Chapter Two
Early Winter, Year of the Daughter 872, 18th Year of the Reign of Grand Knezar Piotyr
Southern Serja-jan, Hanka Forest
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Pine needles spar against whiskers, against the fur of her hat. Her nostrils breathe offerings of the winter woods: crisp air, wet bark, the blue haze of coniferous. An idle breeze carries the musk of her kin. And the stink of Meer.
Straddling the rough branch high above the snow, Ksenia strains to hold her draw as the soldiers chase her mother and aunt deeper into the clearing. In silence she waits until she hears her uncle shout:
"FIRE!"
Ksenia releases the string, and the arrow whistles through the night as a blurred line of shadow. Already she is reaching for her quiver when it takes a Meer under the arm, its narrow bodkin point sliding through the rings of his mail. The soldier howls and clutches at the shaft. Another sprouts from his shoulder. He slumps from the saddle.
From the surrounding pines the arrows of her kinsmen drizzle into the clearing. Crying with fogged breaths, the Meer wheel their mounts to escape whence they came. Ksenia draws and shoots, draws and shoots, no longer watching her arrows' path but capturing them in her mind like a hungry prayer. Her soul sings with their flight, exalts at their penetration.
Despite the barrage, eight of the dozen still sit their horses. They hold up their shields as they gallop down the path out of the forest. But Uncle Kyznec is a veteran of the Northern Campaign, and a grizzled hunter as well; he has foreseen this. Kinsmen under snow and bushes press down upon thick branches, prying upon the deeply notched trunks of precut trees. The woods echo with the dry crackle of yielding pine, and the two trees sway and fall into each other like drunken twins, overlapping in a scatter of snow, needles and pinecones.
The barricade blocks the Meers' escape, but they press on, spurring their horses through the fir-sprigs as they swing their swords like machetes. But skins filled with starka tumble from nearby treetops to burst upon the sharp branches, drenching distilled spirits over Meer and beast alike. With slow matches her kinsmen light torches and toss them twirling onto the fallen trees.
The flames whoosh and dance yellow and pale green across the snow covered branches, lapping hungrily until the trees erupt into a wall of damnation. Horses and Meer shout. One Meer falls from his mount to be engulfed by the burning branches. The rest retreat from the fire, wagging tails in fear, turning helmeted heads wildly in search of escape.
"For the Grand Knezar!" cries her uncle.
"For Mother Serja!" cries her father.
Those villagers unskilled at the bow emerge from behind bushes and trees. Clad in leather and furs,they yawl ancient battle cries of the Janji as they descend upon the clearing with scavenged tools of war.
Horses skewer themselves on pikes and halberds. Her father hamstrings one with his shashka saber, finishing off the dazed rider in a flurry of wild strikes. Her uncle decapitates one mount with a swing of his grandfather's bardiche. Monax comes in behind, dispatching the fallen Meer with the point of his halberd.
A score against a handful, the battle is over before it begins. She flexes her claws from her fingers and toes, and as she climbs down the tree—carefully; her tail is yet to fully mend—she looks over the clearing with satisfaction. By the entrance the fallen trees now crackle ablaze, sweetening the already chop-licking scent of blood with burning pine and flesh. Among hacked bodies, blood drenches the snow in gray-green puddles that steam and shimmer in the firelight. She is no novice to hunting—for all his faults, her father taught her well—but this is her first time to join the others, her first time to kill
men. Soulless men, true, but thinking beings and not beasts.
No difference, she decides. Meer die just like foxes and wolves. Like dogs.
Among her kinsmen she spots the 'Angel,' the Moon Man, the Man from Otherwhen, the one who calls himself Kyle Reese. With the hood of his white fur cloak up, he looks almost like the others, albeit taller, broader. Halberd in hand, he stands poised over a wounded Meer, listening to his begging prattle.
"I yield! I yield!" the Meer cries in their queer speech, his eyes goggling with terror. "Please! Daughter of mercy! We deserters. We hungry! Want go home!"
Preparing a prayer, Ksenia reaches for her serrated knife, but an arrow sprouts from the Meer’s eye. Beside her Dyril, her betrothed, lowers his bow and grins at her. She lets out a low growl until he backs guiltily away.
The clearing is a butcher's yard. It's time to collect the meat.
"Hurry," Kyznec calls out, motioning with his bardiche. "Gather what we can. The fire may bring reinforcements."
But as she draws her knife and kneels over the body, she thinks he is wrong: there are no others. The Meer was telling the truth, for indeed they were a pathetic rabble, half starved, scarred with frostbite, and their armor and weapons pitted with rust. The Meer still hold Zapaport, but between Piotyr’s blockade and the Serjan Winter, their army grows ever colder, ever leaner.
Her kinsmen work with diligence, stripping bodies, hewing limbs, removing prime cuts. As she pulls the soldier's liver, pausing to take a bite, she notices Kyle still standing to the side, watching but not helping. He looks uncomfortable, and she sees her mother sneer at his squeamishness. Sent from Kaa he may be, from ages past, perhaps, but over the passing weeks he has proved a divine disappointment, his work in miracles limited to his arrival.
Though he is strong and tireless and has the scars and stance of a warrior, he is a fledgling in arms. He is slow and clumsy, and half-blind in darkness. His sense of smell is worse than even the Meer. He is a burden. And half mad.
Some even considered abandoning him when he fell ill with the runs, vomiting their food and growing so feverish he could barely stand. That was shortly after he arrived, and banished early all notions of his divinity: angels don't make mud.
But he tries. He learns their tongue, and he spars with Kyznec, improving each day. And, unlike the others, he did save her life.
One Meer they spare, stripping and gagging him and binding his ankles and wrists to a spear. They wrap their meat in skins, pack their loot into canvas sacks and leave the clearing for the heart of the woods.
Owls hoot. Creatures paw through snow, unseen behind a thousand tree trunks. Her kin navigate by secret reckoning: a phantom face on rough bark, a smooth stone under a root, a bramble shaped like an arrowhead, a hint of deer musk, the frozen sweetness from a bleeding spruce. Her kin are of the Janji Clan; the forest flows through their veins.
Kyle follows like a lost child, but a lost child with a mount’s endurance, for deep into the march he stands tall while they are stooped and panting. Her father says his kind must have horse blood, for like them his skin weeps as he labors.
When they reach the stream they pause to drink and then follow north, sloshing through water for a freezing mile so as to cover their tracks. They then climb a wooded knoll, and at the camp find a fire waiting, which they quickly use to warm their feet.
All but swallowed by the forest, their camp rests within the ruins of an ancient keep, its walls and turrets long worn to nubs by the encroachment of trees. Kyznec says it dates back centuries, before the Grand Knezar, when Sarl fought Sarl in warring clans. So long ago, yet Kyle hails from farther still.
Their kinsmen rejoice at the news and bounty. The ambush was clean, the only casualty the tip of her brother's ear to a Meerish backswing. Monax wears the disfigurement with youthful pride.
There is feast. The war and winter is harsh, but in harsh times happiness must be consumed, not hoarded, lest it rot away like sweetmeats turned rancid. The women roast the soldiers and horses, and cook the scraps into hearty stews enriched with roots and nuts and winter berries. Her father opens casks of starka and myod, and the night soon brims with drunken cheer, with song and dance. Shoving daggers up their necks, Monax crafts puppets from two Meerish heads, making them tell jokes and give each other kisses.
Even Kyle, the perennial outcast, amuses the children with tales of his long-ago world, telling of horseless carriages and boxes lit with moving pictures, of winged ships that soar through the sky, and metal towers that burn across the heavenly sea. And he tells of the
Skahynet, the clockwork devil and its army of Steel Men; he tells of his general, the great John Connor, who sought to save the world from abomination. The children, so young their facial fur have yet to darken, listen with wagging tails, their wide eyes shining gold in the firelight.
"You did good tonight, ‘Sena," her uncle tells her as he passes by.
Gnawing on a forearm, she nods but says nothing.
The merriment wanes, for it is midnight. The overcast sky yields before the green of the Moon. A full orb, intersecting Heaven’s Thread. A good omen.
Before the exodus, before Kyle, Ksenia’s mother’s role as the village Moon Lady was a mere tradition, a vestige honor from a greater age. But time is a cycle, and Sestra says a new great age is upon them.
The kin of the Janji gather, and Ksenia’s mother dons the vestments of Alku. A trinity of ram horns curls into a crown atop her headdress of green and blue plumes which sway like tall grass in the Moonlight. Fishbones tinkle from her ears; feathers dangle from her arms. Over her face she wears the white wooden mask painted with the seven eyes. The jawbones and fangs of a cougar armor her snout. She is the Moon Lady. She is the Avatar of Alku.
They bring forth the Meer and stake him spreadeagle across a flat granite block. His green eyes are wide as he stares at the mask, and his fluffy tail curls between his legs. Words of broken speech tumble as he begs for mercy and makes feverish promises of great ransoms. Standing on a tree stump beneath the Moon, her mother lifts in her hands a spirit rattle and a dagger.
The Meer squirms and screams as her mother carves the Circle of the Moon into his chest. Green blood smears the blond of his fur to make a Moon of the Flesh to mirror the Moon of the Night. Her mother rolls back her head, shakes her rattle and begins to chant. An old song, the words speak of Kaa’s silver net, cast into the oceans above to catch the souls of her children, the Sarl, the Chosen Race, the only in all the world bestowed salvation.
A wind whips cold, and Ksenia feels the prickle on her fur, the lightning in her soul. She steps to the altar. As daughter and heir of the current Moon Lady, she has the honor of first Sacrament.
The scent of blood stirs something base and beautiful inside her and she licks her chops and draws her serrated knife and with whispered prayers gelds the Meer, who shrieks and thrashes as Alku’s Ghost enters him through the wound. Children giggle, irreverent of the moment. She steps back and others move forward, drawing knives of their own.
The Meer weeps and wails and gnashes teeth. With outstretched wings, Ksenia’s mother sings to the Moon in deep-lunged ululations as loud as thunder. As Ksenia gnaws upon the manhood in her hands, she spots Kyle, alone outside the circle of her kin. His alien eyes watch with strange desolation. She smiles, raises a hand in greeting. He turns and disappears into the ruins
She moves to follow, but Dyril calls out to her. A shank of Meer in one hand, two wooden mugs balanced in the other, he steps forward cheerfully. Green blood smears the dark of his snout.
“It’s good we’re back to our ancestors’ ways,” he says, passing her a mug. “I don’t know about you, but I never felt Kaa’s presence with sheep and goats.” As he waits for a reply, he grins lamely and takes a bite. Beneath her mother’s song and the cries of the sacrifice, her silence is deafening.
He sighs. “You’re angry, I know. But everyone else has moved on. Your mother’s forgiven your father. Why can’t you forgive me?”
The staska burns her throat, tickles her nostrils. She bites the Meer’s member in half and through the tough, stringy meat says, “I have. You are forgiven.”
“Look, I know that wasn’t our proudest night, but your mother says it happened as Kaa wills.”
“And if Kaa willed there be no Kyle?”
“If Kaa—?”
“You would have stood there and cried as I burned!” Dyril’s ears flatten at her rebuke, and she continues, “That naked man from the sky saved me, but he couldn’t save me from knowing the truth: that my future husband is a coward. All our men are. The only real man among us is Uncle Kyznec.”
“Then why don’t you marry him?” he snaps. “Don’t you know the shame I feel? Don’t you think I wish I did more? And I did try to fight, but they began riding us down, and when I saw others throw down their pitchforks and run, I . . . lost heart.”
“Heart,” she repeats. “Kyznec says in battle the side that keeps heart will never lose. He’s right. We lost when we decided we lost. Then Kyle appeared, and we decided we won.”
“But we shouldn’t have lost to begin with,” he says. His whiskers flex as he frowns. “But if we hadn’t, would Kyle still have appeared?”
She drains the mug and drops the gonads into it for later. “I don’t know. Kyznec says it’s the best thing to ever happen to us, though I don’t know why he thinks so. But as mother said, it is as Kaa wills it.”
He nods and looks down. “The lightning raised your uncle, but it didn’t save Yefin or Ilya or the others who fought and died. Tell me, ‘Sena, do you wish I was among them?”
Fishing for pity, she thinks, but she nibbles the bait. “No, Dyril. You are the son of my aunt and I love you.” She squeezes his arm with just a hint of claw. “But I don’t want to marry you.”
She walks away, doesn’t look back. Silly boy.
The festivities die as the starka runs low. Kinsmen sleep in fur bedding; pairs sneak off to couple. Soon a remnant sits around a fire: her father oiling his saber, Kyznec blowing smoke rings with his pipe, the crone Sestra soothsaying in the mud. The magic of the Sacrament is over and without the vestments the Moon Lady is once more only Ksenia’s mother, a sturdy woman of middle years; she sits side by side with Kyznec’s wife, and they whisper with heads nearly touching, the dark points of their ears poking starkly through the slits of their white babushkas. Licking blood from the black fur of her hands, Ksenia watches the campfire dance.
“You see this cyst?” Sestra says as her gnarled fingers work green entrails into the gray mud, the tissues seeming to squirm in the inconstant firelight. “It’s shaped as a Crescent Moon. A plague will lay waste to the Meerish army. We will conquer their lands and we will feast upon their children. The streets of Helistad will run green with blood and we will offer unto Kaa sacrifices numbering nine and ninety thousand. A new age is upon us, and the Man from Otherwhen is its harbinger.”
Her father sighs. “No one can call me an unbeliever—we all saw the miracle—but why send us Kyle? He’s not Sarl; he knows not our ways. Did you see him during the Sacrament? Did you see the fear in his eyes? I thank Kaa for saving my daughter and brother, but if he is a sign, then he’s served his purpose. We should give him back, during the next Sacrament.”
“Sacrifice him?” Ksenia asks darkly. She nods at Kyznec. “Kaa may have saved my uncle, but she didn’t save me. Kyle did. He’s the one who pulled me from the flames.”
“With Kaa’s guidance,” her mother says.
Sestra nods and puts a bit of intestine into her mouth. She speaks as she chews, her words a toothless warble. “Kaa gave him to us: we should use him. If I could but read his innards, who knows what secrets I could unearth? And such strange hands he has; I could use his knucklebones for a spirit rattle.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Kyznec says. His one eye scans beyond the campfire, but Kyle is nowhere to be seen. “You’ve heard his tales. You know of the artifacts of House See’airuh. I myself have seen the Four Faces.” He points at the hairline of silver dividing the southern night sky. “And Heaven’s Thread? The Diamond Cities? All these were built by the First Men, from an age out of time. His ways are not our ways, but he knows things. Lost arts."
“Lost arts my tooth! Scraping scum from stable walls? Rooting through manure? And collecting fool's gold? Right enough, for he is a fool.” Sestra cackles. “Anything he knows, I can learn by making stew of his brains. And if I learn nothing, at least I’ll fill my belly."
Ksenia’s mother and aunt laugh. Kyznec grins, and when he looks at Ksenia she swears his one eye winks.
“Would you make steak of a bull that shits gold?” he asks.
Ksenia finds little sleep that night. Too much drink leaves her waking in the twilight with a dull headache and sweat on her feet and palms. She straps on her knife, slips from her bedding and, nodding at a sentry—Crilit, one of Kyznec's sons—she paces through the firelight shadows of her sleeping kinsmen. Their breaths sing with broken rhythm; their combined scents churn and warm in the cold, smelling of slothful contentment, like warm pears.
Her kin have done much to make homes here, but the keep shames their efforts, for the tipis and lean-tos fashioned along the crumbling curtain wall are as ephemeral as bird nests in an ancient greenwood. Today they live here, yet millennia hence her people will be but bones in the earth.
The thought should make her sad; she feels only awe. Three years ago, shortly after her first Mooning, a merchant brought to her village a collection of small cut stones with bones inside so old they had melded with the rock. Uncle Kyznec bought several and spoke excitedly of his time in the Northern Campaign where Grand Knezar Alekse led his army through the deep, mountainous canyons that prove the world is layered like a cake, epoch atop of epoch all the way down to the dawn of creation. Ksenia wonders what petrified skeletons sleep beneath her feet and whether any belong to Kyle’s race, the First Men.
As she knew she would, she finds him within the base of the old turret, a jagged ring of stones reaching not quite to her ears. Standing on her toes she pulls her chin over the thick stonework and spies as he squats bundled in furs on a block of masonry, bent with focus over the mortar and pestle in his hands. She's seen him work before, cooking false gold in her uncle's still, mixing brimstone and charcoal and tossing fizzling pinches to the flames—and groaning with frustration. And always alone, always when he thinks no one is watching. A small campfire burns near the far wall; in its yellow light she watches his profile.
For what he is, she decides he's not an ugly man, and as sparse as it is, he looks much better now that he's grown fur on his face. Her uncle says he's seen his kind before, not as flesh but as great titan faces carved in the side of a mountain far to the desolate north. It is said the Blood Tribes worship them as earth deities, sacrificing their young with flint knives to curry the stone gods' favor.
Above, unfelt winds rout the overcast sky to reveal the Moon’s emerald shine, speckled with blue, swirled with white. Kyle glances up. "Come to watch the mad man work?" he asks.
She drops to her feet and, slipping off her fur cap, walks around to the turret's gapped opening. Her ears prickle at the chill. She rubs them. A minor miracle her mane has grown back, albeit white now instead of black.
Kyle puts down his mortar and pestle and stares at her, frowning.
"I'm Ksenia," she says.
He shakes his head, embarrassed. "Sorry, I should have . . ."
"It's all right." It's not his fault her kind look so alike to his eyes. She sits on a rock beside him. He smells of soft apples. The tips of her ears reach barely past his shoulder.
“You should join our Sacraments,” she says. “You’re one of us, now.”
“I’m not so sure of that. I don’t believe what you believe.”
“But you’re here. Your General Connor may have put you in that magic bubble, but it was Kaa who brought you to us. How could that be an accident?”
“Fair enough, but what does that have to do with
meowing at the Moon and eating people?”
She frowns at the alien sound. He peppers them into his speech.
“The Sacrament honors our covenant with Kaa,” she explains. “Kaa was a Goddess and she ruled from the Moon. But on Earth man grew proud. The princes of the world said, ‘Let us put a silver collar on Kaa, so that she will be made to work in our fields and build us great cities.’ And so they did, and Kaa became a slave while the princes became like gods. But Kaa’s daughter, Alku, broke the silver collar and Kaa escaped back to the Moon. And in her wrath Kaa set fire to the world. All the fields, all the cities, all the princes were burned to ash. But Alku knew some men were virtuous, and she hid them in a cave deep in the Earth. And then she flew to the Moon and begged to her mother for mercy on our behalf. And Kaa felt great pity for the virtuous men, and so she spared them and said, ‘Let these men be called, ‘Sarl,’ for they are my children.’ And Alku flew back to the Earth carrying a bag of seeds and a skin of blood. She scattered the seeds, and plants grew. She poured the blood, and animals sprang forth. And that’s why leaves and blood are green: because they come from the Moon.”
Something in Kyle’s grin curdles as if she said something unsettling or, perhaps, unspeakably foolish. Oddly embarrassed, she flattens her ears, but reminds herself that a ravine of ages divides their ways.
She nods to the sky. “Tonight, you told the children your people flew to the Moon.” Blasphemy. “That’s not true, is it?”
Again he looks up at the Full Orb, his green eyes distant. "Oh, it’s true. Several times, in big
rockets. But back then the Moon didn't have any water or plants or anything. It was just an empty desert. Black and white and gray. It's still the same moon, though. That blue lake-thing there, that's the 'Sea of
Trangkwilitee. And that one below it, that's the Sea of
Suhrenitee. Or is that the other way around?"
In her head, she sniffs the guttural, rhyming words. "If your moon didn't have water, why did they call them 'seas'?"
His chuckle flashes fangless teeth, a pale green tongue. "That's a good question. I have no idea."
"Kaa made the Moon, but maybe yours is a time before she lived there. Before she gave the Moon its green."
"Maybe. It's beautiful, anyway. When seen from far away, the earth looks much the same, except less green, more blue."
"You've been to the heavens?" she asks incredulously.
"No. Not that I didn't want to be an
astronaut when I was a kid, but . . ." Trailing off, he picks back up the mortar and pestle.
"The War with the Metal Men happened," Ksenia says. When only the fire's crackle fills the void, she adds, "You're worried that they've won, that they've murdered your general’s mother before he was in the womb." The idea sits ill with her, that one could be so struck from the world, to not only die but be blotted from history, forgotten even by Kaa.
But if that were true, how could Kyle still speak of him?
"Tell me about General Connor."
Sad eyes stare into the campfire, into ageless memory, yet a grin fights across his lips. "He turned the war around. He brought us back from the brink. We didn't agree with everything he did—he kept Metal around, made them fight for us, even had a pretty little
skinjob bodyguard—but without him we wouldn't have stood a chance. It was strange; we always seemed to have a connection, like he was a brother or something, but different. I mean, we escaped together out of
Senchuhree, but it was more than that. I guess he must have really liked me; he gave me a picture of his mother." The grin falls, darkens. "I always wanted to meet her. I feel like I let her down. Let everyone down."
Almost, she reaches to touch his arm.
"It's not your fault,” she says, “Kaa had a different plan. If you hadn't arrived, I would be dead. My people would be dead or scattered. And besides”—She waves an arm, at the ruins, at the dark forest horizon toothy with treetops—"there are no Metal Men. No clockwork demons. Even if they won, that could have been a thousand centuries ago. They’re all dead now."
He sighs. "You're right. And I'm sorry. For everything. Your people took me in and I have no right to judge them." He nods at the bowl in his hands. "And I guess since I'm stuck here, I might as well make myself useful."
She leans forward to look at the black powder, wrinkling her nose at the brimstone scent. "What is it?"
Taking a pinch between thumb forefinger, he folds it in a scrap of sackcloth and raises his hand as if to throw it in the fire. But he hesitates and instead scoops the bowl's full contents into his hand, wadding it in his fist. With another scrap he wraps it tight into a dingy burlap ball half the size of a pinecone.
"I hope this works," he says, tugging her shoulder to follow. They step out of the stone enclosure and stand at the turret's entrance, ten paces from the flames. "I think I've finally got it right,” he continues. “It took me longer than I thought, but then I never done this sort of thing from scratch before. Getting the
saltpeter right was the hardest part, I think."
"But what
is it?"
He smiles and in an underhand throw tosses the ball through the entrance and into the fire. It bounces along the burning sticks. The flames lick along the rough fabric. She sees a crackle and—
—leaps back with a hiss as the fire claps into a burst of light that rends the night with thunder. Gravel and dirt trickle on her mane. The fire is out. Wafting smoke pregnant with rotten egg stinks the air.
Around them kinsmen jump from their fur bedding and run forward with snatched weapons. Several rub sleep from their eyes. All stand in confused silence, searching the sky for thunderclouds.
Kyle and Kyznec share a triumphant look.
"And you can make more of this?" her uncle asks.
Big grin. "Oh yeah."
Ksenia stares up at Kyle standing tall beside her, and then back at the extinguished campfire veiled in smoke, the charred sticks and stones scattered like bones within the old turret. Thunder and damnation, kernelled in such small a measure. But add more, much more . . . .
The soul's eye conjures Meer torn asunder, burnt limbs raining from the sky like gravel and dirt. Though she has never laid eyes upon Helistad, she sees Meerland’s capital blasted to ruins, its walls shattered, its millennia of churches and palaces and libraries smashed, burned, obliterated. She sees Meer by the thousands led weeping before the Temples of Alku where they will be sacrificed day and night until the steps of the holy ziggurats shine a wet green pleasing to Kaa.
As if to testify to her vision, the first glow of dawn swells to the east, lighting long thin fishbone clouds with hues of green and blue. She turns to Kyle, admiring him in the fresh day, and smiles. Kaa’s will is revealed; the Man from Otherwhen has made his use known. The promise of a New Age unfurls like an exotic rug soaked in blood.
"You
are an Angel
," she says as she takes his large, clawless hand in both of hers. She licks his furless fingers and adds, “The Moon Angel."
=^_^=
I'd like to thank my beta, Stormbringer951. His advice has proved invaluable. 
