Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  Great Gods above, let this work. One did not pray to the Old Great Gods for little things. They were life and death, salvation and damnation. So was this.

  Great Gods, let me succeed.

  Great Gods, let me survive.

  Ivah closed her eyes and ran the thin braid, hard with many knots, between her fingers. She could feel the power in it that way, the faint sparking warmth of it. Each knot, square or twisted or spiralling, part of a larger pattern, corpse-hair and hair of the living incarnation woven together, words woven in, such power as she had never felt flow past her lips before.

  She opened her eyes. Shaiveh was watching, crouched with her back against the door, sword across her knees and her eyes gleaming in the light of the mutton-fat lamp. She said nothing.

  “I’m ready,” Ivah said hoarsely. Shai only nodded, reached out a hand. Ivah took it. They walked that way, hand in hand, along under the arcade beneath the gallery of the dark caravanserai. A brazier burned in one corner of the yard. The bells had rung curfew and most of the gang was gathered there now, Kapuzeh’s voice raised over the others, some song out of the desert, Tihmrose’s flute rising achingly sweet and plaintive over his deep voice. Ivah paused to trace symbols in the dust. Let them overlook the door in the gate opening and closing, let them overlook moving shadows at this end of the yard where the goddess slept.

  At least Holla-Sayan had gone off roaming while she was meeting the governor, and he still had not returned.

  Shadow stirred. Shaiveh hissed and pulled a knife from her belt, pushing Ivah away.

  “Hah, Bikkim, you startled me,” she chortled the next instant. “Everyone else is having a good time. What are you doing skulking down here?”

  “What are you?” he countered, rising to his feet, spear in hand.

  “Well, you know…” Shaiveh let her voice trail off suggestively, as if they had not had all the caravanserai’s many empty rooms to crawl into. Master Mooshka was not a popular man with Governor Ketsim, and caravans, except those led by bloody-minded masters and gang bosses, went to places more in favour, and suffering lower taxes and tolls, than Mooshka’s.

  “Pakdhala’s asleep. Go away, don’t wake her.”

  “Hey, are we being noisy? We’re not being noisy, are we, Ivah, love?”

  “No,” Ivah said, fingers working on a loop of yarn pulled from her pocket. Damn and damn and damn him again. She did not have strength to squander; she would need all she had.

  Bikkim’s eyes narrowed. “Wizard—” he said, and found himself mute. She should have bound his limbs, sent him into sleep, something more practical, but her father was right, she never saw the longer road. Bikkim’s face worked as if he were choking, mouthing empty words, and then he thrust the spear at her, jerking it up through the cat’s cradle, slicing the strands that bound his voice. She yelped, her palm cut, but the laughter at the distant brazier hid the sound and as he drew breath to shout and lowered the spearpoint to her breast, holding her off, nothing more, Shaiveh swooped in beside him and slashed his throat.

  She didn’t scream. The sound that escaped her was more a frantic kitten’s mewl, hardly louder than the rasping whistle of the Serakallashi’s throat, facedown on the brick floor.

  “That was near enough murder,” Shaiveh snarled, wiping her blade on her own trouser leg. “Devils take you, couldn’t you have made him sleep? If you can’t do better than that we should cut our own throats right now.”

  “Shut up. Shut up. Did you have to—”

  “Yes,” Shaiveh said bluntly, sheathing the knife and drawing her sword. “Now go, fetch your damned camel-girl, and let’s get out of here before the Blackdog comes.”

  Ivah swallowed and stepped carefully around Bikkim’s chest-heaving body. She tried not to look, but saw his fingers clenched and clawing, as if he would seize her ankle. She lifted the latch on the door, opened it just wide enough to slip into the deeper darkness.

  Ivah stood motionless, letting her eyes adjust. A hump—Pakdhala, buried under blankets. She took a cautious step, stopped when her foot came up against some bundle. Pakdhala usually slept with the Marakander twins; the room would be scattered with their gear and Immerose was not one to set anything straight, Shai called Immerose a sloven. Ivah didn’t dare cast a light; she felt her way cautiously, nearly on hands and knees, did kneel by the mat and heap of bedding. Great Gods be with her now, if ever. The braided hair-cord was alternately silk-smooth and horsehair-rough to her fingers. Corpse hair. She swallowed bile again. Wrist, neck—the girl was a lump. Searching fingers found hair and flinched away, returned, brushing over the girl’s cheek, cold and clammy with whatever illness plagued her. Her wrist—one hand tucked under the folded coat she was using as a pillow, the other beneath the blankets. Neck, then. She wore a scarf, enough cloth to be headscarf or veil, wrapped round and round, silk. No good, Ivah wanted the cord tight. She pulled at the scarf’s fold, loosening it, found an end, touched skin again.

  The girl mumbled and fumbled a hand out to swat at her, chasing away the tickling. Her breathing grew more rapid, rising towards waking. Ivah shoved a hand under her neck, dragged the cord around, and fastened it with the last knot, muttering the last words, Grasslander words and words her father had given her that were no language she could guess at, words that burned her throat, tasted of hot stone.

  Pakdhala, waking, punched her in the face.

  Ivah hissed, lurching back, blinded a moment with pain, face burning hot and suddenly wet, but it was done, the spell complete, and Pakdhala fell back to the mat, her breath now shallow and racing.

  “Cold hells…” Ivah whimpered, eyes tearing, sleeve pressed to her face. She could feel her face swelling, nose and lip. Broken nose? It hurt too much to touch. Probably not, but bad enough.

  “Ivah!” Shaiveh hissed.

  “Coming.” Her voice came out snuffling and stuffy. Blood ran down the back of her throat, blood pouring down her chin, and she used her own scarf to hold her nose. “Stupid…” But what did she expect of a caravaneer, that she’d squeak and ask silly questions while someone attacked her in her sleep?

  She fumbled for the girl’s hand, found it. Orders, her father had told her. Use simple orders, and she’ll be bound to obey. Use her true name.

  “Attalissa, can you hear me?”

  A faintly deeper breath.

  “Good. Now be silent. Get up. Come with me.”

  The girl, stumbling like a drunkard, like a doll on strings, obeyed.

  “Ivah!”

  Ivah led the goddess out.

  “The party’s breaking up,” Shaiveh whispered. She leaned close. “Is that blood?” The flash of a grin. “You’re a mess.” But her grin faded, staring at the girl. “It worked.”

  “Of course it worked.” Pakdhala’s eyes were dark, wide pools, staring horror-stricken, and her mouth hung open, panting like a hunted animal at its last gasp. She swayed on her feet.

  “Come.” Ivah led her around the Serakallashi’s body, heading straight towards the gate. She could feel the shape of the simple concealment she had set still potent. No one would notice, or noticing, remember the next moment.

  “That you, Bikkim? You and ‘Dhala aren’t getting up to anything old Holla’s going to disapprove of down here, are you? Or can I join you?”

  The Grasslander boy. “Shai!” Ivah snapped, and towed Pakdhala into a stumbling trot.

  Shaiveh didn’t follow. “Just me, Zavel,” she said. “C’mon, I picked up a flask of Marakander wine earlier today—want to see what it’s like, just you and me? You can’t say you haven’t thought of it. I’ve seen you look at me. Ivah’s gone off in a snit and I’m on my own for the night—”

  “Bikkim! Gods and devils—!”

  That did it. Ivah ran. No simple spell to make attention slide away was going to withstand that shock. The goddess fell. She hauled her up, heaved the bar off the door in the gate one-handed, dragged her through. Metal clashed and Zavel shouted, “Murder! Gaguush! Father! Bikkim!”
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  “Shai!” Ivah screamed, leaning back through the doorway.

  “Go! Little fool! And seal the damned gate, buy yourself some time!”

  She did, dropping the goddess in the street, scratching the signs on door and gate with the point of her knife, hands shaking. Someone within screamed, shrieked rage. Someone battered at the door that would not open. She threw up. Her nose was running, disgusting, her eyes weeping…milling horses, sharp, anxious voices, trying to take charge.

  “She rides with me!” Ivah snarled, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, and she struck in the face the warrior about to pick up Pakdhala. He backed away, blinking, said nothing, and held her stirrup for her. A rangy desert-bred stallion, they were all desert-breds for speed on the flat. Another heaved the goddess up before her, and the girl sagged back into Ivah’s embrace, slipped and slid.

  “Sit up,” Ivah ordered. “You can ride.” Deliberate, that flopping slide towards the ground, and should the girl have even that much control over mind and body? “Sit up. Hold on. Balance.”

  Pakdhala swayed. Maybe they should have tied her onto a mount of her own, but Ivah didn’t want her out of reach.

  “My lady?”

  “Ride.” She wheeled her horse, kicked it past its reluctance to run in the dark. Clear road ahead, emptied by the curfew. Two swept past her, as it should be, to meet any hazards of the road. One to either side, six behind. Not enough, if the Blackdog overtook them. Not enough. Her throat still burned with the alien words her father had given her. She might never be free of the taste of them, sour as old vomit. Two horses ran under empty saddles.

  There was some sort of commotion in the street before Mooshka’s gate. ‘Dhala? Holla-Sayan pushed the dog away and staggered a step till he found his feet.

  Nothing. She had walled herself off so completely he couldn’t touch her. The crowd…there was a curfew in Serakallash and no one should be on the street, but half the gang was there, and Master Mooshka himself, and folk of his household, with torches. Two men going at the gate with adzes, chopping away the surface of the wood.

  The ghost-horse skipped and sidled and a sword whispered, the devil-wizard drawing her Northron blade.

  “Put that away. These are my folk,” Holla-Sayan said, and strode ahead.

  “That’s done it,” the dog’s ears heard, Mooshka’s voice, and the gate was dragged open from within, horses surging out. Sayan, what was happening? Django and Asmin-Luya at the gallop, all but trampling the others, and on Mooshka’s prized white mares, no less. They disappeared up the street.

  Someone caught sight of him then, and the looming darkness behind him, and shouted warning. Edges glinted and he remembered they were blind. “It’s me—Gaguush, it’s Holla-Sayan. Where’s Pakdhala?”

  “Holla.” She seized him close, there before them all. “Bashra help me, Holla-Sayan, get inside. In—in!” They all herded in, were-bear and devil and ghost-horse and all, Gaguush still clutching him.

  “Where’s Pakdhala?” He’d never heard Gaguush so close to breaking. Pakdhala! He hammered at her barriers, the dog rising frantic, suddenly fearful. The caravanserai reeked of blood. It wasn’t

  Pakdhala walling him out at all, not now. She was herself walled away, trapped…“Where’s—”

  “Gone,” said Thekla, Thekla in tears. “Taken, and Bikkim—” “Bikkim’s dying,” said Zavel, and his voice cracked. He was bleeding, his shirt sodden. “Gods, Holla, the Nabbani girl took her and killed Bikkim.”

  He won’t harm her, Blackdog. Hear me—he thinks he needs the stars for what he plans. Eight days yet.

  Moth’s words barely touched him. The dog swept him away, drowned him, and tore into the world.

  Don’t get yourself killed for nothing. Resist her, damn you, and you might be able to save her and yourself both, you hear?

  Someone screamed, but he was already gone, claws gouging plaster from the top of the wall, over and gone, finding her scent lingering in the air, the Nabbani woman’s, other men and women, horses. He went straight where Django and Asmin-Luya had veered away down an ally, avoiding what lay ahead: bonfires lit where the street broadened out into the market square. There were archers beyond, waiting for him in the darkness. He smelt them, saw them long before they saw anything despite their fires. The dog ploughed into them and left them broken behind.

  “I knew it,” Gaguush said. “I knew when he brought her down that damned brat was too old to be his. He was never right after he came back that time.” She folded her arms close about herself. “He went up there and that damned thing took him over.” And she had been looking right at him when—when he wasn’t Holla-Sayan at all, his eyes gone cold and remote, some yellow-green light burning behind them, a thing for poetry, not something to see in a face you knew. He hadn’t seen any of them, and he hadn’t cared. Bikkim lay dying, a man like a brother to him, and he hadn’t even heard, had he? And how often, how many nights, had he not been there, when she’d thought she had him fast in her arms, when he went so remote and withdrawn. Some other thing riding his mind, and that, that was what lay beside her.

  “What the hell was that?” Tihmrose demanded, squeaking like a child. “What…did that…Holla-Sayan—”

  Master Mooshka puffed out his horse-tattooed cheeks. “That was the Blackdog. The Blackdog of Lissavakail. Here. Him. Attalissa’s guardian. Your Holla-Sayan. Jerusha!” he suddenly shouted, turning away from the stunned silence. “Jerusha!” He retreated across the yard at an ungainly run, and a door slammed behind him. His folk, muttering and jabbering among themselves, followed.

  “Holla’s a demon?”

  Gaguush was going to kill someone. She wasn’t sure who yet. The next damn fool to get in her way.

  “Who in the cold hells are you?” she snarled at the pair that had pushed in along with the rest of them once they got the bastard Nabbani’s spells cut out of Mooshka’s gate. Northrons from some other gang, or the Lake-Lord’s mercenaries? She pulled the dagger from her belt. Should have had the sense to grab a spear when Zavel started hollering.

  Ugly lumbering ox of a horse, too.

  “Django—” but he and Asmin-Luya were the best horsemen, other than Bikkim and herself, sent in pursuit. “Kapuzeh.”

  He nodded, lowered his spear towards the horse, fastest way to overwhelm them if need be.

  “Enemies of Tamghat,” said the man, putting a hand on the mounted woman’s arm. She sheathed the naked sword she carried, shrugging off the threat to the stallion, which grumbled and fidgeted while she looked around, ignoring them all.

  Too much like Holla, that. Oblivious and chasing information no one else could see. Bloody arrogant.

  “You’re Gaguush of the Black Desert, the caravan-mistress? I’m Mikki. The wizard is Moth.”

  “Get out. We’ve had enough of hell-damned wizards.”

  Moth looked full at her, just the edge of a smile. “You need one. Your man isn’t dead yet.” She swung down, tossed the reins to Varro, who caught them, caught Gaguush’s eye, and shrugged. The man Mikki, who was seven feet if he was an inch and pallid as a fish-belly, was suddenly between the woman and Kapuzeh, the great axe still balanced on his shoulder.

  “They were in At-Landi, boss,” Varro volunteered. “Er, Mikki here was, anyhow. A storyteller at my cousin’s wedding. Mikki Sammison, he said, from…you didn’t say where from.”

  Trust the bloody Northrons to care. Gaguush pushed around them. Summoned Kapuzeh to follow, pursuing the woman who went like some pale slinking wolf towards the arcade where Bikkim lay dying, while the useless fools all stood around yelping.

  “Born in the heart of Hardenwald.”

  “I knew you couldn’t be Northron, despite your tongue, not with black eyes,” Varro said, with evident satisfaction, some theory proved. Wherever the hell Hardenwald was.

  “But I am. My father was of the Geirlingas, from Selarskerry. You’re from the Hravningas, you said. Varro Oernson. The mountains, though, not Ulvsness?” And they would keep at it
, being Northron, until they’d worked out they were cousins at twenty-one removes.

  They did, switching languages to the grumbling, choking, mouth-full-of-pebbles sound you heard among the ship-folk in At-Landi.

  But then Varro caught up to Gaguush, took her arm, pulled her back, the job of horse-holder abandoned and Mikki being interrogated, none too friendly, by Tihmrose about why he and a so-called wizard showed up right in the midst of this night of horrors, if they weren’t stirring it on.

  “Boss,” he whispered, “just wait. Um, something you should know.”

  “Not now.”

  “It’s not a common name, Mikki, but you do hear it.”

  “So?”

  “But, but Moth, he called her. That’s not a name at all.”

  “I should care?”

  “It means, um, ‘inguz.’” He used the desert word. “You know, little drab butterfly, flies around at night.”

  “A moth, so what?”

  “Flies into flames,” the wizard, if she was that, said back over her shoulder. Damn good hearing. Eavesdropping, too.

  Varro’s fingers bit her arm and Gaguush jerked away from him. He leaned closer regardless. His moustache tickled her ear, and he’d been drinking too much. They all had, come to Serakallash in one piece and safe as you could be there, behind Mooshka’s walls.

  “But listen, you think Mikki looks human, even?” His voice lowered to a breath. “And they say—they say Vartu Kingsbane came back—Vartu Kingsbane, you know, who killed Hravnmod the Wise, and killed her own daughter, too—they say she escaped her grave and came back and murdered the queen’s lover in Ulvsness itself, oh, six score years since, and the name she wore then was Moedthra. Moth. And she travelled with a demon bear. And Mikki says his father was from Selarskerry, and nobody lives on Selarskerry, the folk of Selarskerry were pirates back so long as history remembers, and godless, and the earls of the Geirlingas cleared the last of them out long ago, a hundred years since. It’s just a rock where folk go to hunt seal now.”