by Bell, Hilari
Looking down into the canyon, Jiaan saw that most of the men there had no hope of climbing. Three of them were seated, two clutching bloodstained arrows in thigh and calf. The only man still on his feet was wrapping a strip of cloth around the arm of a third man, where an arrow had evidently passed though.
The man finished with the awkward bandage and then stepped back, looking up at the Farsalan soldiers who lined the canyon. Or more accurately, at the hundreds of bows, arrows nocked and pointed right at him. His shoulders moved slightly, something between a shrug and a nervous twitch. Very slowly, he drew his sword and laid it on the ground. Then he removed his helmet and placed it next to the sword.
“That’s the Hrum commander!” Fasal’s breathless voice exclaimed. He must have run over the ridgetop at reckless speed to get here so swiftly. “He’s surrendering! What do we do?”
“We accept,” said Jiaan. “We lower some ropes and haul him and his people out of there.” He looked around for the man who had laid his hands on the rock, but the Suud were anonymous in their robes unless you noticed the pattern of the stripes, and Jiaan had been too busy for that.
Fasal, still looking down the canyon, snorted. “He pulled the wounded back when the rocks started to fall. He could have made it out himself, and as commander it was his duty to escape. And now he’s surrendering, the stinking coward.”
“Sometimes,” said Jiaan, “it takes more courage to surrender than to fight.” He remembered the night after the battle of the Sendar Wall. Dying had seemed so easy then, and living so hard. Did this Hrum commander feel that way now?
“Our commander fought to the death!” said Fasal proudly.
Jiaan made no reply.
CHAPTER FIVE
KAVI
THEY HAD INTENDED to sneak past the sentries at night, but with the early winter storm beginning to build, Kavi had urged them to try it during the rain.
“Sentries who’re all wet and miserable aren’t thinking about anything except getting dry,” he told them.
The girl had been dubious, but the Suud agreed with him.
“Storm noise stop noise you make, and water in eyes much good than dark.” Daralk spoke in Faran, out of courtesy to the local farmer who had agreed to act as their guide. The Suud were a courteous folk, Kavi had found, though he was pretty sure that when Daralk said “you,” he was referring to Kavi alone. But if he was making that small joke, Kavi could hardly blame him, for the Suud made no more noise than mice in the dry brush, and the lady Soraya was almost as skilled.
Kavi had been skeptical, then stunned, and finally delighted when the things the girl and Maok had told him about his own gift had proved no joke at all. Working steel again, even if he could only do it with that odd part of his mind that Maok had awakened, had been as much pain as pleasure, especially at first. But if part of his heart ached for his lost craft, another part took consolation in teaching the Suud. They needed steel, and even with the most primitive equipment they had learned as fast as any apprentices Kavi had seen. It had been a relaxed, pleasant time, and he was grateful for it.
But he also knew they had reached the limit of what they could accomplish in the desert. If the Farsalans were to get strong swords in time to do them any good, it would take a town, a metal-working town, to make them.
So now, as the sky opened up and the cold, dreary rain of a winter storm pelted down, Kavi crouched behind a screen of leafless branches and stared at the sentry standing on the road. Who would have thought the Hrum would post a guard this far outside the city?
“It’s the siege camp’s new commander,” said the farmer softly. “He doesn’t know how we were getting food in—they’ve not learned about the aqueduct—but that bastard Nehar reported to the Hrum whenever we did, and the commander kept pushing his sentry lines out and out, until they ended up between us and the tunnel hatch.” He frowned. “We haven’t gotten a shipment in for over a month now. The odd lad bringing messages can get through, but nothing like a big load of foodstuffs. With the new taxes, food’s getting harder to come by anyway. And there are more patrols out as well.”
Rain was beginning to drip down Kavi’s face, but he thought the guard should be allowed to get a bit wetter before they tried anything. “What’s the food—”
A bolt of lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, loud enough to make Kavi flinch. The winter rains didn’t usually have much lightning in them—slow and sullen they were—but this early storm seemed livelier than most. The girl was studying the sky. She had flinched at the lightning too, and now she seemed tense, but Kavi found her very hard to read these days. She’d been better company after he’d broken her out of Garren’s slave pen—gratitude and all. But that was before she’d decided to kill him. Deghan gratitude was a fickle thing.
“What’s the food situation in Mazad?” he asked, “if they’re not getting any more supplies?”
The farmer rubbed his grizzled chin. From his days as an apprentice in the city, Kavi knew the man. He recognized the mannerism as one that heralded bad news.
“Not so good, I fear,” the farmer admitted. “They’ve still got a lot of their stockpile, of course. But our shipments were never enough to feed a city that size—at best, we were only helping stretch things a bit. And now the stockpile’s beginning to run low. I heard that Commander Siddas wanted to start rationing, but the governor won’t allow it. Of course, he’s got his reasons.”
Kavi nodded. “Did they ever find out how Governor Nehar was communicating with the Hrum? Last I heard, Siddas was planning on catching him in the act, and using that to turn the better men in the garrison against him.”
“Oh, they found out,” said the farmer. “For all the good it did. Nehar ties a letter around an arrow shaft and has one of his guardsmen shoot it out into the ruins. Some spot the Hrum know to check. But it’s been impossible to catch him at it, for he only uses his own lads, the ones whose loyalty he’s sure of. And even if anyone thought to question a guardsman shooting an arrow from the walls, why, he saw something move in the ruins and thought he might be spying a Hrum attack. But no one yelled, so it was likely nothing but a rabbit or a cat, and nothing to worry about.”
Kavi’s brows rose in surprised respect. “That’s clever—simple enough it almost can’t fail.”
A flash of lightning illuminated the farmer’s grim face. “Somebody told me Garren himself came up with the notion. And no one’s ever called him stupid.”
“No,” Kavi sighed. The first thing Garren had done, in retaliation for the siege towers’ destruction, was to impose higher taxes on every village in the area. He wasn’t sure if the Hrum governor had intended it, but gathering food for Mazad had become far harder. Yet it wasn’t enough pressure to push the peasants into outright rebellion. Not quite.
“We should try now,” said the girl. She sounded more urgent than Kavi thought the situation warranted, though he was certainly wet and cold, and the Suud in their day robes were naught but lumps of sodden fabric.
“I’ll draw off the guard,” said Lakka, speaking Suud now that clarity was important. He knew Kavi understood the language better than he spoke it. Although that wasn’t saying much.
“Are you sure?” the girl asked in the same tongue. “This isn’t the shapulu you’re used to.”
“Terrain”? Kavi wondered. “Environment”? But Lakka’s hooded face had turned toward him for permission.
Kavi looked toward the Hrum sentry. He still held his shield at his side, with one hand on his sword hilt—the approved Hrum sentry pose—but his shoulders were hunched against the rain, and the pelting drops had to be making it noisy inside that helmet.
“Go,” said Kavi. “But take care.”
Even in the shadow of the hood, Kavi could see Lakka’s confident grin. The man crawled off through the underbrush without making any sound that could be heard over the patter of rain, and the farmer’s eyes widened.
The girl grinned. “Watch this. The Suud are the best—”
The lightning wasn’t close this time, but it silenced her, and even after the thunder finished grumbling she said nothing.
In that silence, Kavi heard the swift drumming of a grouse’s mating dance. In the rain? He looked over and met the girl’s eyes. She was smiling a fierce, deghass sort of smile.
The sentry’s head had turned toward the sound. Kavi could almost hear him thinking, In the rain?
The drumming stopped.
The sentry shrugged and settled back.
The drumming began again, this time a bit farther from the road. It stopped, then started again. And again.
The sentry was cold, wet, and bored. He went to investigate.
The next time the drumming sounded, it was even farther off. The Hrum sentry followed it around the side of the hill and out of sight.
“The hatch is in a shallow ravine,” Kavi told the girl swiftly. “Just behind that big clump of bushes back there. You and Lupsh and Orop first.”
The girl blinked. “You’re not coming?”
“I’ll come last,” said Kavi. “Now go!”
Lupsh and Orop started up, but the girl reached out and caught their arms. “Wait,” she commanded.
Kavi scowled. She seemed to be listening, but he couldn’t hear—
Lightning filled the road with lurid light, and thunder pealed.
“Now!” She spoke in Suud, and the three of them darted onto the road and across. Soon they were making their way into the bushes on the other side. They made no sound Kavi could hear, but he did hear the drumming of a grouse in the distance.
The farmer’s jaw had dropped. “How did she know …?”
Kavi had sworn to keep the Suud’s magic a secret, and in truth he had no idea how she’d known when the lightning would strike—storms were no part of his sweet gift. “The Suud are more attuned to nature than we are. They can detect signs that we don’t know about.”
Of course, the lady Soraya wasn’t a Suud …
“Humph,” said the farmer. “Well, that lad who’s playing the bird is certainly good. But he won’t be able to pull that sentry off too far—he’s supposed to be watching this stretch of road. And if he hears anything back here …”
“That’s why I’m going last,” Kavi told him. “Compared to the rest of them, I sound like an ox in rut. Adalk, Rosu, Marib—go!”
Despite the wet fabric clinging to their legs, the Suud moved over the road like ghosts, fading into the bushes on the other side.
Only Kavi, Daralk, and Lakka were left to cross. Kavi thought Lakka could manage on his own—in fact he could probably manage better on his own.
Kavi grinned at Daralk. “Come on, then.”
He let Daralk precede him down the leaf-strewn, slippery hillside and onto the muddy track. Kavi was just weighing the merits of a quick dash against the need for silence when Daralk, who was already halfway across, spun and hurried back, grabbing Kavi’s arm and hauling him up the hill.
Kavi opened his mouth to ask why, but then shut it again since the answer was obvious—Daralk must have seen someone on the road, and Kavi had a fair guess as to whom. They barely made it back to the hollow where the farmer lay before the sentry appeared, picking his way over the muddy surface. It was a good thing his attention was on his feet.
Kavi sank down beside the farmer.
“Bad luck, lad,” the man murmured.
The sentry resumed his post, and a few moments later Lakka crawled up beside them.
“Hrum not follow bird again,” he said. “Other Hrum see him—say bad bad. Other noise make him …” He hissed in exasperation as his vocabulary failed.
“Suspicious,” Kavi supplied. “And you’re right about that. But tell me”—he turned to the farmer—“how many guards are posted behind these lads?”
“None. Not till you get near the Hrum’s siege camp,” said the farmer promptly.
“So if we could move down the road and get ourselves past another of the guards, we could make our way back to the hatch?”
The man took a moment to consider. “You could,” he finally answered. “Without too much trouble, either. But if some officer just told one of them off for leaving his post, it’ll take more than bird sounds to lure the others away.”
“That’s all right,” said Kavi. “I’ve an idea. At least … do the wild ducks still settle in that slow bit of water near the river bend?”
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a garland of flowers, but at this time of year a garland of juniper was the best he could do. It was prickly, too, but Kavi managed to twine some thin twigs into a rough circlet. He pulled Duckie’s long ears through it and settled the garland on the mule’s head. Duckie, who sometimes received the same treatment from giggling village girls, gave Kavi a disgusted look but made no other protest.
“It needs to be brighter,” said Kavi. “This won’t be getting their attention.”
“I thought you wanted me to board her,” said the farmer. “In fact, you’ve already paid me for it.”
“Don’t understand,” said Lakka. “Mule likes ducks?”
“I do want you boarding her,” Kavi told the farmer. “I can get the Hrum chasing after her, but if you claim her as your own, they won’t be trying to keep her. Especially if—ah, that’s the thing!”
“Mule likes ducks?” Daralk asked, laughter shaking his voice.
“That she does, lad,” the farmer replied. “And they like her, too. Several men were selling her, once they found they couldn’t keep her out of the duck ponds, nor use her for any work without half a dozen of the beasts waddling after her, quacking—and pecking, too. She was on her fifth owner, who claimed he was developing a taste for mule meat, before Kavi took her on.”
“Got her cheap because of it,” said Kavi, digging busily through the pack where he kept ladies’ goods. “Not that it hasn’t given me trouble as well.” The ribbons’ cheap dye might run in the rain, but that wouldn’t matter much, and the wet wouldn’t harm the brass foals in the least, if he could only find … “Here they are!”
He held up the sack of foals some foolish woman had pierced to string for bangles. She’d been astonished when no one would accept them as money anymore. Kavi had taken them in trade, planning to melt them down for the metal, but he’d never gotten around to it. They were still bright, though, and there were lots of them.
“Here.” He handed some ribbons to the Suud. “Tie the coins a bit apart, like this. And you,” he added to the farmer, “can offer the Hrum the money if they’ll help you get her out of the water. It might even save you a bit of wet.” He took some of the shorter bits of ribbon and started tying coins into the garland on Duckie’s head. It certainly looked odd.
“I’m already wet,” said the farmer. But he went to work helping the Suud, and the four of them soon had Duckie’s harness draped in a web of bright ribbons. Duckie snorted and shook herself, and the coins clattered.
“Now what?” the farmer asked, over the Suud’s quiet hilarity.
“Now for the final touch,” said Kavi. A sharp knife sliced a hole in the seam of one of the bags hanging from Duckie’s pack. He took out his purse, removed all the silver mares from the pile of smaller coins, and put them in his pocket. There weren’t many, he was sorry to see. The brass went into the bag, and Kavi shook it down to the bottom.
“Hmm.” He made the hole a bit bigger, and several coins fell out. “I suppose that’s as close as it’s going to get.”
“You really think that will pull Hrum sentries out of position?” the farmer asked skeptically. “They’d get in more trouble than any brass is worth, if they were caught.”
“Which is why they’ll never be admitting it happened,” Kavi replied, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded. “The Hrum are human, and there’s no man or woman born that won’t be picking up money if it falls at their feet. All we have to do is get Duckie onto the road. And the Wheel must be turning for us, for the wind is coming from the right direction.”
That Duckie would follow
the scent of ducks was as certain as rain being wet. They had to maneuver behind the low hills to approach the road without being seen, but even before they reached it, Duckie stopped suddenly, sniffing and sniffing. She drew in a breath, and Kavi reached for her nose, then changed his mind. The Hrum would be seeing a mule soon enough—no harm in their hearing one.
“Hee haw, hee haw!”
The farmer winced. “Loud, isn’t she?”
Kavi unfastened the lead rope from Duckie’s halter. He didn’t need to swat her rump, for the minute she was free Duckie trotted toward the road—the shortest route toward the scent of her favorite companions.
“Come.” Lakka gestured to the hill beside them. “Come look.” He added a sentence in Suud that Kavi didn’t catch, though he thought it equated to, “This I’ve got to see!”
With the Suud leading they climbed up the muddy hillside, reaching the top in time to see Duckie approach the new Hrum sentry. The man had drawn his sword, and Kavi suffered a moment of horrible doubt. He had meant Duckie to look strange, not threatening, but in the poor visibility of the storm …
Lightning flashed, so near that the thunder struck like a blow and the coins on Duckie’s barding lit up like candles.
“Holy Mikkrah!” the Hrum exclaimed.
Duckie had shied at the thunderclap, but once the nasty sound was gone, she continued on her way. She belonged to a peddler who sold knives—a bared blade in a man’s hand held no terrors for her. She trotted within feet of the sentry, ears pricked in singleminded determination.
The Hrum simply stared as she went past, turning to watch her go. Kavi held his breath—at this distance he couldn’t see the pouch. Had all the coins already fallen out? Was the hole still too small? Duckie was almost around the next bend before the sentry squinted, then stepped forward and picked something small out of the mud. He hesitated for a moment, looking up and down the road, then sheathed his sword and followed.
