He shot a glance at Moss when he said that and realized with a bare shock that their captive was awake, hearing everything they said. How long had he been awake? Had he heard Perkar's ill-considered remark about godslaying?
Probably. The more reason not to let him go. When they reached the pastures of his people, they could give Moss into the keeping of someone else. Perhaps he could be traded to the Mang for captives. But he must not be allowed to return to the Mang gaan who sought Hezhi and report what he knew. Perkar would kill him first.
Moss smiled thinly, as if he understood that thought. Perhaps he saw something in Perkar's eyes; but rather than fear, the smile held a hint of mockery.
“I'm going on watch,” Perkar said softly. “I'll see the two of you in the morning.” Then, in Nholish, to Tsem: “Watch this prisoner, Giant. I don't know what Hezhi has told you of him, but he is a terrible threat to her.”
“I know he sought her,” Tsem growled darkly. “I think I should blood my club on him when I'm done making it.”
“No.” Perkar sighed. “We've killed more than enough, and we'll probably kill more before it's done. No reason to do so when it isn't really necessary.”
“I suppose.”
“Good night, Tsem. Be careful not to let the fire eat too deeply.”
Tsem looked up, black eyes caging bits of flame. “Just deep enough, I hope,” he replied.
PERKAR put off his talk with Hezhi until the next morning. They were ascending onto the high plains the Mang named the Falling Sky, and the going alternated between troublesome and dangerous; not a good time for what might become a heated discussion. When questioned about the name, Brother Horse explained how legend held that a chunk of heaven had cracked loose and plunged to earth. If so, their horses now climbed the eroded edges of that shard, beveled by time and wind into a stepped slope of banded sandstone. The going was easiest in the trenched furrows dug by long-dead streams, but it was midday before they found one of these broad enough and long enough to ease the constant upward stumbling into some semblance of normal traveling. Brother Horse explained that there were other, more established paths farther north but that they would risk meeting other Mang traveling there, especially now that news of the war was widespread; young, unproven warriors from every part of the Mang country would be streaming to earn honors for themselves in the mountains.
So they clattered up the dry streambed for another few leagues, until it broadened to vanishing, until dense black soil crept to cover the stone again, and they entered onto the spacious back of the Falling Sky.
“We will never be out of the shadows of mountains now,” Brother Horse told them, and it was true; they could see mighty ones on the north and west. Behind them a few trailed off, but it was the vastness of the lower steppes that struck Perkar. Though the last few days of their travel had been in hills, distance and scale crushed die most rugged of them into the imperial, awesome flatness that sheeted out and beyond the horizon, where sky and earth met in a confused haze of blue-green and brown.
Brother Horse reined his mount to a halt. “We'll offer at this cairn to the lord of the Falling Sky,” he told them. Perkar nodded as he took in the vista they had just arrived upon. Despite the bordering giants, the high plains were, if anything, flatter than anywhere below them. It seemed not so much a piece of the sky as a place where the sky had lain for a time and crushed everything level. In fact, going back over what Brother Horse told him, that might have been what the old man meant. He had not lied to Tsem in claiming his Mang was less than perfect.
Brother Horse began chanting behind him, and pungent incense seasoned the wind. He thought about joining, but he didn't know the song or the gods of this country. But soon! Despite it all, despite the dread he felt at facing his people with his crimes against them, the thought of his father's pasture and the little, unambitious gods he knew—knew the songs for, the lineages of—sixty days, and he could be there. He would not be; actually going by his father's damakuta would put them many days later getting to the mountain, days he somehow believed they could not afford. Still, the thought stirred him, not only with trepidation and sadness but also with joy.
He noticed that Hezhi had ridden out away from the rest, had her eye fixed somewhere westward. He urged T'esh toward her. To his vast surprise, Sharp Tiger followed. Since the time Perkar had adopted him, the horse had shown him, at best, disdain. When Yuu'han or Brother Horse led him, he would follow, but none was able to get upon his back. But now, as he trotted to join Hezhi, there was Sharp Tiger, two horse lengths behind—as if he wanted to hear what the two of them would say. Perkar wondered himself.
“What is that?” Hezhi asked, arm thrust out toward where the wind whipped a wall of dust along before it.
“That's wind coming down from the mountains. It may have some rain in it. See the darkness behind?”
“I don't like it,” Hezhi murmured. “It seems …” She trailed off. “Well. You rode over here for a reason, I know. You haven't spoken to me in days.”
“I know. I've been thinking a lot, feeling sorry for myself.”
“What a surprise. You feeling sorry for yourself.”
“You're angry.”
She flung her hair back over her shoulder and set her little mouth in a scowl. “What do you think you are doing with Tsem?”
“Tsem? He asked me to teach him—”
“How to fight, I know. But you shouldn't have done it without asking me.”
“And why is that, Princess! It seems to me that you told Tsem he was no longer your servant. That he was free.”
“Maybe I did. I did. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't have anything to say about him. I've known him since I was born. You barely know him at all.”
“I'm only doing what he asked. He wants to feel useful, Princess. He knows that you pity him, and it eats at his heart. Do you want to stop him from doing the one thing that might give him a sense of worth?”
“He said that? He thinks I pity him?”
“You say you have known him since you were born. What do you think? That he is so stupid he can't sense disdain?”
She looked down at her saddle pommel. “I didn't know it was so obvious,” she said. “I just don't want him to get killed.”
“Out here, he'll get killed a lot faster if he is unarmed than if he has some kind of weapon. And you saw him carrying his club today. Couldn't you see the pride in his shoulders?”
“It's false confidence,” she hissed. “We both know that branch is nothing more than a toy.”
“Princess, that—”
“Stop calling me that. You only call me that when you think I'm being stupid.”
“That's true, Princess,” Perkar snapped. “What do you know of fighting? That 'toy' of his is capable of being a very deadly weapon indeed. A weapon doesn't need an edge when it's wielded by a man the size and strength of Tsem. One blow from that thing would crush a man in full armor. Hauberks are made to turn edges, but they are no defense at all against impact. Do you honestly think I would trick him into thinking he had a real weapon when he didn't?”
Hezhi looked away unhappily. He thought she was about to reply when he heard the sudden thuttering of hooves. For a moment he paid them no mind, thinking them to be Yuu'han or Raincaster, stretching his horse's legs on the welcome flat. But then a shout went up from Yuu'han, and it did not sound like a shout of jubilation but instead one of warning. In the same instant, Heen began barking frantically.
Jump! Harka fairly shrieked in his ear, and so he did, rolling from T'esh's back as something whistled past his face. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up in time to see the collision of three horses. Sharp Tiger was not one of them; he danced nimbly aside as Moss and his mount barreled into T'esh and Dark. Hezhi shrieked and fell from Dark's back, but Moss, completely in control of his mount, caught her neatly in the crook of his arm. With an earsplitting shriek of triumph, he tore out across the plain toward the fast-approaching wind and its skirt of dust.