Karavans (39 page)

Melior stood at the wrapped body’s head, while Branca stationed himself at the foot. One at a time, using a call-and-response format involving attendees, they blessed the dead man and appealed to the god his wife said he worshipped to grant him an easy voyage across the river. During pauses in the invocation, only the quiet sobbing of his wife, standing shawl-wrapped with her mother, was audible, and the occasional fretting child.

Rhuan frowned. No, the sobbing and fretting were
not
the only things audible. There was a faint humming, a thrumming vibration in the air. The pitch was such that it seemed to work its way through the outer surface of his flesh, through the muscle, and into the bones below.

He looked first at Melior and Branca. They appeared to notice nothing unusual, nothing that might affect the rites. They took turns speaking quietly the words intended to guide the dead man on his final journey. A quick glance at Ilona elicited no response that marked her awareness of anything untoward.

Then he looked at Darmuth, standing beside Jorda. The demon’s eyes were fixed on Rhuan’s. There.
He
felt something, or sensed it. Or even, knowing Darmuth, scented it, like a hound upon a trail.

Carefully, Rhuan lifted his chin and brows in subtle inquiry. Darmuth’s response was just as subtle, and left no doubt.

The rites for the dead man were attracting the attention of something best left blind to such prey as humans.

No
, Rhuan said inwardly.
No, not now. Leave them be. Leave all of us be.

But his bones were invaded, muscles frayed, ears annoyed by the vibration. No sound existed; at least, no sound humans could hear. But Rhuan heard it. It set his teeth on edge. Imprisoned by flesh, his muscles jumped and twitched. He could not stay still, could not stand there a moment longer. He had to
move
; to walk, to jog, to run. To do anything other than stand in one place.

Rhuan knew he should be self-disciplined enough to govern his own body, but he was incapable of it. His bones seemed to vibrate in time with the humming. Even his teeth resonated with it, no matter how hard he clenched them. Deep inside, his ears itched.

He turned abruptly and walked away from Ilona, away from the karavaners, away from the rites. He moved without haste, but purposefully, closing his hand over the hilt of his knife. And as he rounded Jorda’s wagon at the head of the fractured karavan column, he drew the weapon and bared the long blade.

Hidden from all, he lifted his left hand, fingers spread. With a deft twist of the knife he cut into his flesh, opening a deep slice from the ball of his thumb to the outer heel of his left hand. Then he turned the hand palm down over the earth.

“Not now,” he said aloud. “Let them be.”

Blood fell from his hand to the soil beneath. The lush sod crisped into twisted, charred scraps.

He let the blood run. He let the sod burn.

HE MADE NO sound, no movement, but Ilona felt it, felt
something
take hold of Rhuan, something that stripped him of habitual grace and good humor. He was like a startled dog frozen in place, hackles rising slowly from the nape of his neck to the root of his tail. She sensed it so strongly that she could not keep her head from snapping around to look at him, could not keep her mouth from opening to ask him sharply what was wrong. But before she completed either motion he had left her side, had
retreated
, though she had never thought to couple that word with Rhuan. He flowed away with grace regained, but it was grace with a precision and purposefulness in his movements that spoke of sheer instinct, not rational decision making. Rhuan could be impulsive, but he was not a man who disrespected the rites and rituals of others. She could not fathom what would drive him away from a burial ceremony when it was custom, when it was
required
in karavan employee covenants, that everyone would attend dawn rites for a man killed on Jorda’s watch.

Or was it on Rhuan’s watch?

That
might send him away.
That
might drive him away, to know he had failed in protecting the man.

And another alternative presented itself, despite his disavowals: Would it drive Rhuan away if he had murdered the man?

Ilona considered following. Every muscle in her body tensed to do so. But with effort she held herself back; Rhuan did nothing without purpose, even if what kindled that purpose was unknown to others. She had learned that much of him. Had learned, too, that there were gaps in their friendship, personal interstices that disallowed her presence.

She trusted herself to know when he needed someone to ask of him how he fared. She had done so before, and only rarely had he rebuffed her. But this time, now, she thought he might again.

Ilona held her place. She did not go. She put her mind on Branca and Melior and continued witnessing the ritual for a man who had assaulted her. She supposed his god might understand if she did not add her voice to requests for peace in death.

It mattered less than nothing to her if his god did not.

THEY WERE ONE family among many, gathered at the rites. When Torvic had protested getting up so early just to witness some old dead man getting buried, Audrun and Davyn simultanously chided him for disrespect, nearly word for word. That was enough to silence the sleep-sullen boy, and his attention was further distracted by his younger sister’s glee at his chastisement. Megritte made certain he saw how quickly she was washed, dressed, and ready, whereupon she grinned at him in triumph. That prodded him into accelerated motion, and Audrun directed their little troop out of the wagon and up the slight hill to a lone tree, where everyone else gathered to witness the rites.

There, in hushed tones, Audrun directed her two youngest children to watch closely so they might understand the gravity of what had happened, and how absolutely vital it was that they stay close to the wagon rather than wandering away. But even as she said it, Audrun found her own recalcitrant gaze wandering away from the two diviners conducting the rites to the other karavaners. Though seeing off the dead was not the sort of activity that elicited happiness, she nonetheless noted that expressions were far more strained than sorrowful. Audrun supposed the dead man might have been a stranger to most of them, depending on when he and his family had joined the karavan, but the strain in every face was profound.

But then all of them, those folk, were to turn back when the rites were done. The plans painstakingly arrived at over weeks and months of careful thought were now as dead, as wasted, as the cleansed and oiled body wrapped in cloth.

It crossed Audrun’s mind that if Davyn approached some of the other men, those most upset by the change in plan, perhaps they might yet gather up a makeshift karavan even without a master, for safety on the road. She allowed herself hope for a moment, and extrapolation, until she recalled with an anxious, painful pinching in her burdened belly that none of Jorda’s people were bound for Atalanda. None but her family were to take the shortcut that ran so close to Alisanos.

In the background of her thoughts, she heard the murmuring of the diviners carrying out the rite. She was aware of spare dawn light, of coolness, of the rising of the sun out of darkness into day. But she was aware, too, of tension seeping into her muscles.

She could not escape the acknowledgment that their family, too, had the opportunity to turn back to the settlement. There they could wait out the season, as Jorda suggested; it would not be impossible. There were crops to plant and to till, gardens to tend, water in plenty, and fodder. And other adults with whom to share the days while the children made new friends.

They could start anew at the settlement. Remain in Sancorra, remain
of
Sancorra, despite the depredations of Hecari.

What does it make of us, to run from the enemy?

Well, not run … she wasn’t sure the oxen could manage such a gait.

But. They weren’t turning back.

She felt Davyn’s hand on her shoulder and looked up, becoming aware that everyone at the gravesite was taking part in the call-and-response led by the diviners. Even Davyn’s mouth moved to shape the words, but his eyes were concerned. Questioning.

He deserves better.

With effort Audrun threw off the thoughts of such things
as crops and gardens and friends, and joined her husband in the portion of the rite they all were a part of.

But a stray thought implanted itself nonetheless:
Let the guide decide to come with us.

Even as she thought it, even as she mouthed the responses, Audrun looked for the guide. But he was no longer with the hand-reader. No longer among the group. He was absent from a ritual all were required to view.

H
E WAS NOT, Brodhi knew, truly among enemies, but he supposed the others might consider him one. At the very least they undoubtedly wondered if they could trust him, and for the first time since he had sworn himself into the courier service, he realized that it mattered.

Dawn had broken, but as yet sunlight did not reach to all the corners of the world. It also did not reach into Mikal’s ale tent even as Brodhi slipped through the entrance flap, so that a pierced-tin lantern upon the plank bar had been lighted. With the oilcloth side panels let down and thus no freshening morning air to dissipate the odors of the night before, those inside shared a musty miasma of strong ale, smoke, lamp oil, of customers in need of washing, the memory of blood.

One-eyed Mikal, broad and battered. Slight, almost delicate Bethid, ear-hoops glinting. Timmon, blue-eyed and tall, with lank, light brown hair, a long jaw, his bony shoulders threatening the seams of his tunic. And Alorn, curls straying from a damp, cursory taming. Four people, four
humans
, whose intent was to change the world. Four disparate individuals who wore commitment like a cloak, and were thus identical. A powerful number, four; Brodhi in silence told over the Names he knew in their lesser incarnation: Earth. Air. Water. Fire.

And me? Perhaps I am the Trickster.

But surely not. That was Ferize’s role.

They shared a table and, by the crumb- and crust-laden wooden platter, had broken bread supplied by Mikal from the morning’s first baking, had drunk deeply of new ale. Brodhi knew too little of humans, and even less of these four—despite sharing a common courier tent with three of them now and again—to dare to make assumptions about whatever rites they may have undertaken before his arrival. They all wore cords of dangling charms around their necks—beads, feathers, bones, and other items—representative of their particular beliefs. Brodhi had never been interested in asking his fellow couriers what their beliefs were.

He wore no such string of charms, and that possibly, in their view, made him more untrustworthy. He did not pray as they did, nor visit diviners, nor invoke his gods in laughter, fear, admiration, or anger. In ordinary days, uneventful days, he was to them a cipher, and all were content to leave it so. But no longer. These days were neither ordinary nor uneventful. Not when four folk met to discuss taking the first tentative steps toward what might become, were they successful, a full-blown rebellion.

Under their eyes, Brodhi pulled free the heavy brooch of his office, as effective a protection as anything else a man might wear while the Hecari warlord made use of Sancorran couriers, and slipped the mantle from his shoulders. He added it to the pile of other courier mantles, identical in color, in weave, in weight, dropped across the nearest table. The ornate badges had been set upon the table the others inhabited, placed in front of Timmon, Alorn, and Bethid. Bright silver against dark wood. There was not, he noted, a fifth stool pulled up to their table.

With a faint smile, Brodhi hooked out a stool from a neighboring table and sat down. He did not join them. He put distance between himself and the others so they might take ease in it, stilled his movements, and even schooled his expression into bland neutrality.

He placed his badge upon his table. Quietly he said,
“They will kill every single courier if so much as
one
breathes word of rebellion.”