Spirit Gate

43

Horas spent a dreary evening stuck in hall while Master Yordenas made him repeat his report twice like a simpleton who couldn't understand two words rubbed together, and while the party of four argued. At length it was agreed that someone really had to go back to Olossi to make sure the mercenaries got the hells out of town and well away from anyplace where they might have a hand in disrupting the larger plan.

"There aren't many of them," said Horas. "I don't see why they're such a threat."

"Ten would be too many," said Toban. "You were given strict instructions."

"We'll have to send a reeve to oversee their departure," said Weda. "You ought to go, Horas. You know the Olossi council master better than the rest of us do."

"You just don't want to stir your fat ass out of here," he retorted. But he thought of the Devouring girl, and stirred restlessly in his chair. Yet those thoughts drew up from the well of his memory the stark gaze of that woman under the awning, the clerk with her brush and blank scroll. Her gaze had left him raw and shriveled. "Let someone else go. I'm due a break from running messages."

He pushed back from the table and took his leave. He thought of checking in on Tumna, but there were loft masters, the hall's chief fawkner and his assistants, to tend to injured birds. Anyway, he was tired and cranky. Before the lamps could burn dry, he retired to his usual cot in the barracks. The musty smell of his mattress, the angle of the wedge propped under his neck, the feel of his beads wrapping his wrists: these brought sleep and chased away bad dreams.

In the morning, he woke with a clear head and a niggling sense of disgust with himself. What a fool he was to have let that Devouring girl get away without paying for her passage! Thinking of her got him stiff all over again. He was no better than a child, flinching at shadows. Indeed, he could not really identify what had gotten into him yesterday. Likely it was sour wine curdled in his stomach whose gassy effusions had made him believe that a gaze from a meek clerk had power beyond what was natural. Strange how a good night's rest and a comfortable meal could set things right.

He rose early and told Toban that it was best for he himself to go back and personally supervise Master Feden and the council. "I'll even follow the troop for a day, make sure they're really getting gone."

"No matter to me who goes," said Toban. "You might think about giving that eagle of yours some rest, though."

"Yah. Yah."

Toban was a withered stick who hadn't any juice left in him. He wouldn't understand about lusting after a woman, the kind you didn't get a chance to gorge on more than once or twice in your life. Tumna was ragged, surly, and slow from the oversized feeding the chief fawkner had stupidly insisted on last night, but she was strong enough for another day of flying.

Ragged the eagle was, and slow, and cranky at being roused early, but the pair took their distance easily and circled over Olossi soon after dawn. Every Assizes Tower was required to maintain a perch for eagles, and space enough for flight in and out, but Olossi's council had always begrudged Argent Hall their due. First he thought of landing outside the walls, but then he'd have to walk. He had made this turnaround and steep approach enough times that he knew how to bank the turn just right and give a last hop of height in the landing, just before the gap of Assizes Court opened below. They made it, even if the landing was hard. He left Tumna hooded on the perch and commandeered a pair of young guards to escort him to Master Feden's compound, always difficult to find in the twisting streets of Olossi.

After a bit of confusion at the compound gate, he was led to a spacious courtyard and seated at a low table shaded by a cloth awning. Platters of fruit and soup and porridge and dried sourfish were brought. A slender slave girl poured khaif and leavened it with a spicy tincture of moro milk. He gave her a good look-over, but she wasn't anything compared with the Devouring girl, hardly worth mentioning. He set to without waiting.

It was a reasonably good feast, not perfect. The sourfish had a proper bite, but the flat cake was bland. The nai porridge was sharp with kursi, but the soup hadn't any cut to it at all and only a pair of trifling leeks when any decent cook would have layered them on to give a morning kick. Still, the fruit was ripe, moist with juices.

"Good to see you enjoying the food, Reeve Horas," said Master Feden, entering.

"Couldn't eat last night," said Horas as he pulled the tough strings from a globe-fruit and gulped down its sweet pulp.

"I'll join you." Master Feden gave a command, and a small, wiry-haired dog whose coat was a mixture of gray, white, and black settled down, its gaze fixed on its master. Seating himself on the only other pillow, Feden took his khaif without milk or spice and dismissed the girl. "How can I aid you this morning? Is there a message from Argent Hall?" His hand trembled as he lifted the cup, but after he sipped at the hot khaif, the trembling eased and he set down the cup with a firm hand.

"Uh." Horas swallowed the last of the luscious globefruit and licked the sticky sap off his lips. "Just need to make sure the mercenary company departs for the south. Master Yordenas isn't wanting any trouble with them."

"I shouldn't think they're likely to give any trouble." Master Feden glanced across the courtyard as he said it, but there wasn't anyone over there except a pair of guardsmen loitering under the arcade, out of the sun. "Have more khaif?"

"Can't eat too much." Horas took a good long look at the abundance of food, and levered one more sourfish off the platter. Popping it in his mouth, he savored its bitterness, the sting it brought to the eye. That was good. "I'll have to catch them up. When did they leave?"

Feden looked startled. He snagged a round of flat cake, cut it in half, cut the halves into quarters, and tossed one of those eighth pieces to the dog, which caught the treat in its mouth and gulped it down without rising. He put a piece to his own lips, but lowered it again.

"The report's not come in yet." He beckoned, and one of the young guardsmen trotted over. "Find Captain Waras. I'll need his report."

"I'll go out myself and look."

"A strange thing," said Feden. "That Devouring girl asked about you, after you'd left."

That was something to make a man burn brighter, even better than the sourfish. "Did she, now? How was that?"

"She came back to report to me, rather later in the night, if you take my meaning."

Thinking of the imprisoned reeve from Clan Hall, Horas nodded.

"It was strange. She must have known you were going, but she asked again if you'd happened to stay the night. Said it was late enough when you left the council hall that maybe you'd had second thoughts about flying back to Argent Hall." Then the merchant smiled. "Seems you roped a bit of interest there. She's a little too-whew!-spicy for my taste."

Horas looked at the pieces of untouched flat cake placed on the master's platter, and made his own judgment about the merchant's tastes. Casually, he dabbled his fingers in the cleansing basin. "She still around?"

"Nay, she left at dawn with a packhorse and a spare, off to fetch some hired man she mislaid on West Track, so she said. I got to wondering if it was a lover she was going after, she was that eager to get out of town."

"Hierodules don't take lovers." But after all, she was out and about, and she had shown an unusual concern for the man she'd left behind on the road. Now he got to thinking about it, maybe she was hiding something from the temple.

"Lots of things we say we don't do, that we do do," agreed Master Feden with a hearty chuckle.

That got Horas to thinking about what she had promised, and why the hells hadn't he gotten what he wanted when it was offered? Was he crazy? Surely it must have been something he ate, to make him feel all woozy and beaten down yesterday when it was there for the taking, all the sweet juicy flesh, just like the globefruit, only better.

He patted his fingers dry on a cloth and tossed it back on the table, where its edge lapped over his platter and one corner dipped into the unfinished soup.

"That mercenary troop ought to be gone by now. Let me get out to see them."

"I've some fresh redberry juice. Are you sure you don't want to wait for Captain Waras? He'll know what's up." He called over the slave, sent her off with a slap on her hindquarters, a good clout that got Horas to biting his lip for it did make him think of what he might get up to with the Devouring girl if only he could catch up to her before she got lost one way or the other, or killed by accident, now that he thought about it, which was the likely outcome if she came across the strike force who would act first and say sorry for it later.

"I'll just head out," he said.

But after all, the guards who had escorted him to the compound had vanished, and there was some fuss over finding a guide to replace him since Horas was quite sure he would lose his way in the confusing labyrinth of streets. Master Feden jabbered, and there came Captain Waras with a snarl on his face and a surly attitude that would have gotten him whipped in Argent Hall.

"I've got my hands full rousting that mercenary troop," he informed Master Feden.

"What! What? They were meant to leave at dawn!"

"Seems they're negotiating with some merchants from town, who won't be budged. I don't want a fight on my hands, not if I can avoid one."

"Negotiating for what?" asked Horas. "I thought the council ruled they were to leave immediately and without hiring themselves out here."

"I was just about to send a troop of riders to set them on their way. Would you like to come? Is that redberry juice, Master Feden?"

"So it is. Just uncanted this morning. So sharp you'll cry."

"Might I-?"

Down the captain sat, right on the carpet, and the slave was sent to bring a third pillow and a third cup. It transpired that the captain was a devout follower of the game of hooks-and-ropes, as Horas had been back at Iron Hall when he had followed league play in Teriayne. Olossi had teams, as did many of the surrounding villages, and there had been a particularly good scandal last season having to do with a hookster and a very cunning bribe, which Waras explained in entertaining detail. They drained the pitcher of redberry juice, and as promised Horas had to wipe tears off his face. His tongue had gone numb.

"Best we go out," he said as he blinked away the last bitter tear.

AFTER ALL MASTER Feden would come, and then there must be a procession, because council masters did get all twisted up if they weren't given a chance to parade before the lesser, as Horas's old grandmother was used to say.

Out they went. Passing through the fields and waste country beyond the outer walls, they met a group of men and slaves returning with a palanquin carried in their midst. The curtains concealed the treasure within. Master Feden cursed roundly at a merchant he recognized in that group, and there was a nasty exchange, more of looks than of words.

When they reached the river's shore where the militia had posted its sentries, they found the mercenary company ready to move out.

Master Feden called the captain over. The fellow was an outlander, with a hooked nose and a closed face, the kind that never gives anything away. He'd been calm enough in the council meeting, even when the vote had gone against him. Horas knew this kind; they would speak softly to your face and knife you in the back when you turned to go.

"I'm sure you remember who I am!" said Master Feden in a stern voice. "You were told to be gone at dawn."

The captain had a cold expression. He wasn't a nice man. He was the kind people thought was nice, but Horas had learned in the mountains that a sunny day on the high slopes could turn deadly in the turn of a hat and never care who was left for dead behind the storm.

"Negotiations took longer than expected," said the captain with a glance at his men. They were a sleek bunch, tough as leather, sharp as a good blade. "We are leaving now." He spared a glance for the reeve, dismissed him in the most insulting way, and signaled to his soldiers.

"Negotiations for what?" Mester Feden cried.

The company moved, splashing across the shallows.

"I sold my wife," he said, over his shoulder.

The council master turned red. Captain Waras whistled beneath his breath.

"Damn him," said the council master, even redder. "I'd have thrown in a bid."

As the company passed, Horas tried to count them, but he gave up after forty. They were nothing, really. The strike force would overrun them, and even if a few scattered into the countryside, the main army would catch them, crush them, and eat them with supper as flavoring, as the saying went.

He was eager to get back to Tumna, but he must wait with Master Feden as the company crossed. A man threw a shoe, and there was some fuss, and a delay, and gods help them all if by the time he trudged back on weary feet into Assizes Court it wasn't noontide with the sun at its worst and the wind struggling to catch any breath in this furnace heat. He rested awhile and took a cooling drink, and in the end it was only the thought of that Devouring girl on the road and marching step by step farther away from him and his chance to get a piece of her that got him going. He shook Tumna out of her sunning stupor.

The mercenary company was moving at a slug's glide. It was easy to get a comprehensive view of their line of march and of the road stretching before and behind them. There was the usual traffic, slowing to a trickle as it moved into the heat of the day. Trust the stupid outlanders to march right into the worst. They trudged along in a torpor. They were pushing in the correct direction, anyway. Maybe the captain was sorry, now, that he'd sold off his pretty wife. That was something to laugh about.

He circled wide, catching an updraft off the escarpment and banking wide to get a view of West Track more or less parallel to the east-flowing length of the wide River Olo. The river looped and curved along the plain, but West Track ran straight as a spear. There were little villages and fields and swales and low ground and hills hidden by old trees too difficult to chop down. The heat had melted the locals. The villages were quiet; the householders seemed early to their afternoon Shade Hour. He saw no one on the road except a pair of peddlers with packs slung over their backs, a single man leading a horse, a trio of women with the jaunty swagger of entertainers, and-yes!-a woman mounted on one horse and leading two others.

He spotted open ground a distance ahead, circled her until he was sure she'd seen him, and flew ahead for an easy landing. Soon enough, she appeared along the empty road, the only creature abroad. He waited in the shade of a massive old oak tree, while Tumna perched in the sun with wings spread. As everyone did, the woman kept her distance from the eagle, but she tethered her horses across the road and sauntered over.

"I thought you had abandoned me yesterday," she said, raising her chin with a challenge. "You sure were cold. Out on patrol again?"

The sheen of sweat on her made her glisten. A man could go crazy looking on a woman who looked the way she did, with her vest bound so loose you might glimpse anything through those lacings but never quite did, with her linen kilt sliding along taut thighs. She considered the eagle.

"I wonder what she would do," she said, "if I were to tie you up. Would she attack me? I think she could rip my head right off."

In the Tale of Discovery, the shoemaker had been literally blinded with lust, and Horas suddenly wondered if he was about to undergo the same transformation. The sun was so bright, and the pale colors of the dry landscape filmed away into a haze. He was slick with sweat, and so tight he actually could not get a word up out of his throat. But he could move his arm, giving the hand signal for flight and return. Tumna shook herself and kekked irritably, but she took off with a massive thrust and a storm of wing, and vanished over the woodland to find a more peaceful place to sun.

"I suppose that's my answer," she said, watching the eagle go. "Wait here."

She walked back across the clearing and over the road to where she had tethered her horses, and just to watch that shapely rump sway was enough to make his throat dry and his gaze blur. Into the woods she disappeared, leading the horses, and reappeared a bit later without them. With a faint smile, she returned to him and grasped his wrist. He was choked with desire.

She led him deep into the woodland, close beside the river where there was lots of cover and plenty of twisted trees that made perfect hitching posts, to which she tied him.

After a long time, she asked him if he wanted her to stop, and he gasped, "No."

A while after that, she asked him again, and he whimpered, "No."

Not that he could have stopped her anyway. Not that he would have wanted to.

Even later, she said she had to go get more water, and he needed a break by that time, because it was hard work, as the Merciless One knew. The slow heat of the afternoon drowsed around him. His hands began to tingle and go numb, but he couldn't relieve the pressure of the rope. He began to lose feeling in his feet. He cooled, and withered.

The colors within the trees changed as shadows drew long under the branches. It was about the time he realized that he was too effectively trussed up to free himself, and too far from the road for his voice to carry the distance, that he also discovered he had lost his bone whistle. Even if it was concealed beneath the pile made by his clothes and gear, he could not reach it.

It was getting dark fast, for night always came quickly.

He heard male voices, laughter, in the trees, but when he called after them, no one answered.

That's when he understood that she wasn't coming back.