by Greg Keyes
Of course, he did have the unfair advantage of already being dead. His wounds closed almost as quickly as his enemies made them, for this near the River, the flow of energy through his body was continuous.
He shattered an instep with a staccato stamp of his foot, plunged his blade through the gaping mouth of the ankle’s owner, spun to parry—again, more for pleasure than anything else—a descending blade.
A flash of metal from his blind spot, and suddenly steel bit into his neck. His neck.
Ghe’s shriek turned gurgle as his head flopped onto one shoulder. The blade had cut almost halfway through. He felt, rather than saw, the enemy arm cock back for a second blow.
Ghe blew the rest of the barbarians out like candles, reaching frantically for his head. It was already straightening, a weird, familiar tingling setting in. Ghe bit down on another shriek when the halves of his windpipe knitted back; then he nearly collapsed in a fit of trembling. He saw again the face of Hezhi’s white barbarian, the demon, cleaving his head off, his life, his remembrance, blowing away on dark winds. Sagging against the rail, he shook like an ancient, palsied man.
And then his heart exploded. It was more reflex and gravity than design that toppled him from the barge and into the furrow of water behind it. Li, think kindly of my ghost, he thought, for the second time in two lives.
Ghan heard the sudden explosion of shouts, the twang of bows. He put his writing brush down carefully and approached the door to his cabin. He latched it. It was clear enough to him that the barge was under attack or that some sort of dispute involving most of the crew was coming to a violent resolution. He suspected the former rather than the latter. Though Bone Eel commanded no real respect from the men—he was such a fool—no one seriously questioned his station. And Qwen Shen did a fine job of seeing that he made the correct decisions, anyway, and so kept the men on his side. These were also imperial elite troops, not likely to mutiny under any circumstances—and thus far the voyage had been rather pleasant. Surprisingly so.
So they were likely being attacked, and likely by Dehshe barbarians—though also he considered that it could be the doing of the governor at Wun. The man, while affable enough on the surface, had a devious countenance when he thought no one was looking, and he seemed more than passing curious about the barge and its purpose. He had certainly not believed their stated reason for going up-River, which from the lips of Bone Eel amounted to no reason at all. What if the governor were in league with the barbarians, hoping to set Wun up as some sort of independent state? Ghan was familiar enough with the history of Nhol and other empires to understand that when an empire was weak—as Nhol was now—such things tended to happen. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that; perhaps the governor had turned pirate.
Ghan heard the clatter of a door opening and footsteps outside his door. Crouching slowly, so as to make as little sound as possible, he crouched to peer through the keyhole. He saw a figure just crossing from the sunlit hall into the shadow by the door that opened onto the narrow rear deck. That door suddenly swung wide, and a blaze of light flooded through, burned the person into a black silhouette bearing the arcing sliver of a bow in his hand. Through the door, Ghan could just make out another figure on the sunlit deck, leaning heavily against the rail. He thought it was Yen but could not be certain. The first figure raised his bow and fired. Yen—if it was Yen—tumbled over the rail.
The bowman stepped out onto the deck.
In the sunlight, Ghan could see that the man was not a barbarian or one of the governor’s troops; he was one of the emperor’s elite soldiers. Ghan had seen him several times standing watch. His scalp prickled. What was going on? He suddenly reassessed the possibility of mutiny and stepped gently back from the keyhole, realizing that he was holding his breath.
There came the sound of the outer door closing, then more footsteps, approaching his room. There they paused, and the door strained slightly against the latch.
By now Ghan was sitting on his bed. He looked up at the ceiling, an exaggerated expression of concern on his face. If the assassin looked through his keyhole, he did not want to be seen studying the door. Rather let him think him an old man, cowering until the battle was over.
Which, of course, was exactly what he was.
The footsteps went on. He heard the door to the main deck open. By then, the clamor of battle seemed to have mostly ceased. He heard soldiers barking orders, but no more frantic shouting or screams of pain.
Ghan’s hands were shaking a few moments later when he screwed up the courage to open his door. There was no one in sight, but he could hear several soldiers talking on the rear deck. They must have catwalked around the side of the cabins or across the roof; Ghan had heard much trampling up there since the fighting began.
As he opened the portal, the entrance to the outer deck swung wide, as well, and for a terrible instant, Ghan thought it was the killer. But, though it was a soldier, it was certainly not the same man.
“Are you all right?” the man asked hurriedly. “Did any of them get in here?”
“No,” Ghan replied. “Any of whom!”
“Barbarians, either Dehshe or Mang. I don’t know the difference.”
“Are they gone?”
“Yes, or dead.” The man smiled a bit wolfishly. “Took on more than they bargained for, I’d say.”
Ghan nodded absently. The soldier moved around the cabins, the rest of which were empty. Ghan followed him onto the rear deck.
“Great River, what happened back here?” the soldier muttered.
Ghan counted eleven dead men. Three were soldiers, but the rest were barbarians of some sort, dark-skinned, clad in rude leather and felts. He thought that the thick, lacquered wood and leather jackets they wore were probably intended to be armor. Most of them were heavily tattooed with blue lines and circles.
“Dehshe, I think,” he told the soldier. “I’ve read that they tattoo their faces—and that the Mang don’t.”
“Well, Dehshe or Mang, they’re as dead as dogmeat,” the soldier observed unnecessarily. He rolled one over. “This one’s not even cut.” The corpse in question stared at Ghan with vast surprise and horror.
Ghan realized that he was going to be sick an instant before he actually was, and so he made it to the rail in time not to add more noisome fluids than blood to the deck. The soldier, probably embarrassed for him, left. The other three, having completed their inspection, moved on, too, leaving him mercifully alone. After he was done heaving, Ghan stayed crumpled on his knees, unwilling to turn back to the corpses, afraid that he would choke out his very stomach if he did. His chest ached from the unusual action of the muscles there, and he took deep breaths, hoping thus to soothe himself. Watching the boiling gash of wake, he tried to pretend that the whole nightmare would be over soon.
Though, of course, he knew it was just beginning.
It was as he rose to leave that he saw a hand emerge from the water and reach weakly for the barge. It clawed at the side, failed to find purchase, and fell away again. Ghan furrowed his brow; a mooring rope lay no more than an armspan from him, already knotted through an eye on deck. But was this friend or foe? As if he had any friends on this ship. Fingers showed again, grasping more weakly.
Ghan fumbled for the heavy rope. A corpse lay half upon it, and he had to shove the still-warm body aside. He pushed the coil beneath the rail, and it unspooled into the River with a muted splash. Ghan then picked up one of the fallen swords, thinking that if the man in the water were an enemy, he would merely sever the rope. He realized—too late—that the sword was so heavy, he might have real trouble doing that.
It was the first time he had ever held a sword in his life.
The rope tightened. A face emerged from the water, and Ghan let the blade relax when he saw it was Yen. The boy had an expression of dumbfounded pain on his face. He looked up vaguely at Ghan.
“Li… ?” he gasped. It was both a question and an imprecation.
“Come on, boy,
” Ghan urged. “I don’t have the strength to help you. But you’ve done the hardest part.” He remembered the archer, certain now that it was Yen who had been shot. He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach as he realized that this was probably all for nothing, that the young man would die regardless. How had he kept up with the barge?
Yen managed to pull himself to the rail, and Ghan took hold of the man’s shirt and leaned back, felt how appallingly weak his grip was. He was not certain that this helped in the slightest, but the younger man flopped up, under the lowest rail, and dragged himself stubbornly onto the deck. Ghan could see the arrow wound now, though the arrow itself was gone. It oozed blood, or some fluid that resembled blood but was darker. He darted his head about, but there was no one aft.
“Come on. Can you walk? We have to get you to my cabin.” Because the assassin was somewhere on the ship and, when he learned that his job was not complete, would probably wish to finish what he began.
Yen managed to get to his knees and, by clawing at Ghan’s proffered shoulder, to his feet, though he leaned rather heavily. Puffing, Ghan steered him toward the open door of his cabin. He tried to lower him to the floor gently, but the result was that both of them collapsed. Ghan fell awkwardly, his hip slapping painfully against the hardwood floor. The hurt was mind-numbing, and for an instant he believed that he had cracked the bone.
Outside, he heard several men enter the corridor between cabins. Groaning, he disentangled himself from Yen, crawled on all fours toward the door, and pushed it closed before anyone could come in sight. Then, back to the door, tears of pain in his eyes, he waited for the inevitable shove against it. What story would he tell? He tried to think; the pain was subsiding to a warm numbness. No one tried his door.
Yen, for his part, coughed. A few flecks of blood came up, and Ghan knew that to be a bad sign. It was thus strange when the boy rose unsteadily to his feet, went to the door, and latched it. When he looked down at Ghan, this time, there was a sharp sense of recognition, and something unreadable flashed across his face.
“No,” Yen muttered—clearly to himself. “No, I won’t.”
For the first time, Ghan stopped to wonder why he had rescued Yen at all, despite his basic distrust of the man. But the boy was the only one on the barge he really knew. And Hezhi liked him, which surely meant something.
Yen reached down for him and lifted him off the floor as if he weighed no more than a feather, cradling him like a baby. Ghan tried to protest, but the pain and his exertions had left him without a voice. The bed was soft, wonderful, when Yen laid him in it.
“Thanks,” he managed to breathe.
“No, thank you,” Yen answered. “I… may I stay in your cabin for a time?”
“I think you should,” Ghan replied. “Someone up there is trying to kill you.”
Yen raised an eyebrow. “You know who it is?”
“I saw him. I don’t know his name.”
“Really? That’s good. That you saw him, I mean.” He sat down and drew his knees up to his chest. His breathing seemed to have evened out.
“It might be Li, I suppose,” Ghan offered.
Yen looked startled—no, he was shocked. “What? Why do you say that?”
“It’s the first thing you said, when you came up out of the water.”
“Oh. No, I… Li was someone I used to know, when I was a boy. I thought you were her for a moment.”
“She must have been hideously ugly,” Ghan remarked.
Yen chuckled. “Most found her so,” he said, “though I did not. Funny.” He looked at Ghan with clear eyes. “I believed I had forgotten her. And yet there she is.”
“Memory is strange,” Ghan said. “There are moments from my boyhood sixty years ago that I recall more vividly than yesterday. As you grow older, you become accustomed to that.”
“There is no ‘older’ for me,” Yen mumbled, and Ghan caught the glitter of tears in the dim lantern light.
Ghan swung his legs toward the edge of the bed, still worried about the ache in his hip, but certain he could walk now.
“I’ll find Lady Qwen Shen. There must be someone on board who has medical knowledge.”
Yen shook his head vigorously. “No, let it be. I’m growing stronger each moment.”
“Let me see your wound, then.”
“You won’t see much.”
“What do you mean?” But Ghan felt a sharp jab of premonition. It turned into a pain in the center of his chest, and he clutched at it, astonished by the sudden force beneath his sternum. The room shuddered. Somewhere, inside the maelstrom of pain and fear, he knew he was about to die.
But then Yen quietly said “No,” as he had before, and the ball of pain in his chest was released. A sweet breath surged into his lungs, and another.
“I’m sorry,” Yen said. “You didn’t deserve that. I—”
“What are you jabbering about?” Ghan snarled, pain and relief suddenly churning into anger.
“Listen to me, Ghan. I wasn’t lying when I said you and I were Hezhi’s only hope. We are, and that is more certain to me now than ever. The emperor gave this expedition into my hands, do you understand? Not Bone Eel’s.”
“Yes, yes. That much is clear. You and Qwen Shen control this expedition.”
Yen nodded grimly. “So I am betrayed by the emperor or more likely the priesthood. Possibly both.”
“I don’t understand.”
Yen sighed. “I’m not certain I do, either. Have you explained to anyone else about our destination? Does anyone else but myself know even generally where we are bound?”
“The Lady Qwen Shen knows as much as you do. No one knows more.”
“Then they must feel certain they can get the information from you. They don’t want to risk me because they can’t control me.”
Ghan realized that Yen no longer seemed as if he was in pain at all. He had risen, begun pacing furiously about the cabin, though he kept his voice low, raspy.
“I saw your wound,” Ghan said, articulating each word with great care.
“You are the greatest scholar I know,” Yen said. He stopped pacing, and Ghan could see that his face was nearly drained of color. “Probably the greatest scholar in Nhol. And so you must tell me what I am, Ghan.” He reached to his throat and unbraided the silly-looking scarf he always wore, let it drift to the deck. Ghan stared, frowning for an instant, before what he saw made itself understood. Yen turned slowly, to help him.
Another shudder touched his chest, just a light caress, but Ghan thought he knew now where the pain came from, what it threatened.
“L-let me think,” he gasped, stammering for the first time since his eleventh birthday, eyes fixed on the impossible scar.
“Take your time,” Yen said.
There was a rap at the door. Ghan, deep in furious thought, looked up at Yen. Yen placidly replaced the scarf on his horribly scarred neck and went to the door.
Their visitor was Bone Eel, dressed handsomely in blue turban and matching robe. Ghan caught the gleam of steel beneath the robe, however. Bone Eel had apparently been moved to don a cuirass, at least.
“Ah, there you both are,” he said, sounding delighted. “I only wanted to make certain you had both weathered our recent bit of trouble. Very exciting, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, indeed,” Yen answered.
“Master Yen, your clothes are wet.”
“True. Unfortunately, as I rushed to defend the barge, I stumbled and fell overboard.”
“No! That’s dreadful.”
“It was. Happily, one of the mooring lines hadn’t been tied up properly, and I managed to get hold of it. Otherwise, the boat might have left me behind with those barbarians.”
Bone Eel smiled happily. “There wouldn’t have been many to bother about, I assure you. We killed most of them, I’m happy to report, and the others will think long and hard about ever attacking an imperial vessel again.”
“That’s good to hear.”
�
�Master Ghan? All is well with you?”
Ghan tried to focus his thoughts on the lord’s demented patter. It was difficult. It was very much like sitting near a fantastically poisonous viper; the viper had struck, playfully, once, just to show him its speed, leaving him to wonder whether the viper would strike him, or Bone Eel—or not at all.
“Well enough,” Ghan tried to snap. “Though I would be better—far better—if I had never been included in this ridiculous mission.” His tension loosened, just a bit, as he warmed to playing himself. “I think your charter has been well satisfied. We have sailed to Wun and ‘points beyond,’ and I think it’s time we pointed the nose of this scow back down-River, to civilization.”
“Now, Master Ghan,” Bone Eel soothed. “One day up-River of Wun is hardly ‘points beyond.’ I think young Yen here would agree with that.”
“I do,” Yen confirmed.
“I never asked to be included on this trip, however,” Ghan acidly retorted. “If I had—”
“Master Ghan, I’ve heard this objection from you before, several times, and I say what I said then. It is the emperor’s wish that you chronicle this voyage, and so chronicle it you will. Now, I’m sorry for all of this unpleasantness, but the barge was never in any serious danger. We repelled all boarders and lost only seven men in doing so. Those are remarkably small losses, as I’m sure you know. Now, I must see to things, and knowing you are well, I do so without concerns for your health.” He made as if to leave and then stuck his head back in and said, “Try to be more cheerful, Master Ghan. It is good for digestion.” Then the noble left, closing the door behind him.
“Yes,” Yen repeated. “Try to be more cheerful.”