Chapter Twenty-One: Karevan

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Mourdag whistled. "Mount up. They're coming."

Taking the long route back to camp along the river to the coast, we'd come down the valley to the karevan road hoping to catch up with a certain Median merchant due to pass, perhaps inspect his wares, and maybe do some business. The men always had hides from hunting and spoils from their raids to trade if they found something they fancied and, though we'd managed to assemble most of what we needed since, we were still low on a few supplies after our foiled expedition north to the Budini. 

We'd stopped to graze the horses while we waited to meet the karevan from the east as it reached a section of the Raiding Road, a regular route used for driving home cattle from raids on eastern tribes here in the southern territories. When the karevan was due, Aric not only liked to examine their wares but add a few more bowmen along this stretch of country as they passed through, though the traveling troop was sure to be heavily armed. Indeed, most of the men who marched with it were mercenaries hired to protect the goods it carried from predatory raids. I pulled myself up from the grass and rushed to Aruna's side to unbind his hobbles. Familiar flashes moved across the horizon. Mourdag took the mirror from his belt, angled it into the sun, and flashed a signal back. 

I still couldn't say how many men might be stationed at border encampments like ours or just how long the border extended, but it was clear there were similar Suramatai camps across the Tanais to mirror our Skythai ones. There must be women among them like me. After all, they were my mother's people, and it would not have been uncommon for noblewomen to be among the warriors guarding the border. Only a few miles separated me from a world so like this one—and yet so different. 

It was just across that river, not so long ago, that my own mother had been a young warrior. She had earned the right to wed by killing her tally of enemies. When a wealthy foreign king came calling to trade for six of their finest breeding stallions and three hundred broodmares for his herds, he also bargained for a young hamazon bride—the second daughter of the Rokhalani queen—to seal the friendship between our tribes. She traveled with the horses to Bastarnia and became their keeper until her untimely death, never to see her homeland again.

In the distance, a long train of wagons and carts pulled by oxen, pack mules, and asses—flanked on all sides by hundreds of armed riders and footsoldiers—snaked their way along the valley floor beside the river. Our able band might ultimately defeat such a force with our speed and numbers, but we would surely lose more in horses and men than we would gain in goods. It would require an army to take such a large and well-outfitted troop.

“Aric, what is this you have here, my friend?” The karevan leader approached and took hold of Aruna’s bridle. Long and lean, with sun-tanned skin and a wooly black beard, his extravagant but road-worn clothes hung off his wiry frame like rags. “Is this your wife?” He raised an eyebrow. “Your concubine?” Then indulged in a long, lewd grin. 

 “She is not. Takhmaspada, this is Anaiti, of the Bastarnai.” Aric dismounted Isiras, his black gelding, and approached the merchant. 

I wished he would not give my name to strangers.

Takhmaspada leaned in close to Aric. “Name your price.”

I crossed my arms and gave him the foulest look I could manage. 

“She is not for sale,” Aric replied, looking more amused than outraged, as he should have. I was waiting for him to strike the merchant or draw his sword. Something appropriately threatening. But no such defense ever came—just friendly chit-chat.

“I have a buyer looking for just such a thing. He will pay… handsomely.”

“No, my friend, not for any price.”

That wasn’t entirely true, or I would not be here. But I suppose it was good of him to pretend it was so.

“Trust me, you don’t want this one.”

“No? Is she… unclean?”

“No, but I wouldn’t fuck with her if I were you,” Aric warned in his most earnest, stern manner. “This one is a white crow. She was eaten by the Mard-Khwaar and lived.”

Takhmaspada’s jaw fell open. “The androphagi?”

I rested my hand on the hilt of my akinaka and struggled to keep a straight face, avoiding eye contact with any of the other men. My fierce facade could crumble at any moment.  

“It is so. The savage nearly chewed her arm off,” Olgas added.

“Truly,” Bornon said, “she tore the eyes clean out of his skull.”

Takhmaspada stepped back, releasing my reins.

“I owe her a blood debt,” Aric added solemnly.

Takhmaspada held up his hands. “I meant no offense, my friends—my Lady.” He gave a reticent little bow. “As you please….” 

“No worries, my friend,” Aric said jovially and clapped him on the back. “What have you got for us today?” 

He glanced warily over his shoulder at me before taking his leave. “Be my guest.” He made a dramatic flourish with his arm, the wind fluttering the folds of his voluminous sleeve. “We usually have more precious metals and jewels, textiles and carpets, spices and delicacies. Not so much now. These days even Hellenes want iron, copper, and tin. Weapons. Warhorses. Slaves. Wood for ships. Chariots. Charcoal for smithing. Food that will keep. But look at the craftsmanship of this sword,” he said, placing a beautiful akinaka in Aric’s hands.

“Athenai is hungry,” Antisthenes added. “We hear similar requests.”

“If war comes, will it last long?” Takhmaspada asked. I couldn’t tell if he was hopeful or worried. I got the sense that business was good. Rumblings of war in the Greek mainland had everyone on edge and many looking to score ever greater profits.

“Who can say?” Aric answered. “I hope for our sake it ends quickly. Wine is getting expensive, my friend.”

It was a short ride to the seashore from the road where we met the karevan. When Aric suggested the detour, the men leapt at the prospect. The change of scenery did us all some good, and the scent of the sea air was something I hadn’t known since I was a child. The height of summer now, salt wind whipped through the grass atop the bluff, tugging at our hair and clothes. 

“Interesting friends you have,” I said to Aric as we sat and looked out over the sea.

“The karevan driver? Don’t let him bother you. He’s all talk.”

“He’s rude.”

“What will you do, kill everyone who insults you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I just—”

“Will you change his ways, his mind, his trade?”

“He offended me. Should I just accept this?”

“And you probably offend him and lots of other people. My advice: Accept him as he is, an imperfect person. The world is full of them, myself included—and you as well. You are not responsible for his soul, only for your own. Tend to your ways, your thoughts, your duties. Let him attend to his.”

Repugnant to me as his friend was, I could see the good sense in Aric’s counsel. “He has been your friend a long time?”

“It pleases him to call himself my friend. He is a decent enough man in his own way, and he has always kept his contracts with me over the years. But I don’t know if I would go so far as to call him a friend. Not truly.”

“Why not?”

“He believes his wealth buys him honor, and therefore friendship.”

“He’s an obnoxious man, but that seems harsh even to me.”

“Is it? He profits from the lies he tells to sell his wares. What does he produce, what does he create?”

“He transports the goods, though.”

“Indeed. And the horse breeder helps guide the stallion’s cock into the mare, but he doesn’t make the foal. Rest assured, though, he will take all the credit for it when it is born, and he will take all the profit when it is sold.”

“Father says something similar of merchants and traders. They peddle the swords but never fight the wars.” 

“Precisely. One day men like these will rule the world,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Keep them always at a spear’s length.”

We sat on the bluff, watching the west wind ruffle the silken sea for the better part of the afternoon, lulled by the surf’s gentle attack and retreat. The karevan carried jars of aschy, a tart, rich syrup made by hermits in the east. Each, they said, lived beneath a flowering cherry tree, which he guarded with his life, nurturing and maintaining the tree as kindly as it sustained him. The hermits swaddled the trees in thick white felt and burned fires in the orchards to keep them warm in the winter. Year-round, they slept beneath the trees’ branches and sang songs to keep them happy and fruitful. When the trees were content, their fruits ripened sweet. The cherry’s juice, pressed and boiled, turned thick and dark like congealed blood. We bought the karevan’s whole store of the delicacy and passed it around among the nearly three hundred of us to spread on the barley cakes and cheese we’d brought from camp. We sat enjoying the salt breeze on our faces as the men lazed in the grass and gorged on the treats or gamboled about along the cliffside, laughing boisterously among themselves. 

A great eagle flew into view from behind us, golden bronze in the light of the sinking sun. Aric sat up straight to watch her swing over the water, stretching her broad wings and riding a gust of wind high into the clouds.

“I haven’t kept eagles since I was a boy. But they’re perhaps the best hunters of all,” he said, shielding his eye from the sun with his hand. “Ispakaja, my tutor, would take me up into the highlands to scramble into the cliffs while the mother was away and steal a young chick from the nest to rear myself. For hunting eagles cannot be bred in captivity but must be captured from the wilds. She was beautiful, my eagle. I wept bitterly the day I returned her to Artimpasa.” 

“She?”

“We only hunt with females. Far bigger and fiercer than the males.” 

Then the eagle dove. 

“Look!” Aric gripped my arm. 

Like a thunderbolt, the raptor shot down toward the waves. Her talons skimmed the water, and in a blink, she was beating her broad wings against the sky, rising with a little, young dolphin in her grip.

“If I could be a creature other than a man, that’s what I’d be,” he said, pointing toward the sky.

“An eagle?” Of course. The supreme raptor—spirit of Papahio himself.

“The dolphin.”

I glanced at him and back at the eagle, the immature dolphin in its talons, flapping away into the distance with her catch. “Prey?”

“Sooner or later, we’re all prey for something. But, though young, think of all he’s seen. The depths of the sea. The shores of this land. And now the view from heaven. What man of any age may say all that?” He rose and brushed the dried grass from his backside. “We should be going. The Eye of day is closing, and we’re far from home.”

We’d arrived at camp just after sunset and rode to the pastures to put the horses up for the night. The last rays of the sun caught on the river below, turning it into a ruddy serpent twisting its way down the shallow valley toward the sea we’d just left behind. 

“You’ve been quiet all afternoon,” Aric said as we untacked our horses for the night. “I hope the karevan driver didn’t ruin the day for you.”

“Not at all,” I said, hobbling Aruna. “I enjoyed it, and I had a chance to pick up a fine new dagger.” I’d wanted to replace the one I gave away for some time, as I always carried two. “But you didn’t have to do that. I mean, make up those stories.” 

“I merely embellished a little.” Aric flashed a twisted smile. “Besides, it was fun.”

“It was, actually. The look on his face—” 

“That reminds me, I have a gift for you,” Aric said as he fixed hobbles to Isiras’ forelegs.

“For me? What for?” I placed my saddle beside his and studied him anxiously. A gift from him put an undue burden upon me. I had nothing to give in return.

“As a token of our new partnership. And to apologize for Takhmaspada.” He pulled the bridle off the black gelding’s head and let him graze. 

“It’s all right,” I said, taking a straw wisp from my pack and running it over Aruna’s sleek chestnut coat. “It was good speaking to someone who travels as he does.”

“That’s the beauty of our country.”

“The misfits who roam it?” 

“Ha, you’re more right than you know,” Aric said, rubbing the sweat from Isiras’s back with a stiff hemp cloth. He paused and pointed to the ground at his feet. “Here, on this humble spot, we stand at the very center of the world. All springing from the same heavenly source, our broad rivers flow across the country to the sea. Every manner of trade passes through our borders. We meet diverse tribes of men and hear every wisdom thinkable. Like fishermen,” he spread his arms wide, “we stretch our great net across the steppe and catch and keep the best of each for ourselves.”

“This is why I have come to love living in this place.”

He smiled so broadly that his eye nearly disappeared. “Do you? Love this place?”

I ran my fingers through the tangles in Aruna’s tail, smiling to myself. “You said you have a gift for me?”

“I have.” From inside his caftan, he produced an amulet the size of half a walnut shell. Balanced on his fingertips, the deep blue stone was flecked with gold, polished bright, and set in a thick bezel of gold. It was like the dome of the night sky glittering with stars.

“It’s…” I couldn’t think of a good enough word. It was mesmerizing in its beauty.

“It’s lapis lazuli. Mined far away in the mountains at the scorched edge of the earth where the sun rises. Takhmaspada said it was destined for the Queen of Mudrayam, but I persuaded him to give it to me.”

I didn’t know what or where Mudrayam might be, but it had to be a place of consequence by the way he spoke. The gift was too generous. What had I done to deserve it? He’d already been so kind. And no gift was purely an act of generosity, was it? What had I to give in return? I should refuse it, but how could I? Tentatively, I opened my hand, and he set it gently on my palm.

“I have nothing for you,” I said despondently.

“Your gift awaits to be revealed,” he replied with an inscrutable smile and gently closed his fingers around mine and the amulet.

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Chapter Twenty-Two: Ticks

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