32
The Hole in the Door
Porto managed to keep Sergeant Levias breathing through the first night and through the second day as well. He gave him sips of water from his hand and cleaned and bandaged the wound in the Erkynlander’s belly as best he could, but he could see it was a losing struggle, and that was devastating. He had been in a nightmare like this before.
Many years earlier, during the battle for the Nakkiga Gate, a younger Porto had nursed his dying friend Endri until the last moments. But Endri’s wound had been made by a poisoned Norn arrow; this one had been made by comparatively clean Thrithings steel, and that was the only thing that gave Porto hope. But it was a long walk to the nearest water, and no matter how hot his companion’s skin, how pitiful his calls for something to drink, Porto hated to leave him. It had been while Porto was away from him young Endri had died.
Whatever chaos had gripped the crowds at the Thanemoot seemed to have quieted by the second day. From time to time Porto still heard Thrithings-men shouting outside their hiding place, but the calls and cries no longer sounded like men fighting. Still, he was yoked to a dying man by more than his pride and grief: even if Levias succumbed, it would only release Porto to a long, suffering end of his own. Their horses were gone, and he could not imagine walking all the way back to Erkynland, not even if he were twenty years younger.
But as long as I have my sword and dagger, he told himself, I will at least have a choice of how I die.
When Levias began breathing a little more easily in the hours of the second dawn after their fight with the grasslanders, Porto risked carrying him in search of water. He heaved the other man onto his back and then staggered farther away from the Thanemoot and settled his insensible burden by the side of one of the streams that fed Blood Lake. It was shallow this late in the summer, just a thread of water moving between the wide, muddy banks, but the water did move and it tasted sweet to Porto’s lips, so he dragged Levias into the shade of the trees and washed out the wounded man’s bloody undershirt, then mopped Levias’s forehead before trying to clean the wound again. He had seen many such injuries on the battlefield and knew there was small chance the sergeant would survive, but to leave the sergeant to die alone would have been like abandoning poor, lost Endri a second time.
He sat beside Levias all day, moving him now and then to keep the hot sun off his face, cleaning the dark, drying blood off his wound, and giving him water to drink when he seemed thirsty. He could not imagine moving him again any great distance, and could only wait for God to take his friend back. Levias had stopped speaking. Porto had no real company but his own grim thoughts.
A strange noise startled Porto awake from a shallow doze—a scratchy, drawn-out sound like a nail being pulled from old wood. It came from the nearby stream, so after making sure that Levias was still drawing shallow breath, the knight took his sword in his hand and crawled through the undergrowth toward the water until he could get a better look.
At first he thought the stranger must be some kind of giant, because he bulked so large atop his horse, which was drinking from the stream. Then he saw the stranger was truly not so oversized, but only seemed so because he was mounted on the back of a small donkey.
The man turned toward him, though Porto had not made any noise. He gripped his sword hilt tightly, prepared to fight or to lead the stranger away from helpless Levias, but the man on the donkey only nodded his head and then turned away again, as if sword-wielding men crawling through the grass was nothing unusual to him. The stranger was barrel-chested but short of leg, as if one of Prince Morgan’s troll friends had grown to man-size, but unlike any of the trolls, he wore a long beard gathered in a single braid. The hair on his cheeks and head seemed to cover most of his face, as though he were part ape or part Hunën, though his features seemed ordinary enough.
“Vilagum,” the strange called. “Ves zhu haya.”
It took a moment for Porto to understand the man’s Thrithings words, which were nothing more threatening than “Welcome” and wishing him health.
“Zhu dankun,” he answered—thank you.
The bearded man recognized that Porto was not a native speaker: when he spoke again it was in good Westerling, though strongly accented, each word as full of sharp bits as an autumn pinecone. “You are not from the great grass, I see. Where do you come?”
“Erkynland, though that was not where I was born.”
“Do we muddy the stream, my friend Gildreng and I? Would you have drink? Gildreng is full of his own will, but I think he will move if I make him so.”
“I have water in my waterskin,” he replied, looking around for the man’s friend, wanting to trust but wary of an ambush. “But no food to eat.” The last of their supplies had been in the saddlebags and had disappeared with the horses. Only when he said the words did Porto realize how hungry he was. “My friend is very ill.”
The man looked at him carefully, then said, “Come out so I see you, if you please.”
Porto crawled out of the long grass and stood. The stranger was a Thrithings-man, he could now see, with a serpent tattoo that began at his right wrist, wound up his arm, then emerged on the other side of his sleeveless shirt and twisted downward to wrap around his left wrist. He also wore a necklace of snake bones.
“What makes your friend sick?” the man asked.
Porto hesitated, but decided that it would be better to be honest, in case the stranger knew someone who could help Levias. “He was stabbed. Here.” He pointed to a spot on his own stomach. “We were attacked—we did not seek a fight.”
The bearded man nodded, then slipped down off the donkey. He splashed across the shallow stream, leading the donkey up the bank toward Porto.
“I will look,” he said. “I have some . . . skill.” It took him a moment to find the word, but when he did, he nodded again, as if he had not doubted it would come. “Ruzhvang I am, shaman of the Snake Clan. I know something of healing. How long ago was your friend struck?”
“Two days,” Porto said.
Now Ruzhvang’s hairy face grew sad, and he shook his head. “Too late, I think. But it could be the Earth Hugger will take pity. What clan is your friend?”
“He is from Erkynland, like me.”
Ruzhvang said no more, but followed him back to the hollow where Levias lay hidden. The shaman tied his donkey to a branch and squatted next to sleeping Levias, whose face seemed so pale Porto could not imagine death was far away. The man examined the sergeant’s eyes and tongue, then carefully unpeeled Porto’s makeshift bandages and looked over the wound, making little clicking noises with his tongue as he did so.
At last he turned back to Porto. “Did you pray for help?” he asked.
Startled, Porto said, “Yes. Of course. To our God.”
Ruzhvang waved his hand. “All gods or one god. You must be a man of good deeds for them to hear. We of the Snake Clan are the best healers—it is known.”
“Can you help him?”
“I do not say yes, I do not say no. He is very weak.” He tied his donkey to a tree branch. “The bad spirits are in the wound and in the blood. Only a gift of strength from the Legless—the Earth Hugger—can help him now. Will you bring him?”
“Bring him where?”
“Follow me. Where the water is deeper.”
By the time they stopped, they were close enough to the Thanemoot that Porto could once more hear voices in the distance. Ruzhvang took a packet wrapped in oilskin from his saddlebag and walked down to the stream again, which was much wider here, and then without any hesitation stripped off his clothes and waded naked out to where the water reached his thighs. He began to wash himself all over, singing quietly in Thrithings words that Porto did not recognize. When he came back, he pulled on his breeches and sat down in the dirt beside Levias. “Build a fire,” he said as he began to take things out of his oilskin bag, small earthen jars and leather pouches, then set them before him on the ground. When the fire was going, Ruzhvang sent Porto with a clay bowl to get more water from the river, then crumbled something leafy into it, still singing, and waited for the water to boil. “Now tell me this one’s name,” he said.
“Levias.”
“It is a strange name, but I will try to tell the spirits so they will understand.”
By the time the sun had slipped past noon and the shadows had begun to stretch toward the east the shaman had bathed Levias’s wound with the herb-water, singing all the while, then covered it with the boiled leaves and bandaged it with long, dried leaves from yet another a bundle in his saddlebag. Then he had Porto fetch more water and boiled this as well, this time with sections of some kind of root or tuber. When the broth had cooled a little, he held it to Levias mouth and poured some in. The Erkynlander’s throat moved as he swallowed, but the movements seemed almost accidental; Levias did not look any better at all, at least not that Porto could see.
“Feed him the rest slowly,” said Ruzhvang, handing Porto the bowl. “Until the sun is down. The Legless will help him if he is worthy.”
“He is worthy,” said Porto, thinking of Levias’s good humor, his bravery, and his faith.
“Not for us to decide, but the spirits,” said Ruzhvang a little sternly. “But now I tell you about Gildreng, my donkey. He is fierce but if you do not put your hand near his mouth, no injury will you suffer.”
“Why? Why do I need to know that?”
“Because I leave him for you. I am a long way from my people, and if I must walk now, longer still will I be gone. Six days ago they left the Thanemoot, back to our clan lands in the east.”
“You’re giving me your donkey?”
“Even if the Earth Hugger spares his life, this one cannot stay here,” he said, gesturing toward Levias. “But even with my donkey, you do not carry him so far as Erkynland without him dying.” A sudden thought came to him. “But I saw a camp of your people as I came back from trading with shamans of the Sparrowhawk and Bison clans.”
“My people?”
“I think it must be Erkynland’s flag—two dragons on their banner, and a tree. Do you know it?”
Porto’s heart sped. “That is the banner of Erkynland, yes. Did you really see them?”
“It is all the talk of the lands north of here—the clansfolk say the stone-dwellers have come to bargain with the new Shan for an important man that was captured.”
“Count Eolair? Could that be the name?”
“I do not know more. A shaman has other thoughts.” He shrugged, his braided beard wagging on his chest like the tail of a sitting dog. “They say Unver seeks to trade him, perhaps, or ask something else from the stone-dwellers who rule your Erkynland.”
“Do you know where they are keeping this man who was captured?”
Ruzhvang cocked an eyebrow as bristly as a spring caterpillar, and his darkly tanned face showed amusement. “You ask the wrong man. The Serpent gives me strength to heal and no more. But if the new Shan bargains to return him, then the new Shan must have him, do you not think?”
Porto sat back, full of astonishment. Why would a troop of Erkynguards be on the edge of the Thrithings? Even to bargain for Eolair, important as he was? And then he remembered Prince Morgan and the destruction of their mission, and shame stabbed Porto as deeply as the clansman had stabbed Levias. He had failed on all counts. But perhaps if he could find the Erkynlandish camp, he could at least tell them what he knew.
But I cannot leave Levias behind, he realized. I must stay with him as long . . . as long as he lives.
“I go now.” Ruzhvang lifted the saddlebags from the donkey’s back and draped them over his shoulder, making himself look more egg-shaped than ever. “I leave some white currant berries for you and your friend—you see them piled there. You must chew them in your mouth before giving to him.”
“But I cannot keep your donkey!”
“You can. You must. So the Earth Hugger tells me and the spirits do not lie. Treat him well and he will bear your friend with care. He is not so evil as he seems, old Gildreng, though he will kick when he is in a foul mood. I will miss him.”
And while Porto sat, astonished, Ruzhvang shouldered his burden, stopped to pat the donkey on the nose—Gildreng looked away from him, as if he could not believe he had been given away so easily—and then walked off down the winding path beside the stream. “Remember—keep your hands from his mouth!” he called back, then he was gone into the trees.
Porto spent the rest of the dying afternoon beside Levias, dabbing the sweat from his forehead and giving him little sips of the broth. He was hungry himself, but the smell of it did not tempt him at all, so he ate two of the fruits and found them very satisfying, but not enough to quell his hunger much.
At last, when darkness had come, he fell asleep sitting up, the wet rag of Levias’s shirt still clutched in his fingers. When he woke again in the dark hours of the night, certain he had dreamed the whole day, the donkey Gildreng was still tied to the tree nearby and his friend Levias was weakly asking for more broth.
Eolair did not much like that he was still a prisoner, but Unver’s people treated him reasonably well. He had been put in one of the many wagons that had once belonged to Rudur Redbeard. Its door was locked from the outside, but the window in the door, although too narrow for him to have crawled through even in his youngest and slenderest days, allowed him to watch a little of the life of the Thrithings camp as the Thanemoot came to a close.
The madness of the first few nights after Rudur’s death had ended. Eolair would have been hard-pressed to see any difference between what he saw now and ordinary life at Blood Lake, the women tending fires and cooking, the men bartering animals and engaging in games of chance and strength. But Eolair thought he could see a change in the peoples’ spirits, from the aimless excitement of the first days of the Thanemoot to something calmer and more directed. He wondered if that was somehow Unver’s doing, or merely what happened each year at the end of the raucous gathering.
The first time grasslanders approached his wagon bringing food, Eolair was amused to see that the man carrying the tray was accompanied by two huge, armed guards.
If they fear an old man like me enough to send three guards, they must think me a very devil, he thought.
But when the man with the tray climbed the steps and came to the door, Eolair saw that the servant was utterly hairless on head and jaw and upper lip. It was uncommon enough on the grasslands, where a man’s whiskers told much about him, but as the tray bearer stood before the door, Eolair saw that even the man’s eyebrows were hairless, although a stubble grew there that suggested something other than illness had denuded him. Still, Eolair needed information, and even if the man was a foreign slave he might know something. In fact, as Eolair well knew, a slave was often more likely to talk to an outsider. He made sure that the two clansmen guards were standing too far back from the wagon to overhear much.
“I thank you,” he said in the Thrithings tongue as the door was unlocked, and he took the tray. “What is your name, man?” The smell of warm bread and hot soup made his mouth water. He had not eaten well among Agvalt’s bandits: the bandits had not eaten much better themselves.
The man looked at him in mild surprise but said nothing. Up close, Eolair could see that his face and shaved head both were bruised.
“My people must know the name of the one who serves us or we cannot eat,” Eolair continued, an improvisation that would have made his fellow Hernystiri nobles laugh uproariously, since few of the richest knew the names of most of their servants. “Please, tell me, so I may tell my gods.”
The man shook his head. He would not meet Eolair’s gaze. “I have no name,” was all he said.
“What? Everyone has a name.”
The hairless man shook his head again, but this time he looked up. The hatred and despair in his face almost made Eolair take a step back, and he had trouble holding onto his end of the tray. “My name has been taken from me,” the hairless man said, but quietly so the others could not hear. “I betrayed my clan. I betrayed my people. I no longer have a name.”
“But I must call you something,” said Eolair, wondering now at this man’s story, “or the gods will not know who to reward for feeding me.”
A light kindled in the man’s eyes. The skin around them was purple with the marks of old blows. “I told you, I have no name. Now I must go.”
As he let go of the tray and began to turn, Eolair tried once more. “Just tell me something I can call you.”
The man’s hairless brows gave him the look of something unnatural. “They called me Baldhead.” For a moment his mouth curled in a humorless smirk. “That can still be my name, as you see. When you speak to your gods, tell them they have made a very poor world.”
The two armed clansmen followed him closely as he walked away, and Eolair realized that he was not the only prisoner in the Shan’s camp.
Eolair’s second visitor came late that same day, in the dark watches of the evening. He did not hear her coming, nor realize she was there until he heard a voice through the hole in the door.
“Count Eolair, can you hear me?” Whoever it was spoke Westerling, which was a little unexpected, though her accent was barbarous.
He rose from the narrow bed and went to the door. “I hear you,” he said. “I speak your tongue, at least somewhat. Would you rather use it?”
The woman standing outside was dark-haired and handsome, but her eyes were wide with unease. By the dim light from the wagon she looked to be just past childbearing age. Something seemed familiar about her features, but he had seen so many Thrithings-folk in the last months that he could not say why. “No!” She looked around and then spoke more quietly. “Better to use these words, though I do not speak them well, in case anyone hears.”
He was intrigued, and not just by her admirable face. “Very well, my lady.” He could not resist the honorific—she seemed different from the Thrithings-women he had seen, if only in that she spoke another tongue beside her own. “Who are you, if I may ask, and what do you want from me?”
“I am Hyara,” she said. “The Shan, as I now must call him, is my nephew.”
He was surprised; it took all his practiced skill not to show it. “I am pleased to meet you, Lady Hyara, but I admit I cannot guess why you are here.”
“Unver plans to release you—or at least so I am told.”
“So he suggested to me, although I am certain there will be a price, and my king and queen may not wish to pay it.”
“Unver is no fool. He wants you to go back. He wants you to keep your rulers sweet. He does not want a war with your Erkynland.”
“It is not my Erkynland, to be truthful, but their interests are mine.” He looked her over closely. She looked worried but not frightened, a good sign. Still, he could not help wondering if he was being drawn into some family struggle, or perhaps something even more dangerous. “I ask again—what do you want of me, my lady?”
“I want you to tell your queen and your king that the Thrithings does not want war with your land. Rudur is dead, but Unver is no fool. His anger is pointed at Nabban. Tell that to your masters.”
“But Nabban too is part of their kingdom,” he pointed out. “They are not king and queen of just Erkynland or my own Hernystir. The High Ward surrounds Nabban as well.”
“Then the Nabban-folk must stay in that ward!” she said, and in her flash of anger he saw a strength of will he had not suspected. “They steal our lands, they kill our people, then they blame us. Unver comes from the south, where they must fight the stone-dwellers always. He has a hatred for them that cannot be . . .” She searched for a word, but could not find it. “He hates them,” she said finally. “And he will push them back behind their borders again. Blood will spill on the grass and there is no stopping it. But he does not war against the north as well.”
“Why would he? Only a fool fights enemies on two different sides.” Eolair shook his head. “I will tell my rulers that Unver does not wish to fight them. But they still must watch over Nabban as if it were their own nation. That is what the High Ward means.”
“Then they will bring the world into despair,” she said flatly. “Widows, orphans, that is all that will remain. Do you know how many men will come from the grasslands to fight? Many of them hated Rudur because he claimed to be the Thane of Thanes and yet did nothing to stop the Nabbanai. They are as ripe for war as fruit hanging on autumn branches.”
“Where did you learn to speak our tongue so well?” he asked, distracted despite himself. “Did you live in what you call the stone-dweller lands?”
“No, though others of my family did,” she said, but was clearly impatient. “My father was a thane. Many outsiders came to us. I learned because I heard it spoken, and because I wished I could go away to see those lands.” She looked around again to make sure they were still alone. “Why do you ask so many questions?”
“Because that is my nature, good lady—and also my trade. Does Unver speak Westerling as well? What is he like? How can I speak to him, to learn what he truly wishes of my masters? I have asked to see him, but no one will bring me to him.”
“He was badly hurt by that mad dog, Redbeard,” she said. “Unver barely lived after all those torments—only the will of the spirits let him survive. And he is a man, too—he will speak to you when he can do it without looking weak and hurt. But when he is strong again he will also take these clans in his hand like a man with a team of horses, and make them work together, make them go where he wishes. Your masters do not know how strong Unver’s will is, how clever he is and how fierce his angers, but I have seen him, and I have seen that the spirits fight for him, too. I saw them send the ravens to destroy his enemy, and that enemy was my husband Gurdig—though I do not mourn him. Your masters must not provoke him!”
Now Eolair felt stung. “The king and queen are not such weaklings or cowards that they will be dictated to, even by this Unver Shan.”
“Then we will all see the end of things. I know your people are many and their castles are strong. My people will die too.” Her face, so fierce only moments before, now was pale and full of horror, as though she could actually see the terrible things she foretold.
“Lady Hyara, I hear you.” Eolair was angry with himself for letting his own feelings leak through. “I do not want war between our peoples, and I know the king and queen do not want it either. Talk to Unver. Tell him to speak to me before he sends a message to them, and together we will find a way to make peace that both peoples can live with.”
She shook her head violently. “I cannot speak to him—not about such things. It is not my place, and he would not listen.”
“If he is as clever as you say, and loves his own people as much as you say, then he will listen. If he cannot take advice from a woman, perhaps he can take it from an old Hernystirman who has seen many things and many wars.” Eolair patted her hand where it clutched the bottom of the window. “The King and Queen of the High Ward have enemies more frightening and more deadly than the clan-folk of the grasslands—believe me. They do not want war with the Thrithings any more than you do. Tell Unver that I will be a go-between. He has treated me fairly so far, so I will see that my masters, as you call them, do the same. Do not despair, my lady. While good people live there is always hope.”
“But when the spirits themselves want war, and the people’s hearts do too, nothing can stop it.” Without another word she turned from the hole in the wagon’s door and was gone. When he looked out, Eolair saw only a dark, slim shape flitting away across the grass.
When Hyara returned to the great tent, she found her sister kneeling beside what had once been Rudur’s bed; it was rank now with sweat and dried blood. Vorzheva was spooning broth into her son’s mouth. Unver’s wounds had healed a little, but his face was still disfigured by the cuts and the swollen flesh that surrounded them. Hyara could tell by the way the Shan sat that his flayed back was also still terribly painful, but as usual he kept all sign of discomfort from his face. She knew this sort of strength well from the men in her clan and both admired and detested it. It made all pain, including that of other people, into something to be ignored, something unimportant.
In a month, Unver’s torn skin will be only hard white scars, she thought. But not all wounds heal like flesh.
Fremur was there too, and he spoke sternly to her. “It is not good for you to walk about so late, Hyara. You are the Shan’s kin. Someone might wish to do you harm.”
She wondered how much of his concern was really for her, and how much for Unver’s dignity. Thrithings-men did not like their women, even older relatives, to walk about freely, to go without suitable escort or without getting permission first. But Hyara had lived with those strictures for so long that she was not willing to be bridled again, especially not by a man ten years or more younger.
And it is not as if he has asked for my bride price, she reminded herself. Who is he to me, anyway, except the servant of my sister’s son? Let him speak for himself if he wants a say in my life.
“I went out for a walk,” she said. “That is all. How is Unver?”
“The Shan is well,” said Fremur.
“He is regaining his appetite,” her sister said.
“By the Sky-Piercer,” Unver growled, pushing the bone spoon aside, “have I died? Do I need a shaman to speak for me, like the spirits of the ancestors?”
Fremur looked pleased, perhaps to hear Unver still swore by the Crane Clan’s totem. “Of course not, great Shan.”
Unver looked at Hyara. “And what did you see while you walked?”
She hesitated. “Much and nothing, as always.” If he asked her what she had done, should she tell him? Nobody had ordered her to stay away from the stone-dweller, Count Eolair, but she sensed that Unver would not like it if he knew, and if he knew she had begged the foreigner to find a way to avoid war he would probably be furious. No man of the grassland clans wanted a woman to speak for him, much less to plead for peace.
Luckily for Hyara, Unver seemed to have his mind on other things.
“The Thanemoot is almost ended.” He wiped soup from his lip with a disdainful flip of his fingers. Vorzheva and Hyara had shaved his mustache so they could clean the deep cuts that went down his cheeks and into his upper lip. She was not used to seeing a man of his age with no whiskers. He did not look as bizarre as Fremur’s slave, the man once called Gezdahn Baldhead, who now crouched in a corner of the tent staring down at the ground, but it still made Unver seem strange, like something entirely new.
But he is the Shan, she reminded herself. That is as new and different as any man could be. Even Edizel from days long past had not had a story as unusual as her nephew’s.
For the first time, she thought of Unver’s father, Prince Josua. When Josua had first come to the Thrithings, Hyara had been a mere child and had barely seen him or heard him, since he had come as one of his father King John’s envoys and met only with Vorzheva’s and Hyara’s father Fikolmij, thane of the Stallion Clan. When Josua and Vorzheva came back years later, Hyara was old enough to watch and understand. Josua had almost died at the hands of one of her father’s minions, but in the end had survived and even triumphed, a humiliation that had burned in her father’s heart forever after. But over the years, as Hyara had grown into womanhood, Prince Josua’s face had left her memory, though she remembered what he had done very well. It was as though her sister had married a sort of ghost, some kind of supernatural being who could not ever be completely seen.
But now, as she looked at Unver’s face, and despite the terrible injuries, she thought she could see things in his hard features that brought back long-buried memories of the prince—the high forehead, the long jaw, the cool gray eyes.
What else has his father given to Unver, the man who will now rule all the grasslands?
She could not ask that question—she was not even certain any of the others would understand it—so instead she said, “You grew up among the stone-dwellers, Unver Shan. What are they like?”
He fixed her with eyes that sometimes seemed impossibly cold and distant, but now looked faintly mistrustful, more like those of a cautious child than the ruler of all the clans. “What do you mean, Hyara?”
“Do not remind him of those bad times.” Vorzheva put the empty soup bowl down on the floor so sharply that the spoon rattled and spun. “We were deserted. His father left us. We were alone among people who despised us. How can you ask him to remember such things?”
The faintest shadow of a smile curled Unver’s lip, still clotted in several places with dried blood. “Your memories are not mine, my mother. The city beside the marsh was not a hateful place to me, except when I was dragged away from it. I had to hate it then, or I would have hated myself.”
Hyara was fascinated. It was the most she had heard him say about his past. “What is Kwanitupul like? I have always wondered. I met a trader once who made it sound like a magical place, full of every kind of person and thing that ever was.”
“It was filthy and cramped,” said Vorzheva promptly. “I used to stand on the roof of that cursed inn, praying for a change in the wind so that I could smell the clean air of the grasslands and not the stink of the swamps.”
Unver did not look at his mother but held Hyara’s eye instead, his hint of smile still lingering, although there was something else in his face now too, an anger she did not entirely understand. “A child can make his home anywhere, I think,” he said. “If there is something firm on which to stand.”
Fremur suddenly stood up and walked across the grass toward the place where the hairless slave crouched. “And you! What are you listening to, you dog? This is not for your ears. This is the Shan that you tried to betray, and yet you sit there like a spy, hearing all. And it is only because Hyara begged for your life that you are not rotting on a stake. Get out of this tent, you wretch, or I will throw you out.”
The one called Baldhead did not say a word, but rose and hurried out, head down and shoulders high, as though he expected something to be thrown at him. It was true that Hyara had suggested that Fremur spare him, but not out of sympathy or softness. As someone who had watched her father’s way of ruling all her life, she knew that harsh lessons did not breed obedience, only a treacherous silence.
“I should have killed that piece of offal when I meant to,” Fremur said, looking at Hyara almost in accusation. “If you spare a dog he will never bite you, but men are not so trustworthy.”
“Ho, Fremur, you must have known more loyal dogs than I have,” said Unver, laughing a little, though it obviously hurt his healing face. “There is no animal I know—dog or man or horse—who, once injured, will not wish they could return the injury.”
“We need fear those injuries and treacheries no longer,” Vorzheva said with the crisp certainty of someone who did not entirely believe something, but wanted to. “Now we are the ones who will help those who deserve it, and beat down those who try do us harm.”
“And on that, my mother,” said Unver, any trace of a smile now gone, “you and I can truly agree.”