Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (63 page)

By now he could ignore the scene by pretending it did not exist, by covering his mouth and nose with cloth to mask the odor, and by keeping his gaze fixed on the stony roadbed. Only those puddling bodies existed, those two men that Bai had killed, and they were just corpses, nothing that could harm him. Ghosts couldn’t hurt you. They had no substance; they were only emotion and spirit.

He knelt beside the man she had knifed in the chest, because this body was less soaked with fluids. She’d taken her knife; he hadn’t noticed that at the time, or had he? The ginnies scrambled down off his back and away from the bodies, not liking the tang. He fumbled at the man’s garment, found a leather thong along the hairy neck, and with distaste wangled it over the head and fished it off. It was a medallion, like an oversized coin with the usual square hole through the middle but an unusual eight-tanged starburst symbol stamped into the metal. He sniffed it, and bit it. It was tin, not even silver. Allegiance came cheaply, it seemed. He wondered what else the “Star of Life” was offering. Or what it was; perhaps some kind of secret society banned by guild and council alike.

None of it made sense.

He rose and, reflexively, dusted off the knees of his trousers, then scooped up the ginnies. Yet he paused, there on the road. Bai was gone off on some fool’s errand. He
had food, and drink, and a decent string of leya as well as a few items that could be sold to set up in a safe town as a laborer or to hire his labor out to a local merchant somewhere.

Should he really chance going back to Olossi? He could not imagine what Bai thought she was up to, or what all that talk had meant between her and the reeve. He had no loyalty toward Olossi Town, or the temple, or the reeve hall. He wanted to start a new life, while Bai had abandoned him in the service of whatever old-fashioned notion of duty she had imbibed at the breast of the Merciless One. Maybe, after all, it was best if they split up, if he never met her at the Demon’s Whip.

Maybe.

For the first time since he had been sold into slavery by his greedy relatives, he had no fixed purpose to guide him. So of course, standing there like the idiot he was, he waited too long. The ginnies hissed, and flattened against him as if they expected him to protect them from a threat he could not see. Crows and vultures deserted their carrion in a chaos of caws and wings.

About twenty mounted men appeared out of the east, from Hornward, blocking the road. They were riding toward Olossi. Each man wore a staff tied up against the back of the thick leather jackets they wore as armor, and on each staff, over their heads, flew four long ribbon-like yellow and red flags rippling in the wind. When they saw Keshad, they all drew their swords.

After the last years with his luck turning sour at every chance just to spite him, Horas knew that fortune had finally given him an armful of the very best. He’d been happy to fly messages for Marshal Yordenas these past months since he’d come to Argent Hall. For one thing, it gave him insight into the plots and plans of those who played the pipes to which the rest of them danced. And anyway, it was better flying messages than having to cool his heels at the hall with all manner of restrictions set on him while the master ate the very meat he refused to his dogs.

“Heh,” he said, liking the phrase. He’d gotten his hand inside her vest, and he tweaked a nipple.

“None of that,” she said sharply. “You’ve no idea what I can do to you if you make me mad. Aii-ei!” She gave a yelp as Tumna dipped, and pulled sharply up again. Then she laughed as folk do when they are scared and thrilled at the same time.

A hot shiver coursed through him. Her breasts were firm and shapely, and her tight buttocks ground up against him because he had hitched her into the spare harness with her back to his front. He was a little taller, and could see over her, which was a good thing since Tumna was huffing and beating hard trying to get loft. They hadn’t found a good updraft yet, no doubt because they were too close to the river, but he didn’t care. It had been months since he’d worshiped the Merciless One, not for lack of trying.

“We’re forbidden to enter a temple,” he said.

“No one can be forbidden the temple.”

“But he’d know. He killed one reeve for disobeying.”

“I don’t remember that! Whoo-ei! How do you get used to this?”

But he was used to flying, the dips and turns, ups and downs, heights and dives. It was the memory of the quick and brutal death that softened him, and she seemed immediately aware of his distress.

“In all that time, there’s one thing I never did discover,” she said over her shoulder. “Where Marshal Yordenas came from.”

“Don’t know and don’t care.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Haldia.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

She shifted. The feel of her body, helpless in his grasp and moving against him, got him going again, burning and full. She sensed it, and twitched her buttocks right up against his groin until he groaned and begged her to stop, or let him land and have done, they could just find a clearing and land and no one would be the wiser.

“Oh. Oh, no,” she said with a laugh as Tumna found a draft and rode it up. “This is amazing! You know, you can’t serve the Merciless One if you’re too hasty. How I despise men who are hasty. Surely you aren’t going to be one of
those
? I thought you were strong enough to take your time.”

“I’m strong. I’ve bided my time this long, haven’t I?” He was sweating so much that beads ran down to sting in his eyes.

“Bided your time in Argent Hall? It’s true, Marshal Yordenas is a slimy worm. I didn’t like him, and I’ll tell you something in confidence. If you promise not to say.”

Then she did it a second time, and it was killing him with his trousers so tight and nothing to be done up here, and Tumna slipping out of the updraft into a glide over the trees, the first real height the eagle had gotten so he daren’t land now and lose all that effort. Best keep his mind on other things.

“I promise not to say. I hate Yordenas. Always have. Arrogant sneering bastard.”

“He really is a worm. He’s got a limp prick.”

“Heh! No. Truly?”

“Truly. No milk in him, I’m telling you. What a disappointment! But I can tell you’re nothing like that. You’re as full a man as I’ve snuggled up to in a long while. Tell you what.”

It was hard to talk because he was so horribly aroused between the smell and shape of her and knowing he was going to get something Yordenas couldn’t have. It was like the sun shining right in your eyes, blinding you. It was agony. “Ah. Ah. What?”

“Look at that view!”

He could see the view anytime. It was the view of her that was something new.

She went on breathlessly. “Let’s see your message delivered, and us on our way back to Olossi with enough time in the day, and I have an idea about how to get those trousers off you while we’re still in the air. Want to try it?”

Just thinking of it was almost enough to push him over the edge. “The hells. What do you think?”

She laughed. “Careful, now. You don’t want to be spilling your milk too soon, do you? Here, now. Tell me a story.”

“Don’t know any stories.”

“Tell me about where you grew up.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“You got to be a reeve. That must be something to tell.”

“Not much. I hated the village I grew up in. It was full of prating, mewling farmers and foresters and carters who would go on and on about what we owed the gods, and good manners, and where I should serve my apprentice year when all I wanted to do was serve the Thunderer, and how a man ought to behave when that wasn’t what I wanted at all and I didn’t see what business it was of theirs to be telling me what to do!”

“They’re like that at the temple, too, the old bitches. Always ordering a person about.”

“Heh. Yeh. Then there was some trouble over the headman’s daughter and the rights to the best parcel of land, but of course they would all plot against me, so after I—well, anyway, after that I left and walked all the way to High Haldia. I’d heard a man could get work in their militia, and I don’t mind saying I was strong enough to do their kind of work. I was good with a staff, always was, ever since a boy, and good with a bow, did a lot of hunting along the river when I was a lad. That’s all even though they wouldn’t let me serve my apprentice year with Kotaru, but I showed them by thrashing every one of those who did, in all the villages nearby. But anyway, they didn’t take kindly to me in High Haldia, for their captain was jealous of how good I was with the staff, better than any of his men, although of course he wouldn’t admit to it and had to spew some other such vomit about why I wasn’t fit for their puny little militia. I thought I’d have to work felling trees again, which wasn’t to my liking, I’ll tell you, even though a man has to eat, but it came about that a consortium of merchants was looking for guardsmen to accompany a caravan upriver to Seven and up the Steps to Teriayne. That wasn’t bad duty, even though the caravan master was a real prick about everything and let me go as soon as we reached Seven. I spent a while there doing this and that. One thing led to another, and next I knew I was sent with a supply train up to Iron Hall and after that Tumna chose me. That was a surprise! I showed them, didn’t I?”

“You showed who?”

“All those who said I wouldn’t amount to anything. But I showed them!” He was juiced, the words flowing into that sympathetic ear, and the story of his many grievances at Iron Hall tumbled out as Tumna labored upriver parallel to West Track. How the arms master had picked on him, and made fun of him in front of the others, just because the man didn’t like that one time he had gotten in past his guard and scored a hit to his shoulder. How that hireling girl had told him off when he’d made her an offer, and damned if anyone would speak to him that way, but he’d shown her, hadn’t he? You didn’t treat a man with so little respect and expect him just to walk away. How he’d gotten passed over when it came time to appoint a new wing leader, which ought by rights to have gone to him but after all the marshal had favored that bitch of a northerner out of the high country, probably because she was
milking him not because she was anything special as a reeve even if the rest of them did sing her praises just because she had a creamy way of talking sweet to them all. And then she’d pretended to be kind and sorry afterward, the way you would scratch a dog’s head when it was whining, not that he ever whined even when he got cut the short end of the stick. Anyway, it wasn’t his fault that man assaulted him. You didn’t have to take that kind of nasty shit-talk from common farmers just because you were a reeve and ordained to keep the peace, as the veterans were always droning on about. Reeves ought to be treated with respect and not shoved and cursed at and called rude names. So it wasn’t his fault that the man had pushed too far, and he’d retaliated with perfectly reasonable force. Not his fault at all, no matter what anyone else said. They were overreacting, just because the man died when after all it was his own bad temper that had done him in. You’d think they would have taken that into account, but it always seemed the marshal—everyone, for that matter—weighed in against him whenever there was trouble.

“You’ve an eloquent way of telling your tale,” she said. “I do feel I know you better now. How do you like it at Argent Hall?”

“It’s a little better,” he said grudgingly. “There’s a good group of reeves there who have taken a liking to me, but I must say that Marshal Yordenas is a disappointment. He’s weak. Too puffed up with his own importance. If the lord commander hadn’t appointed him marshal, he’d never have risen so far.”

“The Commander of Clan Hall? Appointed Yordenas as marshal? I thought reeves elected their own hall marshal—Oh . . . of course, I’d forgotten about the lord commander’s part in all this.”

“Hard to see how you could overlook it, considering this is his army.” Because he had a sharp gaze honed from years as a reeve, he gestured to make sure she saw the sight coming into view where West Track cut across open country. “There they are. Tumna usually would cover this distance faster than she did today. That’s about two days’ march we’ve covered just since midday. I don’t want you to think she’s like other eagles, she’s much better, but the weight slowed her down.”

Her body tensed, but there was nothing sexual about the way she felt against him now.

“What?” he asked suspiciously. “What’s wrong?”

She relaxed, and gave that twitch against his groin that made him suck in breath between clenched teeth, thinking of how hard it was to wait to devour her.

“I just didn’t expect so many,” she said.

From the height, it was an impressive sight as Tumna circled in to seek a landing site. It was the only army Horas had ever seen, certainly, although he understood that the northern army being fielded was twice this size, the one they were going to throw against Toskala and Nessumara after they finished off the city of High Haldia. The vanguard was out of sight where woodland concealed the road, but the body of the beast stretched a fair way back with men marching in ranks of six with six abreast, each of these cadres separated from the next by a banner and sergeant, and three such sergeants to a company with its triple banners and captain, and six companies to a cohort, each cohort assigned a marshal and badge according to the taste and whim of their commander. Six cohorts had been sent
against Olossi, although the mounted Flying Fours had been split into foraging groups, one of which was riding two days ahead as their strike force while the rest were split into cadres and subcadres roaming up and down the road, scouting or probing out on raids into the nearby countryside.

“I thought . . .” She paused.

“You thought what? I’m not stupid, you know.”

“No, no,” she agreed, resting a hand on his right thigh, right up close to his groin, stroking it just enough to set the flame burning higher. “That’s why I know you can answer me. The one thing I’ve never understood. What’s in it for Olossi’s council?”

“The hells. You
are
just a Devouring girl, aren’t you? More tits than brains.”