Part 28 (1/2)

'Yes, we are waiting to die. Our ways, our memories. And the g'athend will run free once more, until they too are gone for the horses we keep are the last of their kind, too.'

'Do you ride them?'

'No, we wors.h.i.+p them.'

Yet they spoke Daru what strange history twisted and isolated these ones from all the others? What turned them away from farms and villages, from cities and riches? 'Kindaru, I humbly accept your welcome and will strive to be a worthy guest.'

Both men now smiled. And the younger one gestured with one hand.

A faint sound behind him made Traveller turn, to see four nomads rising as if from nowhere on the slope, armed with spears.

Traveller looked back at the father and son. 'You are all too familiar with strangers, I think.'

They walked down into the camp. The silent dogs, ranging ahead, were met by a small group of children all bedecked in white flowers. Bright smiles flashed up at Traveller, tiny hands taking his to lead him onward to the hearthfires, where women were now preparing a midday meal. Iron pots filled with some milky substance steamed, the smell pungent, sweet and vaguely alcoholic.

A low bench was set out, four-legged and padded, the woven coverlet a rainbow of coloured threads in zigzag patterns. The wooden legs were carved into horse heads, noses almost touching in the middle, the manes flowing in sweeping curves, all stained a l.u.s.trous ochre and deep brown. The artistry was superb, the heads so detailed Traveller could see the veins along the cheeks, the lines of the eyelids and the dusty eyes both opaque and depthless.

There was only one such bench, and it was, he knew, to be his for the duration of his stay.

The father and son, and three others of the band, two women and a very old man, all sat cross-legged in a half-circle, facing him across the fire. The children finally released his hands and a woman gave him a gourd filled with the scalded milk, in which floated strips of meat.

'Skathandi,' said the father. 'Camped down by the water. Here to ambush us and steal our horses, for the meat of the g'athend is highly prized by people in the cities. There were thirty in all, raiders and murderers we will eat their horses, but you may have one to ride if you desire so.'

Traveller sipped the milk, and as the steam filled his face his eyes widened. Fire in his throat, then blissful numbness. Blinking tears from his eyes, he tried to focus on the man who had spoken. 'You sprang the ambush, then. Thirty? You must be formidable warriors.'

'This was the second such camp we found. All slain. Not by us, friend. Someone, it seems, likes the Skathandi even less than we do.'

The father hesitated, and in the pause his son said, 'It was our thought that you were following that someone.'

'Ah.' Traveller frowned. 'Someone? There is but one one who attacks Skathandi camps and slaughters everyone?'

Nods answered him.

'A demon, we think, who walks like a storm, dark with terrible rage. One who covers well his tracks.' The son made an odd gesture with one hand, a rippling of the fingers. 'Like a ghost.'

'How long ago did this demon travel past here?'

'Three days.'

'Are these Skathandi a rival tribe?'

'No. Raiders, preying on caravans and all who dwell on the Plain. Sworn, it is said, to a most evil man, known only as the Captain. If you see an eight-wheeled carriage, so high there is one floor above and a balcony with a golden rail drawn, it is said, by a thousand slaves then you will have found the palace of this Captain. He sends out his raiders, and grows fat on the trade of his spoils.'

'I am not following this demon,' said Traveller. 'I know nothing of it.'

'That is probably well.'

'It heads north?'

'Yes.'

Traveller thought about that as he took another sip of the appallingly foul drink. With a horse under him he would begin to make good time, but that might well take him right on to that demon, and he did not relish a fight with a creature that could slay thirty bandits and leave nary a footprint.

One child, who had been kneeling beside him, piling handfuls of dirt on to Traveller's boot-top, now clambered up on to his thigh, reached into the gourd and plucked out a sliver of meat, and waved it in front of Traveller's mouth.

'Eat,' said the son. 'The meat is from a turtle that tunnels, very tender. The miska milk softens it and removes the poison. One generally does not drink the miska, as it can send the mind travelling so far that it never returns. Too much and it will eat holes in your stomach and you will die in great pain.'

'Ah. You could have mentioned that earlier.' Traveller took the meat from the child. He was about to plop it into his mouth when he paused. 'Anything else I should know before I begin chewing?'

'No. You will dream tonight of tunnelling through earth. Harmless enough. All food has memory, so the miska proves we cook everything in it, else we taste the bitterness of death.'

Traveller sighed. 'This miska, it is mare's milk?'

Laughter erupted.

'No, no!' cried the father. 'A plant. A root bulb. Mare milk belongs to foals and colts, of course. Humans have their own milk, after all, and it is not drunk by adults, only babes. Yours, stranger, is a strange world!' And he laughed some more.

Traveller ate the sliver of meat.

Most tender indeed, delicious. That night, sleeping beneath furs in a tipi, he dreamt of tunnelling through hard-packed, stony earth, pleased by its surrounding warmth, the safety of darkness.

He was woken shortly before dawn by a young woman, soft of limb and damp with desire, who wrapped herself tight about him. He was startled when she prised open his mouth with her own and deposited a full mouthful of spit, strongly spiced with something, and would not pull away until he swallowed it down. By the time she and the drug she had given him were done, there was not a seed left in his body.

In the morning, Traveller and the father went down to the abandoned Skathandi horses. With help from the mute dogs they were able to capture one of the animals, a solid piebald gelding of sixteen or so hands with mischief in its eyes.

The dead raiders, he noted as his companion went in search among the camp's wreckage for a worthy saddle, had indeed been cut to pieces. Although the work of the scavengers had reduced most of the corpses to tufts of hair, torn sinew and broken bones, there was enough evidence of severed limbs and decapitations to suggest some ma.s.sive edged weapon at work. Where bones had been sliced through, the cut was sharp with no sign of crus.h.i.+ng.

The father brought over the best of the tack, and Traveller saw with surprise that it was a Seven Cities saddle, with Malazan military brands on the leather girth-straps.

He was just finis.h.i.+ng cinching the straps tight after the gelding could hold its breath no longer when he heard shouting from the Kindaru camp, and both he and the father turned.

A rider had appeared on the same ridge that Traveller had come to yesterday, pausing for but a moment before guiding the mount down into the camp.

Traveller swung himself on to his horse and gathered the reins.

'See the beast she rides!' gasped the man beside him. 'It is a Jhag'athend! We are blessed! Blessed!' And all at once he was running back to the camp.