The first sign we ran across was the half-eaten body of a fawn dragged up onto a narrow cliffside ledge. I reached down, pulled from the saddle quiver a small horse bow I'd borrowed from the Grand Duke's huntsman, and strung it. I tested the pull, then nocked an arrow. Though it was smaller than the recurve bows the Archers use, I knew it would certainly do the job at close quarters.
The others brought their bows to hand and nodded to me when they were ready to continue. I draped my reins loosely across Wolfs neck and urged him forward with gentle pressure from my knees. Wolf went another quarter of a mile, then stopped. His ears flattened back against his head. I raised my right hand, taking it from the bow, to signal the others to a halt. That was almost the last mistake I ever made.
I'd underestimated the strength of Wolfs training. He was terrified and wanted to bolt, but he did not. I wish he had, because the reason he wanted to bolt was the leopard crouched to spring from the rocks on my right.
Finding me a sitting target, cat screamed and leaped.
I did the only thing I could. I ducked forward and twisted myself out of the saddle, dumping myself to the ground. The cat sailed and slashed through the air, all screaming fangs and claws, and passed right through where I'd been sitting a second before. I landed flat on my back and tried to renock my arrow so I could shoot beneath Wolf at the cat.
The cat lay on the far side of my horse. She thrashed out her last moments in impotent, nervous fury. Three arrows stood crossed in her chest.
I slowed my breathing, rolled to my feet, and patted Wolf on the neck. His nostrils were flared and his eyes were broadly rimmed with white from the terror, but my reassurances calmed him. "Easy Wolf, it's dead." I turned to the Hamisians. "My thanks to whoever taught you to shoot."
They smiled and dismounted. They huddled around me and I knelt by the body. "All clean shots. Two got the heart the other the lungs." I winced as I rubbed her stomach. "These teats are full of milk. It looks like she's not weaned her litter yet."
No one took that news well, and Count Patrick looked positively tortured by it. Then something dawned on me. "She had enough food for another day or two in that fawn we spotted. I'll bet she attacked because we are near her lair. We must be close."
We spread out and hiked all over that mountainside looking for any hole or small cave the leopard could have used as a lair. The search took an hour, but I finally found the opening. It was a small cave, a slightly tighter squeeze than the first Dhesiri tunnel, but I managed to get inside and found one live kitten.
We brought the kitten and his dead mother back with us to the camp. That night we feasted again, and this time we all joined the other nobles in the large tent for the celebration.
Patrick's concern for the leopard kitten distracted him from the feasting. I watched the Count dip a finger into a bowl of mare's milk and offer it to the kitten so he could lap the liquid off. I marveled at the care he lavished upon the kitten and bristled when one brutish lord suggested the leopard would make good hunting when grown.
I struck out and flattened the lout with a roundhouse right to the jaw. Everyone else attributed my action to the wine, and the close call with the leopard earlier in the day. I let them believe that's why I'd hit him, but deep inside I knew the real reason behind my attack.
The cruel delight I'd seen in his eyes reminded me all too well of Ring.
Chapter Fourteen
Novice: Blooded
The statues towered above me and looked down with sightless eyes like so many forgotten gods. I let Wolf pick his own path among them—he followed Ring's horse—because I was too awed by the stone giants gathered to oppose each other here in the middle of the Tuzist Valley to guide him. I'd never seen anything as magnificent in my life, and nothing quite so sad.
I spoke to the Justice riding before me. "What are they, Ring? Why are they here?"
I half expected him to demand I puzzle out their purpose for myself, but he didn't. In the half year I'd spent with him I noticed that ancient buildings and the sites of legendary battles held a sanctity for him that even dampened his hatred of me. It seemed to me as though Ring wished he could have been part of their history, instead of being stuck in time now.
He reined his horse to a stop. "These, novice, are the Guardians." He pointed south toward a city built of shining white marble like half the statues. "Down there is the city-state of Tuzi, and back over there," he turned and pointed to a northern city built with black basalt stones, "is Zist. The Guardians belong to both cities."
I frowned. "Why are the statues here? This valley's been peaceful since before the Shattering. What do they guard the cities from?"
Ring smiled. "Each other." He dug spurs into his horse's flanks and waved me to follow him. "I'll explain on that little hilltop."
On the hilltop, less than a quarter of a mile from where we had been before, we dismounted and I had enough perspective to see that most of the thirty-two statues stood arranged on a grid roughly defined by lines of wildflowers. I narrowed my eyes. "They almost look like chess pieces."
Again Ring smiled, then turned away from me and spoke as if addressing himself, the statues, as well as me. "You are correct in that observation, novice, because that is all they were intended to be, at first. But then, after the years, they became the Guardians."
With Ring's confirmation of my guess it became much easier for me to identify the various pieces. The white pieces showed a great deal of old Ellian influence in their design. The Emperor, the tallest piece, wore a simple circlet similar to the one on the King of Ell's brow. The Empress, a foot or two shorter than the Emperor, yet still taller than the Star in Talianna, had the broader face and higher cheekbones common to the Boucan Princesses often wed to Ellian nobles. The other pieces, from Lancers and High Priests down to Elites and Warriors, all had their left ears pierced to mark them as the Emperor's loyal servants.
The black pieces, on the other hand, were more individualized and drew on various Imperial provinces for their models. The warriors, for example, were all Daari with Spirit-lances and the Lancers were Imperianan heavy cavalry. The Emperor piece even resembled a couple of busts I'd seen of old Emperors, but I could not identify him by that alone. Rather fittingly, and perhaps optimistically, the Empress was styled on the women of Sterlos—a nation that paid tribute to the Empire, but one the Empire never conquered.
"Tuzi controls the end of the valley with vast mineral deposits and Zist produces an abundance of food that it exports all over the Empire." Ring stared out at the statutes as if he was seeing them as they had been. "The two cities fought war after bloody war for control of the whole valley, but neither could mount a victory. After a year or two of unsuccessful campaigning the troops would withdraw and the cities would heal up until they had enough men to try again to conquer their neighbor."
Ring pointed at the black Emperor. "Emperor Clekan the Eleventh decided to put an end to this fighting because both cities were important to the Empire. He needed Tuzi's metal and Zist's grain. To prevent a war that could cut production of both, he summoned the leaders of both cities and carefully explained his solution to them.
"He told them ownership of the valley would fall to the city that could defeat the other in a game of chess. The cities were to build the pieces—the Emperor was specific about the sizes and colors—and announced there would be one move a month until the issue was decided."
Ring turned to me and smiled broadly. "He told the leaders there could be no war in the valley until the game was done, and he stationed Talions here to enforce his order. If one city attacked the other, the Talions were to join the defender and wipe out the attacker."
I spoke in a low whisper so I'd not destroy Ring's mood. "Why didn't the cities go out and hire master players?"
"They did, novice, they both did. It took three years to complete the pieces, and another two to prepare the field." He traced the rows of flowers outlining the grid with a finger. "All you can see now are a few of the flower
s, but at one time each square on the board had a different flower on it, and tending the board to make sure your squares looked better than those planted by the other city became as fierce a competition as the game itself.
"The game was a classic. Both cities hired chess masters, and after an early decisive move by black the citizens of Zist threw their leader out and installed their master as the new ruler. It took five years for the game to reach this point, and that was over a thousand years ago."
The emotion in Ring's voice peeled away the years for me and I visualized the crowds of people surrounding the board as wizards moved the pieces on the board. Each move would come after a month of waiting and the anticipation had to be incredible. I could almost hear the hushed intake of breath as a piece stirred and drifted forward to supplant another.
Slowly I came back to reality and sadness gripped my heart. The pieces stood waiting for a game that might never end. Pieces driven from the board early lurked at the edges like ghosts watching to make sure their sacrifice was not wasted. A bird nesting in the mouth of the white Emperor took off, and with it all feeling of life fled the field.
"Why was the game never finished?" I took another look at the arrangement of the pieces. "I'm not that good a player, but it looks to me like black wins with the next move."
Ring turned and walked back to his horse. "Black does win in one move, and everyone knew it. Still there had been peace in the valley for ten long years, and no one looked forward to new wars. Zist's leader wrote to the Emperor and requested more time to consider his move."
Ring swung up into his saddle. "The Emperor gave him an unlimited time to think, and twenty years later the champion died without having made his move. In his tomb in Zist they have a board set up in this exact pattern, and a statue of him hunched over it so he can study the board for all eternity."
I smiled broadly. "That I'd like to see."
My enthusiasm hit Ring like a fist. His face closed and hardened. He turned forward in his saddle and Called. "Come, novice, we have men to kill."
* * *
We'd not been able to pursue Ahnj and Dabir after we found the burned farmhouse because an order came through for Ring to perform a mission off in Solnaria. The mission, which involved escorting a government minister from Solnaria to Thele for talks about the bandits that plagued the border between both nations, irritated Ring.
Ring complained that he got the mission because I rode with him. The journey certainly did take me places I'd not been before, and introduced me to court politics in Solnaria. I found it very educational, while Ring found it boring and grew anxious to get back out hunting criminals.
Luckily, for Ring, Ahnj and Dabir managed to avoid capture. They robbed a few towns in Ditaan and Lacia but had not pulled a gang together to aid them by the time we cut across their trail upon our return from Solnaria. We saw them once, but they escaped by setting half a town on fire. Although it granted them a day's lead, Ring insisted on remaining until the last victim of the fire—a child—was uncovered in the ashes.
Many people in the town thought he did that out of the compassion for her parents, but I learned the truth after we left the town. I commented on how much the family felt in his debt for his efforts, but he snarled. "Didn't stay around for them, novice. I had to know exactly how many died in the fire so I can make them pay for it."
Ahnj and Dabir tried to escape us, but Ring was too good a tracker to be fooled by their desperate attempts at deception. We slowly gained on them and Ring took great delight in locating their half-hidden campsites. At least twice we actually got ahead of them and Ring set little irritating traps where he knew they'd settle down to spend the night.
"Why not just get them and be done with it?" I'd ask.
Ring would just narrow his eyes and let a sadistic smile curl across his face. "They're not finished paying, novice, for all the crimes they've done."
I hated that cruel side to Ring, but I'll admit I preferred having it directed at Ahnj and Dabir instead of me. Still, the trail we followed was fresh enough that I fully assumed this day would bring an end to Ring's game of cat and mouse with the two criminals.
Their trail headed almost directly east, and a local boy told us the only thing in that direction was a farm. We reached the farmhouse by early afternoon. We'd ridden through wheat fields since morning—the plants just reached our stirrups—but we saw no one tending the fields. We both assumed the worst: I hoped the farmer and his family would be unharmed while Ring hoped Ahnj and Dabir would be preoccupied.
The farm buildings stood in a small bowl-like depression centered amid the fields. Several large trees shaded the wood-and-stone house and two on the right held up a clothesline full of drying clothes. The yard in front of the house was dusty and two dozen chickens scratched through the dirt for any food they could find. The chicken coops and hog pens stood back off to the right behind the house, while the big old barn was set farther back and to the left.
A tired old plowhorse watched us from the corral adjoining the barn. A dog, his long winter coat shedding in patches, lay near the farmhouse door. He lifted his head and looked at us with a low growl rumbling from his throat. He decided we were not worth the trouble and dropped back to sleep.
Ring and I stopped our horses near the well in front of and to the left of the house. A thatched roof shaded a round rock base and was held in place by two stout oaken pillars. A wooden bucket hung from a rope threaded through a rusted pulley and a nail held a ladle up on one of the posts. A medium-sized, cast-iron bell was screwed to the post on the other side of the well, the side closest to the house. A rawhide thong lazily drifted on the wind beneath the bell's clapper.
Ring pulled the bellcord once. The bell rang loud and mournfully; not at all the happy sound of a bell calling the family to dinner. The sharp, explosive peal demanded immediate attention. Somehow Ring had Called with the bell.
The farmhouse door opened slowly and the farmer stepped out cautiously. He pulled the door shut behind him without looking back or speaking to anyone inside. The farmer took a kerchief from his belt and wiped it across his forehead. He smiled weakly.
Because I'd been raised on a farm everything warned me the tranquility I saw was a fraud. There was no way the windows should have been empty of people staring out at the two Talions in the front yard. The clothes on the line told me the family had at least five people in it, and the idea that none of them had work to be done was mad. Clearly Ahnj and Dabir had the family hostage inside.
I looked over at Ring to communicate this fact to him, but Ring ignored me. He sat and stared at the farmer. More sweat poured out onto the farmer's brow and for a moment it looked as though he was melting under the harshness of Ring's gaze.
The farmer forced a smile onto his face. "Do you need something, my lords?" He walked to the well and kept it between him and us. "Water, perhaps?"
Ring waited. I watched the farmer's hands tremble as he lowered the bucket into the well. Ring's horse stamped and shifted, yet Ring did nothing but stare at the farmer. Then, as the farmer hauled the brimming bucket back up, Ring answered his question in a low, even voice. "Yes, farmer, water."
The farmer's face showed the doom he felt, and his relief at the gentle stay of execution Ring granted him. The farmer knew what we wanted. He could feel the pressure, and it slowly crushed him. If Ring asked for information, the farmer would deny ever having seen or heard of anyone and we would leave. If we did not ask for information, we would stay and all that while the pressure would increase.
Ring took the ladle, dipped out water, and shifted his gaze to the house. He drank, but never took his eyes off the front door. The farmer's eyes darted between Ring's face and the door. Ring returned the ladle to the bucket. The farmer unfastened the rope and brought the bucket to me.
I took the ladle and drank. The cool water washed the trail dust from my throat. I looked down into the farmer's face and smiled as reassuringly as I could. His expression eased. "Thank you
, the water is good."
"We are looking for two men."
The farmer spun, faltered, and spilled some water. "Beg pardon?"
Ring stared at the door as if he could see through it. "Are you alone here?"
The farmer stared at Ring and trembled. Terror locked his jaw and stole any words he might have offered in answer.
"farmer, you have a family?"
"Y-yes. My wife and her mother."
"No children?" Ring's voice mocked the man.
"Two, a boy and a girl." The farmer's face eased. The answers to those questions came easily. For a moment he thought he might survive this ordeal.
Ring disabused him of that notion. "They are in the house?"
"Yes, no!" The farmer stiffened and agony tore jagged lines across his face.
"Which is it, farmer? Are they inside or not?"
The farmer hesitated, then steeled himself for the worst. "They went into Tuzi this morning to trade for things we need." Doom swallowed him whole because he'd just lied to a Talion, and only now noticed we'd come from the direction of the Tuzist Valley.
Ring raised his voice. "We seek two murderers. They are men in form, but are cowards in spirit. We will find them. Have you seen them?"
The farmer shook his head violently. "No, no one. We've seen no one for weeks. Beside you, that is."
Ring shifted his stare to the farmer and froze him on the spot. Ring gathered himself as if a cat ready to pounce. "You would not lie to us."
"No, no, no lie. We've seen no one."
Ring urged his horse forward. He made straight for the door.
Blood drained from the farmer's face. His knees quivered and almost gave way. The bucket splashed to the ground and soaked the farmer's homespun trousers. He stared at Ring's back, flexed his hands, then looked over at a scythe leaning against the house.
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