child’s voice, and it was Bren’s. As Bren came into the light his eyes were pouring tears. “Amu! Runa!” he cried.

“Bren!”
The command came from behind Bren, a deeper voice even than Mori’s. Andaru came forward and pulled Bren back, his brow-hooded eyes so much like Bren’s though they were stern and cold. Andaru wore the cattle-skin tunic now, and he was armed with the Chigai broadax.

At a signal from Mori, Jen, Arel and Arn were led from the room on their thong. As they were pulled away they all looked at Bren and Andaru, but in Bren’s eyes they saw only grief, and in Andaru’s a distant coldness.

They were taken down a narrow, muddy street toward the sounds of the fearful cattle. They began to hear other animal voices, too, all unhappy—the squeal of boar, the yapping of wolves, and a deep roar that could only be that of an angry bear. By torchlight they were led along, running and stumbling through the mud, trying to keep from falling and being dragged.

At a gate they were handed over to another man, this one wearing a grimy leather apron splotched with blood, new and old. His fingernails were caked with a dark sludge and he smelled of spoiled meat.

“Put these in an iron cage and see they don’t die or escape, or Mori will have your gizzard for breakfast,” the guard who had led them there said.

“Yes, Master! Yes! Yes!” the grimy man said. He cringed in fear; trying to smile, his mouth looked like the slash-mark of a wound. His eyes were round and simple-looking. Even his short-cropped hair and the bristles on his chin were stained with old gore.

“What’s your name, so we’ll know who to hang on the racks if they escape.”

“Doro, Master, who always does what he’s told, pardon me.”

“I should pardon you for being alive, you greasy scum of a butcher,” the guard said.

“Yes, Master!”

With an expression of disgust, the guard turned and went away. Doro led them inside the gate, then to a cage among other cages. Here the lowing, growling and moaning of the animals was all around them, for in all the cages and pens, large and small, were the prisoners of the Chi-gai. As Doro shut them in their cage he looked at them closely in the light of the torch he carried.

“Why, you’re children!” he said. “Is Doro to butcher children now? Well, what does it matter? On the inside we all look alike. But,” he added with a sly grin and a look over his shoulder, “only birds have gizzards. Doro knows what’s in the insides!” With that he clanged the iron-barred door shut and secured the latch with an elaborate knot of chains. As soon as he left, Arn tried to undo the chains in the dark, but found that while his fingers could just touch them, his arm was so bent that his fingers hadn’t the strength to move the chains at all.

They were weak from hunger and their long march, but they could at last talk as they untied the thongs from their necks, and they told each other what they knew. Amu was still alive when they left; the Chigai had lied to Mori when they said Runa was dead. Arn told Jen how Arel had stabbed Gort when Gort was about to kill him. But they didn’t talk long because they were so tired they couldn’t hold their heads up any more. Animals moved restlessly in cages all around them, and over all was the moaning of fear, now muted, as if the fear itself had grown exhausted. But they were so tired. The floor of their cage was covered with musty old straw, so they pushed it into a pile for a bed, then snuggled together as closely as they could, for warmth, and fell into deep sleep.

When the light came out of the east they awoke, shivering, and looked around them. Their cage was about six feet square, with a wooden floor beneath the straw. In a similar cage next to them a large gray wolf, quiet now, lay on its stomach, its head on its outstretched paws, and looked at them with bright yellow eyes. On the other side in its cage a great black-haired boar stood, moving its head back and forth, back and forth as it uttered short grunts or snarls of frustration. In back of their cage what at first looked like a black stump suddenly rose higher than the height of a man—a black bear. Its head, too, moved back and forth, back and forth, its paws on the bars of its cage. Other cages and pens contained shaggy cattle, still restless and moaning at the pervasive smell of blood, their eyes rolling in their broad faces, showing the whites all around.

Jen said, “I’ve got something for you, Arn, if you can use it.” She pulled her leather-wrapped knife from her boot and gave it to him. He quickly hid it in his own boot. “They never thought to search me,” she said. Then she thought how Arn and Arel had come after her to try to save her when they might have stayed with Amu and Runa, and how much more frightened and how lonely she would have been right now without them. Arn had saved her once before when she was freezing on the meadow; he was her brother, who seemed to have grown right out of childhood. But Arel, her friend … With that thought she began to cry because of gratitude and fear and hunger all mixed, and they tried to comfort her.

Doro came soon after with a bucket that he slid under the door of the boar’s cage. The boar’s eyes grew red as it stared at the bucket and then at Doro, but it didn’t touch the food.

“Too proud to eat, eh?” Doro said. “Well, in six days when your head’s fresh on the sentry stone you’ll be beyond eating then! I’ll have looked in your eating hole and out the other side, my friend, and the rest of you’ll be food!”

Next he brought a joint of raw meat for the wolf, but the wolf merely stared at him. “Oh, Great Leader of the wild pack,” Doro said sarcastically. “What a fine coat you have—to keep Mori warm in his cold house!”

For the children he brought a disc of hard bread and a bucket of water, which they accepted. Doro watched them eat and drink, his round eyes blinking once each time he looked from one to another of them.

When Arn had eaten his share of the bread and washed it down with water, he asked, “What does Mori want to do with us?”