Part Forty-Four

13 days out of Altaruk - morning

At dawn Unok took me out past camp to practice, and the canny bastard threw the bout. I knocked him on his ass and danced about gleefully for a while until I caught him looking at me out of the corner of his eye and figured out what he was up to. What'd you go and do that for? I said, getting mad. You renk-sucker! You think that's funny? He shook his head, very matter-of-fact. You can't always learn from losing, he said. You need to win once in a while. Then I saw him setting his feet in case I came at him, and I burst out laughing and swearing in the same breath. I leapt on him anyway, though, just to keep him on his toes, and pummeled him till he threw me off and threatened to crack my skull with his foot.

Well, for all he hates Kerreck, his old House taught him fair enough. Who knows what other tricks he's tried on me? I am a sight better fighter than I was back in Kankhold (my prowess at wrestling notwithstanding, thank you very much) so whatever he's doing must be working to some degree. Can't see as how I'll ever learn the two-knife trick, though.

Never realized how strong he is until today, either. He got me in a hold after I jumped on him and his arm was like a rock. I could've squirmed all day and all night and never budged it. If he ever cut loose on me I'd be dead in two heartbeats--one for him to hit me and one for me to hit the ground.

Asked him if he was going to fight in Balic. He got real quiet and said three days was too short a notice to set up a bout, and he didn't feel like fighting, anyway. What, I said, you don't even want to see the Criterion? He shook his head. You didn't tell the arena manager you were leaving town, did you? I asked, and knew the answer as soon as I saw his scalp flush though the fuzz of his hair. He shook his head again, embarrassed. I didn't have time, he said. I groaned and pulled my hand down my face. You'll be lucky if they don't arrest you when you get back, I said. Didn't you sign a contract? I've been trying not to think about it, he said. I don't know if I want to fight anymore, anyway.

1 day in Cytril - afternoon

Came into Cytril near noon and rode right into an ambush. All morning we traveled through empty olive groves, tools and ladders laid down in haste. We grew quieter the farther we went, Humbel straining to see through the trees, tight-faced with worry, once riding away into the grove to return without spotting a single worker.

Cytril itself was silent. Shutters and doors were sealed as if for a silt-storm and the well in the center of the plaza was capped with an expensive slab of heavy hardwood. I thought maybe they'd spotted a giant and had gone to ground, but it was too quiet--no bells to call an alarm, no runners kicking dust up to alert the outlying farms, nothing. Only a single wagon sitting by the well, its lone kank chewing and rocking forlornly in the sun.

When Unok made for the well, Humbel slid off his kank, hissing for him to wait, and pointed to a building with a kank carved over the door. Unok stood fast while Humbel and I headed for the swinging doors. Before we got to the porch the doors burst open and ten dwarves in a motley of armor boiled out of the inn, brandishing wooden cudgels--dockworkers hired out of Ledo for a handful of bits, I wager, largely unskilled in fighting but more than determined enough to make up for it. They spread out and made to scatter the kanks, and as Humbel and I were closest to the inn, we bore the brunt of their attack.

From the barn across the plaza came a pair of half-giants in thick patched cloth armor sewn with bone and chitin chips. One had a military fork, the other a maul with a glossy stone head, and they waded in, the one with the hammer slamming his weapon down on Unok like he was beating chaff out of wheat.

And then, as if things weren't bad enough, we soon saw that the ambush was directed by some old friends--never met in the flesh, but well-known to us nonetheless: Ben and Hollie.

Ben was withered and gaunt in the sun, his stringy black hair hanging long and lank down his back. His fine red tunic had seen better days. His brown leather breeches were dusty and a faded purple cape, almost Balican in style, flapped and fluttered on his shoulder. His eyes were like Isen's--sunken, green, and glowing. He followed on the heels of the half-giants, spinning a bola at Daphne and knocking her flat.

Then I saw Hollie on the porch of the bar, and if I hadn't already guessed who she was, I would have known her by her hair--long and blond and ratted, falling out in patches, dry as twine and stirring faintly in the hot noon air. I recall her face most of all, I think because you could tell how pretty she'd been before she died. I remembered her cosmetics, stacked on a dresser, and strands of her dead hair wound round the bristles of a carved wooden brush.

Now she was horrible. Her pale skin was wrinkled and torn, especially around the corners of her mouth, where pointed, gleaming teeth made her smile hideous. Her eyes were green squints winking through the matted curtain of her hair. She hefted a stone hurlbat in one delicate hand, clutched a widow's knife with the other, and grinned so wide when she saw me staring at her, I nearly choked on my own heart.

From there it was all clubs and blood and confusion. Mostly I remember Max yelling orders, the dwarves cursing in thick Ledopolan drawls, one giant hamstrung and screaming in a hoarse, heartbroken voice. Between the clubs and the dust and the kanks milling around and snapping at whoever got too close, I lost sight of Hollie, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Ben axing Wavir after Wavir, grimly chopping his way through to Petronia--Dar went down, then Max, then Daphne. Finally Kaylene met him with her scimitar burning white-hot in her hand. She cut him to his knees, then finished him off with a thrust to the back.

Afterwards I found Unok standing over Hollie, breathing hard, the skin on his arms and legs slashed and bleeding from her crescent-bladed knife. His shoulders and back were splotched with wide bruises from the dwarven cudgels. Although I remember his singing sticks screaming through the fight, I don't know how Hollie died, 'cos her wounds were made by sword or dagger.

Houri lay twisted in the dirt beside Hollie, face down, her brown robes fanned out in the dust behind her like the broken wings of a kes'trekel. I turned her over, and knew she was dead as soon as I touched her. Her muscles were clenched up in knots and there was froth at the corners of her mouth--poison, from the prongs of Hollie's weapon.

I stood up when Unok's shadow fell across her, and we stared at the body for a long moment. Then he spat on her, and turned away, and I heard him calling for Kaylene.

All I could do was shrug. No one liked her much anyway.

We went through Hollie's things for some sign of the venom that had killed Houri, but we found naught of it. There was only her widow's knife, the poison reservoir empty, and a garrote made from steel wire braided between two bone rings. I took the garrote, as wire of that fineness and quality's hard to come by, and finding one of the few weapons I know how to use was an opportunity I couldn't ignore.

Ben had another thing, though, which was of more interest: a message tucked in his pouch. It was a blood-stained parchment meant for Wavir in Balic, written out by Gulliver and giving the details of our party--who we are, how many men and kanks he sent with us, when we're to be expected in Balic. They must have gotten to Altaruk in time to catch the messenger. We'll need to send word back to Gulliver when we get to Balic. Maybe they'll be able to find the body.

The townsfolk had been barricaded in an olive storehouse, unguarded and mostly unhurt; the only dead among them were two strangers, both travelers who'd put up a fight when Ben and Hollie rolled into town. The people knew Humbel and greeted him with cries of relief, which redoubled when they found that their jailors had neither looted nor pillaged, saving their efforts for the ambush in the plaza.

So now we're the heroes of Cytril, those of us who lived, and we have our pick of rooms at the inn. This is well, as there's no question of going on tonight or even tomorrow. We are all battered and broken and beaten half to death.

Humbel's hand is smashed beyond repair. Kaylene worked on the wound as best she could, but the bones are crushed and the fingers drawn up into crumpled, unwieldy claws. He will never use his staff again. He is not so disturbed by this as you might think, 'cos Dar survived Ben's axe and will thrive in time, given rest and as much of Kaylene's fiery healing as he can stand. I don't know whether the loss of a hand is a fair trade for the life of his brother, but it's a bargain Humbel has no choice but to accept.

Daphne lives, as well, and will have some fine scars to brag about when she gets back to Altaruk. But Max is dead, confident Max, all his authority gone with the blood that seeped into the dirt at the feet of his killer. The villagers took up his body, and washed it, and wrapped it in a sheet, and packed it on a kank to take with us to Balic.

No one seems to know or care what's been done with Houri.

Sitting on the porch now, in the shade, dabbing water on my skinned knees and elbows. I can't find a palm's width of skin on my body that isn't purpled up with bruises from clubs and fists. Be better tomorrow, after I've slept; I've wrung myself dry already with seeing to the damage Hollie did to me with those hurlbats. When I sat down out here I couldn't even breathe deeply without gasping. She just about split my breastbone from end to end.

1 day in Cytril - dusk

Innkeep fed me gigantic supper of mushrooms fried in olive oil, with lots of garlic, and my spirits have improved by a commensurate amount. Remarkable how your outlook changes when you have a full stomach.

People keep coming up and pestering me to talk to them. I thought I was popular until I realized I was the only one available to satisfy their curiosity: Kaylene is with the wounded, Unok bit my head off when I went to get him to eat, and Micha and Petronia are upstairs together putting the lie to my theory about him meaning her any kind of harm.

1 day in Cytril - night

Unok came out as I was polishing off my mushrooms and wanted me to go out back and practice. I have enough bruises, I said, I don't need any more from you, especially in the mood you're in. Now, he said, and stood there looming over me till I put my bowl down and heaved myself to my feet.

So we went outside, and I got ready to have the living daylights beaten out of me. Peeled off my tabard, folded it up, put it down by my feet, looked at Unok, and stood gaping as he walked past me and sat down hard in the dirt at the base of the back wall of the inn. His eyes clenched shut and he began to breathe in stifled gasps, leaning forward over his stomach as if he'd been stabbed in the gut.

"Unok!" I said, alarmed. "What's the matter?"

No answer. He shuddered and shook his head, and suddenly I realized that he was crying--sobbing, almost soundlessly, his body bent over as though every sob was a poison he had to vomit out before it killed him. He covered his face with his hands, and soon tears ran down his arms in silvery winding streaks before dropping from his elbows to the ground, where the dirt swallowed up his grief.

I didn't know what to do. I stood on one foot, looked at the blank and senseless wall of the inn, and finally sat down cross-legged next to him, gingerly, more than a little afraid of his terrible, racking sorrow. It hurt to watch him. After a while his sobs tapered off into occasional, hitching breaths, and he scrubbed fiercely at his eyes with the back of his hand. I handed him my waterskin. He took it without looking and drank deeply. When he'd finished, he cradled it in the crook of his arm and stared at it for a while before he could look at me, his face caught in a shamefaced grin that was made all the worse by the haunted hollows of his eyes. It was like the grin of a condemned man.

"I haven't done that since I was five," he said. His voice was uneven. I said nothing and he went on, clearing his throat, the words coming faster now, raggedly, insistently. "When they... When the slavers came, I mean. They dragged my mother away. I saw it. They tore my sister right out of my arms." He took a deep breath and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, towards the wall at his back. "I just met a man... One of the slavers. He gave me water. When I was in the wagon."

"He dead in there?"

"No."

I pulled out my knots and ran them through my fingers, dropping my gaze to my hands, trying to keep my voice casual. "You want him to be?"

"No," he said, turning away from me to look into the desert, visible now only as a dark line on the horizon and a lingering heat-shimmer beyond the olive groves. "I don't know why. But I don't."

He told the story in bits and pieces, pausing frequently to drink as his voice roughened and cracked. The slavers who took his village killed most of the men and separated the survivors from the women and the unweaned children. The boys old enough to care for themselves went with the men's wagon, to Nibenay. The women's wagon turned east, to Gulg and points beyond. Unok says he knew one of the men we freed from the granary for one of the slavers. He braced the slaver in his room here at the inn. I don't know all of what was said; I didn't want to ask, and Unok didn't want to say. But I do know that Unok learnt of the fate of the women's wagon--fallen to raiders in the desert, with the slavers burnt and the slaves escaped into the sand.

"Burned?" I said. "That doesn't sound right."

"Not the wagon, just the slavers," he said. "That's what he said. Burned up."

"Huh," I said, musing, and then shrugged. "Maybe you should ask Kaylene about it. A fire cleric ought to know about what kind of wild thing might burn a man up."

"I don't know," he repeated, and leaned his head back against the wall. "I've been free less than a phase. I don't know what to do. Everything's happening so fast. I promised Rhiamon I'd be back for her in fifty days, and we haven't even gotten to Balic yet and it's been twenty-six days already. Now there's this." He looked back at me, desperation naked in his eyes. "What do I do, Innath? I feel like I should go and search for them, but I'll never get back to Rhiamon in time. I don't even know if I want to go back at all. Sometimes I think it would be better if she thought I was dead."

I fished out some colored thread and started threading it through a half-woven knot. "I can't tell you what to do," I said, measuring out a length and biting it free of the card. "I can tell you what my Dad used to say, when he wa'n't in his cups: Don't spit in the face of fortune. You'd'a died in the desert if your wagon had gone to Gulg, and not the other. Besides, how long ago did all that happen? Eighteen years? D'you think there'll be anything left for you to find? D'you want to give up Rhiamon for whatever it may be? Never fight in the arena again, and lose everything you have in Tyr? Never meet your son?"

"Is that the fortune I want?"

"Is it?"

He sighed and looked gloomily at the waterskin, lying slack and empty across his forearm. "I don't know."

"Well, you've got three days to make up your mind," I said and began to pick at a half-finished, convoluted king's knot with my teeth. With my mouth full of thread, I said, "Here, I've something else for you to think about. I've got to kill a templar in Balic."

That got his attention. He sat up straight, forgetting the waterskin, and stared at me. "You have to what?"

"Kill a templar," I said, and spat out the knot. "One of the jail guards. His name is Siccius."

His eyebrow went up. "For Cassia?"

"How'd you know that?"

"I thought you didn't like her."

"I don't," I said, but I didn't sound very convincing, even to myself. I wound the string round my fingers and pushed it back into my belt. "I don't know. That doesn't matter. I ran out on her in Balic. I owe her."

"For what?"

"When you found me in Kankhold..." This was hard to articulate. "When Cassia was in jail, Siccius got at her. Likely raped her." I let that sink in, and went on. "After they tried her they cut her eye out of her head, and chopped off all the toes on one foot. It doesn't matter whether we like each other or not. I know what I'm going to do when I catch up to those bastards who buried me, so I can understand why she wants Siccius dead. And I'm going to kill him for her."

He leaned back against the wall and furrowed his brow. "If you get in any trouble, I won't be able to help you," he said.

"I know," I said. "I'm not asking for help. I just wanted..." What did I want, exactly? I didn't know. I thought about it while I looked into the shadows winding through the groves, and finally I said, "I want you to know what I'm doing, in case something does go wrong. If you end up going back to Tyr without me, I want you to find her and tell her what happened. Tell her I went after him."

He nodded, and gave me the waterskin back, his face furrowed in thought. After that we sat and talked, while the dark drew down around us and the noise from the inn filtered through the wall at our backs, the common room filling up with farmers coming in for the night, eager to drink and tell and retell the story of what had happened that day. Mostly I talked. I told him about Balic, of the King's Parade and the way we used to line up along the route while Andropinis rode down the thoroughfare on his great white brute of a mekillot. I told him of my brief term in the militia, and of the silt giant that smashed the south-eastern levy the night I was on rotation. I told him I'd take him to my old stomping grounds--the Lirr's Den, the sleaziest bar in Balic. You can get into a fight, I said. You'll feel better.

And I even told him, finally, a little about the Criterion, of the Great Sails and the movable marble floor, since I knew he wasn't going to have the chance to see it close up in the time we'll be in town. But I decided not to mention that the arena was where I'd likely end up, if I got caught at the gate with Siccius' head in a bag.

I think he's finding out that being free is not as easy as he thought. When he was a slave he had everything and nothing. Now he has nothing and everything. He's lined from the desert, scorched and burnt from the sun. There's no trainer, no masseuse, no one to watch his diet or tell him when to exercise or rub oil into his bruises. He has hard choices to make and no one to tell him how to make them.

How he'll manage with a child, I don't know. What's he ever had to do with babies? He wouldn't know which end to feed and which end to wipe. Me, I used to spend half my waking hours elbow-deep in baby shit. I must've gone through fifteen half-brothers and sisters before I left, and damn near all of 'em were in diapers. It was always, "Innath, mind the baby doesn't fall into the fire," and "Innath, mash some neep for the baby," and "Innath, the baby wants changing." Not a day went by I wasn't tempted to sling one of the brats into the fire, or tote it down to the market and see what I could get for it.

But I suppose Unok will make a good father, once he's mastered the hands-on parts of it. He has the patience for it. I can't see myself with children--I'd end up kicking them downstairs, or something. I had too much of that from my Dad to want to pass it on.

on to Part 45