Range of Ghosts (30 page)

Stand until he fell, he thought, because once the battle was joined, he knew he would not be able to force himself to back down.

But no—he would do nothing, it turned out, because the soldiers had stopped at the edge of the glare that burned from Samarkar. She backed away, hands outstretched, and they followed, still at the perimeter of her light. Temur had a sense that they were waiting for a signal, some command from a leader that had not yet materialized.

Samarkar’s foot touched the lowest stair. She turned and fled toward Temur; Temur, who was blocking her path, spun about and climbed as fast as he could. Above, wizards were lifting the princess off her feet, carrying her upward and out of harm’s way.

“Hrahima!” Samarkar cried.

As if her name had summoned her, like a djinn, the tiger landed whisper-soft on the stair before Temur. She was scratched and bleeding from a dozen superficial wounds, and her eyes glared green as jewels in the light of Samarkar’s magic. Her tail lashed, but she spun feather-light on the pads of her feet and bounded up the stairs to the descending wizards. One or two cowered from her—more from instinct than personal fear, Temur thought—then she crouched and leaped over them, gaining the battlements in an impossible bound.

“Hrahima is fine,” he said, and reached behind himself to offer Samarkar a hand.

*   *   *

Yongten-la met them at the top of the stairs and promptly swept them down the other side again. Samarkar struggled to keep up with him. Payma was simply bundled into a litter and carried, while a wizard trotted alongside tending her feet. Temur and Hrahima followed as if bobbing in the eddies of a wake.

“You must leave tonight,” Yongten-la said. “Before he can move troops around the mountains to intercept you. We will clear the Wreaking that you may pass in safety. I have had your luggage prepared, and Temur-tsa’s horses stand ready. We have taken the liberty of saddling a gelding for the princess.”

“I am grateful. But how did you—”

He interrupted with a smile that made Samarkar want to smite her own forehead. Of course he knew. She said, “The
bstangpo
will not be pleased.”

Yongten-la snorted. “I’ve crossed worse emperors than he. On with you, wizard.”

He tapped her shoulder affectionately, like a father. Samarkar felt the sting all the way down her chest to her belly.

“Where will we go?” she asked. She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “We cannot take Payma all the way to Ctesifon. Even if she and the babe survived it, she would come to term on the road.”

“Nilufer,” Temur said.

She turned, feeling the surprise blank her face. “Your aunt?”

“You mentioned her,” Temur said, spreading his hands. He’d resheathed his knife. “What better portent than the uttering of a wizard? Her husband Toghrul was my father’s brother, and she no doubt still holds influence over her children. We honor our mothers and grandmothers among the Qersnyk, for who can know what man fathered him? I can claim some kinright with her. And if she or her sons have fallen in with Qori Buqa, well…” He waved a hand. “Better to find out, I guess.”

“So be it,” Samarkar said with a smile, and lowered her voice to add, “Your highness.”

Temur glanced down. “Come on. There’s no time to waste.”

*   *   *

Even as her hands carried out necessary tasks, as her feet carried her through the familiar halls of the Citadel, Samarkar felt unreal, as if she had become someone out of a story. She might have been mist, blown through the corridors as on a gale. She might have been one of Temur’s enslaved blood-ghosts, flying on the wings of the dead. Later, she could never remember how she came to be in the stables, faced with three horses—Temur’s two leggy mares and a stoic, shaggy, thick-necked Rasan gelding in an unexceptional pale-nosed dun—and three mealy-colored, pack-laden mules. Temur—
Temur Khanzadeh,
and in truth Samarkar could not say she hadn’t suspected something of the sort—stood at her left hand.

The same mules from her and Tsering’s earlier trip, she was delighted to realize. Including the stubborn one, but better in flight to have animals whose foibles she knew than have to establish relationships anew.

Tsering was there, to hug her and shove medical bags and one full of paper rockets into her hands. Hong-la was there, sliding flat slabs of purple salt into the bulging saddlebags of the largest mule. He handed Temur something else, as well—a small bag of undyed chamois wrapped around something that clinked thickly as Temur slid it inside his fleece-lined vest. The wizard clapped the plainsman’s arm; the plainsman bowed in answer.

He’s the Great Khagan’s grandson.
That, too, was unreal—part of the storybook. Like the princess being led back to meet them. Payma seemed smaller, clad now not in billowing court robes but in a caravanner’s chamois trousers and tough boots, her hair dressed in a plain braid down her back, the tight, high mound of her belly poking a gap in her vest.
Five months,
Samarkar estimated. If Temur could find his aunt’s small kingdom, somewhere to the west, they should have time to get Payma there in safety.

Hong-la and Tsering helped them lead the horses and mules from the stable. Hrahima followed, well away from the horses, and skirted the wall to move out to the edge of the torchlight. She would lead them on foot. Tsering, eyes bright in the moonlight, held Samarkar’s stirrup when Temur lead Buldshak over for her to mount. Temur and Samarkar didn’t speak; there was nothing left to say.

Samarkar leaned down from the high-cantled steppe saddle and touched Tsering’s hair. “Guard yourself.”

Tsering touched her hand. “May all the little gods of the roads smooth your way.”

Payma had mounted with fair ease; now Temur floated into Bansh’s saddle. The liver-bay flicked her tail against her own flanks with a slap that echoed, as if to say
At last, you’re back where you belong.
Samarkar watched with tenderness that surprised her as Temur leaned forward to stroke the crest of the mare’s long neck. Bansh turned one ear back to him, shifting her weight, and stretched her dished nose forward.

Toward the gates, toward the night beyond.

“Go,” Temur said, and eased the reins to send her forward. Samarkar and Payma fell into line behind him, each leading a snorting, long-eared mule.

They crossed the Wreaking by its own light—Temur, who had seen it only by day, made a mumble of surprise at its blue-white moonstone glow, caught and refracted by its veils of mist. Yongten-la had been as good as his word; wizards and imperial guards were likewise absent. Hrahima crossed before them. Samarkar glimpsed her as a shadow against the whiteness, stooped and moving fast, before she vanished again against the stones of the other side.

The sound of falling water drowned out the ringing of shod and unshod hooves on the long white span. Temur might have called something or he might not; Samarkar couldn’t hear him over the falls. Possibly, he just turned over his shoulder to look at her and his lips moved.…

She glanced back at Payma—riding grimly forward, her cheeks bare of paint and streaked with tears, the hastily scoured shadows of kohl still blackening her eyes. Good enough. She’d keep up.

They came down the far side of the span damp with drifting spray. Samarkar let herself sigh in relief, then touched Buldshak with her heels to send her forward. The road here was broad enough for two riders abreast, and she wanted to keep Hrahima in sight if it was at all possible.

It wasn’t. The Cho-tse vanished in the night as if she were a part of it. For a long while, they walked the horses by starlight and moonlight, accompanied only by the creak of leather, the soft jingle of the tack. The night curled around them, chill and dark, dew making stones slick and wet. They came through the narrowest part of the pass before moonset, and Samarkar began to breathe easier as the stars faded slowly into a lightening sky.

*   *   *

They rode through the day that followed, Temur unable to shake an itch between his shoulder blades as if, at any moment, an arrow could sprout from his back. As the sun briefly made itself visible through the narrow gap of the pass overhead, he asked Samarkar if she worried about pursuit.

“Assured of it, rather,” she said, with a glance over her shoulder. “But the Citadel will slow them; if Yongten-la says he will help us, he will. They won’t come through the pass behind us. They’ll have to come around the Island-in-the-Mists, which will add a couple of hundred
li
to their journey. I’m not worried about them catching us unless we are delayed somehow.”

“But you are worried?”

She bit her lip and glanced at Payma, who sat huddled in bright cloaks on the back of the gelding. Payma lifted her head, pain and exhaustion graying her skin, but her expression was nothing but quiet determination. Samarkar said, “Songtsan will send pigeons ahead to the garrison at the bottom of the pass, and they will be coming for us from the front. Pigeons may fail to arrive, of course. And these mountains are full of predators. But we’ll need to leave the road as soon as we can.

“He’ll know we’re not taking the Kashe Road,” Samarkar said. “We’ll go west at the first opportunity. There are more trails open in summer. We can lose my brother’s men among the mountains.” She looked at Temur. “We
can
lose my brother’s men among the mountains?”

“Get us to the hills,” he said, a pang of determination sharp in his chest, “and I will get us to the steppe.”

“Ride,” Payma said. “And hope the mountain hawks are hungry.”

*   *   *

Samarkar and the others rode through the day and into the long twilight of the mountains, stopping to rest and water the horses briefly in the darkness after sunset. When their eyes had adjusted to the starlit brightness of the night, they mounted again—Temur lifting Payma into her saddle over her protests, when he saw that she could barely stand on her bloodied feet—and let the horses choose their way among the stones of the narrow, treacherous road.

Samarkar was exquisitely aware that each of their lives depended on the sure hooves and good instincts of their mounts. Fortunately, it seemed their forced trust was warranted. Even Buldshak, prone as she was to snorting and staring at nothing, dropped her head close to the trail and descended step-by-step with meticulous surefootedness.

And so they proceeded, exhausted but moving, barely refreshed by the little sleep they’d snatched, until the sky paled once more and a little more light filtered around the black shapes of unfamiliar mountains.

“Tonight we have to sleep,” Samarkar said, as they came to a sharp switchback curve. “Or we
will
die of stupidity before morning.”

Temur tugged his sleeves down as if to cover cold hands. “I know—”

A stone clattered down the slope behind them. Temur reined his bay mare to the inside of the road, away from a steep drop. In the shadow of several large boulders, he turned. Samarkar heard him hiss, “Go! Run!”

She gave Buldshak her head, and the mare broke into a canter, sharp and sure. It was faster than Samarkar would have traveled on the narrow road, but then these were not her feet beneath them, and the steppe ponies were nimble and strong. Behind, the mule fought the lead line for a moment before falling in, and Samarkar heard the tattoo of Payma’s mount’s hooves accelerating.

She was glad of Buldshak’s speed when the first arrow shattered on the rock beside her. Samarkar crouched in the saddle, head ducked, curled in as if to make herself part of the mare’s neck. Her first thought was to fling up a shield, a wall of dazzling light and hot wind that would deflect the arrows as they fell. But the dim light and speed were her allies–surely it would take an archer of incredible abilities to strike her by anything other than luck in this light while firing at a downward angle.

More arrows fell around her—volleys of three or four, rather than a steady rain. One brushed her thigh and left a burning line of wetness and pain.
If it hurts so quickly, it isn’t serious.
But she fought the urge to clap her hand to it, to probe it with her fingers. She needed her hands for the reins.

Behind her, Temur cried out, urging Bansh forward, and by the sound of hooves, the bay mare responded. Payma’s chunky gelding found another notch of speed when Bansh drove the mule up on his backside, and Buldshak, too, put her head down and ran. Stones showered behind them, rattled down the cliff on Samarkar’s right to vanish into empty space, falling until she could not hear them strike. Samarkar hunched herself over her horse’s withers and clung, gulping great breaths of fear, trying not to make any move that would throw the mare off balance.

A line of five figures in black crossed the road ahead, two mounted men behind them. The five raised bows, nocked arrows; Samarkar’s heart clenched in her chest. She yanked the mule’s lead line from the saddle and cast it away so it would not foul Buldshak’s feet, knowing the others would do the same behind her. The mules should follow. If they didn’t, and Samarkar and the others lived, they could come back and get the animals. If she and Temur and Payma died, they wouldn’t need the supplies.

A line of fire sprang across the narrow road, burning the intense violet of sorcery—or chemicals.

Now
would be the time for sorcery. For a moment, Samarkar wished her wizardry was the magic of stories, to bring down lightning from a blue sky, or that she held a captive eagle’s soul in bond and could call it screaming into battle. If she had time, she could have kindled the rockets in her saddlebags and sent them to scatter the enemy, but for now, all she could do was urge her horse on and hope Buldshak had the strength to break the line—and the courage to cross fire.

The rose-gray mare was game. She might be cautious of anything that cast a shadow, but having decided to run, she ran with all her heart and concentration. She stretched out long, galloping in earnest now, and Samarkar got herself as deep into the saddle as she could and called on the heat that came from within. With a sharp scent like lightning, the green aura flared before her, quick and sharp, a gust of hot wind that deflected the arrows and pushed back the violet fire. It flickered and trembled, guttering with each thump of Buldshak’s hooves, but it held until the first flight of arrows spun wide. When it shivered out, Samarkar grasped after it—and found nothing.