CHAPTER XX

Moth wanted night for this, and night was coming. The Kinsai’aa, Kinsai’av the folk of the road called it, was like a mirror holding fire where the setting sun was caught. On the eastern shore, scattered stands of poplar. On the west, where black shadows should have hidden the water, only stumps. In the east, the full moon was rising behind a bank of towering cloud. Lightning flared distant there, silent. Weather brewing over the far hills.

Moth leaned on the wind and circled, a great wheeling turn over the towers of the ferry castle of the First Cataract. The folk of the goddess Kinsai lived there, children of the goddess or their descendants, or waifs and strays come by chance and folded into them, whatever they were. Extended family. Village. Fishers and wizards, scroungers and scholars who carried folk over the river for whatever they could spare, a coin, a song, a bolt of cloth, a baby. The stories told of them had not grown any fewer or any less fanciful over the years. She did wonder what they saw, what they planned, that they had not yet fled.

She did not think them so fey as to choose to die following their goddess.

The waters were empty of any presence of Kinsai, lifeless, for all they teemed with fish and insect, snail and weed. Gone. A great life stilled. She had thought Kinsai might fight. She was one of the great rivers and these only her upper reaches; she ran around the rising of the Pillars of the Sky, through strange southern forests and lotus-filled wetlands where the swans wintered, spread to a great lake, an inland sea. A great goddess there in the lake, sister to Kinsai, one of the mighty, at least in her own land. A silence, waiting, watching…But Sien-Shava must choose, south or east, and Moth thought it was the peopled east and the small gods along the caravan road that would pull him, not the sparsely settled wildernesses below the Pillars of the Sky, where demons outnumbered the human-folk.

Another wheeling circle, eagle spread on the air, hardly a wingstroke needed. Travellers on the road, two riders making a camp…

Well. That was…interesting.

Almost she dropped down.

No. She had no right to put him at risk, to draw the devil’s eye to what he might, so far, have missed. A twist of a feather, the slightest shifting of weight, a long glide and she spiralled lower, narrowing her turn above the camps on the western shore. Holding herself close, silent. Unnoticed by the burning presence below. So far.

Tents and huts both, orderly rows and squares. Main encampment more or less a vast town; others its satellites. Rutted wagon-tracks led to its gates from north and west and south, the arteries that fed it from the new manors that oversaw the conquered Westgrassland folk. Did they think of themselves as bondfolk now, or enslaved? Or did they find something that drew them in the promise of a swift flight free of suffering, to carry them to the Old Great Gods?

She circled, waiting. Watching.

Searching.

Fires burned throughout the camp, brightening as the last sun fled, and she flowed from eagle to owl in a stroke of her wings.

Still she circled. What she sought…

Sien-Shava’s presence burned. He made no attempt to mute himself, to bank his fires. Any wizard would know him, any god. He did not care. He drowned out all else, as if she listened in a gale for the quiet song of some hidden bird.

No hope that she would find Mikki guarded only by soldiers. A hostage would be no use if she could, in any way, put herself between him and the devil.

The patience of the hunting cat. The silence. Hiding. Reaching.

Low, low, silent, feathers whispering against the air. A spider’s web. Chains, human wizardry and devil’s power, iron and blood and song and fire, threads of Jochiz himself, circling and binding the demon, sinking into him, every thread a thousand curving needle-fangs, as if Mikki were swallowed into the mouth of a horror-fish of the deep ocean.

He was caged, a wagon of iron bars and filth. Night, and he was in his daylight form, caught there, an agony that would last till dawn, body wrenched against its nature. A bear, a giant of the forest, pale as straw, claws of ivory torn and broken and bloodied. Iron collar about his neck, inscribed with the binding of his form and sunk into his flesh, chains running to the four corners of the cage. It was not they that truly held him, though.

Gaunt, bones jutting beneath dull and dirty fur, clumped and shedding, matted. As if in a winter’s deep sleep, he hardly breathed. Embers of life burned low. There, a breath, slow and rasping. Stillness again.

To cut those threads, those chains physical and devil-woven—there was death set in them, death rooted in his heart. She felt it in her own, a searing fire, waiting, watching, ready to rise, to consume him from within, body, demon earth-soul.

She came down beside the wagon, landing lightly, barefoot, drawing Keeper as she touched.

Guards in leather kilts and scale shirts covered by red tabards at the four corners, token, symbol, or to keep the prisoner from doing some harm to himself if he woke, she supposed. No use to her.

Except as the horn blown at the hall’s door. Declaration and summons.

She killed the first as he turned towards her, mouth opening, and went the circle of the wagon sun-wise. Took the second’s head as he lowered his spear. The third was running for her. She stepped aside and caught his thrusting spear, jerked him to her and onto Keeper’s blade, went over him to the fourth, who had fallen to his knees.

She split his skull, helm and all.

The air ripped.

She stood with a foot on a wheel’s spoke, cleaning her sword on the tabard she tore from the dead man.

“Sien-Shava,” she said and sheathed Keeper, dropped Lakkariss in its scabbard into the cradle of her left arm.

“Jochiz,” he snarled in correction. And that was a spark of light in her heart. Whatever he did, whatever he planned, he was still the same mind. Despising the human soul that made him and the human name he had borne.

She knew the shape of him, still.

“If you will.” She spoke Northron. People gathered, running up in pursuit of their abruptly translated All-Holy. Men and women in formal robes, red and white. The colour of the Lady of Marakand. Not, she supposed, a coincidence. Though perhaps a lack of imagination. A court of priests. Officers, knights in scale shirts enamelled red, barelegged save for their greaves, sandalled, in the Westron fashion that had been a thing of statuary and tomb-relief even when she was young in the world.

“He will die if you even draw that,” Sien-Shava said.

She shrugged. “And you will still die, regardless.”

“You were never my match, King’s Sword.”

“Oh, Islander, I’ve been many long years on the road, and not peaceful ones. What have you done? Made yourself a priest and the voice of a false god, hiding in a cave? And besides, when did we ever try ourselves? You only hope yourself my better with the blade.”

“You were always afraid to fight me, even for the entertainment of the hall. Afraid to test yourself so far before your brother’s eyes.”

She shrugged. “You can tell yourself that. I didn’t come to fight.”

“Proud Vartu will ally herself with the All-Holy messenger of the Old Great Gods? Am I a fool?”

“Shall I answer that, Sien-Shava? Shall we trade words till we drive ourselves to blows and the sword’s edge after all? I came to make a bargain.”

“For what?”

“You know what I want.”

“You are perverse. That’s a beast. An animal, no matter that he speaks like man. No matter that he sometimes takes the form of one. You disgust me.”

“You really mean that.” Which was startling. “You’ve listened to your own priestly rantings too long, Jochiz.”

“Humanity has perverted you.”

“Humanity has perverted us all. Some more than others. Tu’usha learnt that.”

Mikki flinched and moaned. Careful.

“A bargain,” she said flatly.

“You have nothing to bargain with, no threat to make. You see I hold him in my hand. All I need do is close it, and he is gone. All you can do is stay out of my way, until—we shall see, in the end, what use your black sword is.”

“That,” she said, “is my bargain.”

“What?”

“Give me my man. My bear, my lover, my husband, Jochiz. Free of your chains and your spells and all your bindings. Give me Mikki, and let us go over the river unhindered and out of your way, and I will give you Lakkariss.”

“Lakkariss?”

“The sword.”

“Northron name. It’s nothing of the north.”

She shrugged. Almost a smile. “It’s bloody cold, though. You’ve got to admit it suits.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “I admit I envy what you’ve crafted. What price did your soul pay to summon that from the darkness and the ice? How did you dare even set hand to it?”

“Those secrets I keep. It’s something I could never shape again.”

The priests, the officers, watched, and frowned incomprehension. Foreign words, and not an educated folk. Whispered behind hands, heads together. A woman armed like a soldier—almost the only woman so—was edging around through the crowd. A man likewise, going the other way. She raised her free hand, pointed. Swept it down. Dropped the woman to her knees. Then the man.

“All-Holy!” the man cried out.

“Be silent!” Sien-Shava roared in Tiypurian. “I speak with a devil. Do not presume to interfere. Such matters are beyond your understanding.”

She might as easily have stopped their hearts. Maybe should have.

“It’s something you should never have shaped at all,” Sien-Shava said to her, conversational and in Northron again. “You’ve murdered Ogada. You’ve murdered Ghatai. You’ve murdered Tu’usha. Dotemon, Jasberek, where are they? I reach to them and I find nothing. Emptiness. Dead at your hand as well?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps they hide from me as well. It might be they have allied against you. Or me. Or against us both. You are drawing great attention to yourself, Jochiz, and Jasberek never did like—”

“I fear Jasberek no more than I fear you. You, Vartu! You made this thing and set out with it to make yourself the only great power on this earth—and now you’ll give it up for the sake of a demon beast you used to rut with? I find it hard to believe.”

“I’m serious.”

“You think I’ll release him, while you hold that?”

“You think I’ll surrender Lakkariss to your hand while you hold him bound? We were kin, once. Allies. One fellowship.”

“You never trusted me.”

“No,” she agreed, because that was true. “I did not. But you never swore any oaths to follow me, either.”

“You never asked it.”

“Would you have so sworn?”

“No. Not to you, Vartu.”

“So. You would not have sworn falsely? And so I never asked. I didn’t seek an oath you couldn’t keep. But this—this does not run against your nature. I ask nothing you cannot give. Not submission, not loyalty. Only that we deal faithfully with one another in this one thing, from which we both gain, and give up nothing of ourselves. In that, I would trust you, as I hope you would trust me.”

“Let me see the sword.”

“It’s dangerous. It’s hungry. It’s long since it’s fed.”

“Let me see it, Vartu.”

Moth, holding the scabbard in her left hand, drew the blade halfway. The moon had cleared the cloud. Silver edged the blade. Frost. Moonlight caught the silver tracery.

Sien-Shava almost held his breath. She felt how he tightened his hold on the demon’s life. Felt how Lakkariss reached, hungered…

She rammed the blade home again.

“You don’t think I could forge a substitute.”

“No,” he said. “I do not.”

“Were I you, I would not draw it except in direst need. It is a hungry thing, as I said, and not overly particular whom it takes. To wield it is not to escape its attention.”

“So you say.”

“To tell the truth, it would be a burden gone, not to have it ever whispering at my back.”

“I remember Vartu. I remember how you led us to this place, and why. What happened to your resolve?”

She only shook her head.

“Ulfhild,” he said, and each syllable spat disdain. “Human. Mortal. Woman. No wizard, no warrior—only a whelper of children, after all. She has unmade you, Vartu.”

Moth stood in silence, head bowed. “Maybe,” she said at last.

He laughed.

“You have your bargain—Ulfhild. Give into my hand that blade you have made from the stuff of the cold hells for the murdering of our kin, and you may take your beast and go free, unharmed, over the river and out of my lands.”

Deep breath. She held it out, slowly, reluctant, at the end, across her hands. Fingers still closed around the scabbard and the grip. Jochiz crossed to her. Not a tall man, half a head shorter than she. His curling near-black hair was worn long, dressed in ringlets, now, beneath a cap of gold brocade, and his beard was similarly dressed. Not the Westron look of the men about him, bare-headed, short-haired, clean-shaven. He assumed the air, the authority of an ancient Tiypurian prince or magistrate, a statue such as their lords had treasured in their impoverished halls in the days when the kings of the north first began to trade with them. His eyes were golden brown; the fires within roiled close to the surface. She let the physical world fade. Fire met fire. They were light and fluid light, and the sword between them, like lightning frozen in the world. He closed his hands over it, hand touching hand. She could feel his mortal warmth. A shiver up the spine that was purely animal.

“Let Mikki go,” she said. “You have my word. I have yours. But Jochiz, as we once were kin, be very wary of drawing that sword. There is no mercy in it.”

The chains binding Mikki were wrapped into Sien-Shava’s own heart. Iron. Fire. Death.

One of them had first to trust. She would trust Jochiz no further than his own advantage led him, and Sien-Shava not at all.

A breath from disaster. He might kill now, wrest the sword from her, or try to. And they would die, and every living thing about, because she would unleash all that she had in her to destroy him—

Chains shattered. Threads of light, of fiery soul, unravelled. Contempt, maybe, he as prepared as she to unloose a wrath to destroy this land they stood on. But his grip on the scabbard tightened, bone clothed in fire, and Mikki’s howl of agony wrenched her unthinking away, releasing the sword, heedless.

“Take him,” Jochiz said. “And get out of here.”

She was already gone, spun away to the wagon, and the red-armoured warrior-priest who flung himself in her way was already dead, falling, fool, when she had been called a devil before them all. Struck aside with the back of her hand. She had not drawn Kepra. She did, now, and it burned in the air with her fury as she struck the bars of the cage. Iron shattered as icicles from the eaves when a child hurls snowballs against them. Mikki was twisting, crying out, an animal sound high and senseless, claws tearing at the floorboards. His eyes were white, jaws snapping. The iron collar crackled, sparking like a cat’s fur in winter, but the chains were broken.

“Leave her!” Jochiz roared. “I have disarmed her. She does my bidding now, and goes in fear of the messenger of the Old Great Gods. Leave her to do as she will with the demon. It was the price of her surrender. Pity even such a monster, to be a devil’s slave.”

Mikki!

She went through the gaps she had torn, dropping her sword. Down behind him on her knees, where his flailing could not strike, arms around the massive neck. Not so massive as it should be. All bone and loose skin. Fur came away in her hands. He stank.

Mikki! she called, but he was blind and deaf and his mind a roiling sea of pain.

“Mikki…” Whispered, leaning over him. Holding tight, holding fast, never to let go.

And he was still, and human in her arms, lying head and shoulders on her lap, encircled, arms and body, sheltered, gripped tight. Still a giant, seven feet, or near it. Naked, filthy, scabbed and brutally scarred— those were the bites of wolves or dogs, the lashes, too, of a whip, and he tried to coil himself up, but he was not struggling against her. She let go one hand’s grip on his arm, seized the collar. The last remnant of the spells in it seared. Devilry and wizard’s working fused into one foulness. There was ice in her grip. The iron shattered. She picked it off him, threw it away, shard by shard. And he caught her arm and clutched it to him.

He shivered, but he was fever-hot.

Night, she had wanted, because she had not known in what condition she might find him, and human, at least, she might support him away, if he were wounded. She had not expected this, even from Sien-Shava. Why, she did not know, but that his cruelty had always been a subtle thing, in the past. This was just…humanly vile, as only the mad, and the godless mad at that, might dare to be. Gaunt as a bear after its winter fast, worse, and no fur to hide it.

His ragged nails dug into her arm.

“We need to get out of here, cub,” she said softly. “Think you can stand?”

No answer at all, but tightening of his grip again. Then a shifting of weight. He rolled over onto his knees, still curled up, head in her lap still, but turned the other way. Moth ran a hand over his back, spine a chain of knobs, ribs harsh. Old Great Gods stand witness, she would kill Jochiz and take pleasure in doing so.

Later.

“Up, cub. Before he changes his mind.”

Sien-Shava had gone, he and his disciples, or whatever he might call them, and his soldiers too. Had he given orders, or did he hold some leash on their souls, to tug them after him? Not her worry, just now. Best to be gone before any returned. Maybe she merely hadn’t heard when he spoke.

“Come now. Hold on to me.”

Moth got to one knee, pulling Mikki up that far, leaning on her, head bowed on her shoulder. Held him there a moment and his hand came wandering, faltering, to touch her face.

“Up now, all right?”

She stood, and he—almost climbed her, groping his way. Swaying, leaning his weight, which was still not inconsiderable, the great bones of him, hands braced on her shoulders. Found her eyes at last. His were black, and they slid away almost at once, as from a stranger’s gaze.

“Shh,” she said, though he had made no sound at all, and did not speak in the mind’s silence, either. Noise one might make to comfort a nightmare-woken child. “I’m here. Safe now. We’re going to walk out of here.”

Almost he fell, when she stooped to catch up Keeper and sheathed it. She wanted both hands free. Got an arm around his waist, and on his own he fumbled an arm over her shoulders. Not witless, though his silence began to frighten her.

“Come,” she said. “Step, and again.”

He was unsteady, walking upright. Weak. Shivering, still. No warmth in her feather cloak.

“Careful. The edges are sharp.”

Ducking, twisting through the shattered bars of the cage. “And down, let me go first to steady you.”

He fell more than jumped, and she was braced to catch him or they would both have gone over.

Straightest line through the camp, the main street north. Eyes watched from whatever safety they thought a tent would give. Mikki began to fall, weight sliding, dragging on her. She let him down.

Just wait a moment. I’ll be right back. No answer but he didn’t clutch after her. She wished for Storm, faithful dead horse. He might have carried Mikki’s weight without complaint, wasted as he was. She could, if she must, carry him outright. Awkward burden, bigger than she. Into the nearest tent, humans fleeing out under the back edge. She took a blanket, and if it was someone’s only bed against the winter, well, she did not much care. No clothing that would fit him. The Westrons were not a tall folk. A hemp shirt, laundered thin. She went back to find him down on his knees and crawling.

“Mikki, here, wait for me.” With her knife she ripped a slit in the blanket’s centre, worked it over his head. Tore the shirt to a few strips, knotted them, and wrapped that for a belt, with her woollen cloak she wore beneath the one of feathers and silk over that. “Keep you warmer,” she said. “All right?”

He had never had much concern for notions of modesty. Teased her with his not caring. A glorious nudity, cream-skinned, gold-curled. She did not think he should endure all those staring enemies naked, who had watched his degradation. He leaned on her. Said nothing. They walked.

His shivering was perhaps lessened. His balance a little better. Maybe?

Leaving the camp they were not challenged, but she snuffed the torches with a thought and flung the gates wide, bars breaking, so perhaps the watch found common sense, or perhaps some of those scurrying shadows flitting tent to tent had carried word from their supposed god. They had, after all, a bargain, she and he. She and Mikki passed through, unchallenged, and Moth drew the dark around them, wrapped them in night.

There was the river to cross. Of a certainty, he could not swim it. She would not have tried to swim it herself, if Kinsai were there, though the goddess would likely have given Mikki what aid she could, demons and gods being kin in the nature of the world.

Boat? When she flew over, she had seen them upturned, rank upon rank of them, along the shore. They must have collected every small rowboat and scow from every lesser water they crossed and given up wagon-space to dragging them along.

A watch there, of course, and the gang of a dozen men stood shaking, on the edge of turning to flee. Armed with spears and clubs, not against attack from over the water, but against escape from the camp. She made no effort to cloak her menace. Cold fire edged every gesture, a frost-ghost of light.

“Your All-Holy bids me be gone,” she said, her Westron more that of Tiyosti than Tiypur, and that some centuries old. “Bring me a boat.”

Mikki leaned on her. Flung up his head at some sound, a scent—only a fox yipping, far away.

Hush, cub, hush. We’ll be gone from here soon. Safe and gone.

They brought her a boat, Westrons in terror. But the armed woman was there; she must have passed by during their slow staggering progress. She stood back where she thought she was unseen in darkness. A witness.

So now Ulfhild Vartu crept away shamed, defeated, broken by the All-Holy, the Old Great God’s messenger, an Old Great God incarnate— ran without a fight. No threat left. Begging transport. A great victory; let it warm them through the winter. They did not understand the cold, the folk of Tiypur. Though she doubted that their god would care.

It was a flat-bottomed scow the Westrons brought, one that was already in the river, with a little more water washing about in it than she liked to see, but it was only a river to cross, and they were well above the cataract. She could hear its roar, though.

You want to row, Mikki?

No answer, no. He waded out, rolled in while she held the square prow. She pushed off, leaping in at the last, while he with shaking hands actually did try to get an oar between its pins.

“Leave it. I’ll scull.”

It was a slow crossing over the unhallowed river, the current trying to draw them downstream. Mikki ended up curled in the bilge-water, an arm over his head, undoing all the good of the blanket’s warmth.

Mikki, it’s all right. We’re away. Sit up out of the wet, cub.

He was in there. He did hear. Didn’t respond, though, save maybe to coil a little tighter. And Moth had the oar to work and all her attention held over them, shield and darkness thicker than night. Did Jochiz reach after her? No. Not so mad and child-curious that he would play with the weapon he had won, either. He would give it long, careful thought, test it with many spells, expecting some deceit, before he unsheathed it fully in this world. Study it, taste the shape of its song in the air.

Get Mikki safe away. Steal it back? Maybe.

Leave it to fate, a coin cast to the sky. Would he, would he not…and what might follow, either way.

There was only stillness from the camp, a waiting. Or he dismissed her, truly, as no longer a threat, no longer even of interest.

The scow grated on rocks, stilled and swung, grounded in the shallows.

Cast her mind out, a shout, a summons.

Blackdog! Get down here! I need you!