The Lady (32 page)

Her breath sobbed in her throat.
Holla-Sayan!
she cried, but the words weren't there; all she could do was gasp and choke as Varro had.

The Red Mask crumpled as if it were a child's doll flung to the floor, its light fading.

Ivah fell to her knees as well, unable to stand any longer, and the cat's-cradle, loosed, was nothing but a tangle, snarling her hands. She had lost her light when the panic took her, and now she was blind in the darkness. The only sound was her own rasping breath.

She stayed there, head on her knees, trying to breathe deeply, slowly, waiting for the breathless racing of her heart to subside. She was still there, coiled small, trying to find the will to rise and climb the last of the hill and make the long descent to where Belmyn and her guards kept the spell safe before Gurhan's cave, when the dawn-greying world was lit with a flash of brilliant white and the sound of a thunderbolt ripping the air. Deafened, unthinking, she flung herself forward, arms over her head, as whole trees came crashing down. A branch struck the back of her skull and there was silence.

CHAPTER XVI

Two days had passed since he met the flying devil, but Ghu tried not to think of her. He did not think she would be held for long, not a devil of the cold hells, whom it had taken the Old Great Gods to bind in a lasting grave, and even then, clearly, that had not been enough—but perhaps she had been a dream altogether. Perhaps she had not, and he thought, a wizard with the heart of a dragon, a tiger, she would forget her plan to destroy the victims of necromancy and come in wrath after the one who had defied her. Better, maybe, that she did, rather than that Ahjvar should burn.

If he were not dead.

Yesterday he had made a camp and rested the mare, hunted to feed himself and the dogs and slept through the noon and afternoon heat, riding on into the night again. This day he had let her take only a short noon rest, pressed with urgency, unable to settle. Jui and Jiot had watched hopefully as he took out the sling he had made, but he had only wandered, collecting suitable stones, and the cock-pheasant which had gone bursting into the sky from almost beneath his feet had been allowed to fly.

The dogs had settled for digging out mouse-nests, but they watched him now as he walked, the mare plodding wearily like a third dog a few yards away, snatching a mouthful of grass now and then, flicking her tail at the flies. The sun was setting. He ought to find water, if only a damp spot where he could make a scrape, and camp. Hunt, or cook the breadroot he had dug the day before the night he met the devil. He wasn't Ahj, to push himself to death to prove a point. It was dangerous to fall into dreams, where the world went soft and thin, where
then
and
now
,
there
and
here
ran together. Where he could think the very real devil he had met was a dream.

But he was close, he knew it. They had fallen behind—well, he had fallen behind, the first day; he had not thought it wise to venture back through the Eastern Wall to the suburb to steal a horse, and he had been a day on the road afoot before he found one he fancied and a man he didn't mind injuring with the loss of a beast. He would have taken a mount of greater speed and less calm wisdom, if one had offered, but the proverb that beggars could not be choosers went for thieves as well, at least when the road had not obliged him with a dealer in a better class of stock, before he left it for the empty places. He had caught up again, he thought, crossing the hills. The Red Masks had followed the road until they came to the commonly used track that angled north to Dinaz Catairna. Sometimes he saw them, dreaming, maybe, or hovering half between sleep and dream. Dead men, dead women, not sleeping, lying unseeing under the turning stars, while the horses, hard-used and making worse time because of it, after so many days on the road, slept and found relief from their nightmare days. They knew what they carried, unhappy creatures. There were living men with them, and they slept some distance off, with watches set, and fires that burned all through the night, and when it rained, as it had, a night or two, they huddled under their capes and kept silent, afraid.

They saw that the Red Masks did not eat. Their growing fear was a cloud.

Sometimes he thought he dreamed the Lady reached for the Red Masks, and there was music, high and silvery, voices like glass and crystal, that only they could hear. Or maybe they sang themselves, voiceless.

And Ahj among them.

He was close. Maybe tomorrow, he would come up with them. And then?

He had no plan.

He didn't realize how close, till he saw Jui sink to a crouch in the blowing grass of the hilltop as he walked up himself, incautious.

Ghu dropped flat. The horse, after a mildly startled look, lowered her head and began to graze in earnest, nothing there to startle anyone, a lone horse wandering, and she was below the skyline anyway. Jiot slunk to his side.

Across a boggy valley bottom, green and with pools of standing water between thickets of sweetgale and islets of scrub willow, a slow stream twisting through, rose a long ridge like a wave, facing him. The northern height of it had been made a camp, and it was defended with banks of new-heaped earth at which people still laboured, spears of sharpened willow set at angles facing outward. Banners were flying with embroidered symbols of trees and stars and knotted shapes he didn't know how to name. The hill dipped to the south and rose again, and on the southern and lower, flatter crest of it, about half a mile from the north, spilling down and out of sight to the east, was a moving cloud of mounted folk, horsemen and cameleers, and spearmen and archers afoot, with many different banners. Praitans, he thought, and Grasslanders under orange banners, and there were men of Marakand in red capes, tight together on the crest of the hill, and a priest in yellow sitting on a horse with his hands raised in prayer or blessing. And the Red Masks he had followed all this way, but there were more than thirty gathered here now.

The Praitans on the northern hill worked frantically, and a skirl of Grasslander horsemen charged them, riding in to shoot and wheel away, yelping like dogs. Arrows answered, and he thought some had fallen on both sides, but the Red Masks did nothing, and the Marakander camp—but it was half Praitan—drew in on itself, more coming up from the east and spilling down the west to settle along the edge of the bog, kindling fires. Taunting, not attack. Pickets went out from the Marakanders, scattering southwards, and others disappearing over the ridge, back the way they had come. They must believe some other force might come up to join with the high king.

Why not attack while the Praitannec army was hurried and harried, scrambling to raise some defences? The Praitans looked to have the Marakanders and their allied Praitans and mercenaries outnumbered. Save for the undying Red Masks and the terror they could bring, and perhaps—almost certainly, more Marakander allies out of sight, along the eastern side of the ridge.

So why not attack the Praitans now?

He saw men about the Red Masks, saw the sharp gesture of a hand, denial, the wave of bowing heads, the withdrawal from what had to be at best an unsettling and intimidating presence, the silence. Ah, the Marakander allies were asking the same question, and the Red Masks refused.

They were waiting for nightfall. Ahjvar—
she
—was waiting for nightfall.

He wondered if Deyandara were there, among the lords who tried to raise some obstacle against mounted attack, knowing, as they must know, that it would be futile when the Red Masks rode against them and its defenders fled. There were dead lying, he saw now, the length of the ridge, humans and horses. They had been pursued to that point and then . . . then the Marakanders chose to wait.

Because the Praitans, pursued too closely, might scatter and leave victory uncertain, disappear into their hills against another day?

But the Praitans, unwisely, had turned to face them.

Because they were cornered. The swamp curved north beyond the head of the ridge. They had been in a rout, hunted and herded in panic, and now they had a respite and faint hope, which would be denied.

Was that Ahjvar's humour? Ghu was afraid it might be, or not Ahjvar's but the other's.

The swamp fell into darkness. There was a goddess in the stream that meandered through it, and her presence gathered, drifted into the Praitannec camp. A little goddess, no power to oppose Marakand, but mist rose, cloaking the hill. Jui growled.

“Jui,” Ghu called softly, a murmur only a dog would hear. “Jiot. With me.”

He left the horse to her rest, a good journeying pony, but she had no speed and would only panic, brought where the scent was all of blood and death and fear. When she raised her head, still chewing, and took a step after him he whispered, “No,” and willed her wandering far from violent and ruthless men, sweet grass and coming in time to some master who would hold her dear. She flicked an ear and turned away, drifting south. Ghu angled down the hill, towards where the swamp had seemed narrower, less spattered with ponds and open water, save for the stream. He was among the tussocks of the rising ground, barefoot and wet nearly to the waist, but not making too much noise, he thought, when there came a thunder of drums, brief and shocking, and then a great roaring. But the Red Masks had already gone before; he had felt the wrongness of them pass down from the southern height as he waded the brook. The mist, which had been climbing the ridge, rolled back like a racing ebb-tide.

Fire roared up in the trenches before the rough earthworks. Horses and camels and riders fell under a storm of arrows. He chose his target carefully, a Grasslander coming from his right, spear brandished high, and felt the stone fly true. The man was dead in the instant, struck in the temple below the rim of his helmet. The horse slowed and swerved aside from the dragging corpse. Ghu ran, caught the bridle as it shied, mounted and leaned to haul the body loose, with a silent blessing for the soul, lost and afraid and not even quite knowing it was dead, yet.

He was sorry. He thought, this is what I fall to. Murder for a horse. And I told Ahj I would not learn to kill from him.

It was a good Grasslander horse. Jui barked once, overexcited, then was silent. He turned the horse downslope, riding along the edge of the marshy ground. Someone shot at them, at Jui's pale coat, but the dog ran down and into the edge of the mist, and Jiot was shadow in the night. He reined back to a trot, the horse stirred by the rush above, the shouts and neighing, some charge of the Praitans out through the gap in their fires, but it was not a well-led sortie. There was screaming within, and he felt the terror of the Red Masks swelling.

The spell of terror was not so certain and solid a thing as it had been, weak and—discordant. It faltered and surged; some did find mastery of themselves and stand against it, but that only meant they died fighting, because no matter how skilled a warrior might be, the Red Masks went armoured in spells that shed blows. He had seen it.

“Ahjvar!” he shouted, which was pointless. He set another stone into the pouch of the sling, a second in hand, ready, dropped a man senseless who sat a fretting camel watching the steep westward slope of the besieged camp, and then the woman with the horse beside him, both living, stunned, and as the third man, a Marakander guardsman, turned to see, raising a horn to his lips to signal, Jiot surged past and leapt at his throat.

Ghu had not intended that. The man shrieked and flailed at the dog and fell off his horse, which bolted, kicking him in the leg but missing Jiot. Jui ran to join in, and he whistled them both back, sharp and urgent. They obeyed. The man, still shouting, crawled towards the bodies of his stunned companions. Since he was shouting, Ghu could at least trust he hadn't yet taught his dogs to kill, though Jiot seemed a little too willing to get into the spirit of the night.

“No,” he told him. “With me.” But he had what he wanted, an open way to thread through the angled stakes, and no mercenaries to think him one of their own, leading them in. He swung down to lead the horse, keeping its bulk and shadow between himself and any watching archers above, ducking under its neck as he snaked back and forth, almost to the fires.

The trench was continuous, and it burned without any fuel. Some wizardry fed it. He shut his eyes a moment. Heat. Heat to his left. There was wood, a bonfire. To his right, some distance, another. Between—it was only the illusion of fire. The horse smelt smoke, saw flame, and fought his grip. Jui grinned. Jiot tilted his head to one side, panting. They saw. They understood. Fire that wasn't. The world had become so much more
interesting
, since they began to follow him. They were young enough to think so still.

The horse was a problem, but he might want its height within. He flung his headscarf over its eyes, murmuring endearments, and led it at a trot to the ditch, which was not steep enough to throw it at that speed, though it plunged and scrambled clumsily. Partially grassed—it was an old earthwork, hastily refortified, that must be why the army of the kings had made for this place. A
dinaz
long-abandoned? He pulled the scarf free and swung himself up again as they mounted the dyke beyond and bolted down. Someone saw him and shouted, and he dropped to cling to the horse's side, putting it between himself and the Praitan, but shouted, too, “A friend! Where's the Lady Deyandara?” The name had at least had the virtue of confusing them. A moment's confusion was enough, and he was lost in the dark, cantering, trusting there were no more stakes set, or trenches, and hearing the clash and ring of swords away to his right again. Dark figures rose and fell against the fires, atop the mounds, but the light was sinking and then went out. A wizard had died.

Word floated, thin in the night.

“. . . the king, get the king away . . . Durandau . . .”

He rode to the Red Masks and jerked the nearest from the saddle. He didn't need the knife; an open-handed blow was enough, seeing the thing, the twisted remnants of it, driving it free, speaking a word of peace over it, and rest, and safe journeying on the road if it could find its way. He did not think she could, this broken remnant of a woman's soul. Peaceful dissolution into the earth's long breathing, that was all he could offer or she could hope, had she anything left in herself capable of hope. The husk fell away empty, and he caught the descending blow of a staff in his left hand, twisted it, pulling the man, a boy he had been, hardly yet growing a beard and so afraid, fleeing through the streets from guards sent by his own cousins, and all he had done was play with the coins, he knew no spells to raise against his enemies . . . he was freed and gone, and a woman afoot, white-faced, panting, with a rod of braided woods in hand, shouted, “The king, go with the king!” at him, trusting he was some ally, however unexpected, but he was not here to save her king. Her, yes, as she raised an arm that shook against Red Masks also afoot—the Praitans had been killing their horses, and they clambered over bulky bodies, living horses stumbled and were hampered, a barrier as effective as the shallow trenches—she was here before him, so he would save her, but he did not see any kings.