by Clayton, Jo;
Gleia moved her shoulders, bit down hard on her lip. The Dancer had humiliated Hankir Kan too many times in the past, sometimes in front of his men. She remembered Deel’s shudder, her nervous laugh, and felt sick.
Pushing Deel along in front of him, he took two steps, turned and scowled at the Bowman. “Raver, keep your hands off. He’s mine and I want him delivered to me in good shape.” He glanced at the clouds, then fixed a hard eye on the Bowman’s working face. When Raver nodded his grudging assent, he turned to the silent man. “Get him to the Roost fast as you can. I can’t give you more men, most of them’ve been called to the Fair, you know that. That means there’ll be plenty mounts for you, anyone give you bother on that, let me know. Six days and I expect you. No more. Me, I’m taking the boat. Turp.…” He jabbed a forefinger at the scattered pile of pots and cooking things by the embers of the dead fire. “Get those onboard and don’t take no year doing it.”
Deel jerked loose from the light hold he was keeping on one arm. She smiled calmly enough at Gleia though horror lurked in her eyes. “Been fun,” she said, then she turned and began walking with quiet dignity toward the boat. Chuckling, obviously pleased with the Dancer’s show of spirit, Kan followed her. At the horan he turned again. “Don’t lose him, Gab. I’ll have your hide for a rug if you do.”
Gleia shifted cautiously, trying to find a more comfortable way of sitting the saddle; her cafta was hiked past her knees and provided no protection for the tender skin on the inside of her thighs while the horse’s barrel seemed to grow wider with each jolting step. Being city-bred, she knew little about horses and less about riding; she felt horribly precarious perched this high off the ground. It seemed to her she was continually on the verge of leaning too far back or bumping her nose on the cropped mane or sliding to one side or the other in danger of tumbling off. Gabbler had tied her hands in front of her when he found she couldn’t ride; she clutched desperately at the saddle, her fingers cramping as she used her hands to compensate for her deficiencies in balance. She was terrified of falling—yet, with all this, she was almost grateful to the beast since fighting to stay on his back kept her too busy to fuss much about what was happening to Deel.
The cliff at the Mouth of the Chute loomed in front of them, a granite wall grooved with deep vertical wrinkles. A narrow trail crawled up the face, pleated in repeated switchbacks. The rain now hammering against the stone collected on that trail and cascaded from pleat to pleat. Not something Gleia felt she could reasonably be expected to ride up.
When her mount stopped moving, she sighed with relief, tried to ease herself a little by standing in the stirrups. This started the horse sidling and tossing his head so she lowered herself before she fell off, wincing as chafed flesh burned as soon as it touched the saddle’s rain-soacked leather.
The two Hands were muttering together. The Bowman shrugged, turned and shouted an order that the gusting wind and rain shredded until Gleia heard only the last word. Down. She watched with weary admiration as Shounach, his hands still tied behind him, leaned back, balanced, swung one long leg up and over, balanced again as he sat sideways on the horse, then slid off. He landed on his toes, swayed, straightened, his face impassive. Gleia refused to move.
Scowling, the Bowman cantered back to her; he jerked her hands from their grip on the saddle and pulled her off the horse, wrenching her shoulder, almost throwing it out. When he let go of her arm, she went heavily to her knees. Behind her she heard the creak of leather, the splat of feet in the mud, gasped as the Bowman grabbed her and slashed the ropes from her wrists, hauled her to her feet and shoved her toward Shounach who was already free, rubbing at his wrists, his face carefully blank. At a gesture from Gabbler, she followed Shounach up the track, her feet slipping in the icy water racing down it. The horses were left tethered to trees; apparently the tower was close enough for someone to come later and reclaim the beasts.
Raver Bowman walked behind her, almost stepping on her heels, touching her repeatedly, grossly, laughing at her shudders, adding to the nightmare of the climb. Heights bothered her but this was the worst she’d had to face. In the howling darkness of the stormy night the path seemed hardly wider than her feet, though she knew the horses would come up it later. Before she was halfway up the cliff, her legs started shaking and her head swimming so badly at times that she had to stop, and when she stopped, she had to endure more handling from Raver until she could collect herself enough to go on. Finally, Shounach drew her up beside him. By the time they reached the top of the track, he was nearly carrying her.
When a last flicker of lightning broke the heavy blackness of the night and the rain, she saw forest blocking the view to the south, a forest that stretched from horizon to horizon. To the north, on the far side of the river, the cliffs were lower; she could just catch a glimpse of treetops when the lightning walked. Ahead, a little way off, a squat cylinder stood, a few hazy, nondescript out-buildings near its base. Shounach slid his arm under hers, bent suddenly, swept her feet from the ground and started walking toward the tower.
Deel sat in the hot dark cabin, her back against the wall, the broken locker’s latch poking into her. Even when that small annoyance turned painful she didn’t move—it kept her from dwelling on what was waiting for her and from sinking back into the numbing horror that robbed her of the will to resist. She moved her shoulders, curled her fingers; both ached from the forced backward pull and the bite of the cords around her wrists. When her nose started itching, she tried rubbing it against her shoulder, then drew up her legs and scrubbed her nose across the cloth stretched tight over her knees. For the moment eased, she sat with her head resting on her knees. Ay-Madar I’m in a spot. She swallowed, swallowed again, trying to control the nausea that cramped her stomach and soured her mouth. If he touches me.…
Kan slammed the door back and ducked inside, bringing with him a gust of wind and rain. Deel straightened. He forced the door shut and lit a small lantern, hung it on a wall hook and turned to contemplate her. Hysterical laughter rose in Deel’s throat; he seemed ridiculous to her as he came at her on his knees, the cabin roof low over his dripping oily hair, his right hand slipping along the sidewall to help him balance against the leap and fall of the boat, a five-tailed scourge in his left, the metal bits knotted into the tails clattering and skittering along the floor. Ridiculous—yet the serpentine swaying of his body was oddly mesmerizing. She stared at him, the urge to giggle gone as bile rose in her throat.
He settled onto his heels, smiled at her, mild and unhurried and almost detached. Tucking the scourge handle under the hem of her cafta, he eased it upward, his face set in that slight smile, his eyes flicking from her legs to her face to her legs again. He slid the cloth down her thighs until it lay in folds across her groin. Then he shifted the scourge to his right hand and cupped the left over her knee. “I promised you a boat ride, Dancer.” He rubbed his hand in slow circles for a moment then slid it down her thigh, his fingers hot, quivering a little. She heard his breathing quicken.
Her body jerked, then she was bending forward, heaving up the contents of her stomach, spewing the half-digested food over herself—and across the shelf of his belly, across the red hand stitched on his tabard.
He recoiled, cursed as his head slammed into the ceiling. In ominous silence he stripped the straps from the buckles and tore the fouled tabard over his head. He threw it away from him, caught up the scourge and brought it down on her head, her shoulders, whatever was available of her body.
She screamed as the metal bits cut through her cafta and into her flesh. Slipping and sliding she tried to get away from the awful pain, the bite of the cords, was driven back until she huddled in the corner between bunk and wall, alternating screams with whimpers, pleading with him in broken words until she forgot about words and simply screamed until her throat was too raw to scream any more.
With a grunt half of satisfaction, half of disgust, he dropped the scourge on the bunk. Deel heard a snapping then a so
ft slither then felt cold steel pressing against her cheek. She trembled, lay still, sure she was about to die, knowing she ought to do something, anything, did nothing but lie with her face pressed against the wood, caught in the sweet seduction of passivity. She heard a bark of laughter, then the cold moved from her face to her wrists. “You won’t do this again,” he said. His words came to her from a great distance. “Get this place cleaned up,” he said. He cut the cords binding her wrists. Her arms fell apart, across her back; her hands thumped lifelessly against the slimy floor. She didn’t move, even when she heard the brushing slide of his knees as he crossed the cabin, the slam of the door behind him.
The sweetish stench in her nostrils broke her apathy a little; she stirred, pushed around, sobbing as each movement sent pain burning through her. When she bent her wrists and tried to close her fingers into fists, the bite of returning circulation was almost more than she could bear. She moved somehow along the bunk until she was close to the door, sat awhile working her fingers, rubbing at her wrists until she could use her hands again. Slowly, carefully, she eased the bloodstained cafta free from the wounds on her legs, worked it under her buttocks and with great difficulty over her head. She dropped her arms with a sigh of relief and held the cafta crumpled in her lap a moment, then she let it fall away as she struggled onto her knees, briefly thankful that the front of her body was relatively untouched. She flattened one hand against the heavy planks of the door, rested her forehead beside it, fumbled at the latch with her other hand.
To her surprise the latch moved easily enough. In his certainty that he’d beat the fight out of her, he hadn’t bothered to secure the latch. Clean the place, he said. Clean the place. I’d like to … For a moment anger seared through her, then she slumped back into apathy. The wooden bucket was pressing against her thigh. She grasped the bail, slipped the latch and staggered outside.
The rain was coming down hard, the wind driving it almost horizontally, the drops pelting her like small stones. Indifferent to her nakedness and to the gaze of the two men in the stern, dragging the bucket beside her, she crawled across the deck to the place where the bucket usually rested in its spring clip, a small coil of rope cleated beside it.
When she reached the side of the boat a hand twisted in her hair, jerked her head back. She blinked rain from her eyes and stared blankly into Kan’s threatening face. She licked her lips, faltered. “You said clean.”
He held her a moment longer, then stepped back, scrubbing his hand across the soaked black cloth of his tunic where it stretched over the jut of his belly.
Taking his silence as permission to get on with what she was doing, Deel shook out the coils of rope. One end was knotted about the cleat, the other attached to a snaphook. She thumbed the hook open, snapped it over the bail, rested the bucket on the rail, holding it there with one hand while she pulled her aching body up beside it. When she was on her feet, she stood a moment gathering herself.
Kan came up behind her. “Don’t even think it.”
“What!” When he only smiled tightly at her, she shrugged, winced, turned back to the rail. Standing with her feet spaced to help her keep her balance, she began lowering the bucket to the black glide of water below.
For a moment the bucket bounced wildly, then the lip bit into the water and the current seized it. She cried out, whipped her hands hastily away as the rope hummed taut against the rail with enough force to tear off a finger or two. The boat slewed at the sudden grab of the current as the bucket acted like an anchor. She caught hold of the rail to steady herself, then was thrust aside with a curse at her stupidity as Kan grabbed hold of the rope and began pulling it in hand over hand, muscles working powerfully under the clinging black cloth of his tunic, his strength as awesome as the River’s.
Shaking with reawakened fear, fascinated by the play of muscle in back and arms, Deel stared at him for what seemed to her an eternity until she heard the bucket slam against the side of the boat. She moved to the rail and looked at the glassy surface of the water. Without thought of escape, without thought of dying, simply letting the River’s call take over, she tumbled over the side and fell into the black water.
She heard a roar of rage, broken shouts, then the water closed over her head. She was helpless against its power, paralyzed by the sudden, intense cold, surrendering without the least attempt to resist as it swept her along faster and faster—until her lungs began to burn and the realization seeped into her that she’d got away, she’d really got away from Kan and all he meant. The River had her, but water was no enemy to her, never something to be fought or mastered, but a capricious friend to be teased into doing what she wanted. Holding her arms tight against her body, straightening herself until she paralleled the current, she began kicking, using her strong dancer’s legs to drive her up until her head broke surface and she could breathe again. Still letting the River take her where it wished, she gulped air into her straining lungs, then continued kicking just enough to keep out of undertows and as near the center of the main channel as she could. After a little while she risked a glance back. The boat had swung around; sail furled, slowed by the opposition of the powerful storm wind blowing inland, it was coming after her.
For a moment she despaired, then she had no time for despair as she was swept into the long shallow plunge from the Chute. Arms wrapped around her head, legs drawn up, she was whirled along the crazy twisting current of the rapids, scraping again and again against scattered boulders, losing more skin to the stone, her tattered flesh bleeding into the water, sucking in as much water as air whenever she dared snatch a breath until at last the River left the Chute, spread wider and began its long series of serpentines.
On and on the eerie flight and pursuit continued while the storm began to abate and the rain to fall more gently. Deel grew aware that she had to try to ease herself free of the River or face rolling out to sea and making a meal for crabs; she tried a few slow kicks and was distressed by the leaden response of her legs; they were heavy, so heavy, worse than after a dozen days of dancing. She forced herself to kick harder, using the sweep of the current around an approaching curve to push her close to the bank.
As she struggled painfully shoreward, gaining a grudging few bodylengths, she saw torchlight as a red-gold glow coming toward her, but didn’t understand what she was seeing until she knocked into something hard, floundered a moment and was sucked under. When she fought her way up again, she was being dragged along wooden planks. She struck out blindly. One hand slapped against a thick hawser, a mooring line. She clutched desperately at it, managed to wrap her body around it and cling there, gasping in lungful after lungful of air, only air, no strangling water. A moment later she heard shouts and twisted her head around.
The boat came nosing past the curve, the two men dimly visible in the stern. Overhead, on the deck of the barge, she could hear men stirring, a few sleepy complaints, nervous questions. Hastily, hoping she hadn’t been seen, she lowered herself into the water and used the hawser to launch herself into the quieter eddies underneath the up-slanting rear of the barge. She kicked wearily to the bank and reached up, intending to pull herself from the water. Her hands clutched weakly at the capstones, slipped, caught again, but her arms had no strength left. She raised herself slightly then dropped back, her hands slipping, the gentler current dragging her slowly along the stone facing of the cut. She reached up once more, fumbled for a hold on the mossy stone.
Small, strong hands closed over her wrists. “Help me, Seren.” The words were a sibilant whisper, unmistakably female, as were the hands. Deel was weakly surprised, then relieved when this reached through her despair. Then other hands were on her arms and she was being pulled from the water.
“Sssah! Look at that.” Gentle fingers touched her back and she groaned, unable to bear any touch, no matter how gentle.
“Is she alive?” This was a soft contralto, little more than a whisper over the rustle of wind and the susurrus of the water, a crisp command in i
t nonetheless.
“Just, I think.”
“That’s a Hand-boat coming up on us.” A third voice, this one with an eerie hoarse quality, almost like a growl.
“Remember the compact. No men in our quarters, even Hands.” The murmuring contralto was calm, encouraging, sustaining. This one is the leader. Deel thought about opening her eyes and looking around, but she didn’t, she lay stretched out on the gritty stone feeling like a lump of dough, her brain like day-old mush. Over her she heard the rubbing of cloth against cloth, the grating of sandal-shod feet on the paving of the horseway. “Get her in the tent before someone on the barge comes over to see what we’re fussing about. Better if we can deny seeing her.” A pause, then she said, acid in her voice, “Don’t stand there like lumps. She’s going nowhere by herself.”
Hands closed around her body. More hands than could belong to the three voices. She started to moan but a small palm pressed down over her mouth. Other fingers brushed sodden hair off her ear. She felt cloth against her face, warm breath and the vibration of soft lips against the ear. “Be still.” The whisper was a thread of sound, she had to concentrate to catch the words. “You’ve endured much, hold on a little longer.”
They carried her into a large tent lit by a single lamp and laid her belly down on a thick warm rug, someone’s sleeping rug. Someone lifted her head and held a cup to her lips. Drinking was difficult with her neck so sharply bent, but she managed several mouthfuls of the thick sweet wine, sighing with pleasure as a soothing warmth spread through her chill, sore body. The one holding her took the cup away then eased Deel’s head on to her thigh. She bathed Deel’s swollen eyes and wiped them with a soft clean rag, smoothing away the mucous and clotted blood, then she eased Deel’s head around so the Dancer could see the other women in the tent. They clustered about the entrance, bent forward slightly, whispering now and then, listening intently to what was happening outside. They wore long loose robes of homespun cloth dyed blue and green, ocher and umber and a deep rich russet—and blue veils completely concealed their heads. Deel shifted her gaze; metal and leather armor piled along the tent wall confirmed her guess about the identity of her rescuers. “Trail women,” she croaked.