The Leopard (Marakand) (10 page)

“Good,” he said aloud. “And you don’t want to kill me, because then Ahjvar will be in his right mind again, and—and he will be so, so angry with you. He might kill the lady then, your heir, out of hate for you. So you can’t make him angry. You can’t kill me. All right?”

It stood very, very still. Maybe that was too complicated. Maybe it was going to spring, bound though it was.

The mare was dancing and jerking her head, as if even she smelt the ghost of a bed turned funeral pyre. Ghu wound her long mane about his wrist, a good way to break it, maybe, or pull his shoulder out. “Come with me,” he told the horse, speaking Nabbani, which the ghost probably did not. “Good girl, my pearl, my queen of mares, quiet now. We’ll get him back, we will. Come.”

He had his own belt-knife in his hand, a thin, sharp blade. His heavy brush-cutting knife was back with the harness. He moved slowly, keeping the horse tight at his side. The thing that was not Ahjvar watched the place where the sword had fallen, hungrily, like a dog eyeing dropped bread.

“I’m going to cut the ropes,” he said. “Don’t move.”

It swayed towards him as if it would use even its teeth, if it could.

“I’m probably going to cut you, Ahj,” he added. “Sorry.”

It hissed again, jerked as the blade touched it, but stood. Hot—even soaked with cold rain it was radiating heat he could feel. Quivering, fighting its own urge to kill, to devour whatever element it was that it took of the departing life. Enough intelligence left in it to fear the threat of the bard’s death? To care? Or just enough to know it couldn’t kill him easily with its arms behind its back.

Probably that.

He trailed the knife down, caught what he hoped was rope, and slashed it. Dropped the knife and vaulted up as the mare took off running at the scream the thing gave, a hand’s edge striking for his throat.

But he was out of reach. He brought the mare to a reluctant, sidling halt, turned enough to see the shape that was and was not Ahjvar already free of its remaining bonds and running, knife in its hand in the glare of another lightning bolt. “Sword, Ahj!” he shouted. “Before they kill her.”

Then he gave the horse his heel and got out of reach again, heading back the way he had come, a wary eye out for the brigands, or the piebald, which he had also lost in the lightning with no idea where it had run. Trusting to Father Nabban to spare him marmot holes, as he had in the first wild ride.

“I see him! Dann—!”

“Tell him where we are, why don’t you?” The voices ceased, but he heard their panting, even over the beating of the rain on the earth.

Ghu circled widely enough that the white mare’s shimmer would disappear; he came down on the fire from the opposite direction. They hadn’t tried to put it out. The pony raised its head and whickered, giving him away, and at first he didn’t see the bard, only the two nervously on their feet, one with a bow. That one shouted, but Ghu slid down and slapped the mare’s flank, ordering, “Away, find the others,” as the man loosed an arrow. It hissed overhead as he crawled in towards the light. He found the lady with his hand, flat in the grass, before he saw her. His heart jolted in fear even as her muffled gasp told him she lived. Her hands had been tied before her; she was crawling like a lizard, flat, on her elbows, escaping while she could. White light burned the air and the thunder crashed almost on top of it.

“Come,” he ordered in Praitannec. He tugged at her shoulder, and after a moment, she followed, farther from the fire, where two alert brigands crouched, listening for their fellows. No knife now. He sat hidden in darkness with the bard, worked at the knot with his fingers, wriggling it loose, and finally pulled the cord free. The lady clutched him close, muffling a fit of sobbing on his chest. She was pleasantly soft.

A scream away in the night. He sighed and found the lady’s hand, squeezed it. A death. They would be all right now. It was Ahjvar, not the monster, who would come for the two at the fire.

Of course, Ahj might not know anything of the brigands. He would think he had found some innocent tribesman benighted in the storm . . .

“Ghu!” The bellow made the archer shoot another arrow, blind in the dark.

Ghu cupped his hands, rose up on his knees to call, “Outlaws, Ahj, five of them.” Small chance they spoke good Nabbani. “Two here, three out looking for me. I have the lady safe beside me.”

“Shut up!” Lady Deyandara wrenched her hand from him and tried to cover his mouth. “Andara help me, you’re—what’s your name, the Leopard’s Nabbani servant?” She tried the pidgin of the Eastern Road. “Be quiet. They’ll find us.” She spoke too loudly, making each word stand alone, as if he were deaf as well as simple.

She was right, of course, about the danger of shouting, but he had meant to crawl quickly away afterwards. Wrestling Lady Deyandara’s hands off his face delayed that moment too long. Lightning betrayed them.

An axe wavered at him out of the night, moving in a stench of sour beer.

“Is it the girl, Jecca?” the woman called, safely behind. “Don’t let her get away.”

Ghu kicked the man’s feet out from under him, rolled over, dragging the lady, pulled her up and ran, while the man groped around for his lost weapon.

“They’re all around!” someone wailed in the distance. “Dann, is that you?” A shout that ended in a breathless cough. It hadn’t been.

Pounding hooves, a shriek. That was three. The man and the woman found the axe at the same moment and tussled for it. The man won. The woman yelled, “Damn you!” and grabbed one of the sticks of meat. Ghu wished he had a stick himself. Hands and feet weren’t much defence against an axe. He dragged the lady over to the tree, put her behind him with her back to it. The woman knocked the makeshift tent of blankets flat and began turning in small circles, watching all ways, afraid to leave the firelight, as if that were somehow safety. The man, in the stupidity of drink, seemed to have one thought only, to make sure the bard didn’t escape. A beer-muddled belief that her death now would save them from being found.

“Help!” the bard yelled suddenly, catching a sound. “Over here!”

The piebald loomed into sight, and the long sword, red in the firelight, swept the brigand-woman’s head from her shoulders, spraying the white-mottled withers black with blood. The horse turned, and the last of the outlaws, raising the axe, screamed high-pitched like a wounded animal, for the brief moment he still had a voice to scream with. Ahj ran him through the ribs and carried on around the tree, dragging his sword free, the body, ripped and spilling, tumbling to a heap almost at their feet.

The lady whimpered and tried to press herself into the trunk, as if it might open up and hide her. Ghu couldn’t say he blamed her. Ahjvar looked more a brigand than the outlaws had, barefoot, hands and feet blood-glistening on the blood-spattered horse, without saddle or bridle, and his face deathly grey, a skull-mask with the deep shadows of his eyes. He came sliding down the piebald gelding’s shoulder and didn’t quite pitch forward onto his face, ending up on his knees, a hand braced against the earth, never losing his grip on the sword.

Ghu caught him. He was cold and wet and shuddering and couldn’t seem to speak.

“It’s all right, it’s all right now. They were going to kill the lady.”

Ahjvar shook his head.

“Yes, it is all right,” Ghu insisted. “Whatever chief governs this land has his household warriors hunting them, they said themselves, for murder and brigandage. You would have fought them anyhow, because they had the lady; they were going to kill her.” And he thought that though he did not believe it was yet his time to decide on the life and death of men, he had. Turning Ahjvar loose in his madness was as much a choice as slashing a man’s throat with his forage-knife. He sighed. Father Nabban, was it right, ever, to kill a man? But it was a worse wrong to stand by while a bound prisoner was hacked to death with an axe.

“It’s all right,” he repeated, and Ahj finally found his tongue.

“My head aches,” he muttered, and pushed away from Ghu, standing up. “What have you done with the rest of my horses?”

“I’ll find them. You look after the lady.” But maybe that was not a good idea, just now. It was Ahjvar who needed looking after. Lady Deyandara with her red hair and turned-up nose was not the one to do it. “Just . . .” He couldn’t expect them to stay here. The storm seemed to be passing; the wind had dropped and the rain dwindled to a light drizzle, almost a mist. Ghu pulled a burning brand from the dying fire. “Take this. Stay together. Go down into the valley. Make a fire. I’ll find you.” He didn’t wait to see if Ahjvar obeyed, but clucked to the piebald and walked off, with it following like a dog.

Pearl was easy enough, a soggy white shape under a skyline tree, fool beast, but the lightning had passed. She whinnied when she smelt the piebald, followed. No sign of Ahjvar’s favourite. He found a body, headless, and the piebald came on the head and shied away. He whistled it back and hesitated. Different folks had different customs or even laws about the violently dead. In the empire, to send on the soul of a slain man before the emperor’s wizards could question it about its murderer was a crime itself, even if you had nothing to do with the slaying. Among others, it was a cruelty not to give a body a little earth at once, to free the soul to the Old Great Gods. Well, the dead did not easily lie; the man would have to speak the truth about his deeds. He did not want there to be any mistake, to have Ahjvar taken up for murder.

“Bide a while,” he told the ghost, which crouched small and whimpering and near-senseless in its terror. “The chief’s bench-companions will no doubt find you and send you to your road.” The ravens would alert them.

He did not try to find the other two, who must also lie out on the hills somewhere. It was his belt-knife and Ahjvar’s boots he wanted. And Ahjvar’s horse.

The golden gelding eventually came to his whistling, with its silver-cream tail knotted up with burrs.

“Such foolish horses,” he told them. “You know it’s me who has to comb your silly tails.” But he was glad to find them all safe. He found the trampled grass where he had left Ahjvar bound, and after much blind searching in the sodden and torn grass, retrieved boots and cloak and his knife. After that, he went, with the horses following, down to the stream again, to harness them by feel in the dark, and load them.

They were not happy. They stumbled at roots and plodded like weary buffalo after a day under the yoke. No rest for anyone through the day; Ahjvar would not want to wait to meet the spears of the local tribe, out hunting the swineherd’s killers.

Lady Deyandara had made a little smouldering fire, with wet sticks tented steaming over it, under a stand of towering elms in the valley bottom. Her pony was tethered close, still saddled as the brigands had left it, as though she thought she might yet want to flee into the night—though the east was greying. Ahjvar, soaking wet as if he had plunged into the brook fully clothed, as perhaps he had, sat apart, cleaning his sword.

“Good,” he said hoarsely, when he saw the horses.

“Go to sleep,” Ghu told him. “I’ll cook.”

“We’re not staying here.”

“I know. That’s why you should sleep, now. Just till the morning comes. The horses need rest, so you might as well take some too. I won’t let you have nightmares. I’ll wake you if you even twitch.” He added in Praitannec, for the bard, “It’s safe now. Go to sleep.”

“Do dogs walk?” Deyandara asked, in a low voice. It was Ahjvar she looked at. He was startled into glancing up.

“They killed her dog,” Ghu explained.

Ahjvar shook his head. “I’ve never seen a dog’s ghost.” Most people who were not wizards didn’t see ghosts at all or saw only those of close kin. “Animals go to the earth, like demons; they don’t take the road to the stars. I’ve heard it said that sometimes a dog, maybe a horse but usually a dog, waits after all, to join its master on the way.”

“Dogs are patient,” said Ghu. “He’ll wait. Buried or unburied.”

“I don’t know where he is. They took me across country, all day. I never had a chance to fight. I fought in the hall when the priests killed the queen; I killed a man then, and I’m not useless, whatever my brothers say, but they—they came up and gave me good day, and then, then they just—Badger knew something was wrong, he was leaping at the same moment the man pulled me down and—”

“He’ll find you,” Ghu said.

Ahjvar gave him a look that was more like Ahjvar, a bit sarcastic. He hadn’t meant to say that. He hadn’t meant to speak of her own death as a comfort. The lady should go east, to her brother. She would be safer there. But she watched Ahjvar now with a sort of wary fascination, which wouldn’t please him, when he noticed.

“Go to sleep,” Ahjvar ordered, and she listened to him, wrapping herself in a blanket from her bags and curling up on some flattened ferns, wet, but out of the mud.

“You too,” Ghu said. Ahjvar just grunted, but he sheathed the sword at last and flung himself down. He was asleep almost the same moment. Ghu covered him with everything dry he could find and yawned. But he couldn’t sleep himself; he had promised to watch. Someone had to.

He made porridge and let it sit, keeping warm, as the sun crept up a murky, rain-heavy sky. He found coffee and made some for Ahjvar’s headache, and tea for himself, because despite the fire he was shivering with cold, soaked to the skin, and his cloak of oily wool had stopped shedding water and begun drinking it like a sponge sometime in the downpour. The coffee woke Ahjvar, who at first seemed vague on what had happened and needed to be told why the bard was sleeping by their fire, why he hadn’t woken bound hand and foot on a hilltop. While Ahjvar drank his coffee to the last of the revolting thick sludge, saying nothing, eyes shut, Ghu cleaned Ahj’s wrists and ankles with the barley-spirit and bandaged them again.

Ghu didn’t ask if he had done the right thing. He had done it; it was his burden to carry, right or wrong. But Ahjvar grabbed him as he reached for the kettle of porridge and pulled him close a moment, face bowed to the top of his head, breath warm against him. “You did right,” Ahj muttered into his hair. “Lesser evil, anyhow. But Great Gods, Ghu, don’t do it again. I could have killed
you
.”