The Shasht War (47 page)

But Thru always found the deer trails. These weren't the easiest trails to follow for the two of them, burdened by their heavy packs, but they got through each barrier, no matter how impenetrable it appeared at first.

Later, hidden in a grove of aspens and small pines they stopped to eat more biscuit and cheese. The canyon had broadened out dramatically, and the River Esk was not far off.

"The big house is not far from here I think." She pointed south and east. "I think it is over there, above the river. We always came in on the road from the south, which runs up along the riverbank. We could see the yellow canyon and then we would turn into the gate that leads to the house."

Simona wondered what her earlier self would have made of the way she was visiting the Zempatti zob this time. She shuddered slightly. She didn't want to think of it either. But it was hard not to contrast this visit with those summers of long ago. Riding up in the screened wagon, wearing her favorite summer dress made of silk the color of apricot, sitting with Mother and sometimes Aunt Piggili, and talking about the wonderful parties they would be attending for the next five days. Simona would be enjoying mango ice cream and meeting all the Zempatti girls, who she really liked. She shook her head to erase the vision. That life seemed so far away now, as if it belonged to another person. The Simona of the past had never planned on being snatched away to the new world to witness war and a multitude of other horrors. That little girl in her apricot silk dress had been so innocent, so naive, so protected that she was almost like another person. Even though she'd known that her world rested on the shoulders of a million slaves, she had thought that as long as she obeyed the rules and kept her head down, she would be allowed to live out her life in relative comfort, surrounded by books and art and intelligent conversation. Fate had not been so kind.

Thru, meanwhile had more practical concerns. The first one of which was the river. Was it iced over? The fast-flowing stream in the Yellow Canyon was only partially iced, which worried him. The water was freezing and too cold to swim across. After studying the broader valley view very carefully, he turned back to her. The house was not far away, the pencil lines of smoke from its chimneys were visible.

The river was not yet iced over. The crossing would be difficult.

"Which of the bridges would be the nearest?" he said.

"The Yamich Bridge. It is much smaller than the imperial bridge of course. We always passed close by it when we came up toward the house."

"Is it in view of the house?"

"I don't think so, but I only came here in the summer, and then it's hidden by the trees from the main house."

"But it is unguarded?"

"As far as I know."

With great care they worked their way through the ornamental shrubbery in the outer park of the great house. From the distance of half a mile, Thru thought that this house was not quite as large and showy as the great zob of Simona's family, but still it impressed him with its turrets and upper balconies. These country houses were all the size of the King of Dronned's palace. Just another indication of the difference in scale between Shasht society and that of the Land.

They left the house behind and went on through the woods, keeping parallel to the road, which was traveled by a few wagons, occasional parties of slaves and once, by a messenger on horseback who kept his mount to a fast trot and soon disappeared.

At length they reached the Yamich Bridge, which was wide enough to take a village cart. Across the bridge, tantalizingly near and yet so far, was the village of Yamich, visible as a cluster of dun-brown roofs.

Unfortunately, standing on the near end of the bridge was a party of six Red Tops. Wrapped in heavy robes with thick socks under their sandals, they chatted together while stamping their feet and swinging their arms. Now and then they looked up and down the road.

Clearly crossing this bridge was out of the question, at least for now. With a sinking feeling in his heart, Thru guided Simona farther downstream. At least the woods along the road were filled with dense underbrush so it was easy to stay out of sight of the Red Tops by the bridge.

A mile or two farther on, at the large stone imperial bridge, Thru's hopes of an easy crossing evaporated completely. Four more Red Tops stood guard alongside the two soldiers normally posted there.

Giving up for the moment, they moved farther south again and came to a low-lying area where thick beds of reeds lined the bank and the road moved inland for a ways. They made their way down into the reeds, and Thru pushed on to the water's edge to study the riverbanks.

The water was on the verge of freezing, fragile sheets of ice had already formed in the quieter sections. There were no boats to be seen on the river itself, but with a great feeling of frustration Thru observed a dozen boats of various sizes pulled up on the far shore.

Disconsolate, they ate some biscuit and cheese, drank from a small running stream, and hid themselves in the woods. They huddled together under their blankets in the cold. Simona rested her head on his shoulder, as she had done so many times and thought to herself how very normal this had become for her. Denied all contact with men of her own kind, she had been thrust into intimacy with a "man" who was not even human. And though they had traveled together before, spending more than a week on foot in the hills of Creton, they had not been forced into this desperate kind of intimacy. Now they held each other, just to get a little warmth into their bodies. For Simona, a well-bred girl of the upper class, this had been a considerable adjustment. No man other than her father had stroked her cheek or marveled at the color of her hair. But Thru Gillo had done these things often, and she had responded with occasional strokes of his own fur, usually on the back of his neck.

Thru waited until the sun was well down in the sky. Then they gathered up their burden and made their way cautiously back to the Yamich Bridge.

Thru's hopes rekindled. Only two Red Tops remained. The rest had either gone across the river, or up to the big house. Still, two Red Tops would not make this easy. He studied the bridge, watched the young men in their brown robes with their shaved and painted pates aglow in the late afternoon sunlight. His hopes became tempered by his determination to live.

After carefully studying the bridge, he turned to Simona.

"Better we wait until dark. Perhaps when they get tired we can take them."

Simona felt her eyes widen. Take them? She knew that Thru, for all his gentle demeanor with her was well versed in violence. His face was covered in scars from combat. She'd been there when he'd killed a mot in the river in Creton. She, on the other hand, was not so trained. She doubted her ability to kill anyone, even a Red Top who wanted to kill her.

"Is there no other way?"

"No. We cannot swim, the water is too cold. All the boats are on the village side."

Thru understood that they were in a race against time as well. They had come all the way down from the deep snows of Mount Beegamuus on their snowshoes in just a few hours. But by this point the Red Tops would be getting close to the lodge on Beegamuus. The snowshoe trail would be still visible, and when that was reported, there would soon come an increase in the watch on these bridges. These Red Tops on the bridge at Yamich were clearly a precautionary move. The Red Tops might be searching for many people, after all. This was a "time of danger," as the folk of Shasht called it, a time when political enemies were likely to kill or be killed. So all bridges would be monitored as a matter of course. But once the Red Tops from Hilltop got here, the guard on the bridges would be massively reinforced. Thus, it was now or never.

From their hiding place, Thru keenly watched the Red Tops. The daylight waned. Thru estimated the Red Tops must have reached the lodge on Beegamuus by now. The word was being taken back to Hilltop, then down to the zob that the fugitives were no longer there.

A pair of ox wagons came down the road from the house and passed over into the village. With the wagons came a fresh pair of Red Tops who replaced the daytime pair. They went on into the village. That suggested to Thru that they had lodgings there somewhere. But the fact that the replacements had come down from the big house indicated that that was where the main group were based. Which was good news, because it was at least a mile back up the road.

Thru and Simona ate more biscuit and cheese and settled in to watch the bridge from concealment. Night fell, a wind blew down the valley. The Red Tops whistled, stamped their feet, and rubbed themselves against the cold. They talked longingly of warmer surroundings, of having a brazier, and of drinking something hot and alcoholic to ward away the chill. They were bored young men from the city, who until very recently had been loafing about the temple pyramid and enjoying life in general. Now they were far from home and far from warm.

Darkness grew complete. The moon had yet to rise above the central hills. The Red Tops lit a single torch that they raised on a torchere at their end of the bridge. It threw a flickering, uncertain light over their end.

Thru licked his lips. Thru had two arrows that were stout enough to kill a man with a good shot. And he would have to kill them, or else give up and move back up the Yellow Canyon and into the deep snowy hills. Into country that he had not explored before where it would be much harder to locate a cave and drinking water.

He explained his plan to Simona. She was to wait in the shadows while he went forward with the bow hidden under his cloak. If he succeeded, she was to join him. If he failed, she was to go south into the hills. They both removed their snowshoes, which would only be an impediment on the bridge.

With a deep breath he tried to calm his nerves. Then he stepped out of concealment onto the paved road and headed over it toward the bridge. The Red Tops were both looking the other way, toward the village, where a few amber lights glowed with an inviting warmth. They were wondering aloud about taking turns to go and get warmed up in the inn, leaving just one guard on the bridge. They wondered if they dared to risk it. If they were caught, they'd both get fifty strokes of the lash.

Step by step Thru went on, always expecting them to turn around and see him. He was well onto the bridge, moving into the sphere of light projected from the torchere. Still they muttered together while looking toward the village. Now they were grumbling about the quality of the accommodations that had been set aside.

"A crib next to the damned pigs is what I heard, that's all."

"Typical, isn't it? The Gold Tops are on linen, and we're in with the fornicating pigs."

Thru's approach had grown stealthier now that he was past the halfway point. Each step without a challenge seemed like a miracle. He knocked the arrow, still kept beneath his cloak in front of him. Ten yards to go, then eight, then six, and now he was so close as to be absolutely sure of his shot. He shrugged away the cloak, raised the little bow, drew, and released in a single swift motion.

The left hand Red Top pitched forward with a sudden gasp as the arrow drove into his back. The other spun around, saw Thru, gave an inarticulate cry, and snatched for his sword.

Thru released, but his second arrow went a hairsbreadth wide when the Red Top slipped and went down on one knee. The shaft passed harmlessly past his nose. Drawing his knife Thru leaped toward him, determined to finish it quickly. The youngster came back up and flailed at Thru with his free hand. He'd forgotten to unclip the scabbard lock on the sword and was still tugging on it.

Surprised by this awkward response, Thru's killing thrust went awry and Thru slammed into the youth chest to chest. The Red Top got a hand on Thru's face and with a scream of fright shoved him away.

Thru came back immediately, ducking low and bringing the knife around in a killing stroke. This had to be ended quickly, in case the village was awoken.

Again the young man tried but failed to draw his sword, instead he snapped out a right hand jab that caught Thru squarely on the nose just before he could cut the man's belly. Thru sat down hard. The young man kicked him in the ribs, and he was knocked onto his side with the breath driven from his body.

The Red Top, still crazed with fear, finally realized why the sword wasn't coming free and slipped off the catch guard. He pulled the sword and turned back to kill the hairy thing that had attacked him.

And then there came a scream from the right and across the bridge came another figure, holding a bundle above its head, running right at the Red Top with mouth open and teeth gleaming in the torchlight.

The young man turned away from Thru, who was still struggling to draw a breath and faced Simona, who had started running as soon as she saw that Thru's second shot had missed. She was close though, barely six feet away, and now she threw her bundle at the Red Top, and with the momentum of her mad charge it tumbled right into his face.

With an inarticulate cry he fended it away with the sword arm and that gave Simona the opening to throw herself at him, grappling around the waist. The man was driven back a step. He was howling with fright as he struck down hard with the sword. Simona felt something hard and heavy strike across the pack cradle on her back and stumbled to the ground still clinging to his legs. Meanwhile the sword had sunk fast in the green wood that Thru had used for the pack cradles.

Still screaming thinly, the man kicked at her while he heaved on the sword to free it. She felt the thing release from her back, there was a foot pressing down on her head, and then she heard another scream, with a different timbre. The foot was removed. She turned her head and saw Thru holding the young man around the throat while he worked his knife back and forth in the Red Top's chest. Blood bubbled from the young man's mouth, he shuddered violently, and Thru let the body sag to the bridge.

She noted that Thru had blood running from his nose and spattering down onto the front of his robe.