No Present Like Time (25 page)

The man fighting me turned and ran. I looked to Mist; she was shaking, white hands wrapped around her hilt and an expression of disbelief on her face. Blood peeled off the blade’s razor edge. Her adversary lay on the ground in two pieces. For one beat, blood pumped out slickly around his solid guts. His lips moved, then set.

“Shit,” I said. “It went straight through him!” I hadn’t seen before what a blade designed for cleaving Insects could do to a human.

Mist said nothing, trying to think her way out of the horror.

Gio spun on the ball of his foot and lunged at Lightning. Lightning missed his parry but instinctively turned away from the point. It ripped through the left side of his shirt at the waist and into his back.

Gio whipped out the black blade, thirty centimeters slick with blood.

Lightning fell to his knees, heavily. Gio turned to Wrenn.

The Zascai stopped and looked at Lightning. He lay on his side with his body arched, knees bent, his wounded side raised from the ground. His eyes clenched shut with agony; he drew deep breaths through his open mouth.

The thugs shrank back, their broadswords loose in their hands. Gio’s charisma had worn off and they were themselves again, every terrified individual. I shouted, “See what you’ve done? Killed the Archer!” I made no attempt to hide the panic in my voice. “
Lord
Micawater. The oldest man in the world after the Emperor himself! Put your weapons
down
!”

Their blades dropped to the earth. They turned tail and fled, in ones and twos, every direction into the forest. I yelled after them, “San will bring you to justice! I’ll see you all hang!”

Gio and Wrenn were still dueling to kill fifty meters away. Gio forced Wrenn to retreat against a broad oak trunk; he was in danger of tripping over its roots. The last of Gio’s allies raced past. A look passed between them—the terrified man urged Gio to run. Gio glanced back, realized his friends had split and his chance had gone. He jumped out of Wrenn’s reach, shouted something I couldn’t catch, then disappeared between the trees.

“What did he say?” said Wrenn. “Jant, chase him!”

“No such thing—look at Lightning!”

“Hurry!” Mist snapped. “Help me with Saker! Saker, you’re going to be all right.”

Lightning’s square face was pallid as clay; sweat broke out on his forehead. His body was rigid. “Leave me alone,” he said faintly. He tried to fend me off and pull himself into a sitting position, so Wrenn and I supported him, me on the left and Wrenn on the right, and eased him against a tree trunk. We propped him upright and I rucked up his shirt to see the damage.

The rapier had passed through the forearm of his left wing, between its two long bones; radius and ulna, and then out and through the wing’s bicep before gouging deep into his side. So his folded wing had been stuck through twice, leaving two entrance holes and two exit holes, but it had protected his side from receiving the length of the blade.

Lightning tried to spread his wing but couldn’t. “It’s only a scratch,” he said, vaguely and inaccurately. I took its wrist, held together its three elongated fingers and pulled it open with a grating sound deep within the lacerated gristle. Blood flowed in strong pulses from the upper limb and soaked it. Normally broad with splayed feathers like a hawk, it looked thin with the wet golden plumage plastered down to the skin.

“Water. Hot water.” I rounded on Wrenn. “You can do that, can’t you?”

Wrenn fetched a canteen from the fire Ata had built and began to pour water through Lightning’s wing. I whispered, “He can live without a pinion. The stab in his side’s more serious. Here, cut away the shirt.”

Lightning tried to tug his wing out of my hand. He would rather die of blood loss than be in such an improper position. “I’m sorry, Saker,” I said aloud. “We have to treat it.”

We mopped away the blood on his back, leaving a red-brown map of his skin’s tiny pores and lines. The skin around the puncture hole was spongy and inflamed. Lightning was growing too confused to be rid of our administrations. “Better luck next time,” he said to Wrenn, then rested his head on his knees. “Ah…it
bloody
…hurts.”

I applied my tourniquet to his wing for a minute while I cut strips from his shirt to make a field dressing. It was impossible to tell how deep the wound was. I saw that it was more than four centimeters, but I had been taught not to probe them. I couldn’t do anything about internal bleeding. I couldn’t prevent infection; I didn’t have sutures, nothing even as basic as a mold plaster or a clean bandage. Lightning looked so weak that all I felt was shame. I had never seen him like this before, and I should never have to. It wasn’t the right way around: as at Slake Cross, I should be the injured one and Lightning should be helping me. He’s the second-oldest Eszai, the richest immortal. He is the center of Awia; he taught me its language, etiquette, martial arts. His money drip-feeds Wrought. What will happen without him? “My god, what are we going to do?”

Mist said, “Finish the job.”

Wrenn said meekly, “How can I help?”

I yelled, “Look after your own sorry hide! Gio had a system for fighting two men that you didn’t know!”

Mist spat, “Shira, keep working. Wrenn, then go and fetch the horses.”

Wrenn plunged about in the forest, falling over, cracking branches and making an awful noise. When he returned holding the reins of our three mounts Mist took two from him and left him with his palfrey. “Ride back to the Culver Inn, find our coach and summon the driver. I’ll build the fire up so you can see where we are.”

The Swordsman was only capable of a canter rather than a gallop; he led his horse to the road and we heard its hooves resound loud in the night then steadily fade. Mist said, “I wish you weren’t tripping so hard.”

“Ha! I saved you.”

She looked surprised. “Well, a second later I saved
you
! That man I cut apart, he…Oh, forget it…”

A quick fix would steady me and help me think clearly. Or I could take my whole supply; unconsciousness was very appealing. I pushed the inappropriate thought away and said, “He can’t reach the Castle. In fact, I don’t want him to lie in a coach even as far as Eske.”

Lightning forced himself to recover a little. Calmly but muzzily he said, “San needs us. I’ll be there. Gio broke my bow…Pass me my bow; I want it.” He was blanking out the pain, which I admired because I have tried to do that more than once and failed. “I
hate
rapiers. A
murderer’s
sword. Worse than…”

“You haven’t been hurt before in my memory,” said Mist.

“Long ago.” Lightning sighed.

“There’s something I can give you,” I offered, gesturing for Mist to fetch the splintered longbow and my pack. “Everything will look a little strange for a while but you’ll be too relaxed to care. Don’t worry and let yourself—”

Lightning seized my hand and clenched it so tightly I winced. “No drugs. Promise?”

He spoke with such certainty that I nodded. “I promise.”

He huffed in great breaths, chest heaving like the sides of a tent in a gale. Then he lay down carefully and in a couple of gasps was unconscious. Mist dragged across his opulent gold and pale yellow coat, its gray fur lining collecting beechmast and broken twigs. We draped it over him.

Then I sat down beside him on a tree root. I ignored the blood soaking through my trousers and tried to sense the Circle. The Doctor once told me how, but she had more practice than me. She had taught herself to feel when the threads of our lifelines are strained. She can sense if someone is close to death because they pull on the Circle and it tries to hold them. Like a spider with her fingers on invisible filaments, it’s possible that she already knows Lightning is injured. The Emperor would feel it; after all, he makes the links, sharing our time and preventing us from dying.

I watched the rise and fall of Lightning’s shallow, in-shock breathing. If it stopped, I wanted to be prepared for the terrible sensation, the very moment when he rips through the Circle. No, I mustn’t think that.

Mist stalked up to the fire and turned to me, her expression livid. “Zascai shouldn’t be
able
to murder Eszai. Immortals can’t be struck down this way! Saker
can’t
die. He’ll wake up. I’ll kill Gio Ami. I will—the bastard—how could he dare?”

“Ata—”

Her white hair tousled as she beat her fists on her thighs. “Gio Ami. When I’ve finished with him there won’t be enough left for a dog to roll in!”

“Look,” I said loudly. “The thrust hit his wing and didn’t go deep in his back. If dust doesn’t infect it, the wound may not be fatal. But if we stay here, I won’t bet on it. Return to Awndyn, and his so-called lover can nurse him.”

Mist’s eyes glittered; their shine in the darkness looked halfway insane. “No—on to the Castle.”

“You landed us here. For once plan for someone other than yourself.”

“I can’t believe a Rhydanne has the gall to say that!”

“Only half—”

She interrupted, “If we retreat we give Gio the advantage.”

“As if we have the advantage now!” I glared at her. “Wrenn’s illegal vendetta against Gio is bad enough without you joining in. He’ll duel with Gio’s followers all together or one at a time. Now
you
are trying hatred on for size.”

“You’re right,” she said softly.

“Eszai are supposed to work together; let’s earn our immortality. Damn it, Mist, god will show up, coffee mug in hand, before you bother cooperating. Go back to Awndyn, where I’ll bring you San’s directions as I should have done in the first place.”

H
ours passed and Wrenn did not return. I watched over the Archer, straining to see by the insipid moonlight. Mist said little but glowered more and more until sometime in the early hours she burst out, “I should have gone instead!”

“Serein is a poor rider but
nominally
the best Swordsman,” I said shortly.

“Well, where has he got to? Has he been captured?”

“I hope not. Lightning’s condition is deteriorating, thankfully slowly because he’s strong. It’s imperative we get him out of this wilderness.”

Mist stomped around the clearing, cracking twigs underfoot and kicking dry leaves onto the hearth. I hissed, “Keep quiet! And keep listening; Gio might return. You islanders don’t realize how far your noise carries.”

Lightning woke up but only stayed conscious, unmoving, for a few minutes. I tried everything except scolopendium but I couldn’t bring him back.

I sighed. “Gio’s wrecked his chances of regaining the Circle, that’s for sure. He could have—one of my predecessors was displaced then rejoined it.”

Ata shook her head. “There was such a fast turnover of Messengers that they had a good attitude; they saw it as a temporary prize and a few more years of life. I remember one man, three or four Messengers back, who when he lost his Challenge joined the Imperial Fyrd. We saw him grow old. But most people who leave the Circle are too broken to try again.”

If I was displaced from the Castle as a Messenger, I would try to convince San to make me a new place in the Circle—an Eszai for reconnaissance. Somebody might one day be able to outpace me, but they would never manage a bird’s-eye view. It is theoretically possible for someone to hold two titles in the Circle but it has never happened because it’s so difficult to keep hold of even one title. Anyway, seeing as every Eszai has to be beaten on his own terms, I would change the requirements of my Challenge to favor my strengths no matter who I’m up against.

All I really fear is the advent of another hybrid like me who has taught himself to fly and appears out of the blue with a Challenge. As far as I know I am unique and I’m careful not to have any children. In mortal living memory, relations between the countries of Darkling and Awia have become appalling; Rhydanne and Awians are active enemies, at least in the Carniss area. I only know of one marriage between them, when Jay “Dara,” a fyrd captain from Rachiswater and man of rare tastes, climbed to Scree to find himself a wife.

Jay was my best soldier and after Pasquin’s Tower Battle nearly thirty years ago, when the governor of Lowespass was killed, I placed Jay and his wife Genya as governors in Lowespass fortress. I knew that I could check on them there, and especially on any of their off-spring that might have both a sprinter’s speed and long wings. But unfortunately for Jay running Lowespass fortress is a hazardous job, and twenty-one years later he died childless when Insects ambushed him by the Wall.

G
radually the sky paled; the darkness shrank away into the long shadows of the trees across the whole forest. The dawn chorus broke out; roosting birds roused and called from the branches above us. Mist listened to them with extreme suspicion as she chewed the last of the
pan forte.

She paused, hearing the clop of hooves and the heavy whirring of ironbound coach wheels from the direction of the road. Between the trees a light glowed, faded. The din ceased. Wrenn’s voice called, “Comet? Hey!”

I raised my voice: “Hey, Serein! Over here!”

“Good morning. I’m sorry I took ages. It was a long way and there were rebels everywhere.” The young man’s voice swung toward us, obscured by the sound of hacking as he cut his way through dewy briars. He emerged from a thicket, grinned and pointed his rapier at the road. “But they’ve all passed by now.”

I motioned for Wrenn to help me lift the Archer. He said, “I feel as if I shouldn’t touch Lightning.”

“I understand. You heard tales of his exploits in history when you were a boy, right? Well, you take his legs and I’ll lift his arms.”

We struggled to carry Lightning out of the forest, over the uneven ground. He seemed even bigger limp and lifeless, and was a dead weight, although his bones were hollow. Wrenn climbed into the coach, reached down to grasp him under the arms and pull him up.