Chapter 14
Eye of Crystal sang as the hunting party rode the last mile to the main village of the Uchendi. She usually sang when she was feeling happy, and once she'd recovered from treating the cancer-stricken old woman she seemed to be happy most of the time.
Blade didn't want her to be unhappy. He was glad that his massage and other gestures of friendship helped Crystal shake off the memories of her helplessness. He still wished that she would find some other way of showing her happiness than by singing. Eye of Crystal was intelligent, brave, good-looking, and Blade suspected she would be good in bed. But she could not carry a tune with a pair of tongs, and was always off-key.
However, River Over Stones proclaimed her singing sweeter than a bird's. Blade couldn't entirely disagree. Eye of Crystal sounded better than a crow, a vulture, or most seagulls.
Blade couldn't decide if River Over Stones really expected Crystal to be taken in by such gross flattery. If he did, he was crazy, or at least didn't know the woman he was courting. No wonder she was barely polite to him, and sometimes not polite at all. Blade knew that if River Over Stones hadn't been the adopted «war-son» of her uncle Winter Owl, she would not have even been polite.
«River Over Stone is in a strange place,» she told him once. «He is no blood-kin, so if he is purified it is lawful for him to wed me. So he courts with all seriousness. Yet he is law-kin, so that an open quarrel between us would divide a family. This is something no wise man can wish, my father and uncle least of all.»
«Does he have so many enemies, then?» No harm in trying to get a little more information about what he might be riding into.
«Do you know so little of life among kin, then? Were you an orphan?»
«No.»
«Then I think you are trying to learn what I would not be wise to tell you now, before we know how you may use the knowledge.»
«You seem to trust me as little as River Over Stones does. «
«I will even endure that insult, Blade. I do not dislike you and I am not your enemy. Nor do I think my father will be either, when he has spoken to you as the law says he must. But until that time, who can say for sure whether you are a good man or what River Over Stones thinks you are? That we may be friends, please do not again seek to know what you may not.»
«On the blood of my kills and trueness of my eye, I swear I will not.» No one could doubt Blade's right to swear on those. He did not like having good-looking women angry at him, particularly if they were also as intelligent as Eye of Crystal.
If only she could learn to sing!
The hunters rode for miles through cultivated fields before they reached the village. The village itself was almost a town, stretching for a quarter of a mile along the bank of the River of Life. They even had a waterwheel at the upstream end of the village, pumping water into a tank of stone and clay. From there the women hauled buckets of water to their homes.
Blade also noticed that the stables for the ezintis, the tanners and smiths and slaughterhouses, and what smelled like public toilets were all at the downstream end of the village. These people seemed to have grasped the basics of sanitation. Blade's opinion of the Uchenti went up another notch.
The village was completely surrounded by a ten-foot wall of logs with thorny bushes tied to the top. At the foot of the wall was an equally deep ditch, crossed by four bridges to guarded gates. Pointed stakes jutted upward from the bottom of the ditch. Blade hoped all this fortification was just against shpugas, but it looked too strong and too new. In fact, one of the gateways was still under construction.
The Uchendi were preparing for war-a war in which they expected to have to fight the Rutari to the last ditch. A war in which Richard Blade was also sure to be involved, if it took place while he was still in this Dimension.
Blade wondered if he'd jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. He also hoped that Crystal's father and uncle would be up to the job of leading their people in a desperate battle. Blade knew he was good, but on the whole he wasn't quite sure he was up to the job of playing Winston Churchill to the Uchendi. Assuming, of course, they would let him try.
Blade reined his ezinti to a stop as the nearest gate of the village opened and spewed out people. There were no more than fifty, but they were shouting and laughing loud enough for two hundred. His beast began to balk and fitter, and Blade had to concentrate on keeping it under control or at least keeping his seat. He was not going to spoil his first appearance at the capital of the Uchendi by falling on his arse.
It was some slight consolation to Blade that Winter Owl was having just as much trouble not going head over heels. There was a middle-aged woman clinging to his leg with one hand and pounding his thigh with the other, to emphasize her points. Winter Owl looked down at her, with a long-suffering smile on his face.
«Mother!» Crystal's voice cut through the din. «I know you're glad to see us home. Will you be so glad to see your brother trampled flat as scraped ezinti hide?»
«Hold your tongue, Eye of Crystal,» said the woman, but there was laughter in her voice. «When this-mighty warrior was a small naked boy, yes, there were many times I hoped the ezintis would do dreadful things to him. Alas, they never heard my prayers.»
«Since neither the shpugas nor the Uchendi seem to have done that work either, what could the ezintis have possibly done?» said Winter Owl. «Would you have had the ezintis perish trying to rid you of me, so that the hunters could not ride and the Uchendi would go hungry for meat? Really, Kyarta my sister, you have no sense when you think of how to rid yourself of me!»
Obviously this was an old game between them, one everybody in the village was used to. Blade saw broad grins all around him as the exchange of insults and accusations grew wider. Then suddenly everyone fell silent, as if they'd been struck mute. Winter Owl's mount reared once more, then even it was calm.
A man was walking toward the crowd. Blade knew without being told that this was Crystal's father, He Who Guards the Voice, and thought to himself that he hoped the man had a shorter name! Like his daughter, he was short and squarely built, but without her pleasing roundness. His scarred but unwrinkled brown skin was stretched tightly over what were obviously still rock-hard muscles. He wore only a loinguard of ezinti hide and a necklace of copper disks; his nearly bald scalp was tattooed in complex swirling patterns of green and yellow.
He was smiling as he approached, but in spite of the smile he looked as if he'd be every bit as shrewd and formidable an enemy or friend as the Wise One.
Blade dismounted and advanced to meet the man who was also called Guardian.
«I am Blade, a warrior of England. I came into Latan in the lands of the Rutari, but they asked of me things that are unlawful for me. So I came away from them, and-«
«Guardian! He is a wizard who slew a shpuga by unclean magic!» No need to ask if that was River Over Stones running on as usual.
«By magic that may be unclean,» said Eye of Crystal, «but we don't know-«
«He used it on the shpuga where she and I were present!» shouted River. «Who can be sure if her tongue is her own?»
«If you were there, then the same can be said of your tongue!» snapped Crystal. «As well as all the other things that can be said of it,» she added spitefully.
Blade mentally counted to ten. Here we go again with the Uchendi national sport of arguing. River's outburst had done its dirty work, too, even though Crystal now seemed to be holding her own. People were backing away from Blade, pointing and whispering. Nobody was smiling now, and some of the looks turned toward Blade were a long way from friendly.