Lightning flickered above them. Daenek looked up at the rumbling sky and felt a drop of rain splash on his neck.
“Afraid of a little wet, boy? We got something here to keep us warm. Want some?” The captain extended his bottle over the top of the flames. “No?”
He dropped it, then watched in alcoholic befuddlement as the spilled liquid hissed into steam over the burning wood.
Daenek’s gaze fell to the low flames. He could vaguely hear the rest of the subthane’s men cheering a drunken fight between two of their number. The equines, staked down several yards away, whined at each flash of lightning. Daenek coughed, feeling a band of pressure tighten across his chest. He had no idea of how far they had ridden from the monastery before his captors had decided to rest on this bare hillside for the night. They had not even given him a blanket to wrap around himself, and the cold seeped through his clothes and flesh, gripping his bones. The beginning of a fever made his vision waver and seem unreal.
His shirt was soon plastered to his back as the rain increased.
The fire sputtered, then collapsed into smoke and dark ashes.
Daenek pulled his tightly bound feet closer to himself, trying to draw himself into a ball, to shelter against the storm what little warmth remained in his body.
Minutes or hours passed, driven into his numb senses by the rain, and then he felt himself jerked upright by a hand painfully gripping his shoulder. His knees buckled as his bootsoles slipped in the mud.
“Punk,” snarled the captain’s voice. The face was invisible in the darkness but the breath was thick and fetid with sour alcohol. “Rotten little thane’s son—if it weren’t for your cute tricks, we’d still be dry and warm right now!”
The blow barely registered on Daenek’s senses—he was aware of the rough leather sliding across his skin and his head whipping to one side. There was a taste of warm salt on his lips.
A tremendous burst of lightning and Daenek saw, frozen in its blue-white glare, the captain’s fist in the arc of another swing.
Behind the captain was another figure, reaching for him with massive arms, glistening with the rain. But that can’t be, thought Daenek, his mind whirling in confusion. We must be kilometers away from the quarry—
Then the mute, hulking figure, that Daenek had grown up watching and being watched by, gripped the captain’s neck and tore him away from Daenek as the lightning faded. As Daenek fell to his knees in the mud, he could hear the captain’s shout choked off with a single sharp noise.
A second passed, and Daenek felt himself being lifted by one arm. Another flash of lightning revealed the mute watcher holding him, then reaching for the cords at his wrist. Grunting, the mute strained, then snapped the strands in two. Suddenly, Daenek felt something hard strike him in the side of the head.
With his feet still bound, he fell sideways onto the flooded ground. The rest of the subthane’s men bowled over the mute, sprawling him and themselves into the muck.
The slippery rope seemed to take hours to loosen, but the mute and the subthane’s men were still grappling in the mud when Daenek was at last able to stand up. He hesitated, trying to see what was happening with the roiling mass of bodies, when another lightning flash burst through the shafts of rain.
One of the subthane’s men saw him and pulled away from the fight with the mute. From on his knees, the man dived for Daenek’s legs. Daenek staggered backwards and drove his fist into the side of the man’s head. The blow broke his grip, flinging him to one side, but not before Daenek felt a burning sensation course up his thigh, and saw a knife spin through the mud with its blade darkened.
Daenek turned and stumbled away, feeling the pain in his leg flare with every step. Then rain lashed against his face and chest until he gasped. He ran on, his feet skidding on the muddy slope.
Suddenly, he heard an animal-like cry, from a massive throat that had held no voice for years, filtering through the storm-filled distance. The shout died, broken off at the pitch of its rage. The ground sucked at his feet as Daenek ran.
“Thane’s son,” whispered the storm’s voice.
So this was where it would end. How far had he managed to drag himself before the rest of the subthane’s men had tracked him down? Kilometers perhaps, it didn’t matter. The whole universe had become mud and rain and tearing wind. The night was made even darker by fevered exhaustion and loss of blood.
Daenek pressed his face into the mud, away from the sneering voices.
“Thane’s son.” It was every voice now, that he had ever heard.
The villagers, the Lady Marche, Stepke, the priests. All the languages, with the inflections of fear and hatred drowning out the few strains of pride and hope. Some dull animal part of Daenek, almost the only part still conscious, longed for silence, for rest. Let death come, breathed the small seed made of darkness.
The rain beat on the hillside. Lightning and the shouts of his pursuers, very close. Noises from above him.
Chapter VIII
Sunlight. A yellow disc of it lay warm and liquid on Daenek’s face. He shifted his head away from the light and opened his eyes. The light came from a small round window set in a rivet-studded metal that was painted a dull grey.
Daenek’s brow creased as he looked about in puzzlement. He was lying in a narrow bed with sheets slightly fuzzy with years of wear, and a thin, drab brown blanket over them. There were other beds on either side of him, empty and spaced in neat rows.
The room was unlit except for the small circle of light.
Sunlight, thought Daenek, concentrating furiously. But it was raining, and the subthane’s men—
He sat up in the bed, the motion dizzying him for a second.
His muscles felt stiff but, as he pressed the palm of his hand to his face, he knew the fever was gone. A dull twinge of pain had replaced the throbbing fury of the wound in his thigh. “Hey,” he called into the dimly-lit space. “Is there anybody here?” His voice cracked, stiff with disuse.
Muffled noises from the far end of the room, then a door opened. Daenek watched as a man in a dingy white coat shuffled down the aisle towards him. When he reached the side of Daenek’s bed, he bent down and peered into Daenek’s face. The man’s own broad face spread into a grin, as he straightened up and sipped from a steaming cup he had carried with him. He turned away from the bed with a vague gesture of his hand. He spoke a few rapid words and hurried down the aisle to the door.
Daenek said nothing, his brain sparked into furious activity.
He had recognized the man’s language. Mertzer, he thought. I’m on board one of the caravans. Suddenly, he was aware of a deep subsonic vibration in the room, as from gigantic machines—the caravan’s engines. One hand flew to his forehead and kneaded the skin. Somehow an enormous gap had formed in his memory, from the storm to this warm, safe bed. He pulled himself up and rested his back against the wall at the head of the bed, and waited.
Several minutes later the door opened again. The same man as before entered in company with a taller, sour-faced older man.
As they approached the bed, Daenek noticed that the taller man’s white coat was clean, and that its wide pockets were stuffed with chrome-plated instruments. The man didn’t use any of the odd-shaped devices, though, but merely felt Daenek’s forehead with the back of his hand. With no change of expression on his deep-seamed face, he pulled down the bedcovers and examined the transparent dressing wrapped around Daenek’s thigh. The wound was a dark, but bloodless, red line running from Daenek’s groin to just above his knee. The man poked at the thin, porous membrane and grunted, apparently satisfied.