Blackdog (33 page)

Rying lay back over his pony's rump, bouncing as it shied, flat-eared, white-eyed, trying to get away from the uncomfortable weight. A dark shaft stood out of the mercenary's chest and his hand flopped feebly for it, before he slid sideways. His pony, pricking its ears, turned and came clattering after Attavaia.

Nar-Asmin was across the path, dead, and his white pony, spattered red, bolted towards the deadly drop and the ice field rather than cross the body.

Attavaia searched the upper slopes—no, Rying had been across the path, the rising north side of this narrow valley, there, crumbling upheaval of rock, mostly lost in shadow…

It might, of course, be another mercenary. One of the women, less tolerant of abuses of Lissavakaili women, or someone with a grudge against the brothers. But she rather thought not.

The hunter did not so much emerge from concealment as slowly solidify. He wore all dull browns and greys, jacket, shawl, and cap lacking even the usual trim of red or indigo, and he moved with a snow-leopard's caution, picking his way down the rocks.

But then the rotten, crumbling stuff slid, and she understood the reason for his delicate movements as he jumped to safety. On solid ground, or at least only the usual degree of ankle-turning stones, he strode more swiftly, as arrogant in his assurance as Nar-Asmin, she thought, and shrugged her shawl back to have freer use of her sword. In case.

He paused where Rying had rolled to hands and knees, breathing heavily, kicked him over on his back, and bent swiftly to finish him, straightening with his long knife dripping and no more expression on his face than he had shown when the rocks beneath his feet gave way.

Time to go
, Attavaia thought. But she waited.

The man stopped a few yards away, considering her, she thought. Deciding if she too were prey. He held his bow, still strung, loosely in his left hand, quiver at his shoulder. He was a little older than her, maybe—hard to say. Sun and dry winds and cold aged faces quickly in the high valleys.

“Lost?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I might be,” Attavaia offered cautiously. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. “The mountains are full of vermin, these days.” He wiped his knife on the grass, unstrung the bow, and headed back towards the bodies, trusting her, it appeared, as he hardly seemed such a fool as to think her harmless.

“We should get those out of sight,” Attavaia said as he searched Nar-Asmin, methodically setting aside weapons and purse. “They were hunting, not patrolling, they said, so it might be a few days before they're missed. Better for the villagers if they just disappear than if they're found slain.”

“No village around here,” the hunter said. “You offering to carry them away?” He grinned at her. She scowled at his mockery. Not too much different, that look, from Nar-Asmin's. Too appraising for her liking. It might be a truer appraising, and that was an uncomfortable thought. Not the superiority of a male with a female in his power, but that of a man who knew what you did not want him to know. Mountain women did not carry swords, save the priestesses, and those who had remained in Tamghat's temple were not such fools as to travel into the wilds alone.

On the other hand, a hunter who made no qualms about shooting Tamghat's folk might be one of those who trained with her secret village militias, or he might be one she should recruit.

And he should know the right path to Narvabarkash.

Her hand was sticky, fouled, and she could hardly sheathe the sax as it was, but dismounting to clean it was a horrible labour. By the time she had worked her way down, hung a perilous moment tangled in her petticoats, and cleaned sword and hand, sleeve and shawl as best she could, in the thin dead grass that clung between the rocks, the hunter had looted both mercenaries, caught Rying's brown pony, and heaved both bodies over the unhappy beast's back.

Attavaia hobbled after him, leaning on her pony, the crutch in her other hand. He led back towards the ice field. The white pony milled about on the edge, still nervous, flinching at the sight of them, but the hunter crooned to it, holding out a hand, and it came like a dog, cautious, but relieved to have a human taking charge.

“There's no way down,” Attavaia said. “Is there?”

“Not for you. But if you want your boyfriends to disappear, a crevasse is the best I can think of.”

“And the ponies?” she asked doubtfully. She couldn't see killing them and dragging their bodies anywhere out of sight, and didn't like the idea, anyway, innocent beasts caught in the quarrels of humans. But to leave them straying, where some villager might claim them and find himself executed as a murderous rebel…

The hunter gave her that amused flash of a grin again, dark brown eyes in a brown-burned face of the high peaks. The fringe of beard framing his square jaw was trimmed short, and he was cleaner than the average hunter. He had turquoise pendants in each ear, rather than the usual gold rings. Maybe he hunted leopards.

“They're worth too much. And both young mares, too. I know a place that'll take them, where Tamghati soldiers won't see ‘em. Hold the ponies here, would you, Sister?”

He hauled a body off, hesitated only a moment, and rolled it over the edge. Attavaia watched expressionlessly as the second followed, arms flailing.

“It'll be three of us dead at the bottom, if I try carrying ‘em down,” the hunter said, with a hint of defensiveness.

Attavaia nodded and found a rock to sit on, holding the reins of all three beasts, as the hunter disappeared down the steep sheep-track after the corpses.

She could leave him, take all three ponies and he would never catch up. Or he might; she was a townswoman, and though she had been learning the mountains for two years now, she would never read them as a man like that did. He would track her down, if he wanted to, and he probably would, since the ponies no doubt represented a fairly substantial windfall of wealth for him.

Attavaia made it well over an hour, by the march of the shadows, before the hunter returned. She was cold and stiff and her leg was throbbing; she didn't think she could haul herself back into the saddle without help.

He looked more than a little relieved to see her still sitting there, or maybe it was only the ponies he was glad to see. He took the reins of the mercenaries’ two from her and offered a hand up. Kept hold of the hand, once she was up.

“What happened to your leg?” he asked, looking down.

“Broken. A horse fell on it.”

He frowned. “Death,” he said flatly. “Where?”

“Serakallash,” she answered, rattled. “In the battle, when Tamghat took it.”

“Ah. And whose side were you on?”

“The right one.”

He snorted, smiled, and let go her hand. The air was cold, after his warm grip. “You've missed your trail. It's back that way.”

“I realize that.” A pause. “Which trail?”

“To Narvabarkash. Or thereabouts. You don't want to go to the village itself, anyway.”

“Where are your dogs?” Attavaia took a firmer grip on her crutch. Sweet Attalissa, she'd sat here an hour or two waiting on the man and never thought to wonder that. A hunter without dogs? Without spears?

“With the yaks.” A wide-eyed, innocent look, playing with her as much as the damned Grasslander. A sudden smile, not innocent and much, much to be preferred, as of a joke shared between friends. She found herself smiling back, even not knowing what the joke was. “We've been expecting you, Sister. I'm Tsuzas. I was expecting a goddess, actually, for some reason, but,” he shrugged, “you'll do. Can I help you up?”

She didn't answer, hauling herself belly-down over the saddle from the off side, swinging her good left leg over, but he caught and steadied her, impersonally intimate hands on her hips.

“I don't see how you can expect me, since my business isn't with you, and you can expect all the goddesses you want, Tamghat's made sure there aren't any around here, hasn't he?”

“You tell me, Sister.” He swung up on the brown and followed her back along the trail, pausing only to bundle up the looted gear and strap it to the white's saddle. Attavaia kept going, but a clatter of hooves warned her as the man caught up.

“I may be wrong about the goddess,” he said, sounding almost contrite. “It's often hard to know what anything means.”

She looked back over her shoulder. Too clean for a hunter living wild on the mountains, Great Gods, yes.

Handsome men, Enneas had said.

“You're from Narvabarkash?”

“Didn't I say so?”

He had not, and the limpid, lying-innocent eyes said he knew it.

“You're Narva's priest,” she accused.

“Tsuzas,” he said, touching his chest with a little bow. He grinned, shrugged. “Priest as the god takes me. Today I'm herding yaks and hunting goddesses. So I'm told. Turn south, here, up over this ridge.”

“There's no trail.”

“So?” He pushed the brown pony past her, with the white at heel. “This is a shortcut. Actually a spur of Narva's peak itself, but we cross over. If you were heading for the main village, you'd go over and turn back west, but we go east, and then up, into the stones and Narva's heart. We won't make it before dark, but then, you wouldn't have made it to the village by sunset, either.”

He kept looking back, as though he expected her to suddenly bolt, or perhaps merely to slip gracelessly off over the pony's tail. The latter didn't seem so unlikely. She wouldn't have tried this ridge, herself, even if it had shown a trail.

“She's with you,” he said abruptly, waiting for her on the height.

Attavaia clung to her saddlebow, concentrated on breathing evenly, staying upright. Her head pounded with her leg, and she felt cold and clammy. Her teeth had started to chatter. Something pushed at her, cold, like the winter air crawling off the ice field. Angry, a will of hate. It found its way into her, squeezed her heart.

They had a shorter, gentler ride down into the next narrow valley, where half a dozen yak cows grazed, watched over by a pair of the big black dogs. Attavaia found it no easier. Her ears buzzed, and spots danced before her eyes. Mountain sickness, maybe, or the fever striking back into her leg. No place to fall ill.

“The goddess with you—she isn't Attalissa.” Tsuzas was looking as grey as she felt when the dun came up beside him. He shook his head violently, as if to clear it of buzzing flies. “Death, you said, in Serakallash.”

“Didn't,” she muttered. “You said that.”

“Sera.” His eyes had gone black, pupils dilated. Then the fit seemed to pass and he only frowned. “You're in no condition to be riding around the mountains.” He whistled. It sounded like a string of birdcalls. The dogs, who had stood watching warily, scenting strange horses as well as their master, no doubt, went racing about their business. The yaks, black ones splashed with white, like magpies, grumbled and grunted and bunched up, trudged the way they ought, she supposed. Tsuzas, with another look at her, took the dun's reins. “Just hold on, Sister. It's a long ride yet, and your order's not so welcome on the peak.”

Understanding hit her, sharp as the pain now jolting up her spine with every step the pony took.

“Your god's going to kill me.” Attalissa was gone, and so conquered Narva stirred—why hadn't she realized that danger?

Because Narva had never been more than a legend, a story of old days. Attalissa was all the god the mountains owned, for several days’ travel in any direction. She had to leave this place while she still could. The goddess of the desert spring wasn't hers, to demand her life in service.

“Sera,” she said, through clenched and chattering teeth. “She said to take her and hide her in the mines of Narva, take her back to her spring when Attalissa returns to defeat Tamghat. You take her. I can't go with you. I can't. He'll kill me.”

“He damned well better not.”

“I'll go to the village, friends there. Sisters go to Narvabarkash all the time.”

“No. Now he's got a hold on you, he might not let go, not anywhere in the barkash. Great Gods, I'm sorry.” Tsuzas, presumptuous man, wrapped his own shawl around her shoulders and held it there. “He's not…all there. What people say about peculiar old relatives? Blind and deaf and dumb, in a way. He just reacts to things. Like an animal.”

“Bloody stupid god to worship.”

“You get to pick yours? At least you chose your priesting. I was born to it. The rest of the barkash is Attalissa's now, but us, we're stuck with him, father to son.”

“Emissary from Sera. He can't hate Sera. He can't know Sera. Narva, hear me—Sera sent me, from the desert.” Attavaia could hardly get the words out. A weight of hostility, like rocks, like crushing ice, settled more heavily into the half-knit bones of her leg, finding the flaws, the cracks, the scars, pressing on them. Red flecks danced and clustered before her eyes, bees swarming.

“He can't hear,” Tsuzas said, despairingly. “He can't understand. Shouldn't have brought you this far. My fault: priestess and goddess, my grandfather saw you were coming, and it never occurred to me, when he started talking of goddesses, that even in Attalissa's strength your sisters can never come to the true mines.”

“What true mines?” Talk, any nonsense, just so long as there was sound, tying her to the world.

“There's the Narvabarkash, the district, and then there's the Narvabarkash, the mountain peak, the god's heart. And there's mines, ancient mines, your sisters never found. Even your assassin Blackdog never found his way through them to the deepest shrine. Not that there's any stone worth cutting in the old workings any more,” he added, inconsequentially.

“That's what Sera meant. Take the stone, you take it and hide it there. I'm going…” Back over that ridge, the valley where she had met the mercenaries. It was some border of Narva's, that was why she hadn't been able to find the path, why she got lost, she and the mercenaries both, always back at the ice field, they said. If she could stay conscious, stay mounted long enough, she would be safe. If she passed out here, she knew she would never wake. Crushed beneath a mountain of blind old malevolence. Sisters did die, around Narvabarkash. Mountain hazards. Avalanche and rockslide and falls. More often than was quite to be expected. She tried vaguely to turn the pony's head and found she was leaning on Tsuzas, almost falling between the two animals.