Mistress of Animals Read online

  Left to her own devices, then, she located the highest rock in the nearby terrain, within sight of the camp, and waited. Some of the packs from the High Pass had been claimed and doubtless each of the kazrab had its share. From her vantage point, she saw the remainder resting in a forlorn heap, not far from the central fire where Yuknaj was tending to a stew. The smell of flatbreads baking rose from Hadishti’s kazr, making Penrys’s stomach grumble.

  Not easy to fit in here. I’m a foreigner, wearing the wrong clothing, and a wizard. That last designation is the one they seem most comfortable with—at least they know what to do with that. Maybe Najud is right, maybe we need some sort of status in their eyes to be sharing a tent. Their country, their rules.

  One thing I can do. That’s a lot of animals they’re trying to control. Wouldn’t hurt to get a good count, even if they already have one.

  She settled into a comfortable position and did a detailed scan, segment by segment, around a full circle—five times, once each for the horses, donkeys, cattle, sheep, and goats. It was easier to count the species one by one. Almost forty horses, including their own, their seven donkeys, twenty-two cattle, thirty-five sheep, and seventeen goats.

  With three or four herdsmen? How can they possible control that?

  Even as she thought it, all three of the outriders trotted in from their posts, stripped the tack from their sturdy mounts, and tethered them near the edge of the camp.

  Even so simple a meal as goat stew and fresh flatbread was a welcome change, after more than a week crossing the High Pass eating even simpler fare. The conversation around the fire was subdued and it deliberately avoided the topics on everyone’s mind.

  Grief warred with hope in most of the minds Penrys touched, the dread engendered by those mute packs versus the uncertainty, the possibility that their friends and family could yet be found alive.

  Hadishti kept her eye on everyone, and when she laid her empty bowl down in front of the bit of carpet she used as a seat, all of her campmates did the same, and the conversation stopped.

  She spoke to Najud, across the fire. “We of the Kurighdunaq clan thank you, bikraj, you and your companion, for the kindness you’ve done us, bringing us this unhappy news of our kinsmen. You see us here, three families, unable to decide on our next action.”

  Jirkat nodded from his own spot, in support of her statement.

  “We have spoken,” she said, “all of us, about what we should do. With one thing we all agree.”

  Najud listened attentively.

  “We want you to advise us,” she told him.

  Penrys held her face expressionless. Najud was not surprised, she saw—he had expected something like this.

  He raised one hand our, palm up, diffidently. “I am just a tulqaj, a traveler. Out-clan and out-tribe.”

  Hadishti nodded, and waited.

  Najud spoke confidently. “If it were me, I would return to the summer encampment, which you say is not far. I’d make an appraisal of what’s gone, and I’d do a careful search again for your missing kin. The herds especially can’t have vanished without a trace. It seems to me that so many, even after two months, would leave a trail we can see.”

  He raised his finger in the air. “I don’t say you have not already done this. But this is what I would do.”

  Jirkat said, “Yes, we’ve done this. But we were in a hurry, I confess, expecting at any moment to find our families, and rushing to seek them.”

  He looked down. “We haven’t found them. Now it’s time to retrace our steps and start again.”

  He exchanged an enigmatic look with Hadishti, then he bowed low from his seat to Najud. “Bikraj, you are clan-kin through Qizrahi, and no one can deny it. You are well-traveled, you are older than all of us here, except Hadishti, and you and your companion have seen wonders. You have been on the taridiqa in your own clan for many years—you are not strange to our ways.”

  Penrys noted his hesitation. What are they leading up to?

  “We, all of us, would like you to be zarawinnaj for us, to lead us to our zudiqazd after we search again, as you advise, and there to guest with us for the winter.”

  This time Najud was surprised, Penrys saw, however he tried to hide it.

  Hadishti added, “We need a man of your experience, bikraj, and we need bikrajab, too, for if this is not wizard-work, then I don’t know what else to call it.”

  Najud lifted an eyebrow at Penrys, his expression unusually sober.

  She shrugged. *We must winter somewhere, you said, and they seem to need us. Besides, you can’t leave something this… whatever this is… uninvestigated.*

  “I will swear the oaths of a zarawinnaj,” he said to Jirkat. “We’ll see you to your winter camp and do what we can to find your missing along the way.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Not what you expected, is it?” Penrys said late that night, careful that her voice didn’t carry beyond their tent.

  Her question met with silence, so she tried again. “Came home to be a master-wizard, and instead… I suppose this is just a different sort of mastership.”

  She was curled up against his back, and in any case it was too dark to see his face. She left his mind in privacy, all in turmoil as it was, but she wanted to help, if she could.

  “The zarawinnaj is a position of great responsibility,” he said, at last. “It’s either the clan leader or someone he appoints, and the man who undertakes it is much older than I am, very experienced, very respected. He holds the safety of the clan in his hands.”

  He turned over to face her, in the dark.

  “I am not qualified to do this, Pen-sha. I don’t know these people, I don’t know their herds. I don’t even know the tarizd, the route.”

  “They know that. And they know the route home,” she said.

  He snorted. “We may not even go back that way. The shortest route, unless there’s an obstacle, would be straight back to the zudiqazd before the weather turns. We have to get this remnant of the herds back to the winter camp. At least they’re in good shape, healthy and fat.”

  “I can help with that. I did a count this evening and you know I can find them if they stray.”

  “Good. I’ll rely on you for that. We are far too few to make the herding easy.”

  They lay in silence for a moment.

  “Naj-sha,” she said, finally, “What do they expect of me, of the… woman of the migration leader?”

  “Oh, people come tell her things they don’t want to say to the zarawinnaj directly. The women and the youngsters, particularly. We won’t have that here, I think—too small. And they don’t know you. Besides, they’ll be shy of a bikrajti—it’s not likely they’ve ever seen one before.”

  “That Hadishti will help,” he mused. “Her other son’s now a nal-jarghal so we can look to her for commonsense about that. But I’ve never heard of a bikraj leading the taridiqa—it would never happen.”

  “It’s happened now,” she said. “You’ll get them home.”

  “I’ll have to,” he said, his voice still troubled. “At least it’s not very far, just a few days.”

  “But won’t that depend on what we find?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” he said.

  “And that’s why they need you.” She tapped his chest with her finger. “Now go to sleep and stop thinking about it. Or else I’ll make you.”

  As she’d hoped, his attention focused on her, and he hitched himself up on his elbow to free up both his hands. “Oh, yes? Show me how you’d do that.”

  Najud was all business the next morning, up before daylight and packed. He went to each kazr and spent time asking about pack animals, food supplies, and special skills.

  Penrys made herself useful. She scanned the whereabouts of the herds and came up short for one of the small, shaggy cattle, so she extended her reach and found him. She saddled up her Rasesni mare and went after him.

  He was a one-horned stubborn old bull, no longer the herd-leade
r, and he liked the patch of grass he was in better than the company of the herd which had stopped obeying him. But when Penrys started to crowd him, he grunted in token objection and ambled back to his herd in front of her. Dimghuy was already in place on the herd perimeter and was glad to see them both.

  “I couldn’t go look for him,” he said, “without someone to hold the rest of them.”

  Penrys smiled at him. “I know. I think this is going to be my job, looking for the strays and bringing them back.”

  “You, bikrajti?”

  “It’s something I can do to help.” She didn’t tell him, but she would also be tracking all the people, since there weren’t so many.

  She could be Najud’s eyes and ears on the backtrail. *All strays accounted for.*

  *Good. Come in to the camp.*

  Her lips twitched. He’s busy. It’s not just the two of us anymore.

  She tethered her mare on the edge of camp, after taking the bit out of her mouth so she could graze more easily.

  The tent she’d shared with Najud had been packed, and the last kazr was being disassembled before her eyes. Jirkat’s group had already uncovered the roof felts and dropped that canvas to the ground, and the rectangular felts themselves were half gone, exposing the thin rafters that ran from the tops of the five-foot circular wall to the roof crown, the zamjilah.

  Hadishti and Yuknaj stacked the felts into tidy piles and rolled the canvas covers tightly. Yuknaj chased each anchor rope as it fell and coiled it neatly.

  The men dropped down to the ground when they were done and stripped first the canvas and then the felts from the outer wall, leaving the light wooden lattice sections standing when they were done. Only two long ropes remained—the one around the top of the lattice, just where the rafters connected, and another halfway down.

  Khashghuy ducked through the doorframe into the exposed interior, now stripped of carpets and contents, and steadied the two long poles that propped the multi-spoked zamjilah while Jirkat and Ilzay walked around the wall and lifted the crutch of each rafter loose from the top of the lattice wall, and then pulled it out of its slot in the zamjilah. Then Ilzay went in to help Khashghuy lower the wheel-like crown. By the time they came back out with it, the ropes were gone from the lattice wall, and Jirkat was untying the bindings lacing the lattice sections to each other.

  Penrys watched all this in fascination. The women took each lattice section as it came free and collapsed it into a compact stack of sticks, the leather bindings at the joints holding the lattice-work together. In what seemed like moments, the entire kazr lay in its components at their feet—a stack of rectangular felts and rolled canvas sections, coils of rope, five bundled lattices, a pile of rafters, the two roof-crown props, and the door and its disassembled frame. The zamjilah itself, brightly painted like the rafters and the props and the door with its frame, leaned jauntily against the tallest pile.

  Najud joined her. “Two horse loads, for a kazr this size, but that includes all the contents.”

  He nodded back at the spot where the smallest kazr had been, now just a pile of parts. “A very small kazr, four lattices like that one, can fit on a single horse, but you need two for a five or six lattice one.”

  “Can a single person set one up?” she asked.

  He waggled a hand. “It’s been done, but it’s difficult. If you’re going to travel alone, you use a kamah, like ours. That smallest kazr, the one Yuknaj and Winnajhubr borrowed from their mother, held two adults and the little girl. A kazr is always more comfortable than a kamah, and stronger against bad weather, but not for a solitary traveler.”

  “How big do they get?”

  “In the winter camps, once in a while, you may see a seven or eight section one. Needs long rafters, one like that, and it’s not easy to move, so they’re uncommon. And even the winter camps shift locations a little bit, every few years. For very big families, it’s easier to have two kazrab, or even three, sometimes connected, sometimes not.”

  Penrys surveyed the treeless steppe. “Where do you get the wood?” Their cooking fires had been fueled by dried dung.

  Najud surprised her with a broad grin. “You trade for it, from the eastern woodlands. Very precious, it is.”

  His face sobered suddenly. “More of the wealth of this tribe—their kazrab, left behind in the summer encampment.”

  “Come. We break camp now.” He strode away to the ashes of the prior night’s fire, where everyone not on herd duty was waiting.

  CHAPTER 8

  Najud eyed his new clan responsibilities, as they stood and waited for his instructions. Hadishti’s children, Sharma and Dimghuy, were already on herd duty, and he would send Yuknaj out to join them as soon as all the pack animals were loaded.

  Jirkat’s group had a pack string of both trade goods and their travel loads, as Najud and Penrys did, and each of those needed a leader. The small pack strings that the other two groups had been using for their loads also required leaders.

  “Today we travel to the summer encampment. Jirkat tells me it’s twenty miles. The cattle are the slowest, so we’ll go at their pace.

  “After we load the pack animals, here’s how we’ll do it. The outriders will be joined by Penrys. She can find strays and bring them back. It’s a… bikraj skill.”

  Penrys nodded to them when they glanced at her.

  “I want Jirkat and Hadishti with me as we go. Khashguy will take your string, Jirkat, and we’ll add to it Hadishti’s four and Yuknaj’s three. Winnajhubr will take my string, the horses and donkeys both.”

  He noted both Winnajhubr’s pride at the increased responsibility, and Ilzay’s suppressed dismay at receiving no task yet.

  “Ilzay, I want you to be scout on our way. Ride out one or two miles and confirm the route. Come back and tell us about hazards. Find us a good spot for the mid-day break. This is not part of your clan’s tarizd, not until we reach your summer encampment, so stay close.”

  Najud suppressed a smile as Ilzay almost visibly swelled with satisfaction.

  “Penrys will watch our backtrail as well as help the outriders.”

  He looked at each of them. “Any questions?”

  Receiving silence, he waved Yuknaj and Penrys off to the herds and started everyone else on the task of loading all the pack animals for the long day’s walk.

  Penrys mind-scanned all the way around every half hour or so, first counting the animals that should be in front of her, by species, to make sure none had strayed, and then more widely, looking for others.

  Her range had improved from the two or three miles of a couple of months ago, ever since she had pulled in the power of the Rasesni wizards in their fight against the Voice, the wizard she’d killed before she could learn where he had come from, chained like herself. Now she thought she could reach five or six miles. Certainly she had no trouble following Ilzay’s meandering path as he scouted forward on the line of march, and back to inform Najud.

  She’d been pleased with her one find before the mid-day break, a flock of seven sheep, led by a stubborn old ewe who dodged her for a while before trotting before her into the larger flock moved along by Yuknaj. “These are my mother’s sheep,” the girl called, and Penrys lifted an arm to her in acknowledgment before fading back to the rear again.

  Ever since mid-day, however, she’d been kept busy picking up pockets of strays—horses, mostly, and sheep. The cattle she found were independent minded, reverting to their ancestral behaviors in the absence of people. One bull was belligerent, delaying her until she drove the rest of his little herd forward without him. His nerve broke, then, and he followed them, bellowing defiance at her as he went.

  I hope Dimghuy can handle that one.

  She kept her mental attention on the boy in case there was a sudden alarm, but it must have worked out all right.

  The sun was about two hours from setting when she contacted Najud for more than just a simple update.

  *How close are we? I’ve got more animals comi
ng up than I’ve got daylight to handle.*

  *Half an hour should see us there. We’re planning to swing the herds up north of the camp. What more have you found?*

  *Horses, mostly, and more cattle. Sheep, too. Six bunches, maybe more. Haven’t felt a wandering goat all day—they must have gone somewhere else.*

  There was a delay while Najud considered the situation.

  *We’ll be there at least a full day tomorrow. Let’s fetch them in then, and you can have Sharma to help.*

  *That’ll do.*

  Penrys rotated her head until her neck cracked. It had been a long day in the saddle, more mileage than just leading a pack string. Lonely, too, without Najud to chat with. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt the zarawinnaj while he was working.

  They’d made their camp in the fading daylight, just on the northern perimeter of the abandoned encampment. Najud had had their kamah set up on the edge closest to the looming, unlit structures, marking the margin and serving as a sort of protective barrier, but even so, Penrys noticed the constant sliding of eyes south into the dark, every time a flicker of firelight provided an excuse.

  Collecting dried dung for the fire had been no problem, here where the herds had spent some time two months ago. The small group discussed their plans for the next day as they ate a simple communal dinner. Najud had explained to her how unusual that was—normally each kazr had its fire and meals separately—but while the weather was clear, he encouraged this gathering for the sake of helping these clan fragments bond together.

  Penrys approved. We’d be cooking outside for ourselves anyway, so I’m just as glad someone else is doing it for the group.

  “Tomorrow,” Najud said, “we’ll see what we can find in the encampment and around it. Some tasks we know already—Penrys says she’s found more of the herd strays in the area, so she’ll look for them in the morning with Sharma and bring them into the herds. They’ll need an anchor there to receive them, even if we’re not going to be moving them—that’ll be you, Dimghuy.”