At last, Rhavas and the steppe ponies were off the ship. Sailors strained and shoved to get the galley back into the water. They all cheered when it floated again. And they jeered at Rhavas, shouting, "So long, holy sir!" "We'll never see you again, by the good god!" "Good luck—you'll need it!"
Rhavas only shrugged. They trusted in their god. He trusted in his. He did not think Skotos would let him fall before he accomplished what he had in mind. He booted his horse forward. Before long, he left the Astris—and the Empire of Videssos—behind and rode out onto the Pardrayan steppe.
Videssian writers often likened the vast plains to the north and west of their realm to the ocean. Rhavas hadn't understood the figure of speech when he lived in Videssos the city or Skopentzana. Now, seeing the terrain, he did. Everything was green and gently rolling. When the wind whistled through the tall grass, it made it bend and rise like waves skimming across the surface of the sea.
And, like the sea, the steppe was vast. When Rhavas sailed to Skopentzana, he was rarely out of sight of land. Even so, he got a vivid sense of the sea's immensity. That same feeling struck him now. The steppe swept on for what might as well have been forever. It looked the same in every direction. He might have been all alone there, alone as if no other human beings existed now, ever had, or ever would. There he was, by himself, under an infinite sky, moving across an equally infinite landscape.
He built a small fire when the sun went down. The wheat cakes he ate with his smoked meat seemed less stale after he toasted them. He worried that the flames might draw plainsmen, but was glad to have them when wolves began to howl in the distance. The sea had its sharks. The steppe had predators as well, and not all of them went on two legs.
When morning came, he woke undiscovered and undevoured. He mounted a different steppe pony and led the other three behind him. On across the great, unchanging plain he rode.
A band of nomads found him four days later. The plainsmen were out hunting. They thought they'd come across better game than rabbits or their neighbors' cattle. Their harsh whoops as they galloped toward him put him in mind of the croaking and cawing of ravens and carrion crows.
He cursed them. One by one, they dropped from their saddles and thudded to the ground. Their horses slowed and began to graze. Rhavas plundered the food from the animals' saddlebags and kept on in the direction he'd been going.
A week went by before he ran into another human being. The plainsman was riding along keeping an eye on a large herd of cattle. When he saw Rhavas coming toward him, he broke away from the herd. Rhavas got ready to fell him as he'd felled the other Khamorth. This nomad, though, neither aimed an arrow at him nor drew his sword. Instead, waving, he shouted something in his own language.
He sounded more curious than angry. "I don't understand you!" Rhavas shouted back in Videssian.
Hearing another tongue intrigued the Khamorth. He yelled something else. Again, Rhavas answered in Videssian. By then, the nomad was close enough to give Rhavas a good look at him. He was a young man with an open, friendly face. Jabbing a thumb at his own chest, he said, "Argippash." Then he pointed at Rhavas and mimed curiosity.
"Rhavas," Rhavas said. "I am from Videssos." He pointed south and tried to use sign language to show he'd come a long way and been traveling for some time.
Argippash exclaimed excitedly to show he understood. He used gestures of his own to invite Rhavas back to his tribe's encampment. He didn't seem like a man intent on murdering a stranger. After a moment, Rhavas figured out what he did seem like: a man who'd found something unusual and who wanted to use it to win points from his friends and neighbors. Rhavas didn't mind. He'd hoped to get a friendly reception from one of these bands, but hadn't been sure he could. This seemed his best chance.
The plainsmen's camp wasn't much different from that of Kolaksha's Kubrati. The chieftain here was a barrel-chested graybeard named Takshaki. To Rhavas' surprise and delight, he knew a little Videssian: less than Kolaksha had, but enough to make himself understood. "Learn from traders," he said. "You trader? Got wine?" His bushy eyebrows quirked up hopefully. He knew what he wanted, all right.
"No, I am not a trader," Rhavas answered. "I am a priest."
Takshaki's face fell. "Phaos, Phaos, Phaos," he grumbled. "No want hear Phaos." He said something in his own language to Argippash. The younger man spoke defensively—something that had to mean, How could I have known?
"I will not speak of Phos," Rhavas promised. "If you want to hear me, I will speak of Skotos. If you do not want to hear that, I will not speak of any god. Instead, I will tell you that much of northern Videssos lies open to you nomads and to your flocks and herds."
"We hear. We on way." Takshaki cocked his head to one side. His eyebrows rose again, in a slightly different way this time. "Why you tell? You Videssos." He corrected himself: "You of Videssos."
"I have a feud with Videssos," Rhavas said. The Khamorth chief frowned. Rhavas did his best to explain. When Takshaki got it, he got it all at once. He understood the idea; he'd been missing the word.
He might have been a barbarian, but he was nobody's fool. "Videssos big," he said, stretching his arms wide. "You one man." He held up his right forefinger. "How one man feud with big?" He grinned as he used his new vocabulary.
Rhavas pointed his finger at a hawk circling above the encampment. "Curse you," he said, and the bird plummeted out of the sky. Takshaki and Argippash and the other nomads who'd gathered around to see the strange new arrival all exclaimed in astonishment. Rhavas gave the chieftain a courtier's bow. "I am one man, yes. But I am not weak."
"You do to man, too?" Takshaki asked.
"I can," Rhavas answered.
The nomad plucked at his long, thick, curly beard. "You do with this Skotos?"
"Yes, that's right," Rhavas said eagerly.
Takshaki folded his arms across his broad chest in a truly kingly gesture. "You stay," he declared.
Stay Rhavas did, for the next several months. More than a few men in Takshaki's tribe learned Videssian from him. He picked up the plainsmen's language, studying it with the same dogged persistence he'd given to his theological research back in what was now a vanished time. The tribe's shaman was a man named Budin. He dressed in a fringed costume, as Lipoksha had, but he was not effeminate. Rhavas' sorcery and doctrine intrigued him, as his intrigued Rhavas. Despite differences of birth and culture, they were kindred spirits.
"You want us to hurt Videssos," Budin said when they'd learned enough of each other's languages to be able to talk fairly well.
"I do indeed." Rhavas nodded.
Budin clicked his tongue between his teeth. "A renegade is more dangerous than a man from another tribe," he observed. "He knows his own too well."
"No doubt you are right," Rhavas said. Videssos and Makuran had used that truth against each other to great effect. He hadn't thought a barbarous shaman would be able to see it, but if the man had . . . "I aim to be as dangerous to Videssos as I can."
"Videssos has done things to you." Budin did not make it a question.
"Videssos certainly has." Rhavas nodded again.
"But what has Videssos done to Takshaki's tribe? What has Videssos done to the Khamorth?" the shaman asked.
Maybe he did not think Rhavas would have an answer for him. But Rhavas did: "Videssos has held you away from land where you could graze your animals. Videssos has held on to gold and goods and wine that could be yours. Videssos has been too strong to attack. Now Videssos is weak. Many plainsmen have already entered her." He deliberately used the Khamorth word for going into a woman. "Will Takshaki's tribe stay behind when others grow rich? You were already on your way to Videssos."