Page 122 of The Boy Bride

She nodded miserably. “I know. I know. I mean—I didn’t know, or I’d have told you sooner. When he said he was going on a raid, I thought he meant on travellers through the valley, or one of the villages on the eastern slope, not a mad thing like raiding Dukka.”

“Why’s it mad?” Lill asked.

“Big place,” said Vanu. “What you’d call a town in the lowlands. Walls like we got here. Fucking half-witted, raiding Dukka.”

“I know,” said Gurti again. “And they didn’t even get that far, because somebody heard about their plans and struck first—the raid on Sakka came from Dukka.”

“Of course it did. Of course it fucking did.”

Vanu broke off as he looked back through the doorway. Lill looked and saw that the girls had come through the house and stood clustered in the passage, watching with worried expressions.

“What’s going on?” came another voice from outside. Halza, arriving with a lantern.

Tirtu began explaining the situation to him while Vanu signed to the girls. Gurti gave Lill’s hand a final squeeze and released it.

“I shouldn’t have let any of them go,” she said. He wasn’t sure whether she was talking to him or to herself. “I should have known better. I just … wanted them out of the house for a bit of peace.”

“Need to see Barda,” Vanu said, turning back to Gurti. “He fit to talk?”

“Oh, yes. He’s fine—not badly hurt.”

They all trooped over to the great house. Lill wondered if Vanu would tell the girls to stay at home, but he didn’t. Susami took Gurti’s arm, and Mikhi held hands with Atari. Lill thought about what they must have been through together three years ago when they were travelling with their father and the king’s army ambushed them. And before that, in the Summer Pass, they hadn’t led peaceful lives. At least they had each other, though. What would that be like?

Inside the great house, a couple of candles were struggling against the gloom of the main hall. They showed Barda lying propped on a heap of mismatched cushions on a threadbare rug, wanly sipping from a cup of something steaming. His right foot was wrapped in a bandage and supported by more pillows. Padunu stood over him, arms folded, looking sour.

“Lord Vanu!” said the shaman with obvious relief. And then, as everyone else crowded inside: “And everyone.”

Barda shrank down behind his cup with a hangdog look. Mikhi stepped smartly up beside Vanu, ready to take her usual role as interpreter. Lill didn’t begrudge her the job, exactly; he’d enjoyed it when he’d got to do it earlier in the day, and he could understand why she liked it.

“Your mother’s told us what happened,” Vanu signed and Mihki repeated aloud. “I need all the details of what you saw.”

Barda nodded. He looked slightly surprised that he wasn’t being raked over the coals for something but instead asked to provide intelligence. “Of course, my lord.”

Gurti and Susami were bringing cushions for everyone to sit on and lighting more candles. Vanu sat next to Barda; Lill and Mikhi took places on the carpet on either side of him. Lill caught himself kneeling with his hands on his thighs as if he were awaiting orders from Master Hadda. He rearranged himself discreetly into a more casual pose, imitating the way Vanu was sitting.

“Well, I was going down to, uh … ” Barda looked shiftily around, obviously wondering whether to bother telling lies about mushrooms. “The fact is, my lord, I saw Khatu take a sword as well as his bow when he went down the mountain, so I thought he wasn’t just going hunting or to see Otoni—I thought he was going to follow Da on the raid. Da was going to take him, if you—begging your pardon, my lord—if you and Ma hadn’t told him not to. So I thought I’d follow him and, uh … well … ”

“Ugh, Barda,” Mikhi groaned. “Everyone knows what you were doing.”

Vanu shushed her with a gesture.

Barda slurped his tea and hurried on. “He went down to Sakka, to the great house, where Ganda Dugundu’s staying. I saw him talking to Da and Ganda, and I was going to go in and tell them—ask them—you know, just say that I was there, if they needed an extra blade.” He shrugged uncomfortably.

“But just then, I saw a strange thing. The trader Aruda, his place is next to the great house, and I saw him and his family leaving their house, carrying bundles of stuff with them, like they were on the run. Aruda’s kid saw me and started to run over, like he was going to tell me something, but his ma grabbed his arm, so he just yelled out to me, ‘Barda, watch out! It’s a raid!’ I guess Aruda had some warning of it—he goes to Dukka to trade, so maybe that’s how he found out—or maybe he’s the one who warned them what they were planning in Sakka. Anyway, he was getting his family out. So I went in to Da and Khatu and Ganda Dugundu, and I said, you know, I tried to explain what I’d just seen, but … ”

Barda’s face twisted with misery. Lill, rather to his surprise, felt sorry for him, imagining he could guess what came next.

“They didn’t really believe me. Da thought I was making it all up, and Ganda thought Aruda was a coward, and that he was just afraid their raid on Dukka was going to stir up trouble. I tried to explain that Aruda’d been running like they had to get out right now, but even Khatu started telling me to shut up. So I … I didn’t know what to do, so I … went to find Otoni.”

Barda glanced apprehensively at Vanu, but Vanu just nodded, as if this was a course of action that made sense to him.

“I thought, you know, she might know what to do.”

Right. He’d gone to Khatu’s girlfriend not to warn her of the raid but for advice. That somehow seemed very Barda.

“Who’s Otoni?” Mikhi asked.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Vanu signed.