“Ready?” Jared called from the dock.
Brytnoth and Rafe, silver cloths firmly tied around their faces and glasses fixed in place, gave him the thumbs-up.
Jared flipped the lever that opened the river gate and then jumped into the boat. As soon as he was on board, Brytnoth handed him his night gear. Rafe gunned the engines, spewing bloodied water onto the dock in their wake.
The engines were almost noiseless—the crowning achievement of the manufacturing trade centered in the Great City a decade ago. Everything about the boat had been state-of-the-art, and if their errand had not been so urgent, Jared would have fallen in love with it at once. The speed, the power, and the freedom reminded him of spaceflight, but the rhythmic slapping of water against the keel was far more soothing than the sterile silence of space.
A moment later, they passed out of the gates of the city and found themselves in a much wider channel of water. Rafe let Brytnoth take over the steering and came forward to join Jared in the prow.
“That was close,” Rafe said, flinging himself into one of the bench seats that lined the prow.
Jared’s eyes crinkled as he smiled grimly and he nodded. “I just hope we got him in time.”
“Why do you say that? I mean, in time for what?”
“In time to keep him from summoning the others,” Jared answered, running a hand through his hair.
“How do you know that’s what he was doing?”
“Sahara told me.”
Rafe stared at him in silence for a moment. “That must be creepy,” he said with a short laugh. “Hearing her voice in your head like that.”
“It’s a bit…disconcerting,” Jared agreed. “But it’s been extremely useful.”
“I suppose so.” Rafe sighed and then transfixed Jared with a piercing stare. “Look, it’s probably none of my business, but…”
“But what?”
“Do you love her, Jared?”
Jared clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back, gazing up into the sand-filled sky. “I don’t know, Rafe.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You either do or you don’t.”
“Is it that simple?”
“Of course it’s that simple!” Rafe’s voice was tinged with incredulous laughter.
Jared shook his head. “Well, you don’t know Sahara very well if that’s what you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She’s very…complicated, Rafe.”
“People are complicated. Love isn’t. Come on, Jared, you’re the minstrel here! You know how it is.”
“Those are songs, Rafe. Stories. They aren’t real life.”
“And what exactly is real life? Isn’t it just experience? What we live each day? And it seems to me—not being an expert by any means, mind you—but it seems to me that what you call ‘real life’ isn’t really that different from the stories you tell.”
“Why?”
“Because you remember them. The stories become part of who you are, just like the things you do or say or experience.”
“I tell stories because they are entertaining, Rafe. I think you’re giving them a bit too much weight.”
“Don’t we also tell and listen to stories to learn something, Jared? Like those ‘once-there-was-a-boy-who-did-whatever-stupid-thing-you-just-did-and-guess-how-he-turned-out’ stories we heard all the time as kids.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Sahara and me.”
“I’m saying that maybe you should pay more attention to the songs you sing. Maybe you might learn something. Like what love really is, for example.”
“This is hardly the time for a philosophical—”
“We’re all about to risk our lives to save this girl, Jared,” Rafe interrupted, his voice suddenly sharp. “All of us. Including you—the one who hears her voice in his head. It seems to me you need to square with your feelings for her before we get too much closer to our almost certain doom.”
Jared laughed then. “Point taken. But much as I hate to admit it, I guess I just don’t know what love is.”
“Didn’t you love your parents? Your sister?”
“Yes.”
“What was that like?”
Jared didn’t answer for a long time. “Complicated.”
“How was that complicated?” When Jared made no reply, Rafe continued, “Let me guess. You loved them, and they died. And you dealt with that abandonment by seeking and taking revenge. And now either you don’t know how to recognize love if you feel it, or you do recognize it and you won’t let yourself feel it because the one you love might be taken from you again.” He paused and then added, “Just a guess.”
Jared stood up suddenly. “I’m going to relieve Brytnoth.”
Rafe watched him walk away with a sigh. He leaned back and stretched out his legs.
“Not know what love is,” he muttered under his breath. “And I guess he wouldn’t know a crossbow bolt if it hit him in the face either.”
Chapter 21
The wind was gradually dying down and the sandstorms had subsided at last. They were finally able to remove their face cloths and goggles, and Jared inhaled deeply, coughing a little as the still dusty air tickled his lungs. Far to the east, the sky was just beginning to brighten, but he could still make out the constellations glimmering in the west.
“It’s too bad we hardly ever see the stars,” he remarked to Brytnoth. “I can’t remember a time when the dust storms didn’t blot out the night sky.”
“It occurs to me,” said Brytnoth slowly, “that perhaps that’s part of the Dragon-Lords’ plan too. You said before that they control the water source—perhaps they also desiccated the land, forcing people to settle along the banks of the river.”
“Anything’s possible,” Jared agreed. “That certainly would make our systematic extermination easier.”
He stared southward, straining his eyes against the lingering gloom and the haze. The river snaked away in front of them, and when Jared looked to the left and right he could see the banks getting progressively higher. These gentle slopes were crowded with lush vegetation. Scrubby trees hung their branches out over the water and plants sent creepers and trailers down to the river’s edge. Occasionally he saw the pale glimmer of flowers among the deep green foliage, but the boat sailed far enough from the shore to miss their fragrance.
He turned his attention back to the south, eager to see what lay before them, but in the back of his mind, gnawing at him like a ravenous hunger, lurked Rafe’s questions from the night before.
Do I love her? he wondered. Can I?
They were two absolutely distinct questions, he knew. One suggested that the decision had been made—he did or he didn’t. The other suggested that it was still in his power to choose, and that there was some set of criteria on which such a choice should be made.
They were all taking a terrible risk, he knew. And it suddenly washed over him like a cold wave that if the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for another was the essence of love, then they all loved her. All of them. Not just him. He frowned and rubbed the rough stubble lining his jaw.
“Jared?” Brytnoth leaned into his field of vision, concerned. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He hesitated for a single moment, and then added in a rush, “Listen. About Sahara. What are your feelings for her?”
Brytnoth couldn’t have looked more surprised if Jared had taken a swing at him with his fist. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why are you asking me this, Jared?”
“Because I need to know. Please.”
“I’d die to save her, if that answers your question.”
Jared glanced at him swiftly, and the glow in Brytnoth’s face made his frown deepen. “No, it doesn’t really answer it at all,” he muttered.
“Well, I haven’t got a better answer than that.” Brytnoth grinned at Jared suddenly. “But don’t worry. Everyone knows she’s your girl.”
“She’s not—”
“Shut up. She is. You may be stupidly blind to reality, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are. Rafe and I have heads on our shoulders and eyes in our heads. So like I said, don’t worry.”
Jared opened his mouth to answer, but Rafe suddenly interrupted them. “Be on the lookout for a spot to hide the boat and make camp for the day.”
After that, all their attention was on the passing banks of the river. They saw nothing promising for what seemed an eternity. With each passing moment, the sky to the east brightened and their situation became more perilous. Jared’s eyes snapped left and right, watching for any sign of scouts tracking their passage downriver. Finally, just around a gentle bend, Jared spotted a clump of low-hanging branches belonging to a small copse of trees.
“There!” he called, pointing. “Rafe! Over there!”
Rafe turned the boat toward the shore and drew her up under the shelter of the boughs. They secured her and then scrambled ashore and up the bank into the trees.
When they at last settled down to sleep, dawn was rippling on the river and shimmering through the leaves.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Jared offered, and neither Rafe nor Brytnoth objected. They wearily flung themselves under the shelter of a scrub tree and left Jared alone with his thoughts.
Jared went back to the edge of the steep bank, looking down on the boat and then southward down the river. The water gurgled and plashed against the hull of the boat, rocking her to and fro. Jared felt his shoulders slowly relax as the adrenaline that had fueled him since their encounter with Childir finally seeped out of him.
Childir.
The realization of what had happened in the boathouse began to awaken inside him, even as the birds stirred in the trees and began greeting each other in sweetly cheerful snatches of song. Arnauld had said that Childir was a father to him, and Jared had slain him with his own sword.
Jared’s head bowed under the wave of grief that swept through him. Even the knowledge that Childir’s treachery had probably cost his family their lives did not fully ease the ache in his heart. Some hurts, he reflected, cut too deeply to heal without scarring.
With a heavy sigh he raised his head and tore off a tall stem of grass, twirling it between his fingers. He felt uneasy, a vague sort of uneasiness without any apparent cause. He had never scouted the lands to the south of the city and everything felt unfamiliar to him.
Rolling sands flanked the verdant ribbon of undergrowth and trees that curled along the river’s edges, but these were not the barren drifts that undulated through the wilderness around Albadir. Scrubby and spiky green plants punctuated the sands, and Jared wondered if they were remnants of what once had been a lushly fertile landscape or if they were simply able to survive on the water that lurked beneath the crust of sand.
Jared pinned the stem of grass between his teeth and lay back on his elbows. The cool of the dawn had already faded. The drone of insects among the plants down at the water’s edge filled his ears, and the sun now beat down on their shelter with an all-too-familiar intensity. The ground beneath the trees languished in a maze of deep shadows and rich green light, but there wasn’t a breath of air to stir the leaves. Jared, used to the breezy openness of Albadir, felt that he was being smothered there in the bracken, and that feeling only increased his uneasiness.
And then he knew he was not alone.
He flattened himself in the bracken and slowly, quietly, rolled himself onto his side. Just across the river, mounted on a beast unlike any Jared had ever seen, was a Dragon-Lord scout. He was urging his mount along the bank, back and forth, searching for something in the water. The beast—something like a horse, but with scales instead of hair and a squatter body—kept its ears pinned back against its meaty skull, and its red nostrils were flared in obvious fear. When the beast’s foot suddenly slipped into the water, it squealed in terror, nearly throwing its rider in its mad scramble away from the edge.
He’s trying to force the thing to ford the river, Jared realized. But it’s afraid of the water.
The scout beat the animal savagely with a spiked crop, driving it toward the river bank once more. Jared slid his hand to his sword hilt and waited breathlessly, watching.
The scout, plying the crop until the flanks of his mount were dripping a dark blood onto the grass, managed to get it to put its forefeet into the water. It tolerated this only a moment, its hide shuddering and rippling the surface of the water, and then it bolted in good earnest, throwing the scout from the saddle in its dash up the bank. The scout chased it a few paces with a string of terrible curses, but when he saw that the beast had no intention of returning, he slashed savagely at the river rushes with his crop and turned back to the water.
A sharp whiz tickled Jared’s ear, and before he had time to react, the arrow was lodged in the scout’s chest.
The scout wavered for a moment, his face raised toward the clump of bracken where Jared and his friends lay hidden, and then toppled into the water.
“Quick!” cried Brytnoth, darting past Jared and slipping and sliding down the bank, bow in hand. “Quick! He may have valuable information!”
Jared followed him down to the water and they struck out together across the current with powerful strokes. Luckily, the body had lodged itself against an outcropping of tree roots, or it would have been swiftly carried downstream. Brytnoth reached it first. He hauled the scout out of the water and dumped him in the rushes. A moment later Jared was beside him, dripping and breathing hard.
“Dead?” he asked.
Brytnoth grabbed the scout’s head and peered at him. “Hard to tell, isn’t it, when you can’t see the eyes?”
Jared stared down at the masked and hooded face, and then at the wound in the chest. “He seems to be breathing,” he said.
“Tell me where your friends are,” Brytnoth demanded of the death-mask. “How many scouts lie between us and the Great City?”
A burbling, wheezing sound came from the scout, and in a moment Jared realized that he was laughing.
“I asked you a question!” Brytnoth knocked the scout’s head against the ground. “Answer, lizard scum!”
“No answers,” answered the scout with another wheezy laugh. And then, with a sudden choking gasp, his head fell back and the body went limp.
“Dead,” Jared remarked.
Brytnoth cursed under his breath. “I should’ve aimed for a less vital spot,” he said.
“And run the risk that he would escape? No, it’s better this way. Even if we are running blind.”
Brytnoth rose, wiping his hands on his wet pants. “Let’s go.”
Rafe was waiting for them on the opposite bank. “What’s going on? What happened?”
Jared explained the situation briefly and Rafe whistled. “That was close,” he said.
“Too close,” Jared agreed. “We should move on.”
“How far to the Great City?” asked Brytnoth. He gazed up through the tangled branches at what small piece of the sky was visible. “It’s hours yet until night, and it seems a terrible risk to run the river during the day.”
Jared paced slowly, his brows tight and jaw clenched. God, he thought, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.
“Look,” said Rafe, “if we start now, we should reach the Great City under cover of nightfall.”
“And risk the river during the day?” asked Jared. “I don’t know…”
“If scouts police the City, then we’ll be glad of the shadows, I think.”
“But it’s too dangerous!” Brytnoth protested.
“It’s a risk we have to take, I think,” said Jared, rubbing his jaw. “Rafe’s right. We’re short on time as it is, and there’s no sense staying here. Let’s move out. We’ll go slowly and keep close to the bank, and whoever isn’t driving must be ready with bolt nocked.”
They weighted down the scout’s body with stones from the river, rolled it into the water, and returned to
the boat. Jared clambered aboard and started the engine, while Brytnoth and Rafe returned to their camp and gathered their things.
A moment later, all three were aboard, Jared at the helm and Brytnoth and Rafe on either side of the boat, scanning the banks for any sign of movement.
Though they were jumpy and raised many false alarms, they met no other actual trouble. Just as the sun began slipping under the horizon, Rafe navigated the boat into the shallows on the western bank and shut off the engine.
“Let’s eat and rest and start again when the sun is down,” he suggested, and Jared consented with a brusque nod.
They gathered around the sunken table in the aft of the boat and Brytnoth produced a skin of water, some meat pies, a wedge of cheese, and a few edulia fruits. Without speaking, they fell to.
Jared felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. He hadn’t realized the extent of his hunger until he began to eat, and when the pies had disappeared and the cheese was nearly finished, he began to fear that they hadn’t brought sufficient provisions.
“Is this all you have?” he asked Brytnoth. “Nothing more?”
“I have some for the return journey,” Brytnoth answered. “But this was all I could take from the kitchen without arousing suspicion.”
Jared sighed. “Then it’ll have to do,” he said.
He watched Brytnoth slice two edulia fruits and set the pieces on a board, feeling his memory prickle. He clenched his jaw as the fragrance of the sweet, ripe flesh scented all the air around them.
“Is something the matter?” Rafe asked, watching him intently. “The fruit’s good—you can tell by the smell.”
“It’s…not that,” Jared replied. “It’s just…it’s nothing.” And to kill any further questions, he snatched a slice and stuffed it in his mouth.
When no memories assailed him and no visions of Sahara appeared, he was half relieved and half disappointed. He thought about the last time he had seen her—her face bloodied and bruised, but her spirit as fierce and unbroken as ever—and smiled faintly.
The Outworlder Page 20