Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (71 page)

He went on rolling downslope, letting his body's weight carry him as far as it would until he fetched up against a tree and couldn't kick himself on further.

Had to stand instead; battered and unready and half-blind, he must stumble to his feet, set his back to the tree and draw his scimitar. No hope of standing off to use his arrows in this melee, in this confusion of dust and bodies.

He looked upslope, squinting against the toils of dust, and saw a dark shape looming. The height of his own head it loomed and was a head itself, shining eyes and jaws agape ahead a bulk of shadow. It made a darting jab towards him, all teeth and throat like a doom awaiting, impatient for its prey.

Not he but his body ducked aside, he couldn't help it; he felt a blast of cold air above his head and the tree shake at his back as the monstrous beast slammed into it.

His eye was measuring, even as his body moved — thick as his thigh, had he thought those writhing bodies were? Thick as his chest around, rather. He couldn't see how long; too long, he thought, several times his height and this one at least would look better for being shorter.

His ducking had at least been a warrior's avoidance, not a child's fearful flinching away. He was poised and set, his scimitar drawn back and both hands now on the haft. He didn't pause, but he did pray; even as he swung, he prayed that all men's prayers might be equally effective. The grumbling and greedy Selussid priest, the Ransomers who were priests and killers both, the Surayonnaise this morning who was no kind of priest a
t all: they all prayed differentl
y to different gods, and yet the lives of thousands depended on their separate blessings.

His own life was one such, here and now, and who could say whether Selussid and Surayonnaise might not have undone each other's work, the prayers of one nullifying the prayers of the other, one angry God blunting where another had made sharp
...
? He had no way to tell, except by learning; and so he swung, and his blade met the glossy black hide of the 'ifrit.

His blade met its hide, and bit; bit and sheared through, driven by all the strength he had in arms and shoulders, all the exultant power of his body as he felt it sink deep, deep into the body of the 'ifrit. The Selussid blessing had held, or else the Surayonnaise, or both together. The serpent-beast spasmed on his blade, coiled and twisted and tried to tear it from his grasp, and could not. Jemel turned the point inside the great gashing wound and heaved like a man at a hunt, opening up a carcase with his gutting-knife. No entrails gushed out but only smoke, as though all the solid heft of the creature had coldly and instandy burned to an insubstantial ash. Its glowing eyes faded, and were dull; its hide - its carapace, perhaps, hard as shell and smooth as shell, and yet it had been as supple as snakeskin - dulled also, as though there were smoke beneath the gleam; and then it dissipated and was gone, and left him with nothing at all.

As he had been fighting, so the wind had been carrying away all the fine debris that had stung and blocked his sight. Now, granted a moments respite, he could look around and see how much damage was being done; now he had the leisure actually to hear all the screaming.

It was an image of hell, worse than all the imams' teaching and all the tales told around a thin fire on a bitter night. Not a horse had broken free to escape the ridge, not a man remained mounted; men and beasts lay everywhere, dead and dying, broken and ripped asunder.

And yet there was hope, there were men still afoot and still fighting. Their swords were as potent as his scimitar, their companion's blessing was doing its work and so were they, cleaving brutally amid the carnage.

But even a twice-blessed blade took time and effort to slay one of these serpent-things, and there were many, many and more coming; the earth still churned, the rocks themselves were shifting with its movement, trees that had stood a thousand years were falling as new demons erupted from their roots.

Two more were coming for Jemel. He couldn't even go where he was most needed, to the heart of the battle; he must guard himself and fight his own fight for his own survival.

He set himself against the tree again and met the first
serpent's hurtling charge with
his blade between its teeth, felt those lethal needles rake his arm even as the fire died in its eyes, too close to his; and heaved arm and blade sideways, all the strength he had, so that the scimitar cut its way out of the first dead 'ifrit even before it had faded, and cut savagely into the second before it could strike.

That one took more killing, he took more hurts; and when he next had time to look, it was sweat that was stinging his eyes now and there were fewer men still standing, still fighting, and it seemed an inexhaustible number of the monsters to oppose them.

He stumbled over the broken ground to help them, though all the help he could offer was to draw some few of the creatures to himself, to his own slaughter. His mind had narrowed and narrowed with his eyes, his focus was so intense it was almost painful: there were 'ifrit to kill with this wondrously heavy scimitar, that grew heavier yet with every blow and yet less potent, which was strange but didn't matter, it meant only that he must strike again and yet again. And duck, too late because the creatures were moving more swiftly now, and that one had scored his shoulder; but the sharp sting of it was a spur and he'd seen horses spurred, the Patrics did that in their armour and he knew what it meant, it was to drive the horses harder and so he would be driven, another blow and another and this blade of his must be drinking the deaths of these endless 'ifrit, absorbing all the weight they lost, it was so heavy now he could barely lift it, and yet he must
...

And did; and fought on and on, and soon there were no coherent thoughts at all but only the necessity of movement, the planting of the foot and the swinging of the arms like a peasant, like a farmer with a scythe, no art or grace but only death in his blade and death in his mind's eye, his own death looming and as many others as he could make beforehand.

For a short while he was aware of another man beside him, shoulder to shoulder; they could hew together, and guard each other against the worst. Too short a while, inadequate the guard: there was a sudden flurry of bright black bodies, he himself was sorely pressed and when he had the time to glance around his companion was gone, a sudden absence at his side that seemed the worse because Jemel had never had the chance to learn his name.

In the end, at last, too soon it came as at last it had to; there was an inexplicable trembling weakness in his arms as he raised his scimitar, he nearly lost his grip on the haft which had grown slimy with his blood, he saw the point slip low when it needed not to do that, it needed to stand high and firm and yet he could not lift it. And
there was a fresh 'ifrit directl
y ahead of him and all he could see were the eyes of it, hot and draining, sucking, leeching the last of his strength as though it would kill him before it even touched.

He wished he had time to feel sorry; he thought that with a
little
time, he would remember what he had to feel sorry for, why his death must be a sadness. At the moment it eluded him.

But then the death eluded him also, strangely; he saw a sudden dark flower in one of those glowing eyes, and the glow went out before the 'ifrit crashed into him. He fell, of course, and the creature fell atop him. But those teeth that should have ravened at his throat lay still and sharp against it, only dinting by the weight of them, not cutting in the least. And then there was no weight, the thing had vanished; and instead there was a standing figure against the sky, a silhouette to block the sun, a voice; and it said, 'We came too late. I am sorry. How many are your dead?'

Why, only me,
he wanted to say; but he couldn't find a voice of his own to say it with, and before he did he remembered that there had indeed been others, and perhaps they were all of them dead, and only he not. Which would be a thing to be sad about, perhaps, though not the chiefest thing, he thought.

He struggled to rise and could not until the man stooped to help him, to lift him with an easy heave of the arm as though he had himself lost half his substance in his nearness to death.

'Steady now, lad. This was a heroic
battle
, you've earned your pride but don't overdraw it, lean on me
...'
And then, more slowly, 'Wait - these others are of Surayon. Do the Sharai fight beside them now?'

'Against this?' Another voice, whisper-thin, without a drop of blood behind it; it was an effort even to turn his head but Jemel had to make that effort, had to see. Three men sat on the turned earth and passed a waterskin between them; all of them were bleeding, pale, close to collapse, but all were alive and seemed likely to stay so. Not alone, then; it was good not to be alone, though there was a tremendous sadness in it. 'We all fight beside each other, when we fight a thing like this. What, would you let us stand alone?'

'I did not. Those were my arrows saved you, blessed by my own priest; and be glad there were that few of you standing, that we could use the arrows. Otherwise you'd none of you be standing, we could not have come in time. But I had not realised the Sharai
...'

His voice trailed away, in life or simply in Jemel's still-narrow mind; it did not matter. He was a man, a Patric in a black cloak over white; and Jemel knew what that meant, and he remembered something of his sadness, and the causes of it.

His scimitar was in his hand yet, he had not let it go. Now he strained to lift it, shimmering clean blade and blood-sodden haft, he struggled to point it towards this man his rescuer; and he said, 'I have been looking for a Patric man. D'Escrivey, his name is. He is a Ransomer, he wears your dress. Are you d'Escrivey? You might be. I might be seeking you
...'

A soft, puzzled laugh, and, Aye, lad, you might - if I were he. I am not; my name is Karlheim, of Elessi. I served my year with the Ransomers, no more than that. Is d'Escrivey here? I have not heard. You'd do better to seek him northerly, that's where I last saw him. But you're going nowhere yet. Come on, you little infidel, put up that hero's sword and lie down with your friends there, take some water, you've lost half the blood your God has given you. Which was probably the only half you had left anyway, by the look of that scar on your throat. Steady, there, don't give me one to match it; I told you, I'm not Anton d'Escrivey. Though I'd like to know what he's done to upset the Sharai. He upset all of Outremer long ago, but I hadn't realised his ambitions ran so much further. Perhaps you'll tell me later. For the moment I have an army to move and I don't know the country; but I guess I'll ask your companions about that, because I don't think you'd be too much help there, would you? As a matter of fact, I think you're asleep, unless you're dead already. Which would be a shame, because I'd like to see you meet d'Escrivey. Give me some help here, someone
...'

Even from their island, from their utter separation on this lowest point in all the valley princedom, the girls could still see a great broad sweep of Surayon laid out on either bank of the river. The swathes of open pasture, the defensive walls and the settlements beyond the walls, Surayon-town to the south with the Princip's palace behind it: the valley's
gentle
rise on either side meant that everything was laid open to them here, between the rushing water and the crowding trees of the mountains' early slopes. Julianne had been reminded of something that had taken a few minutes to pin down; it was like a natural theatre on a massive scale, with themselves chief players on the stage and the hushed and expectant valley itself their audience, except that neither one of them knew her part. That was a child's nightmare, though, and she was a twice-married woman with a husband on either bank; she would not dwell on failure, confusion, fear. If they had a purpose here, they would find it out. Elisande would; this was her country, after all, her people. Julianne knew nothing of the land, except what she could see; nothing of the people, except what she had seen.

Whatever lay further that she had not seen, however, she knew that this vista spread out around her, this little view was the heart and the soul of Surayon. Unless the Princip was his country's soul, but she thought them much the same: open, warm and welcoming, but with rocky heights where she dared not tread, hidden places she could not even see, traps and snares where she could not find her way without a guide.

Come to think of it, that would be a good description of Elisande also, and would have done for Rudel too. Were all Surayonnaise so blessed, so cursed, so devious? She was trained to watch for
subtle
ties at court, where lives and livings, even the survival of nations could pivot on a word, a gesture, a deeper level of meaning than the surface showed. A whole population would be a deeper thing altogether than a court. Her father had had her peel an onion once with her fingers, ripping a way in and further in: soft and old and pitted with rot on the outside, it had been stiff and white within until her fingers suddenly found a layer that was grey and slimy. Inside that, though, the core had still been clean and fresh and wholesome. He'd left her to take her own lesson from it, that even the seemingly ordinary was not as it appeared to be and could go on changing however deep she dug, the foul and the good lying nestled together in the same heart and the good unsullied by the foul; she had taken the onion to the kitchens and had watched it being fried into her dinner. The next day, though, her father had given her a pearl and a delicate file. She'd scraped as gently as a jewel-doctor, as stubbornly as - well, as a curious and determined girl looking for the lesson. Again she'd found layer within layer, and subtle changes of colour and iridescence between each of them. And at the heart of it, of course, a tiny piece of grit, that so much buried beauty had been founded on. By then the beauty was all destroyed, and she wondered if that were actually the lesson: not that pearls were onions, but that pearls lost their value by too close an examination, where an onion's value could not be told without it. At the end, though, there was still no onion.