Now I saw this was not to be. Tathra shunned the mask, shunned it as something known. I recalled the shock from the metal when I grasped it in its sleep, some old magic locked in the silver, some ghost thing.

“I will give it back to him,” I said to her. “Is it cursed?”

“No,” she said. I could no longer read her emotions behind the shireen. “There was an Eshkir woman among the tents; the warriors captured her. She was my slave, but she ran away after you were born. The mask was hers.”

I recollected Kotta speaking of this the night before the Boys’ Rite, and how Tathra had cringed in on herself.

“Did she work you ill, the Eshkir woman?”

“No,” Tathra said, “but the women of the great cities are evil, and where they pass they leave a trail like burning.”

“I will take this object and be rid of it,” I said.

“No, it is what you chose; it was meant for you. The sorcery is long spent; it will not harm you.” Tathra sighed behind her veil as if she had been holding her breath, mistaking it for something that must not escape. “It was meant for you,” she said again. “It will not harm you.”

4

That year, as ever, the winter truce ended on Snake’s Road in the month of the Warrior, and I had my first mans’ battles.

The fighting was haphazard and bloody. Who won took what he liked from the vanquished—metal, weapons, women, drink. Most often there would be a pact made next, squeaking females returned to their own tents, and vows sworn between the men. Nevertheless, outside truce and pact, krarl fell on krarl indiscriminately. The Dagkta sometimes feuded among themselves and continually with the Skoiana, the Moi, the Eethra, and all the rest. You might barter and share meat with someone winter or summer, and have to shear off his limbs in the spring. This was the custom of the tribes, and perhaps, in the fogs of their past, the scheme had had its reasons. Yet like many of their ways, only the peel remained, the fruit was long gone. I served it—since it fitted my nature, giving me a chance to spend my hate lavishly—but I never thought it noble or wise. Only the black marsh tribes did not fight. It was said they reverenced a book rather than a deity, and they were reckoned strange. Having no horses or wealth, however, they were spoken of with scorn and left in peace.

Naturally, the little wars were dressed up in ritual and significance. War spear challenge was followed by war dance, and invocation of demons, the one-eyed snake and diverse totems. I bowed to none of these, having seen early the vulgarity and impotence of the tribal pantheon. Generally men create gods in their own image.

Besides, I had already a kind of belief in myself, in my own body and what it could do, which was not amazing after what had gone before. Now I saw braves hang themselves with amulets, leave tidbits for spirits, and still take an arrow in the neck. I, worshiping nothing and bribing nothing with prayers, rode among an enemy unscathed, scything them like summer wheat. It was a virtue among the krarls for the men’s side to glory in butchery, but I outdid them, and I noticed several mark my eyes as I came on at them, and their knees turn to butter.