Mistress of Animals Read online

“Thank you, lijti.” Jirkat hooked a thumb at one of his friends who bent through the doorway of another kazr to fetch cups for the three of them.

  The woman lowered herself carefully to her chosen rug, and urged the food upon her guests.

  Najud tore off a piece of flatbread for both of them and used his belt knife to cut slices off the cheese, then handed Penrys her portion. At the woman’s urging, they began to eat, and the woman joined them. Cups having appeared for Jirkat and his friends, soon all four of their hosts were sharing the meal.

  Doesn’t seem right not to offer some of our own trail food in exchange, but there must be rules about this I’ll have to learn.

  The cheese was soft and crumbly, with a distinct tang to it, and the flatbread did double duty as a plate.

  By this time, the four younger folk had returned. They picked up rugs and made seats in an outer ring around the six older people. One of the boys and the young woman sat together.

  Najud emphatically brushed the crumbs from his clothes onto the grass beyond the rug, and placed his cup on the ground before him.

  Jirkat took this as his cue. “This is Hadishti,” he said, nodding at the woman. “She left our taridiqa at the summer encampment to take her elder son to begin his work as a nal-jarghal, an apprentice, to the jarghal Anitqizat, about a hundred miles east of the summer camp. She brought her younger son, Dimghuy, and her daughter Sharma with her, and they stayed for a little while before she returned, hoping to meet the taridiqa at the autumn camp. When she crossed the route between the summer and autumn camps, the one that was planned, she found no trace of them and turned back toward the summer encampment to see why they were delayed.”

  He used a stick to draw a map on the trodden ground, showing where they were, the summer encampment to their south, and the autumn camp south and west of that.

  Hadishti and her children, the girl and the younger boy, nodded to attest to the accuracy of this account.

  Jirkat pointed to his map and drew a line far to the west from the summer encampment, then he gestured to his companions.

  “These two are my brother, Khashghuy, and our friend, Ilzay. We were sent from the summer encampment by Umzakhilin, our zarawinnaj, the leader of our taridiqa, to bring back a full load of shaimur, dried fish, for our winter food, all the way to Shimiz, in the west, five hundred miles and back. Our clan has taken to bypassing the caravans and going directly, but this is the first time we have done so in three years.”

  Must have been an honor for one so young to be entrusted with this responsibility.

  “As the lijti did, so we expected to find our people in the autumn camp, and we, too, crossed the route without seeing signs of travel, and turned north in the direction of the summer encampment to find out why.”

  Jirkat paused to sip his cooling bunnas. He nodded at the boy and girl sitting together. “These are Winnajhubr and his sister Yuknaj. They left the summer encampment to visit with our neighbor clan Akshullah, just to the east. When they decided to return, they, too, headed for the route to the autumn camp, on the way to the camp itself. They met Hadishti along the way and joined together, and we found them all moving north along the unused route, headed for the summer camp.”

  Najud asked, “And did you find the summer encampment, and were they there?”

  “No, bikraj. The camp was there, every kazr in place, but no people. No one had been there for a while. It’s hard to say for how long, but some of the kazrab had begun to sag. Some of their possessions were intact, but not all. When we searched the kazrab that were our family’s homes, much was disturbed and most of the food was gone.”

  Khashghuy broke in. “It was the same in the other kazrab, too.”

  At a glance from his older brother, he looked down, abashed, and Jirkat continued.

  “We looked for the herds, of course. We could see where they’d been, but the trail was one or two months old. We found some strays, but not the rest.” He gestured around them at the miscellaneous animals.

  “I thought to see if they had taken the High Pass for some reason, though no trail led there, since we were close enough that it wouldn’t cost us much time to be sure. The others agreed, and I brought us here from the summer camp.”

  It sounded to Penrys as if he were relieved to have described the problem to someone older who might know what to do.

  Najud listened impassively to the account.

  “I assume you searched for any trail of horses or people on foot leaving the camp, in any direction.” he said.

  “Of course, bikraj, but much time had passed. The trail of the herds should still be visible, but people—perhaps not.”

  Najud nodded to himself as if he had expected the answer.

  “Thank you for your report, lij. It was clear and detailed, despite its alarming nature.”

  Penrys watched Jirkat sit up straighter in response to the praise from an older man.

  Well-handled, Naj-sha.

  “I’ll tell you our story, and we’ll see how it intersects with yours,” Najud said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Najud shifted his position so that all could see his face, and spread his hands.

  “I am Najud, son of Ilsahr of clan Zamjilah, of the Shubzah tribe, and my mother Kazrsulj is the daughter of Khashjibrim of the same clan. You know her sister, Qizrahi. I have never met my aunt’s new kin, and I greet them now.”

  He bowed low from his seat.

  “My companion is the jarghalti Penrys, of Ellech.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her, and was gratified when she bowed in turn for the audience, her face expressionless.

  “Our story is complicated, but I’ll be brief, to bring you your news.”

  He glanced down to collect his thoughts, very conscious of his position as oldest male in this collection of lost and worried sheep, out-tribe though he may be. They were already looking to him for answers, and he had none for them.

  “I was in my tenth year of my tulqiqa, my travel time, and I was sent by the Ghuzl mar-Tawirqaj in Ussha to Kigali to join an expedition at the Meeting of Waters. The tale was that the Rasesni had invaded Neshilik, and Kigali wanted to know the truth of it, from the reports of their nearest large cavalry force. There were rumors of bikrajab—wizards, as the Kigali say—and so they wanted one to join them.”

  With amusement, he watched Khashghuy nod eagerly to confirm whatever they had heard about Neshilik themselves, while his older brother frowned at him for his unseemly display.

  “Penrys, here, came from further away—that’s too long a tale for right now.” Or maybe ever. He shook himself and continued. “When we reached the Gates, we two were sent with other scouts over the old passes behind the Gates on either side, to see what the truth of the story was. We found many things, most importantly that the Rasesni have had wizards all along—they call them mages—and that some qahulaj had arisen and driven many of them to flee into Neshilik seeking survival.”

  At the word of a wizard performing forbidden magic, even Hadishti’s sober face revealed her dismay.

  “To shorten this story, Penrys defeated and killed this qahulaj a month ago, and I earned my nayith and took back my name. When we left them, the two nations were negotiating. Neshilik is at peace, for now.”

  He slashed his hands horizontally in front of him to shift the topic.

  “And so we took the High Pass at Jaunor. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my family, and I wished to visit them and share my news.”

  He took a deep breath to resettle himself. “When we reached the Grandfather lud—you know the one?”

  There were a few nods.

  “There we found several packs, piled around its base.”

  It was so quiet, he could hear the grazing horses tearing the grasses.

  “Just below that, we found more on the trail—discarded possessions, things dropped by the way, all scattered on and off the trail. And, on the trail itself, a dead horse, still in its tack.”

  Dimghuy’s gasp dis
turbed the silence.

  “We moved the horse and freed it from encumbrance, then piled a cairn over it. And we took everything we found and brought it with us, in our packs. I’d like to return it all to the clan-kin it belongs to.”

  Hadishti leaned forward. “But no bodies? No sign of a fight?”

  “The horse had been there perhaps one month, perhaps two,” Najud said. “Any signs would be gone. But, no, we found nothing that attested to a struggle, just the inexplicable debris on the trail and the packs around the base of the lud.”

  He stood up and looked at Penrys. *Let’s leave them to talk in private, and bring them what we found.*

  She rose and joined him, and they walked over to where their donkeys were staked on a line for grazing, still bearing their packs. Their hosts hadn’t been sure that their guests would be staying, so they chose not to delay them by unloading the packs. It’s what Najud had expected, but now he didn’t know what to do. It was only mid-day, but it was likely they would be spending the night with these strays.

  They collected the three donkeys that they had used for the things they’d found on the pass and he make a short pack string of them. He led them as slowly as he could back to the kazrab where an intense discussion between Hadishti and Jirkat was taking place.

  At Najud and Penrys’s approach, everyone quieted. Najud stopped outside the circle of the kazrab with the donkeys, and then Sharma, Hadishti’s daughter, stepped up shyly to hold the lead rope for him. He smiled down at her in thanks.

  All the Kurighdunaq folk gathered in front of them solemnly. Najud put himself in their place and shuddered. They would be looking for evidence of members of their family and friends.

  With Penrys’s help, he pulled out each pack and laid it gently in a long line on the grass, followed by the loose items. There were more than a dozen packs altogether, and no one rushed to open them. The accumulated marks of the world-bow on the leather surfaces were like blows to the silent audience. Last was the forlorn pile of the horse tack he’d pulled off the beast.

  “Would you help us, Sharma, by returning these donkeys to the others?” he asked. He didn’t want her there when the packs were opened and their owners identified.

  She glanced to her mother for permission, and then obediently led the string off.

  After her back was turned, Najud reached into his pocket and removed the two toys he’d found, and laid them gently on top of the one small pack.

  A low moan came from the young woman, Yuknaj. “Those are Anasha’s!” She bent down over the pack and looked inside, then clutched it to her chest while her brother wrapped an arm around her.

  Winnajhubr explained, “Our mother and her father came from the zudiqazd to see our father on some matter of importance, and brought our little sister as a special treat to see the taridiqa that she would join in a few years. We decided to do our clan-visit with their little traveling kazr so that they could take our places in the home kazr with our father until we returned.”

  He waved a shaking hand at the smallest kazr of the three.

  Najud looked at Penrys. This was not for strangers. *Come, let’s go keep Sharma company.*

  Najud walked slowly away with Penrys, down to the grazing near the spring where Sharma had finished staking the three donkeys.

  The girl looked anxiously toward her elders in the camp.

  Penrys bespoke him. *Better let her go to them. They’re her relatives, too, and her mother will do whatever she thinks is right.*

  Najud nodded, and called to the girl, “We’ll look after our beasts now. You go join your family.”

  She flashed them a nervous smile of gratitude and ran back to her kinsmen.

  Penrys found a tussock of grass to her liking and sat down on it crosslegged, out of the way of the grazing animals but still within sight of the camp. Najud chose another nearby and joined her.

  “What happens now?” she said.

  What indeed? They need help.

  “I don’t know. This is some sort of disaster,” he said. “Must have happened more than two months ago, since that’s when they would have moved to the autumn camp. I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

  “If we don’t know ‘how,’ then just ignore it for now,” Penrys said. “Let’s go for ‘what.’ What are the possibilities? Sketch them out for me.”

  “At the worst,” he said, “they’re all dead somewhere, maybe one or two hundred people, and we just haven’t stumbled across the bodies.”

  That made his stomach clench.

  Then he looked at Penrys and realized she didn’t understand the implications. “If their herds can’t be found, then the winter camp, where the non-travelers live—that could starve. The old, the young, the injured, the mothers… maybe another fifty or sixty people. That’s the whole clan. They’ll have other food—they grow some—and that Jirkat and his friends have brought dried fish, and the other clans in the tribe will help, but that might not be enough. The slaughter of the excess beasts is what feeds the people through the long, cold days, and well into the new year.”

  He leaned forward to make his point. “All the warriors are with the taridiqa, except for a very few left to support the zudiqazd, and this Undullah tribe is not overlarge. This clan will vanish, absorbed into the other clans of the tribe.”

  Cocking his head at the eight people gathered around the packs in mourning, he said, “They’re the walking dead. They haven’t thought it through yet, except maybe Jirkat, but they probably don’t even have enough people to fetch the remaining wealth of the tribe home.”

  At Penrys’s inquisitive look, he said, “The kazrab and everything in them. The rugs made by the women, the leather work done by the men. All the work of their hands that is not in the zudiqazd is rotting, a gift for thieves and the weather and the little scavengers. The people in the winter camp may not be able to ride out and salvage it, especially without the pack animals. Whatever these people can carry, that’s what they will own.”

  Penrys swallowed. “Well, if that’s the worst, then what we need to do is help them find the people and the herds. They have to know, one way or another.”

  Najud’s heart warmed at her response, but he shook his head. “I’m not of their clan or even their tribe.”

  “I saw how they looked at you,” she said. “Besides, you have relatives here…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what that meant.

  “Yes, and they’re likely to be among the dead,” he said, quietly.

  “The missing! Not the dead. We don’t know that yet.”

  I wonder how many children my aunt Qizrahi had? When I last learned the family names, it was only the one, Zaybirs, but that was ten years ago. All gone, like the water from that spring, trickling back into the earth?

  CHAPTER 6

  Hadishti’s son, Dimghuy, walked down to Najud and Penrys about an hour later.

  They’d spent the time moving the tethers for their animals to give them all fresh grass to graze. Najud was eager to either move on or make plans to camp here, but they would have to invite him to stay, and he couldn’t hurry that decision in the shock of what they’d brought from the High Pass.

  The time that was passing was mute evidence of how much they needed someone to lead them, to make those decisions unhampered by inexperience.

  The young man bowed to both of them. “My mother asks you to make your camp with us this evening, and to join us in our discussions.”

  Najud glanced up at the circle of kazrab where everyone was watching, and then looked over at Penrys, who nodded her agreement.

  “We would be honored,” he said, and the look of relief on Dimghuy’s face was evidence of how formal the request had been.

  The young man waved his arm at the camp, and all the men walked down through the long grass to help with the unloading of the animals.

  Every time Najud set his hand to a pack, one of them was before him, lifting it down on his behalf. At first it amused him, but a throttled word of exasper
ation from Penrys, who was getting the same treatment, finally prompted a response.

  “I have been traveling on my own for ten years, barqahab, and am perfectly capable of unloading a horse, or even a donkey!”

  Dimghuy looked shocked. “But you are bikrajab. It’s not fitting.”

  Najud snorted. “I am many things, but helpless isn’t one of them.” He could hear Penrys’s suppressed chuckle in the background.

  “I’ll tell you what I need,” he said, “and we’ll do this together. Yes?”

  The young men nodded, and things went more smoothly after that. They left the horses and donkeys loose in a herd of their own, accustomed as they were to each other, and clustered the packs, frames, and tack on a platform of rocks under their waterproof canvas covers, secure from any sudden rain.

  Their helpers wouldn’t let them shoulder the kamah and the rest of their camp gear, so Najud gave up and followed them to their designated site, some distance behind Hadishti’s kazr.

  *At least it’s relatively private.*

  He shook his head at Penrys’s remark.

  *Yes, but they’ll be scandalized when they realize there is no barrier between the male and female sides.*

  *I wonder if that’s what Hadishti was thinking of when she picked this spot? I owe her my thanks, if so.*

  Najud smiled privately, and then stepped up to direct the erection of the simple tent. Penrys was going to discover just how little privacy there really was in the taridiqa.

  Penrys pitched in with the chores around the camp, or at least she tried to. She spoke to Hadishti about sharing supplies, but was turned down, politely but firmly. When she offered to help with preparations or cooking, the woman just shook her head, kindly. “This is no trouble, bikrajti, no need for you to concern yourself.”

  The youngest Zannib had resumed their herd duties, all but Yuknaj who was helping Hadishti with dinner, and they rode the perimeter of the grazing animals, encouraging them to stay settled in the vicinity of the spring. Penrys turned to Najud for some employment, but found him deep in conversation with the other young men. Even from a distance, Penrys recognized the “getting acquainted” tenor of the discussion and thought her presence would disturb it.