He was right there, and Zulimaya almost gave in. Kanga was prancing at the lip of the cliff, his arms raised in exultation as he looked out over the new world spread out below and yelled something stupid and vulgar about conquering the mountain range behind them like a virgin bride. All it would take was a step forward and a stiff arm in the middle of his back, and he would be a smear on the rocks far, far below. She could see birds flying amid wispy clouds between their sky-high perch and the scree slope that stretched out toward the unknown – he’d never survive. Her knuckles ached with the force of her clenching as she tried to hold herself back. The thought of never hearing that braying laugh or those sullen mutters again was hard to resist.
Will you sacrifice your goal for a moment’s relief? she asked herself. If he dies, you never find Tarek. If only I hadn’t let the Great One go with Tavi, I could have killed him half a moon ago. It was a bitter thought.
With an effort she pried her fingers open and stepped away to remove herself from the terrible temptation of Kanga’s messy death. Everything passes. This will, too. The thought had helped her weather the darkest, hungriest times among the Shinsok, and it did not fail her now. The rage that she could never seem to shake subsided from a rolling boil to a subterranean bog-belch.
Bachi was watching her nervously, as always, and she gave him a nod. He relaxed ever so slightly. If she was plagued by an endless anger, that boy was equally stricken with anxiety. Trying to listen to him stutter and stumble his way through a sentence made Zulimaya want to scream, so when he opened his mouth, she strode on, hoping it looked as if she knew where she was going. Bachi tries to be useful, at least. We’d have long since starved without his power in the Song. It’s not his fault I’m angry. He’s never been anything but kind. A glance backward showed that Kanga was now pissing over the escarpment. Even if I wish he wouldn’t be every now and then. She was tired of being the one that had to keep their idiot compass-bearer in line all the time. She had the fleeting thought of watching Bachi slam Kanga onto his back and yell in his face. It was a lovely impossibility.
“Unless you’re planning to sprout wings and fly from there, let’s keep moving,” she called back, trying to sound as friendly as she could. It didn’t work, but at least she didn’t sound like she was still contemplating murder. At least, she didn’t think so. The way Bachi jumped at the words to scurry after her made her wonder.
“We should camp here,” Kanga yelled, still standing at the cliffside and messing with his furs as he put his piss-maker away. “It’s closer to sundown than it is to noon, and we’ll be down off this mountain in no time now. It’s all downhill!”
“No,” she called back. It was all she trusted herself to say without starting a fight.
Within a few moments hasty footsteps crunched through the snow behind her. Even his footsteps sounded stupid. “You don’t get to make all the decisions,” he said. Looking back, she could see him grabbing needle-leaf twigs and ripping them off as he passed, hurling them into the knee-deep snow as if he wished he could throw them in her face instead. He’d learned that much caution, at least.
“Do you wish to find Tarek?” she said. She was proud of how mild it sounded.
“I don’t know that want to is the right way to say it,” Kanga said. “Besides, he’s still forever away. What difference is a few handspans going to make?”
“Do you enjoy my company so much you wish to prolong the journey?”
That earned a snort, but he still had that stubborn look. “That doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do.”
Once again she had to unclench her fists. “I am getting us out of the mountains and wherever we’re going without dying. I intend to do so quickly. If you have suggestions that are better than mine, I will listen and we will do them.”
He spat in the snow. “That’s why I always gather the firewood and you hunt when we stop, huh? Because you’re so much better than me? Never mind that I can use the Song and you’re just wandering around hoping to spot prey. That’s really helping us all, right?”
Zulimaya suddenly found a needle-leaf twig in her own hand that she was stripping down to bare wood. She treasured her hunting time. When she was stalking a hind or a pheasant she felt competent, powerful. Even better, she didn’t have to deal with any people. The hunt was the best part of her day. She snapped her twig in two and tossed it aside, reaching for another, unable to speak.
“You know I’m right,” he said, triumphant.
“Kanga,” Bachi said from behind, “I’m not sure that –”
“Nobody asked you,” Kanga snapped. “Shut your mouth.”
Zulimaya stopped and turned on him, forcing him to plow to a halt lest he bump into her. “You want to be heard but refuse to hear others. You want to lead but you have no ideas and do nothing to help unless forced.”
He looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign tongue. He truly did not understand what his own actions. In a flash of insight, she realized that he had never learned to question himself. He acted on whatever whim came to him and afterwards told himself it was right. He needed to learn to think.
“I nearly pushed you off the cliff back there,” she said.
His eyes widened, and he sputtered. A few steps back, Bachi went very still.
“Do you know why I didn’t?” she asked. For once, she felt calm. This conversation was right. It needed to happen. She was helping.
“Even a demon can’t take every opportunity,” he sneered. It was easy to tell when Kanga was scared: he got mouthy. Mouthier.
She stepped close to him, feeling a fierce satisfaction when he stiffened and leaned back. “The reason – the only reason – is because I want to find Tarek more than I want you dead. Without your sense of him, we are lost. This is the only piece of you that has value.”
His jaw jutted and he looked anywhere but at her. “You think I care if the ghost girl likes me?”
The wildfire of her anger rose within her, but she resisted it. “You should. Alone, all of us die.”
He walked around her and down a game trail as if he were doing anything other than getting away from her. “Seems to me,” he said airily, “that my being able to find the woodgrub makes me the most important person here. Seems like I should be making the decisions.” She noticed he didn’t say that until he was well out of arm’s reach.
“And where would you have us go?” Bachi asked Kanga, moving to stand behind her.
Kanga flung an arm at the great brown expanse of lowlands stretched before them in the distance. “Down!”
“That…!” Zulimaya clamped her lips shut over her protestations that she’d been taking them that way already. “That is what we will do.”
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Kanga peered at her suspiciously. “And I get to hunt tonight.”
Her lips peeled back from her teeth of their own accord, but she did not shout or leap on him. If you are really making decisions for the good of the group, you will let him. Great Ones of the wild, give me strength.
“We walk until sundown. And then,” she said, the words like coals in her mouth, “I will give you the bow to hunt with. For tonight.”
“I should keep it,” he pressed, sensing weakness.
“No,” whispered Bachi.
“I keep the bow,” she said, letting her anger show. “You have done too much harm to be trusted, and that has not changed.”
Kanga tore off another small branch to dismember. “Every night, then.”
“If you bring in more game than I usually do tonight, then you can hunt for us every third night.”
“Every other night.”
Her head felt as if it wanted to hatch like an egg. “If you keep walking and do not say another word until night falls, then yes, every other night.”
With a smirk and a chuckle that said he’d gotten the better of her, Kanga turned and sauntered down the snow-laden trail. It occurred to her that she had never in her life met a handsome man that was less attractive.
“I kind of wish you had pushed him,” Bachi whispered.
“You have hands too,” she said, stomping after the hateful man. “Do not speak up to him again unless you are willing to stand and fight. I will not step between you two again.”
He fell silent. She felt bad chastising him when he wasn’t the real problem, but not bad enough to take it back. Kanga was not the only one who needed to learn something.
* * *
It was four days later when the mountains gave way to gentler hills and the wind began to bite less when it blew. Far from being easier, the downhill slopes left them all exhausted and aching in the knees by day’s end. Kanga had brought down two of the big four-winged bats and a brace of hares as well that first night, forcing her to admit that he would be taking turns with the hunting every other night from then on. He had crowed and taunted her about it endlessly, but Zulimaya noticed that he skinned the hares without being asked, and when Bachi thanked him for the extra food, he’d merely nodded at the boy and left him be.
None of them expected to come out of a copse of trees directly onto a stone-fenced field of turned earth with a house of stone and wood on the far side, and when confronted by the sight, they all stopped and goggled for a handful of heartbeats before Zulimaya recovered her sense.
“Down!” she snapped at them, kneeling behind the wall. The stones were smooth and old, as big as her head or larger, all held together by some kind of hard, gray mud substance.
“Why?” Kanga asked, peering about artlessly.
“Are you the worst hunter in the world?” she hissed, gesturing for him to get low. “You’ll be seen!”
He looked at her like she was a particularly stupid child. “There’s no one here,” he said.
“You can’t know that. Get down!”
With a gusty sigh and a roll of the eyes, he squatted behind the wall.
Bachi cleared his throat, looking apologetic. He’d gotten low as soon as she spoke, of course. “He’s right, though. The house is empty.” He said it softly enough that Kanga couldn’t hear.
She couldn’t help frowning. “The Song?”
He nodded.
“That house is made of stone,” she said, feeling obstinate. “The Song only works on green things.”
Bachi shrugged and bobbed his head from side to side noncommittally. “For the most part, sure. But there are vines growing through the walls and up under the eaves, and even when they’re mostly dead I can still get a whisper from them. There aren’t even mice in there.”
She felt a pang of envy at the power these fool boys had. Her lack of the Song had been just one more reason for the Shinsok to treat her as chattel, and she’d spent many a cold, hungry night dreaming of being able to hear the green so well that she could slip into the wilds, forage with ease, and leave the hateful tribe behind. “You can hear all that?”
He smoothed his mustaches with a smile. “I’m better at it than most.”
She thought about it. “Then Kanga didn’t really know.”
“No,” he said immediately. “Not a chance. He was guessing.”
She knew it was petty, but that made her feel better. She stood up. “Be more careful,” she told Kanga, and strode off to the house before he could respond.
The door to the house opened with some difficulty, and she stepped inside. The walls were solid, with no windows, and only a little of the afternoon light filtered in through the gap between the top of the walls and the thatched roof, leaving the inside pleasantly dim. It was nice to get out of the wind, even if it was less cold here in the hills than it had been in the mountains. The boys trailed in after her.
“Nobody’s been here for a long time,” Kanga said. “Dust is thick on the floor.”
The inside of the house had two rooms, a stone wall with an open doorway between them. Where they stood had been a common area, with a rickety table and chairs in the center, a flat stone working surface against one wall, and a hearth on the far side. Other than the furniture there was no sign of life: no cups or dishes, no basket of sticks by the fireplace, no blankets or clothes in the corners. A glance through the doorway showed a strangely low table only a hand from the floor. Its flat surface was sunken a few thumbswidths below the frame and was nothing but a loose weaving of branches. It would be useless for working or eating on.
“What is that?” she asked.
Kanga shrugged, but Bachi looked at her carefully as if unsure if she was making a joke. “Have you never seen a bed? For sleeping?” he said timidly.
She looked from the strange contraption back to him in confusion. “Why would anyone make a bad table to sleep on? Where are the furs?”
“Well, they probably had furs, but it looks like whoever lived here took everything they could carry,” he said.
“But the branches,” she insisted, pointing to the bed thing. “Who would choose to lie on them to sleep?”
Bachi shook his head and struggled for words for a moment, making her feel very foolish and more than a little angry. “They wouldn’t sleep directly on the branches. They would have stuffed a…” he gestured formlessly with his hands, “a kind of cloth pillow full of animal hair or soft grasses to put over the flat part, and then they’d lie on it. With their furs. Very comfortable. Some of our elders use them in Wobanu lands.”
“What’s wrong with putting your furs on the ground?” Kanga muttered, sounding baffled. Zulimaya wasn’t about to let him know she agreed.
“The... bed is foolish, but the house is good,” she said. “Why would someone leave it?”
No one had an answer, and it hardly mattered anyway. They could sleep here for the night, build a good fire in the hearth, and use what had been left for them.
“Start a fire for us,” she told Bachi. “It is my turn to hunt.” She turned to Kanga.
“Firewood,” he said wearily. “I know.” He was closest to the door, and he turned toward it.
She was right on his heels when he stopped in the doorway, ducked back inside of it, and threw back a hand at her. “Stop!” he said in a strangled voice. “Stay back.”
She pulled up less than a hand’s width from his fingers, barely keeping herself from his touch. The old fear and rage at the danger of a man’s touch leapt on her like a panther out of the dark, and she grappled silently with herself to keep from breaking all his fingers.
“What is it?” Bachi asked, hushed.
“Look,” Kanga replied, pointing out the door. “Stay low and don’t move fast.”
Backing to a safe distance, Zulimaya sank to a crouch and peered carefully around the half-open door. It faced north, the great valleys below open before them like a panorama. A great cloud of dust rose in the distance, and the hill some six or seven arrowflights away crawled with dark figures. She could just make out men riding on tall, four-legged beasts. Each one held a long spear tipped with glinting metal.
“So many,” Bachi whispered. “I’ve never seen so many people.”
“Those are fighters,” Kanga said, staying just as quiet. “I can almost smell it.”
Zulimaya could not imagine it. There were more people on that hill than she’d seen in all the Kuruk lands. Twice as many, maybe, and more kept pouring over the crest of the hill. All of them, fighters? It was impossible. And yet, looking at the late afternoon sun glinting on a sea of spears, she knew it had to be true. What did they want? What were they doing?
“We know nothing of this place and even less of its people,” she said. “No houses for us, and no fires. Get on your bellies and head back across the field.” That many fighting men was nothing they wanted any part of. “We need to be gone before they come close.”
She steeled herself. “I’ll lead out. Quiet, careful, and low. Let’s go.”