To the High Redoubt (46 page)

“In a few more days, there will be little we can take from the fields. Winter is coming,” she said softly.

Arkady chuckled. “Well, if we can cross the desert in summer, we can climb mountains in the winter.” He tossed his head to get his hair out of his eyes. “If we encounter snow, we'll need heavier boots, but for now—” He patted her shoulder.

When he found a place where they could sleep that night, Arkady took the precaution of piling dried brush around the little hollow in the mountainside. “This way,” he explained, “we'll hear anything that approaches. They'll make enough noise to wake us and give us time to get ready for them.”

“Even three of them?” Surata asked, not in doubt but in worry.

“A dozen of them,” he said, bragging in spite of himself. “Yes, perhaps three,” he amended in a quieter tone.

“This place, where is it?” She cocked her head, listening. “There is a stream?”

“Nearby. And the river is below. We've been following an animal path—deer or sheep by the look of the tracks—along the mountain. The drop is steep if you start downhill. If you wake in the night, don't try to go anywhere without me. You could get hurt.” He stopped his work and looked at her. “It'll be night in another hour. If the Bundhi's men haven't found us by then we might get away from them. Tomorrow, we'll have to travel as far as we can.” He pulled at his brigandine. “I never thought I'd miss my old one, but I do. This is heavier and it doesn't fit me as well.”

Surata sighed. “After all that, a knife and a few pieces of gold is all that we have left to us.”

“It isn't
that
bad,” Arkady protested, taking her hand and pulling her close to him. “We're alive, we're not too hungry and we're free.”

The boughs he had used to line the hollow were fragrant, and though they crackled, they were nice to lie upon. “It's going to be cold tonight,” he said as he drew her close to him.

“Then we will have to warm each other,” Surata answered. Arkady had intended to kiss her lightly, but as soon as he had her next to him, he knew he did not want that slow, tantalizing, expert awakening now. He had been without her too long for that.

“Arkady-champion,” she breathed between kisses. “You are…welcome.”

Never had their caresses been so fiercely gentle. All that they had done before had been in preparation for this, when they could touch each other, explore each other without awkwardness or uncertainty. There was nothing that made him doubtful, nothing that broke the spell between them. They lay together on the boughs as if they were suspended between heaven and earth, each for the other the only reality.

Arkady pulled his clothing over them so they would not be too cold when they fell asleep, and smiled when Surata murmured an objection. “You, you. You keep me warm.”

“Not after midnight, Surata.” He could not help but smile, and he ended her protests with playful kisses, sensing that she was almost ready for him.

Thighs, groins, breasts, mouths pressed together, both as caught in the other's desire as their own. For an infinite moment they were poised apart
and once again the colors blossomed around them, seeming to fuse with them, making them part of the light
.

As one they moved, slipping down ways that defied the limitations of words. There was too great an unity, too deep a closeness to want speech between them. Arkady could feel Surata as he felt his breath in his lungs. His mind experienced her blindness and the frustration it brought to her. They moved as two fish circling endlessly in a clear pool
.

This was what she had meant, he realized, when she talked of yin and yang: separate, yet complete only in unity
.

“Not yet, Arkady my champion,” her words echoed in his mind. “It comes closer, but we do not have it yet.”

This intrusion startled him, as if he had fallen. “Surata?”

“I am here, where you are, but you are still Arkady my champion and I am still Surata. There is another place beyond this, where you and I are fused.” She paused. “When we are as we are…”

“The Divine Child?” He remembered all the times he had been told of the Divine Child, who came to redeem the world. Was this what Scripture had meant? Had his priest been wrong?

“Your teachings do not permit the Divine Child, Arkady my champion. You are told to worship it, not that you can become it.” She had a regretful note in her voice. “It is a pity that we must search for the Bundhi while we are as we are. If we had achieved full transcendence, then our strength would be without end and there would be little the Bundhi could do.”

“We are already transcendent,” he reminded her, shocked that she should be so unappreciative of what they had created between them
.

“Transcendence to this other place, yes, but transcendence of self, no. When we have done that, then the Bundhi will be as easy to defeat as it is to snap a twig.”

“Then teach me,” he urged her, knowing that the longing he had awakened was hers as well as his own
.

“My father studied for thirty years and never accomplished it,” she said, her thoughts becoming unhappy. Arkady was aware that he had the same sadness within him, spurred on by his need for her and for their closeness. “For you and I to do it,” she went on, “when we have had so little time—”

His thoughts broke into hers. “We have crossed hundreds of leagues together, we have nearly starved and died of thirst together, we have trusted each other when we could no longer trust ourselves, we have endured privation and loneliness and fear without turning on each other. If we can do that, then the Divine Child should not be impossible.” He said it with enthusiasm, and the lights around them brightened in response. He felt their presence in the shifting lights grow more vivid
.

“Of course,” she agreed with a trace of amusement
.

“And don't humor me; I'm not jesting. You and I have come through trials together we would not have survived alone. Isn't that what the Divine Child is meant to do?” He let his asperity color his outburst—it colored the lights surrounding, them as well, and Arkady was too entranced by what he saw to be annoyed with her reluctance. “What do we have to do, Surata? Where should we go, now that we are in this other place?”

“It is wretched to be in this other place, that can be so wonderful, and have to search for such as the Bundhi. I wish we could simply ride the crest together, make this other place into anything and everything that will please us best. But you're right, there are things we must do here that are not for our joy. I hope one day it will not be this way.” Her voice was plaintive: the bright shapes trembled like leaves with a wind passing through them
.

“Where do we begin? At the castle in the marsh?” He had been hoping they might go there again, for he thought of the place fondly, seeing it as a refuge
.

“No,” she said slowly. “I…cannot find it anymore. It is…gone. And if we find it again, there is no certainty it would be ours still.”

“The Bundhi?” he asked, not needing to
.

“Yes.” She quivered with him
.

Arkady could think of nothing that would console her. “Then it must be the bamboo redoubt?” He did not want to return there. Even his recollections of the place made him shake with revulsion. There was so much of decay about it and so much malice in the staves…He forced his attention to what she was telling him
.

“That could be too great a risk. The Bundhi guards himself well, and he must know by now that we have got away from his men. He will protect his fortress in this other place more rigorously than his redoubt in the daily world. As long as his redoubt in this other place stands, his redoubt on Gora Čimtarga is impregnable.” Fleeting impressions of various plans slipped through her mind, hints and echos of them appearing in Arkady's thoughts
.

“Would a fire in this other place burn his redoubt on Gora Čimtarga as well as the one in this other place?” It seemed to him to be the most direct means of destroying the redoubt
.

“It might,” she said, “but it is not so easy to burn things here in this other place; they can turn to water or air before flames can harm them. But if we could make it burn, then it might be possible to stop the Bundhi both here and in the daily world.” She considered more alternatives. “Water means nothing to bamboo. It only aids it to grow. The bamboo bends with the wind and cannot be uprooted. If you bury it, it springs up again through the earth. If it is cut with metal, it grows again.”

“You're convincing yourself that you cannot act,” Arkady chided her. “Think what you can do, not what cannot be done.”

She pondered a little while, and he enjoyed sharing her questions and her attempts to find solutions to their predicament. Finally she said, “I suppose you are right, and burning is the answer. What is this thing you have in your mind—Greek fire, you call it—that burns in water?”

“Greek fire. Where did you find that?” He sighed. “I've never seen it used or made. I have only heard of it.”

“But such a thing exists?” she pursued, pressing him for more information
.

“I know it is supposed to exist, which isn't quite the same thing.”

They had made no alteration in the brightness around them, but still there was a change, a subtle turn of shade that gave the lights a greater brilliance
.

“Still, you know of it,” she asked, this time with greater determination. “You can think of it and know that water will not quench its flames?”

“I suppose so,” he answered, beginning to see what she intended. “Certainly if we make Greek fire in this other place, it will not be put out by any water the Bundhi might conjure up.”

“Good.” She was silent again, delving through her memories, and his
.

“How do you do this? I think I'm being tickled,” he told her as he perceived her presence in his mind
.

“I haven't words to tell you, Arkady my champion,” she said, a bit wistfully. “I wish I had. I wish I had years with you, so that we could learn…everything together. I wish it was for joy alone that we—”

“Stop it. Time enough for that later, when we've settled things.” He shared her regret, but he knew that anything that dampened morale on the eve of battle was dangerous. “The day will come. You know that and I know it, and that will have to do for now.”

She took his admonition to heart. “Yes. Later we will have all the time we want.” If she sounded less certain then he, it was from her lack of fighting experience. “When we have our…victory.”

“Very good,” he approved
.

(“Good, so very good,” he whispered as he took the flare of her hips in his hands.)

She was more encouraged now, and her strength grew greater as she explored his memories. “You are a valiant soldier, Arkady my champion.”

“You mean that I am not as reckless as many others,” he said sternly. “Poles are noted for their recklessness. We are reputed to be brave to the point of madness.”

She responded to both the truth and the irony in what he said. “No wonder your Margrave Fadey was disappointed in you.”

“He did not want prudence,” Arkady observed. “I was prudent then, but I will be less so now. Yet I will not be reckless, for that would put you in more danger than we're in now, and that is more than I am willing to do.” He felt his protectiveness answered by her own. He had never experienced such inner reinforcement as they gave each other amid the shifting motes of light
.

“See how brightly we glow, Arkady my champion,” she exclaimed, her delight as warm as sunshine to him
.

“Is that a good thing?” he asked, teasing her kindly
.

“Light on swords is a good thing to you, so this must be the same.” She moved with him, making their luminosity dance and curvet through the light-filled vastness
.

Arkady enjoyed each moment of what they did, and as they continued their onward motion, he hoped that this time they would not come upon the stronghold of the Bundhi too soon
.

“You are as filled with our union as I am,” Surata told him, her eagerness adding to his pleasure
.

He wanted to give her a gallant answer, one that would be as poetic and reverent as the emotions she inspired. He tried to show her the rapture that consumed him, so that she
jerked apart and thrown down, a bamboo staff a hand's breath from his face.

“Arkady-immai!” Surata wailed, her hands flailing as she tired to locate him in the hushed crackle of the twigs and branches.

“Do not move, Surata-of-Bogar,” said the man who had separated them. At the sound of his voice, she grew still. “I have my staff with me and I will not hesitate to put it to use.”

“How…?” she demanded.

“My tigers tell me many things. They found you for me, and they will have their reward. Since my servants permitted you to escape, they will feed the tigers this time.” The sound he made was supposed to be laughter but it was as cold as the breaking up of winter ice.

In the wan moonlight, Arkady was able to see the stranger. The man was tall, and so lean that he appeared even taller. He had little to distinguish him except his eyes, which he turned on Arkady in sudden malice; they were dark and flat as pebbles. He shook his head. “So you're the great fighter,” he said.

Arkady knew from the tone of the man's voice that he was being insulted. He frowned, still badly disoriented. “Surata, is this…is it…”

“Yes,” she said in a rage of defeat. “This is the Bundhi.”

There had been impressions of the man before, in her memories and in the strange byways of that other place. Somehow Arkady had expected more, a larger figure, a stronger air of menace. What was most distressing about him, thought Arkady, was his normality, his ordinariness. “Tell him he is a disappointment,” Arkady said, adding, “Never mind. No sense in giving him reason to fight with us now.”