Snare

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘We can stay on guard,’ Warkannan said. ‘We’ll take turns standing watch at night, then. Soutan, that means you too.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Soutan snapped. ‘I need my energy for working with my crystals. If I can heal the wounded one, we won’t need guards.’

  Warkannan considered enforcing his orders with a fist but decided against it. ‘Have it your way, then. Arkazo, you’ll take the first watch, and we’d better get to sleep early. We’re riding out at dawn. These damned horseherders can follow in their own sweet time.’

  ‘Very well. From now on, we have to make all possible speed. I –’ Soutan stopped speaking and suddenly smiled.

  ‘What is it?’ Warkannan said.

  ‘A happy thought. Once our spy leaves the comnee, the spirit rider won’t be able to hide him.’

  ‘What makes you think he’s going to leave the comnee?’

  ‘He’ll have to, if he’s going to poke his long nose into my business. The Tribes never ride into the Cantons themselves. They go as far as the trading precinct and no farther.’

  ‘I see. But if you don’t have your crystal –’

  ‘It won’t matter. Once we reach the Cantons, I have allies. I can use their eyes until I can get another crystal.’

  In the cool of twilight Zayn was lying on the grass beside the tent, sound asleep with his head pillowed on his saddle. Without thinking Ammadin knelt down beside him. In one smooth motion he twisted around and sat up, his knife springing to his hand. Ammadin swayed back out of his reach barely in time.

  ‘Lord preserve!’ Zayn’s voice shook, and he stared at her wide-eyed. ‘Never wake me up like that again, will you?’

  ‘You have my solemn word on that. You’re pretty quick with a blade, aren’t you?’

  He shrugged and sheathed the knife.

  ‘I woke you because I’ve got some information for you,’ Ammadin went on. ‘I finally got a good look at your enemies. There’s the sorcerer, and that Arkazo fellow, and the third one’s name is Warkannan.’

  ‘Warkannan? Good God!’

  ‘Do you know him, then?’

  ‘Well, I know a man by that name.’

  ‘Does he have a son or nephew named Arkazo?’

  ‘Arkazo and Warkannan are both common names at home. It’s probably not the man I’m thinking of.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  Zayn glared at her. She smiled and crossed her arms over her chest to wait.

  ‘By Iblis!’ he said finally. ‘All right, then, this Warkannan could be the man I know. He’s got a young nephew named Arkazo. But I thought we were friends. I don’t know why he’d want me dead.’

  ‘You don’t know it, maybe, but you could make a really good guess if you wanted to.’

  ‘What is this?’ Zayn scowled at her. ‘I always heard that spirit riders can smell lies. Is it true?’

  ‘Of course. Most people smell different when they’re frightened or worried. Telling lies worries most people.’

  ‘But what if someone was a hardened liar, and it didn’t bother him?’

  ‘Then I couldn’t smell it, probably. But you’re not like that.’

  Zayn started to speak, then turned his head and stared out at nothing. ‘Guess I’m not,’ he said at last. ‘Huh. You learn something every day.’ He got up, but he kept his gaze on the middle distance. ‘I’d better make a fire. You must be hungry.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Zayn froze, hesitated, then turned back and sat.

  ‘When you speak like that,’ he said, ‘you sound like a cavalry officer. A colonel at least.’

  ‘Why, thank you!’ She allowed herself a brief smile. ‘Now look, Zayn. I promised you I wouldn’t pry into your private affairs, but this Warkannan and the sorcerer were talking about killing a spy. The sorcerer’s known for a while now that I’ve been scanning him out. He must want to get rid of me so they’ll have a better chance at you.’

  ‘Oh my God! You’ve got to stop riding off alone. I’m sorry. This is all my fault.’

  She could smell a fear that bordered on terror.

  ‘There’s no need to panic,’ she said. ‘I’m not an easy person to kill. But you’re right about not going off alone. If I really need to, I’ll bring you and a couple of the other men along for bodyguards. It’ll be a nuisance, but I have no intentions of riding in the Deathworld before my time.’

  ‘Good.’ His voice was shaking. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to keep apologizing.’

  ‘I’m sorry – I – oh horseshit!’

  For a moment she considered him and wondered whether to prod him further. Even in the dimming twilight she could see him shaking. She decided upon mercy.

  ‘Why don’t you get some fuel and start a fire?’ she said. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘So am I.’ Zayn stood up, looking away. ‘I’ve got some hard thinking to do.’

  ‘About Warkannan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She waited, he said nothing, nor did he look her way.

  ‘Zayn? How many people will Warkannan be willing to kill to get at you?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s the kind of man who won’t use violence unless he thinks it’s absolutely necessary.’

  ‘If he’s set on killing you, then he must feel it’s necessary.’

  ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’ Zayn paused for a long moment. ‘One thing, though. I’m willing to bet that he’d never attack against hopeless odds.’

  ‘And that’s what he’ll have if he tried to give us trouble. Very well. But if you think that he and that sorcerer are going to try to murder anyone else –’

  ‘I’ll tell you. I promise.’

  And from the quiet way he spoke, she knew she could believe him.

  His face was slipping. Zayn found himself thinking of his situation with that metaphor, that his carefully created false face, the mask he wore when he was serving the Great Khan, was sliding off, or splitting or cracking or any one of a number of words that indicated a slow but imminent destruction. In the Mistlands he had seen what would happen if he let the mask grow into his face. After his vigil, talking with Ammadin, he had wanted nothing more than to be rid of it. Apparently he was getting his wish – now, when he was going to need the mask more than ever.

  All that evening, during the dinner he made for Ammadin and himself, during the hours when he drank with the other men in the chief’s tent, he found himself returning again and again to the metaphor. His face, his mask, his careful distance from the world – he was on the verge of losing them. If he did, he would – would what? he asked himself. Die? Go crazy? Or simply change so much that he’d be useless to the Chosen? In that case, he might as well kill himself and spare them the trouble.

  The dark thoughts finally drove him out of Apanador’s tent into solitude. He walked a little way from camp and stood at the edge of the horse herd, where he could look up and see the night sky, so smooth and dark, unblemished at this hour by any speck or trace of light. Once he would have found the darkness soothing. Now it seemed to send fear like rain down from the sky. With a shudder he turned back to the camp. A few cooking fires still burned between some of the tents, while inside others oil lamps were blooming. The saurskin panels glowed against the night in red-and-purple mottling or stripes of orange, more brilliant than coloured glass. He hurried back, drawn to the light.

  Ammadin was sitting out in front of her tent and tending a small fire. She’d laid her crystals out to feed, and they lit her face with glints and flickers of reflected flames. She looked up and nodded his way. Her eyes flashed red and glowed until she turned her head again.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘nothing’s happened to you.’

  ‘And what can happen to me, here in the middle of the comnee?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose, but aren’t you frightened?’

  Ammadin laughed.

  ‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘Sorry. Guess I had too much to drink.’

  ‘I can smell it on you,
yes.’

  Zayn sat down near her. In truth he’d drunk very little, but he’d taken care to spill keese on his shirt in the hopes of masking those smells of fear and deception that she could read so easily.

  ‘When I was in the chief’s tent,’ Zayn said, ‘I was thinking about that sorcerer. What if he tries to kill you with magic?’

  ‘I’ve tested his strength.’ Ammadin smiled briefly. ‘Don’t worry about him.’

  ‘All right, but –’

  ‘There isn’t anything to worry about, Zayn. Now drop it.’

  Zayn bit back a nasty retort. She did have the right to give him orders, he reminded himself. Ammadin got to her knees and began fussing over the crystals, turning them and placing them at different angles to the firelight. Zayn considered what she’d told him about Warkannan’s remark. ‘Kill our spy’ might mean Ammadin, it might mean himself, or perhaps even both. Now that he knew that Warkannan stood behind the Mistlands attack, things were beginning to make a painful kind of sense.

  Zayn had to admire the wisdom of his superiors. They’d guessed right when they suspected Councillor Indan’s so-called investment group of having more in mind than finding blackstone. Someone in the group must have discovered that the Chosen had sent out a spy, and most likely Warkannan had ridden to the plains to dispose of him. I was wrong about Idres, Zayn thought. I never should have talked the officers out of arresting the whole damned pack of them. Warkannan’s attempts to kill a member of the Chosen proved Indan’s little cabal had some sort of criminal intent. Not, of course, that Warkannan knew who this spy was – and what would he say if he ever found out? It would be a bitter sort of joke on them both.

  ‘You look troubled.’ Ammadin had finished with her crystals; she sat back down.

  ‘I am. I was thinking about Warkannan, and the way he’s trying to kill me.’

  ‘Well, it must be troubling, yes, since he was a friend of yours. Where did you know him, in the cavalry?’

  ‘Just that. I was a soldier in his troop.’

  ‘I thought you were an officer?’

  ‘I am – I mean, I was. I came up from the ranks and earned my commission.’ Zayn hesitated, caught by memories.

  Ammadin leaned forward, watching him, her lips half-parted. What kind of grief had shown on his face, that she’d look so troubled for his sake? He arranged a bland smile, and she scowled at him.

  ‘I told you I wouldn’t pry,’ she said, ‘but this is getting annoying. First you look like you’ve swallowed a mouthful of rebbuhs, and then you smile.’

  ‘Well, sorry. I was just thinking about Warkannan, and about a friend of his. Another one of my superior officers, and a damned fine one. He got himself killed by ChaMeech.’

  ‘Well, that’s very sad, yes.’

  Zayn started to make some dismissive remark about soldiers expecting that kind of fate, but he found himself turned cold by a sudden insight. In truth, Gemet’s assassins had killed Jezro – or so they said. They might have failed, might have lied to hide their failure. What if Jezro Khan were the man the Tribes had found bleeding out in the grass? Ten years ago in summer. The date was right, but Apanador had told him that the wounds came from ChaMeech spears. On the other hand, the mysterious Kazrak had claimed to be an enemy of Gemet Great Khan – your great chief, Apanador said, and his assassins. If the assassins had known how popular Jezro was in the cavalry, and it was no secret, they might have used ChaMeech weapons to avoid a possible border mutiny over his murder.

  And what could matter so much to Warkannan that he’d try to murder one of the Chosen? Only something overwhelmingly important could override the loyalty that came so naturally to him, some greater loyalty such as, perhaps, to Jezro, his friend, the man who’d saved his life? Zayn reminded himself that he didn’t even know if this other Kazrak was an heir or not, or if the piece of jewellery that had meant life itself to him was the zalet khanej. Making assumptions in his line of work often proved fatal. He repeated the reassurance over and over in his mind: he knew nothing for certain, nothing.

  The fire was burning low. Ammadin rose to her knees again and began gathering up her crystals. Zayn made a great display of yawning.

  ‘I’d better go to bed,’ Zayn said between yawns. ‘Unless there’s something you want me to do?’

  Ammadin hesitated, and for a brief moment she smiled at some private joke. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Not right now.’

  At dawn Warkannan and Arkazo broke camp. While Arkazo watered the horses, Warkannan opened one of the big canvas packs and brought out hardtack and white cheese for their breakfast. Soutan lounged in the grass and watched them work. Every now and then he would reach up and scratch under the gold headband.

  ‘We must be getting near the Rift,’ Warkannan said to him.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Soutan said. ‘Once we’re across, we’ll reach Nannes in another day or so. That’s the town with the trading precinct, dead east from the Riftgate in Bredanee Canton. From there we’ll head north.’

  ‘North is where Jezro Khan is?’

  ‘In Burgunee Canton, yes.’

  Warkannan waited, but Soutan let no more information slip. Warkannan found himself wondering how big this Canton was, and if he could possibly find the khan without Soutan’s help, once they were safely out of ChaMeech country. Unfortunately, he knew only a few words of Vranz. He got up and walked out to meet Arkazo, who was leading the horses back to camp.

  ‘Tell me something,’ Warkannan said. ‘Did you study any Vranz in that university of yours?’

  ‘No. I wish I had,’ Arkazo said. ‘I only took Hirl-Onglay.’

  During their morning meal, Warkannan began to worry about his nephew. Ever since Tareev’s death, Arkazo had withdrawn into a silence punctuated only by flashes of anger, but that morning he babbled constantly, rehearsing every horrible rumour and old folktale he’d ever heard about the strange lands beyond the khanate.

  ‘So I was wondering about the Cantons, just supposing we live through this ride.’ Arkazo came to the end of his breath just as Warkannan was reaching the end of his patience. ‘Do you think everyone in the Cantons really is an evil sorcerer like they say?’

  ‘No, I most certainly don’t!’ Warkannan said. ‘That’s just the kind of nonsense people make up about places they don’t know.’

  ‘For a change, Captain,’ Soutan said, ‘you’re quite right. My kind of skills are quite rare, but useful, especially when it comes to crossing the Rift. I’m not making light of the real difficulties, mind, but I have things with me that will ease our path considerably.’

  ‘Magic, I suppose?’ Arkazo started to sneer, then hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t – I mean, ever since you started finding comnees out here, I –’

  ‘You started to believe in magic?’ Soutan smiled more warmly than Warkannan had ever seen him do before. ‘What if I told you that some of the things we call magic are just clever devices, like your uncle’s pocket watch?’

  ‘One of my teachers at university said the same thing, but he never mentioned the crystals like you showed us.’ Arkazo looked away, chewing on his lower lip. ‘He talked about pottery that couldn’t be broken. Some people said it was forged by spirits, but he made fun of the idea.’

  ‘Good for him. What else did he tell you?’

  ‘Not much. He didn’t want to get caught teaching us heresies.’

  ‘Heresies.’ Soutan rolled his eyes. ‘I am amazed at how blindly you Kazraks believe –’

  The earth shuddered beneath them, a weak tremble only, but Soutan swore and clutched the ground with spread fingers as if he could steady it by brute force.

  Warkannan laughed. ‘I think the Lord is sending you a message.’

  ‘Spare me your superstitions, Captain,’ Soutan remarked with some asperity. ‘Your god has nothing to do with it.’

  As if to agree, the earth stayed quiet for the rest of the morning. Once they were finally in the saddle and riding east, Arkazo’s nerves seemed to settle down as well, unt
il, at noon, they came across a reminder of worse dangers than earthquakes. They’d stopped to rest their horses, and Arkazo wandered off down a small gully to look for water, then shouted. Warkannan drew his sabre without thinking and ran while Soutan followed more slowly. Arkazo was standing by a rivulet in the purple grass and pointing to a pile of human bones, stacked up like firewood with a flat stone on top.

  ‘ChaMeech work,’ Soutan remarked. ‘That stone is supposed to keep the dead man’s ghost from wandering. I wonder who was stupid enough to ride this close to the Rift alone?’

  ‘Don’t they ever eat their own kind?’ Warkannan said.

  ‘Only rarely. Generally they bury their dead, and there aren’t enough bones in this pile to make up a ChaMeech skeleton. This was either a comnee man or someone from the Cantons. Notice there’s no skull. They eat the brains first, you see, to get an enemy’s magic, then grind the skull up for potions.’

  Arkazo made a retching sound deep in his throat. Warkannan laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘We’ve got a sorcerer with us,’ Warkannan said. ‘Magic is the one thing that terrifies these creatures.’

  ‘Creatures again.’ Soutan shook his head. ‘They can also, my dear captain, be reasoned with.’

  ‘Huh!’ Warkannan said. ‘As long as a man has cold steel in his hand, maybe. Now let’s get some food in our bellies. The faster we get out of here, the better.’

  In the middle of the morning the comnee had started to break camp. The men and women who were going east to trade cut horses out of the herd or stowed a spare selection of their belongings into saddle packs. Those who would stay behind began loading the wagons for their trip south to new grazing.

  Off to one side, Apanador and his wife, Gemmadin, stood confer-ring. She would stay behind and lead the comnee while he took the trading party east. They each held a calendar stick – the dry white leg-bone of a saur. Every day at dawn, they would each cut a notch into their sticks. Gemmadin would bring her people back to this camping ground in twenty days, while Apanador would try to return with the trading party in the same amount of time. If he should be late, Gemmadin would move the comnee a day’s ride west for fresh grazing, and he would know to catch up with her there. If he were early, he would wait for her until he had to move to the fresh grazing.