Fallen (13 page)

“So Neria protected her village,” Ramus said. “And you keep walking.”

Konrad stared at Ramus for a few heartbeats as though he would draw a sword and slay the Voyager. But then he smiled, shaking his head slightly. “I tell myself so often,” he said. He sat beside Lowkie, picked up another bottle and refilled his mug.

LOWKIE STAYED WITH
them for a while longer, finishing the root wine and rashly promising them a dozen more bottles to take with them in the morning. He finally left, swaying his way back across the field to the farm, wolves whining and yapping upon his return.

“One happy farmer,” Nomi said.

“For now, perhaps,” Ramus said. They had been sitting next to each other all evening, listening to Konrad's tale and then chatting across the fire with the Serians. Nomi had spent some time trying to decide whether Konrad and Neria really had betrayed each other at all, but the wine had fuzzed her mind, and in the end she gave up.

“Tired,” Ramus said, yawning. “Long day.”

“Lots more to come.”

He smiled, leaned across and squeezed Nomi's arm. “But it's a good feeling to be out here, isn't it?”

She nodded. “A good feeling.”

“Good journeys, Nomi.”

They grasped hands, she returned the blessing, and Ramus went to bed.

RHIANA TOOK FIRST
watch, stacking more wood on the fire and sitting close. None of them expected trouble, but that was when it would most likely come, and the Serian kept her weapons at hand.

Nomi slipped past the trees to piss, and when she returned to the influence of the firelight, Beko was standing outside the tent he would share with Noon, stripping off his tunic and undershirt and preparing for sleep. She caught his eyes, he stared back, and then she felt Rhiana watching them both.

“Dawn?” Nomi asked.

Beko nodded. “Dawn, and a full day's travel tomorrow.”

“Good dreams, Beko.”

“Always,” he said. “I have a clear conscience.”

Nomi nodded at Rhiana, then knelt to crawl into her tent.

Good dreams,
she thought. But it took her a long time to get to sleep.

NOMI’S NIGHT WAS
unsettled, haunted by dreams of vicious raiders, and seethe-gators trailing the black remembrance cloth strips of the Sleeping Gods. She and Ramus sat by a large pool and looked at the map he had made, and though they had been traveling for years, still their destination was no closer. It seemed that Noreela had stretched to ten thousand miles long, and the dotted line of their progress on the map was almost invisible. Ramus's skin was scarred with seethe-gator stings, his arms crisscrossed with battle wounds, one eye gouged out and all his teeth rotten or fallen from his head. In the socket of his lost eye, there was something moving, and as she urged him closer a small tentacle protruded from the bloody hole, searching this way and that, as if looking for her. Nomi recognized the sickness inside him. She pointed at the map, wanting to shout and scream that it was time to go, but Ramus only laughed. He opened his jacket and showed her the scores of charms he had collected, all of them withered, dead and ineffectual. She looked around the rough camp they had made by the pool, and although there were five tents, three of them had started rotting. She could make out the vague forms of the Serians and she was sure that they were rotting too, the insides of the canvas slick and warm. Ramus laughed again, silent mirth that she could hear in her head even though he made no noise. She looked at the map. They had ten thousand miles to go. And she knew that Ramus, now mad, would voyage forever.

RAMUS SLEPT WELL.
When he woke before dawn he sat up in his tent, cricked his neck and sighed. It seemed that his nightmares were now confined to daylight.

Chapter 6

RAMUS SPENT THE
first part of the morning—whilst gathering wood for a fire, tending his horse and washing and dressing by the stream—trying to imagine what could be held within the rope charm he had given Nomi.

The old charm breather had asked him whom the knotted rope was for, and Ramus had found it difficult talking about Nomi. The details of why he wanted to buy it for her, what she meant to him and perhaps what he meant to her, none of these were easy to scrutinize or describe. His words had ended up tripping over one another, and in the end he said nothing. But the woman had nodded sagely and reached for the charm, almost without looking.
She was fooling with me,
he thought, but that did not feel right. The rope had grown heavier the closer he rode to Nomi, and when he finally handed it to her, he had barely been able to hold it up. She had not noticed such weight.

He had met a hundred charlatans for every true charm breather, and he knew they all had their ways and means. A look from the old woman's eyes could have set a fugue of weight in his arms. A sprinkle of certain herbs from her hand could have made him momentarily weak without feeling tired. But he had found this woman to be more convincing than any he had ever met. Most of the alleged charmers in Long Marrakash were there for the money, but camped beside a forest path that was far from busy, she seemed to live for the charm of it.

“But what is it?” he whispered. His horse's ears twitched as it snorted, and he rubbed its nose.
Travel charm, friendship whisper . . . ?

Konrad and Ramin came across the field with their own horses, arriving at the stream and giving Ramus a cautious smile and nod.

“A good morning,” Ramin said. “I usually like to start the day with a bath in whores' breast milk, a meal fit for the richest of rich and a good humping. This morning? A wash in cold water, breakfast cooked by Lulah—which if we're lucky won't kill us until this afternoon—and my cock's too cold to rise.”

“Morning, Ramus,” Konrad said.

Ramus smiled. “I enjoyed your tale yesterday.”

“Thank you. Never an easy one to tell, but the difficult ones are always the best.”

Ramus nodded.

“Just look at it!” Ramin said. He had stripped to wash and was staring down at himself, hands held out as if afraid to touch.

“Brisk mornings like this,” Ramus said, “you can almost wonder how we continue as a species.”

Konrad laughed, Ramin grinned and Ramus led his horse back across the field.

He knew that Serians led an extreme lifestyle. In their work, they were often involved in violence and death, and their play was hard as well. As such, their extremes of personality were to be expected. He was used to it. It made him feel as though they really were back out in the wilds, even though they would still be within Marrakash's borders for at least a couple more days.

As he approached the camp, Nomi emerged from her tent. She was the last to wake.

Ramus glanced quickly around the camp, spotting Beko strapping weapons to his horse's saddle. He sighed.
Nothing to do with me. She's her own woman, and . . .
He could think of no reason why he should care, but every reason why he would.

“Piss, I'm not used to sleeping on the ground!” Nomi said. She stretched in the open, her lithe body twisting beneath her undergarments.

“No heavy mattresses for months,” Ramus said. “All these luxuries we forgo when we're on a voyage! Ramin was just bemoaning the lack of whores' breast milk in which to bathe. I'm just happy with hot food and ceyrat leaf tea.”

“You found ceyrat leaf?” Beko asked.

“Rhiana smelled a spread of it in the next field.” As he spoke the tall warrior approached, waving a handful of fresh yellow sprigs above her head.

“Then I'm with you!” Beko said. “A Voyager's luxuries are hard-won and well loved.” He grabbed a leather skin and jogged toward the farm to fetch water.

BEKO BROUGHT EGGS
and bread from the farm as well as the water, and while the ceyrat tea brewed, Lulah made breakfast. Ramus did not expect for a heartbeat that she would be a bad cook, and watching her work seemed to prove him right. She broke the eggs into a wide pan over the fire and whisked them with a frayed stick, adding a pinch of spice from a pouch she fetched from her saddle, stirring until the eggs were lumpy, yellow and delicious-looking. She put the pan to one side and shredded the bread into finger-sized chunks, then she pricked each portion onto a metal skewer and toasted them quickly over the fire. It took five minutes to cook, and she clapped the skewer against the pan to tell everyone breakfast was ready. She truly seemed a woman of few words, and that intrigued Ramus more and more.

The food tasted even better than it looked. He could not identify the spice she had sprinkled into the egg, but it gave it a much more textured flavor, with pockets of heat that seemed to explode individually all across his mouth.

By the time they'd finished eating, the ceyrat tea was ready, and Lulah poured each of them a mug. Ramus watched her as she stood over him and poured, and when she glanced at his face he smiled. She looked away quickly and moved on to Noon.

The brewed ceyrat leaves—a favorite of predators before the hunt—buzzed into their muscles and limbs and chased away any shred of sleep that remained. By the time they finished, the sun was pouring across the field. Long shadows from last night swayed in the opposite direction, and the light in between was brighter and fresher, and somehow more alive. Dawn breathed a heated promise of the day to come, and Ramus enjoyed the feel of it on his face.

They broke camp, packing tents and cooking equipment and leaving the bundles for Ramin and Noon to load onto the packhorses. The Serians worked efficiently and silently, and it was only when they were ready to move out that the banter began again.

Lowkie and his wife came to bid them farewell. The farmer's eyes were narrow and the skin around them dark, and Ramus smiled. Too much of his own wine.

“Stop by when you return!” he said. “The wine will be better settled by then, I'm sure.”

Nobody answered with anything other than a wave.
When we return,
Ramus thought.
How many of us will there be?
He blinked at the weight behind his eyes, but his vision today was good, the pain absent, and if he did not think too deeply, he could even believe that he would see this place again.

They rode out, Lulah and Ramin moving on ahead to make sure the trail was clear. Ramus and Nomi rode side by side, excited that the first full day of their voyage had begun, comfortable in each other's company and relishing the feel of sunlight and open air on their skin.

Ramus noticed the rope charm still hanging exposed on Nomi's saddle.

“A good camp,” he said. “I've not eaten so well in ages.”

“I always
think
I eat well,” Nomi said. “You know me—the best food, the best wine rooms. But there's something about food cooked outside, the fresh ingredients, the meat just killed, eggs just laid, the smells . . .”

“It's called having a wandering soul,” Ramus said.

Nomi uttered a sharp laugh. “That's us! Wandering souls.”

He had found his horse's rhythm much quicker this morning, and even before the Lowkie farmstead passed from view behind them, Ramus was riding with a smooth, fluid pace.

“Did you sleep well?” Nomi asked.

“I did. Fresh air. The excitement too, I think, knocked me out.”

“And the wine,” Nomi said.

Ramus nodded, but when he looked across Nomi seemed distant and concerned. “What is it?” he asked.

She stared into his eyes as though she had never seen them before. “Are you really scared?”

“Yes.” There was no reason to lie.

She lowered her voice. “But the Sleeping God . . . you don't
believe
in things like that.”

“Just because I choose not to worship them doesn't mean I don't believe. There's too much written about them to discard them entirely.”

“We'll be fine,” Nomi said, but she seemed distracted.

“What is it?”

“Bad dreams last night. Change of diet, maybe.”

Ramus went to say something but Nomi clucked her horse on, cantering forward until she was riding side by side with Beko.

Change of diet,
Ramus thought.
Or the map I made, the parchment Ten sold us, the place we're going, the thing we may be going to see. Yes, bad dreams are understandable.
He only hoped that this day would pass without his having another nightmare. He would do his best not to close his eyes for too long and allow one in.

SPRINGTIME IN MARRAKASH
was often quite warm, but today was more like summertime, the sun beating strongly against the subtle southern breeze, a combination that made the air light and sweet. Ramus stripped off his jacket and hung it from the saddle, and soon after, Ramin was the first of the Serians to take off his leather tunic. The others followed suit, and by mid-morning they were riding in their undershirts.

Ramus could already see an order developing amongst the riders. Ramin and Noon were obviously good friends. When they were not chatting, they rode in an easy silence, each of them guiding one of the packhorses with casual care. Ramus suspected that they had been chosen to lead the horses because they were closest to the animals, and some of their chat seemed to be directed to the horses as much as to anyone else. Though Ramin's appearance was intimidating, there was a gentleness about him that Ramus liked. It made him easy to talk to, and the big man's good humor was always infectious.