Dragon's Teeth (27 page)

We’re ready,
she answered shortly. Bakro began backing, slowly. She had her left arm around the young man’s waist, holding him steady and guiding him, and held to the rope with the other, while they “walked” up the side of the pit. It was hardly graceful—and Chali was grateful that the pit was not too deep—but at length they reached the top. Her shoulders were screaming in agony, but she let go of him and caught the edge with that hand, then let go of the rope and hung for a perilous moment on the verge before hauling herself up. She wanted to lie there and recover, but there was no time—

They have found the dead one! Texal o rako lengo gortiano!
she spat. The young man was trying to get himself onto the rim; she grabbed his shoulders while he hissed softly in pain and pulled him up beside her.
What?
he asked, having sensed something.

No time!
she replied, grabbing his shoulder and shoving him at Bakro. She threw herself into the saddle, and wasted another precious moment while Bakro knelt and she pulled at the young man again, catching him off-balance and forcing him to fall face-down across her saddle-bow like a sack of grain.
NOW, my wise ones! NOW!

The last was broad-beamed to all the herd—and even as the perimeter guards began shouting their discovery, and torches began flaring all over the town, the Rom horses began their stampede to freedom.

The cat was already ahead of them, clearing the way with teeth and flashing claws; her task was to hold the gate against someone trying to close it. Chali clung to Bakro’s back with aching legs—she was having her hands full trying to keep the young man from falling off. He was in mortal agony, every step the stallion took jarring his hurts without mercy, but he was fastened to her leg and stirrup-iron like a leech.

The herd was in full gallop now—sweeping everything and everyone aside. There was only one thing to stop them.

The narrowness of the postern gate—only three horses could squeeze through at any one time. If there was anyone with a bow and good sense, he would have stationed himself there.

Chali heard the first arrow. She felt the second hit her arm. She shuddered with pain, ducked, and spread herself over the body in front of her, trying to protect her passenger from further shots.

Bakro hesitated for a moment, then shouldered aside two mules and a donkey to bully his own way through the gate.

But not before Chali had taken a second wound, and a third, and a fourth.

****

“I’ll say this much for you, Dirtman, you’re stubborn.” The Horseclan warrior’s voice held grudging admiration as it filtered out of the darkness beside Kevin. He had been detailed to ride at the smith’s left hand and keep him from falling out of his saddle. He had obviously considered this duty something of an embarrassing ordeal. Evidently he didn’t think it was anymore.

Kevin’s face was white with pain, and he was nearly blind to everything around him, but he kept his seat. “Don’t call me that. I told you—after what they did to my blood-brothers,
I’m not one of them.
I’m with you—all the way. If that means fighting, I’ll fight. Those oathbreaking, child-murdering bastards don’t deserve anything but a grave. They ain’t even human anymore, not by my way of thinking.”

That was a long speech for him, made longer still by the fact that he had to gasp bits of it out between flashes of pain. But he meant it, every word—and the Horseclansman took it at face value, simply nodding, slowly.

“I just—” A shout from the forward scout stopped them all dead in their tracks. The full moon was nearly as bright as day—and what it revealed had Kevin’s jaw dropping.

It was a mixed herd of horses, mules and donkeys—all bone-weary and covered with froth and sweat, heads hanging as they walked. And something slumped over the back of one in the center that gradually revealed itself to be two near-comatose people, seated one before the other and clinging to each other to keep from falling of the horse’s saddle. The clan chief recognized the one in front, and slid from his horses’s back with a shout. The herd approaching them stopped coming, the beasts moving only enough to part and let him through.

Then Kevin recognized the other, and tumbled off
his
horse’s back, all injuries forgotten. While the clan chief and another took the semi-conscious boy from the front of the saddle, cursing at the sight of the chains on his wrists and ankles, it was into Kevin’s arms that Chali slumped, and
he
cursed to see the three feathered shafts protruding from her leg and arm.

****

Chali wanted to stay down in the soft darkness, where she could forget—but They wouldn’t let her stay there. Against her own will she swam slowly up to wakefulness, and to full and aching knowledge of how completely alone she was.

The
kumpania
was gone, and no amount of vengeance would bring it back. She was left with nowhere to go and nothing to do with her life—and no one who wanted her.

No-Voice is a fool,
came the sharp voice in her head.

She opened her eyes, slowly. There was Brighttooth, lying beside her, carefully grooming her paw. The cat was stretched out along a beautifully tanned fur of dark brown; fabric walls stretched above her, and Chali recognized absently that they must be in a tent.

How,
a
fool?
asked a second mind-voice; Chali saw the tent-wall move out of the corner of her eye—the wall opened and became a door, and the young man she had helped to rescue bent down to enter. He sat himself down beside the cat, and began scratching her ears; she closed her eyes in delight and purred loudly enough to shake the walls of the tent. Chali closed her eyes in a spasm of pain and loss; their brotherhood only reminded her of what she no longer had.

I asked you, lazy one, how a fool?

Chali longed to be able to turn her back on them, but the wounds in her side made that impossible. She could only turn her face away, while tears slid slowly down her cheeks—as always, soundlessly.

A firm, but gentle hand cupped her chin and turned her head back toward her visitors. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting these
Gaje
to see her loss and her shame at showing it.

“It’s no shame to mourn,” said the young man aloud, startling her into opening her eyes. She had been right about him—with his hurts neatly bandaged and cleaned up, he
was
quite handsome. And his gray eyes were very kind—and very sad.

I mourn, too,
he reminded her.

Now she was even more ashamed, and bit her lip. How could she have forgotten what the cat had told her, that he had lost his twin—lost her in defending
her
people.
For the third time, how a fool?

Brighttooth stretched, and moved over beside her, and began cleaning the tears from her cheeks with a raspy tongue.
Because No-Voice forgets what she herself told me.

Which is?

The enemy of my enemy is my brother.

My
friend.
I said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,
Chali corrected hesitantly, entering the conversation at last.

Friend, brother, all the same,
the cat replied, finishing off her work with a last swipe of her tongue.
Friends are the family you choose, not so? I—

“You’re not gonna be alone, not unless you want to,” the young man said, aloud. “Brighttooth is right. You can join us, join any family in the clan you want. There ain’t a one of them that wouldn’t reckon themselves proud to have you as a daughter and a sister.”

There was a certain hesitation in the way he said “sister.” Something about that hesitation broke Chali’s bleak mood.

What of you?
she asked.
Would you welcome me as a sister?

Something—
he sent, shyly,
—maybe—something closer than sister?

She was so astonished that she could only stare at him. She saw that he was looking at her in a way that made her very conscious that she
was
sixteen winters old—in a way that no member of the
kumpania
had ever looked at her. She continued to stare as he gently took one of her hands in his good one. It took Brighttooth to break the spell.

Pah—two-legs!
she sent in disgust.
Everything is complicated with you! You need clan; here is clan for the taking. What could be simpler?

The young man dropped her hand as if it had burned him, then began to laugh. Chali smiled, shyly, not entirely certain she had truly seen that admiration in his eyes—

“Brighttooth has a pretty direct way of seein’ things,” he said, finally. “Look, let’s just take this in easy steps, right?
One,
you get better.
Two,
we deal with when you’re in shape t’ think about.”

Chali nodded.

Three—you’ll never be alone again,
he said in her mind, taking her hand in his again.
Not while I’m around to have
a
say in it. Friend, brother—whatever. I won’t let you be lonely.

Chali nodded again, feeling the aching void inside her filling. Yes, she would mourn her dead—

But she would rejoin the living to do so.