Luck Of The Wheels tkavq-4

by Megan Lindholm

  ‘Vandien. Listen. If you touch him right now, you’ll kill him. It won’t stop at a beating. You’ll kill him!’

  ‘That’s right.’ His voice indicated he would enjoy it.

  ‘I can’t let you.’ Her voice was even shakier, but truth rang in her words. Vandien pulled his eyes up to meet hers. She was drawing a line. No compromise. He’d have to hurt her to get her away from that door. She watched him think about it, and it hurt that he had to think about it, but she knew him well enough to understand it. ‘Please,’ she said, and she knew she was begging him, and that was another thing that had never been between them. It got through his anger.

  For a long time, all was still. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with heavy emotions. ‘Get rid of him.’

  The evenness of her tone surprised her. ‘I will. In Villena.’

  ‘Now. I can’t be around him, Ki. I can’t tolerate him anywhere near me. Get rid of him now, or I’ll kill him.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He stared at her, and she sensed how hard it was for him to hold back. She forced her words out quickly, trying to make him see.

  ‘If I toss him out here, there’s only one place for him to go. Tekum. And he’s hurt Willow enough already. I feel responsible for part of that hurt. I won’t be responsible for letting him back into her life.’

  She saw those words penetrating his anger, saw the barest hint of a nod, a concession. ‘I have to take him to Villena,’ she said quickly, and saw Vandien’s anger begin to rise again. ‘Because,’ she pushed on, ‘he’s not the sort of thing you leave running about on its own. Someone has to take charge of him. His uncle’s expecting him. So that’s where he goes. I can’t turn him loose on unsuspecting people in Rivercross, or just throw him out on the road to attach himself to travellers. You can see that, can’t you? Vandien?’

  He pulled back from her. He stood clear of the wagon, and in the gleam of the tiny fire his face held only a few planes of light. He seemed far away, and when he spoke, his voice was even more distant. ‘Keep him away from me.’ A pause. ‘I don’t want to see him, I don’t want to hear him. I don’t want to smell him. Or I’ll kill him, Ki. I’ll kill him.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ came Goat’s wild caterwauling from within the wagon. Ki saw Vandien’s eyes widen, and she pounded a fist angrily against the cuddy door.

  ‘Shut up!’ she commanded him. The boy was silent again. ‘I’ll keep him away from you, Vandien. But Ihave to take him to Villena and turn him over to his uncle. You understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘All I understand is that he made me kill a man worth ten of him. A hundred of him. Made me kill him unfairly, made his death too quick …’ He turned aside abruptly, shaking his head fiercely. He walked away quickly, almost running, and she lost his silhouette in the blackness.

  She hugged herself, held in her trembling. A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she suddenly felt how hard her heart was beating. But it was over, she told herself. For now. She took a great breath. ‘Open the door, Goat,’ she heard herself say. ‘He’s gone. Open the door, and listen to what I tell you, if you want to get to Villena alive.’

  He walked into the darkness, feeling the wagon dwindle behind him, losing the small light of the tiny fire. On across the dark prairie, feeling the sparse dry grasses whisper against his boots, like the whisper of drawn steel …

  ‘If I hadn’t been showing off,’ he said to the empty night. ‘If I hadn’t been pressing the boy, showing him how good I was. If I hadn’t been making death thrusts, and trusting his skill to parry them …’ His voice faded. But so had the boy been pressing him; had he dropped his own guard for even an instant, it would have been Kellich’s steel in his chest, in his eye, laying open his flesh. He tried the justification on. It didn’t fit. Instead he found himself thinking of how preferable that would have been. A quick death in a fair fight - yes, but what if, like Kellich, he had been pushed from behind? It would change everything; it had changed everything, he had seen it change everything in that fraction of a second before Kellich fell. Kellich had believed that he was in league with Goat. Dying, Kellich had taken a piece of Vandien’s honor with him. It was gone, never to be redeemed.

  He fingered the back of his forearm, tracing the line of Kellich’s rip. Absently he prodded it, searching for pain. There wasn’t any, at least not the sharp pain he had expected. It had closed already, a thick, ragged seam on his arm. The pain it gave him was only a deep aching, as if the bone of his arm were frozen. But maybe even that was just a reflection of the deep cold ache inside himself.

  Vandien sighed, but the heaviness didn’t lift from his chest. He stopped walking, forcing himself to face the decision. Was he going back to Ki’s wagon and the boy it sheltered? What if, instead, he kept on walking? He could, he knew that. He had faced the world on his own before, with less. In many ways, it would be the easier thing to do. If he turned around now and went back, it would be a commitment, of sorts. Not only to taking the boy on to Villena, alive, but to living with what he had lost. Living with what his rapier had done.

  He thought of watching his father oil that blade by firelight, never trusting it to a servant, but always doing it himself, sitting in the quiet of the very late evening on the warm bricks of the great hearth, polishing the blade, then lifting it and watching the light run up and down its length. Sometimes he would trust it to Vandien’s grip, kneel by his son and set it in the small boy’s hand and counsel him as to stance and posture until the boy’s shoulder and wrist ached despite his father’s supporting hands. ‘This blade,’ he had said to his son, more than once, ‘has never drawn blood in an unjust cause. That is its honor, and your honor, too.’ And he would trace for his son the ancient, stylized talons on the grip, worn almost beyond recognition, and the spread wings and pinions of the hawk that made up its guard … Vandien found himself fingering the back of his neck, touching the spread wings of the birthmark there. He jerked his hand away. ‘Yes. And he told me that as long as that blade remained in the family, our honor and line would never fail. Wrong on both counts, Papa.’ No heirs and no honor. And the fabled luck that was supposed to go with his birthmark seemed in remarkably short supply. Or perhaps it was as Ki had said, only luck, and no one had stipulated good or bad. He sighed again, but could not breathe out the heaviness that had filled his lungs ever since he had knelt over Kellich’s body and listened to Willow cursehim. Well.

  He stood a moment longer, listening to the night. He had never felt so alone. In his killing of Kellich, something else had been severed as well. A link to his past. A rapier. Such a minor thing, a blade, a weapon, a tool. He had never thought before how firmly it anchored him. He had carried it, he knew now, to remind himself that wherever his roving with Ki might take him, he was still his father’s son. Another might sit at the head of his table, his cousin might wear the necklace of his holdings and mind the borders of his lands. But while he carried his father’s sword, he had known he had still his father’s and mother’s names, and their honor.

  So he had thought.

  Slowly he turned and began to walk back to Ki’s wagon.

  TWELVE

  By late afternoon, Ki wasn’t sure if she was going mad or if everyone else was. Goat stayed in the wagon. She had convinced him that to let Vandien see him was to commit suicide. He had not doubted Vandien’s animosity; the difficult part had been convincing him that she not only could not, but would not, stop Vandien. The boy had been rabid in his anger. ‘I saw him in danger, and I tried to help him. I did help him! If it hadn’t been for me, Kellich would have tricked him into stopping the fight! And then he would have killed him!’

  ‘They were both ready to down swords, you idiot!’ Ki told him angrily. ‘Any fool could see that!’

  Goat’s eyes had gone very wide and far. ‘I know what I felt,’ he said distantly. ‘I felt it!’ His odd eyes suddenly flooded with tears. ‘And I didn’t want to see Vandien die!’ He threw himself onto the bed, hi
s face to the wall. Ki had left him, shaking her head. The boy was crazy. He had slept in the wagon, eaten in the wagon and now he rode in its rumbling belly. Ki neither saw nor heard him. That she was grateful for that almost shamed her. Almost.

  But if Goat was isolated, so was Ki. Ki drove. Vandien sat. He sat in a silence that was neither cold nor angry. He was indifferent to her, caught up in some inner debate of his own. Still. She had waited up for him last night. When he finally came back to the camp, she had been ready to listen to anything he might say. What she had not expected was his withdrawal from her. Her few efforts at conversation were not noticed by him. The food she prepared was eaten in silence. He slept beside her but apart, and his dreams had rocked and tossed him. She had tried to shake him awake, and when that failed to rouse him, she had wrapped her arms around his sweaty body and tried to calm him with her embrace. His arm, where Kellich had ripped it, was the only cool part of his body. She had sandwiched the arm between them, trying to warm it. He had quieted as she held him, but toward morning awakened her with a shudder and a shout. ‘Are you all right?’ she had asked, but he had only stared at her, his dark hair wild, his eyes shot with blood.

  She had stood his silence through the harnessing up, enduring it all morning. But now, for the fourteenth time, he sighed, a sigh that did nothing to relieve the tension she felt thrumming through him. She put her hand suddenly and firmly on top of his thigh, making him jump. ‘Talk to me,’ she urged him. He shuddered and rubbed his face. ‘About what?’ he asked thickly.

  ‘Anything.’

  She waited but the silence only grew. She cleared her voice determinedly. ‘I hung up your rapier. You should clean and oil it tonight.’

  He stared at her, his eyes growing darker.

  ‘Or do you want me to clean it for you?’ she pressed deliberately.

  ‘No.’ He struggled a moment. ‘I’ll clean it … soon.’

  ‘It was an accident. You didn’t mean to do it, and I’m tired of you moping about it.’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Ki.’

  ‘In the name of the Moon, why not? If he had fallen the other way, you would have missed, and you certainly wouldn’t be thinking now about your thrust that hit the wall. That the boy’s chest was there and unguarded was not your doing …’

  Vandien squeezed his eyes shut. ‘It was. Can’t you see it as I must? What was I doing? I was trying to kill Kellich, seeing how hard I could press him and still have him turn my steel aside.’ He cradled his injured arm against his chest, his fingers running up the ridge of the rip. ‘And why? To keep him from killing one of the most disgusting human beings I’ve encountered in my whole life. I killed him, Ki. And it’s changed the way I see myself.’

  Ki hissed in annoyance. ‘Vandien, don’t torment yourself this way. There was a terrible accident. It hasn’t changed you. Take it from someone who’s seen you through some rather strange times. You’re a good man. Nothing’s changed.’

  Silence consumed her words. Then, ‘Honor,’ he said. He let the word stand by itself.

  ‘Honor?’ Ki asked at last.

  ‘I’ve lost … honor.’

  ‘Vandien.’ Ki’s voice was pragmatic. ‘You intended no unfairness in that fight. What if he’d caught his foot on a loose nail and tripped? Isn’t it the same?’

  ‘No. This … feels different. Dishonest.’

  ‘Dishonest!’ Ki exclaimed. ‘Vandien, I’ve heard you tell enormous lies to people eager to believe them. I’ve seen you drive bargains so sharp they border on theft. And I seem to recall that your first attempt at horse theft was what brought us together …’ She couldn’t keep the amusement from her voice.

  His face didn’t echo it. ‘Equal weapons and the outcome determined by skill alone,’ Vandien muttered.

  ‘What?’ He cleared his throat. ‘ In an honorable fight, gentlemen employ equal weapons and the contest is determined by skill alone. No gentleman seeks nor uses an unfair advantage. No skilled swordsman needs one. ‘

  ‘Where did you learn that?’ Ki asked curiously.

  ‘An old fencing master beat it into me,’ he muttered.

  Ki snorted. ‘With those rules of conduct, it’s a wonder he lived to be old.’

  The look he gave her said he didn’t see any humor in her comment. She changed the subject. ‘Even with last night’s detour, we can’t be more than a couple of days from Rivercross,’ she offered. And then Villena and then …’

  Hoofbeats.

  She pushed the reins into his hands, scrabbled up to peer back over the wagon’s roof. Misfortune rode six black horses, and their scarlet hooves flashed in the sun.

  She dropped back down to the seat. ‘Road patrol. Six Brurjans.’ For the first time since the fight at the inn, she saw a flash of spirit in his eyes.

  ‘Can’t outrun them,’ he pointed out. ‘Play innocent or fight?’

  ‘Play innocent,’ Ki said slowly. ‘Then fight if we have to, Want your rapier?’

  ‘They wearing armor?’

  ‘Light stuff. Mostly leather … I didn’t take that good a look.’

  ‘Knives, then. If we look too ready for them, they’ll never believe we’re innocent.’

  ‘Right.’

  It was all a sham, a play of words to pretend it wasn’t hopeless, that if it came to fighting they’d have a chance. Ki took the reins back. Six Brurjans, armed, in light armor on battle-trained horses. If she took down one and Vandien took down one …

  ‘There’ll only be four left to kill us,’ Vandien pointed out.

  ‘I’ve been living with you too long,’ Ki mumbled. She kept her hands steady on the reins. The hoofbeats were close now, and then Sigurd snaked his head up and gave a sudden whinny. ‘Steady,’ Ki whispered, to herself as much as the team. She kept them to their walk.

  The Brurjans hit them like a wind full of dust, swirling around the wagon, making the greys go back on their haunches and bare their teeth. ‘Pull up!’ called one. His black coat was streaked with grey, his harness and his horse’s were red trimmed with silver. His battle teeth had grown so long he could no longer close his mouth over them. ‘Oh, shit,’ Vandien breathed. No Brurjan grew old being honorable. Ki stopped her team. She and Vandien sat silently regarding the ring of riders.

  ‘Kirilikin?’ The grizzled old Brurjan wasn’t addressing them. One of his men rode closer to peer at Vandien. He shrugged, a strangely human gesture of his massive brown shoulders under the brass-studded leather. ‘Probably him,’ he grunted. ‘He’s got the scar.’

  ‘Bring him.’ The grizzled one wheeled his mount. ‘Duke wants him killed in the village square.’

  Kirilikin leaned over to grip Vandien by the back of his collar, but he was already in motion. Vandien launched himself at the Brurjan, using the momentum of his whole body to punch his blade through the thinner, more flexible leather that shielded Kirilikin’s throat. A great gout of blood followed the knife as he withdrew it and Kirilikin groped at his throat in surprise. It had happened in less than a heartbeat.

  Ki slapped the reins on the greys, and the big horses surged toward, but not through, the equally large black horses that blocked their way. A black-pelted Brurjan leaned from his mount to seize the reins and got the back of his hairy arm laid open to the ridged bones by Ki’s short blade. He roared in anger, his crest rising, his maw gaping wide to expose his battle teeth, but drew back, disabled for the moment.

  That short instant was as close to victory as they came. Ki never knew how Vandien was thrown to the ground, but he was there before she was, for she landed atop him, then rolled onto her bad shoulder, awakening that old injury. She started to get up, but something whacked her across the small of her back, and she went flat on her face in the dust. She felt split open like a stepped-on crab. Pain was all she knew, her body screaming at her to be still, that she was dying. Vandien was seized, dragged to his feet. She heard a roar that ended in a shriek, then coarse gibing, and the short, terrible sound of flesh struck very hard. She l
ifted her head.

  Vandien had scored again, but paid for it. A Brurjan crouched in the road, her black-nailed hands over her belly. Red leaked between her short fingers and she was cursing, while two of her fellows sat their mounts, pointing at the entrails that bulged from the slash and laughing. Vandien lay face down in the road. Scarlet streamed from the back of his head and slid down the angle of his jaw. He didn’t move.

  Beyond him, a Brurjan had dismounted and was checking Kirilikin. He looked up from him, shrugged at their leader, and began methodically stripping the body. Someone else had already caught his horse.

  Ki let her head fall back onto her arms. Her legs didn’t belong to her anymore. She stared at Vandien’s body, lying in the sunny road, and the sight of it echoed through her soul. The Brurjan finished stripping Kirilikin’s body. He moved to Vandien’s, rolled him over with a boot. ‘It’s nearly dead.’

  ‘Damn!’ The grizzled leader turned in his saddle and struck suddenly at one of the men behind him. The blow left four trails of blood down the guard’s jowl. ‘That’s for being too quick with your demi. Duke’s orders are that duellers are to be killed in the square, not out on some road where no one sees it. Something like this makes us all look bad.’ The chastised soldier looked down at his pommel, his teeth slightly bared. The leader turned back to the Brurjan by Vandien. ‘Bring it anyway. It’s better than nothing.’

  The crouching Brurjan nodded, grabbed the front of Vandien’s shirt. Ki saw his bloodied features twitch slightly.

  ‘No!’ It was a prayer, not begging, but it drew the Brurjan leader’s eyes. His look was flat. He jabbed his demi at the soldier he had earlier rebuked.

  ‘Only the one that duelled needs to be publicly killed. Put her in the wagon and burn it. Then bring the team. They look old, but they’re well matched. We’ll get something for them.’ The soldier looked displeased. ‘But, Vashikii,’ he began to object, but the leader leaned over and jolted his demi into the soldier’s ribs. He bared his huge battle fangs and his spiked crest rose as he spoke.