Page 40 of Humans Don't Have Horns
The canyon is vast, the air is fresh, and the azure sky is clear without the mists of the swamps. The stench of the swamps is blissfully gone. We camp at a high plateau to the west. Below us is the breathtaking beauty of the canyon, full of magnificent pink cliffs and rocks. The River of Tears is a shiny string on its northeastern border. Tall pinetrees are scattered among the rocks, and small ponds dot the horizon. But the beauty makes me jittery. Because I know that in less than two months, the pink ground will be colored red from the blood of the fallen, and the sweet smell of the pine will fade to give way to the thick smell of death.
“Now what?” Emek asks after I finish assembling my tent at our new location near the canyon.
“Now we wait.” I shrug.
We don’t need to wait for long because the next morning, apprehension pervades the camp as people yell hysterically, “Heathens! The heathens are coming!”
As I rush out of my tent, the panic is so thick it’s almost tangible. Mongans are running around, parents grabbing babies and pulling their children in fear. It breaks my heart to see how afraid they are of my mother’s people. I always thought of the Mongans as the frightening ones. But this is not a battlefield, and no one is more horrified than a parent who doesn’t know how to protect his child.
At the entrance of the camp, there are ten horses, with two Renyan women and eight men. I recognize one of the women as Bina, the head of the opposition, and the other one looks familiar, but I can’t place her. Before I even manage to say something, one of the Renyan men is pulled violently from his horse and hurled onto the ground. Daton is hovering over him, his boot on the man’s neck. He doesn’t bother to take out his axes, but other Mongan warriors pull theirs. This is going to be a bloodbath. I shouldn’t have avoided him. I can’t afford to avoid him. He is too important to all this.
“Will you please tame him?” the woman I don’t recognize grunts at me with haughtiness. I know that voice. I look at her. Siean. She has aged since the last time I saw her, to her actual age. In just a month, she aged nine years.
“You,” Daton growls at her as recognition dawns on him too. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He presses his boot harder into the suffocating man’s throat. But she only curls her upper lip at him in defiance as a response.
“We are here for the demichads.” Bina speaks to me, ignoringDaton. Ignoring all the Mongans, really. “And we brought a peace offering,” she adds solemnly.
“Let’s go to the main tent,” Emek, whom I only now notice, announces, and she signals for Daton to let go of the man struggling for air under his boot. Daton’s body is rigid, his black eyes pits of danger. I can see the inner battle for calmness. His warriors watch him expectantly, their weapons still in hand. Everyone watches him, not daring to take a breath as the Renyan man goes limp. I can hear the sighs of relief as Daton steps back from the man and starts prowling in the direction of the tent. Two of the Renyan men hurry to help the injured victim, who now coughs.
As we walk to the tent, the Mongans stand and watch us pass by. Their apprehension with the Renyan presence is evident. In the tent, the air is heavy with hostility. Emek’s face is reserved, while Daton, Niska, and Bahar glower freely. Navel and Hama stand behind Emek and seem jittery. Bina glares at Daton, and Siean seems to occupy herself by observing them all with derision.
Another Renyan soon enters the tent, following us. It’s the man whom Daton nearly suffocated to death. His face is still red from the lack of air, and his white uniform is disheveled and smeared with red grime. His long indigo-blue hair was neatly braided when he was on his horse, but now it looks like a mess. He appears to be in his late thirties, and he introduces himself as the head of the royal watch, Roshem. Goddess, it is ridiculous how disadvantaged the Renyan guards are against the Mongans. Daton didn’t even break a sweat. And this man is the head of their royal watch.
“Is the Queen aware that you are here?” I ask Siean and Bina, not interested in any royal fanfare they might want to have.
“You are looking at the Renyan Queen.” Bina gestures to Siean. “Her Highness’s first decision was to align with you to defeat the demichads.” I remind myself to close my open mouth. How did they pull that off? Siean eyes me but says nothing. “Roshem, fetch the cases,” Bina orders him, and he leaves the tent. “You may wonder, Your Grace, at this turn of events,” Bina says with a formality that looks now, after the last month, so foreign. As if I’mthe grace of anyone and not a fallen princess with a bounty on her head.
“Indeed, I wonder,” I answer as Roshem returns to the tent with five more men. In pairs, they carry three large chests, a man on either side of each. They lay them carefully in the center of the tent and step back.
“Her Majesty seized Tilil’s greatest treasure. Without it, she lost her control of the council very quickly.” Bina gestures to the chests. “This is the entire extract of Mongan horns from Renya’s royal treasury,” she declares.
The Mongans gasp in shock, and a whimper escapes Emek. Bahar hurries to her and holds her. She puts one hand on her mouth, and the other grips Bahar’s hand forcefully.
Daton kneels and gingerly opens the chest closest to him. It is full of what looks like ash, but even I can feel the hum of power from it. This is not ash. “How many Mongans were killed for this?” Daton’s voice is gravelly, and I watch Emek sob into Bahar’s shoulder.
“I think about two thousand, maybe more,” Bina answers. “We brought the extract to you because we are determined to stop the practice of dark magic that Tilil encouraged.”
Siean speaks now for the first time. “We thought the right thing to do instead of destroying it would be to bring it to you.” Her voice is quiet but steady. All the Mongans look at Emek, but she is unable to speak. Kala told me that two of her brothers were kidnapped by hunters years ago. Emek and Bahar won’t know if their horns are part of the extract my sister brought. They will never know.
Daton signals some of his warriors, and they remove the chests. Siean motions to the Renyans to leave the tent. She looks so different from the Queen Tilil was. She wears white pants and a shirt. Her indigo hair is down. She exudes regalness. “How many people will you send to fight with the Mongans against the demichads?” I ask Siean when we are alone in the tent, again cutting through the fanfare.
“I can hardly see the use of sending Renyans to fight the demichads. Unless you wish to gorge the demichads to death,” shesnorts. Renya’s army was disbanded a hundred years ago. And even when they had an army, it was weak and small. War was never the ethos on which Renyans based their nation. Roshem’s inability to protect himself from Daton was a clear example of how unfit the Renyans are to fight. But why come all this way and bring the extract if she doesn’t want to fight?
“The Cursed Ones are quite good at fighting, as the Renyan bodies dangling at the entrance to their camps demonstrate,” Siean adds. To my horror, the Mongans insisted on moving the corpses with them to the canyon. I should have talked to Daton about it. But like the coward I am, I kept avoiding him.
I eye Siean. This is going nowhere. I decide to change the subject. There is no point in righteousness if she won’t give us people. “How did you become queen?”
“Confiscating the extract was the fastest way to overthrow Tilil. She and her people had become so dependent on it that half of them just dropped dead from the withdrawal a day after they stopped.” She also had to withdraw after nine years. How did she survive it while the others did not? And I can’t help but wonder, was it as painful as the withdrawal from the Nimatek was for me? She must sense my thoughts because she says, “I’m still alive.” Then she sighs. “It was wrong, all right? Using their horns was wrong. I was a coward all my life. First, I let Mom pull my strings like a marionette, then our aunt. But I’ve had enough. Do you want to know what made me stop?” She laughs. “Bina is certain it was her with her speeches of how it ruins Renya. But it was really you and lover boy.”
She looks at my baffled expression and smiles snidely. “Oh, don’t be so stunned. One needs to be completely blind not to see how he feels for you. Well, if the wolf can love the lamb, then the savior must have truly arrived.” I remembered her as an utterly different person. She was good and kind, nothing like the version that stands before me.
“I don’t remember you being so callous,” I say to her angrily, and as the smile disappears. There is something so raw in her that I doubt anyone ever gets to see it.
“It’s not the same for you and me. It never was. You’re a second daughter. Never needed to be molded into the ruler Mom intended. And with your colors, no one had any expectations of you. Mom never believed in the prophecy. You were never Renyan or Aldonian. You were born free,” she says. But I was anything but free. I spent the past nine years under our father’s boot and the haze of Nimatek.
How long has she known of the prophecy, and why didn’t our mother believe it? Why didn’t our mother tell me about it? It is a cold feeling when strangers make more sense than your own blood. But there is no point in asking because all that ever comes out of Siean’s mouth are excuses. Excuses for being too much of a coward to do what she wants. I was like her not long ago. I let my father use me. It only brought me pain. So it doesn’t matter what she has to say. All that matters is that we defeat the demichads.
Chapter Twenty
