Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [14]
Much to his delight, Jahdo found a lot of food wrapped and cached in various cloth bags, including some chewy honey cakes. Meer had him bring out some dark bread and cheese, which Jahdo sliced up with his grandfather’s knife. Before they ate, however, Meer recited yet another prayer, though mercifully it was a good bit shorter than his effort back at Cerr Cawnen, to thank the god Elmandrel for the food.
“The gods do matter a fair bit to you, don’t they, Meer?” Jahdo said.
“They do, and so they should to all the Gel da’ Thae, for we are sinners in their sight, more loathsome than worms.” Meer held out his hand for lunch. “Thanks, lad. That cheese smells good, I must say. At any rate, we all sinned mightily against the three hundred sixty-five gods and the thousands upon thousands of the Children of the Gods, back in the old days, when the Red Reivers fell upon us. Your people, now, they suffered much at the hands of the Lijik Ganda, but as victims they did not sin.”
“Er, well, that be splendid, then.”
Meer merely grunted and bit into his bread and cheese. Jahdo followed suit, and for a long time neither of them spoke. Jahdo had heard stories of the old days from priests and singers among his own people, who recited them at public feast days, such as the celebrations of spring and the harvesttime, but he had never considered that those ancient events would someday reach out dead hands to touch his own life. The Slavers lived only in stories, didn’t they, to frighten children into behaving? Stop pinching your sister right now, or the Slavers will come get you—that sort of thing. But he’d just found out that they were real, and he was heading their way.
Far, far to the east, or so the stories ran, lay a beautiful kingdom that once had belonged to the ancestors of the Rhiddaer folk, where they lived in peace and prosperity near the trees and springs of the ancient gods. One dark day a new people appeared, warriors who thundered down on horseback and killed or enslaved the peaceful farmers. On their stolen land and with their slave labor, these invaders built stone towers and towns made of round houses, where they lived at ease while the ancestors were forced to work the fields. A few at a time, though, the ancestors had slipped away, seeking freedom. Some died in the attempt; others escaped to found a new country, the Rhiddaer, where kings and lords such as commanded the Slavers were forbidden forever by law. Finally, the Slavers’ bloodthirsty ways brought ruin upon their own heads, when a huge civil war, lasting five and a hundred years, tore their kingdom apart. Most of the ancestors escaped during those days of retribution and made their way to freedom in the Rhiddaer. For a long time everyone hoped that the Slavers were all dead, but unfortunately, the warring madness had left them in the end, and their kingdom was prospering again.
“Meer?” Jahdo said. “The old stories do say that the Slavers used to cut off people’s heads and then tie them to their saddles and stuff. The heads, I mean, not the rest of the people. That be not true, bain’t?”
“I fear me it is, lad. The lore passed down from bard to bard confirms it.”
Jahdo dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. After this whole long horrible day, the lore was just one thing too many to endure. He heard Meer sigh and move; then a broad hand fumbled for his shoulder and patted it.
“Now, now, we’ve got to put our trust in the gods. They’ll guide us and protect us, and the Slavers will never even know we were walking their border.”
Jahdo sniveled back his tears and wiped his face on his sleeve.
“Well, I be sorry I did cry.”
“Don’t you think my heart aches within me, too? I tell you again, lad, warriors we are not, and thus the gods will hold us not to the warrior’s harsh honor.”
“All right, then, but if ever I do get home again I’ll have to be a warrior when I grow up. I’ll have to join the militia, I mean. Everybody does. I guess it’s not like that in your country.”
“It’s not, indeed.