Frowning, the Merude said, ‘You were careless in losing them. We were diligent in recapturing them. Accordingly, we expect compensation for our efforts, just as you should expect a certain cost for your carelessness.’
‘Unchain them,’ the stranger said.
‘No. What tribe are you?’ The eyes, still fixed unwavering upon his own, looked profoundly… dead. ‘What has happened to your skin?’ As dead as the Emperor’s. ‘What is your name?’
‘Unchain them now.’
The Merude shook his head, then he laughed-a little weakly-and waved his comrades forward as he began drawing his cutlass.
Disbelief at the absurdity of the challenge slowed his effort. The weapon was halfway out of its scabbard when one of the stranger’s longswords flashed clear of its sheath and opened the Edur’s throat.
Shouting in rage, the other five warriors drew their blades and rushed forward, while the ten Letherii soldiers quickly followed suit.
The stranger watched the leader crumple to the ground, blood spurting wild into the river mist descending onto the road. Then he unsheathed his other longsword and stepped to meet the five Edur. A clash of iron, and all at once the two Letherii weapons in the stranger’s hands were singing, a rising timbre with every blow they absorbed.
Two Edur stumbled back at the same time, both mortally wounded, one in the chest, the other with a third of his skull sliced away. This latter one turned away as the fighting continued, reaching down to collect the fragment of scalp and bone, then walked drunkenly back along the road.
Another Edur fell, his left leg cut out from beneath him. The remaining two quickly backed away, yelling at the Letherii who were now hesitating three paces behind the fight.
The stranger pressed forward. He parried a thrust from the Edur on the right with the longsword in his left hand-sliding the blade under then over, drawing it leftward before a twist of his wrist tore the weapon from the attacker’s hand; then a straight-arm thrust of his own buried his point in the Edur’s throat. At the same time he reached over with the longsword in his right hand, feinting high. The last Edur leaned back to avoid that probe, attempting a slash aimed at clipping the stranger’s wrist. But the longsword then deftly dipped, batting the cutlass away, even as the point drove up into the warrior’s right eye socket, breaking the delicate orbital bones on its way into the forebrain.
Advancing between the two falling Edur, the stranger cut down the nearest two Letherii-at which point the remaining eight broke and ran, past the wagons-where the drivers were themselves scrambling in panicked abandonment-and then alongside the row of staring prisoners. Running, flinging weapons away, down the road.
As one Letherii in particular moved opposite one of the slaves, a leg kicked out, tripping the man, and it seemed the chain-line writhed then, as the ambushing slave leapt atop the hapless Letherii, loose chain wrapping round the neck, before the slave pulled it taut. Legs kicked, arms thrashed and hands clawed, but the slave would not relent, and eventually the guard’s struggles ceased.
Silchas Ruin, the swords keening in his hands, walked up to where Udinaas continued strangling the corpse. ‘You can stop now,’ the albino Tiste Andii said.
‘I can,’ Udinaas said through clenched teeth, ‘but I won’t. This bastard was the worst of them. The worst.’
‘His soul even now drowns in the mist,’ Silchas Ruin said, turning as two figures emerged from the brush lining the ditch on the south side of the road.
‘Keep choking him,’ said Kettle, from where she was chained farther down the line. ‘He hurt me, that one.’
‘I know,’ Udinaas said in a grating voice. ‘I know.’
Silchas Ruin approached Kettle. ‘Hurt you. How?’
‘The usual way,’ she replied. ‘With the thing between his legs.’
‘And the other Letherii?’
The girl shook her head. ‘They just watched. Laughing, always laughing.’
Silchas Ruin turned as Seren Pedac arrived.
Seren was chilled by the look in the Tiste Andii’s uncanny eyes as Silchas Ruin said, ‘I will pursue the ones who flee, Acquitor. And rejoin you all before day’s end.’
She looked away, her gaze catching a momentary glimpse of Fear Sengar, standing over the corpses of the Merude Tiste Edur, then quickly on, to the rock-littered plain to the south-where still wandered the Tiste Edur who’d lost a third of his skull. But that sight as well proved too poignant. ‘Very well,’ she said, now squinting at the wagons and the horses standing in their yokes. ‘We will continue on this road.’
Udinaas had finally expended his rage on the Letherii body beneath him, and he rose to face her. ‘Seren Pedac, what of the rest of these slaves? We must free them all.’
She frowned. Exhaustion was making thinking difficult. Months and months of hiding, fleeing, eluding both Edur and Letherii; of finding their efforts to head eastward blocked again and again, forcing them ever northward, and the endless terror that lived within her, had driven all acuity from her thoughts. Free them. Yes. But then…
‘just more rumours,’ Udinaas said, as if reading her mind, as if finding her thoughts before she did. ‘There’s plenty of those, confusing our hunters. Listen, Seren, they already know where we are, more or less. And these slaves-they’ll do whatever they can to avoid recapture. We need not worry overmuch about them.’
She raised her brows. ‘You vouch for your fellow Indebted, Udinaas? All of whom will turn away from a chance to buy their way clear with vital information, yes?’
‘The only alternative, then,’ he said, eyeing her, ‘is to kill them all.’
The ones listening, the ones not yet beaten down into mindless automatons, suddenly raised their voices in proclamations and promises, reaching out towards Seren, chains rattling. The others looked up in fear, like myrid catching scent of a wolf they could not see. Some cried out, cowering in the stony mud of the road.
‘The first Edur he killed,’ said Udinaas, ‘has the keys.’
Silchas Ruin had walked down the road. Barely visible in the mist, the Tiste Andii veered into something huge, winged, then took to the air. Seren glanced over at the row of slaves-none had seen that, she was relieved to note. ‘Very well,’ she said in answer to Udinaas, and she walked up to where Fear Sengar still stood near the dead Edur.
‘I must take the keys,’ she said, crouching beside the first fallen Edur.
‘Do not touch him,’ Fear said.
She looked up at him. ‘The keys-the chains-’
‘I will find them,’ he said.
Nodding, she straightened, then stepped back. Watched as he spoke a silent prayer, then settled onto his knees beside the body. He found the keys in a leather pouch tied to the warrior’s belt, a pouch that also contained a handful of polished stones. Fear took the keys in his left hand and held the stones in the palm of his right. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are from the Merude shore. Likely he collected them when but a child.’
‘Children grow up,’ Seren said. ‘Even straight trees spawn crooked branches.’
‘And what was flawed in this warrior?’ Fear demanded, glaring up at her. ‘He followed my brother, as did every other warrior of the tribes.’
‘Some eventually turned away, Fear.’ Like you.
‘What I have turned away from lies in the shadow of-what I am now turned towards, Acquitor. Does this challenge my loyalty towards the Tiste Edur? My own kind? No. That is something all of you forget, conveniently so, again and again. Understand me, Acquitor. I will hide if I must, but I will not kill my own people. We had the coin, we could have bought their freedom-’
‘Not Udinaas.’
He bared his teeth, said nothing.
Yes, Udinaas, the one man you dream of killing. If not for Silchas Ruin… ‘Fear Sengar,’ she said. ‘You have chosen to travel with us, and there can be no doubt-none at all-that Silchas Ruin commands this meagre party. Dislike his methods if you must, but he alone will see you through. You know this.’