Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  Since the night Jemel had seen him first, running tirelessly with his eyes a smoky red, Marron had always been the Ghost Walker. The name had come from legend, from a thousand firelight stories; the truth of it had been a thing to learn over weeks and months, was still a shadow largely unexplored, known only by its borders. The one fundamental, though, the self-evident truth had always been that the Ghost Walker walked or ran, and never rode. No animal would allow him anywhere near. Horses reared and kicked, camels roared and bit whoever was most handy, and usually Jemel.

  So it followed that Jemel had never seen Marron in a saddle, until now. And now - seeing the gawky gracelessness, the shambolic slouch of it, hearing the excuses punctuated by yelps as boy met saddle, bouncing - well, how could he help but laugh?

  'You be quiet, you. I haven't ridden a horse in months and I never could handle a charger, we only ever had ponies at home and I didn't like those. Fra' Piet mocked me for my riding and so did— so did everyone else, I don't need your teasing too.'

  'This is not a charger, Marron.'

  'No, it's a raw-boned nag with no manners and nobody could ride it with any hint of style, so stop that giggling and keep your eyes on the road, we could meet trouble any moment.'

  True, it was a raw-boned nag that Marron rode, but Jemel's mount was worse and he rejoiced in handling the creature with deliberate, ostentatious style.

  But it was also true that they were riding into trouble, and he should be watching for it. A Sharai earned his laughter on enemy ground by being always ready to meet that enemy, which meant reading the land, the sky, the wind; and meant also trusting the man at his back to guard his back when he was first man in the file, while his eyes and attention were all turned ahead.

  Enough of teasing, then. He turned to face forward, to scan the country as he rode, as he chuckled; and it wasn't long before the chuckle died, before he was calling on the furthest stretch of every sense to help him and still felt that he blundered blindly in the dark.

  This was hard, hard land to read. In the desert, the slightest sough of a breeze might tell him how far he was from water, or how long it would be before a dust-storm hit. The glimpse of a bird could show where camels might find grazing, or where a man crouched in cover. Every mark on sand or rock was a sign that spoke loud and clear, ink on a page and all the better for the wind's action on it; this was writing that said just when it was written, and often who else had read it since.

  Here, though, all was confusion. Surayon seemed as empty as the Sands, and he did not believe it but he couldn't read the signs that would tell him otherwise. This was wet country, there were open streams to cross, there was a wide and shining road in the valley bottom that they told him was a river. Look at a footprint in the muddy ooze before a ford, see how water pooled in the bottom, and who could say how long since that print was made? Not he ...

  They had skirted the turmoil that was also Surayon, Surayon-city. War hadn't reached it yet, might not for another day or two, and there were men enough to meet it when it came. One glimpse through the open gates, and Jemel had felt infinitely grateful not to be going inside; walls and roofs made him uncomfortable, people in number made him nervous. What use would he be, who could use a Sharai boy in a city? Better far if he and Marron rode the open country and offered help where it was needed, where he had it in him to offer . ..

  Or so he'd thought. So far they'd found the road deserted, except for the one time when a rising thunder of hooves at their back had forced them back into the verge, to allow the Princip and a party of his men to pass at speed. They wore half-armour, mail shirts and helms, and were mounted on good Sharai stallions, fast and fierce, not the giant destriers commonly favoured by the Patrics. Jemel had seen these horses in the stable yard, and his raiders soul had yearned to steal a couple. It would have been easy, with so few hands to saddle and harness such a number; it would have been gloriously funny, a shocking abuse of hospitality at which his hosts couldn't conceivably complain; above all it would have been utterly and magnificently Sharai, a tale to be told around desert fires till the end of his days.

  But he had said ‘ wouldn't waste a warhorse, and had meant it too. He'd take them for a joke, and then what? Have nothing to do but lead Marron into a war which they should neither of them fight, or else shame himself and that same raider's soul by bringing the horses back.

  So no, he had scoured the Princip's stables and found two ageing saddle-horses kept for sentiment, he guessed. They seemed to have half-forgotten that they were ever ridden; his was remembering its manners swiftly under his insistence, while Marron's would be ruined entirely if it should survive the day.

  The war-party had chased its own shadow into the distance, lost itself in the acrid haze; Jemel and Marron had ridden on slowly, and thought the land as empty as the road. Perhaps everyone had run to the city, who had not run to the war.

  Or perhaps these farming folk had clung to their farms, their dirt and weeds, their treasured peasantry; perhaps even now a dozen pairs of eyes were watching the two ride past, perhaps a dozen arrows were aiming at their breasts, two in Sharai dress, both armed so casual on stolen horses, they'll pay back the lives they've taken...

  He didn't know, he couldn't tell; he couldn't read the country. Even the sky confounded him, shrunk as it was between mountain walls, limited, contained. There was no true horizon here. He didn't understand how people could choose to live in a bowl like this, locked in, with only a dream of distance. In the desert, there was little that mattered more than that smudged line where sky and sand should meet: it warned of strangers and of storms, of oasis and of bare rock's rise, of any change approaching. These Surayonnaise squatted in the bottom of a well, and their enemies could drop on them like vultures and never be seen coming.

  The wind was as mute as the sky; its back broken on mountain rock, it was warm and damp, weak and shifting, telling him nothing except what he knew already, that he was all but helpless here. He could fight if they came to fighting, but he'd have no warning of it; he felt all but blinded and deafened too, swathed in a bewildering dampness that washed the world away.

  Then he thought about Marron and what had been done to him this morning. Himself, he was only far from home and out of sympathy with the land, baffled by its strangeness; his friend was carrying a loss far greater, all the stretch and strength of what he'd borne so long ripped away without his consent, without his even knowing until the thing had been done. If Jemel felt disturbingly adrift in this country, then how must Marron be feeling?

  He glanced back one more time, not the hint of a smile on his face or in his mind. His eyes met Marron's - with that momentary jolt that he still couldn't prepare for, when he saw once more that they were deep brown and utterly human, no trace of alien red - and it was his friend who smiled this time, and briefly they might have been two boys riding anywhere for any purpose or for none at all.

  They had ridden for some time, some distance past the city before they met any traffic coming the other way. Still going down but less steeply, the road was also far less straight even than it had been, and to Jemel - who was used to desert trails that ran as directly as possible from water to shade, from rock shelter to oasis - it had not seemed straight at all before. Now it snapped back and forth like a whipsnakes trail as it ran between high banks topped with hedges of thorn, that broke only occasionally to allow access to fields and orchards, groves of olive trees, long runs of vine. At another time, to another man, Jemel could grant - albeit reluctantly - that there might be a pleasant aspect to riding this road, turning and turning slowly amid the green and brown of the crops, the bright and varied colours of the fruits, the heady scents rising from them, the constant batter of birdsong and the sudden gurgling rush that spoke of another stream to ford just around the next corner.

  To Jemel, though, here and now, it was a frustration that amounted almost to a torture. He was desperately out of tune with this landscape, all the sounds and scents of unaccustomed farml
and threatened to overwhelm his senses altogether, used as he was to the bare and singular experience of the Sands - and now the road, the only path they had to follow was so contrived as to deny them any glimpse of what might be climbing up from the valley bottom.

  To those who knew and could read the country, of course — those who could hear an invaders footfall in the sudden shriek or silence of a bird, who could smell a horses sweat behind the perfume of a vineyard in the sun - there was an advantage in such a road, that could baffle and confuse an enemy as it had baffled and confused him. He was wise enough to admit that. No doubt the whole length of it could be spied out from the Princip's clever terrace high above, and those gateways into the fields made perfect ambush-spots, while the sheer height of the banks and hedges would prevent any invader breaking away from the road.

  What Jemel couldn't be was wise enough to endure the frustrations calmly, nor to be sensibly careful. The gentle, steady fall of the slope encouraged his horse, where it would have slowed a camel; he did nothing to hold the animal back. Nor did he check behind again, to see if Marron were keeping up as his pace increased from an ungainly trot to a comfortable canter.

  So he found himself alone as he came around yet one more corner, alone and abruptly facing half a dozen Patrics who blocked the road from ditch to trickling ditch. In his own land he'd have seen them, heard them, very likely smelled them long before this; here he was all but under their swords already. Three fighting men, a woman, two children. Her own, by the way they cling — don't discount her as a fighter. One horse, its rider wounded. Blood and pain-sweat, I can smell them now, too late. The youngest man is frightened dangerous; his father — if that is his father, leading the horse, I think this is a family - his father is disquiet but no worse. Weaponless, though, and his hands busy, in no case to stop the boy if he chooses to be stupid...

  And the boy might indeed have made such a choice, he looked as though he wanted to. He was carrying a billhook -too heavy to throw and if he charges me he dies, despite this nag beneath me and our mission here, I'm not sitting still to be hacked at like a wild vine - which he lifted threateningly, poising himself to charge indeed as he hissed, 'Sharai! rather, beware...'

  If the boy had carried a bow instead, Jemel thought he might have been dead already, with an arrow in his breast. As it was, he had that moments grace, while the boy made up his mind; just time enough for the father to say, 'Hold your hand, Thom. You've seen Sharai before, and not sought to kill them.'

  'This morning changes that.'

  'It need not. Use your eyes, boy. Those we fled, that slew our friends and wounded Soren — they came from the east, and rode in their tribes. If this lad has a tribe, his robe denies it. Besides, they were mounted on camels, not the dregs of some public stable. Hold, I say - unless you want to find yourself spitted,' added shrewdly, with a wary eye on Jemel’s ready stillness. 'But this is not a good day for a Sharai to ride out alone. Where from, lad - Surayon-town?'

  'The Princip's palace,' Jemel said softly. 'And not quite alone,' as Marron finally came trotting round the corner at his back, all out of time with his mount and grunting with the effort of it.

  'No, so I see. What's this? Another boy, another cast-off nag, Sharai dress again but not Sharai blood, I think. What are you?’

  'Guests of the Princip,' Jemel replied, seeing that Marron had neither breath nor words. 'He sent us to help those on the road, if they should need it — those like yourselves, with wounded in your party. They are ready for you at the palace.'

  'We saw the Princip a while back, riding north ...' For the first time, suspicion shaded his exhausted voice.

  'He has his country to protect. His granddaughter is waiting in his stead.'

  'Is she so? I thought she was off wandering, she's not been seen all summer.'

  'She returned with us today.' And broke the borders, or the borders were broken through her, but there was no need to say so much.

  'Good enough, then. I'll trust that girl to heal an arrow-wound, and hope her grand-da can do more. We'll need no help to get there, thank you kindly, even without the horses we gave up at the bridge. There are others behind in greater need — though I doubt how much aid you two are worth between you. Those beasts won't double up with wounded men, not more than once or twice for that climb to the palace, and there are dozens that we passed too weak to walk it. And you're hardly dressed to inspire confidence as escorts, on such a morning

  Jemel felt a bright cruel bubble of laughter rise in his chest to say that he knew it, he knew all of it. But he was struck by an idea at the same moment and swallowed the laughter down, glancing aside towards his friend. 'Marron, we could ask Lisan to send her djinni for the injured . . . ?'

  'Yes - or they could, to save us going back.' To the family's bewildered stares, Marron elucidated, though not much. 'When you reach the palace, tell Elisande that she could send her djinni to fetch in the badly wounded. Say you met Marron and Jemel, and they suggested it.'

  'Elisande's djinn?'

  'Yes. Its name is the Djinni Tachur, but she calls it Esren.' 'I don't understand. How could she, how could anyone -any mortal — tame or possess a djinni?'

  'Did I say it was tame? Go now, go; your man there—' '—My son, Soren—'

  '—Your son is bleeding yet, and needs attention.' Marron had edged his horse close, to check on the wounded man's condition; Jemel could see how he flinched still from an internal absence, coming so near to the stink and flow of blood and feeling nothing, no responsive surge, perhaps a hollowness at his heart. 'Tell Elisande what we have said and other men's sons may be saved also, though they lack horses and the time to reach her.'

  'Tell her to have it use the carpet,' Jemel added, 'to carry them; they'll find that easier. She'll understand.'

  'Better for you to ride ahead, if that's how these Patrics react to seeing me. They won't all be farmers' boys with pruning-hooks for weapons.' Besides, if you go first, you won't lead me into the fighting, where his own blood would certainly take him. Though he still didn't know which side he'd fight on, or for what cause.

  'There are Patrics too have crossed the border,' Marron murmured. 'And I'm a stranger and dressed strangely, I don't look Surayonnaise at all and I carry a nobleman's sword.'

  'You are still of their own blood.'

  'You think that makes a difference? Marshal Fulke is of their own blood. They're more scared of Outremer than they are of the Sharai, or they ought to be. They've traded with the Sharai for a generation - they've traded their children, remember, Elisande lived a year in Rhabat - while they've hidden their whole country from the Kingdom. They should kill me as readily as they would you, or sooner.'

  'If you ride first, then I can watch your back.'

  'Jemel, we'll ride together and face them down together, whoever challenges us. If you can remember that I slow down on hills, going up or coming down.'

  In the Sands, it was bad practice to ride side by side: twice the dustcloud to warn an enemy that you were coming, twice the target for his arrow, and your own friend an obstruction to your sword-arm or your camel's turning. They were not in the Sands now, though. Let them ride peaceably together, then; his good arguments didn't matter in any case. The two of them must have ended up like this, riding side by side, because that was how Marron wanted to ride.

  He had sworn - or thought he had sworn - his life and service to the Ghost Walker. Manifestly, Marron was no longer that; and yet he still held sway, Jemel would follow his will regardless of good sense or good tactics.

  He wondered when and how that had happened, or why he had been so slow to realise it; and thought it was a question that might interest him for a long time to come, if he were granted life long enough to consider it.

  The road wound on and they rode their winding way, meeting more refugees around every turn now. First they sat above an endless line, and then pushed through a crush of weary, filthy faces; only the badly hurt were mounted, and those on a donkey or an ox more
often than a horse.

  Fairly soon they gave up crying encouragement to the weak, or directions to anyone. These people knew their way.

  They must have been expecting this day for a generation. The wounded were making for the palace, as quickly as they might, riding or walking or carried on stretchers; their families would go with them, or else into the city below. Its walls would protect them, they could help to protect its walls. Good. But they needed no one to shout them where to go, any more than they needed swords to watch them. On this road, they were in no danger except from the sky, and that was narrow between the hedges; besides, Jemel had never heard that the Patrics could fly, and he knew that the Sharai could not.

  'Ifrit could fly, if they took that shape upon themselves. Jemel had a bow slung across his saddle-horn, but no blessed arrows. Better not to look for 'ifrit, then, for fear of calling them with his questing. There was trouble enough in Surayon; the tribes were in the east, Patrics in the north and the west, and it was a small, small country. What need 'ifrit in the air, or anywhere? A small doomed country, bleeding already; when the various armies met, it would be drowned in blood. Not all its own, but enough, oh God, enough. This land would be rank for a lifetime. The other Patrics called it cursed already; they would learn better, or their children's children would. There were places of great slaughter in the Sands, where dry bones still rolled in the wind. Here they would rot and stink, and poison all the water that this greedy country claimed.

  There was water everywhere: he saw it, heard it, smelled it, breathed it. His horse waded in it, and there was mud in the ruts on the road and mud in the ditches. There must have been more mud, the road must have been mud entirely for the wagons to make those ruts; but even now at summers end, the earth was wet enough to ooze a little, openly under the sun.

  That and the noise perhaps should have warned him, even before the walls fell away to open grassland and a road that ran straight at last. He should perhaps have been prepared, though nothing, he thought, could have prepared him truly; only enough that perhaps he could have pretended, he needn't have sat staring like a slack-jawed lackwit.