CHAPTER VII

Ahjvar had disappeared. Ailan didn’t know how he did it. There wasn’t enough cover to hide a dog, and he had seen the man climbing along the narrow ledge, seen him inch on his belly into a thin growth of some kind of green-needled bush that Ailan would probably be expected to know the name and uses of tomorrow, if they both lived so long. He could see the nearly sheer slope of broken stone rising, the bushes precariously clinging—no man lying there. It was—there, he moved, shifting position, and suddenly what had been stone, dirty grey and brown, was Ahjvar.

It wasn’t even wizardry, that. It was just something about him, the magic in the man, who did everything as if he had been born to do it. Ailan tried to make himself a little flatter behind his own chosen cover— and Ahjvar had said it was a good place, where falling rocks had collected on a ledge a little wider than others, in the weird sloping edges of stone that looked as if they had been laid down like a stack of pan-fried cakes and then tilted. Probably there was a name for such a place, and such rocks. Ahjvar had names for everything, and tried to teach him, but…sometimes he wondered if Ahjvar even knew that he wandered from one language to another, or if he was so old, and so—so godly—that he just assumed he was understood.

A stone slipped under Ailan’s hand, rattled away down to the gully below, splashing into the shallow stream. He cringed, knowing Ahjvar must be looking—not angry. He never got angry, never hit, never even told him how stupid he was. But looking, and probably thinking he’d have better left Ailan in Star River Crossing to hang, or whatever would have come to him for helping to kill foreign priests and burn their mission-house.

Another clatter of stone. That hadn’t been his doing. Down the gully. In the distance, crows began some sort of conversation. He wondered if Ahjvar understood crows. If crows had words, in their cawing. If they said to one another, people are going to die; soon we can dig out their eyes.

They’d come upon a dead sheep on the hills on their fourth day out from Star River Crossing, before they’d begun following the road again. It had stunk. Something had dug out its eyes and ripped open its belly. Crows, ravens, jackals, foxes, white-headed eagles…that’s what they’d do to a dead human, too. You’d be just bloating, stinking flesh to them.

Rada, when they hooked her out of the muck of the river’s shore. He’d seen. He’d hardly have known her, but for the red gown, which was his. She’d borrowed it four days before. Well, taken it right off his back, and left him nothing but a shirt to go out in, till he found where she’d hidden her small stash of coin. She’d taken her own worn-thin gown away with her, probably to sell to the rag-woman. Seagulls and crows and stray dogs had been at her…No more slapping and pinching and refusing to let him share the blanket when he’d had a bad evening, anyway. He’d fled that miserable room with the money and the blanket and taken to sleeping under the bridge, when the gang who claimed it would let him, for a price, and in doorways when they wouldn’t. He knew who Rada’d gone with that evening, and she hadn’t slipped down the bank drunk; there’d been a cord sunk deep in the puffy, grey-brown fungus-swelling of her neck. He’d liked young men once in a while, too, that magistrate’s guardsman, and ropes.

And he wasn’t thinking about that sort of thing. Just—Rada, and the sheep, and the smell of both was in his mind and in his nose—

He wasn’t afraid. He would not be. Just—like he was all one tight scream, and he didn’t know if that was fear, or what you were supposed to feel, when you waited to see the people who came to kill you.

He tried to slow his breathing. Blood thumping in his ears. They might be wizards. Ahjvar said there was at least one wizard tracking them. They might hear. He should have asked if wizards could hear things ordinary people couldn’t. Ahjvar could, but he was special.

He should have done what Ahjvar had first wanted and climbed on ahead, up what was turning into a sort of split in a cliff where the stream came down, dashing itself to white spray as it tumbled ledge to ledge.

Maybe Ahjvar should have made him go on, not listened when he had said—insisted—he would help.

He wasn’t a child.

His mouth was like dust.

He had fought before. He had killed a man. He’d never won a fight in his life, even against Rada, who’d taken him over when his mother died and been only a couple of years older and no taller than he himself. Yet he always ended up the one in the dirt being kicked. Until Ahjvar, he’d never had anyone on his side in a fight. But he’d killed Timon all on his own.

He had Timon’s knife in the pocket of his coat now.

The priests were coming into view. Ten of them. No dog. But the Blackdog might look like a man. Not an ordinary priest-knight, though. Would he? These were all men, no women. Most of them were knights, or at least, they had armour, scale or leather with rivets that probably meant metal plates hidden. Didn’t cover their arms, though. Barely came down past their hips. Lighter for climbing through mountains. They’d mostly taken their helmets off. Hot, poor dears, he thought, and that was how Rada might have spoken of such men, proud in their armour that wasn’t going to do them a bit of good. Especially not if they slung their helmets from their belts like that.

Didn’t like hearing Rada’s words in the shape of his own thoughts. What would Ahjvar say of them? Fools. Don’t be like them.

One of the two who wore only a plain coat shouted something; they went from a straggle of weary men scrambling along a path of broken stones while trying not to fall into the stream to a pack of alert hunters, some settling their helmets on their heads, some setting arrows to their ready-strung bows, some drawing short Westron swords, all looking around, while the two plain-coated, still bare-headed, clasped hands facing one another and began a sing-song prayer or spell or—

Ailan was already heaving his chosen stone, but a wizard was staggering into his partner’s arms with a crossbow bolt through his back— not the one Ailan had aimed for, and the stone struck before his man could drop his comrade and seek cover. The stone-struck man went down with a thud, a bright stain spreading over his bald head, twirling away in the rushing water. In answer, a swarm of arrows came smashing and skittering off the stones behind which Ailan had laid himself. He went flat again, hurling smaller rocks over without looking to aim, heard the more solid thunk of the crossbow striking something again, which meant Ahjvar must have loaded the stirrup-bow lying on his back and he was in awe, in love, maybe—anyone would be. Someone was breathing heavily, huffing and panting, so Ailan risked raising himself and nearly got a sword stabbing into his face. He yelled and the man slipped and had to brace himself; that gave him his moment to bash with a sharp-edged stone on a clutching hand. The knight cursed—sounded like cursing— and twisted and pulled himself halfway up onto the ledge. Ailan knelt up to smash with another trusty rock, remembered he had a knife if he could get it out of its sheath and out of his coat—the knight was thrashing away but not letting go. Ailan shoved and jerked his hand free as desperate fingers clutched it. Shoved and stabbed and his hand, his eye found their place, their swift sure striking, and the man slid in a tumble and clatter of stones and in his fall knocked off another who’d started to climb, no, that had been another crossbow-bolt and was he supposed to be bait up here behind these stones—?

Ahjvar, leaping down the ledges like a cat. A scatter of arrows missed or were swept aside, as if he had a god’s grace in his hands, and his sword swung and lunged and—

Ailan had lost count. He’d lost common sense, too, watching as if this were a play, as if Ahjvar and the knights were dancers to some drum and flute only they could hear.

It didn’t take long, and they had no attention to spare for coming after him. Five—three, two and the last man running for his life. Ahjvar flicked a knife that plunged into the fleeing man’s thigh and ran up to kill him while he was scrambling in the water, though from the way the man turned the stream red he wouldn’t have gotten up again anyhow.

Ailan knelt where he was a moment longer, leaning on the stones. The water was dark. Three of the bodies were bleeding in the stream, and the bald wizard too, though he hadn’t bled so much. The rapids over the stones were frothing pink.

His hands were dirty from scrambling up stones. Bloody, too. The man who’d made it to the top had clawed him, scratches like a giant cat had been at him, and his knife-hand was red. He’d—every damn night, on the road to Marakand. You need to know how to use that. Ahjvar’s hands on his, gripping over his hand on the knife, gripping his other forearm. You don’t have a shield. Wrap your headscarf, a coat, anything—they’re going to strike for your face, your gut. Behind him, putting his arms where they should be, pushing down his hunched shoulders, kicking at his heel. Relax. Don’t knot yourself up, you’ll be too stiff to move. Move your damned foot, you’re going to trip yourself. Feel where your body is. He’d mostly been feeling where Ahjvar’s body was, like a stupid…Hadn’t been Ahjvar’s intention at all, standing so close, when all the rest of the time he was “don’t touch me” and moving off when Ailan came too close, which he’d done a few times, testing, god’s own beloved or not, because the wide world was terrifying and strange and he wouldn’t have said no at all if Ahjvar had changed his mind—there wasn’t anything wrong with wanting him…And then when he’d finally been able to stand to please him, and get his legs and shoulders and elbows where they should be, it had been stabbing and blocking and slashing not with the knife but sticks, like children. He’d learnt why when Ahjvar hooked the feet out from under him and he fell on his own piece of firewood.

Ahjvar had not laughed, only reached down a hand and helped him pick himself up. And said, “Try that again. And this time, don’t watch only my hands.”

You did the same thing over and over until your eyes and your muscles knew it, but you didn’t stop thinking and planning, either, to seize what opening the other person offered, to lure them to where you wanted them, where you could strike, and you watched, feet and hands and eyes and even how someone took a breath—just like when the cranky camel named Scorpion was going to do something obnoxious, deliberately stand on his foot, maybe, and he knew it was coming by how she shifted her weight and turned her eye. But faster and harder to see and smarter.

He wasn’t going to kid himself, that he’d become some knife-fighting hero of a ballad in the weeks since Star River Crossing, whatever bruises he’d borne and even if Ahjvar had started them both using dulled blades once they came to the ambassador’s house in Marakand. But Ailan had survived, and the knight hadn’t.

His dropped knife—there. For a moment he was reluctant to touch it. Stupid. He pulled at a tussock of dead grass, scrubbed at his fingers and then the knife. His hands trembled like an old man’s.

“You coming down?” Ahjvar called.

It took him a couple of fumbling tries to get the blade back into its sheath. Almost dropped it again. Took a deep breath. Flexed his hands a few times, watched them steady. They were a man’s hands, a little ridiculous, a little startling, battered and broad-knuckled at the ends of his scrawny arms.

Another breath.

He’d survived. The knight—and true enough, the Westron had been hanging off what was almost a cliff with one hand mashed to pulp—had not. But Ailan had put the knife where he meant it to go and hadn’t faltered and hadn’t missed and—a few weeks ago he didn’t think he’d have made it climbing up these ledges; he’d have been weak and trembling in his arms and knees just getting that far, and he’d felt it, all the way up his arm, hard and controlled, when he’d stuck that final time.

“Yeah,” he said, and picked his way down without knocking more than a stone or two loose. Stood with Ahjvar looking over the dead men.

“None of them was the Blackdog,” Ailan ventured.

“No. Not sure either of us would have survived, then.”

“You would,” he said.

Ahjvar laughed. His nose had healed up over that first day and the black scabs had flaked off by the next, leaving pinkish scars against the tan of his skin, and even those were fading. He hadn’t even been wounded in this fight, not that Ailan could see. He’d back Ahjvar against the Blackdog any day.

He’d still be nothing but a snack, himself. But that had always been his fate in any fight. He went to wash his hands upstream, where the water ran clean.

“If I take one of their swords will you teach me to use it?” he asked. “I don’t want to be just bait next time.”

“Noticed, did you? You weren’t just bait this time. Two of those were yours.”

“I was still bait. They didn’t know where you were; they were all after me.”

“Yeah. It helped.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Check their quivers. Get as many arrows as you can. Leave any that are soaked. You might as well learn to shoot, too, with something other than my crossbow. Your aim’s terrible. Probably the weight.”

The sword—which Ahjvar didn’t like because it was meant mostly for stabbing and that wasn’t their style of fighting, he said, as if he and Ailan had some shared tradition to hold to, like their dead language— was going to be a problem with weight, too, heavier than he had thought it would be, once Ahjvar had waved around and discarded nearly all of them, making his choice. “Find you something better in Marakand,” he said, which Ailan took to mean longer, and probably heavier, but maybe not; this blade was broad and thick.

But with the sword strapped to his pack—because it was only going to pull him off balance climbing if he wore it at his hip and he’d be dead if he grabbed for it in a fight anyway—he rubbed his hands over his upper arms, as if he were cold, checking, and was a little startled at just how solid his muscles were getting. Not so scrawny after all.

They ate there, by the waterfall, as if the dead were miles away. Crows circled, landed, hopped closer. Things bigger than crows, rough-throated. Ravens, Ahjvar said, when he asked. It was only noon. The sun grew spring warm. Flies gathered, summoned from rocks, from the earth, he couldn’t guess where. The taste of blood in the air, maybe, like the ravens. He didn’t look when the first bird grew bold enough to perch on a body. Ahjvar didn’t bother to chase it away. Ailan shut his eyes, concentrated on cold water in the silver cup, the taste of the food—they were living mostly on biscuits sopped in water and Marakander sweets that were nuts and raisins and dried apricots and figs all mashed together with honey and rolled in seeds, which were marvellous but more something you’d want to share with a friend sitting on a bench in the sun with a little cup of bitter coffee and a warm evening to look forward to, not—

Three ravens began to squabble over the priest with the cracked skull.

“Time to go,” Ahjvar said, washing his fingers in the stream.

“Which way?”

“Up.”

Ailan, sighed, looking up the crack down which the waterfall plummeted.

“Do I go first, so I can knock you off when I fall, or do I go first so you can catch me?”

“I go first, and let down a rope. Which you will tie around yourself. And then I can catch you when you fall.”

“Oh. Do we have a rope?”

“I always have a rope.”

“I wish you’d said ‘if’ about the falling.”

“Yeah, I wish I could have.” But Ahjvar smiled.

Gods, Ailan almost wished he wouldn’t.

No. That was stupid. He could just—enjoy that Ahjvar was good to look at, and not need to think of him that way. Because that wasn’t what he really wanted from the man anyway, was it? Not really.

“We’ll take a few more days getting to Marakand,” Ahjvar said, testing an edge of rock, which proved to be loose. He chose another handhold. “Maybe a week. Head into the mountains first. Lose any others that might be behind. Though if Jochiz has turned the Blackdog loose on us after all…well, I’m doing what I can to hide our trail even from a hunting devil.”

“Maybe you really did kill him.”

“The more I think about it, the more I doubt I did anything to him at all.”

“Someone else did?”

“I don’t know. But maybe.”

“Your god.”

Ahjvar grunted. Well, it was a stupid suggestion, Ailan knew it. A god couldn’t reach beyond their own land, or he wouldn’t dare even be thinking the thoughts he sometimes had. Watching Ahjvar climb…

He should be keeping watch behind. There might be a second band of hunters after them.

“Look where I’m going,” Ahjvar ordered. “You’re going to want to know where to put your feet.”

“I am. But remember I’m shorter than you.”

Ahjvar looked down, up, considering. Changed where he had been reaching to.

“Alright. You’ll want to move over to the left here, then, if you can’t pull yourself to the ledge above…see?”

He killed people and sat down to eat by their dead bodies as if it were normal not to be bothered by the blood and ravens and flies, and then he was…kind.

Oh. This wasn’t…it wasn’t falling in love, what he felt, what was warm and safe and something he could feel wrapped around him like a blanket, like a hand resting on his head a moment as he was falling asleep, a touch in affection, not desire. It was—this was—not a father— this was a brother. What having an older brother might have been.