Wall of Shiuan com-2

by C. J. Cherryh

  Then she turned and began to run, bare feet seeking tufts of grass to aid her climbing. Above her loomed the house, the cracks of its shuttered windows agleam with light, and the old tower lit to guide the Barrows’ scattered children home. She dropped a piece of treasure, gathered it again, stumbling. Rain was falling, the wind hurling the drops into her eyes with stinging force, and thunder cracked. She heard the suck of water behind her, the heave of a large body, and looking back, she saw the black horse and the rider. Lightning glittered coldly off ring-mail, illumined a pale face. The dogs began barking frantically.

  She touched her luck amulets with one hand and held the knotted burden in her skirts with the other and ran, hearing the rider coming after. The grass was slick. She spilled a piece of her gold and this time did not stop. Her feet skidded again on the slick stone paving before the door. She recovered, hurled herself at the closed door.

  “Grandfather!” she cried, pounding at the insensate wood. “Hurry!”

  She heard the rider behind her, the wet sound of the animal struggling on the slope, the ring of metal and the panting whuffs of his breathing.

  She cast a look over her shoulder and saw the rider alight to aid his horse in the climb. His leg gave with him. He caught his balance and struggled up the slope, holding out his hand to her. She saw him in the jerking flashes of the lightning.

  “Grandfather!” she screamed.

  The door came open. She fled into the light and warmth and turned, expecting the rider to have vanished, as all such things should. He had not; he was almost at the door. She seized the door from her grandfather’s indecisive hand and slammed it, helped him drop the bar into place, the gold scattering. Plates and cups clanged against the stones and rattled to a stop.

  Jhirun turned and looked at the others, awe-stricken female faces ringed about the room, women and children, boys too young to be with the men. There were Cil and aunt Jinel and aunt Zai; but there was no man at all but grandfather Keln.

  And she cast a look at him, desperate, fearing that for once her grandfather had no answer. Sprigs of azael and Angharan’s white feathers hung above doorways of house and stable, above the windows of both floors, wherever there was an access. They jested about them, but they renewed them annually, they that robbed the dead; there were laws, and it was taken for granted that the dead obeyed them.

  “The signal,” her grandfather breathed; his hands shook more than usual as he waved the women toward the stairs. “Zai, go! All the house, upstairs, and hide.”

  Plump Zai turned and fled stableward, by the west door, toward the tower—hers to care for the signal-beacons. The others began to herd frightened children toward the stairs to the loft. Some were crying. The dogs were barking furiously; they were shut in the yard, useless.

  Old Jinel stayed, her sharp chin set; Cil stayed, her belly swollen with her third child, her other children at her skirts. Cil took off her warm brown shawl and cast it about Jhirun’s shoulders, hugged her. Jhirun hugged her back, almost giving way to tears.

  Outside came the ring of hooves on stone, circling back and forth before the door, back and forth, to the window. The shutters rattled, ceased.

  Then for a long time there was nothing but the shaking of harness and the breathing of the animal outside at the window.

  “Ohtija outlaw?” Grandfather asked, looking at Jhirun. “Where did he start trailing you?”

  “Out there,” she managed to say, clenching her teeth against the impulse to chatter. She tried to gather an explanation.

  Steps reached the door, and there was a splintering impact The children screamed and clung to Cil.

  “Go,” said Grandfather. “Hurry. Take the children upstairs.”

  “Hurry,” Jhirun echoed, pushing at Cil, who tried to make her come with her, clinging to her. But there was no leaving her grandfather, fragile as he was. Jinel stayed too. Cil fled, her children beside her, for the stairs.

  The battering at the door assumed a rhythm, and white wood broke through on the edge of an axe. Jhirun felt her grandfather’s arm go about her, and she held to him, trembling, watching the door riven into ruin. It was never meant to withstand attack; no outlaws had ever assaulted the hold.

  An entire plank gave way: the door hung ajar, and a man’s armored arm reached through, trying to move the bar inside.

  “No!” Jhirun cried, tore from her grandfather and ran to seize the great butchering knife from the scullery, her mind only then thinking of tangible defenses; but there was a crash behind her, the bar hitting the floor. She whirled in mid-step, saw the door crash open.

  There in the rain stood the warrior-king. He had an axe in his band and a bow slung at his back, the hilt of a sword riding at his shoulder. The rain sheeted down and made his face look like the drowned dead. He stood there with the black horse behind him and looked about the room as if he were seeking something.

  “Take the gold,” her grandfather offered him, his old voice stern as it was when he served as priest; but the stranger seemed disinterested in that—reached for the reins and led the tall animal forward, such a horse as had not been seen in Hiuaj since the sea wall broke. It shied at the strange doorway, then came with a rush, and its hindquarters swung round and broke the ruined door farther from its hinges. A golden cup was crushed under its hooves, spurned like a valueless stone.

  None of them moved, and the warrior made no move at them. He towered in the center of their little hall and looked about him, he and the horse dripping muddy water onto the stones of the floor; and mingled with that water was blood that flowed from a wound on his leg.

  Children were crying upstairs; he looked at the stairs and up toward the loft, while Jhirun’s heart pounded. Then he turned his eyes instead to the fireplace. He drew on the reins of the horse and led it forward, toward warmth, himself limping and leaving a trail of blood and water.

  And there, his back to that blazing fire, he turned and gazed at them, his eyes wild and anguished. They were dark, those eyes, and dark his hair, when every lord of the north she had heard of was fair. He was tall, armored in plain and ancient style; there was fineness about him that for all his misery made their little hold seem shabby.

  She knew what he was; she knew. The gull lay like guilt against her breast, and she longed to thrust it into his hands and bid him go, leave, become what he was. She met his eyes without wanting to, a chill running through her. Here was no wisp of cobweb to fade in firelight: he cast tall shadows across the floor, left tracks of blood and water. Rain dripped from his hair and made him blink, long hair, in a warrior’s knot, such as the ancient Kings had worn. His chest rose and fell strongly in ragged breathing; he drew a great breath, and his sigh was audible.

  “A woman,” he said, his voice nearly gone with hoarseness; and it was a lilting accent she had never heard—save in the songs. “A woman, a rider all—all white—”

  “No,” Jhirun said at once, touching at the white feather amulet. “No.” She did not want him to go on speaking. In her desperation she opened her mouth to bid him gone as she might some trespassing marshlander; but he was not that, he was far from that, and she felt herself coarse and powerless in the face of him. There was no move from her grandfather, a priest, whose warding charms had failed; no word from Jinel, who had never lacked words before. Outside the hall the thunder rolled and the rain sheeted past the ruined door, a surety that the men would be held from returning, barred by risen water.

  The visitor stared at them with a strange, lost expression, as if he wanted something; and then with awkwardness and evident pain he turned, and with the axe blade, hooked the kettle that hung over the fire and swung it outward. Steam rolled up from it, fragrant with one of Zai’s stews. There was a stack of wooden bowls on the mantel. He filled one with the ladle and sank down where he was, braced his back against the stones. The black horse shook itself of a sudden, spattering the whole room and everyone in it with muddy water.

  “Get out!” Grandfather Keln cried, h
is thin voice cracking with outrage.

  The stranger looked at him, no answering rage, only a tired, perplexed look. He did not move, save to lift the steaming bowl to his lips to sip at the broth, still staring at them warily. His hand shook so that he spilled some of it. Even the black horse looked sorrowful, head hanging, legs scored by the passage through the flood. Jhirun hugged her dry shawl about her and forced herself to stop shivering, deciding that they were not all to be murdered forthwith.

  Suddenly she moved, went to the shelves across the room and pulled down one of the coarse blankets they used for rain chill and rough usage. She took it to the invader of their home, where he sat on their hearthside; and when he, seeing her intention, leaned forward somewhat, she wrapped it about him, weapons and all. He looked up, the bowl in one hand, gathering the blanket with the other. He gestured with the bowl at the kettle, at her, at all the house, as if graciously bidding them be free of their own food.

  “Thank you,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. She was hungry, miserably so, and cold. And to show that she was braver than she was, she pulled the kettle over to herself and took another bowl, dipped up a generous helping. “Has everyone else eaten?” she asked in a perfectly ordinary voice.

  “Yes,” said Jinel.

  She saw by the grease mark on the black iron that this was so; enough remained for the men. It occurred to her that the stranger might suspect others yet unfed, might take note by that how many there were in the house. She pulled the kettle as far out of his view as she could, sat down on the opposite side of the hearth and ate, forcing the food down despite the terror that still knotted her stomach.

  Azael sprigs and white feathers: she suspected them nothing, her grandfather’s power nothing. She had been where she should not; and came this where he ought not. It was on her he looked, as if no one else existed for him, as if he cared nothing for an old man and an old woman who owned the food and the fire he used.

  “I wish you would leave our house,” Jhirun declared suddenly, speaking to him as if he were the outlaw her grandfather called him, wishing that this would prove true.

  His pale, beard-shadowed face showed no sign of offense. He looked at her with such weariness in his eyes it seemed he could hardly keep them open, and the bowl started to tumble from his hand. He caught it and set it down. “Peace,” he murmured, “peace on this house.” And then he leaned his head against the stone and blinked several times. “A woman,” he said, taking up that mad illusion of his own, “a woman on a gray horse. Have you seen her?”

  “No,” said Grandfather sternly. “None such. Nothing.”

  The stranger’s eyes strayed toward him, to the shattered door, with such a look that Jhirun followed the direction of his gaze half expecting to see such a woman there. But there was only the rain, a cold wind blowing through the open doorway, a puddle spreading across the stones.

  He turned his attention then to the other door, that in the west wall.

  “Where does that go?”

  “The stable,” Grandfather said; and then, carefully: “The horse would be better there.”

  But the stranger said nothing, and gradually his eyes grew heavy, and he rested his head against the stones of the fireplace, nodding with the weariness that pressed upon him.

  Grandfather quietly gathered up the reins of the black horse, the stranger not protesting: he led it toward that door, and aunt Jinel bestirred herself to open it. The beast hesitated, with the goats bleating alarm inside; but perhaps the warm stable smell drew it; it eased its way into that dark place, and Grandfather pulled the door shut after.

  And Jinel sat down on a bench amid her abused house and clenched her thin hands and set her jaw and wept. The stranger watched her, a troubled gaze, and Jhirun for once felt pity for her aunt, who was braver than she had known.

  A time passed. The stranger’s head bowed upon his breast; his eyes closed. Jhirun sat by him, afraid to move. She set her bowl aside, marked suddenly that Jinel rose, walked quietly across the room. Grandfather, who had been by Jinel, went to the center of the room and watched the stranger; and there was a creaking on the stairs.

  Jinel reached up to the wall for that great knife they used for butchering, tucked it up in a fold of her skirts. She came back to Grandfather.

  A board creaked. Cil was on the stairs; Jhirun could see her now. Her heart beat painfully; the supper lay like a stone in her belly. They were no match for the warrior-king; they could not be. And Cil, brave Cil, a loyal sister, heavy with child: it was for her sake that Cil ventured downstairs.

  Jhirun moved suddenly to her knees, touched the stranger. His eyes opened in panic and he clutched the axe that lay across his lap. Behind her in the room she sensed that things had stopped, her house with its furtive movements frozen where matters stood. “I am sorry,” Jhirun said, holding his eyes with her own. “The wound—will you let me treat it?”

  He looked confused for a moment, his eyes ranging beyond her. Perhaps, she thought in terror, he saw what had been proceeding.

  Then he bowed his head in consent, and moved his injured leg to straighten it, moved the blanket aside so that she could see how the leather was rent and the flesh deeply cut. He drew the bone-handled dagger from his belt and cut the leather further so that she could reach the wound. The sight of it made her weak at the stomach.

  She gathered herself up and crossed the room to the shelves, sought clean linen. Jinel met her there and tried to snatch the cloth from her fingers.

  “Let me go,” Jhirun hissed.

  “Slut,” Jinel said, her nails deep in her wrist

  Jhirun tore free and turned, dipped clean water from the urn in the corner and went back to the stranger. Her hands were shaking and her eyes blurred as she started to work, but they soon steadied. She washed the cut, then forced a large square of cloth through the opening and tied it tightly from the outside, careful not to pain him. She was intensely aware of her grandfather and Cil and Jinel watching her, their eyes on her back—herself touching a strange man.

  He laid his hand on hers when she had done; his hands were fine, long-fingered. She had never imagined that a man could have such hands. There were scars on them, a fine tracery of lines. She thought of the sword he carried and reckoned that he had never wielded tools... hands that knew killing, perhaps, but their touch was like a child’s for gentleness; his eyes were likewise. “Thank you,” he said, and showed no inclination to let her go. His head went back against the wall. His eyes began to close, exhaustion claiming him. They opened; he fought against the impulse.

  “Your name,” he asked.

  One should never give a name; it was power to curse. But she feared not to answer. “Mija Jhirun Ela’s-daughter,” she said; and daring much: “What is yours?”

  But he did not answer, and unease crept the more upon her.

  “Where were you going?” she asked. “Were you only following me? What were you looking for?”

  ‘To live,” he said, with such simple desperation it seized at her heart. “To stay alive.” And he almost slipped from his senses, the others waiting for his sleep, the whole house poised and waiting, nearly fifty women and an old man. She edged closer to him, put her shoulder against him, drew his head against her. “The woman,” she heard him murmur, “the woman that follows me—”

  He was fevered. She felt of his brow, listened to his raving, that carried the same mad thread throughout. He slipped away, his head against her heart, his eyes closed.

  She stared beyond him, meeting Cil’s troubled gaze, none others.

  A time to sleep, a little time for him, and then a chance to escape. He had done nothing to them, nothing of real hurt; and to end slaughtered by a house of women and children, with kitchen knives—she did not want that nightmare to haunt Barrows-hold. She could not live her life and sit by the fire and sew, work at the kitchen making bread, see her children playing by such a hearth. She would always see the blood on those stones.

 
; No wraith, the stranger: his warmth burned fever-hot against her; his weight bruised her shoulder. She had lost herself, lost all sense where her mad dreams ended, no longer tried to reason. She saw the others lose their courage, settle, waiting; she also waited, not knowing for what. She remembered Anla’s Crown, and knew that she had passed that edge where human folk ought to stop, had broken ancient warding-spells with as blithe a disdain as the stranger had passed the bits of feather at the door, innocent of fear that would have been wise to feel.

  If there had been opportunity she would have begged her grandfather to explain; but he was helpless, his warding spells broken, his authority disregarded. For the first time she doubted the power of her grandfather as a priest—of all priests. She had seen a thing her grandfather had never seen—still could not see; had been where no foot had trod since the Kings.

  The hold seemed suddenly a tiny and fragile place amid all the wild waste of Hiuaj, a place where the illusion of law persisted like a light set in the wind. But the reality was the dark, that lay heavy and breathing against her shoulder.

  They should not destroy him, they in their mad trust in law and their own sanity. She began to wonder if they even questioned what he was, if they saw only an exhausted and wounded outlaw, and never doubted their conclusion. They were blind, that could not see the manner of him, the ancient armor and the tall black horse, that had no place in this age of the world, let alone in Hiuaj.

  Perhaps they did not want to see, for then they would have to realize how fragile their safety was.