The Leopard

by K V Johansen

  “Bide a while,” he told the ghost, which crouched small and whimpering and near-senseless in its terror. “The chief’s bench-companions will no doubt find you and send you to your road.” The ravens would alert them.

  He did not try to find the other two, who must also lie out on the hills somewhere. It was his belt-knife and Ahjvar’s boots he wanted. And Ahjvar’s horse.

  The golden gelding eventually came to his whistling, with its silver-cream tail knotted up with burrs.

  “Such foolish horses,” he told them. “You know it’s me who has to comb your silly tails.” But he was glad to find them all safe. He found the trampled grass where he had left Ahjvar bound, and after much blind searching in the sodden and torn grass, retrieved boots and cloak and his knife. After that, he went, with the horses following, down to the stream again, to harness them by feel in the dark, and load them.

  They were not happy. They stumbled at roots and plodded like weary buffalo after a day under the yoke. No rest for anyone through the day; Ahjvar would not want to wait to meet the spears of the local tribe, out hunting the swineherd’s killers.

  Lady Deyandara had made a little smouldering fire, with wet sticks tented steaming over it, under a stand of towering elms in the valley bottom. Her pony was tethered close, still saddled as the brigands had left it, as though she thought she might yet want to flee into the night—though the east was greying. Ahjvar, soaking wet as if he had plunged into the brook fully clothed, as perhaps he had, sat apart, cleaning his sword.

  “Good,” he said hoarsely, when he saw the horses.

  “Go to sleep,” Ghu told him. “I’ll cook.”

  “We’re not staying here.”

  “I know. That’s why you should sleep, now. Just till the morning comes. The horses need rest, so you might as well take some too. I won’t let you have nightmares. I’ll wake you if you even twitch.” He added in Praitannec, for the bard, “It’s safe now. Go to sleep.”

  “Do dogs walk?” Deyandara asked, in a low voice. It was Ahjvar she looked at. He was startled into glancing up.

  “They killed her dog,” Ghu explained.

  Ahjvar shook his head. “I’ve never seen a dog’s ghost.” Most people who were not wizards didn’t see ghosts at all or saw only those of close kin. “Animals go to the earth, like demons; they don’t take the road to the stars. I’ve heard it said that sometimes a dog, maybe a horse but usually a dog, waits after all, to join its master on the way.”

  “Dogs are patient,” said Ghu. “He’ll wait. Buried or unburied.”

  “I don’t know where he is. They took me across country, all day. I never had a chance to fight. I fought in the hall when the priests killed the queen; I killed a man then, and I’m not useless, whatever my brothers say, but they—they came up and gave me good day, and then, then they just—Badger knew something was wrong, he was leaping at the same moment the man pulled me down and—”

  “He’ll find you,” Ghu said.

  Ahjvar gave him a look that was more like Ahjvar, a bit sarcastic. He hadn’t meant to say that. He hadn’t meant to speak of her own death as a comfort. The lady should go east, to her brother. She would be safer there. But she watched Ahjvar now with a sort of wary fascination, which wouldn’t please him, when he noticed.

  “Go to sleep,” Ahjvar ordered, and she listened to him, wrapping herself in a blanket from her bags and curling up on some flattened ferns, wet, but out of the mud.

  “You too,” Ghu said. Ahjvar just grunted, but he sheathed the sword at last and flung himself down. He was asleep almost the same moment. Ghu covered him with everything dry he could find and yawned. But he couldn’t sleep himself; he had promised to watch. Someone had to.

  He made porridge and let it sit, keeping warm, as the sun crept up a murky, rain-heavy sky. He found coffee and made some for Ahjvar’s headache, and tea for himself, because despite the fire he was shivering with cold, soaked to the skin, and his cloak of oily wool had stopped shedding water and begun drinking it like a sponge sometime in the downpour. The coffee woke Ahjvar, who at first seemed vague on what had happened and needed to be told why the bard was sleeping by their fire, why he hadn’t woken bound hand and foot on a hilltop. While Ahjvar drank his coffee to the last of the revolting thick sludge, saying nothing, eyes shut, Ghu cleaned Ahj’s wrists and ankles with the barley-spirit and bandaged them again.

  Ghu didn’t ask if he had done the right thing. He had done it; it was his burden to carry, right or wrong. But Ahjvar grabbed him as he reached for the kettle of porridge and pulled him close a moment, face bowed to the top of his head, breath warm against him. “You did right,” Ahj muttered into his hair. “Lesser evil, anyhow. But Great Gods, Ghu, don’t do it again. I could have killed you.”

  The lady woke and sat to watch them.

  “You were wounded,” she said, as if it were an accusation, and Ahjvar let him go, tugging his sleeves down over his wrists.

  “There’s porridge,” Ahjvar said. “Probably thick enough to break spoons. His always is.”

  Ghu shrugged, grinned, and found they had only two horn spoons. He and Ahj shared.

  “You’ve come entirely the wrong direction, if you’re looking for the high king’s hall,” Ahjvar said. He was washing the pots in the brook while Ghu, belatedly, checked over the horses’ legs and feet, dealt with the yellow gelding’s burr-matted tail, and cleaned the blood from the piebald. Luckily the burrs were the worst harm any of them had taken. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” the bard said. “I needed to find you. I forgot—” She swallowed, stood and bowed, a deep bow, Nabbani-fashion, hands together. “My lord, I am sorry. I was ill-tempered and hasty and I forgot a part of my charge, and I haven’t thanked you yet for last night.”

  Ahjvar waved a hand, ducked a grim face over the porridge-pot.

  “Keep your wrists out of the water,” Ghu said sternly, speaking Nabbani.

  “I owe you—and your boy—my life.”

  “You don’t owe us anything.”

  She didn’t hear the anger. “I owe you everything. My brother will do you honour, if you come to Dinaz Andara.”

  “I won’t. What is it you forgot? Tell me and you can be off. You can reach the hall of the chief of this land by noon. It’s away to the east; you’ll find the track a few miles over there.” He pointed. “Don’t mention which way we’re going, that’s all the thanks we need. Say we were travellers heading south.”

  Her lips set, but she didn’t argue then. She reached into the neck of her tunic for an amulet-pouch, opening it as she spoke. “Catairanach gave me this, to give you. At least—it was in my hand, after I dreamed of her. She said, ‘Say to him, That which was taken, I give back, as token that I mean to honour what I promise. He will have need of this before the end, if I foresee truly.’”

  Deyandara held out something on the flat of her hand. Ahjvar came to take it and then recoiled as she was about to drop it into his hand.

  “Ahjvar?” she asked, and frowned at what she held, looked up again, puzzled. “It’s just a blessing-piece.”

  “It’s—Ghu, take that from her.”

  Ghu dropped burrs and snarled horsehair in the fire and held out a hand. The lady, still frowning puzzlement, gave him what she held. At first he had thought it was a coin, but he was wrong; it was a disc of unfired clay, about the size of a bronze half-ounce dolphin-piece, but fatter in the middle and tapering to its edge, as if it had been pressed between the palms. It was not stamped with any design but scoured deeply with a few of the slashing, hen-scratching characters the Praitannec bards and wizards used. He couldn’t read them, but then, he couldn’t read his own folk’s writing, either.

  “It’s from the goddess,” the lady protested. “I was to give it to you, Ahjvar.”

  “What is it?” Ghu asked in Nabbani. “What’s to fear in it?”

  “It’s not a blessing-piece,” said Ahjvar, using the Praitannec word. “It’s a seal. The ba
rds give the characters different values than we—than wizards. I don’t think she’s read it rightly if she thinks it’s a blessing, but I don’t think she’s much of a bard, anyway.”

  “You shouldn’t insult her when she can’t understand you; it’s not polite. But you couldn’t stamp ink onto paper with that. Could you? And it’s too rough; wax would stick to it.”

  “No, it’s a seal. It seals.” Ahjvar, whose barbarian-accented Imperial Nabbani was usually impeccable, had been using the wrong word.

  Ghu ducked to hide his smile. “What’s it sealing?”

  “Nothing that should be let loose yet. How can a goddess be so dim? You think you could have tied up a wizard, Ghu? Last night?”

  “Ah,” he said, and closed his fingers over the disc. It felt hot now, as if it pulled heat from his hand and held it.

  “Keep it for me,” Ahjvar said in Praitannec. “It’s safer with you.”

  Ghu nodded. He didn’t carry any kind of token of his own gods, no amulet. He knew he belonged to Nabban, wherever he went. He wrapped the little thing in a wisp of wiry grass to cushion it and tucked it down inside his purse, which held no coins but did have several long cork-oak acorns and half a dozen interesting shells from the shore.

  Ahjvar nodded satisfaction and looked back at the bard. “Now, Lady Deyandara—we’ll be on our way. Had the brigands robbed your bags before Ghu found you, do you want to go up the hill and see what’s of use left in their camp, or can we give you anything to aid you on your way?”

  “They hadn’t bothered to search me or my saddlebags at all, beyond taking the jug of beer the last village gave me. They were too busy arguing over what to do with me,” said Deyandara. “And I’m not going up there again for anything. I’ll come with you to Marakand.”

  “You will not.”

  She raised her chin. “I will. The high king will know everything that I could tell him long before I could reach him.”

  The Praitan high king should have been able to summon his warriors and ride to throw the city folk out by now, but if he had, the lady would probably have heard of it in the villages, now that they drew near the caravan road. So perhaps the high king of the Praitans did not much care about a folk so far from his own.

  “And I can’t go back to the Duina Catairna. I can’t.” She repeated that to herself, as if for some reason she only now realized it. “I can’t. They’ll think I fled them. They’ll think I betrayed . . . but you’re going to Marakand as the champion of Catairanach,” the lady plunged on. “In a way, you’re going as the champion of all Praitan. And there should be a witness there, to take word to Catairanach—she did tell me to come back, afterwards—and to her folk, and to the high king. Maybe I—I haven’t seen my duties clearly, before now.”

  “No,” said Ghu, and wondered at himself.

  Ahjvar’s eyes narrowed. “Ghu says not.”

  “You’ll let your—your groom rule you?”

  “Call him my shield-bearer, if groom’s not grand enough. I generally listen to him.”

  Ahjvar did not have a shield among his gear. He said there was no point. But it meant something else to the Praitans: an esquire, a young warrior serving a senior.

  “He’s—” Whatever she had been going to say might have been interesting. It made her cheeks flush. “You’re using him as an excuse. I am coming. It’s my duty.”

  “If you go to Marakand, you go on your own. Ghu.” Ahjvar jerked his head to the horses and kicked ash over the embers of the fire, turned his back on the lady and acted from then on as if she were not there.

  Her mouth clenched to a narrow line, but her eyes shone too bright, angry tears welling. Ahjvar had hurt her, and she hurt already from her grief for her good dog and her fear. Maybe she was honest that she saw it her duty, and maybe she wanted to prove to Ahj, who had come riding out of lightning with the fire gold on his hair to save her, that she was not a girl, a child too young and thoughtless for the weighty calling she claimed. Or for other things.

  Well, it was her choice, where she rode. Ghu would not make it his. He kept silent as well and saddled the horses, giving the piebald the baggage this time.

  When they left, the lady followed. Her bay hill-pony stood not too much shorter than their horses, and she had no trouble keeping them in sight. They couldn’t outrun her, not without abusing their own weary mounts. Ahjvar settled for pretending he did not notice.

  But there were wolves calling away towards the mountains that night. While Ghu was cooking a stew of dry ham and broken wheat and some greens he’d gathered—how did the Praitans grow so tall when they ate everything boiled to mush?—Ahjvar stalked off to Lady Deyandara’s distant twinkling fire. After a while it went out, and he came back leading her pony, with her walking nervously triumphant at his side.

  The very next day they came to the great road, and as they travelled it, the cleft between the low range of the Malagru and the towering Pillars of the Sky rose slowly over the western horizon before them.

  The last day’s journey on the climbing road to Marakand was on a paved highway, which ran along the north bank of the ravine, hemmed in by steep-rising mountain walls, all shale and juniper, or outright cliff. The previous time Ahjvar had ridden to Marakand, forty years ago, the road had been disappearing beneath an accumulation of dust and dung, cobbles missing, kerbs cracked and fallen away. The city was reclaiming its highway. He wasn’t sure he liked to see that. Marakand had been a great fortress once, seat of an empire that ruled all Over-Malagru and the Stone Desert—or so a wandering wizard of the Kinsai-av had told him when he was a boy. Nobody had taken it for anything but an evening’s tale, though there were a few songs that told the same history, if only people would listen to them properly. Ahjvar thought he might believe in the old forgotten empire. The fortress at the eastern end of the pass and its mate at the west, which he’d seen long ago, were built of vaster stone, harder lines, than any other part of Marakand, like the work of giants. The repairs of later masons showed like woollen patches stitched on a tattered silken robe. Even now, Marakand was as great a city as any in this part of the world, larger than Star River Crossing on the edge of Praitannec lands at the ford of the Avain Noreia, larger than Gold Harbour itself, even not counting the dusty sprawl of caravanserais outside the city walls. Deyandara was certainly awed by the distant looming mass of the eastern fort, long before they ever approached it, or perhaps she was grimly comparing it to a royal dinaz, and calculating the chances of the Catairnans ever reclaiming their land. The few travellers they’d talked with since joining the road spoke of the Duina Catairna as a conquered land, kingless, its lords scattered, its folk abandoned.

  Ghu was less impressed by the fort, but he’d been in the Golden City of the emperor.

  “Ghu,” Ahjvar called back, “you’re in charge of keeping the bard out of trouble.”

  Ghu gave them both a slow smile. The girl looked insulted. Ahjvar reined in the yellow gelding, dropping back between them.

  “Understand,” he said. “You weren’t invited, my lady. You’ll be more trouble and stir up more trouble trying to follow than if I keep you where I can see you, that’s all. And Ghu, whatever you think of him, is good at surviving in cities. You’re not.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Ah, you’ve been to Marakand before?”

  “No, but—”

  “You’ve been to Two Hills? Star River Crossing?”

  “No.”

  “Then you stick with Ghu and do what he tells you.”

  She pursed her lips and said nothing. Stupid, stubborn, silly child. Anyone but a bloody-minded child would have gotten fed up with being so clearly unwanted and taken herself off days ago. She held fixed to the notion he had belittled her honour as a would-be bard; she was going to prove him wrong, prove herself right to herself, maybe, by seeing this foul business through and making a poem of it. He’d have to change his name again. Head for Noble Cedar Harbour, maybe, the easternmost of the Five Cities, where
they didn’t know him. Though if Catairanach kept her word, he shouldn’t have to. He couldn’t quite believe that, but he tried. It was the only hope anyone had held out to him, gods-rejected as he was, in decades.

  Deyandara should be still toddling at her master’s heels, carrying his pipes, learning her trade. She was too young to be on the road on her own.

  “Ghu,” he said, turning his shoulder on her, switching to Imperial, “don’t get yourself in trouble looking after the girl. If she runs afoul of any city authority, you don’t need to know her. Just someone you met on the road coming up the pass, all right? I’ll drag her out of whatever messes she falls into later, if I can.”

  Why, when the brat gave him nightmares so that he hardly dared sleep, even when Ghu lay with an arm flung over him, trying to keep his dreams away. Convincing the girl of all sorts of things that were—probably just as well, given the way he caught her watching him sometimes. A few days travelling together didn’t make him responsible for her, and she wasn’t—he didn’t know she was any responsibility of his. Besides, it was her brother the high king who should be looking after her. He didn’t even like her.

  Ghu nodded solemnly, which didn’t mean he agreed or would obey. He’d packed away his travel-stained plaid Praitannec tunic and looked a proper Over-Malagru servant of some prosperous small trader, respectably but not richly dressed, colony fashion: a short wrapped gown with a broad sash, wide-legged trousers tucked into soft boots, a round felt hat with a tassel, the colours all modest grey and brown. Only his hair, unruly as a hill-pony’s mane, spoiled that well-groomed illusion.

  “Horses, I think,” said Ahjvar, switching languages yet again. He had made sure this morning to look as respectable as a lord’s horse-buyer ought to, scarlet tunic over a shirt of bleached linen, blue trousers, and the twisted gold bracelets, which hid the pink and healing skin of his wrists.