Luck of the Wheels

by Megan Lindholm

  That short instant was as close to victory as they came. Ki never knew how Vandien was thrown to the ground, but he was there before she was, for she landed atop him, then rolled onto her bad shoulder, awakening that old injury. She started to get up, but something whacked her across the small of her back, and she went flat on her face in the dust. She felt split open like a stepped-on crab. Pain was all she knew, her body screaming at her to be still, that she was dying. Vandien was seized, dragged to his feet. She heard a roar that ended in a shriek, then coarse gibing, and the short, terrible sound of flesh struck very hard. She lifted her head.

  Vandien had scored again, but paid for it. A Brurjan crouched in the road, her black-nailed hands over her belly. Red leaked between her short fingers and she was cursing, while two of her fellows sat their mounts, pointing at the entrails that bulged from the slash and laughing. Vandien lay face down in the road. Scarlet streamed from the back of his head and slid down the angle of his jaw. He didn’t move.

  Beyond him, a Brurjan had dismounted and was checking Kirilikin. He looked up from him, shrugged at their leader, and began methodically stripping the body. Someone else had already caught his horse.

  Ki let her head fall back onto her arms. Her legs didn’t belong to her anymore. She stared at Vandien’s body, lying in the sunny road, and the sight of it echoed through her soul. The Brurjan finished stripping Kirilikin’s body. He moved to Vandien’s, rolled him over with a boot. ‘It’s nearly dead.’

  ‘Damn!’ The grizzled leader turned in his saddle and struck suddenly at one of the men behind him. The blow left four trails of blood down the guard’s jowl. ‘That’s for being too quick with your demi. Duke’s orders are that duellers are to be killed in the square, not out on some road where no one sees it. Something like this makes us all look bad.’ The chastised soldier looked down at his pommel, his teeth slightly bared. The leader turned back to the Brurjan by Vandien. ‘Bring it anyway. It’s better than nothing.’

  The crouching Brurjan nodded, grabbed the front of Vandien’s shirt. Ki saw his bloodied features twitch slightly.

  ‘No!’ It was a prayer, not begging, but it drew the Brurjan leader’s eyes. His look was flat. He jabbed his demi at the soldier he had earlier rebuked.

  ‘Only the one that duelled needs to be publicly killed. Put her in the wagon and burn it. Then bring the team. They look old, but they’re well matched. We’ll get something for them.’

  The soldier looked displeased. ‘But, Vashikii,’ he began to object, but the leader leaned over and jolted his demi into the soldier’s ribs. He bared his huge battle fangs and his spiked crest rose as he spoke.

  ‘Do it, scum. If you miss the execution, it’s your own damn fault. Way you hit him, we’ll be lucky if he’s alive to execute. So you do the dirty work here, and no complaining, Satatavi.’

  The female Brurjan dropped suddenly to her side. Her hands fell away, and her entrails spilled from her body into the dust. She hadn’t made a sound. Vashikii shrugged. ‘Satatavi. Put her and Kirilikin in the wagon also. And bring her gear and horse.’

  It all seemed very far away. The rushing noise inside Ki’s ears was so loud that she could barely make out the words they were saying. Words. Funny to think of words issuing from those brutish mouths, of sentences and thoughts being pushed out by red and black tongues past wickedly pointed teeth. As well expect poetry from a serpent, song from a vulture. A Brurjan gripped Vandien’s shirt as Ki might heft a sack of flour. The Brurjan stood and Vandien’s feet dangled clear of the ground. He looked small in the creature’s grip, yet he’d been able to kill two of them before they took him down.

  She tried to anchor her thoughts in reality but they flowed away from her. The time left was so short that none of it really mattered. She and Vandien were already dead, the wagon already cold ashes, Sigurd and Sigmund pulling a plow through a farmer’s field. She hoped they’d get good care. ‘Good horses,’ she said dimly. Vandien’s body went over the back of Kirilikin’s horse, was lashed to the high narrow saddle the animal wore. Blood dripped from his hair, red drops that became black when they met the dust. She could not take her eyes from him, watched the lurch of his body as the slack was taken up suddenly in the horse’s lead rope, watched the rhythmic jolting of his head as the troop moved off at a hard trot, stared after him through the masking yellow dust the scarlet hooves stirred up.

  Then he was gone, her view blocked by her wagon. She heard Satatavi grunt as he hoisted Kirilikin’s body to his shoulder and lugged it toward the wagon. There was a coppery taste in Ki’s mouth, and the roaring in her ears grew louder. Independent of her command, her hands scrabbled at the dust, closed once more on her belt-knife. They hadn’t bothered disarming the Humans once they had felled them. Vandien had taught them their error once; she would reinforce it. Her back felt severed. Her legs responded only feebly to her. There weren’t going to be any lightning leaps to her feet. No. Concentrating, she began to draw one leg up under her.

  ‘Gold.’

  Goat’s voice was soft but clear. Satatavi dropped Kirilikin’s body and pulled his demi from the thong that secured it to his battle harness. Then he stood, staring at the boy, his great jaws slightly ajar as if in surprise.

  Ki suddenly felt woozier than ever. The ever-present singing of the insects had suddenly moved inside her skull, and the day seemed warmer, sleepier. Her eyes sagged and it was difficult to think of anything except Goat’s voice.

  ‘We have gold. And we will give it all to you, if you let us go. All that gold, and you need share it with no one.’

  Satatavi stood frozen, staring at the boy who had materialized in the door of the wagon. Goat’s yellow eyes locked with the Brurjan’s black ones. ‘Gold,’ he whispered again, seductively. ‘Just take the gold and leave. Tell them you did as you were ordered.’

  The Brurjan’s narrow red tongue spilled out between his teeth, curled to moisten his lips. He swayed slightly, and abruptly his eyes narrowed. He shook his head violently, ‘No!’ he said, his voice thick. ‘I’ll take the gold, and burn the wagon! No reason to do just one or the other!’

  In two steps he had seized the boy and held him inches from his fangs. ‘Where’s the gold?’ he demanded gutturally.

  Goat squirmed frantically in his grip, trying to lean away from the teeth and rank breath that burned his face. ‘I don’t know!’

  The Brurjan flung the boy aside, whipping him past his shoulder as if he were a rag. Goat met the ground hard and sprawled there. Ki watched the Brurjan enter the wagon. A moment later she heard the sounds of breaking crockery and rent wood as he began his search. It wouldn’t take him long. The small cupboard set under the mattress was neither that small nor that secret. Objects began to hail out of the wagon around Goat – the floor keg split on the ground, followed by a shower of dried beans as the Brurjan shook out the sack in search of the hidden trove. Goat lifted his head, looked at Ki. ‘Tell me what to do,’ he begged.

  She got her other knee under her, pushed up slowly from the ground. The pain rode her, injecting her with agony and sucking out her strength. She tried to fix her mind elsewhere, to find anger as she listened to her home being ransacked, to find a killing urge toward this Brurjan who had sent Vandien to his death. But all she could fix on was the foolishness of the creature. Vashikii would never have left two enemies alive while he searched for plunder. He would have methodically eliminated all danger before looting the wagon. He would have secured the black war-horse, which danced nervously in the dust as an armload of quilts were thrown out of the wagon. Vashikii had lived long, and his battle fangs had grown thick and yellow because he had not taken chances. Just as Ki promised herself she would live a little longer than this one who had killed her friend. She leaned, panting silently, against the side of the wagon, and waited. Goat had found Vandien’s fallen knife. He picked it up, looked at Ki, and stepped around the tail of the wagon.

  It didn’t take long. She heard his muffled Hmph! of triumph, heard th
e pale clink of the yellow coins against one another as he hefted the small but heavy sack. The plank floor creaked under his weight. He was heavier than two Humans, and too tall. The wagon had not been built for his kind. He had to duck to exit, and his jaws led the way as he leaned out, his throat stretched long and unprotected as he blinked once in the sunlight.

  The same sunlight winked on the brief glint of Ki’s blade, and then only the small blackened haft that stuck out from the side of his throat like an arcane handle. A cry bubbled out of him, sprinkling red, and he batted savagely at Ki. The blade had gone into the big artery on the side of a Brurjan’s throat, and they both knew he was dead.

  His blow took her on the side of the head and she fell, then scrabbled out of his reach. He reached up and pulled Ki’s knife from his throat. He came after her. They both knew she would die with him. She lay on her belly in the dust, watching him with green lizard eyes.

  Goat leaped from the top of the wagon. His weight staggered the Brurjan, but the creature did not fall. Goat’s knife rose and fell, scoring the Brurjan’s leather harness and inflicting one slight flesh wound before a hairy arm swept the boy into the dust. But the delay had been enough. He sank beside the boy, fell across him, and the last of his blood pumped out over Goat’s chest. The boy shuddered and lay still.

  Ki let her head fall forward onto her arms. Blood and dust and death. She had killed again, taken the life of another sentient being as she had sworn she would never do again. It distressed her, briefly, that she could find no remorse. Only surprise at how easy it had been. How simple it was to kill, when one was properly motivated. Then the day greyed briefly, and she sank into that soft greyness.

  ‘Vandien,’ she said softly into the road, tasting dust with his name. The sound of her own voice roused her. How long had she been lying here, how long had he been gone? She knew that he was already dead; but some part of her demanded that she see the body and touch its final stillness. It was this least logical part of herself that pushed her body up. She staggered upright. This emotional part, grown stronger than she had ever recognized.

  ‘He’s dead.’ It was Goat’s voice, full of awe, coming from beneath the body.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she croaked, but already grief was tightening her throat.

  ‘No.’ Goat whispered it. His narrow hands rose slowly, to clutch at his own throat as he stared at the dead Brurjan atop him. His yellow eyes seemed to spin and spark like the eyes of a Harpy. ‘I felt him go. It was nothing like an animal … one moment he was there, wishing you dead, and the next he was … bigger. And getting bigger, and bigger, looming over you, ready to snuff you out like a palm over a candle flame. And then …’ Goat’s voice sank even softer. ‘And then he went somewhere else. And I nearly followed him there!’ Fear shook the boy, making his teeth chatter. ‘I nearly followed him there!’

  He scrabbled out from under the Brurjan’s body frantically and then crawled to Ki, as if rising were beyond him. He sat at her feet for an instant, staring up at her. Then he suddenly hugged her knees, burying his face against her skirt and shaking her with his trembling. ‘Oh, Ki! It’s what Vandien felt, when he killed Kellich. It was too big, too real!’ He clung to her, weeping as a much younger child might, and she found herself patting his shoulders, telling him that it would be all right, all right, all right.

  A long time passed very slowly as she stood there. At last the boy’s trembling subsided and he slowly drooped away from her. He looked terrible, as if he had been through some wasting illness. She found herself pushing the hair back from his face. He looked up at her and she stared down into his face. Purified. Sanctified. Something. Like metal passed through the cleansing fire. ‘I killed the Tamshin. When I told the Brurjans about them. And I killed Kellich there. But Kellich went hating me, and when he was gone it was like a pain in my mind that stopped. I didn’t care. Because I didn’t really understand …’ He groped for words, found none. There was a comprehension in his face that was more terrible than any grief, that Ki sensed surpassed her own understanding of what had come to pass.

  ‘Goat. It’s going to be all right,’ she said, lying, but having to say something to the boy. It wasn’t right for a child to be filled with whatever now possessed this boy. But he shook his head at her, refusing false comfort.

  ‘Ki, we have to go after them. After Vandien. And we have to hurry.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly, and the boy jumped up. He started toward the wagon, then stopped. ‘What do we do about them?’

  She looked at the crumpled bodies. Flies were gathering. ‘Leave them,’ she suggested.

  ‘And the horse?’

  ‘It will eventually go back to wherever they’ve been stabled. It wouldn’t let us get near it, anyway.’

  ‘Should we try to … cover them, or something?’

  ‘No. I’m too tired to care. And they’re too dead. It doesn’t really matter, Goat. No matter what we do to them, they’d still be dead.’ She paused, breathing. If she closed her eyes, the pain from her back was red and blotted out all thought. She tried to find some order in her mind. ‘Goat. I can’t. You’ll have to sort things. Anything that’s still useful, toss back in the wagon.’ She looked again at the crumpled Brurjan. ‘Nothing with blood on it,’ she added quietly. Goat nodded silently, his eyes still full of pain.

  She clambered slowly up onto the seat. She sat down carefully, took up the reins. The pain from her back was a living thing, sucking the strength from her body.

  Goat clambered up beside her. He took the reins gently from her hands. ‘I think it’s finally my turn to drive,’ he said.

  She nodded, leaned back on the seat and felt the world slide into deep blues and blacks around her. The wagon started with a sickening jolt, and she found it was all she could do to keep a grip on the seat and ride along.

  Cooking meat. The smell taunted her. I don’t eat meat anymore, Ki reminded herself. I’m too closely linked with all things that move to want to feed on their flesh. But suddenly it seemed a silly resolution, a child’s fantasy that by abstaining from meat she could somehow break the cycle of feeding and being fed upon. With or without her it went on. She had killed today, and she did not have to eat of Satativa’s flesh to have preyed upon him. She suddenly perceived that eating meat or not eating meat changed nothing. She could not abstain from being Human, nor deny the position Humans held in the slow wheel of life. So she had stopped eating meat. It meant nothing. If she walked about with her eyes closed, would the colors go out of the world?

  Her eyes were closed, and had been for a long time. Slowly she opened them. It was evening, the curtains of night fluttering over the world before closing completely. A pall of smoke along the road made the light dimmer and stung her eyes. Burning meat. And hair. And blood spilled new in the dust.

  Goat’s eyes were fixed on the road, holding the reins as carefully as if they were gossamer. She followed his gaze to where a dim red glow marked a fire by the roadside. Neither one spoke as they slowly approached it. Both sensed there was something momentous about to be revealed; both were too weary to guess what it might be, or to be eager for it.

  The scene that greeted them seemed like the ghastly balancing of an earlier one, the counterweight to the scattered Tamshin under the bright sun. The backdrop was the darkening sky and the beginning of stars, the ruddy touching of the firelight upon the still forms. The toppled bodies of the four Brurjans had been stripped of harness and armor, and ignominiously heaped to one side. Their gear burned with the bodies of those who had fallen killing them. They burned with the flare of spilled oil and the tenacity of piled brushwood. No one would ever be able to identify who had fallen bringing the Brurjan guards down. The horses and weapons had been taken.

  She got down slowly, walked toward the fire. The Brurjans, she noticed, had been killed thoroughly, several times over. The chest of one had been stabbed so repeatedly that the yellowish shards of its ribs glinted through the mangled flesh. Red sockets gaped where Vashik
ii’s battle fangs had been pulled. The savagery of it bespoke a hatred she did not like to consider.

  She drew closer to the fire, wrinkling her nose against the smell, unwilling but compelled. The heat of it scorched her face, and she knew her hair would be full of the smell tonight. She circled it slowly, peering into its depths. Little was left, only the scanty outlines of bodies; two, perhaps three of them. One was clearly too tall; another wore sandals, the leather straps visible against the charred flesh. The third was under the other two, face down, indistinguishable save that he was Human. She stared at the roasting body. About the right height, about the right build … She knelt by the fire, staring at him, willing herself to notice some grisly clue that would prove her wrong. Goat kept silent. She knelt until her face felt scorched by the nearness of the flames and the burning flesh was an unbearable stench in her nostrils, knowing, but denying.

  Something was digging into her knee. She shifted her weight, glanced down. All heat went out of the fire, all living warmth from her body. A horn button. She had knelt on it, and it had dug into her knee. It was still sewn firmly to the scorched cuff that was the sole remainder of a cream-colored shirt. Finely woven stuff, that fabric. Woven by the tiny-fingered Kerugi folk, and it had cost her a shameful amount of coin, but she had loved the way it had felt under her hands when his body heat was seeping through it and her fingers traced the muscles of his back beneath it.

  ‘Vandien,’ she said, calmly.

  ‘It was a rebel fighter.’ Goat contradicted her. ‘They always burn the bodies of their dead. Ever since the Duke ordered some bodies exhumed, and then crucified them … the bodies, and the families of the bodies. Because the bodies showed the marks of Brurjan weaponry, and he knew they had risen up against his Brurjan guard.’

  There was a nervous disorganization to Goat’s words. Ki drew back from the fire, stared at him. He was hugging himself as if chilled to death. His eyes were very big. He looked, she thought, as if he had lost everything. Strange that he should feel so much and she should feel so very little. ‘Don’t believe he’s dead,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t. It’s not him. The rebels wouldn’t have burned his body. They’d have dumped it with the Brurjans. Vandien wasn’t one of their own, they wouldn’t care what became of his body or his family. They care only for their own.’