The pupils were black and distended. Tears were caught in her lashes. Yet the blank features he surveyed with desperate intensity showed him no worse than the stunned depth of her shock. He encountered none of the mindless torment that had caused Orannia’s madness.
Where Perincar’s geometry had fallen short under point-blank assault in Efandi, the resonant strength of the Sanouk song line had guarded the breach, even through the rampaging onslaught of grounding out a roused short curse.
A defender who found himself sorely beset could stake fragile hope on such footing.
Mykkael shut his eyes. All but unstrung by his shaken relief, he shouldered the princess’s leaning weight. Though he felt her shrink in recoil from him, he blessed that first sign of recovery. If she hated him for ever for the arrow that had dispatched her luckless gelding, the penalty held no meaning beside the triumph of breathing survival. The Princess of Sessalie was alive; intact.
Her brave horse was dead.
For that sorrow, he had no words, and no balm of false reassurance. He could not apologize for the ugly event her sheltered young mind had just witnessed. A dangerous power had marked Isendon’s heirs for destruction. The fell threat it carried dwarfed human perception. Mykkael swallowed, tasting the grit of bitter char. The trembling, raw aftermath struck all at once. Alone in Hell’s Chasm, his frail resource seemed insufficient to stand foursquare in the breach.
‘Princess,’ he urged, his voice a scraped whisper. ‘Come on. Let’s get you away before passing kerries swoop down to feed on the carcass.’
The shock of the disturbance rippling over the unseen was sensed by the grand vizier’s hired circle of shamans. They engaged a deep scrying, and uncovered the pattern of a scourge whose signature did not match the nine demons whose sorcerers walked abroad on the earth. Alarmed to encounter an unknown danger, they pursued the source, but lost the dread line as it grounded. To the emperor’s capitol, they sent urgent word: a new peril stalked the cleft of Hell’s Chasm, that might threaten their far northern border…
XXVIII. Cataract
AGAINST THE PRINCESS’S VEHEMENT WISH, MYKKAEL PROCEEDED TO SKIN THE DEAD HORSE. HE WORKED FAST, WATCHING THE SKY FOR scavenging kerries. His methodical speed suggested he had done such grisly tasks of necessity many times in his past.
Or so Anja thought, where she sat, shuddering with nausea, deep inside the shaded cleft. She could not bear to witness the finish, as the flies swarmed and sucked at the raw, exposed meat of Bryajne’s carcass.
Mykkael counted paces to ascertain the range of his wardings, then knelt at a rock spring to wash his befouled hands. Then, using field knowledge, he fashioned a bracing tea from the herbs he stocked in his scrip. He brewed the restorative in a cone of hard leather cut from his boot cuff, and heated the water by dropping in a hot pebble raked from his tiny fire.
At his urging, Anja sipped the concoction. If she was put off by the bitter taste, infused with the taint of boiled leather, the tincture soothed her stomach and eased the wrenching sobs she had stubbornly stifled to silence. She huddled, forlorn, in the shadow, while Mykkael scraped the fresh hide, and the inevitable hungry kerrie descended to devour the buckskin’s remains.
Senses blunted by the warmth of full sunlight, the creature did not scent the living animals jammed inside the cave, but circled, cat-nervous and bugling. It landed at length, all shimmering bronze muscle slung on the feathered vanes of its wings. It snuffled, blew fire in riffling snorts, then sank its black talons into the dead horse’s shoulder, and clamped the hindquarters in the murderous grip of rear claws. It took to the air, its prize clutched to its belly, to a gale wind of thunderous flapping.
It left behind the rank stink of sulphur, soon dispersed by the morning breeze. Where Bryajne had fallen, the stone showed a seared ring of slag, and dried blood snagged with circling flies.
By then, Anja’s revolted tears had burned dry. She was not ready to move, yet. Mykkael did not press her, but stood silent guard at the cleft, knife blade working over the green hide. He cleaned the fat, then the hair, then rolled his handiwork into a bundle, lashed tight with a peeled strip of sinew. After that, he sat with his marked fingers rested upon the burnished steel of his weapon. He did not reproach his royal charge, or attempt to console her sore grief. His tacit trust, that her feelings were genuine, and not under his right to question, allowed her bruised dignity the footing she needed to begin the first step towards recovery.
He had saved her life, at unimaginable risk. That her horse should be mourned, and her privacy respected, bespoke an unprepossessing resilience of character; or not. The warrior who had slaughtered her hapless buckskin had launched his shaft with steel nerves, and no heart. Anja measured his posture. From the place where she sat, she could number the lines that exhaustion had scored into his rapacious features. Mykkael was not untouched, she decided. He looked like a man who ached to the bone, glass cast in the purview of solitude.
Curiosity as always outstripped her good manners. In the end, she could not resist prodding. ‘Did you ever visit the Scoraign Wastes, or ride caravan through the desert?’
The captain turned his head, a dark shadow sliced into outline by the sunlit chasm outside. Against the harsh glare, she could not tell whether his expression showed offence, or contemptuous irritation. His soft-spoken reply stayed unruffled. ‘No, Princess. Never. For me, that land was unsafe to travel.’
Her surprise moved him to qualify. ‘The tribes adhere to an inflexible law. As an infant, exposed, I was outcast as a misfit. Given my self-evident breeding, but lacking the sanction of clan tattoos, I stand condemned in that country. A tribal warrior raised in tradition would be duty-bound to run his spear through my back.’
‘Yet you speak the language.’ Anja puffed a wisp of stuck hair from her lips. ‘At least, I heard your fluent cursing.’
He grinned. ‘Yes, but with a terrible accent. I learned the rough phrases a trader would use to drive bargains and share an oasis.’
The next question stabbed. ‘Why do you answer? Did you hope to win my civil forgiveness?’
Mykkael sighed. The sword flashed, cold blue in sky-caught reflection, as he moved in attempt to lessen the discomfort of his damaged knee. ‘I hope, first of all, to keep you alive to resent me or not, at your pleasure. And I answer your Grace because at heart, I have nothing to hide.’ His careful regard searched her face through the gloom. ‘Well enough to attack, well enough to ride on. Can you manage?’ He stood up. Self-assured to the point of enacting his assumption, he sheathed his sword, then limped towards the horses with intent to unfasten their hobbles. ‘I’d prefer not to linger where a sorcerer’s mark has disrupted the natural currents that flow through the earth.’
‘You talk like a shaman,’ Anja said, rising.
He gave her his honest, velvet-grained laughter. ‘Would you know, Princess? Have you ever met one?’
‘Have I?’ Her smile wobbled, which spoiled the humour, but not her steel-clad persistence. ‘You could tell me.’
Bent to release the knots restricting Covette’s dainty forelegs, Mykkael shook his head. ‘Then be disappointed. I was fostered and brought up by a northern-born merchant. His wife lived with the inconvenience of my witch thoughts. She didn’t like to encourage them. The wardings I carry were earned on campaign. Eishwin, who fashioned the first one, insisted he tapped into my desert heritage to bring the laid pattern to resonance. He talked like a vizier.’ The flash of a smile was offered her way. ‘I didn’t fathom a single word of his inexhaustible theories.’
Anja knelt, checked Fouzette’s bandage, which had grown disturbingly hot to the touch. She said a word, likely learned from a stablehand, that would have vexed the duchess who raised her. As the captain moved on to unfasten the hobbles on Vashni, she pressed her next question to divert her concern for her injured mare. ‘Why didn’t you stay with your family, trading?’
‘A chance slip of fate.’ His tone held no rancour, as if that bygone detail had long since grown dis
tant and meaningless. ‘Because I couldn’t safely work the south passage, I was sent out with a close associate of the house to learn how to manage the exotic routes to the east. I was also expected to establish my own trading contacts. The customs of barter and exchange were complex enough to be interesting. On contacts, I fell shamefully short.’
Anja braced against Kasminna’s head butts, guardedly ready to fend off the inevitable mischievous nip. ‘You weren’t suited for life as a merchant?’
His shrug as he straightened strove to dismiss the scab-crusted state of his back. ‘At fourteen years of age, fast horses and huge, muscled nomads with swords posed the more riveting fascination.’
‘But you would have matured,’ the princess insisted. ‘What made you abandon your upbringing?’
Mykkael must have sensed the quiet desperation behind her chatterbox inquiries. His dark eyes met her open probe without flinching. ‘In the course of my absence, the near family was stricken by an outbreak of virulent fever. Did I say they weren’t young? The house fortune was inherited by a nephew, who had six grown children to carry the trade. By the time I returned, the presiding magistrate insisted there had been no written record. My claim was dismissed.’
‘The nephew refused to employ you?’
Mykkael grinned outright. ‘Actually, no. He made me a handsome offer. I declined.’
Her sandpaper edge progressed into bravery: her curiosity was not going to let up. ‘In fact, you were likely to be assigned to the next caravan bound through the Scoraign?’
He laughed. ‘Clever thought, but no. The truth is quite honestly boring.’ He had been offered the position of desk clerk for his gift at translating languages. ‘Which horse will carry your saddle, your Grace?’
‘Covette.’ Anja swallowed the pang, that the sensible choice should have been her buckskin gelding. ‘The poor girl’s not fresh, but with Bryajne gone, she’ll be desolate and badly distracted.’
Mykkael nodded, approving. Had she named Vashni, he would have been forced to countermand her free preference. The grey was too tightly teamed to Fouzette. If pending danger should drive them to flight, the mare’s lamed stride was too likely to cause her loyal companion to falter.
By logical default, he should ride Kasminna. Yet Mykkael made no move to claim the sorrel mare’s headstall. Instead, he checked the knots, one by one, as the hobbles were retied into lead lines. The princess was left to saddle Covette by herself. Such unassuming humility, fast followed by that deliberate lapse from an accustomed royal prerogative, showed his steadfast respect for her human right to autonomy. The impact almost destroyed her reserve. When Anja handed off the mare’s lead, throat tight with emotion, he accepted with a formal court bow that acknowledged the gift without speech.
‘Leave Stormfront free,’ she husked, turned away to preserve her strained dignity. ‘He’ll have to be trusted to follow his training.’
That risk made sound sense, since the black gelding was too powerfully strong to restrain in the heat of a crisis. If the horse lost his head to raw instinct and bolted, or if his footing gave way on a misstep, he would only drag his sorrel partner off balance, undermining the rider’s defence. Taskin’s sharp insight had taught Anja well, a point Captain Mykkael did not fail to appreciate as he fastened the unused lead into a crude surcingle, and lashed his rolled hide on to Fouzette’s broad back.
Last of all, he reclaimed his tattered surcoat. Near enough to assist, in case Anja requested what he judged an unneeded assistance to mount, he donned the stained garment and readjusted his scabbard and sword harness.
‘Please take the lead, Princess,’ he said, his neat vault astride an achievement that masked the crippling halt in his knee. First-hand, she saw why Stormfront had agreed with him. His grasp on the rein was nonexistent as thistledown, and his cues to Kasminna, made in steppelands style with guiding leg and a balanced seat.
‘You didn’t learn your horsemanship from a merchant,’ Anja said as the wily mare tested his measure, gave a startled snort, and stood fast.
‘No.’ Not smiling, Mykkael pressed Kasminna back on her haunches, then opened her stride from the shoulder to face daylight and finally move out. ‘Sessalie trains mounted men to be lancers, which suits your defence, well enough. They can shock through a line in a siege, or mow down and break an interlocked shield wall that might challenge the span at Stone Bridge. But the wars where I hired demanded close infighting. A swordsman who relied on the reins became ei’jien.’
Since the do’aa term could not help but perplex her, Mykkael tipped his head. The gesture of deference was immediately betrayed, as sunlight exposed his faint smile of scorching amusement. ‘That idiom roughly translates as “luckless, sitting target”.’
Anja raised her eyebrows, resilience restored by his combative humour. ‘We aren’t ei’jien right now?’
That awoke his spontaneous laugh. ‘No, Princess. I would have us be seit shan’jien, “the target with teeth that bites back”.’
By late morning, they encountered the ripped carcass where something uncanny had dined on a slaughtered kerrie. Whether the fire-breathing predator had been naturally slain in the course of a territorial rivalry, or whether the sorcerer’s shape-changer had dealt the huge creature its deathblow, the discovery sat ill with Mykkael. The grue chasing over his spraydampened skin bespoke unclean implications. Not liking necessity, he asked the provocative question.
The princess informed him that the opportunistic kerrie would always feed upon carrion. The predators did not balk at consuming the flesh of their own kind. Available meat would not be left to rot unless something unusual or threatening aroused their overriding suspicion.
‘You’re troubled by this?’ Anja had to shout over the deafening thrash of the flume, hurled up into fantails of whitewater against a crook in the narrowing channel.
‘I’ve seen happier news,’ Mykkael admitted, his reluctance to explain exacerbated by Kasminna’s restive distress. Her wise equine instinct agreed with his hackled nerves, that all wholesome life should keep a safe distance from that mangle of gnawed bones and spilled viscera. The captain dismounted anyway, and handed the mare’s reins off to Anja.
‘Stay close,’ he instructed, his dark face unreadable under the shadow of the ravine.
Still in full sunlight, and glad of the warmth streaming over her spray-damp shoulders, Anja caught his wrist in restraint.
The sinews she grasped leaped to instantaneous tension, then froze stone-still, unresisting. Mykkael tipped up his head. ‘Your Grace?’
‘You intend to investigate?’ Her wide, worried eyes searched his features. ‘Is that safe?’
His level regard seemed a cold reassurance. ‘I am going to cut and salvage the wing leather. Horrid necessity. We’re going to need something to braid into stout rope. A green hide will stretch. Wing leather won’t. I can’t imagine we’ll find a material more strong and reliable.’
Anja did not release him. ‘I asked, is it safe?’
‘Life is not safe, Princess.’ Mykkael gently unwound her choke hold on his wrist. ‘This is Hell’s Chasm, where use of a rope might mean your survival, or maybe that of your horses.’
Her green eyes held his, as fiercely relentless. ‘And do you also plan to investigate?’
Mykkael sighed. He glanced away, while the pounding waters leaped and crashed, and gusts snapped the wet hem of his surcoat. ‘What more could I find?’
His unexpected note of desolation chilled Anja down to the bone. She shifted a heel, sidled Covette, until once again, he must face her. ‘What have you seen, Captain?’
To answer at all ran against his clear preference. Still, he gave the bared truth. ‘My knowledge of lore is scant, at best, Princess. But this much I had from a dying vizier concerning the habits of shape-changers. The creatures do not slaughter wantonly. The captive essence they extract from devouring their kills is what allows the fell beings to shift form.’ Watching her expression with a falcon’s stripped focus,
he added, most softly, ‘I’m sorry.’
A moment of blanked shock, then the hammering impact: Anja reeled, grabbing mane for support. ‘Oh, dear powers of daylight! Then Kailen, and also my high prince—’
His hand braced her rocked balance. Since he had no words for inconsolable horror, he gave a small tug to remind her of the lead lines that threatened to slip through her grasp. ‘Bear up, your Grace. Let me do my work.’ When the recovery he asked for escaped her response, he slapped the ends of Kasminna’s reins to her thigh with a reproving, light sting. ‘Anja! I won’t take your blood on my hands as my destiny, or the failure, that I allowed you to die the same way.’
She took charge of the mare.
‘Watch for kerries,’ he said.
Anja swallowed. ‘All right.’ Harsh reason resurged over deranging grief. ‘Will that sword hilt give warning if a marauding creature is shape-changed?’
Again, Mykkael chose the thorn prick of honesty. ‘I don’t know.’ The one time he had stood in the high prince’s close presence, the established court protocol for royal audience had seen him stripped of his weapon. ‘Princess,’ he added, ‘the sword doesn’t matter. You can give warning by sight.’
A role she must play, if his back was to stay halfway guarded; she rose to match his high courage. Her spine straightened. Slight fingers closed, firm, on the rein ends.
‘I apologize,’ Anja said with strained dignity. ‘Captain, you are no coward.’
He bowed. ‘Your Grace.’ Then he moved promptly off, the cat-fluid beauty of his warrior’s stride undone by his marring limp.
Mykkael came alive to her, in that moment. Not as a hero, not as the paid captain of Sessalie’s garrison, but as a man beset by a difficult quandary the less stout-hearted must name impossible. He stood guard for her fate, and his own, without arrogance. Even with scars and shortfalls in plain view, he was whole. The hands that wielded the skinning knife accomplished their revolting task, fast and sure. Anja saw his humility all too clearly. Dwarfed by the massive walls of the chasm, befouled by the corpse of a predator slain by an uncanny abomination, Mykkael should have seemed foolish and small. Instead, the will in him towered.