Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  A surprisingly chill wind gusted at them for an hour or so, and gave way to a slashing rain. Alone, Falc may or may not have sought shelter. Not today, not with Jinnery like an anvil attached to his leg. He had ridden in rain many times, and was accustomed to it. Unworthy or not, he hoped that she was not and that she hated it.

  His helmet turned water. His cloak did, for a while. Hers was sodden much sooner. She did learn one trick: now and again she tilted her head to the side to let water pour off the big grey hat’s broad brim rather than run off in front or back, onto her. She said not a word, but rode as he did. They even passed an open barn, very close to the road. No one would have denied them temporary shelter. Falc passed it without a glance.

  The rain lasted about an hour. After that, the sun returned with a vengeance, as if seeking to suck up every drop of water at once. Both travellers shucked their cloaks. They steamed. Both knew that the omo suffered the more, in his blacks. He said nothing and showed nothing.

  *

  Just over an hour from Secter, they met two other pilgrims, not farmers or men of weapons either. Male Sectrans, both gave respectful nods to the omo and looked questioningly at his companion. Falc greeted them both. His asking what news in Secter was only politeness, in passing. Both smiled; one said “All’s well,” and they rode on.

  Far behind them, Falc and Jinnery saw the approach of another rider from Secter. Tall and broad, he paced his mount as they did. He wore a hooded derlin as Falc did. Falc noted his boots and saddle and bags before faces were recognisable, but said nothing to his companion. She seemed nervous; Falc was not. Then the pilgrims came together, and the other man hoisted an arm.

  “Hail, brother, in Ashah’s name!”

  “Hail, brother,” Falc echoed, “in the name of Ashah. How do ye, Ashamal?”

  “I am well,” the other omo said, and put back his white hood for the first time. “You ha’ taken on a bodyguard, Brother Falc?”

  “Ah yes, she protects me well. She is Jinnery, Sir Ashamal of Mersarl.”

  Seeing that no explanation was forthcoming, Ashamal nodded to Jinnery, who nodded back without a word. He said, “Would you excuse us to exchange a few words?”

  Without a word she twitched her heels and Shabtain paced forward, past Ashamal along the road to Secter. She paused in the shade beneath a hugely spreading barrtree. Ashamal of the thin, hooked nose and intense, royal blue eyes had already reined close to his fellow omo. He spoke in a quiet voice.

  “Falc: d’you know ‘bout Sench?”

  “Contracted to Havenden of Kem.”

  “Falc, Brother Sench was slain just outside Darsin, ‘nd left naked.”

  “Naked! How slain?”

  “Set ’pon. Stabbed repeatedly. Dishonoured and stripped. That is abs’lutely all we know of it. No one knows anything, ’cluding the High Temple.”

  Falc nodded, grim of face. He saw no reason to waste words on comment, since Ashamal had said this was all anyone knew.

  “You knew nothin’ of this, Falc?”

  Falc shook his head.

  “I’m on my way to offer Contract to Havenden. You have not been... Visited?”

  “I have not seen the Messenger for several nights, Brother Ashamal. I have that woman with me. It’s not my wish. She lived on a farm other side Morazain, and her protector was murdered because of me. They also burned her home and barn. She has... attached herself to me.”

  He told Ashamal about Faradox and Chasmal then, and the rest of it.

  “So. You avenged her uncle and cousin ’thout even knowin’ it.”

  “No. The four were hirelings. Revenge is located atop Faradox’s neck.”

  “Um.” Ashamal glanced Jinnery’s way. She had dismounted and was moving about, exercising her legs. “She’s grateful to you, ’t any rate.”

  “I have not told her.”

  Ashamal jerked his head back to stare. “What? Why?”

  Falc shrugged. “I’m not interested in currying her favour and I do not need her gratitude.”

  “Beware vaunting pri-eede, Ole Brother Stoneface,” Ashamal said, and smiled.

  Falc did not. “You beware pride, Brother. I’ll keep mine. Ashamal: Holder Chasmal of Lango is a good man. I recommend that you go to him and offer Contract.”

  Ashamal cocked his head. “You think that I deserve a good man, Falc? Thank you.”

  “Tell Holder Chasmal I suggested that you approach him, and he will know that you are a good man, too.”

  Ashamal blinked, nodded, glanced away. Oh, this ever serious outcast of Risskor and his sky-high self-esteem! Aloud Ashamal added, “Deserved.”

  “What?”

  “Only a mutter, Falc. I will think on it. P’rhap I should vis’t Lango, hmm? What will you do, Ole Brother Stoneface?”

  “I would ask you to do me service, Ole Brother Dragonel-nose.”

  Ashamal smiled. “Ask, Falc.”

  “I would ask you to escort Jinnery to Lock, Ashamal. Explain to Holder Kinneven that I have delivered his messages to Holder Chasmal, who is now beholden to both Kinneven and Falc. Advise Kinneven that he was most certainly right about Faradox, who now has reason to hate Falc unto vengeance. And tell him that I have had to go to confer with the Master of the Order.”

  “Had to?”

  Falc nodded. “I must. Will you do this, Ashamal?”

  “You’ve never asked any sort of favour of me, Falc. Is ’t ridiculous that I feel honoured? Yes, I will do it. And as for you, Brother: Enjoy your clean head!”

  “Shh — we will not tell her until morning,” Falc said. “Will you ride back to Secter with us?”

  Ashamal shrugged. His whimsical little smile said “Oh well.”

  The three of them rode into Secter of the richly patterned carpets and women in baggy pants rather than the dresses Falc considered proper. There they took a room in a second-class inn. Falc left them to deliver his brief oral message to a Holder, turned down the man’s invitation to night there, and returned to the inn to dine with his companions. It was Falc who laid down the few melts the innkeeper wanted for the meal and a good-sized room. No one thought anything of that sensible three-way sharing of a nightchamber, unless they were surprised that the men had taken up with such a homely woman. Surely a pair of Deathknights could do better.

  They would have been far more surprised to learn that the three slept apart and shared only the room, not bodies.

  In the morning, after they had breakfasted and were mounting, Falc advised Jinnery of his plans.

  “I must go to the Mon Ashah-re,” he told her simply: the High Temple of Ashah. “There you may not and can not go, Jinnery.”

  “What!”

  He but gazed at her; not only did Falc of Risskor avoid saying the unnecessary or the obvious, he tried not to lie, and so would not mouth the standard “I’m sorry.”

  She made more noises, not at all happy about this sudden development. Sir Ashamal was rather surprised that Falc allowed this skinny girl to insult him. Surprised too at her desire to continue with stem Ole Brother Stoneface and at the same time wary of her mount Shabtain, Ashamal held the creature while Falc rode away.

  Once he was outside the city he set Harr to the gallop, and held that pace for an hour. It felt very good to be back in his natural state: alone.

  4

  Despite the quake that enforced several minutes of great care, she overtook him just under five hours later.

  “You’re right,” she said, patting her mount’s thick neck and shaking back her tangled hair. “He is a racing darg!”

  Falc made no comment on the fact that she was wearing the ballooningly full leggings of a Secteri woman, a garment he deemed unfit for any woman. “Jinnery: I am going to the High Temple of Ashah. The home of the Master of the Order; the very home and keep of the Order! There no woman may go. You can not accompany me!”

  “Look at me, Ole Stoneface. Look upon Young Stoneface.”

  He looked into those nigh-black eyes. In the bright
ness of the sun her pupils were mere vertical lines. He saw the purposeful look in her eyes, and in the set of her mouth and strong straight-boned jaw.

  “I am looking, Jinnery. You may not and can not accompany me.”

  “Very well then, Cousin Falc. I will follow, for you can not leave me!”

  He showed a face of affliction and turned his anguished eyes upward. Ashah gave no sign and Falc saw not the faintest hint of a cloud from which might come a lightning bolt to remove this sapling-thin woman’s anvilish weight from around his neck. Again Falc tried.

  “I have been riding for years, girl. I can live in the saddle, eat in the saddle. I can sleep in the saddle. You can try to follow, but you cannot keep the pace I and Harr can set.”

  “That may be.” She smiled and stroked her mount’s neck. “But I’ll bet Shabtain can!”

  He could only stare. So this was the meaning of the phrase “helpless rage!”

  “And,” she added after a perfectly timed pause, “I’m no girl.”

  He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly through his nose. He was stuck with her, and he knew it. “If you must follow me, at least resume your womanly skirt and rid yourself and my sight of those sections.”

  “Sections?”

  “That’s what those most unfeminine leg-balloons of Secter are called.”

  She glanced down at her grass-blue sections. “Oh. But see, since I’m to follow, they’ll not be in your sight, Cousin Omo.”

  Ah, Ashah, the mockery of her voice, the smug satisfaction in her face of planes and angles! Feeling most unwontedly helpless and wondering what inner force or newly manifested weakness was preventing him from slapping her off her mount, Falc stared.

  Suddenly both her face and her voice became less harsh. “Falc... consider. You ride and you wear leggings. I have ridden without complaint, and yet I could not keep my skirt between my bare legs and saddle or darg-hide, and my legs have been chafed constantly. Besides... every time you decided that we would speed up, my skirt blew and I had to use one hand to hold it down. I considered trying to tie or sew it together between my thighs, but without a pin or needle or thread I couldn’t think of a way to do it.”

  “Jinnery —”

  “Just a moment, now; there is more. You are a monk, a Son of Ashah, and you have no business seeing a woman’s legs. Now you cannot: they are covered. Further, the covering is loose and does not even outline the female legs you have no business seeing. Sir Knight of the Order: do you hear logic? Your argument is not an argument, it’s a reaction. It is not logical. Do you hear the voice of your illogical prejudice, Sir Falc, or do you hear me?”

  And that was that. Falc of Riskor, O.M.O., must accept her aquamarine balloon-pants and her sour companionship, such as it was. And yet he would not. She had said that she would follow. Very well, then.

  Without taking his gaze off her, without a word or a movement that she could see, he signalled Harr. The darg turned and set off along the road. Smiling, her eyebrows up in a serene expression, Jinnery waited several seconds before she set off after him.

  *

  She trailed him all afternoon. She trailed him until dusk, and after. He made no camp but rode on. When the sky was a deep slate hue, he swung down and walked for a while, knowing that Harr would not stop or meander. As they approached Hazne’s Wood, Falc pretended to be inspecting his saddle so that he could snatch a backward glance. She was there, walking beside her hideously misnamed darg, sections flaring. Falc brought Harr to pause and swung into the saddle. He rode in among the trees without looking back. Within the forest the road was no narrower and Harr needed no guidance.

  In that greater darkness Falc hauled a saddlebag around before him without turning, found a piece of fruit just on the point of slimy death, and ate it. He was kind enough to Harr to dismount for the fording of Stinking Creek. He spoke soft kindnesses to Harr as they crossed, without looking back.

  Jera rose, and Orlam, and presumably The Loner, too, were up there in the sky of night. Falc did not look up and did not look back. It wouldn’t have mattered; within the forest, night was a thing of black onyx.

  Having started the day with an hour’s gallop, Harr was ready for rest and deserved it. He grew draggy and then definitely surly. When Falc hauled out another moribund fruit and proffered it, the beast seemed as interested in taking off his hand as in eating the gift. His yellow eyes glared. Falc wiped his pulp-slimy hands on the darg’s hide. A bat swooped and Falc ducked at the sound while glimpsing only a movement in the air.

  He listened hopefully, but heard no sound from behind to indicate that Jinnery and the bat had encountered each other.

  Harr turned uncooperative; three times his master drowsed off in the saddle and each time the darg awakened him by stopping. This was not training; this was the opposite of his training. Falc had slept many times in the saddle while his superbly well-trained war-darg bore him on his way. Now Falc slapped his neck and Harr hissed genuine malice. His master knew better than to repeat the act, for the darg would only force him to discipline it more sternly, and that would not be fair.

  When Harr blundered in among the trees and bushes and nearly caught his rider by going under a low branch, Falc knew it was deliberate. He hauled the hissing creature back onto the road and forced him to pace angrily along for a few minutes more — hissing — before urging him into the trees. That was important to both of them; this way it was Falc’s decision, not Harr’s.

  While he unequipped the darg and relieved himself, Falc did not know whether to think about Jinnery or to try not to. He did neither, and the choice was not his. Within bare minutes man and darg were asleep under the trees.

  When he awoke, Harr was breakfasting on this and that and Jinnery was on the road a few feet away, waiting beside her darg. Wearing the big grey hat and her green-blue sections.

  Falc rose, muttered rite-words while he exercised briefly, and murmured to Harr all the while he harnessed the beast. Then he led him out onto the road, passing Jinnery without seeming to see her, and began walking on his way. An hour or so later he stopped to enter the woods and relieve himself as he should have done upon awakening. Furtively, from cover of woods, he ascertained that she was still there. He emerged to mount, but paused while the brown-and-gold butterfly flitted too close. He heard the slurp and saw it vanish, and urged Harr into a trot.

  Falc’s stomach rumbled.

  5

  Two hours out of the woods, he had donned derlin and raised the hood when he heard the approach of a single darg from behind, at the canter. He did what he’d have done had he been alone and overtaken by another rider in more hurry: he minded his business. He rode on without looking back.

  That did not mean he didn’t stiffen when he heard the other darg slow. Then he heard a male voice, speaking low. Falc missed the words.

  “No,” the rather loud voice of a pubescent boy replied, “I’m with him!”

  This time Falc heard the man’s words: “Oh? So far behind? Who’s he?”

  “Sir Falc of Risskor,” she said in that unfortunate voice, still too loud, “Knight of the Order Most Old!”

  The man speeded to come up alongside Falc, who glanced over at someone’s courier. Young and brawny and cocky, he was liveried under his derlin in a painfully bright green and reddish brown, with yellow trim.

  “Hot sun today.”

  Falc nodded. “Yes.”

  “I’d think a noble Son of Ashah’d let the girl wear the hood and derlin,” the fellow said, and was away at the gallop, as if hurled from an invisible catapult.

  Falc sighed. “I was too young and too snotty once, too,” he muttered, and Harr’s neck rumpled as he glanced around. Falc’s stomach rumbled as he gave the darg a pat. “Want to trot?”

  Harr didn’t know questions, but heard a word he knew. Harr trotted.

  6

  Sunset was a half hour away when Falc terminated a half-hour’s gallop and nudged Harr into a turn. Broadside, he watched Jinnery’s
racing darg terminate its gallop. She brought him to a stop twenty or so meters away. Wild of hair and flushed of face, she returned Falc’s gaze.

  “Isn’t galloping glorious?”

  He shook his head, but not in negation. She was still with him; she looked hale; she acted hearty and even friendly. She was no more fathomable than the deepest well, he thought, who had never paused to consider that he was quite unfathomable to all, including himself. He sighed.

  He thought, How many sighs has this impossible woman brought from me? And he said, “What soars in you, woman?”

  She had adopted his set face and equable tone. “Hunger, mostly.”

  Falc’s big chest heaved in a sigh.

  SIX

  We believe that individuals should receive fairness, which means that which they merit and deserve, which means justice.

  Justice cannot be “gentle,” as it cannot be “stern.”

  Justice is justice; that which is merited for that individual:

  reparation, not retribution.

  — the third Master

  *

  The man was big, and all in black. His much smaller companion, in long white derlin with its hood up, might have been a tall boy or an unusually thin man. No; she was a woman, and they were companions without being friends. They had ridden for three hours through ever-rising, increasingly rugged country that led them to the Mountain of God. When they reached the tumbled rocks and rocky debris at the foot of the mountain’s long sloping east face, the woman could only stare up and up that towering mass of stone. She saw mostly grey porphyry shading to the black of jet with shades of russet and dirty gold. Here and there she spotted a sort of scraggly imitation of a tree... Each stood from the mountain at an odd angle that fascinated her.

  The man in black was moving, though, and she must follow. They and their mounts climbed up toward those scoriae crags.

  The High Temple of Ashah and His Order, Falc had told Jinnery, was tucked away well up within the mountain, and invisible. Access was by one pass only; a narrow slice between high granitic walls. First they must climb to the pass. He had seen to it that the derlin concealed those Secteri balloon-pants which he considered awful.