Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  The plate-glass door swung open, and there was a puff of slightly cooler air from within. It was the man she had seen opening the boxes numbered 771 and 253. Youngish, lacking two fingers on his right hand, dressed flash-elegant seedy in saffron cotton tunic and gartered tights and a pleated kilt beneath. Shkai’ra bent to the handles of her pushcart; a vendor of candied figs blocked her way, crying his wares. She kicked him behind one knee.

  “Much sorry!” she said, trotting past as the man picked himself up. She would abandon the cart if she must, but it was invaluable camouflage for now; her injured leg had stiffened, the wound swelling a little despite her washing it out with brandy and bandaging it. It sent a stab of pain up to the small of her back every time her bare foot struck the pavement. Her loincloth chafed in the damp heat, and her belly rumbled with hunger. Sorry I didn’t rip your fucking lungs out through your nose, cowbuggering Arkan, she thought savagely. Shkai’ra wanted to kill someone, very, very badly. With luck, there would not be much longer to wait.

  The inn had no sign; Shkai’ra did her best to look terrified at the glares of the hangers-on as she limped down the street toward it. The man she was following hesitated for a moment, then turned in through the broad gate that lead to the outer courtyard.

  Her adopted persona certainly would have been frightened, she reflected, slowing to a stop. The neighborhood looked run-down even by the standards of the one where she had mugged the okas woman. The inn had no sign, and for once there were none of the fancy Arkan plate-glass windows. Plain brick and wooden shutters for all the buildings along here; all the ones that had not been turned out and abandoned, that was. No refugees had set up housekeeping in the ruined ones, which said something. So did the youngsters who lounged at the corners, puffed kilts and knives openly worn, with the front of their heads shaved and the short hair trained up in spikes from ear to ear. Obviously of military age, especially now as military age descended with each day, but the pressgangs seemed to have avoided this area. There were more women about than in the other parts of the city, bare-faced and heavily made up. Two of them glanced up, pausing as they butchered the body of a dog that looked to have died of mange, a steady appraising stare from blue eyes ringed with Black mascara.

  Always wartime down here, Shkai’ra thought, and let some of the cringe out of her walk. Defending herself hereabouts could arouse too many questions; she let the cart tilt back with its pulling shafts in the air and stood with her arms crossed, scowling.

  Another five minutes, she thought, letting her eyes flick across the open gate. The youngster with the missing fingers was even more nervous, for which she did not blame him. Whatever else he was, he was no spook; of course, a near-six-foot tall woman with a handcart was so conspicuous that even a professional might be forgiven for discounting it as a shadow-tail. He backed into a corner by a watering trough, smiling uneasily as the man watering a mule made conversation. The man had no nose. Her quarry’s face took on a more genuine expression as another man came out of the inn and walked towards him over the courtyard. They spoke.

  Shkai’ra watched him out of the corner of her eye, in snatches. This one looked uncomfortably alert. Afessas, by the haircut; silver-grey in the amber blond of his hair, perhaps forty fairly hard years. Slender, and still handsome in the boyish oval-faced way Arkans preferred, but he moved well. Conservatively dressed in plain forest green kilt and blue tunic; from the way the tunic was left open down the chest there was something underneath it. His hand met that of the other man’s.

  I’m going to follow this one more carefully, Shkai’ra thought. He knows which end of a knife you pick up.

  “Amazing what whining, cringing and playing stupid can get you,” Shkai’ra mused to herself as she pulled the handcart off to the gravel verge of the highway. “I should have tried it before.”

  The man had turned east after leaving through the tunnel-gate; none of the guards had seemed much inclined to do a thorough search of the belongings of a smelly peasant-woman leaving Arko; the incoming stream was being diverted to camps in the countryside, now. A bad moment when a spearhead had chinked on her sword, but the sentries had believed her when she began crying and begging them not to take the family’s heirloom iron stewpot; rubbing onion on her eyes was something Megan had advised her on. Then glacial-slow progress; the man she was following had fidgeted, but he was not impatient enough to force a quarrel on the roadway.

  Then everyone had been pushed off the road for a military convoy; five rejin of cavalry, from the banners, a glitter of lances and a harsh cry to make way. Not more than three thousand of them, understrength, and the drooping necks of the horses showed why. You had to be very desperate to push heavy horse like that, they seemed to have ridden their remounts to foundering and been forced to use their chargers for the last stage of the route-march. The iron clamor of their shod hoofs on the stone-surfaced concrete of the highway overrode the endless weary shuffle of the foot traffic inching by to either side.

  A good three weeks before they’re fit for duty, Shkai’ra reflected, pitying the mounts if not the men.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye; the fessas dodging off into the woods, west and to the right of the south-facing highway.

  Naughty, she thought, pulling out a shapeless bundle that concealed sword and dagger and a small buckler she had liberated from a watchman who incautiously stopped to take a piss in an alley. Very naughty, she thought, skidding down the four meter side of the embankment; some conscientious soul had planted it with a prickly bush to keep the dirt from eroding. Doubtless anyone watching assumed she was going into the pinewoods that fringed the west side of the road to take a dump.

  The closed canopy of the umbrella pines made left the tall trees pillars or a green-roofed hall; the air beneath was still and hot and smelled of resin baked free by the sun. It was drier than the closed bowl of the city. Duff crunched under her feet, and there was little undergrowth beneath that shade; she crouched and examined the wound in her thigh. The swelling had not gone down; the edges of the deep narrow puncture were more puffy than ever, reddish-purple, and it leaked clear puss. Shkai’ra swallowed experimentally and assessed herself; there was the slightest hint of fever-hum in her ears. Not light-headed, she thought grimly. Yet. There was still some brandy in the flask; she lay on her back and hauled the knee back to her ear so that she could pour liquor into the cut and let it stand for a moment. The pain was much worse than the initial wound, enough to make her swear softly under her breath.

  Have to do, she thought, as she re-bandaged it and tested her weight. But it would slow her, and if there was going to be a fight it had better come in the next little while. She pulled the rear of the skirt up between her legs and tucked it into the belt at the front, and unwrapped her weapons with an unconscious sigh of relief. Having them out of reach made her feel considerably more naked than walking unclothed would have. She took the sheathed sword in her left hand, the one that held the buckler by its single central grip, and tucked the dagger into the folds of skirt that circled her waist.

  Fifteen minutes, she estimated, squinting up at the flickers of morning sun that shone through the bird-clamorous branches of the pines. That would let the fessas get enough of a lead on her, and he was city-bred if she had ever seen such, used to pavement under his sandals. Shkai’ra had been a hunter from the time she could walk, mostly on horseback and on the steppe, but often enough in woods. Her bare feet made little sound on the needles. She ran stooping until she found the scuff-marks of her quarry’s passage, then upright at a steady walk.

  The pinewoods gave way to terraced fields planted with grapevines and fruit trees, and she followed cautiously through the fields as the man took to a secondary road, graveled and graded and good enough for a main highway outside the Empire. Cautiously around a village, and then past the hedges of Aitzas country-seats, a nerve-wracking half hour creeping through ditches while watchdogs barked and the fessas stopped and looked, suspicious.

  I
nto oak woods at last, in a district even more rocky and tumbled than most of the land to the west of the great crater of Arko; slabs of porous volcanic rock reared up through the forest. The huge trees were shaggy with moss and laced with wild grapevines thicker than her thigh, tangled with masses of lilac bush and wild rhododendron. That forced her back onto the road, as it shrank to a rutted and overgrown carriage-track, one that had not seen wheeled traffic in years, from the look of it.

  Horses much more recently, or mules—hoofprints and dung both. Shod, but not too large, probably riding hackneys. Shkai’ra slowed to let the man get well ahead of her, and because her leg was bad enough that she could not do more than a hobbling limp. The sun was declining; a day’s quick march, but they had covered only about twenty kilometers.

  She was sweating heavily; her ears buzzed, and her breath came far more quickly than it should. She almost walked into the yard of the stone house at the end of the lane. Only the whisper of movement in the air as the forest opened out warned her, and she sank to the ground behind a topiary bush gone wild with neglect, shivering as the sweat turned cold on her skin. She could smell chimney-smoke, and a light gleamed through the gathering dusk ahead.

  Rasas gripped his five cards tighter and thrust a full copper chain into an already heavy pot, with a poorly repressed smirk.

  “Look, boy of gold,” Glikasonas scolded, taking a swig of the harder gold-colored liquor he preferred over wine. “Yeh keep your face still. Yeh don’t show anything. That’s the first thing we told you. You’re a pleasure-boy, yeh must be able to stone up your face.”

  “Sorry, sirs,” he said somberly, making the grin fall off like a mask, blank underneath.

  “Fold,” said Moras.

  “Same,” said Akobas. Glikasonas and Patappas were already out. “Whatcha got, kid?”

  Rasas turned over his cards, giggling. “Pair o’ threes!”

  “Auggh!” they all cried at once. “Yeh little imp! Yeh bluffed us all!”—“Hayel, what do we need Frenandias for, we’ve got us a five!”—“Well, yeh beat us fair and square, boy, go on, collect.” Triumphantly he swept all the money into his pile.

  A footstep sounded on the front porch. Moras jumped up to peek through the eye-slot, while Akobas gripped the boy’s arm, ready to rush him into the basement if it was a stranger. “It’s Fren,” said the first, and everyone relaxed.

  “Transaction to be continued,’” Frenandias quoted, as he closed the door behind him. This happened about every eight-day, Rasas had learned; some kind of message from some other conspirator in this, that meant some kind of all clear. “‘Service lousy, natives smelly, wish you were here.’” Milisas snickered, clammed up when no one else did. “Him and his fikken humor,” Patappas grated.

  Shkai’ra crouched behind the bush; nausea seized her, and she bent over, struggling to keep her retching quiet. When the fit passed she sat back, spitting to clear the taste of bile from her mouth and waiting for the shimmering before her eyes to clear. It did, mostly, and she sat breathing deeply with her injured leg before her. There were dusky-purple streaks extending up from the wound toward her groin, and she hissed softly when she touched it. Shit.

  The house looked like the sort a moderately prosperous merchant might have built for a refuge during the hottest of the summer months; the surrounding forest made it noticeably cooler, although the fits of shivering that were making her teeth rattle occassionaly made it hard to judge. Two stories, with a central chimney, everything of sawn blocks of grayish volcanic tufa. Windows shuttered, with light leaking around the edges; the second story extended to form a roof over the front veranda, resting on pillars. One oak door with a shuttered peephole.

  I can’t wait, Shkai’ra thought. It doesn’t matter how many of them there are. Much longer and I won’t be able to walk well, much less fight.

  She drew the sword and laid it on the ground before her and her hands on her thighs, palm up and fingers slightly curled. A breath, and then another, counting the time. Sense heartbeat, air on skin, the minor tickle and itch of bugs. Shut down hearing, the awareness at the boundary of her own skin. Pull the mind in ...

  The sword. The Warmaster’s voice echoed through her memory, so long ago. Every other weapon has another use. An axe can cut wood, a knife skin a sheep. Spears and bows are took of the hunt. The sword is made for one thing alone: killing. Take up the sword, take up death.

  A long breath, in, out. Let pain flow out, let anger flow out, let fear flow out.

  “No one followed you, huh, Fren?” Cards slapped on the table, as Patappas dealt, the pack laid on the table for his one hand to deal from.

  “Followed me? Why in Hayel would you think anyone would follow me?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Maybe a stray dog. Or a werewolf.” Outside it was getting dark.

  Take up the death of your enemies.

  Another breath. Let the awareness of the body return; accept the weakness, pain, torn muscle, joint-ache of fever. Accept, let them pass through. The body has its own reserves, the last horded strength for extremity. The trained will can summon it. She did, and felt her pupils flare wide. Her skin chilled and roughened as the capillaries under it squeezed, forcing her blood back toward the heart. A trickle of slaver ran down from one corner of her mouth as the lips ridged. The darkness went lighter, sharp-edged but distant.

  Take up your own death.

  She rose, almost smoothly, and stripped off the hampering skirt. Ripped the tunic down, a moment’s distraction might mean the difference between killing and dying.

  Killing and dying are one. Kill until you die.

  Gravel crunched under her feet, and the feral scent of flowers gone wild, overblown summer roses. Buckler and sword went behind her back. She halted before the door.

  “Hello in there,” she called, standing two paces back.

  The peephole opened, throwing light into her eyes.

  “Go away, bitch,” an Arkan voice said, halfway between anger and alarm. “No food, no shelter. Get lost.”

  You are the sword. Steel does nothing; it is the hard heart that kills.

  “Death,” she muttered, unconscious of the action. The point of the longsword slotted through the peephole, and the impact ran back up the steel to her wrist. A crunching feeling as the point punched through just above the nose, then a thud as the body hit the door when she jerked back on the sword to free it. Her good leg swung up, kicking flat-footed next to the latch; old dry-rotted wood shattered with a crack and a puff of brown dust, and the door gave. The stab of pain up her injured leg was nothing, something happening to someone else far away; she stopped it from buckling under her with brisk impatience. Through the door, shouldering it aside and stepping over the body of a man, eyes still wide in final surprise. Others around a table. One clutching the arm of a blond boy whose eyes were kh’eeredo’s—

  Shkai’ra screamed, blade arching back for a cut. Cards flew upward in a shower.

  Good tactics, bad strategy. She found herself a dispassionate spectator, sitting behind her own eyes. Four men. One holding the boy. Middle-aged, some of them fat, one missing an arm; old warriors, or street-fighters. Balding man holding Lixand by the arm, reaching across to drag out a long knife with the other. She’d given them no way to run and no time to be afraid.

  The fessas she had followed snatched up a javelin from the wall, threw himself backward with a shriek as the tip of her sword drew a line of red across his chest. He backflipped, came to his feet and threw, screamed again as her sword blurred and the barbed head went ktang off the guard, to sink quivering into the inside of a shutter. Shkai’ra shrieked back at him; he threw up his hands as the return slash opened his belly.

  Everything went clear, like the air on a crisp day, rare in Arko, like cold air that Rasas knew from somewhere, his childish made-up stories of imaginary places; nowhere could air be that cold. Some nights here he’d imagined being rescued by a knight on a white charger, whose armor shone, and who would gal
lantly yet kindly overpower Patappas and friends, turning them over to the authorities to be thrown in the dungeons; then the knight, learning Nuninibas was no less evil, rather more so, would take Rasas away and adopt him ...

  But this, this huge female-gargoyle-faced ... creature with blurring sword and rotting leg, did not fit the part. There were splashes of blood flying everywhere, everyone was screaming, and Rasas knew only one thing: I’ve got to get out of here.

  Out of sight, out of mind, he knew, with a slave’s instincts. When it (it couldn’t be a she) had its back turned, he scurried under the card table. Next, the door—if a chance came when there weren’t legs or blurring spattering weapons in the way, before it was over ... he waited. Or the stairs; there were broken windows, maybe he could crawl out over the roof ... he waited. The witch-demon, what else could it be, was hacking up his kidnappers fast. There goes Frenandias ... Akobas ... I can’t wait much longer ... His chance for the door never came.

  Shkai’ra batted the thrown chair aside with the buckler and stabbed down at the knife-arm swiping for her ankles; the point of her sword slammed between the bones of the man’s forearm—his only forearm, it was the amputee—into the hardwood blocks of the floor, and stuck. A third man lunged, barbed javelin thrusting for her belly. She began to quarter, and her leg gave. Ah! Down on one knee; the javelin-head banged off the boss of her buckler with an iron clamor and shower of sparks, and the man tripped and fell full-length over her outstretched other leg. She pulled herself up on the hilt of the sword, and the next man was on her, a knife in either hand.

  Turn-step-sweep-parry, her empty hand grabbing the wrist of the leading knife hand, other driving the edge of the shield into his temple. Turn-twist-hips and throw, flowing with and speeding his motion so his weight never really fell on her bad leg; his flight ended with the top of his head thudding into the stone block wall with an ugly cracking sound. Somewhere she could feel pain alarms, more than one, sounding in the depths of her mind.