Sometimes these days of the march, when she wavered even a little, when fatigue and sun-glare and dry cold winds carried doubt and fear and weakness into her soul, she summoned up Thaggoran out of death in her mind and used him to bolster her resolve. “What do you say, old man?” she would ask. “Shall we turn back? Shall we find a safe mountain somewhere and carve a new cocoon for ourselves?”
And he would grin. He would lean close to her, his rheumy red-rimmed old eyes searching hers, and he would say, “You speak nonsense, woman.”
“Do I? Do I?”
“You were born to bring us from the cocoon. The gods require it of you.”
“The gods! Who can understand the gods?”
“Exactly,” old Thaggoran would say. “It’s not our place to try to understand the gods. We are here simply to do their bidding, Koshmar. Eh? What do you say to that, Koshmar?”
And she would say, “We will go on, old man. You could never talk me into turning back.”
“I would never try,” he would say, as he turned misty and transparent and faded from her sight.
Staring now into the west, Koshmar tried to read the omens in the hard, flat blue sky. To the north there was a line of soft white clouds, very high, very far apart. Good. The gray clouds, low and heavy, were the snow-clouds. She could see none of those now. These were harmless. To the south there was a line of swirling dust on the horizon. That could mean anything. High winds knifing into the dry soil, maybe. Or a band of huge heavy-hooved beasts thundering this way. Or an enemy army on the march, even. Anything. Anything.
“Koshmar?”
She swung around. Harruel had joined her on the hillock without her hearing him. He stood looming behind her, a huge, powerful broad-shouldered thick-wristed figure half again her size, casting an enormous shadow that stretched off to the side like a black cloak flung across the ground. His fur was a dark brick-orange, clustering in bunches at his cheeks and chin to form a savage heavy red beard that all but concealed his features, leaving only his cold blue-black eyes blazing through.
It angered Koshmar that he had come up to her that way, in silence, and that he was standing so close to her now. There was a certain lack of respect in his standing so close.
Coolly she said, “What is it, Harruel?”
“How soon will we be breaking camp, Koshmar?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t decided. Why do you ask?”
“People are asking me. They dislike this place. It seems too dry to them, too dead. They want to pick up and move along.”
“If people have questions, they should bring them to me, Harruel.”
“You were nowhere to be found. You were off with Torlyri, we supposed. They asked me. And I had no answer for them.”
She regarded him steadily. There was a tone in his voice that she disliked and that she had never heard before. With the sound of his voice alone he seemed to be implying criticism of her: it was a sharp, fault-finding tone. There was almost a challenge in it.
“Do you have some problem, Harruel?”
“Problem? What kind of problem? I told you: they were asking me when we were going to leave here.”
“They should have asked me.”
“I said, you were nowhere to be found.”
“Better yet,” Koshmar said, going on as if Harruel had not spoken, “they should have asked no one, but simply waited to be told.”
“But they did ask me. And I had nothing to tell them.”
“Exactly,” said Koshmar. “There was nothing you could have told them. All you needed to say was ‘We will leave here when Koshmar says we are going to leave here.’ Such decisions are mine. Or would you prefer to make them for me, Harruel?”
He looked startled. “How could I do that? You’re the chieftain, Koshmar!”
“Yes. You’d do well to keep that in mind.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to—”
“Let me be,” she said. “Will you? Go. Go, Harruel.”
For an instant there was something like fury in his eyes, mixed with confusion and, perhaps, fear. Koshmar was uncertain about the fear. She had always thought she could read Harruel with ease, but not now. He stood for a moment glowering at her, parting his lips and clamping them again several times as though considering and rejecting various angry speeches; and then, making a grudging gesture of respect, he turned ponderously about and stalked away. She stood watching him, shaking her head, until he had descended into the camp.
Strange, she thought. Very strange.
Everyone seemed to be changing out here under the pressures of life in this place without walls. She could see the changes in their eyes, their faces, the way they held their bodies. Some seemed to be thriving on the hardships. She had noticed Konya, who had always been a quiet and private man, suddenly laughing and singing in the midst of the group on the march. Or the boy Haniman, always so soft and lazy: yesterday he had gone running past her and she had barely recognized him, so vigorous had he become. And then there were some who were growing faded and weary on the march, like Minbain, or the young man Hignord, who went slouching along with their shoulders down and their sensing-organs trailing in the dust.
And now Harruel, swaggering around demanding to be told her schedule for the march, and behaving almost as though he felt he should take her place as chieftain. Big as he was, strong as he was, he had never before let Koshmar see any ambitions of that sort in him. He had always been courteous in his gruff way, obedient, dependable. Here in this land without walls something black and dour seemed to have entered his soul and of late he appeared barely able to disguise his wish to command the tribe in her stead.
Of course that could never be. The chieftain was always a woman: it had never been otherwise since the tribe had been founded, and that would never change. A man like Harruel was bigger and stronger than any woman could be, yes, but the tribe would scarcely trust a man as its leader no matter how strong he was. Men had no cunning; men had no sense of the long view of things; men, at least the strong ones, were too blunt, too hasty, too rash. There was too much anger in them, Yissou only knew why, and it kept them from thinking properly. Koshmar remembered Thekmur telling her that the anger flowed from the balls they carried between their legs, and went constantly to their brains, making them unfit to rule. That was in the last weeks of Thekmur’s life, not long after she had formally named Koshmar to be her successor. And Thekmur had probably learned her knowledge of men at close range, for she had often known men in the way of women, which Koshmar had never done herself.
Gods, she thought. Is that it? Does Harruel desire me?
It was a startling and horrifying idea. She would have to watch him closely. Something plainly was on Harruel’s mind that had never been there before. If he could not be chieftain himself, perhaps he meant to make himself the chieftain’s chieftain. Which she would never permit; but she needed Harruel, needed his great strength, needed his bravery, needed his anger, even. This would take some careful thinking.
4
The Chronicler
It required all the courage Hresh could summon to go to Koshmar and ask to be made chronicler in Thaggoran’s place. Not that he feared being refused so much, since, after all, he would be asking an extraordinary thing. It was being mocked that he dreaded. Koshmar could be cruel; Koshmar could be harsh. And Hresh knew that she already had cause to dislike him.