Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

  Torien said, to Stratto’s back, “You’d have saved yourself some trouble to hold your tongue and let me think we were riding for the fort.”

  Stratto smiled, over his shoulder. “You’re threatening to run, Commander Risto?”

  Torien said nothing. It was, of course, a foolish threat. He did not know the Road, and there would be no point in running.

  Stratto and the other Guardsman, Valle, were already waiting with the young Espere in the yard when he went out to the stables next morning. A slave boy brought a horse to him in the half-lit stall row. He recognized the tack as his own, but the horse was at first glance unfamiliar—a tall black, well-tended but unshod and high-strung. He remembered that the woman had ridden a black. It was a finer horse than his own, and he wondered if the stable-boys had made the assumption that it was his. With a hand on the trembling black shoulder, he shook his head and said to the boy, “The brown is mine.”

  The boy, who spoke no Vareno, blinked at him uncomprehendingly. Torien pointed down the row to his own horse. “The brown,” he said. He touched the knee-flap of the saddle and pointed again.

  “I told him to saddle this one for you,” the woman said, from behind him.

  He turned. She straightened against the door post where she had been watching him. She was unveiled, her face unpainted. Her coarse black hair hung loose to her waist. She came over and took the reins from the boy. Holding the horse’s head, she ran a hand down the long black nose and brushed away a lock of untrimmed mane from the wide-set eyes. “He is young and has much to learn,” she said, “but his is a kingly line.”

  The boy had vanished down the row. Torien leaned into the horse’s shoulder and began unbuckling the girth strap. “I’m not a king. I can’t accept.”

  The woman put a hand on his arm. “A request, not a gift. Without use he will go to ruin, and I have no use for him here. He needs use under a firm hand.”

  He paused, the strap half out of the buckle in his hands. He studied her over his shoulder. “Did they try to stop you?”

  She let go his arm and put her hand instead on the horse’s neck. “Who?”

  “Your people.”

  “Did they try to stop me doing what?”—blankly, though he knew she knew what he meant.

  “Giving yourself up to be a hostage here. They must have tried. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been necessary to steal me away as you did.”

  “They do not understand this is the only way—always the only way. Some of them think there is still hope in war.” She turned her head and lifted her hair over her shoulder with her free hand. She showed him the brand on her neck. Then she let the hair fall again. “I have seen your capital,” she said. “I have seen the columns at Vione. I have seen the shipyards at Salina. They have not seen, and they do not know. They will not know until too late, if I do not end it now.”

  Torien tightened the strap again and buckled it. “I’d want vengeance,” he said, “or death, if vengeance were denied me. I would not offer peace, and I would not take it if it were offered me.”

  “If you had been taken and branded a slave, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him. “You think I am a coward—that I live, that I give myself to my enemies in exchange for peace.”

  He pretended to straighten the saddle-cloth. “I’ve never been branded a slave. I can’t speak for one who has.”

  “You think it is cowardice.”

  “I don’t know if it’s cowardice, but I don’t understand it.”

  “You are Cesino blood, are you not? Though I call you Vareno.”

  “That’s different.”

  “The brand is different. The brand changes over time. You wear their harness now rather than the mark of their iron on your neck. But you are theirs just as I am. There is Varen in your face. You have learned to live in peace.”

  “Some haven’t. Sometimes I think they’re the more honorable.” It had been in his mind since the day he had watched the Dobryno die, but he had never said it aloud, even to Alluin. He was not sure why he said it now.

  “I have heard of these—the ones still fighting,” the woman said. “I have heard they kill themselves rather than let themselves be taken alive.”

  “The Brycigi do.”

  “You think it is honorable?”

  “Understandable, at least—the desire to die undefeated if you can’t live so.”

  “I think it is cowardice. It is easy to die. It is harder to live; therefore it is braver. Anyway, it is a myth—to die undefeated. Death is defeat. If it is at your own hand and not theirs, it is still death and they have won.”

  Torien did not say anything.

  “His name is Fihar,” the woman said, looking at the horse. “He is not the swiftest, but he is sure-footed and does not tire easily. In the desert, it is these things which matter more than speed.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “That is according to custom. The chieftains of my people forfeit their own names. It is to remember they are nothing more or less than Mayaso.” She stroked the long black neck and did not look at him. “I am the voice of my people for peace and the sword in their hands for war. I have no name.” Her voice was as dry as dust.

  “I thank you for use of the horse,” Torien said.

  She held the horse’s head under her hands while he mounted, murmuring in her own tongue to the swiveling black ears. The horse shifted under his unfamiliar weight but gave him no trouble. The woman came around to put the reins in his hands. “I have said it is a favor you do for me.”

  “I ask a favor of you, then.”

  She looked up from his knee. He peeled the glove from his left hand and showed her the scar across his palm. She ran a finger over it—hesitantly, curiously. “I have heard this, too, of Cesini. It is recent.”

  “I swore it in Modigne to a girl whose brother was sold into the mines. I swore to her I’d see justice done for him. I couldn’t promise her I’d find him alive. It’ll be three, four months ago now that he was sold: time enough to have died in the mines, if he survived the crossing from Modigne. She accepted that most likely he is dead. It isn’t what she asked of me—to find him.”

  “You wish to find him, even so.”

  “To know, at least—to give her that peace.” He held the reins in three fingers of his right hand and pulled the glove back on with his thumb and forefinger. “The boy is Mahlan; the sister is Lida. Their mother was a fisherwoman of Modigne harbor—dead now, though the boy won’t know it. I don’t know his age to tell you.”

  “It is enough.”

  “Lieutenant Senna can send me word through one of the garrison messengers, if you find him. Any way you find him.”

  The woman said, “You swore an oath in blood for the daughter of a Modigno fisherwoman.” It was not a question, and he could not tell by her voice whether it was wonder or scorn.

  He looked away down the row. “You understand how Vareno words are not enough.”

  “I have never met a Vareno to whom it mattered.”

  “They kill them quietly in places where it doesn’t,” Torien said.

  Ostensibly the Guardsmen were his guides. Stratto rode ahead. Valle, who like Tarrega—Briule—was Modigno blood or perhaps Epyrian, bronze-skinned with a head of dark curls, rode behind, holding a spear across his saddle. Torien wondered if that was habit or necessity. He supposed they thought the young Espere might try to run. He had tried to kill himself once already, and it was plausible to think he might try to run regardless of how well he knew the Road. But the lieutenant sat silent and slightly hunched in his saddle, watching the dust clods flinging up under his horse’s hooves.

  He was in civilian clothes, now—tunic and sandals and cloak. Without the armor but with his hair cropped close, according to army regulation, he looked very young. He had looked young in harness and under a helmet, but he looked like a boy now and he looked dazed, lost. Torien ro
de close beside him. Valle was riding carefully within earshot, the spear cradled on his left elbow across his saddle-horns, and Torien did not speak to the lieutenant, though he wanted to. The lieutenant would not have heard him, anyway. He was watching the dust at his horse’s hooves without seeing it.

  They crossed the floodplain by noon and made camp on the open sand above the plain. Stratto chose the ground and issued orders. They were alone and there was no need for pretense now. If the lieutenant noticed it had been pretense earlier, it was obvious he did not care. In the tent, when the horses had been unsaddled and watered, Stratto sat down facing the lieutenant and pulled out from the neck of his tunic a seal ring hung on a thin silver chain. He held the ring on its chain for the lieutenant to see. From where he sat at the lieutenant’s elbow, Torien could see the sunburst seal on the onyx face of the ring and the Guard unit number in tall embossed numerals around the edge of the intaglio.

  The lieutenant looked at the ring for a long time. He did not look in Stratto’s face. The smooth olive skin was sickly greenish across his straight nose and cheekbones.

  Stratto dropped the ring back down into his tunic. “I’m giving you time to think on it,” he said. “You’ll have from here to Modigne: time enough to consider very carefully how much you stand to gain or lose by your silence.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.” It came out in a quick burst through shut teeth.

  “I’ll disabuse you of the idea your silence will protect him.” Stratto had produced his knife from somewhere and was paring off the rind of the hard cheese which Valle had handed him out of one of the packs. “At present, he remains in command because it serves our purposes to leave him in command. He’ll hang when we’ve no further use for him, whether you hold your tongue or no.”

  The lieutenant darted a glance to Torien. For a moment, there was confusion rather than fear in his face. “I thought he was to be tried.”

  Stratto did not say anything. He offered a piece of cheese to the lieutenant on his knife-point. The lieutenant spit at it with sudden savagery. His mouth must have been dry; nothing came out. He looked from Stratto to Torien and back again. “He was to be tried. What do you need from me if he’s not to be tried? You said he was to be tried in Choiro.”

  “Commander Risto was under a misapprehension.” Stratto tucked his knife away and put the cut cheese on its cloth down on the sand.

  “He can’t be condemned without a trial.”

  “Names—to answer your question,” Stratto said. “They will ask you for names. Most of the names you give them they will probably already know, but it’s possible you will surprise them before they’ve done with you.”

  “You can’t condemn him without a trial!”

  Stratto did not say anything. Valle had given him the water-skin. He brushed the laces clear and lifted the skin in both hands and tipped water into his mouth. The lieutenant sprang to his feet, suddenly. He tore the skin from Stratto’s hands and flung it across the tent. Valle, almost as quick to his feet, caught the lieutenant’s wrist and slid an arm across his throat. He twisted the lieutenant’s arm behind his back and shoved him to the tent floor. Stratto was on his feet now. He rammed hobnailed toes squarely into the lieutenant’s gut. The lieutenant’s breath rushed out in a long, hoarse gasp. Stratto’s boots worked methodically along the lieutenant’s stomach and chest. The blows landed quickly and heavily. Rather than curling up to shield himself, the lieutenant tried to rise. Stratto kicked him back to the sand, and Torien heard the crunch of bone and the strangled whimper in the lieutenant’s throat.

  He stood. “Enough.”

  Stratto crouched beside the lieutenant, who was lying still and quiet now—face-down, hands spread. Stratto slid two fingers under the lieutenant’s jaw to feel for the pulse. Then he straightened. His face was expressionless. “The Lieutenant may have his uses. You’re along with us for a favor. Don’t cross me again, Risto.”

  Valle had gone to pick up the empty water-skin. “We will need to be careful about rationing, unless you wish to return to the mines,” he said to Stratto. It was the first time Torien had heard him speak. He spoke quietly and with the studied, unnatural precision of one speaking a tongue not his own.

  Stratto said, “How much have we left?”

  “Another skin, besides what we’ve got for the horses. This was half our supply.”

  “The Lieutenant can go without, for now,” Stratto said.

  They broke camp at dusk and rode straight through the night. They rode in silence, Stratto always ahead, keeping his horse to a brisk pace, Valle trailing just far enough behind that he could use the spear to effect, if need be. There was no need and there wouldn’t be. The lieutenant had not spoken since he had fought slowly awake in the tent. He had not spoken when Stratto had very deliberately passed him over for the water-skin before they had ridden out. There was blood dried on his nostrils and lips and chin, and he rode doubled against his horse’s neck with an arm across his stomach, sucking labored breaths through his teeth.

  The sky was clear and the moon waxing full and a wind pushing against them from the sea. Dawn broke early across the dunes. They rode for several hours afterward, the wind keeping up and the heat not as bad as before. In the distance, north and east over the dunes, there were gulls wheeling. They were making good time. If they kept up such a pace, they would reach the city tonight in the late hours or tomorrow morning early.

  They spent the heat of the second day on shaded sand at the eastern foot of a tall dune. There was silence in the tent, except for the lieutenant’s breathing. The lieutenant lay on his side away from them. Stratto was oiling the edges of his knife blade. Valle sat at the tent flap, looking out over the sand. Every now and then, he looked back over his shoulder into the tent. He spoke at length quietly to Stratto in a tongue Torien did not immediately recognize. Stratto answered him in the same tongue, and Torien realized, from memory of his own clumsy efforts, that it was Modigno, or more probably a dialect of it.

  He did not know what they said. Alluin would have known, perhaps, or might have guessed. Alluin had not only an expensive education but an ear for words. He had not studied Modigno particularly, but he had picked up enough through a week’s travel across Modigne to follow most conversations, if he could not yet speak it with any confidence. Torien could follow a conversation as far as it had to do with wine. Stratto and Valle were not talking about wine.

  Stratto slept, afterward. Valle sat watching the desert. Torien lay awake, listening to the lieutenant’s breathing. He had been hoping for a chance to speak with the lieutenant since they had left the mines, and it did not seem now as if he would get that chance. Briefly, he turned over the thought that Stratto was asleep and Valle sitting away from him. They did not consider him a threat. It would take a fool to contemplate attacking two Guardsmen, and he supposed they did not consider he was such a fool. Stratto would wake if he drew his sword. Valle would sense his movement. He could kill one with his belt knife, perhaps, before the other got to him. He could not kill both at once, and he did not think he could kill a Guardsman in a straight fight. If one took him alive, they would give him the traitors’ death in Choiro for killing the other.

  Valle stood up at the tent flap. He crossed the tent to where Stratto slept against the tent wall. His footsteps made no noise on the sand. He bent to pick up the water-skin. Torien watched him take the skin across the tent to where the lieutenant lay. Valle paid Torien no attention. He sat down cross-legged beside the lieutenant, the water-skin on his lap. He turned the lieutenant onto his back and washed the blood from the lieutenant’s face with water in the palm of one hand. He tipped water into the lieutenant’s mouth. The lieutenant spit it back out. Expressionlessly, Valle slid a hand over the lieutenant’s nose and tipped the water-skin again and held the lieutenant’s jaw and nose shut until the lieutenant swallowed. He did this several times in succession. The lieutenant did not struggle after the first few mouthfuls. He had bee
n more than a day without water, and pride did not last so long in the desert heat.

  Stratto was awake now, watching on his back from the tent-side. “You’ll make trouble for yourself one day, Dio.”

  Valle smiled but said nothing. He tied up the water-skin.

  “Get him up,” Stratto said. “We’ll go.”

  “It’s two hours until sundown.”

  “I want to make the ship tonight.”

  Torien said, “Espere controls the city guard, and I’ll wager they pay closer attention to us tonight with the gates closed than they would in daylight tomorrow.”

  Stratto was lacing his boots. “You assume we’re going into the city.”

  He had, in fact, been counting on it, and he had counted likewise that Stratto would want to enter by daylight, when the gates stood open and the guards were less inclined toward individual inspections. Tonight, camped on open sand outside the city gates, he might have had the chance to slip away to the fort—with the lieutenant, most importantly. He was fairly sure that neither Stratto nor Valle would put much effort into stopping him if he ran for it on his own. Alone he could do nothing. He needed the lieutenant, and they knew it.

  Stratto must have seen something in his face. “Your weapons, Risto.”

  It had occurred to them he might be such a fool after all. He considered protesting—more for dignity’s sake than anything else. In the end, he unbuckled his sword belt and wrapped up the belt around the sheath and handed it over wordlessly, the belt knife with its sheath after. Perhaps knowing he was unarmed they would be careless. It was not likely, but it was some consolation.

  Stratto tucked the bundled weapons under one elbow. “You’ll have them back aboard ship,” he said. Then he said to Valle, “Tie their hands.”

  Torien felt a flick of anger. “Do you believe I’m that much a threat, or are you simply that incompetent?”

  “I believe you’re desperate,” Stratto said, “and I’d rather not have to kill you for it.”