by Kate Elliott
“I’ll just head out,” he said.
But after all, the guards who had escorted him to the compound had vanished, and there was some fuss over finding a guide to replace him since Horas was quite sure he would lose his way in the confusing labyrinth of streets. Master Feden jabbered, and there came Captain Waras with a snarl on his face and a surly attitude that would have gotten him whipped in Argent Hall.
“I’ve got my hands full rousting that mercenary troop,” he informed Master Feden.
“What! What? They were meant to leave at dawn!”
“Seems they’re negotiating with some merchants from town, who won’t be budged. I don’t want a fight on my hands, not if I can avoid one.”
“Negotiating for what?” asked Horas. “I thought the council ruled they were to leave immediately and without hiring themselves out here.”
“I was just about to send a troop of riders to set them on their way. Would you like to come? Is that redberry juice, Master Feden?”
“So it is. Just uncanted this morning. So sharp you’ll cry.”
“Might I—?”
Down the captain sat, right on the carpet, and the slave was sent to bring a third pillow and a third cup. It transpired that the captain was a devout follower of the game of hooks-and-ropes, as Horas had been back at Iron Hall when he had followed league play in Teriayne. Olossi had teams, as did many of the surrounding villages, and there had been a particularly good scandal last season having to do with a hookster and a very cunning bribe, which Waras explained in entertaining detail. They drained the pitcher of redberry juice, and as promised Horas had to wipe tears off his face. His tongue had gone numb.
“Best we go out,” he said as he blinked away the last bitter tear.
AFTER ALL MASTER Feden would come, and then there must be a procession, because council masters did get all twisted up if they weren’t given a chance to parade before the lesser, as Horas’s old grandmother was used to say.
Out they went. Passing through the fields and waste country beyond the outer walls, they met a group of men and slaves returning with a palanquin carried in their midst. The curtains concealed the treasure within. Master Feden cursed roundly at a merchant he recognized in that group, and there was a nasty exchange, more of looks than of words.
When they reached the river’s shore where the militia had posted its sentries, they found the mercenary company ready to move out.
Master Feden called the captain over. The fellow was an outlander, with a hooked nose and a closed face, the kind that never gives anything away. He’d been calm enough in the council meeting, even when the vote had gone against him. Horas knew this kind; they would speak softly to your face and knife you in the back when you turned to go.
“I’m sure you remember who I am!” said Master Feden in a stern voice. “You were told to be gone at dawn.”
The captain had a cold expression. He wasn’t a nice man. He was the kind people thought was nice, but Horas had learned in the mountains that a sunny day on the high slopes could turn deadly in the turn of a hat and never care who was left for dead behind the storm.
“Negotiations took longer than expected,” said the captain with a glance at his men. They were a sleek bunch, tough as leather, sharp as a good blade. “We are leaving now.” He spared a glance for the reeve, dismissed him in the most insulting way, and signaled to his soldiers.
“Negotiations for what?” Mester Feden cried.
The company moved, splashing across the shallows.
“I sold my wife,” he said, over his shoulder.
The council master turned red. Captain Waras whistled beneath his breath.
“Damn him,” said the council master, even redder. “I’d have thrown in a bid.”
As the company passed, Horas tried to count them, but he gave up after forty. They were nothing, really. The strike force would overrun them, and even if a few scattered into the countryside, the main army would catch them, crush them, and eat them with supper as flavoring, as the saying went.
He was eager to get back to Tumna, but he must wait with Master Feden as the company crossed. A man threw a shoe, and there was some fuss, and a delay, and gods help them all if by the time he trudged back on weary feet into Assizes Court it wasn’t noontide with the sun at its worst and the wind struggling to catch any breath in this furnace heat. He rested awhile and took a cooling drink, and in the end it was only the thought of that Devouring girl on the road and marching step by step farther away from him and his chance to get a piece of her that got him going. He shook Tumna out of her sunning stupor.
The mercenary company was moving at a slug’s glide. It was easy to get a comprehensive view of their line of march and of the road stretching before and behind them. There was the usual traffic, slowing to a trickle as it moved into the heat of the day. Trust the stupid outlanders to march right into the worst. They trudged along in a torpor. They were pushing in the correct direction, anyway. Maybe the captain was sorry, now, that he’d sold off his pretty wife. That was something to laugh about.
He circled wide, catching an updraft off the escarpment and banking wide to get a view of West Track more or less parallel to the east-flowing length of the wide River Olo. The river looped and curved along the plain, but West Track ran straight as a spear. There were little villages and fields and swales and low ground and hills hidden by old trees too difficult to chop down. The heat had melted the locals. The villages were quiet; the householders seemed early to their afternoon Shade Hour. He saw no one on the road except a pair of peddlers with packs slung over their backs, a single man leading a horse, a trio of women with the jaunty swagger of entertainers, and—yes!—a woman mounted on one horse and leading two others.
He spotted open ground a distance ahead, circled her until he was sure she’d seen him, and flew ahead for an easy landing. Soon enough, she appeared along the empty road, the only creature abroad. He waited in the shade of a massive old oak tree, while Tumna perched in the sun with wings spread. As everyone did, the woman kept her distance from the eagle, but she tethered her horses across the road and sauntered over.
“I thought you had abandoned me yesterday,” she said, raising her chin with a challenge. “You sure were cold. Out on patrol again?”
The sheen of sweat on her made her glisten. A man could go crazy looking on a woman who looked the way she did, with her vest bound so loose you might glimpse anything through those lacings but never quite did, with her linen kilt sliding along taut thighs. She considered the eagle.
“I wonder what she would do,” she said, “if I were to tie you up. Would she attack me? I think she could rip my head right off.”
In the Tale of Discovery, the shoemaker had been literally blinded with lust, and Horas suddenly wondered if he was about to undergo the same transformation. The sun was so bright, and the pale colors of the dry landscape filmed away into a haze. He was slick with sweat, and so tight he actually could not get a word up out of his throat. But he could move his arm, giving the hand signal for flight and return. Tumna shook herself and kekked irritably, but she took off with a massive thrust and a storm of wing, and vanished over the woodland to find a more peaceful place to sun.
“I suppose that’s my answer,” she said, watching the eagle go. “Wait here.”
She walked back across the clearing and over the road to where she had tethered her horses, and just to watch that shapely rump sway was enough to make his throat dry and his gaze blur. Into the woods she disappeared, leading the horses, and reappeared a bit later without them. With a faint smile, she returned to him and grasped his wrist. He was choked with desire.
She led him deep into the woodland, close beside the river where there was lots of cover and plenty of twisted trees that made perfect hitching posts, to which she tied him.
After a long time, she asked him if he wanted her to stop, and he gasped, “No.”
A while after that, she asked him again, and he whimpered, “No.”
>
Not that he could have stopped her anyway. Not that he would have wanted to.
Even later, she said she had to go get more water, and he needed a break by that time, because it was hard work, as the Merciless One knew. The slow heat of the afternoon drowsed around him. His hands began to tingle and go numb, but he couldn’t relieve the pressure of the rope. He began to lose feeling in his feet. He cooled, and withered.
The colors within the trees changed as shadows drew long under the branches. It was about the time he realized that he was too effectively trussed up to free himself, and too far from the road for his voice to carry the distance, that he also discovered he had lost his bone whistle. Even if it was concealed beneath the pile made by his clothes and gear, he could not reach it.
It was getting dark fast, for night always came quickly.
He heard male voices, laughter, in the trees, but when he called after them, no one answered.
That’s when he understood that she wasn’t coming back.
44
Keshad was tired of trudging. Mostly he thought about how he was going to get away from Rabbit, Twist, and the rest of his new comrades, all of whom were the kind of people you never ever did business with unless you were already on your way out of town. It was as if someone had swept up the worst criminals into one band, on purpose.
What was he even thinking? That was exactly what had happened.
It was almost dark when they caught up with the strike force, a group of several hundred soldiers. This was the group Bai had counted two nights ago. Three hundred and twelve, she had said, but as he walked into the rough encampment the soldiers were setting up alongside the road, he wondered if there weren’t more. Canvas was rigged up along ropes to form shelters. Grooms walked the horse lines. Men piled hay along the rope line, feed filched from village storehouses. Although dusk was falling, no one had lit any fires. Wagons were driven across the road to form barriers before and behind the line of march.
“Heya! Second Company! Over here!” A captain called out their sergeant. “We’ll reach Olossi tomorrow. The last village we came through was already abandoned, so it seems someone had news of our coming. We’re covering three watches, not two, tonight. On high alert. Your men will take all the watches. Double your normal numbers.”
“That’s not fair!” Twist muttered. “They always give us the watches, like we’re not worth any other duty. Aui! I liked it better when we were on our own.”
Keshad forbore to remind Twist that he’d been complaining all day about not getting first pickings with the rest of the strike force.
How had his luck changed so fast? He had gambled, and won freedom for himself and for Bai, but now he was no better than a captive in enemy hands. They’d as happily cut his throat and rape his corpse as give him a handful of rice, and certainly no rice or even a hank of stale flatbread was forthcoming tonight. Nor dared he try to purchase anything, which would mean he’d reveal his coin. Stomach grumbling, he stuck close by Twist as they found a bit of ground to rest on. When Kesh rolled out his blanket, the others hooted and called him names.
“Very particular!”
“Quite the merchant’s son. Southern silks never too good for you!”
“Nah, he’s hoping for a bit of company.”
“Rabbit here won’t do it. You’re too wiggly for his tastes.”
One thing Keshad had learned in the marketplace was not to let your opponent smell blood or weakness. “I’m wanting a bit of sleep, if you don’t mind!”
“Oooh. Isn’t he particular!”
The ginnies opened their mouths to display their wicked teeth. The men looked away.
“Just shut up and leave the lad alone,” added Twist. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, I can’t sleep with your chatter. So just shut it, all round.”
They settled down, but Keshad could not sleep. As soon as he shut his eyes, he saw that hideous, distorted creature descending out of the night sky and onto the road. Yet when he opened his eyes to banish the vision, there were a dozen snoring men scattered around him, lying on the ground at all angles like a crazy fence, trapping him. There was no way he could escape.
And they all stank.
The air was clear, untainted by smoke or moonlight. He turned onto his back. The ginnies shoved into the gap between his arm and his body. With them pressed against him, he stared at the sky. Each star had a name and a classification in the lore of Beltak, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, but he did not know more than the two every believer must recognize or be subject to the lash. There: the Royal Road that spans the heavens. There, low and in the north: Iku, the Head of the King, around which the heavens spin.
Older tales whispered in his ears as if the trees were mocking him, reminding him of the Tale of Plenty and the Tale of Fortune. There came the Carter and his barking Dog, rolling slowly up out of the east. In the north, the Sacred Tree had fallen sideways. The Three Footsteps trod west. Tree cover hid the southern sky. But these were Hundred tales. They were all lies.
He dozed off, woke at the sound of hooves, but it was only a man walking a horse along the road. A normally shaped horse. The other vision had been a lie.
Next thing he knew, the butt of a spear slammed into his ribs.
“Eh! Aui!”
Magic clamped his jaws over the shaft.
“I wouldn’t have to do it this way if those things didn’t bite,” said Twist.
Let go.
The ginny let go, and Shai had to rub him to calm him down. Mischief “smiled,” as if amused.
“Come on. Up! Our turn at watch.”
Up he dragged himself, sticking close to Twist as they got their assignments.
“Smart of you to bring your bundle with you,” said Twist. “Someone will steal it, and you’ll never know where it’s gone.”
“Thanks.”
It wasn’t that he trusted Twist, precisely, only that he mistrusted him less than he did the others. They’d been assigned to the rear guard, and fortunately that meant the wagon barrier. He found a comfortable spot to sit, on the driving bench of one of the wagons, and wedged his bundle in beside him. The ginnies draped themselves over the bundle, snugged together, and closed their eyes. He amused himself by whistling under his breath to pass the time, every tune he could think of and then over again. Twist dozed, leaning against a wagon. A pair of other men paced, arguing in low tones about a bet one had lost and the other had won. After a while they fell silent and shared a smoke, off by the edge of the road, huddled close to hide the spark of its burning.
The night wind whispered its tale in the trees. The horses moved restlessly on the rope line. The stars remained silent.
A woman laughed.
He started up, but no one else seemed to have noticed. The pair sucked on their smoke. Its dizzy-sweet smell pricked his nostrils, and he shook himself. That laugh had sounded like Bai. He squirmed around, peering along the stretch of road. The shelters had been strung off the road, along the cleared ground and back under the woodland cover. The horses formed an irregular line of shadow along the river side of West Track, although the river lay too far away from the road in this spot for him to hear its running. He could not see the other barrier. The road had a strange quality in the darkness, the barest hint of a shine that made it possible to travel at night, even during the dark of the moon without lamp or candle or torch to light your way.
He yawned, sucking in a sudden cloud of sweet-smoke that had drifted his way. The flavor punched into his lungs and sent him soaring.
He is aloft. Alone. The wind is a high road under his feet, under the hooves of his mount, which gallops on air as easily as if it were on earth. Its great, slow wings are like bellows pumps, displacing air with each squeeze. The beast nickers, alerted to horses below, dark shapes moving in the night through the trees. “What’s there?” a man’s voice mutters. “Best we go check.” They begin to turn. Shapes scatter along the ground below as the winged beast snorts.
The hells! The nightmare just would not leave him!
Then comes the kick of surprise as the man swears under his breath. “How can it be? How came Shai here?”
“Hei!” Twist shoved him hard in the ribs with the butt of his spear. “We’ll get whipped if they catch you sleeping! Here they come. Thank the gods! I was ready to doze off myself.”
Keshad looked up at the sky, but nothing disturbed the spread of stars. Nothing flew overhead. Reeves couldn’t fly at night anyway. Nothing could, except owls and nighthawks and such creatures. He was just dreaming. Shaking, he clambered off the wagon as their relief walked up rank-smelling and yawning and belching to take their place. There was Rabbit, scratching himself.
“Heh. Heh,” he said by way of greeting, when he saw Twist and Kesh. “I’m hungry. When we going to eat them lizards?”
Magic bobbed his head aggressively, but Rabbit never noticed. Kesh gathered up his gear, and the ginnies, and followed Twist.
“Did you hear a woman laughing?” Kesh asked as they walked back to their doss.
“Whew! You’re dreaming! There’s a couple of bitches marching with the strike force, but they’d as soon cut off your cock and cook it for their dinner as pay you any other kind of mind. Best get some rest. If we’re lucky, we’ll see action tomorrow. Earn some pickings.”
Kesh picked a spot at the edge of the group, outside the sprawled bodies. With some difficulty he convinced the ginnies to curl up inside his cloak, with their heads peeking out one end and tails from the other. He lay on the ground with grass and twigs and stones poking into him. From this uncomfortable bed, he monitored Twist’s breathing. After a long while, he rolled to one side and levered up onto a knee, testing the air and the silence. He rose to his feet, tucking his bedroll and pouches under his arm. The ginnies he slung over his back, already trussed up in the cloak. As if they knew what he was about, they remained quiet.
