by Micah Yongo
“Anyone would think you a scribe,” Neythan said.
Caleb didn’t answer.
Neythan was about to pry further when he heard the distant whinny of a horse. He went to the small doorway at the front of the building and saw a band of men approaching from the east.
“We’re not alone.”
Caleb came to the doorway and peered out to see. He stared for a long while, then grunted, took off his sack, and dumped it on the ground before pulling Neythan’s crossbow out. Neythan stared at the bow, then Caleb.
“That’s my bow.”
Caleb glanced down at it in his hands. “So it is.”
“All this time you’ve had my crossbow?”
“Where else did you think it’d be?”
“I thought it lost at the fall, when you took me.”
“Well. Think of it as payment in kind, till the bargain is up.”
“You’ve been stowing my bow this whole time and all–”
Caleb put his finger to his lips and pointed at the doorway and the approaching strangers, smiling.
Neythan glared back, then turned to the door and drew his blade.
There were four of them – three men and a woman – each dressed in long robes, all on muleback, save the leader who rode a horse. Neythan watched them as they neared, their mules loping across the dry plain with their tongues out, great long heads nodding as if in time to a rhythm only they could hear.
The woman was old; a Súnamite with dark ebony skin so cracked and sunbaked it resembled charred timber. She rode in the middle behind the leader, her head hung like a starved plant’s. The man at the front wore a pale and dirty turban. Stubbled narrow jaw. Wide shoulders. A sword’s sheath low-slung on his right thigh. A second man rode by the old woman. Heavy-set. Thick beard. Broad back. His legs dangling either side of his mule like tassels, his gut keeping him stiff and upright in the saddle. He talked and japed with the rider at the rear, a young man Neythan’s age, gangly with a long neck that made his head loll in step with his mule’s.
“Bandits, likely,” Caleb whispered as he crouched at Neythan’s elbow with the bow. “Makes sense for them to use this pass. Unlikely they’d see men or anything else for at least a day’s journey in either direction.”
The turbaned leader climbed from his horse in front of the ruins. He untied a gourd from his saddle and slowly eyed the grounds before murmuring something to the man behind him and pointing toward the broken houses. Then the man opened the gourd and lifted it to his lips. Neythan saw the woman’s eyes flicker to life, gazing at the drinking man as he poured the water down his throat.
“Captive,” Caleb whispered.
Neythan nodded, a common enough thing. Tutor Hamir had taught them of how bandits would wait on known trade routes, especially here in the north where there were fewer roads. It made it easier to guess the way a bounty might take. In the riverlands of Sumeria further south there was Qareb, Hanesda, Qadesh – each of them large market towns, which meant more merchants, more roads, and more cityguards and soldiers to watch them. Trickier work if you wanted to rob a man as he travelled, which was why bandits preferred to raid in the north.
The turbaned man wiped his mouth and stowed the flask, slipping it back among his provisions on the saddle. He smiled at the old woman, who slumped as he put it away. The man gestured again at his companions impatiently. They began to slowly climb down from their mounts. The old woman leaned forward on her beast. She looked exhausted. Neythan looked at her and decided.
“We need a horse,” he said.
Caleb glanced up at him from the shadows. That they were backed into a house with one exit would make it hard to surprise the men. That they were both weakened, having walked with little rest for three days and eaten sparingly, would make it even harder.
“Whatever you may be thinking, Neythan, you would do well to forget it. The odds do not favour us. Look. The day is not far gone. With luck they will do no more than look around then continue on their way. If we can go without disturbing them then let us try.”
“Give me the crossbow.”
Caleb hesitated, but something about the way Neythan said it – so calm, and firm – made him obey. He handed the bow to him. Neythan put his sword in its sleeve and took it. He checked the stock and selected two quarrels, fixing one snug in the groove against the whipcord and the other beside it in the spine. Caleb watched him, saw the cold stillness in his gaze as he stared out at the bandits.
Outside, the men had begun to move about the ruined plot, looking around. Neythan looked out of the doorway again and saw the broad bearded one entering the house on the far side, chatting bawdily with the lanky youngster as he went in. Neythan would have liked an arrow in the leader first. He had the horse. He’d have the choice to flee, and had the look of one able to fight. But from this angle Neythan could no longer see him.
Neythan stepped out from the small doorway and looked around. There was only the old woman on the mule, head stooped and back hunched. Her gaze rolled up from beneath her headscarf to see him. Neythan nodded. The woman said nothing, as silent as the two mountless mules beside her. Neythan moved along the wall toward the gap between the houses, and then on to the low doorway of the adjacent house. The wind picked up, rolling grit from the ashy stone slope, rattling drily against the slagstone.
Neythan guarded his eyes as he reached the doorway and crouched to peek in. Daylight streamed in through the battered roof. He went inside. He checked the corners, his feet crunching on the dislodged grit from the crumbled ceiling. No one here. The big man let loose a loud belch outside to the sound of laughter. Neythan looked through the window at the back of the house. Still no leader, only the barren, slate-coloured landscape rising up on the other side. He went back to the doorway to check the next house.
Outside, the youngster was shouting at the old woman. He’d pulled her from the mule. She lay on her ribs, groaning, her wrists still bound as the youngster muttered insults before wandering away to the far corner of the plot to urinate. Neythan stepped out and moved to the last house as the boy stood with his back to him, showering the ground. Neythan stayed close to the wall, creeping in its shadow with the crossbow cradled low.
The big man came out yawning before Neythan reached it, a sop of dry bread in one hand, his other lazily scratching his gut as he squinted east to where the boy stood. He stretched and looked idly back along the wall away from the boy and toward Neythan. Saw him approaching in the wall’s shadow and froze. He saw the crossbow in Neythan’s hand; then, the bread dropping from his mouth, he reached clumsily to his waist for his sword.
Neythan quickly stepped away from the wall and shot the man through his beard. The arrow pierced his throat and lodged there like a signpost.
The boy turned at the man’s grunt and yelped. Still moving, Neythan skipped forward and swung the crossbow, pounding the bearded man’s skull and then turning to the boy as the arrowed man crumpled to the ground, reaching feebly for the shaft in his neck as his shawl filled blood-red. Neythan thumbed the next arrow into place and moved to sight the boy.
Whisper of wind at his ear.
Neythan left off from his aim, dropping the crossbow, and turned abruptly to duck away.
The sword of the turbaned leader crashed from behind through the emptied space as he tried to plough through Neythan’s shoulder from overhead. He was turning to swing again but Neythan had already unsheathed his blade. Was already pivoting, allowing his momentum to carry through into his backswinging arm and sword. The blade swung through the turbaned man’s neck, separating his head from his shoulders in one savage swipe.
The dislodged head fell and rolled, coming to a stop between Neythan and the boy as the turban unravelled like a loose ball of thread.
Neythan remained still for a moment at the end of his follow-through, sword outstretched. He watched Caleb tentatively step out from the temple entrance and then turned to survey the carnage. The thick, bearded man lay slumped against the wall
, his hand loosely clasped about the shaft in his throat as he wheezed and spluttered.
Neythan looked down at him without expression.
Then he turned his gaze to the headless body at his feet and the blood pulsing from it, puddling against the wall. The boy was still standing toward the edge of the plot, eyes wild and wide, fixed on Neythan. Neythan just looked at him. It was strange really, fascinating even, how other he was in that boy’s gaze, how alien, though they were more or less the same age.
The boy panted, his breaths snatched and jittery, like an injured bird. He was still holding his member in one hand from urinating. His legs gave out as Neythan sheathed his sword and turned to walk toward him. Then, when he saw Neythan collect the crossbow from the ground, he began to scramble backward on his hands and feet, pleading, whimpering, begging for his life to be spared. Neythan aimed the bow and shot him in the chest from no more than a few feet. He stood and watched the boy bleed and grow still before turning back to the plot to face Caleb.
“Perhaps some warning in future?” Caleb said quietly as he approached, looking over the thick man with the arrow in his throat against the wall. The man was still now, no longer breathing. “Only I like to be somewhat ready when about to witness a bloodbath. Easier on the bowels.”
Neythan walked to the beasts and took the bearded man’s flask. Then he went to the old woman and squatted where she lay on the ground. He undid her bonds and handed her the flask and rose and returned to the beasts. He began removing the supplies hung over the mule-saddles but then, remembering, looked about for the leader’s horse. He saw it idling at the corner of the front house. He threw the satchel he’d been rummaging through at Caleb.
“Only the necessities,” he said. “We cannot take too much, we must make good time.”
Caleb checked the satchel as the old woman, still on the floor, drank from the flask and watched Neythan. He approached the lone horse, talking to it softly. He stroked its long muzzle and rubbed the throatlatch. Its broad wet nostrils flared and snorted nervously as it eyed him, wary of this bloodspeckled stranger. Neythan patted its neck gently and led it toward the three mules and checked its saddlebags.
“A strange one,” the old woman said weakly, but she said no more before closing her eyes to rest on the ground.
Neythan looked at her, and then at Caleb, who eyed him back for a moment but then looked away. Overhead, a lone vulture called, marking the meal to come.
Neythan stood there in the quiet, pondering the old woman’s words, and then other things too: the way Arianna had looked back at him through the rain from her horse that night in Godswell. The way the room had smelt when Neythan awoke to find Yannick’s blood splattered across the walls and floor. Caleb’s cave. The Watcher’s sayings. All of it was so unreal, as shapeless as the outhouse doors before him. He looked at them now and the ruined buildings they invited entry to, these grey neighbourless structures built by men who’d long since turned to dust. And he wondered at what they’d known or not known about the world and whether they’d ever too felt as he did now. Then he turned back to the sacks and bags at the horse’s saddle and continued to rummage, still thinking of those nameless builders. Wanderers, Caleb had called them. Men without country.
Twelve
S E E R
In the end, they decided to stay the night and make use of the shelter. Caleb was coughing like a toad and the old woman was in no ready state to travel. Caleb had agreed, though reluctantly, to allow her to stay with them until they reached the townships further east. They’d let her keep the mule she’d ridden on, sell one of the others, and use the remaining beasts to journey south toward the crown city. Which seemed reasonable to Neythan. He was tired anyway, fatigued by lack of food and the work of moving the bandits’ bodies.
He sat propped up against the ancient wall of the ruin, staring at the sky as he breathed in the smell of the bandits’ blood. Strangely comforting, the familiarity of it. Like a memory of home, because that was precisely what it was. He could still remember how, as a child, they’d make him and the other disciples gut goats and pigs to accustom them to the scent, the blood and offal mingling together until it finally became like nature to them. Like dawn and dusk and clouds and sun. Which was confusing, because a life is something more, isn’t it? That’s what Uncle Sol would say. Neythan missed him now more than ever, the way he’d sit with him, all calm and still but with an answer for everything, answers that were usually questions. Or stories. The old man was forever telling stories. When Neythan was a child even his reprimands came in narrative form, fables that would sketch and then admonish whatever behaviour he’d been found out for. That gently thrumming voice chiding and enthralling him at the same time so that Uncle Sol never had to shout or order or scold, the stories alone always enough. In Ilysia they called it a talent of his blood. Sol was a Súnamite after all, and tales and storytelling were common to their ways, almost a kind of language to them. But that was before Sol began to share the things he saw in his meditations, and the Shedaím decided the things he said shouldn’t be told.
“What troubles you?”
Neythan was still watching the clouds overhead, the way their undersides reflected the sun as it lowered toward the horizon beneath. A buzzard glided still-winged across it all despite the hour, one slow black arrow moving over the shining amber dusk. He dropped his gaze to find the rheumy grey eyes of the old woman peering at him.
“Sorry?”
“What troubles you?” she repeated.
Neythan just looked at her as he sat there on the ground against the gravelled wall of the outhouse. Caleb had busied himself with fettering the horse and mules whilst Neythan remained propped against this ancient wall resting from the work of moving the bodies, thinking, of nothing, of everything.
“What makes you think I am troubled?”
“The question on your face,” the woman said. Her voice was deep and dusty. “You are carrying something within you. Like… a knot, inside, tight… you did not know how to loose it… yet now you have found… a direction, a way to what you seek… yet you are troubled… What troubles you?”
Neythan looked her over; the dark leathery skin, the deep long wrinkles. Black freckles lay either side of her wide flat nose where lines stretched from broad nostrils to her thick rubbery lips.
“Who are you?”
“A question with a question,” the woman said wonderingly. “And twice too…” She tilted her head and smiled. “You shun the answer… But why? What troubles you?”
“Well, the beasts are secure,” Caleb said, ambling over from the far house. “Though it’s true what’s often said of mules, stubborn as a maid’s mother, and too picky it would seem to abide the company of a horse, lest they offend their delicate tastes. We’ll sell the worst of them when we reach a village. The takings along with these spoils will see us the rest of the way south. Especially the blankets and…” He trailed off, observing Neythan’s distracted gaze. He followed it to the old woman. “Ah. So you are awake at last.”
But the woman didn’t answer, her gaze fixed on Neythan.
Caleb looked back to Neythan, who was still staring at the woman. “I am interrupting?”
“No.” Neythan slowly peeled his gaze away from her. “No. You are not.”
Caleb nodded and glanced between the pair. No one spoke.
“It’s good to see your mood has finally lightened,” Neythan said to break the silence.
“My mood?”
“Since this morning… Well, in truth, since the forest.”
“Ah, that’s right. My mood. Such a strange thing, isn’t it. Nothing to do with the fact you nearly had us killed in that forest, of course.”
“So you say, yet tell nothing of how.”
“Why should I? You’re not exactly the kind to listen, are you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Supposed? There is no supposed about it. You couldn’t be less heedful if you tried.” Caleb’s
head wagged as he tugged a blanket free from the pile of belongings they’d gathered from the bandits. “I mean, after all that waiting and peril you put me through whilst you slept blissful as a baby in that forest, you awake only to say, ‘Hanesda.’” He paused, looking up at Neythan. “Hanesda.” Then he continued his rummage through the spoils for another blanket. “That was the best you could do? The sum wisdom you were able to glean from such an encounter? I mean, you spoke with a Watch–” He stopped and glanced at the old woman, then back to Neythan. “You ought to have learnt far more,” he added quietly. “Far, far more.” He shook his head again as he spread the blankets to sit.
“You should not speak so fiercely,” the old woman said.
“Oh?” Caleb cocked an eyebrow. “Is that so?” He looked at Neythan, then back to the woman. “You are his defender, then,” he said. “Well, perhaps it is to be expected for the modest price of a gourd of water and the death of a few captors. Time was mere thanks would suffice. But no, not so any longer, I see.”
“I speak for the sake of the dead. We sit on a grave. You see the markings there on the wall.”
Neythan and Caleb turned to find thin scratched etchings marking the cornerstone of the middle house.
“The line across, it tells that this place is a grave. The plumblines tell of how many rest here. There are four.”
“Why would men build houses to bury the dead?” Neythan asked.
“They are storehouses,” the woman said. “They were built long ago, when the winters were harsher. Longer. Men made these shelters so they would not perish on the way if they journeyed in that season. Like a well in a desert. Although,” she nodded at the markings on the cornerstone, “sometimes men still perished.”
“Storehouses, you say,” Caleb said.
The old woman nodded.
“Not a temple.”
“No.”
Caleb frowned.
Neythan smiled.
“How do you know this?” Caleb said. “It is not a common thing to know.”
