An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

  Tirdad readied his sword and roused his steed into a gallop. He drew up beside the nearest horseman, and would’ve cleaved his head from his shoulders if another hadn’t emerged on his left with the same in mind. Tirdad fell back flat just in time for the blade to arc overhead. This afforded the bandit to his right time to respond with a thrust intended to skewer him while down, but a timely flick of his wrist turned it just shy of its mark to pass harmlessly through his tunic. Tirdad sat up abruptly, which snagged the bandit’s blade long enough for a starling-black rebuttal that plunged bitter cold into his heart.

  The horseman on the left had circled back around, but without the benefit of surprise. And without that, the confidence to swing with abandon faltered. Tirdad easily matched the first strike, then turned aside the backstroke, taking advantage of the opening it created to further sate the starling-black with another frozen heart on which to feed. With the immediate threats dispatched, he finally caught a glimpse of Shkarag.

  By Ohrmazd, her routine was spellbinding. He’d forgotten after all these years just how gracefully she handled an axe—and would’ve never believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. She’d dispatched a bandit of her own, which had her one on one with the last of the crew. Shkarag whirled like leaves in a breeze, at the same time erratic and lissome. A single parry by the bandit would give off a series of whines as it caught the bit of her rapidly whirling axe. Then, in unwinding, she’d slip in like a boxer and whirl again from another angle, which would force the horseman to sidle his mount away and draw another string of whines.

  True to her character, the next whirl broke rhythm with a technique he’d learned to use with maces, but never thought to apply to an axe—though it suited her brilliantly. She slipped forward again, but rose this time with the axe primed on her shoulder, ready to lash out like a snake. When with a shrug of a shoulder she did, the bandit didn’t stand a chance. Her unnatural strength paired with the leverage of the attack made parrying impossible. The blow rung on the bandit’s blade then bit clean through his shin, rousing a cry from the bandit. Shkarag whooped and shuffled back a step. She paused, canting. Then she whirled back in, and it occurred to Tirdad that she was doing precisely what the Eshm sisters had done to him: she was toying with the bandit. The man must’ve realized as much, or at least that he didn’t stand a chance, because it was then that he disengaged and tore off at a mad gallop.

  Shkarag gave chase, though it became apparent she couldn’t keep pace much less close the gap. “Goat-courting . . . fuck!” she hissed, stomping. “Ruining a šo-welling orgasm all pomegranate-red and frothing higher and higher and there’s the peak, but no, let’s not finish our expedition the risk is too steep.” She shivered, bared her fangs, and expelled another agitated hiss, raising her axe for a throw, but coming to terms with the bandit being too far away.

  “What a shame,” said Tirdad. “I’m more than willing to help you fin—” He snapped his teeth around the tail end of the comment, grin plummeting to a confused frown. Thankfully, she was too caught up in her frustration to notice. He watched as she bristled over to the dead horse her spear had impaled, and the struggling bandit it’d pinned. She’d found an outlet. With a heft of her axe, she started chopping. Tirdad turned his attention to the merchant. It wasn’t that he was squeamish; he just didn’t take pleasure in needless violence.

  More bushy brows than eyes, the merchant had them trained on her display. Tirdad urged his mount over to greet the man with a raised palm. Closer inspection afforded the merchant’s ancient countenance—leathery lips sunken and constantly chewing, ears and nose almost comically large. That considered, he seemed hale for any age old enough to look as such, straight-backed and alert.

  “Are you injured?” he asked, sheathing his blade after a quick wipe.

  The merchant gave a curt grunt. “Going to take more than some toenail-swallowing bandits to do me in.” Another nod toward Shkarag. “Some company you keep,” he said, punctuated by squelching in the background. “Not many who consort with divs so openly.”

  “No,” agreed Tirdad.

  “Suppose I should be grateful,” the merchant said with a harrumph. He folded his arms. “Suppose.”

  “I suppose so,” said Tirdad, taking a stern, disapproving tone. “Div or not, she risked her life for yours.”

  “Suppose.” Another harrumph. “What you youngsters see in them is beyond me. But unlike my peers, I remember senile old men thinking the same of me in my youth.” He chewed for a moment while slapping at the dust that clung to his white robes before reaching out a timeworn hand. “Well, hard to come by honest folk. Would say these days, but that has always been the case. So I count anyone willing to save this merchant’s hide a rare blessing. Call me Adur-mah.”

  Tirdad shook his hand. “Tirdad.”

  Those bushy eyebrows lifted an inch. “Of the Eighth, uh, late Eighth House?”

  “The same.” The planet-reckoner withdrew his grasp, made uncomfortable by the fact. So he shifted the subject. “What’s a merchant doing alone on the route—” Tirdad glanced at the camel. “—with bolts of silk no less?”

  “Like to call it enterprising. Truth be told I was growing restless.” He gestured to the east. “With all the tariffs and customs posts en route to Hrom, decided to finance some consignment in the other direction—frontier permits favouring our own and all. Then that cousin of yours causes a row, so I was worried about my investments.” Adur-mah gave the silk a pat. “Turns out she did me a favour. Slew the sorry lot I invested in, but hadn’t the time to spend my profits. Thinking maybe I should keep to the shipping lanes originating in the Gulf from now on.” He mulled over the thought, chewing as he did.

  Having found her release, Shkarag limped over, sprayed with blood—though her attire did a fine job of hiding it.

  “Let me introduce my companion,” said Tirdad, only after taking thorough stock of her body language to ensure she’d settled down. He indicated her with his pommel. “Adur-mah, this is Shkarag.”

  A curt nod by the merchant was all she’d get, and all things considered, fairly polite as far as greeting a div went.

  Shkarag either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She set to rifling through the bodies and saddlebags without so much as a pause for consideration.

  “We’re heading to Ray,” he said to the merchant, though his scrutiny lingered on the half-div. “Then Ecbatana after that. I’d prefer you join us rather than risk another attack, and I won’t ask for payment.”

  “Am also heading to Ecbatana,” said Adur-mah. “No payment for an escort, you say?”

  “What use are we if we can’t share the road with our countrymen, especially if it means a safe journey?”

  Another curt nod. “You are a rare one, Tirdad. Befriending divs yet honourable all the same. A rare one indeed. I would welcome your company.”

  Tirdad flinched inwardly at the mention of honour. It crossed his mind that perhaps he should leave this foolish merchant to his fate. Then it occurred to him that the merchant may be able to weigh in on his quest. They’d travel together. For the time being.

  The dust had begun to settle, which revealed more and more of their handiwork. The bandits’ faces, twisted in pain or fear but never serenity, cut deep. Bandits preyed on the weak, but Tirdad always made a point of remembering that brigands were people whose children needed feeding or who had themselves fallen victim to circumstance. Desperation could bring out the worst in the best of us, and judging the desperate came too easy to those who weren’t. He’d find a priest to perform the rites once they reached Ray.

  Their horses had scattered, but only just. Most loitered nearby amid the parchment-dry tussocks and half-buried boulders, with one or two having galloped off, and one dead. He squinted at a nearby copse, one of the paltry clusters of trees that endeavoured to throw shade on one another in the suffocating heat. Might be a good place to rest until the sun wanes.

  He faced Shkarag, who was elbow deep in a saddlebag. �
�Would you help gather the horses? We may as well see what we can get for them in the city.”

  She pulled her arm free, and with it a pair of gloves, which she slipped on. “Maybe,” she replied, flexing her fingers experimentally, and appraising them as she did. “Always said looting was her favourite pastime. A hobby that changes with the eras—never know what they’ll think up next. Liked the surprise, because you stick your arm in, not looking because that’d ruin the mystery of the great beyond where the cosmos is all shifting dunes that only chooses its shape when you reel in your reward. Then you violate that sack or those pockets, and could be a scorpion pricks you. Could be you find a toy prick.” Shkarag set her head awry. “Looting is an antiquarian’s game.”

  “Never thought of it that way,” mused Adur-mah, patently intrigued by her rambling, and now following her as she rounded up the horses. “Antiquarian’s game, you say? A novel take if I have ever heard one! What better place to discover cultures than in their closest belongings? What does a bandit keep close to heart?”

  “Great,” said Tirdad. “Another one. Why can’t one person I travel with just act normal?” He looked on as Shkarag went from horse to horse, threading each into a train while the merchant yammered on about her fascinating take on social and cultural discovery, the half-div ignoring him all the while. Tirdad chuckled at the sight.

  “Think she might’ve met her match already,” he said to the camel, camels being at the same time the creature you feel the most compelled to talk to and the creature who cared the least about anything you had to say. “Have you ever noticed that those ornery old folks always walk in pairs, one acting as if the other should hurry up and die already?”

  The camel grunted, irritably most likely.

  “Yeah,” said Tirdad. He turned his attention to the scattered corpses, where a radiant lemon-yellow caught his eye. Closer inspection found a scarf, which he unwrapped and held out to get a better look at its pattern. Lemon-yellow diced with a sparse diamond pattern that hadn’t kept its colour well. Dirty and worn, with a rip that spanned half its length, it would do. Shkarag couldn’t just stroll into a city after all, and its daring if faded colour suited her—perhaps more so because the diamonds had faded.

  Rather than stand around gainlessly, he did some rummaging of his own. Although, contrary to Shkarag’s magical rambling, there wasn’t much of interest. A small sum of coins, water, an apricot wrapped in fig leaves, and a canteen with what remained of—he took a swig to check—a passable liquor distilled from dates.

  “What I wouldn’t do for a yogurt right about now,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow and stowing his loot. Now that the adrenaline had subsided, his ribs were beginning to object to all the exertion, so he brought the liquor out for another swig. By then, Shkarag was returning with the horses. Some of them anyway. Tirdad indicated the stragglers with his canteen. “You left a few.”

  Shkarag curled her upper lip. “Maybe.” A tilt, which she swayed into. “Going to tie them to the ankles of this šo-swindling merchant and see how he likes it shelling out tariffs on three borders at once. Don’t know what trousers he’s trying to coax me into, but not buying them.”

  On cue, Adur-mah crossed between horses. He drew up beside his camel to check on his goods, chewing all the while. “I have four limbs, you know.”

  “Everyone knows no tithes in the southwest,” Shkarag hissed. “Shouldn’t let merchants out of bazaars. Shouldn’t. Just shouldn’t.” She flexed her fingers. “At least the no-good cheats can only gesture and mutter there like some namby-pamby milksops so afraid a curse will dribble out, all so much soggy bread.”

  “Lass sure knows a lot about merchants for someone who despises them,” the old man pondered merrily. “And here I really thought she was onto something with that antiquarian looting theory. Ah, well.”

  Shkarag’s fangs unfurled. “Really beginning to—”

  “Never mind that,” said Tirdad, dismounting and inserting himself between the two. “I found something on the bandits.”

  The half-div cocked her head. “Already checked.”

  He brought out the scarf, then wound it loosely around her head and neck, leaving only her reptilian irises and sanguine eye colour as any real indication of her lineage, and not all that damning at a glance. “Thought you’d prefer it to a veil,” he said, a tapered smile alongside. “Really suits you, too. Brings out your eyes and complements your gear.” And it did.

  Shkarag’s enigmatic stare lingered on the scarf before finding something below to dart to. She cocked her head further, swaying. His trousers were roughly the same colour, a thought that only came to him now.

  “How is it?” he asked.

  “Suppose it does match your trousers,” said the merchant.

  “No one asked you,” said Tirdad.

  “Maybe,” Shkarag muttered at length, unreadable. “Maybe,” she repeated, then limped off toward the shade of the copse.

  She hadn’t outright objected to the scarf, so it seemed a favourable enough reaction. Tirdad followed her departure for a moment before turning to the merchant. Here he was on a quest to get to the bottom of what seemed to him a conspiracy against his late cousin, and as luck would have it, a man of commerce had fallen into his lap. This wasn’t lost on him either. His offer to escort the merchant hadn’t been entirely altruistic. As in trade, a deal needn’t be plainspoken to be fair—the most happy, and oftentimes the most successful merchants, are those circumspect few who know how to play the market while making a great many friends along the road. Not quite so crafty, Tirdad nevertheless hoped to make use of the old man’s experience.

  “Find the legends rarely ever stack up to reality,” said Adur-mah, thoughtfully trained on her departure. “But I suppose they would not be legends otherwise. Not always a bad thing either.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ah, just thinking you and your div friend have been wildly exaggerated.”

  “I have a legend?” asked Tirdad. “Well, that’s the first I’m hearing of it.” He reached for the reins of the lead horse in the train and started for the trees.

  The merchant drew up alongside, camel in tow. “Not all that flattering, if I am being honest,” he said. “Overheard some of the boys in the Nishabhur garrison carrying on about you. About as flavourful as you would expect. Something about the only thing more flaccid than your shaft being your sword. Oh!” Adur-mah piped up as if he’d recalled a beloved childhood memory. “Told a tale of your duel come to think of it, all hollering and carrying-on. But the gist, from what I could tell, was that you only won because you went ass up for the champion, and she was pounding your shitter with abandon. So hard she choked to death on her tongue.”

  Tirdad nearly choked on his saliva. “That’s—” He let out a whooping cough. “That’s—” There was no helping it. A coughing fit seized him, doubled over the planet-reckoner and had him clutching his ribs. Even after it’d passed, he waited hands on knees, red-faced and gasping, for the pain to recede. Once it’d returned to the same nagging soreness he’d had since setting out, he straightened and addressed Adur-mah. “That’s no legend. That’s an everyday insult. Figures they’d besmirch my name at every turn. Although,” he took a pull of liquor to soothe his ribs, “if we’re being honest, it isn’t that far off. She was downright wasted during that duel, and even then she had me on my heels. That I killed her at all was an accident.”

  “Might be best you keep to their story,” advised the merchant.

  “Yeah.”

  They’d reached the line of trees by then, a narrow tract of green only a few wide that kept well away from the slopes that flanked it. Tirdad secured two of the horses to neighboring trunks and left the rest to graze. “Well,” he said, stooping to remove his boots, “this legend needs some time out of the heat. Let’s rest until dusk approaches.”

  Shkarag had laid claim to a juniper far removed, reclined against its trunk and panting, but not so far off he missed the drowsy, unfocused s
tare she watched him with. He offered another tapered smile.

  “Stay here,” he bade the merchant, and made for her refuge. What he mistook for a stare was more vacant than the distance had let on. He knelt to offer his waterskin, which she paid no heed. That drew a worried frown. “Shkarag?”

  Her eyes met his, though sluggishly, and she accepted the water after a few failed attempts at grabbing it. Even dizzy as she looked, she had enough wherewithal to nurse it slowly.

  Tirdad stood, beetle-browed. “You really should take care out here, Shkarag. There’s no shame in minding your body temperature. How about we refrain from travelling while the sun’s high?”

  Shkarag just panted between sips.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll make certain that old swindler doesn’t give you any trouble. In the meantime, relax.” With that, he left her to her private plot, making a mental note to check on her regularly. Tirdad was well aware she could take care of herself, but if her industrious caretaking had demonstrated anything, it’s that they were better off looking out for one another.

  “The heat?” inquired Adur-mah upon his return, which was confirmed with a nod. “Trying enough for cold-blooded creatures in this blasted weather without exerting themselves to save a rickety merchant, eh?”

  “She’ll manage,” said Tirdad, unintentionally cold. Then, in seeking to pursue some answers, he took a seat across from the man, whose camel had seen to squeezing in beside him. He traced the contours of the ram’s head pommel. “Tell me,” he began, finding common ground and projecting a cheer he did not feel, “what has you headed to Ecbatana? I’ve travelled for the better part of my years, but always seemed to get pulled away if I ever got too close. Now that the two of us are, well, I guess we’re retired, I figure now’s the time.”

  The merchant bobbed his head, his lazy chewing now wholehearted. “Enjoy it while you can—I see those grey hairs of yours. They have a way of sneaking up on you. Let me tell you, I used to seek out those faraway places where the locals find you exotic and the other way around.” He raised those bushy eyebrows, and it was as if a pair of bouncing silkworm cocoons were stuck to his face. “Ah, but before you know it, you are resting your back or relieving yourself every hour, and that throws sand in your pants if you know what I mean.”