Fifth Quarter (39 page)

"Rough justice, Lady Bard," Gyhard suggested.

All things being enclosed, Karlene had no intention of comparing the immorality of his action to the equally dubious morality of assassination. "How did you do it?"

"That's no concern of yours, but I think you'd do the same if it came to a choice between transferring and dying." He looked at Vree, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile and his voice softened, becoming almost a caress. "I never meant for you to become involved."

Vree jerked back, as though she were shaking off his touch. "No, you meant for me to die!"

Gyhard's eyes narrowed. "I meant for Bannon to die."

"I know." Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "That
was
Bannon."

"You couldn't stop him?"

She shook her head. "I thought it was me."

The captain raised her hand. The order to halt echoed down the line. She squinted at the walls and towers of Shaebridge and could just barely make out the garrison flag of the Third Army through the reflected glare of the afternoon sun on the yellow sandstone. "Orlan, send a pair of runners into the garrison. Have them see if Commander Neegan checked in with the Third Army. If he hasn't, then he didn't enter the city and neither did they. Send another pair to the bridge with a full description of the bard and her companions. If it turns out that they're not in the city or over the bridge, then they must have taken the road along the river."

"Sir!" The squad leader saluted and wheeled his horse around, racing back along the road to where his people stood panting in the sun. They'd had a hard, fast march since the marshal's courier had met them two days ago, double-timing back along the road. They all knew there'd be no rest until His Highness was found.

Rubbing her eyes, the captain slumped in the saddle. "Tell the company to stand down where they are," she growled and reached for her water skin. As she swallowed the tepid liquid, she stared at the city and at the two roads bracketing it as if by will alone she could determine where the fugitives had gone.

I
should've held them when I had them
.

But she'd had no reason to hold the whore and his sister and no way of knowing—until the marshal's courier told her—that they had a companion who knew where to find His Imperial Highness. She had no reason to feel like a fool, but she did.

The captain swallowed another mouthful of water and wished for something just a little stronger. Her orders were clear; capture and question the bard using any means necessary to discover the location of Prince Otavas. But how the slaughtering bloody blazes was she supposed to capture and question a woman who could sing herself invisible?

The best she could hope for was that the assassin who'd passed them half a day before the marshal's courier arrived—Commander Neegan the courier had named him, although the captain had never heard of an assassin making commander who continued to use his own blade—would hold the bard after he'd slit the other two's throats.

The sudden gust of wind very nearly blew Karlene off her horse. She clutched at the saddle horn as a pair of kigh tried to drag her to the ground. Somehow she managed to whistle them back and then hurriedly dismounted while they swirled around her, just slightly more than an arm's length away.

"Don't tell me he's lost another one," Gyhard muttered, reining in.

Vree glared at him, but Karlene paled at the thought of a third discarded corpse. Unable to banish a vision of Otavas lying rotting on the road, she struggled to make sense of what the kigh were trying to tell her. When she finally understood, anger obliterated the horror.

She Sang a piercing gratitude and, breathing heavily, threw herself up into the saddle. "
Your
Kars has done it again," she snarled.

A muscle jumped in Gyhard's temple. "And what has
my
Kars done?"

"Sang the kigh back into the dead. He did it there…" Karlene jerked her head toward a small fishing village, half-screened by giant cottonwoods, squatting between the road and the river. "Night before last."

"We should have expected it." Gyhard shrugged. "He had to replace the two bodies he lost."

The bay shied sideways, reacting to its rider, whites showing all around its eyes. Karlene was so furious, she could hardly speak. "Sure. Should've expected it. Except he didn't rob a grave this time. These two weren't dead. First he killed them.
Then
he Sang the kigh back into the bodies." Her knuckles were white around the reins. "No more stopping. No more sleeping until he's stopped." She slammed her heels into the horse's ribs, and the startled animal leaped forward, the bard bent low over his flying mane, her braid a pale pennant.

"She thinks she's in a ballad," Gyhard snarled, holding his gelding back.

Vree fought to keep her seat as her own horse danced in place, anxious to race after its companion. "She's angry at herself because the prince was killed like these two were and she hasn't rescued him yet."

"Ah, and you can recognize that; you're angry at yourself because I'm still in your brother's body?"

Vree smiled tightly at him. "I wasn't until you brought it up." She gave the gelding its head and it pounded off down the road.

As the two of them drew away, Gyhard spent a few pensive moments remembering all the years, all the lives, when he'd managed to remain in complete control.

Horse and rider motionless in the dappled shade of a cottonwood, Neegan watched as Vree and the bard galloped off and left Bannon on his own. He moved between one heartbeat and the next, guiding his horse up onto the road, eyes locked on the young man sitting, shaking his head, oblivious to the danger.

In spite of everything he'd seen, Neegan was taking no chances. Bannon had received the same training he had and was younger, stronger, and faster. But Neegan had years of experience Bannon never would, and he could anticipate every defense his target might make.

He put his heels to his horse and, as the animal lunged forward, drew his feet up under his buttocks, then launched himself through the air. Bannon turned, eyes wide, and, to Neegan's complete astonishment, made no defense at all. The force of the older assassin's attack flung both men out of the saddle. Totally unprepared to be holding an unresisting body, Neegan slammed into the ground. Bannon slammed down on top of him. Caught between the double impact, air exploded out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, he tried to twist out from under the frightened gelding's flailing hooves, but the weight across his chest held him in place.

Time slowed as the hoof descended.

Time stopped.

Still clutching the end of one rein, Gyhard swore as a hoof pounded into the meaty part of his shoulder then, as another parted the world a hairbreadth from his nose, he managed to scramble clear. On his hands and knees, desperately sucking in air, he realized his attacker hadn't been so lucky.

Blood poured from a half circle where the skin had been ripped from the man's forehead and bone showed through the red.

"Got your head stomped in," Gyhard panted, staggering to his feet and trying to calm his frightened horse. "All things being enclosed, better you than me."

And then he noticed the black sunbursts.

"
Assassins who desert become targets
." Standing over Avor's corpse, Vree had made the point very clear.

"Oh, shit."

It was all he could think of to say.

He couldn't see either of his companions although he thought he could hear hoofbeats growing fainter in the distance. Ignoring the shakiness in his legs, and the pain in his shoulder, Gyhard pulled himself up into the saddle and looked down at the assassin. "All at once," he said thoughtfully, "I'm discovering a distinct desire to get out of this body."

Pushed tight into a front corner, his hands gripping the top board of the cart, Otavas watched the summer storm approach, a line in the dust of the road marking the leading edge of rain. It moved with such deliberation that after he saw it hit the two running between the shafts, he had time to brace himself before it closed over him. Lifting his face to the deluge, eyes squinted nearly shut, he welcomed the force of its cleansing.

He flinched away as the old man pawed at his arm, the ancient voice lost in the drumming of the rain.

"Don't touch me!" he screamed. It didn't matter if he couldn't be heard because the old man never listened.

The touching and pulling continued, but after that single protest he ignored it. Over the last few days he'd become very good at ignoring things he could do nothing about. Dead things for the most part.

A warm channel of salt water cut a path through the liquid sheeting down both cheeks and ran into the corners of his mouth. Invisible tears. Safe tears. Pain that couldn't be used against him. He wept silently, swallowing the urge to keen and wail lest the old man force him into sleep and nightmare again. He wept until he was exhausted, wrapped in the arms of the storm.

"
The dead feel no hunger, no thirst, no pain but can fight and die and joyously rise to fight again in Jiir's army
…"

Neegan had heard the priests of Jiir proclaim those words over a hundred graves. He clung to the memory, used it to push himself up out of darkness—pain pounded with red hot hammers on his skull, so he
wasn't
dead. A drop of water splashed on his hand, and he used it to anchor himself to the real world.

Only his right eye opened.

His left cheek pressed against the ground, he could see the yellow-gray clay of the road, damp pockmarks multiplying in the surface dust; beyond the road a fringe of grass and weeds thrashed in the wind; above, a wedge of gray-green sky.

He could hear only the wind and the approaching storm—no birds, no insects, no enemies.

He could smell only blood.

Although he sensed no danger, he was lying wounded and exposed and that was danger enough. The single drops of rain merged into a solid sheet of water. In the distance, behind him, he thought he heard someone yell.

A moment later, the roaring pain in his head louder by far than the storm, Neegan lay in the long grass, spewing bile. Finally, stomach empty, he crawled toward a half-remembered tree, pride keeping him moving when he'd rather have just laid down and drowned in the mud. He lost track of time, lost track of everything except breathing and moving forward under the constant punishment of pounding rain.

Then the multitude of tiny blows falling on his head and shoulders eased. He crawled a little farther and flopped over on his back, staring up with his one good eye at the dense canopy above him. Although gusts of wind swept walls of water through his fragile shelter, the leaves were thick enough to halve the power of the storm.

His shoulders against the trunk, Neegan inched his way up into a sitting position, his head balanced with as much care as he'd ever used to balance a dagger. Questing fingers touched bone, then pushed the flap of skin back into place. He lived only because the hoof had stuck the thickest point of the skull a glancing blow. Carefully, he scraped away the dried blood sealing his left eye closed and, more carefully still, opened the eye.

There were a pair of narrow wheel ruts under the tree, signs of four, maybe five people, and blood that wasn't his. No threat, no danger. He could barely see the road—the trees and the village and river on the far side were lost behind a curtain of water. The voice he'd heard, or thought he'd heard, had probably been a protest from the village.

With the sun buried behind the storm, it was impossible to tell how long he'd been lying on the road, how long it had taken him to crawl to the tree, how long since Bannon had ridden away and left him for dead.

Bannon had made an assumption an assassin would never make.

"Yet another… question." He licked rain from his lips and swallowed.

Somehow he managed not to slice off a finger as he cut a strip of wet cloth from the bottom of his tunic. The moment he had the strength to raise his arms, he'd bind the flap of skin in place. The moment after that, he'd aim himself at his targets again.

For now, he sat, the pain in his head beating in time with his heart, and wondered why, when all logic suggested he should be lying on the road with his throat slit, he was still alive.

Squinting through the rain, he anxiously watched the backs of his newest children as they strained to move the cart and its two living passengers. The narrow wheels cut deep ruts in the road. The wet clay clung to the wood, adding to the weight, digging the cart in deeper.

Slower… Slower…

He'd sent Kait and Wheyra to push from behind when the road first began to suck at the wheels, hoping that it would be enough to keep them moving toward home.

The cart lurched one final handbreadth forward and stopped.

Reaching out with his staff, he touched Iban on the shoulder. The dead man froze in place. Hestia continued to drag her feet up out of the mud, one after the other, until he touched her as well.