“Well done,” Soka murmured, handing Metyein his cloak.
“He won’t think so. But I’ll be damned if I’ll protect his pride by playing a gull to his abysmal skills.”
“Basham Odelm will be grateful that you didn’t carve his son’s heart out. And I am grateful to be on my way. Shall we?”
“I want a drink.”
Soka flashed a feral grin. “Delightful idea. Cantra’s got that new black-eyed wench. Wild thing. She will be just the thing to warm my bones, one in particular.”
They had hardly gone a dozen steps when an eerie, high-pitched squeal shrilled from behind. Metyein and Soka whirled about, yanking their swords free.
Kaselm sprawled open-eyed on the ground, an arrow holing his throat, blood spreading from him in a steaming puddle. Nedek toppled forward, mouth wide, thudding lifelessly over Kaselm’s legs. A bouquet of arrows sprouted from his back. Before either Metyein or Soka could react, an arrow thudded into Metyein’s thigh, and two more bit into Soka, one through his shoulder, the other just below his ribs.
Pain ripped through Metyein, his leg buckling with the force of the impact. Beside him, Soka made a whining sound, like a hound caught in a trap. He staggered back, lurching into Metyein and ramming his knee against the arrow in Metyein’s thigh. Metyein coughed and swallowed, a gray haze blurring his vision. He grappled Soka around the shoulders, pivoting on his good leg and thrusting Soka ahead of him into the trees. Arrows clattered on the pavement behind and lodged, vibrating, into the tree trunks.
“They shoot too well to be common bandits,” Soka gasped, his right arm dangling uselessly from his wounded shoulder.
“Can you make it to the horses?” Metyein asked, grasping Soka and dragging him through the trees. Farther up the Lovers’ Walk he heard the thuds of booted feet.
“Not and keep breathing,” Soka said, slumping against a tree. “You’ll have to pull the arrows and tie off the wounds. Don’t argue! I know how stupid it is, but I’m going to bleed to death anyway.”
Metyein sheathed his sword and braced his hand against Soka’s chest, grasping the arrow’s shaft in his other hand. Sending a prayer to the Lady, he pulled the arrow from Soka’s shoulder, trying to follow the same track out as the arrow had made going in. It slid out easily, and Metyein stared at the tip in surprise. It lacked barbs, looking more like the square head of a crossbow bolt or a practice arrow.
“Stop mooning, and get the other before I bleed dry,” Soka said through white lips.
Metyein bent and repeated the procedure for the arrow protuding from Soka’s ribs. Blood flowed rapidly from both wounds. He heard only silence from the Lovers’ Walk now, and his skin crawled, knowing they were hunted. He tore strips from his cloak with the aid of his dagger and tied bandages around both wounds.
“What about your leg?” Soka gasped as Metyein pulled him up, slinging Soka’s good arm over his shoulder.
“They’re too close. I’ll survive for now.”
“Long enough to get shot again? Let’s go before you drop me.”
They stumbled through the trees, Soka’s sword serving as a crutch. Metyein’s thigh screamed, the protruding arrow brushing trees and bushes. He gritted his teeth against the agony and lurched on, feeling his strength withering as blood trickled down his leg. Behind, he heard voices calling and the crackle of twigs and leaves. Their pursuers had given up any pretense of stealth.
“They’re gaining,” Soka muttered.
“They can’t use their bows in the trees unless they get closer. We need to go faster.”
“By all means, let us do that,” Soka said, and he managed to move a little more quickly, biting bloody dents into his lips.
They staggered up a long rise, leaving a crimson trail in the snow. Metyein guided them around a thick stand of trees, expecting every moment to feel an arrow piercing his back. They blundered through a thicket of skeletal bushes and vines. The shaft of the arrow in his leg caught in the tangle, and pain unraveled along every nerve. Metyein moaned and lurched forward out of the bushes. But his leg had gone limp. His head spun and his body shook. He staggered another step. Soka said something, but Metyein couldn’t hear it through the rush of wind in his ears. Then the ground beneath his foot vanished and he was falling.
Agony snapped him in its jaws as he thudded against the frozen ground, and then everything went black.
Ice and fire. Metyein tried to open his eyes, but they were too heavy. Frigid water trickled down his neck, and he shook his head feebly. His legs flared white hot at the movement. Metyein groaned.
“Well, it’s a change from faking dead, though I don’t think you want to be so loud,” came Soka’s strained whisper. “No, don’t go passing out again.”
The cold came again and more water trickling. Metyein forced his eyes open and glared at Soka, who was pressing a handful of snow against his cheek. His face was scraped, and his eyepatch had been pushed askew.
Metyein batted weakly at Soka’s hand. “Stop that.”
“Ah, so you’re done with your nap? We can move along now? Brilliant tactics, by the way. Cover under a footbridge, and not so far from the horses, unless I’m turned around, which is entirely possible.” Soka tossed aside the snow and helped Metyein sit up. At Metyein’s clipped-off whine, Soka frowned, his eyes traveling down to Metyein’s ugly thigh wound. “Got the arrow out, but the fall stirred it about in your muscle. I’ve tied it off best I can with one wing, but it doesn’t look good.”
Soka had made a makeshift tourniquet using a strip of cloth from his cloak and a stick, twisting the fabric tight around Metyein’s thigh. Blood continued to seep from the ragged hole. Metyein tore a strip from his own cloak and wrapped it around the wound, sweat beading on his brow, his breath coming in wheezing gasps as he knotted the bandage in place.
When he was through, he looked around. They had fallen down a hill and onto a frozen stream. The hillside was bare of snow, and the dried grasses showed little evidence of their precipitous passing. Above his head arced a stone footbridge. Soka had managed to drag him along the ice into hiding beneath it. Cold seeped through his cloak. His head swam, and he eyed Soka blearily. “The horses?”
“Downstream and over a hill. The bushes on the banks give fair cover. We might make it.”
“Care to lay odds on who they are?”
Soka shook his head. “Too many possibilities to count, what with our fathers’ politics and your duels. Of course Kaselm or Nedek could have been the primary targets and we’re just the sweeping up.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No, but can we discuss it later when we’ve stopped bleeding?”
Metyein’s smile was little more than a grimace, but he levered himself up, clutching the span of the footbridge until the shadows clouding his vision receded. This time Soka aided him to walk, grasping him around the waist. Metyein’s hand brushed Soka’s empty scabbard. “Where’s your sword?”
“On top of the hill.”
“Silly place to leave it.” Metyein swung about as if to fetch it. His leg buckled, and the two men hugged one another for balance on the ice.
“I’ll get it later,” Soka gritted. “Hostage compact says I shouldn’t have one anyway, and besides, don’t know what I’d do with it just at the moment.”
“Let’s hope we get to the horses before they do, then.”
“Hag willing.”
They shuffled along the ice, making little sound. They heard the calls of the searching men and the crackle of their passing. The sounds of the attackers seemed to come from every direction; there was no way to tell where they might be.
Finally Soka turned up the bank and up over a low hill. There were a few scattered trees and bushes on the slope, but mostly they were exposed as they staggered upward. Metyein couldn’t find his equilibrium. He would have fallen more than once without Soka to hold him steady. As they crested the hill, shouts erupted behind them, and two arrows whizzed by in quick succession. A third buried itself in Metyein’s gut beneath his ribs as he swung to the side. He grunted and jerked back against Soka, whose footing gave way. Once again they tumbled forward down the hill, pain netting Metyein in an unceasing, fiery tangle.
Blessedly, he kept his wits this time.
A burly groom wearing the navy and yellow colors of the House of Vare ran to Metyein and helped him up. “Milord! What has happened? Oh, my Lady,” he said as his hand came away sticky with blood.
“Help Kaj Raakin. Get him on his horse. Quickly. Where’s Pelodra?”
“Here, sir,” the other groom answered, leading Soka’s and Metyein’s mounts from the trees.
“Go with Kaj Raakin. See that he gets to safety,” Metyein ordered in a pinched voice.
“But sir, your father commanded me to stay with you always.” The stocky groom scowled and slapped the hilt of his sword. He wasn’t so much a groom as a bodyguard. Which was why Metyein wanted him with Soka.
“Go. He’s unarmed. I want him protected. Stop arguing and . . . go!” he said, hissing as Urviik, the other groom, bound the wound in his stomach, leaving the arrow in place. Without looking at it, Metyein knew that the arrow had bit deep.
Pelodra hesitated. Shouts from the other side of the hill spurred him to action. He spun to hoist Soka into the saddle. Soka clutched the pommel, listing sideways, his face ashen beneath the crimson slash of his eye patch. Pelodra helped Urviik shove Metyein into his saddle, grappling him, as he would have tumbled over the other side.
“Ride with him,” Pelodra said to Urviik. “He’s going to pass out.”
Urviik nodded and swung up behind Metyein. Metyein moaned when the groom brushed the arrow.
“Get him to the residence as fast as you can,” Pelodra ordered, then slapped the blue-roan gelding on the haunches. The gelding lunged into the trees with a startled neigh. Urviik guided him onto a winding footpath. The bare tree branches whipped across Metyein’s face, raising welts and opening cuts.
“Almost to the gate, sir,” Urviik said against his ear. The groom guided them onto the South Walk between the orchestra pavilion and the west supper boxes. The gelding’s hooves hit the cobbles with sharp, staccato sounds that echoed in the frigid air.
The gate loomed before them, a square opening at the center of the palazzo’s first floor. The blocky structure housed an extensive conservatory, elaborate ballrooms, cavernous banquet rooms, museum galleries, guest accomodations, kitchens, and servants’ quarters. Its windows glittered in the frosty light, and the gates hung open as they had when Metyein and Soka had arrived, their locks picked daily by thieves.
Urviik urged the gelding through the square opening without slowing. Metyein felt the impacts of the arrows as they shuddered through Urviik. One. Two. Three. Four in all.
Urviik exhaled wetly against his ear, gurgled, and then canted sideways. The horse neighed shrilly and crow-hopped. Metyein clung to the pommel as Urviik’s weight pulled like an anchor. Then the groom’s body thudded to the ground, and the horse bolted. Metyein doubled over, clinging desperately to the saddle. The panicked gelding turned and turned again, clattering down a long, winding avenue seaming between blocky warehouses and tall, cramped houses.
A jump, a jolting landing, another turn.
The animal skidded on the cobbles and fell heavily, sliding on his haunches into a midden cart. Metyein tumbled out of the saddle, instinctively rolling away from the animal’s deadly hooves.
Chapter 9
T
illen led Reisil between tents piled together like mounds of dirty rags and decrepit shacks that sighed and swayed with the wind. The soft ground squelched and sucked at her boots, and there was a stink of decay and human waste. It was barely past noon, but the temperature was already dropping. Wind whistled around the wall towers with a forlorn sound.
Cookfires guttered and steamed from damp wood. Children huddled close by, feet tucked beneath them to keep warm, faces ruddy. Nearby a toddler whimpered, bending and clutching his stomach. Reisil halted, seeing at once that he was very ill. She went to kneel beside the boy, Tillen trailing after.
“Hello,” Reisil said. The boy flinched and scuttled backwards, tripping and falling hard on his bottom. Reisil made no move to follow, but pushed her hood back and gave a reassuring smile. “I’m a tark,” she said. “Does your stomach hurt?”
He nodded and peered over her shoulder. Reisil followed his gaze and saw a gaunt young woman glance up from where she was sewing a few tents away.
She leaped to her feet and hurried toward them. “Who are you? What do you want?” she demanded in a shrill voice as she snatched up her son and hugged him to her chest. He whimpered. “We don’t have anything. They already took it all. So go on. Go!”
Now Reisil noticed that indeed the unlucky little family had not even a tent. Only a few soiled blankets, a pot and a bucket and a sackful of odds and ends.
“Where’s your husband?” Tillen asked. “The rest of your family?”
The woman’s lips pinched together, and she straightened, staring down her nose at her two visitors.
“That’s none of your business.”
Reisil stood. “Your son is ailing. I’m a tark. I’d like to help.”
The woman hesitated, and her arms clutched tighter around her son, her eyes fastening on the ivy adorning Reisil’s left cheek. The boy moaned and struggled against the pain of her grasp. The look she gave Reisil was full of fear tinged with skeptical hope.
“Stomach’s been bothering him for days,” she yielded, her voice tight. Then it turned hard, defensive. “He’s hungry is all. We been hungry since—” She broke off and pressed her cheek to her son’s head.
“Can I have a look at him?” Reisil asked gently.
The mother hesitated again and then nodded. She sat on the ground, holding her son in her lap. He watched Reisil fearfully as she knelt and looked him over. He was gaunt from lack of food, and his skin and eyes were tinted yellow.
Jaundice
, she thought, and for a moment her muscles seized in fear. Jaundice was an early sign of the plague. But no. He had no rash, no bleeding in his mouth. The jaundice came from hunger and his resulting inability to rid himself of his body’s poisons. Relief made Reisil giddy for a moment. The plague would come to Koduteel, but not yet. Please the Lady, not yet.