Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  “It’s too large,” Darmuth said. “Too much for you.”

  “It is what it is,” Rhuan retorted. “A choice. And the comment you applied to me earlier applies equally to you: You are not to interfere.”

  “I guide.”

  “You accompany. There’s a difference.”

  The merest tip of Darmuth’s split tongue slid between his lips. The sibilants in his speech acquired a hiss. “Human wordssss. Human meaningssss.”

  “And that,” Rhuan said with triumphant finality, “is precisely the point.”

  For a brief moment fangs glinted in Darmuth’s mouth. “You are dioscuri.”

  “Through no choosing of my own.”

  Darmuth’s pupils slitted. The blood came up in his flesh. “Why?” he asked. “Why would a dioscuri wish to become human?”

  Rhuan saw the sheen of scales flash at Darmuth’s throat. Such loss of self-control was rare. Were any of Jorda’s karavaners to see the demon now, they would know precisely what he was.

  “Do you suppose,” he began lightly, “that Ferize asks Brodhi why he wishes not to become human?”

  Darmuth inhaled a hissing breath.

  “Precisely,” Rhuan said. “Observers ask no such thing. It’s for Brodhi to choose, and me … and neither you nor Ferize are to attempt to influence our decisions in any way.” Laughter was banished. No trace of amusement remained. “You are on your own quest, Darmuth. It’s not my place to interfere with that journey, any more than it’s your place to interfere with mine.” He lifted his left hand and displayed his unblemished palm to the demon. “Let me choose, Darmuth. Let me choose what I will be.”

  Darmuth’s reply began as a hiss, but resolved itself into human speech. “I am somewhat fond of you, little dioscuri. You aren’t my get, but that changes nothing. I have no wish to lose you. Not to death, certainly, but not to the humans, either.”

  Rhuan gentled his tone from anger into serenity. “We have time, Darmuth. No choice can yet be made.”

  “But it can. It can! If you tempt Alisanos, if you tease Alisanos, you choose an ending. Your ending.”

  “Let us hope not,” Rhuan said lightly, “but should it come to that, I would hope for some sort of ritual to mark my passing. Perhaps even a human one.”

  “Rhuan—”

  But he overrode the demon. “I want you to stay in the settlement. Help Ilona, if she needs it. And Jorda. As for me, it’s time I found the farmsteaders and gave them my answer.”

  Chapter 33

  A SENSE OF RELIEF trickled into Audrun as the death ritual for a man she didn’t know drew to a close. The two male diviners she knew no better completed a final blessing, arms outstretched over the wrapped body, and as the keening wail of grief from the widow rose again into the brightening day, the gathering of karavaners began to turn and depart the hilltop, including her own family.

  Considering fidgeting Torvic had only been held in place by his mother’s hand clamped on one shoulder—Megritte, as was her habit, had sought a release from boredom by climbing into her father’s arms—Audrun felt her children had gotten through the lengthy ritual with a fair portion of self-control and parental equanimity.

  “Yes,” she said before Torvic even asked, “you may go.” Freed of her confining hand, he dashed away. Megritte, with better manners—always, in her father’s presence—asked to go; she was put down and raced after her brother, though Ellica and Gillan lingered, exchanging privately anxious glances. Raising her voice, Audrun called after her youngest to assert renewed authority, “Go straight back to the wagon! We’re leaving as soon as we can!”

  Davyn’s hand settled on her shoulder, then briefly massaged her neck with casual affection. “By the time the new baby is as old as Torvic and Megritte, they will be of an age to help you, not add to your burdens.”

  Head bent back into his strong fingers, Audrun managed a weak smile, aware of Ellica and Gillan glancing sidelong at her. She did her best to suppress her anxiety. It would not do to allow anyone, husband or children, to see how truly worried she was. Or how much my back aches. Even as she thought it, she pressed a hand against her lower spine.

  “If it would please you,” Davyn said, “we could wait another night and go on tomorrow.”

  It pricked her pride; apparently husband and older children knew after all how worried and weary she was. But Audrun understood the intent of the offer. Rather than turning their backs on the rest of the karavan as it made its way toward the settlement they had left but a few days before, they could allow the youngest to play, the oldest to help, and Audrun herself to rest. It was not in a man’s ken to truly grasp the physical requirements of pregnancy, and in that Davyn was no different than most, but he wasn’t utterly blind to her heightened emotions and lessened physical stamina.

  “Thank you,” she said, “but it’s best we go on as soon as we may. Babies do not always count the days properly.”

  “Ellica, Gillan, go ahead to the wagon.” Davyn’s voice rumbled pleasantly; though he would have done as offered, he was nonetheless relieved not to delay. “The oxen need hitching. We’ll leave once all is—” But he broke off. The hand on her shoulder tightened as his tone lilted into surprise. “He’s coming here.”

  Audrun had been watching her steps down the grassy hill. Now she looked up, following the direction of Davyn’s gaze, and saw the Shoia guide.

  Blessed Mother of Moons, he was coming here.

  ILONA WAS STARTLED, as she returned to her wagon from the dawn rites, to discover that Darmuth was present, replacing the charred steps with the new wood planks and pegs Rhuan had laid out the evening before. It was not out of the ordinary for Darmuth to undertake such efforts, but it was a task Rhuan had promised to do; despite a certain fecklessness of nature, he mostly completed what he’d begun. And Darmuth’s expression was nothing at all akin to the casual friendliness he generally bestowed upon her. She did not know him well, even though he had joined Jorda’s karavan a matter of months after Rhuan had done so, but she was accustomed to being at ease in his presence. Darmuth’s droll comments often made her laugh.

  At this moment, as he tested the pegs fastening the new steps into the slotted folding mechanism, she sensed nothing remotely droll, but a thrumming ferocity in posture, in movement, and an expression that robbed her of the innocuous question forming in her mind.

  He glanced up briefly, and she saw water-pale eyes hard as ice. Darmuth was a compactly built, strong man who very likely was not as old as his single silver-haired braid, wrapped with a crimson leather thong, suggested. His skin was smooth as butter, the tones rich as honey beneath the tribal tattoos he wore on both arms, bared by the chopped off sleeves of his black leather tunic. The rich purple sash doubled around his waist, and the gemstone set in one tooth had always lent him, in her view, a hint of rakish abandon.

  It did not do so now.

  Ilona summoned her wits and said, “Oh.” Which was not at all what she had intended to say, and left her feeling the fool.

  Darmuth’s movements were quick, efficient, and tinged with a simmering, tensile anger she’d never seen in him. “I have been told,” he said, with a certain formality to his anger, “to help you.”

  The words were stiff, as was his posture. Most unlike Darmuth.

  She managed another word. No, two: “Thank you.”

  “I have been told to help you. And so of course I will.”

  That freed her mind and tongue. Now she understood. “Don’t tell me he’s leaving!”

  “He is.” Darmuth tapped the new-made pegs with the wooden mallet to anchor them in their holes. “And I am told to remain in the settlement.”

  The chill of his tone as much as realization unfurled pain in the pit of her stomach. “Why is he leaving? Where is he going?”

  Darmuth folded and unfolded the steps to test their operation. They were whole again, functional, and nakedly new when viewed beside the others, weathered and stained, roughened by hard usage.

 
He rose. They were almost exactly the same height. He was short for a man, she tall for a woman. “Why is he leaving? Because the farmsteaders have asked him to guide them to Atalanda. Where is he going? Along the track skirting Alisanos.” Something flared in his pale eyes, something almost red, or cat-green. His pupils, not shrunken in response to the bright morning sun, seemed almost to elongate.

  Except, of course, human pupils did no such thing. “You’re afraid,” Ilona blurted, shocked to hear those words issuing from her mouth with regard to Darmuth, but knowing them nonetheless for truth. “You believe the deepwood will take him.”

  “It will,” he said. “Oh, it will. He is too tempting a morsel.” Darmuth’s gem-glinting smile was a blade newly honed, slicing into her flesh. “I am told to remain at the settlement. And so he lacks the first and best measure of his protection.”

  Ilona felt oddly empty. Somehow, with three years of Rhuan’s company, difficult as he might occasionally be, had come the belief, the conviction, that he would always be there.

  She was startled out of that thought by a hand clamping down on her forearm. Through the rich green shawl swathing her torso and the sleeves of her cream-colored woven tunic, she knew nonetheless she would bruise. Darmuth’s fingers seemed to burn.

  “You might,” he said. “You might.”

  Ilona felt completely disoriented, jerked out of assumptions she had no right to make. “Might what?”

  “Go to him. Ask him to stay.”

  Her startled laugh was short and sharp. “If Rhuan’s made up his mind—”

  “Rhuan is a child. He has a child’s mind.”

  It was a simpler matter to focus on physical pain as opposed to the emotional. Steadily, she said, “You’re hurting my arm.”

  He unclamped his fingers instantly, eyes flickering, cold and cutting, behind briefly lowered lids. “Your pardon.”

  “If he has made up his mind, and you can’t change it—” Ilona looked for and saw the brief grimace that told her she was correct in believing Darmuth had indeed tried, “—then there’s nothing I can say to dissuade him.” She rewrapped her shawl around her shoulders—tightly, very tightly, letting the yarn form a shield—wincing from the soreness in her forearm. “He’s a man full-grown, and he has the right to make his own decisions.”

  “He’s a child,” Darmuth repeated. “His line is slow to mature. Why do you think I’m here?”

  Behind the simmering anger, Ilona sensed a suppressed but growing fear in him, and a thread of desperation. She was tempted to grasp his wrist as he had grasped her arm, to turn the hand palm up so she could see into it.

  At this moment, faced with the subtle ferocity of his feelings, even the thought of doing so filled her with fear.

  She had never been afraid of Darmuth.

  He saw it in her, she realized, saw the fear, the unease, the discovery that he might be something other than what she had always taken him for. For a moment, one sliver of a moment in a day full of them, Darmuth knew that she saw beyond the calm competence of Jorda’s second guide, saw deeper than ever she had before. That now she found him intimidating, and decidedly dangerous.

  And yet he did nothing to dissuade her of that impression, to dismiss that certainty. Darmuth permitted her, by his unshielded emotions, to understand that Rhuan’s decision was somehow vital to him.

  She wrenched her thoughts from the newborn curiosity that was Darmuth. It hurt to say it, but she did so. “I am not enough to sway him. You know that.”

  A muscle along his jaw leaped. “You might be. You should be.”

  That, somehow, was even more painful. “If I were, if I meant that to him and used it as leverage, I would lose him. This way we have at least something that goes a little beyond friendship, for all it lacks intimacy.” She did not know why she said such to Darmuth. He was not a man who encouraged confidences, by word or deed. “He makes his own choices, Darmuth. And he lives by them.”

  “Or dies.” His tone was oddly tight.

  She felt a great need to step back emotionally, to recover distance and raise it, like a shield, between them. With effort she approximated a sardonic tone. “But he’ll only resurrect himself again.”

  It was enough after all. Darmuth hadn’t moved, but there was the knowledge in them both that the time for speech unencumbered by self-consciousness had been extinguished. All that existed between them now was the casualness of acquaintances.

  NOT FAR FROM Mikal’s ale tent, Brodhi paused. Under the newborn sun the scent of charred poles and oilcloth lingered on the morning air as warmth crept into the day. Worse was the odor of death. Bodies had been gathered, rites were underway, but the dead were dead. Certain processes rendered them far less than they had been alive, and unfortunately pungent. If the bodies were not burned or buried soon, the settlement would, within a matter of days, become unlivable.

  Behind him, a matter of paces away within a tent where men—mostly men—gathered to gulp spirits, three men and a woman, three couriers and an ale-keep, discussed his words. Discussed, no doubt, him, and whether they could trust him.

  Brodhi smiled wryly. A moment later it bloomed into a grin. A tooth-bearing, self-mocking grin. I gave them the key, then I offered myself as the one to turn it.

  He had not intended that. He intended merely to introduce them to realities that all too often went unsaid or worse, went unthought. And yet he had placed himself amid the plan. He had. No one asked him to. No one expected him to. He most significantly less than the others.

  Three men, one woman. And thus a rebellion was born.

  Three men, one woman, and a Shoia warrior. And more: dioscuri, as Ferize herself from time to time reminded him. Was it test? Was it quest? Or was it human folly?

  “Mine,” he said aloud. “My folly.”

  As Ferize undoubtedly would tell him.

  Summerweight blue mantle draped over one arm, silver brooch closed within a hand, Brodhi glanced back. The door flap to Mikal’s tent remain dropped. Privacy behind a flimsy shell of oilcloth. And yet he thought that perhaps it made more sense to shield themselves with nothing more than fabric. Behind wood, behind metal, such plottings were expected. But who would ever think an ale tent would harbor rebellion?

  Brodhi opened the hand in which the brooch lay. Silver glinted.

  Who might think an ale tent would harbor rebellion?

  Hecari might.

  Or Hecari might not, but burn it for the doing. Kill them for the counting.

  DAVYN TENSED AS the guide walked slowly up the hill. His hand fell away from Audrun’s neck. He felt awkward, ungainly, and altogether inept. Something in him, from their first meeting, had recognized, had answered, if unspoken, to the guide, and the question he had ignored then arose now: Is he more competent than me? More of a man than me?

  That he was alien, no doubt. Pure-blooded Shoia, a race so distant and far-flung they were nearly unheard of in Sancorra, with ritually braided multiple plaits aglint with ornamentation even as the hems of his clothing were, a long-knife sheathed at his hip, and a baldric of shining throwing knives strung slantwise across his chest. Nothing about the guide bespoke modesty, in dress or demeanor. And yet Davyn knew, Davyn felt, that the man was somehow—more. More than him.

  Audrun? Oh yes, she saw it. Felt it. Even if she remained unaware of her response; but of that, Davyn could not be certain. She was not a woman who looked after other men, who yearned for what another man might offer; she had fixed her future upon his when they were no more than Ellica’s and Gillan’s ages. But he was all too aware that a woman grown might nonetheless be attracted, might respond to a man, even if that response was neither recognized nor acknowledged by her.

  Davyn stopped halfway down the hilltop. The two eldest of his children halted. And, at last, his wife. But only because the guide had reached them.

  The smooth, youthful features were blandly ignorant of Davyn’s self-doubts. Rhuan smiled, and dimples appeared. The cider-brown eyes were warm and, Davyn f
elt, altogether too attentive.

  Because of that, Davyn took the offense. “My children spoke out of turn.”

  He heard Audrun’s sharp, indrawn breath, and realized his abrupt words insulted Gillan and Ellica, who had meant only the best. But Davyn refused to look at either. Hurt feelings could be set to rights later; for now, everything in him cried out to deny the guide what Davyn believed he himself could offer: safety along the road.

  Even if it did skirt Alisanos.

  The guide’s eyebrows arched slightly. “Did they?”

  Davyn made a deprecating gesture. “It was done out of care, out of a sense of responsibility; a father does not take his children to task for that.” He hoped it was enough to assuage the hurt his eldest felt, but did not have the time to look for himself to be certain of it. He merely locked eyes with the guide, giving no ground to a man who, he felt, was used to taking it. “But nonetheless it was done without my knowledge. And so I am left with the duty of telling you that we will not be needing your services after all.”

  The voice was very quiet. “I think we do.”

  Audrun. It was Audrun. And it hurt.

  He overrode her, still looking only at the guide. “Thank you, but we will do well enough unaided. I understand your concerns and warnings about Alisanos, and I dismiss none of them, but it must be acknowledged that no one knows what the deepwood may do. You say it has grown active and intends to shift—”

  The guide said, “I do. And it does.”

  “—but no one can predict where Alisanos will go,” Davyn continued steadily. “There is no certainty of safety anywhere. Were we to return to the settlement and remain there until Jorda led karavans out again, we might be taken regardless. So? We shall continue on our way and put our trust in the gods.” He managed a slight, tight smile. “The diviners have told us to go, and so we go. There is no room for discussion with strangers, no matter how well-intentioned.”

  The guide looked at him for a long moment, expression oddly blank, and then he looked, from one to the other, in order, at Gillan, Ellica, and Audrun. “I see,” he said. And then grinned. “But the roads are open to all, and if I elect to travel the shortcut skirting Alisanos, there is no one to keep me from it.”