The pain of remembering who Li was had come closer to killing him than the sorcerous arrow that impaled his heart, but the remorse, like his passion, was cooled in him now. He wondered if it had cooled on its own, or if that, too, had been forgotten for him.
In the end it did not matter; all that mattered was finding Hezhi, the rest was mere distraction. His longing for her was almost frantic now, though he was not certain why. He must have her, his daughter, his bride …
This time, the strangeness of that thought troubled him not at all.
XXIII Deep Wounds
COWARD, coward, coward, T'esh's hooves seemed to beat on the sand of the gorge. Perkar bit down on his lip until he tasted blood.
“Where are we going? ” Harka asked.
“To get something that was stolen from me. To kill a thief.”
“That's a riddle, not an answer. ”
“You're my sword. I don't owe you any answers.”
“You just spent five days sleeping on the threshold of Deaths damakuta. Whatever you are about, you should wait until your head is clearer. ”
“I don't think my head is likely to get any clearer,” he snarled. “It's too much for me. I just want to be home, with my father, with my mother, tending cows. Why mel What did I do?”
“Loosed your blood in the Stream Goddess. Swore an oath. Killed Esharu, who guarded me. Betrayed the Kapaka and your people—”
“Stop, stop,” Perkar cried. Tears coursed down his face and streamed back toward his ears. “I know all that. I only meant…” He kicked T'esh harder, and the horse stumbled violently. Perkar's stiff legs almost failed to maintain their grip, as they jolted to a confused halt on recovery.
“Easy, ” Harka cautioned. I can help you see in the dark, but not your horse. ”
“She had a name!” Perkar gasped.
“Of course she had a name. ”
“And you know it?”
“She was my guardian. ”
“You never told me.”
“ You didn Y want to know. You still don Y. ”
“That's right,” Perkar whispered furiously. “I don't. Don't ever tell me anything else about her.”
Reluctantly, Perkar returned T'esh to a walk, at least until they were back to more open, level ground. Soon. The eastern sky was pinkening, as well, and so, shortly, T'esh would be able to see.
“ Where are we going? ”
Perkar collected himself before he answered. “I'm on some sort of edge,” he answered at last. “If I fall one way, I become an animal, hiding from the sun, afraid of everything. I have to fall the other way.”
“ Where do you fall if you fall the other way? ”
“I don't know. But if I let my terror overtake me, I'll be worthless for anything.”
“So, where are we going? ”
“It's death I'm terrified of. The last men to hurt me so, to defeat me, are down there following us. If I defeat them, I defeat my fear.”
“I doubt that. Many who bore me thought that by killing, they themselves could conquer Death. As if Death would be so pleased at them for feeding her that she would never swallow them. ”
“I didn't say I would defeat Death, only my fear of her.”
“This is not a rational decision. And you should know, because you made this same decision before, when you charged down upon the Huntress. You build up so much debt in your heart—and then try to discharge it by dying. But I won't let you die, and so it just builds up again. Anyway, you know that when a man dies in debt, his family must pay the balance. ”
“Shut up. Shut up.”
“Not rational. ”
“Listen,” he said savagely, “it is. First of all, this is not the Huntress and an army of gods. These are five Human Beings, nothing more, and you and I have defeated twice that number. We have a long way to go to reach the mountain, and we can't worry about pursuit the whole way. We don't have enough horses to keep the pace ahead of them. Better to deal with them now before they come upon us one night.”
“But if you happen to die in the endeavor, you will die a hero, and no one will blame you for not solving the larger problems you have created. ”
Perkar did not answer, nor did he respond to any more of Harka's overtures, until the sword—glumly, it seemed—warned him.
“There.”
Without Harka Perkar might not have seen them, camped in a wash and shadowed by cottonwoods. Now, however, he caught the motion of horses and men. Probably they heard him already, and he had no intention of being coy. If he did, if he hesitated, he would never do it. Terror beat in his breast, a black bat with clawed wings, and for a moment his fingers were entirely nerveless. He drew Harka anyway.
I'm going to die, he suddenly knew.
“No!” he shrieked, and rode down into the wash in dim but waxing light. An arrow and then another flew by, and his fingers ached to tug on the reins, to ride out and away. But the arrows were terribly wide of their mark, and his shriek became a whoop that pretended, at least, to sound brave.
“Something wrong here, “ Harka said.
Perkar sensed it, too. He counted five Mang bodies, sure enough, but only one of them was moving. That one was Chuuzek, leaning heavily against the bole of a tree, bow raised awkwardly. Perkar leapt from his horse and rushed toward the thickset warrior, splashing through the shallow water of the wash. He suspected that at least some of the bodies he saw were merely bundles of clothes and the other Mang were hiding in ambush.
Chuuzek fired once more, missed, and drew his sword barely in time to meet Perkar's attack. It was a weak parry; the Mang weapon was flung back by the force of the blow, and Harka plunged into the warrior's lower chest. Perkar withdrew the sanguine blade and quickly stepped back.
“That for our game of Slap,” he snarled.
“You be damned.” Chuuzek coughed raggedly. His knees folded, but oddly, he did not fall. He seemed to balance on his toes, one arm draped against the cottonwood. Perkar searched for other attackers.
“No others, ” Harka assured him.
“What?”
“He was the only one, the only danger to you. ”
Chuuzek was trying to gasp something else out. The sword fell from his fingers, and he tried to reach for it. His hand seemed to be stopped by some invisible barrier that would only allow him to reach down so far. With a sudden shock, Perkar realized that Chuuzek was lashed to the tree. He could see the cords now.
He could also see that the man had numerous wounds other than the one Perkar had just given him. They were crudely bandaged, but the blood soaking them seemed fresh.
“Chuuzek?” Perkar asked. “What happened here?” He moved up to cut the man's bonds.
“No!” Chuuzek roared. He almost seemed on the verge of tears. Blood flowed freely and formed the largest pool amongst several already in the sand. “No. I deserve to die on my feet, you hear me? I deserve it.”
“What happened?” Perkar repeated. “Are the others all dead?”
“All dead, all but me. Knew you would come. Go away, let me die among my own, without some shez around.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“You are an abomination,” Chuuzek whispered. “You are the doom of us all.”
“Who told you this? This gaan I have heard about?”
“A drink of water. A drink of water and I will tell you.”
Perkar found a waterskin near the remains of a fire that had not been fed in several hours. He brought the skin over to the dying man.
Harka warned him, but he did not move quickly enough. Chuuzek's knife slid in, cold as an icicle. He felt it scrape his ribs. Perkar sucked for air and fell back onto the sand, clawing at the offending steel. He got it out with considerable pain, then lay there gasping as the day came fully to life around them.