The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (31 page)

“We ran, but Curti’s leg slowed him. He told me to go on, that he’d hold them.”

Now tears came, in a slow trickle.

“I refused, and he cursed me. Then I did as he told me. There wasn’t time for me to cast a spell. Did I do right? Should I have stayed with him?”

Before I could answer, Svalbard rumbled, “You didn’t do anything wrong. What would two deaths rather than one have gained?”

She dropped the sword, slumped on the ground. “That’s what my mind says. But not the rest of me.”

“He told me his doom before we left the castle,” the big man said. “Perhaps he wanted death. Perhaps he’d had enough. I’ve seen it happen before. And he died saving somebody else, which isn’t a bad way to go back to the Wheel.”

Yonge said, correctly but a bit coldly, “A magician is harder to replace than any archer.”

Cymea looked at me. For a brief moment I mourned Curti, who’d been with me since Kait, the best bowman I’d ever know, yet a man I’d always taken for granted, a friend but not a friend, and I should’ve told him how much he meant, always at my back, never someone I doubted for an instant. Slowly the best of the warriors were being taken away, and I could only hope Saionji judged them mercifully.

All these thoughts flashed, and I knew I couldn’t hesitate.

“Cymea, there wasn’t anything else to be done. Forget about it. Every time you fight, someone dies, and all you can do is keep going. We’ll sacrifice for Curti when we’re safe, and drink to him until we die.”

I’d said — and meant — words like that before. This time, they felt hollow. But I couldn’t think of anything better.

Cymea took a deep breath. “All right. What happened, happened,” she said. “Your plan worked. The Maisirians are fleeing Urey. What do we do now?”

I told her what I’d planned.

“So we just wait?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Once it’s dark, then perhaps we’ll chance moving. Or wait until the morrow.”

“I don’t suppose,” Svalbard said, a bit of hope in his voice, “you’ve brought anything to eat?”

“No, unless you like dried herbs that might turn you into a mandrill.”

“My belly isn’t that pissed at me,” he said.

“Then we just wait,” Cymea said.

But we didn’t … not for very long.

It was almost dusk when we heard the drum rattles. The sound swept an arc east northwest, and this time I went up the tunnel.

It was bad, very bad. About a third of a league distant, two lines of soldiers swept toward us, movement regulated by the drummers. They were sweeping slowly, methodically, and they could have but one prey. I craned out and saw, to the north, a single robed figure directing them.

I went back and reported.

“They’ve tracked me,” Cymea said. “Hells!”

I was puzzled.

“A magician leaves, well, a scent, sort of,” she explained. “Another magician can use his wiles to follow that trace. If I’d had time, I could have swept my tracks clean, but I didn’t have that luxury. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d have to.

“And now I’ve led the Maisirians to you.”

“The hells with blame,” I said. “What can we do about it? Run?”

“If they’re almost all around us,” Yonge said, “aren’t they like the peasants you hire to drive sambur into the trap? Don’t they
want
us to move south, toward what looks like the only way out, where they’ve got to have a killing team waiting?”

“Probably,” I said.

“I’d chance a seeing spell,” Cymea said, a bit forlornly, “but that’d be like a lodestone to iron.”

“What’ll they have waiting for us, if we do run?” I asked. “Magicians,” Cymea said. “Soldiers.”

“The only way to break a trap,” Svalbard said, by rote, as we’d all learned, “is to do something unexpected. Bust an ambush by going straight into them.”

“We’re a little short of troops for that,” Yonge said.

“If we could get rid of that magician,” Cymea said. “Then, maybe …”

“At least we’d better get our gear on,” I said, “and get out of this hidey-hole that’s become a snare.”

We worked our way to the fringes of the thicket. The sweepers were closer now, working methodically, and yes, I was reminded of beaters driving game.

I scanned the terrain around us, looking for an escape. The brook we’d waded up swept past the knoll, then on, curving north, bare brush on its banks, which were about four feet above the shallow water.

“There’s a way out,” I pointed. “But that gods-damned sorcerer would surely sense us … Yonge, could you hit him with an arrow at this range?”

Yonge considered. “Not I. Not even, given the wind’s against us, could this great lump beside me, even if he had both arms and an eye like mine.”

Svalbard curled a lip, said nothing. An idea came:

“Cymea, do you know a spell that’d draw that wizard to us?”

“Of course, but — ”

“Could you reverse it?”

“Oh,” she said, understanding. “Easily.”

“And is there any reason you can’t make an arrow fly like a bird?”

“Simple.”

“Course she could,” Svalbard said. “That’s why they don’t allow witches anywhere close to a shooting match.”

Cymea scrabbled in her pack for the necessaries. Yonge spotted a rather bedraggled bird’s feather in the brush, brought it to her as she scribbled on a bit of parchment, strange letters I didn’t know. The parchment itself was odd, dark green in color, not cream or white. As she wrote, she was whispering, the same words over and over.

“Now, Damastes,” she said, “give me one of your arrows.” I obeyed, and she touched its fletching with the feather, chanting softly:

“Remember what you were

Before man

Before pain

Remember wind

Coursing under your wings

Turning

Floating

High-flying

Now you live

Elyot claims you

Give heed

Give speed

Take flight.”

Perhaps it was my imagination in the fading light, but I swear the arrow stirred, as if coming alive. Cymea used a bit of string to tie the parchment around its shaft.

“Now, give your best aim at that wizard.”

“Don’t blame me,” I said, “if the arrow comes out spinning like a whirligig. Just getting it away’ll be a bit of a miracle.”

“I deal in miracles,” Cymea said sharply. “Now shoot!”

I closed my eyes, half to sense the wind, half to pray to Panoan, to Isa, to Tanis, then brought the bow to full draw.

I opened them, looking at that distant wizard, the man who sought our doom, considering him coldly, without anger, as my prey.

I wished Curti wasn’t dead, for he might make this shot, which I could not. I remembered all he had taught me over the years about archery, how a master archer waits for the moment when the arrow is ready, when it shoots itself.

Perhaps his spirit came back from the Wheel or wherever it’d gone, or just his memory, for my fears dropped away, and I felt one with yew, with ash, with the string, and my fingers opened and the arrow sped away.

It curved high, sailing farther than I’d ever shot in my life, then dropped, as if traveling on a line strung between my bow and that distant, robed figure.

For a moment I lost its fall, then saw the magician fling his hands high, stagger, and go down.

I whispered thanks to Tanis, looked at Svalbard, whose eyes were wide in awe.

But I still think it was not me who made the shot, but Curti.

Soldiers shouted alarm, seeing their master dead on the ground, and the searchers’ careful line broke apart. Men were running here and there, some to the dead wizard, others shouting orders, some firing arrows at who knew what.

“Now,” I said. “Down the hill into that creek and away.”

“No,” Yonge said firmly. “That’s your path. With her. Svalbard, you and I’ll find another way.”

“Don’t be stupid!”

“I’m not, you gods-damned Numantian! You two are more important than we are, and that’s the best route. Don’t think I’m playing hero,” he said. “Two are less visible than four. And I’m not a stumble-witted Numantian nor a spastic Maisirian.”

“But — ”

“Sit on your butt later,” he said. “Now go, before they recover! Come on, Svalbard! Let’s find another place to harry them from, and then we’ll haul ass.”

He was right, and Cymea and I went down the hill without being seen. We slipped into the creek and crept away, past the line of soldiers, and were gone, into the coming night.

And all the while my mind keened the death of two more of the best.

Renan was a city of flames and fear, light flickering across the tossing waters of the Latane River, smoke swirling in the cold wind. It’d been savaged once by the Maisirians during the war, its ancient beauty and charm violated, its canals polluted, its lakes churned muddy by soldiery.

Afterward, it had begun to rebuild, its fathers trying to recapture the charms of its winding lanes, leaning buildings, and gardens. Now the fire had come again, and Renan was madness. Cymea and I had tried to turn north or east, but the press of the retreating Maisirians had pulled us south with them. We’d been able to cross three or four of their columns, but only by moving west toward Urey’s capital, directly away from the way we wanted to flee.

Soldiers scurried here, there, some intent on their own business of blood and loot, others staying with their columns. We moved with them, no one realizing who we were. Twice drunkards saw Cymea was a woman, thought she was part of my loot, tried to take her.

Once two men died, and two more writhed in their blood; the second time only two went down. Cymea killed one, I cut the guts out of the other, and their fellows lost interest in rape.

I spoke fluent Maisirian, so was able to move through the pack, shouting occasional orders, just another arrogant
shamb
or
shalaka
without his troops.

We reached the high stone bridges that looped across the Latane from islet to islet into Renan, and here the press was terrible. It was just short of a panic, and I was afraid of being crushed if we pushed on. I managed to pull Cymea into a niche in one of the low parapets before the bridge, out of the eddy of wagons and men.

If it was madness on this side of the river, it was far worse on the other. I hesitated, wondering what we should do next.

Cymea was half-sitting on the low parapet, and looked over at the dark, chill Latane River, rolling past below.

“Look,” she said, pointing.

I saw a boat, held by the current against the nearest piling. It was fat-bellied, a half-scale navigable version of the famous lake houseboats of Urey. I remembered Jacoba and the passionate affair we’d had on one. This boat was held against the stone by the current, almost broached, and the stone pilings had smashed the solid wooden railing in one spot. At least it wasn’t taking water over the deck that I could see.

“We could jump down to it,” she said. “And if there’s still oars, push it free, and go downriver without worrying about the Maisirians.”

“In this Time of Storms?” I said skeptically, almost having to shout over the chaos. “I’m no boatman.”

“I am,” she said. “When I was a fugitive from your … the army, I spent some time with a river family afloat.”

A bearded, smelly soldier pushed against me.

“Hows ‘bout sharin’ th’ cunt?” he suggested romantically, his breath a reek of garlic, stale wine, and filth. He still carried a quiver of arrows, but no bow, and his scabbard was empty.

I stamped my boot across his arch, he screeched, grabbed for it, which put his head low enough for my knee to slam up into his face, and he collapsed and was trampled into the mire by the pushing, fleeing men around us.

“Go!” and Cymea was on the parapet and dropped down to the tiny, muddy beach. She clambered onto the boat, and it rocked under her. I went over the wall in a roll, almost slid into the water, then she had me by the hand and I was on board.

I saw faces looking over, shouting things I couldn’t make out, paid no mind.

“Here,” Cymea shouted, pulling a long oarlike rudder from a clip at the stern and fitting it over a thole pin near the stern. “I’ll steer … you push it off!”

I put my back against the cabin’s walls, both boots against the piling the boat was jammed against, and pushed hard. The boat rocked, stayed trapped.

There were louder shouts from above, and a javelin thudded into the deck. I pushed again, and Cymea forced the rudder out into the current, and the river caught, spun us, and raced us under the bridge and we were away, turning like a leaf in a whirlpool.

“Help me!” and I hurried to the stern, and both of us levered the steering oar back and forth, and the boat’s prow came around, riding high, and the Latane had us, rushing us away downstream, away from the burning city into the safety of the night and the river.

• • •

Cymea thought we should keep moving until dawn and stay in the middle of the river as best we could. She sent me forward, with a hooked pole she found, and told me to keep a sharp eye for any debris. Twice I fended off logs, once something that could’ve been a smashed boat, half-submerged, rolling over and over as it went. I shuddered at dying like that and kept a doubly close lookout.

Morning came gray and cold. Cymea still held firm at the rudder, but her face was as gray as the day. I offered to spell her, but she shook her head.

“After I show you how to do it. I’m going to try for that little island over there. You go back into the bow and help us come ashore.”

She cleverly let the current take us almost to the island, spotted a small inlet, and steered us into it. Brush overhung this backwater, and I lifted it, and we slid into a tiny cove that might’ve been intended just for our craft. Cymea told me to uncoil the lines that were on the deck, and tie the small boat, fore and aft, to overhanging trees. She tugged at my knots, told me we’d hold firm.

“Now let’s see what we salvaged,” she said.

The boat wasn’t big, no more than twenty-five feet, and the cabin’s roof took up most of the deck. There were curtained portholes, and steps leading down from the cockpit to a glassed double hatchway. A broken mast protruded from the center of the cabin’s roof.