Chapter One: A Night Run CHAPTER ONE A NIGHT RUN TATEN, THE SEAT OF THE PÉKYU OF THE LYUCU IN UKYU-GONDÉ: THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE TWELFTH YEAR AFTER STRANGERS FROM AFAR ARRIVED IN THEIR CITY-SHIPS, CLAIMING TO SERVE SOMEONE NAMED "MAPIDÉRÉ" (BY DARA RECKONING, THIS IS THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE FIRST YEAR IN THE REIGN OF FOUR PLACID SEAS, WHEN KUNI GARU PROCLAIMED HIMSELF EMPEROR RAGIN AND ESTABLISHED HIS CAPITAL IN REBUILT PAN). The stars pulsed in the firmament like glowing jellies in a dark sea. The eternal surf sighed in the distance as the almost-full moon''s pale light illuminated a field of tents as far as the eye could see, each as white as the belly of a corpse-plucker crab. Goztan Ryoto staggered out of one of the larger tents, a thin pelt tunic draped over her shoulders and a skull helmet dangling from her hand. The tent''s garinafin-hide flap fell back heavily against the frame, muffling the angry curses and din of clashing bone clubs inside. She swayed on her feet as she tried to regain her balance. "Steady, votan!" One of the two guards standing by the tent opening rushed up to support her lord. Casting a glance back at the tent flap, the guard asked, "Do you want us to--" Goztan shoved her away.
"No. Let ''em fight. I''ve had enough of them slinging insults at each other over dinner like children--can''t even have a drink in peace." She struggled to pull the skull helmet over her clean-shaven head. "I''m guessing you won''t summon any of them to your bed tonight?" asked the other guard. "It''s too bad. Kitan took a bath earlier today"--she lifted her eyebrows suggestively--"and he made sure we knew it." Both guards laughed.
Goztan glared at them through the eye sockets of the skull helmet. "I''d love to see either of you try maintaining a peaceful household with four husbands." Something crashed to the ground inside the tent; a furious howl of pain followed. The guards looked at each other but remained where they were. Goztan shook her head in exasperation. The cool breeze had cleared her head of kyoffir-haze, and after a moment, she said, "I''m taking a walk. The audience with the pékyu is first thing tomorrow, and I need to plan out what I want to say. Keep an eye on them; intervene only if Kitan''s head is about to be bashed in.
" "It is a very handsome head," said one of the guards. They lifted the tent flap and ducked in, eager to witness the domestic drama among the chief''s consorts. Goztan strode aimlessly through the wide avenues between the tent-halls of Taten, her face flushed from rage and embarrassment. Despite the bright moonlight and the cool breeze, few of the thanes and warriors gathered in the Thanes'' Quarter were walking about, for evening was a time reserved for the fire pit and ancestral portraits, for family and kyoffir. For a tiger-thane like Goztan, the chief of the Five Tribes of the Antler, roaming alone through the tent-city at this hour instead of spending time with her spouses was a choice bound to rouse gossip. Although the skull helmet covered her face, it was still too distinctive to make her completely anonymous. Goztan was beyond caring. She began to run, her legs pumping faster as her breath deepened and steadied.
The skull helmet isolated her from the world at large, and her breathing resonated in her ears like the crash of the distant surf. At twenty-nine, she was in prime fighting shape, stronger and deadlier than she had been during the years when she had fought most of her battles. The sensation of boundless strength coursing through her limbs and the rhythmic slapping of her bare, calloused feet against the ground calmed her until, gradually, she fell into a trancelike state. She imagined herself soaring freely through the air on the back of a garinafin--instead of being stuck here on the ground, plodding through a morass of competing obligations that threatened to trip her with every step. She should be swooping through the sky and scattering her enemies with the flame tongue of her mount, getting drunk on their terrified shrieks, taking delight as cattle and sheep and hide tents and waybones and earthen storage pits turned to ash and roasted flesh. She was meant to be a fighter, not a mediator for petty power struggles among her consorts: aloof Ofta; hotheaded Kyova; crafty Finva-Toruli; and sweet, sickly, paranoid Kitan. Ofta''s tribe had the most cattle; Kyova''s tribe laid claim to the most extensive grazing rights; Finva-Toruli''s tribe had the least amount of everything except an overabundance of ambition; and Kitan''s tribe resisted her in everything, yearning to return to the days before the Five Tribes were united, before she was in charge. Each had his own agenda, pushed for by his tribe''s council of elders; each presented a different claim on her time and affections; each was trying, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to maneuver himself into the position of being the father of her firstborn.
The Five Tribes might be united as one in name, but in reality they were more like five eels forced to share the same narrow cave in the coral reef. The pékyu''s peace had brought many benefits, but it wasn''t suited to her temperament. She had journeyed almost a thousand miles to Taten for the first time in six years ostensibly to plead the Five Tribes of the Antler''s case for grazing rights by Aluro''s Basin, but the truth was that she wanted to get away from all the elders and chieftains and clan heads who hounded her to settle minor disputes in their favor, pestered her to make trivial decisions, nagged her about why she still refused to bear an heir, years after she had become the chief of the Five Tribes and had been elevated to the rank of tiger-thane. If only I had also left my husbands behind. Darkness. The flickering torches and flapping war banners, made from the tails of foxes, wolves, and tigers, faded like wisps of dreams. Without intending it, she had run beyond the limits of Taten, the pékyu''s roving tent-city. The pale beach spread before her, glistening in the moon''s silvery glow, inviting her to dive into this earthly reflection of the celestial river of stars.
She ordered her imaginary mount to slow its beating wings as her heels sank into the yielding sand. What had happened to those exhilarating first days of her marriage, when she had thought that five hearts could beat as one, that betrayals and plots were behind her, and that the Five Tribes of the Antler could finally take their rightful place as the model of a new Lyucu, a united people no longer terrorized by Agon raiders or invading strangers from beyond the sea, no longer riven by bloody internecine warfare, a proud race whose bloodlust would be channeled into war against winter storms and summer plagues, against starvation and flood and drought, against heaven, earth, and sea? She had taken all her husbands in a single ceremony to show that they were all equal, despite their differences in age. To celebrate the act of union, she had ordered the tribes'' best bone-crafters to fashion a new weapon: a magnificent axe replete with symbolism. She was the blade of the axe, made from a tusked tiger''s fang, and her husbands were the handle, four yearling garinafin ribs tied together with twisted bundles of horrid-wolf sinew. She had given it the name Gaslira-sata, the Peace-Bite. Closing her eyes, she imagined the way the handle dug into her palms as she wrapped her fingers around it. A perfectly balanced weapon, equally suited to be thrown through the air to decapitate an Agon pilot''s head as to be swung on the ground to cleave in halves the torso of a Dara barbarian. The Peace-Bite, long starved of blood, now lay dormant in her tent, wrapped in a sheath of sharkskin, while her jealous consorts raged and plotted and argued and jostled and fought to be invited to her bed.
What am I going to say to the pékyu tomorrow? The truth? "For ten years, the Tribe of the Four Cacti have driven their herds to the land promised to us on the shores of Aluro''s Basin ahead of our arrival in spring, leaving us with nothing but roots and dung. Since we can no longer press our claim by force, the elders have been sitting in front of my tent day and night, wailing for me to do something. My first husband thinks I should offer you our store of Dara jewels to persuade you to rule for us. My second husband counsels against it because he thinks his tribe would have to sacrifice more treasure than the others. My third husband thinks I should imitate the elders and kneel before you to move you with my tears. And my fourth husband tells me at every opportunity that my other husbands are plotting to kill him. I want to lose myself in drink because it''s impossible to think with all four of them bickering and screaming without cease." In her mind, she could already see the pékyu''s eyes glaze over, and then he would dismiss her with a pitying but resolute wave of his arm.
Her jaw clenched with the imaginary humiliation. "Who goes there?" A man''s voice woke her from her fantasy. Two male guards stood in her way, bone clubs resting over their shoulders. She saw that she had wandered so far from the edge of Taten that she was approaching Victory Cove, where the city-ships from Dara were anchored. The massive hulls, still breathtaking despite years of neglect, blotted out the stars and gently undulated in the sparkling sea, their silvery masts and spars reminding her of the conifer forests near her homeland in the foothills of the mountains at the edge of.