Godbond (19 page)

Tass. A great wave of relief washed through me, leaving me limp and quivering. Even at the distance I knew her, even though her back was turned partly toward me, without seeing sword or horse I knew her merely by her slender shoulders and the firelight on the tawny lovelocks of her hair.

She sat within tongueshot. I could have hailed her across the night. But no one who has been reared a Red Hart shouts without a second thought—it is our nature to move in silence. And I wanted to go to Tass with a lover's silent tenderness, step close to her before I softly said her name. I came to my knees, ready to creep back and find my way down to her.

And before I could move farther I saw aspen boughs stir beyond her fire, saw myself step before her with a lover's silent tenderness, saw my ardent smile and the firelight shining on my fair, unbound hair.

“Dan!” Tass cried gladly, rising to meet me.

It was Ytan.

His buckskin leggings, lappet, boots, much like mine in wan moonlight and dim, flickering firelight. He had unbraided his hair so that it hung loose like mine. The cutthroat, he must have been spying on me—he even wore a long leather scabbard like mine, as if for a sword. There were small differences—the marks braiding had put in his hair, the rims of his ears beneath it, not notched like mine. But it was unlikely, in the starlit night, that Tass would notice them, or notice the wooden haft of his stone knife riding in the long sheath.

“Have you come no farther than this?” Tass was saying. “I thought you would be a day's hard riding farther on at least, perhaps two.”

By way of reply he reached out, drew her forcefully to him and kissed her. Nor did she resist.

A shout would have alerted him as well as her. But indeed, I was not thinking so clearly. It seemed to me that already I saw her at the point of his knife of jagged flint, mutilated, and the anguish in my heart and mind welled up and cried out to her while my mouth was still dry and frozen with horror. The mindcry was no more than a single word, her name.

Tass!

Instantly she stiffened, flung back her head and hurled herself away from him with a suddenness that caught him utterly by surprise, or she would not have been able to escape him. His fingers furrowed her arms, clutching at her to keep her, but to no avail. Tass was strong when she was enraged. She pulled away and stepped back to give herself room for her fury.

“No! You—you brigand, stay out of my mind! It is like—no better than devourers, than Pajlat's raiders—”

He fully intended to rape her body, not her mind. “Tass,” I shouted aloud, “beware! It is Ytan!”

She gasped, and Marantha's hilt leaped to her hand. Ytan was coming at her with his hunting knife drawn. I had alerted him, too, as I had not wanted to do, calling aloud, and he had the advantage over Tass, knowing himself to be her enemy before she could fully comprehend it of him. But he had not reckoned with Marantha's quickness. The sword flared, a storm-white burst that blinded him, and struck, and only his lifted knife saved him—the stone blade broke off to the hilt in his hand. The next blow would slay him—

He did not await it, but leaped away and fled down-slope, speedily gone between the trees, and Tass did not pursue him, for she was badly shaken. Even at the distance I could see that she could barely stand. Though I could not understand how it had happened, she seemed to be hurt.

“Steady, Tass,” I called to her. “I am coming.” Her pale face had so filled me with fear for her that I swung myself over the lip of the outcropping where I stood, not able to see what lay below, searching blindly for a hold with my feet.

“No whit!” she shouted back to me, her voice harsh and trembling. Then I heard her sobbing. Shakily she whistled for Calimir, and still clinging to the sheer rock, I heard the hollow sound of hooves.

“No!” I yelled wildly. “Tass, stay! For Kor's sake—”

She did not know that Talu was ailing, did not know that I would walk to Kor without her. I heard the reckless speed of Calimir's hoofbeats as he bore her away.

I very nearly let myself drop, for I was so struck down by despair that there seemed to be no strength in my arms. I who had wept for the sake of a horse and a deer, now I was in despair too deep for weeping. Tass … she had given me no time to try to calm her, to talk with her, tell her about Talu, anything. And Kor—I had failed him yet again, I would come to him very much the laggard without Calimir.

Nevertheless, I had to come to him, if only to die where he had died.

Face against the rock, I clung until the thought had hardened in me. Then slowly I inched and heaved my way back onto the top of the crag.

Roundabout, I made my way down to Tass's fire, though I knew well enough that she was gone and far out of my reach. She was quick, she had left nothing that she might come back for. I stood for a while where she had stood, then kicked dirt to kill the fire and struck off across the wooded slopes, not much caring whether Ytan might be on the hunt for me or not. It was dawn before I found my way back to my own campsite, where Talu stood awaiting me dully, her head drooping, not even making a pretense of running away from me, as she had always felt she must do when it came time for her to be caught and ridden.

I strapped my gear onto her, but that day I walked. All day I trudged upslope, letting her trail along behind me at an easy pace, and my angry pride made me keep my head up, watching for Ytan, but I did not see him.

When we came to a slope of scree I kicked the stones loose myself, heedless of whether I might be stung, until I had found a nest of adders for my horse to eat. I found her more as we made our way farther upslope, and she found some for herself, and I began to hope a little for her.

I walked through the dusk, out of a sense of duty to Kor, but I knew that all my walking had not brought me even a quarter of the distance of a good day's journey on horseback. Talu and I had not yet reached even the region of spruces below the tree line.

The walking had numbed my sorrow somewhat. And I was spent. Come Ytan or come world's end, I had to rest, for I had not slept at all the night before. When dusk had darkened into nightfall, I unstrapped my bags and the riding pelt from Talu, lay down where I was, in the middle of the trail, and slept the slumber of the dead.

Nor did Ytan come. For when I awoke, shortly after daybreak, I found the wolf standing over me, guarding my sleep.

I sat up and blinked at it, surprised by the surge of joy that went through me so that I blinked back tears more than sleep. “Wild brother,” I whispered to it, “welcome. I had thought you would long since be starved and gone to Mahela's hell, like the others.”

I wanted to reach out and caress it, embrace it, even, I was so glad. But I knew well from times gone by that it would not let me touch even the tips of its fur, it would dart away. So I hugged my own shoulders instead, to still my hands. Thin beneath its dense graysheen fur, perhaps, but not overly thin, the wolf sat and panted at me.

“
Ai
, I am hungry.” Suddenly I found that I was ravenous, and I rooted frantically in my baggage. There were a few shriveled crowberries left. I ate them, then picked the sugar resin off the bark of certain of the pines, as I had done for days past.

“I am going to have to eat potherbs and moss and lichens again,” I said to the wolf. “What have you been eating, wild brother? Have you learned to graze, like the deer, to eat the sour berries in the highmountain meadows?”

Or were the mice and lemmings and voles, which I had thought gone, not all gone after all? The wolf could not answer. It merely grinned toothily at me.

“It cheers my heart to see you,” I told it.

Talu carried me part of the way that day, but no faster than I could have walked myself, and after halfday I gave up riding and walked. The wolf trotted along beside me. Talu lagged behind, and all my pity and sorrow and anger came back whenever I turned to look at her.

“Not Tass's fault,” I muttered, though there was anger in me at Tassida also. But chiefly at Ytan, for driving her away. And, the viper, for what he had meant to do to her. What he might yet mean to do to her, if he caught her unawares.

“If you scent Ytan on the wind,” I instructed the wolf grimly, “tell me, my friend. I intend to kill him and feed him to my mare.”

Chapter Fourteen

By the time we reached the twisted spruces that grew below the tree line, I could climb the steep trail afoot faster than Talu could manage it any longer. So I took the gear off her, shouldering what I thought I would need the worst, flinging the rest to the ground, and I told her to go hunt snakes in the scree. If she could stay in one place and find food, she yet might live—for a while. Then I strode on, urgently, underneath a mountain sky that mocked my urgency with its clear blue beauty.

Far into the night I walked, and I made my way through the stunted spruces to the thin-aired, treeless highmountain meadow beyond. I could no more than stumble when at last I lay down and slept, with the wolf by me to guard my sleep.

And the halfnight later, just as daybreak was waking me, Talu plodded up the trail, stumbling as badly as I had, gave a huge sigh and stopped where I lay, her head hanging over me. With a groan for her sake I sat up and rubbed her forehead, nor did she trouble herself to scorn the caress.

“Talu,” I begged her, “spare yourself. Stay, rest.”

She swung her head and butted me with her outlandish nose, knocking me backward against a boulder. Limply I sat there and picked the flakes of lichen off it to eat. The wolf, I saw, was gnawing tiny black berries off a low shrub with leaves as jagged as a blackstone knife, and as red, in the early highmountain autumn, as a knife wet with blood. I tottered to my feet and picked some of the berries for myself—the things were so small and tart and seedy that years gone by I would not have thought them worth the effort. But I ate all I could find, then made my way up the trail toward the Blue Bear Pass, stooping to pick more wherever I found them by the wayside.

And even slow and dallying over berries as I was, I soon left Talu far behind. She had grown very weak.

That night, again, she caught up to me on toward dawn, waking me from sleep with the thudding of her hooves as she blundered up to me. There had been no rest for her, after all, even less than there was for me. But the next day at last I topped the pass, and I knew that I would soon leave her behind in truth, for on the downward far side I would make my best speed.

Looking for a moment back the way I had come, I saw nothing but meadow and rock and eversnow. The mare stood nowhere in sight. “Talu,” I whispered nevertheless, as if she were there, “farewell,” though I knew she would not fare well, she would die and I would not be with her to ease her dying. She might be dying at the moment I thought it, and I was not with her. I would not have thought that she wanted me with her, ill-tempered mare that she was, yet she had followed.… With an aching feeling in my chest I turned westward, toward the sea, toward Kor, and I started to run. The wolf loped beside me.

I ran wildly, heedlessly, and Ytan attacked me at the first turning of the trail.

He was waiting atop the crags that rose to either side of the narrow way, and he caught me utterly unawares. Even as he stood and drew his bow I did not see him. But my friend the wolf must have seen him or scented him a heartbeat before he let the arrow fly, and it dodged into my legs as I ran, tripping me so that I fell hard and headlong, scudding down the rocky path on my chest, and the bolt flew over me. I had not seen it or Ytan, and I wanted to curse the wolf for its clumsiness—within my mind I was cursing it fervently, but I was knocked too breathless to speak. And then I
heard Ytan laughing.

I must have made an oafish sight, and Ytan had always taken every chance to laugh at me, even before the devourer had possessed him. He gave forth great yelps of laughter. A moment before, knocked nearly senseless, I would have said I could not move, but when I heard that laughter I moved forthwith, filled with rage and a reckless despair that made me forget all caution. Talu was dead or dying, Kor dead or in mortal danger, Tassida had deserted me, my god also—or I had deserted him—the entire dryland world cowered under Mahela's heavy hand, and what was one meddling demon-thrall of a brother that he should thwart me or give me pause? I would kill him and leave his body for my mare, should she muster strength to come that way. I would feed his head to the wolf. With a roar like that of a wounded Cragsman I was on my feet, letting baggage and bow fall to the stony ground, charging him—Alar flew to my hand, the yellow stone on her pommel blazing with my wrath, blazing the color of thunderbolts. Heedless of the arrow in Ytan's hand, heedless of my own starved, uncertain strength or the steep and treacherous rock under my feet, I charged him, lunging like a bear up the crag where he stood.

Astonished or unnerved, he stood as rigid as the granite peaks, staring, and did not set arrow to bowstring and shoot me as he could have done. In another moment it was too late for that, I was nearly on him. He dropped bow and bolts—they rattled down the sheer flank of the crag—and snatched up a lance, a man-long pole of spear-pine with a sharp flint tip. He could not have chosen a better weapon. As long as he held it leveled at me, I could not come near enough to him to open him up with the sword, rage though I might.

“Bowels of Sakeema!” I cursed. “Bloody, stinking balls of Sakeema!” For in my anger at my god I no longer forebore to curse by Sakeema's name. I struck mighty blows at Ytan's spear, broke off the knifelike tip, hacked at the shaft to no avail—it was of springy, well-cured pine and would not splinter for me. Ytan thrust, his teeth set in a mirthless grin, a warrior's grin, like the snarl of a spotted wild dog. His jagged, broken spear-head was yet plentifully sharp enough to tear my innards out—I gave way, and he stepped forward and thrust again. He was driving me back toward the shoulder of the crag. One more backward step, and I would be toppling, and at his mercy when I landed. He would be able to put an arrow into me at his leisure. And his grin broadened, for he knew it.