Die for the Flame (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A
fter receiving hard hugs and words of caution from Helan, Clarian and Ranna mounted their horses and, leading a packhorse, headed south along the banks of the Blue River. Clarian again had to impose on Rostan to manage the ferry in his absence, which Rostan wholeheartedly agreed to do, especially after Clarian told him of his mission. Rostan had driven a supply wagon during the war against the Maggan. His home was outside the grassland village of Elan, but he was not so anxious to return there to work on the remote family farm now that the war was over. He was glad for the diversion the ferry provided.

The trail Clarian and Ranna followed paralleled the river due south with the river on their right side and the Grasslands growing profusely on their left. Lining the river were willows that were constantly blown by the wind off the Grasslands. The continuous roar from the rushing water was a familiar companion as it powered around giant boulders and down through fast-moving chutes on its way to the delta far to the south.

Ranna was a stout, middle-aged woman, olive-skinned with a distinctive blue tattoo across her forehead. Her black hair, streaked with gray, was twisted into many braids all about her head. She had gotten out of the habit of wearing her hair in the Kobani style but with a visit to the Kobani about to happen, she had braided her hair with deft fingers. Each braid was threaded through with red strands and gold and red beads.

She sat her horse confidently, as if born to it, as in fact she had been, although now she was a bit plump from being away from the horse culture in which she had grown up. She had changed from the traditional Karran dress to Kobani garb. Over her shoulders she wore a red woven cloth cape with strange symbols embroidered on it. Her split skirt was black, trimmed with red piping, and at her belt she carried a large knife in a leather scabbard. Ranna reflected on her life as she rode alongside Clarian, riding back into her people’s land after so many years. Her piercing black eyes missed little, and she had an intensity about her that suggested quiet strength.

She had first seen Karran men when she was a young girl, peeking out past the doorway flap of her father’s skin-covered house. The strangers, so pale-skinned in comparison to those of her people—and some with blond hair—had ridden into her village leading packhorses and sometimes wagons laden with trade goods. Each spring, her village broke camp far to the southeast and migrated to the grazing lands near the Karran people. They packed their houses on wagons and drove their herds of horses and cattle across the plains to a broad expanse of Grasslands that provided ample grass and water from small but numerous streams. In the spring a few brave and ambitious Karran traders would arrive to trade for hides, horses, cattle, and silver. In exchange, the traders offered weapons, bows, arrows, tools, cooking utensils, cloth, precious colored stones, and gold. Only in these border villages could strangers come without fear of being killed, and even then the strangers had to be very careful. Any slight offense could have a Kobani warrior reaching for a knife.

Ranna’s father was a village elder and led the trading for her village with the Karran. He had skin the color of leather and, like Ranna, had blue tattoos on his forehead and long, braided black hair with red strands and red beads woven in. Her mother was a holy woman and healer who normally remained secluded in her house with her herbs and oils and secret incantations, but when traders came, she ventured out to peruse the wares, with Ranna following close behind.

Ranna remembered when she first saw the young, fair Karran who had accompanied his father on a trading trip. When she saw the color of sky in the boy’s eyes, she was amazed, and she asked her mother how it could be. Her mother told her there were many tribes who had strange features and spoke a different language, but none of them as great as the Kobani.

Even as a young girl, Ranna was precocious and approached the Karran traders as they laid out their goods, taking interest in their strange looks and impossible language, as well as a keen interest in their goods. She got used to the traders winking at her as she visited their displays. The first time it happened, she had been frightened and raced back to her mother. Kobani did not wink, and it was a bizarre experience, but she soon learned it was all in good fun, and as she got older she would laugh or smile and wink back.

On a spring day, Ranna approached the trader’s young son. The day was warm and the sky clear with a soft breeze off the Grasslands that smelled like fresh hay. The three Karran—two men and the boy—had unloaded their wagons at the edge of the village and laid out on blankets some of their goods to be traded. The Karran men had learned some Kobani words over the years, and Ranna’s father had learned a few Karran words and, with hand signs and shaking or nodding of heads, they worked out their agreements. The Karran traders were not allowed to enter into the village, nor were they served food or drink, and all proceedings were kept strictly formal—sometimes even hostile—on the part of the Kobani who gathered to study the trade goods.

On this day, the traders had spread out cookware, knives, bowls, pots and rolls of dyed cloth, in addition to weapons. Kobani women crowded in front of the displays quietly discussing and pointing, asking to handle the items.

Ranna soon found herself standing next to the young blond boy. She stared at him openly, without any shyness. “What is your name?” she asked.

He looked startled for a moment and then answered in heavily accented Kobani. “Orlan. What is your name?”

“Ranna. Why is your hair so white?”

“Why is your hair so black?” he replied.

Ranna thought about this and smiled and then laughed.

Orlan laughed, too, his white teeth flashing in a tanned face. Orlan thought Ranna was a pretty girl for a Kobani, though the tattoo across her forehead was not the most attractive feature. But he liked her ready smile, and he kept his eye on her as she followed her mother, stopping in front of each blanket and studying the items there.

A Kobani leader who had not been able to reach an agreement with Orlan’s father over an array of weapons returned leading a fine bay mare. Orlan’s father looked over the horse, checking its teeth, running his hands over the legs, and finally, smiling broadly, he nodded.

Piles of fine hides accumulated, along with worked leather items, saddles, bridles, and crafted silver pieces. By late afternoon, the Karran trade goods were almost all gone and replaced with Kobani items, which Orlan loaded into the wagons while his father and the other trader completed the last transactions. The Kobani crowd thinned out, and only a few lingered to haggle over the remaining items or to try to tempt one of the traders with an undesirable object.

As Orlan’s father watched approvingly, Ranna’s mother traded several jars of salve known to heal wounds and a finely crafted silver bracelet to Orlan for a collection of metal bowls and a heavy cook pot. As she gathered up her new wares and hurried away, Ranna stood there pretending to look at the last items no one wanted. But really she was studying Orlan.

Orlan’s father ordered him to pack up. He picked up the remaining items from the blankets and placed them in baskets, folded the blankets, and carried them to the wagon, where he found space to load them. He turned around, and there was Ranna looking over his shoulder. She smiled awkwardly as if caught doing something she should not have. She started to back away.

Orlan held up his finger for her to wait and went to the wagon. After rooting around, he returned and held out his hand to Ranna. She opened her hand, and he placed in her palm a gold bead engraved on all sides with a leaping flame. She was stunned and at the same time overwhelmed by the beautiful gift. The Kobani prized gold. She looked at Orlan, knowing she had nothing to give him in return. He knew what she was thinking and waved at her. “I will see you when I come here again, Ranna,” he said.

“I will see you, Orlan,” she replied.

For nearly ten years, Orlan came to trade with the Kobani, and each spring he and Ranna would greet each other. Over the years she would ask him to bring her items not regularly brought to trade. She became a young holy woman and healer, taught by her mother, and she told Orlan what medicines were good for which ailments. And each year Orlan brought her a gold bead for her hair.

Kobani girls were never forced into marriage, although many married young. That was not the case with Ranna. The fact was she was too busy being taught the healing ways by her mother, and she had little time for young men. More than a few tried to approach her, some encouraged by her father. But to no avail. She was not interested in young warriors who talked about nothing except fighting or, to break the monotony, horses and cattle.

The fragile once-a-year friendship between Orlan and Ranna lasted until the Great War between the Maggan and the Karran, which drew Orlan into the army to fight against the night people and interrupted trading with the Kobani. Growing population pressures among the Kobani led to an interest in expanding their territory, and when the men of the Great Grasslands were off fighting the Maggan, the Kobani began encroaching into the Grasslands, raiding farms and villages, and running off cattle and horses.

At the conclusion of the Great War, the men of the Grasslands returned home to find the Kobani roaming the southern Grasslands in raiding parties, having burned out a number of villages and farms and killed many Grasslanders. Under the leadership of Orlan, the Grasslanders struck back, and so began a protracted war of raids by both parties for control of the Grasslands.

In the meantime, Orlan and his father settled at the ferry and built the sprawling whitewashed cottage with a gray slate roof that now stood on the hill overlooking the river.

There were no women in the home, Orlan’s mother having passed on to the world of dreams due to a fever some years before.

Several times the Kobani tried to approach the ferry from the south with large raiding parties, but they were always intercepted by alert Grasslanders, who often posted lone lookouts in the remote areas of the Grasslands to spot incursions, slipping away unnoticed to give warning. It was an uncertain and dangerous time in the Grasslands. The Kobani were accomplished warriors who could travel without being detected and attack an unsuspecting village with a suddenness and fierceness that resulted in a town being wiped out. They were equally adept at lying in wait in order to ambush and destroy Grasslander war parties intent on driving them out of the Grasslands.

In the raging skirmishes following the Great War, Orlan led forces that surprised the Kobani more than a few times, and his name became known as a fearsome warrior. It was on one of these raids that Orlan’s father was killed. In the dawn clash between Grasslander and Kobani raiding parties just outside the village of Elan, Orlan ambushed the invaders. In the thunder of horses’ hooves, the war cries and shouts of fury and pain, an enemy’s arrow found Orlan’s father. There was no time for grieving. Orlan swallowed his sorrow and carried his father’s body on the back of his horse down a lonely trail to the ferry where he buried him on the hill above the river.

On a hot summer night, Orlan’s scouts spotted a large Kobani raiding party swinging wide to the east through a less inhabited part of the Grasslands, and he surmised that they were planning to sweep around the flank of the Grasslanders and come in from the east, where they weren’t expected, to strike deep into the Grasslands at a prosperous village that supported large herds of cattle and horses as well as many farms.

With cooperation from the residents, Orlan had the herds of animals driven far to the north, removed the farmers and the people of the village to a place of safety, kept the fires burning in the fireplaces at night, and lay in wait on the high ground of a low valley the Kobani would take on their return home from the raid. He deliberately let the Kobani burn the entire village.

The Kobani were confused and perplexed when they discovered there were no villagers or farmers in the area and little livestock, but they guessed that the people had been warned. After confiscating loot from the farms and the village houses and buildings, the Kobani burned everything and then began the trek back, heavily burdened and slowed by wagons they had captured.

At dawn the next day, with the Kobani camped, exhausted, and sleeping, Orlan and his forces swooped down into the valley and into their camp, first driving off their horses and then encircling them and cutting them down. Few Kobani escaped alive, and the few who did described the biggest single humiliating defeat for the Kobani in memory. Ranna held in her grief as best she could, as did the many women and family members who lost loved ones at the hands of the Grasslanders on the ill-fated raid. She had felt uneasy about the attacks into Karran lands and had suggested several times to the elders that it was unwise, but she was ignored by the warlike factions.

The war went on for over a year after the calamitous raid, and the Kobani sought revenge at every opportunity. The Grasslands became a dangerous place, and both Grasslanders and Kobani who lived near the borders were constantly fearful.

Ranna’s village had never been raided by the Grasslanders; it was one of the largest in the north of the Kobani lands but far enough from the reach of the Grasslander raiding parties to be safe—or so the elders believed. Ranna was much sought after for her healing abilities, especially by the wounded. Her parents were old and had moved south to be with relatives. But she had close family members in this village and was comfortable.

The Grasslander horse soldiers struck at dawn thundering into the sleeping Kobani village with flaming torches, arrows, and sudden death. In retaliation for the massacre of an entire Karran town three weeks earlier by the Kobani, Orlan led a force of angry mounted men in the early hour as daylight opened up in the sky over the grassy plain. The dogs began barking, and then the villagers felt the faint vibration in the ground.