The Novels of the Jaran (37 page)

“Oh, Lord.” It came out of her like a sigh.

Abruptly his gaze sharpened on her. “Can’t you do
anything?”

He might as well have slapped her. She stood up, spun away from him, and walked, hands clenched, over to the dead hunter.

The hunter could have been asleep on his side except for the spray of blood that spread out from his neck, soaking into dirt and moss. A tiny black bug crawled across one of his open eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms across her eyes. Bile rose in her throat.

She picked up all his weapons—bow, arrows, dagger—and set them down beside Bakhtiian. Took in a full breath and walked back to the hunter. First she stripped him of what clothing was not too drenched in blood to be unusable. Then she grabbed his ankles—almost dropped them because they were still warm, the skin soft, yielding under her fingers. She gagged, clenched her lips together. His toes were white; hair grew below the first joint, but the nails were reddish-brown and dirty, as if they were already decaying.

She dragged him downslope over the rough ground and into a dense thicket. Branches stung her back and head and arms. She shoved him down an incline, and he rolled farther into the vegetation, twigs snapping under his weight. Retreating, she did what she could to cover his path, picking up dead branches and sweeping the trail the body had left until she came back to the congealing blood and scattered clothes at the beginning. Dirt stuck to the soles of her boots. The heavy scent of blood permeated the air. She put her hand to her throat, swallowed once, and turned and ran upslope, sound scattering out from her feet, until she was out of earshot. Then she dropped to her knees and was sick.

The stream murmured nearby. Its gentle chorus brought her back to herself, and she rose, still trembling, and explored until she found it. The shock of bitterly cold water on her face made her think again.

She ran back to the clearing.

Bakhtiian had not moved. She gathered up the dead man’s trousers and two tunics, shook them off, and went over to Bakhtiian.

“Ilya. Put these on.”

He looked up at her. Only a thin line of iris gave color to his eyes. His gaze strayed past her to the clearing. “He’s gone.”

“Yes. What happened to your knee?”

His gaze did not light on any one thing. “It went backward. I went forward.”

“Hyperextended, probably.” She offered him the clothing. “Do you need help?”

“I have clothes on.”

“Damn it! You have to stay warm.
Over
yours.” She tossed the clothing in his lap. “Let me see what I can do about your knee.”

Just beyond the path of blood that stained the center of the clearing lay the dead hunter’s sandals and heavy leggings. A yellowing undershirt lay draped across them, half covering a small, hollowed-out animal horn tied to a thong, the last of his possessions. She grabbed the undershirt and walked back to the stream.

It was like encasing her fingers in ice, but she grimly soaked the cloth and ran back to Bakhtiian. He had gotten both tunics on and was cleaning his saber on the hunter’s trousers, slowly and with a kind of desperate concentration.

“I told you to put those on.” She crouched next to him. If he heard her, he gave no reply. “Ice the injury,” she said, feeling as if she were talking to herself. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do first?” She pulled up his trouser leg, and winced. Already the knee was swollen. Discoloration mottled the skin. He paused in cleaning the blade, and his eyes shifted to her. In a swift, careful move, she wrapped the cold cloth around his knee.

Suddenly, his hands relaxed their grip on his saber, his lips parted slightly. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree. Tess finished cleaning his saber with two smooth strokes. Then she set to work again. She found a walking stick and two straight branches for a splint, then eased off his boot—already it was tight at the top as the swelling increased—and bound his calf in the leggings. The blood that lay like rust on the rocks and lichen in the middle of the clearing could be disguised for the time by spreading it out with branches, sprinkling dirt over it, ripping up long swatches of moss and draping them across stained rock. She broke up this activity with trips to the stream, to resoak the shirt and bind his knee. Last, she threw the little animal horn into the same thicket that held the body.
Like a grave offering,
she thought, hearing the light thud as it struck dirt. Then there was only silence. It was almost as if the hunter had never existed. Almost.

“Can you walk yet?” she asked, going back to Ilya.

His eyes were still shut. “Yes.”

“We’ve got the hunter’s belt and some rope from the quiver, for the splint.”

He opened his eyes. “Very well.”

After a time they managed something marginally effective. He grasped the heavy walking stick with one hand, bent his good leg under him, and pushed off. Halfway up his bad leg shifted, pressing into the ground. He gasped. Before he could fall, Tess grabbed him by the waist and pulled him up. He swayed. When she let him go, he staggered back a step. His free arm circled the tree he had been sitting against. He rested his head against the bark. All was quiet, except for the
tik tik
of an insect and the uneven flow of his breathing. Finally he opened his eyes and thrust himself away from the tree. Without a word, Tess slung all the extra gear over her shoulders, waiting for him to set the pace.

Watching Bakhtiian as he hobbled back along the valley toward the horses was a lesson in something; Tess wasn’t sure what. After every ten steps, he halted. After the space of time to take ten steps had elapsed, he started again. His eyes, his whole face, were glazed with pain. Sometimes Tess spoke, to break the silence. He never answered. Once, when she made a bad joke, she thought he smiled slightly.

Finally, seeing that his progress was slowing perceptibly, she redirected their course toward the hills, hoping to find and follow a stream back to the end of the valley. When she heard the soft rush of water nearby, she left Bakhtiian where he had halted yet again and went ahead with the undershirt.

The stream pooled just below a ridge of rock over which Tess could see the slope of the nearest hill. After slipping down five shale steps, it trailed back into the forest. She knelt, plunging the shirt into the water, gasping from the cold.

A note rose high on the breeze, low and trembling. At first she thought it was an animal, but as the sound arced to a peak and cut off she knew suddenly that it was close by, far too close, and that it was a horn. She looked up. Froze, hands still in the water.

The man stood not twenty paces from her. He stared, as surprised as she was. He raised a hand, taking in her scarlet jaran shirt, her saber, and—she could see it by the widening of his eyes—her feminine form and face. She kept her hands below the surface of the water, terrified all at once that he would see his dead companion’s shirt. How could she have forgotten? No one hunted alone.

He drew an arrow and nocked it, but he did not immediately let fly. Instead, he stared. She lifted her right hand from the water. It ached with cold. It hurt to curl her fingers around the hilt of her Chapalii knife, but she did so, watching him. He grinned and said something, foreign words. She drew the dagger. He raised the bow and said something more, clearly a threat. What had Garii said? Thumb over the third and second lights. The world slowed. She slid her thumb along the smooth hilt. The hunter drew the bowstring back and aimed and spoke—

Light streaked out. A flush of heat. He fell. She gasped audibly, jumped to her feet, and ran to him. He lay motionless on the ground. He stank, but it was an honest smell: dirt and onions and too many months without washing. He was still breathing.

For a long moment she simply gaped. How could he not be dead? One side of his face was flushed red. Daring much, she bent to touch it—it was warm, unnaturally so, but not burned. Stunned, not dead.

She lifted a hand to wipe at her face. She had broken out in a sweat. She felt hot under her clothes though the autumn air had a chill snap to it.
Stunned not dead!
Garii had given her a knife set to stun. So it couldn’t be used against him? Against any Chapalii?

What the hell did it matter anyway? She ran back to the pool and fished out the wet shirt, wrung it out, swore, and ran back to the hunter and took all his weapons. Raced into the woods, stopping before she reached Bakhtiian. How could she explain these weapons? Her saber was not even bloodied. She ought to go back and kill the hunter while he was unconscious, but she knew she could never do it. She sawed the bowstring into thirds and then dumped the weapons into the densest clump of undergrowth she could find, and ran on.

When Bakhtiian saw her, he sheathed his saber. “How many?”

“One.” She wrapped the wet shirt around his knee, which was by now so swollen that she couldn’t even make out the shape of the patella.

“Did he see you?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. He held onto a low-hanging branch and waited. “We just have to move fast. I’d suggest trying to follow the stream.”

“We’ll leave a clear trail.”

“He has no weapons. He’ll have to go back and get help. If we follow the stream, we can keep the swelling down.” She tied the shirt at his knee into knots, securing it to the splint. “And hope they don’t find the dead man until tomorrow.”

“That’s the only thing that helps,” he said.

“Besides your stubbornness.”

There was silence, except for a few birds calling and the distant spill of water. “You’d better go. Find the jahar.”

She slung the gear onto her back and handed him the walking stick. “Come on.”

“Did you mention stubbornness?” He pushed himself away from the tree. “I mistakenly thought you referred to me.”

She angled their path to avoid the pool. This time they made it all the way to the stream before he had to stop. While he rested, she wrapped his knee again, then scouted ahead a ways, but she heard nothing, saw nothing. Shadows stretched out around them. The bottom rim of the sun touched the blurred line of trees at the height of the hills, casting a deep red glow like blood against the low advance of clouds. Bakhtiian coughed, and she glanced over at him. The last of the sunlight cast gold across his face. It highlighted his cheekbones so that the skin seemed taut across them, in sharp relief like the face of a man who is starving or near death.

Eyes shut, he said, “Don’t be an idiot. Go on without me.”

“Bakhtiian, did it ever occur to you that I probably can’t find the horses, much less the jahar, by myself?”

He was silent.

“By God. Now that’s a compliment.”

One corner of his mouth tugged upward. He opened his eyes. “You’re right.” He coughed again, but it was a trembling sound. “I don’t know how I could have thought that.” They both laughed.

And, eyes meeting, cut off their laughter abruptly. Silence. A bird sang in the distance, a little five-note figure over and over. Bakhtiian grasped his walking stick and pushed himself up. He winced, took a step, winced, took another. They went on.

His pace was so slow that night made no difference to their progress. Animals accompanied their retreat: noises fading out into the brush, drawing closer when they halted, a snuffling once, that skittered away when she threw a rock in its direction.

Each time they halted he counted. Each time, he reached a higher number before he rose and struggled on. Now and then she had to help him over a fallen log, through a thick scattering of rocks, past a screen of branches. Wet vegetation slapped her face. Vines caught at her legs or brushed, slippery and damp, across her hand. Once she fell asleep balanced on a log, but when Ilya rose the log shifted under her and she woke, startled. Dawn came before they reached the end of the valley. It was another hour at least before they staggered into the copse where the horses were tethered.

Ilya sank down onto the ground. Deep circles smudged his eyes. “I can’t go on right now.” He covered his face with his hands and slumped forward.

“You have to eat.” She brought him food from their bags.

He took the food but did nothing with it. “You should sleep,” he said. “I’ll wake you.”

“You
should sleep.”

“I can’t sleep. I’ll watch.” He shut his eyes again and leaned back, resting against a tree trunk.

Tess rubbed her face. She checked the horses, forced herself to eat, forced herself to refill the water flasks before she allowed herself the luxury of lying down on her cloak three meters behind Bakhtiian, facing the high screen of bushes. Here, in the close wood, the leaves were the brightest green at the tops of the bushes, lit by the sun, shading down to a dark green near the earth, where shadows obscured most of the ground. Encased in gloves, her hands felt almost warm. She fell asleep.

The palace in Jeds looked out over the sea, over the wide mouth of the bay, out toward the islands littering the horizon like so much flotsam cast back to drift. Marco Burckhardt stood alone on the sea wall, watching the waves slide in along the strand and murmur through the hedge of rocks scattered at the base of the wall. Spray lifted in the wind and misted his face. To his left lay the crowded harbor, sailing ships anchored out in the bay, galleys and boats moored to the docks; beyond it, crawling up and down the hills, the fetid sprawl of Jeds itself. And to his right, set a little away from the city in the midst of neat fields, the university, established at least a century ago but transplanted to its new grounds twenty years past by the first prince of the new line in Jeds.

“Admiring your handiwork?” Cara Hierakis came up beside him and slipped a hand into the crook of his elbow. The wind blew the curls of her black hair away from her face.

“My great masterpiece.” Marco grinned.

“I hate to remind you, my dear, but the new buildings were actually built after you died and Charles inherited.”

“I meant my death. I think I engineered it very well, dedicating the grounds and then being crushed under stones in that horrible accident.”

“Yes, you do like coming close to death, don’t you?”