"Kruthruk picked me," Guthlag said, "oldest man in the host. Talkin' makes me thirsty."
Benard reined in again. The night battle outside the walls had been a massacre, they said. He hadn't known about Kosord's Werists fighting on both sides and slaughtering one another, but he could believe it. After that, even, the citizenry had tried to contest Stralg's entry, leading to riots, retaliation, and the bloodshed Tiu had died to avert.
"Drive on!" Guthlag belched and wiped his mouth.
Benard remembered the brake, whapped the onagers. "How much defending did you have to do?"
"Enough." Such modesty was unheard of in a Werist.
"The rioters broke into the palace, didn't they?"
"Faugh! The rioters were just extrinsics with spears. I splattered some gobs of flesh around an' after that the rest stayed well back. But Stralg's warbeasts was more serious. I took out three of them before their packleader got there and called them off. When Stralg himself arrived, I was still blockin' the door, still in battleform, all reekin' of gore. He had Horold in tow. Told me he wanted to talk to Ingeld, an' she came out."
The lady had seen much trouble in her life, but that interview must have been one of the worst moments. She had never told Benard this. He had not even been born then. It was shocking to realize all the things that the world had gotten up to before he was there to see.
"This was the jade stair?"
"Naw, the west door."
Benard tried to conjure up the scene. He knew the passage well enough ... narrow and straight, about fifteen steps ... he counted them in his memory and there were fourteen ... darkness, rushlights flaming and smoking, making shadows dance. Much blood, Stralg and his men crammed in at the bottom, perhaps a few bodies... Ingeld defiant at the top and the monstrous Guthlag-thing crouching beside her. Or looming over her—it would not be wise to ask the man to describe his warbeast. Bleeding...
Guthlag growled. "Stralg said she could marry his brother and swear to be loyal, else he'd give her to the troops, which was it to be?"
"So she accepted the handsome Horold?"
"No. Ah, you'd have been proud of her, lad! She laid out some terms of her own. One of them was that I be spared. So I was. Stralg himself said I'd earned that."
"Praise indeed!"
Guthlag sighed nostalgically for what must have been the greatest moment of his life. "Ah, the Fist's a Hero's Hero. 'Member you asked about battleform? Well, here's your answer: Yes, we can put it on anytime we want, but snot allowed. Man changes form without orders, he's headin' for a load of what your friend the Pimple's goin' through right now. And, my lad, changing's not something done lightly. It hurts! All your joints grind, your bones bend. A man needs to be mad to go through with it. Or really scared. Doesn't matter which in a real fight, because them already changed will turn on shirkers, so when the leaders form, we all form."
"What other terms did Ingeld demand for her marriage?"
"Hard to say." Guthlag scratched busily. "In battleform, anything more'n simple words gets pretty tricky. Lost a lot of blood, too. An' I was trying to watch half a dozen Werists, wondering what to do if they all came up the stairs at me at once. So I didn't get much of it. Something to do with sons ... And her husband was to go free."
"Her what?" Benard squealed, causing the onagers' long ears to pivot in alarm. The old man's chuckle told him he'd reacted as required.
"So wash it to you if lady was married before, my lad?"
"Nothing." He glanced at Guthlag and saw that his denial did not convince. How many people knew or suspected that he'd once been Ingeld's lover? "What was his name?"
"Ardial Berkson. A Speaker, o' course. Nars's chosen heir."
"How long had they been married?" Had she had any say in her father's choice? Had she loved him?
" 'Bout a sixday. He was standin' on other side of her, cool as bronze. Anyway, when Stralg balked at something, she said, 'Packleader, kill me.' I was packleader of the red, then, see?"
"No! Oh, no, that's too much! I've known I've swallowed a lot of whoppers in my time, but that one chokes me."
"Watch your teeth, boy," Guthlag growled. "I'm telling you Mayn's truth. We had it agreed. I was to kill her rather than see her taken alive. That wasn't the final code word, though."
Ingeld was capable of it, Benard decided, like her mother. Whether she would have been capable at sixteen was another question. "Obviously Stralg believed her."
"Stralg had a seer with him. Asked if she was bluffing. Seer said she wasn't. So he agreed. She went to his brother whose looks musta' helped some. Handsome as a god, he was. Ardial wash an ugly cuss an' fishy cold, like all Speakers. He just bowed and walked away between the Werists, stepping over corpses. I was allowed to swear fealty to Horold. First thing he did was order me never to put on battleform again."
It took Benard a moment to realize what his companion had just said. He glanced again at the twisted hands and knees, the pain-racked face. Werists had no need of Sinurists because they could heal themselves in battleform.
"He's probably long forgotten that order. Can't you ask to try?"
"Werists don't beg, boy."
Surely self-defense must be a permissible excuse? Had Guthlag brought the gold along as bait for an ambush so he could battleform in a fight with bandits? No, that was absurd. Was Benard supposed to try and run away with it and be hunted down?
"This journey isn't easy for you, lord. Why didn't you send someone else?"
The resulting pause was so long that Benard thought the old man wasn't going to answer, but eventually he growled, "Came along because Satrap told me to. Said I was the one who had to keep track of you anyway, and I was the only man in his host he could trust not to gut you soon as his back was turned."
"That was kind of him."
"Aye. He wants to do it himself, see?"
Benard knew that. "At least Horold's honest. Did he mention when?"
"Naw. He did say I gotta run you down if you try to escape."
"I have no intention of—"
Guthlag cackled unpleasantly. "Just as well, because it shard to think about anything in a chase sept the game, un'stand? Catch something an' not kill it—snot likely."
Benard stared straight ahead, but his stomach was churning. "I do not intend to try running away."
"That's what her ladyship told me." The old man affected a prissy falsetto. " 'I'm just afraid dear Benard will never abandon all that marble,' she said. 'The darling boy thinks of nothing except his art.' "
"Ingeld did not call me a darling boy!"
"No. She called you a bullheaded idiot."
At last, Benard saw the plot. How could he have been so blind? She had said marble to the Werist, but marble was not the problem and they all knew it. The problem was Horold wanting to kill him. She wanted Benard to run away.
"So the real reason you came was because Ingeld asked you to and this gold came from her, yes?" Meddlesome woman!
The old man cackled drunkenly. " 'Gotta do something to save him,' she says."
A kind thought, maybe, but Benard was hurt that she had tried to buy him off, even if she had not seen it that way. He would not go unless she went with him. Why couldn't they see that sometimes it took more courage to do nothing? True, he rarely went to see her, because the satrap undoubtedly spied on her through his seers, but the thought of never seeing her again was unbearable. One day she would understand that the only way to save his life was to run away with him.
He waited until Guthlag needed another drink, which was not long.
He reined in. There were several boats in sight and more coming, all with bare masts and oars out as they let the current swing them around a great curve, close in to the bank. As the Werist raised the almost-empty wineskin to his mouth, Benard leaped from the chariot. He went down the bank in three great strides that almost smashed his ankles, and launched himself in a dive that should have cleared the fringe of reeds and landed him in the water with a spectacular belly flop.