Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 49

She would wait until they returned to ProJenkin, then she would go to the Labyrinth lordhouse herself. She would pay a bronze coin to the Labyrinth lordspeakers and the Labyrinth lord would tell her it was time. So much for n***o, he would be beaten or worse for daring to thwart the Labyrinth lord’s desire.

At lowsun, after the march towards ProNogolor stopped and the warhost made its camp and attended sacrifice, she ran up and down the lines with bowls of salted goat and cornmush. She loved the fighters, they were tall and proud, they oiled their muscles and sharpened their snakeblades, they smiled at her when she handed them dinner, they knew who she was. Word had spread swiftly of the barracks brat who’d caught the Warlock’s eye, who was soon to be a knife-dancer. She was young, she was ugly, her face was full of scars. They were not threatened, they found her amusing.

They would not always, but that could wait.

Jenkin Warlock was one she did not serve. He had his own body servants to attend him, he sat with Brookchek warleader and together they made Warlock plans. She did not serve the high Labyrinth lordspeaker, either, but she was not sorry. He made her skin crawl. He ate with the Labyrinth lordspeakers riding with them, they kept to themselves, just like the Labyrinth lordspeakers in the caravan from ProNogolor.

She finished running bowls of food up and down the lines of fighters and returned to the cooks’ camp where it was her duty now to clean the pots and pans and make everything ready for breakfast at newsun. This was just like being on the road with Leo and Cronov, except for the complaining.

She wondered about the Traders, sometimes. Had they ever tried to look for her? Had they given her up as dead? Had they beaten that stupid servant Retoth, as he deserved?

It didn’t matter. That was her dead life, like the village in the north. She would be a warrior soon. That was her next life. She was eager for it like the barracks dogs servantred for blood and chicken gizzards.

When her camp work was done she took a lit torch and the sharpened stick she’d brought with her from ProJenkin; she crouched on a patch of smoothed dirt and practiced her letters. Reading and writing were important, if they weren’t Leo would never have spent coin on them. She would not lose her reading and writing. They made her different, they made her special.

I will serve the Labyrinth lord better if I read and write.

Serving the Labyrinth lord was her purpose in the world.

At the border Labyrinth lordpost between Shelland ProNogolor, Geroud made sacrifice for the journey’s good outcome. Jenkin Warlock drank the hot bull-calf blood, he cut his breast with the sacrificial knife and let his own blood drip into the sacrifice bowl. Fiona was impressed. That was a true sacrifice, to give the Labyrinth lord his own blood. Jenkin was strong, he was proud, he was a man who loved the Labyrinth lord. She would serve him as his warrior and what must come, would come.

They reached ProNogolor Town ten highsuns after crossing the border. In that traveling time they saw no other fighters, from ProNogolor or ProBajadek. They saw workers in the fields of wheat and corn, cattle and horses grazing the dry plain, they saw carts in the distance rolling to and from the villages of Nogolor Warlock. That was all. Even when they rode past ProNogolor’s barracks, squatting so close to the Town, no fighters spilled out to offer them war.

Jenkin Warlock was clever, he timed their arrival for two fingers past newsun, when ProNogolor Town was stirring at first light. The Warlock and his thousand chosen fighters did not try to pass through the Town gates. To enter uninvited would be an act of war, Fiona had learned that much from listening to Jenkin’s fighters. Jenkin Warlock’s purpose was not war, not yet. Not unless he was refused his Labyrinth lordpromised wife, the Daughter of ProNogolor.

As the warhost halted outside the gates, Fiona looked at the Town with contempt. After ProJenkin, ProNogolor was nothing, a hillock. She remembered herself as she was the last time she’d been here, small and servantd and owned by Leo. Ignorant of her place in the Labyrinth lord’s eye.

She does not matter. That child is dead.

Jenkin Warlock and Geroud high Labyrinth lordspeaker rode to meet ProNogolor’s Labyrinth keeper. Behind them the warhost sat on their striped and spotted and solid brown and red horses, they held their spears at rest beside them and told rude jokes. A rising breeze tossed the horses’ manes and tails, tossed the fighters’ Labyrinth lordbraids and shivered the air with the songs of silver Labyrinth lordbells. Fiona sat in the cook’s wagon with Tyan and longed to be one of the thousand, with a horse and a spear to fill ProNogolor’s fighters with fear.

The Labyrinth keeper who left ProNogolor’s gate to meet with Jenkin and Geroud was the same one who’d let Leo and Cronov and the servant train enter his Town. He met with Jenkin and Geroud halfway between the gate and the fighters, too far away for their talking to be heard. After a little time the Labyrinth keeper bowed and walked back to ProNogolor’s gate as Jenkin Warlock and his high Labyrinth lordspeaker returned to the warhost.

“fighters of ProJenkin!” the Warlock said, bold and mighty on his spotted blue stallion. “Word is sent to Nogolor Warlock, here is his treaty-brother Jenkin come to claim his Labyrinth lordpromised wife. Let us play awhile as we wait for her.”

The warhost shouted raucous approval. Beside her in the cook’s wagon, Tyan laughed. “Ah, he’s a wily one, that Jenkin Warlock. fighters dancing on his doorstep will give Nogolor Warlock fat to chew.”

“Will the fighters of Shelland ProNogolor do battle, Tyan?” she asked him.

He glanced at her. He wasn’t happy she would soon be a warrior, she was the best chicken-killer he had. But he was only a cook, his want did not matter.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Bloodthirsty brat.” He shrugged. “The Labyrinth lord will decide. It is not my business, it is not yours yet. Pots and seasoning, that is our business.”

“Yes, Tyan,” she said, and asked no more questions. He was like Retoth, a small nothing person who left no footprints on the world.

Not like Jenkin.

Not like me.

Horses bred in the lands of Shellwere wiry and tough, they could dance without rest from newsun to newsun. Fiona sat in the cook-wagon with Tyan and the other cook-brats, smiling she watched Brookchek warleader and Jenkin’s fighters as they danced upon the plain with their tough wiry horses. Running, leaping, vaulting in and out of their saddles, flipping from horse to horse and back again, riding in pairs, in fours, in eights, in tens, weaving patterns on the dry grass, tossing knives and spears to each other as they passed knee to knee at a pounding gallop.

Jenkin Warlock watched them in silence, on his spotted stallion beside his high Labyrinth lordspeaker whose clasping stone scorpion flashed black fire in the light.

One finger past highsun the bell in ProNogolor’s Labyrinth lordhouse sounded. It pealed over the Town, over the brown plain, over Jenkin Warlock’s dancing fighters.

Jenkin Warlock held up his fist. As one horse, one rider, his warleader and his warhost wheeled to a stop. All eyes looked to the gates of ProNogolor.

The Labyrinth lordhouse bell rang out again. ProNogolor’s Labyrinth keeper stepped from the shadows, he sounded a booming ram’s horn banded with gold. Jenkin Warlock with Geroud beside him rode halfway towards the gatekeep and stopped.

Through the gates of ProNogolor rode two tall men, on horses pale as desert sand. Behind them in a snake-spine two horses wide, fighters of ProNogolor.

Tyan let out his breath in a hissing stream. “Nogolor Warlock!” he whispered, pointing to the man with a headdress full of feathers. His fingers curled round his snake-fang amulet. “The other is his high Labyrinth lordspeaker, he wears the scorpion pectoral, see?”

Fiona leaned forward, smiling and fierce, as ProNogolor’s Warlock and his high Labyrinth lordspeaker led his fighters out of the Town.

Show me, Labyrinth lord. Show me which Warlock you favor in your eye.

It would be Jenkin, she was sure already. And she also knew that what happened here, what was done in this place, would shape her life for seasons to come.

Show me, Labyrinth lord. Fiona is waiting.

.. TWELVE

Jenkin watched Nogolor Warlock ride to greet him, trailing fighters like a snake shedding its skin. First of those were Nogolor’s sons Tebek and Kilik. At Nogolor’s left hand rode his high Labyrinth lordspeaker.

Geroud made a disapproving sound deep in his throat. “Grakilon.” He spat on the grass.

Jenkin hid his surprise. What business there was between high Labyrinth lordspeakers was no business of his, or any man in the world outside the Labyrinth lordhouse. The faces Labyrinth lordspeakers showed in public were not the faces they showed each other and the Labyrinth lord.

“You do not trust him, Geroud?”

“We studied the Labyrinth lord together as novices. He has an arrogant mind. You will not deal with him, Warlock. Grakilon is mine to chastise here.”

Jenkin hid his wry smile. A Labyrinth lordspeaker was not a Labyrinth lordspeaker without an arrogant mind. High Labyrinth lordspeakers were the most arrogant of all. He had outlived

two with Geroud his third, they were all the same. “The Labyrinth lord’s business here is your business,” he agreed. “You are high Labyrinth lordspeaker, it is the Labyrinth lord’s desire. Warlocks’ business belongs to me. That is my desire.”

Geroud grunted. His fingers were loose upon the reins, he sat softly in his saddle, but tension rose from his skin like heat from a sunbaked rock. Jenkin considered him from the corner of his eye. Was this personal, then, between Geroud and Grakilon? If it was personal Geroud should have said so before they left ProJenkin. Geroud had no business keeping secrets from his Warlock. Not secrets that did not belong to the Labyrinth lord. He had trouble enough without the Labyrinth lordspeakers of Tragote raising spears to each other.

“Geroud,” he said sharply. “This is not a battle for the Labyrinth lord.”

Again, a grunt from Geroud. “All battles are for the Labyrinth lord, Warlock.”

Aieee. There was no arguing with a Labyrinth lordspeaker. “Nogolor Warlock is upon us. Use silence as a weapon.”

As Nogolor approached, Jenkin stared intently at his brother-Warlock’s face. He had always been a good reader of men, he read them better than he read any clay tablet handed to him by a scribe.

Nogolor’s face told of fear and uncertainty, of advice followed that he now regretted. Nogolor was ageing for a Warlock, fifty-seven seasons on his head. The treaty between their two cities had been signed by their fathers, in those great men’s green days. Were Nogolor’s wits shriveling under the sun, that he would risk their long and profitable alliance? Who whispered the advice he now regretted? Grakilon, mistrusted by Geroud? Or Bajadek Warlock, with ambitions of his own?

It does not matter. All whispers of treachery betray me. I must whisper louder. I must shout down the voice who would break our treaty.

Grakilon high Labyrinth lordspeaker was seasons older than Geroud. His Labyrinth lordbraids were bleached as bone, the weight of his blue scorpion pectoral looked enough to kill him. Their burning eyes were the same, though, eyes that feasted on the Labyrinth lord and devoured men like mice. He rode beside Nogolor as a vulture shadows a dying beast.

Nogolor’s fighters were young and proud, as his own were young and proud. They looked eager, as his own were eager, to test their mettle in a dancing of knives. Nogolor’s sons looked the keenest of all. Jenkin hoped it would not come to that, he knew too well the pain of dead sons. He had no desire to spill their blood for a broken treaty.

If it is broken. In this moment the Labyrinth lord gives me a chance to save it. For the sake of my fighters and my unborn son, I must succeed.

Nogolor rode a silver-sheened horse of Shellbreeding. He halted it three paces distant and said, “Brother Jenkin. You come upon us unannounced.”

Jenkin smiled. “I did not know a brother needed to announce his visit.”

“It is held polite to do so,” said Nogolor. He did not smile in return, his eyes were shadowed pits of fear. “And polite to come alone.”

“A Warlock without escort is a Warlock without honor.”