The Leopard

by K V Johansen

  “You won’t sell my mare.”

  “My mare. Which you bought with my money. No, we’re buying. Say, desert-breds for our lord, let’s say a lord of the Duina Galatan; it’s a good long ways away.”

  “What?” asked Deyandara.

  “You met us on the road, a week or so back. When we saved you from brigands.” He scowled at her. “Which lets us deny you nicely if you make yourself a liability.” He added fairly, “And the reverse, of course. Feel free to insist to anyone who asks that you hardly know us. And don’t go claiming you’re kin of the high king.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because even though he doesn’t seem to have done so yet, or at least word hasn’t run ahead of him this far, the high king ought to be doing something to raise the tribes to take back the Duina Catairna. He has to, if he doesn’t plan to see Marakand gnawing away at all Over-Malagru. Claiming to be blood of the Duina Andara might bring you to harm, especially if your brother’s gone to war.” She should have seen that herself.

  She frowned and bit her lip. “Just . . . Deya?” Expecting him to object?

  “Good.”

  Deyandara flushed prettily and broke into a dimpled smile, as if the word were effusive praise. Cold hells. Ahjvar urged his horse on ahead again, leaving them to follow, as befitted groom and hanger-on.

  There was more traffic on the road here: a caravan of mules coming up from Over-Malagru; a small string of a half-dozen camels heading east, one carrying its own calf in a sort of cradle on its back, led by a white-haired Five Cities woman, escorted by young men who were probably her sons; an ox-cart piled high with green fodder, wobbling its way into the city; other carts and donkeys and ponies heading home to the hill-villages from city markets. It was late afternoon. A long-distance caravan flowed towards them from the fortress’s reaching shadow; ponies and donkeys, ox-carts and all, they crowded off the road. A river of camels, each a hillock of goods: Marakander silver, Northron furs and sea-ivory, mountain gems, dyestuff of Tiypur, which would come back again as Nabbani silks, Westgrasslander wool and leather . . .

  They drew aside themselves; there was no contesting the right of way with that. The piebald, carrying the baggage this morning, decided to take fright at the great, grunting current, till Ghu slipped down and held his head, whispering. The outriders called out and laughed with one another, full of good cheer at being on the road again or replete with the pleasures of the city. Ahjvar was looking forward to a bath-house himself.

  Ghu, leaning back against the white mare’s shoulder, took it all in with a look of serene enjoyment, as if it were a play laid on for his entertainment.

  Finally the road was clear, and they were able to ride on. The ruin of a wall stretched before them, anchored north and south against precipices, once guarded there by lesser towers, derelict since before the present city ever rose. The wall, in its day, would have completely barred the riven valley between the Malagru mountains running up to the north and, to the south, the steep and snow-capped Pillars of the Sky, which made the Malagru look like hills. No, call it a half-ruined wall, rather. New work was raising it again, gangs of labourers at several points, spreading down from the shells of the lesser towers. A road of churned mud wound along it. Personally, he would have repaired his walls before attacking his neighbours, but in the event, it didn’t seem likely a Praitannec army was going to come storming up the pass any time soon, so perhaps there was no hurry. Going through the long gaps where the wall had fallen or settled into a broken ridge, easily climbed even with horses, would be simple enough at night, but by day it was overlooked, and for an army or even a small war-band to get itself past the eastern fort would do little good. The city itself had walls and gates. You’d only be trapped in the narrow valley, with the garrison of the fort at your back.

  The fort itself was no ruin. Squat, square towers straddled the road, sharp-edged, unweathered by sand and frost, and the gates—never closed except in tales of near-forgotten wars—were faced with beaten bronze, dark but uncorroded, patterned with bulls and camels. Even the river, which had once flowed from the south to curve around the city, tumbling down the pass and out to lose itself in other rivers Over-Malagru, had once been guarded, forced into a narrow channel, swift and deep, overlooked by towers. The riverbed, all broken stone and tangled greenery, had been mostly dry even when he first came to Marakand. An occasional spring or autumn flood from the mountains might turn the ravine along the city’s north side into a shallow lake, for a time, until the thirsty stone drank it, but little water from it ever reached the lower hills, and it never flowed for long. If the river had ever had a name, the Marakanders did not remember it. They called it only “the ravine” and carted their street-sweepings out to it.

  Ahjvar reined in again as they drew near the gateway, letting Deyandara draw level with him once more. “Marakanders,” he observed, “like to write everything down. They make lists of what caravan-masters pass in and out and what they’re carrying, and anything else they think noteworthy. At the moment, Praitans might be noteworthy. Keep your lies simple and consistent.”

  She nodded, lips set, as though preparing to lie valiantly. Ahjvar sighed, thinking of Lady Deyandara tied up in a sack like Ghu’s hens, dumped on the threshold of some respectable chieftain’s hall, while he and Ghu galloped away into the night. Snickered. She gave him a disapproving scowl.

  The fodder-cart, which they were just overtaking, passed in under the cool tunnel of the arch without a glance from the guardswoman propped against the wall. She looked the same sort that had lounged at the gates decades ago, a young woman in a short grey tunic, bare-legged, wearing sandals, with a two-foot staff swinging from her belt and a spear, the better to prop herself up. Her helmet was only a cap of stiffened leather with a metal frame; she wore no armour but did have a rectangular shield, which she had leant against the wall. Within the city itself, the guards carried no weapons but their short staves. The Marakanders did not permit weapons of war on the streets except for officers and the few bodyguards allowed to a senator or head of one of the Twenty Families, the rulers of the city. Sensible, in Ahjvar’s opinion, when you had so many people of no high honour so close together, though he would rather that it did not apply to him.

  Deyandara had reined in and was frankly gawking, staring up at the gates.

  A mate to the first guard slouched in a sentry’s niche opposite the woman, eyeing them thoughtfully. A third came purposefully out of a dark doorway under the arch, angling over to intercept them. A clerk, maybe. He clutched what proved to be a waxed tablet and had a brown band to his tunic-hem. Deyandara shut her mouth and twitched her pony closer. Ahjvar gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to lean down and clout her.

  “Good afternoon, master. Your name, and whence you’ve come?” the man asked, in the caravan-road version of trade Nabbani, stylus poised over his tablet. Everyone in Marakand seemed to speak both bastard Nabbani and the Stone Desert dialect that was the language of the western caravan road, and to slide from one to the other without conscious effort, sometimes halfway through a sentence, sometimes conducting a conversation, one party in one tongue, another in the other.

  Ahjvar gave the clerk a nod that was remote courtesy. A lord’s retainer, a horsemaster, was nearly a lord in his own right and had no need to humble himself to common guardsmen. No point trying to bribe him not to take down their names, either. The man would no doubt be happy to oblige, if given enough to share with the other witnesses, and then, unless he was utterly without initiative, would tell someone off to follow them and find out where they lodged, to find out why they had felt the need.

  “Travellers from the Duina Galatan in the north. My name’s Clentara.”

  The soldier set that down in quick, neat colony-Nabbani characters. He wasn’t interested in Ghu; his eye flicked over the Nabbani and shrugged him off as only a lesser servant, didn’t even ask his name. Lingered on Deyandara, obviously another Praitan. “Your wife?”

  A
hjvar flinched. “She’s only—”

  “Deya,” said Deyandara, before he could say anything about a chance-met acquaintance of the road. “A bard of the Duina Galatan.”

  Silly, stupid girl. A bard—she immediately made herself the noteworthy figure in the party.

  The soldier-clerk set that down.

  “You’ve been to Marakand before, Mistress Deya?” he asked.

  “No,” she said brightly. “But I wanted to learn songs of the western road, so I—”

  The clerk didn’t want to listen to explanations. “Then make sure your men know that it’s forbidden to carry weapons inside the city walls. Even for a bodyguard, going armed is forbidden, for outlanders. He’ll need to pack that sword away in the baggage once you leave the caravanserai suburb.”

  She nodded.

  “And wizards are forbidden in Marakand. On pain of death. You understand?”

  Deyandara blanched and flushed red, guiltily, under that look. “I’m not a wizard. Truly. If I were, I wouldn’t come to the city. I know of your law and I’ve no wish to offend your goddess.”

  The clerk shrugged. She had been warned; it wasn’t his business. He flipped the cover of his tablet closed and waved them on.

  Ahjvar resisted the urge to drag Deyandara away by the ear.

  “You—” he began, and clenched his teeth. The long archway was dark, cool after the sun outside; but doorways opened into the towers of the fortress, and they weren’t alone, anyhow, another cluster of home-going Malagru hill-farmers ambled to meet them, some riding, some driving, some leading ponies. They wore embroidered jackets and pleated white kilts, a tall, pale-skinned, dark-haired folk, worshipping other gods than the Lady for all they paid taxes to the city; they talked together in their own language, laughing raucously at some joke. Passing the guards, they fell silent.

  Emerging into sunlight, Deyandara put Ghu between Ahjvar and herself, and then raised her voice to nevertheless be heard. “You’re not really going to want to be spending a lot of time dickering over horses, after all, and this way—”

  But Ghu broke into song then, obscuring her voice and startling her into silence. Just in time, too. A lower wall edged the road here, part of the fort’s enclosure, and its gate opened for a rider on a stocky pony. With a curious glance at them, the rider, a guardsman in a scarlet tunic and dark leggings, kicked his mount on ahead.

  Useful to find out what the colours meant. Ahjvar had forgotten, if he’d ever known. He didn’t think he’d seen street guard in red in his day. Deyandara had said something about the temple guard, which hadn’t existed forty years ago.

  Ghu broke off his song. “That,” he told Deyandara, “is called ‘The Turtle’s Sisters.’ It’s about a girl given to the river . . .”

  Deyandara seemed to get the message. She fell back again, and Ghu with her. A boy on a donkey almost hidden under bundles of reeds from some wet pool of the ravine scrambled up onto the road to join them, heading into the city. He chattered happily in trade Nabbani, wanting to know who they were, where they were coming from, and if the tall grouchy one was Deya’s father. The three began trading songs, while Ahjvar rode ahead, studying the landscape. Across the ravine to the south there was cliff-topped city wall, not nearly so old as the ruined wall of the pass, and in better repair, though still crumbling and vine-grown; there were no gates in the city wall until the Riverbend, over a mile distant at the northwestern corner, where the ravine made a sharp bend from the south and the sprawl of caravanserais along the road began. Here the northern flank of the road was scattered with the paddocks of dealers in animals, but the bulk of the suburb stretched from the city graveyards for a mile or so west along the road towards the distant second fortress, which watched the pass against the desert tribes; the six gates of the city ran from Riverbend around two of its three sides, the last, the Fleshmarket, in the east. There was not a single one along the ravine; the earthquake hadn’t led to any major changes there that he could see.

  Deyandara began one of the shorter—which meant you could get through it in a mile of riding—ballads of Cairangorm, king of the Duina Catairna, and his murder by his faithless wife, stopping after every verse to translate the story for the enthralled reed-cutter. Ghu came up at a sudden canter to put himself and the packhorse between Ahjvar and the girl again. “I only thought to hush her before she told all the passers-by we were liars. Let her sing and stop scowling; it won’t do any good. Do we go into the city or stay at a caravanserai?”

  “Harder to find stabling within the city proper, I imagine. For a singer, since we’re stuck with that story, either would do, but out here there’ll be a lot less notice of odd comings and goings. Caravanserai.”

  With relief, he saw the first of the two bridges ahead, its three spans crossing the empty riverbed, and the square tower over the Riverbend Gate.

  The boy urged his donkey into a reed-rustling canter and, safely out of reach, turned back to blow a kiss at Deyandara before bouncing onto the bridge, leaving them, finally, alone.

  “Good,” Ahjvar said under his breath. “You, Deya—” No, he didn’t trust himself even to speak to her yet.

  After one look at Ahjvar, she hunched her shoulders, losing all the bright pleasure that had lit her face while flirting with the reed-boy.

  Good.

  Deyandara still trailed warily behind them as they passed an enclosed triangle of dusty, pockmarked earth, a small field between three roads. A graveyard, with a charnel-house crouching foursquare and heavy at the west end, a man trundling a wheelbarrow of old bones into its pillared porch from an open pit. Beyond, on the western road, between steep-rising mountains to either side, lay a straggle of dusty lanes and caravanserais. There were inns and stables hugged around smaller yards, taverns and tea-houses, of course, bathhouses. No god, though. The three gods of the city had all dwelt within the city walls, and now two of them were dead or faded away. There was a blockhouse for the city guard garrison that kept order in the suburb, too. In the old days, it had even had its own magistrate. Probably still did. City law kept any shanty-towns of caravan-parasites from growing, though some of the taverns, last time he was here, had seemed to employ rather a large number of servants who didn’t spend much time serving, not wine and bread, anyway.

  He didn’t really want to stay in a caravanserai. They tended to watch their gates very closely, with all the caravans’ goods and gear and beasts within to defend. An inn would be better, but first he paused in the road to seize Deyandara by the arm, when she incautiously rode within reach.

  “If you say one word to embroider that story any further, I will beat you.”

  “Let go!” She tried to pull away. “You’re hurting me.”

  Ahjvar didn’t slacken his grip. “Do you understand me? Did you ever stop to think I had a reason for what I said?”

  She glared, white-faced, every freckle standing stark against her pallor.

  “If they take me, and I am yours, they will kill you too,” he said, and shook her for emphasis. “They will drag you up to the palace plaza and hang you. They will probably torture you first. You won’t be able to say you just met me on the road; you don’t know anything about me. You won’t be able to say your royal brother will be angry, because they won’t care about that, unless it’s to use you as a hostage and hang you later, once they’ve got what they want from him. Hanging is not a nice death, and not always a quick death.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, but he thought it fury, not pain.

  “We’re blocking the road,” Ghu said, low-voiced warning. Ahjvar turned the girl loose as a party of caravaneers afoot came by, all dusty coats and headscarves and the rank reek of camels and sweat, arguing with one another about whether to go to the bathhouse or find food first.

  He chose an inn not quite at random, a place with the usual flat Marakander roof and a useful accretion of porches and galleries. As the aristocratic bard’s retainer, it made sense for him to handle the money, and the girl’s fuming si
lence could be mistaken for lordly disdain. A private room, stabling for four horses, a meal to be brought to them. Mistress Deya was obviously a woman of wealth, about as much in keeping with a youthful bard as having her own sworn spearman. Ghu disappeared with the horses as befitted a responsible groom, which he would have done just the same if he’d been emperor of all Nabban. He reappeared, draped with the last of the baggage, to find Ahjvar staring out the window and Deyandara, arms folded, face tear-stained, squatting with her back against the wall.

  “I didn’t touch her,” Ahjvar growled, looking around, though there was no accusation in Ghu’s face. The girl’s brief outbreak of weeping had been silent and private. Anger, definitely. A better outlet than shouting or throwing things, when it was him she was angry with. But maybe it was herself. He wasn’t feeling sorry for her. She’d been a fool, and folly could get her killed. She was so damned young.

  Ghu nodded, dropped the bags and patted the girl’s head in passing, joining him at the window. A rap at the door announced a servant hard on his heels with a tray of filled dumplings and a jug each of wine and water.

  “Eat,” Ahjvar told them. He couldn’t face the food, himself. He needed to think. To walk. Somewhere well away from anyone he wanted to hurt. “I’m going out. Ghu, you explain things to her again, in nice easy words so she can understand, and then take her out and trot her around to wherever a bard might reasonably go, if she were hunting new stories. Don’t forget to lock the door and bar the window-shutters. There’s a porch roof right below, easy to get in.” Or out. “You keep the key, not her. Keep her out of fights and don’t let any drunken caravan-mercenaries fondle her.” What else? He tossed the man a purse. “In case you need it. Don’t give it all to beggars. Don’t buy any more horses.”

  “Sword,” Ghu said.

  “Who said I was going into the city?” He didn’t plan on it, not yet. But he unbelted the sword and handed it over. “I should be back before too late. Don’t come looking for me if I’m not.”