Snare

‘Four-year-olds, huh?’

‘Yes, and halter-broken.’

‘Very well. A gold imperial each.’

‘Two each.’

Brison hesitated, looking at her cloak, the entire black and purple mottled skin of a slasher saur, and a big specimen at that. Even for a comnee woman Ammadin was tall, but although she had the saur’s front paws clasped at her neck, the middle feet hung well below her belt and the hind set trailed behind her on the ground. Apparently Brison had been on the border long enough to know what the cloak signified.

‘Very well.’ He motioned to another officer. ‘Give the Holy One what she asked for.’

The assistant counted four gold imperials out of a cloth sack and handed them over. Ammadin put them in the pocket of her leather trousers and walked away without another word.

During the day, other comnees rode up to join the camp. The fair would go on for weeks, though it would migrate as the horses ate down the grass. Outside the town, which lay across the only hill for miles in this part of the grasslands, booths built of bundled rushes stood side by side with peddlers who spread their goods out on old blankets and shepherds selling raw fleeces and baskets of rough-spun yarn. Women hawking food in baskets mingled with the crowd; here and there, a juggler or story-teller performed for a clot of onlookers. Round it all swarmed the tiny flying yellabuhs, scavenging on scraps and spills.

That afternoon Ammadin and Maradin strolled through the market, looked everything over before they bought anything, and stopped every now and then for a cup of Borderland wine, which tasted as light as water for someone used to keese. Since their First Prophet had specifically forbidden wine, the Kazraks weren’t supposed to drink it, of course, but here and there a drunken cavalryman staggered through the fair. Ammadin bought fine coloured threads, glass beads, and dyed hen’s feathers to use in making magic charms. Maradin bought lengths of striped cloth, woven from the fine light thread spun in the water-powered mills of Kazrajistan. She lingered over a tray of brass buttons.

‘I should get some of these for Dallador,’ she said.

‘Why?’ Ammadin said. ‘You spoil him, you know, always fussing over him, always buying him things.’

‘Well, I happen to love him.’ Maradin hesitated, then turned away from the button seller’s booth.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said. ‘Something is.’

Maradin shrugged, and they walked a few steps on. ‘I just get so jealous when women look at him,’ she said at last. ‘I remember when I asked him to marry me, and Mama warned me that watching other women chase him would break my heart. She was right. He’s not the most handsome man in the world, but there’s just something about him. Women do flirt with him. You must have noticed.’

‘It would be hard not to.’

‘After all, you –’

‘That was before you were married.’

‘I know, just teasing.’ Maradin paused for one of her wicked grins. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? If you looked at him and Palindor together, you’d think, oh, Palino’s so handsome, Dallo’s not. But there’s something cold about Palindor.’

‘Yes, cold and hard, like a face on a Kazraki coin.’

‘But my husband –’ Maradin hesitated, biting her lower lip. ‘My husband’s as warm as a winter fire. I was so proud when he said he’d marry me. Now, I worry all the time.’

‘Has he ever taken any of these women up on their offer?’

‘No. I just keep thinking he’ll meet someone with more horses.’

‘Maddi! Do you honestly think he’d leave you?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just get so jealous and sulky. And then I say things.’

‘Things you regret?’

Maradin nodded, looking away.

‘What about the men?’ Ammadin said. ‘There was that fellow the last time we rode to Nannes –’

‘Oh, that doesn’t bother me. He can’t get them pregnant, and they don’t have any horses.’

Ammadin knew two kinds of spells and charms, those that worked because they had magic, and those that worked because the wearer thought they did. Love charms fell into the latter category, but usually they did their job.

‘I’ll bind you a charm,’ Ammadin said. ‘You can wear it on a thong under your shirt. When you feel jealous, take it out and hold it in your hand, and it will soak up the jealousy.’

‘Thank you!’ Maradin turned to her with a brilliant smile. ‘I should have brought this to you earlier.’

Before heading back to the encampment they stopped for a last cup of wine. Nearby a juggler sent four saur eggs spinning through the air, but the crowd at the wine booth was talking about a different kind of show to be held that afternoon. One of the officers in the fort was going to be publicly cashiered.

‘I’ll bet they waited until the fair to do it,’ a local weaver told them. ‘What’s the good of shaming a man if there’s no one to watch it, eh?’

‘Well, true, I suppose,’ Maradin said. ‘What’s he done?’

‘I wouldn’t know. They flog a man for any little thing out here on the border.’

When the weaver drifted away, Maradin turned to Ammadin.

‘Let’s go back to camp. I don’t have the stomach for things like that.’

‘Well, you can go back. I’m going to stay and watch.’

‘Ammi! Ugh! How can you?’

‘I’m curious, that’s all. I don’t understand the Kazraks, I never have, but I should, you know. We all should. They’re dangerous.’

At that Maradin hesitated, but in the end she left, taking Ammadin’s purchases back for her. Ammadin followed the crowd up to the town itself.

Out in front of the thorn walls of the big square fort lay the typical Kazraki public square, a bleak gravelled ground with a stone pillar standing in the centre. Already onlookers lined three sides, jostling for the best view. Things were dull in Blosk. To the sound of a silver horn, the true-wood gates swung open. A contingent of a dozen men marched a young Kazrak officer out to the six-sided pillar while others ordered the pressing crowd to stay back. Ammadin, who was caught against the wall of a house, climbed up on a trash barrel so she could see over the crowd.

Marked by the golden scabbard at his side and the narrow gold stripe down the sleeves of his tunic, the fort commander marched over to the unfortunate officer. At his barked orders, two of the troopers bound the officer’s wrists together with one end of a long rope, then tossed the other end over an iron hook embedded halfway up the pillar. When they pulled, they strung him up like a saur carcass hung to bleed so that his feet barely touched the ground. To steady himself the officer had to stretch himself out into a perfect target. Ammadin was close enough to get a good look at him: a handsome man for a Kazrak, with dark curly hair and black eyes above prominent cheekbones. His skin was a rich brown, darker than most of his people. While the commander conferred with the troopers, he stared out in front of him, his face utterly expressionless.

When she heard someone call her name, Ammadin looked round to see Brison, walking up to her unsteady perch on the barrel. He raised his hand palm out in the Kazrak gesture of respect.

‘So, the Holy One has come to watch?’ Brison said.

‘The show was here, so I thought I’d see it. What’s he done?’

‘It’s a strange story. When it was time for my unit to ride here for the fair, we were told to take him with us. He’d volunteered for the horse-buying unit, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would. But a message came in that explained it all. Bad news for poor old Zayn. He’d been sleeping with the wife of this high-and-mighty court official back home, you see, and he figured he had to get out of the hot water before it boiled.’ Brison paused to give Ammadin a wink. ‘He didn’t jump quick enough. Her husband knew about it already, and he pulled strings.’

‘What? You’ll flog a man for that?’

‘Adultery’s against the laws of the Prophets.’ Brison paused for a sly grin. ‘Besides, this old boy has favours to give away, like a reassignment off this damned border.’

Out in the square, the commander yelled for silence. He ceremoniously pulled the sabre, inlaid with the golden crescent, from Zayn’s scabbard and threw it on the ground. Zayn set his lips tight and stared out at nothing while the commander unbuckled the sword belt and threw it after the sabre. He took a dagger from his belt, grabbed the hem of Zayn’s tunic, and slit it up the back and across the sleeves so that he could pull off the last trace of the khanate’s insignia and leave Zayn half-naked where he hung.

‘The man who disgraces his regiment disgraces the Great Khan,’ the commander said. ‘A man who dishonours the reputation of the cavalry will have no honour in any man’s eyes.’

Zayn allowed himself a small bitter smile. The commander stepped back and motioned to a trooper. As the trooper unrolled his long leather whip, the crowd pressed closer.

‘Begin,’ the commander said.

The braided leather thongs uncoiled and hissed through the air to snake across Zayn’s bare back. Blood welled up in a thin, precise stripe. Zayn’s eyes flickered briefly. Over and over the whip struck, lacing his back with lines of blood. Once he winced; once he made a stifled grunt; slowly his face turned from brown to a muddy grey. Other than that, the bloody stripes might have been no more than the slap of a gloved hand. At the tenth blow, Brison swore and turned away with a shake of his head, but Ammadin watched fascinated. The Tribes admired a man able to bear this kind of pain.

The whip uncurled and flew to him again and again – eleven, twelve, thirteen. Zayn’s dark eyes stared fixedly at some distant point, but his face was so pale that Ammadin was afraid that he’d break yet. His back was nothing but blood; the whip bit into old wounds each time it fell. Nineteen, twenty – Zayn tossed his head and grunted under his breath.

‘Enough!’ the commander barked. ‘The Great Khan’s justice is done.’

Zayn gathered his breath in a long gulp. ‘Is it?’ His voice cracked and wavered, but he spoke again. ‘You hypocrite!’

The commander snarled like an animal. He raised his arm and turned to the trooper, as if he was going to order a few more stripes, but Ammadin laughed loudly enough for him to hear. He shot a black look her way and said nothing. The panting trooper stepped back and began to clean the blood-soaked whip on a bit of rag. Two others stepped forward. One threw a bucket of water over Zayn’s back; the other cut him down. Zayn staggered, stumbled, then pulled himself upright by an effort of will. He even managed to smile at the two troopers when one caught his arm to steady him, a cold bitter smile of blazing hatred that made them step back and leave him alone. At the commander’s order, the other troopers came forward and dumped a bedroll and a pair of saddlebags at Zayn’s feet. The commander shoved a tiny pouch of what looked like coins into his hand.

‘There’s your exile’s wages,’ the commander said. ‘Walk wherever you want, but get out of my sight. You have three days to leave Blosk.’

Zayn looked at him, then bent over to pick up the gear on the ground. Ammadin caught her breath; she was expecting him to fall and faint, but slowly and carefully he straightened up again with the load in his arms. With the blood still running on his back, he turned and staggered off. The crowd began to jeer, yelling insults as they moved out of his way, but he held his head high and walked on. Ammadin jumped off her barrel and followed him. When she passed, the crowd fell silent.

Slowly, one painful step at a time, Zayn made his way out of the public square and turned down a narrow alley. He began panting for breath, and at times he staggered, but he kept walking until he’d left the crowd behind. He dropped his gear on the dusty street and leaned against the wall of a house.

‘Zayn?’ Ammadin said.

When he turned his head to look at her, he moved too fast and fell to his knees. Ammadin squatted down in front of him and spoke in the Kazraki language.

‘That’s your name, isn’t it? Zayn?’

For a moment he merely stared at her; then his mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Zayn Hassan.’

‘Do you have anywhere to go?’

‘No.’

‘Come with me if you want. I can use a man like you to tend my horses.’

He reached out a hand twined round with a runnel of blood and touched the edge of her saurskin cloak. ‘A witchwoman. Why would you bother helping the likes of me?’

‘Because you’ve got guts. And it seems a little harsh to be treated this way for bedding a woman who wanted you.’

Zayn managed a thin smile.

‘I thought so.’

He fainted, falling at her feet. Ammadin got up and went to the mouth of the alley. Out in the street four young comnee men hurried along, heading for the centre of town. She recognized none of them.

‘You!’ Ammadin called. ‘Come over here!’

They stopped, scowling, turned, hands on knife hilts. The tallest of them suddenly smiled.

‘It’s a spirit rider,’ he said. ‘We’re coming, Holy One. What do you want us to do?’

‘Carry this man and his gear back to my camp.’

The four trotted over and did what she asked.

Ammadin had them lay Zayn face-down in the grass behind her tent, then sent for Orador, the man who knew wound lore. He was a portly man, Orador, with a long drooping moustache, mostly grey, and a round face to match his belly. A young apprentice brewed herb-water at Ammadin’s fire while the master looked over Zayn’s wounds. Carefully he washed the blood off Zayn’s back with the herb-water, then poured keese over the stripes. When the liquor hit, Zayn’s fingers dug into the grass like a saur’s claws, but he made no noise at all.

‘That’ll keep the evil spirits away,’ Orador said cheerfully. ‘No bandages for you, boy. Air’s the best thing for these shallow wounds, and the bleeding’s stopped already.’

With a long sigh, Zayn turned his head and looked at Ammadin, hunkered down near him in the grass. His eyes were as distant from his pain as if he were merely taking the sun.

‘How soon can he ride?’ Ammadin said.

‘Today if I have to,’ Zayn whispered.

Orador laughed under his breath. ‘I like your guts, but you’ll need to rest for a couple of days, at least.’

‘Easy enough,’ Ammadin said. ‘The comnee won’t be riding for a while. When we do leave, Zayn, we’ll be heading east.’

‘Good.’ Zayn smiled briefly. ‘I’ve always been curious about the east.’

All at once, Ammadin felt danger, an odd intuition that seemed to rise out of no particular cause. For a moment she considered Zayn, lying utterly still in his exhaustion, his back as raw as a piece of freshly butchered meat. The warning came to her as the scent of anger. Puzzled, she stood up and found Palindor standing nearby with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. When he caught her glance, he turned on his heel and strode off. So that’s it! Ammadin thought. Well, I can handle a jealous young colt like him easy enough. She left Zayn under Orador’s care and went to find Apanador to tell him that she had a servant and the comnee a new rider.

After they left Samahgan, Warkannan led his men north rather than straight east, just as if he were indeed going to visit Arkazo’s family in their country villa. In this province, Zerribir, the larder of Kazrajistan, the land stretched out flat in a broad valley, all gold and red with crops – wheatian, oil beans, breadmoss, vegetables – tended by farmers who lived in white-washed cottages set among the rosy fields.

Graceful mosques, built of white-washed true-oak and adorned with minarets, rose out of the magenta view. Five times a day they heard the call to prayer, either carried on the wind from a distant spire or close at hand from a wayside shrine. They would dismount and stand in the road, holding their horses’ reins in one hand while they raised the other to point towards the sky, just as the Second Prophet had taught his people to pray when they were outside. Soutan would stand to one side, watching. One late afternoon Warkannan had enough of seeing him sneer.

‘And just what are you smirking about?’ Warkannan said.

‘Nothing.’ Soutan wiped the smile off his face. ‘Tell me something, Captain. Do you know what you’re pointing at?’

‘Of course. The holy city of Mekka.’

‘Which exists up in the air, floating along?’

‘Don’t be stupid! It’s a symbol of Paradise, where Mohammed’s soul went when he died.’

‘Ah. What would you say if I told you it was a real city, made of wood and vines like any other?’

Warkannan considered a number of blunt insults but discarded them. ‘Of course it was,’ he said instead. ‘Back in the Homelands somewhere. In a desert, if I remember rightly. That doesn’t mean it can’t have some sort of symbolic meaning as well.’

‘Yes, it was in a desert.’ Arkazo joined in. ‘And it was made of stones and mortar, not vines. They didn’t have as many earthquakes back in the Homelands.’

‘Very good.’ Soutan favoured him with a small smile. ‘There may be more to your mind than I thought.’

Arkazo’s face brightened with rage, but Warkannan cut him off. ‘Let’s get going,’ he snapped. ‘I want to make a few more miles before sunset.’

In this flat country the well-kept roads made travelling easy. Warkannan and his men managed a good twenty-five miles a day at a smooth, steady walk. Now and again they pulled their horses to the side of the road to allow a closed carriage to clatter past, drawn by four matched horses, carrying the womenfolk of some rich man behind its curtained windows. More often the roads ran beside canals, where they saw horse-drawn narrowboats glide by, piled high with produce.

‘It’s peaceful here,’ Soutan remarked one morning. ‘Peaceful and prosperous.’

‘For now it is,’ Warkannan said. ‘If there’s another round of new taxes, I don’t know what people are going to eat. The salt tax has damn near broken the farmers as it is. They have to work out in the sun, and salt’s no luxury to them. That’s something that Gemet will never understand, the greedy bastard – hard work and what it does to a man.’

‘Unfortunately, you’re quite right. I have no doubt that Jezro will take a very different view of the matter.’

‘Neither do I. God blessed us when He spared Jezro.’

‘As he damn well should, considering all the trouble you people have gone to for his sake.’

‘Now just what do you mean by that?’

‘Only that you left the Homelands to come here. Haven’t you ever wondered about those Homelands, Captain?’

Warkannan considered as they rode past a long maroon field of vegetables. Out among the rows farmers were harvesting, cutting leaves and piling them high in baskets. He could hear them singing as they worked.

‘From what I understand,’ Warkannan said at last, ‘we’re a lot better off here. The Homelands were filled with infidels and evil magic. It was so bad that the great Mullah Agvar was afraid the true faith would be lost.’

Soutan rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘No doubt that’s what you’ve been taught. Don’t you ever wonder if it’s true?’

‘No. Why would I? The mullahs are the ones who have all the old books and such. They’d know the truth.’

‘Maybe. What if they’re not telling the truth, though?’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘To keep you from regretting what you’ve lost, the Homelands, I mean.’

‘Why would I regret a pack of filthy infidels and their tame demons?’

Soutan looked at him for a long moment, eyes wide in exaggerated amazement. ‘You belong in a museum, Captain,’ he said finally. ‘A pure example of a pure type.’

‘Now, watch it, Soutan!’

Soutan flinched as if he expected a blow. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be insulting.’

Warkannan snorted, then changed the subject.

As they travelled north, they stopped now and then at a cavalry fort to see if they could pick up gossip or news that might point them to the Chosen’s spy. Warkannan’s twenty years of service had left him with plenty of friends, many of them stationed at one or the other of the chain of cavalry forts that bound the khanate together. It was at Haz Anjilar that he heard more about the officer cashiered out at Blosk.

Warkannan had left Soutan and Arkazo at the inn and gone alone to pay a courtesy call upon the commander, a colonel named Hikko who had once shared a border posting with him. Over glasses of arak, they agreed that the cavalry wasn’t what it used to be, that the young officers nowadays were slack and ill-educated, and that the enlisted men lacked a proper respect for authority.

‘What we need,’ Hikko said, ‘is a war. A good long campaign against the ChaMeech – now that would weed out the unfit. There’d be none of this lying around the barracks and arguing with the sergeants then.’

‘Can’t blame the men, I suppose,’ Warkannan said. ‘When you consider what they’ve got for officers.’

‘Now that’s true.’ Hikko shook his bald head sadly. ‘I’ve got a story along those lines. A fellow named Zayn Hassan. Everyone said he had a brilliant career ahead of him. He was stationed in Bariza, on his way up, but he couldn’t keep his hands off of some official’s wife.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He ended up cashiered, that’s what. Down in Blosk, they flogged him and turned him out. A comnee took him in, apparently. But you know what’s damned odd? No one knows the name of this very important cuckold or his wife. You’d think the womenfolk would have spread the gossip over half the khanate.’

Warkannan found himself very sober very fast. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’d think so. How many lashes did this Hassan get?’

‘Twenty.’

While Hikko poured himself more arak, Warkannan considered the matter. Twenty stripes – the thought made him wince. Would the Chosen inflict them on one of their own just to make his story more convincing? Possibly, considering what they were, but not likely. When Hikko offered him the bottle, Warkannan shook his head.

‘I’ve had plenty, thanks. You know, the husband in the Hassan case could have spread money around to keep his name out of it. Who wants to be known as a cuckold?’

‘Now that’s true. And the fellow must have been rich as a khan to get the cavalry to take his revenge for him.’

‘Rich or well-connected.’

‘That too. Damned poor way to run an army, letting civilians meddle with discipline, but there you are.’

Warkannan found himself thinking about Zayn Hassan as he walked back to the inn. Something about the story nagged at him. He kept coming back to the lack of names and realized that the tale required more detail to be fully convincing as juicy gossip. Still, Blosk lay nearly four hundred miles to the south, while Haz Evol, where their other suspect had turned up, stood only a hundred and eighty to the east. Warkannan decided they’d best stick with their original plan.

On the morrow they left Haz Anjilar early. Some five miles along the khan’s highway they rode up to an intersection where a square-cut stone pillar stood in a little island at the cross of the roads. Carved arrows pointed north to Merrok, west to Kazrikki-on-Sea, south back the way they’d come, and east to Haz Evol and the border. They paused their horses beside the pillar, and Warkannan pointed to the north road.

‘All right, Arkazo,’ he said. ‘What do you say you keep riding north and take some letters to your mother for me?’

‘No!’ Arkazo’s face flushed scarlet. ‘You said I could come! I mean, with all due respect, Uncle.’

Warkannan laughed. ‘Respect, huh? All right, Nephew. I wanted to give you one last chance to stay out of this.’

Arkazo shook his head, glaring at him all the while.

‘All right,’ Warkannan said. ‘I’ll just have to pray that your mother forgives me.’

They reined their horses to the east and rode off, heading for the border. Not far along the east-running road the land began rising in a long slope. Ahead a ripple of purple hills stood at the horizon like a fort wall, guarding the civilized life they were about to leave behind.

‘And beyond them lie the plains,’ Warkannan said to Arkazo. ‘And the ChaMeech. It’s a damned shame the Third Prophet didn’t wipe them out when he had the chance. Kaleel Mahmet, blessed be his name of course, but I can’t help wishing he’d driven them across the plains and slaughtered the lot.’