Page 6 of The Summer Pass

“What do you think?” asked the deaf man, Ganda, cocking an eyebrow at Lill.

What Lill thought was that he was an outsider, a lowlander who should not express an opinion. Ganda knew that too, but he was a known shit-disturber. All three of the men were looking at Lill now.

“I think it was a strategic mistake,” Lill signed honestly. “How long had the Zashian king been ignoring the Summer Pass? A year or more? And to provoke him like that, now—to what end? Unless the Boar has mustered troops in Tagra Degra that we know nothing about … ”

“If he was mustering troops, we would have heard!”

“We would be the troops.”

“I believe he has a plan,” Muntu said stubbornly. “He’s not a fool or a coward. He was one of the Lion’s inner circle, after all.”

“Really?” said Lill, surprised. He’d never heard anyone say this before. “Who is he?”

Then he was embarrassed to have asked. As if the name would mean anything to him. Vanu had had a whole life before he met Lill, full of people Lill had never heard of.

But the villagers didn’t know the real name of the man who styled himself the Boar of Hawakhurta. It was only a rumour that he had been one of Vanu’s hearthmen. That in itself was curious, Lill thought. Was the man hiding his identity? In this sparsely populated part of the world, with its tight-knit communities, you’d have to go out of your way to do that.

“I have a theory,” someone said aloud.

Lill turned to look at the newcomer: another pale-haired Hawakhaba man, burly and barrel-chested rather than tall, with round, red cheeks and a sword belted at his hip, under his red and white checked raider’s cloak.

“Enu!” the hearing members of the party exclaimed, while the deaf man lunged in to grasp Enu enthusiastically by the hand.

“When did you get back?” Muntu signed.

“This moment,” Enu replied, laughing.

“Bring back anything good?”

“Not much. We’re taking it easy. Just stopped a few travellers—no fuss, no muss.”

Enu … Lill remembered now where he had heard the name. Enu was Susami’s other parent. The warrior soul friend of Vanu’s whom he’d accidentally got pregnant when he was fourteen.

I have to introduce him to Zaraz was Lill’s first thought. She had been fascinated to hear about the warrior souls the day before and had peppered him with questions he couldn’t answer.

“So what’s your theory?” Ganda prompted. “You said you had a theory.”

“I think he’s Vanu,” Enu signed. The name sign was subtly different from the word “lion.”

“The Boar is the Lion? Impossible!”

“Vanu’s trapped in Umtúshta,” Ganda reminded everyone.

“I think he’s dead,” said Dubo.

Enu shook his head. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it. They can’t keep Vanu trapped forever. I think he’s out and retaken Tagra Degra and raining vengeance down on the invader king.”

“Exactly,” said Muntu aloud, just as if he’d been the one to think of this. He went on in hand language: “And the only reason you lot think it’s bad strategy is because you don’t know what he has planned. None of us does.”

“I’ll grant that if it’s the Lion, he can probably handle whatever the lowlanders throw at him in the way of revenge,” said Ganda grudgingly.

“Probably?” Enu scoffed. “He can handle it, my word to the Blue Heaven. And he wants it. He’s angry.”

Lill said nothing, letting them forget about him and his now opinion, which they were generously willing to do. They were much more focussed on Enu, who seemed to be popular. Lill told himself he was glad to see this; Vanu still carried some guilt for ruining his friend’s life, and it was good to know that actually, Enu was thriving. Of course Lill wasn’t jealous of him; that would be absurd.

Could the Boar of Hawakhurta be Vanu? Lill knew well enough that Vanu wasn’t confined by the walls of Umtúshta, but he didn’t think Vanu had had any plans to leave. And even if he had, if he’d come to the Summer Pass and moved into Tagra Degra, his childhood home … Lill couldn’t help feeling that if Vanu were across the valley in that stronghold—had been there for more than a month, almost as long as Lill had been in Tsuruva—he should somehow have felt it. He had been imagining Vanu far away in the Spring Pass all this time; could he really have been so wrong?

And that raid? Even supposing the oxcarts of loot and piles of bodies were an exaggeration, it seemed so rash and brutal. Lill simply could not believe that Vanu was the one who had ordered that. He wanted to tell the villagers how unlike Vanu it would be. Vanu who regretted the sack of the temples at Alazani, who had not ordered that but watched it unfold with horror. Vanu was thoughtful and tender, in spite of his reputation. These people, they didn’t know Vanu like Lill did.