Karavans (22 page)

Knees nearly touched as they rode side by side. Rhuan knew if he drew away, Darmuth would simply follow. “You’re the demon,” he retorted. “You should know.”

Darmuth inhaled a melodramatically noisy breath, then released it on a rapturous sigh. “Oh, I do so love that smell. Brimstone commingled with flesh. With blood for gravy.” He nodded, eyes closed, then looked intently at Rhuan. “Would you consider cutting off a toe for me tonight? It would be a kindness for a hungry demon.”

Rhuan stared at him. “You want to eat my
toe
?”

“You have ten of them. You can afford to spare me one.”

“I’m not giving you a toe!”

“If you’re squeamish, I could do it myself.”

“I’m not cutting off a toe, and
you’re
not cutting off a toe.” He paused. “Unless it’s your own.”

“No, no, we don’t eat of our own bodies. That would be
self-cannibalization. We may dine on others of our kind, but not ourselves.” Darmuth’s tone was bemused. “I’ve been saving you against starvation, should the need ever arise. It would be easy enough. I could kill you, then decapitate and quarter you before you resurrected. Surely there would be enough of you to last quite some time.” Pupils slitted again. “The arms and legs might be a bit tough because of the muscling. But there is no bone in the abdomen, and the organs nestling there are undoubtedly sweet.”

All manner of distressing images tumbled through Rhuan’s mind, as no doubt Darmuth intended. In reflex he put more distance between their knees and mounts. When he could sort out his thoughts again, he managed a small victory by keeping his tone light. “I suppose that would depend on whether you kept human form or took on your own.”

“That is true.” Darmuth considered it. “You wouldn’t make so much of a meal if I were in demon-form. I should have to keep this form.” He eyed Rhuan assessively, then grinned at his expression. “But not yet.”

Rhuan used a trace of Brodi’s habitual irony. “I do thank you for that.”

“So, Ferize forced the renewal of the blood-bond.”

Memory kindled into annoyance. “She did.”

“It would make life more comfortable if you and Brodhi buried the knife. It makes no sense for you to bicker so much.”

“It makes perfect sense for us to bicker so much,” Rhuan retorted. “We’re
dioscuri.
Worse, our sires are brothers.” “But you are here together on the same journey—” “We are
not
here together on the same journey,” Rhuan snapped, cutting him off. “Our destinations are incalculably different.”

“The ending of the journey, yes, should you both achieve your intentions. But not the beginning. And surely not while the journey is yet unfinished.”

Rhuan twisted his mouth. “I hold no enmity toward Brodhi. He is free to choose his future any way he pleases.

But he would do better not to view
my
choice with such derision.”

“Well,” Darmuth said reflectively, “it is somewhat of a character flaw, to be so stubborn.”

“And arrogant,” Rhuan added.

“And arrogant, yes.”

“And unforgiving.”

“That, too.”

“Rude.”

“Yes.”

“In fact, I believe I would run out of fingers and toes were I to count up the merest portion of Brodhi’s character flaws.”

Darmuth brightened. “Well, if your fingers and toes are so inadequate to the task, perhaps you could spare one for me. The smallest toe, only, I hasten to add …it doesn’t really do much, after all.”

Inside his boots, Rhuan’s toes curled. With effort he straightened them. “The last time I looked,” he said pointedly, “Jorda had seen to it we have plenty of food supplies for all.”

“Human food, yes.”

“In human form, one eats human food. Even you.”

“I’d rather eat humans than human food.”

“No eating!” Rhuan declared. “Not of my toes, and not of various portions of a human body!”

“Easy for you to say,” Darmuth retorted. “You’re not the one trying to fend off hunger an hour after eating.”

“Keep fending,” Rhuan suggested, and kicked his horse into a lope.

O
VER FIVE LONG days, Audrun had grown used to the karavan’s song, the constant creaking of wheels, the subtle tympani of kettles and pots clanking against one another, the crack of oilcloth in strong wind. But now, as she walked beside the wagon beneath the midday sun, the sound of hoofbeats coming from behind caught her attention.

Her first thought was for her children, all of whom had spread out, making their own individual paths next to the dust-clouded karavan road of twinned wheel ruts cutting through turf grass and sod. Ellica and Gillan were on the other side of the wagon and old enough to tend themselves, but the small ones weren’t; she turned, calling their names, and stretched out arms and spread-fingered hands to gather in Torvic and Megritte.

They came, if laggardly, scarves dropped and faces already dirty. By the time Audrun had them safely in tow close to the wagon, the rider was abreast of them. The guide, she saw; and then remembered he had ridden down the other side of the karavan some time before. He flicked a glance at the wagon with Davyn atop the seat.

Audrun pulled down the dust-scarf from her face and asked sharply, “Are we too slow?”

“No. No, you do well enough.” A graceful gesture dismissed
her concern. “There may come a time, as I told you, when you must press the beasts to move more quickly, but not today. They’ve done well.”

Torvic and Megritte were trying to free their hands from her grasp. Admonishing them to stay out of the guide’s way and to pull up their face cloths, Audrun let them go, then turned her attention back to him. “And if they can go no faster?” She nodded her head toward the oxen. “They have had a hard journey from our farmstead.”

He studied the oxen. She knew what he saw; knew what
she
saw, suddenly, that she had not paid attention to for some time, being taken up with her children and the demands of travel. Taut flesh, the suggestion of jutting hipbones, coats without the glossy bloom of good health.

Alarm registered.
He will say we must stop. He will tell the master.
She opened her mouth to beg him not to do so, but clamped it shut again. She had fought her battle with the karavan-master with an understanding of the truths of karavan travel and stubborn insistence. She would not weaken her argument by begging now.

With an experienced eye the guide measured the distance between their wagon and the one before them, the one with its rich crimson oilcloth drawn over curving ribs, and the one before that conveyance. Judging their pace.

Audrun could no longer hold her tongue. She was in possession of yet another truth and no lessening of stubborn insistence. “I do understand you would have had us wait a season. But your female diviner gave us leave to come. You told us to trust her. Surely
she
would have seen in our hands if the oxen could not make it, yes?”

Amusement flickered across his face. “Very likely,” he agreed. “When you unhitch them for the night, lead them some distance away from the wagons, and wait.”

That was baffling. “Why?”

“I will have a word with them.”

She blinked in startlement. A word with oxen? “But taking them away puts them in danger from predators.”

He grinned. “Not so far as to risk them. But it wouldn’t be wise to let everyone in the karavan see what I do, or I
will spend all of my days and nights tending everyone’s livestock instead of performing my own duties.”

That made sense, though Audrun still could not imagine how he could make the oxen move faster. “What will you do to them?”

“I told you. Have a word.”

It was perplexing, she thought, but also rude. Audrun stretched out a hand to indicate her youngest children running ahead. “I can’t ‘have a word’ with my own children and be certain they will obey. How can you expect
oxen
to obey?”

“Oxen are somewhat more malleable than children.”

She awaited additional explanation, a
real
explanation, but none came. She gave up in exasperation. “Very well. I will have Gillan take them out a little distance, and wait.”

He gave her such a smile as to carve deep dimples into his face. “We will get you safely to your turn-off, that I promise.”

And she believed him. Merely by looking into his eyes, by hearing the warm certainty in his tone, she believed him. Was certain of him. She found herself wishing he would do more than that, in fact, wishing he would turn onto the shortcut
with
them, to be certain they would arrive safely at their destination in Atalanda—

Suspicion kindled. Audrun forcibly stopped that line of thought and frowned up at him. “Did you just ‘have a word’ with me?”

The guide laughed, assumed an expression of supreme innocence, then saluted her and rode on, making his way along the winding column of trundling wagons.

After a moment, Audrun pulled the scarf up over nose and mouth, debating inwardly with herself whether she, in the company of the Shoia, was more malleable, or less, than beasts such as oxen.

“I do hope less,” she murmured dryly into cloth.

ILONA, LOST IN reverie as her wagon bumped along the track, caught the movement from the corner
of her left eye. Her senses did not fail her; she knew who it was before she saw him clearly, coming up from behind. And she intended to seize the opportunity. “Rhuan!”

He had been prepared to ride past her, clearly bent on reaching the head of the column. Now he reined in and brought his mount close to her wagon.

She fixed him with a stern gaze. “If I promise not to read it while doing so, will you permit me to look at your hand?”

He was mystified. “Look at my hand?”

She held up her own, palm out. “Your hand.” As he continued to stare at her blankly, she adopted the deliberate clarity of speech people used with simpletons and small children. “The one the woman cut into. Remember?”

Blankness transformed into startlement. “What did you see?”

“I saw the sun flash on the knife, and I saw her make the cut.” Ilona folded her raised hand into an admonishing finger, poking it at him. “And
don’t
do me the discourtesy of saying I am mistaken. You’ve been avoiding me, I think. But it’s been five days. Past time that hand was tended, before it rots.”

He raised his brows. “What makes you think I would say you are mistaken?”

“Because you have before. But I saw you
dead
, remember? And then alive again, despite being strangled and stabbed and not breathing.”

His grin was easy, posture relaxed. “Depending on the circumstances, I suppose I have.” He raised his hand and displayed the palm. “But I need no tending, as you can see.

No rot.”

Ilona steadied herself over a rut in the road, then stared at his palm. There was no sign of a cut. Not even a scar. She scowled. “Other hand.”

He changed hands on reins and displayed that one to her. She stared hard at healthy, unmarked flesh, searching for some hint of injury.

Rhuan abruptly made a fist and snatched his hand close to his chest. “No fair trying to read it.”

“I’m not.” She frowned at him. “Am I to assume, then, that whatever allows you to come back to life, if only six times, also heals such things as knife cuts?”

He grinned. “You may.”

“And I should also assume that you have no intention of explaining
why
I saw what I saw?”

Rhuan merely continued to smile at her. Ilona gave up with a sigh. “More secrets.”

“Oh, I am full of them.”

“You,” she said, “are being insufferably male.” She waved a hand at him. “Go on, then. Take your secrets elsewhere.”

Rhuan laughed at her, then set his horse into a lope that would carry him to the front of the karavan.

EVENING HAD COME upon them. The karavanmaster, as he did each day, called a halt to travel as the light bled out of the sky, and the line of wagons was turned off of the road so as not to block other parties coming through. Audrun was grateful to stop for the night; her back was aching. And Davyn had apparently noticed, because he put out their sleeping mat and blankets beside the wagon, then guided her to it.