Purring Tiger at his side did likewise, slipping her arm through his as if she had already forgotten the Wizard's presence.
It worked.
“Uh, Lord, I, uh, wanted to thank you, uh, for being such a good friend to my daughter.”
Seeking Sword looked back over his shoulder.
“She, uh, told me once she felt more comfortable with, uh, you, Lord, than anyone else she, uh, had met.”
“Oh? She was very kind to have said that, Lord Mind,” he said over his shoulder. “Thank you for telling me.” The Bandit turned back around to face the man.
“That's because she could never see your death. Everyone else's she saw. Always knowing how her friends would die was difficult for her. Not easy to have friends, knowing so much, eh?”
“No, Lord, not easy at all,” Seeking Sword said, commiserating.
“She just couldn't forget that everyone dies. You and I, Lord, we have times when we know it. Most of the time that terrible fact isn't in our conscious thoughts. It always was in hers, Lord. The deaths of others as well as her own.”
The Bandit stepped alongside the man and eased him to a nearby cushion, then sat beside him.
Chapter 26
That morning he frightened me more than anyone or anything had ever scared me, before or since. His powers of prediction turned upside down all that I'd ever learned about prophecy and everything I knew about him. As though by himself he could upset the order that the Infinite had imposed upon the universe.—Personal Accounts of Events before the Fall, by Keeping Track.
The bandits of Howling Gale were primarily Westerners from that Empire's northern deserts. When the faction led by the large bandit failed in 9307 to gain control of the Western Empire, a bloody and merciless civil war resulted. Howling Gale and his allies expatriated themselves northward when it became apparent they had lost. Unlike his fellow expatriate Bucking Stag, whose crimes were financial in nature, Howling Gale took his political agenda to the empty northern lands. There he lived out his dream of racial segregation and enslavement of non-westerners.—The Political Geography, by Guarding Bear.
* * *
Purring Tiger watched the way Seeking Sword handled the disconsolate Wizard, Melding Mind. She marveled at her mate's patience and sympathy.
His behavior now was consistent with the shattered, vulnerable son the day he had learned of his father's death, and yet antithetic to the callous man he had been while she and he, newly mated, had walked toward the fortress. He's so confusing! she thought, remembering the two incidents. Only minutes apart, the episodes might have come out of two different peoples' lives.
* * *
In the minutes after telling Seeking Sword his father was dead, Purring Tiger held his arm with both of her hands. She strolled beside him patiently while his pain poured down his face, knowing she could do nothing except what she was doing, trusting him to ask if he needed anything else.
On this day of days, the Infinite had given and the Infinite had taken away.
In some ways, she felt grateful and humble that Lofty Lion had died. The losses of her father and her best friend had seemed, in her darker moments, like the end of her life. As she had worked her way slowly beyond their deaths, she found new joy in the things she still had. The fortress. Her animal. Her son. Her mate.
So instead of cursing the losses of her father, her friend and her freedom, she decided she could cry awhile but also be grateful and joyful for what remained and what she might gain from that. Melancholia upon her, she silently thanked the Infinite for silver linings, but also for clouds without which silver linings couldn't exist.
“You're crying too,” he said. “He wasn't your father.”
“No, but I did lose mine—as well as my best friend.”
He nodded and stopped on the road.
She stepped into his arms and held him to her and shared in his grief as he shared in hers. As darkness descended they stood there so still. Only their breathing and the drop of a tear revealed they weren't rock.
A half-hour after she told him his father was dead, she informed him what else had been on the psychic flow—the aneurism's rupturing again, Flying Arrow's being comatose, the Heir's throwing the Sorcerer off a battlement. When she finished the Bandit had said, “Incredible, these doings of the high and mighty.”
“I wonder why Flaming Arrow didn't gut the Sorcerer right then,” Purring Tiger said.
“He didn't want to get the floor bloody,” Seeking Sword replied.
She laughed uproariously, his heartlessness disturbing her. She saw some logic in what he said. With a medical emergency in the same room or perhaps next door, servants bustling in and out, guards everywhere, nobles gawking and sticking their noses into the Emperor's face to see if he'd died yet, a body and copious amounts of blood underfoot would be a hazard. “You're amusing,” she said, seeing his frown.
“Sometimes I'm not and I fail to see the humor in the order to kill Leaping Elk during a friendly duel on the day of our mating.”
The cold, imperative tone of his voice frightened and angered her. Infinite blast that idiot Telling Lie! she thought, having learned quickly that Seeking Sword had countermanded her order to kill Leaping Elk in the dueling rings. Telling Lie had been stupid to betray her, and he had paid for his stupidity. Raging River having dispatched the man shortly afterward, Telling Lie would tell no more lies. “You didn't hear what the Lord Elk told me!” she said, trying to sound hurt, trying to conceal her rage. She would lose great face if it became known that her betrothed had reversed her order without fear of reprisal.
“Hush, now, my love. Listen for a moment, eh? I've known Leaping Elk all my life. I respect him as I would a father, which he's been in all ways but fact. When he tells me something, I know he believes it. I've never known him to mislead me on purpose. Yes, I know, you confirmed that he uses the tiger to spy for his brother. A spy is a hostage is an ambassador. It's an established tool of statecraft. With Leaping Elk on our side, we have the nominal allegiance of the Emperor Snarling Jaguar. I'd like to keep it. So please rescind your order.”
“That bitch can't be my sister!” she said, pouting. “You're right about the Emperor Jaguar, though: Order rescinded.”
She mollified her mate then, remembering her father's infinite patience with those who crossed him—a patience that lasted only until the person was vulnerable.
* * *
Watching Seeking Sword coddle the wretched Wizard Melding Mind, Purring Tiger sighed deeply. She drew a lungful of morning air, the smells of the mountain top soothing and familiar to her. She didn't fully understand the Bandit's mercurial moods, and didn't expect to. She just wished he were more predictable.
Standing, Seeking Sword helped the pathetic man to the stairs, where a servant appeared. The Bandit nodded to the Wizard's obeisance and watched as the servant led Melding Mind down. His bronze hair scintillating in the morning sun, her mate returned to her side. “He'll live.”
She smiled, not surprised at his influence, but not comfortable with his methods. She preferred to threaten and intimidate. “I thought you might be able to help.”
Concern on the frequencies alerted her to an announcement.
Purring Tiger saw that he was examining her face. She knew what she looked like: As she had on the evening of their ceremony, as if listening to inner voices. “Strange they'd announce that,” she said.
“Let me guess: Aged Oak met with Flaming Arrow. They decided to wait before investing the Heir with the power to rule in his father's stead.”
“I thought you didn't have any talents!” she complained.
“I don't!” he protested, “I guessed!”
She glared at him, exasperated and doubting him for a moment. “All right, what else did I learn from the psychic flow?”
He shook his head and shrugged.
“For the time being, Aged Oak will perform all duties and offices for Flying Arrow, and—”
“Flaming Arrow has petitione
d that his father waive his remaining requirements, eh?”
“Infinite curse you!” She kicked his shin, feeling that he was playing her for the fool.
“Ouch! It's what I'd do! It's smart tactics. I swear by the Infinite I don't have any talents. I swear.”
“It's not what you'd do!” she replied. “The honorable Lord Sword would never refuse to take the last two heads!”
“I didn't say that Flaming Arrow won't take the last two heads. I only said that filing the petition is a good tactical move.”
“You mean he'll take their heads anyway?”
“Of course—I would! It's just a matter of when.”
Purring Tiger looked at him doubtfully. “When, Lord Seer, will that be?”
Seeking Sword pursed his lips, looking off northward. Then he laughed. “If Flaming Arrow's as wily as Guarding Bear, what he'll do is have his first assassination attempt coincide with Aged Oak's announcement.”
She laughed and hugged him, knowing that anyone possessing not a single trace of talent could never predict the actions of someone already invisible to prescient sight. Then she remembered his predictions of how Flaming Arrow would enter the fortress, and how accurate those predictions had been.
“You do have a talent for prediction,” she said, “even if that talent applies to only one person in all four Empires.”
He smiled. “I have been fairly accurate, haven't I?”
Rubbing his chest between the lapels of his robes, she leaned against him and looked northward, enjoying his presence. His arms closed around her, and in his embrace she felt safe.
Alarming news on the flow intruded across her shields.
Shafts of ice sank into her bowels. Her hands growing suddenly cold, she pulled them away and retreated a step, shock and disbelief in her eyes. “Oh, Lord Infinite, help us!” she said, a tremor in her voice. Feral terror contorted her face. “I don't believe it!”
“What is it?” He stepped toward her.
Purring Tiger stepped back again, fearing him, her eyes never leaving him, not knowing what to expect of him next. “Flaming Arrow assassinated Bucking Stag, just as you … how did you … how…” She stared at Seeking Sword, wondering what kind of monstrosity she had mated.
* * *
“Not … far … now,” Flaming Arrow panted, dragging the injured Probing Gaze toward the lines of battle with his right hand, his sword in his left. From his hip hung the head of Howling Gale.
Each step like a mile, each breath like fire, the Heir shook his head to clear the sweat from his eyes. His vision didn't improve. He was half-blind and nearly hallucinating from too much exertion and too little sleep. As he crept toward the lines of engagement, he could think of no other option than to yell, “Arrow!” He wasn't proud. Having taken his fifth and final head, he wanted out of the maelstrom.
Meager hovels downstream, opulent abodes upstream, the Gale Raider camp had looked more like a fortress within a fortress. Upstream had lived all the Westerners, while bandits of non-Western extraction had lived downstream. To get within striking distance of the bandit leader, the Heir had had to enter camp from that side, as if he were a lowly peasant—not the esteemed Bandit, Seeking Sword.
The impersonation had worked, though, and Flaming Arrow had taken the head. Unfortunately, Imperial Warriors encountered far more resistance than they had at the other three settlements. Bandits had isolated him and Probing Gaze from the attacking forces. By a miracle of the Infinite, both still survived but not without injury. Flaming Arrow was cross-hatched with a hundred tiny slashes, none serious. Probing Gaze, though, had lost his right leg just above the knee.
As Flaming Arrow grew more desperate, and the chances of escape more slim, ghosts began to dance at the edges of his vision. Recounting, Flaming Arrow realized he had gone four days without sleep, and that he had traveled well over a hundred fifty miles. His self-hypnosis had failed to work mostly because he had neglected to prepare, despite having the opportunity during travel. Also, he suspected that fear and anxiety for his father had hindered his ability to concentrate. Whatever the reason for the failure of his self-hypnosis, he was desperate now for oblivion and couldn't achieve it.
Blind, hallucinating, exhausted, the Heir called out his surname, dragging the unconscious sectathon and striking at every shadow he saw.
He seemed to struggle on for hours. He estimated he had taken Howling Gale's head about two hours after sunset. At first, the progression of time had been easy to gauge in the fighting. Now he couldn't have said if the sun would rise in ten minutes or ten hours. His sense of time misreported how much had passed, as his vision misreported what he saw. All he could do was continue to fight and continue to press on.
The screams of the dying and the clash of weapons and the din of battle had deafened his ears long before. No longer able to hear the sound of his voice, he guessed he was hoarse. Phlegm rattled like gravel in his throat. Not even sure he still screamed his surname, he made what he thought were the motions of speaking, and prayed to the Infinite that the sounds came out right.
Only when he stumbled face first into a cool stream did he realize he had no senses to perceive if he was safe.
Before he could regain his feet, gentle hands lifted him and placed him on a stretcher. Swiftly they carried him off.
“Probing Gaze?!” he tried to say. He received no response, not knowing whether his voice or his hearing obstructed communication. He tried and almost succeeded in rolling off the stretcher. The bearers felt the weight shift, dropped the stretcher to the ground, strapped him in and took off again. The bouncing and skewing were too much for his addled brain.
He lost consciousness.
* * *
Ringing and stinging roused him. His ears rang and his face stung. He peeled open an eye to see the face of Scratching Wolf, the General's hand poised for another strike. The thought passed through his mind that this man surely couldn't be his grandfather.
“Lord Gaze?” he asked. His ears reported, “Roar Gash.”
“He's all right, Lord Heir,” Scratching Wolf said. “How about you?”
“Face hurts,” he tried to say.
Scratching Wolf laughed. “I'll wager more than that hurts, Lord. Sorry about having to strike you. The medacors need to find the sectathon's leg. If they don't get it soon, they'll have to grow him a new one.”
“Lots of legs on battlefield.”
The General chuckled again, scratching his armpit. “Yes, Lord, but they can only reattach his. Any idea where it is?”
“Outside bandit command post, near rock with stalagmites on top.” His tongue complained at having to pronounce such difficult sounds.
“Thank you, Lord.” Scratching Wolf rubbed his temple and nodded toward someone beyond Flaming Arrow's range of vision.
“How's father?”
“No change, Lord Heir.”
Sad, the Heir closed his eyes briefly. “Our losses, Lord General?”
“Eh? You don't want to hear—”
“No! How many of ours are dead!”
“We lost twenty-five hundred, Lord.”
“Ouch! Just this camp?”
“Yes, Lord, thirty-five hundred in both attacks. Seven thousand Stag Raiders but only four thousand Gale Raiders got their final shafting. A pity so few, eh?”
“Tough people, these Westerners. Did I get the head?”
“Of course, Lord.”
“Wasn't sure, hallucinating those last hours.” Flaming Arrow closed his eyes and couldn't think of any other questions.
* * *
When he opened them the tent was brighter and Probing Gaze sat where Scratching Wolf had been. “Did I get the head?”
“Yes, Lord!” the sectathon said. “Number five!”
Flaming Arrow smiled. “Did it hurt, Lord Gaze, when they cooked it?”
The gaze of Probing Gaze probed the face of the Heir. “Are you still delirious?”
“Did it hurt, Lord Gaze, when they ate it?”
/>
“Cooked what? Ate what?”
“Your leg!”
The sectathon burst into laughter and wiggled the stump in the Heir's face.
When their laughter subsided, Flaming Arrow asked, “Medacor around?”
“She just left, Lord.”
He climbed out of bed. Dizziness struck him and sent him to a knee. He fought it off and climbed to his feet. Probing Gaze just watched with amusement, unable to assist him. “Sorry they didn't find your leg.”
Probing Gaze shrugged. “I'll have a new one grown.”
“Have you sent all the heads to Emparia Castle?”
“Yes, Lord Heir, as instructed. Why do you ask?”
“One last request, honorable assistant. Lay down on that bed, Lord Gaze, your back to the door.” Flaming Arrow lifted the blanket as the sectathon stretched out, and covered him completely, making sure no blond strands were visible. The Heir found his sword. “Stay there until I've had a fair chance to get away, my friend.”
“You're insane, Lord. Infinite be with you anyway.”
“And with you, Lord Gaze.” Lifting the rear skirt of the tent, he slipped out, then pulled his hood far forward. Taking his bearings, he headed southeast, toward Emparia City. He slipped past the sentries easily, knowing they watched for people approaching, not for those leaving.
Traveling parallel to the main path, he loped comfortably along, feeling a curious kind of freedom. By slipping out of camp, he had avoided needless ritual and ceremony. By fulfilling his requirements, he had completed his rite of passage into adulthood. Both were freeing.
His head still felt filled with muck. Ghosts threatened to dance at the edges of vision again. His strength hadn't fully returned and his legs wanted to turn to rubber. The sun hovered at mid-afternoon. He guessed he had slept twelve or so hours, but knew he really needed thirty six.
All of no consequence for this opportunity to be just a man.
The Heir (Fall of the Swords Book 3) Page 29