No acknowledgement but he felt the movement of the wagon and the flaps being closed. If he took the drug at night, perhaps he would get some peace—of late, that had been so hard to get.
Some time later, he wasn’t sure how long, the flaps opened again. His visitor had no lamp, which surprised him, but perhaps they were all used to working in the dark. He felt a strong arm under his shoulders, and the cup at his lips. “Here, drink it.”
“Kei?” He seized the wrist of the hand holding the cup, and forced it away from his mouth. “Is it Kei?”
“Yes, it’s me. Take the pijn, Arman, I know you’re in pain.”
“No, wait—why are
you
bringing it?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you,” Kei said in a low voice, removing his arm. Arman sensed him move back a little. “I need you not to be suffering. Please drink it.”
“It’ll put me to sleep, and I want to be awake if you’re talking to me. Please.” He wished he could see the man.”
He heard a sigh, and a gentle clink of the cup being set aside. “I came to explain why I’ve been avoiding you. Why I
must
avoid you. I’m in such pain, I can’t sleep—”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was doing this to you.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Kei said, his voice catching. “You’re not. The problem is that as soon as you touch me, hold me, the pain stops. When you hold me at night, or I’m with you, I’m at peace.”
Arman couldn’t see why that was a problem at all. “So then let me help you. I want to—you know I only want what’s best for you,” he said eagerly. “Why won’t you come closer now?”
“Because I can’t. Why don’t you take the pijn when you’re in pain, the way you’ve been every day this week?”
“Because it’s addictive. Besides, I’m getting used to the pain...oh. Is that it? I take away the pain, so you can’t let me do so?”
“Yes, that’s it.” Kei’s breathing hitched. “Tiko asked me...if I wanted to ride straight on to my village. Not going with the wagons anymore, but travelling fast by beast. I could be there over a week sooner.”
“Then why don’t you? You know you want to be home. It’s what you’ve dreamed of for months. Begged for, I remember it.”
“Yes, I know. But I’m terrified too. What if I get home and I still have no peace? What if my addiction is permanent, the damage permanent? What if I’m too broken any more to do any good?” he asked in a bitter voice.
“Kei...my dear friend....” All Arman wanted to do was to hold this kind, damaged man, and take his pain from him. But that was the last thing he should do, if he wanted to help. “But if you can’t sleep, if you’re in such pain—it seems to me you can’t heal that way either. I don’t have an answer. Did you hope I did?”
“No. I just wanted to apologise for my behaviour. I thought if I pushed you away, I would gradually get better, things would improve. But they didn’t. Nothing helps me. It’s all pain, and I am...so lost.”
“Please, let me hold you now. Just this once. I want to help you.”
Silence. Arman thought Kei had rejected the idea, but then the wagon shifted as Kei moved and then there was a warm, familiar weight in his arms. “I don’t know what to do,” Kei said, and now there were tears in his voice. “If I go, I die on my feet, staying isn’t an option, no one has a remedy that will take this away from me.”
Arman stroked his hair and wished, oh how he wished, he could hold him forever like this, pain, discomfort or not. “It seems,” he said gently, “that your strategy was sound, but your execution is not. I agree you need to try and build your resistance. But trying to be hostile to me, to make me hate you, is making your pain worse, because you don’t have it in you to hate. If you don’t hate me yet, you never will. You’ll never succeed in making me hate you either, so you should drop the arrogant attitude. You’re not very good at it.” He heard a damp chuckle against his shoulder. “Now, may I suggest a median between dependence and loathing? If you don’t want me to touch you, or to sleep at your side, I understand that. But we can still talk. We can be civil and friendly, and offer companionship to each other, which I need and I know you do. I can’t see that as strengthening your addiction. I think it makes the separation easier to bear. Am I right?”
“Very likely,” he heard Kei’s muffled voice say. “They keep calling you a butcher—I know you’re not.”
“My hands are red—there’s no washing the blood from them. I told you—I’m a soldier. Soldiers kill. This is why it’s right that you return to your home and I go on to whatever fate awaits me. You have no place in the world I inhabit, and I’m glad of that. I want to know there’s a place, a purity murdering thugs like me can’t spoil.”
Arman felt Kei’s head turn, and now his words were more easily understood. “But I don’t want you excluded from my world.”
“Maybe not, but it’s how it needs to be.” He found the back of Kei’s head, and cupped it gently, caressing it a little. “If you saw another in such pain as you feel, and you knew there was a way they could get a little rest for it, even for one night, would you advise them to take it?”
More silence. “Yes, I probably would.”
“Then will you sleep in here with me tonight? I’ll take the drug because my body hurts, but if I knew, just for this one night you would sleep well—if I knew you could be strengthened for the battle ahead—it would make me happier.”
Another hesitation, and then a deep, heartfelt sigh. “Then I will. For this last time. It has to be,” he said desperately. “I want to go home.”
“I know you do, my friend. I want that for you too. So sleep here tonight, and then we try other ways to get through this, all right?”
“All right. Arman, the people at Ai-Darbin will want a reckoning of you, you know that.”
“Yes, I guessed they might.”
“I won’t let you be hurt. Tiko has sworn to protect you.”
“I’m not afraid of that either. Let’s not talk of it now. Hand me the drug, get your bedroll. I’m very tired.”
“As am I. I’m so sick of this journey even after a week. I never want to travel anywhere ever again when I get home.”
“I understand. Now go on.”
As he felt Kei leaving the wagon, Arman didn’t know whether to be glad or not Kei had revealed what had been troubling him. He decided to put it aside as unimportant. He just wanted Kei to rest this night. Tomorrow, they would deal with the problem in a different way, and talk again, he hoped. At least Kei really didn’t hate him. That eased his mind far more than the most powerful drug ever could.
~~~~~~~~
Over the next few days, Kei realised Arman had been right. Though he was sleeping no better at night, his days were much more endurable when he had dropped the artificial hostility he had tried to maintain against the man. He no longer had to go against his instincts or his desires, nor to feel Arman’s anger or hurt when Kei was unkind to him. It made the situation easier for both of them.
Tiko also kept to his word and stopped baiting Arman and deriding him. There was no great love lost between the two, but Tiko finally accepted Kei’s insistence that Arman had not been personally responsible for his situation or what had harmed him, and not having to feel Tiko’s hate and anger also made Kei feel less battered by the emotions he sensed in the others.
Physically, Arman’s men were doing far better than he was. While two were still somewhat immobile because of broken legs, and another was still suffering from a deep sword thrust in the side, seven were almost completely recovered, and at least two were quite fit. This could have presented Tiko with a problem—his soldiers only slightly outnumbered the Prij, and should there be a concerted attempt to escape, several of them might just get away even though there was no hope of them making it out of Darshian.
Tiko was reluctant to have any of the men bound together because it made for an unnecessarily unpleasant journey for them and a nuisance for their guards, but in the end it was Arman who elegantly solved the problem. After they’d departed from Ai-Vinri, he asked Tiko to join the nightly meeting he had with his men, and in his presence and in Kei’s, he issued a direct order that all of his men were to cooperate with the Darshianese fully, at least until they reached Darshek. More than that, he said if any of his men wished to give their parole to Tiko, he would approve it, and he would bear the full weight of any consequences of that approval, if and when they returned to Kuprij.
That this was a relief to his men was obvious, and all fourteen of them agreed immediately to give their word of honour to Tiko they would not try to escape. Tiko was satisfied, and even went so far as to thank Arman for making his job easier. “I did it for my men’s sake,” Arman had replied, somewhat frostily. “In this situation, their safety and well-being is my greatest concern. The Prij are not served by their pointless deaths, and I trust in your oath to get us to Darshek unharmed.”
Tiko had merely nodded, and walked away. Arman had placed himself at great risk of being called a traitor for what he’d done, and although Kei wished Arman could find it in his heart to be a little more treacherous in order to save the Darshianese hostages, he was still glad Arman appreciated that the Darshianese were doing their best to get them to safety in the most humane way possible. He hoped when the Prij soldiers returned to their homes, they might carry the word that the Darshianese were not the primitive animals they were considered to be. It was only a faint hope—but still, it was there.
The weather continued to be bitterly cold but dry. They were making good time, but as they grew closer to Ai-Darbin, Kei couldn’t help but sense how depressed Arman was becoming. It wasn’t fear of reprisal, he knew that, but there was no doubt what subject—and which person—occupied his thoughts now. Kei tried to offer him opportunities to talk about Loke, but Arman was withdrawn and reluctant to discuss anything, although he was still polite and cooperative, continuing to provide the pastoral care of his men and friendship to Kei as much as he could.
Six days past Ai-Vinri, in the middle of the afternoon, rising clouds of dust heralded riders coming towards them. Kei had a feeling he knew what this would be. Tiko had already discussed with him whether they should send an advance party into the village to judge the mood, and was planning to do so when they got a little closer, but it seemed the villagers weren’t prepared to wait. Of course Ai-Darbin would have known they were coming—all the villages with mind-speakers were being kept apprised of the progress of the prisoners.
The dust clouds resolved in a group of ten grim-faced and determined men on urs beasts, who posted themselves across the road with the obvious intention of stopping them. “Hail, travellers.”
Tiko gave the order to halt. “Hail. I’m Tiko of the Darshian army.”
“We’re the elders from Ai-Darbin, Tiko—my name is Rei. My clan head sends a request that your prisoner, the general, be brought to the village to face an accusation of deliberate and unlawful killing.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t agree to that request. General Arman is in custody by the order of the Rulers of Darshek, and my orders are to see him there safely. I won’t deliver him to vigilante justice.”
Rei nodded. “That’s fair. She asked me to assure you she only intends to have him tried according to our laws, and according to our penalties. No rough justice will be permitted.”
“Tiko, he’s not answerable under our clan laws, you know that,” Kei said. “At the time of the killing, he’d already taken Ai-Darbin under Prijian control.”
“That’s a point the lawyers in Darshek could argue for and against for years,” Tiko said. “Rei, I don’t have to deliver him to you, and I won’t do so unless he consents to be tried under our laws, and unless his safety in and out of the village is absolutely guaranteed. I won’t hesitate to use force to protect him and his men—I have sworn an oath to him and to the Rulers.”
“Well, he won’t consent,” Rei said, already picking up his reins of his beast as if the matter was closed. “I’ll deliver your word to the clan head. However, as you have refused, she asks me to tell you your request for supplies is also refused.”
Tiko bowed his head. “That’s only fair.”
“Wait.” Tiko turned to Kei, eyebrows lifted in surprise at his request. “Isn’t it only fair to ask the general if he’d consent?”
“What’s the point? Why would he?” Tiko was frowning at him, as if he thought Kei had lost his mind.
“I think we should ask, that’s all. If he and his men are to suffer from a lack of supplies, at least give him a choice.”
“We have enough supplies—just. It’s a matter of principle, not life or death.”
“Even so.”
Rei seemed utterly bemused by their discussion. “The lad is right, Tiko. It won’t do any harm to ask.”
Tiko sighed. “All right, Kei. Go and speak to him. We’ll stop here for a half hour or so—if you gentlemen would care to wait, we can offer you some tea. Kei also has news of the Ai-Darbin hostages which you can take back to your clan.”
Rei nodded and Kei turned his beast back towards the wagon. Already fires were laid, some of the urs beasts were allowed to graze and the more mobile Prijian soldiers had been helped by their healthy fellows and the Darshianese out of the wagons. There was no activity around Arman’s wagon, as the soldiers always waited for Kei’s clearance before attempting to move him. Kei climbed into the wagon, tying one of the flaps back. He regretted Arman was forced to travel in almost total darkness for this journey, but it was necessary for warmth, and to have a lamp while the wagon moved was too risky.