Karavans (29 page)

“Dead,” Darmuth suggested.

“Likely.”

The demon frowned thoughtfully. “She should have rites.”

“She should,” Brodhi agreed, “but does either of us know what would be appropriate?”

“You’re
dioscuri
,” Darmuth said lightly. “Make something up.”

A surge of anger rose up in Brodhi strong enough to flay the skin off a human. It took supreme effort not to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse that would achieve nothing other than to amuse Darmuth. And thus amuse Ferize, and thus any number of other demons, because of course they would be told. He
was dioscuri
, but only Darmuth and Ferize were ever inclined to mock him for it.

Even now, sly irony glinted in Darmuth’s pale eyes. Brodhi buried his anger and once more knelt down on one knee beside the old woman. In the inner language, the secret language, spoken beneath his breath, he gave her spirit release verbally. Then physically, touching fingertips very lightly to the eleven blessing points: middle of forehead, the bridge of her nose, each eyelid, each cheekbone, the fingertip hollow between nose and mouth, the upper and lower lips, chin and, lastly, the notch in fragile collar bones lying beneath age-mottled skin.

Go where you will, he wished her. Go as a human should, according to the requirements of whichever god you worship. Be well, old mother, now that the river lies behind you
.

He glanced up from the body and saw Darmuth watching him still. The expression on his face was unreadable, and yet something in his eyes suggested he was cataloging Brodhi’s actions.

Brodhi rose with a marked lack of habitual grace. “I am not yours,” he declared vehemently. “You will say nothing of this.”

Darmuth was amused. “I may say whatever I wish.”

“I am not yours,” Brodhi repeated. “Leave it to Ferize. Tend Rhuan. He is yours.”

Darmuth laughed. “You think it speaks badly of you, that you would aid humans?”

He could not trust Darmuth. Brodhi said carefully, “That is not my oath. Not the oath I swore to humans—to the courier service.”

“So you remember that oath? You respect that oath?”

With vicious precision, Brodhi answered, “I remember all my oaths.”

“And do you consider one less binding than another?”

The question was a trap. Brodhi knew it, and refused to let himself be led into it. “Hadn’t you better ride back and make sure Rhuan hasn’t been killed yet again? Possibly for the seventh time? Which, of course, would end everything. For you. And for him.”

“You said you’d know if he died. Because of the blood-bond.”

“Oh, indeed, I may know he has died, but that doesn’t mean I will tell you about it.” Brodhi made an elegant but wholly human gesture with his hand. “Shoo, demon. Ride away, run away, fly away; I leave the means of departure to you. But do absent yourself from my company.”

Brodhi turned away. He neither heard nor saw Darmuth’s departure, but he knew the instant the demon was gone.

Oaths. So many promises made to humans, and to his own people. He could abjure all such things and damn himself forever. That, he rejected. Therefore it remained for him to pick his way through the myriad expectations, the numberless requisites set out upon his path. He was
dioscuri
. He felt, as always, as if he were a blind man, a blind man with no sense of touch, and no understanding at all of the world around him.

A blind man whose survival depended wholly on whim, on caprice.

Upon the games of the gods.

I
N THE WAGON, alone, Audrun sat on the edge of the cot usually shared by Ellica and Megritte. She had taken the time to go apart, to let the first reaction come upon her where no one would see. Her arms and legs felt cold, strangely numb. Her hands tingled. Spots danced before her eyes.

She closed them—and saw behind her lids the painted face of the Hecari. Smelled again his stink. Felt again his hands upon her, touching breasts and belly.

Touching breasts and belly
.

Audrun raised trembling hands and placed them over her eyes. She held the posture stiffly, forbidding herself the weakness of rocking that once, in childhood, had brought comfort with repetition, with the mindlessness of movement.

Oh, it was hard. Hard not to wish herself a child, innocent of the world, knowing pain and small hurts that she had learned, in adulthood, were mere precursors to what a woman faced, being both wife and mother.

Her throat cramped painfully. Audrun grabbed the front tail of her long tunic. Fabric crumpled in her hands; she pressed the wad of cloth against her face. The first keening wail of shock, of humiliation, of trembling reaction, escaped her mouth but was captured, was stifled, in the cloth.

She was wife and mother. She would let no one see her cry.

BY SUNSET, AFTER all the wagons had been moved off the road, Rhuan, Jorda, and several volunteers dug a pit. The bodies of the Hecari warriors were dumped into it, then the freshly dug earth was thrown over them. But Jorda’s instructions for completion of the task were explicit: There was to be no mound marking the burial pit, nor even the look of recently disturbed soil. And so they spent hours carrying off buckets of dirt, scattering it onto the wagon ruts where it would soon dry to blend in. The top layer of sod was replaced over the pit, then tamped down flat. The grass would die, Jorda said, but for a day or two it would not be obvious that dead men lay below it. They could not afford Hecari discovering their dead brethren.

He thanked and released the burial detail, then turned to Rhuan. Both of them were grimy from fine dirt sifting into the sweaty creases of their skin. With sleeves rolled up, dust clung to the wirelike ruddy hair on Jorda’s thick forearms, dulling its fire, and his loose tunic was stuck to his torso. Rhuan had removed his leather tunic to dig without its hindrance; now, as the sun went down, he felt the day cool into evening.

“Tell me,” Jorda said.

Rhuan knew what was coming. He knew also he deserved it.

He sighed, rubbing dampness from his brow with the back of a hand that hours before had been scribed with the crimson streaks of poison. The heaviness of ornamented braids dragged at his scalp. He was hungry and tired; dying and subsequent revival drained him, and the chill of dusk was an affront to flesh that fed on warmth. But he knew he owed Jorda the truth first. He would eat and rest later. “They did as told, the farmsteaders. Stood quietly, and the mother and eldest daughter kept their eyes cast down.”

Jorda’s brows rose. He had not expected that answer.

“Well?”

Rhuan drew in a breath. “One of the warriors put his hands on the wife.”

Within the nest of his beard, Jorda’s mouth jerked. “And so, despite instructions, the husband retaliated—”

Rhuan cut him off. “It wasn’t the husband.”

“The eldest son, then.”

“No. Me.”

“
You
!”

Rhuan kept his tone level. “She’s pregnant,” he said, “and the warrior touched her where no man but a husband should touch his wife, particularly a pregnant wife.”

Jorda stared at him, momentarily struck dumb. Slowly he shook his head. “Of all people, you should know—”

“I do know better. I knew better even as I cut his throat.”

The karavan-master remained disbelieving. “But it didn’t stop you.”

“No. Had you seen the look on the woman’s face—”

Jorda dismissed that with a sharp, silencing gesture. “Six Hecari warriors? You saw fit to open hostilities that might have gotten the entire family killed? That might have gotten most of the karavan killed?”

Rhuan held his tongue. Experience had taught him further explanation would be fruitless.

Jorda’s tone rasped. “Where’s Darmuth?”

“Chasing down the sixth warrior.”

“And so you might even be responsible for your partner’s death.”

Rhuan laughed. “Not Darmuth’s!”

That was a mistake. It heated Jorda’s already evident anger. Above his beard, cheeks flared red. “
You
may have lives to surrender without fear of a permanent death, but the rest of us do not. One life is all any of us has, Rhuan. You take them for granted, those lives. You risk what isn’t yours
to
risk.” He was angry, yes, but also perplexed. “Tell me why I should keep you on as a guide, if you are to be so irresponsible?”

It was truth in Rhuan’s mouth, but also arrogance. He
knew it. But could not, in that moment, find sweeter words; Jorda had pricked his pride. “Because I
can
die for you and your people, and have. Because I
can
take risks others can’t, and do. Because I may have precipitated this incident— that, I freely admit—but I also cleaned up my mess …and six Hecari warriors will no longer trouble the innocent folk of Sancorra. I count that a boon.”

“They might have killed the woman, Rhuan. A pregnant woman.”

“No.”

“No?”

He could not help himself. “My reflexes are better than any Hecari’s.”

It cowed Jorda not in the least. “How do you know that? Can you swear to that in each and every circumstance? That you will always be faster?”

“Yes.”

“
How
?”

Quietly he said, “Because I’m not human.”

That stopped Jorda in his tracks. The karavan-master blinked, brows rising. Rhuan had seen it before in Jorda and in others: because he liked humans, because he could laugh and joke with them, humans forgot he was not truly of them.

Until they were reminded.

But it passed, did Jorda’s startled recollection, and he made a reply with excessive, pointed clarity. “And. You.

Died.”

Rhuan laughed at him. “And I don’t doubt just this moment that you wish I’d remained that way.”

“You
died
, Rhuan!” Jorda wiped his face with a thick forearm, regaining control over the rumble of his bass voice. “I took it on faith, the day Ilona brought you to me, that you would put the welfare of the karavan first. I knew nothing at all of you, and she barely more. But she convinced me that with one guide dead, a Shoia might be valuable to have in my employ—”

“And so I am.”

“—and you swore an oath to guard the people who put their faith in me.”

“And so I have.”

Jorda studied him. The anger had burned itself out. The master seemed older in that moment, and infinitely wearier. Creases deepened in the flesh around his eyes. “One day, Rhuan, you will not rise up again. You will die the last death.”

“One day, yes. The true death will find me.”

“And until then I should believe you will do whatever you must to protect my people?”

“Yes,” Rhuan said steadily. “Judge me not by what happened today, but by all the days, all the years, I have already protected your people.”

SMOKE AND ASH drifted across the ravaged tent settlement; some fires continued to burn sluggishly at sunset as men ran to fill buckets and pots with water. Brodhi, deserted by Darmuth who had departed for the karavan, could not recall that he had ever seen humans mourn, not so many as this, who struck him as weak; he supposed that yes, if a loved one died it was perhaps worth a momentary pang of regret, but nothing more. It did nothing to alter the facts, such mourning, but wasted emotions and strength that might better be spent on something else, something substantial, such as gathering up scattered belongings and setting up tents that remained mostly whole. Would they not need shelter? Or, in their grief, did they feel nothing of external reality, and thus were immune to wind, rain, and cold? And why did they not begin proper rites for their people?

He stood amid the wreckage of lives, of human lives, and felt nothing save distaste. He watched as the women keened, clutching at one another as if another’s grief might aid them, but Brodhi failed to see how it could. Wouldn’t shared grief double, even treble, the pain?

The men were less effusive, but he saw tears tracking channels in the grime and smears of blood that dyed faces, bearded or clean-shaven. He saw bodies bent forward as if
they suffered belly wounds; he saw trembling in the calloused, work-hardened hands. There were wounds on none except those who had attempted to save the one in ten, and who had paid for the interference with blows to their own bodies. None had been killed; Hecari were meticulous in decimation, wanting those who survived to learn the lesson, to
teach
the lesson: Too many Sancorrans banded together called for culling.