Bai lifted both ginnies and fixed them on Kesh's shoulders. He stifled a yelp. Mischief's tongue flicked against his ear. Magic grunted, displeased to be dumped on this unappetizing male rival. But they stayed with claws clutching Kesh's robe, gazes rising as Bai rose smoothly to her feet. She unfastened the top two ties on her sleeveless jacket, and pushed out of the thicket of pipe-brush. Once away from him, she made as much noise as she could pushing through branches as she approached the cleared verge.
Kesh was frozen, a coward, too stunned to respond as she placed herself in the open.
"Whew!" she said as the men saw her and the crawling one straightened with a leer on his face that made Kesh shiver with disgust. "I hate peeing in the woods."
The way her jacket set on her shoulders changed somehow, its tight curve over her shoulders relaxing away as, he supposed, the front gaped open. The two men dropped their gazes right down to her breasts.
She leaped. She had a knife in her hand. Light winked on the blade. It sank into the chest of the closest man before Kesh could blink. Yet when he did blink, two or three times, as if he had a midge in his eye, afterward he saw a new movement, already begun. The other man had lunged, with hand gripped to the arrow. He thrust the arrow as though the barbed arrowhead were a spear. She sidestepped the thrust, kicked up into his groin so hard that bone snapped, and spun away as he howled and doubled over. Meanwhile, as if he had just realized he was dead, the first man collapsed in a flaccid heap, spirit fled.
A knife blade flashed. Somehow, the other man had unsheathed his own knife. Despite his injuries, he cut at her. She sprang, actually flipped twice-hands feet hands feet-and ended up on the other side of the dead man. With a graceful sweep, she bent low and came up with his sword. Blades clashed as long knife met short sword. She twisted hers, and flipped her wrist. The knife went flying and hit the ground with a thunk. He yelped, stumbled out of range, but went down with his companion's sword buried up to its hilt in his gut. She shoved him onto his back as she let go the sword, scooped up his knife, and straddled him.
Face contorted with fear and pain, he thrashed, begging for mercy: "-pray you, Lady, I pray you-be merciful-"
"So I will be. You will be paid, in the same coin you took." She cut his throat, jumped back as blood spilled, and tossed his knife onto his twitching body.
Turning, she raised a hand to wave. How strange, thought Kesh, that there was no blood on her palms. "Come on! Quickly! There may be another set of scouts."
He rose, but his legs could only be moved in a shuffling stagger. The ginnies weighed heavily on his shoulders. He had to lean on her walking staff to stay upright.
She gave him a look, fastened up her ties, and hit the wreckage like a scavenging dog. She collected six bladders of drink and a basket with shoulder straps which she filled with wedges of cheese, flat bread, rice balls wrapped in se leaves, several precious pouches marked with the ideogram for dried tea leaves, and oilcloth wrapped around what was surely dried fish. His stomach hurt, just looking at it. His gaze skimmed across the open eyes and rictus grins of the dead, elided the splashes of dried blood. All at once, he dropped. The ginnies scrambled off as he heaved again. There was nothing in his stomach to lose.
She came back to him while he was still kneeling at the side of the road with a hand shading his eyes and his stomach clenched, all sharp pain.
"Blood takes people that way sometimes," she said, setting the basket down by her feet.
Her voice could not be that of his sister. Zubaidit, whom he had once known, would have been screaming with hysterics. It infuriated him that this lilu had taken over Bai's form and done violence with hands that ought to have belonged to gentle little Bai.
"I've never killed a man," he said accusingly.
"Yet how many out of the empire have you sold into slavery over the years to buy us free from our debt?" she asked him. "Isn't that a way of killing the life a person once had? Isn't that what happened to us? And at least Hundred folk sell only their labor and have a hope of earning out their time. Those slaves from the south will never go home."
The bile rising in his throat choked him.
Was it the same? No, not at all. Not at all.
"Where do we go?" he asked. All his determination had fled. The buzzing of the flies had sapped him. He was empty. A vulture, seeing them stay still for so long, sailed down to land beside a corpse, and bent its head to tear.
"We have to go back. Think of that village we came through yesterday in the afternoon."
"It isn't our fault their Ladytree rotted through and fell three years back and the new one is only a sapling. They ought to have allowed us to shelter for no coin in their empty council hall, instead of wanting to charge us just because they're greedy."
"It doesn't matter how they treated us. We have to go back because it would be wrong to go on, knowing others will be used in this same way. Come on. I found food enough to last us a few days."
"Looted from the dead."
"I picked up forty vey, too, although I must say that these were desperately poor folk, to have so little. Or else the wolves already took their coin. Maybe so."
The ginnies circled the basket, and she hoisted them to her shoulders. She took a few steps, paused, and turned back.
"Kesh? Kesh! Come on!"
Her voice had a bark, like that of a snapping dog. He startled as though struck, shook his shoulders, and rose to his feet. No use crying over what was already spilt.
"At least let's stay off the road," he said. "At least that much."
"What difference will that make? They're west of us and east of us now. We're stuck between sections of their company, and I expect they have scouts moving through the forest. That's what I would do, were I their captain. We'll move faster on the road. The ginnies will warn us."
Aui! No place was safe. He indicated the weapons carried by the dead men. "What about these?"
"Leave them. Unless you're skilled with a bow." She was already moving, her long legs flashing as she strode away from him, heading back toward Olossi, the one place he really did not want to go.
He hesitated. He had paid off all her debts. He was so furious that his anger tempted him to turn and walk away from her, deserting her and her idiot schemes and pious scolding.
He couldn't do it.
The quivers were trapped under the dead men, and he didn't want to touch them. He didn't have the stomach to pull that sword free, but he picked up both bows and tossed away the littler one that was flimsy and had too light a draw. You could always sell a good bow. He grabbed the basket of looted food and drink, slung its straps over his shoulders beside his empty pack, tucked the bow in, and hurried after her. You had to stick by your kin. She was all he had.
She strode ahead, the ginnies' tails hanging down behind like ornaments. He huffed along after her with nothing but a red rage and a flowering confusion in his mind. In his haste he did not even mark the huge shadow that overflew them until she cursed and ducked, although nothing had been thrown at her. The booming shriek of an eagle split the air above them. Now he looked up, but it was already too late. The reeve-for it was a reeve-was circling back.
"He's seen us," she said unnecessarily. "The hells. Come on. Best we try to make our escape through the forest. The trees give us an advantage."
"But that's a reeve." He waited on the roadway, watching the eagle bank around in a wide curve. "A reeve could help us."
"Gods curse you, Keshad. Why are you so stupid?" She shrugged off the wine bladders that were slung over her shoulders. "Never mind. Maybe you're right. Just follow my lead and keep your mouth shut. Take these."
He took the sacks of wine, leaving him burdened and her free.
More quickly than he would have thought possible, the eagle swooped low, running straight down between the trees and dropping into the canyon made by the cleared road. It hit the roadway with a solid whomp that made him skip back in fear. The reeve unhooked swiftly and swaggered forward with a baton held at the ready.