When they spotted Koroll, he was traveling with an escort of twenty men. Exactly as Elelar had predicted, at a pre-arranged signal from Tansen's Outlooker guide, sixteen of Koroll's riders turned around and galloped away, heading back to Shaljir and abandoning their commander to his fate. Even Jalan, confronting the newborn Firebringer at Darshon, hadn't looked as stunned as Koroll did now.
The four men who remained with him had been hand-picked by Koroll himself long ago, and so they had not been included in the plan devised by someone senior to Koroll, someone able to order sixteen Outlookers to abandon their commanding officer to certain death. The Imperial Advisor, perhaps? Someone on the Council?
And they say that we are a treacherous people.
The Advisor's man stayed hidden and merely watched while the rebels attacked the remaining four Outlookers guarding Koroll. The battle was brief and deadly. Four Valdani died for their loyalty to a doomed man.
Alive, alone, and disarmed, Koroll raged furiously, hurling threats and insults at the "Outlookers" confronting him—until he saw Tansen. His eyes flew wide open with shock and he sought air in a long, noisy, horrible gasp.
"Tr... trap," he croaked.
"Yes, Commander." Having posed as a rebel prisoner during the journey, rather than as an Outlooker, Tansen was wearing his own clothes. Despite the changes in his appearance since their encounter at Cavasar, he saw recognition flash in Koroll's eyes. Of course, a man who carried two Kintish swords was hard to forget in Sileria. He sheathed them now and said, "Outlookers ambushed Josarian disguised as Silerians, so we..." He shrugged. "As you see."
Koroll gazed at the mounted gray-clad men around him with glazed eyes. "Rebels." Making an obvious attempt to pull his wits together, he looked down the road in the direction his escort had disappeared. "And them?"
"Genuine Outlookers," Tansen said dryly. "The Emperor's finest."
Moving slowly, Koroll turned back to him. He looked around, as if reconstructing the events which had just occurred. Finally he said, "I've been... betrayed."
"Yes."
Koroll frowned. "Did you bribe my men?"
Tansen grinned. "You flatter us, Commander. We don't have that much money."
"Kaynall." Koroll's face crumbled with sorrow for a moment, then turned red with fury. Clenching his fists, he snarled, "The Council! Those fatherless goat-molesters! I told them I needed more men, more money! I told them I couldn't hold this godsforsaken land for them with nothing but prayers, threats, and luck! Daroll was a fool. Borell was a coward! And I—"
"And you, Commander," Tansen said without sympathy, "are a liar."
Koroll's eyes glittered with hatred. "A strange accusation for a Silerian to make. Your accursed race invented the practice."
"You give us too much credit," Tansen replied. "We merely perfected it."
"You did a good job in Cavasar, shatai, I'll grant you that."
"You saw what you wanted to see." Tansen lifted one brow and added, "And then you tried to hide your mistake with another lie. Really, Commander," he chided, "telling people that I stole my own swords?"
"And will you use them to kill me now, shatai?"
"It would be easiest," Tansen admitted. "But Josarian wants to deal with you himself, so I must bring you back to him."
"So you serve him." Koroll sneered. "He's an illiterate peasant who'd never have gone beyond those savage mountains if not for you. And you, a shatai, do his bidding."
Tansen ignored the clumsy attempt to insult him. No one who knew Josarian would doubt his worthiness to command even a shatai.
So he merely replied, "That's right."
"I don't understand you." Koroll frowned and shook his head. "Why? Tell me that. Before you deliver me to him, just tell me why."
"Why what, Commander?"
Koroll came forward, holding his gaze. "Why did you do it? Three Into One, you're a shatai! A man like you... You could have been anything you wanted to be, anywhere in the three corners of the world." Ignoring the warning gesture made by one of the rebels, Koroll seized the front of Tansen's tunic. "Of all the things you could have done with your life, why—by all the gods above and below—did you join forces with a lone shallah outlaw and make war on the greatest empire in the world?"
"Because I'm a Silerian," Tansen said simply. "And a full-blooded shallah, by the way."
"I would have kept my promise." Koroll's hot breath fanned his face. "I'd have doubled your gold, given you more contracts, made you my right arm in Sileria."
"I didn't want to be your right ar—"
"I could have made you rich!"
"But you couldn't have made me free."
"You believe that tripe, too?" Koroll exclaimed, clinging to him. "Even you?"
"What tripe is that?" Tansen tried to shove him away.
Growing demented, Koroll clung like a leech. "The Firebringer! A mystic fireborn savior! Freedom? Here?"
"All right, Commander, I think it's time—"
Tansen saw it coming too late. Realized his mistake too late. He had underestimated Koroll. He had been careless and arrogant with a prisoner. The rebels hadn't searched Koroll for concealed weapons, assuming the High Commander wouldn't carry any while riding under armed escort well within his own territory. Mistake. A cry of agony escaped Tansen's lips as the wavy-edged blade of a shir slipped through his ribs in search of his heart.
Cold. Bitter cold. A poisonous cold that burned worse than the Fires of Dar.
"Tan!" He heard the horrified shout of one of his men.
Koroll's arm was around his neck. The commander held Tansen's sagging body between himself and the rebels. The deadly chill of the shir against his throat made Tansen's eyes water. The pain of his wound made him dizzy and sick. Blood coursed down his side, soaking his tunic.
"All of you! Dismount now!" Koroll shouted.
"Kill him!" Tansen ordered.
"Quiet!" Koroll dug the shir into his flesh.
"Tansen!"
"Kill him!" Tansen repeated.
"If you even move, he dies!" Koroll warned.
The wound was bad. He could tell. Very bad. He might well die even without getting his throat cut. He would certainly pass out in another moment.
A shir... Who did he kill to get a shir?
"Off your horses! Move over there. Now!" Koroll shouted. It was a tone that had commanded thousands of Outlookers. It was having its intended effect on rebels who were stunned by the sudden destruction of someone they had always considered invincible.
Ah, but every man can be killed. Every man.
"That's right," he heard Koroll say to the rebels. "Just do as you're told."
"Kill him..." Tansen's tongue felt thick. His voice sounded weak.
Armian... I'm coming. You'll have your vengeance at last.
His mind was wandering. He was weakening.
Focus on the task at hand.
He had just one chance. He might as well take it, since death was otherwise certain instead of just probable.
He gathered what was left of his strength and moved suddenly, throwing Koroll off-balance just enough to enable Tansen to slip his arm between the shir and his neck. Koroll recovered quickly and attempted to slit his throat, but he merely made a painful cut on Tansen's forearm now, and shatai were trained to ignore such wounds.
Tansen shoved at Koroll with one arm, positioning a foot to make him stumble. He simultaneously used his other arm to unsheathe a sword and sweep it across Koroll's belly, all in one move. The Outlooker doubled over, and Tansen brought the blade down on his neck, killing him instantly.
He was not a shatai for nothing.
You should have known better, Commander.
Agony washed through him as he stared at the corpse of his enemy. He was breathing much too hard for so brief an encounter. He felt hot and cold at once. There was a lot of blood—Koroll's or his? He didn't know.
Tansen didn't realize he had fallen to his knees until he felt two men trying to help him up. He tried to rise, bu
t his legs buckled.
A Valdan with a shir. What next?
The sky looked... very blue today. There would be no rain for awhile now. Dust choked him, and the ground felt hard beneath his head.
"Tansen..." The voice was far away. "Can you hear me?"
It was dark suddenly. Pitch black. A dark-moon night? He was dizzy. And tired. So very tired...
"Nev... N..."
"What, Tansen?"
Koroll should never have tried to get the best of him. Koroll, of all people! He had known what a shatai was, after all.
And how Josarian would laugh. Tansen, the great warrior who was always correcting Josarian's form and criticizing his technique, had been slaughtered by an aging Valdani prisoner in a moment of carelessness.
Ah, how Josarian would weep... He was sentimental sometimes, Josarian was.
I am prepared to die today. Are you?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
He is a blade, this man.
At the moment, though, a very dull and worn one. Dissatisfied with the clumsy Sister who had been attending Tansen upon her arrival, Mirabar had sent for Basimar. The woman could be irritatingly foolish at times, but Mirabar had seen enough of her healing skills to have faith in her ability to keep Tansen alive and make him whole again. However, now that he was getting better and she was less worried about him, Mirabar almost regretted the decision, because Basimar kept her busy with the most menial tasks she had performed since her early days among the Guardians.
Until Basimar's arrival, Mirabar's primary role here had been to supervise the previous Sister (Lann's assertion that she had "terrorized" the woman was untrue, unfair, and outrageous) and offer prayers to Dar for Tansen's recovery. Now Basimar had her washing and rolling bandages, preparing broth, emptying a wooden bucket that served as Tansen's chamber pot, and changing the linen on Tansen's pallet with monotonous regularity—a chore that he certainly didn't make any easier with his bad temper and dark scowls.
"I am a Guardian of the Otherworld," Mirabar said aloud, speaking to the savage wilderness of the mountains looming in the distance. "I have better things to do with my time than boil, hang, dry, and roll rags for some warrior's wounds."
She looked hastily over her shoulder, afraid she might have spoken loud enough for Basimar to hear her. Fortunately, no critical comments emerged from the Shrine of the Three where Tansen lay recovering under the Sister's supervision.
It was a relief to everyone to know that Commander Koroll was dead, but the price of that monster's defeat had seemed too high during those first few days that Tansen lay hovering between life and death. A shir wounded worse and killed faster than other blades. Even if the victim survived, a shir wound was more disabling than an ordinary wound and took longer to heal. Although the rebels had had to leave Koroll's shir where it fell, one of them was able to identify it as Baran's distinctive workmanship. The commander had evidently slain a rebel to get it. With all of the battles and chaos of the past year, the waterlords were growing increasingly nervous about how many shir were lost and unaccounted for these days. Now Mirabar saw what could happen when a Valdan got his hands on one, a Valdan who knew about Silerian water magic. It was lucky that the wound hadn't killed Tansen, and a miracle that the journey back into rebel territory hadn't finished him off.
He hangs onto life, even when this world uses all its might to push him into the Other one.
The rebels traveling with Tansen knew that the journey might well kill him; but they thought that remaining in Valdani territory was even more likely to cause his death—as well as all of theirs. They had done their best to stop the bleeding, then tied him into his horse's saddle and returned to safe territory as fast as they could. Their destination was this Valdani ruin, the first landmark on this side of the invisible border between two warring peoples.
A runner had found Josarian soon afterwards. With Mirabar at his side, he came immediately to his brother's sickbed, traveling all night to reach him. A Sister was already in attendance, but it had taken Mirabar less than a day to decide to send for Basimar. Despite the many demands placed upon him these days, Josarian had refused to leave until he was certain Tansen would recover.
The shatai was getting better every day now—as his increasingly bad temper confirmed. A man like that did not react well to being confined to bed and ordered around by two women. Eight men, including Lann, were staying here, too, to guard Tansen. Although she would like to leave now that Tansen was better (and now that Basimar was making her do all manner of disgusting chores), Mirabar must remain, too. If Kiloran's assassins learned where Tansen was—and how weak he still was—she would be his best protection.
When he was well, Tansen would be much harder to kill than Srijan had been, and Kiloran knew it. He'd lost assassins trying to fulfill a bloodvow against Tansen before the war. How long ago that now seemed... The disastrous feud between Kiloran and Josarian had cost the waterlord his son, so it seemed likely that he would relish the chance to deprive Josarian of his bloodbrother if he learned that Tansen was lying wounded and helpless in a poorly protected area at the edge of rebel territory. In a few more days, when Tansen was well enough to be moved, they would take him to safer ground. Some place where Kiloran couldn't reach him.
Must it always be this way here?
So far, the war against the Valdani continued despite the internal chaos of the rebellion. Everyone still wanted the Valdani out of Sileria, even Josarian's enemies. Consequently, everyone still fought them. But there was no more mutual cooperation between the rebellion's quarreling factions. However, assassins and shallaheen loyal to Kiloran had recently seized four villages in the west, slaughtered many Outlookers, and sent the survivors fleeing back to Cavasar. Rumors suggested that Kiloran would move against Cavasar itself before long. Meanwhile, Josarian expanded his territory a little farther every few days. Yes, the war against the Valdani continued.
Mirabar, like many others, was increasingly worried about how long a divided Sileria could continue to fight Valdania. She had witnessed the miraculous events at Darshon, and she believed it was the will of the goddess that Sileria should finally be free of foreign rulers. Prophecy and visions had united to bring about these events, and surely Dar and the Otherworld were more powerful than Kiloran and the Society.
Nonetheless, destiny did not simply happen. It required effort, commitment, sacrifice. Mirabar wished she knew what she could do to influence events now, but the Beckoner continued to ignore her pleas for guidance. Unless he relented and came to her again, it must be someone else's role to ensure victory now. But who? Josarian? Tansen?
Tansen... She had seen his swords breaking her people's shackles in her visions, time after time. Yet it was Josarian who had become their leader, who had embraced the goddess and become the Firebringer. Once, that first night at Kandahar, she thought she knew how all the pieces fit together, what all the portents and symbols meant. Now she was confused again. Had Tansen already fulfilled his role in Sileria, or was his destiny only beginning?
Well, until I'm sure of his destiny, I suppose I'd better keep him alive.
This practical attitude enabled her to endure another morning of mind-numbing boredom as she prepared bandages and boiled broth. She didn't even snap or snarl when Basimar reminded her that it was time to change Tansen's bedding.
He didn't snap or snarl, either, when she entered the garish shrine and announced her intentions. He looked defeated, like a man who'd endured all he could.
"Please, don't," he begged. "Let's just both tell the Sister you did."
She regarded him with wide-eyed innocence. "You mean... lie?"
"Surely it won't be the first time, sirana."
"I don't see why you're whining about it. You just have to lie there, while I do all the work."
"I just have to put up with you poking, prodding, and shoving me all over this lumpy pallet while I try to preserve what precious little is left of my modesty." Basimar kept him naked beneath the sheets.
Mirabar sighed. "Shall I get Lann to help you outside for some air while—"
"No, don't," he pleaded. "If I have to listen to him tell one more story about his New Year's victories, I'll wish I had died."
She laughed. "All right. I will spare you. No change of linen and no boring stories."
He stopped her when she would have left. "Don't go yet. She'll know you're lying if you try to pretend you changed the bedding so quickly." Using his good arm, the one that wasn't bandaged and healing from a deep shir cut, he took her hand and gently pulled her down to sit beside him.
"You're looking better," she commented.
He had lost the ghastly pallor of those first few delirious days when they had all been certain he would die. He needed to get back into the sun, and he looked too thin, having swallowed nothing lately besides broth and Basimar's noxious tisanes. But he was indeed starting to look more like himself again.
"You're looking better, too," he said.
"Me?"
"The first time I opened my eyes, you looked like—"
"A demon?" She wanted to say it herself rather than hear it on his lips.
He squeezed her hand, surprising her. "No, a hag."
"Oh. And here I thought you were going to say something unkind."
"There were circles under your eyes, your face was dirty, you were pale, and your hair was so tangled it looked like you hadn't combed it in days."
"I hadn't. I had more important things to do."
"Like bullying that poor Sister."
"I didn't bully..." She pursed her lips when he smiled knowingly at her. "Well... I may have been a little sharp with her."
"Only a little," he assured her with patent insincerity.
She shrugged. "It's my duty to keep you alive."
"I see."
His voice was soft, his expression... soft, too. The silence lengthened as their gazes held. His eyes were liquid brown and his mood unfamiliar to her. Feeling self-conscious, she lowered her eyes, remembering all the times he had avoided her flame-gold stare. She was afraid of seeing him do so again even now, when he showed no inclination to look away.
In Legend Born Page 65
