The Lone Warrior
Page 22
One hand clapped over her nose and mouth, Mehcredi lurched to her feet. Walker. She could see him quite clearly about fifty yards off, in grim conversation with the van master, but for some reason, she knew she wouldn’t last another second without feeling the warmth of his flesh under her fingers. Touching him was imperative.
From her left, something called, a low harsh bray. She whirled. Five hulking birds with bare leathery necks and cruel beaks sat in an untidy row on a branch, glaring at her. When one of them shifted its perch, a strip of something pale flapped, tangled in a black claw. Corpsebirds.
Mehcredi’s stomach rebelled. Stumbling behind a boulder, she sank to her knees and was briefly and violently ill.
A firm hand clasped the back of her neck. “Breathe,” said Walker. “That’s it.” Sliding his arm around her waist, he hoisted her to her feet. Gratefully, she leaned into his shoulder. “Better?”
When she nodded, gulping, he handed her his water bottle.
“Idiot,” he said without heat. “You should have stayed put. You haven’t seen death at close quarters before, have you?”
“Yes, but only . . . properly laid out.”
His palm traveled up and down her spine in a comforting, matter-of-fact caress. “Battlefields are ugly.” His brows contracted, the lines around his mouth deepening. “There’s no sign of the enemy. They all died the same way, as if their chests just . . . exploded.”
She could only shake her head, wordless, and press closer.
“C’mon, Meck, lad.” Someone slapped her on the back. Abad, looking pale and grim. “Don’t be such a girl.” But he lifted a fold of his head cloth to his nose.
Walker released her immediately. “Go back,” he said. “We’ll take care of this.” He glanced around, his lips thin. “There’s something . . .” He shook his head.
It took the rest of the day to collect the bodies and make a pyre. Dinari ordered the caravan to pull off onto the stony plain, half a mile distant, well upwind of the greasy smoke.
Mehcredi helped Cook prepare the evening meal, but no one ate much and conversation around the campfires was subdued. Lying on another of Walker’s feathergrass mats in the lee of a big boulder with the dog’s head draped over her ankles, she gazed up at the silvery blue disk of the Sister hanging low in the arch of the sky. The Brother, three times Her size, flared an angry crimson, dominating the zenith. Far off, direwolves howled on the hunt, desolate and desperate, and the wind fingered her hair, a sly cool touch. The small hairs rose all over her body.
Scrounger sat up, a growl rumbling in his throat. Gradually, she became aware of another noise, threaded through the wind, a low rhythmic chanting near as desolate as the direwolf song. Through the double-edged shadows, she made out a dark form among the boulders a little way distant.
With a huff of regret, she abandoned her warm cocoon of blankets and walked slowly toward him, pebbles rattling beneath her feet. Walker didn’t move that she could see, but the chanting stopped.
“What are you doing?”
For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he turned his head, his hair shifting in a dark curtain across his shoulders. A long pause, as if he searched for something in her face. “It’s called the Song of Life.”
“For the dead?”
He shrugged. “There’s no one else to sing it for them.”
Anger swept over her, springing out of ambush from the gods knew where. “Not much bloody use is it?” Her voice rose. “They’re still dead. Torn to pieces, like so much meat. Gods, left for the corpsebirds and the direwolves.”
A strong arm drew her into his warmth. “Sshh.” He stroked her hair. “What do you believe, Mehcredi?”
“Believe? About what?”
“About life and death and why we’re here.” She caught the flash of a thin smile. “The big questions.”
“I don’t—I never thought about it.” Feeling calmer, she settled more comfortably against him. I believe in you, she thought and congratulated herself for having the wits to keep her stupid mouth shut. “What about you?”
“The Shar believe in the great cycle—birth, life, death, rebirth. The gift of our Ancestors.” Hard fingers lifted her chin, directing her gaze to the stars. “Look up. We’re part of that, of everything that is.”
Mehcredi snorted. “Sure. No more than bitemes matter to him.” She jerked her head toward the dog, her eyes stinging with tears. “In the end, all we are is meat. Blood and bone and muscle and guts, like—” She choked.
Taking her shoulders, Walker turned her to face him. “True enough.” He cradled her cheek in one palm, his thumb brushing to and fro across her cheekbone. “But there’s more. Yes, we are of the earth and like our Ancestors we return to the earth, but, Mehcredi—”
Utterly intent, he gazed deep into her eyes. “You are made of starstuff, right down to the blood and bone and muscle and guts. So am I, so are we all. Just as pure, just as beautiful, just as real.” She thought his smile was tender as well as wry, and rather wistfully, hoped she’d got it right. “The choice is yours. Live your life in the mud or shine like the stars.”
Slowly, giving him time to pull away, she lifted a shaking hand and slid her fingers into the silk of his hair. It whispered over her knuckles, cool as water, while his skull curved warm and hard against her palm. He didn’t move. “What did you choose?” she whispered.
His short laugh stirred the curls on her forehead. “I don’t know. I may never know, not ’til I join my Ancestors.”
“But isn’t vengeance—” She broke off, conscious that every muscle in his body had gone rigid.
After a long tense moment, he relaxed and she let out a cautious breath.
“I cannot allow them to live,” he said, every word clipped.
“Yes,” she said shakily. “Yes, I can see that.”
He set her at arm’s length. “Go on, go back to the fire. You need your sleep.”
Rubbing the small of her back, she said, “I ache all over.”
The ghost of a smile. “I imagine you do.”
“Walker?”
“Yes?”
“Say your name for me again, your real name.”
She heard him take a deep breath. “Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian.”
“It’s awfully long. Pretty though,” she added hastily.
“Welderyn will do,” he said gravely.
“Mmm. Welderyn?”
“Yes?”
“Can we stay like this a little longer? It’s nice, just being held.” She met his eyes. “That’s all, I swear.” Her heart thumped hard. Once, twice.
At last he nodded and held out his arms. With a sob of relief, she went into them and they closed hard around her.
The Necromancer cracked his shin on a footstool. Swearing, he reeled back and immediately tripped over his own big feet. Or, to be more accurate, Nerajyb Nyzarl’s feet. He wiggled the diabloman’s bare toes, regarding their hairiness with fascination.
His head ached as if a troop of Shaitan’s imps danced a victory jig inside it, the wound in the back of his thigh throbbed and he’d discovered that Nyzarl had a bad knee and a back molar that needed attention, but these were truly minor inconveniences.
Directly behind him, Dotty emitted a shrill giggle. Turning carefully, he stretched out an arm that felt impossibly long and grabbed a towel from the massage table. Slinging it around his hips, he glared at her. “Shut your—” he growled, and stopped, startled.
His own voice echoed in his ears, no longer the querulous tones of an old man, but virile and mature. He smiled. “Pack the equipment away,” he went on, enjoying every commanding syllable. “We may need it again. Break anything and I’ll flog you myself.”
“Of course,” she said huffily, her hands deft with the complex assemblage of wires and glass and metal.
On the other side of the room, Xotclic watched with interest, the limp body of a slave slung over each shoulder, the stable boy dangling by his ank
le from one clawed hand. The Technomage had been wrong, the energy of two deaths hadn’t been enough. If it hadn’t been for the demon . . .
He’d been helpless, suspended in agony between his own body and that of the diabloman, oblivion beckoning with an icy finger. If he could have screamed, babbled, begged—anything—he would have done so. But he was nowhere, nothing, a tiny frantic mote, shrieking its terror into the suffocating never-ending dark. He thought he heard a sly laugh, pitiless and deeply amused, the flap of leathery wings.
Dotty had panicked, damn the useless bitch. As he’d watched in horror, trapped in the reservoir she’d made, the intelligence of the Technomage she’d once been faded from her eyes and her lips went loose, her chin quivering. Wringing her hands, she’d bleated, “Oh no, oh no. Oh, what shall we do? Do, do, do.” Then she’d started to giggle, over and over, like a kettle going on and off the boil.
But the demon had lurched out the door, returning a few minutes later with the struggling form of a husky stable boy. A clawed foot spearing the lad’s chest, it held him down until Dotty snapped out of her hysteria and connected him to the apparatus. In the nick of time too.
The Necromancer released a quiet breath as he watched the Technomage place the equipment in its padded box, her touch as tender as a mother’s.
In the demon’s place, he would have taken the opportunity to end the partnership, there and then, without a second thought. He shot a glance at Xotclic from under thick stubby lashes—delightful to see everything without the need for spectacles. As far as he could ascertain, the demon was entertained. Perhaps he constituted an amusement, or the creature had other plans . . . Well, he would be on his guard. Xotclic was but a tool, after all.
He flicked a glance at the husk of his abandoned body, drooling silently into the rug, and his guts heaved. “I’m going to bathe,” he announced. Nyzarl’s personal hygiene left a great deal to be desired. And he needed to dress the thigh wound before it could fester.
At the door, he forced himself to take a last look at the plump bespectacled body with its mild face and silly fringe of fluffy white hair. There lay everything he’d been, a feeble chrysalis for the primal force he was now. The Queen’s Knowledge, librarian, archivist and scholar—old man—was truly dead.
“They’re all yours,” he said to Xotclic, “except her.” He indicated Dotty, still fluttering over her box. “If I wish you to hurt her, I’ll say so, all right?”
“Ss.” Dropping the three corpses in the corner, the demon stalked over to the body of the erstwhile Queen’s Knowledge and sank into an ungainly squat. The Necromancer blinked. Were its legs folding backward, and in more than one place? Almost gently, it grasped the slack chin, raising it to peer into the face. Was that what passed for a smile on its lipless mouth?
Despite himself, despite all the logic of his fine intellect, bile rose in the Necromancer’s throat. Gods save him, the thing on the floor might be no more than an envelope, but he couldn’t watch. “If it’s going to be . . . messy,” he said, “I’d prefer you went outside.”
Xotclic reared back and hissed, the forked tongue flickering. Involuntarily, Nyzarl’s body took a smart step backward. Oh, so the man had been a coward into the bargain. Grimly, the Necromancer forced himself to meet the creature’s eyes. “Very well,” he said evenly. “Do as you please. You’ve earned it, after all.”
“Ss.”
“We will speak tomorrow.”
“Ss.”
“Dotty, get back to your quarters.” The Necromancer watched her scuttle off. Without a backward look, he set off down the passage, trailing one hand along the wall for balance.
Determinedly, he promised himself he was going to enjoy exploring every inch of this wondrous new flesh, especially the heavy genitals swinging between his thick thighs. By Shaitan, the man was hung like a bull. He’d think of all the pleasures age had wrested from him—youth and strength, and, oh gods, the welcome spur of lust. Girls, boys, separately, together. Fuck, yes! He licked his lips, feeling the responsive ripple in his groin. Delightful.
And tomorrow, he’d tour the estate, speak with Nyzarl’s—his—steward. He wouldn’t mind betting the fellow had been bleeding the place dry, because that’s what he’d do in the steward’s place. He growled, just for the pleasure of hearing the powerful, masculine sound.
A nobleman’s house didn’t run without staff. He’d have to replace the three—no, four—dead slaves. That was a nuisance, but there was a ramshackle village about a quarter of a mile away, no doubt sprung up to service the estate. He’d make do.
He paused at the entrance to the bathhouse and gazed about with pleasure at the intricate geometric patterns of mirrors interspersed among small blue tiles, the deep marble tub with its soaps and lotions laid out ready. The little slave girl had all in readiness for her master’s bath, a hidden furnace keeping the water piping hot.
It wasn’t until after he’d sluiced his wound with healall and submerged himself up to the chin that the image he’d been keeping at bay sprang out of some dark recess of his brain: Xotclic the demon hooking a talon into the Necromancer’s glasses, removing them as gently as a lover. From behind the faded blue eyes, owlish in their nakedness, Nerajyb Nyzarl’s soul screamed without ceasing.
Not long after dawn on the following day, the rutted ribbon of the Spice Trail began to widen. Paving stones appeared and the occasional splash of green by the side of the track. The wind changed and the vanbeasts’ shaggy ears swiveled forward. When they picked up the pace, the whole caravan surged forward as one.
From his driver’s seat, Abad grinned across at Mehcredi, her aching thighs still clamped around the mare’s broad barrel. “They can smell the water.”
“Water?” She gazed around. “Where?”
Abad jerked his chin at a misty smudge on the horizon. “Miles off yet, but it’s the Son right enough.”
“The what?”
“Ye’re the strangest lad I ever met.” The waggoner wiped the sweat from his brow with a fold of his head cloth. “Don’t ye know nothin’?”
She dropped her head. “Didn’t have much schoolin’.”
“Trimegrace sits where the three rivers meet—the Father, the Son and the Bastard. Not but what I’d call the Bastard a river. It’s either a trickle or a flood and always at the wrong season.” He chuckled. “Well named.”
Mehcredi lapsed into silence, gazing at the first poor farms with their skinny livestock and meager crops. Walker had spoken a total of ten words to her today, possibly less. With his straight black brows drawn together, it wasn’t difficult to tell he was preoccupied, and, she suspected, worried. She shot a glance at his straight back, swaying easily to the rhythm of his horse. He was deep in discussion with Dinari. They’d be talking about yesterday—those horrible wounds and the absence of a single bandit corpse. In fact, there was no evidence to show men had been there at all.
Cautiously, she kicked the mare in the ribs, urging the animal forward until she was within earshot.
“You seen anything like it before?” Dinari growled.
“No. You?”
“Fuck, no.” The rings on the van master’s fingers glinted as he rubbed his chin. “I’d better go to the Janizars the moment we’re settled in the city.” His thin face grew hard. “Not that anything will be done. Bandits are beneath the Grand Pasha’s notice.” He grimaced. “Too fuckin’ holy, yes?”
But Walker only grunted, dropping back to ride by Mehcredi’s side. “What is it, boy?”
She stared at her horse’s ears. “It wasn’t bandits, was it?” she said, very low.
“No,” he said, equally quietly.
They slowed to a walk. “The evil that Cenda spoke about . . .” She trailed off uncertainly.
“Go on.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Could you feel um, anything?”
A brow rose. “What makes you think I should?”
At that, she stared. “You’re a shaman!”
“Whatever it was.”
“Yes.” He gathered up the reins. “Dinari will pay me off tonight. I’ll get us a decent lodging—with a bathhouse. We’ll talk then.”
He cantered away.
The bathhouse at the Three Rivers Inn was larger than Walker had expected, with a small cold pool in addition to the two hot tubs. He even took the opportunity to shave, though like all his people, he had so little body hair it was hardly necessary.
As he scraped away with the razor, his thoughts darted about like the tiny silvery fish that lived in the Spring of Shiloh, the ones that no one, not even the most skilled hunter, could catch. Where they came from, no one knew, but he had no difficulty in working out the origins of this unwelcome confusion of mind.
There was Mehcredi the assassin for a start, but she was his own very personal problem.
With a grimace, he returned to the puzzle of the massacre on the road. He’d already heard the crazy rumors flying around the souks—a djinn roaring in on the hot desert wind, death under its dark wings. Looked like Deiter might be right, curse him, though what of his lies about what-might-be? But how could he ignore even the smallest chance of finding a kinswoman? Gods, his head hurt.
Grimly, he stalked over to the nearest bath and sank beneath the steaming water. Out in the stables, by the light of the Sibling Moons, he’d completed not only the twenty-third nea-kata, but the twenty-fourth. The little dog his only witness, every movement had been precise, controlled. As close to perfection as the gods permitted a mortal.
He’d reaffirmed his purpose, dwelling unflinchingly on the memory of Nyzarl shouting orders to his demon, torturing himself with visions of the diabloman’s heavy-jawed face, glutinous with satisfaction as he surveyed the carnage. Nothing in this life would prevent him from completing the sacred duty the Ancestors had set him, not the old wizard and the nameless evil he feared, nor the assassin with her huge bright eyes and her foolish trust.