Yusek screamed, jumping backwards. Even the strangers stepped away from the spreading pool of gore.
Some went for their swords but others in the crowd stopped them, grabbing their arms. Orbern threw up his hands for calm. ‘Do not move!’ he called. To the travellers he offered a small bow of his head. ‘There will be no further challenges. Your demonstration is most … pointed. North of here you will find a handful of small settlements, homesteads and such. And I have heard rumours of a temple of some sort.’
‘Who knows this region best?’ the spokesman asked, his voice still mild and uninflected.
Orbern’s brows drew down once more. ‘Well, Yusek here has covered most of the slopes.’
Yusek tore her gaze from the pile of viscera and saw that the spokesman stranger was now regarding her through his painted mask. His eyes were hazel brown.
‘What?’ she snapped.
‘You will guide us.’
‘Sure as the bony finger of the Taker, I will not.’
The spokesman turned away. ‘It is decided. We require food and water.’
Orbern exhaled his relief. ‘Shel-ken, find them some supplies.’
‘No! It is not decided!’ Yusek snarled. She glared at Orbern. ‘I won’t go with these murderers!’
‘Is this one also defying the hierarchy?’ the spokesman asked of Orbern.
Yusek backed up until her shoulder blades pressed against a wall. Orbern eyed her, one brow arched as if to ask: well?
All eyes swung to her. A few of Orbern’s men licked their lips as if eager to see her sliced from throat to crotch. ‘No,’ she said.
Yusek confronted Orbern after the two visitors had left the hall to wait outside. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded while he watched, pulling on one fat lip, as the mess that had been Waynar was hauled away. Fresh sawdust was thrown over the stained dirt floor. He returned to picking at the greasy bird carcass. ‘Well?’
His tired gaze flicked to her. ‘You’re hardly really a member of this little community of ours, are you, Yusek? You take every excuse to range over the slopes for days on end. It’s as if you’ve just been waiting for an excuse to cut and run anyway.’
She couldn’t find it in herself to deny any of what he said. ‘But with these two murderers? You saw what they did to Waynar! You just want to get me killed.’
Orbern pushed aside the bones. ‘Yusek …’ He rubbed his brow, sighing. ‘Firstly, dear, Waynar asked for it. He challenged the Seguleh. So, lesson number one — do not challenge them! Now, secondly, contrary to what we all just saw, in their company you will be the safest you’ve been in years.’ He sat back, opening his hands. ‘Thirdly, almost everyone here is a murderer — since when has that been a problem for you? And lastly, frankly, it has been a royal pain in the arse keeping everyone off your arse this last year.’
‘If they can’t control themselves that’s their problem, not mine. They can go hump animals.’
‘Oh, don’t fool yourself — some do. Or each other. In any case, I agree, yes. Why women get blamed for men’s callousness and lack of respect for others is beyond me. But it becomes your problem when it’s you they’re attacking. Yes?’
‘I’ll kill anyone who tries that. They know that.’
‘So I’m down yet another man.’
‘It’s not my damn fault they’re arseholes!’
He pulled savagely on his beard. ‘Yusek! The reason they’ve been driven out of all other towns and villages and families — any community of cooperative people — is because they are murderous, selfish, short-sighted, impulsive, cruel arseholes!’ He pointed to the door. ‘I’m doing you a favour.’
She didn’t move. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘The fact that you’re still alive proves that, Yusek. But the odds are stacking up. Eventually, you’ll disappear and Ezzen, or Dullet, will have a self-satisfied smirk on his face for a few days … and that would be the end of it.’
Yusek lowered her chin. ‘I’m not asking you to do me any favours.’ She hated how sullen that sounded, but it was the truth.
Orbern sighed again. ‘I know. But I am anyway. Osserc knows why. Must be my civilized conscience.’
She went to pack the rest of her meagre belongings. Queen’s throw! I may as well just ditch ’em. She spotted Short-tall, out of the south, and raised her chin to him. ‘So who are these Segulath anyway?’
‘It’s Seguleh,’ he corrected her, then drew a slashing line across the air. ‘Swords, sweetmeat. Walking swords is what they are. Watch yourself or they’ll do you as they did Waynar.’
She gave him a face, threw her tied bedroll over her shoulder.
She found them waiting in the muddy garbage-strewn grounds that Orbern called the ‘Marshalling field’. A pack of gathered stores sat with them.
The spokesman indicated it. ‘Carry this.’
‘I ain’t no one’s pack mule.’
‘None the less.’
‘No. You can fucking carry it.’
Something whipped past her face — a silvery blur. Her bedroll fell from her shoulder into the mud, its rope tie cut. The man straightened, his cloak falling back into place.
Yusek stared. How in the name of Togg did he do that? She raised her gaze to the painted mask and the eyes behind: these studied her, narrowed, as if gauging her reaction. It was not the swaggering superior look she was used to from all those who’d bested her in the past.
She spat to one side — ‘Fine!’ — yanked up the pack, which was damned heavy, adjusted it on her back. ‘You do have a name …?’
The spokesman motioned for her to walk with him. The silent partner followed, hood still raised. As they approached the palisade door she spotted fat Orbern up on the catwalk. He waved for the solid log cross-piece to be pulled aside and the door pushed open. They exited into the woods with almost the entire crew of Orbern-town at the palisade watching them go.
‘My name is Sall,’ the spokesman said. Now, in the silence of the woods, he sounded rather young.
Yusek jerked a thumb to the other. ‘And him?’
Sall was silent for a time, perhaps searching for the right words. ‘In the rankings of the Seguleh I am of the Three Hundredth-’
‘Three hundredth what?’ she cut in.
Again, he was silent for a while. The rain had let up and now the streams of run-off trickled across the track. Heavy drops pattered amid the woods. The morning’s mist was gone with the rain.
‘The Three Hundredth I refer to means among the Seguleh fighters,’ Sall said, his tone now quite icy. It seemed he wasn’t used to being interrupted.
She eyed him sidelong. He’d raised his hood again. ‘So … you mean that you’re among the top three hundred fighters of all you Seguleh?’
‘Among all those who choose to pursue the rankings, yes. Not all need do so.’
Among the three hundred best fighters of these Seguleh? Damn! She jerked her thumb to the other. ‘And him?’
‘Yusek’ — he spoke much more quietly now — ‘I can give you his name … but it will be of no use to you. You might address him but he will never speak to you. He is Lo. And he is Eighth.’
Eighth? Like in eighth best of all of ’em? Burn’s embrace! And they’re out here in the middle of nowhere? ‘What’re you two doing here?’
‘As I said, we are looking for a monastery that is supposed to be somewhere here in these mountains.’
Yusek snorted. Damned foolishness. Here she was guiding a couple of fanatics off to some temple so they could bow to some dusty piece of bone, or a sacred statue on a wall, or have a senile old man wave his hand over their heads. What a fucking waste of her time!
She decided to ditch them right away.
She simply didn’t stop walking. So far that tactic had never failed her. She’d lost everyone she’d ever walked away from. As the day progressed, sure enough they fell back just as everyone always did. Once they were far enough behind on the trail she shucked the pack from her shoulders, took the best of the dried staples and a skin of water, and just kept right on going without looking back. In fact, she decided to run.