29 - It was the thing to do

Just when my bones had started to whisper that time was growing short, and I was starting to make my mind up to retreat, one guard whispered something to the other, and went away across the floor, and down the ladder.

While a breeze was making sound, I stood and made a hand-span long slit at eye height behind the remaining guard. The fabric was like oil on the palm. I made the full cut, quietly enough, sheathed the blade and unsheathed my pin-dagger, fast; he might sense my presence just by feel, as people do. I stepped through to his back, choosing the ring of his mail I would put the needle-blade through into his heart just as in training, clamped my hand over his mouth and nose and did it, both at once. He gave a huge thrash, but though I felt the bristles of a moustache on my palm I had sealed off his breath well enough that he could make no sound. I took his weight as his muscles failed, and laid his body down silently, his black eyes frozen in the shock of feeling instant death. I remembered what I had said to he who was called Perai; “If I have to stab a back to save Yeola-e, semanakraseye’s honour not only permits but requires it.” There was no more thinking about it to be done.

I turned to the bed, seeing the room only from the corners of my eyes and taking no more impression than gold and a sense of richness; it was long white hair I looked for. There it was, almost too real to be true, like the surprise gift a child finds after wanting it for years, creamy silver peppered with the odd strand of black, unoiled, the straight tendrils disheveled with sleep. Inkrajen did not move; he had not awakened. The body beneath the gold satin covers was small and slight; the face, its brown startling against bright hair, was forty or fifty years old, clean-shaven and delicate in a Lakan way, its wrinkles of sun and strain smoothed in sleep. In such an innocuous scabbard, I thought, comes the deadliest steel.

Pin him with my knee, clamp down on his mouth and nose and cut hard and fast across his throat, I’d do in a moment; I absolutely should not have hesitated, since the other guard would come back any moment, but I did.

Maybe it was because he was asleep and so had that childlike look of peace and innocence that all people have in sleep, no matter how evil or dangerous in waking. Or perhaps it was that I knew him, in a sense, by what I’d heard of him, as I hadn’t the other man I’d murdered, and it’s harder to kill someone you know. Or perhaps it was that the moment I did it, that mind with its brilliance, its decades of war-memories and lessons drawn from all of them, its few broad principles and host of specific tricks of strategy and tactics rising in part from his character and in part from wisdom built over all that that time, would be gone like a candle-flame snuffed out. Part of me didn’t want to kill him but to talk to him, hear his stories, learn from him.

Thus I stood teetering on the knife-edge of half-action. Any instant he could have awakened, seen me and called the alarm, and I would have done worse than failed. Sense spoke to me in Azaila’s voice. Why did you come here, then? Rya-kya, lad. All or nothing.

I pinned his chest with my knee, clamping his mouth and nose with my hand. He woke as I did it, and his eyes, like two oiled jets framed wide all around with white, flickered with each catching of the knife-edge on sinew in his throat, looking at me but seeming to see only pain. When the stroke was finished and his life-blood pouring out, they stared, full of shock, disbelief, sorrow, anger at the guards who had failed him, but no rancor for me. When his eyes fixed on me, they went puzzled.

All or nothing went without saying for him. I was Yeoli; what else would I do if I could, but kill him? His was the perfect acceptance of the aggressor: I chose; I paid. Though he would have stopped me with steel through my heart if he could, I don’t think it even entered his mind to hate me.

Only one mercy could I give him. I took his head in my hands and lowered my lips to his ear; having no time for all I wished to say, apology for the pain, blessings for the next life that Lakans believe in, I just whispered, “My name is Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, Tennunga’s son. I got through all your guards by my gift of weapon-sense and my training in the School of No Name in Terera.” It was what he would want to know.

He gazed at me—I found myself wishing my face was clean of grease, and my hair combed—and was mouthing the words “Thank you, lad, I will see you in the next—” when death took him, making his eyes glass.

I got up from the bed. My plan was to kill the other guard silently as well when he came back, so I’d have that much more time to creep out before his corpse was discovered and the alarm sounded, so I had to stay here. I wiped the blood off my hands on the sheet, and looked around; I might find something useful.

He’d had little furniture, just desk, night table, shelf, one chair and the bed, whose headboard was a three-tiered shelf full of books; but it was all ebony carven more ornately and smoothly than I had thought wood could be carved. Everywhere were prizes of war, jewelry, carvings, tableware, statuettes, all gold or crusted with gems, in our style or Enchian or Hyerni.

Jewels always help; into my pack I quickly put a few that looked priciest for their weight. On his night table lay a sand-timer and several large maps. Even with him dead his plans could still be used, if I left them, so I folded them all into my pack. Set apart from all else upon a cushion of red satin under a petaled arch of gold-inlaid ebony, lay a miniature spear, bound with tassels, its head wrought of gold polished smooth as glass. A sacred talisman, I saw, and being in the chamber of the general, one of significance to all the army, if not all the nation, like the sword of Saint Mother. That would be a loss to cause them anguish; but then it struck me as petty malice. I laid it straight on his chest, instead, curling his hands around it, as weapons to be cremated with their owners are laid; let them take what they would from that.

Inside the carven doors of the bookshelf were personal things I would rather not have seen at all: a letter in childish Lakan script, a child’s play-sword, three busts, fashioned from real Lakan hair and mahogany to depict their dark skin, of a woman and two children. I presumed the books would all be Lakan, but an Enchian title caught my eye, being familiar: Greatest of Our Battles, by Rao Shae-Frisena. I froze, tingles spreading out all over me as I ran my eyes over the titles. He had Enchian translations of every major Yeoli work on general-craft in existence.

All-Spirit, I thought, no wonder he’s beating us! ‘Know the enemy,’ I was taught, yet no one in Yeola-e goes this deep with them. It was as if the thousand dead of yesterday all screamed Why not? It seared into my soul; I was determined that it would, that I would never ever forget this. To show Hurai, I took the most concise classic, Naishana Krai’s Warcraft.

For proof I’d done it, I cut off one lock of Inkrajen’s white hair. Just as I was knotting it to put in my pack, I heard a gasp at the door.

I had expected the warning of weapon-sense, or at least a polite hail from the foot of the ladder if someone else came, to give me at least a little warning. I did not know Lakan servants are considered no one, their comings and goings expected to go unnoticed. I and a round-shouldered, short-haired brown man who was halfway up the ladder stared at each other, both freezing. He knew better what to do, though, and so acted first. Throwing back his head, he let out a scream of anguish that seemed to last a day, and ended with “Ahai! Ahai! Ahai!”

I threw what was nearest my sword-hand—a sand-timer—which made him jump down out of my sight. The thought came with an unreal slowness like the movement of a glacier: Oh shit—the alarm’s been sounded. I remembered the word “ahai” from the raid on the Shae-Tyucheral. “Ahai! Ahai! Ahai! Ahai!” Many voices took it up, spreading outwards fast as fire; the floor shook with guards scrambling up the ladder.

My hands thought for me, snatching off the helmet of the guard I’d knifed, a peaked cone in the Lakan style. I scrambled out the slit, hacked through the outer wall with my dagger and dived onto the canvas roof, taking its slope in a roll, tumbled off the edge and landed running. The cry sounded all over the camp now; torchlight spread fast as flame catches. Now thousands of Lakans staggered out of tents or ran by with spears, every way I turned.

Now when I had true reason for terror, it vanished somehow, leaving my mind clear as water; perhaps it was the knowledge that what I had feared longest I need fear no more, since it had happened. The plan I thought of, had I considered it beforehand, I would have spurned as too ridiculous to try; now, as there was no other choice, I did it unthinkingly. Between two tents I buckled on the helmet, and ran out shouting, “Ahai! Ahai!” It was the thing to do.

Perhaps it was then that I learned that an utterly unexpected move can work, for it did. In the confusion and the madly-flickering torchlight, my darkened face and straightened hair aided them in seeing, as people will, what they expected to see. I certainly never stayed still long enough to give anyone a good look, and for all fear was gone from my mind there was plenty enough left in my body to give my cries sincerity. Pretending to be running in a daze of panic, uncaring where I went, I worked my way towards the edge of the camp.

When I had got within twenty strides of it, a man with a torch seized my arm and rattled off something to me in Lakan—probably something like “Calm yourself boy, and tell me what’s going on!”—and awaited an answer. I shrugged, shook him off and dashed on, shouting, “Ahai!”

I know now what gave me away. We Yeolis, as I didn’t know until a foreigner told me, have a unique shrug, a double motion: first the hands and forearms turn up, then, distinctly separate, the shoulders rise. Seeing something so strange he’d known right away I was not one of them. As I cleared the edge of the tents he roared to his comrades, and next thing I knew fifty Lakans were chasing me.

Though I could not see the ground I ran flat out. Carrying no light, I was soon lost to their sight in the dark, and I heard what I knew by their tone were curses. The sentries were closing in to where they thought I would come, so I dashed wide around them; then a command must have been given to spread out, for the bobbing knife-point of lights behind me widened into a comb. Suddenly one of my feet found air instead of earth and I flew headlong, into a ditch; chance was kind, not to break my ankle, or neck. I would come to grief running across fields and fences in this darkness without a flame, I saw; so I trotted gingerly until I found a fence, crouched behind it and groped for my tinderbox. It lit, Saint Mother bless it, on the first try, and I touched it to the torch. When the line of Lakans came even with me I joined their number again, torch high, pretending to give death-chase to myself.

We all headed for the foot of the stream-path, for even if that demon wool-head assassin fled through the woods, we can head him off that way. … I pulled ahead; like those of the rabbit that outruns the wolf, my legs had more compelling reason. The pair of guards there waited in stance with spears levelled, searching in the dark for pale skin and curly hair. Beckoning grandly, I ran right between them. It was only some way up the slope that it dawned on them that the most enthusiastic runner had been strangely taciturn, and spear-less. Their cries sharpened with rage, and several spears were cast; but by then I was far enough ahead to dodge them.

It was a plain race now, on a long, steep ascent. They were scores to my one; but I had run up the side of Haranin every day in training for nine years, breathing air too cold and thin for trees to live in; in the Breaker of Hearts, as our long obstacle race is called, I had scrambled up steep Hetharin for the last stretch, after all the other ordeals, first among those of my age for six years running. Beneath its mantle of forest the slope seemed to laugh, and say, “You know whose side I am on, lad.”

Where the path resorted to switchbacks, I climbed straight, pulling myself up on trees and rocks with my free hand. Two sentries stood at the junction, I remembered, their legs fresh; I veered into the forest to my sword-side again. It slowed me and strained my luck, but did the same to them; I heard one crash down yelling behind me. On the mountain-girl’s path and its gentler incline, I increased my speed; my legs were jelly with streaking pains now, my lungs and heart wanting to tear loose from my chest, my body to fly to bits. I knew from experience they lied, though, and I had strength left if I willed it. Eventually I was staggering, barely making a fast walk; rested legs could have caught me easily as a baby. But the Lakans were all the same. As often as not in the Breaker of Hearts the racers come to the finish on hands and knees; but the first there still wins.

In sight of Yeoli torch-hooks they gave up, but I did not stop using all my strength until I was within hailing distance. I had never thought flames could seem to have embracing arms. I had planned to creep back through our sentries, but now I could not find it in me; so I called out “Friend!” and the tongue twister, wiped my face as best I could, and tried to make my curls curl again with my fingers. One sentry knew my face despite the grease, having seen me with Hurai. “Anaraseye! What in the name of—”

“Secret assignment, no questions!” I gasped, and staggered in.