by K V Johansen
The man just glowered, but his eyes kept sliding to Ghu, bare-chested and bathed in blood. Ahjvar sat down, picking up a broken willow switch. Eyes back to him, following the knife that began peeling off strips of bark. “Be good and answer, or I’ll let him have you.”
Ghu’s lips tightened. He didn’t find that funny.
“Maybe,” the man said. Ahjvar stood the knife in the earth at his side and twisted bark strips, knotted them. Cornel cherry. Truth. Dropped the sign on the man’s chest. He flinched, expecting who knew what. Maybe the knife. Ghu had turned to watch the other way. Nothing moved.
“Others. Anyone at all.”
“No,” the man spat. “Not on this side of the river. Damned devil-deluded barbarian—”
He didn’t hit him, just poked him with his toe.
Ghu turned back, leaning over Ahjvar’s shoulder.
“Your empress,” he said, “is the one devil-led.”
“The Exalted is the chosen daughter of the Old Great Gods.”
“They were alone,” Ahjvar said. “Leave him to me. Go wash your face. Don’t fall in.”
He thought Ghu might warn him off, but he only nodded, faded away, shadow into shadow. Ahjvar could hear nothing of his passage.
“You were sent to join the holy one’s followers, that much is obvious. Where did you come from?”
“Kozing Port.” The man sneered.
“Did I ask where you were born?” He would really want to hurt him if he kept that up. Started weaving another character, a triad, cornel interwoven with blackthorn for strength, walnut for secrets. Laid it, more carefully, over the man’s heart.
“Did you come from the Lai, from Numiya?”
The man licked his lips. “Over the river.”
He did hit him. “Who sent you?”
“Lai Sula. Mulgo Miar.”
“Who? The Pine Lord?”
“Him. Yes.”
“He takes Buri-Nai’s orders?”
Treachery, double treachery. Mulgo Miar had fled to Dan’s service the previous autumn. Mulgo Miar was supposed to be in Alwu, awaiting Lord Ontari’s return. Should be with Dwei Ontari now.
“He obeys the will of the Old Great Gods. The Daughter of the Gods speaks to him in his dreams.”
“So what’s their will? You were sent to do what your captain—tall woman, scars of the pox on her face—failed to do?”
“No.”
“What, then? The holy one,” Ahjvar said, when there was no answer, “won’t have me hurt you, but you’d rather speak the truth anyway, wouldn’t you?”
“Him?”
“Yes.”
Silence. Cold consideration of his options. Unlike the woman Meli, the assassin rejected the temptation to offer himself to them, in any capacity. He abruptly bunched himself and tried to kick. Ahjvar hit him again for that. His face was swelling from the first blow that had sent him down.
“Your empress lies. She lies when she says the Old Great Gods speak to her. She lies when she claims godhead. She’s the tool of a devil, or the master of one. Tell me, are you tattooed for her? Foreign script like thorns, over your heart. Something stole your comrade’s soul as he died, you know. Something takes you all, every one marked with the empress’s tattoo.”
“You lie. And the Old Great Gods are the guardians of our souls. If the Daughter of the Gods needs mine, it’s hers.”
“So you weren’t sent to kill the holy one. What, then?”
The spell still pushed against the man, urging confession.
“To capture him. He’s only a man, not even a wizard. Nothing but a runaway slave to beat to obedience, once we get him away from the wizard. And his Northron guardian, the wizard’s slave. You. You won’t die, she said. A necromancer’s slave. Cut off his hands but don’t think him harmless even then. Bring him bound in chains.”
“I’m not—Northron.” Don’t get sidetracked. “What does she want with us?” No point telling the man he and his partner would have been doomed even if they had succeeded in their abduction, or that their empress—or her master—had likely already written them off for dead. Something knew Yeh-Lin now, even if it hadn’t when these men were sent out.
“The Exalted doesn’t need to explain herself to me. Her wisdom sees what I can’t understand. She does as the Old Great Gods desire.”
“Or the devil ruling her changed his mind. Why?”
A man hearing blasphemy. The rage as he flung himself at Ahjvar despite his bonds was that of a maddened animal. And that was what blind faith gave birth to.
Love, too, Ahjvar supposed. He knocked the man back into the bushes.
“She is no goddess but the puppet of a devil. That’s truth for you. How many more of you? Where?”
Ghu had come back, so soft-footed Ahjvar had not heard him. His hair was wet; his coat, rinsed and inadequately wrung out, was draped over his shoulders, dripping. Had he gone right into the river, with that wound? He was clean, but the bandage was wet. A sure way to fever and festering.
His river, he would say.
And how long had he been standing there? The coat was dripping a puddle.
“Enough,” the man said. “You’ll find out. There’s enough of us. You won’t get past Lai Sula, and they’ll come to find you.”
“Where?” He pushed. “Where are they hiding?” Truth and secrets pressed. The man snarled, screwed his eyes shut. “Don’t need to hide. They’re with Lai Sula and the Pine Lord.”
“How far away is the empress? How great an army?”
“Don’t know.”
“What does Buri-Nai want with me that dead isn’t enough anymore?” Ghu asked.
“How should I know? To send you to a traitor’s death and lay out your guts for the birds to fight over while you still breathe. To burn your Northron abomination, I hope, if it can’t be killed. She’ll know what to do against necromancy. The Exalted is guided by the Old Great Gods. I’m Wind in the Reeds. I serve. To the death, I serve.”
Ahjvar sat back on his heels, spoke Praitannec. “They were sent to take us alive to the empress, you and I. Change of plan from the winter.”
“I heard.”
But he thought Ghu had stopped listening. . . . necromancer’s slave . . . cut off his hands . . . He couldn’t have been to the river and back when that was said, could he? To burn your abomination. That, Ghu had most certainly heard. Ahjvar wished he hadn’t.
Would rather he had not heard it himself.
“He has allies over the river. He’s not Meli, a mind easy to turn aside, thoughts only for himself. And I don’t trust he doesn’t already have allies, or can’t find them, in the camp, despite the compulsion of truth on him.”
Ghu said nothing.
“Ghu?”
“I know. You’re not wrong.”
“Go. Out to the road. I’ll follow.”
“No.” Ghu rested a hand on the man’s chest, over where the tattoo must be, the heart. “Ahj, I said: you don’t kill for me. Not like this.”
“No. Don’t—”
The man’s eyes widened. Breath stuttered. Ceased. Gone. Like a candle pinched out.
No blessing for the road. That it would have been empty, with his soul reft away, was not the point. Ghu never left the dead unblessed.
Ghu flung himself away even as Ahjvar reached after him. He caught him on the wood’s edge and they sat there in the sun, wrapped in a heavy silence.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Ghu said at last. “Killed him. Not that way.”
“It was fast. What’s the difference, if you’d cut his throat?” But the difference was there and he knew it.
Ghu shook his head.
“You should have left him to me,” Ahjvar said. “I don’t mind.”
“Yes, Ahj. That’s why.” But Ghu didn’t turn to him, just watched the road. Hadn’t looked at him, since then.
Ahjvar put a tentative arm around him. He was relieved when at last Ghu sighed and pressed a cheek to his shoulder. Wet and shivering
, now. Ahjvar draped the plaid blanket over him, paced about a bit, loaded the crossbow against—whatever, and settled in to wait for Ivah and the dogs and the camp-marking party to find them.
After a while it occurred to him what Ghu had forgotten. Ghu had his eyes shut, leaning back against a tree. Probably not asleep; he looked round when Ahjvar stood up.
“Rafts.”
“Oh. Good.” Ghu shut his eyes again.
Ahjvar went back to the river, to hang Ghu’s black coat like a scarecrow in the shallows as a flag for the raft-folk. Perhaps it would dry in the sun.
CHAPTER XXXIII
By mid-morning the next day, there was a roadway cut through the boggy woodland, a bed of brush and logs laid, and the camp almost in holiday mood. Excited more than apprehensive. They had taken a patrol from the western landing, but held the four men prisoner now, and from the east they were hidden by the woodland. Their own patrols were already over the river; luck with them—it was not something Ahjvar thought his god could influence—they would be able to stop any scouts or villagers taking news of the crossing back to Lai Sula. But they weren’t counting on it.
“Mulgo Miar,” Dan had said in distress, hearing their news the previous evening. “I thought him a true servant of the gods.”
Small wonder Dan had been losing his war, was Ahjvar’s opinion. A man who ought to be kept quietly to his prayers, and his declaration that he would be no emperor but a hermit and priest of the god of Nabban when all this was settled was perhaps the greatest wisdom he had shown in his life. They needed Ti-So’aro’s brother Zhung Huong, the practical governor of Dernang, down here; Daro Raku could look to the town. A word with Yeh-Lin last night, and a courier had headed north with that order. They could not count on Dwei Ontari being either alive or true.
Ahjvar found Yeh-Lin down at the water’s edge, watching her riverers impassive, arms folded.
“You still think it won’t work?”
“I think we’re fortunate the island’s here.” But she smiled, raised a hand. “Do you feel that, dead king?”
“Feel what?”
“The wind.”
“So . . . there’s wind?” It was blowing up the valley, warm with a promise of summer.
“I will leave the charming of the ropes to the Grasslander. She does have a way with bits of string. We, however, will set our sails, to carry some weight of our own. You, captain!” Switching languages. “There must be more slack in the ropes. Think of what happens when you cast a line across the water, how the current shapes its curve. Let our bridge make a great bow, let the river play with it, and it will be gentler.” She ran light-footed as a girl out across the decks, started some sort of explanation with much hand-waving, gathering a crowd of her workers. Ahjvar shrugged and settled down to watch.
After a while, as shape began to emerge, and order, he continued across, deck to deck, so far as the bridge now went. Ghu was where they were shifting and lashing a last raft into position, the bow angled into the current. It was like the keystone of the arch, but the weak point, he thought, not the strength. They made a great arc sagging downriver, stronger, Ghu said, than if they had been lashed to make a straight line flung from shore to shore. Or even shore to island to shore. Two arcs bellied like nets, noses upriver and now, under Yeh-Lin’s direction, some raising sails on their stubby double masts. Wind to push against the water, not enough to move them. Enough to hold.
“If the ropes fail . . .”
“They’re still rafts. They have sails and poles and steering oars. It won’t be a disaster.”
It would be if Lai Sula’s scouts had marked them, and they were flung off their bridgehead, rafts scattered downriver, the army trapped on the west, the leading party cut off.
Ghu was the first to cross, over and back, leading Snow. Where the white stallion went, the other horses would follow without acting up—or so Ghu’s folk all seemed to believe. Ahjvar and Ivah walked with him. No straight line, as he had said, but two curving bridges riding the water, each deck bobbing and swaying with a life of its own, and gaps enough for human or horse to drop a leg in if unwary. The water, in such gaps, rose and foamed. The endmost rafts were grounded in the shallows, anchors as much as the trees to which they were lashed. They had had to dismantle several rafts to salvage enough heavy cordage. The island shore was algae-slicked, gravel and broken riverstone; their pioneers had hacked a trail beneath the heronry, though they left the birds their nesting trees. The stronger current took the eastern channel. Here the rafts bucked and jerked more, and Ahjvar had the uneasy feeling the river chewed at them, trying to gnaw one loose. Ghu didn’t seem troubled by it. No fog. The water was all dark and dazzle, broken points of sun. Yeh-Lin had followed them halfway and stood at the island’s northern point, ankle-deep in water. Moving, her steps slow and careful on the stones, her sword drawn. A dance, almost.
Protection.
So he made nothing new after all in what the Denanbaki shaman had called his prayers with the sword, but only found something that already belonged to Nabban. Well.
Across and back and it held. Knotted braids trailed like some sort of festival tassel from the ropes, Ivah’s work. Setting strength on the ropes, wishing them to hold.
Crossbow companies first, with spearmen among them. Small parties, but crossing quickly. Some had been landed from the rafts at the start, to guard the bridgehead and dig in the posts—timbers of a dismantled raft—that must anchor them on the treeless east. They fanned out as more joined them, began an advance. No road on this shore, only a winding cattle-track.
The cavalry next, horses led. The rafts moved differently under them, rocking more, but of course they had carried far, far heavier cargoes, and the danger lay in some beast taking fright at a bellying sail and shying, or slipping.
It seemed a long afternoon. The foot and what baggage they needed for the night’s camp crossed intermingled. Not all the great host. Prince Dan, guarded by the wizard Gar Sisu and with most of the conscript imperial footsoldiers Yeh-Lin had won them, would travel on downriver. Nearly all the horse but the banner-ranked of the prince’s household guard had been diverted to the east.
A sombre mood descended as they broke up their bridge, coiling ropes, rafts drifting, bumping, as their crews turned them. A short night and fireless. Uneasy, with patrols and pickets flung far out about them, and the weight of Yeh-Lin’s wizardry over them. Nothing, not even fog, obscured Dan’s companies on the rafts, even the horses of the banner-lords of his guard, the only cavalry left to that party. Let the watchers look to the river and the west. Ghu stayed among the sleeping soldiers that night, but the river shore was churned and muddy, owned and human. He slept as if exhausted, dropped down like the dogs in the open, but Ahjvar couldn’t, sliding towards nightmare every time he began to drift. He gave it up and sat by Ghu, watching the moon rise. Yeh-Lin drifted out of the darkness to sit by him, close enough he could feel her warmth at his shoulder.
“Keep him out of it, tomorrow,” she said after a while. “They need to see the god they fight for, not have him lost among them.”
“Yes.” Agreeing with what she said, that was all. Ghu would be where he felt he needed to be.
“What?” she asked, of his silence before, not his answer.
“He shouldn’t have killed that damned assassin. Not a prisoner.”
“Simplest. You would have. I would have. Once.”
“Now?”
“I would have—considered it. I don’t know what I would have chosen.”
“Simplest isn’t right. I was wrong. He’s god of this folk. He’s—he should have found someone else to follow, back in Gold Harbour, not stayed to grow up in my madness. He should have gone on west as he meant to and left me behind.”
“Choice, not chance. He followed you. And if that captive had been brought before us all and been still swearing death to the holy one, we would have decided to take his head, rather than keep prisoner an assassin with a devil’s hand on him.”
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“For that. Not because it was easier than dealing with him living.”
“You think that was his reason?”
No. Ahjvar thought it was deep anger that killed the assassin, not reason of any sort. He shook his head.
“Go to sleep, Ahjvar. You don’t want to be half dreaming through the day tomorrow.”
He did not want to be dreaming this night, either. But he tossed his sword at her feet, and stripped himself of knives—pointedly. Dropped them in her lap and rolled to lie along Ghu’s back, arm over him. No intention of sleeping. People all around. Breathing. Alive. Dreaming. Afraid. He could almost taste their dreams. Water. Blood. Ghu rolled over himself and clung on to him. Ghu’s dreams, his, he wasn’t certain any more. They blurred like blood in water.
“Shh,” he said, and walked them through the oak grove in his mind.
Rising by the light of the waning half-moon. Cold food. Quiet reports, patrols in, patrols out. Armour like a skirted coat, more shaped than a Northron byrnie, enamelled scales of plate and lacquer-hardened leather. Black, and sky blue ribbons. Greaves, gauntlets, helmets in the current Nabbani style, ornately crested to give somewhat of a beast-skull shape, horns or fins. Yeh-Lin had had armourers busy as well as the tailors, or she had changed the colour of what she scrounged from Daro Korat’s armoury. They looked good banner-lords, not great lords: no gilding. Ghu laughed at it, not happily, but did not protest the need. The slash over his ribs of the previous day had healed to a purpled scar overnight. Horse-armour as well, burdens of the rafts. Niaul looked well in that and seemed to know something more serious than yet another jaunt down the river was in store, nuzzling at Ahjvar’s cheek, prancing with the same sort of restless tension as the men and women were showing, watching the horizon, where the sun was rising red. They were trained for battle, had seen fighting, or Snow had, in the rebellion. He didn’t know about Gorthuerniaul. But Ahjvar was still surprised when Ghu, circling Snow close about, took a spear from one of Ti-So’aro’s followers. He handled it with old ease, smiled for the first time that morning and raised eyebrows at Yuro, standing by his big black.
