Care and Consequence: Eight Years in the Forest
Do not weep for your goat, afem. Only by its blood are we fed.
Golmorod brushed Kyna with a comb carved from the bone of one of her siblings. She was a mahogany-colored mare, sleek and very clearly strong, with a lean side and a high cheekbone. She was prized to his family; while Oshkum people follow many customs to differentiate men from women, Oshkum horses are a race that is perhaps more egalitarian even than some human republics, and mares such as Kyna were valued as much as their male counterparts, provided of course that they could ride. Kyna, of course, could ride.
He remembered learning to be one with her on the plains when he could barely talk, and the pride the pair had inspired in his father, looking on from atop his own steed. Kyna was named after the first sound Golmorod made, as was custom for foals that grew up alongside human children. That she had survived so many years, even in the forest, was a miracle, and of course Golmorod thanked Tangutar nightly for such providence. Since the Oshkum first entered those cursed trees eight years ago, the mortality of their companions had increased tenfold, and it was all the breeders could do to keep their numbers at least equal to the population they had entered the forest with. Of course, as the Oshkum population stagnated only briefly, at the very beginning of their journey, this presented a unique demographic problem that Virageg was the first Oshkum leader to face: a shortage of horses.
And now, there was the bargain.
Golmorod understood his father’s decision, likely much more than the majority of their people. Although they had been faithful in following the river, each new camp took a little bit longer to pack, and each new child born in the forest inspired just a touch more lag in the family that bore it. Early in their journey, though there were indeed vast problems with organizing the population that had since been solved or at least mitigated, there had still been a spark in their step, a fear that motivated them to travel quickly, and lightly. This spark had faded with time, and since it seemed that the only major sign of what they were running from had shrunk from the ever-present threat of perishing in flame to the trickling loss of manpower to Shadur, there was a growing sentiment that perhaps they should stop moving on at all. People were comfortable, families were built, and there was an entire generation of rapidly maturing young men and women who had never known life outside of the forest. It seemed that, despite Virageg’s steadfast and iron-willed leadership, a contentedness had set over his people once again, like it had under the long rule of the king that came before.
Golmorod set aside his comb and sighed. Everything was different now, now that this wild-looking deserter from so many years ago had returned into the Oshkum fold bearing such ominous tidings. There was fear again, and doubt, and while his father might prefer such motivation to the stagnation he perceived in calm, Golmorod was not so sure. He liked it here, in the forest. In fact, there were things… and people… that he was not so sure he would be ready to leave behind if his people truly did find the path promised by the horn-god.
And too many Oshkum felt the same. When Everach (horn-bringer, as the people had taken to calling the deserter who returned) emerged from the woods and approached Virageg with the offer, their camp was immediately set ablaze with division, and apprehension. The king himself almost smiled at the news, before sitting back contemplatively in his wooden throne (a new addition to the camp brought as a gift by a Naami trader), but around him there was a furious debate on all sides. As it is nearly impossible to suppress information from a population so well-knit and physically close together as the Oshkum river community had become, this debate soon spread up and down the riverbank, engulfing camp after camp until even the most ignorant of Oshkum was stubbornly certain what would be the best thing for their people. By the time Virageg announced the situation to his public, most everyone already knew it, and once he announced his decision, there was a silence so rich with the potential to turn into ugly noise that nobody felt confident to break it. Of course, he decided to accept, and would send riders to collect the peoples’ horses at dusk.
The silence was not broken until that very dusk, when Virageg began to order his band of horse-collectors to assemble. The very first man he drafted dissented; it didn’t exactly make matters better that this man was Unasht, Virageg’s closest confidante and the grandfather to his grandchildren.
“I will not go,” stated Unasht simply, and in an instant he could feel the eyes of his camp, and the symbolic eyes of his people, trained on his face.
The silence, though broken, decided to linger for a bit, making each slow response by each of the men ever more agonizing.
“Unasht—“ Virageg began, his voice as even as his counterpart’s, though much more silent, and somehow all the much more terrifying.
“No, I will not go. I will not take from these people the last thing they hold dearly, the last thing that connects them—that connects us, Virageg—to our way of life.”
“You will,” Virageg growled. Each man’s voice rose to meet the others, and already it was impossible to remember when this process began.
“Already you have demanded so much from us on this journey. We followed you because we were loyal, Virageg, not because we were afraid. The fire behind us only strengthened our loyalty. But now—this has gone on too long. There are no more fires. There are families, and children born here who know nothing else. This is wrong. Your son’s prophecy cannot command us forever.”
There was much being said that had been waiting on pursed lips for years, and now those lips had opened there was no stopping what escaped them.
“Life is comfortable here! Everything about the way we live has changed! We no longer need to move so often—the greenery here does not wax and wane as it did in the plains. There is abundant game, and our goats have enough to eat no matter where we go, thanks to the methods of gardening our Naami allies have shown us. Everything has changed but our most fundamental partnership, and now you wish to rip that from us for nothing but the chance to return to the hardships we have escaped?! I will not follow you in this, Virageg. I have followed you too far already.”
With that, Virageg rose from his throne, and the camp held its breath. All except Unasht, who looked up boldly at his liege, knee unbent even before the hulking size the King imposed. But then, the King spoke, and all were reminded of his regality, and its origins outside of only his physical size. He was kingly, and part of that meant authority too powerful to resist.
“You will obey me, or you will challenge me and perish. I will not see my people divided.”
Unasht, it seemed, was conflicted, as he did not respond for some time, but he betrayed nothing in speech or in body language. After the tensest moments the camp had ever seen, he turned, silently, and walked back to his tent. Virageg watched him all the way, and once Unasht had entered, Virageg turned to his son.
“Golmorod,” he said, “you will lead the band that will collect the horses.” Then he sat back down, rubbing his temple, and that was that.
It took quite some time, as people were resistant to the decree, but none were so bold as Unasht to oppose Virageg, and by the next morning, each and every horse of the Oshkum had been counted, and collected, and brought into one of a few clearings Naami scouts had shown the Oshkum were in the area. Then Golmorod departed from the band of no-longer-riders, followed by the twenty best horses in tow, and returned to his father’s camp. As it happened, four of those twenty belonged to their family, so Golmorod stopped briefly along the way to brush those, among them his own personal favorite, Kyna, before stepping back towards his father, and his King.
Unasht’s tent was gone, but Golmorod dared not question his father; Virageg’s face bore less welcome than it ever had before, and one might have better luck hugging the obelisk of Shadur and licking it than attempting to question Virageg’s emotions. That night, a young man that Golmorod knew to be named Setgel was tasked with tying six of those twenty to a tree near their camp. He realized he had seen this boy about their camp quite often lately, performing courtly duties and clearly being groomed for a higher position, closer to the King. Though he could not have been much older than 15 or 16, he was shrewd, a watchful and sly figure who rarely spoke but seemed always to listen. Golmorod wondered if perhaps this boy was to replace Unasht, whose boisterous nature was so unlike the boy’s. If perhaps this altercation was a long time coming.
Once the horses were tied, the fourteen that remained— fourteen only, out of a thousand times that— were returned to their families. Kyna alone out of Virageg’s stock was kept by their family. The Oshkum people laid down for the night, all among them but one, their king, resting uneasily; tomorrow would mark the beginning of a new kind of journey.
Golmorod expected that he would dream that night. It seemed that his dreams came fullest when there was suffering around him. He too rested uneasily, falling asleep slowly, twitching until at last a dream came over him. Terror. Terror was the first thing the dream brought. A familiar but forgotten terror, washed over by years of full bellies. Then came light, and then Golmorod saw the source of the light: fire. He was standing on the riverbed, watching the tents of the Oshkum burn: there were women, children, screaming, though he could not see them in the blaze. Suddenly, he heard a terrible scream behind him, quite unlike those in the fire. He whipped around, and found himself face to face with a figure, great and terrible, dressed in furs. Its face was obscured by a mask mouthless mask of wood— or perhaps this was its face. It shrieked, remorseful or enraged, and lifted an arm. Golmorod flinched, but the creature did not strike him. Instead it reached up towards its mask, to remove it perhaps, or to scratch it off. One last shriek—
Golmorod awoke in a pool of sweat. Another shriek— feminine, and quite closer to him than those in his dream felt. The babes were crying, and Unastoma— Unastoma was nowhere to be found. He jerked up, swept out of his tent. His heart nearly beat out of its chest, a combination of the residual terror from his dream and the current terror of reality. No, he didn’t love her, but sometimes he needed her. Another shriek.
Virageg was already out of his tent by the time Golmorod was able to identify the direction of the screams. Both men ran into the forest, where the sounds were coming from. Once they cleared the tree-line, they were greeted by a horrifying sight. Unastoma, Golmorod’s wife, was held aloft against a tree. The man holding her was slim, muscular. With one hand he struggled to cover her mouth, allowing her to fall down from the tree. He reached out to her, began to run to her, he saw what was in the man’s other hands— a jagged shard of bone, which he jammed into Unastoma’s side.
Her cries, now muffled by the man’s hand, faded as he slid his tool up her side, around the front of her neck. Golmorod’s scream of terror stopped him, as the former fell to his knees; the man turned, and spotted the two men looking on. Golmorod recognized him. It was Setgel, his father’s new favorite apprentice, with eyes as wild as the dying girl’s, full of adrenaline, malice, and perhaps something else. And just as soon as he turned, he crumpled to the ground beside his victim, an arrow protruding from his forehead.
Golmorod hadn’t seen his father draw the bow, or string it, but when he turned to his father he saw his bow in hand. Accuracy and speed to be expected from the Great King of the Oshkum. “Taken by Shadur,” Virageg muttered.
By now, more from their camp, and some from nearby camps, had come to see the ruckus. Among them, straggling a bit behind the rest, was a sleepy-headed Unasht, Unastoma’s father. He too held a bow, a community man to the last. Before he saw the scene by the tree, he briefly locked eyes with Virageg. They exchanged a look, one Golmorod would not understand for a very long time. Then Unasht looked past Virageg. His scream would haunt every different kind of Golmorod’s dreams for years to come.
***
The Oshkum remained one united tribe as they followed the path the horn-god revealed. It was terribly morbid; every so often, once the trail seemed uncertain, Everach caught and skinned an animal of the forest, burned its pelt, and rubbed its blood on his eyes, and then he would know the way. But it worked, and gradually the animals’ sacrifice led the Oshkum into sparser and sparser trees. To Golmorod, the most unsettling change was the change to their prayer. Once a moon, when it shrunk to a sliver of size that Everach recognized, the priests of Tangutar donned strange wooden masks and oiled them for a dance.