by Ginn Hale
John stripped off his coat and tucked it around Alidas’ inert body. He didn’t trust himself to attempt to splint the leg. He’d probably do more harm than good and there had to be some kind of physician in Amura’taye. For now he just needed to keep Alidas warm and safe.
Distantly, John heard gunshots and the sound of a tahldi screaming, but it was so far from him that it could have been a bird call. Even with the growing morning light, he couldn’t see any of the other riders. He guessed they each chased their own chosen quarry, as Alidas had.
John sat down beside Alidas, exhausted and shaking. His eyes burned and his back ached. He’d been up the entire night. But he knew he was trembling from more than simple exhaustion.
He’d never seen brutality like this. He hardly knew how to react. Intellectually, he knew that this battle would have taken place whether or not he had warned the Bousim convoy. Still, he couldn’t keep from feeling responsible for the carnage surrounding him, for Alidas’ hopelessly mangled leg.
More gunshots cracked through the woods.
If John hadn’t warned the Bousim convoy, then perhaps Alidas would not have been injured; but then again, maybe he would have been killed. John pulled the rifle close and leaned his head down on his knees. He would stay with Alidas until Pivan came searching for his surviving rashan. He didn’t think that there was anything more he could do. Just wait.
His eyes were drooping closed when he heard a hushed moan behind him. Turning back, John realized that he had forgotten completely about Saimura.
The young man’s chestnut hair was tangled with dirt and rotten leaves. Mud streaked his tattered, reddish coat, pants and bare feet. He had his hands wrapped around his right ankle.
As John pushed himself to his feet, the young man looked up at him and went pale. His brown eyes were wide with fear. The moment he caught sight of the rifle in John’s hand he drew out a long hunting knife. He didn’t hold it towards John. Instead, he turned the blade to his own throat.
“Don’t,” John whispered to him.
“I won’t burn on your Holy Road,” Saimura said.
“Saimura,” John said his name and the man almost dropped his knife. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“How do you know me?” Saimura asked.
“I just know,” John answered. He certainly wasn’t going to tell the truth.
“Are you a friend of the revolution?” Saimura lowered his knife.
John could see that Saimura was so scared that he would believe almost anything, if it meant that he would live.
“There are too many people who might overhear us.” John crept closer to him. “You have to be quiet and just trust me.”
“Are you Sabir’s—”
John cut him off with a small shake of his head.
“Let me see your ankle.”
Saimura watched in silence as John investigated his injury.
The ankle was swollen and hot, but Saimura could rotate it and also flex his toes. John guessed it wasn’t broken, just badly sprained. Either way, Saimura wasn’t going to be able to move with any speed for a few days at least. John wrapped the ankle with strips of weasel hide that he cut from his pants.
His pants were already a wreck anyway.
“You’re going to have to hide here until night. After that you’ll be safe. Just keep south of the river,” John whispered to him.
“They’ll see me here.”
“No,” John assured him, “I’ll hide you. You just have to stay very still and very quiet, all right?”
Saimura nodded.
It wasn’t hard to do. Saimura was slim and already covered in leaves and mud. John dug out a hollow under a split tree where the fallen trunk and branches would mask Saimura’s shape. Once Saimura was settled in, John spread leaves over him.
“Sleep if you can,” John told him. He didn’t dare say anything more. Pivan’s riders might find him at any moment. Both he and Saimura would end up dead if they were seen having a conversation.
John walked back to where Alidas lay, pale against the dark ground. He was probably as young as Saimura. John checked his pulse again. It felt strong.
When he glanced to where Saimura was hidden, he saw nothing but scattered leaves and dead black branches. He didn’t allow himself to look back again. He tried to just forget that Saimura was even there.
The morning light grew stronger. It hurt John’s eyes after so many hours of wakefulness and dark. He heard the sound of hooves pounding against the soft ground and felt the vibrations as riders grew closer. Pivan was at the lead. John counted only seven other riders, then he noticed that several men rode together.
Four animals lost, John thought, and at least three men wounded. He wondered if that would be considered a triumph or not. He supposed it depended on how many of the Fai’daum men survived. Not many from what he had seen.
He felt sick.
Pivan reined his mount to a stop and dismounted. In the morning light, John could see that the rashan’s coat and uniform weren’t black but deep green. He strode towards John, glaring, but as he caught sight of Alidas wrapped in John’s coat, his expression softened. He crouched down beside his young rider.
Up close, in the morning light, John could see the deep lines that etched the edges of Pivan’s eyes and mouth. They lent some character to his soft features. John didn’t know whether he liked that character.
“What killed the tahldi?” Pivan asked.
“A dog tore out its throat.” John was so tired that he had to speak slowly and take care to only use Basawar words, not English.
“That was no dog,” Pivan said. “That was Ji Shir’korud, the demoness of the Fai’daum.” Pivan gave Alidas’ fallen mount a cursory once over. He seemed to observe the furrows of dirt where John had dug Alidas out from under the animal because he immediately glanced at John’s mud-encrusted hands. “Why didn’t she kill Alidas as well?”
“I held her off.” John lifted Alidas’ rifle in explanation.
Pivan nodded. “If you had left him to die, I would have hunted you to the ends of the shattered earth.”
If he hadn’t been so tired John supposed he would have been either angered or worried to receive another threat in place of gratitude. As was, he found it somehow funny.
He was struck with the delirious idea that Pivan only knew how to communicate via threats and John wondered if Pivan would have asked someone out in the same manner.
If you don’t go out with me, I’ll hunt you down to the ends of the shattered earth.
John smiled.
“Do you think I’m joking?” Pivan demanded.
“No,” John murmured, “I’m moved by your commitment to the relationship.”
Pivan looked deeply confused by this and for a moment John thought that he had responded in the wrong language. But his words had all been Basawar. Then he realized that Pivan was the kind of man who didn’t know how to deal with humor.
“His leg’s badly hurt. The bones will need to be set,” John said, to give Pivan a solid crisis to respond to.
“I’ll take him.” Pivan reached over and very carefully lifted Alidas into his arms.
“Come,” Pivan called to John, as he carried Alidas to his waiting mount. “We are expected in Amura’taye.”
Chapter Twelve
The ride into the walled city, Amura’taye, at the foot of Rathal’pesha passed in delirious waves of exhaustion and sudden bursts of fevered wakefulness. John clung to the back of a rider. He watched the terraced farmlands and herds of heavy-coated sheep blur by. The women working the fields in their rough wool dresses seemed familiar to him. When they passed through the huge gates of a second wall, John suddenly thought he had been here before.
Then he remembered that he had dreamed of these narrow city streets. He had smelled the thick smoky cooking fires. He knew that there would be crowds of men in the streets, a few of them riding dull gray bicycles.
The sound of little bells chiming from street vendors was ne
w. And for the first time, he noticed that stone bridges arched over some streets, connecting the upper stories of massive stone buildings. Armed men looked down from the bridges.
As they continued traveling, John drifted in and out of consciousness. One moment he thought that all the buildings on the road looked rundown, brick tenements and shops with cracked doors. Dark, cramped alleys seemed to wind aimlessly between structures. Filthy goats and half-dressed children ran through the streets. Some of the older children ran alongside the riders, begging for coins. The riders ignored them and their tahldi swung their sharp horns if any child came too close.
John felt his head droop and his eyes close for what seemed only a matter of seconds. When he looked up, he noticed that the buildings lining the cobbled road were large, more ornate, and often surrounded by gleaming walls of latticed stonework.
Through the gaps in the walls John caught glimpses of painted doors depicting pastoral scenes and waterspouts shaped like birds or fish rising from tiled roofs.
When they stopped at last, it was before a large two-story building with a green-tiled roof and carvings of flowers bursting across the polished wooden doors. A motif of crossed arrows repeated all across the stone walls surrounding the main building, its vast courtyard, and the outlying buildings.
John almost fell off the tahldi; he was so tired and sore. He blindly allowed a man to lead him to a narrow room on the first floor. There were no windows or decorations in the room, only a small bed but that was all that mattered to John.
Later he woke long enough to devour a hot, nearly flavorless, broth. Pivan asked him about his sister and brother-in–law.
“Loshai iff Behr.” John gave their Basawar names and roughly described where they could be found. They would know to claim that they had come from the isolated western region of Shun’sira to pray at the foot of Rathal’pesha. Ravishan had practiced the words with them all in case any shepherds or hunters came across them.
John fought to keep his eyes open as he spoke to Pivan.
“I should go with you.” John attempted to rise, but Pivan laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“No. You need rest. Your back was badly injured and you’re fevered. Don’t make me beat you down.” Pivan spoke in a firm, fatherly tone. And John thought that he truly must have had a fever, because he found Pivan’s kindly threat comforting. He laid his head back down against the cool mattress. He would get up in a moment, he thought, and seconds later he fell into a deep sleep.
After a full day’s sleep, Pivan woke him to tell him that his sister and brother-in-law had arrived and that Lady Bousim had requested that they break their fast at her table.
“Lady Bousim?” John stumbled slightly over the woman’s formal Basawar title. Pivan frowned at him slightly.
“I don’t know that I’m…prepared to meet such a person,” John replied.
“We have baths for that,” Pivan responded, and not for the first time, John wondered how much he miscommunicated with his shaky grasp of the Basawar language.
Maybe Pivan suspected something of the same nature, because he sent a servant boy along with John to make sure he found his way to the men’s bath where Bill waited.
Inside, morning light poured through the crude panes of the rock crystal skylights overhead. The light gleamed across the white-tiled floor and reflected in the large mirrors mounted on the stone walls. Several benches stood near the mirrors but otherwise most of the small space was occupied by a huge, white marble tub. Wisps of steam rolled up from the hot waters piped into the tub and the air was filled with the humid, mineral scents of hot springs.
Bill perched on the edge of the tub, naked and in good spirits. He greeted John with all the asthmatic enthusiasm he could muster.
“I can’t believe that I’m actually excited to be taking a bath with you,” Bill said, smirking.
“Likewise,” John replied.
“Well, who wouldn’t be thrilled to get a glimpse of this awesome body?” Bill flexed his arms and John gave a laugh. It did really frighten him to see just how emaciated Bill had become. John could easily count every one of his ribs and the vertabrae of his spine.
But things would get better now, John assured himself.
As he stripped off his clothes, the muscles of his shoulders and back ached. A quick glance in the mirror showed him deep bruises still darkening from blue to purple and several red scrapes.
“Man, your back looks like a big, ugly blueberry pie,” Bill said, then frowned. “No, maybe more blackberry pie. Wait, I got it! It’s black-and-blue berry.” Bill grinned and then dunked under the hot water. He bobbed back up, leaned back against the white stone, and sighed, breathing easier than he had for some time.
John slid into the water slowly, taking time to adjust to the heat after so many months of relentless cold. Finally, he eased down and began to wash the filth off himself. Bill scrubbed at his own body, and rafts of mud and dirt floated off them both.
The water was much deeper at the center of the tub and John dunked his head. At the far end of the tub, a drain carried the fouled water away.
At last, John hauled himself out of the water and onto a bench. Steam from the bath crept over the mirrors, making John’s reflection look muted, as if lost in a deep fog.
His long blonde hair looked like a smear of butter. His back, as Bill had noted, was mottled with bruises. Red scrapes gouged across his ribcage.
At least he was clean. That alone made him feel much better. Free of mud and blood and sweat, he felt as if he had somehow become more human. He supposed it was simply the sense of rejoining civilization with its beds and baths and its rituals of hygiene.
Of course, those rituals varied from civilization to civilization. And John realized, as he studied the line of small instruments on the marble stand before him, that he was not familiar with those of Basawar.
The serving boy who had taken Bill’s and his clothes away had left the tray of shining tools along with towels.
John picked up a long silvery one. It looked like a very sharp butter knife or perhaps a scalpel. There were also several things that looked like shaving brushes. Why there was more than one, he didn’t know. An assortment of nasty looking little picks and tweezers lay along side several round, flat tins.
John unscrewed the lids of two of the metal tins. One contained a white powder. The other brimmer with what looked like wood shavings.
“So, what do you think they did with our clothes?” Bill was working soap into his hair. The white lather slowly darkened to brown as he massaged it through. A mass of leaves, mulch and twigs had rinsed out of John’s hair. He’d had to use a bristled brush to get all the dried blood and mud off of his body. His skin still felt slightly raw and tight from the experience.
“Burned them,” John replied.
“You think?” Bill asked.
“I hope.” John unscrewed the other two tins. One was filled with a rough dark red powder. The other was full of clear goo. John sniffed it. It had no scent.
“So, what’s all that?” Bill asked after he’d rinsed his head a third time.
“I don’t know,” John said.
“Any guesses?” Bill leaned back against the marble and caught his breath. It took a lot out of him to go without air, even for the short time it’d taken to rinse his hair. John waited until Bill’s breathing slowed to normal.
“Most of the men I’ve seen here are clean-shaven so I’m thinking that some of these have to be for that. This blade, probably.” John held up the silver knife. Its razor edge caught the soft light and gleamed.
“What about shaving cream?” Bill frowned. “I’m not all over the idea of shaving with some knife and a bar of soap.”
John set the knife back down and inspected the rest of the brushes, picks, tweezers and tins. He wondered how inexplicable the contents of his own bathroom would have been if he hadn’t known what they were meant for.
“So?” Bill prompted from the water.
&n
bsp; “I don’t know,” John said.
“Try one,” Bill suggested.
“Try one how?”
“I don’t know.” Bill shrugged. “Taste one, maybe?”
“They’re not food.”
“How do you know?” Bill asked.
“Because the boy who brought them in said they were for our bath. And that we’ll be having the honor of eating in the Lady Bousim’s company after our baths,” John said.
“You understood all that?” Bill looked impressed. “I kind of got the idea that we were supposed to use them to eat some woman in the bath.”
“Eat a woman in the bath?” John asked.
“Yeah, well, your version does sound a lot less weird, but mine’s much more sexy.” Bill pulled himself weakly from the water and sat on the edge of the marble tub. John tossed a towel to him.
“The kid didn’t say what any of this is supposed to be for?” Bill poked one of the long curved picks.
“I guess anyone from Basawar would know.” John picked up one of the fine brushes. He ran it across the palm of his hand. The bristles were far too soft for brushing hair. He put it back down.
“I wonder how Laurie’s doing?” Bill pondered.
“Better than us, I hope.” John shrugged.
“I bet she got her stuff figured out in a few seconds,” Bill said. “She always knows what all the stuff is in those baskets of soaps and crap. Maybe it’s a woman thing.”
John guessed that Laurie was doing the same thing they were. Hesitantly, he poked his finger into the tin of clear goo. It felt slick and almost oily. Some kind of pomade, he wondered. Or maybe it was a skin cream or possibly an ointment? It could be anything. John wiped his finger off on a towel.
“Salad dressing?” Bill suggested.
“You’re just hungry, aren’t you?” John asked.
“Starving,” Bill admitted. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a salad dressing.” John screwed the caps back on the tins. Bill absently ran his fingers through the long strings of his patchy black beard.
“So,” Bill said, “what are we going to do?”
