Evil for Evil (52 page)

The thought that he could die out there, stupidly, through carelessness, took a while to form in his mind, but once he’d acknowledged
it, he found it hard to silence. People died, lost in the mountains (but he wasn’t lost, he was on the main road), particularly
if they had no water and only a few crumbs of food (but Eremia was Mezentine territory now; there’d be patrols, hunting down
the resistance or keeping out insurgents). He remembered passing an inn at some point. He’d only caught a glimpse of it as
he galloped past (he’d been making up time after being held up crossing some river — a whole river full of water, unimaginable
excess). He could remember the name from the map — the Unswerving Loyalty at Sharra Top — but he couldn’t place it in this
disorganized mess of landscape; could be an hour away, or a day’s march on foot. Nothing for it; he was going to have to ride
the stupid horse. After all, deliberately allowing a courier of the Republic to die of thirst in the desert was surely a worse
crime against the state than crippling some overbred animal. Reluctantly, almost trembling with guilt, he ran down the stirrup,
put his foot in it and lifted himself into the saddle.

The horse reared.

High-strung, temperamental thoroughbred, he thought, as his nose hit the horse’s neck and his balance shifted just too far.
He hung in the air for a moment, realizing objectively that he wasn’t going to be able to sit this one out, and watched the
sky as he fell.

Not as bad, actually, as some of the falls he’d had in the past; he’d been expecting worse, he told himself, as the pain subsided
enough to allow his mind to clear. He opened his eyes, tried to move, found out that everything still worked. Stupid bloody
horse, he thought, and dragged himself up, feeling the inevitable embarrassment of the seasoned rider decked by a mere animal;
won’t let it get away with that, or it’ll think it’s the boss. He looked round for it. Not there.

The rush of panic blotted out thought for a moment. He recovered, hobbled a little way to a tall rock, scrambled up and looked
round. There was the horse; off the track, heading down the steep, rocky slope at a determined canter, obviously unaware of
the desperate risk to its fragile, expensive legs. Served it right if it broke them all.

It took at least two heartbeats before he realized that it had gone too far — just too far, but enough — for him to have any
hope of catching it, unless it stopped of its own accord, to rest or graze (graze? Graze on what?). No horse, no transport;
and, needless to say, his few crumbs of food were in the ration sack, just behind the saddle roll.

Fear came next. He felt its onset, recognized it from a distance, as it were; but when it overtook him, there was nothing
he could do about it. He was going to die; he was going to die very slowly, his throat and mouth completely dried out, like
beans hung in the sun; it was all his own fault that he was going to die so unpleasantly, and there was no hope at all. He
felt his knees weaken, his stomach tighten, his bladder twitch, he was shaking and sobbing. For crying out loud, he tried
to tell himself, this is ridiculous; you haven’t broken a leg, you’re fit and healthy and it can’t be far to that inn, but
the forced hopes turned like arrows on proof armor. He dropped to the ground in a huddle, and shook all over like a fever
case.

Fear came and went, taking most of him with it. He stood up; he was talking to himself, either out loud or in his head, he
couldn’t tell. You’re not thinking straight, he said, you’re going to pieces, that’s not going to help; and you’re missing
something really important.

That stopped him. He looked round, like a man who’s just realized he’s dropped his keys somewhere. Something important that
he’d seen just a few moments ago, before the fear set in and wiped his mind. Something …

It came back to him, and he thought,
idiot.
It had been there all the time, he’d probably been looking straight at it while he was crouching there quivering and blubbing.
It had been a silvery flash; sunlight on the surface of a bog-pool, down below in the valley.

Some of his intelligence was starting to creep back. He looked for patches of darker, lusher green, and soon enough he caught
sight of that flash again. He tried to gauge the distance — hard in such open country, but no more than two miles away, probably
less, and all downhill. Now he thought about it, the horse had gone that way; there was a chance he’d find it again, drinking
peacefully. Two miles downhill; he could do that, and then he’d have water. Not water to spare — the water bottle was with
the ration sack, on the saddle of the stupid fucking horse — but enough to keep him alive, give him a chance to calm down
and get a grip. He heard someone laugh, high, braying, almost hysterical; it took him a moment to realize he was listening
to himself, but now he thought about it, he could see the joke.

To begin with he tried to hurry, but a couple of trips and sprawls made it clear that haste could kill him, if he fell awkwardly
and twisted something. He’d been careless twice already that day. He slackened his pace to an amble, as though he was strolling
home from work. All the way, he kept his eye fixed on the spot where he’d seen the silver flash, just in case it turned sneaky
on him and crept away.

When he got there … It wasn’t beautiful, even to a man who’d killed himself with anticipated thirst only an hour earlier.
It was a brown hole surrounded by black peaty mud, sprinkled with white stones and fringed with clumps of coarse green reeds,
a very few clumps of dry heather, here and there a tuft of bog-cotton. He slowed down as he approached it; wading into the
mud and getting stuck would be careless too, and he was through with carelessness for good. From now on, every action he committed
himself to would be exquisitely designed, planned and executed with all proper Mezentine precision, a work of art and craft
that anybody would be proud to acknowledge.

In accordance with this resolution, he crept forward, taking care to test the ground with his heel before committing his weight.
It soon struck him that he was wasting his time; the mud was slimy and stank, but the most his boot sank in it was an inch
or so. He quickened his pace; he could see the water now, and smell it too. Nothing to be afraid of …

He stopped. In front of him, unmistakable as a Guild hallmark, was the print of a horse’s hoof. He frowned. So the horse
had
been this way — the print was fresh, he could tell by the sharpness of the indentation’s edge, the deeper pits left by the
nail-heads. Maybe it was still somewhere close, in which case at least some of his troubles could well be over. He swung his
head, looking round, and saw another print, identical, and then another, at just the right interval. He’d found the wretched
animal’s tracks, so he could follow it until he caught up with it, and …

The fourth print he found was of an unshod hoof. Definitely his horse, then.

He hurried along the trail of prints. As he’d anticipated, it was heading straight for the water. Logical: horses get thirsty
too. He wondered how much of a head start it’d have on him by now. Not too much, he hoped. The miserable creature would just
be ambling along, grazing as it went, in no particular hurry. And it shouldn’t be too hard to spot in this open, flat country.

He stopped. He’d reached the edge of the pond, a black beach of glittering mud, with two hoofprints in it; the water beyond,
like a silver inlay in rusted steel. For a moment he forgot about the horse. It was only when he thought, And now I’ll be
able to fill my water bottle, too, that it occurred to him to wonder where the horse had gone from there. No hoofprints leading
back the other way, after all. It looked for all the world as though the stupid animal had swum out into the middle of the
pond …

Horses do swim, of course; but not unless they’re made to. The horse had come this way, arrived here, but not gone back. There
was no sign of it to be seen anywhere. Therefore, it had to be here still, somewhere.

Fear again. Not something he wanted to go through a second time in one day, but it swooped and caught him up before he could
ward it off with deliberate thought. As he struggled to breathe, he shouted at himself,
It’s all right, all you’ve got to do is go back exactly the way you came, you know that’s all firm footing.
The very thought made him lose his balance. He staggered, as though drunk, and when his misplaced foot touched down there
was nothing under it to take its weight, nothing at all, like standing in slow, thick water. He jerked his foot back, felt
something sucking on his boot, but the seal broke and he wobbled helplessly on one foot, a ludicrous object, hanging in the
balance between life and death. For two long seconds he knew he had no control over his body or his destiny; it was all to
be decided by subtle and accidental forces of leverage and balance. His foot touched down, sank a heart-stopping two inches,
and found a firm place.

At least it explained what had become of the horse. He sucked in air, although his lungs felt sealed; the battering of his
heart shook him, as though someone behind him was nudging him repeatedly in the back. The insides of both his legs were wet
and warm, and he spared a little attention for the momentary feeling of revulsion.

Well, he thought. I can’t move. Under no circumstances am I going to move my feet, ever again.

As if they’d heard him and wanted to tease him, his knees had gone weak, to the point where they were endangering his balance.
He knew what he had to do. Very slowly, keeping his back perfectly straight, he folded himself at the waist, bent his knees
and squatted, stretching out his left hand as far as it could be forced to go so as to test the mud directly in front of him
with his fingertips. Only when he was absolutely sure of it did he finally drop forward and kneel. That, he reckoned, was
about the best he’d be able to do.

He looked up. There was the water, a thousand million gallons or so, but impossible to reach under any circumstances. He knelt
and stared at it, almost as though he believed he might be able to train it to come when he whistled; but it didn’t move,
not even a ripple or a spread of circles where a water-fly had landed on its face. He laughed, a sound like his mind grating
as its gears slipped their train. He was out of the mud, but he was completely and irrecoverably stuck. Big difference.

A certain amount of time passed. Mezentine precision could calibrate a scale to measure most things, but not time spent in
terror, despair and that particular sort of shame. Once or twice he almost managed to nerve himself to move, only to fail
when he made the actual attempt. He noticed that the water had a strange, colored sheen to it, and that one of the stones
near his hand was crusted with yellow crystals. He thought: I shall spend the rest of my life here, and nobody will ever know
what became of me. Maybe the horse had the right idea, after all. What would it feel like, drowning in mud? You’d try and
breathe in, but nothing would come, the reverse of holding your breath. There’d be panic and spasm, but surely not for very
long. Does pain actually matter if you don’t survive it?

Something was different. He was aware of the change long before he realized what it was, probably because it was so mundane,
among all the melodrama. Nothing but the light fading (and how long could he hope to survive once it was dark and he couldn’t
see the danger?). He was tired, he realized, more tired than he’d ever felt in his life, now that the panic had turned to
terrified resignation. No chance at all that he’d manage to stay awake. Sleep would come for him, quiet as a poacher; he’d
slide or roll into the mud, and …

The water turned red as the sky thickened; sunset brought a sharp chill that finally gave him a legitimate reason to tremble.
Mosquitoes were buzzing a lullaby all round him. In spite of everything, it was impossible to believe that when the sun came
up again, he wouldn’t see it. He’d been in a battle, a tangled skirmish at the very end of the Eremian war; his horse had
been shot under him and he’d ended up lying on the ground, trapped beneath its dead weight. All around him there’d been dying
men, Mezentines and Eremians jumbled together, too damaged or too weak to move. He’d listened to them for three hours, shouting,
screaming for help or yelling abuse, groaning, begging, sniveling, praying. He’d heard their voices fade one by one as the
long wait came to an end. That he’d been able to understand; this — a healthy, strong man, uninjured, not yet starved or parched
enough to be more than inconvenienced — was too arbitrary to be credible, because people don’t just die, for no reason. He
fought sleep as it laid siege to him; at first ferociously, as the Eremians had fought the investment of their city; then
desperately, a scampering withdrawal in bad order to inadequately fortified positions; then aimlessly, because there really
wasn’t any point, but one has to do one’s best. On his knees, supporting his weight with hands flat on the ground and fingers
splayed, he let his head wilt forward and closed his eyes, allowing the equity of redemption to drain away. No point in keeping
his eyes open when it was dark and there was nothing to see. Could you drown in your sleep, without ever waking up? If so
it was a mercy, and it would be churlish to …

He was dreaming, and in his dream a man was standing over him, prodding him spitefully with a stick. It was an unusually vivid
dream, because the prods hurt almost as much as the real thing would have done, had he been awake. The man began to shout.
He dreamed that he opened his eyes and saw thin, gray light, the sort you get just before dawn; he saw the man with the stick,
and for some reason he was straw-haired and fishbelly-skinned. Curious, almost perverse. Why, in his last dream before death,
should his mind have conjured up an Eremian?

“Fucking wake up,” the man yelled, and stabbed him with the stick, catching him on the edge of the collarbone. You can’t hurt
like that and still be asleep.