Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  “By a woman, especially. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it.”

  “N —” Falc broke off and turned his head back her way as if it were an effort. He met her eyes. “Yes.”

  She nodded, aware of having gained a lot from him, in that single word of admission so difficult for such a man. She was pleased, but without the feeling of triumph she would have expected.

  “I shall not call you Deathknight again, Falc. We both know I haven’t been, but I want you to know that isn’t by accident. Uh... perhap my darg were bettter named Tay? I had a cack named that once and it was a good loving cack. Got killed under a cart wheel. I think my darg will recognise Tay as well as Tain, don’t you?”

  Falc’s face showed nothing. “Probably.”

  Abruptly she half turned, almost in a jerk, to send a sharp glance about the nice little room. Parshann had made the house himself, and he had done well. It was just that apparently he cleaned house even less often than he took off his big hat.

  “This place is filthy and you need nourishment! Oh, the situations I get myself into! Sleep if you can, Falc. I’ll wake you when I have some soup or stew or whatever can be gleaned here. Old Parshann’s going to have the first decent meal he’s had in over a year!”

  Falc understood the sudden embarrassment and discomfort that made her return to her critical manner in an abrupt explosion of act and speech and exaggerated industriousness. He wondered about that last braggadocious part, though, until Parshann told him later that he’d just had the best meal he’d had in over a year. Falc tried not to chuckle. It would only hurt his cracked rib.

  4

  Falc was brought out of a drifty sleep late that night by the sudden illumination that entered the room.

  He swallowed. He got himself up in the bed in time to see the Manifestation coalese out of the familiar ethereal luminosity: a wavery silvery-grey figure, robed and faceless in the helm and war-mask of Sath Firedrake. At once came from it that hollow, echoic voice Falc knew.

  “Say to me the Credo of the Order.”

  “The purpose... of the Order Most Old is to preserve the social order,” Falc said. “Thus the purpose of the Order Most Old is to hold and cherish knowledge; to hold ever foremost its duty to the social order; to dispense it with love and great care for its value and its danger to the social order; to assist commie — communication among its leaders; and to strive ever to maintain that social order.” He broke the ritual then: “I am indeed Falc, and I am wounded.”

  The Messenger accepted the sundering of tradition and recognition phrases. “What happened?”

  Falc explained, denigrating himself for being taken by surprise and naming his embarrassment and loss of face because it was a woman who saved him. Too, he had been helpless not to accept her aid, even in mounting.

  “Cease these unseemly noises that question the word of Ashah, Falc. Ashah did indeed have purpose in guiding your paths to cross, and in guiding her into such tenacity. As to her prowess — we both know that she was trained by a master.”

  How gentle you are tonight, O spirit of the Firedrake, Falc thought in considerable surprise.

  The voice from far down in a well came again: “What are your thoughts about them?”

  “They wore no city’s colours and the colours of no individual I know,” Falc said. “Yet it seemed that they came expressly to kill me, and —”

  “And were smarter and more cautious than those who tried previously. As if they knew about those attempts, perhap, and had been warned and taken counsel?”

  “Ah, your wisdom transcends mine, as always.”

  “Of course. I may be right and I may be wrong, Brother Falc. I but name what seems to be a possibility. It is too bad that he who did not escape is beyond ability to talk.”

  “Yes. For that I am most sorry.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  Falc tried.

  “You are near the estate Holding of Daviloran. He is Contractor to our brother Kaherevan. Assuming that he is alone and can be contacted, Sir Kaherevan will soon come for you. Daviloran will house you until you recuperate. You must do that, Falc. You must not fare forth again until you are as well as you were yesterday, lest you meet others who will find you easy prey.”

  O Ashah, how Falc hated those words, that thought! Yet he realised that the Messenger spoke truth, and Falc had to admit it to himself. Even when he was less helpless, he would be no match for another attack. Even those four from Lango would have had no trouble with a Falc of one arm and a stiffened side! He must be well beyond a mere “less helpless.”

  “My news to you tonight was to be that Brother Kaherevan has been uncontactable these past three nights. At last contact, five nights ago, he was on his way to Lock on his Holder’s business.”

  Damn!

  “Thus, if he does not arrive in a few days and you can travel, do so by night. Go to Holder Daviloran.”

  Falc nodded, wondering if the Manifestation could see him, and thinking that it was so. On the point of asking in what direction, he curbed himself from showing the Messenger stupidity and a self-willed tongue: Certainly Parshann would know where lay the house of a nearby estatemaster!

  “Falc: Have great care. You cannot be done without. The Master and the High Temple abide well. On those occasions when you despair that you are only a chesspiece of the cosmos, consider the despair of the player! May you be granted a morrow no worse than this day.”

  “And thou,” Falc said, hoping that the morrow and several more to come would be beyond merely no worse than this day.

  5

  Once Parshann and his ever-present hat were out of the house on that better morrow, Falc suggested that Jinnery fetch the saddlebags off the dead attacker’s darg.

  “Perhaps it contains a clue as to who they were or who sent them.”

  Jinnery stared. “Sent them?”

  “I believe those three were sent to kill me. Me, specifically, Jinn. And now you will ask no more about it.”

  “Hmp. Same Falc, vertical or horizontal! But come to think, that knapsack may hold something of value, too.”

  “That would be good. Something to give our host.”

  She snorted at that. “What Parshann is getting is a clean house, as fast as I can wade through the mess! Doubtless that will be for the first time in over a year, too, the filthy barga!” She glanced around. “Falc... do you own anything? Do omos carry melts?”

  “No. Sometimes I have some. Something always turns up.”

  “Yes, doesn’t it! Someone who insists on being slain and leaving you his darg and possessions! And you refused to tell tales of blood-violence to Chalis! Oh, Mother Avmer, what a man!”

  She waited, looking expectantly at him, but Falc disappointed her. He said nothing and his expression did not change. With a sigh Jinnery went to fetch in the pair of saddlebags from their mutual victim’s darg. When she returned, he had succeeded in sitting up and propping himself in that position. She forewent comment on that, knowing it would avail her nothing.

  They were disappointed. The leathern sacks contained no clues.

  “I’m sure this bracelet was crafted in Lock,” Falc said, turning the pretty trinket over in his good hand. “But that means nothing.”

  “Parshann won’t have any use for a bracelet, either.”

  “True. We will give him the sacks themselves and the dried food they contain. Also the extra tunic and that blanket, thin as it is, and the knife and spoon.”

  “Falc — I can use the tunic, and the knife and spoon! I can not use another darg, but Parshann can. Falc? Falc? Hmp. Asleep. All right, Esphy m’ girl, let’s get at playing woman again. Two big brutes are as needful and dependent as children... on the good mother you’ll never be!”

  She left the room quietly and went into Parshann’s surprisingly spacious kitchen. With moisture-sparkling eyes, she began work on another better dinner than the farmer had eaten (while wearing his hat) in over a year. Meanwhile she glanced di
sgusted about the messy hut.

  *

  By night Sir Kaherevan had not come. The Messenger did not appear. Falc fell asleep while trying to give serious thought to the indications that someone had actually formed and was implementing a plot against the very men who were dedicated to preserving them and all Sij from renewed Empire; from a repetition of disaster: the Order Most Old.

  NINE

  ...for no one can know what is in the mind of another. It is the way of some not to care. Of others, to demand to know. Of others, to attempt to listen and to think, and so surmise what is there that one did not hear — or heard without hearing, none of these is “right” at all times, as each is “wrong” at some time. Circumstances and sometimes opportunity dictate method, as in nearly all else.

  — the fifth Master

  *

  “Sometimes it seemed to me when I was teaching you,” Falc said, “that you were already familiar with knives and knife-fighting. Now I’m sure. In that attack on us you surely displayed more knowledge and skill than I’ve taught you.”

  She shrugged and avoided looking at him while she made a show of tidying his chamber, which she had thoroughly cleaned only yesterday afternoon. Falc sat silently regarding her. He realised that her face had changed, so gradually that he had not noticed. He remembered his first impression: that Jinnery held her thin-lipped mouth neither attractively nor even very pleasantly. The tight set of those lips had eased, although she still chewed her nails. Her grim face and bitter mouth had loosened up, with the new appearance heightened by her wearing her hair down and loose. Only now did he realise that change, as he saw it reverse: how tight her mouth had just become and how her jawbone stood out!

  We’ve grown comfortable with each other, he thought. Now I’ve jolted her back to the old Jinnery. I have hit a nerve.

  At last the silence and his steady stare became unendurable. She straightened and faced him from across the room, eight or so steps away. Medium blue hair flowing loose and long. The clothing of a larger woman, blousing so that it merely emphasised her thinness. Eyes like almonds staring back at his.

  “You’re right again, Falc,” she said, and added in a mildly exasperated way, “of course. I lied to you. My father may have been slain in Morazain, and maybe he wasn’t.”

  He said nothing, but continued to gaze at her. Neither expectantly nor questioningly; he merely gazed with that open, rather ascetic and often dour face that could make her so uncomfortable.

  “All right, all right,” she said, as if he had been badgering her. “And Querry was not my uncle. I never knew who my father was and my mother hardly knew him. She was killed when I was twelve. Murdered by... by one of her customers. Nothing came of it. I mean, he was fined, that’s all. That’s how the city gets money. It doesn’t go to twelve-year-old orphans.” She looked away. “And girls out on the streets after dusk — they’re thick as crellies and worth no more attention.”

  Falc said nothing. He heard her. He had no need of asking what sort of customer, or what her mother was in the business of selling. That was implicit in Jinnery’s words and stance and tone, and her attitude of resignation, as well as by her previously choosing to lie.

  “My name was Esphodine,” she told him, looking away as she pronounced the word, then returning her gaze to the steady stare of midnight eyes and that dark face that showed nothing. No disapproval, no querying or expectancy, no surprise. Just Falc, in bed and looking at her, listening.

  “I said was, Falc,” she warned him. “Esphodine. My mother thought it sounded just so fine! I hated it. Hate it. I’d as soon be called Flunderpuff! I took her name after she died, and I... I took her profession, too. I went out on the streets. I did not do that well, but I survived. Not every man was so choosy as not to accept a skinny youngster with an ugly voice, at bargain rates. Some men like such a woman — or such a girl, anyhow.”

  She said that defensively and as if challengingly in that unfortunate voice that was more brass than silver bells or gold, and Falc nodded. That was all. His face didn’t change, or his eyes. He merely nodded an acknowledgment that said nothing.

  Suddenly she burst out,. “Don’t you even judge, monk?”

  “Too often. I am nearly always wrong when I do. I know that I will again, and I will know again that it is wrong and unworthy. I judged you awrong, Cousin Jinnery, long ago.” His voice laid the slightest stress on her name and the word “cousin.”

  “The first day and night ever we saw each other! I suppose you did, as I judged you! Hmmp!” She turned away to pick a bit of lint off the flowered partial covering of the room’s only chair; Parshann’s work. Leaning one hand on its back, she looked at Falc. “That’s where I was and that’s what I was doing when a farmer named Querry found me, four years ago. He had a son and no woman. He needed help on the farm, and he needed the kind of release a woman provides. Even one as hard as I’d become. In me he fancied that he found both. Ah, how I leaped at the opportunity to escape the city and all those men! How I romanticized the peace and the idyllic pastoral life! It turned out not to be so idyllic, and not my pot of hax either. So... I became harder, and wore my dissatisfaction and bitterness like a cloak. I had much bitterness in me. That’s why I was so cruel to you when you came, free and on the move, seeing the world. I envied you, you see, and so I was cruel! I had told myself Querry was getting plenty from me, and you had everything, and I had a right to be unpleasant. To nag.

  “That’s what I told myself when I thought at all, I mean.”

  At last Falc took his gaze from her. He looked at the wall beyond the foot of the bed and sighed. Without intending to, he spoke. Dull and quiet of voice, to the wall.

  “I know. I fled too, Jinn. I fled my own Risskor. No normal man chooses to give his life to the Order Most Old.”

  More than surprised, she could only nod. Each of them had just told the other more than they had ever admitted or shared. They knew each other a bit better, and a bond deepened. They had made admissions each to the other, and understood without knowing details that did not matter.

  “Falc...”

  “I need to be alone now, Jinnery.”

  “Alone! You mean ‘Jinn,’ don’t you?”

  He looked at her. He nodded. “I need to be alone, Jinn.” “But we were just — you’re closing me out again.”

  “Confound and damn it, woman, I have to increase the rainfall.”

  “Oh.” She hurried out of the room, and shut the door. Falc made noises with the bed, in the event she was listening, and reached under to move the chamberpot under the bed a couple of times, so that it made scraping sounds and she would think he was urinating, as he’d said. Then he resumed staring at the wall, thinking.

  *

  “It isn’t right,” Falc said with some heat. “It’s embarrassing... demeaning!”

  “Demeaning!”

  “I mean to both of us, Jinnery!”

  “You mean Jinn, don’t you?”

  “I mean it isn’t right and it’s embarrassing to have you come in here and carry that pot out and empty it.”

  “What, you think I’m such a weak girl and Parshann should do it?”

  “No, I think I should.” He gestured, and she noticed how short and slow the movement was. “I can throw it out the window, there.”

  She set the chamberpot down beside the bed, then pushed it under. She straightened and stepped back.

  “All right then, Sir Knight of the Order, you do it.”

  Dark, dark eyes stared, and blinked. “Leave me alone, then.”

  “I will not! When you get out of that bed and fall down, I’m going to be here to catch you!”

  “I will not f — I’m not wearing anything.”

  “That’s a lie. For shame, Son of Ashah!”

  “Damn you, woman!”

  “Damn you too. Damn us both! Just go on and empty that pot, so I can get back to Parshann’s bedroom. He doesn’t want me in there but it looks as if thirty half-wits have been partying
in that room for a month. He’s ’way out in the field right now, and now’s my chance. Move, Falc, move!”

  He looked lances and throwing stars and knives at her. Then he spent about a minute getting himself into a sitting position. He kept the sheet over him, slung across one shoulder. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and for the first time she saw their hairiness, their muscular calves and the thickness of his ankles. He sat gazing at the floor. Then at her. His face took on a look of resolution again, and he stood.

  Fortunately, he fell backward onto the bed and she did not have to catch him after all.

  Stalking over to the bed, she retrieved the blue chamberpot and started, stiff-backed, out of the room. Suddenly she turned, half-squatted to set down the pot, and strode to the bed with a rustle of a dead woman’s long, pale green skirt. That was a surprise; so was her dropping to her knees beside the bed.

  “Falc, Falc! We are not judging, remember? I must help you, for now. You lost about a third of your blood just three days ago, and you’re barely strong enough to sit up in bed, much less stand and walk! Admit it — to you, I mean; you don’t have to say anything. Just accept it, Falc, and let us both be glad I’m here. I — am — glad, Falc.”

  Then she rose with a new rustle and hurried out of the room.

  Well, Falc, a proud and vehemently independent man told himself fully forty-five minutes of reflection later, you can be a man or you can let her be the man. A man knows when he has to admit that he is dependent. Damn!

  *

  Falc looked at the two savory bowls she had brought to him, and the mug of steaming hax.

  “Thank you, Jinn,” he said, and squeezed her arm.

  “Here, careful with that touching now, you might break an oath or something!”

  She was feeling guilty about that cut before she reached the door. She felt guilty right up until bedtime and past, but avoided letting Falc know. It was Parshann who went in and took away the empty bowls and mug.