by K. J. Parker
“It probably won’t be me on the return trip …” Cannanus tried to tell him, but he’d started walking again. Meeting over.
The horse they’d given him was beautiful, a Vadani mountain thoroughbred, intended to make him feel guilty and in their debt. He felt the guilt in spite of himself, but not the gratitude; it’d be impounded by the messengers’ office as soon as he got back and given to some colonel in the mercenary cavalry. Just as well; it wouldn’t be right to keep something the enemy had given him.
The fine, handsome, morally questionable thoroughbred cast a shoe almost as soon as he crossed the Eremian border, a few miles after his Vadani escort had turned back and left him on his own. That, he couldn’t help thinking, was probably a judgment on him for his ingratitude, or else for being tempted to keep the horse. It gave him a certain amount to think about as he walked, leading the gift-horse by its reins, along the dusty, stony track that passed for the main road to Civitas Eremiae.
Other concerns, too; less high-minded and abstruse, rather more immediate. One of them was the fact that he’d forgotten to fill his water bottle back at Valens’ palace; rather, he’d assumed that one of the Duke’s countless servants would have done it for him while he was busy with the meeting. Another was the emptiness of his ration sack: the scrag end of a Mezentine munitions loaf, turned stale by the dry mountain air, a bit of cheese-rind and a single small onion.
He could, of course, ride the horse; but that would lame it, maybe cripple it for good on these horrible stony roads, and it was such a very fine horse, with its small, graceful head, arched neck and slim, brittle legs … Walking it lame would be as bad as damaging government property, for which he was personally responsible. That, he reckoned, was the Vadani for you: they bred exquisite horses, but their farriers couldn’t nail a shoe on properly.
As if on purpose, the track started to climb steeply. Being a highly trained courier, Cannanus wasn’t used to walking, and it wasn’t long before he felt an ominous tightness in the back of his calves. He tried to picture in his mind the maps of the Eremian border country that he’d glanced at before he started out. The big stony thing he was struggling up was tall enough to count as a mountain, worth marking on a map and giving a name to; but there were so many mountains in Eremia that that was no great help. He gave up and started looking about him, but all he could see on the plain below was empty, patchy green blemished here and there with outcrops and bogs. Not a comfortable environment for a city boy at the best of times.
The thought that he could die out there, stupidly, through carelessness, took a while to form in his mind, but once he’d acknowledged it, he found it hard to silence. People died, lost in the mountains (but he wasn’t lost, he was on the main road), particularly if they had no water and only a few crumbs of food (but Eremia was Mezentine territory now; there’d be patrols, hunting down the resistance or keeping out insurgents). He remembered passing an inn at some point. He’d only caught a glimpse of it as he galloped past (he’d been making up time after being held up crossing some river — a whole river full of water, unimaginable excess). He could remember the name from the map — the Unswerving Loyalty at Sharra Top — but he couldn’t place it in this disorganized mess of landscape; could be an hour away, or a day’s march on foot. Nothing for it; he was going to have to ride the stupid horse. After all, deliberately allowing a courier of the Republic to die of thirst in the desert was surely a worse crime against the state than crippling some overbred animal. Reluctantly, almost trembling with guilt, he ran down the stirrup, put his foot in it and lifted himself into the saddle.
The horse reared.
High-strung, temperamental thoroughbred, he thought, as his nose hit the horse’s neck and his balance shifted just too far. He hung in the air for a moment, realizing objectively that he wasn’t going to be able to sit this one out, and watched the sky as he fell.
Not as bad, actually, as some of the falls he’d had in the past; he’d been expecting worse, he told himself, as the pain subsided enough to allow his mind to clear. He opened his eyes, tried to move, found out that everything still worked. Stupid bloody horse, he thought, and dragged himself up, feeling the inevitable embarrassment of the seasoned rider decked by a mere animal; won’t let it get away with that, or it’ll think it’s the boss. He looked round for it. Not there.
The rush of panic blotted out thought for a moment. He recovered, hobbled a little way to a tall rock, scrambled up and looked round. There was the horse; off the track, heading down the steep, rocky slope at a determined canter, obviously unaware of the desperate risk to its fragile, expensive legs. Served it right if it broke them all.
It took at least two heartbeats before he realized that it had gone too far — just too far, but enough — for him to have any hope of catching it, unless it stopped of its own accord, to rest or graze (graze? Graze on what?). No horse, no transport; and, needless to say, his few crumbs of food were in the ration sack, just behind the saddle roll.
Fear came next. He felt its onset, recognized it from a distance, as it were; but when it overtook him, there was nothing he could do about it. He was going to die; he was going to die very slowly, his throat and mouth completely dried out, like beans hung in the sun; it was all his own fault that he was going to die so unpleasantly, and there was no hope at all. He felt his knees weaken, his stomach tighten, his bladder twitch, he was shaking and sobbing. For crying out loud, he tried to tell himself, this is ridiculous; you haven’t broken a leg, you’re fit and healthy and it can’t be far to that inn, but the forced hopes turned like arrows on proof armor. He dropped to the ground in a huddle, and shook all over like a fever case.
Fear came and went, taking most of him with it. He stood up; he was talking to himself, either out loud or in his head, he couldn’t tell. You’re not thinking straight, he said, you’re going to pieces, that’s not going to help; and you’re missing something really important.
That stopped him. He looked round, like a man who’s just realized he’s dropped his keys somewhere. Something important that he’d seen just a few moments ago, before the fear set in and wiped his mind. Something …
It came back to him, and he thought, idiot. It had been there all the time, he’d probably been looking straight at it while he was crouching there quivering and blubbing. It had been a silvery flash; sunlight on the surface of a bog-pool, down below in the valley.
Some of his intelligence was starting to creep back. He looked for patches of darker, lusher green, and soon enough he caught sight of that flash again. He tried to gauge the distance — hard in such open country, but no more than two miles away, probably less, and all downhill. Now he thought about it, the horse had gone that way; there was a chance he’d find it again, drinking peacefully. Two miles downhill; he could do that, and then he’d have water. Not water to spare — the water bottle was with the ration sack, on the saddle of the stupid fucking horse — but enough to keep him alive, give him a chance to calm down and get a grip. He heard someone laugh, high, braying, almost hysterical; it took him a moment to realize he was listening to himself, but now he thought about it, he could see the joke.
To begin with he tried to hurry, but a couple of trips and sprawls made it clear that haste could kill him, if he fell awkwardly and twisted something. He’d been careless twice already that day. He slackened his pace to an amble, as though he was strolling home from work. All the way, he kept his eye fixed on the spot where he’d seen the silver flash, just in case it turned sneaky on him and crept away.
When he got there … It wasn’t beautiful, even to a man who’d killed himself with anticipated thirst only an hour earlier. It was a brown hole surrounded by black peaty mud, sprinkled with white stones and fringed with clumps of coarse green reeds, a very few clumps of dry heather, here and there a tuft of bog-cotton. He slowed down as he approached it; wading into the mud and getting stuck would be careless too, and he was through with carelessness for good. From now on, every action he commi
tted himself to would be exquisitely designed, planned and executed with all proper Mezentine precision, a work of art and craft that anybody would be proud to acknowledge.
In accordance with this resolution, he crept forward, taking care to test the ground with his heel before committing his weight. It soon struck him that he was wasting his time; the mud was slimy and stank, but the most his boot sank in it was an inch or so. He quickened his pace; he could see the water now, and smell it too. Nothing to be afraid of …
He stopped. In front of him, unmistakable as a Guild hallmark, was the print of a horse’s hoof. He frowned. So the horse had been this way — the print was fresh, he could tell by the sharpness of the indentation’s edge, the deeper pits left by the nail-heads. Maybe it was still somewhere close, in which case at least some of his troubles could well be over. He swung his head, looking round, and saw another print, identical, and then another, at just the right interval. He’d found the wretched animal’s tracks, so he could follow it until he caught up with it, and …
The fourth print he found was of an unshod hoof. Definitely his horse, then.
He hurried along the trail of prints. As he’d anticipated, it was heading straight for the water. Logical: horses get thirsty too. He wondered how much of a head start it’d have on him by now. Not too much, he hoped. The miserable creature would just be ambling along, grazing as it went, in no particular hurry. And it shouldn’t be too hard to spot in this open, flat country.
He stopped. He’d reached the edge of the pond, a black beach of glittering mud, with two hoofprints in it; the water beyond, like a silver inlay in rusted steel. For a moment he forgot about the horse. It was only when he thought, And now I’ll be able to fill my water bottle, too, that it occurred to him to wonder where the horse had gone from there. No hoofprints leading back the other way, after all. It looked for all the world as though the stupid animal had swum out into the middle of the pond …
Horses do swim, of course; but not unless they’re made to. The horse had come this way, arrived here, but not gone back. There was no sign of it to be seen anywhere. Therefore, it had to be here still, somewhere.
Fear again. Not something he wanted to go through a second time in one day, but it swooped and caught him up before he could ward it off with deliberate thought. As he struggled to breathe, he shouted at himself, It’s all right, all you’ve got to do is go back exactly the way you came, you know that’s all firm footing. The very thought made him lose his balance. He staggered, as though drunk, and when his misplaced foot touched down there was nothing under it to take its weight, nothing at all, like standing in slow, thick water. He jerked his foot back, felt something sucking on his boot, but the seal broke and he wobbled helplessly on one foot, a ludicrous object, hanging in the balance between life and death. For two long seconds he knew he had no control over his body or his destiny; it was all to be decided by subtle and accidental forces of leverage and balance. His foot touched down, sank a heart-stopping two inches, and found a firm place.
At least it explained what had become of the horse. He sucked in air, although his lungs felt sealed; the battering of his heart shook him, as though someone behind him was nudging him repeatedly in the back. The insides of both his legs were wet and warm, and he spared a little attention for the momentary feeling of revulsion.
Well, he thought. I can’t move. Under no circumstances am I going to move my feet, ever again.
As if they’d heard him and wanted to tease him, his knees had gone weak, to the point where they were endangering his balance. He knew what he had to do. Very slowly, keeping his back perfectly straight, he folded himself at the waist, bent his knees and squatted, stretching out his left hand as far as it could be forced to go so as to test the mud directly in front of him with his fingertips. Only when he was absolutely sure of it did he finally drop forward and kneel. That, he reckoned, was about the best he’d be able to do.
He looked up. There was the water, a thousand million gallons or so, but impossible to reach under any circumstances. He knelt and stared at it, almost as though he believed he might be able to train it to come when he whistled; but it didn’t move, not even a ripple or a spread of circles where a water-fly had landed on its face. He laughed, a sound like his mind grating as its gears slipped their train. He was out of the mud, but he was completely and irrecoverably stuck. Big difference.
A certain amount of time passed. Mezentine precision could calibrate a scale to measure most things, but not time spent in terror, despair and that particular sort of shame. Once or twice he almost managed to nerve himself to move, only to fail when he made the actual attempt. He noticed that the water had a strange, colored sheen to it, and that one of the stones near his hand was crusted with yellow crystals. He thought: I shall spend the rest of my life here, and nobody will ever know what became of me. Maybe the horse had the right idea, after all. What would it feel like, drowning in mud? You’d try and breathe in, but nothing would come, the reverse of holding your breath. There’d be panic and spasm, but surely not for very long. Does pain actually matter if you don’t survive it?
Something was different. He was aware of the change long before he realized what it was, probably because it was so mundane, among all the melodrama. Nothing but the light fading (and how long could he hope to survive once it was dark and he couldn’t see the danger?). He was tired, he realized, more tired than he’d ever felt in his life, now that the panic had turned to terrified resignation. No chance at all that he’d manage to stay awake. Sleep would come for him, quiet as a poacher; he’d slide or roll into the mud, and …
The water turned red as the sky thickened; sunset brought a sharp chill that finally gave him a legitimate reason to tremble. Mosquitoes were buzzing a lullaby all round him. In spite of everything, it was impossible to believe that when the sun came up again, he wouldn’t see it. He’d been in a battle, a tangled skirmish at the very end of the Eremian war; his horse had been shot under him and he’d ended up lying on the ground, trapped beneath its dead weight. All around him there’d been dying men, Mezentines and Eremians jumbled together, too damaged or too weak to move. He’d listened to them for three hours, shouting, screaming for help or yelling abuse, groaning, begging, sniveling, praying. He’d heard their voices fade one by one as the long wait came to an end. That he’d been able to understand; this — a healthy, strong man, uninjured, not yet starved or parched enough to be more than inconvenienced — was too arbitrary to be credible, because people don’t just die, for no reason. He fought sleep as it laid siege to him; at first ferociously, as the Eremians had fought the investment of their city; then desperately, a scampering withdrawal in bad order to inadequately fortified positions; then aimlessly, because there really wasn’t any point, but one has to do one’s best. On his knees, supporting his weight with hands flat on the ground and fingers splayed, he let his head wilt forward and closed his eyes, allowing the equity of redemption to drain away. No point in keeping his eyes open when it was dark and there was nothing to see. Could you drown in your sleep, without ever waking up? If so it was a mercy, and it would be churlish to …
He was dreaming, and in his dream a man was standing over him, prodding him spitefully with a stick. It was an unusually vivid dream, because the prods hurt almost as much as the real thing would have done, had he been awake. The man began to shout. He dreamed that he opened his eyes and saw thin, gray light, the sort you get just before dawn; he saw the man with the stick, and for some reason he was straw-haired and fishbelly-skinned. Curious, almost perverse. Why, in his last dream before death, should his mind have conjured up an Eremian?
“Fucking wake up,” the man yelled, and stabbed him with the stick, catching him on the edge of the collarbone. You can’t hurt like that and still be asleep.
He saw the man’s face. It was smooth, unlined, but horribly spoiled by a long, shiny pink scar. “If you don’t wake up now,” the man was bawling, “I’m bloody well leaving you here, all righ
t?” He raised the stick again for another jab. Instinctively, Cannanus began to flinch away, remembering just in time not to move.
“I’m awake, for crying out loud,” he gabbled; and as he said it, it occurred to him that there was a man, a fellow human being, there with him in the bog. “How did you get here?” he demanded. “It’s a bog, you’ll be eaten …”
The man looked startled, as though a friendly dog had snarled at him. “Oh,” he said, relaxing a little, “I see what you … It’s all right,” he said, “I know the path, so long as we stay on it we’ll be fine.” Something must have occurred to him; he asked, “How long have you been there?”
“All night,” Cannanus replied. “Can you get me out of this? Please? I’ll do anything …”
“Just keep still and don’t thrash about, or we’ll both be in trouble.” The man’s voice had something about it, unfamiliar yet acting directly on him, as though the words didn’t really matter. Authority, he supposed, but not the stern, brutal voice of a man giving orders. Rather, it was someone who naturally and reasonably expected to be obeyed when he told you what to do; it reminded him a lot of Duke Valens, but without the edge.
“It’s perfectly simple,” the man was saying. “We just go back the way I came. You can see my footprints, look. Easiest thing would be if you followed them exactly, put your feet on them. Oh, and don’t let me leave without my sack.”
For a moment, Cannanus didn’t recognize the word. “Sack?”
“Sack. Come on, you know what a sack is.”