It was unexpected. Equally discomfiting. “Well,” I said finally, “I guess that means less work for Halvar, then, if anything does happen. Since there’s no one to tell for either of us.”
Del didn’t answer at once. And then when she did it was very quietly, with an odd lack of emotion. She spoke uplander to Halvar, explaining the truth of things. I didn’t catch all of the words, but I did catch his expression.
He looked at Del. At me. Then drew in a breath and addressed the gathered villagers, adult and child alike.
I heard Del’s hiss of shock. And then she was trying to override Halvar’s little speech, telling him no repeatedly. But he was adamant; I heard the word for honor.
Trust him to hit on the right word. It shut her up immediately.
“What?” I asked irritably.
Del was tight as wire. “I told him.” Her teeth were gritted. “I told him. That there are no names. There are no kin. Only the Sandtiger and Delilah, with blooding-blades for kinfolk and the circle for our lodge.”
I waited a moment. “And?”
Del sucked in a deep breath, held it, released it. Slowly. Silently. “So,” she said, “they will sing. They will make a song for all our lost ones, a song of farewell, because they had no kin to sing it to for them when they died, to guide them into the light.” She swallowed visibly. “As you and I have no kinfolk to sing the songs for us.”
I heard the first voice. Halvar’s: the headman’s privilege. And then a woman’s voice: his wife’s. And another and another, until all the village was singing. Voices only; no pipes, no drums, no sticks, no tambors, no chiming finger-bells. Only voices.
Voices were enough.
Wrapped tightly in my cloak, I sat beneath a star-blotched Northern sky and thought only of the South. Of the desert. Of the Punja.
Where a woman had borne a boy—a strong, healthy boy—and left him to die in burning sands beneath a blazing sun.
Twelve
The stench was worsening. Halvar, riding a little ahead of Del, who rode ahead of me, seemed not to notice, which told me either he had no sense of smell, or he’d grown so accustomed to the stink he no longer noticed it. To me, it seemed impossible, in view of the magnitude of the odor. Hoolies, I could taste it. It made me want to spit.
I leaned over in my saddle, making sure I didn’t threaten the stud, and spat. Twice. He waggled an ear, shook his head, walked on.
We climbed relentlessly toward the dragon, which was making its presence known through smell and smoke. Both filled up nose and mouth, lingering unpleasantly in lungs, causing a tight, dull headache that made me irritable as well as impatient. There had been no sign of hounds since Del and I reached Ysaa-den, though we’d heard them. And no sign of any dragon; as we climbed, our closeness to the rock formations and crumbling spires caused them to lose their eerie shapes and became nothing more than stone and earth, which is what I’d said the thing was all along. I felt suitably vindicated; unfortunately, no one wanted to share in my victory.
As we climbed, Halvar entertained us with stories about the dragon and Ysaa-den. Trouble was, I was too far behind the headman and Del to hear everything over the noise of hoof on stone; moreover, his mountain dialect rendered his uplander mostly unintelligible. Which didn’t particularly bother me, if you want the truth; I was content to match the rhythm of the stud’s steady climbing and spent my time looking around watchfully. Part of me waited for hounds. Now that I no longer wore the Cantéada ward-whistle, the stakes were a bit different. But I still had a sword, and so did Del.
So did Halvar, but it was an old, ill-tended bronze sword, of no use to anyone, let alone a headman untrained in fighting. I had the feeling Halvar would be more hindrance than help, if it came to making a stand. But you can’t just pat the village leader on the head when trouble arises and send him off to mother and father; the hounds had eaten Halvar’s, and anyway he was too nice a person to dismiss so easily. There would have to be some show of dignity and honor in the name of the headman’s pride.
From the heights came a mournful wailing howl that changed, midway, to a vicious growling snarl. Halvar halted his mount.
“Far enough,” he said, so emphatically even I understood it. “I am headman, not hero; such things are for sword-dancers and sword-singers trained on Staal-Ysta.”
Which meant Halvar was more than a nice person; he was also pretty smart.
We were two-thirds of the way up the mountain. The track had changed to trail some time back; now it began to resemble little more than a trough formed by melting snow. I asked Halvar why, if they so feared the dragon and its hounds, the villagers even bothered to climb far enough to make a trail.