Corunden showed his surprise when the man in black re-entered his inn, but Falc made no explanation. He had already see the orange cloak, draped over a chair. The man at the table there, seated so as to be able to see the door, was unfamiliar to him, and looking at him. Falc approached and the fellow rose. He did not wear Chasmal’s colours, or Lango’s colours, or any colours at all that Falc recognised.
“I am Falc of Risskor. You are from Holder Chasmal?”
“Yes. I —”
The accent of those two words told Falc that the fellow was Langoman, but that did not make him Chasmal’s. Falc insisted on a test: “Who is his Housechief?”
“You know he has none, and was you helped put the Eye on his son’s finger. Will you sit down, Sir Falc? My lord Chasmal has naught but good — better than good! — to say of you. I am Arle.”
Falc was convinced. Moving a chair so that his back was not to the door, he sat and drew off his gauntlets. Quietly he told the bulky man about the killers sent by Faradox.
“My lord Holder will soon know about this, Sir Falc. You were unscathed?”
“Yes, and my darg, and the one Holder Chasmal gave me. I hope that he employs better weapon-men.”
“That is worth mentioning to him too,” Arle said. “I can tell you that he employs no murderers! About this man I am to watch for, B — ?” He broke off when Falc touched a finger to his lips.
Falc said, “That man knows. That man decides for that man. You were bidden to wait for two days?”
Arle sighed and showed him a small smile. “I am to wait for three.”
“I doubt whether that will be necessary,” Falc said, and went out to wander about a bit before dinner. He did not eat with Arle or anyone else, and retired early. He set his mind to the statement “Consider that when you lie sleeping, you dream that you are awake, and know it not. How then do you know that you are not dreaming even now?”
As usual, attempting to ponder that put him to sleep.
*
He was up and out early next morning, with a fat sack newly packed by Corunden. Once again the man in black did not resume his journey west. He dismounted to lead Harr up that same hill and kept that same vigil from concealment high above the road. Meanwhile he mouthed and muttered psalms of the Way and reviewed the Words of the Firedrake. Today he pondered the sub-meanings of the statement that “A single grain of sand can close the eye of the mightiest of men.” Now and again, making sure he was invisible from the road well below, he exercised. Surging cumuli seemed to harry the sun across the sky, as smaller birds sometimes harried the crawk.
The surprise came along about noon: the fast-moving darg was the gift-animal of Chasmal of Lango, and its rider was Jinnery. Her medium blue hair strung down and blew back wispily from her dishevelled bun. She was alone and lightly cumbered.
That was interesting, even fascinating. Falc remembered the determination he had noted in that bony face she wore in such a grim expression, and knew that he had been right: there was indeed more to her than most might think.
Whatever the reason, she must be following me.
With derlin on and hood up, he trailed her into Morazain. He watched her go to the White Horn and enter. He was watching when she left. He saw two men take note of her, two poorly dressed louts suddenly interested in a young woman alone and well-mounted. When they exchanged nods and began following her, Falc of Risskor was watching. He followed them through Morazain and out the Gate of Gift Pearls, to the west.
The two men tracked her all afternoon, and Falc tracked them, maintaining the derlin and hood. She was hurrying. Misusing Chasmal’s fine pampered darg, he mused. The sun dragged across the sky with its almost effulgent crown of cumulus, and Falc followed, keeping his distance. To his knowledge Querry’s niece was so ignorant as never even to glance back. Staying well behind, her pursuers had eyes only for her and naturally no fear for their backs. Nor did Falc give them cause. Once he put back his hood and wore Baysh’s broad-brimmed hat for a time, so that at this distance he could be taken for a different man.
He thought it was unnecessary; he never saw them so much as turn. Why should they, two armed men? She, however, had much to fear and should have thought of it. Could she suppose that she was too unattractive to draw attention — on that obviously excellent darg?
Single-mindedly intent on following me, Falc thought. Why?
Toward sunset he paused atop a long, long slope that ran down ahead of him. After a straight stretch, trees rose and the road curved almost sharply. If the two followers continued, he thought, he would cut across to come between her and them, beyond the curve. Dark, dark staring eyes saw her pull off the road just at the trees; watched her followers hurriedly turn off also, this side of her. Furtively, just as they had trailed her.
They are cutting across, Falc thought. They plan to take her, in the woods.
He threw back the white hood. He was opening the derlin as he signalled to Harr and braced himself. The darg objected but raced down the hill at a slither-gallop anyhow, because that was what his master demanded.
When Harr reached the trees, drooling, Jinnery’s darg stood waiting and the bony-faced woman was just emerging from behind some bushes at the trees’ edge. Falc and a disappointed Harr did not have to do or say anything; at sight of him the two men gave up thievery; for the present, at least. They cut wide around him and fled back toward Morazain.
Omo and darg had a brief disagreement as to whether to give chase or remain here. Falc won. A staring Jinnery was hurrying toward him, wisps of hair blowing loose from her moribund bun. Still mounted, he was about to tell her what had happened and what had almost befallen her when she produced a dagger, or rather a farmer’s knife. She lunged into a charge, blade upraised. Falc made a clicking noise to Harr and threw up one arm. Harr lurched forward, trailing drool. The knife raked Falc’s gauntlet. Harr hissed and tugged at the rein, wanting to turn and bite.
“Harr BIDE!”
Still mounted, Falc released the rein. His gloved hand snapped around her wrist, the one above the nail-bitten hand sprouting the broad blade. She made nasty noises, then pained ones as he lifted her by that wrist, one-handed, until only her toes touched the ground. He ordered her to drop the knife. Since her choices did not exist, she did, oddly not weeping but looking angry. Not, he thought, ferocious.
No girl, indeed, he mused. A woman indeed!
Though dangling in air by one wrist and surely at some pain to her shoulder, she batted at him with her other hand. The action hurt her. He saw that in the writhing of her face.
“I’ve just saved your life, twice,” he told her. “First from those two men who trailed you all the way from Morazain while you never had sense enough to glance back! — and secondly from this darg, who wanted very much to turn and eat your hand off. Harr’s had sharp metal in his teeth before, sandwiched in fingers.”
With a sudden flex of his arm he swung it, and opened his hand to sling her from him. He was dismounted and standing over her before she had ceased rolling and fighting to regain something approaching equilibrium. He spoke quietly.
“You do not want to kill me, Jinnery. You never did.”
She sat up without looking up. She covered her knees with her skirt of bright print. Without looking at him she began telling her story to the ground between her outstretched legs. She stammered only a little, but as she went on in that dull voice of brass, Falc’s heartbeat speeded and he began to breathe more and more heavily.
Hours after he had left the farmhouse three days ago, four men had come riding, asking about him. Four men in matching colours. No, not the Arlord’s hirelings come back; other men. Unfortunately, Chalis was happy to tell them excitedly and proudly that Sir Falc had been there, and indeed had helped get in the hay, for he was their cousin.
“I saw one of them strike him down, then, with a long pole-sword thing, and I saw the blood and Querry went running and they just stood waiting and then they killed him, too. I saw it. My legs we
re quivering and my head went all silly and I thought I was going to fall down. I told myself that if I fainted I was as good as raped and murdered, too, and I just ran, and there was this darg, and I got on and kicked and kicked it and we galloped across the fields. When I looked back they had... had set f-fi-ire to the barn and the house.” She paused to fight the quaver out of her voice. “I took next to nothing and didn’t even think of getting to the road. Not for a long, long time. Then, in the woods, I hid and cried all day, trying to think of what to do. Then I decided to try to catch up to you, but I was afraid to ride at night.”
Suddenly she looked up at a man whose face had gone shades paler. “Did you know that darg was trained to race, to jump?”
“No,” Falc said.
He stood staring down at nothing; at the ground between Jinnery’s ankles. Her head tilted a little as she became aware of his pallor and saw the working of his mouth, of his temples. The knuckles of his gauntlets shone with the clenching of his fists.
At last, at long last he asked her about the quartet of murderers. Her description told him what he had already decided, in horror and anguish: they were the four men sent by Faradox of Lango. To murder me, not that innocent boy and his good father; too good.
With confirmation, Falc was even sadder. Conscience-stricken. He already knew, and did not need her reminder:
“They were after you. You are the cause of those deaths.”
Staring down and then at the trees, Falc nodded.
“Yes.”
Never mind that he had stopped in a spontaneous act of kindness, to help strangers in trouble; any explanation or remonstrance against his guilt would be unworthy. Because of him, Querry and Chalis were murdered and the farm burned, destroyed. Jinnery had nothing and no one.
She is my responsibility.
“All I knew to do was follow you. I have no one, nothing. I am noth — you are responsible. All I knew to do was follow you.”
After a time Falc brought his eyes into focus and looked down. He found that he had to refocus still again. She was staring up at him. Old, faded blue-grey cloak thrown back. Smudged, rumply white blouse, long skirt of medium blue dotted with little flowers in yellow and green with a touch of pink. Clothing and skin-over-bone legs were floured with road dust. She did not even flinch when he drew his sword, but only kept glaring large-eyed up at him from that gaunt face. Even the pupils of those burnt-almond eyes were enlarged almost to roundness. Yet she merely sat, at the feet of a large black-clad man who had just bared the long blade she knew had been smeared with blood rather more than once.
Falc strode past her with a sound of creaking leather and soft boots whispering through grass and long cloak whispering in air. The innocent sapling was perhaps as thick as his arm; he chopped through it with one vicious, grunting stroke and the fledgling tree sagged and toppled against a larger companion. The sapling shifted slowly, and fell by degrees. Whirling, Falc chopped twice into a huge tree before he wheeled and hurled the sword to drive into the ground.
Jinnery was twisted half around, watching. She looked from man to weapon. It stood, quivering.
From ten paces away, he said, “How can I let you accompany me? I can’t be on my guard all the time. You tried to kill me.”
“No I didn’t. I wanted to prove a point... no, I had to. And you are on your guard all the time! I know you Deathkni — omos can’t be killed that way, so easily. I don’t want to kill you, Cousin Falc. I need your protection, Cousin Falc, as you have proven and besides you are responsible to begin with. How can you refuse me?”
She watched leathern mailcoat gleam in various places, the points of stress and reflection shifting as his chest filled and slowly subsided in a great sigh. Her thin lips were a straight, grim line; her jaw squared with the clamping of her teeth. He could not refuse her, and they both knew it. Unattractive or not, she was on a more than attractive darg. Such a young woman alone on such a fine animal would not long be allowed to survive; indeed, she almost had not made it much past Morazain.
Falc sighed again. This was not going to be pleasant for him.
3
It was not pleasant for him.
“Back on the dargs,” he had said after a long silence, and turned away as she got to her feet. “We’ll go a bit farther and stop for the night within the woods.”
“After I’ve been racing all over the world following you?” Her unfortunate voice had become even less pleasant. “We’re stopped; what’s wrong with this place? I’m weary!”
“We will stop at sunset,” he said, mounting.
“It’s almost sunset now!”
“Almost. We still have light. Best to use it.” He turned away and made a little noise. Harr began to move.
“Well, wait a minute, damn you! I’m not experienced at swinging onto a darg in a skirt!”
“I can’t spare you my leggings.” He didn’t look her way, and despite what she had said she was in the gift darg’s saddle and alongside him within a half-minute.
“You really are a conceited dictator, aren’t you!”
“‘Conceited’ is a child’s word,” Falc said pleasantly, looking straight ahead. Though it does go with your boy’s voice.
“Arrh! Damn! Arrogant, then! Arrogant! You’re an arrogant... Deathknight!”
“Yes,” Falc said, and they rode.
They rode in silence.
A little over an hour later he had nudged Harr and realised that he was about to turn left into her darg; he had quite forgotten her silent, skinny presence there beside him. He pointed beyond her.
“We’ll go into the trees past that big rock beside the little derrberry grove,” he said. “There’s a little clearing back there, and a stream. We can eat derrberries and —”
She interrupted. “They’re not ripe, this time of year.”
“Oh,” he said, although he could see by the low hang of the spindly branches that the berries were ripe.
“I can’t say that I care to go back in there and camp with you, out of sight in the woods,” she said with an attempt at haughty asperity. “Why c —”
“Oh,” Falc said.
He had paced Harr forward, across in front of her, and up the little incline toward the almost snowy boulder rearing up amid the bushes at the woods’ edge. He heard her mutter. He could not make out what she said, and supposed that was fortunate. She was coming. He did not glance back. He noted that the derrberries were ripe. He lifted his helmet off with care, so as not to disturb his skullcap.
A few seconds after he had passed the bushes, he heard her mutter sourly and knew she had seen the colour of the berries: that deep, deep purple that might as well have been black. They passed in among the trees, and around the truly gigantic one, and there was the brook, narrow and shallow, but alive. The small grassy clearing was dotted with the pink of quolina. Falc swung down, removed saddle-sacks, and unsaddled Harr.
“I never saw berries ripe this time of year before,” she said in sour admission of error, working at her mount’s saddle straps.
“You’ve lived in Morazain and on a farm,” he said. “One.”
“Oh you really are a superior son of a barga, aren’t you!”
“Yes.”
She made an exasperated “oo-oh!” sound.
After a while he realised that he must leave off being unfair and unpleasant to her. She was, after all, bereaved. “Derrberries that get as much shade as sunlight ripen faster than those in open fields,” he told her.
Rather than saying “Oh,” or “Thanks,” she chose: “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
That was the sort of question Falc did not trouble to answer. He heard her grunt and glanced her way. Deceptively strong for someone so thin, she had just peeled the saddle off Chasmal’s gift and was swinging it as she turned. She staggered a little, forced to replace one foot as she sought a place for the saddle. She glanced at him.
“On the ground anywhere,” Falc said. It was something one appreciated abou
t dargs; the saddle came off dry and could be put anywhere. Dargs didn’t sweat. They just drooled. He gestured at his own saddle. “You might want it well away from mine.”
Her question was her usual challenge: “Why?”
“Because I’ll sleep with my head on my saddle and you certainly don’t want to have to sleep close to a murderous Deathknight!”
She carried her saddle well away, walking spraddle-legged under its weight, and nearly fell with it when she dumped it to the grass.
“You have water?”
She turned. “I have a little left.” She glanced at the stream. “It doesn’t matter now, does it.”
He nodded. “That’s good water. Comes off the mountain. You have something to put derrberries in when you pick them?”
“Yes! My mouth!”
Falc sighed. “Take this pan and pick for us both, Jinnery.”
“And what will you be doing?”
He could have told her. Her stance and tone and face were all so unpleasant, so challenging, though, that he decided against it. He stood gazing at her.
“Pick your own,” she said, and strode away, dusty skirt swishing. She ignored the proffered fry pan.
Falc had murmured a hurried version of the Credo and a few other rite-things while he removed gauntlets and cloak, loosed his mailcoat, and sat on the ground to open the knapsacks. He shook his head, gazing down at one of the two daggers he had given Corunden. The fellow had packed all this food and returned part of the “price” Falc had decided on!
When she returned, lips and hands empurpled, he was sitting on the ground holding a piece of ferg breast, cooked but unheated. He was chewing. She stopped, stared, blinked, stared. Falc said nothing.
“What’s that?”
“Ferg,” he said, and took another bite. “Breast.”
She looked at her hands. He watched her grow just a bit smaller and assumed that she was realising what she had done to herself. “It... didn’t occur to me that you had food.” Falc saw no reason to say anything.
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