"Stay." Karah climbed off the rock. "I'll be back as soon as I find us some water."
"Water all over," he said, pointing to the salt sea.
"No! Don't drink that! You've had more'n enough already. Godsall! Wish I had someone t' stay with you—keep you out of trouble."
"I'll stay if you give me a kiss before you go." He looked forlorn.
"I just know you'll remember I did this," she said mournfully, and leaned over to kiss him. When he rolled onto his side to receive her lass, a medallion slipped out of the open neck of his shirt It glinted with gold and a complex design that blurred when she tried to study it—after a moment, the design hurt her eyes so much that she looked away. She brushed her lips against his—and he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against his chest. His kiss was no mere peck, but a passionate embrace. When she finally managed to break away, she said, "Remember. Stay. You promised." She made him give her his overshirt, tied it to the highest of the trees so she would have a landmark, then hurried off before he could think of other demands.
"He's goin' to remember," she muttered as she headed toward the first cluster of birds. "I'll be charged with fraternizing with an officer, or takin' advantage of a man not in his right mind, or Three know what else. Kissing an officer will probably get me hanged."
She shouted and waved her arms at the birds as she neared, and they flew up, screaming rage. Two bodies lay in the tidal pool. She recognized an assistant priest and Doe, the Tseldene whore, and one of the horses, a scrawny brown one. She didn't know if the horse was one of those she'd managed to rescue or one that drowned aboard the ship and washed out after.
She searched both bodies, averting her eyes from the bird-ravaged faces and hands. She searched in vain—neither of the two had carried anything she needed.
Karah stood, scrubbed her hands in the water, and looked for the next place where the birds fed. She was as afraid as she'd been when the ship foundered. But standing there, she had more time to think about her fear—and more time to imagine surviving the wreck to die of thirst. Or hunger.
Or madness. The bleakness, the emptiness—they were enough to drive someone mad, she thought.
She wished she knew which horses she'd managed to save.
She wished she could find someone else alive.
She wished most of all that she could be sure Bren was going to be all right. If he lived, she wouldn't be alone. She wasn't certain when he'd quit being First Captain Morkaarin and started being Bren, but she decided she preferred the change.
Karah walked—stumbled—continued because she had to. She was exhausted, parched, sunburnt, bruised, and frightened. "Grenlaarin means nothing here, she thought. I could die unnoted, could be lost forever. My family can't help me here. She'd always thought herself tough and capable; she never considered herself a snob.
She suddenly realized that she didn't care much for the person she'd been. She hoped she'd live long enough to find out what sort of person she could be.
Karah reached the next body. He had been one of the XIXth's pikemen. Both of his legs were gone, bitten off cleanly by something huge. I was in that water, she thought, and shuddered.
She rolled him face up, and was grateful the birds hadn't been at his face yet. He was a hideous shade of blue-grey and starting to bloat She realized she wasn't going to have very long to search bodies—the task would soon become unbearable.
He had a flask strapped to his waist, and a dagger. She managed, with some struggle, to remove both. The flask was full, and whatever it had in it would be better for Bren than sea-water. She didn't taste to find out what it contained; she was so thirsty she feared she would drink the whole thing. She moved on.
At the next cluster of birds, she found a sealed barrel and a broken one in the tidal pool with a dead woman—another member of the pike unit—and two dead horses.
One of them was Glorylad.
Karah choked on the sudden lump in her throat, and her eyes filled with tears. She waded into the water and stood beside the dead beast. Seaweed tangled his mane, and water covered his hooves. His head was thrown back.
"Oh, Laddie," she whispered. She'd raised him from a colt, trained him, spent every spare minute with him. She'd told him all her secrets—about the fights she had with her cousins when she was younger, about the boys she bedded as she grew up. Lately about the odious Kreugfeldt boy her father wanted to marry her off to. She didn't care that Glorylad didn't understand. He'd always listened, ears pricked forward, happy just to hear the sound of her voice.
She knelt in the water next to him, and stroked his jaw, and hugged his neck once. Still crying, she stood and brushed the tears from her cheeks. She pressed her lips into a thin line and took a few deep breaths. There was no time to stand and mourn. She had to move on.
She checked the woman's body, but found nothing of use. She aimed herself for the next black clump of scavengers, fighting tears, forcing herself not to look back.
"Hey!" someone shouted. She looked up—realized she'd been walking without looking around her. The voice came from a shrubby spot of high ground to her right. She turned and headed toward the voice and caught sight of movement beneath the low trees. Someone was sitting propped against one of the scrawny trunks. The person stood as she approached. It was a man, one she only vaguely recognized.
"You're the first I've seen alive," the man said.
Karah recognized him—he'd joined the unit the day before it shipped out Karah didn't know his name, but she didn't like him very much. He was always watching, every time she saw him; watching Eowlie, watching Bren… watching her. But he was alive—maybe he'd managed to save something from the ship. "I'm Chevays," he added "I've seen you before a few times."
I noticed, she thought. "Karah." She introduced herself. She almost added the "Grenlaarin" and decided against it. It didn't matter much here—wherever "here" was.
"The captain's alive, too. You find anything useful?"
He shrugged and didn't answer her question. "Did you?" he asked instead.
He made her nervous—she didn't tell him what she'd found and where she'd been looking, though she realized he'd been able to see what she was doing quite clearly while she was hugging her dead horse and searching the drowned pikewoman. She didn't answer.
He smiled—thin-lipped, a half-smile. Raised one eyebrow. She didn't care for his expression; it was condescending, amused at her, superior. She wanted to get away from him.
He said, "We'll have to go inland eventually, I suppose, but I was hoping to find more people first—and maybe some more water. I got the flask from the woman you were searching—but it won't last long, I don't imagine."
Karah said, "No. Probably not."
"So the First Captains alive, is he?" Chevays studied her, his dark eyes thoughtful. "What about the girl with all the teeth?"
Karah became more sure that she did not like Chevays—not the way he looked at her or the way he talked to her; she didn't like his rat-thin face or his shifty eyes or his pointed questions. "I don't know," she said stiffly. "I'm still looking."
"Well," he said. "Well, well." He crossed his arms over his chest, tilted his head to one side, and stared down at her. He was very tall—and for all his leanness, muscular as well. His gaze wandered from her face to her breasts and downward, then back up again. He clicked his tongue. "You're going to need some help, aren't you? Why don't I come with you?"
"I don't think so," Karah said blandly. "We'll cover twice as much area if we split up and meet back here."
He rested his hand on the hilt of his knife. "I think separating would be a very poor idea."
Karah's hands slipped to her own knives. "I don't." She glowered at him.
"Wouldn't it be a shame for one of the ship's only two survivors to die so soon after the wreck?" He smiled again, and she thought he looked terribly like a sand viper.
"I told you—the captains still alive."
"So you say. But if it were true, he'd be with you."
&n
bsp; "Bad guess." She sized Chevays up, backing a step. He had the advantage over her in both reach and weight—and the way he looked at her, she thought he would kill her and enjoy it She would not beat him in a straight fight.
Tall and lean as he was, she would bet she couldn't outrun him either. She couldn't scream for help—there wasn't anyone to hear.
"I outrank you," he said, and his smile became sly. "If you fight me, I'll still win—but when I'm through with you, I'll make sure you're hung for attempting to kill a superior officer. If you do what I tell you to do right now, you'll probably live."
"What a brave man you are," she snarled. She sheathed her left-hand knife, stuck two fingers in her mouth, and whistled shrilly—a low tone, rising.
"Calling for help? That was stupid, dear girl. Now I have to kill you."
He came in fast, knife low. Karah had no experience with knife fighting—she pretended her right-hand knife was a short sword. She deflected his cut, he grabbed her left wrist to stop her off-hand stab and she dropped that knife—but she slammed her forehead into his face and stepped as hard as she could on the arch of his near foot, then brought her knee up into his groin.
He yelped and lost his grip, and she scrambled out of his reach. Whistled again, the same shrill rising tone—slim chance it would do any good, but she judged her odds of survival slim. She'd take any chance at all.
He charged her again, limping.
She fled, hoping she'd hurt him enough to slow him down.
When she heard his harsh breathing right behind her, and felt the impact of his footsteps on the rocky ground, she realized she hadn't She ran around a tidal pool, he tripped her, and she slammed headfirst into the stones. Her other knife skittered out of her hand across the stones. She rolled onto her back, pulled both knees into her chest, and kicked out at his face—managed to smash his mouth with one boot.
Blood spattered—blood and teeth. Chevays howled.
But he kept coming, and the white blade of his knife reflected the sun into Karah's eyes.
He landed on top of her, one knee in her stomach. She lost her wind and saw stars. Bile burned in the back of her throat She grabbed the wrist of his knife hand with both her hands, and he punched her in the face with his free hand. Her nose, already broken when the Sea Mare wrecked, crunched beneath his fist.
Karah screamed. It was all she could do to keep from throwing up. But she didn't let go of his knife hand.
She heard a whinny and hoofbeats clattering over the rocks toward her at a canter. "Windrush!" she yelled. She couldn't see her horse coming—she hoped he got to her in time.
"You called your horse?" Chevays laughed.
Karah wedged her feet on the ground and bucked her hips up, hanging onto Chevays' knife hand with all her strength. She threw him off-balance, pulled his knife hand across her chest so that he fell onto it, then rolled. She bit him on the side of the forearm, clenching her jaws and trying to bite clear to bone.
He screamed.
Black hooves and black forelegs flashed over her head, and Chevays' skull gouted blood—teeth sank into one of the man's shoulders and pulled him up and threw him.
Karah rolled on her stomach and scrambled out of the way of the horse's hooves. "Trample!" she yelled, and Windrush dropped Chevays onto the stony beach… reared… smashed down with his forelegs on the man's chest and head. Reared and plunged… reared and plunged…
It seemed to happen so slowly—she watched Chevays fall forever, watched her horse pound him into the stones, endlessly—watched Windrush pound his skull into a pulp on the ground, until he didn't have a face anymore, only smears of blood and grey tissue and skin.
She'd spent years war-training horses. She'd never seen the results of that training before.
"Stop!" she said at last, when mere could be no doubt that Chevays was dead and beyond any hope of miracles. Then Karah crouched on hands and knees, vomiting. The combination of nerves and fear and the sight of the man's shattered body proved more than she could bear.
Bent over and retching, she almost missed what happened next. Almost—but Windrush backed and whinnied, and swirling movement above the body caught her eye.
She looked up and stared in horror. Smoke rose from his body, pale and wispy, curled and looped and coiled above him until it coalesced into the face of a beautiful woman. The wraith-woman looked from the man to the horse, then over at Karah. Her expression held annoyance and infinite disdain. "The idiot," she said in a soft, cultured voice. "He got precisely what he deserved." Her mouth twitched into a smile. "I would have preferred to take care of him myself—but I must say, you did an adequate job, considering what you had to work with." She shook her head "I'm coming with you. You won't know I'm around—I'm not planning to advertise my presence. But I feel the need to keep an eye on my sister." Her face uncoiled, back into hazy tendrils, and with an unexpected burst of speed, the tendrils came at Karah and started to wrap around her—
They stopped.
"How terribly, terribly strange," a muffled voice from within the haze said. "I cannot so much as touch you." The smoke coils hung there for an instant, and the voice said, "Nearly out of time. I'll take what I can get" And Karah saw the layers of smoke wrap around Windrush's face. The horse reared, and his eyes rolled back until Karah could see the whites around the edges.
Then the smoke vanished up Windrush's nostrils, and the horse stood, shivering.
Karah didn't know what to do. She got up and walked to her horse. "You, woman," she said. "Spirit Ghost Whatever you are. Can you hear me? Can you answer?"
The horse gave no sign of being anything but a horse. "You won't know I'm around," the woman had said. Perhaps, Karah thought, she could not control the horse. Karah wasn't certain what the smoke-woman might gain from going into the horse—but if she wasn't going to bother Windrush, Karah needed him.
Awful as it was, Karah searched Chevays' mangled body. The flask was intact, and she found another knife, and around his waist, a pouch. She took everything. If he'd kept it, it had to have some value. She gathered up all the knives.
"Rot in a cold hell," Karah told his body.
She staggered. She was exhausted, her body hurt everywhere and her face felt like it was about to explode. Her nose was swelled so much she had trouble looking around it, and both her eyes were swelling shut.
"Down," she told Windrush.
He knelt.
She climbed wearily onto the big grey's back, and —his muscles tensed and trembled beneath her thighs. The animal had never used his battle training before. Karah, her own recent battle experience still horribly fresh in her mind, could sympathize. She patted him on the neck and crooned to him, "Good lad. Brave lad. You did a fine job, boy."
Windrush calmed as she stroked him and praised him. He was frightened by the corpse; she needed to get the horse away. She needed to get back to Bren, too—to give him something to drink, to see if he looked any better for having rested.
"Up," she said.
Windrush lurched to his feet, his front legs straightening fast so that she nearly slipped off his rump, his hind legs shoving. So tired I can't even ride, she thought, amazed that she could be that tired.
Karah clucked her tongue and headed back the way she'd come, guiding the horse with knees and words.
I wish I was home.
CHAPTER XII
Amourgin was the first to spot the red shirt blowing from a tree—but Eowlie was the one who found Bren, unconscious and breathing shallowly beneath the meager shade of a few scrubby bushes.
"He's nearly dead," she said.
Amourgin knelt by his commander and checked the unconscious mans pulse. The pulse felt fast and thready; Bren's skin was hot and dry, and his color was very bad.
Amourgin said softly, "I wonder if things would go better for me if he died."
He looked up, and saw Eowlie staring at him. She shook her head. "No. If you can save his life, you should. He was fair to me. He set me free from Zeemos."<
br />
The law-speaker sighed. "Yes. Of course." He stared down at the First Captain, and sighed again, more deeply. "Eowlie—" he said. "I believe I can save his life. And I agree with you that I should—he is a good man, and fair, and he deserves to live." Amourgin lay his hands on Eowlie's shoulders and looked into her odd gold eyes. "But I could be hanged anywhere in the Tykissian Empire, at any time, if you were to tell anyone how I saved him."
The girls eyes widened, and she asked, "How can that ve?"
"I do magic. I am a wizard, though not a great one—but anywhere in Tykis, the sentence for wizardry is death."
Eowlie looked bewildered. "Vut the f'riests do magic."
"Yes. But I am not a priest."
She frowned. "Stufid, stufid rules." The girl sighed. "Then no one will know how you saved him."
Amourgin laughed quietly, and pulled the Analects out of his pack. "I imagine I worry for no reason," he said, more to himself than to Eowlie. "It isn't likely we'll live through this little adventure."
Eowlie said, "We'll live."
She said that with incredible confidence. He wondered if she knew something he didn't.
He squatted in the sand next to Morkaarin, and slid the secret panel out of the back of the book. "Watch my back for me," he said. "If you see anyone coming, I'll have to hide the evidence of what I've done."
She nodded, silent, and turned away to stare over the flat, bleak land for signs of life.
Amourgin removed several of the tiny tubes from their hiding place, and mixed their contents in the palm of his hand, all the while muttering. He added a febrifuge, an expectorant, two varieties of spirit balm, and as an afterthought, one of the new powders still being tested for effectiveness—a variety of leaf mold, he'd been told, and surprisingly good against some forms of lung sickness.
It would be interesting, he thought, to see how well the powder actually worked He poured a bit of alcohol from his flask into the concoction, stirred it around with a finger while muttering an incantation against illness, and smeared the resultant gooey mess against the captain's lips. Then he called upon the Three to witness his work.
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