And did; and fought on and on, and soon there were no coherent thoughts at all but only the necessity of movement, the planting of the foot and the swinging of the arms like a peasant, like a farmer with a scythe, no art or grace but only death in his blade and death in his mind's eye, his own death looming and as many others as he could make beforehand.
For a short while he was aware of another man beside him, shoulder to shoulder; they could hew together, and guard each other against the worst. Too short a while, inadequate the guard: there was a sudden flurry of bright black bodies, he himself was sorely pressed and when he had the time to glance around his companion was gone, a sudden absence at his side that seemed the worse because Jemel had never had the chance to learn his name.
In the end, at last, too soon it came as at last it had to; there was an inexplicable trembling weakness in his arms as he raised his scimitar, he nearly lost his grip on the haft which had grown slimy with his blood, he saw the point slip low when it needed not to do that, it needed to stand high and firm and yet he could not lift it. And there was a fresh 'ifrit directly ahead of him and all he could see were the eyes of it, hot and draining, sucking, leeching the last of his strength as though it would kill him before it even touched.
He wished he had time to feel sorry; he thought that with a little time, he would remember what he had to feel sorry for, why his death must be a sadness. At the moment it eluded him.
But then the death eluded him also, strangely; he saw a sudden dark flower in one of those glowing eyes, and the glow went out before the 'ifrit crashed into him. He fell, of course, and the creature fell atop him. But those teeth that should have ravened at his throat lay still and sharp against it, only dinting by the weight of them, not cutting in the least. And then there was no weight, the thing had vanished; and instead there was a standing figure against the sky, a silhouette to block the sun, a voice; and it said, 'We came too late. I am sorry. How many are your dead?'
Why, only me, he wanted to say; but he couldn't find a voice of his own to say it with, and before he did he remembered that there had indeed been others, and perhaps they were all of them dead, and only he not. Which would be a thing to be sad about, perhaps, though not the chiefest thing, he thought.
He struggled to rise and could not until the man stooped to help him, to lift him with an easy heave of the arm as though he had himself lost half his substance in his nearness to death.
'Steady now, lad. This was a heroic battle, you've earned your pride but don't overdraw it, lean on me ...' And then, more slowly, 'Wait - these others are of Surayon. Do the Sharai fight beside them now?'
'Against this?' Another voice, whisper-thin, without a drop of blood behind it; it was an effort even to turn his head but Jemel had to make that effort, had to see. Three men sat on the turned earth and passed a waterskin between them; all of them were bleeding, pale, close to collapse, but all were alive and seemed likely to stay so. Not alone, then; it was good not to be alone, though there was a tremendous sadness in it. 'We all fight beside each other, when we fight a thing like this. What, would you let us stand alone?'
'I did not. Those were my arrows saved you, blessed by my own priest; and be glad there were that few of you standing, that we could use the arrows. Otherwise you'd none of you be standing, we could not have come in time. But I had not realised the Sharai...'
His voice trailed away, in life or simply in Jemel's still-narrow mind; it did not matter. He was a man, a Patric in a black cloak over white; and Jemel knew what that meant, and he remembered something of his sadness, and the causes of it.
His scimitar was in his hand yet, he had not let it go. Now he strained to lift it, shimmering clean blade and blood-sodden haft, he struggled to point it towards this man his rescuer; and he said, 'I have been looking for a Patric man. D'Escrivey, his name is. He is a Ransomer, he wears your dress. Are you d'Escrivey? You might be. I might be seeking you ...'
A soft, puzzled laugh, and, Aye, lad, you might - if I were he. I am not; my name is Karlheim, of Elessi. I served my year with the Ransomers, no more than that. Is d'Escrivey here? I have not heard. You'd do better to seek him northerly, that's where I last saw him. But you're going nowhere yet. Come on, you little infidel, put up that hero's sword and lie down with your friends there, take some water, you've lost half the blood your God has given you. Which was probably the only half you had left anyway, by the look of that scar on your throat. Steady, there, don't give me one to match it; I told you, I'm not Anton d'Escrivey. Though I'd like to know what he's done to upset the Sharai. He upset all of Outremer long ago, but I hadn't realised his ambitions ran so much further. Perhaps you'll tell me later. For the moment I have an army to move and I don't know the country; but I guess I'll ask your companions about that, because I don't think you'd be too much help there, would you? As a matter of fact, I think you're asleep, unless you're dead already. Which would be a shame, because I'd like to see you meet d'Escrivey. Give me some help here, someone ...'
Even from their island, from their utter separation on this lowest point in all the valley princedom, the girls could still see a great broad sweep of Surayon laid out on either bank of the river. The swathes of open pasture, the defensive walls and the settlements beyond the walls, Surayon-town to the south with the Princip's palace behind it: the valley's gentle rise on either side meant that everything was laid open to them here, between the rushing water and the crowding trees of the mountains' early slopes. Julianne had been reminded of something that had taken a few minutes to pin down; it was like a natural theatre on a massive scale, with themselves chief players on the stage and the hushed and expectant valley itself their audience, except that neither one of them knew her part. That was a child's nightmare, though, and she was a twice-married woman with a husband on either bank; she would not dwell on failure, confusion, fear. If they had a purpose here, they would find it out. Elisande would; this was her country, after all, her people. Julianne knew nothing of the land, except what she could see; nothing of the people, except what she had seen.
Whatever lay further that she had not seen, however, she knew that this vista spread out around her, this little view was the heart and the soul of Surayon. Unless the Princip was his country's soul, but she thought them much the same: open, warm and welcoming, but with rocky heights where she dared not tread, hidden places she could not even see, traps and snares where she could not find her way without a guide.
Come to think of it, that would be a good description of Elisande also, and would have done for Rudel too. Were all Surayonnaise so blessed, so cursed, so devious? She was trained to watch for subtleties at court, where lives and livings, even the survival of nations could pivot on a word, a gesture, a deeper level of meaning than the surface showed. A whole population would be a deeper thing altogether than a court. Her father had had her peel an onion once with her fingers, ripping a way in and further in: soft and old and pitted with rot on the outside, it had been stiff and white within until her fingers suddenly found a layer that was grey and slimy. Inside that, though, the core had still been clean and fresh and wholesome. He'd left her to take her own lesson from it, that even the seemingly ordinary was not as it appeared to be and could go on changing however deep she dug, the foul and the good lying nestled together in the same heart and the good unsullied by the foul; she had taken the onion to the kitchens and had watched it being fried into her dinner. The next day, though, her father had given her a pearl and a delicate file. She'd scraped as gently as a jewel-doctor, as stubbornly as - well, as a curious and determined girl looking for the lesson. Again she'd found layer within layer, and subtle changes of colour and iridescence between each of them. And at the heart of it, of course, a tiny piece of grit, that so much buried beauty had been founded on. By then the beauty was all destroyed, and she wondered if that were actually the lesson: not that pearls were onions, but that pearls lost their value by too close an examination, where an onion's value could not be told without i
t. At the end, though, there was still no onion.
Surayon might be either one, a useful onion or a beautiful pearl; she thought it would not matter, in the end. Outremer would destroy its mystery layer by layer, and justify it by that gritty heart; the Sharai would dig out whatever had value, take that and leave the rest, and never mind that it must rot abandoned.
There was smoke aplenty in the air, but that might still be from yesterday's burnings not extinguished yet. One house could smoulder for days unattended and there were dozens, maybe hundreds that had been put to the torch as the invaders passed through. And there were dozens, maybe hundreds of men Julianne could see coming and going, riding westerly or easterly alone or in small bands, some few afoot; even at the limits of her sight or the valley's turning she could identify Sharai and Patric by the dress they wore, and she could see how they kept their distances, how none of them closed for battle.
This might be news, it might be worth the telling; but when she looked around for Elisande she found her still busy, still muttering to herself head down and almost on hands and knees among the grasses.
.. Is this bloodwort? Yes, it is. Good for clotting, if there were enough to pack a wound, which there is not, and time enough to let it work, which there will not be. Still, pick it, save it, someone might prick their finger ...'
Elisande had decided - decreed, rather — that as there was no other conceivable use for this fleck of land in midstream or for these two girls upon it, and as Esren had brought them here to be useful, therefore it must intend them to serve as nurses and wards for the injured. It was her one known talent, after all, to heal the sick and the hurt; and Julianne had learned by helping her, they had been sick-nurses together in the Roq and in Rhabat and in the Princips palace yesterday. So why not here today, close to whatever action there must be? No doubt Esren would ferry the wounded across the water as they fell. If necessary, she would order it to do so. And in the meantime, she would scour every green and growing thing for any healing or nourishing effect whatsoever. This was a safe place, which might be why the djinni chose it; and she was a skilled healer, which must be why the djinni chose her; but still there was an element missing, something to force the place and the occasion, and she thought it must be some potent hidden herb that it was her task to seek out before the crisis came.
Or so she was pretending, at any rate: gazing at the ground with a fierce focus, refusing to look up or around as she picked and poked among the damp and heavy grasses, hoarding a poor harvest into the gathered belly of her skirt.
Julianne turned back to her vigil, looking for patterns in the movements of men and seeing none, living breathlessly from moment to hopeful moment until a sudden unexpected noise made her twist around sharply, and the words she might have been thinking to say unravelled themselves entirely as she went.
The noise came from Elisande - of course, there was no one and nothing else here that might have made it - and it was, startlingly, a laugh.
At least a sort of half-laugh, a choking, coughing sound of self-mockery. She had laid out all her gleanings neatly on a stretch of trampled grass, and now she was sitting back on her heels and looking at them, looking up at Julianne and back at her herbs again.
‘I’m sorry, my love,' she said softly, not laughing now. 'That was pathetic'
'Do you think so?'
'Do you not?' Her voice had an edge of challenge again, to say that Elisande was not entirely blunted. 'Look at it, an hour's labour for this ...' Her fingers played with what she had collected, lifting and letting fall. 'Any abandoned croft could show a better crop than this, and what, I'm going to heal half an army?'
'We don't have an abandoned croft, Elisande. All we have is what you can find, because I don't know a simple from a, from a—'
'Simpleton?'
'Anyway, you may not need to heal half an army. The armies have decided not to fight.'
'Have they? Truly?' A sudden heedless scramble to her feet, scattering half of what she had worked so hard to gather; she stared, stood on tiptoe as though an extra inch would show her a deeper truth, shaded her eyes with her hand and stared again.
After a while, though, she shook her head and sank back, sank down, sank almost utterly. Briefly Julianne felt a cold fury, only that she was not certain who to be so angry with: herself for raising such a fragile hope or Elisande for doing nothing to keep it perilously aloft, for so easily allowing it to fall.
'That's not peace,' she said, as though this were any kind of news. 'That's reconnoitring. They're sending out scouts, watching each other, waiting to strike ...'
Shifting about like pieces on a gameboard, but Julianne left that thought unspoken. 'I didn't say peace,' she said instead, 'I said they'd decided not to fight. They're not waiting to strike, they're just waiting. Watching each other, of course, but expecting something else to happen. It's better than yesterday, love. Would they have waited even this long, if they'd met yesterday? If they'd had a chance of meeting, two armies from Outremer and the Sharai?'
No, of course they wouldn't. There'd have been no courtesies of war, and no care in the planning: only a yell of hatred, a holy curse on all unbelievers and an instant charge from either side, from both. And they'd have ridden over Surayon and hardly noticed as they trampled lives, hopes, an entire people into the bloody dust.
They might yet; they would yet, if nothing else did happen. It was strange, disturbing to find herself yearning -praying, almost — for an assault, for men to die; but it was the only way she knew to stop them killing each other. If she were a player, she'd move her pieces now to make it happen, to force it quickly. She trusted neither side in this undeclared, unconvincing truce. It needed one hothead, one holy fool, no more than that...
Elisande shrugged, the closest she could come to perhaps you're right, perhaps it's too early to despair. She gave a despairing look to the tumbled herbs that represented all her mornings work, another to the fertile but barren island on which they'd been marooned, and moaned. 'There has to be a point to this, there must be something that we're missing.' 'Must there?'
'Yes. Yes! It's not just that I want it, of course I do, I can't bear to sit and do nothing; but Esren said we'd be of most use here. Didn't it? Or did I dream that?'
'You know you didn't dream it, sweets. Don't work yourself into a passion.'
'Well, then. That's what it said - and the djinn know these things, Julianne, it knew we’d be useful if it brought us here...'
It knew they would be useful, but it didn't tell them how; likely both parts of that were significant. It wanted - or needed? - them to work it out for themselves. Or else to fail, perhaps that was their usefulness? Like leaving Marron at the palace, if only to stop him doing something that would make matters worse. He might stay where he was put, if he hadn't entirely lost that habit of obedience; Elisande emphatically would not. And so she was put here where she could do no harm at all, and Julianne with her to keep her from expiring in her fury...
Well, it was possible. As likely as anything, so far as she could judge; at least as likely as Elisande's notion, that they had some significant purpose to fulfil if they could only outguess the djinni.
Just for form, she said, 'You could call it back, tell it to take us somewhere else
'I'm not sure it would come; and where should it take us anyway, what can we do? We did it all, last night - you with your voice, I with my hands. There is no more, if they will not let us fight. In any case, to leave would be,' a helpless gesture of her hands, surrender. Disaster, if the djinni has dealt straight with us. There is a purpose to this, Julianne; we can find it out; we will.'
And perhaps she would, if sheer determination were enough to draw forth answers. Privately Julianne doubted that, she'd too often seen determination defeated by simple ignorance, but she would not say so for the world.
She said nothing, then, and turned her attention back to the riders in the valley, north and south.
Of course the story changed, be
cause it must; of course the change was for the worse, a degradation, a loss of hope. She thought it had never been otherwise, and never would. It was in the nature of humankind to hope, the nature of hope to fail, the nature of the world to decay. All life was a losing struggle against the weight of inevitable death. God is history, she thought suddenly, startling herself into a soft cry with the thought; she hadn't realised that she or anyone was fighting God, but the conclusion was irresistible. The djinn had foreknowledge, and even the djinn were fallible and so mortal; what else could be eternal than the sum of what had happened, the exactitude of knowledge - and how could she or anyone resist the past, or what it taught?
'What?' Elisande looked up from the depths of her silence, which had dragged her deeper and deeper down as though she sat in the bottom of a well, unreachable.
'Oh - uh, look. If there was a truce, it has been broken.' She didn't want to confess where her thinking had brought her, so far from the immediate anxiety of the day, into paths so twisted or so overhung with gloom. This was what had led her there, this was what mattered more: death had come back to Surayon, refreshed. This was what they had been waiting and watching for, what perhaps they had been set here to observe.
For some little time now, she had been watching an army emerge onto the northern flood-plain. No more scouts, no more reconnaissance — here were men in numbers, sure of their strength. Most wore black robes, though there were other colours among them; their officers had black cloaks thrown over white. They were the Ransomer army come down from the Roq, swollen by recruits en route as a river swells and swells in time of flood, between its rising and the sea.
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 52