“You’re convincing yourself that you cannot act,” Arkady chided her. “Think what you can do, not what cannot be done.”
She pondered a little while, and he enjoyed sharing her questions and her attempts to find solutions to their predicament. Finally she said, “I suppose you are right, and burning is the answer. What is this thing you have in your mind—Greek fire, you call it—that burns in water?”
“Greek fire. Where did you find that?” He sighed. “I’ve never seen it used or made. I have only heard of it.”
“But such a thing exists?” she pursued, pressing him for more information.
“I know it is supposed to exist, which isn’t quite the same thing.”
They had made no alteration in the brightness around them, but still there was a change, a subtle turn of shade that gave the lights a greater brilliance.
“Still, you know of it,” she asked, this time with greater determination. “You can think of it and know that water will not quench its flames?”
“I suppose so,” he answered, beginning to see what she intended. “Certainly if we make Greek fire in this other place, it will not be put out by any water the Bundhi might conjure up.”
“Good.” She was silent again, delving through her memories, and his.
“How do you do this? I think I’m being tickled,” he told her as he perceived her presence in his mind.
“I haven’t words to tell you, Arkady my champion,” she said, a bit wistfully. “I wish I had. I wish I had years with you, so that we could learn…everything together. I wish it was for joy alone that we—”
“Stop it. Time enough for that later, when we’ve settled things.” He shared her regret, but he knew that anything that dampened morale on the eve of battle was dangerous. “The day will come. You know that and I know it, and that will have to do for now.”
She took his admonition to heart. “Yes. Later we will have all the time we want.” If she sounded less certain then he, it was from her lack of fighting experience. “When we have our…victory.”
“Very good,” he approved.
(“Good, so very good,” he whispered as he took the flare of her hips in his hands.)
She was more encouraged now, and her strength grew greater as she explored his memories. “You are a valiant soldier, Arkady my champion.”
“You mean that I am not as reckless as many others,” he said sternly. “Poles are noted for their recklessness. We are reputed to be brave to the point of madness.”
She responded to both the truth and the irony in what he said. “No wonder your Margrave Fadey was disappointed in you.”
“He did not want prudence,” Arkady observed. “I was prudent then, but I will be less so now. Yet I will not be reckless, for that would put you in more danger than we’re in now, and that is more than I am willing to do.” He felt his protectiveness answered by her own. He had never experienced such inner reinforcement as they gave each other amid the shifting motes of light.
“See how brightly we glow, Arkady my champion,” she exclaimed, her delight as warm as sunshine to him.
“Is that a good thing?” he asked, teasing her kindly.
“Light on swords is a good thing to you, so this must be the same.” She moved with him, making their luminosity dance and curvet through the light-filled vastness.
Arkady enjoyed each moment of what they did, and as they continued their onward motion, he hoped that this time they would not come upon the stronghold of the Bundhi too soon.
“You are as filled with our union as I am,” Surata told him, her eagerness adding to his pleasure.
He wanted to give her a gallant answer, one that would be as poetic and reverent as the emotions she inspired. He tried to show her the rapture that consumed him, so that she jerked apart and thrown down, a bamboo staff a hand’s breath from his face.
“Arkady-immai!” Surata wailed, her hands flailing as she tired to locate him in the hushed crackle of the twigs and branches.
“Do not move, Surata-of-Bogar,” said the man who had separated them. At the sound of his voice, she grew still. “I have my staff with me and I will not hesitate to put it to use.”
“How…?” she demanded.
“My tigers tell me many things. They found you for me, and they will have their reward. Since my servants permitted you to escape, they will feed the tigers this time.” The sound he made was supposed to be laughter but it was as cold as the breaking up of winter ice.
In the wan moonlight, Arkady was able to see the stranger. The man was tall, and so lean that he appeared even taller. He had little to distinguish him except his eyes, which he turned on Arkady in sudden malice; they were dark and flat as pebbles. He shook his head. “So you’re the great fighter,” he said.
Arkady knew from the tone of the man’s voice that he was being insulted. He frowned, still badly disoriented. “Surata, is this…is it…”
“Yes,” she said in a rage of defeat. “This is the Bundhi.”
There had been impressions of the man before, in her memories and in the strange byways of that other place. Somehow Arkady had expected more, a larger figure, a stronger air of menace. What was most distressing about him, thought Arkady, was his normality, his ordinariness. “Tell him he is a disappointment,” Arkady said, adding, “Never mind. No sense in giving him reason to fight with us now.”
“Why should he fight?” Surata asked bitterly. “He has us.” She faced Arkady. “He will hurt you, he wants only the least excuse. He will try to force you to fight or escape or defy him, and then he will do all that he can to destroy you.”
Casually the Bundhi turned and slapped Surata with the full strength of the back of his hand. “You will no longer talk to him. You will speak to me, and if I have reason to say something to that worm, you will do it as briefly as you can. Tell him that he is not to talk to you.”
“Arkady-immai,” she said, her hand against her face where the Bundhi had struck her, “he has ordered us not to talk to one another. He means it.”
“Right,” Arkady said, wanting to add scathing words but afraid for Surata.
“Very good. You have prolonged your useless life a while and you have reduced your suffering, at least for the time being.” The Bundhi came closer to Arkady, his staff almost touching his shoulder. “So white, your skin, and your hair pale as a ghost. What a creature you are.” He spat, smiling. “You have no control of your body, do you? One instant outside that woman’s body and you shrivel.”
“Do not harm him, Bundhi!” Surata cried out.
“Do you like this untutored foreigner?” the Bundhi asked her, disbelief in his voice. “The loss of your eyes has unsettled your mind.”
“This fight isn’t his. He brought me here.” Surata was both defiant and desperate. “You have no reason to hold him.”
“He is with you, he has caused my men to behave stupidly and it amuses me to see you thus. What does it matter if this is his fight or not, when it is karma that moves him to bring you?” He reached down and grabbed her by the hair. “Tell him that you are both going to come with me.”
“We’re to come with him,” Surata shrieked.
“Let her go!” Arkady bellowed, starting to rush at the Bundhi, hands extended.
“Tell him to stop,” the Bundhi said calmly, his bamboo staff poised over her breasts.
“Stop, Arkady-immai.” Her voice was low but it halted him.
“Do not doubt that I will hurt her, foreigner. For me there is merit in your pain. Tell him, Surata-of-Bogar. Tell him, too, that only Vadin will be with us; the other two are with the tigers.”
Surata did as she was told, her voice almost failing her at the end. “He is telling you the truth, Arkady-immai,” she gasped.
“I know that.” He remained still, feeling as cold inwardly as the icy wind off the peaks was making his naked skin.
“Dress, both of you. I will watch and listen. You may say things only if I permit it. Right now, I do not permit
it. My staff is hungry, Surata-of-Bogar, and it would please me to let it devour you.”
“We’re supposed to get dressed, Arkady-immai,” she told him.
“That’s something, at least we won’t freeze,” Arkady said as he reached for his leggings, embarrassed by the contemptuous way the Bundhi looked at him. He pulled on the clothes with unseemly haste, wishing they had been discovered in any other situation than the one they had been in.
“Do not touch each other,” the Bundhi warned Surata. “If you touch each other, you will also touch my staff. You know what its touch will do. You have the scars from its burns on your hands.” He shoved Surata toward the heap of her clothes, chuckling as she stumbled and sprawled on the boughs.
“It will be light before long. Vadin will be waiting on the road, and he will follow behind us, in case you want to fall behind. Tell your foreign soldier that, Surata-of-Bogar.”
She repeated what the Bundhi had said, and took a chance, adding, “We will have to find another way.”
“We will,” Arkady vowed. Now that he had seen the Bundhi, he was more determined than he had been in his life to defeat the foe or die in the attempt. He knew now why the Margrave had been willing to storm an unassailable fortress, why his father had felt betrayed by living beyond his battles, why there had been captains willing to lose men and lives for issues beyond honor.
In the early morning they crossed the river on a high bridge that swung and groaned with every step they took. Far below them the swirling water frothed like the jaws of a mad dog.
With the crossing of the river, they left the merchants’ road behind and instead had to walk single file up paths used by shepherds and pilgrims. The rocky outcroppings offered little protection from the wind, and the few copses were limited to the places where wind and rock could not pull at them.
They travelled silently, the Bundhi leading, Surata immediately behind him and held to him with a long hempen strand that went around her waist. A few paces behind her was Arkady, and finally Vadin, his staff held high to remind Arkady that he had good reason not to fall behind. The Bundhi set a steady pace, one that demanded all the strength that the others possessed to maintain. They passed few other persons on the trail, and those they did pass stepped aside and averted their faces, showing fear more than respect in their attitude and conduct.
At night there was a little food, and two separate trees where Surata and Arkady were tied, the Bundhi and Vadin sleeping between them, Vadin serving as pillow and blanket for the Bundhi.
“Are they asleep?” Arkady whispered when the night was half over.
“I hope so,” Surata answered. “I knew you would remain awake, so I forced myself not to sleep.”
“How far are we from Gora Čimtarga?” he asked.
“Four days, perhaps five,” she said forlornly. “They will be watching us all the time.”
“As we will be watching them,” Arkady said with a grim smile.
“If we once enter the redoubt on Gora Čimtarga, we will be lost.”
“Then we must not enter it,” Arkady said. “Before we get there, we must find a way, a reason to delay our arrival. Do you agree?”
“Yes, of course. But how?” This last was a cry of profound anguish.
“We’ll find a way. What else is a champion for?” He had meant to cheer her with this quip, but to his horror, she began to weep. “Surata…no. Surata.”
“Arkady-immai, you are my champion, no matter what occurs after.” She tried to reach out to him, but the bonds held her and all she could do was strive to lean away from the tree and toward him.
Vadin shifted, then was pressed firmly into a posture that could not be comfortable by the arm of the Bundhi.
“If only we could touch,” Surata whispered. “Even our hands, it would be something, better than this.”
“I know, I know.” The admission sounded so trivial when measured against what he wanted to say that he flushed to the roots of his light brown hair and beard.
“You tell me in many ways, Arkady-immai. I know them all.”
The Bundhi reached out, his hand closing around his staff, and he brought the bamboo close to him, pressing it against his palm. Although he continued to sleep, the rhythm of his breathing changed to a deeper, more passionate panting while the bamboo drew upon him, in a communion that fascinated and repelled Arkady as he watched.
“He does not use women, Arkady-immai. He is…bound to that staff,” Surata said in an undervoice. “He feeds on it as much as it feeds on him. Anything the staff devours ultimately feeds him.”
“It’s more than feeding,” he said as he stared.
“Yes—much more.”
For quite some time the Bundhi maintained his bizarre link with the staff, and when he finally moved the staff away, he slept on as if drugged, in a stupor that lasted until sunrise.
By the end of the second day, Surata was bruised from stumbles and falls; her plight gave the Bundhi malefic enjoyment, and he took pains to remind her of her blindness and helplessness.
“When we reach my redoubt, Surata-of-Bogar, you will be taken into the staff. It will not happen quickly. You will know that you are being devoured. You will embrace Siva before you die. I think I will take turns between you and your foreign soldier. I want you to hear him scream, and to feel his death when the bamboo touches you.”
Arkady wanted to call to her, to tell her not to listen. He had done it once and his throat still ached from the place where the Bundhi’s fingers had sunk. He was faintly queasy from the thinning air and the increasing cold, so he did his best to concentrate on walking and tried not to be goaded into action that would harm Surata as well as himself. It galled him to know that he was failing her when she had the most need of him. He wanted to pray, but none of the words made sense.
“Think what it might be like,” the Bundhi exclaimed as they crested a rise in the trail, “to bring the Left Hand Path such power! You are going to give me the world, Surata-of-Bogar. Think what that will mean to those of the Right Hand Path, if there are any left other than you.”
Surata did not answer, and in retaliation for silence, the Bundhi tugged on the line that held her to him, and laughed as she staggered, flinging her hands out as she fell.
“You leave an offering in blood on the stones. The tigers will like that.”
From his place at the rear of the line, Vadin lifted his staff, and when he reached the place where Surata had fallen, he rested his bamboo for a moment. Arkady turned in time to see the segmented wood quiver in Vadin’s hand.
That night, Surata was tied to Vadin’s feet, so that any movement she might make would wake the Bundhi’s servant. The Bundhi himself reclined in isolation, his head not far from the long-needled shrub where Arkady had been secured.
“If you attempt to speak, we will know it,” the Bundhi said with relish. “You will be gagged and then you will be punished for disobediance.” He tweaked Surata’s earlobe. “Tell him.”
She translated, and then was silent, her hands joined in her lap. One side of her face had turned livid from the Bundhi’s blow and there were scrapes on her arms where her stumbles had taken their toll during the day. She fingered her bonds and then shook her head.
“Relish this, Surata-of-Bogar. Shortly you will enter my stronghold, and you will be mine utterly.” He reached out with his staff, letting the side of the bamboo rest against Arkady’s face.
Arkady felt the burn, and something worse, something that ate into him as if to reduce his skull, and all his bones, to calcined ash. That dread as much as the pain forced a loud moan from his lips. “God and Saint Michael,” he swore as the Bundhi moved the bamboo away. Gingerly he raised his fingers to probe the welt that was rising on his face.
“There will be more, in time. Your face, soldier, and then the rest of you. Tell him that I will burn away his testicles with my staff, Surata-of-Bogar.” The Bundhi plucked at the cords that held Arkady. “This is not too bad. This will hold him for
the night.”
Humiliation filled Arkady as he heard Surata repeat the Bundhi’s threat. The brand on his face was bad enough—and it would be a constant reminder of his disgrace for the rest of his life—but the Bundhi’s determination to make him less than a man sickened him. He wanted to purge himself of any taint of the Bundhi, though it brought him to the brink of death.
When the Bundhi’s staff had been sated and the night was far advanced, Arkady made a desperate gamble: moving with deliberate care, he stretched out his arms as far as the ropes would allow. His wrists were chaffed and his fingers were numb by the time he was able to press the hemp fibers to the side of the Bundhi’s staff.
At once he could feel the unearthly heat of the bamboo eat into both rope and wrists. He could smell his own flesh char, but he endured the agony until dark spots blurred his vision. Only then did he try to part the cords. It took more than three attempts to get the hemp to snap, and when finally he succeeded in breaking his restraints, he was too dizzy to do more than sit staring at his hands, corpse-pale in the moonlight.
A sound—perhaps a bird, perhaps a night-hunting animal—brought Arkady back to himself. His mind screamed at him to get away, to kill the Bundhi and Vadin, to free Surata, but his body responded sluggishly, and he was clumsy when he moved. He unwound the ropes that had held him, taking care not to let them trail on the ground or touch the Bundhi’s staff. His arms trembled and ached with the effort, but he would not be rushed, particularly when he felt so awkward. When he had all the rope wound into a coil, he moved into a low crouch, wincing as his ankles and knees popped. He tottered to his feet, then crept away from the Bundhi toward the place where Vadin lay with Surata tied to his feet.
He hesitated, afraid to wake her suddenly for fear that he would also wake Vadin. The sound of his heart in his chest seemed so loud to him that he thought it was enough to rouse her.
Surata’s lips moved. “Go.” The word was so soft that he was not sure he had heard it until she repeated the order. “Arkady-immai, go.”
To the High Redoubt Page 36
