Moving Water (11 page)

The mare lay flat on her side on the cobblestones, neck outstretched and belly mounded up in that pathetic posture of a horse's death. The blood was on their shoes, in the cobble crannies, in her shimmering gray coat, on her unshod hooves. A slash behind the jaw had all but beheaded her. Cleaver at least, said my soldier's past, before I saw the human body pinned under her, the mashed mess that had been a face, and the weapon beyond. A cleaver it had been.

I had no need to ask. They had already fastened on the black surcoat, the badge of succor, authority.

“Went mad she did—quiet as a cow 'n then kicked down the door—put us out o' the yard! Clean up the waterpipe—Tem had at her with a pitchfork, savaged him—yah, over there, near to—not the street, the kitchen—maids screeching fit to bust—she went right in! Kicked over the spits 'n the cook had a giggling fit—two barons o' beef, clean ruined! Roosting on the drainpipe—Tath there back from the butcher—‘Watch out,' I said, I said, ‘she'll butcher you!'—‘Butcher!' he says, 'n off for the cleaver—join the army he was going to—at her full tilt—swipe—no, she knocked him flat—never, he got her first swing—'n then. . . .”

They all went quiet at once. Battle, murder, sudden death. It was too alien to their little world. I looked with them at the dead. I should have grieved for the man, my own kind, my own breed, my own blood. But I could only see her on the road, gay and docile and beautiful, and I grieved for the mare.

A portly aproned person was forging up, outrage well in advance of sorrow in his eye. I heard myself promising reparation for damage done by the beast of an imperial prisoner, arranging a funeral, someone to tell the family, check their finances, provision for the savaged groom. And the mare. “Get the knacker's mules,” I was saying harshly. “I'll show him where to go.”

She left a long smear of blood down the hill among plunging horses and scandalized carriage folk, through the gate, along the harbor, into the forest quiet. I grieved for the damage that the dragging did. In a clearing amid the helliens I made the knacker's man help with all the familiar details of a field-pyre. Then I poured on a whole jar of hethel oil and waited, as an honor guard should, till only embers remained.

* * * * *

At the Treasury I caught the last porter and bullied the keys out of him. Then I went, slower and slower, into the tunnels below.

The vault was in darkness, total, impenetrable. As I checked, aghast, a sharp green flare became a candle-flame. When he said, “Over here,” the tone told me he already knew.

He was hunched on his stool amid the straw, my old campaign cloak's faded brown and field-green blotches bizarre over the blue robe. The candle displayed his face. Deep-lined, drawn to the bone. But quiet. Perhaps the touchstone of an aedr is such acceptance of hard reality, but I knew it had not been easily won.

I sat down in the straw. Water ticked. Presently, in a voice remote beyond sorrow, he said, “Thank you, Alkir.”

Words were still superfluous. Queries remained. At last, he answered them.

“She used the Well. Broke my Wreve-lan'x. I was a fool not to expect something like this.”

“You mean, you're not vicious enough!” I could not help myself. “Do you still say she's a child? That this isn't a Must?”

He shook his head. Our common pain made me lash at him. “What will your Fengthira say to this?”

He looked up. His eyes told me he had broken his own news, with a hurt to which mine was trivial.

“She said, ‘Tha'lt have need to think on the words.
Vengeance is sweet. But wisdom chooses salt.
' ”

“In the name of—” I found I had shot to my feet. “Are you both mad? An innocent beast! That never asked to be brought here! That trusted you! That—and you made a song and dance over Gevos!”

He did not protest or retaliate or excuse himself. He merely bent his head.

“All this talk of Math,” I raged, “and you can't protect one poor poxy beast! If I—” And then the straw fell out from under my feet.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh. . . .”

“No.” He did not look up. “That was all true, yes. It wasn't unjust. It was what I'd already told myself, yes. It's no harder because you say it again. Don't blame yourself. No, don't.” He raised his head. The candle defined that laughter's resurrection, painful, unquenchable. “There's been enough blaming around here.”

What could even begin to make amends for such crass, blundering imbecility? I had a vision of the night ahead, alone with nothing to do but think. I sat down again in the straw, hauling my own cloak closer round my ribs.

“No,” he said. “Go home. And don't argue. Callissa will be expecting you.” It was an order. A general's order, permitting no demur.

* * * * *

When I woke the mare was in my mind, like a bruise, more hurtful the morning after the blow. I went on duty because there was no alternative, and Sivar met me by the guardroom, saying for the benefit of a passing pentarch, “Sir, about my leave. . . .” The pentarch receded. Worry mushroomed in his face. “Sir—something wrong. He wants another blanket. Made it a joke, said no exercise. But I don't like the look of 'im.”

My heart sank. Parade, guard-change, recruits, a mess dinner that night. “Buy the blanket.” I disgorged fendellin. “I'll try to come down sometime.”

“Sometime,” was late afternoon. The tunnels were dank and chill as ever, I felt the cold invade my flesh as I went. He was hunched on his stool again, but now the candle was lit, he had all three blankets over my campaign cloak, and before I reached the light I knew he was shivering.

“Killing rats with Axynbrarve,” he said ruefully, “doesn't keep you very warm.”

“The Morhyrne's forge wouldn't warm you down here.” His arms were huddled close, the classic pose of a man in cold too bitter to remedy. I could see the fine, continual tremble of his shoulders under the rough gray wool. I doffed my parade cloak, black velvet with the moontree stitched in silver. He shook his head. I said roughly, “Don't be a fool,” and he forced a laugh.

“I doubt,” he said, “it will do much good.”

After a moment I said, “Look here.”

His face fairly jerked up. Then he gave a somewhat shaken laugh.

“Nothing. That's just how Fengthira begins a Command.” His eyes were a little puzzled. “What is it, then?”

“Fever.” Though I am no physician, Phaxia had shown me that glassy, slightly unfocussed look too often to err. “Pains in your joints?” He nodded, taken aback. “Headache?” Another nod. “And cold. Or you feel cold.” To be sure, I touched his temple. “And you're hot enough to shape horseshoes on. Swamp fever. From Lisdrinos, probably.” Silently, I groaned. A physician, sickroom gear, the care such fevers demand. . . . Scrambling arrangements in thought, I took some time to absorb his words.

“Probably not.” He sounded diffident, apologetic. And quite, quite sure.

“Eh?” I said.

He shifted his right arm. I did not have to be told that slow, forced movement had hurt.

“Hawge . . . the dragon . . . left a sting hole in my ribs. Sometimes it aches, swells up, that sort of thing. It's aching now. But—I don't think that's all.”

A cold knot formed in my belly. “You mean. . . .”

“It would be logical.” He was carefully calm. “First the mare, then me. And with the Well, anything's possible.”

I swallowed. Hard. Then, feeling hunted, I said, “We have to start somewhere, and it looks like fever to me.” I took up the water-bottle. “To begin with, you can drink this. All of it!”

We would need more water, I thought. Heat. A couple of braziers, coal, someone to stand watch, lay him down. . . . Looking at the chains I groaned again. They were fastened side-running, left wrist and ankle to the left, right side opposite. To lie straight at any angle was impossible. Smith's tools, then. A physician. “I'll see to the rest. Don't worry—Well or no Well, we'll get you through.”

“Sir,” he said dutifully, and produced the ghost of a grin.

* * * * *

It took a long time to organize help, heat, cudgel my brain for other sickroom needs, browbeat a night pass out of the Treasury. It took so long I was waiting by the mess when Evis returned, splendid in full-dress uniform, a frown joining his thick black brows.

“Sir.” His manner warned me what to expect. “There's not a leech'll touch it in Zyphryr Coryan. By the end they wouldn't let me in their doors.”

You should have expected it, I told myself. “We'll have to do without them.” He shot me a dubious glance. “I'll have to do without them.” I gave the thronged mess a rather wild look. Candlelight, armor, decorations shimmered back. The moontree's silver orb had developed a leer. “Did Amver find the smith?”

He said blankly, “Smith?”

“To knock those shackles off. I told you. Did he find one?”

Evis put a hand to his brow and looked decidedly odd. “Sir, I . . . remember you told me. Now. But I'd—forgotten it.”

With breath drawn to scour him I stopped. Evis was a second wasted on the Guard. In the six months of my command he had never forgotten anything, from horses' tail-ribbons for a big parade to the details of a route-march's provisioning. “No matter.” She, I thought viciously, saw to this as well. “We'd best get this over with.”

If a dinner took longer you would be eating in your grave. It was moonlight when I finally tore through silvered streets to the black hulk of the Treasury. The gate was just ajar. From inside, Amver's voice demanded, “Who goes there?”

“Me.” I was flustered beyond recall of our password, but his reply held relief. “Oh, it's you, sir. Sir, I beg pardon, I forgot them tools till too late. I can't unnerstand it! I went soon as Sivar tole me, an'—an'—”

“Never mind. I know what happened.” I hurried past him to the silent scribe-shop within.

Two braziers at full heat barely tickled the vault, but within their range it was like noon in Phaxia. Sivar rose hastily from the straw, stripped to a drenched under-tunic, sweat shiny on his wide red face. But the prisoner, hunched on his stool, wrapped in cloak and blankets, was still shivering.

He raised a sort of smile. I could smell the fever stench, see the glaze in his eyes, already sunken into parched, waxy skin. The fever would burn him up, the shivering flog his muscles to exhaustion, as I had seen with men in Stirsselian.

I asked sternly, “Have you been drinking?” And he nodded.

“Three water-bottles.” His voice was slightly blurred. That was familiar too.

Sivar looked nervous, as well he might, no physician, lacking even my experience. I looked from the chains to the straw to the wall, steaming torridly. “We'll get you loose tomorrow. If you could lie down—even against the wall—”

“I'd burn a hole in it.” However reduced, the grin was there. “Don't worry, Alkir.”

“Worry!” I nearly had at him. “Wait—this happened before, you said. What did you do then?”

His brows knit. He had to struggle to marshal his mind, and that was familiar too.

“Poultices—wild honey. Thassal will know—oh. No. Thassal's in Everran. But she's dead.” He put a hand to his brow. “I keep forgetting . . . we live longer than you. . . .”

“Who was Thassal? What would she know?”

“Nursed me. After Coed Wrock—Hawge, I mean. But—there was no fever. At least . . . perhaps there was. I never knew. . . .”

Desperation winged my wits. “The past-sight. Could you see?”

He gathered himself together, or tried to gather himself. Already the fever had frayed not only wits but will. After a moment he let his hand fall, mastered a flinch, and said in that woolly voice, “I'm sorry. Can't . . . focus properly. . . .”

“Never mind,” I said in a hurry. “Poultices. Wild honey.” We would have to break the irons and strip him first. “Sivar, I'll relieve you.” He, too, would have duties elsewhere. “Tomorrow morning, get some honey. In the market. And smith's tools. Can you find Amver a relief?” Never had the staples of command seemed so chaotic, so unmanageable. The coal was low. Callissa would be expecting me. There would have to be a nursing roster. Evis must take command. . . . I ripped my cloak off for the heat and the shine of armor made the prisoner cover his eyes. I knew that symptom too.

In a stronger voice he said, “Can't play nurse and captain both, Alkir.”

“Amver'll stand watch tonight,” Sivar butted in eagerly. “He's off duty tomorrow. 'N I c'n muster some more.”

“Do it then,” I said with relief, looking back to my charge. He had raised his head, but I could tell focusing was an effort too.

 “Go on,” he said. “They'll look after me.”

* * * * *

At dawn I was making back for the Treasury. Cocks crew in distant rosy farmlands, late fishermen and early merchantmen moved on a harbor of pink and silver and wonderful azure blue, the city was full of fresh dawn air. But belowground was dark and dawnless, and the stink of fever and coal smoke had permeated the whole Treasury. The scribes will be pleased, I thought—then Sivar hurtled up the steps at me with blood on his face and water on his surcoat, white-eyed and blind as a bolting horse.