Karavans (36 page)

His smile was crooked. “There’s nothing left in my belly
to
lose.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking beyond the lantern light into the darkness. “It’s coming. And there’s nothing any of us can do to prevent it.”

The karavan-master’s eyes sharpened. “If Shoia are so sensitive—do you know when?”

“No. That much even I can’t tell.” He changed topics abruptly, looking at Ilona. “The man is dead. Someone opened his throat.”

“
Someone.
” Jorda’s tone was laden with heavy irony, but he went no farther with the implication. “Then I had better go tell his woman.” His expression was strained; Ilona knew he hated this duty above all others. “Perhaps you and Darmuth might do her the courtesy of wrapping the body in oilcloth and bringing him to her wagon. She’ll want dawn rites, I’m sure, before we head back to the settlement.”

“Darmuth hasn’t returned yet,” Rhuan said, “but yes, I can do that. I’ll get the cloth from the supply wagon.”

Grimly, Jorda said, “I suppose I had best come up with an explanation for his death other than murder … a predator, I suspect, which will frighten everyone, but we’re bound for the settlement anyway.” He thought further. “But where were you, they’ll wonder? Your job was to keep him safe.”

“I,” Rhuan declared, “was nowhere near him.”

“A predator, then,” Jorda decided. “And you were some distance away and too late to save him.”

The master departed, but Rhuan lingered. Ilona met his eyes. Her voice, for the moment, steadied. “I know what Jorda believes. But I’d like to hear confirmation from you. Was he dead before you found him?”

His gaze was unwavering. “Yes.”

And yet she needed a more specific answer. “Did you kill him?”

He replied without the slightest change in inflection. “No.”

She could not help herself; the line of her gaze dropped to the horn hilt of his long-bladed knife, sheathed slantwise on his left hip, and marked also the line of slender throwing knives safed in loops along his baldric.

Rhuan said, “It wasn’t done with a knife.”

Her eyes flicked up. “You said his throat was cut.”

“I said his throat was
opened.
”

“But—
oh
. Rhuan—”

He overrode her failing voice. “Let be, ’Lona. No more is needed, save to know he’s dead.”

Perhaps in truth no more was needed. But Ilona could not avoid seeing the man’s face before her, the charm in his hand, the terrible intent in his eyes. She could still hear his voice invoking the charm, still feel the closing of her own throat.

Closed. Not opened, as the man’s was.

But she let it be, just as Rhuan suggested.

WITH A MOTHER’S sense of such things, Audrun became aware of furtive glances exchanged between Ellica and Gillan when they believed no one was looking. At other times, when she
was
looking, both assumed what she considered to be rather imbecilic expressions of innocence. Audrun knew better; her children were not imbeciles, and such behavior was completely alien to them. Eventually she managed to quietly call both of them to her as Davyn went off to check the oxen prior to bedtime, while the two youngest were washing plates, pots, and utensils with much slopping of water.

“All right,” she said crisply, as they gathered at the back of the wagon in the glow of a battered tin lantern, “tell me.”

Ellica avoided eye contact, ducking her head to study the ground. Gillan did not mimic her, but the rush of color into his face sang its own song.

“You went for a walk after dinner,” Audrun said dryly, “which isn’t a habit either of you have cultivated on this journey. Where was it you went, and what did you do or see?”

Her two eldest exchanged glances. Ellica chewed her bottom lip.

“I’m not giving in,” Audrun warned them. “We can
stand here all night if you like, which means at some point your father is going to become suspicious, or you can tell me now.”

Both children were clearly uncomfortable, but Gillan, thus prodded, finally answered. “We talked to the guide. The one with the braids.” He raised his chin and his tentative voice firmed. “We asked if he’d come with us.”

Audrun blinked. “Come with us?”

“We know,” Ellica said quietly. “Da wants to go on to Atalanda instead of turning around like everyone else.”

That took Audrun aback. She and Davyn had certainly made that decision, but all of the children had been away from the wagon when they had done so. The intention was to tell them just before bedtime. Were she and Davyn truly so easy to read?

“If the karavan goes back to the settlement, there’s nothing for the guide to do,” Ellica continued.

Her brother nodded. “So we asked if he’d come with us.”

“He said he’d give us his answer in the morning,” Ellica finished.

Audrun, struck dumb, considered several different answers, and eventually found one she felt was most appropriate. “Your father got us this far, did he not? He should be trusted to do as well for us on the rest of the journey.”

Gillan averted his eyes and dug holes in the turf with the toe of his boot.

“He killed all those Hecari,” Ellica declared, “and died, and came back to life. If
Da
were to be killed, he’d stay dead.”

Well, yes. They had grasped the very thing that had already occurred to Audrun. If Davyn were killed, they’d be left alone on a strange road skirting the dangerous borderlands of Alisanos. Davyn had only one life to lose. The guide, who knew the route and its dangers, could possibly spare two or three.

But I’m a parent, and must act as one.
“This is business for adults,” she chided. “It’s a decision for your da to make. You should not have gone to the guide. He isn’t family.”

Gillan and Ellica simultaneously opened their mouths to
speak. But in that moment every dog in the karavan began to bark frenziedly. Beneath their feet the earth rippled.

Clanking pots fell off their hooks underneath the wagon. Something inside tumbled and thumped onto the floorboards.

Audrun grabbed the wagon to steady herself even as she called out to her children. “Into the wagon!” It seemed safest; it offered cover where the open sky did not. She lifted her voice to call the youngest. “Torvic! Megritte! Come into the wagon!”

But the earth stilled itself as abruptly as it had moved, and she found herself clinging to the wagon’s tailgate surrounded by four big-eyed children demanding to know what had happened and
how
it had happened; what it meant, and would it happen again, loudly and all at once. But Audrun had no answer for them. Not even one of false reassurance. No such thing had ever ocurred in her lifetime.

The earth had
moved.

The guide, she thought, would know precisely what to say. He would give her children the truth, not prevarication. No matter how well-intended that prevarication was.

She followed that envisioned route. “I don’t know what that was.” She flicked a glance at Gillan and Ellica. “But we’ll ask the guide in the morning. He’ll know.”

That satisfied her eldest children. And she realized, with no little amount of surprise, that it satisfied her as well.

H
AVING RETRIEVED A roll of oilcloth from the supply wagon, Rhuan carried it out to the body, hidden from the karavan by distance and darkness, and dropped it to the ground. The dead man lay on his back, head puddled in congealing blood, and the gaping wound in his throat showed black in the thin light save for a pearlescent glint of vertebrae. His mouth was frozen in a rictus of terror. Open eyes stared into the sky. He stank of urine and feces.

The man had made it some distance from the wagon. At Rhuan’s arrival various insects stilled, but soon began their songs again. The night was filled with chirps and buzzing.

Awareness flickered through Rhuan’s body. All the hairs on his arms stood up. “All right,” he said, “you made this mess. You can help me clean it up.”

Darmuth, leaving behind swathing shadows as he assumed human shape, laughed. The gemstone in his tooth sparkled. “What, no questions as to whether I ate any part of the body?”

“Well?”

“No. Though not for lack of an appetite. I stole a milch cow and ate most of her. They’ll assume a predator took both cow and man.”

“And they would be correct, wouldn’t they?” Rhuan unrolled
the oilcloth with a practiced flip of his hands. “Just once, it would be nice if you accepted responsibility for the various people you murder.
I’m
the one they always blame!”

“It’s best that way. With you blamed, I am in better position to keep you from harm. Were our roles reversed, I’m certain I’d end up being killed in revenge.”

“You don’t believe I could keep
you
from harm?”

Darmuth shrugged, leaning to take up the body’s feet as Rhuan bent to its arms. “It’s better if they wonder what you’re capable of.” They swung the body onto the oilcloth. “And anyway, I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. Human or otherwise.”

“Did you kill that man in Hezriah’s tent?”

“What man?”

Rhuan draped fabric over the dead man’s feet and head, then turned to the longer portions on either side to do the same, enveloping the body. “Hezriah. The bonedealer. The one who’s ever hopeful he’ll come across Shoia bones to sell for exorbitant prices.”

“I know who Hezriah is. What dead man are you talking about? Other than this dead man, that is.”

Rhuan looked up. Darmuth’s pupils were slitted, catlike.
Demon
like. “The one who somehow managed to find his way out of Alisanos.”

“Ah. How much of him was still human?”

“Most of him.”

“Well, I haven’t killed any humans save for this one for quite some time now. I didn’t kill that one.”

“He looked at me,” Rhuan said, “and he knew me. Or thought he did.”

“And that bothers you?” Darmuth shrugged. “If Alisanos had begun its work on him, no sanity was left.”

“I really would prefer not to be lumped in with demons. I’m not one.” Rhuan paused, then politely added, “No insult intended.”

Darmuth assumed an expression of exaggerated hurt. “We’re not so bad as all that.”

“You eat people.”

“Only a few of them. Now and again.”

“I don’t.”

“Oh, that’s right. Your preferred main course is demon-flesh.”

Rhuan winced. “Let’s get this man to his wagon. Jorda’s there telling the wife.” And as Darmuth picked up one end of the wrapped body and he the other, he added casually, “The farmsteaders are going on to Atalanda by way of the shortcut. I’ve been asked to guide them, and have pointedly been reminded that I have no employment until next season.”

Darmuth considered it as they carried the body between them, heading back to the wagons. “Dangerous.”

“That’s why they asked me to accompany them.”

“Dangerous for
you
.”

“Possibly.”

“
Probably.
For many reasons.”

“Possibly probable.”

“But of course you’ll do it.”

Rhuan grinned. “So I will—” But then he stopped grinning. The night went silent. “Oh no.”

Darmuth cocked his head, scented the air, and began to laugh.

Queasiness returned. Rhuan itched from head to toe, as if tiny insects crawled across his flesh. “Oh, I do hate this …”

The demon’s laughter continued.

Rhuan’s belly cramped sharply. “I’m gratified
you
find humor in the situation!”

Another rolling shiver of the earth caused Rhuan to drop his end of the body, swearing. He turned away and went down on one knee. His bones were afire as he gave way to unproductive retching. Over the sound of his own misery, he heard the karavan dogs once again barking amid the complaints of myriad livestock.

“That,” Darmuth announced smugly, “should convince you better than I of the folly in guiding that family
along the shortcut. It’s too close, Rhuan. If Alisanos is affecting you this much already, going closer could be a death sentence. Or, well, worse. For you.”

“A
life
sentence?” Rhuan’s gust of laughter was hoarse. “Oh, by all means worse. I do know that.”

“So?”

“So, they are two adults and four children—with a fifth but a matter of months away from birth.”

“Oh.” The demon frowned. “A human baby.”

“Yes, Darmuth, a human baby. It may be a risk for me, but it’s far more dangerous for them to go on alone.”

The pupils of Darmuth’s eyes rounded, then flickered back into vertical slits. His nostrils flared as his upper lip lifted to display slightly elongated eyeteeth. “A
human
baby.”

“Altogether innocent,” Rhuan said pointedly, “of Alisanos entire, and what manner of predators live there.” The painful retching had died but his belly felt fragile, and a troublesome buzzing along his bones remained. Grunting, he gathered up the oilcloth-wrapped legs of the body. “Are you certain you didn’t eat any part of this man?”

“Quite certain.”

“Because whatever rites his wife may desire undertaken may well require him to be stripped. I should hate for her to see bitemarks scattered throughout his flesh.”