“You like to do that yourself.” Dhulyn tightened the strap on her own pack and straightened, automatically checking the placement of sword, boot daggers, sleeve knives, and the small ax that hung between her shoulder blades. Parno watched her for a moment before turning to his pipes, detaching the drones and the chanter from the air bag and slipping each one into the padded sleeve designed for it in the roll of felted cloth.
“You are sure you would not like to wait longer, give them more time?” he said, without turning toward her.
“While we are giving them more time, we can look for our killer.” She pushed her hands into the small of her back and stretched until the muscles cracked. “There are others who depend upon our help, besides the women of the Espadryni.”
Parno pressed his lips together and finished closing the heavy silk bag that held his pipes. No point in talking about it any further just now. He knew that tone.
A shadow darkened the doorway to the tent. Parno was relieved to see Dhulyn turn immediately, her hand already reaching for a weapon, and turning the movement into a gesture of welcome when she saw Star-Wind. Whatever thoughts were distracting her, it did not interfere with her reflexes. She would be herself again.
“You are going then,” the junior shaman said, as his glance through the tent took in their packing. His tone was wistful, as if he would like to ask them to stay if he could think of a reason. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I will ride a short way with you.”
“We thank you for your courtesy,” Parno said. He slung his pipes over his left shoulder and hefted his pack in his other hand. He expected Star-Wind’s offer was more an excuse to stay close to Dhulyn than an act of courtesy to departing guests.
They walked together through the camp to the horse lines. There was no sign of any of the women, and very few even of the children were out of their tents. The men they passed all paused in their work to greet them civilly, and some showed an inclination to follow along until a gesture from Star-Wind returned them to their tasks. When they arrived at the horse line, a young boy, the ghost eye clear on his forehead, stood beside Star-Wind’s horse. He waited while Dhulyn and Parno saddled their own horses, and even though it was clear they would need nothing further, he hovered until Star-Wind once more waved him away. Star-Wind grabbed a handful of mane and swung himself onto his horse’s back without benefit of either saddle or bridle.
Touching her forehead to those who lifted a hand to them as they rode, Dhulyn chose the most direct route away from the camp.
“There are some who are asking that Winter-Ash be punished for endangering you,” Star-Wind said after they had been riding a short time. It was clear that he was addressing Dhulyn, but Parno noticed that he looked away from her. So he did not notice immediately that she had stopped.
“We must go back,” she said. “They did not endanger me; they would not, not while we are in Vision.”
“No need,” Star-Wind said. “Both Cloud and Horse Shamans have spoken against it.”
“It is hard, when I see the old woman, Snow-Moon, crippled, not to be afraid that the same may come to Winter-Ash through my fault.”
“It is used only rarely, but there are things we cannot let go unpunished. Snow-Moon would have allowed her child to starve from neglect, even after she had been warned three times.”
Dhulyn nodded, but it was easy to see she was only partly convinced. Star-Wind sighed, and his voice hardened.
“What would you have us do? Confine the worst ones? In the cities, perhaps, that might be possible, but we cannot be so soft here. It is impossible. They know the meaning of the Pact, and they must all see that punishment comes swiftly.” There was regret in his voice, but there was impatience also.
“Your pardon, Star-Wind of the Salt Desert, it is not my place to approve, or disapprove. Forgive me.” Dhulyn inclined her head in a short bow. It was against the Mercenaries’ own Common Rule for her to comment on the political or social structure of another society. The Brotherhood was always neutral.
Except when we’re not, Parno thought, remembering a couple of slavers he and Dhulyn had once waylaid and killed.
Star-Wind accepted Dhulyn’s apology with a shallow bow of his own. “Where do you begin your search for the killer, Dhulyn Wolfshead?”
“We’ll follow your back trail to the place where you found our injured Brothers,” Dhulyn said. “He said they had been following some trace of the killer when they fell into the orobeast trap. Perhaps there will still be something for us to see.”
“There has been rain toward the Door, but perhaps not as far as the place you wish to go. That is the direction you want,” Star-Wind said, indicating the northwest. “We were three days from here when our scouts found Delvik Bloodeye. But that was our whole camp, women, children, and all. You should make better time, only the two of you.” He spun his horse around to face them. “We look forward to your return. Farewell, Dhulyn Wolfshead, Parno Lionsmane. Sun warm you, Moon and Stars light your way.”
“And yours, Star-Wind of the Salt Desert.”
“You are very quiet, my heart.” They had ridden much of the day in a more or less comfortable silence, with Dhulyn answering whenever Parno had spoken to her but offering no conversation herself. Now she straightened in the saddle and seemed to give herself a shake.
“I am feeling low,” she said, in a voice that matched her words.
Parno felt a jolt of alarm pass over his midsection. Except when she had an obvious injury, Dhulyn rarely admitted to feeling any kind of pain, still less an emotional one.
“Should we have rested longer after your ordeal with the Seers?”
Dhulyn shook her head, but the frown of abstraction didn’t leave her face. “You did not meet them, the unbroken women; no one ever has. And they might have been punished—crippled—because of me.”
The alarm rang louder. Dhulyn never felt sorry for herself. Parno inhaled deeply and prepared to go to work.
“I see,” he said in a tone that suggested a challenge. “When I worry about killing people, you roll your eyes to Sun, Moon, and Stars, and my concerns are dismissed as unfortunate remnants of my overly refined upbringing in a Noble House. But when you are worried about women who are not even going to be punished because of you, then I’m supposed to be full of sympathy, hold your hand, wipe away your tears, and say, ‘There, there, it’s all right, my sweet one’?”
The dark look that Dhulyn shot at him gave Parno hope.
“You’ve never been in favor of needless killing,” he pointed out, returning to his normal tone. “Or maiming.”
“Luckily for you.”
Parno smiled. She’s back, he thought, but he said nothing else out loud. Dhulyn might speak more about it now, once she’d begun—or not. But she already seemed more her normal self, and she had stopped her unhealthy brooding over the difficult circumstances of the Espadryni.
They had ridden perhaps half a span farther, when Dhulyn took in a deep breath and shook her hair back from her face. It had grown long enough that the braids and tails she wove it into were brushing her shoulders. Soon she would be able to tie it back with some hope that it wouldn’t escape.
“It is not,” she said, “that I ever expected to return to my home.” Parno waited, knowing there was more. “There was never any hope of that, and I have always known it. But I feel an echo of that loss when I look at these people, so like the people of my childhood and yet so unlike.” Dhulyn turned to him, her blood-red brows raised in question, and Parno nodded his understanding and encouragement.
“They did not know that the women are whole while in Vision—and what could they have done differently, what can they do, now that they know? Star-Wind says they are doing the best they can. I wonder if my own people would have done the same. Did they face a similar dilemma—not the same one, obviously—and choose to allow the breaking of the Tribes rather than live on in some distorted version of themselves?”
“Their choice led to life for you a
nd, eventually, freedom, safety—well,” Parno amended when Dhulyn grinned. “As safe as a Mercenary’s life can be.” He shrugged. “I won’t complain of a decision that led to the two of us riding together, as we are now. But that is easy for me to say—I lost nothing by it. And from what we’ve been told, the choice these Espadryni made must also have been a difficult one, if in a different way.” Parno cast about for the words he needed to express his thoughts. “It’s not as if the Marked gradually became broken and soulless, over generations. These people had to cope, not with a change in their circumstances, but with the very circumstances themselves.”
Dhulyn nodded, but slowly, more as if she were acknowledging he’d spoken than as if she agreed with him. Parno edged Warhammer nearer to her until he could nudge her knee with his own. “If their choice was annihilation or sequestration, perhaps they really are doing their best.”
Dhulyn raised her hand toward him, palm out. “I know that the Seers would not be alive at all if the men did not take these precautions, however harsh. I merely wondered if my own people would have chosen differently.”
It was evident, Parno thought, that Dhulyn would have done so. But how much of that was the effect of Mercenary Schooling, where the Common Rule taught them not to fear death, but to accept it as something that would come to all.
They had stopped to eat and were sharing a travel cake and a dried sausage when Parno returned to the subject from another angle.
“Do I imagine it, or did the Salt Lake People seem much less comfortable with us at first than those of the Long Trees?”
“The Long Trees had no women with them,” Dhulyn pointed out. “Isolated, with nothing to compare me to, they reacted to me, to who I am, and not so much to what I am.”
“Now, of course, it is both.” Parno handed Dhulyn her half of the travel cake. “Your presence is now both a constant reminder of what their own women are not and a symbol of what they can become.”
Dhulyn bit off a piece of cake, chewed and swallowed. “Perhaps. If I am indeed the one they wait for.”
“You feel no closer to the answer?”
“Are the White Twins correct? Is there some detail I have already Seen but don’t understand? And they seemed to say, too, that I had the answer to the question of the killer as well.”
“Obviously the trader is part of the clue. What did you think of him?”
Dhulyn frowned. “A little too charming for my taste, too easily my friend.”
Parno grinned. Dhulyn was notoriously reserved, even among the Brotherhood. “A trader who doesn’t charm is a trader without custom.”
They could not stretch out their meal any longer and were soon back on the road. Even after almost half a moon, they had no trouble following the back trail of the Salt Desert Tribe. The signs were still clear: the cropped grass, the hoof marks of horses both mounted and running free, the animal dung, even the marks of nightly cooking fires carefully dispersed. They were moving much faster than the Tribe had been able to, but still they held their horses to a fast walk, keeping a sharp eye out, Dhulyn looking on one side, Parno the other, for the signs of scouts returning to the main body of the Tribe with horses carrying extra weight.
Only when the angle of the setting sun made it useless to look for tracks did Dhulyn agree to stop for the night.
“We really didn’t need to be so careful today,” Parno said. He watched as Dhulyn cleaned and skinned a rabbit she’d shot as they rode. “Star-Wind said they were three days out at least when their outriders found our Brothers in the trap. We’re at least a day’s ride away ourselves.” He handed her the skewer from their parcel of cooking implements.
“Better cautious than cursing,” Dhulyn said.
The rabbit was a small one, and they made short work of it. Parno was wondering whether to break out his pipes for some music—perhaps he could even encourage Dhulyn to sing—when she broke the silence herself.
“I’d better take the first watch.”
Parno tilted his head to look at her more closely by the flickering light of the fire. “It’s my turn,” he said.
“I don’t feel like sleeping just yet,” Dhulyn said. She hesitated, frowning, before adding, “I am a little afraid of having a Vision, to be honest.” She blinked and looked away. “I fear meeting them again and seeing their real selves. It would break my heart.” She sighed.
Parno rocked back a bit in surprise, then nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “No pun intended. Come.” He shifted until he was sitting leaning against his pack and saddle. “Put your head in my lap and sleep,” he told her. “If you are Seeing and I think you’re in a bad way, I’ll wake you.”
DHULYN NOW KNOWS THAT THE THIN, SANDY-HAIRED MAN IS BEKLUTH ALLAIN. HE IS STILL WEARING THE GOLD RINGS IN HIS EARS, BUT HIS FACE IS LINED NOW, AND HIS FOREHEAD HIGHER. HE IS SITTING AT A SQUARE TABLE, ITS TOP INLAID WITH LIGHTER WOODS, READING BY THE LIGHT OF TWO LAMPS. A PLATE TO HIS LEFT CONTAINS THE REMNANTS OF A MEAL—CHICKEN OR SOME OTHER FOWL, JUDGING BY THE BONES. HE GLANCES TOWARD THE ROOM’S SINGLE WINDOW AND RISES TO LOOK OUT. HE MUST HAVE STEPPED IN SOMETHING WET, FOR HIS FEET, CLAD IN THE EMBROIDERED FELT OF HOUSE SLIPPERS, LEAVE MARKS ON THE FLOOR. IT IS DARK OUTSIDE, FORDHULYN CAN SEE NOTHING THROUGH THE ARCH OF THE WINDOW. THE MAN TURNS TOWARD THE TABLE AGAIN AND, SMILING, SAYS, “HOW CAN I HELP?” SHE WISHES SHE KNEW THE ANSWER . . .
PEOPLE WORK IN A FIELD OF HAY. RAGGED PEOPLE, FACES DRAWN WITH EXHAUSTION. MOUNTED GUARDS PATROL THE PERIMETER OF THE FIELD, THEIR FACES MARKED WITH THE SAME FATIGUE. THE GUARDS FACE OUTWARD, WHICH TELLSDHULYN THAT THEY ARE GUARDING THE REAPERS FROM EXTERNAL DANGER, NOT FROM ESCAPE. IN THE DISTANCE THERE IS A SMALL FORTRESS, SURROUNDED BY A WALLMUCHTOO LARGEFORIT . . .
DHULYN STANDS LOOKING OUT OVER A GROUP OF RED HORSEMEN SEATED ON THE GROUND, SOME CROSS-LEGGED, SOME WITH THEIR FEET IN FRONT OF THEM AND THEIR FOREARMS RESTING ON THEIR KNEES. SHE KNOWS THIS PLACE; SHE RECOGNIZES SOME OF THE MEN IN THE GATHERING. THERE IS SUNDOG, FROWNING, AND THERE ROCK SNAKE. THERE IS ALSO A MAN SHE DOES NOT KNOW, WHO CARRIES A LONG KNIFE IN HIS HANDS. A THIN, CURVING BLADE. A BUTCHER’S KNIFE. A FLENSING KNIFE PERHAPS. BUT WHEN SHE TURNS TO LOOK WHERE EVERY MAN IN THE GROUP IS LOOKING, IT IS NOT A BROKEN SEER WHO IS HELD BETWEEN TWO STRONG GUARDS. IT IS GUNDARON OFVALDOMAR.
“GUN.” DHULYN TAKES A STEP FORWARD, BUT HER VOICE MAKES NO SOUND. . . .
THE THIN, SANDY-HAIRED MAN IS STILL WEARING THE GOLD RINGS IN HIS EARS, BUT HIS FACE IS LINED NOW, AND HIS FOREHEAD HIGHER. HE IS SITTING AT A SQUARE TABLE, ITS TOP INLAID WITH LIGHTER WOODS, WRITING IN A BOUND BOOK. THERE IS A TALL BLUE GLASS AT HIS RIGHT HAND AND A MATCHING PITCHER JUST BEYOND IT, HALF-FULL OF LIQUID. DHULYN CAN SEE THE WINDOW ON HIS FAR SIDE FROM WHERE SHE IS STANDING, AND IT IS DAYLIGHT NOW, THE SUN SHINING. THE WINDOW LOOKS OUT ON RUINS, WATCH TOWERS FALLEN, BRIDGES CRUMBLED INTO THE RIVER, STREETS FULL OF RUBBLE. THE MAN LOOKS UP, SAYING, “HOW CANI HELP?” . . .
Parno woke, completely alert in an instant. It was almost the change of watch. He folded aside his bedding, rolled to his feet, and secured his sword and daggers before stepping aside to the designated latrine and emptying his bladder. He could make out where Dhulyn sat cross-legged, a dark shape like a boulder in the light of the almost full moon. He folded his own legs and sat down next to her, close enough for their knees to touch. She turned and leaned her forehead into his shoulder, breathing deeply in through her nose. Since they had been separated in the Long Ocean and reunited in Mortaxa, there had been two Dhulyns. In front of others she was still the typical Outlander, cool and watchful, undemonstrative. But she was more likely to touch him when they were alone—and he her, now that he thought of it. In many ways, he was reminded of the days when they were first Partnered, when the bond burned fiercer than it did now.
“When I was a child, before Dorian the Black took me from the slaver’s ship, I would pray to the gods of Sun, Moon, and Stars, offering them anything, everything, if they would only restore my people to me.” Dhulyn lifted her head from his shoulder, speaking in t
he whisper of the nightwatch voice. “Do you think what we have found here is the answer to that prayer?”
Parno knew her tones well, and under the cool sarcasm there was a faint splash of bitterness and something that was not quite anger, not quite fear. These were night thoughts, and her earlier Vision of their friend Gundaron alone and in danger at the hands of the Espadryni did not help. He shrugged. “Didn’t you once tell me that the gods are remote, that they don’t concern themselves with every little request? After all, they have the whole world to see to.” He waved his arm at the night sky, where the stars burned in unfamiliar patterns. “And more than one world, it appears.”
She nodded. “I would hate to think I somehow caused this place to come into being.”
Parno began to laugh, tremors beginning in his belly and building until he laughed out loud. When Dhulyn shoved him, he controlled himself enough to speak. “I never thought I’d be the one to say this to you,” he said. “But you aren’t so very important, you know. The world doesn’t revolve around you, not even this one. Go on, get to sleep, my heart.”
“In Battle,” she said, standing.
“And in Death,” he answered, touching his fingers to his forehead.
It was well into the fourth watch of the next day, and Dhulyn was thinking they should be starting to look for a place to camp overnight when Parno pulled up on Warhammer’s reins.
“Found,” he called out to Dhulyn. “Here is a clear trail of three horses returned to the main column together, something no scouts would have done.”
Dhulyn stopped a few paces off and leaned over herself, the better to see what Parno was pointing at. “Your eye is getting better for tracking, my soul.” She straightened up. “Somewhere there to the east, I mean the west, is the trap in which our Brothers were caught.”
“Try not to kick up any of this ash,” Mar said as she picked her way carefully through the burned grasses. It looked as though there had been a fire followed by a rainstorm. In the places where their feet disturbed the surface of the ash, the sodden layer on top gave way to the dry ashes underneath. There were even one or two spots where Mar was certain she felt heat through the soles of her boots.
Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno Page 33
