Chapter 8: The Third Spear
While he'd been able to see the fighting, Qemik didn't get his knuckles bruised. From his vantage point, high on a ridge with the great aurochs herd behind him, so full of the promise of fate, the fight seemed inconsequential, a mere interruption in the tale, over quickly. A few lunges, some kicks and punches, a few people flying through the air, and Ulgî standing over them like a tree studying the dust, and then it was done. And yet with the fight concluded and history itself beckoning just beyond the ridge, there they stood, gasping for air, Oyana rambling on about being awake or something similarly inconsequential.
He wanted to hurry them, quick as the wind, over the ridge. Somehow he was sure that once they saw the vast, majestic sprawl of the herd, thousands of mighty beasts to the horizon moving as one, they would be as swept up as he was in the certainty that the day had come, and that it was time to act. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder what action there was to take; he was simply swept, like a branch down a fierce river, by the need to act. And baffled about why the others, like stones unperturbed by that river, didn't feel the current.
While they were gasping for air and nursing their wounds, he stood and spun in place, gazing, searching. There. That hilltop with a single tree on it, overlooking the vast bowl of the plains beyond, that must be the place. The crest of the sky. "Hurry! I'm telling you, I saw it, the lone beast of white!" It was all he could do not to run off and leave them behind.
"What are you talking about?" Kargöz demanded sourly. He'd only traded a few blows with one of Möktîg's men, before Ulgî had swept the man away, but he still had a black eye and a deep bruise on one leg, and was in no mood for Qemik's earnest but vapid enthusiasm.
"The lone beast! There," Qemik pointed over the ridge, "is the aurochs herd. A throng of thunder dark as a shadow and wide as a sea," he recited. "And in it, near this side in fact, one aurochs with shaggy white fur. White."
"Did you see a spear marking on it?" Kumzu asked, eliciting a scowl from Yîgeke.
"I couldn't get near. You know how aurochs are."
"Yîgeke could get close enough. She handles beasts every day for her master. She knows their ways like no one else," Kumzu answered, deepening the scowl.
"And the crest of the sky?" Kargöz asked. It was clear he wanted to find a flaw in Qemik's thinking, but prophecy was so full of metaphor and vagueness, and with unexpected ways it might come to pass, that it was hard to argue with something as pronounced as one white-furred aurochs amongst a herd. They were, after all, strikingly rare.
Qemik pointed to the lone tree in the distance. "There's a sharp drop beyond that. Not so sharp that the aurochs will refuse to run over it, but sharp enough that, if you stood there, the land would be open below you, a vast bowl of emptiness. All you'd see is the sky."
He could tell that Kargöz thought this interpretation was a stretch, which itself made Qemik's blood boil. It was certainly no harder to believe than a tree rising from a bog, or patterns in hide. The Haehînbór had mused for generations about what the Third Spear might mean. In a throng of thunder dark as a shadow and wide as a sea, a lone beast of white, marked with the Third Spear, shall be swept to the crest of the sky. Many had concluded the throng must be the aurochs herd, but there was less agreement about the crest of the sky. But if the white-furred aurochs had a spear marking, and it was swept to this crest, surely that would match the sign, even Kargöz must see this!
"We might as well go watch," Oyana said, glancing at Yîgeke sympathetically. "We've come all this way. And then we'll know." Finally, someone who could see what was plain before them. Qemik led them to the crest of the ridge, wishing they'd hasten their steps.
Of their company, only Yîgeke had seen this herd before. The vista was breathtaking; thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of vast creatures, each a mound of thick fur taller than Ulgî at the shoulders, all running as quick as the wind, moving together as if led by one hand. Nothing could stand before such a throng. And they were, indeed, heading in the direction of the crest Qemik had pointed out.
Most startlingly, there, near the left flank of the herd, was a single white-furred aurochs. While there'd been aurochs with a white hide from time to time, even Yîgeke had never seen one with her own eyes before. But did it bear the mark of a spear? Qemik was sure it must, but he could tell the others were less so. He was marshaling some arguments that Yîgeke could run out amongst the beasts and see it with her own eyes, when he was brought up short as he spied the same thing the others were exclaiming about.
Archers. Dozens of Ortheri archers on horseback, racing alongside the herd, trying to catch up with the white-furred aurochs. Even Qemik could immediately divine their intent. If the aurochs died here, it could not fulfill the prophecy, and the Third Spear would be seen by the Haehînbór as a false sign. By, for instance, Möktîg and his fellows, who were recovering from the brawl not a quarter-league away, well within sight of the crest.
"They went to such pains to be sure that the First Spear be proved false without revealing their knowledge of the prophecy to any but us, who were marked for death," Kargöz was musing, "and here they ride in the open, in full sight of a dozen Haehînbór."
"Perhaps those, too, are marked for death," Oyana answered.
Why were they worrying so much about this? The time for action was plainly arrived. "We have to stop them!" he cried out, waving his arms. "We have to save the lone beast of white."
"How?" Oyana answered, whirling on him with an accusing glare faster even than Kargöz could. "You're uninjured and unwearied. Perhaps you can single-handedly defeat a dozen mounted archers in full armor."
There was a moment when Qemik thought she meant it, and he was considering how to go about it, before he realized she'd been sarcastic. He frowned and fell to thinking, trying to come up with a plan. The thundering of the herd grew louder, filling the silence as it stretched on. The archers would be in range soon. And still he had no ideas.
"I can save the white one, but I'd need a horse, and for the archers to be busy for a few moments."
Qemik looked around, unsure at first who'd said this. He found everyone staring at Yîgeke, who was standing with her shoulders slumped as if she hoped to sink into the ground and vanish.
Another pregnant moment passed before Qemik asked her, "How?"
"I've ridden amongst the herds before, to separate out the one that my master wishes, many times. I know the flow of the beasts, and how to calm the horse enough to slip into that flow. I can guide the white aurochs…" Here Qemik was about to object at the idea of bringing it closer to the edge of the herd where it would be more vulnerable, but before he could, Yîgeke continued, "Guide it farther into the center of the herd. Out of bowshot, at least long enough for it to reach the crest."
"You shouldn't have to!" Kumzu objected with uncharacteristic fervor. "The prophecy should provide for itself."
"And so it would, if they," Qemik stabbed a finger in the direction of the horsemen, "weren't interfering to prevent it."
"Even so," Kumzu argued, but with far less certainty.
"But I would need…" Yîgeke was trying to continue as if Kumzu had not raised an objection, but her determination was flagging. "You would have to engage the archers. Knock one off its horse, and keep the others so focused on you that they couldn't fire at me until I was deep enough into the herd."
Another few moments passed while her fellows thought this through and reached the conclusion that Qemik alone spoke aloud, unnecessarily: "We will be captured or killed." But after a moment, he shrugged off the gloom of this assessment. "But the prophecy will go on. The First Hand will lead our people to freedom." He whirled around and stared at the archers. "That one. I'll run there, past those rocks, and come out in front of them. Oyana, Kargöz, throw your spears at the two on either side. You don't have to hit them, just make them swerve, and I can leap up and knock the one with the red helm crest off his horse. Then she can take the horse in the chaos, and the rest will have to rear up to get around us and the rocks, and that will buy some time. We can make it more by running into the way."
And he was already running down the ridge. "That is if they don't just put a dozen arrows in you before you even reach the rocks," Oyana called out bitterly at his back, but she was following him, unsure of why. And Kargöz, spear in hand, and then Ulgî with Kumzu on his shoulders.
Even though she'd had a hand in it, Yîgeke was bewildered by the audacity of this plan. Qemik paused and called out to her, "Hurry!" He could see the hesitation plain on her face. "No one else but you could do this. This is what I said, this is why fate chose you! You are the First Hand!" She scowled, but she started down the hill, her fleet footsteps easily making up the distance. Perhaps simply drawn along by the momentum of the rest of the fellowship, Qemik wondered.
The plan had seemed like madness, but for once, Qemik had the right of it. The Ortheri did not expect to be opposed at all, and certainly not by something as audacious as an attack by barefoot slaves. The crude spears would likely have glanced off of their armor, but in the split second that an unexpected spear is flying at a man, he doesn't calculate such things, he swerves. Qemik was lying on the ground in a tangle of limbs with one Ortheri warrior, while Yîgeke was whispering to his horse, and then with a leap she was on its back and charging into the herd before the steed had even come to a stop. There was a baffling swirl of spooked horses and confused Ortheri, pinned between boulders. One man in armor was suddenly flying through the air over Qemik, while Ulgî was crying out from the pain of his fist making contact with the man's armor so effectively.
He hauled himself to his feet. He had a few moments before his opponent could pull his armor-clad body up, during which he watched Yîgeke, sliding through the herd like a leaf carried on a breeze. Already she was within a stone's throw of the white aurochs, and more, the herd was shifting around her, nudged by her slightest movements, the current carrying some towards the center and others away from it.
It would take her a few minutes to drive the white beast out of bow range. Qemik turned to face the man he'd unhorsed. Already, the other Ortheri were rallying, forming a circle around him and his companions. Arrows were nocked and pointed. Even he could imagine no way to escape from this.
But while they were capturing the five of them, they weren't firing at Yîgeke. They may not even have realized she was present yet, let alone what she was doing. Qemik raised his fists and bellowed a challenge. If he made this capture difficult, it would take longer, and buy her more time. He saw Oyana following his lead, and soon, Ulgî as well, though the large man might have intended an actual fight rather than a stalling tactic. No matter, it would work either way, and Kumzu would quiet Ulgî when it was time to surrender.
It was a few moments before it occurred to him that Kargöz was nowhere to be seen. He fumed. The coward! The day had come to stand, to fight. To defend Yîgeke, and the Haehînbór. And Kargöz always hung about Yîgeke, hoping to win her hand. Now he'd shown his true colors. He had fled, while Qemik remained steadfast. Now, surely she would finally see that Qemik was her true match.
That is, if any of them survived. He threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender, but he turned to watch the herd cresting the hill. Half of the Ortheri were still racing alongside, but none could reach the white aurochs, so deep inside the herd. There! The white aurochs was reaching the crest! In a throng of thunder dark as a shadow and wide as a sea, a lone beast of white, marked with the Third Spear, shall be swept to the crest of the sky. He could feel the flow of fate as if it were the wind itself. Surely there would be no more arguing now about whether the day had come.
There were no more grave injuries by the time the Ortheri were leading them across the plains, their hands and feet bound in great chains. In the distance there was some kind of wain, a great covered cart pulled by four horse; it was clearly where they were being led. Somehow, being brought in chains didn't dampen Qemik's spirits. He knew he was being marched to his death, but all was well in the world. The day had come, and he'd helped to keep fate on course
At least until he was close enough to the wain to see that one prisoner had reached it before them. There, surrounded by four Ortheri, was Yîgeke, in chains.
There was a steely look in her eye as the five of them were being loaded into the wain. Qemik had never seen it before, and he had no idea what to make of it.