by K V Johansen
Jui gave one sharp bark. Protest or agreement? But they both left him, breaking into a flying lope to overtake the vanished horse. The bay raised his head and whinnied after them.
Ahjvar turned him aside to take the descending western trail.
Not far, though. He hadn’t survived decades as a Five Cities assassin on immortality alone, and to ignore the little nagging prickles of unease was—never wise. Even when they were nothing more than a bad dream or a grey day. Sometimes they weren’t.
The horse sidled around restlessly when Ahjvar dismounted, not happy at being separated from the others. Ahjvar tugged at the bridle, addressed one dark eye. “Stand, damn it.” No idea what commands or signs a Nabbani-trained warhorse knew. “Evening Cloud. What sort of name is that for a horse? Sounds like someone should write lovesick poetry to you.” He tried the Praitannec. “Gorthuerniaul . . .” Shook his head. Too long. “You. Niaul. Stand, or I will tie you to a tree.”
The head turned to study him, but the sidling stopped. “Better.” He unslung the bow in its leather wrappings, hung the quiver over his shoulder, and led the horse off the trail. They were out of sight from the fork and someone would have to come beyond the first bend to see that his tracks turned aside.
It wasn’t the landscape for a mounted fight. He shoved the plaid blanket and the scarf with its flashes of kingfisher blue into a saddlebag, fished out a headscarf that might have been russet originally but had faded in the past year to a mottled dun, and wrapped it as if against desert snow and sand, covering pale hair and beard. He left the horse with another terse, “Niaul, stand,” heading up a steep shoulder, stone beneath the moss and groping tree-roots, worked his way down from that height, back to where he could see the trail down the mountain and the path to Swajui branching off. A good vantage-point and a long, clear stretch of the trail. This western slope of the ridge dropped away abruptly, almost a low cliff. Little cover, with the trees and bushes so bare. The thin soil supported only sparse undergrowth, but rid of the plaid and with hair covered he was dull and drab as a nesting bird. A winter-broken bough would make a scribble of twigs before and alongside him; there were a few stalks of some seedy weed, but mostly it was stillness that would hide him.
He spanned the bow, slotted in a bolt, put quiver and sword where he could quickly lay hand on either, and settled himself to wait. He might have had only a couple hours of sleep in the past gods alone knew how long, but no heaviness tried to close his eyes now.
Might have been dreaming. It had been a night of strange dreams, surely enough. Devils damn all devils. But for the same vague, subtle pressure of a spell to come twice, when he had never dreamed anything of the like before . . . No. He didn’t have such dreams.
No wizardry raised his hackles now. Nothing. Birdsong. The shrill barking cry of some animal he didn’t recognize, far in the distance to the east. Blackflies settling to bite, a first crop of spring annoyance. He hadn’t noticed them, riding with Ghu. If the horse was too badly tormented, he was going to wander off.
Was it quieter, down the trail?
A bright blue bird flew up crying alarm, raising a flock of little black twittering ones.
Hooves.
Could, of course, be some hunter, even a pilgrim seeking the gods. Not very damned likely. Not even a fluffy seedhead fouled his line of vision down to the bend. So.
They came around the corner, two riders abreast. Good sturdy horses. Lacquered scale armour, helmets with ribbons. Not Zhung, the characters on the breast of their deep rose surcoats. Min-Jan. Imperial officers, not banner-lords or the spear-carriers of banner-lords. Imperial officers’ livery, at any rate, and the enamelled badge on their helmets the same. How many behind them?
He let them come on, farther than he had intended, waiting for their followers, but none appeared, and the two were deep in some low-voiced discussion, the horses walking. Argument, he thought, from the way the thick-bodied older man gestured.
Still no followers. Very, very slowly, he shifted position a little, lining up the bow to cover the area where the trail forked. Much closer than he wanted, really; there would be no time to prepare a second shot. He wanted to hear what they said, know what they were. Not a troop riding to the destruction of Father Nabban’s holy site, as he had for a moment thought, seeing the livery. The regular army did not conscript women for the common soldiery. He wasn’t sure about the officers.
They reined in and the woman, thinner, younger, her face flecked with pale pock-marks and her hair cut short, leaned to study the tracks, not dismounting.
“They’ve split up.”
The older man pulled off his gloves, tucked them into his belt, and licked a finger. Not testing the wind but writing on his wrist in saliva. Wizard. Ahjvar felt the subtle pressure again, a will imposing itself on the world. The man pressed his wrist to his lips, eyes shut. Not officers, just the uniform as a mask.
“The holy man went up the mountain,” the wizard said.
“Don’t call him that. It sounds like treason. Or heresy. Something.”
The wizard ignored that. “The guardian, whatever he is, left him and turned west.”
“Seems unlikely.”
“That’s the path to Swajui, captain. It’s a holy place. Why not?”
“Why not? Would he leave the holy man? If they’ve split up, it’s because they know they’re followed and he’s doubling back behind us.”
“I’ve made sure they don’t.” Smug bastard. Mistaken.
“You say. They killed three of our best in Denanbak. Hope you appreciate I didn’t send you with them.” The woman considered, eyed the wizard sidelong and tilted her chin up the trail. “That one is the one who matters.” She hesitated. Artfully. Did the wizard feel a prickle of warning on his spine? He should. She was about to make him a stalking goat, if he had the wit to see it. “What do you foresee if we do split up here?”
“Nothing,” the wizard spat. “I see nothing. I have seen nothing. They’ve been hidden from me since yesterday. Only glimpses, hints . . .”
“Are we even following the right men? If you’ve led me a wild goose chase . . .”
“I don’t make that kind of mistake, captain.”
“Fine, fine, they’ve split up. You head to Swajui and I’ll—”
No question which of these two was most dangerous to himself. An assassin of the Wind in the Reeds. One shot. Ahjvar took aim on the woman’s eye. At this range, he could have hit her with a thrown pebble.
And just as he would have squeezed the trigger, the wizard spurred his horse forward, coming between him and the assassin. “I’m not going after that guardian alone, whatever he is, and I’m not going to be bait in any trap for him for you. He’ll be no threat once the holy man is dead.”
Likely true enough. Bones and ash. Ahjvar shot the wizard instead, since the man now blocked the assassin. The iron head of the quarrel shattered his cheekbone, tore through his brain. Ahjvar was on his feet, sword in hand and slithering trunk to trunk down the steep slope, leaping the last drop even as the wizard fell, caught in his stirrups, spooking his horse, which bucked and shed the corpse. The other spurred forward, sword sweeping around. Ahjvar dropped under the blade and slashed open the beast’s belly as he rose. Ghu would not like that, and he was sorry for the need. The assassin vaulted clear of the screaming, kicking shambles and landed on her feet.
Shield lost in the keep. The woman was armoured, but a head and a half shorter than Ahjvar, her blade likewise shorter than the Northron sword, single-edged like a Grasslands sabre but broader, heavy. Ahjvar drove in hard, forcing her back, but she circled away, moving uphill. Fast, damnably fast, and balanced and confident. Professional, in fact. And she’d probably both slept and fed better for many days. On the other hand, Ahjvar wasn’t worried about dying.
He counted on that too damned much and he knew it. Tried not to. He could be laid out on death’s threshold for days, recovering from what should have been fatal. Time enough for the assassin to ca
tch up with Ghu and kill them both with that one death. Time to stop being a death-wooing fool, but he’d said that before. Should have told the devil to find him a shield. Heavy dagger to guard his side. He didn’t follow in close again, shifting slowly around, inviting—he was too damnably tired to let this be dragged out, and the other probably intended that, Ahjvar’s haggard face betraying his weakness.
Had her, the assassin moving in where Ahjvar wanted her. Sweeping kick as if to hook the woman’s legs out from beneath her, contemptuously avoided along with the sword’s swing she shouldn’t have been so focussed on. Dropped his shoulder, dagger punching swiftly below the skirt of scales, slashing upward. Ahjvar let the dagger go and shifted to a two-handed grip on his sword, weight and height his advantage now as the wounded woman staggered back, blood darkening her bright trousers. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and hit the great vessel of her thigh. Ahjvar didn’t wait to find out, struck the woman’s left wrist and likely broke it, though the glove was armoured and he didn’t take the hand off. The slender knife the Nabbani had snatched for went flying. Poisons in Denanbak. Didn’t want any edge to touch him. Battered the woman down with both hands on the sword again, breaking more bones, stamped on her swordhand as she tried weakly to rise, and thrust still two-handed beneath her jaw.
Death, and no lingering ghost. A moment’s shock and fear and rage and she was gone. Ahjvar went back, scooping up his dagger, shaky, to finish the poor blessed horse. A beast-soul returned to the earth it belonged to; that, at least, was as it should be.
He had no desire to strip either victim of armour to look for the tattoo he was almost certain he would find, at least on the woman. Leave that mystery for Yeh-Lin. He did fish in the neck of her armour to pull out the ornate badge on its chain, just to confirm. Wind in the Reeds, though neither stealthy nor secret here, riding out as an officer of the army in all confidence. And the wizard—raging ghost.
He considered questioning him. Ghosts didn’t lie. Couldn’t be compelled, either. To draw anything useful from a reluctant and resisting ghost took patience and calm he currently lacked. This one was inchoate and might take days to draw himself together. Ahjvar gave him earth and checked for his badge. Not Wind in the Reeds, no, but a wizard of the imperial corps, Bamboo Badge Rank, the second highest, was it not? Conscripted from Zhung Musan’s service before the castle fell by the assassin . . . or had she been set to serve with him in response to some alarm the wizard had taken, some foretelling of Ghu’s coming? He should have asked Yeh-Lin for news of the town, but he forgot—that was only a dream.
Habit of the past year meant he considered for a moment what might be salvaged, but no, he didn’t even want to check the saddlebags for food. And no point pulling the bodies off the road, since he couldn’t hide the dead horse. Leave them for a warning. He cleaned his blades and scrubbed blood from his hands in dirt and old leaves before climbing back up the ridge of stone to hunt for quiver and crossbow, retraced his steps to check on the horse. Horses. The wizard’s was out among the trees nearby, reins tangled in one of those evergreen bushes. He gave the bay a pat and praise for standing and went, circling carefully, talking soothing nonsense as he would have so long ago, before he’d stopped caring for anything, and was able to come up to the stray without panicking it, though the bay—Niaul—trailed after him, trampling through brush like an ox. He dumped the other horse’s saddle, freed it of its bridle, and it bolted away. He caught Niaul, took him further down the trail to Swajui, and left him to stand again. He’d be a fool to trust there were only the two.
But drifting a mile back down the trail, concealed in the forest, watching, only found him the straying horse again, peacefully grazing the first shoots of new grass on a sunny edge, though he waited until well into the afternoon. Cast his own spell, too, weaving it of the old patterns and the sword’s edge. Nothing followed, nothing stirred, either on the track or in the forest. He picked his way back up to his own horse, not wandered too far, and took the path to Swajui.
CHAPTER XXIV
The mountain of the god rose grey, banners of mist trailing west, fading into cloud. The air bit harsh and clean; breath began to smoke like the high winds. No trees, now, only low juniper spilling from cracks in the rocks and snow deep in the shadows, while the first brief flowers, pale yellow, vivid blue, splashed colour over the south and the eastern slopes.
There was a path, if you knew to find it. Holy folk, drawn to the god, might find it. A foal-heavy mare might, driven from the shelter of the lower forest by bear or wolf or leopard. A boy might, seeking that mare, with the warmth of the god burning like a hearthfire to draw him on, and the wind rising. Geese crying high overhead. It had been spring then, too, till the storm fell on him.
The standing stones were cold and dark, when he came to them. It was only that shadow fell on them, but they seemed a warning. Two on the ridge, and two more distant over it, only the tops visible, and the last yet out of sight where the shallow stream crossed the valley that was more a ravine.
There were ravens. They rose from the carcass of a dead musk deer, wandered up out of the forest to die in the winter. It was gone nearly to clean bones now, as a boy and a horse might have been. The ravens circled, croaking. One dropped to his wrist. Snow laid his ears back, shook his mane and stamped. The raven studied Ghu, obsidian eye—one side, the other. Beak like the point of a spear. Cried hoarsely and flew. Ghu rode on between the stones, reined in again, looking down. The valley was cast all in shadow and ice fringed the narrow meltwater stream. There were trees down there, pines that grew more as creeping bushes than great towers, bare, red-barked willow no higher than his head. And stones. Mostly stones. Clumps of wiry grass not yet greening held a little thin soil in place. No flowers yet at all among the stones, and snow at the head of the ravine and in all the shadowed places, feeding the stream, the great peak rising white over them. He dismounted and went afoot, leading Snow down the steep way that was barely a memory of a path, angling towards the second pair of standing stones, then made a sharp turn to the south and crossed the ravine-valley to the brook and the stepping stones. There he dismounted and unsaddled Snow, removed his bridle. Cleaned the horse’s feet and groomed him as if at the end of an ordinary day and his stall waiting, while the shadows thickened colder and darker over them, and in the west the sky turned sullen orange. Grain—mostly with Ahjvar. He poured out a little of what there was, murmuring to the horse of the danger of the unseen cliff, where the brook fell away in a great plume that turned to mist before it ever reached a lower valley, and left him, crossing the stepping stones of the brook and up between the third pair of stones.
Another cliff towered beyond, fissured and broken, spilling scree and snow.
The seventh standing stone, alone, twice the height of the others, a roughly squared pillar, or a broken slab embedded where it had plummeted from above . . . who, now, remembered?
Ghu climbed the rising ground and stood before it. The wind hissed in the creeping pines below. Darkness thickened, the sun behind the clouds falling away into the west, over mountains, deserts. Sun on the hills of Praitan, maybe. Sunlight still sparking on the waves of the Gulf of Taren, the tiled roofs of Gold Harbour. The stones of the ruin on the headland they had called home warm in the sun, and the garden wall, and the garden he had dug and tended gone to weeds and wild things, but the gulls still floating on the wind and crying, and the sea still running away into the sky.
He sat down with his back against the stone, legs crossed, leaned his head back, looking into the west. The light was gone, starless, moonless, black cloud low and thick. The horse Snow was no more to be seen than the snow-heavy heights.
“I’m here,” he said.
Another night, not quite yet a year gone by since then. Summer air, and the damp smell of the mist still, and the swamp called the Orsamoss. Smoke clinging to clothes and hair, the reek of the burning tower. A bank overgrown with junipers sheltered them, spice-scented. Ahjvar had dragged himself that far, cou
ld do no more, and had lain down like an exhausted child with his head in Ghu’s lap. He wanted to die. His goddess was silenced and put to undreaming sleep in the earth, but his curse still bound him to her and held him in the world, and the hungry ghost of Hyllau still possessed him, waiting to rise and hunt. He could die, at last. Ghu had promised it. He would not wake again with innocent blood on his hands. And the hag had taken him then, hungry to hunt, and Ghu had taken on himself the grace of the gods who would claim him and broken the binding curse, dragged her struggling from Ahjvar’s soul, and when the savage will of hate that was all she had left of humanity would have burnt the man, again, he destroyed her. A human soul, not released to the road to the Old Great Gods but made nothing, ash and nothing, a piece of the universe unmade.
He had taken the other part of the curse of Ahjvar’s goddess then, put himself in the goddess’s place to anchor it. By doing so, he made himself a necromancer, some might judge. Wizards, priests . . . gods. An enslaver of the dead. And he had asked, come with me to Nabban. Because he was afraid, and lonely, and afraid to be alone. Selfish.
And Ahjvar had said he would try, and had held him for his own comfort when the nights were bad.
If he were no god, he could not hold this curse, and Ahjvar would be dead, as he should be, and go to his road.
If he were no god, he could return to the west.
If he were no god . . . what changed, for Nabban?
The land died soulless, unknown, unloved.
And Ahj died regardless. He could not hold him here.
He could. He would not.
The Mother had not denied Ahjvar, but she had had so little will, so little left of her being. The Father could still take that decision from him. Cast Ahjvar to his road, without a word, a farewell. Do not let him burn again, do not let there be pain and fear, just let him go. He prayed that, if his heart was prayer, beyond words.
