by K. J. Parker
In the end, the factor that decided the issue for him was the thought of how much energy he'd have to scrounge up from somewhere just to get off the horse. If he carried on riding until he was too weary and famished to stay in the saddle, presumably he'd just keel over and flop down among the grass tussocks and die. No effort needed. Let's do that, then.
As a last gesture of Ducas steadfastness, he pointed the horse's head toward Sharra before closing his eyes. Then he yawned hugely and let his chin sink forward. Every step the horse took jolted his neck.
After a while, it seemed reasonable enough that Death should be riding beside him. No hurry (Death was an urbane, considerate fellow), take your time, if you'll excuse the pun. This is all perfectly natural. Everybody dies.
He lifted his head (he knew his eyes were shut and his chin was resting awkwardly on the junction of his collarbones) and glanced round for one last look at his country; this part of his country, or a part of this part.
I've served Eremia all my life, he said, and now it's killing me. That's nice.
Death didn't approve. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, you should be thankful that you had the opportunity to devote your life to the common good. Come along, now, this is a solemn moment, you'd do well to act accordingly. More gratitude and less attitude, so to speak.
Miel sighed. Oh, absolutely, he said. And look where it's got me.
Now then, said Death. You've lived a life of luxury and privilege, not like those two poor devils you murdered. You've had everything.
No, Miel replied. Most things. Everything that money can buy.
Death clicked his tongue. The mere fact that you're making that distinction proves how privileged you've been. How many people in this world can say they own the land they die on?
Miel laughed, though he couldn't hear himself. You know, he said, I don't think anybody can own land; not great big slices of geography like this. It's a bit like when you see a small man getting dragged along behind a great big dog. Who's walking who?
Death sighed. I'd love to stay here and chat, but you clearly aren't thinking straight. Shall we go?
Not yet. Miel narrowed his eyebrows, as though he was doing long multiplication. I'll tell you something I never had. And it's something that nearly everybody else gets.
Oh, you mean love, Death said. Don't worry about that.
That's easy for you to say, Miel replied irritably. But it's important, it's one of the really important things that matter a lot. You can't just wave a hand and say don't worry about it.
Really?
Yes, really. I missed out on it, and it's not fair. I can hardly remember my parents, so I missed out on that sort of love. No wife, no kids-
You were in love with Veatriz Sirupati, Death pointed out, until she married your friend Orsea.
Doesn't count. She never loved me back.
True, Death replied. Well, maybe when you were both kids, and everybody thought she was going to marry you, for sound political and dynastic reasons.
You can't call persuading yourself to make the best of a bad job love. I'm sorry, but you won't budge me on that one. Love is really, really important, and I missed out entirely. Unfair.
No big deal, Death insisted. Love is a confidence trick, that's all. It's Nature's way of suckering a mammal with a brain and a long, vulnerable gestation period into reproducing. Humans can think, so ordinary animal-grade maternal instinct wouldn't be enough to make human women go through all that, not if they stopped and thought about what's involved. So you have love. It's a substitute for rational thought; look at it that way, it's the complete antithesis of what being human's all about. Humans can make choices, it's what makes them unique. Love takes all your choices away, and there you suddenly are. Worse still, love inevitably leads to the worst pain of all, when you lose the people you love. You might as well be getting all uptight with me because you've never had diphtheria.
I'm not listening, Miel said.
You are, you know. Think how utterly lucky you are. You'll die, and nobody will suffer unspeakable pain because you're not around anymore. Nobody loves you, even your best friend had you thrown in jail. You can die knowing you won't be hurting anybody. Now that's a real privilege.
I don't think I'll die after all, Miel answered, and opened his eyes.
It was getting dark. He considered stopping for the night, in case the horse stumbled and fell, but decided against it. If he was going to reach Cotton Cross before the last dregs of nutrient drained out of his blood, he needed to keep going. I have decided to go on living, he realized, out of pique, just to be difficult. Well.
He could have been lucky, or perhaps the horse was really a fire-dragon or the spirit of one of his ancestors, briefly assuming equine shape in order to keep him alive. In any event, it didn't trip and stumble in the dark, and when the sun rose he was appreciably closer to Sharra Top. Not nearly close enough, though.
In a dip of dead ground was a pool. The water was brown, so dark it was almost black (peat water, seeping up out of the saturated ground at this time of year). The horse put its head down to drink, and he couldn't be bothered to pull it up. He quite fancied a drink himself, in fact he was desperate for one; but that would mean dismounting, and he knew that if he did that, he'd never be able to get back on the horse. The point was academic because he was going to die, but his stubborn streak had worn through onto the surface, like cheap silver plating on a copper dish. I shall die of thirst instead of hunger, he decided, and then all of you who betted on starvation will lose your money. Serves you right. Ghouls.
The horse was still noisily sucking up water. He pulled on the reins to drag its head up, but it jerked back, snatching them out of his hands. He swore, leaned forward to retrieve them, and felt himself slipping, forward and sideways, out of the saddle. He writhed, trying to pull himself back, but it was too late. He'd passed the balance point.
Hell of a stupid way to die, he thought, as he fell. It seemed to take him a very long time to travel the few feet, long enough for him to feel disgust at the ridiculously trivial way his life was ending, and then for the disgust to melt into amusement. If he fell in the water in his state, he probably wouldn't have the strength to swim. Drowning, now; nobody would've bet on that.
The water wasn't deep, but the pool bottom was spongy and soft. He tried to put his weight on his feet, but instead they sank down; he felt peat mud fill his boots, squidging between his toes. He was up to his waist before he stopped sinking. He laughed.
Would being swallowed up in a bog count as drowning, or was it something rarer and unlikelier still? Typical Ducas, got to be different from everyone else. Thorough, too. When the Ducas resolves to die, he's privileged to be provided with a redundancy of alternative causes. Surplus and excess in all things.
"Hold on, don't move." It was a voice, faint on the edge of his awareness. "No, you clown, I said don't move, you'll just go further in." Move? Come to think of it, the voice was right. He was still trampling aimlessly up and down, and each thrashing kick dragged him further into the mud. But a voice…
"Now listen to me." The voice was calm but urgent. He liked it. The voice of a good man. "I'm going to throw you a rope, and I want you to grab hold of it and hang on. Can you hear me?"
"Yes," Miel heard himself say. "Where are you? I can't see you."
"Directly behind you." Ah, that'd account for it. Of course, he couldn't turn round to look. He felt something flop against his neck, looked down at his chest and saw the knotted end of a thin, scruffy hemp rope drooping over his shoulder like a scarf. "Got it?"
Miel nodded. He carefully wrapped his right hand round the rope's end, so that the heel of his hand was jammed against the knot. He had no strength to hold on with, but he might be able to keep his hand gripped shut. As an afterthought he folded, his left hand round the rope as well.
"Good boy. Don't let go, for crying out loud."
A second or two; nothing happened. Then the rope tried to pull away. He fel
t its fibers rasping into the soft skin of his neck. He was being hauled backward; he couldn't balance and his knees hinged. He was sure he was going to fall back, but remembered he couldn't. The rope jerked his hands up until his clenched fists bashed the underside of his chin. It was like being punched by a very strong man; he swayed, his eyes suddenly cloudy, nearly let go of the rope-would've let go, except that the knot was jammed against his hand. He could feel himself being gradually, unnaturally pulled, like a bad tooth being drawn. It didn't feel right at all. At the last moment, he tried to save his boots by curling his toes upwards, but he was wasting his time. His feet were yanked out of the boots like onions being uprooted. Now he fell; his backside and thighs were in the muddy water. He twisted round a half-turn, and a big stone gouged his hip painfully. He realized he was lying on his side on the grass. The rope's end was still gripped in his right hand; he'd let go with his left when the rope burned it.
Not drowning or smothering in mud, then. The thought crossed his mind, vivid and shocking as forked lightning, that maybe he wasn't going to die after all.
"It's all right," the voice was saying, "stay there, I'm coming." Miel grinned for pure joy and, quite unexpectedly, sneezed. The whole thing reminded him, for some reason, of a time when he'd seen a calf being born, hauled out of its wretched mother's arse on the end of a rope. So maybe I did die after all, he thought; maybe I died, and was reborn. As a cow.
The rope was tugging at him again. "Let go," the voice said, "it's all right." Miel wondered about that, realized that the owner of the voice wanted his rope back. Well, indeed; what with the price of rope and everything, why not? He let go.
"Right, let's have a look at you." He'd closed his eyes; he opened them, and saw a pair of boots. Old, fine quality, carefully waxed. He turned his head and looked up.
The voice's owner, his savior, was not quite as tall as his cousin Jarnac and not nearly as broad across the shoulders and chest. He was somewhere between forty and fifty years old, if the proportion of gray in his hair was anything to go by; his face was long, intelligent and somehow weak-looking. His hands were small and slender, and there was a big, shiny red scar running the length of his left forefinger; a civilian scar, Miel's instincts told him, rather than a military one. That came as something of a surprise. As well as the fine boots, he was wearing a short riding-coat (shiny and worn around the shoulders, suggesting that the man was in the habit of carrying heavy loads), breeches to match and long leather gaiters. The clothes could have come from Miel's own wardrobe. Correction; they were the sort of clothes he used to give to his grooms and his falconers, old but still perfectly good.
"I'm Tropea Framain," the man said. "Who're you?"
Miel hesitated before speaking. "Thanks," he said. "You saved my life there."
"I know. What did you say your name was?"
"I'm trying to get to Cotton Cross, but I lost my way. Do you think you could possibly…?"
"What?" Framain looked like he'd just remembered something important and obvious. "Oh, right. When did you last have anything to eat and drink?"
Miel shrugged. "Not sure."
"That bad. It's all right," Framain went on, "my place isn't far. If I help you up, do you think you could stay on your horse for half an hour?"
Framain's own horse turned out to be a fine-looking bay mare. The other end of the miraculous rope was tied to its girth, which explained how Miel had been pulled from the bog. For some reason he felt painfully guilty about not telling Framain his name when asked to do so. It was a perfectly civil request, and Framain had done the proper thing by disclosing his own identity first. For the Ducas, bad manners are one of the few unforgivable crimes.
They rode for a little less than the half-hour Framain had specified across an open, stony moor, with no trace of a building of any sort to be seen. The house appeared as though by magic; quite suddenly it was there, as if it had been lying down in the heather and had stood up when it heard its master approaching. In fact, it was concealed in a deceptively shallow saucer of dead ground. There was a big farmhouse, a long barn, a clump of stables, byres and other outbuildings, including one that looked like a giant beehive with a tall brick chimney; a covered well and a sheep-fold, large and empty. No sign of any livestock, unless you counted half a dozen thin-necked chickens pecking about in the yard. This man, Miel realized, isn't a farmer. In which case, what is he? He noticed that the thatch on the farmhouse roof was gray with age and neglect, but the barn roof was bright gold with new, unweathered reed.
"You'll have to excuse the state the place is in," Framain said (he hadn't spoken since they'd started to ride). "I'm on my own here, and there's a lot to do."
Miel muttered something polite. They rode down into the yard, which was open and unfenced. Framain dismounted, tied his horse to the fold rail, and helped Miel down. To his shame, Miel found he didn't have any strength left in his legs; he slithered off his horse, and Framain had to catch him.
"In here," Framain said, and helped him to the farmhouse door. It was open. Miel remembered that when they'd passed it, the barn door was shut; he'd noticed three heavy iron bars and padlocks.
The house was a mess: one long room, mostly filled with an enormous oak table, thick with dust. The windows were unshuttered and empty-no glass or parchment-and as they came in, two crows erupted from the middle of the table, where they'd been picking over a carcass on a broad pewter plate. They flew up and pitched in the rafters for a moment, cawing and shrieking angrily, then swooped low and sailed out through the nearest window. Framain didn't seem to have noticed them. The walls were paneled in the old style, but the wood was gray and open-grained, and in places the damp had warped and split it away from the masonry, leaving behind nails rusted into the stone like arrowheads snapped off in a wound. The floor was dusty and crunched as they walked on it. There were rat and mouse droppings on practically every surface, and the smell was a confused blend of every imaginable kind of decay. Ashes and clinker from the blackened fireplace had spread onto the floor like lava from a volcano, but a thin, straight plume of gray smoke rose up out of an extravagant heap of charcoal in the middle, and there was a full charcoal bucket nearby, next to a small table on which stood a fat, fresh loaf and a grimy earthenware jug. So somebody baked here, and kept the fire banked up, and fetched in the water.
"Like I said," Framain muttered, "it's just me. Sit down, I'll get you something to eat."
He hacked a massive plank of bread off the loaf with an edged tool that Miel couldn't identify but which was never meant for the purpose; then he stood for a moment, frowning and indecisive, before reaching up into the rafters and pulling down the dustiest side of bacon Miel had ever seen. He wiped it with his sleeve before slicing off a chunk the size of his hand. Putting it on top of the bread, he handed it to Miel. "There's water," he said, "or wine." He picked up the jug and peered into it, then poured some into a horn mug he found on the floor. "Better start with water if you're parched," he said. The water was gray and muddy with dust. Miel didn't mind that, or the muddy taste of the bacon, although it was as tough as saddle-leather and he hardly had enough strength in his jaws to chew it. The bread was fine.
Framain let him eat for a while; then he cleared his throat and said, "You're Miel Ducas."
Miel nodded. "You know me from somewhere."
Framain shook his head. "I've never seen you before," he said, "but it's not hard to figure out. You said you were heading for Cotton Cross when you got lost, but you'd never have heard the name unless you knew the area, and if you knew the area you wouldn't have got lost. I can tell from your voice that you're an Eremian of good family. When I asked you who you were you didn't answer, and you looked sheepish, so you're anxious to keep your identity a secret but you haven't had much practice at telling lies or pretending to be someone else. All this area used to be Ducas land, and it's common knowledge that the Ducas himself is leading the resistance. It wasn't terribly difficult to put it together."
M
iel thought about the sword; the hanger he'd stolen from the scavengers and used to kill the two men with. He didn't have it with him, so either it was hanging by its hilt-bow from his saddle-hook or he must have dropped it somewhere; in any case, even if he had the strength to fight, it was too far away to be any use to him. He couldn't see any weapons in the room, apart from the cutting thing (a thatcher's spar-hook, he realized) that Framain had sliced the bread and bacon with. Forget it, he told himself; if Framain wanted to hand him over to the Eremians, there was precious little he could do about it until he'd got his strength back.
"That's me, then," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't answer you earlier, it was very bad manners."
"Understandable." Framain wasn't eating or drinking. "In case you're worried, I'm not-let's say, I'm not political. I like to stay out of everybody's way myself."
"I see," Miel said.
Framain laughed. "It's not what you're thinking," he said. "I'm not a criminal or anything, I just like a little privacy. Especially these days, with the Mezentines charging about, and refugees, not to mention your lot, the resistance. No offense, but I tend to regard the whole human race as just a lot of different subspecies of pest."
Miel smiled cautiously. "In that case," he said, "I apologize for intruding. And of course I'm really grateful-"
Apparently Framain wasn't interested in gratitude. "Anyway," he interrupted briskly, "you can stay here and feed yourself up until you're ready to move on, no problem there. You can call it repayment for arrears of rent, I suppose, since technically I'm a trespasser on your property. If you've finished your water, you might like a drop of the wine. You'll like it, it comes out of sealed bottles."
Miel laughed awkwardly, and Framain knelt down and scrabbled about under the table for a while, finally emerging with a glass bottle wound round with swathes of filthy black cobweb. It turned out to be very good wine indeed.