That seemed like a very worker way of going about the endeavor, but Gutch’s demonstration had been rather effective. “I agree with your terms.”
“You seem to take it so damned seriously. Give me your word.”
“Very well, you have my word as a warrior. Help me, Gutch, your sentence is served, and afterwards loot the wizards as you see fit, I don’t give a damn.” The he realized that a length of cord had been run through his sword’s scabbard and tied around the hilt. If he’d tried to draw, it would have slowed him. “What’s this?”
“A test of politeness.” Gutch reached behind his rock and picked up a stout tree branch. In those massive hands, there was no doubt the improvised club would be extremely lethal. “If you’d tried to pull on me—despite my exceedingly reasonable proposal—I’d have caved your head in.”
“Clever.”
“Thank you. The sword you’re looking for is…” Gutch frowned for just a moment, then pointed. “That way. The feeling is faint, but when Ashok uses it again I’ll be able to tell you approximately how many miles away it is.”
“No more spinning around and carrying on then?”
“Nope. I’m too big to keep prancing about like that. Some traveler might see me on the road twirling and tell their friends. Talk about damaging your reputation! Breakfast?”
Chapter 37
The mountain passes were their most direct route south, but at this time of year, crossing was questionable. The lands that had formerly belonged to House Somsak were treacherous in winter. It wasn’t nearly as rugged, high, or cold as the ranges to the south, since the snow here was usually measured in inches rather than feet, but sudden storms came often enough to block the high passes for days at a time. Regardless of how much snow fell, Ashok knew he could make it, but the others would more than likely perish, and without Keta, he wouldn’t be able to fulfill Omand’s order. He’d offered to carry Keta across the mountains on his back, but the Keeper had declined the offer.
So they stuck to the hill country and the lower mountain valleys. The trade roads were well maintained. The going was easier, but the weather was still unpredictable. It was common to wake up to a dusting of snow, have the sun melt it by noon, and then get rained on for the rest of the day. However, Keta had money, so they were able to sleep at inns most nights. Ashok remained with the team, avoided speaking to the locals, and Keta or Thera would bring him his food. He slept beneath the wagon every night, ostensibly to protect their goods, but mostly to stay out of sight. Many years before he’d worked in these lands and didn’t want to be recognized.
Each morning they set out again, bright and early, and every day brought them a little closer to his final condemnation in Akershan.
Ashok tried to give Thera her privacy. She was a woman, and his limited social knowledge had taught him ladies deserved their privacy. He wasn’t sure if that applied to profane fugitives from the warrior caste as well, but it seemed reasonable.
One night, Ashok learned that Thera was not in good health. There was no inn, so they had made camp beneath the stars. Whether from the influence of the Heart of the Mountain, or just practice, Protectors were notoriously light sleepers, and he had been awoken by the sounds of thrashing. Thera was convulsing in her bed roll, muscles contracting violently, eyes rolled back up in her head, seemingly awake, but incoherent and speaking nonsense words.
When he’d gone to her, Keta had stopped him, warning him that Thera sometimes had these fits, and there was nothing that could be done for her. The Keeper stayed with her, her head in his lap, whispering calming words as Ashok had stood there uselessly. The fit had passed shortly, and she’d fallen into a deep sleep, as if nothing had happened at all.
Keta said such events were rare, and it was best to not speak of them to her at all, to avoid embarrassment. Ashok had heard of such a twitching sickness among members of the first caste, but he was surprised that it existed among the hardy warriors as well. The next day, Thera made no mention of the event, if she even remembered it at all. He was happy to keep avoiding her.
In truth, Ashok hadn’t spent much time interacting with women. He was no stranger to them, but visiting the pleasure women or being gifted slave girls for the night—great houses tended to be very hospitable to Protectors—was drastically different than actually speaking with one.
He’d been of the first caste, where women were allowed to hold offices and obligations, but it wasn’t as if Protectors spent much time in the courts of the Capitol or the great houses. Their time was spent in the jungles, mountains, slums, and forsaken places abandoned to the criminal element. They were outsiders in the society that their actions made possible.
Emotional attachments were discouraged. Such things made it difficult to enforce the Law in an unbiased manner. Some Protectors were more rigid about that tradition than others. When the terms of their obligation were up, then they’d be assigned a wife. Other than mandatory social niceties and politics, there really wasn’t much reason to speak with a woman before that. At least most Protectors had grown up around others, but all Ashok had for a childhood was a lie of memorized statutes and governing-caste etiquette painted over the casteless dog beneath.
In the only world he understood, everyone had a place, and how you treated them was based upon whether they were higher or lower in status, and by how much. Here, they were all equally nothing, which was very confusing. So Ashok avoided Thera. He figured that was for the best. She had yet to roll a bomb under the wagon while he was sleeping as she’d threatened, so their terms must have been acceptable. Except for the times he caught Thera watching him suspiciously, she mostly seemed content to ignore him as well.
With Keta, on the other hand, he wasn’t so lucky, because the Keeper was incapable of shutting up about his damned Forgotten. During the days he would try to tell stories of the old times, legends mixed with real history, about demons that fell from the sky, and a heavenly hero who followed them, forging swords that could smite through demon hide from the hull of his black steel ship, and about a people who had risen, then fallen, but who would rise again. As the days passed, Ashok discovered he was less inclined to murder the strange little man. Keta might have been totally delusional, but at least he was passionate about it.
* * *
One morning Ashok was walking along, trailing after the wagon as their oxen lumbered up a steep hill. It was that much less weight for them to pull and it felt good to walk anyway. The terrain was rolling and covered in tall brown grass that swayed in the cold wind. Across the hills, fat gray mountains loomed, their tops cloaked in white clouds. It pained him to admit it, as much as he deserved otherwise, but it felt good to be out of his prison cell.
To the side, Thera came out of the tall grass, carrying a small bow and a few arrows, her cloak and hair whipping in the wind. He was no longer surprised at how stealthy she was when she set her mind to it. She probably would have made a fine border scout.
“No luck?” Ashok asked.
“I was hoping to see a rabbit or something. I’m getting sick of jerky and rice. That’s the last time I let Keta be our pretend merchant and buy stock for our pretend wagon. Never let a man who grew up on gruel and slop choose your rations.”
If he wasn’t worried about witnesses, he could have chased down an elk on foot and carried it back over one shoulder. Ashok extended his hand toward the bow. “I can try.”
“You know how to shoot a bow?”
It was a weak bow with a light pull weight, not a proper fighting bow at all, thus legal to own, but sufficient for a worker to hunt small game. “If it’s possible to kill a man with a device, then I’ve been trained how to use it.”
Thera began to laugh, then realized Ashok wasn’t making a joke. “Oh…”
She didn’t give him the bow, but surprisingly, she didn’t walk away either. Instead she fell in beside him and the two of them followed the slow-moving wagon together. They climbed in silence for a time, listening to nothing but the whis
tle of the wind through the tall grass and the creak and rumble of their wagon. For just a moment, he could imagine that they were just a man and a woman out for a stroll on a beautiful winter day. Was this what it was like to be normal?
“How have you taken to Keta’s sermons?”
“Is that what those are supposed to be?” Ashok asked.
“I think so. I’ve heard them all. I think he practices on me before he tries them on the masses. You should see him work a crowd. He’s so enthusiastic that by the time he’s done people actually believe.”
“Preaching is dangerous.” Strangely enough, Ashok actually found himself respecting someone for having the courage to do something illegal. “He’s an odd, but brave little man.”
“Yes, I think so.” It was a rare sight, but she had a very genuine smile. It was one of the few times he’d seen her without her hood up, and because of the wind, for just a moment he caught sight of a terrible scar running along the top of her head. Normally it would be hidden from view by her long dark hair. Thera caught him looking and self-consciously put her hood up to cover it.
Ashok was no stranger to injuries, and it was odd to see anyone heal from a head wound that extensive. That hadn’t been some superficial cut. That was a skull being put back together. He’d known a few warriors over the years with marks like that, saved by surgeons, but they were usually fools, their brains left dimwitted and damaged from the impact, but Thera’s mind seemed as sharp as her many knives. It certainly explained the strange convulsions he’d witnessed. “What happened?”
“I was only a child. Something fell on me and I nearly died.”
“What was it? An axe?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He’d been told that women were sensitive about such things, as if a scar could somehow ruin their beauty, but scars were just stories told in flesh. “There’s no need to hide it. It gives you character.”
“Was that meant as a compliment?” she asked, incredulous.
Ashok shrugged. “I tell the truth. Take it or leave it.”
“Well, there is a need to hide the mark. I’m a criminal, remember? So I’m not in the habit of displaying any distinguishing features that might show up on a wanted poster…But thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
They continued on in silence for a time, neither of them in a hurry to catch the wagon. “So why are you out here, Ashok?”
“I’m avoiding another sermon.”
“Which one?”
“He started talking about an ancient hero being sent by the gods to chase the demons into the sea.”
“Ramrowan,” Thera said thoughtfully. “That’s one of Keta’s favorites, the greatest warrior who ever lived.”
“Keta has not seen me fight.”
“Wow, our Protector is humble too.”
“It is not bragging if you can perform on demand. And do not call me Protector.”
“Ramrowan, the first king. By the time Keta gets done telling that story to a barracks full of casteless, they’re believing that they’re so destined for greatness they’re usually ready to rebel on the spot.”
“Cruel foolishness,” Ashok muttered. “Nothing good comes from a casteless thinking they can achieve anything. I once met an untouchable on a beach in Gujara. He’d found a spear. He was very proud of it, and he even used it to try and save his family from a demon.”
“That’s brave.”
“No one realizes how hard it is to stand against a demon. I’ve seen the mightiest warriors flee in terror when faced with such things, but this old untouchable wouldn’t budge. After, when he wouldn’t put the spear down, they killed him with an arrow without so much as a second thought. So much courage, but they just left him there on the sand for the tide to take out and the demons to eat.” Ashok hadn’t thought of that incident in a long time. “I buried him myself.”
Thera seemed surprised. “Why would you bother?”
“It seemed like the thing to do.” Perhaps there had been cracks in his foundation of lies even before Mindarin’s revelation, but he didn’t like to dwell on such things, so Ashok changed the subject back. “Maybe someday Keta will use that story in a sermon, like this fabled hero from the sky.”
“I’ve heard that story so many times now. After the demons were cast from the heavens and went about destroying the world, the gods took pity on us and sent their champion to save mankind. Ramrowan fell from the sky in a ship made from black steel,” Thera recited from memory.
“Landed in the desert, rallied the survivors, gave us magic, and man chased the demons into the sea. Yes. That’s the one. Keta seems fond of it.” He had heard a lot of theories as to the origins of the ancestor blades over the years, and that story was as ludicrous as all the others.
“Keta likes to share the heroic parts to get the casteless riled up, but he doesn’t tell them the sad part of the story that comes next.”
“There’s a sad part?” Ashok asked, intrigued. “He must have been saving that for after my miraculous conversion to fanaticism he keeps hoping for.”
“Yes, very sad. A parable about how men are stupid. He took all the tribes of Lok, united them into a single kingdom, and won an impossible victory. Yet the demons were supposed to invade the land again someday, and only his bloodline would be able to stop them. So protecting royalty became the most important thing in the world. The age of kings was glorious for a time. Keta says they were blessed because the people heeded their gods, but eventually the Sons of Ramrowan got too proud for their own good.”
Ramrowan. Mindarin had once referred to the Heart of the Mountain by that name. There was usually some element of truth to even the strangest of myths, so this supposed champion had probably actually existed. As for the rest, Ashok had no trust in fables.
“His descendants got greedier and greedier. Keta’s books say the Age of Kings fell apart because they forgot their gods and just used their church as an excuse to steal whatever they wanted, but the way I see it, if the whole world kisses your ass because they think you’re the only one who can save them, of course you’re going to get cocky. But that only lasts as long as the people still believe.”
“If authority is not respected, authority is not retained.”
“Exactly. A few hundred years later, the idea of demons coming inland was seen as a trick, and the church just a prop to excuse the kings’ whims. Once they got sick enough of their tyranny, the warriors rose up and destroyed them. The kingdom broke into the houses. The royalty and priests who survived became casteless. That’s why, no matter what, the Law keeps the casteless around, just in case the old stories are true. Only the bloodline of the first king can stop the demons.”
Ashok had actually fought demons. Regardless of Keta’s myths, if an army of demons was to crawl out of hell and invade the land, all of the casteless in the world would be nothing but a snack.
“Everything changed because of the excesses of the Age of Kings. Religion was banned, and we ended up with the Law instead. Fat lot of improvement that was.”
Ashok gritted his teeth. Insulting the Law was like insulting him. He knew now that was Kule’s doing, but it was still so ingrained in him that such sleights made him angry.
Thera caught his reaction and paused. “Don’t take it personally. I meant no offense.”
He’d not expected an apology. They followed the wagon quietly for a time while he tried to come up with a polite response. “I suppose if I’m going to spend the rest of my life a criminal, I’d best get used to such talk.”
“We don’t hate law, Ashok. We’re rebelling against the unjust parts of it, not the whole thing. You’ll see. Keta has built something remarkable in the south.”
“You always speak of Keta’s accomplishments, but never his prophet…” Ashok mused. “Do you think he’s a charlatan or a just a madman?”
She paused for a moment, unsure how to answer. “Neither. Both.” Thera shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, doe
s it? If it is really the Forgotten speaking or just some poor deluded fool hearing voices, people will fight as long as the Law is unjust.”
“The Law is by definition justice.”
“Saying something over and over doesn’t make it true. Wrong is wrong. Like declaring some men whole and others barely more than animals, or where the innocent can be punished on a whim, or where we’re deprived of our ability to believe in something more.”
“But you don’t believe.”
“I want the freedom to choose for myself.”
“So that is why you fight? For some nebulous concept?”
“Freedom isn’t nebulous once you’ve lived it, Ashok.”
* * *
A couple of weeks south of Apura and skirting the base of the Somsak Mountains, the sky had darkened as terrible storm clouds rolled in. The weak rain turned into a torrential downpour, followed by thunder louder than Thera’s alchemy. The wind threatened to rip their canvas cover off. Within minutes the poor oxen were having a terrible time of it as the road melted into mud and ruts.
“The water is particularly evil today,” Ashok said after a horrendous crash of thunder.
“Water doesn’t have intent!” Keta shouted back. “That’s just superstition.”
“Water is the source of all evil and the home of Hell.”
“If water is so evil, how come we make beer out of it?”
Ashok found it ironic that he was being lectured about superstition by a man who believed in prophecies. “Malevolent or not, if we don’t get out of this soon we’ll get stuck or lose the animals.”