* * *
• • •
She awoke to find Ari standing at her door. On guard. Still half-under the influence of the drug, she smiled at him, reassured to see him there, protecting her person. Then she realized that he should not be on duty so soon after the assassination attempt. She knew that his body had been pierced many times by the exploding musket balls.
She sat up in bed. “Ari, come here.”
The Niho knight walked easily across the chamber. Katerina could see nothing in his walk to indicate that he had been shot—was it eight times?—a day or two before.
“Sit down, Ari,” she said, patting the bed beside her.
“Lady, I prefer to stand.”
Katerina was about to order him to sit, when she realized that it might be painful or difficult to do so because of his wounds. She looked carefully at him. He was in black kimono and full armor, but without the face mask. He seemed entirely unharmed, but that could not be. Then she saw that at his sleeve was a peep of white bandage, and a dab of red where a wound had leaked, perhaps even while walking across the room to her.
“Are you . . . all right?” she said.
“I am alive—and ready to serve you again,” he said.
“Should you not be resting?”
“No, Lady, my place is here by your side.”
Katerina thought about how to go about this. There was only one way.
“Ari Yoritomo,” she said, “I order you to cease your duties as my guard immediately and for . . . for three days and three nights. You will rest in your quarters during that time, undertaking no activities, and you will find another Niho knight to take your place as my guard.”
“Lady, I would prefer to remain . . .”
“This is my direct order to you. I do not trust you to discharge your duties to my satisfaction until you are completely healed.”
Katerina watched Ari’s face change. She had often thought of the Niho as expressionless, almost inhuman creatures. But that last remark had hit home; she saw Yoritomo wince, look deeply hurt, just for an instant, before his impassive mien returned.
“As you command, Lady,” he said.
“I would also like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving me from the assassins. You will always have my gratitude.”
Ari merely nodded. Katerina wondered if she could have offended him—could one actually offend Niho?
She said, “Ari, when you first came into my service, you made an oath to me. Do you remember it? You said, ‘I spill my blood today, willingly, as a symbol that I shall never shrink hereafter from spilling mine or that of any man or woman or child who seeks to harm you.’ You remember those words?”
Ari nodded again.
“There is a man who seeks to harm me—we have seen his handiwork; those assassins were his creatures. He is the Emperor of Khev. Do you swear you’ll spill his blood for me?”
“I swear it, Lady,” said Ari. “Gladly.”
“Thank you. We must delay our vengeance until we have reached our destination. But I shall hold you to your word. And, in due course, I shall send you against the Emperor.”
Katerina was about to say more when she noticed that the spot of bright red blood on the bandage at his wrist had grown in size. She must let him go and rest.
“Tell me one last thing, Ari,” she said. “Your father’s blood was a purple color. I saw it clearly, when he went to join the Seirei. Yet I see yours is red as a poppy. Why is that?”
Some of Ari’s poppy-red blood suddenly seemed to suffuse his normally impassive face. Two reactions in a day, thought Katerina. This is unprecedented.
At first she thought that he would not speak, so long was he silent. Then he said, “I will tell you, if you command it, although it is a source of shame for me.”
He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Then, “As you may know, the Niho fought many wars with the Celestial Republic to gain their freedom. And these conflicts were long-lasting and cruel. The Han troops, in order to humiliate us, would rape all Niho women who fell into their hands. Some of these women became gravid, and although most destroyed the fruit of these liaisons, either before or after the birth, some mothers did not have the strength to kill their own children—and the infants were allowed to live, and grow tall, and eventually were accepted into the Niho clans.”
Ari stopped.
“Go on,” said Katerina.
“The taint of their Celestial blood remained, of course, even after several generations. And they were weaker than full-blooded Niho, but they were also different in the way that they thought. More creative in their minds, more freethinking, more emotional. They and their descendants are called Kangiru. Perhaps one in every hundred Niho has Kangiru blood, which is red, like mine, like a common man’s, not the true purple of a pureblood Niho.”
“And do the rest of the Niho look down on you for this taint of blood?”
“Some do, a very few, but most Niho recognize that a Kangiru must struggle so much harder to achieve the required excellence than a pureblood. And that is respected.”
“And you, of course, are a knight first grade, are you not?”
“I am that, Lady,” he said, and smiled.
“Well, Ari Yoritomo, knight first grade, you have my respect—and my thanks—but you will take your leave of me now. I intend to rest—and I command that you do the same.”
CHAPTER 21
For Jun, the march was a blur of agony and exhaustion. After two savage beatings in close succession, he did not quite know how he managed to carry on. But he walked with the rest of them, mostly impelled onward by virtue of the fact that he was permanently yoked to the creature who called himself Kromo, who kicked him whenever he dropped, then kicked him harder until he rose once more to his feet.
Jun had never been drawn to the idea of making love with a man, although he had been very fond of an unmarried uncle whose companions were always lissome young men, and he knew that a significant proportion of people enjoyed relationships of this nature. His uncle had been one of the most upright, moral men he had ever known, as well as one of the kindest. Jun had never paid very much attention to his uncle’s choice of bedfellows. In truth, he had no strong feelings about the subject at all—but he was alarmed, disgusted and frankly bewildered by the things that came out of Kromo’s mouth during that long, long march. A constant dribble of his most disgusting thoughts, largely directed at Jun and concerning what he would like to do to different parts of his body. There was a disturbing element of brutality and violence—but also a secondary theme of hunger, food and eating—about the sexual fantasies that spilled endlessly from this fellow’s rubbery mouth, and Jun had no idea how to shut him up. On top of that, the man’s breath was the worst Jun had ever smelled: a stench like rotting meat combined with fresh human excrement.
Kromo was a good deal more powerful than Jun and he seemed to be more than a little insane. Jun thought about complaining to the jailers about his yoke mate and then hurriedly abandoned the idea. So he and Kromo were anchored together, day and night, for the three days that it took to reach Konda Pali, as the vast mining complex in the Gray Mountain was known, and except when he was asleep, Kromo kept up a constant stream of obscenities in a low, half-intelligible mumble.
There were twelve prisoners in this coffle, all of them yoked in pairs and destined for service in the mines. The six yoke pairs were all roped together at the crossbar, with about two paces of thick cord between each pair, which meant that there was no possibility of a yoking running away, even if they could coordinate their attempt. All twelve prisoners were joined in one shuffling mass, urged onward by the whip of one of the slave-masters. The second master traveled in a donkey cart, which held a water barrel and few meager cooking items, plus the two men’s spare clothes and bedding. The slave-masters took it in turns to ride in the cart or to drive the cof
fle forward. They rarely spoke, either to each other or to their prisoners: in the latter case, a vicious blow from the whip expressed more than words ever could. The two men expressed neither fury nor joy, just the unmistakable air that this was a dull, routine duty that they had undertaken before, more times than they could count.
Directly in front of Jun, Ketut and the big black scarred warrior were yoked together. But Ketut had her head bound in position and could not turn and look at him, although she did exchange a few grunted words now and then with her much taller yoke mate.
They walked all the first morning, with Jun dripping blood with every step, through gleaming paddy fields, the hot sunlight reflecting from the surface of the water like mirrors. Dirt-poor peasant farmers stopped their backbreaking work and straightened to watch the coffle shuffle past on the raised road, staring with fearful but compassionate eyes at the condemned wretches, flinching a little at the crack of the slave-masters’ whips. They soon left the vicinity of Sukatan and the fields that served it, and now they were entering a low, dry scrubby land of hard gray rocks and sand, with trees few and far between. They stopped at noon for a short break. The two slave-masters came around with bucket and ladle and the prisoners opened their jaws and tipped their heads back and received a sloppily poured cupful of rice water directly to the mouth.
Once more Jun thought about trying to speak with the slave-masters but his courage failed and, like the rest, he meekly put back his head and gratefully received his mouthful of slimy liquid.
They were fed that night—or, at least, a dozen bowls of dry rice with a few rancid pickled vegetables on top were put out on the ground for them to eat. But their arms remained tied to the yoke poles. Kromo had his face down in the dirt, wolfing down the meal before Jun was really aware of what was going on. His own bowl was out of reach, in the middle between his yoke mate and himself, so he waited patiently, with the good manners his late mother had instilled in him, for Kromo to finish and allow him to reach his own bowl. But when the big man was done, he merely shoved Jun along, using all his weight and the inflexible yoke and began eating from Jun’s untouched bowl.
Jun looked sideways at him. There seemed to be no point in protesting. But something hard and ugly began growing in his gut. For the first time in his pampered life, he contemplated violence against another living human being. He imagined punching the big man in the face; how good it would feel to smear his fat lips against his big yellow teeth. But there was nothing he could do now. His hands were tied to the yoke—and anyway, the creature Kromo scared him. What would he do to Jun in retaliation, if he were to hit him? Jun shuddered. Let it go, he told himself. Just let it go. Soon this will be over. They will realize that this is all a terrible mistake and cut me free. I must endure. Wearied beyond measure, with his neck stiff, his wounds aching but mercifully now dust-clogged and drying, Jun fell asleep on the ground, still yoked and bound.
In the blink of an eye, it was chilly dawn and the slave-masters were cracking their whips and coming round with the bucket of rice water and the ladle, and Jun opened his cracked mouth, tipped back his head and waited like a baby gannet for his liquid breakfast.
After three days and two nights of hardship of a kind that Jun had never experienced before—almost no food, precious little water, traveling over a harsh, gray, desertlike terrain which chewed through his sandal soles and bruised his already blistered feet, most of the time near delirious with pain, exhaustion and loss of blood, sometimes out of his own head in a nightmarish otherworld of demons and monsters where War-Master Hardan scolded him for his lack of sufficient military enthusiasm—the coffle tottered into a green valley, where crops were growing in ordered rows, a brook chuckled between low banks, and low, whitewashed buildings with red-tiled roofs were scattered here and there. Washing fluttered on lines. There were even flowers blooming in the neat gardens beside the cottages.
At first Jun thought he was still in one of his walking delusions. Then he saw that a vast, dun-colored mountain loomed above the pretty green settlement, the rising hillside punctuated with several dozen grim black towers, like vast, dead, limbless trees. There were a dozen long, wide black buildings set into the gray hillside with a massive double door and thousands of small black windows. A track led to each one and behind each a giant windlass stood like a guardian, the wheels slowly turning. The mine heads. The entrances to the underground complex of Konda Pali. The greatest source of gold in the Laut Besar, perhaps even the world.
The coffle was herded into a large open space, a kind of stock pen covered with a palm-leaf roof and surrounded by a high fence made of hundreds of very thin wires, the ground stamped flat by the passage of thousands of feet before theirs. Their hands were freed and the yokes were cut from their necks, collected and borne away by the two apelike slave-masters.
Jun had never felt a sense of release as powerful as when the yoke was taken from his neck, and with it came a new surge of hope and strength. He had survived the march. He was free of Kromo at last—that endless, perverted, mumbling monologue was silenced. He saw that the other members of the coffle were hurrying toward the far side of the compound where there were tables laden with bowls of fruit and mounded rice. And water butts, and some people already washing. He joined the movement and soon caught up with Ketut, who was trotting toward the table beside the big black striding warrior.
For once, and only briefly, Ketut smiled at him. “I did not think you would make it here alive, richboy,” she said.
She was indeed surprised at his survival. This slim, haughty princeling, this soft-handed boy who had never done a hard day’s work in his life had endured the beatings, the lack of food, the three days yoked to that Kromo person, and here he was unbroken, uncomplaining, walking on his own two feet. This rich boy was tougher than he looked.
“So, do we eat first—or wash and then eat?” said Jun, gripped by a sudden insane cheeriness.
“Eat—in the Hole you eat whenever you can,” said the big warrior. She was speaking the Common Tongue, but in a light tone with a strong, guttural accent.
The three of them selected palm-leaf plates and piled them high with sticky gray boiled rice and a coarse bright yellow bean-and-vegetable stew, and they carried them away to a patch of empty ground where they sat cross-legged and began to eat.
“You have been here before, then?” said Jun.
The warrior smiled at him and lifted one huge, muscular arm. Jun saw that along the black ribs was a mass of pink scarring. At first he could make no sense of it and then he realized that the latticework of thick scars spelled out a word: “Runner.”
“I was lucky,” the warrior said. “Mostly the bear-dogs get you. But I killed one of those monsters with my hands when they trapped me, and the Mbaru never want to lose any more of their beasts than they have to, so they called them off. They beat me for two solid days, four of them taking turns, they branded me a Runner and had a little rape-fun, too, of course. Then they did the worst thing they could do to me. The very worst. They sent me back here to the Hole.”
“Mbaru?” said Jun. He did not care for this scarred woman’s conversation at all.
“Those mummy-fuckers,” said the warrior, and inclined her head toward the wire. “They call themselves hunters, we call them Mbaru. They track down those who try to run.”
Jun looked and saw a dozen figures standing on the far side of the wire.
At first sight they did not seem particularly remarkable, a group of medium-sized men—no women—in drab baggy breeches and shirts, tall dusty boots, most of them a little scruffy, if the truth be told, their long hair tied back with strips of cloth. Some wore broad-brimmed leather hats against the sun. Jun noticed that they were all very heavily armed: knives in their belts and tucked into their boot tops, swords, too, around their waists, pistols shoved into sashes, long muskets draped over their shoulders, one man carrying a bow, with a quiver full of arrows at his b
elt. Another held a pair of slim javelins. At their feet, by the wire, squatted three huge black animals, and Jun had never seen their like before: short snouts in wide, triangular, fur-covered faces, small, round ears, honey-colored eyes, heavily bunched, muscular shoulders. Harnesses made of pale brown leather encompassed their broad chests, and each animal was leashed to one of the hunters. The nearest of the beasts stood and turned to lick itself and Jun saw that the front legs were long, furry and slabbed with flesh like a bull gorilla, although slightly bowed inward; the back legs were much shorter, the paws edged with long black claws. The beast settled down again and yawned, exposing a blood-red mouth and long, curved yellow fangs.
A pair of long, lean-bellied hounds sat on the far side of the group. They were impressive hunting dogs with big, square, shaggy heads and powerful jaws that looked as if they could easily crunch through human bone but, even so, these hounds looked nervously across at the massive bear-dogs from time to time, and kept their long tails tight between their legs.
“Those slave-hounds track you—the dogs on the right. They are twice as quick as any man, and they can smell your thoughts before you think them, or so they say. They catch up with most of the Runners within ten, fifteen miles. Most folk climb trees to escape getting chewed. Then the Mbaru come up with the bear-dogs. Bear-dogs can climb trees.”
Jun was aware that one of the massive beasts was staring at him. The bear-dog opened its black nostrils, showing a glimpse of the pink flesh inside, and took in a huge snort of air. It was smelling him. Taking in his scent.
“See those necklaces?” said the warrior. “See the big brown beads around the Mbarus’ necks? Those are dried Kepala beans. They wear one bean for each Runner they’ve brought in—living body or severed head, the only difference is the pay: the Squinters pay them five ringgu for a live one, only one ringgu for a head.”
Gates of Stone Page 24
