Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (9 page)

The man looked up. “Did any of you see a captive with the soldiers?”

The other two shook their heads. Mandhi flew down the hall and threw open the curtain to the room where the imperial soldiers had stayed. Where Navran should have been.

There was nothing.

She stormed back to the dining room. “Where is he? You must have seen him. We’ve been following him from Jaitha, he
must
be here.”

In the kitchen on the far side of the dining room, the innkeeper raised his timid head from where he had crouched behind the counter. “I may know,” he said.

“Then tell me!”

The man flinched. “The soldiers, when they arrived they had a fourth man with them. They met another company and passed him off. The captive continued north, while the three that you saw stayed here.”

Mandhi put her hands on her face and fell to her knees. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

The man shrugged. “You didn’t ask anyone.”

“Oh. Oh, Taleg. For nothing—”

“Is Taleg your guard’s name?” Bhargasa asked.

“Yes. Will he live?”

One of the soldiers returned with a jug full of water and a pouch of salt. Bhargasa lifted the bloody rag from the wound. Blood immediately gushed out and splattered his hands. “I’ve seen worse.”

“That isn’t what I asked. You.” She pointed at the innkeeper. “Is there a doctor in town? An herbalist? I can make a few medicinal mixtures myself, if the ingredients are on hand.”

“There’s no doctor,” the innkeeper said. “An herbalist, maybe, depending on what you need—”

“No,” Bhargasa said. “I can give him rough stitches. With that he should make it to Davrakhanda, where Sadja has a surgeon in his household. Better than anything you find in these parts.”

“And how far to Davrakhanda from here?”

“We got here in four days.”

“Four days?” Mandhi paused. “Why are you here, exactly?”

“Looking for you, obviously. We were sent for three Uluriya, two men and a woman, one of them a Kaleksha. We found two out of the three.”

“And Sadja-dar sent you four days ago? And you arrived here in the middle of the night, just in time to find us fighting the Red Men.”

“Imperial guard?” Bhargasa looked up with an expression of alarm. “Those were imperial guards? I didn’t notice the uniform.”

“They had imperial seals in Jaitha and were wearing red earlier.”

Bhargasa grimaced. “Nothing good can come of that. But as you asked… I’ve long since stopped wondering what the king of Davrakhanda knows, and how. He told us to arrive by midnight on the fourth day, and so we did.”

Farsight.
Mandhi crept to put her hands on Taleg’s forehead. “Did he foresee how many of us would come back?”

“If I knew, I would tell you. We should get him off this table.” With a jerk of his head, the other soldiers came forward and picked him up, one at each limb. They carried Taleg into the chamber which he and Mandhi had claimed and set him on the bed. Immediately the blood began to bubble from the wound again, staining the bed sheet and spreading across the cushion. “Bring me more rags,” Bhargasa demanded.

“I’ll stay with him,” Mandhi said. “Can we leave at first light?”

“At the latest.” One of the soldiers appeared with an armful of shredded fabric. Bhargasa nodded to Mandhi. “You never told me your name.”

“Mandhi, daughter of Cauratha in Virnas.”

“And how did you come to be fighting the imperial guard in the middle of the night so far from Virnas?”

She laughed. “Because things have not gone according to plan. We were responding to your king’s invitation.”

Bhargasa raised his hand. “Never mind. One of my men will bring needle and thread for stitches. Keep the rag against his wound. If the bleeding slows enough, pack it with salt to staunch the wound. I’ll stay with you for the first watch of the night.”

The feeble light of dawn dribbled through the window of the chamber and lit Taleg’s pallid form. Mandhi stood at the window and glanced from the murky horizon to her husband and back. A silent sentry guarded her door. None of the others had stirred yet. She herself hadn’t slept, though some part of her mind reminded her that she needed it. Her own need, however, was less than Taleg’s, and this thought alone kept her from sleep.

The crown of the sun appeared red between the palms and acacias along the distant horizon. She heard sheep bleating and the curses of an early-rising peasant. It was time to leave.

She wet a rag in the bowl of water next to Taleg, and lifted the bandage covering the wound. He hadn’t woken all night, but his breathing was steady and his heart thundered ceaselessly in his chest like it always did. When she peeled away the poultice her breath stopped. “Star-damned,” she said.

Every time she lifted the bandage, the wound continued to bleed through the coarse stitches that Bhargasa had been able to apply. The surrounding flesh swelled in a sickly white rise, turning red and virulent as it retreated from the crater of the puncture. Already the stench of putrescence began to fill the room. She touched the edge of the wound with the rag. Taleg flinched and muttered. His eyelids fluttered, and for a moment the glassy whites of his eyes showed beneath the lids. Then his hand fell back to the ground.

“The stars upon him,” Mandhi said. She wiped away what she could with the wet rag and reapplied the poultice.

Taleg’s lips moved. With a groan like stone scraping over stone, he whispered, “Mandhi.”

“Taleg! You’re awake.”

“Where is Navran?”

“Gone,” Mandhi said. “Don’t worry about him.”

“We couldn’t save him?”

“I don’t care about saving him,” she said. “I care about saving you. We’re going to Davrakhanda.”

“I can’t go to Davrakhanda. I don’t think I can walk that far.”

“We will lay you in a drag-cradle and carry you.”

He shook his head. “You’ll never be able to carry me by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself. Sadja-dar’s men are here.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. Sleep, Taleg.”

He turned his head and rested it against the cushion. For a moment his lips moved silently. Mandhi put her finger against them and he stilled.

There was movement in the hallway. One of Sadja’s soldiers. She said with a loud whisper, “Come here! Quickly.”

A young man stuck his head through the curtain. “What is it, lady Mandhi?”

“Tell your commander we have to leave
now
. Then come help me bring Taleg out.”

Bhargasa appeared a moment later in the doorway. “I have told the men to prepare the drag-cradle. What happened?”

Mandhi pointed at the blackening wound. “The bleeding hasn’t stopped, and it’s starting to rot. Can this surgeon in Davrakhanda heal a rotting wound that’s festered for four days?”

Bhargasa closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I don’t know. But the kind of care you’ll get between here and there… you might find herb-women, and dhorsha who could offer rams’ blood.”

“No dhorsha,” Mandhi said. “We are Uluriya. And for the herb-women, would they help?”

“For this?” He glanced at Taleg’s wound and shook his head. “I think he has a better chance in Davrakhanda.”

Mandhi rinsed her hands in the bowl of water. “That’s what I thought. Load him onto the cradle. We have to
run
.”

Bhargasa’s soldiers wrapped Taleg in blankets. Mandhi paid their host generously for lodging and damages, then they loaded Taleg onto the cradle and took up the harnesses. All three of the soldiers took one of the leather straps to pull, while Bhargasa walked in front. With a heave, the soldiers started forward. The leather creaked and the woven branches of the cradle stretched, but it held, and in a moment the cradle skidded forward along the road kicking up a tail of red dust.

Mandhi walked alongside Taleg. “I’m not letting you walk ahead of me this time, beloved,” she whispered.

The sun was a half-circle above the horizon when they left. Bhargasa pointed them down the east road from the village, and they did not depart from it until the sun had passed its zenith overhead. They didn’t quite run, but Mandhi couldn’t blame them for that. The faces of the soldiers were ruddy with exertion, and sweat dripped from their backs like monsoon rains. As soon as Bhargasa called a halt, they took deep swigs from their canteens and collapsed in the shade of a banyan.

“Eat and rest,” Bhargasa said. “After this, we march until nightfall.”

Mandhi knelt at Taleg’s side. His skin was the color of white clay and beaded with sweat. She unrolled the blankets to check the wound.

“Will you take some food, Mandhi?” asked Bhargasa. He offered her a piece of roti and two figs.

“I’m not hungry,” she said and set the food aside. The thought of eating made her ill.

The wound was worse. The jostling of the cradle meant that the flesh pulled at the stitches, and it continued to leak blood and pus. The flesh around the wound burned with rot, while the rest of his skin was clammy and limp. She tapped him on the cheek to wake him.

“Taleg,” she said. “Taleg. You have to drink something.”

His eyes fluttered open for just a moment. She forced the nub of a water pouch into his mouth and squeezed. The water trickled out the corners of his mouth and into his beard. He coughed and turned his head away, then licked his lips.

“Mandhi,” he croaked. “Where are we?”

“On the way to Davrakhanda,” she said. “There is a surgeon there.”

“It hurts,” he said. His breath caught in his throat. “Hurts to breathe.”

“Just keep doing it. We’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

She repeated the prayer for healing three times over him before the men were ready to start on the road.

The sun burnt the horizon in the east on the second day of their journey. Mandhi gave water to Taleg before they started, but as soon as it hit his throat he turned to the side and retched. She wiped his face clean and offered him the water again, but he refused it. The wound still bled, slowly now, seeping blood like a dying, poisonous fountain. She replaced the bandage. Great flakes of dried blood fell away when she pulled it from his burning flesh.

She tried several more times throughout the day to get him to take water or roti, but he would not. If she forced the water down his throat he vomited, and she couldn’t even begin with food.

She ate, but only because she wouldn’t otherwise have strength to keep up the pace.

The day was long and monotonous. They passed through an endless procession of identical villages, dusty mud-brick buildings interspersed with palms, streets infested with goats and served by a murky well. At first Taleg spoke intermittently in incoherent worries about Mandhi, Cauratha, Navran, Ulaur. By noon his muttering had ceased. He lay as still as a fallen tree, the slight movement of his breast the only thing that indicated he still lived.

That night, Mandhi tried to offer him water, and again he spat it back. His skin was dry, free of sweat, and limp as a leaf without water.

When they woke on the third day, Mandhi spoke to Bhargasa.

“He won’t make it another two days,” she said. “The wound still bleeds. He vomits back the water I give him. With no blood and no water in him, he’ll die.”

Bhargasa closed his eyes and bowed his head. “There may be nothing we can do.”

“What if we stopped in a guest-house in one of these villages and called the surgeon to us? Lying in a still bed would be easier for him than lying in the drag-cradle.”

“That would take twice as long. Do you really think that getting off the road will make the difference?”

She clenched her hands into fists. “You don’t understand. We
have to
get him to safety. We have to.”

“Lady Mandhi, if your guard dies—”

“He is not my guard! Don’t you understand anything?” Then, though her judgement warned her against it, the exhaustion and sorrow of the last three days broke through, and she could not stop herself from saying, “He is my
husband
.” She pressed her fists into her eyes and shook with sobs.

Bhargasa only watched her humiliation for a moment. Then he called to his men, “Take up the straps of the cradle. Today we march for the garrison in Chakurta, even if we wear out the soles of our sandals. And when we get there, you will rest, and I will command other soldiers to take up the cradle and bring Taleg the rest of the way to Davrakhanda. Tonight.”

The soldiers shouted their assent. Mandhi stilled her crying, wiped the dust from her hands, and rose. “Thank you,” she said.

“I hope you have the energy to make it,” Bhargasa said.

She thought that their march had been difficult the previous two days, but Bhargasa pressed them forward that day at a pitiless pace. The men all but ran, and Mandhi was forced to jog for long stretches to match their speed. Taleg jostled and groaned as the cradle dragged through the dust behind them. Earlier, Mandhi might have worried that the movement reopened the wound. But now, what did that matter? Either they reached Davrakhanda in time, or they didn’t. She doubted that their gentleness would make the difference.

They did not stop to eat or drink. They took labored bites of roti between heavy breaths and sips of water whenever they could. Bhargasa took a turn in the traces, the leather strap digging into his shoulder. The callus on Mandhi’s heel, which she had thought was impermeable, began to split from the violence of her sandal slapping it. Every step became painful, and she relished it. It gave her something else to think about.

Nightfall came after a day that felt like it lasted the whole dry season. Mandhi stopped to dribble more water into Taleg’s mouth, in the vain hope that some of it would reach his stomach. He still breathed. That was all that mattered.

Bhargasa lit a torch. “A few more hours, and we reach Chakurta,” he said. “Just a few more hours.”

Darkness inked the sky. The waxing sliver of the moon seemed to breathe cool air on them. They marched through hamlet after hamlet, earning curious and disapproving stares from the villagers that saw them. The stars glittered overhead. Mandhi repeated the prayers over and over again. She thought of the pain in her foot. She thought of anything except Taleg dying next to her.

Ahead, a black square loomed in the star-speckled blue of the night sky. Torches were lit on the corners, and soldiers stood for the night watches at the entrance. Bhargasa barked orders as they approached.
Chakurta
.

The gates opened, and they dragged Taleg into the open courtyard in the center of the garrison. The soldiers who had carried him collapsed to hands and knees as soon as they halted, panting and darkening the dust with the sweat dripping off their brow. Mandhi knelt next to Taleg and rested her head for a moment on his chest. His lips were cracked, and his tongue was as dry and hard as a stone. But his heart still beat.

“… looks like he’ll die any minute,” a voice was saying. “I’m not giving you four men to carry a corpse to Davrakhanda in the middle of the night.”

Bhargasa barked back. “Sadja-dar wants him in Davrakhanda. Either you give me the men, or you answer to him.”

The commander of the garrison grumbled and spat. “At least let me give you a palanquin. I have a spare which we sometimes use when the king visits. Easier to carry than a drag-cradle. And do you want me to get lodging for the woman?”

“Yes. I don’t think she’ll make it to Davrakhanda tonight.”

Mandhi rose to her feet. “I’ll make it,” she said.

Bhargasa looked her over and nodded. “Take some roti. If you slow us down—”

“I won’t slow you down.”

Within a few moments the palanquin was secured with a contingent of grumbling soldiers to carry it. Mandhi checked the wound one last time. It still seeped black, half-clotted blood, but she cleaned what she could and retied the gauze around it.

With a lot of grunting and shouting, the men levered Taleg into the curtained palanquin and lifted it to their shoulders. Taleg’s feet dangled over the edge of the platform. Immediately they began to groan about his weight, but a shout from Bhargasa put a stop to their whining. A moment later they were on the road.

The last hours of travel to Davrakhanda were a blind monotony. All Mandhi saw was the oval of light from Bhargasa’s torch, and the sweating, swearing soldiers bearing up her husband’s body. Villages and palm trees passed them as mute shadows against the backdrop of the stars. The only thing that mattered was the road in front of them and the next step. This was the whole world, and Taleg was the center of it.

She could not look at Taleg while he lay in the palanquin, and they could not stop to let her examine him. And so a quiet certainty of doom began to steal over her. It began like the throbbing in her feet, a deadening pain which did not cease but could not be ignored. They would reach Davrakhanda, but they would reach it too late. Taleg would be dead when they arrived. She saw herself bending over the palanquin, parting the silk curtains, and finding no breath in Taleg’s nostrils. They would travel through the night, and deliver a dead man to Sadja’s doorstep.

At some point during the night, her prayer changed from the prayer for healing to the prayer for the dead. The stars burned overhead. The stars, the purified souls of the dead. And Taleg would burn with them tonight. The pain throbbed. But she kept walking.

The road descended. Overhead, she heard the cawing of a gull. They continued to march. And the eastern sky lightened, casting a gray dawn at last over the white stone towers of Davrakhanda and the turquoise water gleaming in its harbor.

The gates of the city opened to Bhargasa’s shouts. He gave an order to the men, which Mandhi could not understand—her ability to understand speech had fled some time in the night, and all she knew was that Bhargasa ran off ahead of them, alone, while the other soldiers continued their march through the streets. She could only follow, unable to remember anything about Davrakhanda. People gawked at them as they passed.

And then they reached the wall of a vast palace, its doors thrown open. People moved about furiously within, shouting words beyond her comprehension. They entered. The soldiers lowered the palanquin to the ground.