Blade Kin Read online

  And there, in the distance, very faint, she could hear a man running—crashing through the brush, panting, groaning in weariness. By the sounds of it, three men chased him, and the man lunged ahead heedlessly.

  One of the pursuers cried out in Pwi—“Get him! Stop him!” And Fava bolted upright.

  Everything became quiet, and she realized she had had another bad dream. Yet even waking, she could hear the faint echoing of pursuit in her head. Not since childhood had Fava been bothered by such dreams.

  The night air had cooled the stone table. Tull had pulled their furs up to cover his face, leaving Fava’s feet exposed. She wiggled her toes, decided to put more wood on the fire. She got out from under the furs and tiptoed about, placed the wood on the fire, then sat on a stone with her feet next to the flames. The night air seemed to close about her. A high, thin haze obscured the stars, and the shadows of the totem warriors hovered above her.

  The bad dreams had come so thick and fast, she felt as if she had not slept at all. She got a fur from the pack and wrapped it around her, and dozed the night away.

  Closing her eyes, Fava hung her head to rest. We should not have slept here. The bad dreams come too easily.

  When she woke in the morning, she recalled only one more dream—an old Pwi woman in black robes was putting moccasins on Tull in the darkness, and the moccasins glowed like the sun, brighter and brighter, until finally she had to close her eyes against them.

  The dream filled Fava with foreboding, for the moccasins were the symbol of the Spirit Walker.

  As they ate a breakfast of boiled oats with cinnamon, Fava asked, “Did you dream last night? All night, I was troubled by dreams.”

  Tull hesitated, “No.”

  “Are you sure? I heard you talking in your sleep. You said you could heal someone.”

  Tull stopped eating, gave her a strange look, and considered. “I don’t remember dreaming anything.”

  Fava shivered and finished her breakfast.

  ***

  Chapter 3: The Wall

  Tull did not like lying to his wife about his dreams. He had dreamt that night, fragmented troubling dreams that spoke to him of things faraway and perhaps things yet to come.

  He could not know the truth of his dreams, if they were really of import, or if they were merely caused by the sense of an approaching storm, so he put it from his mind.

  That morning after their wedding, he woke early to fix Fava breakfast, but Fava rose with him, and as he pulled out some presents that he’d bought for her at the market—figs from South Bay, candied hazelnuts, leatherwood honey for their bread—Fava had revealed some treats that she’d bought for him: his favorite pork jerky soaked in fish sauce and covered with ginger, lemon-mint tea, oatcakes.

  He discovered that she knew his tastes perfectly, far better than he would have ever guessed.

  As they moved through the room, setting the fire, warming the cooking pot, slicing meat and preparing breakfast, it seemed that they were dancers in the kitchen.

  He’d known Fava since childhood, and when she moved to the right, or stepped back, he somehow anticipated her every motion, and she did the same with him.

  She was eager to make breakfast for him, to show him kindness.

  He’d never had that before. With his first wife Wisteria, she had been born to wealth, and offered no help in the kitchen. Tull had always felt as if he were her servant, and though he had never begrudged that, it felt good to realize that Fava was someone that enjoyed helping out, even in little ways.

  With Fava, Tull discovered how intimate, how loving a small act like cooking muffins could be. As they moved around each other, he felt the warmth of her body, the power of her love, the strength of her devotion.

  I have never known a love like this, he realized, and it was air to a drowning man. Our love will bind us together, become stronger than anything that I’ve ever imagined.

  Still, that morning, Tull did not tell Fava the whole truth. He had felt compelled to come south, as if somehow in his bones he had known that he needed to sleep on that bed of stone. It was a place of power for Spirit Walkers, and perhaps something inside him knew that it was time to begin his training. The dreams he’d had that night troubled him, but they did not do much to enlighten him. The few that he remembered were mere phantoms that raced across his memory.

  Now he felt constrained to sail north, so they ate that day, and left early in the morning and stopped at sunset. They did this six days in a row, so that on the sixth night they slept in their cabin at the Haystack Islands.

  Tull wanted to go farther that night, return all the way to Smilodon Bay, but a bank of clouds came and the wind blew contrary and their light failed.

  In his dreams on the bed of stone, he’d seen an old man, one who was running, a man whose mouth was sewn closed. Yet in the dream, Tull had seen into the man’s eyes, had felt that he was racing to Tull, to bear a message.

  Tull felt sure that he would meet the man soon, that he needed to find the stranger.

  He slept soundly, that night, partly from weariness, and partly because the thick clouds kept the night warm. Lightning played above the clouds, sent down a grumbling noise like a dog circling its bed, but the storm brought no rain.

  At dawn as they lay in the cabin, Tull heard a guttural cry, and his eyes sprang open. He ran to the door and looked down into the forest.

  The clouds above had dissipated, showing a pale blue, but the ocean was covered in fog, as was most of the forest. He heard the cry again, and the sound of branches cracking among the firs downhill. He grabbed his gun, loaded it, and stood at the door.

  A Neanderthal came running toward them uphill in the deep ferns, his legs pumping mightily, weighed down by a heavy pack and thick winter furs that flapped as he moved. He was gasping for breath, his head rolling as he struggled uphill, and in one hand he carried a longspear, wrapped with dull red cloth, feathers tied around it.

  He was an old man with silvering in his hair, fatigued, ready to drop. He shouted incoherently and fell in a bed of ferns.

  Tull watched where he lay, saw him struggle to rise, then drop, resting his head on his forearm and gasping.

  Tull’s breath quickened, for it was the man from his dream.

  Through the silver mist downhill, from between the black trees, he saw the pursuers, two men all in crimson, startling red body armor of leather, brilliant red capes—yet their faces were black, hidden behind iron masks. The men loped uphill in step, as if they were a single entity.

  “Blade Kin!” Tull whispered. Everything in him wanted to attack, yet Tull restrained himself, like a hunting dog awaiting its master’s orders before treeing a bear.

  The fallen Neanderthal rose up on his hands, looked back, gave a wordless cry, lunged toward the cabin.

  At first, Tull suspected that the Neanderthal had seen them and was calling for help, but then he realized that the old man was running blindly up a game trail, that his eyes did not focus on them, for the cabin was concealed between standing stones and had blackberry bushes trailing up the sides of it.

  The old man rushed past the cabin, sweat pouring from his forehead, terror in his face, blue eyes wide with fear, his long red hair in tight braids, wrapped with green cloth. He stumbled past, clipping the branches of a tree.

  Tattoos of ownership were on his left hand, and he clutched a long circular map case made of stained wood.

  He rushed to a fallen tree, turned and leveled his spear at the warriors.

  The armored Blade Kin charged uphill, seemingly unfatigued, fluid in their movements. In seconds they would have the fleeing slave.

  Tull stepped forward, still in shadows, pulled up his gun and fired.

  One Blade Kin was lifted from his feet, blood spraying from his face mask, and flew backward in the ferns.

  The other warrior hesitated only a moment before reaching into his belt for a long-barreled pistol.

  Tull didn’t have time to reload. He dropped his rif
le, pulled his sword of Benbow glass and leapt downhill, gambling that he could attack before the slaver fired. Tull shouted, and the Blade Kin fumbled the pistol, misfiring as he yanked it from the holster.

  For one crazy moment Tull was leaping toward the man, his sword gleaming in the morning sunlight as it flashed, and the Blade Kin put his hands up to ward the blow, and then Tull chopped through the Blade Kin’s armor with a whack, cleaving the man in half, right down the middle.

  Tull saw movement downhill. The warrior he had shot was struggling to rise. The bullet had hit the man in the face, but his armor must have deflected the lead.

  With a cry, Tull leapt onto the struggling warrior and swung, taking off the man’s head.

  Tull stooped and grabbed the warrior’s pistol. He lunged downhill, and Fava shouted, “Where are you going?”

  “There’s one more!” Tull yelled over his shoulder.

  Fava cried out and ran to follow him, and Tull rushed down through deep fern beds.

  The Blade Kins’ trail was not hard to follow—they had knocked the morning dew from ferns, and while the wet ferns gleamed, these seemed dull and lifeless. Tull ran as fast as he could, given the limp in his right leg, and Fava was hard-pressed to keep up.

  When they reached the bay, through the fog he saw two sailboats in the harbor. In one sat a Blade Kin in red armor, fingering a pistol.

  He looked up at Tull, pulled off a shot. The bullet exploded into a fir tree not three feet away. As the man hurried to reload, Tull raced to the water’s edge.

  Tull leveled his pistol at the Blade Kin. The warrior tossed the gun, as if to surrender, and then reached for his sword.

  Tull fired into the Blade Kin’s unprotected throat, blowing the man backward into the water.

  He began to sink slowly as water filled his leather armor.

  Fava came and stood, stunned. The fog around Tull and the boats dimmed the scene, making it seem surreal.

  “Who were they?” Fava asked.

  “Judging by their armor, palace guards to the Slave Lords in Bashevgo—a thousand miles from home,” Tull said, unable to stifle the awe in his voice.

  He glanced back uphill. The old Neanderthal had come down to the ridge above them, and sat in the ferns, gasping, resting on his spear.

  The feathers on his spear fluttered in a slight wind. Tull saw now that what she’d taken for furs were really ratty old woolen rags, the kind of clothes many others would throw away.

  The old man tried to speak, grunting and making urgent gestures, but the slavers had removed his tongue, a practice common in the houses of the Slave Lords where secrecy was a way of life.

  Tull’s eyes rested on the map case. The old Neanderthal held it protectively, as if to guard it even from Tull and Fava.

  “I think he is a slave of some importance,” Tull said.

  The whole incident seemed unreal, and he found himself shaking.

  “How did you know there was a third Blade Kin?” Fava asked.

  “I heard him running,” Tull answered.

  “No you didn’t—he was sitting quietly in the boat. How did you know he was here? You couldn’t have seen him through the fog.”

  Tull started to say something, and his eyes widened as he sought an explanation. “I just … I heard.…”

  “Ayaah, you heard him,” Fava said, “just as I heard him a week ago, in my dreams while sleeping on the altar of stone.”

  ***

  Chapter 4: From out of the Wilderness

  The night that Tull and Fava returned from their wedding journey, the young Pwi of the village gathered to celebrate three miles south of town at the edge of a small lake that the Pwi called “Perfect Mirror for a Blue Sky.”

  They sat beside a bonfire, singing and drinking beer all evening, and told stories about Tull and Fava in the same way that humans will when someone dies. In a way, Tull and Fava would be leaving their single friends forever as they clung to one another in their new life.

  Beside Tull the old Neanderthal sat, looking suspiciously at the group in his ragged clothes. He still clutched his map case and spear, as if fearing that someone would attack him at any moment.

  Since he could not tell his name, Tull called him Uknai—the Pwi word for “cripple,” and the old slave seemed not to mind.

  Tull’s little brother, Wayan, was combing Tull’s hair, and as one boy finished telling a story, Wayan asked Tull in Pwi, “You feel buttery. What makes you feel buttery? Is it because the moon is shining on you?”

  “The word is sweaty. I feel sweaty because I am too near the fire and I’m dressed in hot furs.”

  The smoke from the crackling fire crept low over the lake; two of old Anorath’s dogs yapped as they hunted mice beneath a tangle of mossy logs. Thor hung overhead, yet enormous redwoods blocked the moon and starlight, deepened the night.

  On the other side of the fire was a human girl, Darrissea Frolic, a dreamy-eyed young artist who crafted finely scented paper by hand, then inscribed love poems on it.

  The love poems were sold to men who were too clumsy or too illiterate to create a poem themselves, and seldom did a ship leave Smilodon Bay without a sheaf of Darrissea’s poems. Tull felt honored to have her here this night.

  Darrissea pulled her wool cloak tightly around her throat to keep out the crisp air, stirred the yellow-hot coals at the edge of the fire with the toe of her finely crafted otter-skin boots.

  She looked out of place, the only human at the celebration. Her awkward features contrasted sharply with the blunt, chinless faces of the swarthy Neanderthal boys with their deep-set eyes. Her long wavy hair was nearly as black as her eyes—far from the hues of the redheads and few platinum blonds among the Pwi.

  Darrissea was thin with a slender artist’s hands, not the knobby fists of a Neanderthal. She wore a brilliant blue cloak embroidered with golden geese flying around the edges, a white silk shirt with a lace collar, cream-colored leather pants.

  Many Pwi boys were wearing only moccasins and long black cotton breechcloths, as if to prove to each other that the chill air did not bother them.

  Among the Pwi, Darrissea appeared almost alien. But even among the humans of town, she’d always been a misfit. Her father had been a freedom fighter—a stern man who hunted slavers and openly fought pirate bands—until he’d died of poisoning right here in town five years back. Darrissea lived alone in his house now, never making close friends with her own kind, somehow more comfortable among the Pwi.

  Darrissea sipped cautiously from a mug of warm green beer, the kind the Neanderthals liked, and scowled at the taste, then peered around nervously to see if anyone would notice her scowl.

  “Would you prefer wine?” Tull asked. “We can have one of the boys go back to town to fetch it for you.”

  Darrissea looked up, and her dark eyes glittered in the firelight. “No. You’re a Pwi, now that you’ve turned your back on the human half of your heritage. This should be a Pwi celebration—even if it means drinking beer that tastes like … this.”

  Fava cut in. “It would not be a bother—”

  “No bother, I’m sure,” Darrissea said. “But you Pwi are taking on too many human customs. A hundred years ago every Pwi on this coast lived in a hogan, but now a stranger can wander the street in Smilodon Bay and not tell where the human part of town ends and Pwi Town begins. You work the farms and mills, but your grandfathers hunted with spears, trailing the mammoth herds.” Darrissea nodded at some of the boys and girls who had painted their faces blue and decorated their hair with swordtail ferns and strips of cloth—not the kind of garb they would wear while working in Ferremon Strong’s fishery.

  No, tomorrow they would come to work with their hair combed down, many wearing pants and tunics like any human. But tonight the young would party the night away in celebration of the wedding just as their ancestors had even done on Anee for a thousand years, perhaps as their ancestors had even done on Earth a hundred thousand years before.

  Though Darris
sea and Tull had been speaking English, the universal trading language used by her Starfaring ancestors, Darrissea raised her mug and spoke in the soft nasal language of the Pwi. “Hezae, anath zhevetpwasha palazh. Friends, let us reverently continue to give life to the past.”

  Tull and Fava drank to the toast, and Tull asked, “Will you give us a poem for our wedding present, something I can read to Fava?”

  Darrissea looked into the fire, dancing flames reflected from her black eyes. “I think your life should be a poem to the person you love. You just live the poem—each act, each carefully measured step, designed to convey your love, so that as your lives unfold the catalog of your deeds reveals the depth of your passion.” Darrissea smiled and looked up at Tull and Fava. “But if you want words on paper, I will give you those, too.”

  Anorath, a young Pwi of nineteen, got up and walked to the beer barrel; his bracelet of painted clamshells rattled as he scooped out a mugful of beer. “I gladly remember a time,” he said, “when Tull first moved here. That old human, Dennoth Teal, had a big peach tree, and every year he hid all the peaches away like a pack rat and would not sell any, so Tull and I decided to steal some peaches.

  “We went at night, when Freya and Woden gave just enough moonlight to pick the peaches, and we each carried three bags. No wind blew; the only sound was the mayor’s dogs howling as we picked, when we suddenly heard humans sneaking toward us.” Anorath laughed and stomped on the ground, imitating a human trying to sneak in his clumsy boots. “So Tull and I climbed and hid in the thickest branches.

  “When we were at the top, I heard a human whisper, ‘Here it is! This is the tree where I saw them!’ and I was so scared I thought I would pee, because I knew old Dennoth would club us.

  “But two men climbed till they were so close, I could smell the humans’ stinking breath. I was sure I could smell a gun in Dennoth’s hands, and I hoped only that he would beat me instead of shoot me. I got all dizzy from fright and thought I’d fall until Tull grabbed my arm and pulled me higher.”