Blackdog (43 page)

It's all right. I'll be all right. I'll stay right here out of the way
, Pakdhala told her father, before Holla-Sayan could protest he was staying with her and touch off yet another fight with Gaguush about his overprotectiveness, another sneer from Zavel about her being babied. At the same time, though, it was what she wanted most, Holla close under her eye where she could protect him, as she had not been able to Otokas.

Yeah, right. Don't shoot Django by mistake, eh?
Holla gave her a flicker of a smile, eyes human hazel again, and she wanted to hug him. He had to struggle with the dog, every time he let her claim some small freedom.

I can tell a Stone Desert man from a Red by now, I should think. I'll aim for his legs if I can't see his tattoos.

Django will thank you for that, yes.

Gaguush continued making her plans. “Holla-Sayan, are you listening? You four go round the south and up. Doha, Pakdhala, Thekla, stay right here. Kapuzeh, you too.” She raised her voice. “Master Singah! Hey, Singahs, both of you, get over here.”

In short rushes the merchants, Singah the elder and the younger, were moving with their men back beyond the road towards the cliff, finding what cover they could there. One of the Over-Malagru guards lay by the fire, moaning, an arrow low in his belly. Moopung, his name was. He bled around his clutching hands, and rocked from side to side.

“Hells.”

“Cowards. If they fall over the cliff, we'll be well rid of them,” Tusa muttered.

“He'll die of that,” Judeh said, white-lipped. “Not quickly, either. ‘Dhala, if we—”

“Leave him,” Gaguush said sternly, and looked around at them all. “Let's go.”

They broke out in both directions, Gaguush and her handful yelling, noise and fury and distraction. Pakdhala let her attention follow Holla-Sayan, slipping through the shadows, the rocks, Varro, Tihmrose, Django following. Dark shadow riding him, the Blackdog on the edge of the world. The sun was still not up over that eastern ridge; the others might not notice.

The sun would be in their eyes, when it rose, any moment now, and the raiders knew it, they waited for it.

If they did, they made their charge too soon, some tribesman panicked at a sudden rattling stone above. Half of them rushed screaming at the camp but the rest turned and fled, running into Holla and the other three. Pakdhala and Doha shooting from behind the baggage and Immerose and Tusa from the rocks to the north brought several down, but the raiders made for the shelter of the baggage themselves, scrambling and leaping over the low bulwark it made.

Pakdhala screamed, anger, mostly, slammed the heel of her left hand into a man's face and her knife up into his ribs. She wrenched her blade free and shoved him out of the way. Doha gave a startled grunt and pitched into her. They both fell. The woman behind him, spear bloody, steaming, fell on them in turn, mouth gaping, as Kapuzeh whirled to slice halfway through her neck. Thekla, muttering a steady stream of what must be Westron curses, crouched by them, throwing stones at the two who then closed with Kapuzeh and edged him away, blades clashing.

Pakdhala clutched Doha close. He was very heavy for such a thin old man. Heat spread, soaking into her. “No,” she said. “You won't die. You can't, I won't let you.”

He bared his teeth, desert-dry skin rough against hers, muttered something that was just breath.

“Cousin Doha! Doha!
Sayan!”

His eyes were empty, spirit sliding away.

Doha!
She could feel him there, on the road to the Old Great Gods, the long journey beginning, the reins of his soul still wound through his body. Pull him back, hold him…with his wounds beyond healing that would be to damn him a ghost just as much as leaving him unburied would.

’Lissa!

I'm all right, dog.
But he would know that.
It's Doha…Father, Holla, I'm sorry.

Pakdhala rolled from beneath Doha, knife still in her hand, shoved the head-lolling body of his killer off him.

Gaguush and the others charged back then, seeing them overrun, and finally, five of the merchants’ men showed with grim efficiency that they were not mere decoration, as Immerose had taunted after the last raider attack, when they left the fighting to the gang. It was over, then, very quickly. The three bandits still on their feet threw down their weapons. Bikkim fended off Pakdhala's strike, gone wide as she recognized him, and wrapped his arms around her.

“Ah, Doha.” Gaguush dropped down beside the old man, a hand on his cheek. Looked up at Kapuzeh. “Kill them.”

Judeh opened his mouth, closed it again before his protest found breath. Thekla kept up her muttering, prayer now, to her dead gods. Bikkim slumped and suddenly all his weight was on Pakdhala. They staggered down together and her heart nearly stopped when she saw the quantity of blood soaking his trousers. Knew what she would find before she had the trouser leg ripped off, and was screaming at Judeh for his needles and thread, for honey and myrrh and sesame oil. She barely noticed when Kapuzeh cut the throats of the shrieking, struggling bandit survivors, the merchants’ guards holding them down on their knees, only yards away.

She noticed only as an annoyance the blood trickling down her own face from a cut on her temple she did not remember getting.

Django, Tihmrose, and Varro came staggering in from the hillside. Varro and Tihmrose were both wounded, but nothing demanded immediate attention, and the merchants’ belly-shot man…was dead, Great Gods, one of his companions had stabbed him in the heart. He would have died, yes, slowly and horribly from the filth of the wound, but she could have tried…

There was only Bikkim, to lose or save.

Pakdhala was Judeh's assistant in all his leech-craft, as able at stitching up wounded camels, drenching ill ones, as he. Better, though no one said that in Judeh's hearing. “Help me,” she ordered, and Judeh did not argue, simply handed her what she asked for, pressed the edges of the gash together for her, agreed when she muttered they couldn't close it completely; it would have to drain. Thekla hovered behind her, catching her long braids back out of the way, tying a bandage around her head to keep the blood out of her eyes, finding her hat to keep the climbing sun from dazzling her.

“Got two of them,” Django reported to Gaguush behind her. “The others dodged us in the rocks, headed off and with all the screaming down here I figured we were needed. Doubt they'll dare come back, though.”

“Where's Holla? Doha's his kin.”

“Feondas.
” That was Varro. It didn't sound like any invocation to a god. “I don't know. He wasn't hurt that I saw. I'll go find him.”

“Must have gone to follow them,” said Django. “Bloody idiot. He'll be all right, boss. Probably a good thing if we know which way they ran—we can warn the ferrymen at the upper castle and the guilds of At-Landi.”

The merchants were fussing and clucking over their goods in their own half-Nabbani dialect, angry at the damage, picking their way around Bikkim's prone form as though he were merely another bundle. Pakdhala heard everything, saw, smelt everything. It almost made her sick. She could feel Bikkim's heart beating as though it were inside her own chest, feel Judeh's when he put a comforting hand on her shoulder for a moment.

Dog
…she pleaded, wanting her father here, but he would not answer her, or there was no Holla-Sayan left conscious in the dog's mind to speak to her, only the Blackdog, which knew what it had to do when Attalissa was threatened.

They buried Doha and the Over-Malagru man Moopung under cairns of stone by the roadside, since there was no earth to dig in here. It took half the day to choose and carry sharp-edged chunks of rock, and they all had torn nails and bleeding hands before they were done. Pakdhala said the prayers to Sayan over her supposed cousin, because Holla-Sayan still had not come back and Varro had found no trace of him. Gaguush wanted to throw the Red Desert tribesmen over the cliff, to let the Kinsai-av deal with them, but Pakdhala said flatly, no. They were not Kinsai's folk, and Kinsai did not want them. So the bandits were heaped together and another cairn made, though without nearly such care. Kapuzeh set the head of one of them on a broken spear rising from it, as a warning. Barbarians, both Masters Singah muttered at that. But it was Master Singah the younger who demanded Bikkim be abandoned, to die or recover alone as he could. Tusa caught Gaguush's arm before her fist could strike.

“Feel free to travel on alone if you like,” Gaguush snarled, then. “But you don't take my camels. If you think you can carry all your goods on your own, then do so and get out of my sight. I'm not civilized enough to abandon my folk, Bashra be thanked.”

Pakdhala left Gaguush pacing and cursing and harrying Judeh about tending the camels’ assorted scrapes and bruises, and went to sit by Bikkim, who breathed slowly and deeply, dosed with poppy-syrup by the leech.

“Better,” Thekla said, with a flick of her hand towards him, like a darting bird. “See?”

Pakdhala nodded. She felt very strange, empty, as though she floated in some dark place, nothing to hold her to earth. Or as though she'd been dosed to sleep herself. Drained of life.

“You're ill,” Thekla said. “All tired out. You should sleep.”

Pakdhala pulled aside the blanket covering Bikkim and felt his thigh. It was warm, but not too warm, not fevered, not even very swollen.

The Westron woman put another blanket around Pakdhala, forced a cup of sweet tea into her hands, and watched like a cat until she drank it. “Now sleep.”

Kinsai was here; she shouldn't feel like this, weak as in Serakallash or Marakand.

“Sleep,” Thekla insisted, and nudged her down by Bikkim, tucking blankets close around them both.

Sleep, little sister. Your young man will be fine, though how you're going to explain that to the harridan, when he's up and walking tomorrow…

Will you stop calling Gaguush that?

No. She is a harridan, a hag, a termagant. Your dog's too good for her.

Told you no this time, didn't he? Why don't you pester Immerose? She never turns anyone down. Will Bikkim be all right, really?

You tell me, you're the one healed him.

Did I?

Not that it's agreed with you, child. Go to sleep.

You should have warned us.

No. Raiders are your own problem, caravaneer. Besides, you felt them coming. You should have paid closer attention and not been thinking of young men with their shirts off.
Kinsai giggled like a girl.
But there was something I wanted to tell you…No. I don't know. I can't say. Be careful, little sister. There's…something hunting you.

I know.
But Kinsai had gone, and she was asleep.

It was dusk when Pakdhala woke again, feeling hardly any more rested than before. Judeh sat watching over Bikkim, and Tihmrose and Immerose came over the moment they saw her stirring.

“You look terrible,” Tihmrose said. “Like you haven't slept in a month.”

“That cut on your head must be worse than it looks.” Judeh teased the bandages away, wincing as they stuck, but it was only dried blood and the honey he had smeared on it to prevent poison. The cut itself was just a thin scabbed line. Pakdhala put her hand up to feel it. She always did heal quickly, like the Blackdog.

“Huh. Well, that's…better.” Judeh gave her an odd look. “Bikkim's much better, too. Take a look, ‘Dhala.”

Pakdhala bit her lip, bending over Bikkim's leg. It looked like a scar two weeks old, knit clean, pink and shiny against the hairy pale brown of his thigh. The stitches showed dark and ugly.

“Not too close a look,” Immerose added. “He's got nothing on but his drawers.”

But there was a wary shadow behind her light words: Holla-Sayan had not come back.

“Father's all right,” Pakdhala said, before they had quite worked out who should tell her Holla-Sayan was still missing. “He'll be back soon. He just went to…to follow them, make sure they weren't going to attack again.”

“You always know where he is, don't you?” Tusa came up quietly beside her, squatted down, her voice stretched thin and her lips pale. “And Bikkim should die, from a wound like that. Not right away maybe, since it missed the artery, but it would never heal.”

“Tusa!” Tihmrose snapped. “The Lady prevent it! Don't ill-wish the man.”

“You know he should die of that. Out here. You've seen it happen, someone rotting till they died. And look at him!” The Great Grass woman dropped to her knees by Bikkim's side, and her pale brown eyes looked, to Pakdhala, not so much afraid as desperate. “’Dhala, you're a wizard, aren't you? Just say. Maybe your mama was, or some other kin? Someone you get it from?”

Pakdhala shook her head. “No. It can't have been as bad as it looked. A lot of mess, but not so deep as it seemed.”

She'd meant that as a warning, but Judeh contradicted. “It was bad.” His voice was defiant, too loud. “I didn't expect him to live.”

“She's a wizard,” Tusa said, rocking back on her heels, arms folded tightly around her knees. “A wizard. Or…”

“Or what?” Immerose asked.

Tusa shook her head.

“So what if she
is
turning out to be a wizard?” Immerose asked. “We could do with one. So long as no fool goes mentioning her talent in Marakand, there's no harm, and a lot of good.”

“I'm not a wizard!” Pakdhala said. “I can't be. I'm just…Holla's brat.”

“If she is, she'll need a master to teach her properly,” Judeh said then. He gave her a wry grin. “A proper apprenticeship. I knew I wasn't that bad a doctor, till you came along for comparison, brat. But if you're a wizard, that explains a lot.”

“No!”

Tusa wouldn't abandon the matter. “And she does always know things. You ask ‘Dhala where anyone is, she always knows without looking. And Holla-Sayan—he knows. He has to. That's why he's such a fool over her, like he's got to watch her all the time.”

“You make it sound like there's something wrong with a talent for magic,” Tihmrose pointed out. “C'mon, Tusa. It's not like we're going to turn her over to the Voice's guard in Marakand for execution, and anywhere else, well, if she is a wizard, that's to her benefit. Find her a good master and in a dozen years she'll have a fancy house in At-Landi or be in Over-Malagru making her fortune. Support us all, in our old age.”