But now he had experienced the pain of death several times over and no small taste of her oblivion. He owed his beating heart to Harka, but now he understood that even Harka could not protect him. Not against Karak, who had brushed him aside as if he were a child—not against Chuuzek, either, who had flicked him almost casually from his saddle.
He did not consciously remember the past several days, but something in him did. He felt as if he had been lying in a grave with spiders crawling in and out of his mouth, with worms chewing at his eyes. A simple warrior—a boy—was not fit to deal with such things. He was in a struggle meant for shamans, wizards, and godlings. Useless, even if he had his heart, whole and full of bravery, but his heart was not whole; it was deeply scarred, and not just metaphorically. Now … Now what he wanted most to do was ride away, leave Hezhi and Ngangata and all of his responsibilities, and hide—hide from gods, from wars, from the sky itself.
HEZHI awoke with the dawn. Ngangata was cursing and saddling his horse, as were all three Mang.
“Stupid. I should have watched him. We should never … whose watch was it?”
“Mine,” Raincaster answered, voice carefully neutral. “He said that he was going back a bit, to see where our pursuit was when the sun rose.”
“I'm sure,” Ngangata snarled. Hezhi sat up, fully alarmed now.
“What's happening?”
“Perkar,” Tsem told her. “He's gone.”
XXII The Dreamsnare
GHE felt a flash of pain and smelled life leaking into the air. He turned, puzzled, to see that one of the soldiers had thrust an arrow into his own eye and was working it deeper even as Ghe watched.
No. He had been shot in the eye and was merely grasping at the shaft as he died. Even as Ghe realized that, two more soldiers swore at arrows sprouting in the deck next to them.
The mist had hidden them, but now Ghe could see a half-dozen canoes ranged upstream on the River. All were converging on the barge furiously, each paddled by ten or fifteen barbarians.
The soldiers knew their jobs and did not remain surprised for more than an instant or two. Within heartbeats, twenty of them were at the bow, a wall of spears and swords, bows twanging behind them. Three men loaded and cranked the catapult. Ghe was just wondering what he should do when his better-than-Human ears detected a clamor aft. Grimly he raced toward the rear of the boat, springing up upon the cabin roofs and crossing them in great strides.
A boatload of the barbarians swarmed over the brass railing onto the afterdeck; three Nholish soldiers lay beneath their feet, pumping red life onto the planks. Other than barbarians and dead men, there was none to witness Ghe snarl and leap from the roof; two of the invaders managed to shoot him before he was amongst them, but neither shaft gave him pause. He was a panther among dogs.
The trip up-River had lulled them all. The people in the villages nearest Nhol had been coolly cooperative when they docked for supplies, but the farther away they voyaged from the great city, the more eager were people to see them. At Wun, the governor had thrown them a magnificent banquet, and though Bone Eel seemed bored by it—it was perhaps not sufficient for his jaded standards—Ghe thought it a grand show of hospitality, as did the soldiers. That had been a day ago. The governor had warned them that the Dehshe tribes on the east bank of the River were troublesome, but Ghe had gathered that most real attacks were on the outposts farther south and east.
But here they were. The impact of his body hurled several of them back, and then he was amongst them, carving at their hearts and lungs with the icicle point of his knife. He used the blade for two reasons. The first was that the soldiers on board the ship did not know his nature, and he did not want them to know. Let them think him a superb fighter—which, in fact, he was and could easily demonstrate. A more salient justification was that he enjoyed the feel of his blade in flesh, the exquisite geometry of cut-and-thrust, and though he could draw their lives from them more easily than he could stab them to death, the latter gave him greater pleasure. It recalled the joy of learning the ways of the Jik, and with that memory came a vague inkling of why he had ever been loyal to the priesthood, though they were so clearly monstrous. They gave him a thing of beauty; the discipline to kill with elegance, with art.
Of course, he did have the unfair advantage of already being dead. His wounds closed almost as quickly as his enemies made them, for this near the River, the flow of energy through his body was continuous.
He shattered an instep with a staccato stamp of his foot, plunged his blade through the gaping mouth of the ankle's owner, spun to parry—again, more for pleasure than anything else—a descending blade.
A flash of metal from his blind spot, and suddenly steel bit into his neck. His neck.
Ghe's shriek turned gurgle as his head flopped onto one shoulder. The blade had cut almost halfway through. He felt, rather than saw, the enemy arm cock back for a second blow.
Ghe blew the rest of the barbarians out like candles, reaching frantically for his head. It was already straightening, a weird, familiar tingling setting in. Ghe bit down on another shriek when the halves of his windpipe knitted back; then he nearly collapsed in a fit of trembling. He saw again the face of Hezhi's white barbarian, the demon, cleaving his head off, his life, his remembrance, blowing away on dark winds. Sagging against the rail, he shook like an ancient, palsied man.
And then his heart exploded. It was more reflex and gravity than design that toppled him from the barge and into the furrow of water behind it. Li, think kindly of my ghost, he thought, for the second time in two lives.
GHAN heard the sudden explosion of shouts, the twang of bows. He put his writing brush down carefully and approached the door to his cabin. He latched it. It was clear enough to him that the barge was under attack or that some sort of dispute involving most of the crew was coming to a violent resolution. He suspected the former rather than the latter. Though Bone Eel commanded no real respect from the men—he was such a fool—no one seriously questioned his station. And Qwen Shen did a fine job of seeing that he made the correct decisions, anyway, and so kept the men on his side. These were also imperial elite troops, not likely to mutiny under any circumstances—and thus far the voyage had been rather pleasant. Surprisingly so.
So they were likely being attacked, and likely by Dehshe barbarians—though also he considered that it could be the doing of the governor at Wun. The man, while affable enough on the surface, had a devious countenance when he thought no one was looking, and he seemed more than passing curious about the barge and its purpose. He had certainly not believed their stated reason for going up-River, which from the lips of Bone Eel amounted to no reason at all. What if the governor were in league with the barbarians, hoping to set Wun up as some sort of independent state? Ghan was familiar enough with the history of Nhol and other empires to understand that when an empire was weak—as Nhol was now—such things tended to happen. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that; perhaps the governor had turned pirate.
Ghan heard the clatter of a door opening and footsteps outside his door. Crouching slowly, so as to make as little sound as possible, he crouched to peer through the keyhole. He saw a figure just crossing from the sunlit hall into the shadow by the door that opened onto the narrow rear deck. That door suddenly swung wide, and a blaze of light flooded through, burned the person into a black silhouette bearing the arcing sliver of a bow in his hand. Through the door, Ghan could just make out another figure on the sunlit deck, leaning heavily against the rail. He thought it was Yen but could not be certain. The first figure raised his bow and fired. Yen—if it was Yen—tumbled over the rail.