The Lady (37 page)

“Girl!” Chieh hauled her to her feet. “Let's go.”

“We're going?” she asked hazily. “No!”

“We're going,” said Chieh. “You're staying. Hicca wants you after all, you and the gold about your neck.”

“No!” She wrenched her arm away.

“Or kill her yourselves and throw her down to us,” someone called up, and laughed.

“You get her only once we're out the gate,” Chieh shouted angrily, and grabbed again for Deyandara. Ketsim's hand came down on her arm; Ketsim's sweat-slick face leaned in close, his breath foul with the disease.

“No,” he said. Chieh let her go and took a step away. “She kill you, before another man take you, but she is not buy my life with my little wife.” And then a torrent of furious Grasslander that had Chieh bowing, white-faced. In that distraction, Hicca's followers tried to force their way up, and one of the Grasslanders was killed before they got the trap door closed again.

Was the night growing thinner? More shouting, more battering, and Chieh refused to look at her, keeping close to Lug's side, while Ketsim clutched her hand. Then silence below.

More low-voiced Grasslander discussion.

“Maybe they go for axes,” Ketsim translated for her, as if that should be a comfort. “But if I, I Hicca, not wanting queen, not wanting Grasslander lord, I set fire.”

“Barbarians,” muttered Chieh. “My lord—” And more in Grasslander. Ketsim seemed to agree with whatever she proposed, this time. “We're going to rush them,” she told Deyandara. “We put you in the middle, we get out, we get whatever mounts are closest, and we head south to the road. Can you ride a camel?”

“No!”

“Siman probably took all the camels. Do you have a knife?”

Deyandara shook her head, hoping she hadn't hesitated too long.

“Useless. All those drunks at the table, and you didn't manage to hide yourself a knife?” The woman thrust a sheathed dagger at her, and Ketsim let her go to take it, nodding approval.

“Good,” he said. “You kill Hicca for me, little kitten, little wife.” He laughed and ruffled her hair; Chieh laughed with him. Even Lug smiled, though his face was drawn tight and he kept swallowing, as if his stomach fought him. Another of the Grasslanders already showed a face rising in blisters; she leaned on the wall, stroking the point of her spear with a whetstone.

Deyandara smiled. So now she had two knives. And her smile felt as false as their laughter, because what good would it do? It was the Catairnan curse on her still, that she should end up here with her own folk bargaining for her death and her only defenders her enemies.

A man at the window looking out over the
dinaz
spoke intensely. Deyandara went to look. Marnoch—of course not. Praitans, yes, archers, and they were shooting fire-arrows at the tower, while the roofs of the houses fell in behind them. Tendrils of smoke began coiling down through the thatch, new and summer-dry.

A nod from Ketsim, and one of the men pulled up the door. The blistered spearwoman went down in a rush, Lug close behind her, and shouted, one word.

“Fire,” said Chieh, and Ketsim seized Deyandara, hauled her down with them, into the sleeping-chamber of the bench-companions, which looked more like a yard where the fall butchering had taken place, blood pooled on the floor, bodies still in their sodden blankets, bodies sprawled ugly and ungainly on the floor. She squeaked and jumped back from something underfoot, saw it was a hand. No arm. Just a hand. Straw, rubbish, bedding, broken spear-shafts, arrows, bows, were heaped in the corners, already ablaze, flames reaching for the rafters of the upper floor, and there was a fire set under the stairs down which they had run. It smelt of pitch.

“The bastards were setting this while they were still talking to us,” Chieh said. “And they've taken every bit of armour, not left so much as a shield. I told my lord only a fool trusted a Praitan.”

One of the bodies moaned, and the sick woman started to it but was ordered back by Ketsim. They weren't going to carry the wounded. A moment's pause, while Lug threw up, and then they went down the stone stairs to the hall in the same order. This time they were opposed before they ever got off the stairs, and the woman went over the side, no railing. Lug made it a little farther, bearing down one Praitan with his rush, but someone with an axe cut his leg half away, and he went to the floor on his face and was hacked to death there, with Chieh screaming after him, her sabre sweeping Ketsim's way clear, Deyandara dragged stumbling in his wake.

A bonfire of furniture burned in the centre of the hall where they had feasted, and its flames reached to the ceiling. The door was held against them, shouting, jeering Praitans. They called
her
the traitor and a whore of Marakand. Ketsim put himself between her and a thrown spear, not for her own sake, but because he let no one take what was his, she knew, but still, he did it. She caught him as he staggered back against her. No armour, she thought dazedly, surely he remembered he had no armour, and then, unable to hold up his weight, she went down to the floor, kneeling, with the Grasslander lord slumped against her. At least he was a good thick body against a second spear, which followed.

In a song he would have had some last words for her, and she too, would no doubt have forgiven him his rough wooing, but he just muttered and groaned, and she didn't know if he died then, or later, but she stayed holding him until most of the mercenaries had forced the hall clear of Praitans and gotten so far as the door. The pitch-fuelled fire on the floor under the upper stairs burnt through about then, and a burning beam came down onto the stone stairs. More burning timbers fell, their supports gone. The stairs were cut off and so was the door, but Chieh and one of the men had rushed back for her as they fell, or for Ketsim, not knowing if he were dead or wounded, and now there were the three of them huddled together and the smoke making a blind hell of it, smoke roiling and red-lit, and the heat growing. The door was in the direction Ketsim was facing, but Chieh had moved him, dragged and turned him, shouting his name, and Deyandara found only fire, crawling that way. When she stood the very air was hot and choked her. The floor was cooler, safer. She could still breathe, though she coughed, and wherever the smoke parted, there were flames. Chieh ran against her, fell, and clutched her.

“Door?” she rasped.

Deyandara shook her head.

“Ketsim's dead.”

“I know.”

“You weren't worth it.”

“This isn't my fault!”

“Bloody Praitan wasn't worth it. Cheating Marakand. What is it with you barbarian tribesmen, always wanting to be kings?”

“I don't.”

“Lug's dead.” Chieh was crying, and her tears were dark. She was hard to see, though they crouched face to face. Someone else was coughing, the third man, but he stopped.

“Going to find Lug,” Chieh said, and shoved her away.

Deyandara clutched after her. Lug had been killed on the stairs. She had seen him lying at the foot of them, they'd had to leap his body, and there was fire between them, now. But Chieh vanished into smoke and didn't return. She crawled until she found a wall, felt over it, but didn't remember any open windows in the hall, remembered, somewhere, wooden shutters, but not where, and didn't feel any. It was hotter in both directions she turned, and she couldn't stand. She curled up small with her good arm around her knees, Chieh's useless knife long lost, and tried to breathe through her shirt and shawl. It hurt.

It wasn't Ghu who found her after all, but Ahjvar. She wouldn't have cared if it were Ketsim himself who heaved her up in his arms and mashed her face into his chest, but Ketsim was dead, of course, and Ghu wouldn't let Ahjvar hurt her, so everything was all right, and it was a good enough dream to die to. She'd rather it had been Marnoch, though. The flames roared and the heat seared her.

In a dream she wouldn't have cut her lips on her teeth, banging her face on his collarbone as he leapt and landed rolling, and dropped her at the bottom of the outside stairs.

She wasn't dead. She couldn't breathe—she could, but it hurt, and she couldn't stop coughing, but she wasn't dead. Yet.

There were dead Grasslanders, dead Praitans, living men and women in the dawn, weapons bare. She got to hands and knees and sat back on her haunches like a dog, still gasping. The air was sharp and winter-cold in her throat. A white-and-grey dog came gliding in beside her, licking her face. Its fur went black and smudged as it brushed against her. She ducked away from the dog, even her head wobbling, and tried to make her swimming eyes see Ahjvar, standing above her on the first step. He was black with smoke, even his hair dulled with soot, his coat scorched, and the skin of his hands was red and swelling against the gold bracelets on his wrists. Leopards, she thought. Like his sword. Little leopards. Leopards of the old royal line, before Hyllanim changed his emblem to the bull. Her eyes ran with tears. The Praitans just stood. Not that many of them, not so many as she had seen in the night, but it had been supposed to be all over, hadn't it? Ketsim and Cattiga's heir, dying together in the fire, the southern pox wiping the land clean of invaders, the valleys a prize for whoever could hold them, and what could a goddess do but bless the victor? In Hicca's place she'd have sent her men off to round up straying horses, and anything else of value that could be salvaged, before they abandoned this cursed place. Now they wouldn't have to rake through the ashes for the gold about her neck. She wondered, if she simply twisted it off and threw it, would they fight over it like hungry dogs for a scrap of meat? Worth a try. Ahjvar couldn't fight them all.

“Which one of you claims the kingship of the
duina
?” Ahjvar asked. His voice was little more than a whisper, but the silence was such that they heard. It resounded in her ears like a challenge, though there was no circle cut, there were no bards to witness. Her breath caught when she tried to tell him, “Hicca,” and the dog was there, breathing out warmth, still trying to clean her face, so that her gasping breathed in moist dog-breath, and she found the next breath easier. The dog grinned.

She didn't have to be heard. Hicca stood forward, with gold about his own neck. “And why does a,” his lip curled, “godless and drug-crazed mercenary have any right to ask? Ketsim's man. Traitor to your folk.”

“I wish I were godless,” Ahjvar said, and sounded as though he meant it. She could see why Hicca said drug-crazed; when she looked up, ducking the dog again, she saw how bright his eyes were, pupils too dark, large against the blue. He swayed where he stood, and it wasn't her own feeble shaking that made it seem so. “I wish the world were godless. But it isn't, and here we are, traitor to your queen's heir, traitor to the men who kept their faith and fought in their queen's memory, for the whole of the folk and the land, forsworn traitor to the invader whose boots you rushed to lick. Crow, come late to the field when even the ravens are done their feasting, to feed on the rotten scraps they disdain. You burnt the sick and the dying alive in their beds.”

“I defeated Ketsim. The high king will uphold my claim against whatever's left of Marnoch and Yvarr the Seneschal. They've got no queen to follow, and you won't live to sell her back to her brother. This is my victory. If the Duina Catairna has a king this morning, it's me.”

Ahjvar laughed, which brought on a fit of coughing. He smothered it on his sleeve, and there was blood. “There is only one king of the
duina
standing in this place, before cursed Catairanach and the Old Great Gods. He is not you.”

He came past Deyandara, down the steps, and if Hicca had time or wit to raise his sword Deyandara didn't see it. His head fell, body crumpling after. “Out!” Ahjvar roared, as with a yell the spearman at Hicca's shoulder thrust at him. She didn't see all that followed, but two more of Hicca's men were on the ground, and Ahj hadn't given back so much as a step. “Get out, run, before the curse on the
duina
takes you all for this night's work. Traitors and murderers!”

They closed in about him in a rush, but there was a fog coiling about their feet, flowing around the corner of the burning tower, through the lanes between the smouldering ruins, ankle-high, knee-high, like rising water, cold as the waters from the depths of the earth were cold, and the air blew morning-cool, fresh and clean, for all the rising smoke. The dog sat back, head tilted to one side. Deyandara got to her feet, finding she could, as if the warmth of the dog had given her new strength.

The men about Ahjvar fell back, leaving him alone, chest heaving and wounded, but still on his feet. A woman walked up the lane behind with the fog running to twist about her like welcoming cats. Catairanach, dressed in the long blue and white gown of a queen, with the dawn sparking in her hair as if she wore a net of spiderweb and dew, or diamonds. Those of Hicca's folk who had never seen her in the hall at some blessing or judgement would nonetheless know godhead when it stood among them.

The goddess looked around them, at the men and the few women, nodded to Ahjvar, and turned her back, gazing out over the ruins of the
duina
.

“Enemies,” she said, and her voice was like it had always been in Deyandara's dreams, but real, with earth and water in it. “My enemies, but—” As Hicca's people drew themselves up a little, “—I defend as I must, with the land and the powers of the land, and this epidemic was not
my
curse on them, but their own misfortune, in coming so vulnerable to a land where the pox was running. What king kills his enemies so, helpless in their beds? You did not even have the mercy to kill them outright, but left them to burn. What king demands murder of his folk and puts that burden on their souls? There is only one king left to the Duina Catairna, and he is Catairlau, Cairangorm's son, returned out of fire, through death and long years, to make my
duina
great again. If you think you can kill him, with my hand over him and my blessing on him, you are welcome to try. But touch the Lady Deyandara at your peril.”