My dear
old friend Roktakto Rakkhoshi,
It’s been so long since I last wrote to you
that I don’t know if you even remember who I am. But I still think often of
those days, back when we were girls together. Do you recall how we sneaked off
to Kanakhora Koshai’s butcher shop to steal pieces of slavemeat when he wasn’t
looking? It wasn’t that difficult, because he was half blind and lame in one
foot, so that he couldn’t chase us even if he did see us. And do you remember
how we once tried to make bloodjam out of a recipe your grandmother gave us, and
how it never worked because we’d forgotten half the ingredients? Or how we hung
around the Temple of the Cannibal Spirit, dressed demurely in the manner of
supplicants, so we could ogle the boys under our hoods?
Ah, those were the days.
Yes, my dear, it’s been a long time since then.
You probably know that I now live in Pyãchano Protisruti. I don’t know if
you’ve ever visited this town, but if you haven’t, my dear, you really ought
to. It’s so advanced compared to all other places I’ve seen that I have no
hesitation in declaring it the greatest city the world has ever known. Why, in
numbers alone, the population must number quite twenty thousand! You can almost
drown in the sound of voices in the marketplace, and that’s even without the shrieks
of the food slaves being led to slaughter. And the shops, my dear, the shops!
You can buy anything in them, I do declare, but anything, from boots that reach halfway up your thighs to knives
that can cut a hair in two, to dresses that caress every crevice of your body like a lover’s kisses. I would love to
take you around them and buy gifts for you.
The box that I’m sending you along with
this letter is something I bought in one of the shops, a curious place off the
main market which professes to deal in magical goods. Of course, magic does not
exist, as even the proprietor readily agreed, but you can do delightful tricks with
the things he has to sell, once you know how. He has powders which, if you put
a pinch on your palm, give off clouds of green or purple vapours, enough to
alarm and impress the ignorant and unwary. He has cloaks which, in the dark of
the night, give off a glow as though lit by fire. He has ointments which make
you feel just like you’re flying
through the air if you smear them inside yourself, you-know-where. Oh, my dear,
he has so much more that I’m just dying to show you!
Of course, knowing me as you do, you won’t
be at all surprised that I at once bought as much of his stock as I could
afford – after haggling like a demon, so much so that even he commended my
ability at the art. I could never pass up the chance to make mischief. And
among the things I bought was this little round box, whose carvings you’ll
appreciate. I’m sure you and your lover...what was his name again, Bhishon
Boka?...would like to try out these positions, if you haven’t already. As soon
as I saw it, I knew it was the perfect gift for you.
You’ll see that the carvings are half on
the lid and half on the body of the box, and if you turn the lid round and
round...I can already see you putting this letter down to do that...the figures
of the men and women do very interesting
things with each other. Now, I was playing around with this, when suddenly the
bottom of the box fell out. I was at first most vexed, thinking it was broken –
but then I realised that the box had a secret compartment in the bottom, one
which opens when the men and women of the carvings all simultaneously reach the
consummation of their lovemaking with each other. I don’t think even the
proprietor of the shop was aware of this, or he would have certainly mentioned
it in an attempt to drive up the price. And when I looked inside the little
secret compartment, I found a closely written mass of parchment packed tightly
inside. When you open the compartment, you’ll find it there.
I never was one for much reading, as you
know, so I only flipped through a few pages, but recognised it as some kind of
adventure tale, of the sort which would be of great interest to you. It’s obviously very old, and apparently
consists of the writings of someone called Chheechkaduni. The name seems
vaguely familiar to me, but I can’t for the moment imagine why. Let me know
what you think of it.
So tell me, my dear, when you’re planning
to come to Pyãchano Protisruti. Make it soon, for I’m desperate to take you
around and show you everything.
You’ll never want to go home again, I promise you.
Your dear old friend,
Lojjaheen
Lukochuri.
************************************
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Two days
after we’d so precipitately fled the town of Golmal Galagali, we finally took
the time to rest. While Opodartho and I put together a rough camp, my Lord climbed
atop a high earthen mound, one of many which dotted the plain, and looked back
over the way we’d come. After a long time he came down again.
“I can’t see anyone,” he reported. “If
they’re pursuing us, they’re still a long way behind...or they’re taking care
to conceal themselves. I would.”
“Maybe they’ve given up the chase,” I
suggested hopefully.
“Don’t you believe it,” Opodartho replied
grimly. “They won’t forget what happened there, Chheechkaduni – not even a
hundred years from now.”
I busied myself in lighting up the fire for
our supper, which we would need to cook before the sun went down so that its
light didn’t give us away to pursuers. This also saved me from having to
respond to Opodartho, who was obviously itching for a fight. After all, it was
obvious that she blamed me for
everything that had gone wrong in Golmal Galagali, even though, of course, none
of it had been my fault.
I must have mumbled some of this aloud,
because Opodartho paused in the act of grilling some of the meat we’d snatched
up as we fled. “What was that?”
“I said none of what happened back there
was my fault,” I said defiantly.
“Oh, then whose fault was it? The Governor’s son’s, for getting in the way of your knife
and having his belly slashed open?”
“You know as well as I do that he tried to
–”
“And you know as well as I do,” the strumpet interrupted, “that he thought you were inviting him to your
bed.”
“Well, how was I to know that letting him see my ankles was supposed to be a
sexual invitation in his misbegotten town?” I flared. “Have you ever heard of
anything so ridiculous?”
“He wouldn’t have seen your ankles,” she replied, “if you hadn’t got drunk and insisted
on climbing on top of a table to dance.”
“Shut up, you two,” Onek Mangsho broke in wearily.
“At least the little twerp didn’t die, and we managed to get away as well.”
“Not by much,” Opodartho reminded him.
“They were breaking down the front door even as we were jumping over the back
wall, and we had to leave half our things behind. Fortunately,” she said,
drawing aside her cloak to show us the pouch hanging at her belt, “I’d imagined
something like this might happen, so I’d kept our jewels and money on me.”
Onek Mangsho drew her to him fervently. “I
thought it was all gone,” he said between the kisses he rained on her mouth in
a most disgusting display of excess affection. “I should have known you’d have
saved it.”
“What made you imagine something like that
might happen?” I asked sourly, as the two of them tore off each other’s clothes
with all the delicacy of rutting dire hyenas. “Do you normally stash all our
valuables on your person in anticipation of a quick getaway?”
“No,” the slut grinned, as she climbed on
top of Onek Mangsho and began thrusting clumsily away. “But when it comes to an
unknown town, and you begin getting
tipsy, it’s always good policy to be ready to run at a moment’s notice.”
Unable to take this torture any longer, I
wandered away from the campsite, nibbling at a piece of broiled meat to assuage
my hunger. Knowing that they might go at it for an hour or more, I climbed on
to one of the mounds and began to look around. Behind us, towards Golmal
Galagali, the plain stretched dusty and dotted with scrub all the way to the
hills on the southern horizon. The view to north and east was little different.
But to the west, where the glare of the setting sun made it difficult to see
clearly, my eyes seemed to detect some kind of movement in the distance. I
squinted, but it was very far away, and as the sun sank from view it became
more and more difficult to see, until I could make out nothing more.
I’d finished my piece of meat, and the
night chill was beginning to eat into my bones, so I returned to the camp. Onek
Mangsho and Opodartho were sitting by the embers of the fire and greeted me
with some signs of relief.
“Where were you?” the former asked. “We
were beginning to get worried.”
“Just taking a walk, Lord,” I replied,
unwilling to give Opodartho the satisfaction of knowing that her lovemaking had
disturbed me so much. “I wanted some fresh air.”
Opodartho cocked an eyebrow at that, but
said nothing, so I continued. “I climbed one of these mounds for a look around
– just in case any danger was approaching.”
“And?” Opoartho asked.
“Well, from Golmal Galagali I couldn’t see
anything, but from the west...” I hesitated, trying to think of what exactly I had seen. “It seemed like movement,” I
said eventually, “as though a band of people were walking through the desert,
but more than that, I can’t say. I watched it as long as the light lasted, but
I could make out nothing more.”
“A caravan, perhaps,” Opodartho suggested.
“It isn’t likely to be a caravan,” Onek Mangsho
said, “I have never heard of a caravan route out there in the desert in that
direction. Perhaps it was just the sun heating the air and making it dance.
Come and lie down between us now. It’s cold and you must be as desperate for
rest as we are.”
He was quite right about that, but the
touch of his body as he wrapped his limbs around mine aroused certain instincts
in me that kindled a fire between my legs. But before I could do anything about
it, a soft snore above my head told me that I would be wasting my time.
Opodartho, meanwhile, had already fallen asleep, snuggled against my back.
Disgruntled, I lay awake for a long time, the desire in my belly unwilling to
fade away. Finally, halfway through the night, I fell asleep.
I was woken by a hand clamped over my
mouth. It was a familiar hand, the skin rough and calloused, so unlike my own
delicate appendages. I tried to pull my head away, to ask Opodartho what she
wanted, but she clamped down all the harder.
“Don’t make a noise,” she murmured in my ear.
“Lie very still.”
I blinked my eyes open, but could see
nothing. The fire had long since gone out, and the night was very dark.
“What –” I tried to say, though all that
came out past Opodartho’s hand was a murmur.
“Shh!” It was Onek Mangsho. “Keep quiet,
can’t you.”
At that moment I heard, very close, the
unmistakable noise of footsteps – the scrape of leather on rock, and then the
clink of metal on stone. Someone cursed softly.
“Faster,” a voice urged. “Don’t dawdle so
much.”
“Easy for you to say, Marattok Markhabey,”
someone else grumbled. “You aren’t
the one feeling your way among these rocks and about to break your neck.”
They were so close now that I could smell
them – the stink of dried sweat and something else, a tangy odour familiar to me
but which I couldn’t for the moment name.
A shadow, the outline of a head and
shoulders, briefly occluded a few dim stars on the horizon. “I’ll break your
neck myself if you don’t get a move on,” the first voice said. “They’re getting
further away from us at every moment while you stumble around like a cave mole
in the sun.”
“I’m doing my best, Marattok Markhabey,”
the second voice said, still whining. The footsteps scarped on the rock, and
paused momentarily. “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?” Marattok Markhabey asked
impatiently. “You’re getting on my nerves, Obikol Olombush.”
“I thought I saw something,” Obikol
Olombush replied. His scent filled my nose, the dried sweat and the other,
tangy odour. I now remembered where I’d come across it before – it was one of
those that lay heavy in the air of the spice markets of Golmal Galagali.
“Something moved.”
“Only in your head,” Marattok Markhabey
snapped. “You’re looking for excuses to slack off, as usual.”
“What’s the delay?” someone else asked,
from a little further away. “Get a move on, can’t you?”
“It’s nothing, Uronto Uipoka,” Marattok
Markhabey replied hurriedly. I had to suppress a start at the name; it was, of
course, the Governor of Golmal Galagali’s right hand man, who had impressed me
so disagreeably when we were in the town. “One of our men fancied he saw
something, that’s all.”
“Stop wasting time on shadows,” Uronto
Uipoka called. “If we don’t catch these vermin the Governor will flay the skin
from our backs.”
“And if he catches us,” Onek Mangsho said,
when the men had finally passed us by and disappeared into the night, “it’s
going to be our skin he flays, depend
on it.”
I let out the breath that I’d long since
forgotten that I’d been holding. “We should leave now,” I said, as Opodartho
drew her rough peasant hand off my mouth, “and make what distance we can before
daylight, Lord.”
Not even Opodartho could argue with that.
“We can’t go to the north, though,” she pointed out. “Uronto Uipoka and his men
have gone that way. And to the south there lies Golmal Galagali. And if we go
to the east, the rising sun might betray us to them. So it’s only the west
that’s left to us.”
It was the darkest hour of the night when
we left the shelter of the rocks. We tried to move as silently as possible,
with my Lord at first holding up his spears so that the shafts might not strike
a rock and perhaps give us away. From time to time we’d stop and listen for any
noise of pursuit, but except for the sound of our own footsteps, there was
nothing.
“I wonder how many different sets of people
are hunting us now,” Opodartho observed after a while. “There’s the lot from
our old village, of course, who’ll never forgive us for escaping. I’m certain
the Babbling Balladeer of Bãkano Bodhojom will also be seeking high and low for
us after Chheechkaduni ruined his best musical instrument trying to play it. And
then the cohorts of the Cavilling Cavalier of Chebano Choshma, where, you’ll
remember Chheechkaduni got drunk and challenged the Cavalier’s lady to single
combat, will still be scouring the land for us. And rest assured that the
Dribbling Devil of Drishtihin Dhikkar will still be hungering for revenge
after Chheechkaduni knocked over and broke his priceless crystal...”
“All right, I get the idea,” I snapped.
“Chheechkaduni is responsible for everything. She’s guilty of all the things
that have gone wrong with us, ever. There’s no need to go on and on to make
your point.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Onek Mangsho said. “Save
your breath for walking, not pointless squabbling.”
It was hardly “pointless squabbling” to
defend myself against the shameless hussy’s canards, but we did need our breath
because the going was getting harder, the ground stony and broken. Suddenly my
Lord, who was in the lead, stopped, raising a hand.
“Can you see something there?” he asked,
pointing. “Or is it merely my imagination that I can see flames in the
distance?”
At first I did not know what he was referring
to, and then I saw a dim flicker in the distance, as of a fire which had
momentarily flared up. “I see it,” I said, pointing. “There, over to the
right.”
“Yes,” Opodartho agreed. “It seems to be
the kind of fire a small camp might light, my Lord. Remember what Chheechkaduni
said, that she’d seen movement over here before sunset?”
“It might be a group of travellers, then,”
Onek Mangsho said. “They’d have halted for the night. We’d better hurry and see
if we can get passage with them. The faster we’re away from these parts the
better.”
“They’ll probably be leaving at dawn,”
Opodartho said. “We’ll need to hurry as fast as we can.”
In all our time of travelling, I can recall
little that was quite as exhausting as that scramble across the desert that
followed. Much of the way was across exposed, fissured rock and tumbled
boulders, among which were cracks that could snap an ankle like a twig if one
were unlucky. And between them were depressions which had filled with windblown
sand so soft that our feet sank up to our ankles, and our leg muscles screamed
with protest as we waded across them, wishing we could stop to rest and grimly
aware that we could not.
“It’s getting lighter,” I said once, glancing
over my shoulder. “How far is the fire?”
“I can’t see it any longer,” my Lord
replied. “It might be simply that there are rocks between us and it, or...”
He never finished. Dark shapes seemed to
flow out of the shadows all around us. Something slammed me in the chest, and
the next instant I found myself sitting down, pressed back against a rock by a
knee in my chest, and with a blade at my throat.
“Don’t move,” someone said in the trade
dialect of the caravans, and pressed hard enough for me to feel the edge of the
metal. “Don’t even breathe hard, or
I’ll cut your head off.”
There was, of course, nothing I could do.
From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Opodartho and Onek Mangsho, pinned to
boulders just as I was. I felt a hand on my body, searching, and in a moment my
beloved long knife was eased out of its place.
“Do you have any other weapons?” the person pressing me back asked. “If you do,
tell me now, because if I find one on you later, I won’t kill you. What I’ll do
to you will be much worse than that.”
“No,” I whispered. The knee digging between
my breasts made it hard for me to breathe, let alone talk. “I have no other
weapons.”
“For your sake you had better be telling
the truth.” The pressure of the blade at my throat eased slightly. “I’ll let
you get up now, but don’t try to run. You won’t get far.”
Gasping for air, I got to my feet. At once
my wrists were seized and pulled behind me, to be tied tight by what felt like
leather thongs. I briefly saw my Lord and Opodartho, having the same thing done
to them. Our captors thrust us together.
“Follow me.” From the voice, it was the one
who’d been kneeling on me. “Don’t try to talk to each other and don’t try to
escape. We’re all around you.”
It was still far too dark to make out
anything clearly, and all I could see was that our captors seemed to be covered
in dark cloaks that hid their forms so completely that they all looked alike. I
couldn’t even tell how many of them there were – seven or eight, perhaps.
I felt a shove in the small of my back,
hard enough to send me stumbling a few paces. “Move. What are you waiting for?”
Onek Mangsho and Opodartho had already
begun walking, without waiting to be pushed, and I followed them. It wasn’t the
first time I’d walked with my hands tied – I only have to mention the horrible
episode of the Cantankerous Curmudgeon of Komboler Karkhana, who had held us
prisoner under such onerous circumstances – but I’d never had to stumble
through rocky desert in the dark with them secured. Within moments I’d already
lost balance and fallen once, and would have a second time if Opodartho hadn’t
been in the way.
“This one is awfully clumsy, Ukuner
Upodrob,” the one who had shoved me called. “She’ll slow us down. Maybe we
should just cut her throat and leave her here.”
Before I could even voice my outrage at
this calumny – how dare anyone call me
clumsy, and not that coarse peasant Opodartho, who had all the grace of a
pregnant pangolin from Poishar Prosthan? – the one who had been kneeling on me
turned. “Not yet. There won’t be any killing until we’ve got a chance to talk
properly to them.”
“And then we can eat them?” the one who had
called me clumsy asked hopefully. “At least let’s eat this one. She’s meaty enough
to last for a meal or three.”
Ukuner Upodrob didn’t reply, just motioned
us onward. We were still going west, and now came out of the rocks and again
into the open. The plain was rocky and fissured, and not much easier going than
it had been before, but it was light enough now that I could see a little
better and didn’t stumble quite so much anymore.
Only now could I find some time to think,
and wonder who these people were. Obviously they weren’t Uronto Uipoka’s
people, for they would have taken us back south, towards Golmal Galagali, not
west. Besides, from what they’d said so far, I’d got the idea that they weren’t
certain who we were and where we’d come from. But they didn’t seem any less
dangerous than the Governor’s men, and –
“We’ll stop here for the day,” Ukuner
Upodrob announced, pointing. I realised that what I’d taken for a dark smudge
of lingering darkness was a hollow in the ground, as though the Cannibal Spirit
had pressed one of His thumbs into the desert. “Nobody will be able to see us
once we’re inside.”
I’d have liked to have had a look around
before we went down into that hole, since one thing our travels had taught me
was that one had to always know which way to run if one could escape from a bad
situation; but all that this earned me was a blow across the shoulders with the
butt of Onek Mangsho’s light spear, which the one who’d wanted to eat me was
carrying. “Get in!”
Though the sky above was lightening by the
moment, at the bottom of the hole it was still quite dark, and everyone,
including our captors, had to pick their way. Then we reached a flattish place
in the middle, which seemed to satisfy Ukuner Upodrob.
“All right,” she said, turning to us. “Now
who sent you to follow us?”
She? But then I realised that I’d known it from the start, from her voice
and the way she moved. In fact, I suddenly knew that they were all women. And then she confirmed it by
removing the cloth over her face, revealing herself to be not just female but
rather striking. In fact, I’ll even admit that she was almost as beautiful as I
am. Not quite, of course, but almost.
“Well?” she demanded. “I’m waiting for an
answer.”
Onek Mangsho and Opodartho seemed to have
deduced it for themselves, for neither of them showed any surprise. “Nobody
sent us,” my Lord said.
“We weren’t following you,” Opodartho
added.
“You’re both lying.” She turned from one of
us to another, looking us over from head to foot. Whatever she saw didn’t seem
to make her happy. “You’re obviously warriors, you were armed to the teeth, and
we’ve been watching you since yesterday afternoon. You thought you could sneak
up on us in the dark, didn’t you?” She turned to me. “You. You tell me. Who’s
paying you?”
“Nobody’s paying...” I got no further
before a blow to the back drove me to my knees.
“When Ukuner Upodrob asks you a question,”
the one who’d wanted to eat me said, “she expects a proper answer.”
“That’ll do, Mochkano Merudondo.” Ukuner
Upodrob held up a hand. She stood with her hands on her hips looking down at
me. “Now, whatever your name is...”
“Irshar Itihash,” I said. It was, of
course, not the name by which I’d been known on Golmal Galagali. “And these
are...”
“I will ask them myself who they are, when
I wish to know.” Ukuner Upodrob kicked at a pebble, sending it rolling past my
knee. “No, you tell me, who is it who employed you? And you were planning to
kill us, weren’t you?”
“We didn’t even know you were there,” I
protested.
“A likely story,” Mochkano Merudondo
jeered. “Ukuner Upodrob, we’re thirsty and hungry, so let’s kill this one and
drink her blood, and then we can eat her. What do you say?”
I am, of course, the calmest and most
restrained of women, but at that moment I developed an acute and sudden dislike
for Mochkano Merudondo, even though I’d yet to see her face. “I’d poison you if
you try,” I said.
Ukuner Upodrob snorted. “Don’t make threats
you can’t keep.” She turned to Onek Mangsho. “And what have you got to say for
yourself?”
“Exactly what Irshar Itihash told you,” my
Lord replied. “We didn’t even know you were there. We are simply travellers,
passing through the desert.”
“Travellers, indeed.” Ukuner Upodrob laughed.
“Travellers move through the desert in the dead of night, following the tracks
of people like us, do they? Do they go about in small, heavily armed bands of
obviously experienced warriors?”
“Even travellers need to look to their own
security,” Opodartho said. “You should know that.”
Ukuner Upodrob tapped her lips with her
forefinger. “All right,” she said. “So you were travellers in the desert. Where
were you travelling to?”
My mind went blank for a moment, but
fortunately she wasn’t looking at me. Equally fortunately, Opodartho’s slow
brain came by one of its momentary sparks of inspiration. “We’re on our way to
Ghrinar Ghurnijhor,” she said.
“Ghrinar Ghurnijhor.” Ukuner Upodrob and Mochkano
Merudondo glanced at each other. “Never have we heard of this place.”
This was, naturally, not surprising, but
Onek Mangsho picked up the story. “It’s a fortress across the desert to the
west,” he said. “It was abandoned for a long time, but the High Monk of the
Cannibal Spirit has decreed that it be revived.”
“Is that so? And...” Ukuner Upodrob turned
suddenly to me. “What were you going to do there?”
My mouth began talking before my mind had
consciously decided on an answer. “We were going there to hire ourselves out as
mercenaries. A place like that has need of protection from...”
“...from desert bandits like ourselves,”
Ukuner Upodrob finished. “I knew you
were warriors.” For some reason, she relaxed slightly. “If you’d said you were
merchants or something I’d have known you were lying. And are you expected
there?”
“Yes, we are,” Opodartho said quickly. “The
governor, Shompurno Shajano, had specifically sent a message asking for us to
join him.”
“Hmmm...” Ukuner Upodrob thought over what
we’d told her. “This certainly is interesting information.”
Opodartho and I shared a quick glance. We’d
hoped that they’d have let us go at the mention of the governor, for the wrath
of such a personage was not something to be lightly risked, as we ourselves had
discovered. But Ukuner Upodrob was showing no signs of doing any such thing.
What were they planning for us?
“So what do we do with them, Ukuner
Upodrob?” Mochkano Merudondo asked, on cue. “Should we just slaughter them and
move on?”
Ukuner Upodrob looked us over and shook her
head. “Wait. What are you two called?”
“I am Bedonajonok Bhimrul,” Onek Mangsho
informed her. “This lady here is Kothor Konkal. Irshar Itihash you already
know.”
“All right,” Ukuner Upodrob said, having
apparently come to a decision. “We have a clear choice. One, we cut your
throats right away, and use you for food...” She paused to let Mochkano Merudondo
stop cheering. “Or, you offer us
something to make it worth our keeping you alive.”
There was a brief silence. It was Opodartho
who broke it. “You’re fugitives yourselves,” she said. “It’s more than obvious
that you’re filled with fear of enemies, and that you know that sooner or later
they’ll track you down.”
Mochkano Merudondo hissed in anger, but
Ukuner Upodrob raised a hand. “Let her talk.”
“What we can offer you is something more
than you could ever hope to obtain otherwise,” Opodartho went on. “It’s
certainly more than the few miserable meals you might get out of our bodies. We can offer you nothing less than the
fortress of Ghrinar Ghurnijhor itself.”
Ukuner Upodrob stared. “Tell me. How are you
going to give me the fortress?”
“The governor is expecting us, as we said.
What would be more natural that we arrive at the head of a band of other,
equally capable, mercenaries? And once we’re inside the place...”
“Yes, I see.” Ukuner Upodrob nodded. “A
fortress is certainly something we would certainly love to take over. All
right...you can live, at least for now.” She signalled, and I was pulled to my
feet. Someone fumbled behind my back, and the ropes finally fell away. I tried
to massage my hands, but my fingers were numb. “Don’t make the mistake of
imagining that we trust you, though.”
“I’ve got my eye on you, especially,” Mochkano Merudondo informed me. She took off her
face-cloth, revealing a visage even uglier, if that was possible, than
Opodartho’s. No wonder, I thought with a twinge of sympathy, that she was so
vile-tempered, with looks like that. “Sooner or later, you’ll put a toe-tip
wrong, and that’s all I’ll need.”
“You’d better be fast then,” I told her. “You’ll
need to be, or I’ll rip off your face and feed it to you.” It was probably
immature, but I felt better for saying it.
Mochkano Merudondo glared at me and was
about to say something when Ukuner Upodrob called her. The two of them moved
off to the other end of the hollow, talking, the ugly woman gesturing furiously.
Onek Mangsho and Opodartho came over to me.
“Well, Irshar Itihasah,” my Lord said
heartily. “It looks like we’ve got a good opportunity to make a new start with
these friends of ours.”
“Yes, Lord...” I tried to remember what
name he’d given himself. For some reason, it refused to come to me. “Lord...”
“Bedonajonok Bhimrul,” Opodartho put in
quickly. “My husband’s name is Bedonajonok Bhimrul, Lady Irshar Itihash. I
forgot that I’d not introduced you properly when I’d recruited you to our
band.”
The hussy was brazenly making an attempt to
claim Onek Mangsho for herself! I wished I could throw myself on her to avenge
this insult, but I could not even protest verbally, what with the bandits
around. I merely contented myself with glaring at her, which, of course, she
ignored.
“Kothor Konkal,” Onek Mangsho said, “let’s
rest while we can. There’s a long walk to Ghrinar Ghurnijhor.”
We sat down with our backs against a
largish boulder. A couple of bandits sat down opposite us. One took out a short
curved knife and began sharpening it on a stone, staring at us menacingly, but
this was the kind of thing we’d long since grown accustomed to in the course of
our adventures. The previous night’s lack of sleep began to catch up with me,
pulling at my eyelids. Yawning, I turned to Onek Mangsho, only to find he was
already fast asleep, with Opodartho’s own slumbering head on his shoulder and
her arm twined around his. The shaft of jealousy this sent through me served to
wake me up for a while, and I tried to think of a way to put Opodartho in her
place. But I still hadn’t come up with a plan by the time I fell asleep.
It was almost dark when I woke. The bandits
were sitting together with Opodartho and Onek Mangsho, eating. When my Lord saw
that I was awake, he called me over.
“Feed Irshar Itihash too, Ukuner Upodrob,”
he said.
Ukuner Upodrob nodded to Mochkano
Merudondo, who brought out some rough dry bread and a couple of strips of meat
from a bag. “She should be in our bellies,” she grumbled. “Instead, our food is
going into hers.”
“Hush,” Ukuner Upodrob said, and resumed
what was apparently an interrupted conversation with my Lord and Opodartho.
“You say you know the way to Ghrinar Ghurnijhor?”
“We have detailed instructions,” Onek
Mangsho said evasively. “It will take several days to get there, even
travelling without a break.
“Not to mention which,” Opodartho added,
“we will have to cross the Chasm of Chondaler Chokkhusthir, which is – as you
must have heard – deep and dangerous. It will not be an easy journey.”
“In that case,” Mochkano Merudondo said,
“we should first replenish our stocks. They’re almost exhausted.”
“But where?” one of the other bandits
asked. It was the one who had been ostentatiously sharpening her knife when we
were trying to sleep. “We’re hunted almost everywhere around here. They’ll be
on guard, and there aren’t many of us left.”
“There must be settlements to the west, on
the way to the fortress, Tibrogoti Kochchop,” Ukuner Upodrob told her. “I’d
myself been thinking of raiding in that direction. We’ll attack any we come
across.”
“And what if we don’t find any?” Tibrogoti
Kochchop asked.
“Then,” Mochkano Merudondo put in, “I know
where I’ll find food for us all.” And, to nobody’s surprise, she stared right
at me.
“I must say I
hadn’t expected this,” Onek Mansho muttered as we moved off into the freshening
evening darkness. The bandits had spread out on either side, and for a brief
moment the three of us were alone. “If they’d tried to attack one of the nearby
towns we might have been able to get away in the fighting, but I’m afraid we’re
in for the long haul now.”
“Do you think
that if there was such a fortress and we helped them take it over, they’d let
us live?” I asked curiously.
Opodartho
snorted with laughter. “Your friend Mochkano Merudondo would celebrate the
victory with a meal of your heart, Chheechkaduni.”
“Here she comes
now,” Onek Mangsho said warningly. The dark shape of the bandit loomed up near
us. “So, tell us about your previous fighting experience, Irshar Itihash,” he
said loudly. “I heard you were at the Battle of Jholshano Judhdho. It must have
been a terrific conflict.”
“Yes, my lord
Bedonajonok Bhimrul.” I am, of course, a skilled raconteur, unlike a
slab-brained peasant woman I could mention, and this was precisely the kind of
story I can tell well, where my fertile imagination and keen tongue have free
rein. “I was serving in the troop of the mercenary leader General Polatok
Palowan. As you know, he had been hired by the monks of the Monastery of
Mulyohin Mithye to defend their territory against the depredations of the
Despot of Doshbar Digbaji. We’d just got to the monastery when we got news that
the Despot’s army was on the march, so – stopping only long enough for a swig
of wine and a hunk of meat apiece – we set out again to block their advance. It
was the middle of the night, and even darker than this, so...”
I kept talking
as we walked on through the night, and out of the corner of my eye I saw
Mochkano Merudondo, keeping well within earshot.
It was strange,
but despite all my imaginative and skilful storytelling, I had the distinct
impression that she was the only one who was actually listening to me.
*************************************
It was sometime late the next night, our second spent walking into
the desert, that the scout Ununer Upodrob had sent out ahead came hurrying
back. The bandits quickly gathered together to listen.
“There’s a
village up ahead,” the scout said. “I saw the buildings, but didn’t get close
enough to make out anything more.”
“Why not?”
The scout
hesitated. “There’s something strange about the place,” she said. “Something
about it set off my sixth sense. I wanted to run away from it, not go in.”
I’d expected
these hardened desert bandits to laugh at the idea of a “sixth sense”, but
apparently they took these things seriously. Nobody even sniggered.
“Perhaps we
should bypass it and move on,” Tibrogoti Kochchop suggested. “If it’s an evil
place...” Opodartho jabbed me in the side as I involuntarily sniggered at the
word ‘evil’ dropping from the lips of such as these. “If it’s an evil place,”
Tibrogoti Kochchop continued, “we would be well advised to leave it alone.”
“Can’t be done,”
Mochkano Merudondo said. “We have only a couple of days’ food and water left.
If we don’t stock up now, we might as well abandon the whole idea of going to
Ghrinar Ghurnijhor. We’d starve in the desert.”
“Why don’t you
simply buy food and water from them?” I suggested. “That way you don’t have
anything to worry about.”
Mochkano
Merudondo stared at me, her eyes white in the night. “Do you even have any idea
of the cost of food and water here in the desert? We don’t have enough money to
pay for the amount we’d need. How were you all going to get through the trip,
anyway? We didn’t find any money on you.”
“They were
planning to cut the throats of anyone they met, I’m sure,” Tibrogoti Kochchop
said. “They just call themselves mercenaries and us bandits, but they’re the
same under the surface.”
“That’s all very
well,” the scout put in, “but what are we going to do?”
Everyone looked
at Ukuner Upodrob, who so far had not said a word. She tapped her teeth with a
fingernail, and seemed to be in deep thought. Finally she nodded.
“We can’t
continue further without food and water, that’s true enough,” she said. “Nor
can we just walk into danger by attacking that village without knowing what it
is that scared Jongoler Jolohosti. So there’s only one choice left – we’re
going to have to send a couple of spies to go in and find out what’s wrong.”
“I’m not going,”
the scout, Jongoler Jolohosti, said instantly. “I’m willing to do anything
else, but I’m not going in there for anything.”
“I’m not asking
you to,” Ukuner Upodrob said. “I wouldn’t risk the lives of anyone in the troop
unnecessarily. Luckily, though, we have options now.”
Opodartho,
Onek Mangsho, and I exchanged glances. Even though we could barely see each
other in the darkness, we all knew what options she was talking about.
*************************************
“There it is,” Jongoler Jolohosti
said, pointing. She’d come with us this far with great reluctance, and only
because she was the only one who knew where the village was. “You two go on
from here; I’m not moving another step.”
Opodartho
and I looked at the village. In the first light there didn’t seem to be
anything special about it – surrounded by a low wall of earthen bricks, it
looked like any of a hundred others in this country. Even Golmal Galagali had
looked much the same.
“What’s
wrong with it?” I asked. “It looks like any other desert village to me.”
“Can’t
you feel it?” the scout replied. “No, of course you can’t. If you did, you’d
never go in there.”
“Feel
what?” I asked. “Can you explain what you’re talking about? Is there something
specific?”
“No,”
Jongoler Jolohosti said. “It’s nothing one can name, but I long ago learnt to
trust my instincts. If not, I’d have been dead many times over. There is
something very wrong with that place.” She hesitated. “If you want to run away,
you can. I won’t say a word.”
“We
won’t leave Bedonajonok Bhimrul at your group’s mercy,” Opodartho told her.
“Did you forget that Ukuner Upodrob is holding him hostage?”
“Do you
really think that she’s going to let you go free, whatever you do?” Jongoler
Jolohosti asked. “Surely you aren’t as naive as that.”
I
realised that the bandit was actually trying to be good to us. “We won’t run
away,” I said. “Maybe afterwards we can find a way out. But we won’t leave
Bedonajonok Bhimrul in the lurch. He does mean a lot to us.”
“Suit
yourselves,” Jongoler Jolohosti said grumpily. “I’ll wait here for the rest of
the troop to catch up. Don’t forget, if you aren’t back by nightfall, we’ll
assume you’ve been killed or run away, and the result will be the same for the
man.”
“We’ll
be back,” I said, abruptly losing all sympathy for her. “Don’t worry about us.”
Opodartho
had already started walking towards the village, and I hurried to catch up. “Don’t
forget, we’re merchants, separated from our caravan,” she said. “We just want
to rest and recuperate a little before we move on and find our fellow
travellers.” It was a cover we’d used many times before, usually successfully.
“I hope they
don’t hurt our Lord while we’re away,” I said. There was something nagging me,
something someone had said, which I had wanted to ask Opodartho about, but I’d
forgotten. “He’s alone and there are six of them.”
“Hurt him?” Opodartho laughed shortly.
“Did you see the way Ukuner Upodrob was looking at him? Hurting him was the
last thing on her mind. Why do you think she kept him as a hostage, instead of you or me?”
“Can
you see a gate?” I asked, to take my mind off the mental image this roused, of
what was probably going on behind us. No wonder the main group of bandits was
taking its time. I wanted to ask what we’d do if Onek Mangsho decided that
Ukuner Upodrob and her women were preferable to the two of us, but if I did,
Opodartho would likely accuse me of disloyalty. “Where’s the gate?”
“There,”
Opodartho said, pointing. It was a small affair, just a door set in the wall.
“There’s no guard.”
“That’s
good for us, isn’t it?” A thought struck me. “Perhaps they have nothing to
steal.”
“They’d
still want to protect themselves against dire lions and hungry bandits,”
Opodartho said. “I wish we could have persuaded Ukuner Upodrob to return some
of our weapons.”
“If
you’re right about Onek Mangsho and Ukuner Upodrob,” I said, “maybe she won’t
mind if something happens to us because we don’t have any weapons.”
We came
to the gate. It was even smaller than it had looked like from a distance, and wasn’t
even locked or barred. Opodartho and I peered inside cautiously at first,
expecting we didn’t know what – perhaps corpses lying in the streets, bloated
with plague, or an army waiting for us with levelled spears. But it was just
like any other street in any other village, still empty at this hour of the
morning. The only strange thing was the open gate and the absence of guards.
We
walked into the village. From somewhere close by, a door creaked open, and
someone said something. As though it was a signal, other doors and windows
started being thrown open, and people began coming out of their houses, some
still yawning and rubbing their eyes. A couple of them glanced at us curiously,
but nobody made any move to approach us.
“It
looks like any other village to me,” I said. “Let’s walk through the streets a
couple of times, and if there’s nothing out of the ordinary, we can go back.”
“There’s
one thing strange about it,” Opodartho replied. We had just reached the central
square of the village, which was, like many others of its kind, fitted out as a
market. At this hour, of course, it was still deserted. “How many villages and towns have we seen in
our travels – hundreds, right? Do you remember even a single one which did not
have any guards at the gate or patrolling the streets, even if they were not in
the middle of a desert crawling with bandits?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “When
you put it that way...”
“Ladies,”
a voice behind us said. “If you would be so kind as to spare a moment, I’d like
to talk to you.”
We turned. The man
standing behind us had come up so silently even my sharp ears hadn’t picked up
a sound. I wondered how long he’d been behind us and how much, if anything,
he’d overheard. “Yes?” Opodartho asked.
“I’m called
Digbidig Gyanshunyo. I am the assistant to the chief of this village.” He was
dressed in a yellow and pink robe, and had a deeply lined face, thin white hair
and deep-sunken eyes. He must have been all of forty years old, perhaps more.
“I apologise for not meeting you earlier, but we seldom have visitors so early
in the morning.” He made a small bow, little more than an inclination of his
head. “Or such pretty ones, to tell the truth.”
“Thank you,”
Opodartho said. She introduced ourselves, using the same names as we’d given
the bandits. “We were separated from our caravan, and found your village while
trying to rejoin it.”
“Ah. Not many
caravans pass this way, so you were fortunate.” Digbidig Gyanshunyo gestured
with one robed arm. “Please come along. The hospitality of Astaboler Artonad is
yours, for as long as you want it.”
“Is that the name
of this village?” I asked casually.
“Yes, indeed, Lady
Irshar Itihash. It’s not a large village, but it’s a good, prosperous one.”
Digbidig Gyanshunyo led us into one of the houses. “I am sure you would like to
freshen yourselves up, and perhaps rest a while. You will be exhausted after
wandering in the desert.”
“Thank you.”
Oppodartho smiled at him. “You said you were the assistant to the chief. Where
is he?”
“He is indisposed
at the moment.” Digbidig Gyanshunyo gestured to us to enter one of the rooms.
It was dark and shadowed, with a low bed in the middle and thick hangings on
the walls. “He will meet you later, if he is better. In the meantime, I’ll have
food brought to you.”
As soon as he’d
left, Opodartho casually went to one wall, running her fingers along the
drapes. “It’s lovely fabric,” she said. “It seems a nice, clean village, Irshar
Itihash. We’re lucky we found it while wandering the desert.”
I thought the
trollop had finally gone insane. Never before had I known her to take any great
interest in such things as ornamental wall hangings. But then she never was
particularly stable. I watched as she made a complete circuit of the room, and
was just about to say something when Digbidig Gyanshunyo returned, along with a
young woman bearing a tray.
“Here’s food and
drink for you,” he said, smiling. “This young lady here, Mostishkoheen Murgi,
will get you anything you might need.”
“Thank you very
much,” I said, watching the girl set the tray down on a small table next to the
bed. It contained a stone jar of water, vessels for drinking, and a couple of
plates heaped with strips of meat and dried fruit. “We will be on our way when
we’ve rested and refreshed ourselves.”
“The chief will
want to meet you before you go,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo said. “I told him about
your coming. He at once said that the very thought of meeting someone from
outside filled him with happiness, and he couldn’t possibly deprive himself of
the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
“That’s nice of
him.” I sipped some of the water, aware that the girl, Mostishkoheen Murgi, was
watching intently. It was surprisingly cool, as though it had been brought up
from deep wells like those we had seen in the Grotto of Gobhir Gohobbor, where
I had for the first, and hopefully last, time in my life fallen into the liquid
over my head. Sometimes I still dream of that terrible sensation – and the
agony that ended it, as Opodartho reached in and dragged me out by my hair. “You
don’t get a lot of visitors, I assume?”
“No, I’m afraid
you’re the first in a long time,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo replied. “Except, of
course, for the occasional traders, but they’re hardly visitors, if you know
what I mean.”
I chewed at one of
the fruit. It was leathery and faintly sweet. I’d never had anything like this
before. “You aren’t eating, Digbidig Gyanshunyo?” I asked, to be polite.
“I’m not hungry,
lady,” he said, taking a fruit and putting it back again. “How about you?” he
asked Opodartho. “You aren’t eating either.”
“Is this your
house?” Opodartho asked right back, with a bright smile. “It’s very nice.”
“Well, no, it’s
not mine. We keep it for visitors.” Digbidig Gyanshunyo indicated the girl. “Mostishkoheen
Murgi takes care of guests, when we have any.”
“She can’t have
much to do, since you said you don’t have many visitors,” Opodartho said. “When
did you last have visitors here?”
“Two
moons...three,” Mostishkoheen Murgi muttered. She had a voice that was low and
thick, as though she had something stuck in her throat. “It was a man, but he
didn’t stay long.”
“Did the chief
meet him, as well?” Opodartho asked for some reason. It was a strange question
to ask, it seemed to me. As guests, even under false pretences, what did it
matter to us whom the chief may or may not have met? But then tact and courtesy
were unknown things where Opodartho was concerned.
“The chief loves
meeting visitors,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo responded to the question, ill-mannered
though it might have been. “He never lets one depart unmet, and each time he
seems rejuvenated and filled with happiness and energy after the meeting.
Meeting you, I am sure, will give him immense joy and happiness.”
“He’s quite old,
then?”
“Yes, quite old,”
Digbidig Gyanshunyo said. “Aren’t you hungry, Lady Kothor Konkal?”
“I’m too tired to
feel like eating,” Opodartho said. “Just leave the food here, and I’ll eat as
soon as I’m rested a while.”
I gnawed at
another fruit. I’d have loved to eat more, but I didn’t want to look like a
starving gourmand in front of Opodartho. Besides, I was beginning to feel
drowsy, which was no surprise after the night’s march and the exertion of the
last few days. Opodartho, too, yawned, though loudly and ostentatiously like
the peasant she was, not discreetly like a woman of refinement such as me.
“I’ll leave you to
rest,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo said. “If you need anything, just let Mostishkoheen
Murgi know. She’s there to serve you in any way you want.”
I glanced at
Mostishkoheen Murgi. She did not look too eager to serve us in any way
whatsoever. “Just call if you need something,” she muttered. “I’ll come, if I’m
not doing something else.”
“That’s no way to
talk to guests,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo snapped. “I’ve told you before to behave
yourself around them. Otherwise we may have to do something about you.”
Mostishkoheen
Murgi directed a savage glare at his turned back. I was struck again by what a
coarse, ill mannered young woman she was. Digbidig Gyanshunyo would have been
better off with someone better-natured. But I was feeling far too tired to have
much energy left for sympathy.
As soon as he’d
gone, the girl following behind, I lay down on the bed. “I’ll try and sleep a
while,” I said. “I haven’t had a bed to lie on since we left...” Some random
impulse kept me from saying Golmal
Galagali. “Since we left that town where we met,” I compromised.
“Neither have I,”
Opodartho said. She looked at me strangely. “Are you feeling all right, Irshar
Itihash?”
“Yes, why do you
ask?” I yawned again. “I’m just a little sleepy that’s all.”
“All right, you
sleep it off.” I thought I heard her mutter something about it being lucky I’d
only had a couple of pieces of fruit, but I was too sleepy to care. The last I
saw of her, she was sitting on the bed, looking at the drapery on the wall. I
dreamt of Onek Mangsho and Ukuner Upodrob, twined around each other, and of
Mochkano Merudondo, pointing at me and laughing. When I went to punish them as
they deserved, I discovered that my arms and legs were tied with pink and
yellow ropes, the exact colour of Digbodig Gyanshunyo’s clothes.
When I woke,
Opodartho seemed to be sitting exactly as I’d last seen her. She glanced at me.
“I was beginning to think you’d never wake up. But you were snoring loud enough
for me to know you were all right.”
“All right?” I
repeated. “Did something happen to make you think I wouldn’t be?”
She shook her head
impatiently. “It’s not the time for something to happen yet, obviously, or it
would have already.” I didn’t understand what she meant by that, but she didn’t
give me the chance to ask. “It’s almost evening,” she said.
“We’d better get
going, then,” I replied. “We’ve got to find our, er, travelling companions.
They’ll be worried about us.”
“Get going?”
Opodartho repeated. “Yes, we’d better get going – if we can. Our hosts don’t
seem to be eager to let us go.”
“Huh?” I blinked
and rubbed my eyes. “What do you mean?”
Opodartho nodded
at the entrance. “Try the door and see.”
I tried the door. It
didn’t open. I tried it again.
“Should I call for
Mostoshkoheen Murgi?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder at Opodartho.
“There’s no need
for that.” The door had opened silently while I was still looking at her, and
Digbidig Gyanshunyo stood at my elbow. “Our chief would like to meet you now.”
“That’s fine,”
Opodartho said, rising from the bed. “We were just about to leave.”
“Well, you can do
that, just as soon as you’ve met him.” Digbidig Gyanshunyo smiled engagingly. He
looked over my shoulder at Opodartho and down at the table. “He will be glad to
see you decided to partake of his hospitality.”
“What?” I asked,
and followed the line of his sight, only to find the plate of food almost
empty. Opodartho, the glutton, must have been stuffing herself while I was
asleep. It was just like her.
“Yes,” she
replied, sweetly and shamelessly. “It was very good.”
For some reason
Digbidig Gyanshunyo seemed a little nonplussed. “The chief is waiting for you
now,” he said. “He’s eager to meet you, and no wonder. After all, this is his
only pleasure.”
“All right, then,”
Opodartho said. “Let’s go meet him, then.”
“I’m afraid he’s
only got a limited amount of energy, enough to see one of you ladies at a
time,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo told her. “He informed me that he wants to meet Lady
Irshar Itihash first.”
My mind was still
hung over with sleep, but not so much that I neglected to direct a triumphant
glance at Opodartho. The chief, going just by the description of my charms
alone, had chosen me over her.
Obviously, this was a victory for me.
Opodartho didn’t
seem to be put out, though. “Mind you don’t take too long,” she said. “We’d
like to get as far as we can through the desert tonight, while it’s still cool.
We’re supposed to meet our travelling companions tomorrow.”
“Where are you
planning on meeting your companions?” Digbidig Gyanshunyo asked me, as we came
down to the street. The sun was still up but it was quite cool, and there were
many people outside. Most of them stared at me, which is, of course, natural,
seeing how beautiful I am, but I was still feeling far too tired to fully
savour their admiration. It was really very strange, how tired I felt, despite
my day’s sleep. It was all I could do, to put one leg in front of another.
“It’s a wide desert and there are few landmarks.”
This was, of
course, not a welcome question, seeing that the assistant chief probably knew
the desert around quite well and I knew it not at all. Pretending I hadn’t
heard his question, I took a moment to adjust my travelling robe. “What’s the
chief’s name?” I asked. “How long has he been chief?”
“He is called
Oshomapto Ondhobishshash. He’s been chief for a very long time, and is likely
to remain so for many years to come.” Digbidig Gyanshunyo stopped momentarily
to speak to someone who was passing. While they talked, I looked around,
remembering why Opodartho and I had come here in the first place. It still
seemed a totally ordinary town, remarkable only because of the total absence of
any signs of the inhabitants being able to defend themselves.
“Sorry about
that,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo said, returning to my side. “An assistant chief, as
you can well imagine, has many calls on his time.”
“Certainly,” I
said. “Out here in the desert, don’t you have problems with dire lions or other
dangerous beasts?”
“No – they don’t
come into the town and we don’t have any reason to go out into the desert,
especially at night, when they hunt.” He didn’t seem to feel it necessary to
warn me about the dangers of wandering the desert at night. “We have never
found any need for guards,” he added, anticipating my next question.
“Still,” I said,
“you would likely attract robbers? This seems to be a fairly prosperous
village.” Ukuner Upodrob would be happy with my report. Equally obviously, the
scout was just full of ridiculous fancies. I found myself quite enjoying the
prospect of telling them the village was ripe for the taking. “Surely you ,ust
have been attacked by now?”
“We have been
fortunate, by the grace of the Cannibal Spirit. However, we don’t need guards,
never have, and I have excellent reasons to believe that we never will.” He saw
somebody else he wanted to talk to, and waved. “Excuse me.”
While he was busy
with his discussion, I glanced back once over my shoulder at the building where
we’d spent the day, to make certain that I might be able to find it again. It
was already quite far off, and the shadows were lengthening, but I thought I
saw someone standing, arms crossed across her chest, outside the door of the
room. It looked like Mostishkoheen Murgi, and it looked like she was staring
after us.
I was certain it
was only a trick of the light which made it appear as though she looked as
though she wanted to warn me about something.
*************************************
“This,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo said,
“is the chief’s house.”
It was almost full
dark already, mostly because this absurd exhaustion I felt made it impossible
for me to walk with anything like my usual speed. Digbidig Gyanshunyo, however,
didn’t seem to be particularly put out at my sluggishness. It was almost as
though he was even mildly pleased at it, though why that should be I couldn’t
begin to imagine. Once when I’d stumbled he’d even helped me up and held my
elbow until I could find my footing securely again, though it delayed us not a
little.
“It’s not what I
expected,” I said. The house was right at the back of the village, so far back
that behind it I could see the dim shape of the wall around the town. It was
also a lot larger than the others – low and broad, with pillars supporting a
domed roof. It was as though someone had visited the fabled great cities of the
south, which Onek Mangsho had told us about, seen one of those ancient
buildings there, and decided to copy it here in Astaboler Artonad. It looked so
out of place that I almost expected soldiers in heavy armour and carrying
hooked swords to stand guard outside, as in those fabled cities of the south.
There were, of
course, no such guards. Digbidig Gyanshunyo casually pushed open a heavy door –
it was studded with thick nails, the first sign of security I’d yet noticed – and
ushered me inside. Perhaps it was only courtesy that made him draw the door
shut again, and pull home a bolt.
“Wait here,” he
said. “Oshomapto Ondhobishshash will be with you in a moment.”
We were in a
square courtyard surrounded by pillared corridors. High above, supported by
buttresses, was the hollow bulge of the dome, the interior thick with shadow.
It would have been completely dark but for the torches set in holders all
around the square.
“Where is he?” I
asked, walking across the courtyard to a curious hump of stone which stood near
one corner. It looked like a carved, truncated cone, as though someone had
taken one of the intricately decorated pillars of the southern palaces this building
resembled, cut off most of it, and brought what was left over here. I bent for
a closer look at the carvings and reached out to touch them.
They were not
carvings, and it was not stone.
The thing unfolded
section by section. First, a long arm, stretching out and out, long,
claw-tipped fingers reaching out from a withered grey hand. Then, the head, a
skull covered by skin dry as the desert, atop a neck like a column of bone and
sinew. I watched in fascination, unable even to step back, as it came upright
on legs like stalks. Its head tilted on one side as it studied me, the
torchlight flickering faintly on something glittering deep inside the twin
caves of its sockets. It made a sound like the desert wind would, if the desert
wind were capable of laughing.
“This is the
chief, Oshomapto Ondhobishshash,” Digbidig Gyanshunyo said from where he was
standing, near the door. “Won’t you greet him as a guest should, Lady Irshar
Itihash?”
There was
something in his voice I’d never heard before, something that was filled with
exultation and ancient cruelty. Involuntarily, I turned to look at him. He was
lounging against one of the pillars, and grinning.
“Now you know why
we need no guards in this village, bitch,” he said. “And, also, why the chief
becomes filled with energy again each time we have a visitor.”
At that moment the
thing’s hands came down on my shoulders and began pulling me towards it. The
strength in it was incredible, and utterly beyond my capability – in my
exhausted state – to resist.
There was one
thing I could still do, though, one thing I’d learnt long ago was vital to
learn to do properly.
I could fall.
Even as the
thing’s fingers ripped through my travelling robe, I’d already gone totally
limp, and had let myself drop, rolling as I fell so that my arms could take the
impact. I rolled, as quickly as I could, the ripped cloth of my robe tangling
with my arms and flapping in my face. As though from very far away, I could
still hear the thing wheezing, and, behind it, the exultant voice of Digbidig
Gyanshunyo.
“Every drop of
your agony,” he was shrieking, “will go to feed the chief, and to make our
village safe and secure. Every single drop! Roll and dodge all you want, you
won’t...”
And then he
stopped, his words ending in a gasp.
Throwing a piece
of torn robe out of my eyes, I looked up. Digbidig Gyanshunyo was still
standing by the pillar, but swaying gently, clawing at his throat. Red blood
pulsed all over his pink and yellow robe, over his hands, and down on the
floor. He gasped again, and then fell, crashing down on to the ground. The haft
of a knife protruded from his throat.
I was still
staring at him, half-mesmerised, when the flickering torchlight was blocked out
as a shadow fell over me...
I rolled over and
looked up. The thing’s claws were reaching for my throat. Its mouth was a
fang-studded pit. The glittering things in its sockets rolled, dimly gleaming.
It hissed, and I could feel its enjoyment.
And then something
struck it from behind, so hard that it went staggering over my head and fell in
a welter of stick-thin limbs and leathery skin. It thrashed on the stone,
unable for the moment to right itself, hissing. One of its flailing hands
struck Digbidig Gyanshunyo, almost tearing his head off his shoulders. He
stopped gasping.
“Chheechkaduni,”
Opodartho yelled in my ear, as she yanked me to my feet. “Get going. We have no
time to lose!”
Staggering,
holding on to her for support, I ran.
*************************************
I have no clear idea how we made it out of Astaboler Artonad. I seem
to recall us hurrying through the streets, Opodartho supporting me all the
while with an arm around mine. At times I thought someone else was also
alongside us, holding on to my other arm, and some of the time this person was ahead
of us, telling us which way to go.
At last my head
cleared, and I found we were out in the desert, the walls of the town behind
us. Opodartho let go of my arm, and I sank exhausted on to the ground.
She turned to our
guide and companion, whom I now perceived was real, not a figment of my
imagination. “Thank you, Mostishkoheen Murgi.”
The thick-bodied
young woman shrugged. “Perhaps I should thank you. You cut him up good, as you
promised?”
“Yes. Digbidig
Gyanshunyo won’t be insulting you any longer. Won’t you get into trouble,
though? People might get suspicious of you.”
“Nobody will
suspect me.” The girl grinned suddenly, and revealed herself to be rather
prettier than I’d imagined. “I’m only one step above a slave. Nobody thinks
I’ve any brains or ability to think, let alone do anything involving planning.
Don’t worry about me. Just go away and, for your own sakes, don’t come back.”
“We’ll do our
best.” Opodartho hesitated a moment. “How long has this been going on? You
know, your, uh, chief – that thing in there?”
“A very long
time,” Mostishkoheen Murgi said. “It’s been a very, very long time, since
before my mother was born, and maybe before her mother was, too. That’s why we
hardly get any visitors anymore – the word’s gone out that anybody who enters
this town never leaves again.”
“What happens if
no visitors come for a while?” Opodartho asked.
Mostishkoheen
Murgi had already turned to go back to the town, but paused a moment to answer
over her shoulder. “What do you think? It...he...lives on agony, the pain he
can draw out of his victims. The longer they last in their dying, the better
for him. Why do you suppose nobody tried to warn you away? Everyone’s happy
when there’s a visitor. It means they’ve
been spared.”
“But you,” I said.
“You helped us.”
Mostishkoheen
Murgi glanced at me contemptuously. “Yes, because Digbidig Gyanshunyo pushed me
too far this time. Not that you made
it any easier for me.” Without a further word, she stalked off across the desert.
“What on earth
did she mean by that?” I asked Opodartho, as we began walking away from the
town. The cool night air was finally reviving me. My legs no longer felt like
leaden weights, and my mind, too, began clearing.
“You don’t
know?” Opodartho snorted. “That food they gave us was loaded with drugs to make
us lethargic and docile. I’d have thought you had better sense than to eat it,
but I couldn’t say anything in front of the two of them. Luckily you only had a
couple of fruit. Didn’t you wonder why Digbidig Gyanshunyo was so insistent on
us eating?”
“But you ate it
too,” I protested. “I saw the plate was almost empty.”
“Ate it? Hardly.
If Mostishkoheen Murgi does her job and cleans the room properly, she’ll find
it all stashed under the bed. I had to put them off their guard.”
I didn’t say
anything for a little while. “So how did you get her help anyway?” I asked
eventually.
“I didn’t, not at
first. I knew, of course, that something was wrong from the start. Why else do
you think I felt the hangings in the room as soon as we first entered? I was
looking for a hidden niche or doorway. But there wasn’t any, which meant that
any danger would have to come through the door. So I sat up watching the door,
while you slept. But nothing happened. And then I realised that whatever the
danger was, it had to do with this mysterious chief who seemed so eager to meet
us.” We climbed up a low ridge of rock. “When Digbidig Gyanshunyo said the
chief wanted to meet us one by one, of course, I knew that you were in terrible
danger. As soon as you left, I called Mostishkoheen Murgi and demanded her aid
to rescue you. I’d been willing to bribe her, or to fight her if necessary, but
it turned out that she was so filled with resentment that she was more than
willing to help, as soon as she understood that my purpose was to kill Digbidig
Gyanshunyo, not just to run away. Not only did she guide me, she even gave me
the knife I used. And, even more luckily, she knew of the back way into the
chief’s house. Apparently the front door was only for Digbidig Gyanshunyo and
any victims he might bring along.”
I shivered. The
night must have suddenly turned very cold. “Where are Ukuner Upodrob and her
gang?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we have come across them by now? We must have passed
the place where Jongoler Jolohosti said she’d wait.”
“Right here,”
someone said at my very elbow. “Ukuner Upodrob and her gang are right here. But
you won’t be for much longer.”
Even Opodartho,
who hadn’t been drugged as I’d been, could not react fast enough. For the
second time we found ourselves at the points of Ukuner Upodrob’s bandits.
“Playing us for
fools, were you?” Mochkano Merudondo said elatedly. The point of the knife she
held traced its way down between my breasts, just hard enough for me to feel
it. “We’ve been waiting all day, while all you’d need is an hour or two for a
look. And we’d just about decided you’d been killed, when you come wandering
out, good as new.”
“Good as new?” I
pointed at my torn travelling robe. “What about this?”
Mochkano Merudondo
gurgled thick laughter. “You think we’d be taken in by such an obvious trick?
You really should have cut yourself up a bit as well, dearie. Of course, even then we wouldn’t have believed a word.”
“Stop that,”
Ukuner Upodrob, whom we’d not seen so far, suddenly loomed up through the
darkness. “It’s pointless talking to them. We’ll just kill them and move on.”
“I’ve been waiting
to hear those words,” Mochkano Merudondo said, raising the knife. There seemed
to be something familiar about it, but I couldn’t see it well. “From the first
moment I saw these two I’ve been waiting.”
“No, not you.”
Ukuner Upodrob snapped. “Our new recruit, Bedonajonok Bhimrul, will prove his
loyalty by finishing them off.”
“With pleasure.” I
had no idea where Onek Mangsho had been all this while, but he appeared out of
the shadows. “I told you how tiresome I found these two, Ukuner Upodrob.”
“Traitor!”
Opodartho spat furiously. “You’ll pay for this.”
“I hardly think
so,” Onek Mangsho said, taking a spear from Tibrogoti Kochchop’s hand. “Not
unless there’s an afterlife, and the Cannibal Spirit sees fit to throw us all
together.”
My mind was
whirling. All through our long wandering, I’d been aware that someday Opodartho
might prevail on Onek Mangsho to betray me, but it had never struck me that he
could betray us both – and for someone
as trivial as a bandit as that. “You...” I tried to say something expressing
the pure outrage I felt, but words failed me. All I could do was repeat, “You...”
“Get on with it,”
Ukuner Upodrob said. “Kill her.”
“As you command,”
Onek Mangsho said. His arm rose and fell almost casually, and Tibrogoti
Kochchop fell, writhing, the spear in her chest up to the haft. “Oh, I’m sorry.
You should have mentioned which her.”
For a moment
everything was still, and then Opodartho and I sprang forward simultaneously.
Mochkano Merudondo was still looking open-mouthed at Tibrogoti Kochchop’s body,
and at Onek Mangsho pulling the spear out of it, when my elbow took her under
the chin. As she fell, I grabbed hold of her wrist and twisted. The knife
dropped from her fingers, and I scooped it up almost before it had hit the
ground.
And, yes, it was
familiar. It was my own beloved long knife, and I knew exactly what to do with
it. Oh, how well I knew. The familiar red haze of combat settled over my eyes
as I got to work.
By the time the
haze faded, I was being hurried across the desert by Opodartho and Onek
Mangsho, each of whom held me by an arm. “Shut up, Chheechkaduni,” Onek Mangsho
was saying. “Stop shouting.”
“Eh?” I hadn’t
realised I was shouting, but my throat was raw and sore. “What was I saying?”
Opodartho snorted
with derision. “You were yelling that Mochkano Merudondo would never get to eat
you, but she was welcome to eat your knife. And then you literally drove it
right through her mouth and out of the back of her head, but you kept shouting
it anyway. You really don’t remember any of this?”
I didn’t. “Did we
kill them all?”
“Would we be
running across the desert if we had?” Onek Mangsho replied. “Apart from
Mochkano Merudondo and Tibrogoti Kochchop, we killed a couple of others and
probably wounded one or two more. But Ukuner Upodrob, Jongoler Jolohosti and
the rest are still alive, and, wounded or not, as soon as they’ve sorted
themselves out they’ll be after us.”
“They’re already after us,” Opodartho said.
“Can’t you hear them?”
For a moment I
couldn’t understand what she meant, and then I heard it too, the scuffling of
feet and panting of pursuit. “We can’t outrun them all night,” I said. “They
can come at us from both sides, and this time they won’t be taken by surprise.
What should we do?”
For a while nobody
answered. “Let’s try and make that pile of rock up ahead,” Onek Mangsho said
eventually. “We can hold them off once we’re there.”
We scrambled for
the rocks. Now it was a race for time, for our enemies surely knew as well as
we did that they had to stop us before we reached the shelter of the pile of
stone. A spear, thrown by one of them, came down on the sand near us. Onek
Mangsho invested a precious moment in snatching it up.
“My light spear,”
he said with satisfaction. “At least we’ve got most of our weapons back again.”
“They won’t get to
us in time,” I panted, struggling through sand up to my ankles. “We’ll get
there ahead of them.” And, indeed, a little later we were climbing up into the
pile of boulders. “Let them come at us now. We’ll slaughter them.”
“And what do we do
if they decide to starve us out?” Opodartho asked. “They do have food, you
know; we just gave them enough to last a day or two.”
I knew what she
meant, but it wasn’t the time to think about that, and I was about to snap at
her when something moved in the darkness ahead of us...
“What on earth is
going on here?” Uronto Uipoka asked.
I think my breath
froze in my lungs. For a moment I literally could not feel the rock under my
feet; I felt as though I was standing on air, waiting only to fall. Beside me,
Onek Mangsho and Opodartho were frozen too, in mid-climb, staring up the rock
at our hunters from Golmal Galagali. Then there was a sudden shout, and we went
rushing up the slope, charging them before they knew properly how to react. It
was only a moment that we were among them – I swung my knife in an arc,
slashing at Marattok Markhabey, drawing a scream from him – and then we were
past them and rushing down the far slope of the rock as fast as we could go.
And then it was
that Ukuner Upodrob made her great mistake. She must have thought, from the
sounds of struggle, that we were perhaps fighting among ourselves, or maybe
that we’d got into difficulties in the darkness. So she gave the order to
charge the rock pile – just as Uronto Uipoka and his band had collected
themselves together sufficiently to defend it.
We didn’t wait to
see who would win, or whether they’d all kill each other. Stumbling, falling,
the air like fire in our chests, we raced across the desert as fast as we could
go, and we kept going until the dawn was in the sky. Then we found a fold in
the desert floor deep enough to conceal us, lay down together in it, and fell
into an exhausted sleep.
For once, the
Cannibal Spirit favoured us. Maybe He decided we’d earned our rest.
*************************************
“They’ll probably still be
following us,” I said. “Either the bandits or the Golmal Galagali group,
whoever won the fight.”
We were trudging
through the desert, northwards. It was night again, and we’d been looking out
for pursuit, but seen none. Opodartho and I had told Onek Mangsho what had happened
in the town.
“Perhaps the people
from Astaboler Artonad will also be chasing us,” Opodartho said drily. “I doubt
they’ll be too happy that we killed Digbidig Gyanshunyo. The chief, after all,
will still want energy from his victims – and there won’t be an assistant chief
to entice guests, anymore.”
“May all the three
lots of them kill each other,” Onek Mangsho said. “If all our enemies were to
get together, I do wonder if there would be space in the world to hold them
all.”
A couple of things
had been nagging in the background of my mind, and I suddenly realised what I’d
been meaning to ask for a long time. “Opodartho,” I said, “you told me that you’d
been ready to bribe Mostishkoheen Murgi if you had to. What were you going to
bribe her with?”
“With one of our jewels,
of course.” Opodartho looked at me as though I were stupid. “Have you forgotten
them?”
“But...” I tried
to find words. “The bandits searched us when they caught us. How come they didn’t
find the jewels?”
Opodartho and Onek
Mangsho grinned so broadly their teeth glinted in the dim starlight. “When we
were escaping the Golmal Galagali group that first night,” the trollop said, “I
realised I might need a better hiding place than my belt. So I hid it in a
place nobody would find, even if they stripped me naked. Do you understand now?”
I understood. For
a moment a retort trembled on my lips about sluts and the canyons they had
between their thighs, but I let it pass. After all, the jewels were safe, and
she had saved me from the agony of Astaboler Artonad. And I’d probably find an
opportunity to use that insult again someday.
“Where do we go
next?” I asked instead.
“I have a place in
mind,” Onek Mangsho said. “But it’s a long way away. A long, long way.”
“Everything is a
long way away,” Opodartho said, and for once I agreed with her.
The desert sand whispered
under our shoes and blew into our faces, as we walked on.
*************************** *************************** ******************************
Lojjaheen Lukochuri, my dear old friend,
Thank you so very much for your gift. I loved it
immensely. Bhishon Boka is unfortunately away on one of his boring old business
trips, so I have not had the opportunity to try out those suggestions on the
box with him, though my body is on fire to do so. You know me so well to send
me a gift like that!
I rather enjoyed
the tale on the parchment. Not that it is of any importance, of course, but it
was quite entertaining. If you do come across anything more by this
Chheechkaduni, I would like to have a look at it. You know how I am – if something’s
even a little worth reading, I can’t let go of it, even when it’s really a load
of rubbish, like these parchments. In any case, if you find or hear of anything
by Chheechkaduni, let me know.
I’d love to come
and visit you in Pyãchano Protisruti, and in fact I’m getting ready to make the
trip within a short time. I’d love to go around with you to all the old shops
and hunt around for things to buy. No telling what I might find among them!
Your old friend,
Roktakto Rakkhoshi.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2016
