The Last Hour of Gann (144 page)

“But she kept bleeding—
”

“Oh, shut her up, for Christ’s sake!”
Scott exploded.

The lizardman stood up. Amber touched his wrist. He shut his eyes and hissed, then shot her a very Meoraq-like look of annoyance and knelt down again.

“She kept bleeding—”

“It’s enough, Nicci,” said Amber. “Come on. Stop.”

Nicci considered, gazing into the fire. “She kept bleeding,” she said at last, decisively. “And she got really sick. And in the morning, Commander Scott and Mr. Lassiter said she was dead and we kept going, but we all knew she wasn’t dead—”

“Nicci.”

“We could all hear her under the wind—”

“Nicci, please.”

“—crying—”

Amber pressed her face to the baby, as if its sleeping purrs could drive ever
y other sound away.

“—begging us to come back.” Nicci thought about it while Amber enveloped herself in the peaceful song of a small life that knew only how deeply it was loved. “And we left her there anyway,” said Nicci.
“We all walked away and pretended we didn’t see those big weasel-things at all, didn’t we? We pretended we never heard her screaming.”

“I swear I’m going to hit her if she doesn’t shut up,” said
Eric in his soft way.

“I’m not sure she can shut up,” Amber answered wearily. “Let her say it all. Who can it hurt now?”

“When we saw that place, Commander Scott said it was the temple, even though Meoraq told us to look for the ends of the world and we all knew we weren’t there. But we followed him. And the place got bigger and bigger and we knew it was wrong, but we all kept going. They sent someone out to look at us or something, and Commander Scott sent Abdullah to go meet him, only I guess it freaked him out to see Abdullah coming right at him like that because he…” Nicci shrugged again. “Commander Scott knelt down in the snow, so we all knelt down in the snow with him. So they took us away. And they cut us up and they did a lot of things…but they fed us and they kept us warm, so…and this is actually kind of ironic…being captured like that probably saved our lives.”

And that, mercifully, seemed to be the end. Nicci watched the baby doze against Amber’s chest, the scantest hint of emotion wrinkling at her brow, although Amber couldn’t say quite what that emotion was. She only knew that it was better—not much, maybe, but better—than the total lack of life that her sister had exhibited throughout her awful recital.

“So are you happy now?” Scott asked bitterly.

Amber looked at him, helpless to do anything but shake her head.

“You sure? Not even one I-told-you-so? One If-only? One steaming Bierce-knows-best pile of bullshit we can warm ourselves by as we gather around your campfire?”

“Go to sleep,
Scott,” said Amber. “It’s over, all right?” She had to chew her next words a long time before she could keep them down, but in the end she was able to say, “You did the best you could,” and mean it.

Scott
stared at her for a long time and then dropped his eyes. He looked at the fire and said, in a strained, distant sort of voice, “You know…that first night after we left…that very first night, when we were alone and we all thought, you know, that you were dead…”

The fire snapped. The baby shifted, purred for a few seconds,
then slipped easily back into sleep. The lizardmen watched from the far wall, hands on swords, restless.

Scott
looked up, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a hideous imitation of the charismatic smile she remembered. “That was the night I fucked your sister,” he said. “She said she didn’t want to, she even pretended to struggle, but she came. And she wasn’t even a virgin, so yeah, Bierce, you really dropped the ball somewhere along the line, but that’s okay. I’m sure you
did the best you could
. You want to know something? Huh? You ruined everything, Bierce.”

“Yeah, and I broke your flashlight, too.”

“Fuck you!” he spat, and didn’t flinch even when every lizardman in camp whipped out a sword. “You! Ruined!
Everything
! We’d have been just
fine
if you’d only
died
! We’d be
home
by now if it wasn’t for you!
You
!”

And then he lay down with his back to her and pretended to be asleep.

Amber closed her eyes and concentrated on the baby’s little purrs, its small hand so warm against her breast, its living, loving reality. Gradually, the hot knot in her stomach loosened, although the bitter taste in her mouth remained. When she finally opened her eyes, Nicci was looking at her with those dead eyes and Bo Peep’s own bitter smile. “Aren’t you glad you found us?” she asked.

* * *

Meoraq found the soldiers sent to assassinate him without difficulty. There were nine in all—two groups of four and a lone man wearing the governor’s colors. He killed them swiftly, tied the corpses to trees with their own belts, and left them to be found. Perhaps they were, for there were no more assassins that night. As his last empty patrol along their back-trail came to an end, Meoraq met with Onahi and his men, and with them took a rogue kipwe they found sleeping in the trees.

It was another hour before t
hey returned to camp, bearing what they could upon two hastily constructed litters. Amber had a grimace of some unhappy sort for him, but did not stir herself from the fireside. The watchmen, however, came at once to make their unsettling report of angry words and blows struck and Meoraq knew even before they pointed him out who had been at the root of it all.

“
Honored one, you have said these creatures dwell in the sight of Sheul,” Onahi murmured, frowning now at Scott. “And you have proven that it is His will you have their care, but it would seem a far simpler matter to care for them were they kept bound and hobbled.”

Meoraq flared his spines reprovingly, but spoke no censure. His heart was in the right place. And honestly,
Onahi just wanted Scott hobbled. Meoraq wanted him dead. And buried.

He left the
preparation of the first skewers to Onahi and made a quick count of his camp. All were present—watchmen, slaves, humans, and his Amber. She had the infant in her arms again, he saw. It slept too deeply to sing, even when she stroked a careful hand across its little back. ‘Someday it will be my child at that breast,’ Meoraq thought, but he did not disturb her or the child to say so.

The meat roasted and the humans clustered close to watch it. Meoraq tried not to resent this. They had endured a terrible captivity and they were doubtless hungry. All the same, his days of tending to them like cattle were done.

And so when Scott deemed the meat done enough for his taste and reached to have the first skewer out, Meoraq caught him unhurriedly by the wrist and pushed him back. “This is my camp,” he said. “And you are not my welcome guest. You have what I give you, human, when I choose to give it, and you will receive it gratefully or it will be the last thing you ever take from my hand.”

Scott
’s face puckered and colored in that way Meoraq so well remembered. “We’re starving,” he insisted.

Meoraq flattened his spines in disgust. He let go of
Scott’s wrist to seize the edge of his loose tunic and pull it up, revealing the man’s pink body, which was not an abundant one, but certainly was not emaciated. “No, you aren’t,” he said, and covered the man curtly up again. “Sit and wait for your share or go hungry.”

“Does it understand you?”
Onahi asked, watching Scott limp sullenly away.

Meoraq grunted a caustic affirmation as he tested the skewers himself and decided one of them at least was indeed ready. He took a token piece for himself and gave the rest to Amber. She offered it at once to Nicci.

“She’ll have her own,” he said testily, very much aware of the men watching him. “That is yours.”

Amber’s little brows twitched together. She put her arm around Nicci’s shoul
ders and would not look at him. Nicci did, her eyes glinting like light on the edge of a blade as she ate his wife’s first meal in days.

The color throbbed in his throat. He turned his back on her and breathed.

The sun dropped further behind the clouds. On the distant walls of Praxas, the braziers were lit, tended by far more men than were needed for the chore. They were watching, Meoraq knew, but he did not think they would dare to come for him. Which was almost a pity, as he was right in the mood to deal with them.

What in Gann’s grey hell was he going to do with all these people? It was not a new thought, but it was one he hadn’t had to consider for some time and he’d never had an answer even when the matter had been pressing. Now here it
was again, grossly compounded. There would always be room in the barracks for Onahi and his watchmen, as they were born under the Blade and shared some of the rights of entitlement all of Sheul’s favored had been blessed with, but what to do with these fatherless, mateless women? Meoraq could demand they be taken in, but he had no illusions; as soon as he had left again, some corruption would be found in them and they would be turned quietly back out into the wilds. So what was he supposed to do with them? Go on to Xi’Matezh with this…this caravan like nothing had happened? And after that, take them all back to Xeqor? His was the championing House of all that great city, its bloodline unstained and renown unspoiled back to the very day of its founding. He could not fill its halls with raider-slaves and remain its steward.

Meoraq hissed and rubbed at his throat, which felt disturbingly warm already. ‘Patience, Uyane. Patience is not a word to a warrior, but a way of life
. Honor Him and show patience.’ “How well do you know this land?” he asked.

Onahi
tipped his head toward him without taking his eye from Scott. “I have been all my life within those walls, sir, save for one summer spent with my mother’s people in Chalh.”

Meoraq grunted morosely, poked at the fire…and then looked around with a frown. “Chalh?”

“To the south, sir, and eastward. Just out of the shadow of the mountains, in the lie of the road that leads out of Yroq.”

There was a question, scarcely hinted at, in those last words. Meoraq supposed he had an accent. “We didn’t come by road,” he said. “You have kin in Chalh
?”

“My mother’s kin. In service to
House Ylsathoc.”

“Ylsathoc,” he echoed. The name was oddly familiar to him…
and then he placed it. “I knew an exarch of that name. Exarch Ylsathoc…ah…Hi-something. Hilesh?”

The watchman of Praxas betrayed dumaq emotion
at last with a snort, taking his eyes off Scott just long enough to roll them. “Hirut. Exarch, is he?”

“You know him?”

“I knew a swaggering little sprat who seemed to think the wind itself would stop blowing if he didn’t point it in the right direction. How did he turn out?”

“He’s taller.”

Onahi snorted again.

“Would you know the way to Chalh well enough to guide a man?” asked Meoraq.

“There’s little enough to know, sir. Three days of brisk travel would take us to the Prophet’s Crossways. From there, the southward road will lead us directly to the gate. It should be in fair repair,” he added. “There’s a shrine at the Crossways, popular with the priests and blade-born pilgrims.”

“But no road from Praxas.”

Onahi grunted and flexed his spines in a shrug. “The city of my father gave its love to Gann long ago. I always had a mind to make the journey to Chalh, but never won release from the warden.”

Small marvel, that. Warden Myselo
would not be quick to let another man free to speak of what he may have seen, certainly not to the sort of city that birthed exarchs.

“You
never stood a watch without the walls?”

“Many times.”

“You could have left.”

“I suppose so.”

“You never wished to?”

Onahi
grunted and spared him half a glance before Scott redrew his attention. “It never felt like the right thing to do.”

“You left tonight.”

“Tonight, it did.”

“Sheul’s hand is ever upon the hammer,” Meoraq mused, looking around at his Amber, safe again within his keeping, and at her Nicci, safe again beneath her arm.

Onahi acknowledged this politely and quiet passed between them for a time. At length, it was the other man who broke it, raising a hand first in salute. “Forgive me, honored one, for my boldness. Is it your will to travel on to Chalh?”

“It would appear to be Sheul’s will,” Meoraq answered, taking
another skewer off the coals. “How does that find you?”

“I obey Him in all things.” He paused. “It will be a relief to settle there, sir. Chalh is a good place.” He paused again, his eye drifting from
Scott to the fire, and to the slave who crouched there at Amber’s side, suckling Gann’s child. “A good place for a family.”

“Perhaps you will have one someday,” Meoraq said, as if this were not an absurd suggestion
to make of a Sheulteb’s bastard. He liked the man.