Read Online At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories by Kij Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

belts were knives and embroidered bow cases made of oiled cloth, covers flipped back. Block quivers nestled in the small of their backs. Their felted boots had toes that pointed up and notches in their shaped soles. The stirrups nestled in the notches: very sensible, worth trying to imitate.
    One of the riders said, “I am Huer, bodyguard to the emperor Erchua of the Tien, and the leader of this group.” Nonsense words to us, for all their being in the Trade language. He swung from his saddle and stood beside his blood-colored mare: a man just my height—and I am short for my people—and a dog’s lifetime older than me, with papery wrinkles seaming his face. A bright beetle’s wing and a strand of sky-blue beads hung from his dark brimless cap, his only ornamentation.
    “I am Ricard,” my brother said. “We are the Winden clan of the Moot people.” These would be nonsense words to them as well, but necessary for all that. “Greetings.”
    “Foals!” One of the barbarian women called out in Trade, then said something in a different tongue, pointing at the herd. Several dismounted.
    “Wait—” Ricard started; but exclaiming they walked into the herd.
    I whistled softly through my teeth, the tones for the two smartest dogs, the lead bitch and the gray-faced male, and look around and be wary . They rose and loped toward the herd.
    “Who made the noise?” the leader asked Ricard. “Why do the dogs go?”
    “Katia told them to.” Ricard gestured toward me. “She is our handler.”
    The stranger looked at me until I flushed and ducked my head. “She wastes her time training curs.”
    We had run into other barbarians who despised dogs as unclean. Ricard did not defend but only said, “She works medicine with the horses, too.”
    One of the barbarian women trotted toward us from the herd. “They are small but they are well,” she called to Huer. Her accent was thick but even through it I heard her excitement. “And all the foals. Completely healthy.”
    “Are you here to trade for horses?” Ricard asked.
    “Your horses are not sick?”
    “No.” Ricard said. “They’re the best horses on Ping. We have—”
    “You know horses?” the leader interrupted, staring at me. “What makes them ill? You have medicines?”
    “Why?” I asked warily. “Do you seek help?”
    “Are any of the others healers?”
    “I am teaching one of the children, but—”
    “Which one?”
    I said nothing, but Mara huddled in Meg’s arms and hid her face in her mother’s sleeve.
    He turned away to look at Ricard. “I have important news. Are you all present?”
    “No,” Ricard said—too young to lead, I know now, to know better than to say this. “Lara and Willem are out with the geldings.”
    “Good,” the barbarian said and shouted a word. It seemed impossibly fast. The strangers pulled their short bows free of the cases at their hips and shot.
    The leader struck the metal whistles from my hand before I could get them to my lips. I dove for them, but he caught me as I dropped. I fought to free my hands from the folds of his tunic, to pull my knife.
    Three rounds of arrows had hissed through the air in the moment I had fought. Ricard was down, an arrow sprouting from his breastbone. Jena was fallen, Stivan beside her; I could not see the arrows. Den, Mikel, Brida, Meg, Daved: arrows and blood blooming from throats and breasts and backs. And the children.
    Several dogs broke the drop command. Silently my lead male launched himself at the leader’s throat. An arrow threw him sideways before he hit, but the young male dog behind him struck the man as he raised an arm to protect his face.
    My knife pulled free. I jabbed for the leader’s side as he shoved the male aside; whistled attack with my mouth, too soft and too late. I heard the dogs scream as they were shot.
    I howled with them and slashed again at the barbarian. Although I was good with a knife, he threw up his quilted bow case to snag the blade and