The Luck Of The Wheels

by Megan Lindholm

  Vandien was pushing him again, in a final series of thrusts that Kellich turned at the last possible moment. The laughter was plain in their gasping now, and all the circle was grinning. Save one. Ki saw his face suddenly behind Kellich, contorted with anger and hate and fear. She cried out aloud, but it was too late, for Goat had already stepped in, had already given Kellich the one push from behind that was all it took. His rapier went wide; the staggering step he took to try to regain his balance carried him wildly forward. Amazement widened his eyes and his mouth opened silently.

  It was Vandien who cried aloud as his thrust, unchecked, sank his rapier deep into Kellich's chest.

  ELEVEN

  As Kellich fell, the supple blade of Vandien's rapier ripped free of his chest, flinging a bright spray of red droplets. They freckled the faces of bystanders, who cried out in horror and recoiled as if sprayed with poison. But above their sounds rang out Goat's high-pitched victorious shriek. 'He's dead! He's dead! He's dead!'

  Vandien's rapier clattered to the floor. He dropped to his knees by the youth. Unbelieving, his fingers reached, touched the spreading stain where Kellich's life was pumping out in fainter and fainter gouts. He pressed to hold back the flood that poured past his fingers. 'Kellich?' he asked. But the youth's eyes were open, wide and blue as the empty sky. His mouth was ajar still, as if he would never get over the surprise of his death. 'Oh, Kellich,' Vandien whispered. He touched the boy's cheek, the hand that still gripped his weapon. 'I'm sorry.' His voice broke on the words, and his head sagged onto his chest. His shoulders drooped, and his hand went up to cover his mouth. Ki heard the ragged breath he drew through his bloody fingers.

  From without the inn, a shout. 'Guards coming! Guards coming!'

  Within the inn, instant mayhem. No one wanted to be at the scene of a duel, let alone one that had ended in death. Frantic customers shouldered past Ki, sending her staggering as she fought her way toward Vandien. 'Not in my inn, oh no, not in my inn!' the tavernkeeper was wailing.

  And above the curses and shouts as folk fought their ways toward doors and windows, Ki heard Willow's voice ring out. '... nothing left for me! Nothing! Because of you! May you never know a moment's peace or rest for all your days to come! I curse you and all that care for you and any children you father! May you know loss such as mine! May you never forget what you have done. Never!'

  Vandien was still on his knees beside the body, his face raised to Willow as if she had blessed him. Blood welled in the tracks of her nails down his face, and as Ki moved in, she slapped him again. He didn't move. Ki wasn't sure if he even knew she was there. She shoved Willow aside, and the girl sprawled by Kellich's body, clutching at him and sobbing wordlessly.

  Ki gripped Vandien's arm. 'We have to get out of here. The guards are coming.' He didn't respond. She shook his shoulder, then tried to drag him to his feet. 'Please, Vandien. Get up. We have to get out of here.'

  He looked up at her blankly. 'I didn't mean to kill him,' he said softly. Tears suddenly brimmed his dark eyes. 'It's like I killed myself ...'

  She snatched up his rapier from the floor, got under his arm and levered him to his feet. He tottered as if he were drunk. 'It's going to be okay,' she told him as she guided him to the back door. 'It's going to be all right.' They reached the wagon and she pushed him up onto the seat. She took the kerchief from her throat and wiped the blood from his face, then wrapped it hastily around his still-dripping forearm. He sat still and dumb under her touch. She opened the cuddy door, tossed his rapier inside, slammed it shut. Kicking off the wheel brake, she started the team at a careful walk and held them there despite her hammering heart. Mustn't look like we're in a hurry, she told herself. From the front innyard, she could hear the shouts of the Brurjan guards and the screams of those being questioned by them. She guided the team down the narrow alley between the stables and the manure piles and out into another street. 'Willow knows who we are and where we're going,' she reminded herself. 'She has no reason to keep still about it. Except that she has no travelling papers; maybe she'll be hiding herself...' But Ki knew she couldn't count on that. At the next corner, she turned randomly.

  Vandien looked bad. He was swaying with the wagon, and his face was dead. She pushed the cuddy door open, grabbed the wineskin off its hook and pushed it at him. It held cheap wine, good only for washing the road dust from a dry throat. 'Drink some,' she told him, and he obeyed her mindlessly. She left him holding the skin and swaying stupidly with every jolt of the wagon; if he looked drunk, maybe the guard wouldn't stop them for questioning. For now, she had to find shelter for them and the wagon, and give the turmoil at the inn time to subside.

  Some hours she passed in a run-down wainwright's on the far side of the town bargaining for axle grease, linchpins and other trivial supplies. The man didn't object to making money, and her wagon was all but invisible in his yard full of rotting hulks of other wagons and rigs. Vandien remained sitting, drinking the sour wine and staring at his hands. Ki left him alone. She couldn't think of anything she could do for him. He needed to think through what had happened. It was hard to leave him alone, but he had to make his own sense of Kellich's death. She tried to keep herself and the wainwright busy with small talk.

  Early evening brought a soft, forgiving darkness and a little-used north road that would take them out of town. Or so the wainwright assured her; she hoped he was right. It wasn't unusual for folk to know little of the roads that led away from the towns they had been born and raised in.

  The horses snorted occasionally, complaining of the dark road and the annoying ruts that crumbled under their heavy hooves, but Ki kept them to their pace. The town fell away behind them, and then the cultivated fields. They finally entered the endless swell of the prairie. Vandien still hadn't spoken. She slid closer to him on the seat. Hooking one arm around his waist, she pulled him tight against her. He sighed suddenly, and put his arm across her shoulders. She didn't mind the weight. Turning her head, she brushed a kiss across his stubbled cheek. She waited.

  'Ki,' he said, and stopped. For a long time, he said nothing. She moved her hand up his back, rubbed the tight muscles in the back of his neck. He didn't relax.

  'He was one of the best swordsmen I've ever faced.'

  She nodded into the dark.

  'I think we could have been friends.'

  She nodded again.

  'Oh, gods!' he cried suddenly. 'I killed that boy!'

  'You didn't mean to,' she whispered. She let go of the reins to hold him, and the team, free to do its own will, immediately halted. Around them was only the empty night, the chirring of insects and the smell of the earth as the dew settled. Ki held him, wishing he would cry or curse, anything but hunch and hold his pain inside him. She ran her hands up and down his back, then hugged him suddenly, kissing the side of his face fiercely, trying to make him feel less alone.

  He moved then, capturing her wrists and gently setting her away from him. 'The horses need to be unharnessed.'

  'Yes. And I'll make a fire. You'll feel better when you've had a cup of tea and something to eat.' Her own words sounded inane, but it was all she could manage. She let him unharness the team while she found straw and twigs and bits of scrubby brush to build a fire. The small light in the darkness was cheering; she took courage from it. She filled the kettle from the cask and set it over the flames, then climbed the wagon step to get the new bag of tea.

  It was dark within the wagon, and she groped over the bed where she had earlier tossed the sack of tea. Something warm stirred under her hands.

  'Ki? Have we stopped finally?'

  She stumbled backward down the steps, fleeing as if confronted by a nightmare. Goat followed her out, rubbing his eyes and blinking after his long sleep. She couldn't make a sound, could only stare at him. She didn't remember thinking of him since they left Tekum, but now she knew a part of her had deliberately decided to leave the boy behind. That same part was both horrified and enraged to see him emerge from the wagon
. He walked toward the fire, holding his hands out toward it.

  'DAMN YOU!'

  It was the pain in Vandien's voice more than the anger that froze her for the instant that it took him to get to the boy. Goat went down under him, and Vandien's hands tightened on his throat before she could reach them. Stupid details imprinted themselves on her mind as she flung herself into the struggle: that the cut on Vandien's forearm had opened and was leaking darkly in the firelight; that Goat had not changed his shirt and there were great rings of sweat under his arms; that the boy looked like a dying rodent as his drawn-back lips bared his long yellow teeth. Then she was in the middle of it, wedging her shoulder against Vandien's chest and up, kneeling on Goat's chest as she levered the man off him, and then springing up to fling her arms around Vandien as Goat raced, howling, for the shelter of the wagon. Vandien flung her off with a curse and sprang after the boy, but he already had the door shut. She heard a thud and then the clatter of overturned pans as he piled things against it. Vandien turned to the other door, but she got to the seat before he did. She sat, her back to the other cuddy door, and looked down on him.

  'Don't!' she warned him as he started up.

  'Get out of my way.' He spoke as if she were a stranger, one he would not mind bloodying. It shocked her.

  'Listen to me.' Her voice was shaking. 'Wait a minute.' He didn't. He was coming up onto the seat. She planted her hands on his shoulders, held him back. She wondered if he would throw her aside, knew that his anger made him far stronger than she, wondered what she would do if he did. He didn't, but all of her weight was insufficient to keep him on the ground. He was on the wagon seat. She plastered herself against the door.

  'Vandien. Listen. If you touch him right now, you'll kill him. It won't stop at a beating. You'll kill him!'

  'That's right.' His voice indicated he would enjoy it.

  'I can't let you.' Her voice was even shakier, but truth rang in her words. Vandien pulled his eyes up to meet hers. She was drawing a line. No compromise. He'd have to hurt her to get her away from that door. She watched him think about it, and it hurt that he had to think about it, but she knew him well enough to understand it. 'Please,' she said, and she knew she was begging him, and that was another thing that had never been between them. It got through his anger.

  For a long time, all was still. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with heavy emotions. 'Get rid of him.'

  The evenness of her tone surprised her. 'I will. In Villena.'

  'Now. I can't be around him, Ki. I can't tolerate him anywhere near me. Get rid of him now, or I'll kill him.'

  'I can't.'

  He stared at her, and she sensed how hard it was for him to hold back. She forced her words out quickly, trying to make him see.

  'If I toss him out here, there's only one place for him to go. Tekum. And he's hurt Willow enough already. I feel responsible for part of that hurt. I won't be responsible for letting him back into her life.'

  She saw those words penetrating his anger, saw the barest hint of a nod, a concession. 'I have to take him to Villena,' she said quickly, and saw Vandien's anger begin to rise again. 'Because,' she pushed on, 'he's not the sort of thing you leave running about on its own. Someone has to take charge of him. His uncle's expecting him. So that's where he goes. I can't turn him loose on unsuspecting people in Rivercross, or just throw him out on the road to attach himself to travellers. You can see that, can't you? Vandien?'

  He pulled back from her. He stood clear of the wagon, and in the gleam of the tiny fire his face held only a few planes of light. He seemed far away, and when he spoke, his voice was even more distant. 'Keep him away from me.' A pause. 'I don't want to see him, I don't want to hear him. I don't want to smell him. Or I'll kill him, Ki. I'll kill him.'

  'It wasn't my fault!' came Goat's wild caterwauling from within the wagon. Ki saw Vandien's eyes widen, and she pounded a fist angrily against the cuddy door.

  'Shut up!' she commanded him. The boy was silent again. 'I'll keep him away from you, Vandien. But I have to take him to Villena and turn him over to his uncle. You understand that, don't you?'

  'All I understand is that he made me kill a man worth ten of him. A hundred of him. Made me kill him unfairly, made his death too quick ...' He turned aside abruptly, shaking his head fiercely. He walked away quickly, almost running, and she lost his silhouette in the blackness.

  She hugged herself, held in her trembling. A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she suddenly felt how hard her heart was beating. But it was over, she told herself. For now. She took a great breath. 'Open the door, Goat,' she heard herself say. 'He's gone. Open the door, and listen to what I tell you, if you want to get to Villena alive.'

  He walked into the darkness, feeling the wagon dwindle behind him, losing the small light of the tiny fire. On across the dark prairie, feeling the sparse dry grasses whisper against his boots, like the whisper of drawn steel ...

  'If I hadn't been showing off,' he said to the empty night. 'If I hadn't been pressing the boy, showing him how good I was. If I hadn't been making death thrusts, and trusting his skill to parry them ...' His voice faded. But so had the boy been pressing him; had he dropped his own guard for even an instant, it would have been Kellich's steel in his chest, in his eye, laying open his flesh. He tried the justification on. It didn't fit. Instead he found himself thinking of how preferable that would have been. A quick death in a fair fight - yes, but what if, like Kellich, he had been pushed from behind? It would change everything; it had changed everything, he had seen it change everything in that fraction of a second before Kellich fell. Kellich had believed that he was in league with Goat. Dying, Kellich had taken a piece of Vandien's honor with him. It was gone, never to be redeemed.

  He fingered the back of his forearm, tracing the line of Kellich's rip. Absently he prodded it, searching for pain. There wasn't any, at least not the sharp pain he had expected. It had closed already, a thick, ragged seam on his arm. The pain it gave him was only a deep aching, as if the bone of his arm were frozen. But maybe even that was just a reflection of the deep cold ache inside himself.

  Vandien sighed, but the heaviness didn't lift from his chest. He stopped walking, forcing himself to face the decision. Was he going back to Ki's wagon and the boy it sheltered? What if, instead, he kept on walking? He could, he knew that. He had faced the world on his own before, with less. In many ways, it would be the easier thing to do. If he turned around now and went back, it would be a commitment, of sorts. Not only to taking the boy on to Villena, alive, but to living with what he had lost. Living with what his rapier had done.

  He thought of watching his father oil that blade by firelight, never trusting it to a servant, but always doing it himself, sitting in the quiet of the very late evening on the warm bricks of the great hearth, polishing the blade, then lifting it and watching the light run up and down its length. Sometimes he would trust it to Vandien's grip, kneel by his son and set it in the small boy's hand and counsel him as to stance and posture until the boy's shoulder and wrist ached despite his father's supporting hands. 'This blade,' he had said to his son, more than once, 'has never drawn blood in an unjust cause. That is its honor, and your honor, too.' And he would trace for his son the ancient, stylized talons on the grip, worn almost beyond recognition, and the spread wings and pinions of the hawk that made up its guard ... Vandien found himself fingering the back of his neck, touching the spread wings of the birthmark there. He jerked his hand away. 'Yes. And he told me that as long as that blade remained in the family, our honor and line would never fail. Wrong on both counts, Papa.' No heirs and no honor. And the fabled luck that was supposed to go with his birthmark seemed in remarkably short supply. Or perhaps it was as Ki had said, only luck, and no one had stipulated good or bad. He sighed again, but could not breathe out the heaviness that had filled his lungs ever since he had knelt over Kellich's body and listened to Willow curse him. Well.

  He stood a moment longer, listen
ing to the night. He had never felt so alone. In his killing of Kellich, something else had been severed as well. A link to his past. A rapier. Such a minor thing, a blade, a weapon, a tool. He had never thought before how firmly it anchored him. He had carried it, he knew now, to remind himself that wherever his roving with Ki might take him, he was still his father's son. Another might sit at the head of his table, his cousin might wear the necklace of his holdings and mind the borders of his lands. But while he carried his father's sword, he had known he had still his father's and mother's names, and their honor.

  So he had thought.

  Slowly he turned and began to walk back to Ki's wagon.

  TWELVE

  By late afternoon, Ki wasn't sure if she was going mad or if everyone else was. Goat stayed in the wagon. She had convinced him that to let Vandien see him was to commit suicide. He had not doubted Vandien's animosity; the difficult part had been convincing him that she not only could not, but would not, stop Vandien. The boy had been rabid in his anger. 'I saw him in danger, and I tried to help him. I did help him! If it hadn't been for me, Kellich would have tricked him into stopping the fight! And then he would have killed him!'