Red Country (16 page)

In the darkness men drew soft, careful breaths. I could feel Karyx's silence ask another question, to which I did not want to reply. I watched the night and thought, Don't ask me how I know.

After a while he said, “What will you do now?”

The lights of Penhazad lay on the horizon, a bright constellation behind the burial party's silhouettes. I looked at them a while. Then I said, “I'll ask you one more favor. Can you lend me a dagger—or a knife?”

He shook me by the elbows. We must have stood up again.

“Listen to me—listen, curse you! Yes, I know he deserves it, I know you want to, I'd have done it myself before I threw six hundred cavalry across Kemreswash, you're probably the only one who can get close enough, this was your—listen! It won't stop this. Believe me, Sellithar. I've talked to the engineers, the construction men. This is so big all Estar's involved—contracts, labor, money, people's opinion, experts' theories. Guild-masterships. Assembly-places. They've all put in more than they can afford to lose. It's useless to stop Kastir. He—Zem—wanted to save Hethria, and you won't do that by taking out one petty officer. You have to see the phalanx off. Go in there now like a Lyngthiran berserker and we—Hethria—have lost the three of you for nothing. Do you want to win this war or not?”

After an endless moment I said, “Yes.”

He drew a long, long breath. “Then I'll ask again. What will you do now?”

I countered with another question. “Who is ‘we'?”

Karyx hesitated, then gave a wry little laugh. “That begins with you.”

“What?”

“Without you, I wouldn't have this post. The Lyngthirans would have gutted Stiriand. This army'd be Estarian from sweeper to general and we'd be out to beg our bread.” The burial party growled again. “We don't know what you had in mind when you—ah—married that. But we're standing to, Sellithar.”

It was a moment or two before I could speak. When I might have done so, I was thinking. And remembering, with painful accuracy, things Zem and Kastir had said.

“There's one thing I didn't tell you,” I said, “about Zem. He had a twin brother. Another aedr. And Kastir doesn't know.”

Someone whistled in the dark. Someone else strangled a gleeful yell. It was unrolling before me now, clear and simple, plain as an open road.

“If this is a war,” I said, “I won't fight it behind the enemy lines. And I couldn't bear to see that—that—thing—again. Karyx, I don't want a dagger, I want a horse. I'm going into Hethria.”

“Good,” said Karyx. “So are we.”

Nothing I said would dissuade them. I tried orders, pleas, threats and prophecies, I lost my temper, I wept. Karyx said, “You'll feel better for it,” gave me a handkerchief, and went on exchanging quick, decisive sentences with the men who asserted that it was their war, claimed I was still their sovereign, had no sweethearts or families, were happy to become outlaws, paupers, knew all the perils of Hethria, would live on grubs if Zam could not feed them, would let him “blow them away” if they were superfluous, would go back now for horses, knew how to reach the first dassyk. And after that would follow me wherever I went, whether I wanted it or not.

They also brought back robes, supplies, waterskins, weapons and news that Penhazad was in uproar, Zem's death a scandal and Kastir bent on finding me, “if he has'ta tear off every roof.” Like Karyx, all six were Stiriand veterans, light cavalrymen, old comrades, who had frequently ventured into Hethria. Their nuggety short-backed Stiriand horses were fit to travel all night, and we did, for they knew how to steer by the stars for the first dassyk.

As we rode along I wondered who else was grieving in the dark. Zam, beyond doubt. If they did not exchange mindspeech, he would use farsight to keep track of his brother. Zem might even have warned him before he died. . . . Again a physical grip seemed to constrict my heart. Gently, I put the memories aside. The time for passive mourning was past.

And if Zam knew, so might Beryx and Moriana. I grieved for their grief, sure Zem too had been like a son to them, before my mind went back to Zam. Perhaps he also was riding as well as grieving in the dark, his mind bent upon the west.

Tentatively, I thought,
Zam?
But there was no reply.

By the time we reached the dassyk I had the rudiments of a plan. First I told the Sathellin about Zem. Then I said to the dassyk master, “If I were you, I should pass no more westbound caravans, and send the word south to other roads as well. Somewhere or other, Kastir has Sathel spies.”

He was the usual laconic leathery desert-dweller. At this his already grim face grew positively black. Then he said, “Ah.”

“I don't want him to know where I went,” I said. “And whatever—the other warden plans, it's better no word reaches the west.” It gave me pause. Once I would have said “Everran” naturally. “The sooner that's done the better.” One day saved might be little enough, but I was here, and Zam was not.

The Sathel nodded again, and made an exceptionally long speech. “None'll hear aught of him or you,” he said, “from us.”

We nodded at each other. Then I went out to my escort, who asked nothing aloud.

“If you're determined,” I said, “to go on with this, it's no use wandering round Hethria hoping we might run into Zam. There's one place that, sooner or later, I think he'll go. It's called Eskan Helken.” Three or four faces showed they knew its reputation. “I shall go there now. But I don't know the way.”

They were taken aback. Then Karyx said, “Directions. Or a guide.”

The dassyk master was reluctant to supply either. “Hethox country 'tween roads. Whyn't you wait here?”

I said, “We're no use here. We're extra mouths. And we're dangerous.”

At that he said, “Can't spare a guide. Give you a line, though. Best go at night. Use the stars.”

* * * * * *

It was curiously dream-like, that journey, the long, processional rides under the stars, the continuity of landscape which travelers take for granted become a series of magic lantern appearances at dawn, the settling to sleep while others rose, the light slumber in gorge or hill shadow or by entranced waterholes or under cloaks on sticks over open sand, then rousing at sunset, to breakfast and await the stars. And most of all, perhaps, the distancing from reality that comes with grief.

I hardly believed it when the false dawn first showed a bump on the southeast horizon. It still seemed unreal when sunrise came that last morning and Eskan Helken stood before us, alexandrite towers divided by gulfs of purple, plum and amethyst, less substantial than the red wizards' castle I had waited for.

When we rounded the last bastion into the grass bay, a little dulled by summer, by the seeds' fall, but green enough to retain its magical effect in that waterless waste, I found I had let out a mighty sigh of silent relief. Then I realized that all the way I had been half afraid the entire thing was some aedric illusion, that I would return to find nothing but naked sand.

Yet something had changed. As we drew closer a horse whinnied, clear and sharp. Then with a low thud of hooves not one but a dozen gray horses came cantering from a grass fold, all but one of them sleek and glossy as pieces of moonlight come to life.

Catching his breath, Karyx murmured, “Just like the song.” The others glanced nervily upward. Someone said, “Fengthira,” under his breath. Moonlight. I thought he meant the horses, till it dawned on me that they too were familiar with the songs of Harran. More familiar than I. They would not have to be told whose place this had been.

I said, “She's gone now. I've seen her grave.” I said it absently, intent on the gray mare whose ribs stared, whose hide was still rough with a journey's accumulated sweat and dust. “Do you see that horse? It's been ridden hard just lately. Zam must already be here.”

They were not much relieved. It was in a mood of nervous respect that we pitched camp out at the very valley mouth, and when I suggested we take the horses up to the spring they baulked outright. “If it's all the same to you,” Yngis, the senior trooper, said firmly, “we'll wait to report in.”

Karyx went to the nub of it. “You know him. We don't.”

So I climbed the cleft alone. When I had ranged the whole pocket, drunk at the spring, inspected the cave, paid my respects, feeling both awkward and intrusive, at the grave, I still could not accept that no other living person was there. Then I thought of the gray mare again, and understood. She was Zem's, not Zam's. She had come home, but she had come alone.

Feeling thoroughly forlorn I went back down to the camp.

* * * * * *

By the third night we had mostly adjusted, and even felt brave enough to light a tiny fire, down at the very margin of the grass. “Seeing we're here,” as Karyx put it, “we may as well knock.”

There might still have been no warning, if we had set a guard. As it was we heard nothing. Not a whinny, a hoofbeat, a swish of grass, the merest flicker of motion to catch a night-honed eye. Just a gray horse towering over us in the fire-wash and a voice like a sliver of ice demanding, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The men all went to jump up, and froze. When Karyx managed only a sort of deprecatory noise in his throat, I pushed my turban back, feeling my hands shake, my breath short, and got up on legs that felt shaky too.

“It's me,” I said. I had expected to be embarrassed at this meeting, but not physically afraid. “Sellithar.”

There was a silence that made the fire's noise crack like a whip. Then he slid down from the gray, hauling saddlebags and waterskin after him, and came, with the gait of one stiff and spent from long furious riding, up to the fire.

This time the men did rise, an instinctive gesture of respect, one or two even began a salute. He let the gear fall, not bothering where, and automatically pulled his turban down about his neck. His face was bristly, haggard, the eyes sunk deep with strain and fatigue and, I thought at first, with grief.

Then I looked again and changed my mind. The grief was in the eyes themselves. They had a peculiar fixity that went down to the very irises. The aedric motion was gone. They were bleak, and cold, and still as polar ice.

He scanned our circle, face after face, and I thought he must be reading their minds. But when his eyes reached me I realized it was the blank stare of sheer, congealed weariness.

“Sit down,” I said, the rest forgotten. “There's tea still hot. Have you eaten today?”

“I don't want to eat.” Though flat, it was not impassive. This was the cold of latent hostility. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

I paused for him to divine the rest. But he said in the same flat tone, “Why?”

When I stared, he repeated even more icily, “Why?”

I should have explained about Kastir, the others' refusal to leave me, my strategy, my guess on where he would be. I found myself saying in a very small voice, “There was nowhere else.”

He frowned, a just perceptible twitch of the brows, as if even that were an extravagant waste of strength. When he did not speak, I did my best for the others. “They helped me bury Zem.”

At my side, Karyx cleared his throat. “If you'll have us, we can help you fight Estar—sir.”

The gray eyes shifted to him, but did not change. After a moment, Karyx blurted, “We've gone light on your grass.”

“Grass? Estar?” He sounded flatter than ever. “You talk in riddles.” His eyes returned to me. Something showed then, a painful awakening.

“So it was you. The dark . . . even with Phathire, I couldn't see. Next day—I didn't know what they'd done with him.”

It broke on me in a dazzling flare. Farsight had shown him Zem lying on the midden, he had set out to ride clean across Hethria, not for revenge or even battle, simply to give his brother fitting burial. And when he looked next day, Zem had been gone. Who knew what he had imagined, how he had tortured himself? He was not just fatigued stupid, he was bemused with grief.

“It was us, yes.” I said it almost tenderly. “We buried him in Hethria. I . . . thought that was what he would want.”

Karyx added with well-meant if tactless haste, “We can show you the place.”

He drew a long breath, and then his muscles seemed to slacken from head to toe. He rubbed a hand over his face. “No.” It was just audible. “Not important. Not now.”

The hand dropped. He looked dazedly at us, his gear, the fire. Slurring the words, he said, “Can sleep now.” He brought his eyes back to us. “You . . . tomorrow.”

Karyx started forward, beginning, “Sir, if it's sleep you want, we can watch—” and was cut short by one almost-savage stare.

“Not here.” It came quite clearly, and as clearly, with hostility. “Up there. By myself.”

* * * * * *

We had finished breakfast and spent a long uncomfortable wait by the dead fire next morning, before we saw his figure emerge from the cleft and start slowly down the grass. When the gray horses converged on him he paused a moment, then came on with the horses at his heels, and guessing the others' intent I said grimly, “Oh no, you don't. You all wanted to come. Now you can explain why.”

First he went to one of his saddlebags, lying where they had been dropped, and unearthed a little bag of salt, from which all the horses had a lick. Then he said, “Off,” and they meekly dispersed. Only then did he look at us.

He studied each face in turn, a long, silent, expressionless stare. If anything, he looked worse than the night before, but this time I knew better than to offer help. At last he said, “Sit down. Now explain properly. What are you doing here?”

Craven as all their sex, the men promptly looked at me.

I met those gray eyes, chill, hard, immobile, and thought in exasperation,
Why ask me to put it in words, when you know it's too painful, too complex, when you've already understood?
And knew he was at least reading my mind again when he answered,