Medicine for the Dead

by Arianne Thompson

  Elim glanced back and forth between the poncho over Way-Say’s arm and the keen interest on his sharply-angled face. Was that the deal? Did he have to give up his name to save his skin?

  Way-Say’s brows furrowed over his prominent eagle nose, and his expression wilted into doubt. “No comprendes?”

  In the end, the creeping heat on the back of Elim’s neck made the decision for him. He couldn’t take another scourging today. He just couldn’t. “Elim,” he said to his feet.

  “Ylem,” Way-Say repeated. When Elim glanced up, the Sundowner was staring at the handprint burned into Elim’s bare chest – and quickly looked away.

  Maybe Way-Say knew who’d put it there. And maybe they were going to do something with his name after all. Something with henfeathers and calf’s blood... and the footprints he’d been stupid enough to give them without even thinking. God Almighty, how many chunks and crumbs and pieces of his soul had he lost in the last three days – and how many of those had he torn off and surrendered of his own dumb-assed free will?

  “¿Keyen ti lo pongo kieres?”

  Elim returned to the here-and-now, and belatedly realized that the Sundowner was offering to dress him. Which was downright sensible, seeing as they had him tied up like a painted duck on a pull-string – even if he didn’t especially relish what that heavy, prickly wool was going to feel like over a raw sunburn. God knew he’d paid enough for the privilege.

  “Yes please,” he said, and squeezed some gratitude into it. “Ai, uh... grése.” He dipped his head, as much in thanks as to help Way-Say’s upward reach, and then gritted his teeth as the coarse weight of the cloth settled over his blistered skin.

  But Way-Say’s hands were gentle and thoughtful in their work, drawing the folds straight so that the fabric lay down neatly, with only a minimum of pulling or rubbing. He finished by drawing the hood of the poncho up and forward, until it hung far enough over Elim’s brow that it would not easily fall back again.

  Elim straightened and met Way-Say’s questioning glance with a nod. “That’s real fine,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Way-Say matched the nod, and raised him a look full of... well, it was hard to say exactly what his big dark eyes had in them just then, except that it was some relation to what you felt when you knew that your saddle wasn’t fit right or your poor critter had an abscess in his mouth, and you just couldn’t fix it right then.

  Way-Say squeezed Elim’s shoulder through the poncho-cloth – the right one, where Elim was brown and not nearly so crispy – and kept his gaze even and serious. “Tlahei achan,” he said.

  That did not sound like Marín. But it did sound important.

  “All right,” Elim said, making an even swap of sincerity. “All right, sure.”

  Way-Say seemed to take that as a promise given. He picked up the knife and the hide, and went away back to the wagon. No sooner did Bootjack have him back under his baleful gaze than he snapped the reins, and set them moving again.

  But this time, Elim had protection, of one kind or another... and plenty of time to wonder what he’d just traded for it.

  IT WOULD BE all right, though. Vuchak settled his thinking by reminding himself of that. All they had to do was take the half-man and poor Dulei home to Atali’Krah. And then Dulei would have his funeral and the half-man would have his death – because surely the Eldest would take his life for what he’d done – and then things would be all right. Perhaps Vuchak and Weisei might even be allowed to stay in Atali’Krah afterwards, though Vuchak knew better than to hang too much weight on that particular wish.

  But there would be home-going comforts, regardless. Hot squash soup and seed-babies fresh from the fire; singing and shoe-throwing and the blue moon dance, if they made it home in time; cold mountain air and the smell of piñon-smoke and everywhere, everywhere the feeling of atleya – of right-way living and shared understanding and all the things that lived so well in the minds of the a’Krah people as to pass unsaid between them. Vuchak would share in it – all of it. He only had to be diligent in getting there.

  “Hsst!”

  Vuchak glanced down to where Weisei, walking beside the wagon, had pricked himself with the needle again.

  Foolish. The rawhide was tough, the stitches small, and the needle difficult to handle with sweaty fingers. Only an idiot would try to sew moccasins and walk at the same time.

  “Weisei,” Vuchak said – not for the first time. “Be reasonable.”

  Weisei sucked his finger, and made no reply.

  Unfortunately, this particular idiot was a divine son of Grandfather Marhuk, who had hung the sun and lit the moon and whose thousand unsleeping eyes kept watch over the world... and whose lately-born royal child was now making his wishes known. Weisei wasn’t brave enough to overrule Vuchak in matters of safety, but he was perfectly content to debase himself, to walk like a common slave while his atodak sat idle in the wagon – to try and shame Vuchak into abandoning the long march.

  Vuchak could not afford to let him. He needed to save his own energy for later. After all, someone would have to keep an eye out for broken men tonight, and listen for infected coyotes and marrouak, and make sure the half-man didn’t rise up and murder anyone in their sleep. Hakai couldn’t do it: even if Vuchak knew the borrowed slave well enough to trust him, he obviously didn’t have the night-eyes of the a’Krah or the stamina of the Ikwei, and nightfall would find him blind and exhausted. No, the only person Vuchak could trust was himself, and the only impediment to that –

  “Acht!”

  – was Weisei. Vuchak sighed. He pulled the horse to a halt and hopped down to the ground.

  “... Vichi, what are you doing?” came the inevitable call from behind him. “Are we stopping? Do you have a debt to pay?”

  “You had a very fine idea, marka,” Vuchak said. “It’s a pleasant day for a walk.” This, without regard for the sweltering bright sun overhead. “If you haven’t finished enjoying yours yet, perhaps you would ask Hakai to lead the horse for us.”

  Vuchak met his prince’s gaze, eye for eye, thought for thought.

  “Well,” Weisei said, “that would be quite a lot for Hakai to manage all at once. I might take your place – only until you get tired, of course.” And he laid his moccasin-things on the wagon-bench, and climbed up beside them to take the reins.

  In this way, the agreement was made clear: Weisei still objected to forcing the half-man to walk without resting, and would ensure that one of them suffered in tandem so long as this imagined wrong went uncorrected.

  Vuchak, for his part, maintained that the long walk was reasonable and necessary – something that a man of any color should be able to endure without failure or complaint – and would gladly prove as much, not only to his prince, but also to the spotted stranger at the end of the rope.

  All this passed unsaid between Vuchak and his marka in the space of a moment and a glance. Weisei tugged at the rope to tell the half-man to ready himself for walking again, and Vuchak retrieved his shield and spear from the bed of the wagon. Weisei prompted the horse to move forward, and Vuchak fell in step behind and to the left of the prisoner, where he could be most easily watched.

  There was a pleasantness to that, even in spite of the heat and the dust and the eye-searing light of the sun. This was atleya: correct placement, sensible arrangement, with his shield on his arm and his spear in his hand and his marka sitting tall and respectable in the wagon, as a son of Marhuk should. Nevermind about what he would do later: this, now, was the right way, and Vuchak would continue to act rightly for as long as diligence and duty required.

  IT WAS AN orderly day. Vuchak saw to that.

  At noon, he and Weisei tied yuye around their eyes – cheap everyday versions of the formal one Hakai wore to show his service – to shield themselves from the sun.

  At midafternoon, they halted just long enough to pay their debts.

  And when the sun first touched the Mother of Mountains, they stopped and ordered Hakai to
craft the fire. Weisei donned his hue’yin, the holy cloak made from the feathers of royal crows, and set about drawing offering-circles for any nearby spirits. Vuchak mixed and wrapped dough for ash bread.

  By the time the Mother had swallowed the sun, they had boiled the tea, scooped the ashes into the big cooking pot, buried and scraped over all evidence of the fire, and were ready to move again. They traveled another two miles on the road, just to be safe, before turning off and walking a further half a mile to the south. This was the slowest going, as the half-man kept tripping on stones and weed-clumps, his eyes and feet too weak to avoid them.

  There was nothing to be gained by punishing him for that, though – and no reason for Vuchak to invite weakness into himself by observing it in others.

  So when they had made camp, he sat down with hot husk-wrapped bread and a steaming cup of blue spruce tea, and tried to ignore the ache in his bones as he watched the darkening sky.

  Daytime was hot, yes, and bright enough to burn the eyes of any a’Krah foolish or unlucky enough to be away from his bed. Still, this was a known thing. It was ordinary and natural, and could be weathered with the correct understanding and preparation.

  The same could not be said of night. Not out here. Not anymore.

  Vuchak had tried saying as much, the night before Echep had left. Be careful, he had said. Go quietly. Don’t sleep near the road.

  But Echep, tall and splendid and always and forever joking, had only clucked like a scolding hen, and tossed his long plaits back over his shoulder. Will you like it better if I sleep in your sister’s bed? As if he had only to flash his silver and his smile, and difficulties would yield to him like so many wayward women.

  Now he was gone, more than a month overdue. Not even his horse had returned to Island Town.

  Vuchak’s grip tightened around his cup, beating back weariness and an insidious, creeping anxiety. The others might be equally thoughtless, careless, weak-willed. Not Vuchak.

  He was craftier than Echep – more careful, better prepared.

  He was doing all of the correct things.

  Nothing would go wrong.

  STILL, AS THE miles piled up and the sun slipped down into the western sky, Elim couldn’t help but wonder how much longer they intended to go on. It wasn’t that he was any stranger to long days or hard work – you didn’t need to spend all so many hours forking hay before a leisurely few-miles’ walk started to sound positively restful – but he had never, ever gone barefoot before, and his feet and ankles were already missing his boots something fierce.

  Not that it mattered now. He’d lost them – what, yesterday? Two days ago? Plenty of time, anyway, for the naked soles of his feet to soak up some of the blood and witchcraft that had seeped into the ground over the years, and for spirits of all kinds to latch onto him like so many angry sorcerous ticks.

  Elim looked down, half expecting that mysterious handprint on his chest to have burned through the poncho somehow. He couldn’t have said who’d put it there. Maybe the dead boy in the box. Maybe Bootjack, or one of his ilk. Maybe something else altogether. But somebody had got a hold of him, sure as Sunday, and he didn’t have to know who or how or why to understand that he was a marked man.

  Maybe that was as it should be.

  Suddenly he was staring at wagon wheels and wood. Elim looked up in dim surprise, and halted just before he would have barked his shins on the buckboard’s iron fittings.

  So they’d stopped again.

  Elim stood still in the dull light of sunset – his knees and ankles screaming like a hawk-snatched hare, his back and shoulders scrubbed raw by that sweat-drenched wool, his mouth dry enough to spit cotton – and prayed for an end. Let it be a rest. Let this one be a real, proper rest.

  Then Bootjack glanced back at him, and Elim directed his wishing back down to his tied hands.

  What if they just weren’t going to stop, ever? What if they meant to take turns sleeping in the wagon, and just walk him ’til he dropped?

  They weren’t allowed, though. They weren’t. They were supposed to take him to their home city, whatever they’d called it, and then he was supposed to make his apologies to their heathen chiefs, and then they were going to decide whether to forgive him, and if they did, he had to be allowed to go back to Sixes to get Sil’s body and then back home to Hell’s Acre. That was the agreement. That was the deal.

  And if you believe that, I got some magic apples to sell you.

  “May I have your hands, please?”

  Elim looked up, shocked to hear plain-spoken Ardish. There in front of him was the blindfolded one, Hawkeye: empty-handed, patiently waiting. It must have been him who spoke – it must have – or else Elim was plumb imagining things now.

  He hedged his bets, and put out his wrists without a word.

  “Thank you.” Hawkeye set to untying them.

  Elim stared at him in dumb amazement, looking for something that would make this reasonable. But apart from the blindfold, Hawkeye was just plain average: maybe forty or so, weaker in the chest than the gut, with his silver-threaded black hair tied back at his neck and a gray tunic pulled on over worn denim pants. Even his moccasins were old and ordinary, as if whoever had made them had been just too dang tired to bother with beads or fringes.

  The rope fell away from Elim’s scabby wrists, leaving his hands at liberty to pull off his poncho with one sharp breath and an instant of eye-watering pain.

  Then there was nothing but fantastic relief as the warm evening breeze slipped kisses over his bare hide. “Amen,” he breathed, the ground going wobbly under his feet as he tested to see whether the air wouldn’t maybe mind taking a turn at holding him up. His hand latched on to the sideboard of its own initiative.

  “Sir?”

  As it worked out, the unseen hand of the Almighty didn’t care to sharecrop for his legs after all... but that was all right.

  Hawkeye gestured away to the left, to an unremarkable stretch of brown grass and twilight sky. “Come along, sir,” he said. “Let’s have some refreshment.”

  Elim wasn’t sure who sir was, or what refreshments could be waiting out there, but he didn’t need to be asked twice. He followed Hawkeye out to the field, and when the blindfolded fellow finally stopped, it was not to take any notice of Elim.

  Elim belatedly understood the purpose of this little expedition, and decided that he might ought to have some refreshment too. He hunkered down and set to it, wishing for taller grass or dimmer light.

  But it didn’t seem to matter. Bootjack was sat down with a drink and Way-Say was digging around in the mule-baggage. Presently, Hawkeye went back to rejoin them without so much as a backwards glance.

  Which left Elim alone in the field. Untied. Unwatched. None of the three Sundowners was even pretending to keep an eye on him.

  Elim hugged his knees and held still, his hopes brightening even as the daylight faded.

  He could do it. He could bolt right now.

  Hawkeye was still closest to him, but he’d been walking as long as Elim, and was already starting to limp. Bootjack was meaner, hardier, but he’d been on his feet all day too, and toting his weapons around to boot. Way-Say was the freshest of the three, and Elim couldn’t guess how fit he was.

  Actually, he wasn’t too sure about his own self, either. He was already so dry and tired, and he’d been dumb enough to leave his poncho draped over the side of the wagon, and the river was at least twenty miles behind them now. Could he really out-run and out-hide these heathens here, if his life literally depended on it?

  It did, though. Elim was sure of that much. He had signed on for this project of his own free will, looked their Azahi right in the eye and said, All right, sure – because he HAD shot the boy, and this was the only right way to make amends for that, and everybody knew it. But these jabbering strangers here weren’t playing fair. They’d had him tied up and marched all day like a runaway slave, and if that was how they were going to treat him on the way to their home vill
age, what did that say about what they’d do to him once they got there?

  And besides, that Sundowner boy in the box was dead, regardless... and poor Sil too. Better that Elim get himself home alive. Better to go back empty-handed and bearing bad news than to let himself get killed trying to do right by Sil’s remains.

  Elim staggered back up to his feet, doing up his buttons and limbering his knees as his heart beat faster. He had to decide. He had to be sure. Once he took off, there’d be no second chances – no stopping for anything less than Bootjack’s spear in his back.

  Sudden movement from the camp caught his attention. Hawkeye had made it back, and was reaching up to unharness the horse. But the horse – Actor, Sil’s bleached black gelding – was having nothing to do with it. He held his head high and away as Hawkeye reached for him, his ears going flat and his neck so stiff Elim could see it even from this distance. What the dickens was that old Sundowner doing? What kind of idiot would start unhitching a horse bridle-first?

  Elim squinted, hesitating.

  Somebody would see to it. Somebody would correct him.

  But as he waited, rubbing the insect prickles from the top of one foot with the bottom of the other, it occurred to Elim that about the only thing dumber than stripping down a horse from the front-end was running headlong into the desert with nothing but good intentions and a crusty pair of pants.

  Besides, Sil might be dead and done for, but Actor was still alive... and God knew he deserved a chance to go home too. God knew you couldn’t leave a man behind, even if he was a horse.

  Elim started forward, resolved now. “Hey, uh, Mister Hawkeye,” he called ahead. “You want any help with him?”

  All three Sundowners looked up at the sound of Elim’s voice, but he didn’t waver as he surrendered himself back to their authority. No, there was no telling whether or when he’d get another chance – but if he did, he wouldn’t take it alone.

  “ALL RIGHT, AX, buddy,” Elim said. “You ’bout ready to get unshucked?”