Shadow Gate (75 page)

“Heya! Twist!” he shouted in a louder voice than he'd known he possessed. “I fancy those ones!”

He galloped after the ewes, grabbed clumsily at them and missed, purposefully tripped over his own feet in a mud-slopped puddle, and generally made such a horse's ass of himself that the soldiers, roaring with laughter, all rushed to watch, cheering him on. He was soon winded and aching, but he kept on until Yudit made a show of getting in his way, and then he collapsed, heaving on hands and knees while the soldiers caught the ewes and, just like that, killed both to make a feast. The prisoners, rounded in to haul wood and set up camp, were all surreptitiously licking their fingers and wiping their mouths on their arms.

“Heya!” he said to the sergeant. “I know how to carve up a sheep.”

“Heh! Heh! Seems you do. But we're eating these, not devouring them.” He walked away without handing Shai a knife. Indeed, the soldiers did all the work skinning and butchering the sheep, keeping the prisoners away from anything sharp. The big open hearth soon blazed, and Shai's mouth watered as meat began to sizzle.

Yudit crept up beside him and slipped a pair of nai cakes, like flat bread, into his hand. “How did you know?” she whispered.

“Eh, ah, it's a trick we did at home, eh?” He gulped them down when no one was looking.

She pressed leaves into his palm. “Se leaves. Very nourishing.”

They had an unpleasant, spicy flavor, but they went down easily and for all that they weren't much to taste, they were filling. For the first time in days, he didn't feel light-headed.

“Did you really?” she asked him.

“With sheep? I did not!”

She laughed, and he saw she'd been teasing, that she'd understood all along, and the sight of a smile briefly on her face made it all worth it.

“Heya, girl!” called the sergeant, beckoning to Yudit. She winced, let go of Shai's hand, and rose. “Heh. He may have broad shoulders and brawny arms, but he's not fashioned for the likes of you, eh?” The soldiers chortled. Head bowed, Yudit trudged over to the sergeant, and he led her into one of the longhouses. The men's blood was up after the fight, and they quarreled, there being too many soldiers who wanted a piece and too few captives old enough to be marked for the taking.

“What about one of the younger ones?” said one of the soldiers, eyeing Vali and Dena, who sat apart with their perfectly groomed hair now rather undone by a day's hard walking.

The others jeered and cursed. “What? That's disgusting.”

“If the lord does it, it must be good for the rest of us—”

“Shut up! You gods-rotted imbecile. You want to get us all punished?”

“Hush! Lookya. Here he comes.”

The lord, his leaf-green cloak swagged behind him, walked into the clearing leading his winged horse. All fell silent, heads bowed, and after a troubling silence in which no one spoke, the sergeant burst out of the long-house, tying up his trousers.

“Eh, lord, sorry to keep you waiting. What's your wish?”

“Why have you stopped marching while there's still light for walking?”

“Ah, eh, had a bit of a fight with some locals, here, and afterward I thought we might cook up two sheep to strengthen our blood.”

The man's gaze cowed all. Shai watched with bent head, kneeling in the dirt with the other prisoners. “This lack of discipline is what got you defeated in Olossi. We must keep moving.” He glanced at the sky, and licked his lips. He had a prim face, bland and ordinary, that of a man who in other circumstances you might meet with equanimity in the market about unexceptional business. “Anyway, I'm tasting a flavor in the air. We're being followed, but I can't . . . quite . . . grasp it. Still, the meat will strengthen you. Dena and Vali, come along.”

They rose with shoulders set in shame, carrying the canvas that served as the lord's shelter.

At the edge of the clearing, the cloak paused and looked back. “Share meat with the prisoners. I'll know if you don't. Be generous. Sergeant, I'll speak with you now.”

He went, and after a bit Yudit slunk out of the shelter and came over to Shai. He left her with the younger children and strode boldly up to the fire.

“Eh! I'm hungry!”

“What?” they laughed. “Going to eat your girlfriends?” But they dared not disobey the lord's direct order. Each child got cut a strip, not so much to sicken them except for Jolas, who threw up afterward, but even Eska looked better for the day's bounty of food.

At dusk, the sergeant returned and walked among the soldiers, speaking in such a low voice that Shai could not hear anything. Their voices buzzed afterward, like bees disturbed by smoke. They've had news, Shai thought.

Last of all, the sergeant beckoned to Shai. “You're to come with me,” he said, and called over a pair of soldiers to accompany them. The stream they'd crossed earlier passed through one end of the clearing. With head
bowed, Shai followed the sergeant upstream along the bank. On the far shore, water rippled through rocks below a dense growth of pipe-brush. The lord's shelter had been set up near the water, canvas strung between two trees and staked down on either side. Dena sat on a log outside the shelter with hands folded in her lap and tears flowing down cheeks still rounded with baby fat. The sergeant flung out a hand, and they all stopped. The soldiers grimaced, turning away. The sergeant wiped his brow nervously. None could see what was going on under the shelter, but they could all hear it.

The sounds of a man in rut forced Shai's mind back to that day in the desert when he had sold Cornflower's services to the Qin soldiers. Ripe peaches, one man had said: That had been Chaji, and now that Shai thought of it, he realized he'd never liked Chaji, who was mean-spirited and vain. What men had gone for the first chance at Cornflower? The ones he had liked least, truly. The others had had more self-control, or perhaps they'd feared her too much to touch her. Perhaps a few had found the transaction distasteful.

Knowing it was Vali who suffered, Shai found the sounds unbearable. Yet even when he shut his eyes he could not hide from the puffing and panting, a groan of release, the wheezing sigh in the aftermath of pleasure. But truly, a pleasure taken, not shared.

Maybe Mai had been right. Maybe selling Cornflower's sex to the Qin soldiers had not been an act of prudent economy but one of thoughtless cruelty. He wept silently.

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

Startled, Shai opened his eyes to find himself looking directly at the lord. The man bit his lips, as if he were nervous, or recalling the taste of something sweet.

“You puzzle me, with your dull mind and witless foreign face. Vali says you are the one who told him to request more food for the prisoners.” Perhaps he meant to be intimidating, with a belligerent stare and restless hands
so like Shai's detestable brother Girish, but Shai had faced far more formidable opponents. He had his story and words down cold.

“I'm so hungry, ver. Never get enough to eat. Makes me tired. Mutton was good, though.” He smacked his lips.

“I don't understand you. I fear there is something I am missing. Best we get you to her. She'll know what to make of you.” He shuddered, as though by invoking the nameless
her,
he remembered what fear was, he who obviously need fear nothing. “Sergeant, see our friend the woodcutter does not escape. Meanwhile, I must now return to Olo'osson to scout the plain and the Rice Walk for other remnants of Lord Twilight's broken army. I knew the plan would come to nothing under that outlander's incompetent command. Heh. Our lackwit looks something like him, doesn't he?”

“Yes, lord,” said the sergeant in the tone of a man who is grateful when he is overlooked.

“You and your company must press onward without my guidance.”

“We could wait here for you,” said the sergeant, careful not to look up.

“In some ways this seems a safe enough place, very isolated. But I taste an odd flavor on the air, just out of my reach.” He shook his head, rubbed his fingers together. “I can't name it. Keep moving. Do not lose the two I favor. You will bring them intact to the army, with the lackwit. If you fail me, I will be sure to make you personally pay for the loss.”

The sergeant kept his gaze lowered as his voice quavered. “Yes, lord. All will be as you command. What of the other prisoners? What is your will with them?”

The lord whistled before replying. “The army needs recruits. Those who are ashamed of what they have done will not wish to escape home. No mercy for those who fall behind.”

His winged horse paced into view, and the guards drew back fearfully. The lord wiped his hands on his
trousers as though wiping off sweat. He did not look back as he rode into the dusk.

“Now what, Sergeant?” asked a guard.

“Bring me that girl I like,” said the sergeant curtly, looking irritated.

“Right where the lord sheltered, Sergeant?”

“I'm captain of this troop now, aren't I?” He sauntered over to the shelter as Vali crawled out. Grabbing the boy by the shoulder, he yanked him out so roughly that the lad sprawled face-first on leaves and muck. “Bring Yudit. She's my favorite, and I'll thank you boys not to touch her any longer.”

“Cursed getting above himself, he is,” muttered the first guard. “Just like that.”

The second said, to Shai, “Come on then, you and them.”

Dena held Shai's hand, still crying, but Vali walked with arms clenched tight against his chest. After a bit, Shai said quietly, “How are you faring, Vali?”

The lad looked in the direction the cloak had ridden away. They saw a light rising above the trees: The horse had flown. “He doesn't touch us. He just wanks off in his hand.”

The words were a lie, and Shai knew it, and Dena knew it, and the lad knew it. Their silence was their pact. If they must say so to endure it, then let them say so.

“You'll survive this,” Shai said softly.

The lad caught Shai's other arm and both children leaned on him as they headed back to camp, guards walking before and behind. They blundered along the stream's edge in the darkness. Foot slipping, Shai careered into the water, and yelped as cold bit his skin. In the moment of surprised pain, his gaze lifted to the thicket of pipe-brush on the far shore.

Merciful God!

Memory is a ghost that haunts you. He saw within the pipe-brush Cornflower's face, her pale skin and light hair. She was staring at him.

“Get moving, you clumsy ewe-tupping oaf!” The man slammed him across the back with the haft of his spear.

Shai went down to his knees on the hard stones. Vali gulped down a sob and Dena yelped out a protest, then stifled the cry as the guards cursed at her.

“Here, now,” said Shai quietly. He rose, joints popping. His knees smarted and his back ached. “We're just moving on, like you said.” To the children, he spoke in a lower voice. “We'll survive this. Don't despair.”

When he looked back into the pipe-brush, now behind them, it was too dark to see anything. Anyway, it had only been a trick of his mind.

It rained half the night, and twice Avisha woke, sure she heard Mai crying in the adjacent chamber and, in response, Priya's soothing whisper. Every slightest noise carried within the captain's house: the raised plank floor, the stout wood pillars, and the strong roof were of highest quality, but until more of the settlement in the Barrens was serviceable, Mai had insisted they make do with canvas walls.

The children slept soundly, crowded close. After the rains died, the air grew close and stifling, so Avisha tied up the entrance to let in air. Standing in a light cotton shift, she sighed in a blissfully cooling breeze. A pair of figures paced the lower porch that wrapped the structure. A face looked up at her.

“Early yet, Avisha,” said Chief Tuvi in a voice hoarsened, perhaps, by the early hour.

She hurriedly shrank back into the shadows of the sleeping chamber as the two men—she hadn't recognized the other one—chuckled, their footfalls soft on the porch as they continued their circuit. Did the man never sleep? He was the captain's most trusted officer,
which explained why he had been sent to the Barrens with the captain's beloved wife.

Who had woken again.

“I just can't sleep,” Mai was saying in a low voice. “My back hurts. Every time I close my eyes I think of Shai.”

Avisha dressed as quietly as possible so as not to wake the other women and children. The house had been built on three levels, to accommodate both their living situation and the vagaries of the ground. A walkway wrapped the greater structure, with the main house one step up, and the inner house another two steps farther up, its raised floor constructed around a courtyard with a cistern, an area for a small garden, and foundations dug out where a tower would be built. The kitchen and work area lay on the western edge of the house, and she slipped on sandals and crossed the walkway down into the kitchen yard. A fire burned on the outdoor hearth: Sheyshi was already up, brewing tea.

Avisha fetched a tray and a pair of cups from the pantry. “I'll take that in.”

“I will do it,” said Sheyshi. “You will go marry and leave. I will stay here.”

Stupid girl!

Aui! She could take in a basin of washing water. She filled a pot from the cistern and heated it on the hearth. By the time she had a pitcher, basin, and cloths ready, Sheyshi was gone and the kitchen women were bustling. Lads were sent to haul water from the spring; rice was washed and readied for cooking. Fish again! But there were fresh spices, shipped in three days ago, to flavor the stew. In town, hammering started up, men getting to work while it was still cool. Although the heavy tray made her arms ache, she paused on the walkway where the view opened over the east. The sun was rising, a blush spread along the watery horizon.

“Need help with that?”