Snare

Soutan rolled his eyes, then laid a hand on the copy of The Mirror that Warkannan had set down on the table.

‘What is this?’ Soutan said. ‘Not the Qur’an itself?’

‘No. No one can touch the holy book unless they’re ritually pure, so you can’t carry it around in your saddlebags with you. That would be sacrilege. This is just a translation into Kazraki.’

‘So it is a Qur’an.’

‘No, because it’s not in the old language.’

‘But the thoughts are surely the same.’

‘Maybe, but God spoke in the old language, not in Kazraki. That’s why the real Qur’an is so holy.’

Soutan raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘What do you think would happen if you touched a copy when you weren’t pure, whatever that means? Fire from heaven?’

‘Of course not! The law’s just a sign of respect.’

Soutan had the decency to look abashed. Warkannan changed the subject.

They rode out from Haz Evol in the cool of dawn. Warkannan led his small caravan of four mounted men and four pack horses due east, heading for the Great River, where the comnees congregated during the summer. The last of the downs dwindled behind them until the plains stretched ahead, mile after mile of grass, turning from lavender to a deep purple here at the end of the spring rains. The grassland ran to a horizon as straight as a bowstring. Here and there a few orange and magenta fern trees or a stand of blood-red spears rose up to point at the sky; otherwise, there was only grass.

By their first night’s camp, the plains were beginning to get on Tareev and Arkazo’s nerves. It happened to men, their first time out; the cavalry called it border fever, a twitchy way of riding, a certain way of turning the head, staring this way and that, a certain slackness about the mouth as men realized that there was simply nothing and nobody out in the grass but the wandering comnees. Tareev and Arkazo had all the symptoms. At night, they hugged the pitiful excuse for a campfire, flinched at every strange sound, and talked much too loudly when they talked at all. In the heat of summer, raiding parties of ChaMeech rarely travelled any distance from the Rift, but still Warkannan kept a careful watch as they rode. Thanks to the Tribes, the big predatory saurs – the longtooths, the slashers, the grey giants – who once had ruled the plains were scarce these days, at least in the Tribal lands, a huge area from the northern headwaters of the river system south to the seacoast.

‘You never know, though,’ Warkannan told Tareev and Arkazo, ‘when you’ll run across one of the meat-eaters. The Tribes haven’t wiped them out by any means.’

‘They can be scared off,’ Soutan put in. ‘It takes several men to do it, but shrieking and clashing sabres together gives the saurs something to think about. They’ve learned they can find easier meals than H’mai.’

‘Good,’ Arkazo said. ‘But I wouldn’t mind seeing one.’

‘From a distance, I wouldn’t either,’ Soutan said. ‘The greater the distance, the better the view.’

They did regularly see the six-legged grassars, the herds of grazing saurs who provided meat to the Tribes and the predators both. The females stood about four feet high at the shoulder, the males as much as six, and where the bright red female heads were slender, the piebald males had broad skulls crowned with three long horns. Both sexes had thick pebbled hides and long tails ending in a spike of bone. Whenever they smelled the horsemen, the males would raise their massive heads, snort a warning, and slam their tails against the earth. In answer the females shrieked to call their young hatchlings back to the safety of the herd.

Warkannan would always halt his little caravan and let the grassars lumber away. Despite their solid size, their six legs gave them a surprising agility; they could begin a turn on the forelegs, stabilize on the middle pair, and swing the hind legs around to follow while the spike on their tails slashed any predator close behind them.

‘How do the Tribes kill them, anyway?’ Tareev asked.

‘With arrows and spears,’ Warkannan said. ‘They weaken them with arrows, then move in with the spears for the final kill.’

Tareev rose in his stirrups to watch the herd trotting off. He was grinning as he sat back down. ‘I’d love to join one of those hunts,’ he said. ‘Kaz, are you game?’

‘You bet,’ Arkazo said. ‘If we find a tribe that’ll let us ride along.’

‘The point of this trip,’ Warkannan broke in, ‘is to reach Jezro safely and get him home the same way. Charging around hunting saurs isn’t in the itinerary, gentlemen.’

‘Yes sir,’ Tareev said with a martyred sigh. ‘The way we’re going, we might not ever see any Tribesmen anyway.’

‘Oh we will,’ Soutan said. ‘I’m keeping a good look out. We need information.’

Every time they stopped to rest the horses or to camp, Soutan took a strangely-wrapped object from his saddlebags and walked off alone to stare into it. When one morning Warkannan asked about it, Soutan unwrapped the silk pieces to reveal a polished sphere of heavy glass, engraved with numbers and strange marks around its equator.

‘It’s a scanning crystal,’ Soutan said.

‘What do you see in it?’ Arkazo said, grinning. ‘Spirits and demons?’

Tareev snickered.

‘That’s enough, gentlemen,’ Warkannan snapped.

‘Thank you, Captain.’ Soutan looked the two young men over, then shrugged. ‘I see your university didn’t teach you good manners.’ With that he stalked off into the grass.

Warkannan turned to Arkazo and Tareev. ‘Front and centre, you two,’ he growled. ‘Soutan believes in his damned sorcery. We need his help. Hell, without him, we’ll get nowhere. I want you two to treat this magic business with every show of respect. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes sir,’ Tareev said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It just goes against the grain, somehow,’ Arkazo muttered. ‘But of course, sir. Whatever you say.’

When Soutan returned, Tareev and Arkazo apologized.

‘Accepted,’ Soutan said. ‘By the way, there’s a comnee some ten miles ahead of us.’

‘You’re sure?’ Arkazo said.

‘If I hadn’t been sure, you young lout, I would never have mentioned it.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just hard to believe that bit of glass is magic.’

Warkannan started to intervene, but Soutan smiled.

‘Why?’ the sorcerer said.

‘Because of the engraved numbers, I think,’ Arkazo said. ‘It makes it look like a tool or something.’

‘Very good! It does, yes. Think about that.’

Soutan walked over to his saddlebags and knelt down to put the crystal away. Tareev leaned close to Arkazo and muttered, ‘Huh! We’ll just see if this comnee ever shows up.’ If Soutan heard, he never responded.

All three Kazraks were in for a surprise when, after some hours of riding, they saw the comnee right where Soutan had said it would be. Warkannan and his men saw the horses first, and only then the sprawl of tents along a stream. Against the brightly coloured trees and the wild grass, the tents, so gaudy in themselves, blended in so well they almost disappeared. The comnee insisted that they eat the evening meal with them and brought out skins of keese to drink with the guests. When Warkannan asked his carefully prepared questions, he found that several of the men had indeed heard of a Kazrak exile who rode with a comnee. Somewhere to the south, they told Warkannan, and a spirit rider was the one who took him in. When Warkannan and his men were ready to ride out the following morning, Warkannan gifted their hosts with a sack of grain and received warm thanks in return.

‘No, no, I should be thanking you,’ Warkannan said. ‘For your company.’

And for your information, Warkannan thought. And yet, as they rode away, he felt heavy-hearted, to be hunting a man down like a saur. He’s one of the Chosen, he reminded himself. They’re more vicious than any beast alive.

In summer every comnee travelled to the Great River, which flowed, wide but shallow, from the north through the heart of the Tribal lands all the way to the distant southern sea. Apanador’s comnee arrived in the middle of a sunny day. Once the tents were set up and every scrap of fuel in the area scrounged and set drying, the men put out snares for small game. Along the riverbanks grew fern trees, spear trees, brushy shrubs, and mosses in a riot of orange fronds and yellow threads. In this thick vegetation lived the turquoise chirpers, the purple and grey spotted snappers, red-boys, and a dozen other kinds of meaty reptiles. They’d supply meat until the grassars came to the river to drink.

Ammadin had never thought of Kazraks as hunters, but Zayn had brought with him a perfect weapon for snaring tree lizards –three brass balls connected with leather thongs. Down by the river she saw him stalking a redboy. It scrambled up a fern tree, then made the mistake of shimmying out onto a frond, where it stood squawking on its six skinny legs. Zayn swung the balls around his head and made them sing like a giant insect, then let them fly from his open hand. The balls wrapped the cords around two pairs of the redboy’s legs and dragged it writhing from the tree. Zayn scooped it up with both hands and snapped its neck.

‘That’s amazing,’ Ammadin said. ‘You’ve got a good eye.’