Karavans (42 page)

“Or dies.” His tone was oddly tight.

She felt a great need to step back emotionally, to recover distance and raise it, like a shield, between them. With effort she approximated a sardonic tone. “But he’ll only resurrect himself again.”

It was enough after all. Darmuth hadn’t moved, but there was the knowledge in them both that the time for speech unencumbered by self-consciousness had been extinguished. All that existed between them now was the casualness of acquaintances.

NOT FAR FROM Mikal’s ale tent, Brodhi paused. Under the newborn sun the scent of charred poles and oilcloth lingered on the morning air as warmth crept into the day. Worse was the odor of death. Bodies had been gathered, rites were underway, but the dead were dead. Certain processes rendered them far less than they had been alive, and unfortunately pungent. If the bodies were not burned or buried soon, the settlement would, within a matter of days, become unlivable.

Behind him, a matter of paces away within a tent where men—mostly men—gathered to gulp spirits, three men and a woman, three couriers and an ale-keep, discussed his words. Discussed, no doubt,
him
, and whether they could trust him.

Brodhi smiled wryly. A moment later it bloomed into a grin. A tooth-bearing, self-mocking grin.
I gave them the key, then I offered myself as the one to turn it.

He had not intended that. He intended merely to introduce them to realities that all too often went unsaid or worse, went unthought. And yet he had placed himself amid the plan.
He
had. No one asked him to. No one expected him to. He most significantly less than the others.

Three men, one woman. And thus a rebellion was born.

Three men, one woman, and a Shoia warrior. And more:
dioscuri
, as Ferize herself from time to time reminded him. Was it test? Was it quest? Or was it human folly?

“Mine,” he said aloud. “My folly.”

As Ferize undoubtedly would tell him.

Summerweight blue mantle draped over one arm, silver brooch closed within a hand, Brodhi glanced back. The door flap to Mikal’s tent remain dropped. Privacy behind a flimsy shell of oilcloth. And yet he thought that perhaps it made more sense to shield themselves with nothing more than fabric. Behind wood, behind metal, such plottings were expected. But who would ever think an ale tent would harbor rebellion?

Brodhi opened the hand in which the brooch lay. Silver glinted.

Who might think an ale tent would harbor rebellion?

Hecari might.

Or Hecari might not, but burn it for the doing. Kill them for the counting.

DAVYN TENSED AS the guide walked slowly up the hill. His hand fell away from Audrun’s neck. He felt awkward, ungainly, and altogether inept. Something in him, from their first meeting, had recognized, had answered, if unspoken, to the guide, and the question he had ignored then arose now:
Is he more competent than me? More of a man than me?

That he was alien, no doubt. Pure-blooded Shoia, a race so distant and far-flung they were nearly unheard of in Sancorra, with ritually braided multiple plaits aglint with ornamentation even as the hems of his clothing were, a
long-knife sheathed at his hip, and a baldric of shining throwing knives strung slantwise across his chest. Nothing about the guide bespoke modesty, in dress or demeanor. And yet Davyn knew, Davyn felt, that the man was somehow—
more.
More than him.

Audrun? Oh yes, she saw it. Felt it. Even if she remained unaware of her response; but of that, Davyn could not be certain. She was not a woman who looked after other men, who yearned for what another man might offer; she had fixed her future upon his when they were no more than Ellica’s and Gillan’s ages. But he was all too aware that a woman grown might nonetheless be attracted, might respond to a man, even if that response was neither recognized nor acknowledged by her.

Davyn stopped halfway down the hilltop. The two eldest of his children halted. And, at last, his wife. But only because the guide had reached them.

The smooth, youthful features were blandly ignorant of Davyn’s self-doubts. Rhuan smiled, and dimples appeared. The cider-brown eyes were warm and, Davyn felt, altogether too attentive.

Because of that, Davyn took the offense. “My children spoke out of turn.”

He heard Audrun’s sharp, indrawn breath, and realized his abrupt words insulted Gillan and Ellica, who had meant only the best. But Davyn refused to look at either. Hurt feelings could be set to rights later; for now, everything in him cried out to deny the guide what Davyn believed he himself could offer: safety along the road.

Even if it did skirt Alisanos.

The guide’s eyebrows arched slightly. “Did they?”

Davyn made a deprecating gesture. “It was done out of care, out of a sense of responsibility; a father does not take his children to task for that.” He hoped it was enough to assuage the hurt his eldest felt, but did not have the time to look for himself to be certain of it. He merely locked eyes with the guide, giving no ground to a man who, he felt, was used to taking it. “But nonetheless it was done without my knowledge. And so I am left with
the duty of telling you that we will not be needing your services after all.”

The voice was very quiet. “
I
think we do.”

Audrun. It was
Audrun.
And it hurt.

He overrode her, still looking only at the guide. “Thank you, but we will do well enough unaided. I understand your concerns and warnings about Alisanos, and I dismiss none of them, but it must be acknowledged that no one knows what the deepwood may do. You say it has grown active and intends to shift—”

The guide said, “I do. And it does.”

“—but no one can predict where Alisanos will go,” Davyn continued steadily. “There is no certainty of safety
anywhere.
Were we to return to the settlement and remain there until Jorda led karavans out again, we might be taken regardless. So? We shall continue on our way and put our trust in the gods.” He managed a slight, tight smile. “The diviners have told us to go, and so we go. There is no room for discussion with strangers, no matter how well-intentioned.”

The guide looked at him for a long moment, expression oddly blank, and then he looked, from one to the other, in order, at Gillan, Ellica, and Audrun. “I see,” he said. And then grinned. “But the roads are open to all, and if I elect to travel the shortcut skirting Alisanos, there is no one to keep me from it.”

Defeat. Davyn felt it.
Knew
it. And the knowledge was bitter.

“Of course.” It took effort to keep his expression neutral, to maintain control of his voice. “I wish you safe journey.”

R
HUAN WAS NOT blind to the tension in the father, but neither was he unaware of the same in the wife and the elder children, who very much disagreed with the decision. Family conflict was a familiar thing to him—and one reason he had taken service with Jorda—but he had no experience of such things among humans. He didn’t blame the father for
wishing
to protect his family unaided. He did blame him for being stubborn enough to refuse that aid when the lives of his family depended on it.

Rhuan recognized the cause. Pride. Excessively male pride. He knew the latter well; he was too acquainted with the urgings of his own pride to say one thing or another, to
do
one thing or another. That pride had, in fact, been the bane of his kin for generations.

So Rhuan smiled, infused his voice with light-heartedness and acceptance, and simply informed the father of his plans to travel the same direction upon the same road.

He saw relief in the faces of the children and the wife. He saw anger and resentment flare in the farmer’s eyes; saw too, and appreciated, as the man applied self-control to keep from permitting the disagreement to kindle into true and lengthy argument.

“Safe journey,” the father said courteously, if through
stiffened jaw. The wife glanced up at him, fully cognizant of the tension between two men, and so Rhuan purposely diffused the moment.

“My thanks,” he said warmly, “and to you. If you’ll excuse me, I must return to my duties. I will see the karavan to the settlement, then begin my own journey.”

As he turned away, he glimpsed the startled and dismayed faces of the wife and the two elder children. They had expected him at the very least to depart at the same time they did, thus placing himself near them upon the road. His return to the settlement with the karavan would put more than a week between them. But on the face of the farmsteader, Rhuan saw a relaxing of the features from stoniness into relief, and an easing into cheerfulness. Just as he expected.

He smiled again, made the graceful gesture of departure required in his own kin, and strode back down the hill toward Jorda’s wagon. Behind him, he heard the father firmly directing the oldest son to see to hitching the oxen.

The thorn of anger pricked as he walked. Rhuan flattened it instantly with a wave of rejection. Anger he knew as well as pride; it rose quickly when teased into life or beckoned on purpose. Usually it was Brodhi who brought it roaring to the surface, heated and strong, which was one of the reasons Rhuan preferred to keep his distance from his kin-in-kind. No good, and quite a lot of bad, might come of it were they to enter into kin-feud. Such things killed among his people, including the innocent.

Then, of course, there was Darmuth, who ridiculed him in an entirely different way for entirely different reasons.

And now it was anger encouraged by a human. Rhuan shook his head briefly in denial and dismay. He knew better. Humans were very young, and very emotional. Those older were held to be wiser, and thus responsible for guiding the young
with
that wisdom.

Guiding. As Darmuth guided him? As Ferize did Brodhi?

He thought not. He thought most decisively not.

“Rhuan.”

Lost in musings, he had been watching only his direction of travel, unaware of others as he neared the wagons. With the rites completed, families were busy packing belongings and hitching teams, calling to one another. But this voice was quiet, pitched to privacy. This person waited specifically for him.

There was pain in hazel eyes. There was a rigidity in slim posture. There was pride, female pride, every bit as strong as that claimed by males, as she stood waiting, swathed in a rich green shawl. Dark hair was wound in untidy coils against the back of her head, anchored in place by rune-carved sticks, but had loosened around her face so that wavy tendrils framed her features. He had stood beside her throughout the dawn rites held for a man who had assaulted her, and had seen nothing in her of the emotions she tried to suppress now.

He halted, aware of warmth rising in his face. He owed this woman honesty, and so he answered before she could ask. “Yes. It’s true.”

She did not look away. She met his eyes levelly, and a slight twitch moved the corner of her mouth. “For all your wilding ways, you have always offered to help those most in need of it.”

He had expected something entirely different. He stumbled with a reply. “They shouldn’t …it’s … they are going into danger.”

“Extreme danger.” Ilona nodded. “While the karavan is returning to a safety that is somewhat more evident, if not wholly assured in a province overrun by Hecari.”

Floundering—he had not thought ahead to envision what it would cost to wish farewell to those he treasured—he sought to offer reassurance. “I’ll return, Ilona.” He grimaced. “If Jorda will have me.”

“He doesn’t keep guides in his employ out of season; how can he consider this desertion? If you survive to return for the next season, he’ll have you.”

“If I
survive!”
He began to laugh, halted it before it could gust from his mouth, insulting her concern, and
tamed it to a crooked smile. “How could I not? I have several lives left to me.”

The single word reply was an odd mixture of emotions. “Several.”

And so he lied, to give her ease. “Six.”

She sought the truth in his eyes. She found something there, but he could not tell what it might be. “Six.”