Caine's Law (43 page)

Now they’re all getting up and this is not what I had in mind. I’ve had a dustup or three with mountain trappers and none of them was any fun at all, even though they happened back when I was a lot younger and a hell of a lot tougher. And I never took on five at once.

Apparently I should have taken a minute to think this through.

On the other hand, there are some tactical advantages to traveling with a Khryllian Knight. Speaking of—

“Oh, for the love of
justice
!” Angvasse’s voice comes from the doorway behind me. “Does this happen
everywhere
you go?”

“Um … actually, yeah. Seems to be getting worse, though.” I give a sideways nod and shrug and spread my hands, because he’s looking past me at her now. “Sorry.”

While I’m still half turning away, I snag his wrist with my left, his fist with my right, and drive his knuckles into the edge of the table hard enough to break any man’s hand.

Well, almost.

Still, it springs his grip enough for me to strip the knife into an ice-pick grip and while he’s yanking away and starting to cover against the backhand stab he’s expecting in his chest or guts, I go overhand instead and give him the pommel square in the bridge of his nose. He still manages to get in a good solid knee just below my belt that’s gonna need some attention from Angvasse before I walk straight again.

I jam the knife through his forearm and into the top of the table. He howls, and clouts me a solid star-shower upside my head with his free hand, so I wrench the knife back and forth deeper into the tabletop, which elicits more howling.

“Remember my boot?” I remind him by applying it a couple times to his testicles, and his howling chokes down to grunting.

The others are trying to maneuver to get at me. One manages to dive headlong over the table at my flank which would be more than trouble but Angvasse is there. With her customary uncomplicated display of terrifying power, she grabs the back of the guy’s jacket, whips him over her head, and hurls him the length of the room so that he lands in the fire.

One-handed.

This gives the others sufficient pause that for a moment the only sounds in the room are the choking of my pal and the blistering cussing going back and forth between the publican and his medium-rare patron.

“Take ’im—jus’
take
’im—!” my new best friend forces out. “Y’kin
have
’im. Jus’ lemme go!”

“You sure? Sure for sure? Because I’m thinking maybe you really want me to do you right now. With this nice big blade of yours. Save you the embarrassment of telling everybody about the little dried-up pissant who gave you that new scar.”

Behind my shoulder, Angvasse says softly, “Don’t.”

Oh, sure. “Whatever.” I let go of the knife with half a shrug and step back.

He’s practically sobbing with gratitude as he takes the hilt and starts to work the blade out of the table. While he’s still levering it back and forth, I drop the royal into the open palm of his nailed-down hand.

I’m still not a thief.

With Angvasse to cover my back, I take my time going out the door. Maybe one of them will try something. Even say something.

Anything. Give me an excuse.

But instead they just kind of huddle up and go quiet, and y’know maybe it’d be worth staying the night in this shit-hole town after all, considering what they’re talking about back there is pretty much certain to be a plan that would give me that excuse.

Yeah, but never mind.

Deliann asked me once what I’ve ever done that didn’t end in violent death. Maybe next time I see him, I’ll have an answer.

Full dark now. The moon brushes silver across the mountaintops. The gelding doesn’t even look up when I untie his reins and unbuckle his bridle. I cut the girth straps and pull the saddle and leave it where it falls.

Angvasse comes out the door behind me. “Khryl’s Love has restored his arm, as well as the other’s burns.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I shoot her a look. She’s got one of those ale casks in a rope sling over her shoulder. “I see Khryl’s Love has also restored your beer supply.”

She sets it in the dirt. “And I have yet to assay its quality, which is as well. Alcohol seems to make me disinclined to overlook the imperfections of others.”

“Was that supposed to be an insult? Better luck next time.”

“You provoked that,” she says. Softly. Without a trace of accusation. “If I hadn’t been here, he’d be dead. So would you.”

“If you hadn’t been here, he never would have seen me coming.”

“You decided to kill him before you went inside. And you attacked when you could have retired.”

“Nobody made him pull that knife.”

“No denial?”

“There’s nothing to deny. He’s alive. And temporarily wealthy. Who cares who started it?”

“Apparently you do.”

I cut one of the saddlebags free and dump it. Some miscellaneous hand tools and a bundle of dried meat fall to the ground next to the saddle. “If you don’t mind, check the other bags and the rest of the tack for grain or dried fruit or anything. I think my horse is hungry.”

While she does that, I take the saddlebag to the nearest horse trough and scoop up a couple quarts. A third of it has already trickled out the seams before I can get it to the gelding, but it’s just as well. Slow and steady with the water; I’m still not experienced enough with abused horses to be able to tell how dehydrated he is, but I know better than to give him too much at once.

“And what is this horse, that you would kill for it?”

“Him.” I go back for another bag of water. “It’s not about him. It’s about somebody who would treat a horse that way. Anybody.”

“It—he—appears to be in no great distress.”

I hold the bag, and the gelding drinks again. “You don’t know how to look.”

“You’ll forgive me, I hope, for pointing out that horses are after all only livestock. Cattle.”

“That’s how we treat them. It’s not what they are.” I give her a shrug. “If I treat you like some ignorant fucking slag hustling two-peasant blow jobs behind the bar, what does that make you?”

There’s just enough light from inside that I can see her brows pull together.

“It makes you,” I tell her heavily, so she doesn’t have to guess, “a Lady Legendary of the Order of Khryl.”

“Yes,” she says softly. “I understand. I am what I am.”

“Right. And what would treating you like that make me?”

The trace of a smile. “Unconscious. Possibly dead.”

“That’s why it’s lucky most horses are nicer than you are.” I shoot her
a look sidelong. “Kind of makes me think about how Khryllians treat ogrilloi.”

She stiffens. “Ogrilloi are not
nice
.”

“Depends on what you think that word means.”

“And they are not mistreated in the Battleground.”

“No? Stop by your fucking jitney landing some night, then come and tell me that again.”

“If ogrilloi ruled where Khryl does now—”

“Owning somebody is a knife that cuts both ways. It means one thing for them and a whole other thing for you. I don’t know if it does you damage, or if it only displays shit that was already wrong with you, and I don’t really care. It’s ugly either way.”

“If you truly care not, why do you speak of it?”

“Because
you
care.” I drop the empty saddlebag. “You can’t help it. You are what you are.”

“This is a lesson from your horse-witch?”

“She’s not mine. It’s more like I’m hers. Well, not really. Mostly, she just doesn’t try to run away.”

“She must be extraordinarily patient.”

“You don’t know what patient looks like until you meet her.” I pick a rope halter off one of the saddle pegs and slip it over the gelding’s head. “Come on.”

“Where do you think to go?”

“Upriver. Not far.” I grab my satchel and shoulder it. “We need to be out of town.”

“What of his equipment?”

“Leave it. Bring your pack. The cask too.”

“What will you do without saddle and bridle? Let the horse go?”

I smile at her. “Come and see.”

The gelding’s balky on the lead; probably going extra-slow and careful because he’s expecting a whipping whether he acts up or not. He’s too hand-shy for me to pet him, and he won’t even look me in the eye, so all I can do is hum to him a little. “It’s okay, big guy. Come along. Just a little farther. Come on. It’s okay.”

I keep humming and murmuring and whatever because the words don’t really matter anyway, just the sound of my voice, just a calm quiet human voice without anger or threat. A voice that doesn’t belong to the ratfuck I took him from.

We don’t have to go far. A hundred yards or so beyond the last of the buildings, we come across a broad swath of weeds and scrub along a little creek wending for the river. I take the halter off and step back, and the poor miserable fucking thing won’t even lower his head to the grass. He just watches me out of the white rim of his left eye while he waits to find out how I’m going to hurt him.

I come around beside him, facing the other way, out of arm’s reach, and give him my left eye while I talk. “Don’t be afraid. I can’t promise you’ll never be hurt, but I will not hurt you. I will never hurt you. And if I might ease any of your pain, I will. That’s not who I used to be, but it’s who I am now. Don’t be afraid.”

“You speak to him as if he’s a person,” Angvasse says softly. “As if he understands.”

“He understands. Not the way you understand, knowing what the words mean. At least, I don’t think so. Hard to know for sure. Horses are deep.”

“Then how do you know he understands at all?”

I shrug. “I’ve seen it. When you tell them the truth, they understand.”

“Then why is he still frightened?”

“Probably expects me to change my mind.”

Slowly, carefully, Angvasse lowers herself to sit on the ground a few yards away. “I begin to understand why you wanted to kill that man.”

“You see what this horse is?”

“I see what he is to you,” she says. “That suffices.”

The gelding has relaxed a hair or two; looks like Angvasse has the right idea. I take a couple extra steps away from him and sit down on a rock. “The man I hurt because of you called you Shandy. That’s just a word. You can pay attention to it or not. It’s not you. You don’t have to be anything but what you are. You can stay with us, or go where you please—though you should probably stick close for now, because there are wolves and bears and cougars in these hills, and we can protect you. But you don’t have to stay. You’re free.”

“I don’t understand,” Angvasse murmurs. “You might have been killed to gain this horse—and now you cast him away?”

“That’s not what this is.” I look up into the moon-shadow pool of his eye. “So we’re here. I know this time of year, you’re usually south and west, but we need you. There are three of us, and we all need you. Please come when you can.”

For a long moment, none of us moves. The only sound is the trickle of the creek, and the rustle of a small animal skittering through the scrub.
Then for the first time, the gelding makes a move I haven’t ordered him to: he turns his head far enough that he can look me over with his other eye too, and apparently what he sees is reassuring, because his head lowers by his front hooves and he begins to munch the weeds.

Well, all right, then.

“What just happened here?” Angvasse speaks only a hair above a whisper. “Did you cast some glamour? Since when do you do magick?”

“It’s not my magick,” I tell her, just as softly. “It works best at dusk or dawn. Half-light. If you can’t manage that, it’s best to be outdoors, somewhere dark and quiet, without too many people around. Like here.”

“To do what?”

I open my hands, a sort of gestural apology in advance for how this is gonna sound. “When you speak to a horse of the witch-herd, sometimes she can hear you.”

“Witch-herd?” She pantomimes looking around in bafflement. “A herd of one? Through which you speak to a woman you won’t meet for another fifty years?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Assuredly. And how long must we wait before you decide she’s not coming?”

“We don’t have to wait at all. If she’s coming, she’ll—”

The black gelding lifts his head and nickers softly. From somewhere back in the star-shadowed night, a horse nickers in reply.

“Like I was saying.”

As the upper rim of the moon slips over the eastern peaks, she comes out of the darkness as if made of night. The horse is big, powerful, and in the moonlight I can’t even guess his color. He walks slowly, easily, bare hooves making only the occasional knock when he steps on a stone. She is just another moon-silvered shadow, an outline, her face invisible within the haloed cloud of her hair.

Except for her witch-eye. Her witch-eye glitters like an ice dagger.

“I see I have underestimated you again.” Angvasse gets up and starts toward her. “I give you greeting, good—”

“Angvasse. Don’t.”

She stops and frowns back at me.

I nod at the gelding. “Business first.”

“But—”

“You don’t need introduction. Just wait.”

The big horse stops just short of the creek, and she swings down off him. She walks into the creek and stops in the middle. She stands there, watching
the gelding. He snorts and tosses his head. He sidles one way, then the other, then takes a few steps backward, tosses his head and snorts again.

She just stands there.

He starts to move forward, still kind of sidling but the sidle’s getting bigger, almost bouncing, stiff and gawky like some ancient geezer trying to show his grandchildren how he used to dance, and there’s an arch to his neck now and he pulls himself up and gives a couple of big huffs like a stallion and stamps a forehoof.

She stands. Watching. Nothing else.

Angvasse moves close to me. “You’ve seen this before, but still you watch. She watches the horse. You watch her. As though to fix in memory every slightest detail.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“It’s your smile,” she murmurs. “I’ve never seen you smile. Not once. I’ve seen you grin. You bare your teeth like a dog about to bite—”

“I prefer to think it’s a wolf.”