She saw the 'ifrit driven back through the breaches they had made in the enclosing wall. She saw men follow and fell anxious again, thinking that they would lose themselves in there where the 'ifrit would not, and so the tide of the battle could turn again.
But there were men of the Sharai, unmounted men running and climbing up onto the tops of the walls, to be both guards and guides. How they knew to do that, she couldn't tell: whether someone had warned them, or whether they had learned a humiliating lesson for themselves. Imber had learned it, but that was knowledge wasted ...
Sharai and Ransomers both rode into the maze in pursuit of the 'ifrit, often side by side; Hasan, of course, was among the first, though Fulke remained outside, with the bulk of both the armies. Even amid those twisting walls, she thought Hasan would likely ride faster than the men above could run. He would risk losing himself entirely if his Beni Rus couldn't keep up with him, risk coming alone upon a whole nest of the 'ifrit; of course he must do that, of course he had to keep her anxious even when she couldn't see where he was or what he was doing, when she had only her imagination to feed her fears ...
She turned south again, to confront what was no fear at all, because who could be afraid of the truth? The cortege was closer now, and the men seemed more like farmers than warriors, scanning their fields for rabbit-sign or insects. Except that no farmer had ever been so frightened even of a plague of rabbits, a locust-swarm. Something lurked, something was expected ...
Something arrived, erupting from the ground around them like a thousand massive serpents. Their mounts must have sensed a vibration in the earth, bare moments before it burst open; half of them were rearing already or leaping sideways in a deadly absurdity, trying impossibly to lift all four hooves at once. A few trained warhorses lashed out with their forefeet, but no one it seemed had thought to bless them or the plates they were shod with; where they struck, even razor-sharp steel had no effect, though the same blow would have ripped a mans leg open and shattered the bone within.
The men reacted with an air of weary inevitability, hacking down from the saddle, hewing at the creatures as they rose. The horses were dragged down, one by one; most of the men jumped free, though a few were too slow, falling with their beasts and being either crushed or snared amid the writhing demon-snakes.
Those who could made a stand in twos and threes, back to back and using their blades like scythes, cutting swathes through the encircling creatures. Like farmers again, Julianne thought, surrounded by some wicked living crop that was tearing itself free from the soil, discovering mouths and teeth...
In some ways, it was more like a single crop than a nest of snakes. There was a mindlessness to each separate head, only a general malignity overall, nothing like the common independence of 'ifrit; and yet these things shimmered blackly, had glowing red dot eyes and resisted anything except a blade that was blessed. Those blades wreaked havoc among them; the trouble, the danger was that there were simply so many, and more breaking forth at every moment.
More among the following army, too. She spared that a single reluctant glance, and saw it in chaos. A scream brought her attention swiftly back to the foreriders. One scream among many, and only a horse; she had a care for horses, but not overriding her care for men. It was only that this particular scream, she knew before she saw which horse was screaming.
Imber's horse, that carried Imber's body: it plunged and kicked, but there were snake-things swarming over its quarters now, binding its legs and fastening great sucker-jaws onto its flesh. The burden it carried was flung madly from side to side, straining the ropes that held it. At last it slipped and hung mockingly, revoltingly half-free for a moment before another sprawling lurch from the horse shook it loose altogether.
It fell to ground, into the midst of the gaping horror; now it was Julianne's turn to scream.
That caught Elisande's attention, and more than hers. There was a soft glow in the air suddenly, between herself and Imber's wrapped corpse, right on the river-bank there and still a fair way from the fighting; for a moment she was reminded of that other golden gleam she'd seen on the other bank, and she almost expected to see Marshal Fulke step out of the light and into the shadows of the world.
But it wasn't the marshal, of course, it was her father, coming as he so often had come throughout her childhood, quite without warning when she needed him the most.
Coming not quite far enough, offering her something short of what she wanted, and that was common too; but surely this time, she was no child begging for a new saddle now, surely...
'Father, fetch me over to that bank! I have to ...' She couldn't say it quite, her throat was too full of sobbing, but that alone should be enough. She never wept in public, and he knew it.
'You have to do what?' He spoke as softly as ever; she heard him more clearly even than usual, despite the roar of the water between them and all the sounds of battle behind.
'Imber's horse,' she said, with a desperate gesture, 'he's dead, and it fell...'
'And what will you do, about either?'
She stood already full in the spray of the river, ice-cold and bitter as it was; and yet it was those few words that stilled her, colder by a distance and more bitter to receive. For a moment she could only gape; then, 'I am his wife...!'
'Perhaps. He would have said so, at any rate, and that is good enough. But even so, Julianne. Man or horse, a body is a body, there are living men and living horses to concern yourself with first.'
'They will eat him ...!'
Shockingly, if shortly, her father laughed. 'No, sweetheart. They will not eat him. If he is dead, that is how they want him, no more than that. You can find him later, if you live. If any of us live. Far more useful now to help Elisande, and try to make it so.'
'Help Elisande... ?' She gazed around, feeling almost stupid with grief and despair, with mourning suddenly delayed. Elisande was striking fire from a flint, to catch her tinder; looking past her, Julianne saw the Princip standing on the further bank, as her father was on this. It came to her that there was no accident here, these men too had come to help Elisande. "Which must surely mean that whatever she was doing really did matter ...
'Elisande? What can I do?'
'Well, you can stand in the wind's eye for me, till I get this sodden stuff alight,' in the familiar growl that could always uplift her heart, if only by a hair and for a moment. 'Wet grass, wet air, how's a girl to make a fire ... ?'
Julianne wasn't clear quite why she wanted to make a fire, but knew better than to ask. There were mysteries abounding here - particularly how the old men, the Princip and her father had known what Elisande was about, how they had known when and where to come, what they had been doing that they had broken off to be here and why they were needed at all, and on the wrong sides of the water - but she judged this a good time to play the incurious innocent. As well that it had become second nature to think before putting a question. The djinn gave answers, and demanded payment after; these close folk would give her nothing, she suspected, and a payment might be demanded anyway. Better to make a virtue of not wanting to know, of being not above such things but apart from them, a married woman quite unsteeped in magic; better to be content to fetch and carry at Elisande's command.
Or, indeed, to be a wind-break. Elisande could make a light from nothing in a storm, but it seemed she still needed flint and tinder like any mortal to conjure a true flame. And of course everything was damp here, in the everlasting spray from the battering waters; Julianne crouched down and pulled threads from the inner hems of the robe she wore, winning a frail smile from her friend, and, 'That's a desert habit, it's why the Sharai wear rags. Have you been in the Sands, lady?'
'Once or twice. I met my husband there ...' One of my husbands, the one who has the advantage now, if living is an advantage in a world where men die when you love them.
'Well, never mind, my love. One has to meet them somewhere.' She was talking for the sounds' sake, not the meaning of the words;
her eyes held a different message, compassionate, distracted. It was her fingers that truly mattered, teasing those threads into cloudy puffs of fibre and looping them around her feathered twigs before she went to work again with flint and steel.
This time her sparks settled and caught in the fluffy stuff: a glow, a hesitant twine of smoke, a bold but tiny flame within the shield of her cupped hands. They held their breaths together, while it contended with the twig; at the first faint snap of green fibres parting, they both exhaled together, both turning their heads away from that precious flame to do it.
And caught each other's eye, and giggled together as if nobody's heart were breaking, and then fed the infant fire with shreds and shavings like two maiden aunts determined and urgent to see a precious child grow fat.
'Why do we — you — need a fire, anyway?' That question that she wasn't going to ask, had no intention of asking: it just slipped out while her guard was down, while they were just two girls together and all their attention was focused on not losing this tentative little flame, and they might as well have been away alone on a hillside somewhere and setting up camp for the night.
'I need a source, a power I can work with. Grandfer used the river, but I'm not so good with cold and wet. He used to say I had a desert soul, when he was teaching me.'
'Is that why you went to live with the Sharai?'
'Not really, no. I loved it, but he'd have sent me anyway. Ruthless, like your father. They use us, any way they choose; what's best in their judgement is the only one that counts... How much pain can you stand, Julianne?'
An infinitude... 'As much as you can load upon me.'
'Truly?'
'Truly. That and more.' See me standing? I can stand this much. You're my friend it's what you're for: to load me with less pain than lean stand, less than my lovers give me and less by far than I can give myself.
'Good. Because I have made this fire, whole and strong' -it didn't look strong to Julianne, it looked shy and reluctant and liable to disappear without a word of farewell; but this was ritual as much as information, there was a rhythmic formality, almost a chant to the way that she was speaking -'and now it has to be divided, and you must do that work. It must be carried to all the cardinal points' - north and south where the old men waited, east and west where the river ran: her hand gestured to the little cairns that she had built -'and set to burn there with a memory of what it was before, a single point of light. I can teach it to remember, but not do that and carry.'
'How shall I carry the fire, Elisande?'
'In your hands.'
Of course, in her hands. In her cupped hands, necessarily, they had such scant fuel for it and the pieces were so small; and how could it hurt else? It was true that they had nothing else, no firepot, no shovel. Pain and sacrifice might be a part of this working, or they might not. Elisande was so focused suddenly, she seemed not to care, almost to be oblivious, only speaking about it to be sure that her work was not spoiled.
'It'll go out.' The protest was not to save herself, only that she feared to lose the fire; she'd give her hands gladly, if that was all that was asked of her. Why not? She'd given one man already, and might yet have to give the other; what was a pair of scorched hands, after that?
'No. I can keep it now, but you must hold it. It will burn where I tell it to burn, and what; I'll have it burning stone soon, and gladly. I won't let it feed on you, but the heat of it will hurt.'
She nodded. Heat did hurt. Many pretty things hurt, she thought, if you came too close, but some you had to cradle.
'Be ready now, let me just speak to it a minute ...'
And Elisande did speak to the fire, though she didn't know the language; and she thought it brightened, whitened, stiffened under just the impact of her voice.
'Now, Julianne. Scoop with your hands right underneath, it doesn't matter if you pick up soil too, but don't leave any of the fire behind, don't let it scatter . . .'
It didn't want to scatter now, though it was made so scanty. It felt as though she picked up a bulb, something light but solid.
Light and solid and hot. Damp earth and grass was cool only for a moment against her skin; then it began to steam beneath the smoke. Anywhere else, any time else she would just have dropped whatever it was that she carried, before her palms could blister. Here and now she set her teeth and tightened her grip and followed Elisande.
Who seemed to her to walk deliberately slowly, but perhaps that was again ritual and required, like a priest in a temple, pacing to his own bloods beat; or else it simply helped her friend to keep her mind in focus. Julianne could focus too, on something other than her searing hands. All she had to do was lift her head and look across the water, to where men were fighting for their lives, where her man had done that thing and lost, and lay neglected. That was a burning focus, and a sharper pain than any she could feel in her body. Let her flesh blister and scar; she'd wear it as a reminder, every time she reached or touched or gripped a thing, that once she'd been twice married and had lost the first and sweeter, lost her boy.. .
She'd never seen the virtue in sacrifice, never understood the priests when they told her that suffering ennobled. She thought that was a pap they sold to the poor, to anyone who truly suffered. And she still didn't feel noble, what she felt was pain, pure and meaningless, but that in itself was a virtue, a strengthening, a gift. She could do this, she could carry a thing that was too hot to carry; which being true, she could also certainly bear a thing that was too heavy and too hard to bear. Or else turn it around, look out at the seething mass of black and the men who struggled to keep their feet within it; look in vain for Imber's body and she could do that, she could endure the loss of him twice over. Which being so, she could undoubtedly endure this simple and uncomplicated pain, she could cany this fire for Elisande who so much needed her to do it.
She could, she did. To the first cairn, and let a segment of the bulb-fire fall away between her fingers when Elisande sang to it; wait and watch while it spread out across the little heap of stone and flourished, sprang to more vigorous life.
And so on to the second, thinking that she could smell her palms begin to cook, though Elisande had promised that the fire wouldn't actually consume her.
To the third, and she thought her bones were steel, and glowing, and shining through her skin; she thought her joints were locked and solid, she couldn't drop the fire now if she had chosen to, she'd have claws for hands for ever.
To the fourth, and she couldn't see the river's banks now, couldn't hear the water. Elisande had to guide her, a hand on her rigid arm to push her forward, a tug to stop. She couldn't anneal her spirit further by turning from pain to grief and back to pain again; her greedy body had seized her, wrapped her in itself and in its agony, so that she could barely remember her husbands' names and not think at all about them. That part of her which was grateful for this was very small indeed, and very deeply buried. She might hope to have it rise later, she might seek to dig it out with frantic, buckled fingers; for now, all she could do was gasp.
She had to trust that fire flowed across the fourth cairn and flourished there; she could not see, could not stand to look. She twisted in a hobbled dance, too racked to be still, too breathless to scream; all she could think was to throw herself into the river if only she could find it. Distantly, though, she felt someone grip her wrists, which would prevent her. Faintly, faintly she heard a voice, 'Oh, sweet, your poor hands! Its all done now, all over, trust me now...'
And there was a cooling somehow within her surely blackened, surely shrivelled flesh, a soothing from the inside out, which seemed all wrong but welcome none the less; and following close on that healing touch there was a wordless whisper in her head, a voiceless song that eased her dizzy mind, calmed her breathing, laid her down in damp sweet grass—
—And would have sung her to sleep in another moment, except that she understood herself and it that precious moment too sooi} for Elisande, and just in time for her. She fo
rced her eyes to open and stared up into her friend's, bare inches away and just where she had thought to find them; said, 'Don't do that, Elisande. I don't want to sleep, I want to see.'
'Nothing to see, precious, nothing that matters. I've numbed them, and started the healing process; they need salves now, but not till they've been cleaned and it's too soon for that, even if we had the necessaries. Let them rest, don't look
'Not my hands,' she said, she explained with terrible patience. T can't feel my hands.' I can’t feel anything— but that was a lie, even though she didn't say it. She only wanted it to be true. T want to see what you do; and I want to see what's happening.' North and south, to her Imber and her Hasan and all men else, and Elisande's precious Surayon also.
'Oh. Unh. All right, then, sit up and be good. And still don't look at your hands, keep them in your sleeves. Promise? Or I'll knot them there ...'
She made the promise carelessly, literally not caring. What need any beauty in her hands, after today? She might have trouble naming any use for hands at all, except to hold a dagger one last time.
She might stop being so self-pitying, or so dramatic. The war was not yet lost; time to think about escaping the 'ifrit when it was clear, when it was certain that she needed to.
Elisande helped her into a sitting position, with a bare stub of rock to lean against.
'Comfortable?'
'It'll pass. So will time. You'd best get on with your show, sweetheart.'
Elisande shook her head, denying the implication, you're wasting what's most valuable, frittering it on me. 'I had to break a while, to let myself calm down. Nothing's more calming than a little gentle healing.'
Nothing was more exhausting by the look of her, vast eyes in a bloodless face, a tremble in her fingers where they still touched and fussed over Julianne. She was in no condition to make a major working — but there was no one else able to do it. Julianne still felt a residue of the jereth's virtue inside herself, rewoken perhaps by Elisande's healing touch; she wished, she yearned to have a way to share it with her friend. Or give it her completely, that was better.
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 59