Deep Water (47 page)

There was blood in the water. Water sprite, Bramble thought, they’re probably in every major stream in this time.

“Pull him up, pull him up!” Red shouted, and the other men rushed to grab Geb’s shoulders and haul.

Acton stood to jump into the water, but Baluch held him back. The music in his head was warning, now, harsh and clamorous,
full of fear. “No,” he said. “There’s something down there.”

The men pulled, and pulled again, and suddenly Geb came free of the water. Something was clinging to his legs, but as they
watched the water sprite dissolved into air, like mist, like fog dissipated by wind. It cried as it went, a thin, mournful
cry that set the hairs up on the back of Baluch’s neck.

Geb was bleeding hard, the big veins in his legs pumping the life out of him. Red cradled him, trying to put pressure on the
worst wound, but there was no hope. Geb gripped Red’s jacket and said, “Meli . . .”

“I’ll look after her,” Red promised. Geb nodded feebly, once, and died.

Acton and Baluch climbed into the boat from the shingle, careful not to let their feet get in the water. Red looked up at
Acton with accusing eyes. Wild eyes, full of grief.

“You didn’t even try to help,” he said. Then he bent his head over Geb’s body and began to weep. Acton stared at him, his
mouth grim. Bramble thought he looked older, that the lines in his cheeks showed more clearly than they had a few moments
ago.

“Come with me, Baluch, Den, Odda. We’ll gather wood in the forest for his pyre,” he said. He leaped from the boat as though
glad to leave it behind. The others followed him. One splashed in the shallows as he landed and stumbled, terrified, up the
shingle, almost crawling in his haste to get away from the water.

“This land is cursed!” Red said.

Baluch made the sign to avert evil and moved closer to Red. “Acton tried to help. I stopped him.”

Red glared at him. “No one stops him doing what he really wants to do.”

Bramble thought that was a fair comment. No one stopped Acton. Baluch turned away to follow Acton.

Red raised his voice. “When we go on, I’m thinking I’ll be in Asgarn’s boat.”

Baluch paused. He didn’t turn around, but he nodded, then jumped for the shore. In the middle of the jump, in midair, the
waters came sideways and swept Bramble away in a flurry of foam and bubbles.

She was playing a drum in a simple, repetitive rhythm. In her head, another rhythm echoed and flicked in counterpoint. It
has to be Baluch, Bramble thought. Coming back to Baluch at least had the virtue of familiarity; she could relax a little,
read his thoughts a little. He clung to the prow with one hand and beat the drum with the other.

He began to whistle, and with the sound her vision cleared and she saw that they were on the river and his drumbeat was keeping
the oarsmen in time. The river was calmer here than in the rapids, but its surface was deceptive — the boat was traveling
very fast. They were rowing because the river was about to join another big stream and they would need to make their way against
the crosscurrents and eddies that the confluence created.

Between the two rivers was a sheer clay bluff that came to a ragged point with a tiny beach where several small round boats
were tied down. Baluch looked up and Bramble could see a village on top of the bluff; smoke came from drying racks with rows
of fish tied to them; some laundry was spread out on bushes to dry.

The bluff was lined with women watching, children crowded between their mothers’ legs to peer over at the strangers. Baluch
waved to them and a couple of the children waved back. Then the men appeared. Some had slingshots; others carried head-sized
rocks.

“Row!” Acton called. “Head for the bank!”

They bent their backs to the oar as Baluch increased the speed of the drumbeat, marking the time strongly. The boat seemed
to pause and then leap away from the village toward the near bank. But stones were raining down on them already. One from
a slingshot, about the size of a fist, hit Baluch in the shoulder and spun him around onto the deck. It knocked the wind out
of him and for a moment all Bramble could see was the rough-finished boards of the hull, all she could think about was the
aching desire to breathe… then he gasped and dragged a breath in and hoisted himself up.

The large rocks were mostly falling short but one had caved a hole in the side of the boat, just above the waterline. Several
men were bleeding from the ears or nose. One nursed a broken hand. It was clear that the slingshotters could send their stones
right to the bank — there was no safety there.

“Back!” Acton called. “Backwater!”

The unharmed men reversed themselves on the bench and spun their oars around. Baluch sprang down to a bench to replace an
injured man and they rowed strongly until they were out of range. The men on the bluff shook their fists in the air and cheered.
Their women hugged and kissed them. Bramble wanted to cheer with them. No one ever told this story, did they? About the ones
who fought back. Oh, no, the stories were all about massacres, not about brave villagers who repulsed the invaders.

Asgarn’s boat, following theirs, was keeping still in the water, rowing against the current just enough to let Acton come
level.

“We need to find a place upriver to come ashore,” Acton called to him. Asgarn nodded and ordered his men to reverse oars,
then they rowed hard until they came to a sand beach on the far bank of the river.

Careful not to put their feet in the water, they lifted the wounded off the boat and tended them. One man had been hit in
the head. There was no split in his skin and he said he was fine, but a few minutes after he sat down on a rock he began to
bleed from the nose, and a moment after that he was dead.

Acton looked at his body with tight lips. Baluch’s mind was full of mourning music, low and solemn.

“Elric,” he said. “He was named for my father.”

Looking down at the man, Bramble recognized in his features one of the boys who had played with Baluch and Acton the first
time she had come into Baluch’s mind. She remembered him, too, as one of the boys who had showed off, trying to attract Acton’s
attention.

“We would have done them no harm,” Acton said angrily.

“They didn’t know that,” Baluch said. “We’re strangers. Maybe they’ve heard some story about what happened to Hawk and his
people.”

Acton was stone-faced. Asgarn put his hand on Acton’s shoulder.

“We have to take the village,” he said, “or we can forget about getting to T’vit.”

“Yes,” Acton said. “Tonight.”

“Night?”

“Oh, yes. They won’t expect it. We land upstream of them and go in, hidden by darkness. We make noise. We threaten. We let
them leave, if they want to.”

“What if they don’t?” Asgarn said, loud enough for the others to hear.

“Then we kill them all!” Red exclaimed, and the men cheered.

Acton took a breath, and then let it out. Baluch, even Baluch, was nodding.

“They challenged us,” he said. “They killed first. There are consequences to murder.”

“The women and children will not be harmed —” Acton began.

“Unless they fight,” Asgarn concluded. The men nodded.

“Unless they fight,” Acton conceded.

Bramble really didn’t want to be present for the raid on the village. But the gods decided otherwise. She waited with Baluch,
feeling his heart beating faster, in the darkness outside the village, until everyone was in bed except the single lookout.
She watched Asgarn slit the lookout’s throat. She crept with Baluch and the other men until they had surrounded the quiet
houses and, as Acton nodded, she felt Baluch’s throat contract and release in an unearthly, high-pitched scream. In an instant,
all the men were screaming, a terrifying ululation that sounded completely inhuman.

In the houses, there were shouts and cries and clangs as people tumbled from beds and peered out of windows and doors. Acton
raised a hand and the men stopped screaming.

“People of this village,” Acton said, in the language he had learned from Gris. “You have killed one of my men, and for that
your punishment is death.”

The cries rose again but now they were human voices, Acton’s men cheering, villagers protesting.

“But I am merciful,” Acton shouted over the top of them, and they fell silent. “If you choose to leave this place forever,
taking with you whatever you can carry, I will let you live.”

“Never! We’ll never leave!” an old woman’s voice shouted back. “This is our place, you thieving bastards!”

There were shouts of agreement from men and women both.

“I will even let your women and children go before this battle, if you refuse to leave.”

“We’ll stay!” a younger woman’s voice came. “We’ll fight by our men and we’ll see your souls to hell!”

Baluch stood close by Acton, as if worried about him.

“Well, Wili, I tried,” Acton muttered. He turned to Baluch. “You’ll tell her I tried, Bal?”

Baluch nodded. “They’ve chosen death. It’s their right.”

That seemed to comfort Acton, which annoyed Bramble. He was about to kill a whole village, and he wanted to feel good about
it, to feel good that he had given them a choice between losing everything they had, everything they’d worked for, and dying.
He had no idea what he was asking! She was angry again, and she welcomed the anger, because it strengthened her against what
she knew was coming.

“For Elric!” Acton cried aloud, and his men echoed the cry as they rushed forward.

There had been men with torches hidden in the undergrowth. Now they threw the torches onto the thatch of the roofs and the
houses came alight with a whoosh of air, the sudden heat on their faces, sudden light almost blinding them. The village men
came out of the houses waving slingshots, with hatchets, with spears, with staves, but without a sword between them. The women
came behind them with anything they could find, from a cooking pot to a kitchen knife. Some of them had babies tied to them
with shawls. The children followed them, with little knives, with small slingshots, with bits of wood snatched from the kindling.
“For the River Bluff!” they cried as they attacked.

They fought fiercely, children included, but they had no hope. There was a lot of blood, and Baluch spilled his fair share
of it, including a young boy who came at him with a knife. He swiped him away with the flat of his sword, but Bramble heard
the boy’s neck crack. Baluch paused for a second, but the rapture of battle overtook both him and Acton and he charged villager
after villager with real enjoyment, part of him relishing the image of fire against the dark sky, of sparks flying upward,
of flames glinting on raised swords, of the rushing river encircling them with constant music.

Bramble fought against being caught up in the surge of emotion, but it was hard, so hard, to stay separate when Baluch’s mind
was so close to hers. She pulled herself as far back as she could and made herself think of other things; and then she thought
that someone should stand as witness to the slaughter, for the children if for no one else, so she made herself watch it all,
and feel it all, the exhilaration and the horror mingling in her until she couldn’t split them apart, until it felt that she
was drowning in fire and blood.

Was this what it had been like in Carlion, when Maryrose and Merrick had been slaughtered? Had the ghosts felt the same combination
of excitement and repulsion? Or were they simply glad to kill?

She wished she could weep.

When the villagers were all dead and the fires had begun to burn down into the stone foundations of the houses, Acton called
them together to count their losses. There were none. They whooped and slapped each other’s backs and cheered for Acton a
few times.

A couple of them went off to look for drink in the sheds which they claimed they had carefully
not
set fire to, because sheds were usually where the beer was brewed. This raised a laugh and a cheer. Baluch was exhausted.
He slumped on a bench under an elm tree, incongruously untouched, as though ready for a picnic.

“Women and children,” Acton growled to him. “Such great warriors we are.”

“Their choice,” Baluch said, his voice flat, his mind suddenly replaying the moment when he had killed the boy. All music
emptied out of him and he hung his head between his knees, fighting nausea. Bramble felt a sour satisfaction, all the more
so because there had been moments when she had been too involved with Baluch, had shared too closely with his pleasure as
his sword had swung cleanly, had killed efficiently.

Baluch sat up, leaned his head back against the elm and closed his eyes.

“We’re not going to do it this way when we get to T’vit,” Acton said.

Bramble deeply wanted to hear him say it, wanted him to reject the warrior creed that he had lived his life by. She was surprised
by the depth of her desire, the strength with which she silently urged him to put an end to the killing. Perhaps, just perhaps,
he was changing . . .

“I don’t want any of the houses lost,” he said. “No fires. We’re going to need the houses and boatsheds, and the boats, too.
Tell the others. Kill the men, leave the houses alone.”

She should have known. She hated him more in that moment than she had ever hated any warlord or warlord’s man. He was as bad
as she had always known. She felt as though her chest was being sawn open with a blunt knife. Why should it hurt her so much?
She had always known what he was.

Baluch kept his eyes closed as though he didn’t want to look at Acton’s face. “And the women and children?”

Acton paused. “We’ll give them the choice. Then it’s up to them.”

Bramble could have cried with thankfulness when the waters rose, gently, to carry her away in a deep and silent current.

The current washed her up, again in Baluch’s mind, looking at another village by daylight, a whole, undamaged village of about
twelve houses lying in a flat bend of the river, untouched, calm, perfect. Except that there were no people.