by J. S. Bangs
“Look ahead,” he whispered.
Two shirtless men in red dhotis with spears at their sides crouched outside a building with Thikram’s spiral above the door. They gestured and spat, paying no attention to Mandhi and Taleg, but they glanced every now and then into the building.
The Red Men.
Mandhi’s heart pounded. They had seen no other imperial guards the whole trip: these had to be the ones they pursued. She looked away from the men and pretended to watch the dhorsha blessing the harvest. “They must have Navran inside,” she said quietly.
Taleg looked pained. “I don’t like our chances. We can’t just walk up and ask to buy their prisoner.”
“No, we can’t. But we can just ask the innkeeper to let us buy a room for the night.”
“And then?”
“Night will come. And with it, opportunity.”
* * *
The master of the guest-house had only one room left to offer them, but he was pleased to sell it to them along with an evening meal. The food was impure, of course, but Mandhi accepted it into their room without comment. The soldiers had taken the other room in the guest-house, and they kept the curtain over the door drawn. One man always stood guard at the door, while the other two came and went. Mandhi and Taleg took turns spying on the door. They never heard Navran’s voice or saw any concrete evidence that he was there. But he had to be.
Shortly after full dark, Taleg whispered to Mandhi, “It’ll be time, soon.”
Mandhi was lying on the bedroom floor, attempting fitfully to sleep while Taleg watched the guard across the hall through a hair’s-width crack in the curtain. In a moment she was fully awake and crossed the room to him. “What?”
“They changed their guard. The old one has gone into the chamber to sleep. The one at the door is the only one still awake.”
“Give them a few more minutes. Then we’ll go.”
Taleg grabbed his staff. “We go with the quiet plan first?”
“Yes.” Mandhi counted the coins in her purse and slipped out a handful. They might still have enough to get back to Jaitha. And if they didn’t succeed, there was no point in returning to Jaitha.
When the sounds of breathing from the other chamber were completely still, Mandhi nodded, and they both crept out the door into the narrow corridor between the chambers. The soldier standing watch looked at them with eyes narrowed, and they tensed as Mandhi approached him.
“I make you an offer,” Mandhi said.
The man put his hand on his sword. “What is this? An offer for what?”
“Your prisoner.”
“How do you know we have a prisoner?”
“Please. I’m not a fool. I see what you’re doing in your chamber there.”
“And what’s your interest in him?”
“Does it matter?” She opened her fist and showed him the gleaming metal within. “He’ll just slip away in the night.”
“My comrades will kill me.”
“Split it with them. This is more than enough to be worth the trouble for all three of you.”
The man laughed. “You have no idea what the trouble would be if I let him go.” And he opened his mouth and bellowed, “Alarm!”
Taleg rushed forward swiping his staff, but the man’s sword was out in an instant and parried the blow. He thrust the point towards Taleg, who leapt back, but just as quickly brought the flat edge of the sword around and smacked Mandhi in the cheek. The dim corridor splintered into stars.
She staggered back and slumped against the wall. Her vision tilted and blurred. The grunts and clangs of Taleg’s blow and parry with the guard thundered above her. The lamplight brightened. The curtain into the soldiers’ room was thrown aside and the other two appeared with their swords in hand. She put her hand to her cheek and felt blood.
Get up, Mandhi. Taleg can’t take all three of them alone.
She lurched forward and grabbed the ankle of one of the men as he rushed towards Taleg. The man fell, his sword clattered to the ground, and the man crowded next to him stumbled. With a groan he looked back and swiped at Mandhi, but the blade passed harmlessly over her head. She ducked and crawled back. Taleg’s stave smacked against steel and bone at the far end of the hallway. The soldier looming over her thrust the blade at her again. She put her hands over her head and screamed. Let them see that she was a woman and leave her alone. She had given Taleg a moment; hopefully it was all he needed.
Shouts and crashing metal sounded in the hallway. There were more voices now. The innkeeper. The grunts of the soldiers. Someone shouted curses. Metal crashed against metal. Wood splintered and ceramic shattered in the dining room at the end of the hall. Someone screamed and fell. Taleg.
Mandhi opened her eyes. The hallway flickered with ghastly lamplight. Indistinct bodies glittering with steel clashed in the gloom at the end of the hall. “Taleg!” she screamed. She pushed into the crush of bodies. There he was, face-down on the remnants of the table, blood spreading underneath him. She reached his side, grabbed his kurta and heaved. Not enough. Why did he have to be so heavy? She hooked an arm under his limp bicep and lifted again. Fighting men jostled around her. Someone tripped over her feet. Curses and shouts echoed on every side.
If Taleg has fallen, who is fighting?
She slipped her other hand under his torso and grunted trying to raise him onto his side, but to no avail. He was half a yard taller than her and heavy as a boulder, and for the first time she regretted it.
Behind her, fabric tore and voices receded into the night. A breath of silence filled the room.
A broad-nosed, muscular man appeared next to her. “Let me help you,” he said. Before she could respond, he put his shoulder to Taleg’s limp torso, and with a groan rolled him onto his back.
Mandhi shrieked and put her hand over her mouth. His kurta was torn and bloody. A narrow, deep gash pierced his belly, gushing blood the color of pitch in the lamplight.
“He lives,” the man said. “We can save him.” He tore the kurta and stuffed the strips into the wound. “Bring me water and salt from the packs,” he shouted to someone nearby.
Mandhi looked up. There were three other men in the room with unsheathed swords, wearing grimaces and sweat from the battle. One of them immediately left through the front door of the guest-house. The other two moved to the periphery of the room keeping watchful eyes on the windows and the entrance.
“Who are you?” Mandhi asked. “What are you doing here?”
“My name is Bhargasa. We belong to the guard of Davrakhanda. Our king sent us.”
Sadja. Her thoughts whirled. “You aren’t the ones that took Navran?”
“I don’t know who Navran is, but we took no one.”
“But Navran. Where is he?”
“I told you, I don’t know who Navran is—”
“A captive! The soldiers had a captive with them. We were here trying to free him.”
The man looked up. “Did any of you see a captive with the soldiers?”
The other two shook their heads. Mandhi flew down the hall and threw open the curtain to the room where the imperial soldiers had stayed. Where Navran should have been.
There was nothing.
She stormed back to the dining room. “Where is he? You must have seen him. We’ve been following him from Jaitha, he must be here.”
In the kitchen on the far side of the dining room, the innkeeper raised his timid head from where he had crouched behind the counter. “I may know,” he said.
“Then tell me!”
The man flinched. “The soldiers, when they arrived they had a fourth man with them. They met another company and passed him off. The captive continued north, while the three that you saw stayed here.”
Mandhi put her hands on her face and fell to her knees. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
The man shrugged. “You didn’t ask anyone.”
“Oh. Oh, Taleg. For nothing—”
“Is Taleg your guard’s name?” Bharga
sa asked.
“Yes. Will he live?”
One of the soldiers returned with a jug full of water and a pouch of salt. Bhargasa lifted the bloody rag from the wound. Blood immediately gushed out and splattered his hands. “I’ve seen worse.”
“That isn’t what I asked. You.” She pointed at the innkeeper. “Is there a doctor in town? An herbalist? I can make a few medicinal mixtures myself, if the ingredients are on hand.”
“There’s no doctor,” the innkeeper said. “An herbalist, maybe, depending on what you need—”
“No,” Bhargasa said. “I can give him rough stitches. With that he should make it to Davrakhanda, where Sadja has a surgeon in his household. Better than anything you find in these parts.”
“And how far to Davrakhanda from here?”
“We got here in four days.”
“Four days?” Mandhi paused. “Why are you here, exactly?”
“Looking for you, obviously. We were sent for three Uluriya, two men and a woman, one of them a Kaleksha. We found two out of the three.”
“And Sadja-dar sent you four days ago? And you arrived here in the middle of the night, just in time to find us fighting the Red Men.”
“Imperial guard?” Bhargasa looked up with an expression of alarm. “Those were imperial guards? I didn’t notice the uniform.”
“They had imperial seals in Jaitha and were wearing red earlier.”
Bhargasa grimaced. “Nothing good can come of that. But as you asked… I’ve long since stopped wondering what the king of Davrakhanda knows, and how. He told us to arrive by midnight on the fourth day, and so we did.”
Farsight. Mandhi crept to put her hands on Taleg’s forehead. “Did he foresee how many of us would come back?”
“If I knew, I would tell you. We should get him off this table.” With a jerk of his head, the other soldiers came forward and picked him up, one at each limb. They carried Taleg into the chamber which he and Mandhi had claimed and set him on the bed. Immediately the blood began to bubble from the wound again, staining the bed sheet and spreading across the cushion. “Bring me more rags,” Bhargasa demanded.
“I’ll stay with him,” Mandhi said. “Can we leave at first light?”
“At the latest.” One of the soldiers appeared with an armful of shredded fabric. Bhargasa nodded to Mandhi. “You never told me your name.”
“Mandhi, daughter of Cauratha in Virnas.”
“And how did you come to be fighting the imperial guard in the middle of the night so far from Virnas?”
She laughed. “Because things have not gone according to plan. We were responding to your king’s invitation.”
Bhargasa raised his hand. “Never mind. One of my men will bring needle and thread for stitches. Keep the rag against his wound. If the bleeding slows enough, pack it with salt to staunch the wound. I’ll stay with you for the first watch of the night.”
7
The feeble light of dawn dribbled through the window of the chamber and lit Taleg’s pallid form. Mandhi stood at the window and glanced from the murky horizon to her husband and back. A silent sentry guarded her door. None of the others had stirred yet. She herself hadn’t slept, though some part of her mind reminded her that she needed it. Her own need, however, was less than Taleg’s, and this thought alone kept her from sleep.
The crown of the sun appeared red between the palms and acacias along the distant horizon. She heard sheep bleating and the curses of an early-rising peasant. It was time to leave.
She wet a rag in the bowl of water next to Taleg, and lifted the bandage covering the wound. He hadn’t woken all night, but his breathing was steady and his heart thundered ceaselessly in his chest like it always did. When she peeled away the poultice her breath stopped. “Star-damned,” she said.
Every time she lifted the bandage, the wound continued to bleed through the coarse stitches that Bhargasa had been able to apply. The surrounding flesh swelled in a sickly white rise, turning red and virulent as it retreated from the crater of the puncture. Already the stench of putrescence began to fill the room. She touched the edge of the wound with the rag. Taleg flinched and muttered. His eyelids fluttered, and for a moment the glassy whites of his eyes showed beneath the lids. Then his hand fell back to the ground.
“The stars upon him,” Mandhi said. She wiped away what she could with the wet rag and reapplied the poultice.
Taleg’s lips moved. With a groan like stone scraping over stone, he whispered, “Mandhi.”
“Taleg! You’re awake.”
“Where is Navran?”
“Gone,” Mandhi said. “Don’t worry about him.”
“We couldn’t save him?”
“I don’t care about saving him,” she said. “I care about saving you. We’re going to Davrakhanda.”
“I can’t go to Davrakhanda. I don’t think I can walk that far.”
“We will lay you in a drag-cradle and carry you.”
He shook his head. “You’ll never be able to carry me by yourself.”
“I’m not by myself. Sadja-dar’s men are here.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Sleep, Taleg.”
He turned his head and rested it against the cushion. For a moment his lips moved silently. Mandhi put her finger against them and he stilled.
There was movement in the hallway. One of Sadja’s soldiers. She said with a loud whisper, “Come here! Quickly.”
A young man stuck his head through the curtain. “What is it, lady Mandhi?”
“Tell your commander we have to leave now. Then come help me bring Taleg out.”
Bhargasa appeared a moment later in the doorway. “I have told the men to prepare the drag-cradle. What happened?”
Mandhi pointed at the blackening wound. “The bleeding hasn’t stopped, and it’s starting to rot. Can this surgeon in Davrakhanda heal a rotting wound that’s festered for four days?”
Bhargasa closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I don’t know. But the kind of care you’ll get between here and there… you might find herb-women, and dhorsha who could offer rams’ blood.”
“No dhorsha,” Mandhi said. “We are Uluriya. And for the herb-women, would they help?”
“For this?” He glanced at Taleg’s wound and shook his head. “I think he has a better chance in Davrakhanda.”
Mandhi rinsed her hands in the bowl of water. “That’s what I thought. Load him onto the cradle. We have to run.”
Bhargasa’s soldiers wrapped Taleg in blankets. Mandhi paid their host generously for lodging and damages, then they loaded Taleg onto the cradle and took up the harnesses. All three of the soldiers took one of the leather straps to pull, while Bhargasa walked in front. With a heave, the soldiers started forward. The leather creaked and the woven branches of the cradle stretched, but it held, and in a moment the cradle skidded forward along the road kicking up a tail of red dust.
Mandhi walked alongside Taleg. “I’m not letting you walk ahead of me this time, beloved,” she whispered.
The sun was a half-circle above the horizon when they left. Bhargasa pointed them down the east road from the village, and they did not depart from it until the sun had passed its zenith overhead. They didn’t quite run, but Mandhi couldn’t blame them for that. The faces of the soldiers were ruddy with exertion, and sweat dripped from their backs like monsoon rains. As soon as Bhargasa called a halt, they took deep swigs from their canteens and collapsed in the shade of a banyan.
“Eat and rest,” Bhargasa said. “After this, we march until nightfall.”
Mandhi knelt at Taleg’s side. His skin was the color of white clay and beaded with sweat. She unrolled the blankets to check the wound.
“Will you take some food, Mandhi?” asked Bhargasa. He offered her a piece of roti and two figs.
“I’m not hungry,” she said and set the food aside. The thought of eating made her ill.
The wound was worse. The jostling of the cradle meant that the flesh pulled at the stitches, a
nd it continued to leak blood and pus. The flesh around the wound burned with rot, while the rest of his skin was clammy and limp. She tapped him on the cheek to wake him.
“Taleg,” she said. “Taleg. You have to drink something.”
His eyes fluttered open for just a moment. She forced the nub of a water pouch into his mouth and squeezed. The water trickled out the corners of his mouth and into his beard. He coughed and turned his head away, then licked his lips.
“Mandhi,” he croaked. “Where are we?”
“On the way to Davrakhanda,” she said. “There is a surgeon there.”
“It hurts,” he said. His breath caught in his throat. “Hurts to breathe.”
“Just keep doing it. We’ll carry you the rest of the way.”
She repeated the prayer for healing three times over him before the men were ready to start on the road.
* * *
The sun burnt the horizon in the east on the second day of their journey. Mandhi gave water to Taleg before they started, but as soon as it hit his throat he turned to the side and retched. She wiped his face clean and offered him the water again, but he refused it. The wound still bled, slowly now, seeping blood like a dying, poisonous fountain. She replaced the bandage. Great flakes of dried blood fell away when she pulled it from his burning flesh.
She tried several more times throughout the day to get him to take water or roti, but he would not. If she forced the water down his throat he vomited, and she couldn’t even begin with food.
She ate, but only because she wouldn’t otherwise have strength to keep up the pace.
The day was long and monotonous. They passed through an endless procession of identical villages, dusty mud-brick buildings interspersed with palms, streets infested with goats and served by a murky well. At first Taleg spoke intermittently in incoherent worries about Mandhi, Cauratha, Navran, Ulaur. By noon his muttering had ceased. He lay as still as a fallen tree, the slight movement of his breast the only thing that indicated he still lived.
