Moonscatter (23 page)

He shook his head, tilted it and contemplated her. “You look like a scruffy boy. Why should you have such a boundless capacity for annoying me?” His rueful grin dissolved into a scowl. “I'm not a half-witted infant.”

They stopped before the guard, waiting with an assumed patience while he inspected them. Hern slumped in the saddle, looking sleepily moronic.
He's not the half-witted one
, she thought,
I am
. When the guard spoke, she blinked, then forced her tired brain to take in his words, her mind having to shift from the mijlocker she'd just been speaking to the sulMinar she was hearing.

“… want?” the guard finished.

Serroi blinked again, bowed as low as she could. Picking careful between phrases, she addressed him in the seeker's mode, low to high. “If the magnificent one before me in whose shadow this one is unworthy to stand, the incomparable and compassionate guardian of this most glorious of cities, this worm beneath his feet would contrive to find the words in his ignoble head to reply.” It was hard to keep her face straight as she mouthed this nonsense, but minark culture demanded this formalized hypocrisy.

Mollified by the string of compliments and the mode of address, the guard preened himself and repeated the question. “Where you going, slave-dung, and what do you want here?” His blunt speech was the worst of insults but Serroi was glad enough to get to the point that quickly. The sun was almost gone and the guard was quite capable of shutting the gate in their faces.

She bowed again, slipping her fingers quickly into the pouch hanging at her side, drawing out two of Yael-mri's grudged gold coins. With them concealed in her hand, she spoke again. “Oh most honorable and warlike of guardians before whom these worms tremble, this useless and disgusting uncle of this person who is less than the dust on your divine feet and he who speaks these stumbling words have ridden across the Mountains of the Dead at the bidding of They-Who-Heal. It is required that we take ship at Skup and proceed on their business. This one who is blinded by the glory of your person.…” She let one of the coins fall as she raised her hand and placed it before her face, fingers spread, thumb holding the second coin against her palm. “… must ask passage through this domain of mind-dazzling glory. Noble sir, may this unworthy one note that in the liberality of your wealth you have dropped a trifle of gold. Doubtless you have so many coins that it has escaped your notice.”

The guard's eyes searched the paving stone. The breath hissed between his teeth when he spotted the golden round. He scooped it up, tucked it into a pouch, then began looking round again.

Greedy bastard
, Serroi thought. She dropped the second coin.

The minark straightened, sneered at them, then waved them past. “Keep to the low way, dung.”

As they rode through the ironwood gate, he stood watching them, making no move as yet to close the gate behind them. They rode past the towers that looked down on the open way between ironwood and ironmetal gates, their shiny blue surfaces pierced at various levels by bow slits. When Hern and Serroi emerged from between the black iron gates glistening with oil, they passed into a narrow ugly street more like a posser-run than anything men should be expected to traverse. On both sides of the inner gate, ornate grills shut off wider streets that climbed steeply up and around the dark foliage of stiff, spear-like conifers. Hern glanced at these, then ahead. The corner of his mouth twitched up, but he made no comment.

The low way was a narrow cobbled passage between two high, dirty walls. On each side of the roadway were deep stinking gutters filled with sewage and scraps of garbage. The farther they got into the city, the more noxious the air became. Hern wrinkled his nose. “They make it obvious what they think of us.”

Serroi yawned and immediately regretted it. “What I told you.” The street curved sharply some distance ahead. She straightened, stretched out a hand to stop Hern as she heard a blare of horns, several instruments played loudly with no attempt at anything but noisemaking. “Maiden grant.…” She heard a clatter of hooves, high giggling laughter in between the blasts of noise, cursed softly, looked up to meet Hern's startled gaze. She urged her macai to the edge of the gutter and motioned Hern to ride close behind her. “A Brissai,” she said quickly. “Young minarks from the High Terraces out on a tear, juiced to the ears on dream dust or worse and up to any mischief that appeals to them. Chasing some unfortunate, sounds like.” She chewed on her lip, anxious eyes on Hern's face. “If they only push us into the gutter and sweep on past, we'll be lucky.”

“Into that?”

“A little stink is better than a skinning, and that's the nicest thing that will happen to us if we so much as touch one of them.” The sounds were coming rapidly nearer, more raucous than ever. “They're after blood. Don't move, don't say anything no matter what, don't even breathe.”

She heard the pattering of bare feet on the cobbles then a ragged furtive little man bleeding from hundreds of small wounds came stumbling around the curve. He was so blind with his terror he blundered past them without seeing them, struggling to reach the great gates before they were shut.

The Brissai came round the bend a moment later, five young men in loose robes that whipped open about naked golden bodies. Long loose tresses of russet hair fluttered in the stinking air, golden eyes were fire-hot, golden skin wore a film of sweat, not from exertion but from emotional extravagance. They rode sleek rambuts with silken ribbons braided into their crimson manes, strips of azure and silver, red and gold and green, fluttering in the wind of their tempestuous passage. Each youth carried a long slender rod with a needle-spiked knob at the end of it. The leader saw Serroi and Hern, pulled his mount to a sliding halt, sitting the plunging beast with the easy grace of a superb rider. He looked lovingly at them, delight shining in his metallic eyes, a tender smile on his delicately curved lips. With an unregarded grace, he pointed at the stumbling fugitive. “Ban Abbal, get that.”

One of the five rode after the little man and smashed the spiked ball into the back of his head. The minark went on a few strides then jerked his mount around and forced it to trample on the small body before he left it lying, flung out on the cobbles like a bit of rubbish and came back to the Brissai.

The leader danced his mount closer to Serroi. “Green,” he said, then laughed, the sound like music above the clatter of the nervous rambut's hooves. “The boy has green skin.” The snickers of the other four sounding behind him, he twitched the rambut two steps sideways. “And a fat man. A little fat man full of juice.” He giggled and prodded at Hern's shoulder with the ball of needles, their points sliding easily through the black cloth to pierce the flesh beneath. Hern sat without moving, without even a wince, his eyes fixed on the cobbles.

The minark looked at the blood on the spikes, smiled sweetly. “Little fat man's so stupid he can't feel.” The look in his eyes heated to a glare, his playfulness changing to rage as if he sensed the pride and strength behind Hern's unimpressive exterior. He rode his rage with a light hand, taunting Hern, jeering at him, punctuating the jeers with passes of the needle ball. Small cuts opened on Hern's hands and face, trickles of blood crept through his tunic and trousers, though he sat stolidly until the highborn started swiping at his eyes. Even when the ball danced in front of his face, though he was pale with fury and frustration, Hern kept himself under control, moving just enough to save his eyes.

The other four were beginning to get bored. They milled back and forth past the intent pair, hooting and yipping. They sniped verbally at Serroi, teased at her hair with their needle balls, but otherwise left her alone. She belonged to their leader, his prey after Hern.
He must be Falam's kin at least, a son maybe
, she thought.
Highest of the high. Maddest of the mad. He's going to kill Hern. No way we can make it to the Port. Have to get out of here
. She closed her eyes and fumbled for the rambuts; the beasts were strange to her and slippery, a little mad like their riders. She couldn't read them well enough, was taking a long time to control them, too long.

The minark raked the needle ball down the side of Hern's face, laying it open to the bone. With a roar, Hern snatched the rod away, his strength waking a spark of fear in the minark's golden eyes, flipped it over and used the butt of the rod to punch the youth in the stomach, driving him backwards off the rambut, spilling him into a particularly evil-smelling section of gutter.

As he splashed down with a shirek of mindless rage, Serroi finally got the hold she wanted and sent the rambuts stampeding toward the gate. “Hern, this way,” she yelled and kicked her macai into a plunging run after the beasts and their struggling riders. Hern bent low over the neck of his mount and followed after, laughing with satisfaction and derision at the minark youth, stained and filthy, cursing, slipping, clawing his way out of the gutter.

The guards were beginning to close the ironwood gates for the night, but fell back before the wild panic of the rambuts and their near helpless riders, recognizing their status even if they didn't know their faces. Serroi and Hern bowled through the gap before the guards could react. As soon as they were across the bridge, Serroi swerved to one side so Hern wouldn't plow into her and pulled up. She closed her eyes again and stabbed deeper into the rambuts. They began bucking and sunfishing, rearing and flinging themselves into reckless leaps, went to their knees, rolled with abandon until they were free of their riders. Leaving the minark youths groaning on the grass, they ran wildly across the pasture land plunging through several herds, scattering the hauhaus and rambuts there into terrified flight. Drained by her outreach, swaying in the saddle, Serroi let her control fade.

Hern edged his macai closer, caught her as she almost fell. “Very nice. What now?”

Serroi scratched delicately along the periphery of her eyespot, trying to get her weary mind to think. “Back,” she said finally. “The Sleykyn road. East.”

“You all right?”

“Will be. I can stick in the saddle.”

“They chase after us?” He twisted around, clicked his tongue against his palate as he saw one of the guards running toward a draggled screaming figure limping over the cobbles and pointing a shaking finger at the pair sitting their macai beyond the bridge. “That answers that.” He kicked his macai into an easy lope. Serroi settled herself more comfortably in the saddle and sent her macai loping after him, frowning as she wondered how much the beasts had left in them after a full day's riding.

They were some distance down the side road when she heard the alarum gong ringing out over the valley. “What else?” she muttered. Nijilic TheDom was a handspan above the eastern mountains, flooding the plantings on the left and the pastures on the right with shimmering white light though he was several days past his prime, a light she could have easily done without because it silhouetted them far too clearly against the pale earth of the rutted road.

“What's that for?”

“The gong? That's to warn the pass guards to watch for us and stop us.”

He looked across the fields to the towers. “They've got a good view.” Still looking back, he grunted with disgust. “Armored troop riding out.” He swung around. “They want us bad. Me.”

She made a face. “The one you ducked in that muck most likely is the favorite son of the Falam, or close to that. Not your fault,” she added hastily. “Nothing else you or I could've done. Bad luck, that's all.” She shifted position, stretched carefully. “I could sleep for a week. How's your face?”

“Sore.” After a minute he said softly, “I'd like to have that little bastard for just five minutes.”

“He's probably warped enough to enjoy a bit of beating.”

With a bark of laughter he ran a hand through his hair, “Right again, meie.”

“Right, hunh!”

The land began to rise. The mountains ahead were worn, their contours rounded as if their substance had been eaten by time. Sounds floated along the road, carried on the east wind that rustled in the grass and tugged at their hair, sounds of hooves on paving bricks, the clatter of armor. The turnoff was hidden by a gentle swell of the ground but she knew the minarka were close behind and getting closer by the minute—and they couldn't push the macai harder without running them into the ground.

Hern bent forward and patted his laboring mount on the shoulder, murmured encouragement to the tired beast. When he straightened, he said, “We going somewhere or just running?”

“Both. First we've got to get out of the Vale.” She paused. “Next, we've still got to get across the Sinadeen. That means Shinka-on-the-Neck, since Skup is now thoroughly closed to us.”

“Shinka.” He said it like a curse. “An extra passage at least.”

“Looks like.”

“Pass guards. How many? How good are they?”

“Four. Sweepings. Punishment detail. Not really guards, more like sentries, watching for Sleykyn raiding parties. They've got a gong too.”

“Sleykyn. Maiden's tits, Serroi.”

“Yah. I know.” She yawned, swayed in the saddle again, the ground ahead blurring, swinging, blurring again.

Hern caught hold of her halter and pulled her macai to a stop. Ignoring her protest, he untied his water skin and filled a cup, then threw the water in her face. She gasped. He filled the cup again and handed it to her. “Drink this.” He watched her gulp the water down. “You got anything in that magic belt that will wake you up? You're about out on your feet.” He grinned. “Or seat in this case.”

Serroi rested the cup on the saddle ledge, her fingers searching along the belt for the pocket with the waxy green buttons that gave her energy but exacted a high price in return. She chewed a button, swallowed, washed away the bitter taste with the rest of the water and handed him the cup. “Thanks.”