Spirit Hunter (8 page)

Swiftarrow leaned back against the tree trunk, sweat pouring down his face, eyes closed. He would have to keep her drugged all the way back. Two moons. Forty-two days. He prayed Autumn Moon had given him enough herbs.

“Found a pretty hostage, did you, holy boy?” It was Li, sprawling in a litter carried by two young T ’ang soldiers still hollow-eyed with the shock of their first battle. They were just the sons of farmers. They ought to have been at home teasing the slave girls and helping their mothers brew lychee wine. One had blood on his face, the other stared firmly ahead, and Swiftarrow knew he was trying to forget the bleeding bodies, the crying children. He hid his surprise at the sight of them. So transfixed was Swiftarrow by his prisoner he’d not heard the men returning.

General Li smiled, his greasy face alight with triumph. “It seems the Shaolin are just as tempted by a lass as anyone else. I’m afraid you will still have to kill the girl, boy, when you are done with her - no prisoners. We have no need of hostages.” Li raised his cup in a mocking salute and Swiftarrow wanted to break his fat fingers.

“She is not a hostage,” he hissed, still leaning back against the tree, watching Li over the girl’s slumped body. “She will be Shaolin. She is what I came to seek. Give me one of your women to tend her, O great General. The girl is a prisoner but she shall keep her honour, if I have my way.”

General Li laughed, bidding the two young soldiers walk on with the litter. “Take as many of my whores as you wish. This day, I am inclined to be generous.”

Swiftarrow watched him go and swore quietly. He could hear hoofbeats now, men calling to one another, dazed with the thrill of battle. He longed for the quiet of the Forbidden Garden, the rippling surface of waters overhung with willow, plum-blossom drifting on the breeze: peace. By the time he was there again, it would be summer, peaches growing fat on the trees, peonies breathing out their scent during the day, petals folding at nightfall.

He looked down at his prisoner. Her lean face was sunken and grey, her mouth slightly open. Swiftarrow felt as if he had shot down a swan – a swift graceful creature lying broken before him.

I have ruined her life.

M
y body is a prisoner, caught in the claws of sleep. My spirit-horse and I ride free through the blackness, trying to escape it, but just as I catch a hint of the light and colour of the world of men – the smell of wood-smoke, a snatch of talk in a language I don’t understand – a bitter taste fills my mouth and the dark claims me once more.

Someone has drugged me with herbs, and I am too weak to stop them. I can hardly lift my hand. At least my shoulder hurts less now.
Ah, pull me under, darkness. Drown me. I cannot bear to live.
My wolf-guide is not here. Gone. I am drifting, lost in the spirit world without him. If I stray too close to the World Below, I will stay there, leaving my body behind for ever. Dead. I am so afraid.

I am inside myself once more. I’ve a sense of moving; I hear the wooden clatter of wagon wheels. Where am I going? The bitter taste will come again soon, dragging me down into the shadows. The herbs they give me freeze my body and slow my mind so that I cannot make sense of anything. Even the food they force between my lips tastes of nothing but ash – how long will I be trapped? But I must swallow my panic, and I must use this time to think.

Why was I spared when so many died? Oh, Shemi, you are dead and it is my fault, my fault.
Where are these people taking me?
Questions flit about my head without end, like many fish in a pool. I do not even know how much time has passed since the night I lost Baba and Shadow, and the rest of my kin. Mama will be wondering what became of us. I dream of Mama and Aunt Zaka waiting night after night by the fire.

I didn’t see Baba dead. To live, I must clutch at the hope he is still alive. When I wake, I will look for him till my last day on earth, if only to confess what I have done, if only to be turned away from my tribe for ever. Uncle Taspar is dead. Shemi. All of it my fault. How many folk at that Gathering lost their kin, even helpless little children? I am to blame. Tears seep from beneath my closed eyelids. They burn my skin. Oh, why can’t I shake off this smothering sleep? Why don’t my limbs obey me and move? I cannot even lift my little finger. The bitter taste touches my lips once more; sleep rises up to claim me and I ride my spirit-horse alone across the endless night.

I will escape my captors even if I die trying; and I will take revenge for each and every lost life.

S
wiftarrow leaned back in the saddle, squinting against the late-morning sun. The westernmost city wall of Chang’an loomed ahead, crumbling mud ramparts held together by a thatch of weeds all baking in the sun. Silk flags mounted along the top flapped hard in the breeze, bright against the fierce, cloudless blue sky. They would have to wait while Li spoke with the guards. Swiftarrow was used to long, hot delays after all the checkpoints on the road east – clearly, the Palace had grown uneasy about the north-western border – but still he ached for the peace of the temple, for the whispering song of wind rushing through bamboo in the Forbidden Garden. Swiftarrow sighed.

In a few hours, I will be free of this hateful task.

Yet he knew it was not true. She would always be there to remind him of the life he had blighted. Perhaps Autumn Moon would send the girl to learn the Shaolin Way in the Great Temple at the foot of Mount Shaoshi, many moons’ ride east from the capital. But the Empress would surely want to keep her barbarian Shaolin, her new toy, in Chang’an.

Swiftarrow made for the wagon where his prisoner lay, weaving his mount amongst the desert-weary soldiers. The T ’ang conscripts were now just as sun-browned and hard-eyed as General Li’s Horse Tribers.
The Entertainment Ward will be drunk dry of rice wine this night and the concubines’ mistresses will be rich by morning.
Swiftarrow frowned as he thought of his sister.
None of these fools can afford the attentions of White Swan. Not even General Li.
It was thin comfort.

Dismounting, saddle sore, Swiftarrow ignored the ache in his legs, patted the mare on her skinny flank and sprang up into the wagon, pushing aside the deer-hide covering.

“La, child – you do make me jump!” The concubine patted her moth-eaten hairpiece as Swiftarrow let the deer-hide fall into place behind him. Some of her real hair had escaped from beneath the lacquered coils, wispy and fine. She smiled, showing the remains of her teeth. “Poor lass – what’s to be her fate, then? I’ve grown fond of the girl, tending her like a babe.”

“Ask no questions, Mistress Orchid, and you shall be told no lies,” Swiftarrow said. She shrank away from him, retreating to the far end of the wagon to gaze into her mirror. Swiftarrow looked down at his prisoner, kneeling before her. She lay so still, wreathed in drugged sleep, dressed in the ragged, travel-worn shift she’d been wearing when he’d found her with an arrow through her shoulder. Mistress Orchid had washed it, and now only a faint brown patch betrayed the bloodstains. Again, Swiftarrow saw the girl as she had been that day in Samarkand, running from him through twisting streets, full of bright, burning life.
And now look at what I’ve done to her.

“You have done good work,” he said to Mistress Orchid. “I will make sure you are well paid.”

She turned from her looking-glass and smiled again. “Anything for a pretty face,” she said. “And I don’t mean hers – not that she is pretty, poor wench. It’s what got me into this trade, I warn you. Did your mother never tell you to stay clear of ladies like me?”

Swiftarrow did not trust himself to reply. Leaning back on his heels, he watched the girl sleeping. She was much thinner, despite the broth Mistress Orchid had been spooning between her lips as she slept, and the morsels of boiled rice and dried pork Mistress Orchid had coaxed her to swallow while she was awake. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised now: purple-grey, like the inside of a shell. The flesh had melted from her face; her cheekbones stood out like knife-blades. Her hair was combed and coiled about her shoulders; Swiftarrow felt a burst of sorrow for Mistress Orchid and her unlooked-for kindness. There was many a whore longing for a lost child. At the back of his mind clung shadowy memories of the House of Golden Butterflies. The other concubines used to look at him and White Swan with such great hunger in their eyes, pulling him up onto their laps, patting his head, combing White Swan’s hair and pinning flowers to her skirt. He remembered the rose-oil scent of their heavy silk robes, their painted eyebrows and jangling bracelets.

Come, take my hand,
White Swan used to say
. Let’s hide in the dancing hall. They are bringing a leopard to show the men tonight. Maybe Cook will give us some meat to feed him.
Now she was one of them, a Golden Butterfly. Now she danced for the richest men in Chang’an. Swiftarrow drew his breath sharply; if he did not take care, the anger would burn him to nothing.

He would go to White Swan as soon as he could get away from the temple.
What will she say about this task of mine?
It was hard to know: his sister was good at keeping her true thoughts locked away, showing nothing to the world but her beautiful face.
It’s all anyone cares for, anyhow. No one cares what she actually thinks, save me.

Swiftarrow sighed and looked down at his prisoner again. Mistress Orchid was right: she was not beautiful, lying there so thin and still. A strand of black hair had slipped across her face. He reached out to move it, but stopped himself, pulling back his hand.

He whispered a curse.
Never again.
Never again would he carry out such a task, not even on the orders of the Empress herself.

L
ast night, I awoke – to the rotting, foul reek of all wall-dwelling places. It was ever the same on the ride into Samarkand, but nothing can truly make you ready for the stench: the belly-churning body-waste of countless men, women and children, all flowing through the streets in a great river, the rotting food, unclean bodies, smoky cook-fires. I must be in a huge trading-place. But where? It isn’t Samarkand, for that city always smells faintly of pepper-oil, and here I understand none of the talk I’ve heard in snatches. Is it Bukhara? Constantinople even? But there is a strange slant to the light, a different taste in the air.
Where am I?

I’ve been left alone in a small chamber. There are wooden shutters drawn across the window but I can push them open to look out over a courtyard, a sloped rooftop and, beyond that, a mass of trees. The shutters still hold the faint, spicy scent of cedarwood. Whoever holds me captive does not fear that I might escape. I am weaker than a day-old kit, lying here on this pile of soft quilts. My hip bones are sticking out, my legs thin as sticks, fingers nothing but bone. I ache all over, and my hands shake. My right shoulder hurts, and when I reach to touch it, the skin feels different here – rougher. A scar.

And now I remember: I was wounded. Yet the wound has healed. A chill creeps down my back: when my uncle Taspar was shot in the leg three summers ago, the wound took nearly two moons to heal. Uncle Taspar. And I remember. My uncle is dead, the fault mine. Shemi is gone, and so have all the rest. Have I been captive for two whole moons? I have lost count of the days and nights, addled with herbs, helpless, unable to move. Whenever I close my eyes, I see my captor’s looking back at me – glittering green, almond-shaped. I led him to the Gathering. I thought he was good, my saviour; I was wrong. A wave of sickening anger rolls through me. But I cannot only blame him. I must also bear the burden of guilt for those who died: men, women, children – every last one.

And all this time, I have been taken further away from Baba, if he is even still alive. Does he seek me along the Roads, asking in every trader-inn? I draw in a long breath. At the back of my mind are snatches of half-forgotten dreams: Mama hunched by the hearth, staring into the flames; Baba gazing into still water. We have been torn from each other but I will find them one day, I swear it now. I will kneel before them to offer my apology. It is worthless, but my duty all the same.

I may be too weak to climb, but I must get out of this place somehow. There is a heavy wooden door, but these wall-dwellers have some magic that keeps it fast shut. When I first woke, I crouched by it, pushing. No matter how hard I shoved, the door would not move. I shouted, but nobody came.

Yet I know there are people close by. I hear snatches of muffled talk, the clank of an earthenware pot being put down. This morning, when the chamber was filled with the grey light of dawn, the sound of chanting drifted from across the courtyard.

Why have I been brought to this place? Do I wait for my death?

I get to my feet and my whole body shrieks with pain. Leaning against the wall, I cross to the window, longing to feel fresh air against my face. Beneath my hand, the wooden wall feels faintly warm. Down in the courtyard, I see a little girl sweeping with a bundle of twigs tied to a crooked branch. She is the first person I have laid eyes on since I awoke. Like all wall-dwellers, she has no spirit-horse, and I shudder. Who is she? The child of my captors? Their slave? I stare, but the girl does not turn away from her task. She is clad in dusty black robes, her hair woven into a pair of plaits and cut bluntly above her eyes like a horse’s forelock. Small clouds of yellow dirt curl up as she sweeps.

“Hie!” I shout, as if calling for Shadow across a long pasture. Tears prick my eyes because I will never see Shadow again, never trail my fingers through his white-gold mane. “Help me!” I cry. My voice is broken with misery: “Let me out!”

The little girl jumps and turns, looking up at my window with a round, pale face. She runs like a startled hare, leaving the bundle of twigs behind in the dust.