"Were." Rhavas automatically corrected him.
"See what I mean?" The soldier rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb to the west. "Go on. Get out of here."
Thus encouraged, Rhavas did. He found more trees in which to encamp that evening. Not long after he went off the road, a troop of eastbound horsemen trotted along it. He counted himself lucky that they hadn't seen him.
He didn't know whether he found himself lucky to be falling asleep in the woods again. If he kept dreaming about falling off the Bridge of the Separator . . . No, he didn't want to do that more than once. He hadn't wanted to do it once, in fact.
Because he was so nervous about it, he lay some time awake. But when he did fall asleep, he slept soundly. No dreams troubled him. The next thing he knew, sunbeams sneaking through the branches overhead woke him.
He ate the last of the bread in his saddlebags, then started riding again. Before long, he came upon . . . a checkpoint. He felt like cursing the soldiers there just because they were an annoyance. Then one of their officers asked, "What do you want, priest, coming out of the rebel's territory?"
"You favor Maleinos?" Rhavas said in glad surprise.
"Yes, we do. But what about you?" the horseman growled.
Another officer stirred and stared. "Very holy sir! Don't you know me, very holy sir?"
A lump of ice like Skopentzana winter formed in Rhavas' belly. He nodded jerkily. "Yes, I know you, Himerios."
IX
Himerios and Rhavas rode toward the city of Videssos side by side. To Rhavas' dismay, Himerios had no trouble getting leave from his superior. The other officer just said, "Yes, go on—do what you need to do."
"I know Skopentzana is lost," Himerios said now. "That news came down here some time ago. I had heard you'd got free of the sack, but did not know if it was true. I praise the good god to find it is."
"Er—yes," Rhavas said cautiously. If Himerios already knew he'd got out of Skopentzana, the former garrison commander might also know he'd got out with Ingegerd. He had to watch what he said.
"You will know what happened to my wife . . . ?" By the way Himerios said it, Rhavas couldn't tell if it was statement or question.
Rhavas looked down at the steppe pony's mane. "Yes," he answered, and then, "I am afraid the news is not good. I grieve from the bottom of my heart to have to say this, but it is so."
"Go on," Himerios told him. "I feared it would be so when I saw you ride up alone, but tell me more. Tell me everything you can."
"There is not much I can tell," Rhavas said, and that was true in more ways than he hoped Himerios ever found out. Before he could continue, the sound of hoofbeats behind him made him look back over his shoulder. A couple of men from the troop Himerios had been with were catching up to them. He shrugged to himself. Maybe they had business in the capital, too. He did need to think about what to tell Himerios. The story he'd given Koubatzes wouldn't do. It hadn't done then, in fact. But the jolt of running into the officer dismayed him.
The other riders—not very soldierly looking men, either one of them—came up by Himerios. Rhavas looked a question at him. Himerios nodded. "They're my friends. They can hear whatever you have to say."
"However you like." Rhavas shrugged again. "Ingegerd and I escaped from Skopentzana. We made our way south together for several days." That was all true enough. Rhavas looked over to Himerios to see how he was taking it. Himerios' face showed only intent interest. Rhavas went on, "After we got to Tzamandos, we fell in with some other fugitives—merchants and such—and went south with them."
Himerios nodded once more. "Yes, I had heard that, too. What happened after you joined them, very holy sir?"
How much had Himerios heard? More than Rhavas wished he had, plainly. How much news had come down from the north? Naturally, the officer would have looked for anything he could that had to do with Skopentzana, and especially with Ingegerd. Who were his companions? Whoever they were, he didn't mind their listening to what Rhavas had to say.
"We were attacked by Khamorth," Rhavas said—which was true. "We took refuge in a stand of trees." So was that. Then he parted company with the truth. "We got separated in the woods. I managed to escape, but"—he bowed his head in a good counterfeit of sorrow—"I do not know what became of your wife after that."
"No, eh?" Himerios looked not to him but to the two men who'd ridden up after them. With a jolt of dismay, Rhavas realized who—or rather, what—those men had to be: mages tasting the truth of what he said. Ever so slightly, one of them shook his head. Himerios turned. "No, eh?" he repeated, his voice harsher. "Suppose you tell me now what really happened, very holy sir."
How much did he already know? Had someone found Ingegerd's body in that farmhouse? No way to tell for certain who had ravished her—it might have been the Khamorth. But if those wizards were listening to make sure Rhavas couldn't lie and get away with it . . . "Curse you," Rhavas said, almost casually, and Himerios fell off his horse.
"Phos!" one of the wizards exclaimed. The other sketched the sun-circle over his heart. The one who'd spoken stared at Rhavas in horror. "You're mad!"
He shook his head. "Not I. I know better than to cling to the weak and the outworn." He focused his will on the mages. "Curse both of you, too."
Their faces twisted in torment, but they did not fall. Koubatzes hadn't, either, not right away. Rhavas was braced for their resistance. As Koubatzes had, they tried to work magic against him. He felt it, but it hindered him no more than cobwebs hinder a man crossing a dark room. He knew his own powers now, far better than he had when he faced off against the Skopentzanan sorcerer.
"Curse you!" he said again. "To the ice with both of you!"
Anguish filled their cries. Rhavas looked back over his shoulder, but they'd gone too far for the men back at Maleinos' checkpoint to hear. It was him against them—and he was stronger and more determined. He cursed them once more, and they, like Himerios, slid from their horses and sprawled in ungainly death.
Rhavas had left Koubatzes where he lay, dead in the snow. He couldn't do that here: this road would be used again, and soon. Dismounting, he dragged the bodies behind some bushes. Even that wouldn't do for long; their stench would soon give them away. But he would be long gone by then—and how could one priest slay a stalwart officer and a pair of wizards? For that matter, why would a priest want to do such a savage, senseless thing?
"He has his reasons," Rhavas muttered. "Oh, yes. He does indeed."
He led the other horses for two or three miles. A soldier coming the other way along the road gave him a curious look, but said nothing. Rhavas almost struck him dead, too, but in the end refrained. One more death on this highway would say where the trouble was going.
When Rhavas spied horses grazing in a meadow, he stripped the saddles and reins from the animals he led and let them go mingle with the others. He did not think the man who tended those beasts would mind suddenly acquiring three new ones. Whoever the fellow was, he wouldn't even have to look them in the mouth.
It's over, Rhavas thought as he rode on. I dreaded it, and it's over. Everything seemed so very simple, so wonderfully simple. But then Rhavas realized it was not over, and it was not simple, either. He had left bodies behind him. Someone would remember Himerios had ridden off with a priest. Someone would very definitely remember two mages had ridden after them. When none of those people returned or sent word of their whereabouts . . .
No, it was far from over.
Plucking at his beard, Rhavas kept on toward Videssos the city. How was he supposed to show the Empire—show the world—what needed showing without leaving this trail of corpses in his wake? Of course, the corpses were part of the point, but he didn't think the people with whom he'd be talking would appreciate that.