Foul Tide's Turning (27 page)

‘The Nijumet will make us climb down the heights to the steppes,’ said Dolki, bemoaning their fate under the netting as they rested. ‘They will have left a boy in a ravine to guard their horses. They will strap us across their saddles and ride into the plains. We will be lost to the world!’

‘Your soldiers never pursue the raiders?’ asked Cassandra.

‘Not far. Nobody crosses the steppes but the riders of the Nijumeti,’ cried Dolki. ‘Not even the guilds. The Guild of Rails tried to build a line along the coast centuries ago, but their trains were attacked and the rails torn up for blade metal. The radiomen keep no stations there. You will find no librarians’ holds across any of the hills of the Arak-natikh. Trading caravans bypass its shores by taking ferries along the ocean or travelling overland far to the east. Once we are taken there, we are lost. I will never see my father and mother again. If I should ever meet my sisters, I will feel only sorrow, for they will have been snatched by the hordes too.’ Dolki brushed her ears and then yelled in fright as she realized someone was blowing softly against her lobes.

Alexamir rolled off a boulder behind them, roaring with laughter. ‘I thought you Rodalians worshipped the gusting wind. Do you not regard me as a god now?’

Dolki muttered something in her own language and shrank away from him.

‘What, not even a small god? Joni the Trickster, perhaps? I have always felt a powerful affinity for Joni. I have a taste for shenanigans and guile that would make even the trickster blush.’

‘How can anyone tell when you blush, you blue-skinned savage?’ spat Cassandra.

‘I grow a horse’s tail and it swishes coyly behind my arse,’ said Alexamir. He patted the front of his trousers, fondly. ‘Or is that something else that swishes down there, I never can remember.’

‘It is so small you must lose it constantly.’

‘You are a tiny creature, golden fox. That thought must cheer you somewhat, even though it is wrong.’ He reached down and scooped her up as easily as his knapsack, tossing her over his back and howling with laughter as she struggled like a fish in an angler’s net. Alexamir strolled across the heights for a few minutes before he swung Cassandra down off his shoulder and slid her body along the frost-covered granite. ‘I am only sorry that you cannot see the steppes from here. We are still many weeks from the cliff-edge. Why anyone should want to live in this high, rocky storm-maze when the steppes lay beyond is a mystery beyond even the understanding of our witch riders and sorcerers.’

‘Perhaps the Rodalians prefer the company here,’ said Cassandra, struggling along the rock. ‘Even among barbarians, I can tell that your kind is benighted.’

‘Ha, to be Nijumeti is to be blessed by the Goddess. When the greatest warriors of Pellas die, they are rewarded by having their essence poured into the flesh of Nijumeti babes. When warriors’ champions die, their souls flow into our horses’ foals. That is why we have never been conquered. That is why there is nothing freer than a Nijumet.’

‘You confuse having a quarrelsome nature with nobility.’

‘Well, we even have nobility this season. Our clan is pledged to follow a king, now. A lord of clans called Tragmass. I do not think I like kings. The Weylanders call their nobility blue blooded … but all Nijumeti bleed blue. No, even a great horse king is a king too much for the Clan Stanim. But I am not yet lord, and so my words do not bear the true weight of my extraordinary wisdom.’

‘Then you should cut me loose, for I am the granddaughter of an emperor. If the ancestors smile upon my house’s strategy, my mother will be empress one day. And even kings must bow before an empress.’

He growled with amusement and sat alongside her. ‘My land is too big for kings or emperors. They are too quick to develop a taste for taxes over a raider’s honest spoils. You should never steal from your own people, only others, or however will you take your fun? And taxes can only be paid by tying yourself to the land and making the dirt your master. What man should be slave to another? What man should be kept by the dirt, rather than keep the dirt for his cattle and his horses as he wanders?’

‘Said the nomad stealing a woman for a slave.’

‘Stealing? To be a thief is a
high
calling. Kingship is the whore’s trade. Those who call themselves kings will sooner or later demand you invade some country or another and trick you into believing their ambitions are your own. When you want to steal a fleece, it is best to leave the sheep alive to grow a fresh coat for the following year. Even the most stupid goat rustler knows that. Kings usually fail this test at the first hurdle.’

‘I will never be your slave.’

‘You misunderstand your position – you will not. I shall elevate you, golden fox. You were born a mangy royal in some ugly far-called land. But you will die a Nijumet wife with many fine healthy Nijumeti children around your tent weeping for your passing. You may thank me later. In fact, I will probably insist upon it.’ He leant across and pressed his lips to hers. Despite Cassandra’s best intentions, she felt her heart racing. His skin might look like he had expired of cold in the night, but his kiss was hot and passionate. In a certain light – one that didn’t make him look like he was dying of hypothermia – he might even have been considered handsome, in a ridiculously blocky kind of way. ‘There,’ grinned the young nomad. ‘I have stolen a kiss from you.’

‘Lay me down on the rock,’ said Cassandra, ‘let us see what else my sly blue thief can steal.’

‘Ah, you see, these charms rarely fail me. Please me eagerly and I will venture out in search of new wives only occasionally.’

‘Only
occasionally
? Truly my ancestors have blessed me,’ teased Cassandra.

‘Many wives make light work for the camp. Does your nation not have this saying? But you do not need to fear you will go unattended in later years. I could tup twelve women a night and not think it too much. I may be young, but already I am a legend among my people. I strangled a lion in the long-grass when I was twelve. When I was thirteen, we were attacked by the Clan Menin and I cut down twelve riders fighting on foot. My stallion Astultan was probably one of your emperors in his last life, for he can gallop for two weeks and sleep while we travel.’

‘Cut the ties behind my back so I may use my hands properly.’

‘Is this the face of a fool?’

‘One lives in hope.’

Alexamir jumped to his feet and drew a long sword from the scabbard on his back and held it out before him, glinting in the high clear sunlight. ‘This is what I cut with. Have you ever seen the like of it before?’

Cassandra had to admit, she hadn’t. The cobalt metal of the slightly curved sabre seemed to shimmer the same shade as the nomad’s skin, and the shining blade was etched in a script she did not recognize. Its hilt looked like a ridged white spine-bone.

‘I was riding among the hilltops when a snake leapt at Astultan. He reared to crush it. I was thrown off and fell not into the grass but through the roof of a burial mound. This sword was there, as bright and new as the day it came from the forge. The bones of the warrior below must have been eight foot tall – a giant from the ancient times.’

‘It’s an interesting blade.’

‘
Interesting
? It shakes in my hand when my anger grows, almost humming. I think the soul of the warrior it was buried with lies in the blade, and shakes with envy when it sees how well I fight. Yes, it is envious of the glorious life that stretches out before Alexamir, the lord of thieves.’ He slid it back into his scabbard and winked at Cassandra. ‘If there is a luckier woman than you in Pellas, I would not care to throw dice against her, for she would sweep the stakes on every game.’

‘I have been trained as a thief too,’ said Cassandra, laying her back against the hard surface. She raised her legs and wrapped them around the nomad’s ribs, caressing him as his weight slid down towards the granite. ‘From almost the moment I could first walk.’

‘I thought as much. The skyguard of the mountain people are soft and do not imprison people lightly, preferring banishment. What can you steal from me, my little golden fox, apart from my heart?’

‘Your weight and your strength,’ said Cassandra, twisting and converting his momentum, throwing the descending brute’s weight against the boulder to her side. His skull cracked against the stone and he tumbled down to the rock moaning but still conscious. ‘There was a reason my previous captors kept my feet chained, Alexamir.’ She stood up and lashed out with her boot, catching the nomad in the side of his cheek with a crunching sound. Now he was rendered properly unconscious. ‘Four gask guards with broken ribs, you overfed blueberry.’

Cassandra heard pebbles dislodged behind her and ducked just as a blade so curved it was almost a scythe cut through where she had been standing. Nurai, the cursed witch rider.

‘Why my dreams led me to you, wide eyes, I will never know,’ growled the woman, circling Cassandra. She knew what Nurai saw. A soft foreign noblewoman with her hands still bound behind her back, a quarter of the weight of the muscled nomad.

‘Well, a Vandian is surely your people’s best hope of improving your bloodline,’ said Cassandra. ‘But on balance, I think you can keep that one for yourself. Did you come sneaking here to watch us? To see what a Vandian woman has to offer that you do not?’

‘I’ll leave Alexamir your entrails for a belt!’ Nurai lashed out at Cassandra, but the Vandian had already stepped to the side and brought her boot down on the woman’s knee, shattering the bone. Nurai crumpled to the mountaintop, yelling in fury.

‘You’re about four times stronger than a Vandian,’ said Cassandra. ‘But you strike at the same speed as my people. And whatever blue piss-water you’re pumping for blood, your bones are no harder than mine. Let’s make this a fair fight, shall we … you can tie my legs together and I’ll hop around you.’

Nurai roared at being so mocked. She came in faster than she should with only one working knee, her knife curving in low for a proper gutting, bellybutton to throat. Someone had at least taught the nomad how to do that correctly. But only if the blade connected. Cassandra threw herself down, sliding across the frost-driven rock, kicking Nurai’s boots out from under her and rolling back to her feet in time to add a leg behind her spine and speed the witch rider’s impact with the ground. Nurai’s knife slid away towards the unconscious raider, but Cassandra stamped down and broke most of the fingers in the nomad woman’s right hand to be certain.

‘You’ll be mixing potions with your left hand for a while, witch.’

Nurai was trying to struggle to her feet when Cassandra heard screams from the direction of the camp. It sounded like Dolki and her friends panicking. The thought that the other Nijumeti were claiming their wives before they reached the steppes vanished as an aircraft burst out of the slopes, roaring into the sky above, its wing guns smoking. Not much of a fighter aircraft at all. A small triangular flying wing with a single rear-mounted propeller, a combustion engine burping corn oil as it weaved through the air. She caught a glimpse of one of the horses bolting away, terrified, the nomads leaping and fleeing, shards of rock erupting into the air under a fusillade. There was an explosion behind Cassandra, but it was no bomb launched from the aircraft. Green smoke drifted with the stench of a child’s stink bomb bought from market. As the wind from the heights shredded the mist she realized there was no sign of Nurai or Alexamir. Cassandra grunted.
Smoke cover. Not much of a witch, either.
But Dolki had been proved right about the nomads’ capacity for pain. A Vandian would have been laid up for months with that shattered kneecap, absolutely unable to scamper away carrying a monstrous brute like Alexamir across her back.

‘Well, that was a thankfully brief engagement.’

The witch rider’s knife had been scooped up too, so Cassandra wouldn’t be using that to free her hands. She sprinted back towards the camp.
If I can get to the remaining horse …
She turned the boulder. The camp was devoid of nomads apart from a couple of bleeding corpses left across the hard ground, and while a horse was still tied up, there were others inside the camp. Sheplar Lesh, Kerge, men in Rodalian aviator’s uniforms and the old postal courier from the caravan halt, Dolki in his arms crying. He had lost a yak but regained a princess, it seemed – his daughter. Cassandra felt a sad stab of regret that she would never have a similar reunion with her father. Not until she slept with her ancestors, at any rate. A couple of flying wings had touched down on the flat ground ahead while two more circled in the sky above. Cassandra tried to back away but Sheplar came sprinting over the second he saw her, a pistol clutched in his hand.

‘Tracking men over granite is never easy,’ said Cassandra, grudgingly. ‘Those savages underestimated me and I have made the same error with you.’

‘Easier from the air. Hunting border reivers is bread and water to the skyguard of Rodal,’ said Sheplar.

Cassandra scowled at Sheplar Lesh, a grudging newfound respect for the Rodalian clown. ‘And you came after me.’

‘You are under my protection as well as in my custody,’ said Sheplar. ‘My honour would never permit me otherwise.’

‘I would have allowed the nomads to carry me away and make my presence here the clans’ problem.’

‘Then there stands the difference between your people and mine.’

‘You are a fool, Sheplar Lesh,’ said Cassandra. ‘But a brave one. I must give you that.’

‘Not so big a fool as the Nijumeti,’ said Sheplar, holding up a pair of manacles. He tossed them across to her and gestured at them with his pistol. ‘Lock them around your ankles. I would hate to have you run away and slip down a ravine.’

She sighed and did as he had ordered. ‘You owe me a husband, I think.’

‘And you owe me a life, bumo.’

‘I’ll relinquish your debt if you relinquish mine.’

Sheplar grinned with weary resignation and indicated the two empty cockpits of the nearest plane. ‘And how then could you afford to pay me to fly you to Hadra-Hareer?’

So, my trade stays the same. For the moment
. Maybe she would have been better off being carried away to the steppes by the nomads after all.