Luck Of The Wheels

NINETEEN

It wasn't a stone in his hoof; she could feel no heat or swelling. Damn and damn and damn. She'd haveto hope it was only a bruise. She patted Sigurd's filthy shoulder and got back up on the box. So, they'd walk, then. Just when she needed speed, this had to happen. She stirred the team up, sat back and tried to calm herself. It didn't work. There was a marked hitch to Sigurd's stride that filled her with fury. She'd like to kill Willow and Vintner. And if that was dawn breaking over Tekum, then Goat and Dellin would be expecting her anytime now, and she wouldn't be there.

Dawn meant another thing as well, something she pushed to the back of her mind. Dawn meant Vandien was dead, from Kellich's poison or the Duke's sword. It didn't much matter which had killed him. Either way he was just as dead. As dead as everything they had shared. She found she could think of him calmly. Much of the anger and tears had been worked out with a double-bitted axe and the wall of Vintner's barn. A numbness had replaced it. He was dead by now. How could it matter whether he had died for the rebellion or thinking of her? He was still as dead. She was still as numb.

She rubbed her eyes with dirty hands, looked again. Yes, dawn was breaking, but not over Tekum. The rosy glow over the town had to be something else. Fire? Maybe, but who'd set half the town ablaze?

Actually, more than half the town was ablaze, and the flames were spreading. The long hot days had made anything burnable tinder-dry. Sparks leaped the narrow streets in the winds of the fire's breath. She picked her way through the town, turning often to avoid the fires. Even avoiding the streets where the buildings still blazed, Ki choked in the smoke and blowing ash. No one seemed to be doing much about the fires. The fires must have been the final culmination to an earlier uproar. She saw only one body, but the signs of earlier violence were everywhere. Broken furniture was strewn through the streets, and door leathers dangled and flapped in the fire's wind. She saw very few folk, and the ones she did see were either salvaging or looting; Ki wasn't sure which.

The tree-lined main street had taken the worst of whatever had happened here. Ki guided the team between the wreckage of Festival booths, past burned-out buildings and scorched ones, between trees whose leaves hung blackened and lifeless from the fire's heat. Perhaps it had started here; no buildings along this strip were actively burning still. Mud brick walls, cracked and crazed by the heat, gaped emptily, their thatched or wooden roofs burned away. Ki saw a few street children salvaging bits of food from the wrecked booths. They were competing with crows, and both groups stopped their pecking to watch Ki suspiciously.

At first she didn't recognize the two figures coming toward her. The boy walked at the man's side, the man's hand on his shoulder. As she came abreast of them, Dellin lifted a hand in greeting. She halted the team. Goat immediately scrabbled into the side door of the cuddy. Dellin shrugged, and awkwardly clambered up to share the seat.

'Do you know what happened?' Ki asked.

Dellin shook his head. 'The Brurjans ran wild, looting and wrecking. They took everything they wanted, and wrecked the rest. Then they rode off toward Algona.' He shook his head again, as if trying to clear it. 'Such emotions as those creatures harbor! And no restraints on any of it last night. I tried to shield the boy, but...' Again he shook his head.

'What happened to your mule? The Brurjans?'

'No. Someone set fire to the shed where we were resting. No place was safe anymore, so I decided to come and find you. But once we were on the road, we met a wave of folk fleeing the town's destruction. A merchant with two heavy bags and a knife demanded our mule. He was so full of greed and fear that he would have killed us for it. The mule wasn't worth it, so I let him take it. I was too busy trying toprotect the boy's mind to physically shield him as well.'

'Isn't it wonderful,' Ki observed bitterly, 'how adversity brings out the best in all of us? The Brurjans turn on the merchants, and the merchants turn on you. But what triggered it all?'

Dellin shrugged. A Brurjan went amok and killed the Duke, I think. At least, the Brurjans were shouting his name through the streets and saying he had given the town to them. Keklokito, it was.'

So even that plot had gone awry. She wondered where Vandien had fallen, and how. The team stood still in the street. Ki's eyes wandered over the wreckage. 'Where do I go?' she asked the empty street.

Gotheris poked his head out of the cuddy door. 'You didn't find Vandien?' he asked. She heard anxiety in his voice.

'No,' she replied, and the word came out harder than she meant it. Dellin looked at her curiously, and she felt the probing she was powerless to stop.

'The bond is gone.'

She shrugged. 'He's dead.'

'The bond is gone. While it was there, I could tell he was alive. But now it's gone. He's let go. Or you have.'

'He's dead,' Ki repeated dully. Simple sorrow would have been a relief. Why did she have to deal with anger and betrayal and probing questions from a nosy Jore? Was he reading her irritation with him? Then let him, and be damned. She glared at him.

Dellin only looked at her.

Goat's face was worse. The look of sleepy bafflement hadn't left his eyes. A deep furrow divided his brows as he looked from her to Dellin and back. 'Something ... is wrong,' he said. He struggled with words. 'It isn't like ... you feel it is.'

She shook the reins. Useless to explain to the boy that she could not put her feelings into simple words. She didn't understand them herself. This was what all her hoping and searching came to. She felt cheated and betrayed. Worse, she felt foolish. Because she had known all along, not just for a day, but for years, that it would come to this. That she would someday reach for him, in need, and he would not be there. Anger shook her like the storm that had battered her wagon days ago, and self-disgust filled her at the way she had let herself be beguiled into depending on him. She turned her back on them and covered her eyes, trying to find a way to be alone. Dellin had spoiled her numbness.

'I can't help you without letting you hurt the boy.' Dellin's voice came dimly to her. 'I'm sorry. You'll have to face this on your own.'

On my own, thought Ki, and the words echoed stupidly through her mind, repeated endlessly. On my own. She felt herself reach out, and suddenly knew the truth of Dellin's words. There had been a bond, but now she reached and felt only a wall. No one reached back. He'd let go of her. Sometime yesterday, he'd chosen to follow the rebellion. And died for it. Her loneliness stretched endlessly and achingly into a void that held no answers, no return of warmth. It was a bleeding that could not be staunched. On her own. 'I cannot allow it, not so close to Gotheris!'

The halting of the wagon jarred her. She had not realized that Dellin had been driving the team. She opened her eyes but could see nothing at first. Then nothing turned into the fingers of her hands. She lifted her face slowly, uncoiled. Dellin had risen on the seat. 'Stop that!' he cried commandingly. 'Let her go!' Ki turned her head.

From one of the remaining trees, a noose dangled. A young boy had hold of it, holding it open. Perhaps fifteen or twenty people, more than Ki had yet seen today, clustered in the streets. They muttered angrily, like stirred bees, and their faces were avaricious with hate. Three young men were dragging a woman toward the tree. 'She's one of those damned rebels,' someone shouted to Dellin. 'One of those what killed the Duke and turned the Brurjans loose on us all. Friends with the very one that done it!' Others in the crowd muttered an angry assent.

'Let her go!' Dellin roared. The men halted, looked up at him. Their eyes flamed with hate. The woman bucked against their grip, threw her whole body backward trying to break free of their relentless hold. Her hood flew back.

Willow had aged in the night. Her spikily shorn head made her look like the victim of some devastating illness. Her skin was grey, and black soot smudged the side of her nose. With her mismatched eyes wide and rolling, she looked like a battered doll, victim of some wicked child.

'Let them kill her,' Ki said quietly.

Dellin looked down at her. 'I thought I should stop them, for Gotheris's sake. Now I know I must stop them. For yours.'

In the brief interval of his speaking, the crowd had lost interest in him. One of the men gripped Willow's short hair, lifted her nearly clear of the ground as they pushed and dragged her forward. The boy, his mouth ajar, held the noose open and waiting for her.

Dellin's eyes wandered gravely over the crowd. But if he had hoped to see any sign of them relenting, he was disappointed. 'Stop.' Dellin said the word this time, and a plea was in his voice. He did not speak loudly, nor did his voice carry. It was almost as if he mouthed it under his breath. It did no good. The men who gripped Willow were strong in their purpose. Ki could find no pity in her heart for the girl. She had cursed Ki too well and too truly. A few folk at the edge of the crowd, suddenly sickened by what was to come, turned and hastened away. She saw a woman put a pleading hand on her husband's arm, lean close to speak earnestly to him. Reluctantly he accompanied her as she turned away. No one paid any attention to their leaving.

'Don't do it!' Dellin breathed again. The boy holding the noose jerked as if stuck with a pin. His eyes focused suddenly on the struggling girl, on the savage faces of the men forcing her near. His eyes widened as if he had just glimpsed demons walking by daylight. He yelped like a kicked pup, and fled.

'Damn!' One of the men cursed, and had to take one hand from Willow to snatch after the swinging rope. She took full advantage of his distraction, ripping a hand free to batter frantically at the man who gripped her hair. Ki sat quietly, watching her. Behind her she heard a muffled whimper, turned to see Goat framed in the cuddy door. He clutched the seat as if he were drowning and it was the only bit of driftwood in the sea. On his face was the panicky look of a child who cannot breathe. In his eyes was horror such as Ki had never seen. 'It's wrong,' sighed Dellin.

The crowd was thinning. The man trying to bring the noose and Willow's neck closer together looked abruptly and distinctly uncomfortable. It seemed to Ki he suddenly found his central role in the drama distasteful. 'You'll be punished,' Dellin warned ominously.

'Get the damn noose on her!' one of the men holding Willow ordered him. But the one gripping the noose was instantly angered.

'You want it done, do it yourself!' he snarled, and flung the dangling rope at his companion. He missed gripping it, and the noose swung past him, and then pendulumed past him again. Those standing in the streets now seemed suddenly more witnesses than accomplices. The hate-energy had bled out of the lynching.

But the one who gripped Willow's hair was immune to the change in atmosphere. Even as the other two 'loosened their grips on her, he drove his fist into her belly, doubling her over and briefly stilling her struggles. He kept his grip on her scalplocks as he reached wildly for the passing noose and snagged it. The rough rope was in his fingers, and he was pushing it down over Willow's head when Goat growled.

'Feel it yourself!'

And he did. The man fell, gasping, to his knees, his nails clawing wildly at his throat as he mewled out the terror that had muted Willow. She fell bonelessly, her chin slipping free of the noose. She sprawled in the street, her legs and arms too long and angular in conjunction with her cropped head. The other two executioners boggled at their leader clutching at his throat. Long strings of spittle were falling from his open mouth, dangling and then darkening his shirt front. They backed in disgust, then spun and walked off in different directions, shoulders hunched, the one with his arms folded tightly around his body. Of the lynch mob there was only the victim lying in the street, and the executioner strangling in a nonexistent noose.

'Stop that!' Dellin barked, and his long fingers cracked like a whip as they struck Goat's fixed stare from his face. Red and white streaks remained in their wake, and an astonished look in Goat's eyes. 'No!' Dellin told him firmly, as if he were a child reaching for a pot of boiling water. 'No! Let go!'

Ki saw him release the man. She saw it in Goat's face, in the sudden slumping of his narrow shoulders. She didn't have to turn to see the lynchman tumbled flat in the road like a puppet with cut strings. But she did turn to watch Dellin as he climbed down the box and slowly crossed to where Willow lay.

He lifted the girl with an ease not entirely Human. He spoke something over the limp form in his arms, and when she began to stir, he set her carefully on her feet again. Neither one of them paid attention to the man who lay in the street, weeping silently. Dellin spoke softly to Willow as he took her hand and led her toward the wagon. He brought her alongside it, gestured her up toward the box. She lifted her face and for a long moment her eyes locked with Goat's.

'No!' she cried out, in a voice low and harsh as a cat's growl. Her eyes fixed on Ki and went wider. 'I won't go with you! I won't ride with traitors and freaks! I won't become one such as he! I won't! I'd rather die!' She broke free of Dellin's light touch, spun and was gone in a staggering run.

'She speaks the truth,' Dellin said, and with a start Ki knew his words were meant for Goat. The boy watched Willow run away with heartbreak in his eyes. 'She'd rather die,' Dellin went on mercilessly. 'Andshe 'probably will, if she keeps radiating it to the Humans around her. Thick as their mindskins are, still a few will hear her, and enough will feel her death-hunger to find a way to satisfy it. This,' and his sweeping hand included not just the fleeing girl, but the smouldering city as well, 'is what comes of Jore blood misused, to a Human's end. This is what comes of Jore and Human mingled without wisdom or conscience.' His grave accusation brooked no denial.

'You can't say all this is his fault!' Ki objected, and was surprised at the depth of her feelings.

But Goat, his pale eyes wide, nodded with equally grave acceptance. 'Yes, Ki, it was.'

'You are strong, and your Jore talent is great in you,' Dellin observed.

Goat nodded again. With a strange humility, he added, 'Stronger than you, Uncle. And more talented.'

Dellin stared at the boy, re-evaluating him. When he spoke, there was acceptance in his voice. 'It is good for both of us to recognize that before we begin. So, Gotheris. Now is a deciding time. Will you go on with me, and learn? Or will you flee, as that girl does, frightened by the wideness of the plain she glimpses?'

Goat's silence seemed long to Ki. She listened to the crackling of distant fire, the restless shifting of the horses in their harness. 'I will not flee, Uncle,' Goat replied at last, and some small corner of Ki felt absurdly pleased, as if she had made an unlikely bet with herself, and won.

'Remember that you have decided that.' Dellin mounted the box, took up the reins and shook them. Goat remained where he was, leaning on the scat between them. He watched the scorched buildings and toppled stalls as they passed them, as if memorizing their outlines. Ki watched the hitch-lurch of Sigurd's uneven stride.

She felt empty, she decided at last. She was cargo on her own wagon, just a thing along for the ride to Villena. She had felt too much in the last few days. Like a musical instrument treated too roughly, the strings of her emotions were broken and dangling inside her. No matter how they were plucked, no further sound could be wrung from them. She swayed slightly as the wagon rumbled down the street.

The town slowly changed to farm acreage. A field of stubble had burned into a great black square. Goat spoke suddenly. 'The thing I liked best about Vandien,' he said without preamble, 'was how he felt when he was angry with me.'

Ki felt as if a bandage had been ripped from a wound scarcely closed. But Dellin turned to the boy, and his surprise was plain. 'What?'

'I didn't know, then, the difference between us Goat fumbled for words. 'I couldn't separate what he felt from what I felt,' he said slowly. 'So his anger was mine.'

'So?' Dellin prodded.

'He was angry at me because I was not... honorable. To myself. He believed I had betrayed myself, by not being a better ... man.' Goat spoke the word hesitantly, as if he feared laughter. No one even smiled, and the boy took courage. 'A lot of folk have hated me. Or wished me dead. But no one had been angry with me that way before. Even my father: his anger was always full of sorrow, mostly for my mother and himself, and how hard I made their lives. But Vandien's anger believed I was cheating him and myself, by being... dishonorable. He made me feel that... that I was angry with myself, for being less than anhonorable ... man.'

Goat stopped speaking. The wagon creaked on, and Ki thought about the strangeness of the legacy Vandien had left the boy. At first, it was about ... that girl.' Points of color suddenly appeared on Goat's cheeks. His fingertip traced a knot in the plank seat. And I was angry back at him. Because he made me so uncomfortable about what I had done. But then ... after Kellich ... Vandien felt that way again. About himself as well as me.' Wonder came into Goat's voice. 'It was as if he had claimed me, because he judged me as he judged himself.'

Goat touched Ki's hand shyly, to be sure she was listening. 'That was why I attacked that Brurjan. Because I thought he would have, and I wanted to do as he would have done.' The boy's voice tightened. 'I'm sorry he's dead. I wanted to hear him say I had done the right thing.'

Ki clutched the boy's fingers briefly. 'You saved my life.' She tried to give him what he needed. She couldn't say Vandien's name, refused to feel her grief. 'He would have said that you'd done the right thing.'

They passed a smouldering farmhouse. A flock of chickens, refugees from the fire, were taking dust-baths in the road. They squawked angrily as the passage of the horses disturbed them. Farther ahead a stray horse grazed by the road. They were almost abreast of it before Ki spotted the crumpled rider in the ditch.

'That's the smallest Brurjan ...' she began, but was interrupted by Goat's sudden cry. The boy sprang to the seat, and then leaped to the road from the moving wagon, to fall face down in the dust. He was on his feet and scrambling toward the body before Dellin could even halt the team.

'Gotheris!' Dellin cried in rebuke and alarm as the boy put his hands on the body.

'Goat! Leave him alone, he's already dead!' Ki added.

'He's not!' Goat declared, and the hope in his voice stunned Ki until he lifted the oversized helm and bared the dark curls beneath it. Her heart slammed into her mouth. Emotions fountained in her, her anger, her fears, but she found herself in the road, and she knelt beside him, almost afraid to touch him. He was arrayed like a Brurjan, and his clothing was richer than anything she had ever seen, but it was Vandien.

'He's dead,' Dellin said gently, but she paid no attention. His skin was cool, his arm a terrible grey, but she turned his face away from the dust and slipped her hand inside his shirt. Cold chain mail. She set her fingers to his throat, touched the light pulsing under the angle of his jaw. 'He's alive!' she declared fiercely.

Dellin clambered slowly down from the wagon and came to stand over them. He did not stoop to touch the body, but Ki could almost feel the soft brush of his mind as he probed.

'Ki,' he said at last, and there was infinite pity in his tone. She felt his touch on her thoughts, felt his attempt to soften the impact as he said softly, 'It's only his body. He's not ... in there.'

'No!' Goat's voice was shrill in her ears, but more, it screamed within her as he pushed aside his uncle's comforting touch. She felt scraped raw as his mind-touch ripped away her half-formed acceptance of Vandien's death. 'Don't let go!' he told her fiercely. 'Hold on to his life for him!' His clutch at her feelings was as rough as his uncle's was skilled. It was like the embrace of a stranger, and she would have struggled against it if she had known how. Her hearing had gone woolly. Someone whispered, 'Stop. You'll only die with him, he's gone out of reach,' but it was no one she knew and his words didn't matter. What mattered, she found, was sitting down in the dust and dragging Vandien's body half into her lap, cradling him against her as she put her cheek on his forehead. Holding onto him. Refusing to let him be dead. She brushed her lips against his hair. She held him closer, but despite her grip she sensed him slipping away.

'Too late,' someone warned. 'He's let go, no one can reach him now. Let him go.'

'Which do you fear more?' Goat demanded of her. The boy's voice was strangled in her ears, but it rang out in her heart. 'Decide. To love him. Or let him go.'

She couldn't hold him and let him go. His body was warm against her; the rising scents of his hair and skin were sweet in her nostrils. She couldn't let him go. But she couldn't love him, not the way Goat made the word feel inside her, not without restraints and cautions. She loved the man, yes, she wanted him close to her, she'd die for him if she had to. But that was not what Goat was asking of her. She could let her love flow endlessly into Vandien without regret. But there was another aspect. There was accepting wholeheartedly Vandien's love, and depending on his love to be there. It was not just admitting she loved him, but admitting he loved her, and accepting what he offered. It was too dangerous to be that vulnerable, it would hurt too much if ... She felt him slip another notch. Something inside her broke jaggedly. She gasped, but the pain wasn't physical. She threw away her caution, let the walls come down and her love go howling after him. There was relief in releasing what she had withheld from him and from herself. Needing him. Not just wanting him. Depending on him in the same way he depended on her. 'Please,' she begged of someone, not knowing who she asked, nor what she asked for.

'You've reached him.' There was amazement in Dellin's voice. She suddenly felt his guidance enter the web of their feelings. Deftly she felt him extracting Goat, and just for a bare moment, as he left, she felt as a Jore would the network she and Vandien had made and shared, felt it stretched tight and hummingly alive between them.

Then there was only the man in her arms, his weight and his warmth against her. She knew then only what she felt toward him; what he felt toward her she would have to take on trust, believing blindly that his feelings corresponded to her own. It was suddenly a lonely and dangerous position to hold. Caution bade her be wary, warned her not to care too much that he cared for her.

'Don't let go now,' Dellin warned her. He dragged Goat to his feet, stumbled him toward the wagon. 'Neither Goat nor I could hold him for you now. Love him, or let him go.'

She sat in the dust of the road, holding him. She lifted his arms carefully onto his chest, clasped both his hands in one of hers. The fingers of his sword arm were puffy and chill against hers. The wound he had taken from Kellich? She pushed his sleeve back. As her eyes traced the angry brand down his tanned forearm, she winced. 'What did they do to you?' she asked him.

'Probably more than he'll ever be able to tell you about, even if he can remember it all himself,' Dellin replied for him. The Jore healer crouched beside them. 'It might be wiser not even to ask.' He rocked on his heels beside them.

'Is Gotheris going to be all right?' Ki remembered to ask.

Dellin nodded in his slow way. 'He's tired. But he did well, for his first attempt. I see that my major task will be to teach the boy restraint and caution. He left himself no line of life to depend on. If Vandien had not come back, neither would Gotheris.' 'But Vandien is back, and he's going to recover?'

Dellin looked at her pityingly. 'You know he is, so why do you ask? Trust what you feel sometimes.' After a long pause, he added, 'You may find him somewhat changed.'

Ki lifted a questioning gaze, but Dellin dropped his eyes to one side to keep her from reading them. 'I could mute it for him,' Dellin offered softly. 'Hide the worst from him.'

Ki heard what he was offering. It frightened her. What had they done to him, that Dellin would make such an offer? She pushed the idea away, and knew he felt her doing so. 'I want him the way he is,' she said firmly. Saying the words aloud helped her know they were true, 'I don't always have to understand him. Sometimes we'll just have to trust each other.'

Vandien took a slightly deeper breath. His mouth twitched. She held him closer. His eyes slowly opened. 'I thought ...' His voice was rusty. 'I thought I was home.'

'You are,' Ki told him.