***
Dhanur trudged through the open market, the sun warming her hair and the smells of fruits, vegetables, and meat passing by her nostrils unnoticed. It would have been nice not to have any other worries but which juicy persimmon to eat and how many to buy, but her inner voice continued to swirl.
‘We just abandoned Abbaji and Janurana in the north. Doubt anyone will take kindly to them.’
‘What’s with saying we now?’
‘We almost died.’
‘Yeah, I know. They’ll be fine. Abbaji’s been up here a hundred times with and without me and people weren’t that much friendlier then. He’s got Janurana too. Whatever that’s worth.’
‘She’d be better with her ax.’
‘Doubt she’d need one.’ Dhanur sighed and saw a Clan Macaque stall owner give a displaced clanless man given a few unripe star fruits and burnt meat from for moving a few urns. The stall assistant from Clan Tree also sighed and gave the man a small bag of fruits.
‘Don’t blame yourself for that. You didn’t do the scorching. No worse than raiding.’
The stall she eventually found herself at was run by a burly Clan Rhino man with a small fire behind it. From his roof hung strips of dried water buffalo and fish. Dhanur shuddered at the buffalo and could only imagine Dekha’s scrawny haunch hung up there. On his display were bowls of fruit. He had baskets of small karondas, tiny and red, sliced mango, bright yellow and sweet smelling, diced persimmon, dim orange and tart, small purple blue phalsa, sweet and sour, it was like a rainbow before him. As she approached, he stood and grabbed a small woven tote.
He greeted her in the northern tongue before she could greet him. His eyes ran all over the glittering armor she still wore and he gave a hearty laugh and a compliment Dhanur didn’t understand.
“What?” Dhanur blinked, coming back from eyeing his selection. “Oh. Uh… Light leave it. Um… Hello?” Dhanur struggled to remember what little northern she had learned. She ground her hand into her head.
The stall keeper raised an eyebrow. “Your parents south before war?” he asked in simplistic southern.
“Oh! Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”
“Sure. Lucky! I know a traveler! I see one now.”
“What? How’d’you know I was traveling?”
“Yes, everybody walk around like you, yes? A warrior but no northern?” He rolled his eyes and flipped some fish he was roasting. “You see others walking, blinding all like the sun here?”
Dhanur stopped herself from smacking her own forehead
The stall keeper laid the tote across some of the baskets of fruit. “I did many trading with south before all. So, how far?? And what do you want?”
“Sorry,” she said, looking down at the bright metal of her scales. The armor made a glittering mosaic of light on the rainbow of fruit in front of her, as though she were holy, but she certainly didn’t feel filled with Light. Just heat. Wet northern heat.
“Don’t have a bull or something to carry?” The man mercifully gave her another out.
“Not right now.” Dhanur didn’t lie. She sighed, looking at each basket of fruit in turn. The smell was strong, but they didn’t bring a smile to her face. “It all smells really good.” She sighed. “But I’m goin’ further north. To, uh, go further north.” She scowled and shook her head.
‘That was stupid,’ she thought.
“Yes?” he said in his slow deep voice. He cocked his brow at her.
To the side, a Clan Kalia shopkeeper, one who was at the inn stepped away from their stall to speak. “If you’re going further north with those other two, you won’t make it to Aram. The spirits won’t allow it.”
Dhanur scowled at the man who spoke, she only needed to read his sneer to understand.
“What? Who even are you? Back off!” She turned away and crossed her arms, as if he understood. “I didn’t scorch the borderlands. So… Don’t need your guilt or whatever.”
“Knew you looked like a traitor. You won’t make it.” Another Clan Kalia woman spoke up. “The Boars will get you before the spirits do.”
“Let me earn my living, Pampu,” the Clan Rhino merchant scolded her, clicking his teeth. “Do you want me to hiss at your customers too?”
The other stall keepers waved him off but continued watching suspiciously.
“Stole this armor,” Dhanur said to whoever could listen and tried to slap her chest intimidatingly, but it was a weak tap. “Your fruits all smell really good. So…”
“I go twice a week. I pick them with my son. Every week, very fresh. Meat too.” He pointed to the jungle, his smile was full of pride at his wares.
A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead from cooking in the northern heat. He didn’t look uncomfortable though, whereas Dhanur felt as though she was roasting. Maybe it wasn’t northern parentage that helped handle the worse heat up here, otherwise she wouldn’t feel like dal in a pot. For a second she worried she had gotten sick again, but shunted that possibility away. She looked around behind herself and saw no sign of Brachen or Janurana.
‘How are we supposed to find them once we’re done?’ her voice asked.
She conceded that maybe splitting up was a bad idea, but she was already alone with money in her pocket and goods to purchase before her. She didn’t know anywhere to pick so many ripe fruits or find many animals up north so Dhanur knew she had to procure supplies before traveling. Her travels had taken her all over the south, even through some of the borderlands, but just as the southern army never made it past Vatram into the north in the war, neither did she in all her excursions. Even Brachen never led her up through it when he was missionizing.
“Where did you say you got this stuff?” she asked.
“The jungle, behind the city.” He pointed to it again.
Somehow, Dhanur had yet to notice it. It was too big to be noticable and simply became the background of the city. The wall of green and brown seemed to stretch into the sky with its own clouds of steam leaking up into the air. Its canopy was lush malachite, a pelt of tree tops with a myriad of ferns poking between the trunks at the floor. Although it was often referred to as a wall, the profile of the jungle was as haphazard as any natural landscape. Some parts bowed in or jutted out, opened for rivers, showed smaller or thicker tree species, or otherwise resembled any completely overgrown and impassable morass of nature. Dhanur finally understood why the Daksinian army closed in on Vatram instead of just cutting through the jungle at any point like they might through a plateau pocket forest. There was simply no way to effectively move anything through the vines strangling the carved wooden crenelations of Vatram’s southern wall. Nor could anyone find a way around the towering bramble bushes that were kept at bay through nightly sheering lest they obstruct the view atop the only gate into the only path through the jungle. Dhanur began to wonder, however, why the northerners would need a wall against their own jungle. Regardless, it was a stark juxtaposition to the state of the Outside moving south, brown and black and dust and death. Before the scorching, the south had a simplistic and rustic beauty of its rolling hills, canyons, and pocket forests separated by endless shrubs. Still, she was surprised more northerners weren’t in awe of the jungle, but figured they’d probably say the same of the Capital’s gates or the Keep’s gleaming walls. But the jungle did nothing to shade the city from the sun directly overhead. Still, Dhanur took a slow deep breath and looked up before rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger.
“I meant where in the jungle,” she said.
“What? You steal my spots??” He laughed. “You’re serious?” The man turned to the woman who had called Dhanur a traitor before and shrugged. “A poor scout you, huh? Come in and ask where our warriors is, yeah? Money is money. You find them in the jungle, gonna be everywhere. You find out quick since you’ve never been home.”
“Is that your biggest tote? I’m going pretty far. Or do you have any more?” she asked, pointing behind him.
“Three.”
“I’ll take the three then, just, filled up. Please.”
“That’s half my stock, miss.” He sighed warily. “Okay.” He licked his lips and twisted them in a frown. “Then what do I sell to others when they come? No discounts for scale.”
“I, well. I already figured I’d give you extra,” she said as though it were an obvious fact.
“For so much, show the money first. You gonna run off!”
Dhanur rolled her eyes and untied her pouch.
She wondered if everyone was so distrusting in the north. It would explain why barely anyone ever listened to her father. And it would explain why Aarushi didn’t want to work with any northerners when procuring her and Muqtablu for their mission, besides them just losing a war and wanting to lick their wounds first. However, she had heard of other conflicts between the north and south so she figured the distrust wasn’t unwarranted, especially when the clans jockeyed for power constantly.
‘That’s probably why they need a wall then, whoever holds the city has to hold it,’ Dhanur thought.
“I’d be too fast for you anyway,” she chuckled. “Heh… But here.” Instead of bothering with cowries, she procured the last two nuggets of ruby to pay the man.
“Wish you’d put them in your fists when you walked up.”
“Oh, sorry. Well, here. So, I can have three totes?”
“Alright, alright. All then?” He pointed to each selection of fruit and meat.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Yes, please. Uh, no buffalo though.”
He pulled a small wooden bowl out of his pocket and started shoveling the small fruits into the bags in silence. After a bit, Dhanur grew uncomfortable with the other shopkeepers around her. “So. Have you been further north than the jungle?”
“No need.”
She summoned the courage to say the name. “Heard of the champion, Muqtablu?”
“Yeah.”
“… Okay.” She wouldn't force the conversation and she looked around her once more as he filled the bags. Turning to her right, Dhanur noticed a rope of garlic hanging.
When the stall keeper finished, she tied the bags to her waist band. “And a few cloves of garlic, you know, for a bandage or two?”
***
Brachen chatted to Janurana about his earlier travels as a young man as they took a break from the heat under the shade of someone’s front door canopy, tucked away in an quiet side street. He talked about his own experiences having become an Ascetic early in life and about his own travels, much like Dhanur’s, with a bow of his own to accompany his growing affinity with the Light. His extensive pilgrimage brought him to all the temples across the plateau and beyond. He claimed to have visited more lands than his daughter with a cocksure smugness. Each city had its own type of practices for the Light, although most had clarified butter to offer. The Capital had the smear it put on everyone’s forehead before they entered. Even before the war, the higher-ups of society would jostle for position in the clarifying pit there. The few cities that still hugged the enormous Adrihima mountains further south past even the lost southern Valley would claim that the Light above melted the snow-covered mountains. It would provide the rivers against which their cities were built, and thus they would burn much of their food to give the Light the energy to do so. When Brachen inquired about the fire they used to deliver the food upwards, they claimed the fire itself was not actually of the Light. Regardless, it was another odd connection between the two that he noted. They further claimed that before the Rivers’ fall, the major river of the Valley, the Mahasvati into which the others were mere tributaries, so thick Brachen had struggled to find a single bridge or crossing, had provided an ample harvest to allow for it. It was much more than the plateau ever provided according to their tales. But now that the cities had to hug the mountains and avoid the creature infested Valley, the offerings were more than half their harvest. However, they claimed that to change their tradition of feeding the sun might incur another swarm of creatures from the Rivers that they fought every day to hold back. Janurana had the most interest in hearing about the western coast and any swamps Brachen visited.
“I’ve been to one.” He twisted his mustache, still rigid even in the heat. “It was close to the Borderlands. Some had adopted the Light while a few praised the spirits. I hadn’t seen any spirits there though. Their worship, however, was less direct than the northerners do here. To them, it was mostly…” he thought of a good word, “incidental, coming and going with hate, praise, offerings, and conflict against the few spirits they claimed were there and even some against the Light in some way. They refused to tell me how they fought it. Just like swamp diseases and changing tides create in us. The people were less open, it seemed.”
Janurana smiled. “I doubt they would be. Mother had attacked father. He ruled in a swamp, said we must accept what we can and can’t change, stop when we are winning. I believe he knew how much things could change in an instant.”
“It looks like your family life always had some tumultuous times.” Brachen chuckled, then frowned as Janurana sighed.
“In a way, I suppose. But they made peace afterwards and father would brag how mother deemed him worthy of siring me since he resisted her. People rarely change, it seems.” Janurana fiddled with her waist in lieu of her sari or parasol.
Brachen swiftly changed the subject from her mother. “You know, I traveled with many others many times, and was the best with a bow among my fellow pilgrims. Believe me or not, it took me quite some time to master my Light. These young pilgrims seem to grasp it so quickly these days.”
“Dhanur mentioned you built her bow together.” Janurana snapped up this topic.
“That we did. Well, I did. She tried, Light shine on her, but she didn’t have the patience then, but she held what I told her to hold. It didn’t have the bone covering then, so it seems she learned. All that time traveling and murdering your kind, it must have been… I’m sorry that was not a smart thing to say either. It is not your fault you are as you are… Is it?”
“No, Guru. I promise you.”
“Then how did it happen?” he pressed.
Janurana sucked her teeth. But if she was going to go through with her resolve to get rid of her mother and the gwomoni, she would have to delve into unpleasant memories. “I don’t remember a lot. I… I think I don’t wish to relive many things.”
“Understandable.”
Janurana clenched her eyes shut, trying to recall. “No. Th… Not before that, wait, after. I, Um…” She flinched and twitched, cycling through her thoughts. She tried to focus on the word gwomoni, only to be reminded of a city with “ni” in the name. She tried focusing on the concept of a monster since that’s what gwomoni were, only to see a memory of a Kalia loosing its venom at her and making her have to patch up her sari again. Even remembering her mother was easier than what she tried to recall. Suddenly she could vividly see a shirtless northern man with a bronze helmet arguing in the throne room of House Malihabar while Janelsa Malihabar waved him off as if he didn’t even matter. Flashes of those her mother had killed joined the slide show.
“I’m sorry, Guru. But I am simply unable to remember. Every time, something takes me astray.”
Brachen would have asked how she can be sure that she did not choose to become a gwomoni if she did not remember, but he only said, “hm.”
He motioned for them to go between two homes as the few people passing by had begun to notice them and throw unwelcome glares. A clanless man spit at them and went on his way.
“It’s no more your fault than it was Dhanur’s for taking part in the war that caused all this, I assume,” Brachen said. “Still, I won’t lie and say I haven’t killed gwomoni. Returning from the Adrihima mountains, a group of them were coming south, all under massive parasols attached to bulls not unlike Dhanur’s. They demanded I step aside, then noticed my wounds as my robes were torn from a scuffle with a Kalia.”
“Even I stay clear of them!”
“And I do now too. A normal sized snake with one head is far more than enough. I thought they were nobles, but they didn’t have any escort. But I had seen some nobles without escorts before if only traveling a short distance. I suppose it’s not hard to believe the nobles are gwomoni as Dhanur said, looking back on it. Still, I was still learning my Light’s power and had no other pilgrims with me at the time, but my Light was enough to stun the gwomoni and put an arrow in each. It took a few before I learned where to stick them.” He laughed and leaned against the building, stroking his mustache. “Didn’t have this either.”
“I simply cannot imagine you without it.”
“Neither can I!”
He had no ire or judgment in his voice now, only contentment and nostalgia as he reminisced in his earlier adventures. Janurana happily listened, elated to be regaled by someone who wouldn’t deign to kill her and was doing his best to not look at her with distrust and disgust. It'd been so long since Brachen could speak freely about such adventures. Happy as he was being a sedentary Guru, Brachen’s younger, war avoiding disciples had little taste for tales of his dangerous former life.
He continued to speak at length about seeing temples carved into mountains, built on top of trees, deep underground, or floating on rivers. Each of their practices were different, one required pilgrims to bathe for a day before entering but it wasn’t the one in the river which Brachen and Janurana both agreed was frustratingly contradictory, though amusing. Another demanded that one perform some esoteric Light magic involving putting a small mote of Light in a bigger one inside a box of Light on top of a pillar of Light. Brachen found out as he snuck in late at night that they weren’t a temple at all but a front for some mercenary band to hide the ‘taxes’ they claimed were owed to the governors of the cities they visited. He described standing against such misdeeds of mercenaries he witnessed and winning bow contests just as his daughter had while he complained about his ankles and stroked his graying mustache.
Brachen transitioned to how he taught his daughter what he gleaned about defending oneself while Outside. She had caught on quickly and for a while even slept with the bow they’d made together, the bow she still had. He felt the Light had so many ways to show how deeply one affected the world around them. The bow he made with her with love and safety in his heart so many moons ago, Dhanur had kept it by her side. It had probably taken many lives, in self–defense and otherwise. He was glad she had it, and further glad that his life had been lived so he could find her abandoned in Vatram and teach her to wield it with skill and purpose. Even when he wasn’t there, some part of him was keeping her safe.
“You wouldn’t know it now, but back then I could hit three targets in the space of a rabbit’s leap.” He stroked his mustache and Janurana giggled at his clear embellishment. “I fear Dhanur thinks she's the master now, I’ll have to humble her.”
“I think you'll do so easily, eh, Guru Brachen?”
He nodded and raised a finger toward her. “I have already saved her life since seeing her again. The score is one to nothing. But we all need balance and where Dhanur excels in skill, lance, and grace with her bow and arrow she sorely lacks elsewhere, but we all have faults and fairness.”
“You are wise. Talking about her skills makes me remember the weapon she gave me. I should find a replacement.”
He only nodded and went out into the streets again. “Where do you smell the smelters?”
Surprised, Janurana eagerly sniffed in all directions, being discreet when anyone walked by. Over the olfactory noise of the north she caught the truly putrid smell of smelted bronze, one almost as painful as sickness or poisonous garlic. “The jungle. Towards that.”
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“If it smells bad to you, imagine how it must be to me, Guru.”
Her nose was right. The calls for them to come to this stall or that had quieted. Fresh smells of laundered clothes and the sizzle and pop of cooking food faded and turned into the scrape and hiss of metalwork and the acrid stench of kiln fire. The armorers were well placed in the city, allowing trading but ensuring that the tools of war could be brought into the jungle if an army approached to better defend the whole north. At the very end of the market, at the final edge of the armorer’s section, was the garrison’s barracks, storehouses, and commander’s lodge. Northern warriors milled about with Clan Macaque commanders directing clanless porters to and fro. Many of the warriors sported their battle trophy southern armor. Although some had only leather as their armor was being repaired.
Brachen let Janurana pick which stall they’d walk up to, allowing her to endure the one with the least horrific scent so she could fake a smile. Even he had to stifle a cough from time to time. But they were far less forgiving than the peddlers of food and clothing.
“Do you think I'd sell a weapon to the likes of you? I should shout for a warrior right now.”
“Don't think your pretty dupatta hides what you really are, southern gwomoni.”
With each rebuttal, Brachen and Janurana both just bowed quietly and backed away from their venom. Janurana knew they didn’t mean the gwomoni insult literally, else wise they would have called for a warrior. She couldn’t blame them. Vatram was lucky to still be standing if the scorching was anything to go by. She remembered that many of mother’s armorers worked directly with her warriors. A flash of memory reminded her that her mother had also battled with the north.
‘Perhaps they still somehow remembered that too,’ Janurana thought.
Regardless, they continued to approach each armorer with a glittering smile to match the shining bronze in different shapes and sharp curves they all had displayed before them. The northern artisans who worked these forges leaked their magic out to their tools, encasing them in multi-colored lights. It soon mixed into the bronze, at times when it was still molten and at times when it was being polished or fettled. Curved axes, spearheads, helms, grieves, scales, even utility knives, hammers, and other basic tools all were saturated with ripples of silver and gold or swirls of blues and greens like she had seen with the Uttaran warriors who had picked them up when leaving the temple.
“You’d have us slain in our beds!” yelled one as Janurana took too long admiring his work.
Brachen kept a hesitant smile on his face to lessen any threat the city folk might have felt, but the disdain did start to weigh on him as it did for Janurana and their shoulders fell. He had never shown the people of Vatram any anger or ill will. A few times he had argued with the healer, others in touch with the spirits, or the spirits themselves, but never in anything other than a tense debate. He had driven a group of them from his temple, but that was self-defense. The people of Vatram usually regarded him with eye rolling contempt, not hostility.
The armorers were far more connected to the war effort than a few clothing peddlers, especially those from the deep north port clans. At some point a boy, almost grown, pointed at them and hucked a dirt clod. It didn't stay together long enough to reach either of them but the message was clear. As they fled, many of the displaced were joining in and threw what little food they had gotten that day at the pair. They slipped off the main road and into the maze of side streets, losing the small group of northerners before it could grow into a crowd or mob. Once the made it to the inn where Dekha was stored, they entered the stable, closed the doors, and then thanked their luck that few people would be there in the middle of the day.
“Perhaps we should wait for our escort.” Brachen sighed.