The Women and the Warlords Read online

  'Brother!' said the Ondrask, embracing Terzanagel.

  'Brother,' responded Terzanagel, as ritual required; he engaged the Ondrask's embrace with something less than enthusiasm.

  They were brothers in name only; the ritual demanding their embrace celebrated the historical links between the priesthood of Noth and the modern-day text-masters, links which the text-masters, for their part, would have been happy to forget.

  While the Ondrask did his best to prolong the embrace -- knowing exactly how it discomforted the text-master -- General Chonjara arrived. This fierce, broad-shouldered man of thirty-five was overshadowed by a hulking heavyweight bruiser -- Karahaj Nan Nulador, his bodyguard. Nan Nulador now dropped down on one knee in front of Yen Olass.

  'No,' said Yen Olass.

  'Give him what he wants,' said Chonjara.

  Earlier, the text-master Eldegen Terzanagel had been unable to tell that Yen Olass was Yen Olass because of all her winterweight clothing. But Chonjara and his bodyguard knew her for an oracle: the lacquered, box at her side betrayed her calling. Reluctantly, Yen Olass reached out and touched Karahaj Nan Nulador on the forehead, dabbing at him lightly with her layers of wool. And she said, as the Sura Woman does:

  'Peace for your daylight.’

  And Nan Nulador was content.

  Yen Olass would happily have spent all day handing out blessings and doing other forbidden things -- reading fortunes, interpreting dreams and making charms -- but the Sisterhood rigorously discouraged any and all involvement in the kind of occult practices which might lead an oracle to become mistaken for a dralkosh.

  An oracle's work must necessarily have a gloss of mystery -- men accepted the intervention of magic when they would have crucified any woman who dared present herself as an arbitrator -- but the Sisterhood was determined that the order must not become entangled with religion, superstition or the practice of evil arts.

  As the Book of the Sisterhood put it:

  'The Method is not a way of Power or a way of Decision. The Method calls on nothing outside itself, for the oracle exercises no Power and makes no Decision. Instead, when a patron so requests, an oracle enters a conflict at the centre, making of herself a pivot. The Art is no Summoning, no Shaping. It serves only to reveal possibilities.’

  Now more people were starting to arrive. Some of them were Yarglat clansmen, bearing weapons, and clearly spoiling for a fight. Others were league riders, foreign mercenaries who gave their loyalty to Lord Alagrace alone. Today, Lord Alagrace could not use the army to keep order, since most of the army's officers were men of the Yarglat. However, his league riders were reliable, and their presence would lessen the possibility of outright slaughter in Enskandalon Square.

  Yen Olass looked for the two old men, Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk. Neither had yet arrived. Yen Olass closed her eyes, and imagined:

  Snow.

  Wafting snow beneath ricepaper skies. A world of frozen mud, silence, and bloodless horizons stretching away across leagues of ice and tundra toward distant infinities of cloud.

  Between her thighs, the bulk of a long-haired grender-strander, its travelling rhythm urging past a herd of musk ox, past huge browsing beasts with snorting breath --

  'Lord Alagrace ordered you here, didn't he?' said Chonjara.

  Yen Olass, her reveries thus interrupted, opened her eyes.

  'I am here,' she said.

  'My father certainly didn't ask for you,' said Chonjara. 'So it must have been Alagrace. Unless Lonth Denesk

  'Haveros, maybe,' said Nan Nulador.

  'No,' said Chonjara. 'He was boasting last night about how his father would kill mine. It must have been Alagrace. Isn't that so, girl?’

  As they were speaking Eparget, the dominant dialect of the northern horse tribes, and thus the ruling language of Gendormargensis, the word Chonjara used for 'girl' was 'lakux', a word also meaning 'filly', and carrying implications of naivety, inexperience and frivolity.

  And Yen Olass could hardly answer 'I am a woman', for the word for woman, 'narinii' -- a word also meaning 'mare' -- implied a mature, sexually experienced female of proven fertility.

  Yen Olass felt hurt. She did not analyse her pain -- the Sisterhood discouraged introspection -- but the dynamic producing her pain could reasonably be stated like this:

  I am Yen Olass. I am not a girl. But not a woman (narinii). Language has no word for me. Unless I choose to call myself fench oddock ('thinning blood', meaning 'old maid' or 'crone', or -- sometimes in a different context, and sometimes not -- 'soup stock'.) But I'm not that. So what am I? Myself. Alone.

  'Why so silent, girl?' said Chonjara.

  'Do you wish for a reading?' said Yen Olass, who saw that he was one of those who hated the Sisterhood, and that she could match insult for insult by treating him as if he were a patron.

  'In another time and another place, I'd rip you open and rape you,' said Chonjara.

  'My lord!' said Nan Nulador -- and Yen Olass saw that General Chonjara's bodyguard was shocked.

  For that matter, she was shocked herself.

  And so, perhaps, was Chonjara, for he looked around uneasily, seeing who might have overheard him. The Ondrask of Noth certainly had, but that hardly mattered, for the high priest of the horse cult had no love for the Sisterhood. Yen Olass doubted that the brief time they had shared together counted for anything now that they were back in Gendormargensis. Who else had heard? The text-master, Eldegen Terzanagel. That, for Chonjara, might be unfortunate.

  Sensing her advantage, Yen Olass pressed it home:

  'In another time, another place, healthy young sons might take care of their senile old fathers instead of encouraging them to hack each other to pieces with battle-axes.’

  Chonjara turned on her, and now it was Yen Olass's turn to realize she had gone too far. Chonjara's face was white with anger, for she had insulted his father with an unpardonable expression: in Eparget, 'shasha', the word for 'senile', meant not just old and weak-minded, but also implied impotence, incontinence, coprophagic habits and a tendency to indulge in a desire to practise fellatio on dead sheep. Among other things.

  A confrontation was prevented by the arrival of Lord Alagrace, Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk, together with a crowd of underlings, onlookers, friends and functionaries. Amongst the new arrivals was Haveros, Lonth Denesk's son, who looked around, frowning when he saw how many league riders were on the scene.

  Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk were relaxed and jovial, and seemed to have been drinking a little. Yen Olass realized Lord Alagrace had settled the matter with some last-minute diplomacy; in all probability, the old men had been draining a cup of friendship just before coming to the Enskandalon Square.

  Yen Olass knew Lord Alagrace would be pleased with his success. Any duel amongst the Yarglat was dangerous to the peace of Gendormargensis. Arid, in itself, duelling claimed the lives of too many bright young officers, and allowing old men to kill each other encouraged the young.

  Yen Olass knew that Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk must be every bit as glad as Lord Alagrace. When the Lawmaker had banqueted them, they had got drunk; siding with their sons, they had called each other iiar', 'coward' and 'woman', and then they had called each other out. Sober, they must have cursed their stupidity -- they had been comrades in battle for twenty years in their younger days.

  Nevertheless, unrelenting shame would ride the man who shied away from combat; an excuse was needed to avoid a fight to the death, and Yen Olass, at Lord Alagrace's request, was going to provide that excuse.

  The two old men composed themselves while a herald declared the details of the challenge; then Lord Alagrace, surprising nobody, intervened:

  'Fight if you wish,' said Lord Alagrace, 'but before combat, please give your consideration to a reading.’

  Lonth Denesk and Tonaganuk both agreed. General Chonjara scowled. For the reading, Yen Olass threw back her hood, unwrapped her scarves and took off her mittens; she opened her laquered box, took out the Casting Board an
d slotted its two halves together, shook the 365 Indicators in their leather bag, then began.

  Yen Olass placed sixteen Indicators on the Casting Board. What did those sixteen ivory tablets tell her? Nothing. The Book of the Sisterhood taught methods and ways of reading the Indicators, but those were only for the guidance of novices; most skilled oracles used the Indicators only as the starting point, and completed the reading by intuition.

  Yen Olass used neither Indicators nor intuition; she had planned her campaign beforehand, devising four sequences of pointless destruction and two of reconciliation. Now, with her planning done, she let these images possess her, and become visions; as a skilled orator, she submitted to the eloquence of her own words, permitting them their own life of passion.

  Nobody would dare interrupt until she was finished; here, in the public eye, she was guaranteed absolute freedom from intrusion. Her own room in Moon Stallion Strait had never provided her such security.

  'A horse,' said Yen Olass. 'A stallion. Rider of winds. Women tremble before him. A rider. Woman-master. Who can say which is which? Masters of all horizons. Only the sun can ride them out. Rider tells the horse to stay -- now! Stay still. A fly. What? Nothing. No, a fly.’

  And now she no longer saw the Casting Board, the Indicators, Chonjara's fur-lined boots or the people in the Enskandalon Square. Her eyes were unfocused, staring through reality. Her head was lifted, her voice pitched to carry over the heads of those who listened. Talking to whom? To what? She saw the horse, and she saw the fly.

  'Just that. No more. A fly. Tail. A whisk of a tail to brush away -- what? It was nothing. No, a fly. But the horse moved. And the rider, suddenly angry -- gashed home. Red blade. Scream choked on blood rolled up and over, four legs, gone. Dead meat. All for a fly. Blood on the blade, blood--’

  Yen Olass screamed.

  A cry of horror broke loose from her throat as something shattered her vision. What?

  She saw Chonjara's foot still in the air, still rising, her Casting Board breaking apart, the ivory Indicators scattering.

  And she heard Lord Alagrace, his voice a roar of outrage: 'Chonjara!’

  'Children play girl-games,' said Chonjara, his voice thick with anger -- and with something close to hatred. 'Men have other ways to work the world.’

  Lord Alagrace now had no choice. The Law of Readings compelled him, as the most senior person present -- Lawmaker in the absence of the Lord Emperor Khmar, and hence senior even to Volaine Haveros, the Lord Commander of Gendormargensis -- to ask the patrons to name the doom of the criminal who had interrupted the oracle.

  'Lonth Denesk,' said Lord Alagrace. 'Tonaganuk. This individual has interrupted your reading. I ask you--’

  'There is no reading,' said Tonaganuk.

  And with those words he committed himself to mortal combat.

  There was nothing else he could have done.

  For the reading to continue, Chonjara's fate would first have to be settled. For interrupting a reading, he could be killed out of hand, if the patrons so desired. Tonaganuk could only spare his son from punishment if Lonth Denesk agreed. Doubtless Lonth Denesk would agree to pardon Chonjara -- but then Chonjara would be shamed for life by the fact that he had been pardoned by a man who was, officially, his father's enemy.

  So to save his son's good name, Tonaganuk was now forced to declare the reading at an end, and fight Lonth Denesk, as was his privilege; the conventions governing readings allowed any patron to break off the proceedings at any point.

  Lord Alagrace did not swear, but he came close to doing so. It was well known that Lord Alagrace was the mentor of Celadric, Khmar's son, the young man who was now proving himself such a master of the skills of negotiation, arbitration and diplomacy; Lord Alagrace, although he was an old man, was committed to the new order which he saw would in time replace the reckless combat-law of the horse tribes.

  Now, despite his best efforts, Lord Alagrace was about to see two old men hack each other to death for the sake of a system of blood and honour already at least a generation out of date.

  Yen Olass sat on her yaquern fur rug, weeping quietly, more from shock than from anthing else. The crowd fell back; General Chonjara stepped forward to present his father Tonaganuk with battle-axe and shield. Volaine Haveros carried similar gifts to his own father, Lonth Denesk. Chonjara's bodyguard, Karahaj Nan Nulador, was down on his hands and knees in the snow, gathering the scattered Indicators.

  'Thank you,' said Yen Olass, as Nan Nulador laid the ivory tablets before her.

  Nan Nulador made a sign of reverence -- a fist unfolding to five fingers, meaning 'this (all) which I have is yours' -and then withdrew.

  And Yen Olass ceased weeping.

  And watched.

  The two old men had taken off their gloves and had shed their heavy coats. Lord Alagrace was trying to talk to Tonaganuk, pitching his voice too low for anyone else to hear; unfortunately, Tonaganuk was somewhat deaf, and was finding it hard to make any sense whatsoever out of what Lord Alagrace was saying. Lonth Denesk peered at them with rheumy eyes, clutching the haft of his battle-axe in swollen earthroot fingers.

  'Come on,' said a voice from the crowd of spectators. 'What are we waiting for?’

  Yen Olass identified the speaker immediately: York, the youngest of Khmar's four sons. Eighteen years old, an uncouth brawler with a passion for hunting and fighting. Lord Alagrace abandoned his efforts to avert violence, and withdrew; the duel commenced.

  First, silence.

  A pause.

  And Yen Olass waited for York to speak again -- but he knew better than that, and held his tongue.

  A little snow feathered down on the light wind. The old men glowered at each other and began to circle, slowly,

  moving their feet deliberately. In the cold air, their breath snorted out in little puffs of steam. Both were having trouble supporting the weight of shield and battle-axe. Light glittered as the spur-bright axe blades wavered.

  Then they swung at each other. Both stumbled as blades clattered against shields. They clashed again, neither strong enough nor fast enough to strike a decisive blow. A third clash left both unblooded. Lumbering forward, labouring axes through the air, brunting attack after attack with their shields, they hacked and parried.

  The old men began to sweat. Both were gasping now, gasping like drowning men. Their faces were wet, white hair dripping with sweat, sweat running down into white beards. Then Tonaganuk mustered enough strength to strike one formidable blow which drove his opponent's shield back.

  First blood.

  Lonth Denesk bled from his upper lip, just slightly injured by the shield jolting backwards into his face. But now Tonaganuk sensed his weakness. This was the moment. They clashed again, axe against shield, shield against axe. But now, instead of drawing back to strike again, Tonaganuk pushed forward, using his shield to shove Lonth Denesk backwards.

  Taken by surprise, Lonth Denesk tried to brace himself -- but slipped, and went down. Tonaganuk gashed his axe home. There was the sharp sound of shattering teeth. Lonth Denesk struggled, trying to rise, his limbs flailing. Tonaganuk brought his axe down, ripping his enemy's scalp open. Lonth Denesk, blood streaming down his face and straining through his beard, struggled up into a sitting position, tried to say something. But the axe hacked into his throat.

  And Yen Olass, watching with fascination -- she could not help herself -- saw, to her amazement, that Lonth Denesk was still alive, though blood was flowing freely and his wound gaped his trachea open. Lonth Denesk rolled over, got to his hands and knees, tried to rise--

  But--

  Yen Olass squeezed her eyes shut. But nothing could shut out the sounds. Lonth Denesk did not cry out -- could not, with his throat hacked open -- but she heard the butchering thuds of heavy steel cleaving home to bone. It went on for what seemed like a long time.

  Then it was over.

  Slowly, Yen Olass opened her eyes.

  Lonth Denesk lay dead in bloodstained snow. Tonagan
uk stood alone. He had dropped his shield, he had dropped his battle-axe, and he was -- clutching his chest. As she watched, Tonaganuk sank to the ground, crushed down to his knees by disabling agony. Chonjara stepped forward.

  'Leave him!' said Haveros.

  If Haveros had stayed silent, nobody would have objected if Chonjara had gone to his father's aid. But now that Haveros had spoken, Chonjara could not intervene -- Haveros was insisting that the tradition be followed, and the tradition was that a duel was not over until both men were dead or one had walked away, a victor, without any assistance.

  Back in the old days, when the horse tribes had been nomadic wanderers instead of the rulers of an empire, this tradition had sometimes meant that a wounded victor died slowly in full view of the witnesses, unable to crawl away from the body of the man he had killed. But those were the old days: in Gendormargensis, it was unusual for anyone to enforce that ruling.