by Greg Keyes
Perkar sat gazing at the fire, knowing he should feel elated, wondering why he did not. He felt weary—unbelievably weary, considering that he had only been awake for half a day at best—and yet the thought of sleep unaccountably sickened him.
“They say there is a man at this fire in need of some wine,” a soft voice asserted from just behind him. It was Raincaster, returned from rubbing down the horses for the night. Yuu’han was only a score of steps behind him, bearing a wineskin.
“I should have helped you with the horses,” Perkar murmured. “I feel well enough.”
“You don’t look well enough,” Raincaster said. “And it insults a horse to treat her halfheartedly.”
“I would not have been half—”
“Raincaster meant no insult,” Yuu’han intervened. “You are not as strong yet as you would like to think, that is all. Have some wine.” He proffered the skin.
Perkar sighed. “Very well. I’m sorry, Raincaster.”
Raincaster wiped his forehead, a Mang gesture that dismissed all blame. “You have been fighting for your life against demons,” he reminded everyone. “No reason to think such an experience would sweeten your mood.”
Perkar returned the smile, though he did not feel like doing so. He liked Raincaster. He liked Yuu’han, as well, but with Yuu’han there was always the sense that his cordiality to Perkar arose out of duty—duty to Brother Horse and the responsibilities of hospitality. Raincaster seemed to genuinely like him—and to have an interest in the ways of the Cattle People. “Perhaps I do need some wine,” he said, by way of further, though indirect, apology. Perkar accepted the proffered skin, tilting it back and catching a mouthful of its contents—though with some misgivings. He quickly discovered his misgivings were justified; the wine was kbena, a strong drink made from some sort of desert plant, sweet and tainted by an unpleasant aftertaste that reminded Perkar of rotten pears. It was certainly nothing at all like woti, the prized drink of warriors in his home country—save that it did warm his belly. He also knew from experience that the first mouthful was the worst, and so quickly swallowed another before passing the skin on to Raincaster. The three of them drank in silence for a while, watching the Fire Goddess consume withered juniper scraps. The night sky lay heavy above, revealing no light.
Perkar quickly realized that he did not want to get drunk any more than he wanted to sleep. The fifth time the skin came around, he shook his head and passed it on. Yuu’han shrugged and took a long draft.
The wine stirred something in Perkar, something he might ordinarily not have brought up.
“I know it was hard for you,” he mumbled, addressing both of the Mang.
Yuu’han nodded, understanding him and already accepting the implied thanks, but Raincaster’s expression demanded that Perkar express himself more fully.
“To leave your kin to help us. With the war and everything.” Even a mere five drinks of the potent kbena was enough to thicken his tongue and make him feel more stupid than usual. He wished for eloquence rather than the gruff, clumsy, apologetic statement he had just uttered—but, as usual, it was too late to correct.
Raincaster shrugged, apprehending the spirit of the comment. “Our uncle is right, and the others are wrong. Anyway, I’ve never cared much for those Four Spruces People. They’ve always had delusions of grandeur.”
Yuu’han’s somewhat bleak expression softened at that. “Remember Mane Gatherer?” he said.
“I’ve heard the story,” Raincaster replied.
“I haven’t.”
“Mane Gatherer told us the sun had spoken to him. He wanted us all to band up behind him and invade the Southlands—conquer Nhol, the Fisherfolk, the whole world, he said.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.” Yuu’han gulped down another mouthful. “He said it was the destiny of the Mang to rule the cities.”
“What happened?”
Yuu’han cracked a cryptic grin. “You’ve seen a city. Would you want to try to rule one?”
Perkar stared at the two Mang for only an instant, considering, before swearing, “No. By the gods, no.”
Raincaster clapped his cousin on the shoulder. “Our reaction exactly,” he proclaimed.
Not much later, Yuu’han took the watch and Raincaster retired. Two tents had been erected: one for Tsem, Brother Horse, Heen, and Hezhi, the second for the two younger Mang, Ngangata, and Perkar. Perkar sought his blanket near Raincaster, after making Yuu’han promise that Raincaster—who had the next watch—would wake him for the last, or dawn, quarter. He could tell by Yuu’han’s answer that he would not be trusted to stand watch, not in his present condition.
He lay awake long, unable to understand what was growing in him, gnawing at him. He dozed fitfully once and awoke sweating, heart pounding. Raincaster was gone, Yuu’han in his place. Ngangata was curled in his blanket, snoring faintly. The brief nap had not rested Perkar in the least, but it had tightened something in his mind, so that he knew what dark disquiet had replaced the demon Hezhi and Brother Horse had driven from him. It gathered itself together and shouted him its name.
Fear.
A mere spark before, it had caught in him now and burned furiously. In the past year, he had seen more bloodshed than he dreamed possible. He had murdered and fought fairly. More to the point, he had been disemboweled, been lanced through the throat, and stabbed numerous times—once through the heart. He still dreamed of each of those wounds; the pain of each was written clearly on his body and in his mind. When he thought about it much, it revolted him. Despite all of that, still he had developed the illusion that he was invulnerable, unstoppable, because keeping grasp of that belief was the only thing that kept all of his terrors at bay. When he was a child lying in ted with the terrible nighttime understanding that death would claim him one day, he had faced that by pushing it away, insisting that it was many, many years before he would have to face such an unfair reality. The child in him had used Harka to do that again, to place death in a far-off place and time he need not think about.
But now he had experienced the pain of death several times over and no small taste of her oblivion. He owed his beating heart to Harka, but now he understood that even Harka could not protect him. Not against Karak, who had brushed him aside as if he were a child—not against Chuuzek, either, who had flicked him almost casually from his saddle.
He did not consciously remember the past several days, but something in him did. He felt as if he had been lying in a grave with spiders crawling in and out of his mouth, with worms chewing at his eyes. A simple warrior—a boy—was not fit to deal with such things. He was in a struggle meant for shamans, wizards, and godlings. Useless, even if he had his heart, whole and full of bravery, but his heart was not whole; it was deeply scarred, and not just metaphorically. Now … Now what he wanted most to do was ride away, leave Hezhi and Ngangata and all of his responsibilities, and hide—hide from gods, from wars, from the sky itself.
Hezhi awoke with the dawn. Ngangata was cursing and saddling his horse, as were all three Mang.
“Stupid. I should have watched him. We should never … whose watch was it?”
“Mine,” Raincaster answered, voice carefully neutral. “He said that he was going back a bit, to see where our pursuit was when the sun rose.”
“I’m sure,” Ngangata snarled. Hezhi sat up, fully alarmed now.
“What’s happening?”
“Perkar,” Tsem told her. “He’s gone.”
XXII
The Dreamsnare
Ghe felt a flash of pain and smelled life leaking into the air. He turned, puzzled, to see that one of the soldiers had thrust an arrow into his own eye and was working it deeper even as Ghe watched.
No. He had been shot in the eye and was merely grasping at the shaft as he died. Even as Ghe realized that, two more soldiers swore at arrows sprouting in the deck next to them.
The mist had hidden them, but now Ghe could see a half-dozen canoes ranged upstream on the River. All
were converging on the barge furiously, each paddled by ten or fifteen barbarians.
The soldiers knew their jobs and did not remain surprised for more than an instant or two. Within heartbeats, twenty of them were at the bow, a wall of spears and swords, bows twanging behind them. Three men loaded and cranked the catapult. Ghe was just wondering what he should do when his better-than-Human ears detected a clamor aft. Grimly he raced toward the rear of the boat, springing up upon the cabin roofs and crossing them in great strides.
A boatload of the barbarians swarmed over the brass railing onto the afterdeck; three Nholish soldiers lay beneath their feet, pumping red life onto the planks. Other than barbarians and dead men, there was none to witness Ghe snarl and leap from the roof; two of the invaders managed to shoot him before he was amongst them, but neither shaft gave him pause. He was a panther among dogs.
The trip up-River had lulled them all. The people in the villages nearest Nhol had been coolly cooperative when they docked for supplies, but the farther away they voyaged from the great city, the more eager were people to see them. At Wun, the governor had thrown them a magnificent banquet, and though Bone Eel seemed bored by it—it was perhaps not sufficient for his jaded standards—Ghe thought it a grand show of hospitality, as did the soldiers. That had been a day ago. The governor had warned them that the Dehshe tribes on the east bank of the River were troublesome, but Ghe had gathered that most real attacks were on the outposts farther south and east.
But here they were. The impact of his body hurled several of them back, and then he was amongst them, carving at their hearts and lungs with the icicle point of his knife. He used the blade for two reasons. The first was that the soldiers on board the ship did not know his nature, and he did not want them to know. Let them think him a superb fighter—which, in fact, he was and could easily demonstrate. A more salient justification was that he enjoyed the feel of his blade in flesh, the exquisite geometry of cut-and-thrust, and though he could draw their lives from them more easily than he could stab them to death, the latter gave him greater pleasure. It recalled the joy of learning the ways of the Jik, and with that memory came a vague inkling of why he had ever been loyal to the priesthood, though they were so clearly monstrous. They gave him a thing of beauty; the discipline to kill with elegance, with art.
Of course, he did have the unfair advantage of already being dead. His wounds closed almost as quickly as his enemies made them, for this near the River, the flow of energy through his body was continuous.
He shattered an instep with a staccato stamp of his foot, plunged his blade through the gaping mouth of the ankle’s owner, spun to parry—again, more for pleasure than anything else—a descending blade.
A flash of metal from his blind spot, and suddenly steel bit into his neck. His neck.
Ghe’s shriek turned gurgle as his head flopped onto one shoulder. The blade had cut almost halfway through. He felt, rather than saw, the enemy arm cock back for a second blow.
Ghe blew the rest of the barbarians out like candles, reaching frantically for his head. It was already straightening, a weird, familiar tingling setting in. Ghe bit down on another shriek when the halves of his windpipe knitted back; then he nearly collapsed in a fit of trembling. He saw again the face of Hezhi’s white barbarian, the demon, cleaving his head off, his life, his remembrance, blowing away on dark winds. Sagging against the rail, he shook like an ancient, palsied man.
And then his heart exploded. It was more reflex and gravity than design that toppled him from the barge and into the furrow of water behind it. Li, think kindly of my ghost, he thought, for the second time in two lives.
Ghan heard the sudden explosion of shouts, the twang of bows. He put his writing brush down carefully and approached the door to his cabin. He latched it. It was clear enough to him that the barge was under attack or that some sort of dispute involving most of the crew was coming to a violent resolution. He suspected the former rather than the latter. Though Bone Eel commanded no real respect from the men—he was such a fool—no one seriously questioned his station. And Qwen Shen did a fine job of seeing that he made the correct decisions, anyway, and so kept the men on his side. These were also imperial elite troops, not likely to mutiny under any circumstances—and thus far the voyage had been rather pleasant. Surprisingly so.
So they were likely being attacked, and likely by Dehshe barbarians—though also he considered that it could be the doing of the governor at Wun. The man, while affable enough on the surface, had a devious countenance when he thought no one was looking, and he seemed more than passing curious about the barge and its purpose. He had certainly not believed their stated reason for going up-River, which from the lips of Bone Eel amounted to no reason at all. What if the governor were in league with the barbarians, hoping to set Wun up as some sort of independent state? Ghan was familiar enough with the history of Nhol and other empires to understand that when an empire was weak—as Nhol was now—such things tended to happen. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that; perhaps the governor had turned pirate.
Ghan heard the clatter of a door opening and footsteps outside his door. Crouching slowly, so as to make as little sound as possible, he crouched to peer through the keyhole. He saw a figure just crossing from the sunlit hall into the shadow by the door that opened onto the narrow rear deck. That door suddenly swung wide, and a blaze of light flooded through, burned the person into a black silhouette bearing the arcing sliver of a bow in his hand. Through the door, Ghan could just make out another figure on the sunlit deck, leaning heavily against the rail. He thought it was Yen but could not be certain. The first figure raised his bow and fired. Yen—if it was Yen—tumbled over the rail.
The bowman stepped out onto the deck.
In the sunlight, Ghan could see that the man was not a barbarian or one of the governor’s troops; he was one of the emperor’s elite soldiers. Ghan had seen him several times standing watch. His scalp prickled. What was going on? He suddenly reassessed the possibility of mutiny and stepped gently back from the keyhole, realizing that he was holding his breath.
There came the sound of the outer door closing, then more footsteps, approaching his room. There they paused, and the door strained slightly against the latch.
By now Ghan was sitting on his bed. He looked up at the ceiling, an exaggerated expression of concern on his face. If the assassin looked through his keyhole, he did not want to be seen studying the door. Rather let him think him an old man, cowering until the battle was over.
Which, of course, was exactly what he was.
The footsteps went on. He heard the door to the main deck open. By then, the clamor of battle seemed to have mostly ceased. He heard soldiers barking orders, but no more frantic shouting or screams of pain.
Ghan’s hands were shaking a few moments later when he screwed up the courage to open his door. There was no one in sight, but he could hear several soldiers talking on the rear deck. They must have catwalked around the side of the cabins or across the roof; Ghan had heard much trampling up there since the fighting began.
As he opened the portal, the entrance to the outer deck swung wide, as well, and for a terrible instant, Ghan thought it was the killer. But, though it was a soldier, it was certainly not the same man.
“Are you all right?” the man asked hurriedly. “Did any of them get in here?”
“No,” Ghan replied. “Any of whom!”
“Barbarians, either Dehshe or Mang. I don’t know the difference.”
“Are they gone?”
“Yes, or dead.” The man smiled a bit wolfishly. “Took on more than they bargained for, I’d say.”
Ghan nodded absently. The soldier moved around the cabins, the rest of which were empty. Ghan followed him onto the rear deck.
“Great River, what happened back here?” the soldier muttered.
Ghan counted eleven dead men. Three were soldiers, but the rest were barbarians of some sort, dark-skinned, clad in rude leather and felts. He tho
ught that the thick, lacquered wood and leather jackets they wore were probably intended to be armor. Most of them were heavily tattooed with blue lines and circles.
“Dehshe, I think,” he told the soldier. “I’ve read that they tattoo their faces—and that the Mang don’t.”
“Well, Dehshe or Mang, they’re as dead as dogmeat,” the soldier observed unnecessarily. He rolled one over. “This one’s not even cut.” The corpse in question stared at Ghan with vast surprise and horror.
Ghan realized that he was going to be sick an instant before he actually was, and so he made it to the rail in time not to add more noisome fluids than blood to the deck. The soldier, probably embarrassed for him, left. The other three, having completed their inspection, moved on, too, leaving him mercifully alone. After he was done heaving, Ghan stayed crumpled on his knees, unwilling to turn back to the corpses, afraid that he would choke out his very stomach if he did. His chest ached from the unusual action of the muscles there, and he took deep breaths, hoping thus to soothe himself. Watching the boiling gash of wake, he tried to pretend that the whole nightmare would be over soon.
Though, of course, he knew it was just beginning.
It was as he rose to leave that he saw a hand emerge from the water and reach weakly for the barge. It clawed at the side, failed to find purchase, and fell away again. Ghan furrowed his brow; a mooring rope lay no more than an armspan from him, already knotted through an eye on deck. But was this friend or foe? As if he had any friends on this ship. Fingers showed again, grasping more weakly.
Ghan fumbled for the heavy rope. A corpse lay half upon it, and he had to shove the still-warm body aside. He pushed the coil beneath the rail, and it unspooled into the River with a muted splash. Ghan then picked up one of the fallen swords, thinking that if the man in the water were an enemy, he would merely sever the rope. He realized—too late—that the sword was so heavy, he might have real trouble doing that.
