Текст книги "Hammerfall"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Memnanan sent men for beshti and for wheeled carts to carry the precious books to the edge of the camp. “The priests moved them here,” he said. “They can bring the books down. We’ll rest here until they’re ready. The god knows there’ll be no rest tonight.”

There was a little shaking as they waited. They sat on mats, under an awning, as wealthy folk passed time, while filling of the Ila’s household waterskins and the watering of the Ila’s herds took precedence at the Mercy of the Ila.

Servants brought them food and drink during a second tremor. The poles of all the tents shook, and the canvas shook. Behind his eyes, Marak saw a lake of fire spreading outward and flowing over desert rock. He saw the falling stars. But he ate and drank, and took his ease, the last that any of them might see in their lives. Memnanan went aside now and again to pass particular orders to his men, then came back to join them.

A rider came up, perched like a boy, bareback. Welcome sight, Tofi came riding up, clearly not expecting to see them disposed as they were, like a handful of wealthy enjoying the afternoon breezes, with the Ila’s Mercy pouring out its abundance of water nearby and the searchers still busy in the rubble of the city beyond the ruined wall.

A flash of recognition preceded an immediate solemnity and formality in Memnanan’s presence, and Tofi dropped from his saddle to stand the ground, light and quick as he was, wide-eyed and anxious.

“Men said to come, omi.”

“That they did,” Memnanan said.

“This camp will move tonight.” Marak rose from his seat under the awning and came out into the wan, clouded sun. “You’re to go among the first in a caravan of all these camps. You’re to go in among the tribes. You can spread the word to the other caravan masters in the camp: if it gets out to the tribes, no harm done. There’ll be no hire given but the lives of all of us, and you know the truth as well as I do: tell it to them. Rumors can fly, for all I care. Gather up all your tents, every beast, every man.”

“Where shall we go, omi? Back?”

“Back, as fast as we can. You’ll carry those persons the Ila bids you carry: the au’it, the Ila herself, her servants and her men. Have you kept the freedmen?”

“I paid them wages,” Tofi said, “and I don’t know how they found it. There’s not a tavern working, but they’re drunk.”

“Hire them or not, but get skilled help, first, before the rest of the masters get wind of it. Where are you camped?”

“To the southwest edge,” Tofi said. “On the flat. There’s no other out there. Some have let their beasts go forage. I haven’t. I waited.”

“Good. We’ll use our tent, the same we have used. It was a good size. Give the best one to the Ila and the au’it. Her men will camp with us, with their households, I take it, in tents they will provide.” Memnanan, standing close by, failed to contradict him, so he supposed the instruction stood. The Ila would move from this white grandeur into ordinary brown tents two men could have up and down again in haste, and her men would have the tents the Ila’s men used in the desert. “Go see to it.”

Tofi bowed, and bowed again. “Omi,” he said. “Captain,” he said to Memnanan, and ran to scramble up to the saddle of the waiting besha, making him extend a leg.

In an instant more Tofi was off down the street, vigorously plying the quirt.

Chapter Sixteen

« ^ »

The book of an au’it may not be opened except by an au’it and it may not be read to the people except an au’it read it. If a village wishes to know what is in an au’it’s book, let them ask the au’it.

—The Book of Priests

The priests came to the ila’s tent with their besha-drawn carts, and the chief priest, a haughty old man, strode angrily past Memnanan, went into the Ila’s tent and came out again with his hauteur aimed solely at the junior priests and with a very chastened demeanor toward Memnanan.

“We are,” the chief priest said, every word labored, “to take the library in our charge. Where shall we dispose it?”

“Men of mine will guide you down,” Memnanan told him, and with a nod of his head toward Marak: “He has the Ila’s authority in this matter.”

The priest looked at Marak in dismay, and turned to the junior priests to give orders. Au’it came out, bearing books; and so priests went in, and servants, so that it became a hand-to-hand stream, loading the leather-bound books into their arms, one to the next past the veils and curtains of the interior, and servants passed books on to priests and soldiers outside, and they laid them carefully onto carts which would have fared very well on the pavings of the city. Now, with the increasing loads, they bogged in the wet sand around the Ila’s Mercy, and required the beshti to labor to move them. “Not so many in a load,” Memnanan said, and added under his breath, “fools.”

“To the outside,” officers shouted as they filled each cart. Memnanan sent an officer down with precise instructions, while Marak and his companions sat on mats in the shade of the awning and rested, truly rested in the bawling confusion. Norit slept longest, curled up in a knot. Hati waked and sat sharpening a knife. Neither of them had use in what proceeded. Marak himself let his head down and catnapped in what should have been the heat of the day, but was in fact cool and pleasant.

Important men and women arrived at the tent, and Marak lifted his head, overhearing that rumors were suddenly rife in the camp, regarding caravans leaving. “Caravans may indeed leave,” Memnanan told them. “And if I were you I’d see to my herds, and have the beasts watered before the Mercy grows crowded.”

Priests’ white robes were now brown-edged with soil from the spring, dusty and stained by the moldering dye of the books; but on they worked, better men than they looked, in Marak’s estimation.

The au’it labored with them so far as loading the last carts, and two of them in their red robes went with the carts, down the sole straight road that led from the Mercy through the camp, and if rumor was not now running the circuit of the camps, nothing less than a star-fall in their midst would rouse curiosity.

Servants hung about in the doorway of the Ila’s tent with worried looks on their faces. They had sent all their treasure out, at the Ila’s order, under a sky leaden and disheartening. The guards themselves looked desperate, expecting further calamity, and looked about them as the ground shook, as if they now realized that cataclysm had reached the heart of their lives.

Traffic around the fountain increased to a point of panic, slaves of the caravans restoring their supplies, servants of households taking up water in jars, jostling with common folk and villagers: if one house was watering, then all would. Beshti moved in and out, with their handlers, snarling and grumbling.

The beshti Memnanan had ordered arrived to water, too. Marak was glad to see Osan among them: and the rest that appeared were fine animals, decked out in gear that shone with brass and fine dyes.

Memnanan’s men came to report the carts outside the city and disposed under guard of the priests. It was time to move.

Norit slept like the dead, for all the rest she had not had, and they had not disturbed her. But now Marak shook gently at her shoulder, and met for a moment the gentle face, the sensible one. She had a frightened look, in her interludes of sanity, as Marak could only imagine. Norit’s plunges into madness were deep and dark, and left her haunted by things she half remembered, half understood.

He tipped up her face and kissed her, and Norit kissed him back, her fingers woven with his, reluctant to let go.

“Priests have already gone down,” he said gently. “With the last of the books. We’ll ride, with the captain and his men. Can you get up, or shall I help you?”

“I wantto go,” was her answer: Norit’s answer, as if she had half heard everything until now, or as if she wished to say that going back to the tower was her choice, apart from Luz’s wish.

“Come,” he said, and helped her gently to her feet. He and Hati together picked out a fine gentle beast and helped her up to the saddle before they themselves mounted up.

Then Memnanan rode his besha to its feet, and the rest of the company got up, a good twenty men besides, good, agile riders, armed beneath their robes, and carrying heavy quirts, Marak noted, not solely for the beshti.

“I’ve ordered the books to a ridge beside the road,” Memnanan said, swinging in close to Marak as they walked their beasts past the fountain and through the confusion there. “And I’ve sent messages calling the lords of the villages and the tribes there to hear us. If I were doing it, I’d have the Ila down the hill to speak to them, but she says rely on the priests to persuade the people. She sends her messages through the priests. I have less confidence.”

“In the priests?” Marak said. “I have none at all.” The visions momentarily haunted him with sights of fire and destruction to come… then failed entirely, and even the imagination of the next handful of moments eluded him, leaving him bereft of any resource. From instant to instant he believed what he saw… and then saw only disaster in attempting to get all this mass of people on the road in any orderly fashion, without fatalities even in the process itself. He imagined no one would take the books. No one would care. He and Memnanan had deliberately let rumor loose, foretelling the movement of a caravan, and fear became a bitter dose at the fountain, where rumor spread.

Now a tide of worried people shouted questions at them: “Where are the caravans going?” and: “What will the Ila do?”

Marak had no idea on the latter and wanted no pause for questions, not yet, not here, disorderly as the road through the camp proved to be. “Wait,” he shouted at the importunate. “Your leaders are going down to hear. Stay here! Pack your belongings!”

There must be a fervor to carry them, a wild, a mad, an unstoppable urge: he stirred it, and knew what he did… he reminded them of their belongings. He hinted of movement. If the leaders denied him, the people themselves would be behind, pushing, demanding answers of their leaders, who had only one place to get answers. But it was a dangerous action. It could end in looting, in murder, in people trampled, or robbed, or stabbed and shot. Any leader knew it. Any leader who had not gone out to the summons would know he had to go, he had to find out the truth of their situation.

And it could not wait another day.

“You’re running a risk,” Memnanan said.

“They have to move,” he said. “They have no choice.” More people crowded in on them. Three times more he told them the same, before the rumor was running the camp on so many legs that their appearance was only confirmation, the outflow of authority, the imminence of movement.

The road poured them out of the camp and onto the vermin-hazard of the open sands, a fast-moving company of riders. A relatively few curious had come, the anxious, the frightened, representatives of households joining their leaders on the flat. They came in their hundreds out to the ridge, a mobbing not for blood but for news, and pressed outward in greater and greater numbers, hysteria in their faces. In some areas of the camp behind them, tents were already collapsing.

A ridge of sand along a face of rock: that was where Memnanan had ordered the priests and the au’it to take their cargo of precious books, and that was where Memnanan had told the lords and the leaders to meet. The Ila’s men had gone out to protect the priests and the au’it, and spread out across the ascent to prevent others.

The priests tried to make themselves heard, trying to take authority to themselves, crying out that the judgment was on the city.

“The god has sent this!” they shouted out to believers within hearing. “The god has decreed a judgment! Repent of your rebellion and your greed, and the Ila will intercede for you!”

“We have to silence that,” Marak said as they came within earshot. “They don’t know a damned thing, and they have no authority over anything but the books. Quiet them.”

Memnanan had a worried look, but he gave orders to his men as they reached the ridge: the guards went to the priests and ordered their leaders off the ridge, down at the base, where the carts were. There the junior priests had spread out and made a useful defense of themselves, a line of bedraggled white between them and the press of the crowd.

A greater and greater crowd gathered, both from the edge of the camp and from the far side of the city perimeter. There were thousands afoot, and tribesmen mounted on beshti, all pressing toward one point, one source.

“This is dangerous,” Hati shouted at him above the noise of the crowd. “They all want to know what’s happening. What will happen when they know?”

“They will know,” Norit said in a loud voice: Luzshouted. “ This is the day of judgment! Hear Marak! Hear the messenger! Listen to him!” But even Luz could not make herself heard, and the soldiers plied their quirts, driving back those the crowd behind shoved forward.

In that moment Marak feared for their lives, knowing he had set too much in motion too fast. The beshti they rode snuffed the scent of the crowd, the palpable scent of fear, and swung their heads this way and that, ready to fight, sensing a mobbing and knowing only one answer to that. Madness was not the sole property of the mad, not now. The crowd stretched now almost as far as the tents, under the clouded sky. The leaders who came forced their way to the base of the ridge, the tribesmen and some few village lords riding, most afoot, pushing, shouting, arguing with the priests and pushing at the soldiers, whose whips only frustrated the press, and did nothing to hold it back.

Then Memnanan drew a rifle from his saddle gear, and fired several rounds into the leaden sky. The reports echoed off the cliffs, startling beshti, bringing a moment of relative silence.

“Marak Trin Tain!” Memnanan shouted out. “The Ila’s answer to your questions. Be quiet! The god speaks through the Ila, and the god has appointed an escape for his people! Be still. Stand still!”

“That’s Aigyan,” Hati said, edging her beast close to Marak’s, pointing. “The man with the red sash. Lord of the an’i Keran. He sees me. He may suspect revenge. Thereis trouble.”

They could not be heard in the mutter around the ridge. Marak saw the veiled tribal lord, one of a handful of the deep Lakht tribes he most wanted well-disposed to them—and one that he least wanted against him. He knew the challenge he would face; but Memnanan had given him his moment, his only moment, and he rode Osan to the center of the ridge, looking out on thousands of misgiving, mistrustful faces. Men below looked up, a moment, a single moment in which the crowd expected an outcome, a miracle.

“ Safety!” Marak shouted out in the inspiration of his heart. “Safety! That’s become more scarce than water on the Lakht! The refuge you came here to find, all of you, water, food, and shelter enough for every household! I, Marak Trin, I’ve come in from across the Lakht with a caravan and we’re going out again, to bring you all to a place where one refuge for you exists, off the edge of the plateau, beyond the village of Pori! I’ve seen it! I’ve seen a river green-sided with palms. I’ve seen beshti wandering free of harness. I’ve seen craftsmen in their tents, working for the pride of their craft! I’ve seen the heart of the tower that provides this place and keeps the star-fall away from its land! I’ve been inside it, and I know it exists!”

Cries rose up to him, one and another just out of earshot trying to position himself to hear and the attempt crushing those nearest.

“I say safety,” Marak repeated for those who were in earshot of a shout. “I say a caravan leaving the holy city, going to an oasis where you and your children will live!”

That created its own babble, repeated mouth to ear among the crowd, and now, caught in the press of bodies forward, riders controlled irritated, snappish beasts.

“The tribes will move first,” Marak shouted, while the fire boiled and bubbled within his vision, while the stink of heated rock assaulted his imagination. “The Keran and the Haga, of the deep Lakht, will go first. Then the Ila’s caravan. Then tribes beyond that. And the villages! Let every tribe, let every village, let every man forgive their feuds! What is the law of the Lakht? What is the god’s law? That when the wind rises, any man may come into a tent, regardless of feuds, to the number the tent will bear! No just man can deny shelter!”

Grim veiled men nodded. It was the law. And now for the first time there was a hush over the crowd. Those who could possibly hear leaned close.

“The Keran are the kinsmen of my wife, the Haga are the kinsmen of my mother,” Marak shouted, as loudly as he had in him, “and to them I entrust the guidance of the caravan. The Ila will go with me, in my band. Then the rest of the tribes, in their honor, as they determine precedence, then the villages, as they determine precedence. Those of the city, you with no tents, no knowledge of the desert, each tent of the villages will take one or two of you, and those who have to walk, will walk following the beshri, with riders to guard you and to set the pace. Each lord of a tribe will govern his tribe, each lord of a village will govern his village.” Fire, the visions said to him, overwhelming all sense of what he had to say. Random words welled up in him, not his own, warning of this disaster and that, and he smothered them, fighting for his sanity and his own sense. “More,– more! each strong and reputable and god-fearing man will carry, besides his day’s water, the wisdom of the au’it, on his person, one book! These strong men will bring the wisdom of the au’it to the new land and they will have their names and the names of their houses written down forever! One book, one bookwith a man or a band or a tribe will assure the carriers of it a welcome in the paradise the Ila will rule! If a man of the tribes and of the villages wishes to carry that burden for himself, let him come forward now to the priests and present himself to the au’it, who will entrust him with that honor! Spread that word! Paradisefor the bearers of the books!”

The priests had by no means realized what sacrilege he intended. Perhaps they imagined they alone would carry those books, pulling their carts through the deep desert. Perhaps at very least they expected more order about it, a making of orderly lists: but the mood and tenor of the crowd was not in favor of long lines and meticulous recording of names.

“No!” the chief priest shouted at him, and a murmur went out from the ridge, all the way back, over the grumbling complaint of beshti and a lone, frightened voice shouting above the rest, “What did he say, what did he say?”

“Paradise!” he shouted. “Water enough and food enough for you and your children!” He lifted his arms and shouted with all the strength that that was in him, half-kneeling on Osan’s saddle as he did. “When men think they will all die, they gather together, not to die alone. You all came here to die, and not to die alone, but we have better news! We know the path to paradise! We move at sunset. We’re not going to die. We refuse to die! Those who survive this journey are all going to live, in a paradise on this earth!”

A young caravanner of the tribes leapt up onto his feet, standing barefoot on his saddle, waving his arms and shouting in excitement.

He was not the only one. Men waved their arms and cried aloud. Those at the back of the gathering were still trying to find out what was said; but those near the front saw the books and rushed at them, overwhelming the priests as men took books for themselves, snatched two and three in their passion for rescue. Pages were imperiled in squabbles. A cart axle cracked in the press of bodies, and spilled its load of books onto the sand, priests scrambling to save them as the crowd utterly mobbed the carts.

Norit screamed above the cries of the crowd, wild-eyed, a madwoman beyond any doubt. “The hammer of heaven is coming down!” Norit cried. “Listen to Marak Trin! Prepare to move!”

The priests shouted to their own wild-eyed hearers, “Respect the god, in the Ila’s name!” Believers cried out, “The god and the Ila, the god and the Ila his regent!” while fire rained down in Marak’s vision.

Now he knew the city folk would follow, and follow with the passion of belief, never mind what they believed, only thatthey believed, and drove their bodies with the strength of that belief. It wasthe god that would save them, because they would go, and go, and go, believing in paradise.

Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices dinned at him, ill timed, goading him, urging precipitate action, urging him to lead this mob, when he most wanted to use his wits.

“A judgment on the earth!” Norit cried over all the tumult: “The hammer of heaven is coming! Do you see it, Marak, do you see it? It’s coming! We’re losing time!”

Luz was afraid. Luzherself was gripped by fear. He saw in his vision a falling rock, saw it strike, saw a ring of fire spreading out from it; and a taste like copper came into his mouth. Haste, haste, hastedinned in his head until he could scarcely think, as if a message had held off as long as it could and now that the essential thing was done, Luz told them, unveiled what unnerved even her.

He saw Hati similarly afflicted by the vision, her hands clamped over her ears, and he fought to still his own shrieking voices, trying to use his wits for what still had to be done.

“Captain!” he shouted at Memnanan. “As soon as you can get there, bring the Ila to us where Tofi’s camped, at the southwest corner, on the flat. He’s waiting for us. He’ll need help there: he has the beshti, and he has to keep them!“

“Do you want a detachment with you?” Memnanan asked him.

“You’ll need them for your own safety!” Marak yelled back. “Go!” He turned Osan’s head, tried to speak coherently to the tribal lords, less bothered by the shouting below, at the carts than at the noise in his head, the flaming rings that obscured his sight.

Memnanan led his men off to the north, off the edge of the ridge. But to the face of the ridge, coming up toward them, was the lord of the Keran, still among the foremost, and he looked no happier.

“Norit, stay with us!” Marak said, and turned Osan’s head, suddenly within close-range shouting distance of the veiled man, in the surrounding tumult, both of them mounted, over the heads of the pandemonium below. “I’m Marak Trin Tain,” he shouted out across the racket. “I’ve married this woman. She’s never complained of your fairness. And I’ve heard nothing but good of the Keran, and I want you to the lead, omi! Forgive me for putting it forward without begging your goodwill, but the sky gives us no time for such courtesies.”

The veiled man glared back, looking at him, not at Hati. “What is your request, villager?”

“Lead a caravan east, past Pori, past the rim of the Lakht, where there’s safety from the star-fall. No one knows the eastern desert better than the Keran. Sheproves that.”

The eyes above the veil were hard as black stone, and no more revealing.

“Marak Trin Tain, is it?”

“All the world’s come here expecting to die. If someone doesn’t lead all the world awayfrom here, they’ll starve, if the stars don’t destroy them first. The crops will fail. The star-fall will only get worse. Soon there’ll be no food to sustain this mass of people.”

“I bleed from grief. We’ll ride away safe.”

You came here, it occurred to him to say. You came here because everyone else was coming…

But that was not the way to win this man. Not this man.

“I’m amazed your prideisn’t sufficient,” Marak said, leaning an elbow on his knee. “Hati had said you’d want to lead, not follow.”

“Lead this refuse?”

“To lasting glory. A caravan. A caravan of everyone in the world, toward safety. No one will forget your name. Aigyan, they’ll say. Aigyan-omi, the great tribesman, the most famous man in all the tribes. You can’t be famous if there’s no one to tell the tale.”

“I hear you’re mad as she is.” It was Aigyan’s first acknowledgment Hati existed.

“At least as mad as she is,” Marak said, “but both of us have the Ila’s forces under our command. That’s Memnanan himself that’s just left here. Do you know the name?”

“Marak Trin Tain commands the Ila’s army, and Captain Memnanan takes his orders. The Ila’smad, too.”

“No. The Ila’s gone sane. She wants to live. I ask you: lead. You’ll go first, the other tribes, then the Ila with my company.”

“That white whore! In her billowing white canvas!”

“None of the big tents: small ones, fit for the desert. It’s our only chance.”

“And what’s at the other end? There’s no oasis beyond Pori!”

“Have you been beyond Pori? I have.”

“My father was there. And there’s nothing there.”

Pieces came together. Made sense. “Thirty years ago. This began thirty years ago. There was another Descent. And I’ve seen the tower. I’ve seen the river. A green oasis, past Pori and off the Lakht a few days.” He had only the eyes to reason with, above the veil, dark and fierce as Hati’s, but they were attentive, and he took a chance. “I tell you this well knowing you could find your own way there and leave the villages to die. You came here because you hoped the Ila had an answer for the star-fall. You came because you know how bad it is out there. Well, so do we. We just crossed the Lakht. And we know that a skill like yours is the best help we could get.”

The eyes narrowed above the veil. For the first time they swept across Hati, acknowledging her existence. “This isMarak Trin Tain.” That was a question, flatly stated.

“Marak Trin, no longer Trin Tain,” Hati said, “because Tainis a fool. Be patient. He’ll make you an honest grandfather yet.”

Whathad he just heard?

The an’i Keran swept aside his veil and spat to the side. It was a superstition, ridding the place of devils, and Aigyan stared across at them, unveiled, a man the sun had weathered about the eyes, a man whose face showed deep scars and an unforgiving mouth.

“Daughter of a devil. So now I’m to follow you, is it?”

“Join me,” Marak said urgently, before things flew out of hand. “Lead the caravan. Take the place of honor across the edge of the Lakht. Can a man ask more?”

“Your mother is Haga.”

Aigyan might as well have spat as said that word. There was an old feud, old as water boundaries.

“Damned right his mother is Haga!” rang up from below, where other tribesmen had had forced a way toward them, brown and green, Haga riders, six or seven of them.

One rider suddenly drove his besha up toward them.

“My enemy,” Aigyan said, unveiled, and Menditak, lord of the Haga, likewise unveiled himself as he arrived.

“Water thief!” Menditak hissed.

“Hold off,” Marak said, and drove Osan between the two. “To you, omi, the lead.” This he said to Aigyan. “And Hati goes with me.—And you, omi, mother’s cousin…” The last was for Menditak of the Haga, heartfelt. “I’ve reserved a place of honor for you. I hope you have my mother and my sister. I knew if there was any safety for them, it was with you, and I know if anyone will bring all his tribe through, you will. That’s why I want you on the one side and the Keran on the other, because you’re the wisest, the canniest, and the quickest leaders alive, and I needyou both, not one, not the other, but both of you in your right minds and your good judgment! Your peoples’ lives, all our lives depend on it!”

“New land, you say! Paradise!” The last was mockery from Menditak of the Haga. Few of the tribes believed in the god behind the Ila. They had their own ways, their own paradise, their own devils, and one of the latter wasthe Ila.

“To each his own!” They could all but hear one another normally, with the sudden ebb of the crowd from around the ridge. Tribesmen had drawn swords and villagers and priests alike scrambled out of the vicinity, not that they were targets, but that a tribesman had as soon ride over them as around them. “Water and safety is what I offer! I came back to save as many as I could! It was beyond my hope to get word out to the tribes, but here you are, and now I see a chance for the rest of the lives out here under this unfortunate sky! It’s gotten worse, and it will get worse than that, rapidly, trust me that I know. Paradise of water, of shade, of everything material, and honor!

Not forgetting honor, and the respect of all the villages as well as the tribes. They were both there, they were both listening, and neither had ridden at the other. ”Will you ride away from honor? Will you ride away from renown greater than any man has ever had? Or will you ride at the front of the greatest caravan the world has ever seen?“

“We go first,” Aigyan declared.

“And you next the Ila’s men,” Marak said before Menditak could take umbrage at that, “and not less in honor. It takes twoof you, setting aside water feud, to demonstrate to all the tribes how great-souled men can behave! One isn’t without the other! It takes you both, and both of you will have that reputation. Ever after this, whenever men talk about wise agreements, they’ll say, Like Aigyan and Menditak, after their example. You’ll become a proverb for wise men. You’ll put all the rest to shame, never yourselves.”

They hesitated. If the wind blew contrary, if a besha sneezed, if anything tipped the balance the other way, it was calamity. But the wind stayed still.

“My fathers,” Marak said, in the way of the tribes with other men, paying his respect. “We need you.”

“To Pori,” Aigyan reminded him. “And how do we move these city-bred fools?”

“As the tribes move. If men fall behind, they fall behind. Take the south road tonight and wait for me by the Besh Karat, do you know it?”

“As I know my own backside,” Menditak said.

“I trust you to know,” Marak said—whatever and any flattery to keep the peace. “I have to gather the Ila’s beshti. If anything should happen to me, leave, lead as many as you can keep alive and go to the village of Pori. Do you know a northern route? It’s safer.”