Enoch

The main body of the Bayut tribe, along with the Jarchit, the Yurkut, a dozen or so minor steppe tribes, and most of those Cainites not native to the northern steppes or otherwise left without a tribal affiliation, camped together amid a strange sight in these flat wastes. The small range of mountains Grant had glimpsed at a distance when first arriving on Nod had a few streams running down into the foothills below, making them excellent grazing land despite their roughness. Terraces cut into the sides of mountain valleys showed that this land had even been farmed, in an age now forgotten. And where the largest of these valleys opened onto a lush floodplain stood the ruins of a city, now occupied by the Cainites and perhaps in the early stages of being slowly, disjointedly rebuilt.

It was old, the Cainites knew that much. Again, Daguk’s guess for how old differed from Gotai’s, which differed from Piran’s, but all agreed it was built closer to the beginning of civilization than to the present, and what they saw was probably the topmost layer in several cycles of destruction and reconstruction. What kind of people had lived here, what they called themselves, how they lived, what they believed, who (if anybody) in the present day was their progeny, and whether they were even human or some manner of djinn, troll or yaoguai were questions whose answers they could only invent to fill gaps in the true story. They did know, at least, what the city had been called. Cain had made that much known to his followers, though there was no telling how much more he kept back or had simply forgotten.

Its name was Enoch. Cain had briefly recounted giving it that name, when it was built.

A winding dirt path– no, a cobblestone highway still having the grass and dirt worn off it by renewed use– led Abutai’s company to Enoch’s nearest gate. Round yurts and peaked tents spilled out from what remained of the city walls, whose rough cyclopean masonry was in some places no more than a pile of half-buried stones, in others still possessed of a functioning, if badly eroded, parapet. Herdsmen came and went, taking a herd of horses here, a flock of sheep there between pasture and pen. Just inside the walls, tumbled stones had been re-stacked on ruined foundations high enough to contain and shelter the animals.

Amid these chaotic comings and goings was a young woman, roughly of an age with the younger Cainite warriors such as Yuya and Iona, heading for the gate. She wore a broad-sleeved gown of yellow silk, stained with mud and sweat, skirt torn at the knees, and a straight two-handed sword far too long to draw over the shoulder slung tightly across her back. Her hair laid unevenly between her shoulder blades, as though cut with a knife. Following her closely was a tall man with loose, wrinkled skin, as though he had lost a great deal of weight in a short time. He wore a short black robe and trousers wrapped below the knee. His hair looked to be growing back in from a shaved head. Over his shoulders were two sets of saddlebags, tied up with cookware and bedding dangling all about. Most of the warriors just stared, but Iona laughed, a mean-spirited, witchy cackle that echoed through the foothills.

“Is that a– did ye really– ye cannae be bloody serious! What’s that, the third one in two years? Lugo noblewoman again, too, do I have that right, Gotai?”

“So it would seem, my good Vetana. When I left, wide sleeves in a light color hadn’t been high women's fashion in Lugo for decades, which means they must have come back into vogue since then. She must be from Xinqian, that's the only place trends change that fast.”

“Oh aye, she's in vogue, is she?” Iona rode over to the girl as she trudged along. “Alright, get to havering, ye clarty sow. What brings ye all the way to Enoch?”

The girl blinked, and the Penitents could see the gears turning behind her eyes as she tried to make sense of Iona’s distinctly Vetani jabs. Finally, with only a small trip over her words, she said, “W-well, obviously, the same thing that brought you here, peasant girl.” She genuinely didn't seem to mean those last couple words as an insult. “I've decided to escape the cage that is a woman's lot. I will present myself to Cain, and become a warrior in his service.”

Iona laughed again, rocking in her saddle with unrestrained derision. “Ye wanna… become a warrior… ah, I cannae take it!” Once she got a handle on the laughter, she dropped to a much milder expression, still grinning but making room for at least a little gravity. “So, ye fancy ye ken why I’m here, lass? Was yer da a pirate captain, too? Did ye have to swim half a league to shore when his first mate led a mutiny? Only get away ‘cos he froze up over whether to go ‘head and kill ye or force himself on ye first?”

“Well… no, but I can fight! I’d be wasted on a loveless political marriage that has me sitting around simply looking pretty, when I’m not forced to bear children for some fat old minister. I want to ride with the liberated women of the Cainites!”

Sauhur, listening from a few paces behind, put his whole head into an exaggerated eyeroll, as nobody could clearly see his eyes through his chain-veiled helm. “Bah. Where did this image of the independent steppe woman come from? Is it because we teach our daughters to ride and use the bow? Girl-shepherds need to kill just as many wolves as the boys. That does not mean we dispense with the feminine on the whole and have our women feign manhood. Although, some princelings do humor those womenfolk who wish to ride with the men in the field…” he looked meaningfully at Iona.

Iona studiously ignored the shaman. Clearly, whatever misgivings he had about women taking a proactive role in the military affairs of the Cainites, he had expressed ad nauseum already. “And what of yer eunuch? Do ye mean to liberate him? Right the injustice that was done to him as a boy?”

“Linshou has never known anything but service to my family–”

“And you have never known hardship, wee miss!” Iona was done laughing now, her mirth suddenly turned to vitriol. “Tell me, do ye envy all men, or just the lairds who get songs written about ‘em, after they lead ten thousand peasant blokes to die in some foreign land? Often as not, they nae want to be there anymore than ye want to be in this marriage you’re running from. I’m a fighter ‘cos it’s all I know. Been party to theft and murder since I was old enough to climb a ship’s rigging. I came here ‘cos it makes little differ if ye raid a village to get corn or fish, and I dinnae ken how to fill my belly another way. If ye just want equality, ye could have saved yerself a long ramble and eloped with a peasant. Sure, he might’ve been the master of the house in theory, but on the daily, both a’ ye would be busting yer arses fair and square. Sure as the Nightmares wait, ye wouldnae be sitting around bored.”

“Oh, so our sex can’t even have a chance of winning glory on the battlefield? Except special little you, of course.”

Iona leaned over and backhanded the noblewoman across the mouth. She fell to her knees, and her eunuch manservant froze in stunned silence.

“Ye can have a go, if ye can get a horse. I take it yours were lost getting here? The eunuch doesnae have to help ye, assuming ye didnae win him in battle yerself. War-captives are the only bondsmen we keep out here. Maybe ye can make some dosh as a camp follower, once we go on the march. Not sleeping around, necessarily, though it pays better than the cooking or the laundry. But if I were ye, with yer soft hands, I’d find one man to tent with. You’ll still get callouses enough that way; you’ll need to pull yer weight herding the flocks. But idleness will be a thing of the past for ye, and being frank, I see the path ye mean to take leading to a choice between a Bekhite’s bed or his cookpot. And likely not yer choice.” Iona got her horse moving again. “Welcome to the steppes, ye dense burd.”