The Two of Swords: Part 5 (3 page)

Cursing himself for having no options, he ran at the gap. A tribesman had closed it; he’d drawn and was taking aim. Forza threw himself forward, landed on his elbows, heard the swish of the arrow passing over his head. He kicked at the sand, found his feet, shot up like a startled bird. A tribesman loomed into his field of view; Forza stretched out his right arm, holding the backsabre, and felt the edge run up against something as he passed. He heard a scream, so that was probably all right. He ran, waiting for the impact of the arrow in his back. He heard another swish, the flapping noise of the fletchings as they spun in flight, changing pitch as they went past him. He kept running.

As he ran, all he could think was: she’ll be all right, the diversion worked, we drew them off. He had absolutely no way of knowing if that was true, because there were about a thousand tribesmen blocking his view. He tried to visualise – the breach in the barricade, the enemy surge, like floodwater; they’d closed it up a bit with dead bodies, shooting them as they nudged and elbowed through the gap, but not enough. He tried to remember how many reserves he’d had at that point in the line, but he couldn’t. Nothing he could do about it now. Why hadn’t they shot him yet?

He ran for a while, and then his chest hurt too much, nothing he could do got any air into his lungs. His throat was burning, he guessed it was a bit like drowning. His foot caught on something and then he was nose down in the sand. Ah well. He didn’t bother trying to move. Enjoy breathing while you still can; won’t be long now.

But he lay there, and nothing much happened. Gradually he started getting some air past the cramps and the burning sensation. He concentrated on breathing in deep, and his head began to clear. He wondered if there was an arrow sticking out of his back. Sometimes you don’t feel it go in, apparently, or maybe the pain he’d taken as cramps was a puncture wound. He wriggled his back, felt no impediment. She’d be all right, wouldn’t she? He tried not to think about it. The urge to get up and go back, to save her, while there was still time, was like a halter round his neck, dragging at him, choking him. He tried blocking it with logic. What could you possibly do, on your own? They’d kill you before you got anywhere near. You’re in no fit state.

He raised himself on to his hands and knees, and a fit of coughing nearly split him in two. His knuckles brushed against something sharp; he looked at his hand, and saw he’d cut himself slightly on the edge of the backsabre. That made him want to laugh, but he couldn’t spare the breath.

It took a bit of twisting and wriggling, but he turned himself round and sat up. All he could see was sand, with a double line of deep, scuffed footprints. Had he really run that far? He couldn’t see anyone, standing or lying dead on the ground. Suddenly he felt the sun, like an extraordinary weight. His head swam, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything until it cleared. The sensible thing, surely, would be to close his eyes, just for two minutes.

When he came round, it was beginning to get dark. The temperature was dropping. He started to get up, but found he’d carelessly mislaid his strength. He remembered that there was something terribly important, but he had no idea what it might be.

The next time he woke up, he was shaking. That, it turned out, was because of the cold. It was pitch dark to start with, and then his eyes adjusted. A little faint moonlight became enough to see by. He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry. Oh hell, he thought, I’m going to die in the desert. He closed his eyes but he was too cold to sleep. He couldn’t control the shivering, and there was nothing to crawl under or wrap himself in. He tried rubbing his legs, but his hands were numb, stupid useless things on the ends of his arms that wouldn’t do as they were told. For some reason, when his eyes were closed, he could see the dead Erithryans, hanging off their posts like a lot of limp flags. Of course, if you die lying down, sooner or later drifting sand will cover you up. He thought, if I’ve been wrong all these years and there really is a fire god and an afterlife, it’s going to be dreadfully embarrassing when I get there. Something in the order of a hundred thousand Easterners; oh, it’s you, they’d all say, we want a word with you.

There was nothing he could do except crouch, his hands wrapped round his knees, and wait for the sun to rise. It took its own sweet time about it. At some point during the long wait he remembered – Raico, the attack, he had no idea if she was dead or alive. He could feel the panic, it was like an itch, or, rather, it was like being full of ferocious energy while also being unable to move; he couldn’t sit still, but he could barely lift his arm. For God’s sake, he thought. He strained his eyes staring at the sky, willing it to change colour.

When at last the dawn came, he stood up. For a while he didn’t dare move; he was like someone standing on a very narrow bridge or a ledge, one slight misstep and he’d be gone. Somehow he managed to get his legs swinging, short steps to begin with; it didn’t matter, because it couldn’t be very far and he’d be at the oasis. Ridiculous, really; he’d been there all night in the vicious cold, and the oasis and the army couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards away. He could do that crawling on his hands and knees, if needs be.

Think of something else
. So he tried to order up images of home, of his house, the park, the barn where they laid up the store apples, wrapped in straw, on shelves; of her. He realised after a while that he was making up fake images and fake memories, because the real ones didn’t seem to be there any more. Even her face was becoming indistinct, obscured, turned away, in shadow. He stopped. He’d come a long way, he was sure of it. He shot a glance upwards at the sun and saw it was high in the sky. He looked round. Then it slowly dawned on him that he’d been walking in the wrong direction.

Here lies Forza Belot, who died of stupidity. He sank to his knees, outraged at the sheer bitter unfairness of it. He tried to swallow and found he couldn’t. The heat was like lead ingots strapped to his arms and legs. Of all the bloody ridiculous things, he thought, and a shadow fell across him.

Where they’d come from, he had no idea; he’d looked round a moment ago and seen nobody. But there they were: four tribesmen, on horses. They were looking at him. Then one of them leaned down and took his bow from the case that hung beside his leg. It wasn’t strung; he watched the tribesman string it one-handed, very neatly done, with the elegant grace of long practice. He watched him choose an arrow. The distance was no more than twenty yards. The other three were watching him, as if they were going to mark him out of ten on his performance.

The backsabre was long gone, of course, lying forgotten in the sand somewhere. Made no difference; he knew he wouldn’t have had the strength. He realised he felt nothing at all, no fear, no sudden spurt of survival instinct; he felt as if he was a long way off, watching something unimportant happening to someone else. The tribesman nocked his arrow, fixed his eyes on the target, pushed out with his bow hand, pulled back with the arrow hand, looking at Forza over the arrow tip. When his left arm was nearly straight, the power of the bow would drag the string out past his bent fingers and launch the arrow, it was a simple matter of geometry, a certain point on a straight line. The tribesman closed one eye, concentrated, approached the critical point; then he fell sideways off his horse and hit the sand face first.

His three companions had absolutely no idea what was happening. They leaned forward to peer, saw the arrow in their dead friend’s back, swung round in their saddles; another one toppled backwards over his horse’s arse. One of the remaining two dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and yelled; he got about five yards, then slowly drooped sideways and toppled off. The last man just sat there, until an arrow hit him in the ear.

Unbelievable, Forza thought. Absolutely fucking mad.

That said, there were now three horses there for the taking. He tried to get to his feet, but it was as though his feet were caught in something. The hell with that; the horses were about to spook, any moment now they’d be off and that’d be that, the last ludicrous twist of the farce. No sudden movements, he told himself, rather superfluously. He stared at the nearest horse, trying to catch its eye, then remembered: horses don’t like eye contact, it scares them. Let’s all keep perfectly calm and still, and—

Quite suddenly, the horses put their ears back and sprang into a gallop. Forza tried to yell, but he couldn’t make a sound. He watched them sprint away, no catching them now, not without twenty riders with ropes. Just so, so unfair. He closed his eyes, and then thought: so who shot the four arrows?

The answer was riding straight at him at a brisk trot: a dozen men in flowing white robes, so presumably they were angels or something. As they got closer, he realised they actually were angels, because they were too big to be ordinary humans, stupidly tall and absurdly broad across the shoulders, though it struck him as faintly ludicrous that angels should choose to ride stocky little black cobs; the angels’ feet were so low they were practically trailing on the ground. But no matter; he’d reached the stage where he was seeing angels, and he knew perfectly well what that meant. He wondered if he’d hallucinated the four tribesmen, too. No, he decided, they looked pretty real, dead on the ground with arrows in them, lying in the unique carelessly dropped postures that are impossible for living men ever to fake. Four real men, and they’d been shot. By imaginary angels? In a way he was glad he was nearly out of it all. Trying to make sense of it would’ve been so very tiresome.

Two of the angels dismounted and came towards him. They cast shadows, which angels aren’t supposed to do. They had scarves over their faces, but there was a little window around the eyes, and he noticed that one of the angels was an Imperial. One, but not the other. Fancy that.

“He’s alive all right,” said the Imperial angel. Forza opened his mouth; he wanted to say, no, I can’t be, or I wouldn’t be able to see you. On the other hand, could an angel be wrong about a question of life and death? He had to say, they weren’t making a very good impression. “Fetch the water.”

The other angel had blue eyes, like a Northerner. He nodded, went away, came back with a water bottle. The Imperial took it and pulled out the stopper. “Can you hear me?”

Forza mouthed yes, then nodded.

“Two mouthfuls, then count to twenty, then two more, got that? If you drink it all at once, it’ll kill you.”

Now he came to think of it, the Imperial angel was a head and a half shorter than the blue-eyed angel. Suddenly he thought, they aren’t angels at all, they’re big, tall Northerners commanded by an Imperial officer; in which case, he wasn’t dead—

He grabbed the water bottle out of the Northerner’s hand and gulped at it. He’d managed four huge swallows before the Imperial snatched it out of his hand. “No,” the Imperial said. “Oh, why doesn’t anybody ever listen?
Two
mouthfuls, then count twenty, then
two
more. What the hell’s so difficult about that?”

“You’re incredibly lucky,” the Imperial said. “I mean it. Somebody up there must love you very, very much.”

They’d caught one of the dead tribesmen’s horses and put him on it, and they were riding back along a line of hoofprints, presumably in the right direction, though Forza had no idea. Nobody had asked his name or what he’d been doing or how he’d come to be there, which was probably just as well; for all he knew, they could be Senza’s men, or bandits who’d hold him to ransom if they found out he was valuable. At least he’d found out why they wore the white robes: white reflects the light, like a mirror, so you don’t get quite so hot. He made a mental note of that.

“Everybody in the desert knows that,” the Imperial said. His name was Duzi, and he’d long since got on Forza’s nerves. “When you’ve been in the desert as long as I have—”

“How long would that be?” His voice was still horribly croaky. He wondered if it’d ever be right again.

“Eight years,” Duzi said. “Not a lot of people last that long out here, unless they’re born to it. That’s why they send me out the greenhorns, see, so I can show them the ropes, nursemaid them. They come here without a bloody clue, they go back hard as millstones or not at all …” He lowered his voice. “I reckon I’ve got my work cut out with this lot, though. Bloody Northerners, soft as butter, all they do is whine about the heat. That said, it’s pretty cold up there, or so they tell me. Must be a bit of a shock, if you’re used to breaking out in a sweat every time the ice starts to melt.”

I must not ask questions
, Forza repeated to himself. If he asked questions, he’d put Duzi on his guard and he’d clam up, though that would have the valuable collateral advantage of stopping him talking. But if he let him ramble on, he could easily learn something. “It must be difficult for you,” he said.

“You’re telling me. Though, to be fair—” Duzi wiped sweat out of his eyes with the underside of his wrist. There was probably a reason for that; he had reasons for every damn thing. “To be fair, a couple of these lads show a bit of promise. Rhesea, that’s the one on the end, he’s a natural with the horses, he can do anything with them. And Teucer, that’s the carrot-top, he’s a hell of a shot. It was him knocked off those savages for you. Hundred and twenty yards, and quick as you like. He was some sort of a national champion back home, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him. Looks like he’s half asleep most of the time. Reckons he’s never shot a man before, just targets and animals. I told him, it’s no different. Think of it as a target, do everything the same as on the range, you’ll be just fine. He’s from some place called Rhus, never heard of it myself, only been out here a week or so. He’s handling the heat well, say that for him, or at least he doesn’t moan all the time like the others. They’re like a lot of bloody women.”

Forza moistened his lips with his tongue. They felt like oyster shells. “Rhus to Blemya. That’s about as far as you can get.”

“You do see the world in this game,” Duzi said, “that’s one thing you’ve got to say for it. Of course, I’m from Torus originally, you know, on the south-east coast. Know it?”