They had not been married long, the Judge Lapidoth bar Shmuel and Dvora bat Lizabet, when they rode up the Bashan Pass and out of Eden Valley. They were still in the Pale—Fort Kidmi and the northern border were three weeks away, if you had good horses and pushed hard—but the steppe was not the valley. Here on the windswept upland, packs of stobor, tamerlane prides, and solitary land gators were still a menace; worse were bandits, sometimes nomad raiding parties slipping past the patrols. Worst of all, the Saurons' Angband Base loomed beyond the frontier at the entrance to Tallinn Valley. The People—haBandari, in their own tongue—had been at war with the Saurons since the first of the accursed breed set foot on Haven.
Dvora waved up at the steep tumbles of rock on either side of the pass; low blocky fortresses armored them like a cliff lion's scaly mane. Someone blew a ram's-horn trumpet back. The pass was crowded with traders' caravans from half the world, haBandari herders taking their horse-herds down to the lowlands for birthing, or women making the same journey for the same reason. Many of those women were from outside the Pale, paying rent here rather than tribute to the Saurons for use of Tallinn Valley. The Bandari asked only goods. The Saurons demanded women as well.
Traffic thinned as they turned north, until by the second week there was only the odd herdsman's tented camp or a ranchhouse to mark this as inhabited land, that and the graded crushed-rock surface of the road. By Earth standards they traveled through an Arctic wilderness of lichen, scrub, and adapted Terran grass, but humans had lived on Haven for a thousand T-years. To Havenite eyes, this was rich land; as rich as anything outside a lowland valley, or the great continent-spanning equatorial depression of the Shangri-La. It was cold enough to crinkle the hair in their nostrils in the thirty-six hour darkness of truenight, but trueday and dimday were warm with summer, and they had hospitality for most stopovers. If not, the double sleeping bag that had been a wedding gift was warm enough, with two.
Now and then they stopped to hear a dispute over grazing of herds or an inheritance. Dvora was as cheerful as if she had won her first case. Her husband grinned; she had, by talking him into taking her along as assistant and recorder—the alternative was death by precedent and brief. The Law allowed that a man who was newly wed might stay home to cheer his wife, but in these days of Diaspora on Haven the Law frequently yielded to necessity.
"So you come along to cheer me instead," he said, as they rode side by side. Their stirrup-irons made an occasional musical ting; the pack-muskylopes behind blew out a blubbery cry through their hair-filled nostrils.
Dvora smiled at him around a stick of biltong she was chewing on. "Keep the sklems up here from skinning you, you mean," she said indistinctly, her strong white teeth busy with the hard dried meat. Lapidoth was tall for one of the Bandari, his long braid of hair a rufous brown; his wife was more typical, of medium height, olive-skinned, dark of hair and eye.
The ruby on her left hand glinted in the pallid light of Byers' Sun; it had been his mother's and her mother's before that until he came along, the eldest of four brothers and no sisters at all. God only knew how many generations of women had treasured it, a surprising vanity for people like themselves. Dvora prized it not just for its beauty, but for the words with which he had accompanied the gift. "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her worth is far above rubies."
Not part of the ceremony, yet Dvora had not hesitated to improvise as well. Her hand had trembled once, convulsively, in his, but then she had spoken without faltering: "I will do you good and not evil all the days of my life." Apparently, she thought that breaking precedent to ride out with him fell into that category. ("It does!" she had insisted. "The Proverbs say we're supposed to bring food from afar, not fear the snow, consider a field and buy it, and you can't do that locked up.")
"Who's next?" he said as they halted at a crossroads well.
Nothing moved across the rolling land but the shadow of an ice-eagle circling against the great reddish disk of Cat's Eye, falling huge and faint on a distant herd of sheep. Lapidoth chuckled as he hauled up the skin bucket of water and splashed it into the trough by the well, watching the shepherdess' dogs chivvy the bleating herd into a tight clump; she would be waiting with her bow in hand.
"Botha, pleksman," the Judge's wife said. Yeoman ranch-holder. "Tax evasion, claim for exemption due to hardship," she recited, then: "Hee-yee, back there!" The riding crop in her hand snapped at the nose of one of the muskylopes, as it tried to shoulder her pony aside at the trough and the horse shied at the sweep of a curled horn. The clumsy, shaggy beasts were native to Haven's steppes and hence needed less water than the Terran horses. Not that that prevented them from trying to take more than their share.
Rather like Botha, Lapidoth thought; then he put all prejudgment aside with a practiced effort of will.
They turned aside onto the plaintiff's land; it was nearly a quarter-cycle's journey to the wowenwerf, the homestead of Bothasplek. Nothing much showed aboveground but kraals, the skeletal frame of a windmill-pump, a few fields of irrigated fodder and greens . . . and the felt-and-leather tents of Botha's neighbors, who had come to the trial as law, custom and desire for a break in the routine of rural life demanded. Smoke blew from the chimneys in the turf roofs, bringing to Lapidoth and Dvora the taste of ash and the promise of warmth.
"Botha bar Hans fan Tellerman, stand forth!" Lapidoth said, in his best ceremonial voice.
The central room of Botha's ranch house was the usual type, three-quarters sunken into the ground, fieldstone below and whitewashed rammed earth above. Bedrooms for him and his wife and his children, his younger brother and his family, his widowed sister and her children, and the half-dozen young clansfolk who worked for him on shares gave off the main room; farther down a corridor were storerooms, kitchens, loom-shed, smithy, and ice-lined pantry. There were good, colored rugs in the central room, around a ceramic chagal stove; tools and weapons were racked on the walls. Bothasplek was household and business and military unit all in one, as was common in the Pale's portion of the steppe, and universal near the northern border.
Right now the circular room was crowded with neighbors and kinsmen and even the second assistant of the chief of Kumpanie Tellerman, Clan Tellerman, who happened to be up near the border too. He held the status of aluf—commander's power over his kinsmen. Muskylope-oil lanterns lent steady amber light and buttery scent to the air.
"What have you to say?" Lapidoth asked.
The written and oral depositions were over, and the accused had a right to reply in summation.
Botha blinked, his big hands working. He was a square-built, square-faced man with a deep chest, a typical high-steppe Bandari in his worn leathers. His hands and face bore scars; this was the frontier, after all. The lack of respect in his voice was not typical at all.
"I deny that the assessment itself is just," he said. "I've lost stock to hotnot raiders twice this last Haven year"—almost eight T-years; most people still used both systems, as was convenient—"and what did Fort Kidmi do for me, that I should waste labor and working-stock helping them?"
"And you were caught smuggling twice last year," one of the neighbors broke in, "and fined for it, bar Hans. More sheep than you lost to the raiders—more sheep than you say were lost to the hotnots, and you're too friendly by half with them for my taste."
There were two words for foreigner in Bandarit; gayam meant anyone not of the People and was a mild insult. Hotnot meant high-plains nomad, savage, and was a serious slur.
"Order," Lapidoth said, as the accused cursed and shook his fist, and arm-waving discussions erupted. The offenses were all there in the records, anyway. "Botha bar Hans, of Kumpanie Tellerman, do you dispute the facts of this case as stated?"
"I dispute your right to tell me what to do on my own land, you Eden Valley pimp of a fan Reenan!" he barked, his wind-burned olive skin flushing darker. There was a shocked murmur, and the chief's assistant spoke sharply:
"A little more respect for the blood of the Founder, you!" he said, half-rising. Fan Reenan was Piet van Reenan's clan; all the clans descended from unit-commanders in the original band of refugees Piet had led. "And this land isn't yours, it's the clan's land, given you in trust as it was to Hans bar Yitzhak before you—and your father never shorted his dues."
"Thank you, aluf fan Tellerman," Lapidoth said, "but no more interjections, please." He consulted with the lawspeakers on either side, local folk with no direct interest and of known integrity.
"Botha bar Hans, in the name of kapetein and of the People, by the Law we keep, hear the sentence of the Judge of the People.
"You withheld your road dues, and paying them will not cause you to suffer hardship. The dues are assessed on all, for the defense of all; so says the Law. You will pay to the commander at Fort Kidmi the labor of three fit adults for seven cycles; this you owe. For the offense of late payment, as much again or its value in silver or other goods; your aluf or your clan chief to make the assessment. No others of your clan are to aid you in this payment."
A gratified murmur; Botha was not popular with his local kinfolk.
Botha stood silent, glaring. Lapidoth went on: "And you will remit the illegal charges for water, grass and campground you have imposed on those who came to this law-speaking."
At that the accused did speak, or howled: "There are too many! Their beasts are eating my home-pasture bare!"
"Then you're overgrazing it," Lapidoth said, looking to the Tellerman aluf. A man's clan chief allocated land, and saw that the holder did not abuse it. The aluf nodded. It would be looked into.
Botha ground his teeth audibly. Lapidoth said: "Here are thirty neighbors and landsmen of the accused, folk of the same district. Do any dispute this verdict? Let them speak here, or hold to the peace of the Law."
Silence. "Judgment is given."
As Dvora's pony paused to investigate a knotted patch of ground cover, Lapidoth turned to her.
"I want to be off Botha's land before first-cycle night so we don't have to accept any more of his hospitality!"
Both of them had grown heartily tired of watching him watch them at mealtimes, or hearing him apologize for the necessity of serving tref food, which he had probably ordered up on purpose—unlike the farmers back in Eden, most haBandari kept the basic dietary laws whether they were Ivrit, Christian or sacrificed to the anima of the Founders. The People as a whole were about one-third of each, varying from clan to clan.
Even the local fan Tellerman clansmen didn't like Botha bar Hans.
"I feel sorry for his sister," Dvora said.
"Why?" Lapidoth asked.
"She's pregnant. One of the ranch hands, I think."
Her husband nodded. Embarrassing at the least, by Bandari morals—they were not a prudish folk, but they respected marriage; and she would have to leave soon for the fan Tellerman hospice in the Eden Valley, where higher air pressure made it safe to bear children. Safer, at least. Coming from a household fined for lawbreaking would heighten the embarrassment to a real ordeal. He smiled as she pressed her hand to her own stomach; another four T-months to their own first.
"She should give her brother better advice," Lapidoth said.
"She said he hasn't been listening lately—she needed a shoulder to cry on. Evidently Botha had a run of bad luck a few years ago, and it embittered him. He's a hater by nature—didn't you see his eyes? Wouldn't put it past him to ambush us." Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, she always said. Paranoia was a survival trait on Haven. Lapidoth tugged at the strap of his rifle; he was authorized to carry one of the expensive weapons. Not that Botha would really be that stupid; still . . .
"Come on, slowpoke!" he cried, his voice carrying too loudly in the thin steppe air.
Dvora's pony, a trade from Botha's kraals and about as cantankerous as the man himself, jerked the reins through her fingers and started to browse on a tangle of brownish ground scrub. Dvora first tugged, then sawed on the reins, to no effect. Trust a horse of Botha's to have an iron mouth as well as an iron constitution! The crossbreed was a poor match for her own gentle Eden Valley mare, but she was stone-lamed back at Bothasplek. Finally Dvora got its head up and tightened her grip on the reins, only to be thrown forward as it grabbed another mouthful.
"Ai-ya!"
A shriek of bloodthirsty glee cut through the air, and a dropping shaft struck Dvora's mount in the rump just behind the blanket-roll at the cantle of her saddle. If she had not been sprawled on the pony's neck, the arrow would have struck her. The pony bolted, bucking and twisting. Dvora wrapped her arms about its neck and clung, but she was too far off balance to begin with. Her grip broke: she tumbled end over end, and lay still.
Lapidoth swore horribly as the bandits boiled up out of the hollow; Bandarit was an excellent language for profanity, having inherited richly from both Ivrit and Afrikaans in that respect. He clamped legs to signal the horse to stillness and brought the rifle up. Crack, and a long billow of dirty-white smoke; the archer leading the gang pitched backward out of the saddle with a hole in his leather breastplate. Lapidoth's hands worked rapidly; bite a cartridge open, drop a pinch into the pan, work the lever to open the breech and push the charge and bullet in with a thumb. Lever back to lock the breech, pull back the hammer. Sight low on the charging figure, horribly near; squeeze the trigger, ting the flint comes down on the frizzen in a shower of sparks and crack again. This time the bullet struck the horse rather than the man, but he went out of the saddle in a fall that landed him on his head.
The third man was riding at him, no time to reload again. Sh'ma, Yisroel, Lapidoth had time to think, raising the empty gun to protect himself; no time to draw his saber. The bandit was snarling, sweeping back a meter-long yataghan for an overarm cut. Then his face dissolved in a shower of bone and blood as a pistol shot exploded from behind Lapidoth.
Limbs and bladder threatened to give way as he slid from the saddle, but he controlled himself enough to stumble to his wife's side. Somehow, Dvora had managed to fall as softly as she could—I'll never say that ground scrub has no purpose for existence except to break a muskylope's leg again, he vowed. God, what a woman! Half dazed as she must have been, she had managed to reach her pistol, aim and fire in time to save his neck.
She still held the heavy double-barreled flintlock. It shook in her hand, and she brought up her wrist to steady herself. Still, the barrel drooped; just as well, Lapidoth thought, seeing his wife's eyes glazed with horror and what he hoped wasn't concussion. Her braids tumbled free of her knitted cap; one dangled in the mud and blood that smeared her face.
"Dvora?" he called, making his voice gentle. As far as he knew, she had never killed, never seen violent death before. Every Bandari trained for war, but training was not the same.
"I got him," she announced, her voice faltering. "He would have killed you."
"Killed us." Lapidoth said, and knelt beside her. "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all," he whispered in Ivrit and smoothed back her hair. She let her head sag and allowed him to straighten her, feeling over her limbs for breaks.
"Nothing . . . I think . . . get the muskies . . . ." she whispered. "Their horses too. Don't worry . . . about me."
No one could let a chance to catch and claim horses or muskylopes go by. And the bandits' saddlebags might hold extra food, some evidence of whether they were outlaws from Dede Korkut's strictly ruled yurts or honored members of a particularly feral tribe. Or Botha's men in disguise; they were nondescript, dressed in nomad felt, but that could be subterfuge. There were Caucasoid genes among many steppe tribes, and Turkic blood cropped out among haBandari now and then. Although the stink was strong evidence; the People were a cleanly folk.
"Go on!" Dvora pushed at his leg. "I'll build a fire . . . ."
Rather than upset her further, he mounted and collected the beasts, who hadn't strayed far. A quick search of their baggage yielded five daggers, a skin of mare's milk, some herbal-smelling smears that he discarded when Dvora grimaced at them, and a firman, a letter to Botha. He read the Turkic script well enough, even this semi-literate scrawl; it was from Mustafa, a Rolling Plains outlaw who called himself a chief and led a varying number of sheep-stealers, backstabbers and horse thieves in the country northeast of the Pale, up Rungpe way.
Ambush, was it? By Yeweh, Botha could run for Tallinn Valley and live under the Saurons' banner of the Lidless Eye after this. Stoning would be all he could expect from his own people or the kapetein's justice—killing by stealth, bringing in outsiders to attack a fellow Bandari and offering violence to a pregnant woman.
"Mustafa," he murmured to Dvora. "And Botha. They were in this together. This proves it."
"A wonder they can read," she said, her voice acid though shaky. Then her eyes went wide, and she coiled in on herself, her lips pale and moving in silent protest, oath or prayer.
"Can you ride?" he asked. Even shaken as she was, she might be better off riding through the night to Tallinn Town than camping here. He tucked the firman into her saddlebags and pulled out a blanket to wrap around her as she rode.
But Dvora was shaking her head. Fear clenched in his belly as she tugged at the leather breeches she wore, lowering them in a gesture incongruous this far from the peace of their bedroom. They were stained with blood.
"I'm going to lose it," she whispered, amazed.
"The fall?" Lapidoth was personally going to kill that damned pony if it had made her miscarry.
"The fall, maybe. And the altitude. I was told, if I were spotting, not to worry too much, just lie down and keep warm. It started yesterday, but we had to get out of there . . . ."
Lie down and keep warm. On the steppe, a quarter of it permafrost and liable to freezing temperatures even eight Terran months into the two-year-long summer. Wonderful. Their first child. Easy to say that it might never have survived; Lapidoth wanted to howl. Instead, he patted Dvora's hand. He still had a life to worry about. His wife's.
"I'll build a fire, heat water . . ." Damn, he wished she hadn't ridden out with him.
Dvora's hand was lax, pallid, but the pulse in her wrist, though weak, was steady. Now, Lapidoth thought, if only she didn't hemorrhage, they had every chance of getting her to safety. Rest till Byers' Star rises, he thought. At dawn, they would set out.
"But we have to move," she whispered. "They could come back, see what happened to their friends."
"You can't ride," he told her. "At least sleep till morning." It was late dimday; she should stay sleeping while it was relatively warm. When they had to move it would be early truenight, and the motion would help keep her from freezing.
"No!" She started to rise, and he restrained her. "Tie me to the saddle . . . . I'll make it . . . ." Then, with a flicker of her usual wit, "You don't want me to get all upset, do you?"
Caught between the cliff lion and the tamerlane, Lapidoth thought He took what seemed like an age to lift her to the pony's back, settle her in warmly, and tie her to the saddle.
"Horses," she murmured. "I'll lead them; you guide." Slowly they started off, a tiny, feeble party under the unwinking gaze of the Cat's Eye. It provided enough light for Lapidoth to scout out their way. They were nearing Angband's territory now, where the Sauron fortress loomed over the Tallinn Valley. Lapidoth hoped against hope to see riders on the steppe: they might be nomads of Dede Korkut's tribe, friendly to the Pale—but they could be bandits, just as likely.
He turned back toward Dvora, who had drifted into uneasy, muttering sleep. Her forehead was only slightly warm; he tucked the blankets more firmly about her, thankful that childbed fever had not claimed her out here with no mediko or salves. Carefully, not to disturb her, he detached the reins of the spare horses from her saddle. If worse came to worst, they would provide a diversion.
For an instant, the shots and screams of Dvora's nightmare blended into reality. She waked, screamed, a huge hand clamped against her mouth. She tried to bring her teeth to bear.
"Quiet!" Lapidoth hissed at her. "We just got unlucky."
He stood at her stirrup, adjusting saddlegirth and the ties that bound her. "I'll try to distract them; you get through. Take the firman back to the Pale . . . there's proof. Throw a big rock at Botha's execution."
"No!" she cried, despite his muffling fingers. "Don't throw yourself away . . ."
"I'm not a hero, remember? I'll be as careful as I can," he told her. Then he mounted, slapped her pony on its rump, sweaty despite the cold, and rode in the opposite direction, leading the captured horses until, with a shout, he could set them galloping in a panic.
I'll be as careful as I can. As the gelding broke into a stumbling run, Dvora realized he had promised her nothing at all. And, as the shouting and shooting rose, then subsided, she realized he would never tell her anything again.
With nothing else to do, she rode on, tears freezing on her face. Her skin was growing hotter, more taut, even as she wept. Possibly, she had a fever. If she were fortunate, she would die of it. If she were very fortunate, she might even deliver the evidence, and then die. Dizziness wrapped her in an embrace rougher than Lapidoth had ever dared, and she rode on through the night.
The pony's gait slowed to a trot, then to a dispirited stumble. Once or twice it stopped to graze, and she lay dozing, waking when it moved. The last time that happened, she found herself covered with sweat. Her forehead was cooler and she was shivering, but with honest cold, not fever.
"Sentenced to life," she muttered to herself, grasping the reins in hands disgustingly weak.
Life without Lapidoth—and she had had him for such a short time! She pulled off her glove, wiped her face, then clenched her thighs, numb after the countless hours of riding through the day and early into first-cycle night. The packing between them . . . she should change it, but it lacked the heat and wetness of too-heavy bleeding. Stronger than I thought. Damn.
She must be near the town now, unless the pony had wandered in circles for most of the night. If she was going to live—which, barring bandits, looked likely—she would have something to show for it: her vengeance on the people who had robbed her of husband and child-to-be. I will have justice. Never forget; never forgive.
Only one thing would stop her. If the Saurons found her, she had every intention of blowing out her brains with her pistol. The People did not surrender to that enemy, ever—still less a woman to be forced into their accursed breeding program. Lapidoth's ring winked on her finger. "Strength and honor are her clothing, and she will rejoice in times to come." Yeah, sure.
Then she heard the wailing, a thin, plaintive noise that forced a shiver up her spine. She glanced around her and saw in the far distance the looming, windowless bulk of Angband through the truenight blackness. Sick and dazed, she had ridden far too close to it. And now she rode across the culling ground that was so much a part of the Saurons' bloody history, on the home world and here: the blasted land where children who did not meet the standards of . . . the Master Race—her mind spat out the epithet from hatred that was old before mankind ever soared from Terra—were set out to die . . . .
Or to be taken up. By nomads, by haBandari travellers—it had been done for centuries; it was a mitzvah, a righteous deed. Some children were too frail to live, the powerful Sauron legacy overstressing tiny bodies, striking them dead just as surely as a plague. But others . . . no reason others might not be claimed, grow up healthy.
Grow up hers.
The cries came more and more faintly. Whatever child wailed out there, hungry and abandoned, would not survive until morning; the cold or stobor, drawn to the sound and the smell of a lonely infant, would see to that.
A child to replace the babe I lost. The thought became obsession, then armor for her weakened body. She reached down and slipped loose the ties that bound her to the saddle. Lapidoth's knots, she thought, undoing the familiar tangles. Then she blinked away the tears. She would ride in quickly, quietly, seize the child, and be gone.
A hundred meters from where she thought the child lay, she dismounted and tethered her pony, then advanced with all the trailcraft she had. Ahead of her she heard stumbling, and her hand went to her pistol. Did Saurons stumble? Not with their night sight; and what would it be to them if others took up their discards . . . her baby! Already, she thought of the child lying in her path as hers; that the Saurons could toss it out to die filled her with rage as hot as what she felt for Lapidoth's killers.
Now she could hear how the cries changed. There were two voices; two infants! Children which, if they thrived, would have the Sauron genes, and would grow and raise more children, strengthening the breed. Such children, if they survived exposure, usually thrived. If her own breasts could not produce milk, she would need a very strong wet nurse indeed, she thought. She quickened her pace. Just a little longer, she thought at the babies ahead. Your mother's coming!
Second-cycle night at Angband Base: black and freezing, with neither Byers' Sun nor Cat's Eye in the sky for light and warmth. Two tiny voices cried in the frigid darkness.
Both were weaker than they had been an hour before. Soon both would be still forever, unless . . .
Kisirja came stumbling, drawn by the sound, but not drawn enough to dare show a torch. Aye, Saurons were not known to shoot at skulkers on the exposure ground, but no one on Haven ever felt easy putting Saurons and mercy in the same thought.
Kisirja stooped by the abandoned infants, scooped one up in firewalker-fur gloves, pressed it against her. Warmth and softness made the baby quiet. "Mine now," Kisirja crooned. "Mine." She held it inside her sheepskin coat.
"Mine now," Dvora heard another woman croon. "Mine." A rustle told her that the interloper had placed one of the infinitely precious children inside her heavy coat. Dvora drew closer, saw the woman stoop, her gloved hand touching the second child . . . .
Not both! One is for me! Dvora cried to herself, strode forward, and snatched up the child. How good its tiny body felt in her arms! She could almost believe this was the child she had carried in herself, not whatever it was that Lapidoth had buried ("Don't look, Dvora; you don't want to see") beneath scrub and a few flat rocks. Her child . . . and his.
She had to give the other woman credit for speed; she jumped back, ready to fight Though she tried to keep even her breathing quiet, the infant she held betrayed her location with a squall that already sounded stronger for the warmth it took from her body.
"Who are you?" the woman whispered in Turkic. "What do you want?"
What do you think? Dvora chuckled faintly, appalled that she could laugh. She summoned her own knowledge of the speech of the tribe.
"The same as you, child of the steppe. The Bandari hate the Saurons no less than you, but we need their genes if we ever hope to meet them on equal terms. And there are two babies here, so we need not even fight. Go in peace."
It was a bluff. Dvora felt the bleeding start between her legs again. She barely had strength to stand, much less fight a woman of the steppes, hardened by life among the yurts and sheep flocks. Usually, the nomads respected haBandari, left them alone. Perhaps this one . . . please God . . .
She heard a faint choke of breath that she identified as a sigh of relief.
"Allah and the spirits grant you the same peace, haBandari," the tribeswoman said and hurried away. Dvora could see her releasing her muskylope from the Finnegan's fig to which it had been tethered. Dvora waited, gathering her strength for the long stagger back to her own beast. Curiously, she seemed to draw strength from the tiny bundle that squirmed inside her garments, seeking nourishment from breasts that might never fill.
It took one infinity of struggle to stumble back to the gelding and another to mount it, to tie herself to the saddle and finally to urge it into unwilling movement toward Tallinn Town.
Before she fell into an uneasy sleep, the child resting against her heart, she rehearsed the story she would tell in Tallinn Town. She hadn't miscarried on the steppe, but given birth; despite all odds, the babe had survived, and so had she. That much of the story she would invent. Lapidoth's sacrifice and death—she would die before she altered the truth of that by so much as a breath. She would have the satisfaction of Botha's condemnation and death.
And the truth of the child's birth would remain for her own people. Chaya, she thought. Her grandmother's name. My daughter, Chaya.
"Allah and the spirits grant you the same peace, haBandari," Kisirja said. She knew nothing but relief that they could share. The Bandari lived southward; the ones who came north were traders, but they were also warriors whom few dared to rob. She hadn't heard this one approach, while she'd made enough noise on the exposure ground to wake a gorged tamerlane.
The other baby quieted as the Bandari woman picked it up. Somewhere not for away, a stobor started yowling, then another and another, until a whole pack was at cry with a sound like the laughter of demons. Kisirja hurried toward her muskylope, which was tethered to a Finnegan's fig out of sight of Angband Base.
If the Bandari woman had a mount, it was nowhere near Kisirja's. She untied her muskylope and climbed onto its broad, flat back. She tugged on its ears to send it back toward the clan's yurts. She wanted to gallop, but not during second-cycle night.
Not much later, the stobor pack trotted through the exposure ground. The nasty little predators soon left, hungry still.