“To them? Nothing.”
“Oh, I get it. It was all their idea. Their cunning plan. Run all the way down here just so they could kill a guy they saw every day.”
She appeared impervious to sarcasm. “They came to be with their own kind.”
“There’s wild herds a hell of a lot closer than this one.”
“Horses in the witch-herd aren’t wild,” she said. “They’re feral.”
“I—” He stopped, squinting at her. “They—all of them?”
“Look.”
He looked. For the first time. At the horses, instead of around them and past them. The herd had been just … well, context. Scenery. Local color. He’d been looking for the horse-witch and he just naturally assumed that when he found her, there would be horses around. Why else would people call her the horse-witch?
Finally looking at the horses themselves, he saw scars.
He knew a thing or two about scars. He knew what a whip scar looked like. He knew the difference between the scar of a knife and the scar of an arrowhead, and the difference between both of those and scars left by spurs. He knew the scar left when the skin rips around a club-blow, and the one when the flesh itself is crushed and destroyed. And he knew the look in the eyes when the scars inside are worse.
Every horse watching him and the grooms was remembering every time they’d been whipped. Beaten. Spurred. Clubbed. They were remembering being starved into submission, or penned in the sun without water. Remembering having chains pull their faces so hard that skin ripped to the bone. Remembering being tied down, screaming, trying to get away, to fight back, to do anything at all that might make it just stop. Remembering the bottomless nightmare that was their experience of humanity. Because that’s what they did when they saw people.
Remember.
He knew what they were remembering because when he saw people, he mostly did the same. He said, very, very softly, “Holy shit …”
He looked up at the horse-witch. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”
“They believe you.”
“What, the horses?”
She shrugged. “You’re still alive.”
“Uh. Yeah.” He gave half a nod over his shoulder at the two grooms. “You two better go wait in the village.”
They didn’t need convincing. They scrambled to their feet and started toward the rocky slope where they’d left their mounts ground-tied. Ten million pounds of horseflesh closed across their path. Shoulder to shoulder. Not threatening. Just in the way.
The grooms recoiled. They looked back at him. He looked up at the horse-witch. “Can they go?”
She squinted over the heads of the herd. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Come on, they’re just kids. Let ’em go, huh?”
She tilted her head to watch him with her brown eye. “You don’t understand what I am.”
“Well, that’s a fucking news flash. I don’t give a shit what you are—”
“Except you do.”
“—I just want to finish the day without anybody else dying, all right? Can we do that?”
She gave him half an apologetic shrug. “Seems unlikely.”
“What gets us out of here? Come on, a clue, huh? Anything. Seriously.”
“They don’t like people,” she said. “People are what they joined the herd to get away from.”
“They seem to like you well enough.”
“I’m the horse-witch.”
“Okay, then, horse-witch, how about you witch some horses out of our fucking way?”
“That’s not what I do.”
“Another news flash.”
She leaned a little forward, bracing herself against the bay’s powerful neck, and angled her face to give him a full-on stare. “There are two things I do. Ruling these horses isn’t one of them. Look at my eyes.”
The one eye doe-brown, warm and gentle. The other milky bluish grey, cold as a glacier.
“Two things I do,” she repeated. She touched her cheek below the brown eye. “Forgiveness.” She moved the hand to the ice-milk side. “Permission.”
“Forgiveness and permission? Forgiveness and permission for what?”
“It’s not complicated. Forgiveness for everything bad that’s happened to you. Permission to be who you are. Everything else is …” She shrugged. “Else.”
He scowled up at her. He should probably just shoot her, grab the horses, and get out of here before Kylassi’s blood attracted griffins. Or something worse. Who knew what kinds of predators might be stalking the fringes of the witch-herd? But when his hand closed on the Automag’s grip, he discovered that he understood what she was talking about. A cold emptiness unfolded inside his chest, and he left the pistol where it was.
Forgiveness for everything bad that’s happened to you.
Permission to be who you are.
She hadn’t made the horses kill Kylassi. She hadn’t made them do anything. She didn’t have to.
Permission.
He looked at the horses again, then at the grooms, who were both white as the limestone bluffs. “Maybe you better walk.”
“What about our horses?”
“They’re not yours. Go.”
They moved tentatively, sidling toward the wall of horses, and this time the silent herd drew away like an ebb tide and opened before them, and he reflected that she’d been right before. He did care what the horse-witch was. When he turned to tell her so, she was gone.
It never occurred to him to not follow.
“His enemies are not demons, but are human beings like himself.”
—LAO-TSE
The Book of the Way
Following the horse-witch was easy.
He shrugged an interrogative toward the bluff where Orbek waited with the SPAR; a second later the young ogrillo skylined himself just long enough to wave in the general direction Kylassi’s horse had bolted. He nodded and pointed with an open hand in the same direction along the rim of the bluff. Orbek waved acknowledgment and disappeared.
He started walking.
Horses drifted around him, giving him plenty of space without ever seeming to look up from industriously cropping the scrub. The herd thinned like dawn fog dissolving under the morning sun. The little valley opened into a broad rolling bowl a handful of miles across, and by the time he reached the mouth, he was alone in the open, the herd grazing disinterestedly behind him. The wind in his face smelled of pine, red clover, and oncoming weather. He didn’t see her, and he gave another shrug up toward the jaws of the ravine. This time, Orbek held up both his arms, then crossed them into an X and pointed northeast.
Northeast, he caught a glimpse of something man-shaped that carried something bow-shaped in one hand as it slipped into a crease between two low knolls.
“Well,” he muttered. “What ho, hail fellow well met and suchlike shit.”
He faded back into the ravine mouth, then swung out along the base of the north face of the bluff. He moved like a ghost, a wisp of vapor borne by the wind: while it blew hard enough to cover his footsteps, he trotted through scrub that now thickened to grass. When it stopped, so did he.
A couple of horses were ground-tied ahead, one full-tacked, the other wearing only a halter and a lead-rope. He turned in pursuit of the bowman before the horses could take his scent.
The wind was still in his face. The bowman was staying downwind of his prey, which made it easy to stay downwind of him in turn. Fist gained steadily. Though he was no longer young, he had for some few years made a minor specialty of sneaking up on people.
He came around the shoulder of a rocky knoll to find the bowman on the summit of the next one above, no more than thirty yards away, kneeling among a jumble of weather-bleached stone. The bow was strung in an elegant reflex, short and thick and looking to have serious pop. The bowman had already nocked an arrow and extended his left arm and was drawing back the string.
“Don’t do it.”
He spoke just loud enough to be heard above the
breeze. He didn’t want to startle the bastard.
The bowman went absolutely still. His reply was no louder, and it carried the lazy twang of the southern steppes. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t be a dumbass.” Christ, now she had him doing it. “Lower your weapon.”
The bowman slowly, carefully, slacked the tension on his bowstring and aimed the arrow at the ground.
“Now come out of there.”
“May I turn around?”
“Sure, whatever.”
The bowman edged back from the rocks, taking himself off the skyline before he stood up. The man nodded to himself: a pro.
The bowman had a closed, narrow face weathered as the rocks behind him, and slitted dark eyes that widened to discover the other man empty-handed below him. He shook his head. “And I would have sworn on my momma’s hair that any man good enough to creep me would be smart enough to do it holding a bow of his own.”
“I’m a crappy shot.”
His dark eyes narrowed again. “Who are you?”
“You can call me Fist. Jonathan Fist, freeman of Ankhana.”
“You ain’t in the Empire now, freeman.”
“No? Then where are we?”
“Someplace else. You alone out here?”
He shrugged. “Mostly.”
“What are you doing in these hills?”
“Stopping you from shooting the horse-witch. What are you doing?”
“No business of yours, dead man.” The bow came up.
“Don’t point that at me.”
The bow stopped. Old-leather wrinkles deepened around dark-slitted eyes. “Why not?”
“I don’t like it. You won’t either.” The man calling himself Jonathan Fist tilted his head a couple degrees to one side and let it center again. “You’ll get hurt.”
“I’ll take my chances.” He drew back the string as he lifted the bow, and with a wet meaty whap an invisible fist smacked him spinning to the ground. The bow clattered away into the rocks. The arrow splintered against a random stone.
From the southern bluff above the mouth of the ravine, a thousand yards behind, came a faint crisp cough, like a healthy man clearing his throat.
Jonathan Fist said, “Told you.”
He walked up the knoll. The scrub had given way to thick prairie grass almost knee-high that smelled weedy and full of sap. By the time he got to the top, the bowman was thrashing weakly. His boot heels scuffed gouges in the pale sandy soil as he tried to shove himself into the rocks without getting up. His rough-tanned leather jerkin was the color of pine bark except for a spreading patch of wet black around a small neat hole where his right shoulder met his chest. His left hand was over his shoulder as though it might be plugging a bigger hole in his back.
“What did you—how did you …?” he gasped. His voice had gone thin and hoarse and shocky. Boneshots can do that.
“All you need to know is it can happen again.”
She was a hundred yards downslope, the big bay peacefully cropping grass while she untacked Kylassi’s horse. She finished ungirthing the massive high-cantled saddle, then she yanked it off and tossed it heedlessly over her shoulder like a soiled pillow. It bounced and tumbled down the slope and the bowman kept scuffling back from him and Jonathan Fist said, “How’d that feel?”
Still trying to scuffle back, the bowman blinked at him. “What?”
“You want another?”
“I, uh, I—” The bowman swallowed. “No.”
“Then stay where you are.”
The scuffling subsided.
She had one of the gelding’s forehooves in both hands now; she was lifting it, bending the leg, working it slowly back and forth.
“What—what are you going to do with me?” The bowman’s voice had gone even shakier. “I don’t—I don’t want to die …”
He kept watching the horse-witch. “Then quit trying to play me and give me the goddamn knife.”
“Wh-what?”
Jonathan Fist sighed, and slowly turned, and looked at the bowman with eyes black as volcanic glass. “Remember what I said about being a dumbass?”
The bowman thought about it. The fear and shakiness drained out of his weathered face, leaving only the concentrated wariness of a deer hunter in bear country. His left hand came out from behind his shoulder holding a half-moon skinning knife with a split-finger grip: a fist with eight inches of blade for knuckles. “Can’t fault a guy for trying.”
“Can kill you for it, though.” He made a flicking motion with the back of his hand. “Toss it down the hill. Easy.”
“Into the rocks? Hey, c’mon—” The bowman looked distinctly offended. “You know what this knife’s worth?”
“More than your life?”
“It’s just—it’s a hell of a thing, that’s all.” The wounded bowman shook his head. “It’s a hell of a thing to do to a fine piece of steel. Look, I’ll give it to you. All right? It’s yours. What do you say? Just don’t make me throw it into those rocks.”
He chewed the inside of his lip for a second or two. “Set it in the grass, then. And the quiver. Push yourself away.”
He didn’t have it in him to make a pro disrespect his tools.
When the bowman had complied, he picked up the knife and held it in one hand while with the other he checked the man’s wound. The bowman’s face had faded from leather to old ivory, and the tremor in his hands was no longer faked, and when Jonathan Fist probed the wound, front and back, and felt splinters of bone within, the bowman shuddered and groaned against locked-shut teeth. When he was done with the wound, he looped the bowman’s wide belt around the shoulder and cinched it tight: close enough to a bandage that it might keep him from bleeding out.
For a while, anyway.
The bowman got himself under control again. “How bad?”
“You might pull that bow again.” A shrug. “Someday.”
“Shit. That bow’s my life. What else’ve I even got?”
“Get up.”
The bowman was close enough to the rocks to pull himself to his feet. He leaned heavily against the stone, panting. “Well, uh, well—thanks for the patch, anyway. Not many out here’d bother.”
“Didn’t do it for you.” Jonathan Fist looked down the slope. From below, she briefly met his eyes. Then she turned back to the gelding. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Go?”
“You’re gonna meet the horse-witch.”
“In a pig’s asshole.”
“You’re gonna meet the horse-witch,” he repeated, “and then you’re gonna explain just why, exactly, you were about to shoot her in the back.”
He helped the bowman down the slope. Slowly. The man’s knees were going weak, and he didn’t feel like carrying the bastard. He paused just before the knoll’s slope would take them down off the skyline, and swung his arm in a wide circle, without turning his head.
The bowman frowned at the gesture, then checked the angle of the slope against a squinted measuring of the horizon that ended at the bluff. “You got friends out here.”
“Worry about your own friends.” Jonathan Fist steadied him down a broken shelf of rock. “Friends of yours out here will most likely bleed to death.”
“I ain’t sociable.”
“How long before somebody shows up looking for you?”
The bowman gave a sigh that ended in a cough. “I guess we’ll both find out together. Unless you want to turn me loose.”
“Maybe later.”
The bowman struggled down to a patch of dry grass. “This is about as far as I’m gonna make it on foot,” he said, and Jonathan Fist believed him.
The horse-witch never looked up. She pried the steel shoes off the big gelding, one after another, and tossed them carelessly aside without bothering to watch where they fell.
“Hey.”
She had produced a small hooked knife from somewhere and was thoughtfully sculpting the gelding’s left rear hoof.
“Hey, dammit. You know
this fucker was about to shoot you?”
“Yes.” Her hands flickered, and when he could see them clearly again, the hooked knife had vanished back into whatever elsewhere it came from, replaced by a rasp that she applied to the hoof with the same absolute attention.
“Look, I’m sorry to interrupt. Hate to inconvenience you by saving your fucking life. Go right ahead on with what you’re doing.”
“All right.” And she did.
Again, he became conscious of the weight of the Automag on the back of his belt. “You think maybe you might be interested in, say, why? Maybe find out who wants you dead?”
“No.”
He blinked. “Because you already know, or because you don’t give a shit?”
She released that leg and moved on to the next. The rasp was gone and the knife was back. “You talk a lot.”
“I’d talk less if you’d hold up your end of a fucking conversation.”
“You mean side.”
“What?”
“You’re the end.” She seemed to find something troubling in the hoof; a new knife, smaller, appeared in her hand. “Both ends.”
“Whatever.” He waved a hand. “Forget that, huh?”
“All right.” She tilted her head to one side, then the other, and somehow he understood that she was examining the hoof with one eye at a time, doe-brown and milky blue-white in sequence.
His jaw hurt. He’d been grinding his teeth. “So, people try to backshoot you so often you’re bored with it? Or what, you’re arrow-proof?”
Her answer was only a distant shake of her head. The gelding had gone twitchy; the breeze had swung, and maybe he could smell the bowman’s blood. She released his leg, squatting patiently beside him, as though there wasn’t thirteen hundred pounds of nervous warhorse dancing around her.
“D’you think—” The bowman had gone white around the mouth. “Whilst you two flirt, d’you think I could maybe lie down?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
As she calmed the gelding and picked up its next leg, he found himself watching the sunstreaks in her hair, shifting and gently twisting in the breeze. Made him think of dawn reflected on a rippling river. When he realized what he was doing, he shut his eyes.
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