Jedit

Chapter 2

Jedit's screaming attack caught Ruko flat-footed.

The scout's spear was knocked aside as Jedit shot a punch like a catapult stone at Ruko's throat. The scout twisted to dodge, caught the blow on his shoulder, and was bowled into two spectators. They caught and propped Ruko but otherwise stayed out of the fight. Explosive rough-and-tumble brawls were no surprise among the tigerfolk, with so many high-strung young warriors eager to prove their prowess.

A running scout called only, "Recall the rules! No claws!" No one heard over the caterwauls and coughing screams of the combatants.

Despite the swift assault, Ruko lost no time replying. Stamping one foot to regain his balance, he stepped inside Jedit's defenses while the cat man's arms were still extended and slammed an elbow to Jedit's belly, then to his jaw. Jedit's fangs clacked shut. Whirling and dipping, Ruko scooted under Jedit's arm to attack his blind side.

Just as fast, Jedit hooked an arm like an oak club. A knotty fist mashed Ruko's ear and drew blood. Raging, for a tiger's temper was never far submerged, Ruko spun the wrong way to attack more quickly. For a second his back was presented to Jedit.

Toppling sideways, Jedit slapped a clawed hand to the hard-packed dirt and threw both legs in the air. Black-taloned feet rammed Ruko's spine almost hard enough to snap it. Onlookers grunted as Ruko cannoned into a gray-scaled tree. In seconds, Jedit flipped back on his feet, squatted, and jumped-but in haste. Ruko was savvy enough to duck alongside the tree trunk. Sailing through the air, Jedit couldn't stop. Flinging out both hands, he spanked off the tree. Crouched, waiting, Ruko balled both fists and slammed Jedit's brisket like twin sledgehammers. The cat man crashed full length in the dust, momentarily winded.

"You'd assault… me for… speaking plain truth?" Ruko raged as he punished Jedit's gut with fists like a berserk windmill. "Your father deserted our tribe to enter a wasteland! He's dead! So will you be if you don't abandon foolish notions!"

Berating his enemy while fighting distracted Ruko, and he paid for his neglect. Tough as a monox, Jedit was pained but took little damage. Now, as Ruko swung both fists, Jedit snagged his wrists and pulled. Adding his strength to Ruko's, he drove the chief scout face first onto the dirt with a bone-jarring crunch. Yet Ruko broke free by rolling in a somersault that let him spin to a crouch — Right into Jedit's next attack.

The tiger flashed two balled fists in a sweeping circle. Ruko deflected the first blow by shooting an arm high and shunting it aside, but the next blow hammered his shoulder and numbed his arm. Rather than retreat, Ruko lunged with his good arm and slammed his forearm across Jedit's throat. As Jedit recoiled, Ruko whirled and jigged behind his foe. Grasping his own wrist, Ruko yanked backward to half-throttle Jedit and hoist him to tiptoes, off-balance. Muffled snarls, coughs, and curses turned the air blue but were barely heard for the shouting of the tiger tribe.

Ruko's quick-laid scheme failed. Taller and heavier, Jedit stayed planted, tucked his chin to trap Ruko's arm, and dropped to a squat, dragging his full weight on Ruko's arm. As the chief scout was tugged forward, himself now off-balance, Jedit hooked a massive shoulder under Ruko's gut. Before the scout could jerk free, he spilled head over heels and crashed full-length, this time in the river. The tremendous splash spewed water in all directions.

Ruko flung out his arms and legs to gain ground and rise, but water and a soft sandy bottom confounded him. Water filled his sensitive nose and mouth, so he snorted and sputtered. Jedit gave him no relief. Hurling himself from the river-bank, the bigger warrior landed elbows and knees on Ruko and smashed him flat underwater and halfway into the sandy bottom.

For a moment all was confusion, with water boiling like a piranha attack and two tiger tails whipping spray, then Ruko shot into sight, his balance regained, perched on one leg like a crane. Onlookers paused in their cheering to wonder what might happen. All grunted in unison as Jedit's head and torso boiled up from the shallow bottom. With a savage snarl, Ruko kicked his cocked foot and banged Jedit boldly under his jaw. Muddy water flew in a spray as Jedit's head whipped back.

Howling with laughter, Ruko jumped-straight into Jedit's out-thrust arm. A hand like a spear rammed Ruko's belly and cost him his breath. The chief scout sagged around the arm, and Jedit was ready. With a roundhouse swing from far behind, Jedit punched Ruko's jaw so hard two teeth cracked. The scout still hung on Jedit's forearm, sagging, fighting for wind and footing. Jedit gave him neither. Yanking his arm close, Jedit slammed the scout again and laid him on the riverbank.

Pouncing like an eagle, Jedit blasted another fist into Ruko's belly, half-crippling the scout and probably splitting his liver. Growling like a windstorm, Jedit rammed claws into Ruko's shoulder to pin him in place. Whipping his free hand in the air, Jedit extended five fearsome razor claws like flaked chert.

"I'll tear your throat out! I'll-"

A hard-swung spear haft walloped Jedit's skull just below the ear. A second haft from the opposite direction caught him on the rebound. Smacked nearly senseless, the tiger-man collapsed like a fallen leaf onto the muddy bank beside his enemy. Ruko's twin scouts kept their spears aloft like clubs.

One pronounced, "No claws!"

Head spinning in a star-spangled swirl, Jedit barely heard a scout ask an elder, "What shall we do, milord?"

"Hang him and let him ripen?" asked the other.

"He's Musata's cub," rasped the elder.

Dimly, Jedit heard his mother heave a great sigh over her wayward child's antics. "Yes, that's best. Hang him up."

Jedit heard a great roar like the river running wild, then no more.

Hours later, crickets chirruped and nightjars cooed as evening stippled the jungle canopy with scattershot stars.

A lovely sight, thought Jedit, except the stars were framed by wooden bars. He'd awoken with a crashing headache that forced him to lie still or else vomit.

Wooden bars pressed against his spine and rump. One striped leg hung between the bottom bars, so his toes dangled in cool air. "The Birdcage" was a stout cell made of green saplings suspended forty feet high between two leafy teak trees. The bars extended past the cell's six corners, so a prisoner couldn't slash the rope bindings. A determined tiger could have chewed through the green wood and clambered down a tree, but most miscreants didn't bother. The Birdcage imposed public humiliation and cramped confinement, two things that free-roaming tigers hated, but by common law they could suffer only a single day. Jedit could endure twenty-four hours. He'd perched here a dozen times in cubhood and youth.

With naught to do, Jedit watched the tribal meeting on the village square forty feet down and two hundred feet off. Hundreds of tawny tigers crouched on their haunches, tails twirling and twitching as they swapped opinions in low voices like buzzing bees. As news had spread, all afternoon and evening far-flung tigers had trooped in. All gawked at the alien man who'd stepped from misty legend square into their midst.

Johan sat cross-legged in a cage not high in a tree but rather balanced on eight poles driven into the ground, a mere nine feet in the air. Deeming him helpless without claws, the tribal council had ordered him kept close to satisfy the tribe's curiosity. The prison was tucked behind the rambling common hut where the council debated. Two of Ruko's scouts paced underneath the cage. From above, Jedit concluded that if Johan worried about his fate at the hands of savage tigers, he gave no sign. He sat immobile with eyes closed. Occasionally his head swayed as if he tossed in a dream.

Hanging high in the air, Jedit Ojanen whipped his tail and felt the cage swing in response. He wished for a stone to lob at Johan's cage. Young, impulsive, and rash, Jedit resented the queer stranger and blamed him for his troubles. The warrior had argued passionately for Johan's life, yet the man hardly seemed to care if he were executed at moonset or not. Even a rabbit fought for its life, Jedit knew, so why not this skinned rabbit of a man? The jailbird heaved a great sigh, unconsciously imitating his mother.

"Jedit!" A carrying whisper.

Jedit's ears swiveled. He knew that voice.

On a stout branch thirty feet off crouched Hestia. Small and lithe, to a human she would be invisible in darkness, her tawny hide and black stripes matching the silvered moonlight. To Jedit's keen vision, she might as well have been outlined in fire. Before he could answer her call, Hestia wriggled her haunches and leaped.

The wooden cage bobbed and swayed sickeningly as Hestia pounced atop. For a stomach-lurching instant Jedit thought the whole contraption would plummet and shatter on the jungle floor. Slowly the erratic swinging stilled. Jedit squinted through a headache at the she-cat's round face. Hestia's face stripes were a lighter hue than most tiger's, almost tan like a lion's, and her eyes glowed gold like distant fires. She wore a halter of red painted with brown diamonds down the breastbone. A necklace of brown and red beads swung at her jabot of white fur.

Hestia's flaring gold eyes peered at Jedit through the wooden bars. Mischievously, she swiveled her hips and clawed feet to set the birdcage swinging again. Jedit jolted and bleated at her to stop. She giggled.

"Serves you right." Hestia's sibilant purr did not carry. "I should slash the ties and let you crash. Broken bones would keep you abed, and then I could nurse you back to health. The only time I see you is when you're in strife."

She cocked a hip to rock the cage again. Jedit jolted, but as a feint. Uncoiling, he shot a big paw through the bars and snagged her foot. Hestia chirped as her leg was dragged between the bars, and her rump thumped on wood.

"Ow! Bully!"

"Bully?" Jedit released her ankle. "How shall I show my affection? Bite your neck? Drag home a water buffalo? Or bring you Ruko's head as a trophy to hang from your doorway?"

"It would stink and draw flies." The tigress rocked gently, making the cage sway, lulling as a cradle. "Why must our people make war all the time? If we can't fight the Khyyiani or the Hooraree or the Sulaki, we Efravans war among ourselves."

"It's traditional. What else can occupy us in paradise? Food and water are plentiful, the weather is pleasant, and there's no one else to bother." Jedit leaned back, mildly queasy. His head throbbed viciously. "What say the elders?"

"I shan't tell you-and don't!" Crouched atop the cage, Hestia flicked her foot as Jedit reached. "Why should I? You don't care about anyone but yourself."

"I care about my father," Jedit corrected in a whisper, "and my mother… and our tribe's past and future."

"Not that again," sighed Hestia. Idly she peeled bark with a claw.

"Yes, that again. Do you know that manling-he's a magician-hit the target first shot when I mentioned why my father journeyed west? He recognized immediately that we tigerfolk have reached the end of our trail. That our people have expanded westward since forever but can't go farther because the desert blocks our way!"

"What matter?" Hestia gazed up at the stars, giving Jedit a silhouette of her lovely muzzle and delicate ears. "Your father didn't need to strike into the desert! Legends say there's nothing but sand forever-"

"Our legends are wrong, as the manling's presence proves." Jedit gazed down at the village. The tribe's gossip and arguing masked their conversation. "There's a whole world of men! Hardly extinct! It would benefit our tribe to meet them and learn from them. We might even take our place among them. Our tribe was great once and accomplished miracles, to hear the legends. Why not again? Think how crowded we grow in this valley. We can't expand forever! If the tribe split, half could journey west…"

"Yes, yes." Only half-listening, Hestia noted the pause. "What?"

Jedit tapped a claw on a wooden bar. "I swear that magician knows something about my father. His eyes lit up when I mentioned Jaeger. Otherwise he's cold as a toad in winter."

"Bosh," said Hestia. "Why should he know Jaeger? Think, silly! A whole world of men can't all know each other."

"Ah, right." Jedit pondered, suddenly overwhelmed by the idea of hundreds, even thousands, of men. He shook his head, making his headache flare. "Ugh! Either way, I must keep that magician close if I'm to find my father in that wide world."

Hestia didn't say, If he's alive.

"He's alive." Jedit watched a shooting star wink out and hoped it wasn't an omen. "I should be with him."

"Ach!" spat Hestia. "Your mother is right. As keeper of our lore, she knew it was jinxy to also name you 'Ojanen.' A legendary name is too large a legacy to pile on a mortal's back. You'll end up sacrificing yourself somehow, same as the first Ojanen sacrificed himself to save Terrent Amese and all the tigerfolk."

"I can think of worse legends to live up to," said Jedit. "I'm already becoming famous. No one's been banished from our valley in generations, but if anyone can manage, it's I, Jedit Ojanen, headstrong son of the headstrong Jaeger and Musata."

"I just wish you were happy. For yourself, and your parents' sake and mine."

The young tigress shivered. Her slim paw descended through the bars. This time, Jedit held it gently as if cradling a butterfly. For a while the two hung in space in silent communion, but both wondered what their futures held.

Hestia said, "Do you really believe your future is tied to this hairless manling?"

"It must be," said Jedit. "Else why did the gods send him right into my paws?"

Hestia didn't contest that. "We'll see what transpires."

"What? Where are you going?"

"Trust me!" Scooting on long lithe legs, the she-cat vaulted for a nearby tree branch and vanished in the silver-splintered night.

Bored again, and now lonely, Jedit Ojanen watched the meeting below. Tigers milled and murmured. After a while heads turned toward the common hut. Many tigers clustered near the door. As Jedit wondered what was going on, his aerial prison gave a lurch and descended. Jedit was standing when his wooden cage thumped on dirt and thick tree roots. A score of tigerfolk had gathered. Jedit chafed as the guards flicked dark claws to sever the comer ropes.

"What do you want with me now?" he demanded.

Ruko snuffed through his nostrils. "I want nothing of you, Jedit the Jinx Ojanen, but the elders demand your presence."

Bemused, Jedit stalked toward the large hut as tigers fell away at both sides. The inside of the hut was dark, but cat's eyes let him see the nine village elders, one his mother, sitting in a circle. At the center stood the stranger Johan, free of his prison and unfettered. Beside him stood, oddly, Hestia. Outwardly calm, her whiskers twitched from nerves.

Jedit's mother gave the news. Bone beads clicking, Musata said, "Jedit, my son. Our council has debated long. We have weighed both tradition and… newer ideas, and come to a compromise. Remember-a compromise is a decision no one wanted."

Musata wore the hint of a smile. Frowns of elders overshadowed her words. Jedit ignored them, having no use for outmoded thinking.

"Our decision is, in part, to heed your words. Our laws state that men are evil and should be exterminated, yet clearly this manling's arrival is a sign from the gods. Or a test. Whatever it be, such a message we cannot ignore, nor can we act in haste. Thus, for the time being, Johan is set free to roam our valley-but no farther-with one stipulation."

Struggling to absorb the news, and minor victory, Jedit asked, "And that is?"

"Johan must be watched day and night. You, Jedit Ojanen, can hardly serve as an impartial guard, so another has volunteered." Musata nodded.

"Hestia?" asked Jedit.

The she-cat bowed her striped head, embarrassed by the attention. Jedit made the connection: By sticking to Johan, Hestia stuck to Jedit.

"Uh, I thank the council for their wise decision. We can learn much from this man of the outside world. Such knowledge will benefit-"

"The outside world does not concern us!" He who interrupted was old Noddel, a tiger nearly white with age, eyes clouded by cataracts. "Your father was cursed with curiosity about the world beyond Efrava, Jedit Ojanen. Yet we tigerfolk are content and see no need to quit the jungle. Your father, Musata's husband, I'm afraid, paid a fatal price for questioning. Mend your recalcitrant ways lest you be seduced to your death!"

Rather than discourage him, Noddel's close-minded pronouncement only reinforced Jedit's desire to explore, but for once he bit his tongue.

"At least we hold off a death sentence until wisdom can be shared," he finally commented.

"See who speaks of wisdom?" Musata smiled. "A cub who makes the wild warthog seem the soul of reason. Go, Jedit. The council must ponder. And Hestia, lead your charge thither."

Without another word, the two tigers and lone human departed.

Outside, a few hundred tigers stared at the trio in puzzlement. Raising his voice, Jedit said, "The council has set Johan free to explore our valley. You may all bespeak him and, it is hoped, learn. Hestia is his guardian."

Belatedly, Jedit asked Johan, "Does that suit you?"

"Kind of you to ask." The man's voice dripped sarcasm. "A guest of your people is afforded the same courtesy as a cow. Yes, it suits me to explore this valley. Let us do so immediately."

"Uh, Hestia, does that suit?" asked Jedit. "We can begin on the morrow-"

"Now," said Johan.

Jedit regarded the man's black eyes, which glittered even by starlight. Pointed chin, bald brow, and slit mouth seemed aimed at Jedit like weapons. Were all men this fearsome and unfriendly?

While the tiger wondered, Johan stepped out, bare feet treading silently on hard-packed dirt, brown robes swishing against his skinny legs. Hestia blinked and jumped to catch up, then Jedit. The tiger crowd parted as from a leper, while Johan crossed the small square for the path that wended along the riverbank. Johan went surefooted as a cat in the darkness, and Jedit and Hestia padded behind.

"Where do we go?" hissed Hestia.

"To explore, I guess," said Jedit.

"Is this what you wanted?"

Jedit swiped a huge paw across his nose. "I'm not sure, but best we quit the village for a while."

"Best for whom?" she asked.

They walked for weeks.

With the tigers tagging along, Johan explored the valley, walking steadily as a millstone fifteen miles a day or more. He stopped only when the tigers asked to sleep or soak during the heat of the day. In the course of several weeks, the odd trio traversed the oasis valley from west to east, then crisscrossed it north and south, until Jedit and Hestia knew every square mile and figured Johan must know it too.

Jedit was confused the entire time, and Hestia admitted the same. To the tigers' eyes, Johan seemed to take no pleasure in exploring but treated it like a job, surveying the valley as if he'd buy it-or conquer it. Jedit enjoyed the chance to escape the confining village and to question Johan as much as possible. Hestia said little, but when asked, admitted she was happy just to be near Jedit.

For days they followed the river, which the tigerfolk had never named, there being only one. It wended steadily upward, for the valley rose as it trickled east. Pacing alongside its placid bubbling, Jedit realized for the first time that his village in Efrava was the lowest point of the valley.

Once, prodded by Jedit amid his studies, Johan conceded, "Yes. The river flows from the east, then sinks into the bosom of the world and is not seen again. Much of the Sukurvia is undershot by a sunken ocean, a secret sea. The water eventually reaches the southern sea at Bryce." He spat the last name, though the tigers didn't notice.

One day they reached the end of Efrava's oasis. The jungle shriveled to gorse and thornbush and stunted trees with only a few graceful acacias like tall fans. The river became a sprawling swamp stitched by sawgrass and weeds. Johan departed the river and plodded on, the tigers trailing behind, until they reached a tall headland. Standing on a brow of parched grass, they gazed east and saw only rising desert.

Jedit gazed back at the coarse, impassable swamp. "How is this possible?"

Gazing eastward, Johan answered only because Jedit would persist. "Obviously, somewhere farther east, the river runs aboveground but then sinks into the soil. It percolates out here, pooling as this swamp, then continues on down the valley. As you said, Efrava is thirty leagues long, just the length of the river, its nurturing mother. What lies yonder?"

The eastern sun was fierce, and Jedit squinted in glare. "Four days' walk lie more oases. East by north lies the land of the Khyyiani. East by south, the Sulaki and the Hooraree."

"Rivals?" asked Johan.

"We kill each other on sight. Most of the time." Jedit frowned, puzzled. "It's tradition to fight them all, but every six years we meet on neutral territory and exchange the cubs below three years. Otherwise we'd become inbred and die out. More often we sally against them, warring to keep them in line. The Khyyiani are cruel, loving to torture captives with lingering deaths, and the Sulaki sacrifice captives and even their own people to a bloody god named Ergerborg."

Johan squinted in concentration. Over weeks he'd tuned his ear to the tiger's antique accent. Now he fixed the twisty tribal names in his mind. "There's no hope of reconciliation, then?"

"Oh, none. We'd sooner nest with mud imps than those bastards."

Johan nodded, seeming satisfied, leaving Jedit and Hestia as puzzled as ever. Abruptly the magician turned. "We've walked one end of Efrava to the other. Now let us venture south, then north."

"What do you seek?" asked Hestia.

Johan's teeth showed a shark's grin. "Knowledge."

Skirting the matted swamp, Jedit warned of mud imps. Johan didn't seem to care.

On their second day circling south, amidst clouds of annoying mosquitoes, Hestia gave a sudden bleat. Her foot had tangled in a snare. Rather than rush to her rescue, Jedit Ojanen unsheathed his black claws and spun a quick circle. Well he did. From both sides in tall bushes popped a dozen evil faces with bamboo blowguns. Johan, in the lead as always, muttered some enchantment and waved a languid hand, invoking an aura of protection. Jedit flicked a paw at a zipping wasp and spanked a poisoned dart aside, then another. A third struck his neck but lodged in his short mane, not penetrating the skin. Two darts shot at Johan stopped a foot away to hang in midair, then slowly sank to the ground. Hestia had slashed the snare from her ankle. Crouching low, she leaped into a slot in the brush, giving a keening cry that set nerves on edge. Jedit bulled into brush after the biggest clutch of imps.

Squawling mud imps scattered through the brush. Belt-high, covered in reddish fur clotted with mud, they had devils' faces with black rams' horns, pug snouts, yellow fangs, and scruffy dark manes. Jedit caught two. One he killed with a swipe of his huge paw, claws splitting the creature's skull. The other he stabbed from behind, severing its spine. A third he tried to kick to death, but it dove into a bush and vanished. Jedit ripped the bush out by the roots only to uncover a gopher hole. Disgusted, he trotted back to the trail. Hestia, her stripes dusty and leaf-strewn, carried an imp's head by one horn. Showing it to Jedit, she pitched it into the brush.

Obviously protected by some magic aura, Johan hadn't moved a pace. He asked only, "Are these common?"

"As mosquitoes in some spots," said Jedit. He rubbed his own black nose, which was drilled with bumps. "Pests. They avoid us in large groups. They live on rats and hogs and ducks, mostly."

Soon they entered the jungle proper again, nurtured by southward-trending trickles from the river. A herd of tiny yellow deer bounded away from a pool. Everywhere ran game in plenty: water buffalo, deer, wild pigs, red monkeys. Even parrots and giant anacondas and tortoises were food to tigers. Jedit and Hestia ganged up to encircle and kill an animal when hungry. They would gorge, eating flesh, organs, even brains and eyes, then needn't eat for four or five days. Johan seldom ate, subsisting on water and roots and now and then a nest of eggs.

Everywhere, the tigers noted, Johan absorbed the lay of the oasis, until he must know it better than any native. He studied the sky, asked about the year-round weather, memorized hillocks and swamps and open glades, noted the types of trees and how they clustered, tasted the water, sifted the soil for minerals or clay. Whenever the tigers asked why, Johan gave vague answers about "wanting to know everything there is to know."

One time, pacing a sun-dappled trail, he asked abruptly, "Do your people have any legends about flying?"

"You mean," asked Jedit, "about tigers flying like birds?"

Hestia put in, "No, not as such."

"No true talk of magic carpets or winged shoes or soaring boats?"

Numbly the two tigers shook whiskered heads, and Johan marched on.

Over four months, they scoured all of Efrava, until the only place left unexplored was the village itself. Camping by night without a fire under three teak trees, Johan sat against a trunk, hands in his long sleeves and feet drawn up under his robe. Jedit lay sprawled on the ground. Hestia lay nuzzled against his broad back, one arm around him, as they always slept of late. The tigers were nodding when Johan startled them both.

"I have a confession to make," said the mage. "I did know your father."