Sun-burnished faces watched him approach. Eyes nestled in wind-stretched epicanthic folds. Midnight-black hair in loosely bound manes, through which were threaded-rather sweetly-white blossoms. Long, narrow-bladed curved knives in beaded belts, the iron black except along the honed edges. Their clothing was beautifully sewn with red-dyed gut thread, studded here and there with bronze rivets.
The elder one, on the right, now held up both hands, palms outward, and said in archaic Daru, ‘Master of the Wolf-Horses, welcome. Do not kill us. Do not rape our women. Do not steal our children. Leave us with no diseases. Leave us our g’athend horses-of-the-rock, our mute dogs, our food and our shelters, our weapons and our tools. Eat what we give you. Drink what we give you. Smoke what we give you. Thank us for all three. Grant your seed if a woman comes to you in the night, kill all vermin you find. Kiss with passion, caress with tenderness, gift us with the wisdom of your years but none of their bitterness. Do not judge and you will not be judged, Do not hate, do not fear, and neither will we hate or fear you. Do not invite your wolf horses into our camp, lest they devour us and all our heasts. Welcome, then, wanderer, and we will tell you of matters, and show you other matters. We are thehe Kindaru, keepers of the horses-of-the-rock, the last clan left in all Lama Teth Andath-the grasses we have made so that trees do not reach high to steal the sky. Welcome. You need a bath.’
To such a greeting, Traveller could only stand, silent, bemused, torn between laughter and weeping.
The younger of the two men-perhaps in his mid-twenties-smiled wryly and said, ‘The more strangers we meet, the more we add to our words of welcome. This is born of experience, most of it sad, unpleasant. If you mean us harm, we ask that you heed the words given you, and so turn away. Of course, if you mean to betray us, then there is nothing we can do. Deceit is not our way.’
Traveller grimaced. ‘Deceit is everyone’s way.’
Twin expressions of dismay, so similar that it was made clear they were father and son. ‘Yes,’ said the son, ‘that is true. If we saw that you would enter our camp and be with us, yet plan betrayal, why, we would plan the same, and seek to deliver unto you first what you thought to deliver unto us.’
‘You are truly the last camp left?’
‘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 worship 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 sub¬stance steamed, the smell pungent, sweet and vaguely alcoholic.
A low bench was set out, four-legged and padded, the woven coverlet a rain¬bow 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 lustrous 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 lt will eat holes In your stomach and you will die In great pain.’
‘Ah, You could have mentiones that earlier.’ Traveller took the meat from the child, Me was about to plop it Into his mouth when he paused. ‘Anything else I should know before 1 begin chewing?’
‘No. You will dream tonight of tunnelling through earth. Harmless enough. All loud 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.