Page 2 of The Summer Pass

When he looked down the meadow, Lill noticed that there was something going on at the forge. A cart was pulled up to the door, and he glimpsed Nakhana the blacksmith signing urgently at someone Lill couldn’t see past the edge of the roof. He started down the hill and was running through the tall grass by the time he reached the bottom of the steep meadow. He burst in the back door of the forge with the force of his descent, making a dramatic entry he hadn’t quite intended. But he was honestly a little excited about the prospect of visitors.

There were three strangers inside the forge, along with Nakhana and a carter whom Lill recognized but did not know by name. A huge Hawakhaba man, as tall as Vanu, seemed to take up most of the space between the open front doors and the anvil. His straw-coloured hair was braided, his heavy jaw was unshaven, and he wore the gold jewellery and bold-coloured striped cloak that Lill had learned marked a man out as a successful raider—or at least someone who wanted you to think he was a successful raider. His clothes were covered in blood, fresh and dried, and he looked barely conscious. He was propped up on either side by two lowlanders: a tall, thin Zashian woman and a Chiddang man whose head came up to the raider’s armpit.

The lowlanders and the carter looked up at Lill’s arrival with hopeful expressions, as if he might be able to solve their problems. The carter quickly dismissed the idea and went back to signing, badly, at Nakhana, something about wanting to be paid. The two lowlanders went on looking desperately at Lill. They were both bedraggled and clearly frightened. The man was wearing slippers and no shirt, with a shawl knotted around his shoulders that looked like it might have belonged to the woman. She wore a bright red headscarf that had come unwrapped, hanks of her dark hair spilling untidily out.

“Who are they?” Nakhana signed angrily at the carter, jabbing his finger toward the lowlanders.

“Know don’t!” the carter signed back. “Need paid!”

“Hostages,” said the big man hoarsely.

He waved his hands in a vague approximation of the sign and then slumped forward, slipping through the grasp of the two dismayed lowlanders, to land face down on the floor of the forge.

“May I offer you an account of myself, Son of a Noble House?” the Chiddang man said tentatively.

Lill blinked at him stupidly for a moment. He’d never been addressed so formally in Chiddeng before, with folded hands and a very correct bow—or at least, if he had, it had been when he was a child too young to remember. But he was the son of a noble house, and though he was dressed for work in the forge, he still wore his hair in the long braids that suited his status.

The Chiddang hostage was a commoner, to judge by his short hair. He had put on a borrowed shirt of Nakhana’s that was much too big for him. They were in Lill’s front room—or the front room of what Lill supposed was not going to be exclusively his house for much longer. The village shaman had come—Lill had run to fetch her—and was tending to the injured raider in the bedchamber. Nakhana was in there with them, leaving Lill alone with the two lowlanders.

“Let me be the first to give an account,” said Lill, which was, as far as he could remember, the appropriate response to someone who was your social equal. “I am called Lillang-Ghan the son of An-Ghanill.”

The man smiled, visibly more at ease. Lill’s introduction made it clear that he was not the legitimate son of a noble house.

“You honour me with your account. I am called Shan-Dall.”

“You honour me.” Lill switched to Zashian so that the tall woman could understand: “You seem to have suffered great hardship.”

The woman puffed out her cheeks in a dramatic sigh. “It has been horrible! I can’t tell you.”

Shan-Dall reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“But we are so lucky to have met you, Lillang,” he said. The woman nodded fervently. “We don’t understand the language of the mountains at all.”

“I think the tea is ready,” said Lill. “We could sit and drink.”

“Oh, you’ve made us tea! You darling.” The woman folded herself onto the cushions on the seating platform and accepted a cup from Lill with a beaming smile.

“We work at a hostel on the Torakand road,” Shan explained.

“We’re musicians,” the woman added quickly. She nodded toward the bedroom door. “That man was a guest, and there was a misunderstanding—he thought we meant to rob him.”

“Ruka did mean to rob him,” Shan muttered. “You stopped her.”

“As I say, a misunderstanding. He doesn’t speak our language, nor we his—we still don’t even know his name. We all yelled at each other to no purpose.”

Lill winced sympathetically. He could picture it.

“Ruka got away in the confusion,” Shan added wryly.

“I can’t be sorry for that, darling.” As Shan grimaced, as if he thought she was being altogether too sweet, she added, “Can you imagine how much worse this would all have been if we’d had to listen to her complaining the whole time?”

They both dissolved into giggles at the thought.

Shan took up the story. “We don’t know what the man meant to do when he took us prisoner—we have no one to ransom us, so perhaps he intended to sell us as slaves. He threatened our landlord and tied our hands and made us walk behind his horse. We were terrified for our lives.”

“When we met a patrol from the Great King’s army,” said the woman, “we thought we were saved. It was just as we were entering the pass, and we thought they’d kill that man and free us. They certainly tried to kill him—they injured him and left him for dead, but then instead of untying us, they just took us!”

“No!” said Lill. “How awful.”