Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

  Through the long afternoon, while the sun crawled down to Modigne, he drifted in and out of consciousness. He woke once thick-headed and thirsty and leaned over on his elbow to the water-skin, but his hands shook so that he could not untie the knots. He let go the skin and lay back exhausted on the cloak and watched a pair of lizards chase each other round and round a tuft of yellowing esparto grass. He slipped away again, slowly, and came back with a start at the sound of thunder over the plain. Far off across the flatland, southward, he could see the sky breaking open. There was a storm building at the sea-line, the clouds like green marbled pillars and the rain like a shot-silk curtain hung between. The thunder rolled over the plain and echoed off the hillsides. Twenty miles, he supposed. The storm would be here before the boy.

  It occurred to him that the boy was not coming back.

  He would have had reason to come back, as he’d had reason to wait through five hours at the smithy in Modigne, had the wound not festered and gone to fever—but that was the way of it, and a dead man couldn’t file a manumission. Anyway, the boy had a better chance now to run than he’d had in the city. If he were foresighted, he would wait and watch in the hills and be back at length for the eagles in Torien’s wallet and for the seal ring. Over the mountains in Volenta, they would not care about the collar on the boy’s neck or that he was carrying a Vareno nobleman’s gold.

  The first fat drops of rain were spattering on the gravel. He had not seen rain for more than four months. In late spring, he had ridden to Vessy with his new commission and a month’s leave in which to say his goodbyes, and it had been raining off the lake on the day he had come home. Closing his eyes, he could see the black Cesino earth crumbling to mud along the causeway, and the long green fields stretching beyond to the oak wood still stripped bare by winter; and the head of the hill veiled in mist and the river spilled over its banks and rushing onto the lowland; and he could hear the patter of rain on the roof-thatch of the fishermen’s huts—Cesin itself pouring into that rainfall, Cesin itself pouring out a libation for him in farewell.

  A funerary libation, he thought. The Dobryno had been wrong.

  Thunder started from a murmur across the plain, building up slowly to a roar and then falling away to sudden silence. In its wake, there were indistinct voices. Footsteps hurried toward him over the gravel. It had not been thunder but carriage wheels on the road. He opened his eyes, fumbling for his sword. He rolled onto his left arm and propped himself up on the elbow and held his sheath in his left hand while he drew the blade under his stomach in his right. He held himself trembling on his hands, the sword beneath him. He could not push himself up. There were hands on his head and shoulders, and someone was bending down close to his ear to say, “Easy, Lord Risto, you’ve nothing to fear.”

  He recognized the voice of the young priest.

  He gave up trying to rise. He rested his forehead against the dirt and lay still on his palms. The voices went back and forth far above him. He heard Ædyn’s voice. He closed his eyes and let the blackness come.

  He opened his eyes still in blackness. It was like coming up out of deep water. His head was thick, his throat tight. His body was at war with itself, his lungs pushing greedily against his ribs and the pain stabbing angrily back, and he lay very still, holding his breath and trying to keep the peace, listening to the blood in his ears and the patter of rain and realizing only slowly through the pain that the rain was pattering on a roof above him rather than on his face; realizing just as slowly that there was a smooth, hard surface beneath him; trying to remember where he was and how he had come there—and with whom, because he was not alone in the darkness. There were hands on either side of his neck, holding his head still. When he tried to sit up, the hands held him firmly down. A voice floated out of the darkness: “Lie still, Lord Risto.”

  Memory came all at once, in a clump of sounds and images. He was silent for a moment, struggling to untangle it and arrange it all into a chronology. He peeled his tongue off his teeth and said, hoarsely, “What time?”

  “Not yet midnight.” The young priest’s voice was patient. “Sleep, Lord Risto. Give your body the chance to repair itself.”

  “Where?”

  “Five miles east of Gorazo, perhaps fifty miles from the border. Ædyn met us on the road.”

  “You did not come to Baralla.”

  There was a stretch of silence. The young priest’s hands were very still on Torien’s shoulders. “No,” the young priest said. “I did not come to Baralla.” He said it quietly as from a distance. “Sleep, Lord Risto.”

  He slept and woke again, this time in pale daylight. He lay blinking up at the low, slatted ceiling of the priests’ carriage, shivering in the breeze through the open doorway. His body was sore and cramped against the bench. The young priest was gone. There was no sign of Ædyn. The rain had passed in the night and the sky above the flatland was gray the color of pigeons’ feathers, the breeze ruffling the esparto and kicking spirals of red dust up to the hills.

  Torien turned his head against the bench. Across the carriage, the old priest was scraping something from a mortar into a cup, scraping the sides of the mortar and stirring whatever was in the cup with one forefinger, humming under his breath and unsurprised to look up and find Torien watching him. “Yes, yes, you are awake,” he said. He wiped his fingers and brought the cup over. “You drink this,” he said, “very carefully. I have opened the wound again. I try to bleed out the infection. You are stupid to stitch it. I tell you this.”

  “Where is Ædyn?”

  “They eat now. You drink this.”

  “Where are my horses?”

  “It is not a time for thinking about horses. You drink this. You sleep. If you do not die, then maybe you think about horses. You owe thanks to God we do not come another day late.”

  The old priest was pushing the cup against his lips. Torien shut his teeth and turned his head away. “I expected the young one in Baralla.”

  “Yes, he tries to go to Baralla. They stop him at the gate. They look for your horses, and they see he has your horses. They question him: when does he go? Where does he go? Jovan he tell them you sell the horses. You go on a ship, he says. But they know he lies. They ask the harbor master. They treat him very badly now. They say if he does not tell them where you go, they kill him. But the jente Sagrado he stops them. He has—how do you say it?—a debt to pay. He stops them from killing him.”

  “A debt? To the Church?”

  “To Jovan a little. Mostly to me. We save his daughter when she is so small and sick. He has no place else to go. He comes to us. We help him. He owes us this debt. So now his people they bring Jovan to me at the chapel.”

  “He was badly hurt?”

  “They beat him. I dress it.” The old priest was prying apart Torien’s teeth with his fingers. “You drink this now. He tells me how you stitch yourself and walk through the tombs. You are stupid to do this. He is stupid to let you do this. I tell you there will be infection. It is to me surprising you are not dead when we find you.” He tipped the cup onto Torien’s tongue. “It is most important to break the fever,” he said. “If we break the fever, then maybe you do not die.”

  Torien said, thickly through a mouthful of honey and basil, “I will pay you to take me to Choiro.”

  “Yes, yes, the boy he tells us you try to cross the border.” The old priest did not really seem to have heard. He was bundling his things together on the opposite bench.

  “Listen to me. I will pay in gold. You can name the sum.”

  The old priest looked up. “Is it how you think of priests in your country? That you buy them with coin?”

  “Not only priests, and not only in my country.”

  A shadow fell across the doorway. The young priest, Jovan, came up into the carriage. In daylight now Torien could see the bruises on his face and the stoop in his shoulders which he was making effort to hide. “Go eat, Antoni,” Jovan said. “The horse
s are hitched.”

  “Yes, I go.” The old priest tied up his pack. He looked up again critically at Torien. “Water only,” he said, “until the fever breaks. Then you eat. It is necessary against the inflammation. I think you do not care about this, but I want you to understand that I help you.”

  He went out through the carriage doorway. Jovan sat down facing Torien on the far bench. He leaned carefully back against the wall. He noticed Torien watching him and smiled. “How do you feel, Lord Risto?”

  “Maybe I do not die.”

  “I should have been there at Baralla. I’m sorry.”

  Torien ran his eyes over Jovan’s bruised face. “He told me what they did to you, and why.”

  “It is nothing. Though I would not have minded if Sagrado’s people had come a little sooner.” Jovan smiled again.

  “I said I will pay you to take me to Choiro. Anything you ask—anything it takes to make it worth your while.”

  “I heard what you said.”

  “I must get to Choiro, Jovan.”

  Jovan hesitated. “Have you considered that whoever paid Brevade for your death in Modigne may just as easily pay for your death in Choiro? It may be better not to cross the border, Lord Risto. It may be safer to stay in the provinces—perhaps to pass into Volenta.”

  “Safety was never a primary concern, in case you couldn’t tell.”

  It was half a joke, but Jovan did not say anything, and he did not laugh. His face was serious.

  “A horse, then,” Torien said, “if you want no further part in this. Whatever medical supplies you are willing to give me.”

  “He was a Guardsman,” Jovan said, “the man who questioned me in Modigne.”

  There was silence between them, and the breath of wind through the open doorway.

  “You’ve found yourself on the wrong side of this fight, you mean,” Torien said, finally.

  “I fear I may have misunderstood the nature of the fight and also the scope.”

  “My offer holds. I will pay anything you ask for a horse and medicine. You can go back to Modigne and tell them you left me on the northeast road. I won’t blame you for it. The boy stays with me. I don’t want him in the hands of the Guard.”

  “You think I fear for myself.”

  “The High Commander of the Guard wants me dead. I think you’ve the right to be practical about it.”

  “It is a little late to speak of practicality. If I cared only for practicality, I would have given you up under questioning. I fear for you, Lord Risto. I fear you make a mistake to go to Choiro. I did not understand, and I fear that you do not. They are powerful enemies you have made. Brevade was nothing.”

  “Perhaps I’ve equally powerful friends.”

  Jovan’s eyes fell to Torien’s ribs. “They have not been much help to you, so far.”

  “I have to do this, Jovan. There are other lives than mine in the balance.”

  “It will be a fortnight before we can get you to the city, and that is if we have no trouble at the border. If Modigne has sent an alert—”

  “They’ll be watching the gates and shipyards. There are other ways into and out of the city. I know the walls: I spent four years at Vione figuring out how not to spend four years at Vione. I could tell you how to breach the city and take the Hill with two hundred men, if you wanted.”

  Jovan looked at him curiously. “If I wanted?”

  “Hypothetically speaking.”

  “Tell me, Lord Risto,” Jovan said, carefully, “if this is not more than a matter of justice for the voiceless of Modigne.”

  That caught him off-guard. “Why should it be anything more?”

  “You are not Vareno by blood.”

  “Not purely. Cesino enough they can give me the blood-traitors’ death and feel justified in it. One of the Dobryni promised me once that they would.”

  “Cesino enough to carry a grudge?”

  He was silent, for a moment, looking at Jovan across the carriage. Then, not sure what else to do, he laughed. “Are you trying to turn me?”

  “I am wondering what it would take to turn you, and thinking perhaps the High Commander has wondered the same thing. It is not too much a stretch to imagine you could be a political threat.”

  “I took an oath, Jovan.”

  “My people as well, before the uprising.”

  “Anyway, it’s beside the point.”

  “Maybe it is.” Jovan stood. He was silhouetted in the doorway against the overcast sky, and Torien could not see his face. “Try to rest, Lord Risto. It won’t do any of us any good if you are dead by the city—any of us but the High Commander, I suppose.”

  “Jovan.”

  “Yes, Lord Risto?”

  “He offered me a commission not six months ago. The Palace garrison. A yearly bonus of ten thousand eagles and a private house on the Hill. The only thing changed between us is that I stumbled into his trafficking ring in Modigne. It isn’t a question of loyalty.”

  “I am sure you are right, Lord Risto,” Jovan said.

  They crossed the border river Nona at a cattle ford north of the customs station. Rejoining the road, they crawled north and east across the broad, sunburned face of Varen. The days ran together in heat and monotony. While Antoni nodded on the opposite bench, Torien watched the spelt fields go by through the slats in the carriage walls, the dust billowing in a haze from the horses’ hooves and spinning off into whirlwinds over the fields, jumping wicker goat-pens and stone boundary walls, the yellow spelt husks rattling like dry bones and the olive groves fluttering silver, the heat curling off the red tile roofs of the farmhouses, the irrigation ditches seared white as old scars.

  Sometimes in the evenings lightning crackled silently in the distance above the hills, but it did not rain. The dust came in on the wind through the slats and hung in the air as thick as smoke. He woke once in the night with sweat trickling down the sides of his face and between his shoulder-blades under the edge of the dressing, the dust sticking on his skin like wet plaster, the salt stinging his cracked lips, and he grasped very sluggishly in the heat that this meant the fever had broken.

  Jovan and Antoni took turns at the driver’s bench, now, and he suspected that sometimes, in the long afternoons when Antoni dozed inside the carriage, Jovan gave the reins to Ædyn. Mostly they traveled in silence, on account of the blown dust and the clatter of hooves and wheels on pavement, but every now and then, when he was lying awake in the heat trying to resist the urge to scratch at the dressing, he heard their voices coming down from the bench, the young priest’s and the boy’s, and sometimes the wind carried the words to him very clearly, and no matter how he tried to focus on the spelt fields and whirls of dust he could not help but hear.

  “Very much braver than I am, and certainly much braver than I was”—Jovan’s voice, quietly in response to something he had not heard Ædyn say. “It is no reason to be ashamed, Ædyn.”

  “I broke. I always thought—” There was a long moment of nothing but road noise and Antoni’s gentle snoring. Then Ædyn said, in a smaller voice, “I did not think I would break.”

  “They did not have to break me,” Jovan said. “I was a coward. They don’t have to break cowards.”

  “It’s different. I was older than you were.”

  “Not so much older.”

  “Had you won your spear?”

  “My spear?”

  “I mean that I had drawn blood already.”

  “My people are not hunters,” Jovan said. “My people are farmers. We have different rites.”

  “They try to make us farmers,” Ædyn said, “the Vareni. They think if they make us farmers we will not fight.”

  “I see,” said Jovan, mildly.

  “Did he free you, then—your master? Or did you run?”

  “He sold me to a brother of the Hospitallers. The brother freed me. I think he had some idea I would be his apprentice, but I am afraid he hasn’t go
tten his money’s worth. I haven’t proven very adept at medicine, you see.”

  “Antoni.” The boy was silent, for a moment. “Is that why you joined the orders?”

  “It’s one reason.”

  “Do you ever think about it now—about fighting, I mean? Now that you are older.”

  “I think there are many different ways to fight,” Jovan said.

  They came down into the river valley of the Breche. The road cut across the floodplain and hugged the western bank of the river for a stretch of about twenty miles; then the river bent west, and the road crossed over eastward on a line for the city. Jovan took the carriage off the road before they came to the bridge. They would cross here, below the river-bend, out of sight of the bridge watchmen.

  It was noon, and while Antoni built the cook fire, Jovan and the boy unhitched the horses and took them down to the water. Torien could not see the water from the carriage, but he could see the line of elm trees along the bank. Through the slats, he watched Jovan and the boy take the horses out of sight into the trees. A little while later, he saw them coming back up the bank. Jovan left the horses with the boy and came up into the carriage. “There is cavalry crossing the river,” he said.

  “A patrol?”

  “A full column, I think. It is a lot of cavalry.” Jovan hesitated. “They saw us on the bank, Lord Risto. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t know they’d be there.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Eat, I guess. There’s not much else to do. Did you find a place to cross?”

  “I think it is a good place. The river is very low. I will go down later and test the footing.”

  The priests and the boy sat at the fire to eat. Torien lay on the bench, balancing the bowl of porridge on his stomach and watching the road through the slats. The cavalry column moved massively down the road from the river. Mess wagons and strings of spare horses followed the troop. He had never seen a full column mobilized before. It was one thing to know the numbers in your head and another to see a thousand Imperial cavalrymen moving down the road in front of you.