"It doesn't sound good," Apad said. "Did you hear him? He won't give us anything. We'll have to fight, as we planned."
"Shhh." Eruka gasped. "We might be overheard. Who knows what gods might lurk here? Or even Ngangata and the Alwat."
Apad nodded tersely, in agreement, acknowledging his mistake.
But Perkar leaned very close to Apad's ear. "The caves, Apad. We must look in the caves. We have the time, and we must take it."
Apad did not meet Perkar's eager gaze. "Yes," he answered. "I suppose…"
"Hurry," Eruka urged. "The Alwat will lose us here if we don't keep up."
Perkar nodded and quickened his pace, but he marked everything in his mind, tried to paint a map as they moved away from the clearing. He must find the trail up to the caves, in the dark. With or without his friends.
V
Blindness
The Alwat did not lead them very far from the clearing, only to the base of the valley wall, where the trees climbed steeply up the slope. There, on the gentle rise clinging to the base of the precipitous one, a little fire was burning, a cheerful sight in this web of gods and power. The Fire Goddess was always friendly to Human Beings, always on their side.
The Alwat had also erected shelters, simple lean-tos roughly covered in sheets of birch bark.
"Do they expect rain tonight?" Perkar asked Atti, gesturing at the huts.
"Not tonight," he answered.
"Not tonight? What other night? How long will this take, this negotiation?"
To his surprise, it was Ngangata who answered him. The two of them had not spoken since their fight, and Perkar did not expect to speak to him ever again.
"The Forest Lord has little sense of time," he said. "It could take a night or many nights. There is no way of knowing."
"Why did the Forest Lord send us away, then? Why can't we attend our king?"
Irritation flashed across Ngangata's broad features, as if his answer to Perkar was meant to be singular, a gift to be accepted but not a precedent to be taken for granted. Perkar felt his face burn, but not with anger. He stepped back from the fire lest it show.
"The Forest Lord doesn't really understand Human Beings or even Alwat, I think," he said. "He believes we are like the Huntress, like Karak."
"He thinks we are gods?" Perkar asked, unwilling to stop now that the half man was speaking.
"No. The Raven and the Huntress are gods in their own rights, but they are also aspects of Balati, parts of him. As leaves are parts of a tree. Better yet, they are like aspen trees. Each aspen is a tree itself, but all of the aspen in a forest are part of the same root."
"And he thinks we are like that? All aspects of the Kapaka?"
"It is his habit to think that way," Ngangata answered. "Besides," he went on, "the king is wise, and he has been schooled in this kind of negotiation. We will be allowed to fetch him water and food when need be; Balati will not notice our presence."
"You say that the king is wise," Apad said, his voice low and flat. "Do you mean to imply that we are not?"
"I mean only to imply that you are not as wise as the Kapaka," Ngangata said softly. "That is no insult, only a fact."
"Who can dispute that?" Atti added, a little too quickly.
Apad's expression said that he might, but he kept his peace. For days, Apad had been trying to goad Ngangata into a fight, following Perkar's example, but with no success. Ngangata's answers to him were always couched in words just short of insulting, and Perkar realized now that when Ngangata openly insulted someone, he meant to do so. The fight at the cave had been no accident, no slip of the tongue. The half man had invited Perkar to fight him and then let himself be beaten. Apad and Eruka would never see this—but they had not felt the strength behind Ngangata's half-hearted blows. What Perkar still didn't understand was what the little man was up to. What shamed him was the suspicion that it had been some sort of test, one he had failed.
And why did he care about that? Ngangata was not a warrior, had no Piraku. Having his respect gained one nothing.
But he did know one thing; he would rather have Ngangata with him tonight than Apad or Eruka, though he liked the two Human men better.
"I'll make my offerings now," he told them. He gave a little incense to the Fire Goddess, then moved off into the shadows crouching about the camp. There he offered to his sword, to Ko who made it. He offered to his armor, too, unfolding it as he did so. To the gods of the mountain, he made no offerings at all; he did not want to attract their attention.
His oblations were hurried, as he began to feel a nagging urgency. If he was going into the caves of the Forest Lord, he must do so now; for all he knew the Kapaka and the Balati were even now concluding an agreement. Best, in fact, not to go back to the fire at all. Ngangata and Atti might become suspicious; if he left now, they would think that he was displaying more piety than usual. It would be a good while before they actually began to look for him, and then it would be too late. Or perhaps they would go to sleep and not realize he had been gone at all. Part of him wanted Apad and Eruka along, but he was forced to conclude that he might be better off without them; after all, he had no intention of seeking battle, save with the Rivergod himself. He had no quarrel with the Forest Lord nor any god in his domain. Nor, he realized, did he really seek glory or a place in some epic. All of that was just his friends talking. It sounded good at the time, but growing fear and apprehension was stripping it away. After all, he had seen the Forest Lord, knew something of the being from whom he intended to steal; and at the moment, he felt like little Perkar, not like some Giant from one of Eruka's songs.
He donned his hauberk, and as it settled over his shoulders, a terrible cold fear settled with it. The steel felt hard and unforgiv-ing against his body, too heavy. Almost he took it back off, returned to the fire to wait for the Kapaka. He did not. This was his only chance; if he did not go tonight, he would never go, no matter how long the Forest Lord and the Kapaka negotiated. Because as his fear was stripping away his reasons—Piraku, heroics—it also gnawed at his most basic cause. How often had she told him that there was nothing he could do? How often had she begged him to forget? She was a goddess; she knew so much more of these things than he did.
A goddess, but not a warrior. She did not know what a man with the right weapon might accomplish.
And so he settled the hauberk, donned his steel cap with its plume of horsehair, strapped on his greaves. Then, with a single backward glance, he set off along the base of the valley wall, searching for the trail up, the one that went past the caves.
It soon became terribly dark, though a glimpse now and then showed the Pale Queen to be full. The forest was, fortunately, open and expansive, so that he did not become hopelessly tangled. His progress was anything but the silent stealth he had imagined, however; everywhere there were branches to step on, snags to stumble over, and his armor protested in a metallic chorus each time he tripped. Worse, it seemed impossible to keep his bearings, and he worried that he was traveling in entirely the wrong direction. He thought seriously about lighting a torch, but that would attract the attention of everyone around him—and everything—and so he decided to muddle on without one.
He did not find the trail, and the moon set. Balat became darker than the inside of a coffin, darker than any cave could be. Perkar did try to start a torch then, but could find nothing suitable from which to make one, nothing that would catch fire. Finally, blind, he sank to the cool earth, rested against an unseen tree. He thought he heard people calling his name, after a time, but could not be certain. In any event, he did not call out himself. It would be too humiliating, too stupid, and he could already imagine the condescending expression on Ngangata's face. His back to the rough trunk, Perkar cursed himself until he dozed.
He awoke with a start, but there was no clear indication of what had awakened him; the woods were still dark. Nightbirds were calling, but not close or loud. He rubbed the grit from his eyes and strained them at the darkness, realized that it was not entirely dark, after all; he could just make out the enormous bole of an ash, to his left, the suggestion of a fern frond, there. It must be, he thought, the earliest glimmerings of dawn. Soon it would be light enough to find the camp. He would tell them that he had gone off in search of solitude, he supposed, that he needed to be alone. They would think it odd—Apad and Eruka would know it to be a lie and Ngangata, at least, would suspect some more foolish motive. But it would be better than admitting the truth. Perkar realized that he felt relieved, unburdened. The knots tied in his gut were loosened and gone. The decision had been taken from him by the forest itself; he had tried to find the caves, the magical weapon—if it existed. He had failed; not because he wasn't strong or brave, but because the forest would not let him find the way. It was simple, a relief. Be a man, she had told him. Dream of the possible.
The light was a bit grayer, more details were coming clear. He studied the earth near his feet, trying to puzzle out details, occupy himself until it was really light. He made out one of his bootprints, pressed into a worn, muddy place. There, another.
He frowned. One of his prints crossed another. Not his. He found more as he searched; many men in boots, walking one behind another. And the prints of horses. Perkar drew a tight breath, and his heart pounded. It was the trail.
The songs often spoke of caves as mouths or doorways, but to Perkar they seemed like eyes, slitted and unblinking eyes of some enormous creature. He panted as he regarded them and tried to decide which to enter. The path up was harder than the one down, as his grandfather used to say. Especially in full armor, without a horse. His clothes were already soaked with sweat, though the morning was cool. The first true rays of the sun were yet to be seen.
He had no time to dither, he knew. Ngangata and Atti might not know what he was about, but they would certainly come looking for him, follow his bumbling trail through the woods. He understood that he could yet turn back, and that nagged at him. Once he entered the caves he was committed to his course of action. He was telling himself that for the fifth time when he heard muttering voices coming up the trail, the rattle of armor.
Suddenly his choices narrowed. There was only one cave close enough to reach before Ngangata and Atti came into view, and he found himself scrambling upslope toward it. It was not the largest cave, nor the smallest; but part of its floor had collapsed and the rubble formed a ramp leading up to it, like the wrinkled folds beneath the eye of an old man. He levered himself from one broken chunk of rock to the next, fingers fumbling desperately for purchase on the moss-covered stone. He was almost to the opening when he heard his name called. Reluctantly—and yet still a bit relieved—he turned toward the voice.
It was neither Ngangata nor Atti; it was a red-faced, puffing Apad, Eruka trailing not far behind him.
"Wait!" Apad called. The two of them straggled over to the talus slope and started up it—somewhat more cautiously than Perkar.
"Where are Ngangata and Atti?" Perkar called.
"They went to take food and water to the Kapaka. We said we would look for you," Apad explained, through his wheezing. He and Eruka were both clad in their armor, as well, and had probably been running or at least trotting since they left camp.
"What are you doing here, alone?" Apad demanded as he drew abreast of Perkar. "We agreed to go together."