“What happened?”
“They wanted to know how many of us lived in these hills. I told them just one other family a quarter-hour walk up the trail. I advised them not to go back there, that the bear boy was dangerous, but they insisted. Only two of them came back an hour later, and they were in a hurry to leave.”
“Do you really think the Hannegan would chase Valley runaways this far outside the Empire?”
“We know it. Others have been killed closer to the Province. Filpeo Harq exploits people’s hatred for gennies, and calls us criminals because we fought our way out of the Valley. Some of his guards were killed.”
While they were unhitching the horses, Blacktooth noticed two cows with shaggy coats in a pen next to the barn. They were not ordinary farm animals, and appeared to be Nomad cattle. But Nomad cows would have kicked and butted their way out through the boards of the fence by now, so he decided they must be hybrids. Or genny animals, like their genny owners. For that matter, the Nomad cattle probably descended from a few successful freaks. Sometimes, rarely, an apparent monster, whether man or beast, proved to have superior survival value.
The gennies’ hospitality improved sharply after the bad beginning. Apparently not of Shard’s family, the hunchback had disappeared. Soon Ædrea had killed a fawn; she brought a cup of its blood into the house and presented it to Chür Høngan, who looked at it in frozen silence.
The cardinal was turning red as he choked back laughter. When the Nomad looked at him, Brownpony hid his mouth. Høngan snorted at him and took the deer blood from the girl. Growling at her, he frowned mightily and downed it at a gulp. The girl stepped back as if in awe. The Red Deacon’s laughter exploded, and after a moment they were all laughing except Ædrea.
“Well, Nomads drink blood, don’t they?” she demanded. Blushing at the laughter, she went to dress the fawn.
“Some do,” said Holy Madness. “On ceremonial occasions.”
After an evening meal of veal-tender venison, black bread, peas, and mugs of cloudy home brew, they talked again, crowding around the fire in Shard’s house. Only the Nomad was missing; pretending to speak little Ol’zark, he had taken his blanket roll and gone to bed early in the carriage after losing a drawing of lots for a place in the house. The other loser was Blacktooth, who was glad to sleep away from a headsman, a cardinal, a crazy priest, and several portents, including a pretty female tease.
The common language among them was Ol’zark, but when Shard asked the Oriental a question, Wooshin replied in broken Churchspeak. After this had happened three times, Brownpony turned to him and said, “Wooshin, speak the language of our hosts. That language is Ol’zark Valleyspeak of the Watchitah Nation.”
The Axe bristled and stared at Brownpony, who gazed at him evenly. “Valleyspeak is the language of our hosts,” he repeated.
Wooshin looked down at the floor. The room was dead silent. He looked up, then, and said in flawless Texark, “Good simpleton, the answer to your question is that by profession I was a seaman and a warrior. But in my later years I cut off heads for the Mayor of Texark.”
“And how did you sink to that, Ser?” asked a thin voice from Ædrea.
Wooshin looked at her without anger.
“Not sink, not rise,” he said in bad Churchspeak, then returning to her tongue: “Death is the way of the warrior, girl. There is no honor in it, nor any dishonor, if one is just being oneself.”
“But to do it for the Hannegan?”
Wooshin’s normal expression was relaxed, alert, about-to-smile, wrinkled about the eyes, humorous, scrutinizing. But now it was as frozen as a corpse. Facing Ædrea, he arose slowly and bowed to her. Blacktooth felt his scalp crawl.
Then the Axe looked at the Red Deacon as if to say “See what you made me do!” and went to take a walk in the night. It was the last time the old manslayer ever resisted speaking Ol’zark, but Blacktooth noticed that when he did so, he always imitated Shard’s accent, and he called it Valleyspeak. He treated Ædrea with extreme courtesy during their stay. There was no mistaking the bitterness of his regret, but regret for what? Blacktooth was unsure.
After two days of intermittent light snow, they stayed at Arch Hollow, as the Shards called it, for six days, while Chür Høngan spent most his time riding out to investigate the conditions along the trail. Wooshin too was gone most of the time, but made no account of his activities, unless to the cardinal in secret. It seemed best to wait until other passing traffic began to shovel its way along in the near vicinity.
On the second night they sat around the fire in the center of Shard’s lodge. Brownpony tried to elicit the family’s story without asking too many questions. His skill in conversation soon led Shard into recounting his family’s adventures since the famine and the exodus. There had been a mass escape attempt ten years ago. At least two hundred were hunted down and killed by Texark troops as they fled through forests and up streambeds across the crest of the ridge. At least twice as many escaped the troops that were there both to protect the Watchitah people against intruders and to prevent the escape of the gennies. The Valley was more than a valley; it was a small nation which had kept the name of its place of origin until the conquest. No one had counted the population, but Shard called it a quarter of a million, causing Brownpony to raise an eyebrow. Fifty thousand was closer to popular consensus.
“The approaches to the Watchitah are well guarded by the Hannegan, but the patrols could not catch so many at one time,” said Shard. “Probably half of the dead were killed by Texark troops and the others lynched by farmers. Ædrea, of course, could have escaped by passing for normal, becoming a ‘spook.’ My daughter is very brave to remain with us. The spooks among us are the ones most hated and feared. They can marry unsuspecting normals and pass on the curse, give birth to monsters.”
“How safe are you here from the natives?” Brownpony wondered. “I think of this as outlaw country.”
“It was, and is, to some extent. The nearest town is two days away. They know we’re here. The priest visits us every month, except in winter. He and the baron govern the town. There has been no trouble. Only ’Drea goes to town. Of course she wears the green headband. We’re south of the Denver Republic, but the Church is respected here more than in the Empire. The papal highway is patrolled, of course. Still, there are occasional outlaws, but they are looking for traveling merchants. We have nothing here to invite robbery.”
“Are there more of you living near here?”
“You saw the hunchback, Cortus. His family lives next door. But the only family behind us is the one with the bear boy.”
“Shard, I am the Secretary for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Concerns.”
The old man looked at him with suspicion. “If you really are, then you don’t need to ask such a question.”
The monk could feel a tension bordering on hostility in the room but it passed in silence. It seemed clear Shard was lying about the presence of other gennies in the region.
After the dishes had been washed outside in the snow, Linura entered and sat beside, but a little behind, her brother. Then Ædrea came in and dropped cross-legged on the floor beside Blacktooth, who stirred restlessly and almost stopped listening. He wanted his rosary back. Her girl-smell teased his nostrils. Her knees were shiny by firelight. When she noticed his gaze, she pulled a blanket over her lap, but smiled briefly into his eyes before attending the conversation again. Remembering that this coy creature had grabbed his penis at their first encounter, he nudged her.