When what happened next stopped happening —
But it was too violent and too painful for Rahm to recall with clarity.
He remembered walking backward, shouting, then — when Tenuk fell against him, like a bubbling roast left too long on the spit and so hot he burned Rahm’s arms — screaming. He remembered his feet’s uneasy purchase on the flags because of the blood that sluiced them. He remembered a dark-glazed crock smashing under a horse hoof. (With the soldiers, horror spread the village.) He remembered running to the town’s edge, to find the gravefield shack aflame.
Ienbar had called, then shouted, then shrieked, trying to get past the fire from the mounted soldiers’ muzzles; then Rahm hadn’t been able to see Ienbar at all for the glowing smoke, and there’d been the smell of all sorts of things burning: dried thatch, wood, bedding, charred meat. Rahm had run forward toward the fire till the heat, which had already blinded him, made him — the way someone with a whip might make you — back away, turn away, run away, through the town that, as his sight came back under his singed brows, with the chaos and the screams around him, was an infernal parody of his village.
Uk pulled his sword free to turn in the light from one of the towers, parked by an uncharacteristically solid building with a stone foundation. Something was wrong with Uk’s knee; it had been throbbing on and off all last week; for three days now it had felt better, but then, only minutes ago, some soldier and some peasant, brawling on the ground in the dark, had rolled into him. Uk had cried out: it was paining him again. Turning to go toward the lit building, he’d raised his sword arm to wipe the sweat from under his helmet rim with his wrist — and smeared blood across his face, sticking his lashes together. But that had happened before. Grimacing at his own stupidity, he’d tried to blink the stuff away.
While he blinked, Uk recognized, between the struts of the light tower, from the diminutive armor and a motion of his shoulder, Mrowky — who was holding somebody. Three steps farther, knee still throbbing, Uk stopped and grinned. The little guy had actually got the redheaded girl — probably snagged her as she’d fled the common’s carnage.
You’re a lucky lady, Uk thought. Because Mrowky would do his thing with her, maybe punch her up a little afterwards, just to make her scared, then run her off. That was Mrowky’s style — even though, when a whole village had nearly gone into a second revolt over the petitions, laments, and finally rebellious preachings of a woman raped by a soldier, Nactor himself had harangued the troops a dozen campaigns back: “I don’t care what it is — boy, woman, or goat! You put a cock in it, you put your sword through it when you finish with it! That’s an order — I don’t need to deal with things like this!” But Mrowky wasn’t comfortable — nor was Uk — killing someone just because you’d fucked her. And rarely did a woman carry on afterwards like the one who’d raised Nactor to his wrath, especially if you scared her a little. Though others among the soldiers, Uk knew, honestly didn’t care.
Really, though, Uk thought, if Mrowky was going to do her now, he’d best take her out from under the light — behind the building; not for propriety, but just because Nactor or one of the officers might ride by. (No, Uk reflected, Mrowky wasn’t too swift.) Favoring his right leg, Uk started forward to tell his friend to take it around the corner.
The redhead, Uk saw, over Mrowky’s shoulder, had the stunned look of all the villagers. She was almost three inches taller than the little guy. Mrowky had one hand wrapped in her hair so that her mouth was open. As his other hand passed over it, the redhead’s arm gave a kind of twitch.
Which is when Uk heard the howl.
From the darkness, black hair whipping back and a body under it like an upright bull’s, the big man rushed, naked and screaming. Rush and scream were so wild that, for a moment, Uk thought they had nothing to do with Mrowky and the girl; they would simply take this crazed creature through the light and into the dark again. Then Uk glimpsed the wild eyes, which, as the light lashed across them, seemed explosions in the man’s head. The teeth were bared — the image, Uk thought later, of absolute, enraged, and blood-stopping evil. Under his armor, chills reticulated down Uk’s shoulders, danced in the small of Uk’s back.
The wild peasant was heading right toward Mrowky and the girl.
All Uk had a chance to do was bark Mrowky’s name (tasting blood in his mouth as he did so); the careening man collided with them; for a moment he covered — seemed even to absorb — them both. Then he whirled. With a great sweep of one arm, he tore Mrowky’s helmet from his head — which meant the leather strap must have cut violently into Mrowky’s neck before it broke, if it didn’t just tear over his chin and break Mrowky’s nose. The big peasant whirled back; and Uk saw that he had Mrowky by the neck, in both of his hands — the guy’s hands were huge too! And Mrowky was such a little guy —
With sword up and aching knee, Uk lunged.
The big man bent back (a little taller than Uk, thicker in the chest, in the arms, in the thighs), drew up one bare foot and kicked straight out. The kick caught Uk in the belly. Though he didn’t drop it, Uk’s sword went flailing. He reeled away, tripped on something, and went down. Blinking and losing it all because of the blood in his eyes, Uk pushed himself up again; but the redhead was gone (doubtless into the dark he’d been about to urge Mrowky into) and the peasant, still howling, was flinging — yeah, flinging! — Mrowky from one side to the other, backing away. Mrowky’s head — well, a head doesn’t hang off anyone’s neck that way! And the peasant was backing into the dark — was gone into it, dragging Mrowky with him!
Uk got out a curse, got to his feet, got started forward — and tripped on another villager who was actually moving. Wildly, he chopped his blade down to still her. (Yeah, in the neck!) Then he started off in the direction they’d gone, but not fast enough, he knew — damn the knee!
On the roof of Hara’s hut, Qualt crouched, watching Rimgia, watching Rahm, watching Uk. (But he tried not to watch what Rahm was doing to the little soldier whose helmet Rahm had torn free.) Qualt turned away. Behind him something huge and dark and shadowy spread out from him on both sides, moving slightly in the breeze, like breathing — watching too. When he looked back, Qualt saw Rimgia stagger into the shadows around the council-house corner — and in the shadows, saw Abrid run up to her, seize her by the shoulder, demand if she were all right, and somehow, over the length of his own question, realize that she was not; and slip his other arm around her. Looking right and left, and totally unaware of what had gone on just around the corner (Rimgia’s eyes were fixed and wide, as if she were seeing it all again), Abrid helped his sister off along the council-building wall.
Qualt had gripped the edging of twigs and thatch so tightly that even on his hard and calloused palms it left stinging indentations. His hands loosened now, and he moved forward, as if to vault down and pursue them. But the thing behind him — did it reach for his shoulder? No, for it had not quite the hands we do. But a dark wing swept around before him, like a shadow come to life to restrain whoever would bolt loose.
And turning, Qualt whispered, words lurching between heartbeats that still near deafened, halting as the trip from one roof — over the violence — to another: “This is — what thou seest if…thou flyest at Çiron!”