Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Your one hope,” says Garatajik, “is to vanish into the Great Desert, the Land that Eats Men. Reach that desert, and you leave the Prophet’s world behind you. It is winter. Caravans will yet be crossing, before the killing heat. Join one, I implore you. Reach the Great Desert, and live.

  “And now get up. Make some room in those packs. I have some things for your journey, and one item you must treat as priceless. If you will consent to—”

  A snarl, a gasp. Mektu has appeared out of nowhere. His face is exultant. He seems to be embracing Garatajik—but no, the Prophet’s son is bleeding. Mektu has stabbed him in the ribs.

  The older man claws at his attacker. Mektu pulls the knife free and leaps back from the blood. Garatajik sways. His knees bend. He drops sidelong against the stone.

  For an instant, no one moves. Then Chindilan looks at the cavalry officer and drives the hilt of the war axe into his stomach. The man doubles over, and Chindilan strikes him again between the shoulders. As the sergeant falls, Chindilan whirls on Mektu in a rage.

  “You dumb savage shit! You’ve killed us all!”

  His words shock Kandri into action. Falling to his knees, he tears open Garatajik’s kanut and fumbles for the wound. He cannot tell if the man is breathing. Chindilan bends and lifts Garatajik at the torso. Kandri rips the scarf from the victim’s head and winds it around his chest.

  Blood through the white cloth, a red flower opening—

  From behind them, Mektu sputters, “I saved you, Kandri, I had to, I needed to!”

  “You hear that?” says Chindilan. “Your brother saved us. He’s a fucking hero is what.”

  “That’s Garatajik,” says Mektu. “That’s her son!”

  “Bastard!” Chindilan makes as if to smack him. “One dead and it’s curses and Wolfpacks. Two, and I don’t even fucking know. Holy war.”

  Mektu’s hands are quivering. “I’m a dead man, I’m a stain in the dirt, I should just kneel down and—two?”

  “Did you hear something?” says Eshett.

  “Two dead, Uncle?”

  “Be quiet, Mek,” says Kandri. “Listen: we’re not crossing the Stolen Sea. We’ll head west, angle back toward the mountains.”

  “You know that’s hopeless,” snaps Chindilan. “You’re sounding cracked as your brother all of a sudden.”

  “We can make it,” Kandri insists. “We can hide in the mountains. Trust me!”

  “It doesn’t matter where I go,” says Mektu. “They’ll chase me down the throat of the devil. They’ll chase me to the back of the moon.”

  “Someone’s coming!” whispers Eshett. “Kandri, shut him up!”

  Mektu stops his raving, and Kandri hears them: men’s voices, calling for Lord Garatajik. Eshett scurries to the next grave and peers around it. Shock takes her instantly, and she flies to them, her terror as clear as any scream of warning. Too many, too many, run! They dive for their packs and the bag from Garatajik and flee west, darting from mound to mound. They leave the Prophet’s Secondborn sprawled in his own blood beside the moaning rider.

  But as soon as the scene of carnage is out of sight, Kandri veers north. “What’s wrong, can’t you decide?” cries Eshett.

  Kandri doesn’t answer. Speed now as important as stealth. Very soon, he changes course again, this time sharply east.

  “Brother, what are you doing?” cries Mektu. “You’re taking us back toward the Stolen Sea!”

  Chindilan’s face brightens with comprehension. “The rider. He was conscious, he was listening. And he’ll say we’re running for the mountains, if he talks at all. You devious bastard, Kandri! Harach, there’s still a chance.”

  They fly over the barren Windplain, the parched earth and brittle scrub. Sometimes, Kandri is able to lead them down along a dry wash, hidden from eyes above. The heat like a poured resin. The miles slide by.

  When they pause for breath, Mektu gabbles: “You can’t blame me. I thought you’d been taken prisoner. I thought you were about to die.” Kandri looks at him without warmth, without forgiveness. Chindilan does not look at him at all.

  Mektu grabs at Kandri’s arm. “I can hear them!”

  “No, you can’t. Be quiet, rest.”

  “What did he mean, brother? One is curses, two is war?”

  “I didn’t mean anything,” mutters Chindilan.

  “That’s a lie,” says Mektu. “Gods of Death, this whole family’s addicted to secrets! Papa runs off to the desert twice a year. I get mauled by a yatra and they all hush me up.”

  “For your own sake, that was,” says Chindilan.

  “Some barefoot kid turns up on the doorstep, and they say, ‘Here’s your brother, sorry we never mentioned him.’ Ari disappears, and Papa acts like he’s the reason why.”

  “Ari?” says Eshett.

  “Ariqina, my girl.”

  “Mektu,” says Kandri, “shut your mouth.”

  “And now this,” Mektu continues. “I heard you, Uncle. ‘Two and it’s holy war.’ Go ahead and explain that one. I’m listening. Prove me wrong.”

  Neither man takes the bait. They share a faska, knock pebbles from their shoes. Flies swarm their hands, drawn to the blood of Garatajik the Merciful, and Eshett looks east and says they will be famous, hated above mere mortals, devils made flesh.

  It is true that the Old Man acted strangely when Ariqina disappeared. His mild swagger turned to melancholy; he looked like a man sentenced to death. Watching him, Kandri’s thoughts flew to the worst. But Dyakra Hinjuman banished those particular fears.

  “He never so much as glanced at her in that way, child. Believe me. I know the ones he did.”

  Nonetheless, his second mother had forbidden him to plague the Old Man with questions about Ariqina. Stranger still, Uncle Chindilan had come to Kandri the next day with the same command.

  “He doesn’t know what happened to her, Kandri. For the love of Ang, drop the subject.”

  “If you don’t want me talking to him, talk to me,” Kandri countered. “What’s wrong with him? Is it just memories? Did he lose someone at my age?”

  Chindilan’s eyes flashed with rare anger. “Just memories, is it? Just the harmless fancies of the old.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Uncle.”

  “Yes, you did. I know how this works. The young don’t have the courage to see their elders as real. To see them at all, if we’re honest. To admit that they’re fucking alive.”

  “That’s not true,” cried Kandri. “How can you think that, Uncle? I never—”

  “Forget it,” said Chindilan. “Yes, he lost someone. When he was much younger than you.”

  The smith turned and cracked his knuckles, looking mad enough to spit. But his hands were trembling.

  Sand becomes clay. Their footfalls ring like uncertain applause. They are running straight into hard, white light: the eye-wounding brightness of sun on salt. Kandri squints but cannot see the edge of the Yskralem: the horizon is simply too bright to look at.

  He mops his face with the tail of his shirt. His mind full of voices, nagging, severe. His mother weeps: Ang, Great Goddess, you’ve made assassins of my sons. The Old Man’s rejoinder a verbal shrug, hiding his disappointment. What did you expect of those two?

  Ariqina hides nothing. She whispers in his ear: You can’t be a killer. Not you. A part of heaven lives within us, Kandri, under the flesh and the stink and the shit. Our job is to find it. What good are we if we can’t find it?

  They snatch two minutes’ rest in the shade of a long-ruined hut. Gasping, light-headed. Salt rimes the stones about them like hoarfrost.

  “Uncle,” says Kandri, “what did he mean about arrangements for our family?”

  “He sent his own man to question them,” said Chindilan. “Beyond that, no idea. Maybe he’ll try to bundle them off to Nandipatar, or someplace even further—the Cotton Towns, perhaps. At least they’ll have some good whiskey in their old age.”

  “Be serious,” hisses Kandri, miserable with shame.
>
  “Serious?” His uncle shrugs. “Garatajik’s man will likely burn the house down and tell the Prophet they’re dead. That’s what I’d do.”

  “When did Lord Garatajik—”

  “Recruit me? Five weeks ago. Five damned-to-the-Dark-Gods weeks.” He casts a smoldering glance at Mektu.

  “And that rider you hit?” asks Eshett. “Wasn’t he a friend?”

  “Of course,” says the smith, “but what could I do? Bring him with us? No, it was kinder to make it look as though he fell defending Garatajik. They may not believe it, but it’s the best chance he has.”

  “We could have done the same to you,” says Kandri. “We still could, maybe. You don’t have to run.”

  “The devil’s ass I don’t. The Old Man was my best friend. Without Garatajik to vouch for me, I’d be thrown straight to the worms, boy. I’d be first in line.”

  And Eshett would be next. Kandri draws a hand over his face. She has no choice now either. With a Son of Heaven murdered in Balanjé, the army will seal off the village, search it house by house. Some soldier would recognize Eshett from the brothel; certain villagers, badgered long enough, would say they saw her go to the two standing by the vylk tree, screaming for a horse. If they had not marked Balanjé with blood, she might have stayed there with her widowed friend. Now there is nothing for her but flight.

  Eshett seems to guess the drift of his thoughts. She points at him sharply. “If we live, you take me back to my village. Six days east of the Stolen Sea.”

  “That’s fair,” says Kandri.

  “And when we get there, you stay hidden in the bush. I’ll bring food, then you leave. That way, no one has to lie if the Prophet’s men come calling.”

  “What’s the name of your village, anyway?” asks Mektu.

  Eshett’s glance is hard as stone. “You’ve never heard of it,” she says.

  They race on. The salt coating the rocks begins to creep across the land like a skin. Where are the cliffs? He shields his eyes, but it’s no good; he is dazzled no matter how he tries to look east.

  At first the salt-skin cracks underfoot like brittle ice, but soon it grows stronger, smoother. And then Chindilan shouts out the words they’ve all been fearing: “Here they come.”

  Kandri does not look back. He can hear the hoofbeats, ringing as if on stone. The Wolfpack has seen through his deception—or guessed at least that they might have been deceived—and divided to cover all paths from Balanjé.

  He takes Eshett’s arm and pulls her faster: she is the slowest of the four. But why bother? They can’t outrun horses, and at the cliff’s edge, they’ll need time to secure the ropes. Still, he shouts at them, Faster, damn you, and they plunge on into the dazzling light.

  All the land is salt, now, a clean, solid skin. Like running on the surface of an egg. Kandri hears that strange falsetto cry, mournful and chilling, that has somehow become the army’s prelude to slaughter:

  Oorlulu-Kralulu-Kelulu-Lhor!

  He sees his brother glance back, sees terror bloom in his face. “Six of them, Kan,” shouts Mektu, “with bows.”

  Six riders, fresh from camp. Marksmen, possibly. Able to cut them down from a distance, without dirtying their hands. Kandri winces. He sees himself stopping Eshett, bending her over, beheading her with one well-aimed blow. Then Chindilan. Then Mek, who would watch him sidelong. Then his own life, his own stomach. If he can do it. If he has time.

  Something ahead: a fractured line across their path. Are his eyes failing? Is that the cliff’s edge he sees?

  From behind comes the howl of a pursuer: “Death! Death to abomination! Let the earth drink their blood!”

  The words break something open in Mektu. He stops running, whirls with machete raised, screaming a wildcat scream. Beside him, Chindilan too pivots heavily, raising his axe, hurling madness at their attackers with his roar.

  No choice. Kandri lets go of Eshett and turns on his heel, whipping his own blade from his belt.

  The riders are within a hundred feet. Their horses seem to fly above the salt-crust. Five cavalry, nocking arrows to bows. And at their center, one Rasanga, one Innocent Dreamer, huge upon his stallion, sword whirling overhead. The other five are howling, crazed for slaughter. The Rasanga’s face is cold.

  The riders take aim. Suddenly, Kandri is possessed by mad indignation: to die full of arrows like a pig. He doesn’t know what drivel he is screaming, Kill fuck blood, or where he finds the strength to charge. But Mektu and Chindilan have found it too. They are attacking together, and will die together. No one will be tortured in Eternity Camp.

  Arrows fly. Mektu screams in agony. The gap is nearly gone; the archers shoulder their bows and draw their swords. They will be ribboned, slashed to bits. Kandri’s rage is also grief, he is choking on it, he says goodbye to Ariqina Nawhal.

  There is a sound like the breaking of bone.

  The horses vanish to their necks. They have fallen into the earth, and the riders are dashed with hideous violence to the ground. An air pocket, a cavity beneath the salt. Strong enough for four to have crossed without incident, but not six men and horses. Now the animals are thrashing, screaming, and the men are impaled, great salt fragments like window shards driven into their limbs, chests, faces. Some are crushed beneath their broken-limbed steeds. Others, luckier, are clawing at the edges of the pit.

  “Kill them! Kill them now!”

  Chindilan swing as he bellows, and his axe splits a man’s groping arm like a length of cordwood, hand to elbow. Then the Rasanga springs from the earth with a leopard’s grace, blood-blinded but still attacking, still horrible, and Kandri and Mektu leap into the fray, and everything is simply hell. The Rasanga a blur, a flywheel, a madman with dagger and sword. Horses screaming, wild arrows from the pit, a severed arm gripping Mektu’s ankle, new cracks spreading under their feet. The Rasanga prays aloud, and he is winning, he has reduced them to parries and retreats. His eyes serene. His every blow a little nearer the mark. Her feet touch heaven, he sings. His dagger kisses the corner of Kandri’s eye.

  Then it’s done. They’re the victors. Chindilan’s axe has missed Mektu’s face by an eyelash, but not its target. The Rasanga twitches, spraying them with blood. His head lolls back on a flap of skin.

  When he falls, no one speaks. They are numb with amazement. The three of them still standing, and Eshett untouched.

  One of the horses, having somehow extricated itself, limps away across the plain, dragging a dead man by one stirrup. They slaughter the other animals, ending their agony.

  “The Gods must truly love you,” says Eshett, pointing at the body of the Rasanga. “What a monster. I didn’t think he could be killed. And look at you, you’re just fine.”

  Fine. The men bark with ugly laughter. They’re in agony, shaking with it, nauseous: every wound is full of salt. But it’s true, they’re not dying. The cuts are mostly superficial; they have traveled with worse.

  “He almost took us,” says Mektu. “All by himself, and wounded. If any of those other bastards had climbed free—”

  “They weren’t Rasanga,” says Chindilan. “I’d rather have fought all five of ’em than that son of a devil’s whore.”

  “That one the horse is dragging?” says Mektu. “That was Ithim, from Sharp’s Corner. The one who bet me I couldn’t spell ‘Mektu Hinjuman’ backwards after drinking a whole bottle of—”

  Kandri grabs Mektu’s elbow. His brother twists and looks down. An arrow is snapped off in his ribs.

  Eshett hisses through her teeth.

  “What, didn’t you notice it, you mad jackdaw?” says Chindilan.

  “I noticed, of course I noticed, I forgot,” babbles Mektu. He gazes, fascinated, at the shaft in his side. Cautious, he reaches out to brush it with a finger—and howls in agony, face raised to heaven. Kandri clamps a hand over his mouth.

  “Gods of death, brother! They’ll hear you at the gypsum mines.”

  When the fit passes, he is gasping, but his face is oddly cal
m. He takes a firm grip on the arrow and shoves.

  His skin stretches at a point behind the wound. The other three hold him steady. Mektu howls again and a bronze arrowhead splits his flesh from the inside. Kandri leans in awkwardly, clamps his teeth on the arrowhead, and pulls.

  By Ang’s mercy, the head is not barbed. Out it slides with nine inches of shaft—all the remaining shaft, Kandri prays. He spits. Mektu is grinning. When they flush out the wound with spirits, he does not even scream.

  “You were angry when I stole the bush kits,” he says. “Are you still angry, brother?”

  Eshett threads a surgical needle. Mektu, looking triumphant, watches her begin to sew his flesh. “They’re full of medical supplies, did you know that, girl? Wound spirits, bandages, limb splints, scurvy powder, spider gall. And waspwort. And tooth powder. We wouldn’t last a week without the bush kits. I’m right this time. Why can’t anyone say it when I’m right?”

  ‘You’re right,” says Kandri, turning away.

  “And tooth powder. I know when I’m right! You think I need you to tell me?”

  “Sew his mouth shut when you’re done there,” says Chindilan.

  “Girl,” says Mektu, suddenly sly, “I know why you look familiar. You have a vegetable cart.”

  “Stop moving!” snaps Eshett. “Kandri, make him behave!”

  But Kandri has begun to loot the corpses. Some coins of fine, unalloyed gold. Dry meat wrapped in fish skin. And seven faska, more precious by far. He selects one, lifts it, hesitates. The prayer flows unbidden through his mind:

  Beloved Prophet, envoy to the Gods.

  By your intercession their wrath becomes tenderness.

  By your grace I fill my cup.

  He wipes away the blood and drinks.

  Only three persons know the truth about his fear of drowning. One was with him at the time. Another, the blind cook who came down with him from Candle Mountain, listened to the tale and then wrapped him in her arms, as she had done years before when he was frightened of nightfall.