Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (39 page)

The view over the maze of stone spires and twisting canyons was as awe inspiring as ever, and the drop from the edge of the trail as sheer, but the girl paid little heed to either, rushing down so fast that Kavi reached out to restrain her several times. It was good that she wasn’t afraid of heights, but still . . .

“I know you’re in a hurry to get to the bottom, lass, but the fastest route isn’t always the best! Especially not in this case.”

“I won’t fall,” she said impatiently. “This . . .” Her gesture seemed to take in the towering rocks, the open sky, even the heat of the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the barren earth. “This is home.”

But she slowed her headlong pace a bit and they all reached the bottom in one piece, to Kavi’s relief. “What next?” he asked, scratching Duckie’s
ears soothingly, though the mule appeared to have no more fear of heights than the girl. “This being your home, and all.”

While he was in Mazad, Soraya had purchased a small bag of dried beans to give to the Suud, saving the money from the scant funds he’d left her. When he asked about it, she shrugged. “It’s symbolic,” she’d said, and added nothing more.

Now she stood with her head cocked, listening. Kavi heard nothing but the soft sigh of the wind—a wind too soft to lessen the heat that was already making him sweat.

“They’re here,” she said.

“Who’s here?” He couldn’t see anyone.

“The Suud. They must be posting watchers on all the cliff trails, even in the day.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted a string of bouncing, liquid syllables that echoed off the rocks.

“You speak Suud?” Kavi was impressed.

“I had most of the winter to learn it,” she said. “Now we wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For night.”
You idiot,
her sardonic glance added. It was obvious, now that she’d said it. Kavi knew that the Suud were nocturnal.

“You don’t need to stay,” she went on. “I owe you more than I can ever repay, for freeing me, for bringing me here. But I’m fine now.”

“I’ll see you into your friends’ hands, nonetheless.” Kavi looked around till he found a patch of shade big enough to shelter Duckie, as well as himself and the girl. It was a good thing darkness was only a few marks off, or they’d need more water than they carried. “As for owing, the news you brought to Mazad will more than make up for any trouble I went to. Though I do have a question for you. You know that the Hrum’s swords are better than ours?”

Soraya nodded. “Ours break and theirs don’t. At least, that’s what the soldiers said. There’s some secret about the way they make them, but I never heard what it was. Most of the soldiers didn’t know.”

“Part of the secret seems to be that they’re forged in layers,” said Kavi. He fished the chip of watersteel out of his purse and turned it in his fingers, feeling its cool smoothness, its strength. It felt different than any other steel, though he couldn’t quite tell what the difference was.

“Here.” He held it out to the girl. “Take a look.”

She reached for the chip of steel, but the moment her hand touched his, she jerked back, staring at him with widened eyes.

Kavi frowned. “It won’t bite you. You could cut yourself if you really tried, but it’s not going to slice your fingers off on its own.”

“No.” Her startled gaze narrowed in speculation. She was looking at him, not the steel. “No, I don’t suppose it will.”

“What’s the problem?” Kavi asked. “Did I suddenly grow a third eye or something?”

“No. Well, actually yes, in a sense. Never mind.”

She took the steel crescent from his hand. “I see the layers. Is that what makes it stronger?”

“Not entirely,” said Kavi. “I’ve a friend, a sword smith, who’s been trying to duplicate this. He can make the layers, but the blade still doesn’t turn out like the Hrum’s. It takes a better edge than ours, but it’s brittle.”

“So the layers aren’t the secret,” she said, passing the watersteel back to him.

“I think they’re part of it,” said Kavi. “But there’s something else, as well. There are rumors that there’s some kind of superior ore in the desert.
I was wondering, since you’ve obviously spent time here, if you’d heard anything about it?”

“No.” She said it without hesitation, but her eyes flicked away. “No, I don’t know anything about that.”

It felt like a lie to Kavi, the first she’d told him. But here, with the silent rocks looking down on them, and perhaps Suud watchers listening, he decided not to pursue it. If the desert held secrets, it could keep them, as far as Kavi was concerned.

T
HEY CAME SHORTLY AFTER SUNSET
—far sooner than Kavi had expected them—two dozen Suud, streaming out of the shadowed canyons like pale ghosts. Except that ghosts didn’t wear striped robes, or carry such wicked-sharp spears.

The girl wasn’t intimidated. She shot to her feet, smiling a welcome as her eyes raced from one face to another until she found the one she was looking for. She ran past the threatening spears without a glance and into the arms of an old woman, several inches shorter than she was, but who hugged her like a mother hugs a daughter who’s been gone too long.

Even as Kavi smiled, he noticed that most of the
Suud who carried spears were looking at him. And they didn’t look friendly. Clearly the girl was right about being welcome here, and clearly he was not.

Kavi took Duckie’s lead rope, nodded politely to the folk with the spears, and led the mule back to the cliff trail.

The moon was just rising, nearly full. He would make camp at the top of the cliff and get on his way tomorrow. It would take several days to get back to Mazad, and he had a lot to do before he could move the shipment.

Halfway up the trail, he turned to look back. The Suud and the girl were gone, as if they’d never been there. It looked as uninhabited, and uninhabitable, as any place Kavi had ever seen, but he wasn’t fooled. The spears were there, waiting for any who tried to enter the desert without the Suud’s permission. No wonder the miners who went in search of that superior ore never came back. Kavi wouldn’t have tried it, even for watersteel.

H
IS NEXT MEETING,
four days later, was easier to arrange, but reaching a satisfactory conclusion proved harder.

“You mean to poison the whole Hrum camp?” one of his most reliable agents asked incredulously. “I didn’t think you were that . . . um . . .”

“I’m not going to kill them,” said Kavi. “Just make them sick for a while. And I probably won’t be able to get the whole camp—two thirds, if I’m lucky. But that will be enough to force them to bring the patrols in to protect the camp, and we can get the wagons to the aqueduct entrance and get the supplies inside.”

“All the wagons except the five that you’ll be driving,” said his agent. “You and four volunteers, assuming you can find anyone crazy enough—”

“It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Kavi insisted, hoping he was right. “Any scheme based on human greed has a lot going for it. But I’ll be needing a copy of a brewer’s mark. Someone who’s been selling to the Hrum. They’ll trust casks with a familiar mark on them more than casks from a brewer they don’t know.”

The agent was eyeing him warily again. “There’s no one I hate that much. Even if they do sell beer to the Hrum.”

Kavi sighed. He didn’t hate them either, although the brewer who supplied most of the
beer to the Hrum’s camp at Mazad had just suffered the misfortune of losing an entire shipment to a barging accident—courtesy of Sorahb. Kavi couldn’t risk the Hrum ordnancer putting his “Sorahb brew” into a supply tent and leaving it there for the next month; it had to be served while Kavi was in the camp. Kavi knew the financial loss would hurt the brewer, but it wouldn’t bankrupt him altogether. And as for getting some other brewer killed . . .

“What makes you think I’ve gone bloodthirsty all of a sudden?” Kavi asked. “I’m going to forge a copy of the brewer’s mark you give me, but with several things different. Enough that anyone who looks closely will know it’s a forgery. The brewer won’t suffer for it.”

“No, but you might, if they look too close at your clever, forged mark before they start drinking.”

“Until they start getting sick, they’ll have no reason to look closely.”

“Unless they taste the poison, or—”

“They won’t,” said Kavi confidently. “My brewer and the apothecary worked together for three days to get it right.”

And if the curses of the brewer’s assistants had any effect on the Wheel’s turning, Kavi was due for a long spell in the Flame. They had been recruited as taste testers.

Eventually Kavi got the information he needed, and promises for the help he’d need as well. But it took more time and argument than any other plan he’d proposed. Admittedly this scheme was wilder than most. But it was the only thing he could think of to accomplish all Siddas’ goals. It should work. It had better work, for if it failed, Kavi, and the four other men who’d volunteered to help him, would be taken by the Hrum. And while the other men would be sold as slaves—far from trivial!—Kavi was marked as one of their own. The Hrum had a very short way with traitors.

A
WEEK AND A HALF LATER,
about two marks before sunset, Kavi drove an oxcart loaded with beer barrels up the road that led past Mazad. Of all the things that worried him, the most pressing was that he wasn’t a very good ox carter. The man who’d volunteered the wagons had also agreed to sell them the oxen, but given the likelihood that they’d be trapped in Mazad and eaten, the master
carter had offered only his oldest oxen. That was fine with Kavi, since the oldest were also the cheapest. He’d soon discovered another advantage in that the oldest oxen were also the most placid and best trained. The beast Kavi was driving didn’t pay much attention to Kavi’s commands, but he took the wagon where Kavi wanted it to go and stopped when Kavi wanted him to stop. Well, more or less.

The four volunteers in the other wagons—experienced carters all—had enjoyed a good laugh at his antics as he tried to convince the stubborn beast to do as he wanted, but if he really got in trouble they would come to his aid. Several people had tried to convince Kavi to let them do it all—and he wished he could agree—but Kavi didn’t trust anyone but himself to negotiate with the Hrum patrol.

Another thing that hadn’t concerned him was finding a Hrum patrol—they’d been so thick around Mazad that Kavi, alone and on foot, had trouble avoiding them. He hadn’t been able to get his final message into Mazad to tell Commander Siddas to expect them tonight, but the commander knew it would be soon and Kavi had decided it
wasn’t worth risking a life to try to send someone else.

So five oxcarts that were looking for a patrol shouldn’t have any trouble finding one. Of course, there was always a chance that the officer in charge wouldn’t be an arrogant fool, but a bit of rudeness would change that, even if the man wasn’t an ass to start with.

All he needed now was a patrol. But since the Wheel never spun as you wanted it to, the small cart train had almost reached the road that turned off to the city before a patrol came marching toward them. A foot patrol, who’d likely been walking all day. Bound to be tired and cross. And thirsty. Kavi suppressed a grin.

“Off the road,” he shouted, flourishing his goad. “Make way, make way.”

A few of the men started to shift their formation to the side, but the officer, predictably, came to a halt in the center of the road and folded his arms. His men, seeing his intention, dressed their lines behind him.

Kavi began trying to stop the ox, but the ox didn’t seem to be interested in stopping. Despite Kavi’s increasingly frantic shouts, it lumbered on
toward the Hrum commander, who appeared to have made up his mind to let the beast trample him before he yielded the road. Though surely if it came to the test . . .

Trampling the patrol wasn’t part of his plans. Kavi jabbed frantically with the goad, but the ox ignored him. The officer was crouching to leap aside when the ox finally braced its feet and came to a stop, right in front of him, huffing hot breath into the man’s face through its great nostrils.

The officer settled back into place, warily enough that Kavi suppressed another grin. Then he changed his mind—why not begin as he meant to go on? He’d already made a fine first impression.

“I told you to clear the road,” he snapped, just as the officer opened his mouth. “I’ve a load of fine, strong beer for the mining camps, and I want to make it to the foothills by sunset. So if you’d get your . . . selves off the road, I’d be appreciating it.”

He was tempted to make the speech longer, to annoy the officer even more, but he didn’t want to overdo it. Judging by the color rising in the man’s face, he was close to overstepping that line, so he folded his arms and waited.

The officer, having lost his chance to speak first, made up for it by taking his time to reply, but eventually he spoke. “All carts on this road are subject to search, by order of Substrategus Arus. All citizens of the empire are required to give way to units of the army on the road. In your ignorance, you may not have known this, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.”

His tone implied that Farsalans were ignorant to the point of barbarism, and that Kavi was the worst of the lot. But for all his annoyance—it’s alarming to have an ox and loaded wagon rolling down on you like an avalanche—he seemed to be an honest man. Curse him. But Kavi could change that.

“Search?” he sputtered indignantly. “What do you mean, search? You think Sorahb is hidden among my casks? Or in one?” He snorted. “I’d think you wanted to steal a nip, but beer this strong is a man’s drink. And I’ll not have you breaching my casks—it’d drive down the price. But feel free to search for all the warriors you fear . . . ah, imagine might be there. The sooner you’re done, the sooner you’ll clear the road.”

Several lances, which had been carried at rest,
were now pointing in Kavi’s direction. The officer’s face was flushed with annoyance, but he only planted his feet more firmly and studied Kavi with insulting deliberation. Kavi returned his gaze, unflinching.

He’d considered, and rejected, the idea of growing a beard or mustache. Almost all Farsalans were clean shaven, and he’d feared it would only make them pay more attention to his features. In the end, all he’d done was to cut his hair shorter than he usually wore it, and darken both hair and skin with walnut stain. His general description already matched half the peasants in Farsala—this just made him match the description of the other half. There were advantages to being ordinary.