The Last Road

by K. Johansen

  Nikeh sank down to one knee, waiting, watching. No need for speech. She felt Istva’s tension as he crouched beside her. Shivering. She didn’t want him here, didn’t need a guide any farther. No getting rid of him, though.

  Four sentries guarded the sleep of Dimas. False prince, risen to his false god’s esteem through being merely the foremost of those who licked the All-Holy’s boots, or perhaps his backside.

  She spent too much time with street-guards. Their vulgarity was contagious.

  Four sentries. Two at the front, Istva had said, by the door, where torches burned against the night. One at each back corner.

  Istva was trembling. Not fear, she thought. A hunting dog, eager to be unleashed. She herself, as well. Not fear. The guards were only an obstacle to be gotten past, as the priestess who had provided her robe had been. A woman brought by Istva into the dark beyond the watch-fires with the tale of a forager dying of a Marakander patrol’s arrow, desperate for a final blessing.

  The robe was a little sticky against her back, but in the dark the stain wouldn’t show.

  She crawled, keeping low. Didn’t waste time checking on Istva. If he failed to follow, if he betrayed her now—

  The sentry to the left was hers. She rose up behind him, hand over his mouth, knife slicing across his throat, all her strength in drawing it back. He struggled, briefly. Weakly. She let him down, looked, then, for Istva. Shadowy movement, that was all, at the far corner. No sound beyond a faint scuffling. Hard even to judge the direction of movement, but she thought someone moved towards her, so she went to meet him. Knife ready. But it was Istva. Good.

  How long till the bodies were noticed?

  Long enough, Nikeh most devoutly hoped and prayed, though her goddess was long dead.

  She crouched, pulling the tent wall taut by its lower edge. Canvas, not leather, and big enough to house a family or two. Dimas wouldn’t be alone, but Istva had thought there might be a clerk and a serving-man, and perhaps a couple of child message-runners.

  Nikeh wiped her hand on the grass, drew the heavier knife from her boot and began slicing. Not so easy as she had hoped; it took some sawing, made a faint sound. The handle grew slick with sweat. Her boots were a flaw in her disguise; no mere fourth-circle priestess would have such good boots, or would have managed to keep them, crossing the desert after Serakallash, when the camps by night became a brutal struggle for food, for fuel, for another blanket or robe to ward off winter’s bite. A nightmare, Istva had said. He didn’t talk of how he had survived. Murders were done. Dimas had let it happen. Only the strong would come to Marakand, he had proclaimed. The All-Holy disdained the weak. They could not serve.

  “Hurry,” Istva muttered at her shoulder.

  Shut up, she would have said, but enough cloth had parted and she was done. She returned that knife to its sheath, picked up the other again, long and sharp as she could make it. She slipped through the slit she had made.

  Istva followed, so close she felt his breath on her neck. That wasn’t what they agreed. He was to stay outside and keep watch. He had the dead sentry’s short-sword in his hand and how did he think he was going to explain that? She scowled at him to say this was her affair now, leave her to it.

  Greedy of her, to want this work for her own alone. Istva’s wife was dead, his children taken into some work-camp where they were being taught to worship the All-Holy as the emissary of the Old Great Gods, if they even lived at all. Istva was Westgrasslander, and his conversion only words of his mouth, not his heart. It had been that or burning, for himself and his children too.

  A night-lamp burned, small, weak flame. That was a blessing Nikeh hadn’t counted on. A curtain divided the tent and they were in the larger half of it, the back. Proper bedstead and a man sleeping there, alone. Dimas was devout, too devout to keep lovers, no room in his heart for a wife. All for the All-Holy. Dim dark shapes that were chests containing what might be of interest to the wardens of the wall and the city— records, if they kept such, plans, treasury—but she wasn’t here to fetch and carry. Two low cots—they had come in at the foot of one. Two people in each. Servants. Soldiers. Whatever. She didn’t much care. Folk of the general’s service close to hand, anyway, and the rest, more lowly, beyond the curtain in the outer room. Nikeh rose to her feet, crossed to the bed, avoiding the little table with the lamp and a thick book. Devotions? It lay open on its spine.

  Dimas lay likewise sprawled on his back, arms flung wide like a baby. Such a young man. Did he feel the weight of all the deaths he carried? Not only those he had commanded in the conquest of the south of the Western Grass and the desert town of Serakallash, but all those of his own following dead in the desert, hunger and sickness and cold and thirst, and the murders in the night, when love, friendship, kinship had become worth less than a piece of a blanket or a scraping of porridge.

  Probably not. It was all as the Old Great Gods of his imagination decreed, the All-Holy’s will.

  He slept beneath a good heavy quilt, flung half off, though the night was chill with lingering winter. Nikeh dragged a fold of it up over the prince’s face, pressing down to be sure of silence, kneeling over him, driving her slender knife in deep, finding its home.

  “Emrastepse remembers,” she hissed. Dimas jerked only the once, dead before he could twist his head away, bring an arm up to grapple. She wished she could have seen his eyes as he died.

  Nikeh was off him before the welling blood could soak through. None of the other sleepers stirred, no guard called out from the other side of the canvas or the entrance.

  She wiped her knife clean, wondering whether the devil knew his folk, as the true Old Great Gods knew and valued every soul they called home to their embrace, or if those tattooed for the cult were only souls, a nameless tally.

  A cry, then. A man sat up on one of the cots. Istva spun on his heel and slashed as if he carried a sabre, but the blade did the job. The man fell back with a cry. Istva and Nikeh shoved one another out their rip as more cries rose.

  “Get rid of the sword,” she gasped as they ran.

  “No!”

  “Get rid of it—we’re a priestess and a bondman, we shouldn’t have a sword.”

  “Your hands are bloody.”

  They were. She had thought them clean.

  A shout—sentries behind, giving chase. Cries, people in other tents. Little light, and the moon failing them, the cloud that had been thickening earlier in the night covering the stars now, the mountains. Istva whirled around and she should have run, she should have left him, but she wheeled back to him and wished she had the sword she had left in the fort. Hard to hide it under a priest’s robe.

  A soldier almost upon them—he didn’t ask questions. He came sword first, a swift lunge, and Istva still fought as if he had something longer with a good edge to it, and he didn’t seem any too skilled regardless.

  “Give me the sword,” she said, but he didn’t hear, or he still thought her the clerk she had seemed when they first met, scouts bringing him in, another captured enemy forager who might be turned to their service. Eager to offer himself, it turned out. He had been foraging for fuel high on the steep sides of the valley where it narrowed to the pass. More than a few Westgrasslander converts had come into Marakander hands that way; very few had been willing to go back. The Westrons realized their mistake and began sending soldiers to guard them. It gave the slingers of the Malagru hillfolk who patrolled the mountainsides something to do.

  Now the Westrons did not venture up from the valley bottom at all.

  Istva was no sword-fighter. Better at cutting throats. Farmer, Nikeh decided. She watched her moment, dodged around and slashed low, knife in each hand now, and the soldier stumbled, his calf opened. Istva stabbed at last, struck armour, swore by some Westgrassland god and stabbed again at the man’s face. That finished him. Kicked him between the legs for good measure. Nikeh shoved both filthy knives in the sash of the tunic beneath her robe and took the fallen man’s sword, dragging Istva
away.

  More shouting behind them and Istva stumbled, lurching against her. She kept her hold on his arm, half dragging him. He lost his sword. There—corralled camels. Nikeh squirmed through the hurdles, tugged Istva awkwardly after her, crawling. He gave a yelp as something scraped him. Once they were in he didn’t follow her among the furry mounds of the waking beasts. He just let himself down on the trampled ground amidst the dung and prickly leavings of fodder. Nikeh went back to him, grabbed him. “Come on.”

  “Hurts,” he said, and it was more a gasp than a word. Bloody lips. Arrow in his back. Oh. It had broken off when she dragged him through the fence.

  “Ah, Old Great Gods…”

  Leave him. Run.

  She felt for the wound. Middle of his back, just aside from his spine. His breath was making strange sounds now. Bubbling. Wheezing. She rolled him over on her lap.

  “Istva—” Whispering. Horns were bleating an alarm. No one was paying this pen of camels any mind. Not yet. Soldiers mustering, but all the other folk too, the undisciplined, disordered rabble that was the bulk of the army, the devout who’d followed on the All-Holy’s word. But there were diviners, too, and ambitious priests and priestesses of the seventh circle, the primates of the cult, who would be eager to prove themselves the prince’s worthy successor, find the assassin, impose order. Present the All-Holy with a situation under control when he arrived, as rumour said he would any day now.

  Istva seized her hand. “Run,” he said. “Go, girl.” Something more in his native Westgrasslander. Whimpering. Pain. A plea to his god, who might or might not be dead. Maybe not, if he was from the route of the southern march, but still, they were very far away. His god might as well be gone, for all the comfort he could give.

  She seized Istva’s left arm, turned it to the fading moonlight, pushed his sleeve back. Tattooed, first circle, of course he was, the price of his life, and he didn’t know what it meant, none of them did.

  “Istva,” she said. “Listen, I have to—”

  No time. His eyes were fixed on something beyond. But the breath yet bubbled in him, weak, his heart still labouring.

  “The tattoo,” she said. “I’m going to hurt you, I’m sorry.” Stupid. What greater pain could there be?

  She took her fine knife, and pinching up the skin of the dark pattern on his wrist, sliced, sawing, as if she worked the skin of a rabbit free. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. He moved weakly on her lap. “Old Great Gods, I’m sorry, Istva. I have to, to set you free.”

  He was still. He was dead. His wrist oozed and her fingers clutched a lump of skin. She hurled it away. Her gorge rose and she couldn’t stop herself, but she managed to lean over and not defile him further, vomiting on the ground. That did it for the camels. Too much noise, too much strangeness, reek of blood and bile. One rose and bellowed, signal for them all to unfold, awkward and massive, threatening—she had travelled with camels when she was younger, the journey to Marakand, but she didn’t understand them as she did horses. Looked like a threat. Bells about their necks clanging. Dimas’s own baggage train, that’s what these were. “Go to the Old Great Gods,” she choked out, and the words tasted of acid and blood, which latter was her imagination. She rolled Istva off her lap and remembered what else was due, scooped a handful of dampish earth, stinking of camel, and flung it over him. “Go to the road and may your journey be short. The Old Great Gods wait for you with open arms.”

  She hoped they did. She hoped she had been in time.

  She hoped he hadn’t felt it, what she did. Hadn’t hated her, in that one last breath of pain.

  Camels scared her. They scared lots of people. Couldn’t see a gate, but the corral was made of hurdles lashed together and she had two knives.

  They surged out, bellowing, and one more small priestess among the now-scores of crowding, clamouring people, yelling of assassins, shrieking and fleeing camels…who noticed? And the night kept thickening.

  She didn’t run, except when everyone else did, and always humbly, at the back of the crowd. Let herself fall behind. Turned aside into squares where the camp still lay undisturbed.

  The foot of the Western Wall was a deeper blackness in the dark, but torchlight marked its line, ancient work rebuilt in the days of the false Lady and repaired again in more recent years, barring the pass of Marakand. It was nearly dawn before Nikeh could find her way there. If the sun rose before she made it back, she would have to wait for nightfall, or very likely be filled with arrows, probably by her own side. She felt an absurd sense of safety just to be in the wall’s shadow, though, when finally she made it so far. Smooth, vast blocks, like a ruin of Tiypur’s imperial past. Broken stone below, and stubby bushes—Marakand had cleared all the brush and trees away in recent years, pulled down vines, built up the fallen lines of lesser walls and watchtowers that curved to the heights, the sides of the pass, relics of long-forgotten days of war with the Stone Desert tribes or the Great Grass invasions of the days of the seven devils. A little pomegranate was trying to come up from the roots here, buds showing tiny tags of pale leaf on last year’s knee-high shoots. A dirty white rag was tied there, just a twist of cloth hardly noticeable. Enough to tell her where she was, a quarter mile from the southernmost watchtower.

  She swallowed, tried to find some moisture in her mouth. Still tasted of acid, her throat sore with it. She whistled like a starling greeting the dawn and waited, realizing how weak, how shaken she felt.

  She could feel his weight on her lap still.

  It wasn’t him she remembered, but her brother…

  Whistled again. Oh Gods, if Lia could not hear…if Lia were not there…She might scale the heights, go around the wall, which was a barrier to massed horsemen out of the deserts and the Grass, not to those who could climb the mountain paths. Would she be able to persuade a patrol of hillfolk she was no enemy? She was Westron. Remembered what she wore and peeled off the priestess’s robe, with its sticky, torn back— she hardly remembered that deed, except the feeling of satisfaction, that indeed, it was easy to kill a priest, as she had always suspected. Nikeh bundled it up and buried it under some stones. She was about to whistle one last time when the knotted rope came whispering down.

  Wiped her hands on the skirt of her Marakander tunic, took a deep breath. It looked a long way up, now. Started to climb. Hand over hand, foot upon foot, reach and jerk herself higher, push and catch. Sweating. Had to stop and simply cling. Hadn’t been so bad going down, had it? Should have done as Lia wanted, gone by the steep sides of the riven pass as she had done on other nights, meeting Istva, but that would have cost her far more time. Just a shadow, still, but movement, above. Wake up, fool. Climb. Hand, hand, feet. A welcome face peered over the parapet, strong arms reached to help her haul herself up, and she tumbled onto Lia Dur’s sandals. Shaking. Shivering so hard her teeth chattered together. Exhaustion from the climb, the sleepless night. Reaction.

  “I did it,” she said. “Dimas is dead.”

  “I knew,” the Marakander said, hauling up the rope. “I could see the torches. I was afraid they’d taken you, though. I thought about throwing myself off the wall so I didn’t have to tell Scholar Jang, when she comes back from whatever mysterious errand’s taken her away.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I swear!” Lia offered her an arm up, pulled her into an embrace, squeezing her hard, which was not exactly comfortable, armoured as the other woman was. “A scout came in from the north,” she said. “Word came just after you went down. The All-Holy’s only a day’s march away.”

  And that was an enemy against whom her knife would be no more use than a child’s fantasies had ever been.

  His children were long dead, and lost, their souls bereft of hope, beyond any salvation. They had gone to the road unblessed, unsigned, and the road was broken. There was no way to the Gods for them, only a slow, sad fading.

  It made Philon ill, to think how many would knowingly condemn those they loved to such a horror. It made him il
l, to know he had done so, and not even out of ignorance or blind prejudice, mindless adherence to the old ways and the empty worship of a long-dead goddess, but out of policy, to keep secret his own faith, so that he might continue to be a voice of quiet persuasion in his cousin’s tower, counselling her against forbidding the missionaries when they came, She would not have listened to him, had he borne the tattoo—initiate, and then his secret rise to be a priest of the fourth circle. The priest who had first inducted him had counselled against it, promised him he could much better serve in secret, that the All-Holy had need of such strong faith as his to be secret in the lightless places, hidden till the time to burn bright had come. But his children’s immortal souls had been the sacrifice. If he had known…No one could have foreseen, not the All-Holy himself. They had been meant to have been saved.

  Why did he think of them now? Because Dimas had been, in some manner, like a son to him? A man he might have hoped his little one would grow into, strong in faith, in virtue, steadfast. A commander of men as his grandfather had been. Perhaps. The soul of the prince at least was safe in the embrace of the All-Holy, who was, in himself, the bridge, the true and only, to carry the souls of his faithful to the Old Great Gods, when the end of all things came.

  Long ago Philon had sinned, betrayed his faith, but only in order to serve it. Killed a holy man at his princess’s command so as to be later where he might do greater good. Save lives, Philon had thought. Win lives for the All-Holy, rather than deaths for dead gods. Better quick surrender, overrun, than slow dying holding their walls. Because who would not choose life given certainty of death? Too many, it had turned out. If the princess had surrendered the tower so soon as the gate of village was opened to her enemies, so many more would have lived. They would have been called upon to renounce their desperate and futile clinging to the hollow past, they would have acknowledged the All-Holy, even if, at first, only to save their lives…but they would have come to understand the truth, to find joy in their faith, in knowing themselves saved.