Spirit Gate

50

They crossed the River Olo on a bridge made of floating barges strung on chains across the current. Later, when Shai looked over his shoulder, the hill that marked Olossi was barely visible as a dark irregularity on the southern horizon. All else lay so flat beyond the raised roadway that the landscape seemed artificial, as if the earth had been planed smooth. Members of the Olossi militia strode alongside, holding lanterns to light their way. These were young men, eager to prove themselves. In the shifting bands of light he saw them grinning, in contrast to the grim Qin soldiers, who had been up for two days and had already fought a battle. But as the company strode along, it was the militiamen who rubbed their aching thighs, who paused to gulp down an extra breath of air or take a slug of bracing spirits.

Shai stumbled as he walked, even though the road was well made and level. Half the time he leaned against his horse for support. How the Qin soldiers and horses endured this relentless pace he could not imagine. About half of the herd had been left behind to recover at Olossi under the stewardship of Mai and the clan that had taken her in. That act alone made Shai understand that Captain Anji had committed to the enterprise in the way a man standing at the top of a cliff takes an irrecoverable step forward into the gulf. No Qin soldier left behind his string of mounts except with clansmen.

The ground on all sides lay dry and dusty. Parched irrigation ditches ran at right angles, black threads trailing off into the darkness. Yet there was water in the soil, more than there ever was in Kartu country, which was fed by no mighty river. Plants grew alongside the ditches, and ranks of trees rose at the shores of shallow ponds. Even the taste of the air had changed. The locals whispered of the rains coming, bringing with them the new year and its festival.

They passed through a village whose houses were slung along either side of the road; the silence that accompanied their march was that of a town abandoned, not sleeping. A single dog yipped at them, then scuttled around a corner. Soon they passed beyond houses and storage sheds built up on logs, past shelters and empty byres, back into the flatlands with rectangular fields scored into a patchwork by irrigation ditches.

They took a turning off the main road, a two-cart road, as the locals called such, and struck out onto a narrower path. This one-cart road was also raised on a berm, so it almost felt as if they were walking on the air like spirits or demons.

On and on they marched, into the night. A breeze rose up off the distant salt sea, whose broad expanse was not yet visible ahead of them. Once a shadow passed overhead, but probably it was Reeve Joss. According to Anji, he alone of the eagle riders was carried by an eagle who trusted his rider so thoroughly that the creature was willing to fly blind. Still, how could any of them be sure, if he did not land?

The stars shimmered in a hard, clear sky. Shai marked the progress of the shadow as it moved west, briefly blotting out individual stars and clusters which reappeared as the blot flew on. At length, he could no longer see it.

Was that really the reeve? Or a man wearing the face and voice of Hari?

The world, like those river barges, seemed to tilt and sway beneath him. He could not keep his feet when the road would keep shifting, rising and falling with each fresh step. Everything had pitched him off his balance, and he could not find steady footing.

What creature had spoken to him? Hari was dead dead dead. He knew that, because he always knew what was dead and what was living. Hari's wolf ring had spoken with the voice of truth; objects could not lie, not to him, not to anyone. They had not the capacity. Yet it seemed he was wrong, because that had been Hari on the road. He had been solid, angry, passionate; he had scolded Shai, just as he always used to do. Get up, Shai! Speak up, Shai! Run faster, Shai! You can, Shai! You must, Shai! Hari was the best of the brothers, the one who cared, the one who struggled. That was why he had run from the stultifying walls and customs imposed upon the sons of the Mei clan. Yet after being marched away by the Qin, had Hari been sold into slavery, or his services as a mercenary sold to the highest bidder? It was impossible to know, unless Shai could find Hari again. But how could he find Hari again when Hari was dead?

Yet the man he had seen was living, or was living at least at that time when he had first seen him, on the road, riding a winged horse. How anyone could survive such a barrage of arrows, all striking true, and that well-aimed javelin cast, Shai did not know. No person could. So that meant that Hari was dead after all. But if he was a ghost, then the other men shouldn't have been able to see him.

Jagi strode up beside him and bent close.

"Don't let us down," he said in a low voice. "The landsmen think you're one of us, but you're staggering like one of them."

Better to have kicked him and have done with it! Shai stiffened, his only reply a puff of breath between gritted teeth. Jagi faded back to the ranks of the tailmen. So after all Tohon had been right: the tailmen tolerated him, but did not respect him. He belonged to no one, not to the Mei clan, who had been eager to be rid of such an unlucky son, or to the Qin, who tolerated him solely because of his kinship to their captain's wife. He hadn't seen Tohon for three days, and was himself not skilled enough to ride as a scout.

That was the truth of what he was. Tohon felt sorry for him, Mai ignored him, and no one else wanted him. Even Hari had told him to go away. But he wasn't afraid of the shadows. Hari was all he had. So he would find Hari, no matter what.

Thus he found the strength not to falter. He did not want to be compared to the local men. He walked, and the stars rode the wheel high into the heavens and rode the wheel down into the west, as they always did, every night in every land. They were the same stars. It was only people who gave them different names. People might name him anything they wished, but he was what he was, and he would with the aid of the Merciful One accomplish what he had come here for: Find Hari, or Hari's bones, and return them to Kartu.

Very late, with the waxing sickle moon rising, they halted in a wide field where the captain met with the reeve. The land here was very flat but it sloped westward to the Olo'o Sea whose waters stretched like a field of darkness except where the moon's glow traced a glimmering path. At the edge of the sea rose an edifice. Watch fires burned atop towers built at each corner. The wind had been blowing out of the southeast, bringing the promise of rain, but now the wind faltered and died. The late night air grew stifling and close.

Chief Tuvi called the tailmen together. "This is your part. The walls are of stone. A careful man can climb them. This you will do, kill any you find within, and open the gates. Do it quickly. The reeve will land inside, while you are about your business, and provide distraction. Move too slowly, and he'll die. I need a volunteer to fly in with the reeve. It's the most dangerous job. You'll have only a moment to kill any guards at large before they kill you."

"I'll do it!" said Shai, stepping forward.

The others laughed. Chief Tuvi smiled in that good-natured way he had, but he chose Pil, who had not even volunteered.

Shai looked away as Pil sauntered off, proud of his chance at glory. Burning with shame, Shai checked his weapons and marched out with the rest of the tailmen, leaving the locals and the elite guard behind. They must walk the last few fields lest their horses be spotted. Across sheep pasture he trudged, and as the others split into pairs and trios, he found himself alone and, it seemed to him, awash in moonlight. Of the rest, he saw no sign or motion; they had vanished as if they had never come.

He cut into a rice field and crept through the stubble, but the rustling of dry stalks shattered the silence, so at length he found a dry irrigation ditch and used its depth to cover his approach. He meant to do something this night, although he wasn't sure whether he was likely to end up living, or dead.

The watch fires burned steadily. Of guards he saw none, but that did not mean they weren't there. The last field he crawled across, grateful for the dry weather. Beyond the field the ground rose into a low ridge. Just below the top he paused, then rolled over and plunged down the slope into the murky, stinking moat. Algae slimed his face and hands as he pushed through the water. It never came up higher than his chest, but the weight of water soaking his clothes made it difficult for him to clamber up the steep wall beyond. The stone wall offered fingerholds, nothing more. Yet years of carpentry had given him strong hands. Hand's-breadth by hand's-breadth he climbed the wall, never looking down. No guard called out. No arrow pierced his back. Nor was the wall so very high, after all; not nearly as tall as the wall of the citadel in Kartu where the town's rulers, whether Mariha princes or Qin commanders, held court. The reeves of Argent Hall did not fear assault so very much, it seemed. Maybe everyone had grown fat and lazy and complacent, thinking nothing would ever change.

His right forefinger began to bleed, but he was almost at the top. The moon scattered its pale beams over the endless flat plain. When he rested, pressing one side of his face against the stone and gazing outward with his uncovered eye, he saw no movement there beyond.

Abruptly, a shadow passed overhead, coming down fast. A man's sharp cry rang out from inside the walls.

"Who goes there?"

"Reeve's shelter!" cried a voice Shai recognized as that of Reeve Joss. "I claim reeve's shelter. I have terrible news!"

Shai grabbed the topmost battlement and heaved himself up onto his stomach, kicked, scrambled, and swung first one leg and then the other over. Leaped down onto the wall walk. Dropped into a crouch. He was in.

No one had marked him. He spotted a guard off to the left, but the man was looking down into a wide courtyard mostly hidden from Shai's position. Staying low, Shai moved along the walkway in the other direction and found a ladder. Down he went, got lost in several turnings, and found himself in a garden after all, where he hid behind a fountain. No water ran. That lack of noise made him feel vulnerable, because sound was like shadow; it concealed what wished to stay hidden. It was very quiet, but even slight sounds carried in the night: the scrape of a foot on gravel, a distant laugh, the trickle of water from a second, working fountain. An insect whirred.

In the garden stood a cottage. The pair of windows he could see from this side were open; a lamp burned inside, but from this angle he saw no one. He crept along a lattice screened by a fall of vine. He reached the porch, and eased up onto it. Around the corner, a door slid open. Beyond the garden, a man shouted in alarm, and was answered by an eagle's fierce shriek.

A foot fell; a shadow breached the corner of the porch; a man's shape slipped into view.

"Who are you?" he said.

Shai drew, and thrust. The point of his short sword cut into flesh, pushed deep, kept sliding until the hilt slammed up against the body it had impaled. Panting, Shai wrenched it loose, but the blade caught on ribs. He fought with it and shoved the man back and actually got his foot up on the man's thigh and shoved with the foot while tugging on the sword.

All fell free. The man collapsed onto the porch without making a single sound, just a thump. The cloak he wore wrapped around his shoulders shifted, rising as if wind breathed into the fabric. Shai took a step back, then a second, waiting for the man to struggle up and attack him. Waiting for his ghost to rise out of his body, cursing and moaning.

The body did not stir. No misty form shimmered into the air.

Behind him, a man chuckled.

"Well done," said Tohon, appearing out of the gloom. "But move fast, now. We go on."

"He's not dead."

"Looks dead enough. If not, we finish him later. Follow me."

A clamor rose from beyond the garden. Cries and calls were punctuated by the clatter of weapons. Tohon set out at a jog, and Shai ran after him, wiping his mouth, which was suddenly moist with saliva. They crunched along a gravel path. The scout seemed uninterested in how much noise they were making. Two corpses sprawled in the garden; their ghosts were caught in an eddy around their bodies, trying, Shai supposed, to figure out what had happened to them.

He and Tohon crossed under a gate and ran down an alley, made a twist and a turn, and sprinted into a wide and dusty court. Reeve Joss's giant eagle walked with wings spread while a pair of hapless men cowered away from his talons. Several bodies had fallen in the court, but in the dim light it was impossible to know what had struck them down. A ghost was weeping beside one corpse, but the other ghosts, strangely, were already tearing away from the flesh, seeking Spirit Gate, through which they would cross into the other world.

Near the fortress's massive gatehouse, a fire burned in a outdoor brick hearth. Here guardsmen might warm a cup of khaif to keep them awake through a night's watch, but tonight the flames illuminated a quartet of tailmen as they set their shoulders to the wheel. With a groan, and a rumble of gears, the gate creaked. Black-clad riders streamed into the fortress.

Anji rode up to Tohon.

"Done," said the scout. "But it was the lad who killed the marshal."

Anji nodded at Shai. "Well done."

He signaled. Together with the Olossi militia, the Qin soldiers spread throughout the barracks, stables, chambers, and lofts of Argent Hall. Reeves and servants were caught, bound, gagged, and confined under guard, while the dead were carried into the same high loft where the prisoners were kept and lined up in tidy rows for the living to contemplate.

Living among the reeves were guildsmen called fawkners, men and women whose work was to care for the eagles. They proved most cooperative. As soon as they saw that the hooded eagles under their care were not to be harmed, they seemed, in truth, relieved at the incursion, even though many of the eagles were badly distressed, restless in the darkness.

As soon as every room was accounted for, the troop set to work. Anji and his officers inventoried the contents of the storerooms. The militiamen dressed in the garb of the hall's hired men. The Qin soldiers rolled wagons into position and took their stations. Joss hooded Scar in an empty loft, to rest him. Men napped, hoarding their strength. Shai was too restless to sleep. He walked back through the compound and found the garden and its cottage, where he had stabbed that man. No body lay on the porch, of course, but strangely, no blood stained the boards either. For the longest time, as light rose and the night softened with dawn, he stared at the spot. There was no evidence that anything at all had happened. Inside the cottage, the lamp still burned, but it was guttering on the last of the oil. He moved toward the entry door, thinking to go inside, to blow it out. To look for something he had surely misplaced, only he wasn't sure what it was.

"Hey! Shai!" Jagi waved at him from the shadowed alley. "Come on! We're supposed to take up position. You're with me."

He shook himself. To his surprise, his hand was already on the door, which was closed, but he wasn't sure whether he was about to open a closed door, or had just closed an open one. Uneasy, he backed up, then jumped down the stairs and hurried over to Jagi.

As Shai came up to him, Jagi punched him, hard, on the arm. "Tohon says you struck down the marshal. You didn't let us tailmen down."

Shai could only grit his teeth so as not to wince in front of his companion. He did not look back at the deserted cottage as they trotted away down the alley. The night's activity seemed like a dream to him, something best left behind. They took up their station on the wall walk where scaffolding gave them protection; they still had a good view over the courtyard. It was very quiet, very still. Jagi readied his bow.

To kill a man, you must be willing to see the ghost he becomes. Such was the curse set upon him. He was not sure he was willing to be a soldier, if he must face, every time, the ghost he had created. Yet releasing ghosts did not seem to bother Anji, and anyway, Shai knew he would never have the courage to ask the captain if it did.

A militiaman rang the first bell as soon as the sun's rim broached the eastern horizon.

"Captain has a new idea," said Jagi. "Something to do with the oil he found in the storerooms. He's talking it over with that eagle rider, right now. I wonder, though."

"You wonder what?" asked Shai. He wondered, too, at the empty courtyard, the abandoned rooms: Argent Hall's ghosts had fled quickly, almost as if they were happy to find release.

"Let's say we survive this. I wonder what kind of wife I can find here. She won't be able to cook the things I like to eat. I tried a bit of their yoghurt and milk. Gah! It had no bite to it! I suppose I'll have to learn to eat what she cooks. That's what my mother would tell me to do."

He settled down with chin on crossed wrists and bow tucked beside him, dozed off…

A bell woke him. Just as he opened his eyes and remembered where he was and who he was with, a whistle called the alert. Jagi tipped from slumping against the wall to a low crouch so fast that one instant he seemed asleep and the next ready to loose an arrow.

Shai peered over the wall. If you looked hard you could see specks in the sky.

Argent Hall's eagles were coming home.