Soldier’s Boy kept as still as a small animal hiding in deep grass. He glanced over at Jodoli. Sweat was running down the sides of his face and he looked ill. His eyes were glassy and his mouth hung open. He looked back at Kinrove, who was weeping openly now.
Dasie turned away from the table at last. She looked around at us all. In her two hands, she held a round of dark brown bread. “What should I do with you?” she asked Kinrove. “I do not wish to kill you. I think that if you will agree to leave off this mad dance, you could still be of great use to your kin-clan. And even more use to me, if you would help me. But I don’t know if I can trust you. I thought of making you swallow a little pellet of iron, or shooting some into your body. I’ve heard that can destroy a Great One’s magic completely. I don’t wish to do that to you. Or to Jodoli. But I have to be sure that neither of you are plotting against me behind my back. If you will not help me, I at least need to know that you will not hinder me.”
“You have destroyed my dance.” Kinrove drew a deep, shuddering breath. “My dance is broken. I will need whatever magic I can rebuild to save my own kin-clan. You have condemned the People. I will not have the power to save them. But I will do what I can to keep at least my kin-clan safe.” He struggled for another breath. Almost reflexively, he glanced toward his feeder, Galea. She stood, hands clasped before her, her face tensed in an agony of fear for him. He took another breath. “Dasie, I will not hinder you,” he said quietly. “I will not permit any of my kin-clan to hinder you. By the magic, I swear this.”
“Put your swords away,” she said quietly to the men who surrounded him, and they sheathed their weapons. She glanced at Galea. “You may tend to your Great One,” she told her, and the woman snatched a bowl of food from the table and raced to his side. Other feeders followed her, surrounding Kinrove, wiping the sweat from his brow with cool, damp cloths, offering water, wine, and delicacies, and all the while exclaiming with dismay at how his magic had been drained by the iron.
Dasie had turned her attention to Jodoli. “And you?” she asked him severely. “Will you try to stop me from what I must do?”
Jodoli was not without his pride nor did he lack intelligence. His head had sunk forward onto his chest. Sweat ran freely down the sides of his face and his robe was drenched with it. He rolled his head back on his shoulders and looked up at her as she stood over him. His eyes were horribly bloodshot. “Can you believe,” he wheezed out, “anything a man says when a sword is at his chest?”
She stared at him. Then she made a curt gesture, and her warrior moved the tip of his blade away from Jodoli’s chest. Jodoli’s breathing eased but he still said nothing to her.
Dasie did not have the stomach for it. She gestured angrily at the feeders and servers who huddled still along the wall. “Come to him! Bring him water and food.” Then she turned back to Jodoli. “I ask you, by the magic, to tell me the truth; do you intend to hinder me in any way?”
“What could I do to stop you?” he demanded of her. “I have seen far more of the Jhernians than you have. Like Kinrove, I think what you do is madness. You will stir up the hornets’ nest and all of us will be stung. I think I will do what Kinrove does; I will do all I can to protect my own kin-clan, and hope that the rest of the People can care for themselves.”
Despite being at her mercy, he spoke to her as if she were a small, selfish child. His disdain was not lost on her. “When I have driven the intruders away,” she said to him through gritted teeth, “then I will send for you. And you will come to me and thank me and beg me to forgive you for how wrong you were. I think you may be surprised, when I put out the call for warriors ready to defend our lands, how many of your folk will answer that call. Many of us are sick and weary with waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to drive them away.”
I thought he would be wise and keep silent. Firada was at his side now. She held a cup to his lips and Soldier’s Boy watched enviously as he drank deeply. When he lifted his face from the cup, he drew three deep breaths. Dasie had started to turn away when he spoke to her. “They have always come to our lands, Dasie. The intruders are not newcomers here. Go to the elders if you do not believe me. Dream-walk to the oldest of your kin-clan and ask. Always they came, at high summer, to trade with us. In times past, before they built their Gettys Fort, we let them come into the mountains and some even journeyed as far as the Trading Place. How else do you think they came to know of it? It was only when they tried to build their road through our Vale of Ancestors that we had to stop them. If you kill the intruders, even if you kill every one of them at Gettys Fort, do you truly believe no more will come? Can you be so childish, so simple as to believe that killing them will drive them away forever?”
