“Those exquisite, sad houris. They were the souls of women who died in the desert. From thirst, from neglect, in childbirth, by falling over a cliff and striking their heads—from any and all means. They were the unlucky ones, whose souls were caught up and stolen by the Eupupa before they could escape spontaneously. Captured, and brought here to be kept in that mirage to serve them that we cannot see.” He was gritting his teeth now.
“It is a most unnatural way to not-die, but there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it. No wonder they were so frantic for us to take them away. They are souls that want desperately to rest.” He shut his eyes. “By what means those like the Eupupa can force a soul to do their bidding I do not know. I do not want to know.” Opening his eyes, he turned away from the eastern horizon to look once more to the north.
“Let us leave this place, and try our best to think no more about what we have seen here.”
“But wait!” Ehomba did not, and Simna had to hurry to catch up to the herdsman as he resumed walking. “They were all so ravishing, every one of them. No, they were more than ravishing. They were radiant. Surely not all the women who die in the desert are beautiful. Or do the Eupupa choose them that way so they’ll make better bait for the unwary—like us?”
Striding along, tireless and exact as always, Ehomba did not answer immediately. When he did, it was with a feeling of disappointment. Not in their narrow escape, but in his companion who had asked the question.
“Simna ibn Sind, my friend. You who claim to know so much about women, and to have known so many of them in person. Did you not know that that is how every woman sees herself—inside?” Lengthening his stride, he pushed on ahead, forcing the pace as if he wanted to put not only their recent experience but also the memory of the experience out of his mind.
Simna considered his companion’s words, frowned, shook his head, and caught up to the third member of the party. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve had to try and fight something I couldn’t see. It was lucky for us you’ve seen these Eupupa before.”
The litah spoke without turning his massive head. Both jaws, Simna noted for the first time, were stained dark beyond the black. Occasionally the thick tongue flicked out to lick at them.
“I never saw such before.”
Simna blinked in surprise. “Then how did you know what to fight? How did you know they were even there?”
The wide, yellow eyes turned to meet the swordsman’s. “Don’t you ever see anything outside yourself, man? Haven’t you ever watched a cat, any cat, suddenly tense and strike at what to you seems to be empty air? We see things, man.” Killer eyes flashed. “There’s a lot out there, everywhere, that men don’t perceive. We do. Some of it is to be ignored, some of it is for play, and some of it”—he snarled under his breath—“some of it is to be killed.” With that he lengthened his stride and jogged on ahead.
Left scratching at his chin, Simna watched the tufted, switching tail move out in front of him. “Well I’m glad I’m fugging visible, that’s all I have to say!” With a shrug he moved to match the herdsman’s elevated pace.
Once he thought he felt something brush his face. It was just the wind against his cheek, but he swatted hard at it nonetheless, and looked around, and saw nothing.
Nattering cat, he thought irritably. Filling a man’s head with narsty scrawl. Ahead, he thought he could make out a line of trees, the first they had seen in many a night. With the sight of fresh foliage to boost his spirits, he held his head a little higher as he strode onward, and tried to forget all about the dismal events of the past hours.
“Cats and sorcerers,” he muttered under his breath. A more morose and melancholy pair of traveling companions he would have had difficulty imagining.
XXVII
LACKING IN INNER SENSITIVITY HE MIGHT BE, BUT THERE WAS nothing wrong with the swordsman’s superb vision. The line of trees he had espied from a significant distance was no mirage.
“At last,” Ehomba murmured as they started down a final, gentle slope. Ahead lay a narrow but deep river lined on both sides with small farms and orchards. The leafy crowns Simna had spotted were fruit trees, pungent with blossoms, each verdant upheaval a small galaxy of exploding yellow and white flowers.
The swordsman eyed his friend. “What do you mean, ‘at last’? Why should you be so elated by such a sight? I thought you were the dry-country type.”
“It is true that I love the land where I live.” Dirt slid away beneath the herdsman’s sandals. “But that does not mean I cannot love this more. Any man can love a distant destination more than his homeland without forsaking the latter.”
“Then why don’t you move?” Simna asked him directly. “Why not bring your family, your whole village, up here, where there’s plenty of water and good soil for raising crops?”
“Because obliging as this place may be, it is not our home.” The southerner spoke as if that settled the matter. “Much as plentiful water and fertile land are to be desired, they do not make a home.”
“Then what does?”
“Ancestors. Tradition. A warmth of place that cannot be transplanted like an onion. Certain smells, and sights. The air.” He felt of the sack of beach pebbles in his kilt pocket. “The feel of especial places underfoot. The wildlife you live with.” He glanced surreptitiously at Ahlitah, who was padding silently alongside. “The wildlife you fight with. In a new place all these things are different, alien, foreign. People are the easiest thing to pick up and move. The others—the others are much more difficult.”
Simna shook his head sadly. “I feel sorry for you, bruther. My home is wherever I park my carcass. Preferably a place with good cooking, a soft bed, and a friendly lady. Or a soft lady and a friendly bed.”
Ehomba squinted down at him. “Should I feel sorry for you—or should you feel sorry for me?”
“I feel sorry for all three of us.” Ahlitah did not look up. “You two, for being clumsy, chattering, two-legged hairless apes, and me for having to put up with you.” Turning away, he snorted wearily. “Next time save some other cat’s life.”
“I will try to remember,” the herdsman replied.
They were following a marked path now. No more than a foot wide, it wound like a smashed snake through a leafy field of taro and yam. Yuca bushes shaded the more sun-sensitive young plants.
“Strange.” Shading his eyes, Ehomba scanned the numerous fenced plots and the neatly pruned fruit trees they were approaching. “You would think someone would have emerged to challenge us by now. These fields are well tended. Surely there are wild animals here that would feast on these healthy vegetables if the farmers did not keep them away. And the appearance of three strangers in a tillage ought to provoke some kind of reaction. We could be thieves come to steal their crops.”
“Yes.” With a mixture of curiosity and wariness, Simna studied the luxuriant acreage through which they were traipsing. “If this was my farm and orchard I’d have been out here with arrow notched and ready as soon as anyone showed themselves atop that last ridge we crossed.”
“House,” Ahlitah interjected curtly. Raising a paw, he pointed.
There were three of them, individual homes sharing a small thorn-bush stockade. The gate was open wide, presenting no obstacle to their entry.
“Hoy!” Simna shouted, putting his hands together around his mouth. “Commander of a legion of legumes, come and greet your guests!” There was no response. With a shrug, the swordsman started for the entrance.
The first house had windows, but the glass was of poor quality and did not allow them to see clearly what lay within. An uneasy Ehomba held back.
“I do not like intruding on another man’s privacy.”
“What makes you think there’s anyone here? You can’t violate privacy if there’s no one present to claim it.” Simna opened the door.
Ahlitah hung back with Ehomba, not out of any respect for the intangible called privacy, but because the interior of human habitations hel
d no interest for him. On the single occasion when he had been obliged to enter one, he had found the interior malodorous and claustrophobic. The occupants, however, had proven a good deal tastier than their surroundings.
Looking more puzzled than ever, the swordsman emerged several moments later. “Empty. More than empty, deserted. There’s food in lockers in the pantry, and dishes and clean linen stored neatly in cabinets. Beds are made but haven’t been slept in recently.” He eyed the surrounding trees with fresh concern. “The people who lived here left not long ago but with no immediate intention of returning. It’s my experience that folks don’t do that without a compelling reason, and it’s usually a disagreeable one.”
“Let us try the other houses,” Ehomba suggested.
This they did, only to find further evidence of well-planned departure.
“There must be a town somewhere nearby,” the herdsman conjectured when they had concluded the brief search. “Perhaps everyone has gone there.”
“Hoy, yes.” Simna tried to view their eerily silent surroundings with some optimism. “Maybe there’s a festival of some kind going on.” His expression brightened. “I could do with a little old-fashioned country excitement.”
“On the other side of the river, maybe.” Ehomba gestured with the point of his spear. “There are more farms, more fruit trees, and beyond that I think I see some hills. If the town is fortified, it would naturally be sited in an area affording the most natural protection.”
“Come on then.” With a growl, Ahlitah started toward the river. “If we’re going to have to swim, I’d just as soon get it over with while the sun’s still high enough to dry my pelt.”
But they did not have to swim. A perfectly adequate, well-maintained wooden bridge wide enough to accommodate an oxcart spanned the swift, high-banked waterway not far downstream. On the opposite side they encountered more of the tidily deserted habitations, some built of stone as well as wood that boasted several stories. Each showed similar signs of having been conscientiously abandoned by their inhabitants.
“Must be quite a festival.” Simna was not yet willing to concede that something untoward had happened to the occupants of the fastidiously tended farms and homesteads.
“I hope not.” Padding silently alongside them, the big cat flowed like black oil over the packed earth. “I don’t like a lot of noise—unless I’m the one making it.”
“Maybe it’s a carnival, or a jubilee.” Simna put more than his usual strut into his walk as they approached the first of the foothills. “I could do with making a bit of noise myself.”
As they entered the gentle, forested hills, the path they had been following widened into a narrow but serviceable road that showed evidence of having recently accommodated many wagon wheels and shoed feet. Before long they found themselves passing numerous transient camps filled with people of all ages and description. Men and women alike wore expressions that seldom varied between exhausted and sullen. Even the children were somber and reserved, watching the passing travelers from the haggard depths of eyes wide with silent hurt.
Old men sat motionless, resting stooped heads in wrinkled palms. Dogs chased wallabies around and beneath wagons and carts piled high with household goods, while cats posed imperiously atop piles of bound linens and towels. co*ckatiels and gallahs, parrots and macaws squawked from within cages of wire and wicker, but even their normally boisterous cries seemed muted among their doleful surroundings.
Women cooked food over open fires built of wood taken from the surrounding forest. Ehomba saw no signs of starvation among the bands of wayfarers, or indeed any evidence of physical deprivation whatsoever. Except for their attitudes, all appeared to be in good health.
Some they passed even looked frustrated and angry enough to contemplate assaulting the travelers, but such attitudes underwent a rapid and radical change the instant the would-be aggressors caught sight of the brooding litah. For his part, the great cat ignored the increasingly dense clusters of humans, deigning to exchange glances only with the cats they kept as pets and companions. For their part, the house cats returned his gaze, affirming that each and every one of them knew their place in the hierarchy of felinity without a word, or a hiss, having to be spoken.
“What’s going on here?” An increasingly perplexed Simna kept glancing from right to left as they trudged northward past larger and larger concentrations of dour, depressed people. “Where have all these folks come from?” He gestured back down the road they were walking. “Not from the farms along the river. Those houses still contained all their goods and furniture. These people look like they’ve brought everything they own with them.” He scrutinized one face after another as they continued on, trying to divine from their disconsolate expressions what sort of calamity might have befallen them.
“Look at them—exhausted, dazed, like they have nowhere left to go and don’t know how they’re going to get there. I’ve seen people like this before. People at the end of their rope. Usually they’ve been driven from their homes by some natural disaster, or by some marauding hoard. But these—these folk still seem healthy and well fed. By Geesthema, it’s not natural. Even the children look as if for the past weeks they’ve been spoon-fed nothing but hopelessness and despair.”
Ehomba concurred. “And it still does not explain what happened to the farmers along the river who deserted their homes and fields.” He lifted his gaze to the winding road that led onward into the hills ahead. “Something peculiar is going on here, Simna my friend, and I fear it has nothing to do with a fair or celebration.”
“Hoy, bruther, one doesn’t have to be a keen reader of men to see that. But what?”
“Perhaps the answer lies over the next hill. Or the last.”
They marched on, the butt of Ehomba’s spear striking the ground methodically with each of the herdsman’s steps, marking their progress like the pendulum of a tall, thin clock. The range of hills was not high, but it was extensive. It took them almost a week to negotiate the entire length of the winding road.
The farther north they traveled, the more families and transients’ encampments they encountered, until the hills resembled anthills swarming with displaced farmers and townsfolk. Every time they tried to approach someone to ask the meaning of the unaccountable diaspora, the intended recipient of their questions caught sight of Ahlitah and beat a hasty retreat. Not wishing to panic any of the already obviously frightened migrants and believing it unwise to leave the always hungry litah out of their sight, they continued on, confident that sooner or later they would encounter someone willing to stand and deliver themselves of an explanation.
One, of a sort, manifested itself when they reached the crest of the last hill. The panorama spread out before them was not what they had hoped to descry.
As far as the eye could see, a vast, fertile plan stretched all the way to the northern horizon. Isolated clouds of towering whiteness marched across the sky like floating fortresses, and numerous small rivers and streams filigreed the earth like silver wire. Neatly spaced pockets of construction marked the borders of field and forest, and several towns were visible in lesser or greater detail depending on their distance from the hill.
But no one was tilling the vast patchwork of fields, or working in the towns, or plying the rivers in boats equipped with nets and lines. No pickers worked the orchards, no farm animals roamed the scrupulously fenced pastures. Smoke there was, but it rose not from chimneys but from the burned-out husks of abandoned homes and mills, workshops and granaries. The destruction had been selective and by no means total, as if the devastation had been imposed in a precise and disciplined manner.
In the midst of the robust, healthy pastures and towns there stretched a wall. A hundred feet high, it looked to be made of some yellowish stone. Twenty feet in width, its top was smooth and wide enough to drive wagons along. Or chariots, Simna thought, or cavalry. Armored figures in their hundreds, in their thousands, could be seen running back and forth to position themselve
s along its length, a length that extended as far to the east and west as they could see.
Nor was the wall straight. Here it curved inward, rippling and twisting, to accommodate the path of a river flowing against its base, there it thrust out sharply to create an arrow-like salient. At quarter-mile intervals, battle towers rose another fifty or sixty feet higher than the rim of the wall itself.
Immediately behind it the travelers could see the brightly colored tents and flying pennons of an army on the march, though at this distance it was impossible to assign an identity to the marchers. The glint of sunlight on armor, however, was very much in evidence. Ahlitah could also make out, marshaled in temporary holding pens, much larger creatures clothed for war.
“Mastodons, I think.” The big cat had to squint, as the distance involved was a challenge even to his exceptional vision. “And glyptodonts. Other elephants, and some balucherium as well.”
Simna nodded. “Easy enough to see who they’re fighting.” He gestured toward the base of the hill.
Thousands of figures swarmed over the fields that had been tilled right to the base of the first incline, trampling the crops there, knocking down the neat wooden fences and hedgerows. There were people, of course. No doubt some of them called hastily forth from the first farms the travelers had encountered, called to arms to help defend their country against the invading host.
But there were also dwarves clad in traditional leather and coarse cotton, and arrets, the tall, thin, bark-brown forest people of the west. Among the crowd Ehomba thought he saw a giant or two, massive of brow and heavy of jaw. Unmistakable in their light armor were the chimps and apes, and the smaller monkeys were present in large numbers as well.
