No Time For Salad
They walked over to the great house, with Barda explaining as they went why he was the better choice to marry the village headman’s girl.
Vanu wondered whether the girl was particularly pretty or what.
But Barda didn’t seem to know her name or to be sure whether she was the headman’s niece or his daughter, and Vanu guessed that her main appeal was that she existed.
“I wouldn’t mind Barda marrying,” he signed to Lill. “It would give me some peace of mind.”
“No doubt,” Lill signed back.
Barda stood at the open door of the great house like a sentry ushering them in, quite cheerful now that he’d talked himself into believing Vanu was going to make his case to Faru.
“Hey, what are you all up to?” came Khatu’s voice from across the gathering place.
He jogged across the pavement toward them. He had a basket of freshly picked greens slung over his shoulder, and his mother was following, at a slower pace, with another.
“Just been helping Ma pick salad,” he explained. “You want to take some? I was going to bring it over later. It’s growing really well over behind the round house, where we had the turnips last year.”
“We don’t have time for salad right now, brother,” Barda announced importantly. “Got business to discuss with Da.”
“Snow in the lowlands! ‘Business with Da’? What’s that mean?”
“It means what it means, brother.” Barda gestured toward the door of the house.
“Lord Vanu,” said Gurti stiffly, arriving where they were all standing at the doorstep. “Will you take some salad?”
“Ma!” Barda groaned. “There’s no time for salad! Lord Vanu has business with Da.”
Gurti’s face drained of colour.
“Not that business,” Vanu signed quickly. Maybe too quickly—he wasn’t sure she caught it. She still looked alarmed. Lill looked curious.
That was when Faru emerged from the gloom of the hall of the great house, face like a thundercloud.
“Da—” Barda began.
“Khatu,” Faru cut him off. “A word.”
“Hey? What is it?”
Faru gestured impatiently toward the inside of the house, then shook his head. “Why endeavour to keep this private now? It is already too late for that.”
“Keep what private?” Khatu asked innocently.
“Should we go?” Lill signed to Vanu.
“Maybe,” Vanu signed, and they stayed where they were.
“They are saying in Sakka,” Faru said to Khatu, ignoring the others clustered around the door, “that the female hunter with whom you have been consorting is with child.”
Khatu’s mouth fell open. “Otoni? Pregnant?”
“Indeed. Is the child yours?”
Khatu shifted his grip on the basket of lettuce and looked around as if he expected someone else to know the answer. “Uh. Yeah. I mean I don’t know. I never asked her whether she was seeing anybody else.”
Gurti gave an audible sigh. Vanu glanced at Barda, hoping he had the sense to keep quiet. Of course he didn’t.
“It’s his! It’s definitely his.”
Lill, beside Vanu, slapped his forehead with his palm.
“What?” Khatu looked at Barda. “How do you know that? What do you know about it?”
“I heard her talking to her friend, you know whatshername, the blacksmith’s widow with the tits? That time you went down the mountain for lamp oil.”
“That was weeks ago! You mean you’ve known about this for that long, and you haven’t told me?”
“Uh … yeah. I guess so.”
“What the fuck, Barda?”
“The whole village is aware that your brother’s whore is expecting a child,” said Faru severely. “If it was you who spread this rumour, Barda, you have brought dishonour upon your family.”
“Don’t call Otoni a whore!” Khatu cried.
“I didn’t!” said Barda at the same time.
“All I said was … ” He trailed off as he realized everyone was glaring at him now.
“Earth’s pussy, maybe I did! But I was just trying to look out for her—Deru was complaining that she hadn’t brought him any rabbits, and I said maybe she was feeling poorly in the mornings. ”
Khatu let out a roar, flung away his basket, scattering lettuce, and ran at his brother.
Barda dodged but not far enough. They both went down on the pavement and rolled over several times, pulling hair and howling and trying to throttle each other.
Their parents watched, Gurti looking resigned, Faru grinding his teeth.
Vanu touched Lill’s arm and signed, “Interpret for me?”
Lill nodded.
“I understand you’ve arranged a marriage for Khatu with a young woman in Sakka?”
Faru stared at Lill, as he repeated Vanu’s words, as if he were an animal that had suddenly spoken. Vanu felt the old urge to bash Faru’s head against something, this time with a new flavour to it. Luckily for Faru, he quickly shifted his glare from Lill to Vanu.
“The daughter of Ganda Dugundu, the famed raider from Korudukha Peak, who has recently arrived in Sakka. An excellent match for Khatu. Ganda and I have spoken extensively of it.”
“Who does Ganda think you and Khatu are?” Vanu asked.
Faru appeared physically pained by having to listen to Lill translate for Vanu. It was much worse than his reaction to Mikhi.
“Ganda Dugundu is an old friend. He is well aware of who I am and the honour which a marriage with my son would convey.”
Vanu stared at Faru in disbelief. Had the man actually thought he could keep something like this from the rest of them? Did he not realize what he had just said?
Khatu and Barda had paused for breath in their brawl, and they stared too, blinking in confusion. Gurti dropped her basket of greens. Lill signed, “Shit.”
“So what you actually mean,” Vanu signed slowly, “is that Ganda saw you in Sakka, recognized you, and is blackmailing you into marrying Khatu to his daughter in return for keeping our secret.”
“Faru, no,” said Gurti despairingly.
“Really, Da?” said Khatu, sitting up on the pavement and shaking hair out of his face.
“Certainly not! I would not describe what happened in that manner.”
“What did happen?” Gurti demanded. The way she was looking at her husband, Vanu wondered why Faru didn’t go and bash his own head against something.
Instead he glared around at the assembled residents of Umtúshta. Finally he said, “Ganda happened to arrive in Sakka when I was there, two weeks ago.”
“When you were sulking down the mountain avoiding your responsibilities at home,” said Gurti, with such bitterness that Vanu almost flinched. Faru glowered.
“That would have been right around the time of our wedding,” Lill remarked aloud.
“We were down in Sakka a lot around then,” said Khatu, “but we didn’t run into him.”
Barda had picked himself up by this time and was dusting himself off. “I remember everyone talking about a famous raider from Korudukha. I didn’t know he was a friend of Da’s.”
“No, because Ganda was very circumspect,” said Faru, as if this was a point in his favour. “He realized that we were incognito and did not publicly reveal that he knew us.”
“But privately?” Vanu prompted.
Faru scowled again. “Privately, he spoke to me and said that he had heard I was walled into Umtúshta with Lord Vanu. He is aware that there are caves—he was an ally at one time,” he added furiously as Vanu raised a hand to begin forming a response to that unwelcome news.
“He didn’t know that the caves had an exit on the mountain, or where it was, but of course, seeing me in Sakka, he was able to work it out. ”
“Oh, Faru,” Gurti moaned.
“He was an ally,” said Lill, homing in on the important point. “What is he now?”
Faru sneered, obviously deciding he would pretend not to hear anything Lill said that wasn’t a translation for Vanu.
“Answer him,” said Gurti.
“You forget your place, woman,” Faru snapped. “And that one”—jabbing a finger toward Lill—“forgets his.”
Vanu covered the ground between himself and Faru in two strides, seized Faru by the front of his shirt, and hoisted him off the ground.
“Knows his place just fine. Don’t talk about him like that. Answer the fucking question.”
Faru gulped and flailed feebly, going red in the face. “Ganda’s a—we had a falling out. Years ago. Put—me—down!”
Vanu tossed him back toward the doorway of his house. Faru reeled and stumbled and sat down hard on the doorstep.
“And?” Vanu signed.
Faru groaned. Vanu was standing over him, so he couldn’t get to his feet.
“And the headman of Sakka is his brother-in-law. Ganda said he’d tell him who I was if I couldn’t—if I didn’t convince him that we should be allies again.
He has this dreadful daughter he dotes on—I said one of my boys would make her a good husband.
He said, ‘Not the one who was chased over Dukha Ridge by a piglet’—”
“It was a full-grown boar!” Barda protested.
“What do you mean, a ‘dreadful daughter’?” Khatu wanted to know.
“Yes, what do you mean?” said Gurti, who had come to stand beside Vanu.
Faru waved a hand impatiently. “Skinny and freckled, chases dogs around the village.”
“She what?”
“She’s ten! You wouldn’t have to marry her for years. It would all have worked perfectly well if you hadn’t got that hunter woman pregnant!”
“Ten?” Barda repeated despairingly. “Not marry for years?”
“But the huntress is pregnant,” said Gurti. “So now what happens?”
“I’m not marrying the ten-year-old!” Barda put in helpfully.
“The ten-year-old won’t have you,” said Lill. “On account of the piglet.”
“I tell you it was a boar! Fully grown! Vicious tusks and everything!”
“What’s going on?” asked Padunu, appearing in the doorway behind Faru.
“Kindly help me up,” said Faru, looking pathetically glad to see an ally.
Padunu hesitated, looking to Vanu for permission—the crowning touch to Faru’s humiliation. Vanu took a step back, gesturing assent.
“Of course, my lord.” The shaman reached down and hauled Faru awkwardly to his feet.
“Fortunately, I was able to salvage the situation,” Faru said, looking around at everyone with an attempt at dignity.
“I’m not abandoning Otoni,” said Khatu, folding his arms over his chest.
“We will give the huntress money and relocate her to another village,” Faru went on. “We can put it about that the father of her child was Barda and not Khatu after all. And Ganda has agreed to go ahead with the betrothal if we accompany him on a raid tonight.”
“I’m not having Barda pretend to be the father of my kid!”
“Yeah, well, I’m not doing it anyway! I don’t want a fake mistress any more than I want a toddler for a wife.”
“You have agreed to go on this raid?” Gurti spoke over her sons’ bickering.
Faru took a step backward and bumped into Padunu. “Khatu and I will go. Tonight.”
“You will not take Khatu.”
“Ma, I’m a grown man—I can take care of myself!”
“You can also listen to your mother,” said Vanu.
Khatu groaned.
“Da could take me,” Barda suggested brightly.
“Absolutely not!” said Gurti.
“No,” said Faru at the same time.
“I’d prefer if nobody went on a raid tonight,” said Vanu. “But since you’ve got yourself into this situation, you’d better get yourself out of it.”
Lill did not conceal his pleasure as he translated this.
Lill said nothing on the way back to the house, leaving Vanu to his thoughts. In fact, he stayed silent once they got inside the house, until Vanu looked sharply at him, wondering if something was the matter. But it looked as if he was just waiting for permission to speak.
“You can talk,” Vanu signed.
Lill started. “Sorry. You looked angry.”
Vanu sat on the edge of the seating platform, stretching out his legs. “Furious. Not with you.”
“No … I realize.” Lill hopped up to sit beside Vanu, an adorable manoeuvre. “I guess it’s just my instinct to stay quiet when I think someone looks angry. I thought at first all that was quite funny, that situation they’ve got themselves into. But in fact it’s serious.”
“Nah, it’s funny too. And they deserve it. All of them except Gurti.”
“Why did you say that to her—‘not that business’?” He signed the words Vanu had used.
He’d forgotten all about that. “She was afraid I was going to reveal her secret. She’s sleeping with Tirtu.”
“Oh! She is, isn’t she?”
“You knew that?” Vanu was impressed.
“No. I heard … uh. Tirtu with somebody—or two people in Tirtu’s house anyway, having … you know. This was a long while ago, when I first got here. I never found out who it was, but it makes sense that it would have been them.”
“So it’s been going on a while. I thought so.”
“How much of a danger do you think this Ganda person is to us?” Lill asked abruptly.
Vanu looked at him for a moment. Was it his imagination, or was he right to think that if he said, “He’s a grave danger,” Lill would offer to go down the mountain and kill Ganda Dugundu in his bed?
Or would he not make the offer—because that would reveal too much—would he just do it?
“Not much,” said Vanu honestly. “He knows who Faru is and that there’s a way out of Umtúshta—he knows roughly where the mouth of the caves is, and possibly he could follow one of those halfwits through the woods to find exactly where it is.
But he couldn’t navigate the caves on his own, and I don’t know why he would try.
The real harm he could do us is by telling the king’s men that I’m not trapped in here.
And from what I remember of him, I can’t see any reason for him to do that.
He may have had a falling out with Faru, but he didn’t with me. ”
“He could have heard that you wanted to stop the raiding,” Lill pointed out.
“Could have. But then he’d’ve gone to the king’s men weeks ago, wouldn’t he, instead of all this business about Khatu marrying his daughter.”
“That’s true. If he really wanted an opportunity to do you harm.”
“Think he just wants to mess with Faru, really.” After a moment, Vanu admitted, “What worries me is he’ll tell people in Sakka, maybe by accident, and word will get to the king’s men that way.”
Lill nodded gravely. “If that happens, we’ll flee through the caves. We’d be able to get to safety.”
Vanu looked up into the rafters of the house that he’d called his for the last three years.
“Don’t want to flee through the caves,” he said aloud. “I’m happy here.” He looked down at Lill again. “Never more so than since you came.”
Lill’s eyes widened in that frozen look of terror that Vanu had seen more than once before when he’d offered some bit of affection. The difference was that this time it wasn’t quickly shuttered away. Lill just went on looking at him like that, nakedly afraid.
Vanu leaned down and kissed him softly. Lill kissed back eagerly, clumsy in a way that went straight to Vanu’s heart—and from there on down to his cock.
He tipped Lill’s head back to kiss his throat. Lill’s arms twined around Vanu’s neck, and he gasped as Vanu’s teeth grazed his collarbone. Vanu slipped one arm under Lill’s knees, wrapped the other around his shoulders, and picked him up, still kissing him, and headed for the stairs.