Moonscatter (22 page)

The sun rose higher, a normal sun this side of the Vachhorns. There were minarka working already on the lower terraces, loosening soil about the plants, pulling weeds, some few emptying bulbous waterbags into the small areas within the earthen-dams raised about each plant, hoarding the water with such care not a drop was wasted. The minarka looked up as Hern and Serroi passed, blinked dark eyes at them without much interest and even less welcome, then went back to their work. They were small and slender, even the men, with long limbs and short torsos, all shades of brown from deep amber to burnt honey, with darker brown hair and umber eyes. Both men and women wore short wrap-around skirts and sleeveless shirts tucked behind broad sashes wound round and round before they were knotted at the side. Some of the older men and women wore sandals of braided straw, many of the younger went barefoot.

Serroi began to envy them their cool clothing as she followed Hern lower and lower down the mountains, dropping into the dry heat of the Vale. The long narrow valley lay between two mountain ranges, getting little rain but enjoying a vastly extended growing season, its fertility a gift of riverMinar. The minarka on the terraces were most likely tending the third planting of the year.

As the track flattened, its nature changed. It broadened until it was cart-wide and the surface was no longer hard mud or stone but sun-baked brick painted with soft pastels like colored dust and set in patterns of delicate symmetry. Listening to macai claws clicking on the brick, Serroi rubbed her nose and contemplated Hern's back. The black tunic was hanging straighter. The fat was melting off his sturdy frame though he never stopped grumbling about the meagerness of trail rations. The pavement flowing past was neat as a house floor as if someone weeded around it and swept it every day. The verges bloomed with fall flowers or had miniature trees and mosses arranged in exquisite landscapes. Serroi stroked her lips, swallowing a chuckle (Hern was in no mood for laughter of any kind, especially that directed at him), wondering which he'd head for first once they reached Skupport—a brothel or a cookshop? The fields beyond the verges were enclosed in low stone walls, fieldstone carefully fitted together without the aid of mortar. She thought of riding beside him and coaxing him out of his sullens, then shook her head. Not yet. Within the walls the minarka farmed on three levels, fruit trees in neat rows, between them taller plants of various sorts strapped to strung wire supports, between these, ground-hugging plants—berries, tubers, bulbvines, root vegetables.
I wonder what he saw in the deadland's dust?
she thought for the hundredth time and for the hundredth time recoiled from the thought, exceedingly reluctant to remember her own visions, and wondered again, unable to leave the image alone. Whole families were working in their plots, from the tiniest who could barely toddle but who could carry away the debris of other minarks' work to ancients who moved with inching deliberation but handled the plants with great love and greater skill. When Hern came through the Viper's Gullet he looked subdued, withdrawn. Even when he splashed vigorously, noisily in the cold, clean water in the Cisterns, he kept some of that brooding melancholy. He came to her, clean and sleek and fed, seeking another kind of comfort—and was turned down hard (perhaps harder than she'd really intended; she was fighting her own ghosts and had nothing left for him but anger). All of the minarka, even the youngest, straightened as Serroi and Hern rode past and stared at them from dark, hating, hostile eyes. Once when she looked back, she saw young children industriously sweeping the bricks as if to brush away any sign or taint of the strangers' passage. Her anger fired Hern's. Their hard-won accord shattered about them and they flung unforgivable words at each other, yet they couldn't leave each other, there was no place to go, the land bound them to each other. The heat, natural here even this late in the year, was unbearable. She wiped at the sweat on her forehead and eased out of the blue wool jacket. She pulled loose the neckties of Beyl's shirt, sighing with pleasure as the gentlest of breezes caressed her sweaty skin.
Just as well I'm not wearing the leathers
, she thought.
They'd rot right off me
.

The road dipped slightly, went round a clump of olivine weepers and turned onto a wooden bridge, a single humped curve with a lovely arch and side rails of bent and molded watercane. Serroi exclaimed with pleasure. Hern looked back for the first time since they'd started down the mountain, raised his brows, then urged his macai onto the bridge.

Serroi stopped at the top of the arch. A comparatively cool breeze was drifting along with the water. She drew her sleeve across her face, looked at the brown stain on the fine white cloth with distaste, looked at the blue-green water and sighed, started on after Hern.

He was waiting for her in the shade of a clump of watercane. With a flip of a hand at the sun, he said, “Time to eat.”

Again suppressing a smile, Serroi nodded, slid out of the saddle and stood bending her knees and kicking briskly to work some of the stiffness out of her legs, gazing thoughtfully at the bridge and the river. “Be better to get out of sight; those minarka back there weren't exactly friendly.” Without waiting for an answer she led her macai around the reeds and along the riverbank.

A tree grew out of the water, some of its roots clinging to the gently sloping bank, the dirt washed away from the others, a weeper with dark yellow-grey-green leaves like flat teardrops on fawn and saffron withes that hung to the water, ticking at the surface, dancing and swaying with the wind. Serroi led her macai to the water beside this tree. As the beast drank, she pulled off her boots, rolled up her trousers (dark blue wool, Braddon's gift), dug into her saddlebags for the nourishing but monotonous trail bars (nuts, dried fruits, honey) and the tough strips of jerky. Dropping Hern's share into a shallow pannikin, she set it down on the grass and took her own food to the tree, where she straddled a root and dangled her feet in the eddies teasing at the other roots. She ate slowly, relaxed except for a niggling little itch that continued to plague her, a warning of some danger to come or simply her own reaction to the near stifling hostility that filled the Vale.

Once his mount was drinking Hern stripped off his tunic, tossed it down beside the pannikin. He dumped the bars and jerky on the tunic and used the pannikin to dip water from the river which he dumped over his head and torso. With a sigh of relief he settled on a patch of grass, pulled off his boots and inspected his feet. The abraded places were still faintly pink but had healed without sign of infection. The blisters were redder but they too were healing. He wiggled his toes and looked at the water, then at Serroi. Grunting with the effort it took to bend that far, he rolled his trousers above his knees, scooped up his food and came over to the tree. He found a stouter root, settled with his back against the trunk, his feet in the water. His eyelids came down sleepily over his pale eyes as he contemplated her a moment, then he looked down at what he held in his hand and grimaced. He began eating, chewing slowly as if he wanted to make the meager meal last as long as possible. Except for several considering glances, he didn't acknowledge her presence.

Serroi brushed her hands off, bent precariously and dipped first one hand then the other into the water, swishing them about, straightened, slanting a glance at Hern, daring him to match her acrobatics. Smiling, she wiped her hands dry on her trousers, kicked her feet gently in the water. “Sulky little baby boy,” she murmured, her voice a whisper just loud enough for him to hear.

He chewed steadily, his eyes on the swaying withes. In his face or body there was no sign he heard her.

“The meie's always right. You said it.”

He brushed the sticky crumbs from his hands, but he made no attempt to reach the water. Lacing his fingers behind his head, he stared dreamily at the river and the withe tips, at the ever changing shadows breaking and reforming on the water.

“Hern, I don't know what you saw in the dust.” He stiffened as if she'd flicked him with a whip. “I can only hope your ghosts weren't as … as troubling as mine.” It was an indirect apology for the things she'd said to him at the Cisterns. If she had to, she'd say the words; for her own pride's sake, she'd rather not. If he made her say them, it would be deliberate; she had (she hoped) stopped underestimating his intelligence and sensitivity.

He folded his hands over his shrinking paunch. “You've got a nasty tongue when you turn it loose.”

“You're no gentle soul yourself, Dom.”

“It'll probably happen again, cutting at each other like that.”

“Probably.” She kicked her foot up, watched the crystal drops fall back. “I've always felt that grudges were a profitless waste of time and energy.”

Hern smiled. “I'm a lazy man, meie.”

Feeling absurdly buoyant, she balanced on her root and grinned at him. “As long as we know.”

“Uh-huh.” He glanced up at the fragments of sun visible through the leaves. “Hate to say it, but we better get moving if we want to reach Skup by sundown.”

They rode through a silent land, the laughter and high-pitched gabbling of the minarka dying away as soon as the strangers were spotted. Hern's face grew slowly grimmer as he took in what she'd sensed so strongly before. “They'd make a fine mob,” he said finally. “Better than that bunch in Sadnaji.”

“They've had more experience with Assurtilas as a neighbor. We should be safe enough as long as we stay on the road and don't bother them.”

“I would like to depend on that.”

“They're used to Sleykynin riding through the Vale, going from Assurtilas to the Mijloc; they've learned to leave them alone if they stick to the road.”

“Good for them. But we're not Sleykyn.”

“The habit should hold.”

“Habit.” He snorted, then looked about. “I haven't seen any houses.”

“They live in walled villages.” Serroi wiped at her face. “Maiden bless, it's hot. Villages built on the least fertile ground, of course.”

“Walled?”

“Sleykyn raids. When they don't keep to the road.”

They crossed the river twice more as its wide bends swept it away and back, then away again. Not long after the second bridge, when the sun was perching on the points of the Vachhorns, the road widened and the plantings ceased. Herds of hauhaus and rambuts—cream-colored hooved beasts with crimson strips running vertically along their barrel bodies—grazed on the grassy pasturage that lay before the high blue walls of Skup. Straight ahead of them, on the far side of a broad moat, two high square towers flanked the gates of Skup. The outer gate was higher than two houses and made of ironwood planks, a wood so dense it weighed as much as the metal it was named for. Behind the ironwood gates, black iron gates stood open. Only closed in wartime, they were oiled daily and moved a little on their hinges. The minarka took no chances. Skup had never fallen, not even when the Mad Prime of Assurtilas two centuries before had assembled a Sleykyn army and burned the rest of the Vale to dust and ashes. Serroi saw with relief that the outer gates were still open. She glanced at Hern. He was scanning the walls, his eyes narrowed, a measuring intentness in his face. “Dom.”

“Mmmmh. You know who built those walls? When this is over.…”

Serroi pulled her mount to a slow shuffle and waited for him to match his speed to hers. “Do you speak the sulMinar?”

“No. Why should I? There was.…”

“No need before.” She tilted her head, ran her eyes over him, grinned when she finished. “Probably just as well you don't.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“That you're less likely to get us skinned.”

Hern looked pained. “Viper.”

“O mighty one.”

“Crawl for them?”

“Want to spend the night with the hauhaus?”

“Not especially.”

“Thing to remember is that most of the minarks in the High Palaces …” She nodded at the villas on the higher terraces partly visible above the walls, catching the colors of the sunset in their glittering sides. “They're getting madder by the moment, apt to act on whatever thought flits through their crazy heads. Which can be very dangerous to the hapless passerby. We'll have to hope we can avoid being noticed, that's the safest way through Skup.”

“Why not go around?”

“Can't. The walls go into the sea, faced with tiles like those.” She flicked a hand at the blue walls (turning purple now as they sucked in red light from the sunset). “Too slippery to climb and too high to jump.” She rubbed at her eyes, patted a yawn. “Maiden bless, I'm tired. That's the only gate. Let me do the talking.”

His brows lifted, then he said amiably, “Viper.”

Serroi patted her macai's neck. “Poor man, his brain's rotting. That's all he can say now.”

“If I answer that, we will be here till morning.” He looked around at the herd of blocky hauhaus grazing close by. “I can think of pleasanter bedmates.” He kneed his beast into a faster walk, his brows rising again as he took in the guard strolling to the center of the gate.

The minark wore elaborately chased and gilded plating. Three tall white plumes swayed above a gilded helmet whose outer surface was molded into spikes that glistened in the light from the setting sun. His long thin legs were uncovered from mid-thigh to ankle, his feet thrust into gilded sandals. He stood waiting for them to come across the drawbridge, leaning on the pole of a halberd whose head shimmered like silver above the sway of the plumes. Hern's eyes narrowed.

“Watch it, Dom,” Serroi whispered.

“Stop nagging at me, meie, you're worse than Floarin in a bitchy mood.” Reason prevailed over irritation so he kept his voice low, though he scowled at her.

“I like my skin, Dom, even if it is green. I want to keep it right where it is, wrapped around my bones.” She sniffed, then lifted her head, her eyes twinkling, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Relax, man, and remember you're no longer Domnor of Oras and the Plains. Here, now, you're a beggar. No, less than a beggar. If it helps, so am I.”