Blackdog (42 page)

“His?”

“Does it matter? They're long dead.”

“No,” the ghost whispered, and she shivered, losing form, becoming a shadow in the grass, fear sapping her will to be there. “It doesn't matter. But Lady, if you were a mother, save my daughter, don't condemn her with her father. Set Ivah free of him. I beg you—I lay it on you, as you were a mother, as you loved your own children, save my daughter.”

Moth sketched runes in the air.
Journey
again, and the sign of the Old Great Gods. “
Go now
,” she ordered. Her eyes burned, and the air around her.

“Please…” The word faded. An-Chaq was gone, banished to begin her soul's last journey.

“Was that meant to be a binding on you?” Mikki asked, with mild interest.

“I think so. More fool she.”

“It was good of you not to hurt her.”

“Don't be sarcastic, cub. The point is, I didn't.”

“We could try to save the child, if chance allows.”

“I'm rather less inclined than I might have been. She should have stuck with begging.”

“But what about the daughter, this Ivah? Tell me you won't not try to save her, just to spite an imprudent ghost.”

Moth smiled, the narrow smile Mikki distrusted as much as he loved; Great Gods forgive him that he did love that vein of venom in her, too. She held up a hand, with the thin black threads of An-Chaq's hair still wound into a ring on the little finger.

“An-Chaq's and Ghatai's daughter should be easy to find. And her blood may be a hold on him, a way to see into Lissavakail better than creeping around its walls, in spirit or flesh. Particularly if he has possessed Attalissa.”

“You won't harm the girl.”

“If there's any other way.”

Mikki sighed. “No, Moth. That wasn't a suggestion.”

She looked back at him, setting a foot in the stirrup, and grinned, a glint of mischief that stirred his heart. His wolf, beautiful as a winter birch by moonlight.

“I know, cub.” She added, more seriously, “She'll hardly be a child after all this time, and she may not want saving. I won't risk anything for her. But if there's a way, I will give her a chance.”

There never were any promises. In the end, there was only Lakkariss, and the Old Great Gods’ own doom, however she had been brought to serve it. He nuzzled her calf, falling in beside Storm. She bent to scratch around his ear.

“Tonight, once I've done the star-charts, I'll find the daughter. Her memories of the past six years might be useful—I'll see what she's dreaming and what I can steer her dreams into telling us.”

Mikki sighed again and nipped at her hand. “Are you planning to take all night?”

Moth made her calculations of the movements of the stars and checked them again, and found they still had time. Not a great deal, but enough, now they knew where to find Tamghiz Ghatai.

She set out the runes along the edge of their fire.

Journey. Need. Sword
.

God. Water. Inheritance.

Water. God. Need.

And Vartu's soul said, not south across the deserts to the Pillars of the Sky and Lissavakail, not yet, but,
West.

Cold wind from an empty sky. The breath of fate. Maybe.

Or was she merely being diverted again? The dreaming mind of the daughter might tell her if Tamghiz had any concern in the west.

She sat, hands locked around the hilt of her sword—not Lakkariss but her own demon-forged Kepra, which she had carried from the drowned islands when she was only Ulfhild the king's sister, the King's Sword. She leaned her head against her knuckles, watching Mikki pretend to sleep.

Hunting the dreams of An-Chaq's daughter could wait another night.

The kings and the wizards believed their war with the devils was over, and that their sons and daughters could lead their folk in peace. But time weakens all bonds, and men and women and even wizards forget, and only we storytellers remember
.

P
akdhala woke out of a muddled dream, her mind blurry. Not a nightmare of Tamghat, this time. Bikkim was in it somewhere, grinning at her in the old, carefree way, as he had so rarely since Serakallash fell. In the dream, Bikkim was shirtless, which was distracting, and the waters of the Kinsai-av roared past, drowning out whatever it was she tried to say to him. She had been frustrated because she could not hear her own words, and then she realized she was wearing only a thin cotton shift, and it was soaking wet, clinging and nearly transparent, which was why Bikkim was grinning. The note of the river changed from roar to chortle as she woke.

Immerose and Tihmrose, sleeping one on either side of her, had not stirred, though Immerose was lying on her back, mouth open and snoring. Pakdhala jabbed her in the ribs and the Marakander rolled over without waking. It was warm enough they had not pitched the tents, but the dawns were still chilly, now they had turned north, and her breath made smoke in the air, like the mist that rose over the cliffs from the river's breath. The fire was down to smouldering coals. A camel blew through its nose at something, and slow footsteps crunched past, down the line of picketed beasts. Django or Kapuzeh, she could tell, and she guessed, from the position of the stars and the greying night, that it was the last watch. Dawn was creeping up on them. Perhaps not much point trying to slide back into sleep. She might just as well get up and find a precarious path down the basalt cliff to the river to bathe and pray, as she did whenever chance allowed, in whatever water they passed by. But it was always on this north-south run, along the Kinsai-av, that she felt most whole and strong.
Sister Kinsai, lend me your strength…

Whole and strong was relative. She was no more than she had been as a child, though she was a grown woman, no doubting that; her body told her so.

Last autumn Gaguush had hauled her off for a long and red-faced discussion of men and babies. It was particularly hard for Gaguush to discuss such things, Pakdhala understood that. It stirred in the gang-boss's mind all the old pain that she did not have to worry about such things, having been married and divorced for barrenness when she was not much older than Pakdhala, before she ever quarrelled with her brother and left her tribe. But she grimly did her duty by Pakdhala, and then Tusa, Immerose, Tihmrose, and even Thekla had each in turn done so, Tihmrose with lots of rather startling and…interesting…advice on enjoying men
without
babies, which Pakdhala hoped her father hadn't picked up on, because she didn't think she could have looked him in the eye afterwards, if he had. And then Holla-Sayan had taken her home to the Sayanbarkash again, to have the tattoos of adulthood done, the snakes that coiled and knotted, blue and black, around her arms and cheeks. No touch of Sayan that time. The pricking of the needles had built and built in waves until it hurt more than she could have imagined, but she bit on the rag and said nothing, and the bard doing it had given her a great many odd looks, because, her grandmother said afterwards, she did not cry. And everyone did, a little. Her father ought to have told her she was supposed to.

But she was still a child in power, nothing any small demon or wizard of average ability could not equal. No strength woke that she could set against Tamghat.

More rasping of stone, as whoever had been walking settled down by a fire again. Pakdhala yawned and squirmed out of her bedroll, more or less fully dressed in shirt and trousers. She groped for her coat and boots and shook them out in case anything had crawled in during the night, finished dressing, and tiptoed away as quietly as she could, waving at Kapuzeh, who knelt shaving a brick of tea into a kettle at the further fire. He waved back. A star on the crest of the steep ridge over the camp winked, shadow passing before it, and almost the same instant she reached out, searching, touched…

Dog! Raiders!

“Up!” she screamed aloud. “Raiders! Gaguush, Father, wake up!”

She felt them, two-dozen souls, men and women, all hot and eager—angry, excited, predatory minds.

The gang had been attacked twice already this run, once in the Salt Desert and once in the Stone, both times by desperate men and women, the remnants of caravan-gangs who could no longer find merchants to employ them or goods to carry on their own behalf. There were too many like those, or folk left homeless by other bandits, even Serakallashi who had fled into the desert, godless and now without scruple towards those who still held a place in the world. But these were not so soul-torn and desperate, these felt of greed and the thrill of the hunt, Red Desert hill tribesmen stirred to some thieving lust enough to dare the scarred basalt wasteland along the Five Cataracts.

“On the eastern ridge!” Pakdhala shouted, dropping down by her bundled belongings to find and string her bow.

Shouting from above, voices accusing, who was it had been seen, one man's voice roaring over them all, “Go! Just go!”

They came in a sort of scrabbling rush, dodging stone to stone.

The gang were all awake now, grabbing for their boots, for bows and spears and sabres. Pakdhala ran towards the ridge, aiming for a tumbled boulder she could shelter behind. Holla-Sayan grabbed her by the shoulder as she darted past. He nearly threw her down, he jerked her back so hard.

“Behind the baggage, out of the way.”

For a moment she stared into the Blackdog's eyes, yellow-green like clear peridot, and she hoped no one else saw. He was fighting hard just to stay a man, here with the rest of the gang around them. She shouldn't have woken him so abruptly, waking the Blackdog rather than her father. Pakdhala squeezed his arm and didn't argue.
I'll be careful. You watch yourself.

She ran, crouched low, and joined cousin Doha behind the heaped bundles and chests of the merchants’ goods. The old man gave her a gap-toothed grin, picked a target on the hillside, and released his bowstring. The arrow splintered on a rock.

“Sayan curse you all!” he shouted, and shot again. His eyes were growing cloudy, but he wouldn't admit it.

Pakdhala took a steadying breath and chose her own mark, the shouting man in the lead. Red Desert tribesman, braids flying, sabre raised, and her father and Gaguush together running to him. Pakdhala never missed. Rag targets, bustards for the pot, raiders—there was always a moment when they were all the same, and she never missed. Holla-Sayan jumped the desert man's tumbling body and went on. Gaguush wheeled off towards a woman slashing at the picket-line beside short-tempered Lion. Bad idea. Frightened camels lurched to their feet, milling around. Lion kicked. The woman squealed and fled limping into Gaguush, fell as she turned to flee again. Gaguush speared her in the back, got her own back against a tilted slab of rock as more came too late to the fallen woman's aid.

The raiders didn't risk the camp, now it was roused against them, but kept to cover like foxes around the hen-yard.

The merchants, brothers from beyond the Malagru Mountains in the east, clustered wailing in the midst of their own guards and servants, who were doing precious little to help. Django and Judeh edged up towards Gaguush, their progress made hazardous by raider archers somewhere above. Holla-Sayan came back down the slope to her in a headlong rush and the two of them fought free, dashed back to the camp, sweeping Django and the camel-leech with them into the shelter of the stacked chests and bundles, where the rest of the gang joined them.

The panicked camels dragged their lines and headed down the road, shambling to a halt before they had gone far, tangled and confused.

Good beasts
, Pakdhala thought.
Stay there.
Not real words, but a soothing of their minds. Great Gods help them if the whole herd plunged over the cliff in panic.

Pakdhala coolly shot a bowman when he showed himself a breath too long. Her father shoved her down below a canvas-wrapped bale of camlet cloth, arrow-studded, with a hand on top of her head.

Dog!

“Keep down,” he ordered.

“We should have camped on the ridge,” Bikkim muttered. “We're trapped down here.”

Asmin-Luya snorted. “It's all shattered shards of rock up there. You'd be the first to complain if you had to sleep on it. How about Zavel and I work around and get above them?”

Zavel swallowed, nodded, and took a firmer grip on his spear.

“What if there's more over the hill?” Kapuzeh asked. “I swear, I didn't hear this lot till ‘Dhala started yelling. Could be another bunch still to come.”

“There isn't,” Pakdhala said. For a moment she could touch their minds. The raiders had left their horses two valleys over, and only one woman remained there, watching them.

“Like you know,” Zavel said with a sneer. Pakdhala gave him a dark look.

“Zavel,” Gaguush said. “Shut up.”

“What about it?” Asmin-Luya asked again, with a nod towards the broken black rock of the ridge. “Plenty of cover.”

“Not you and Zavel,” said Gaguush. “He makes as much noise on the stones as a Westgrass ox. Tihmrose, Holla-Sayan, Django, and Varro go up the hill. Half the rest of us make a rush—” she pointed north, through the camp “—to the rocks there, then we can shoot ‘em from both sides when they're chased down into the camp.”