Elemental Logic - Fire Logic Part 11

"The main gate is to the west," said Emil, "and there's two postern gates, all guarded. We've dreamed up half a dozen ways to break in over the years, but we've never actually done it. Let them hide away inside their walled city ... if they'll just leave the rest of Shaftal alone."

They walked to the main gate, and Emil went into a shop within sight of it to visit a friend who had made it his habit to watch the comings and goings of the garrison. When he reappeared, he reported that his friend had nothing useful to tell them. If a Shaftali spy were visiting the garrison, he or she had the sense to go in by the postern gate, and if the owner of the trunks of books were going in and out, he looked no different from any other soldier.

Willis's mood seemed to have only grown more foul as the day continued. Apparently, he did not like that Emil taught Zanja about glyphs, nor did he like that their intuitions had proven so compatible. But why he was so irritated by these things Zanja could not imagine.

As they walked through the rich farmlands of the river valley, Annis talked to Zanja about her experiments with gunpowder and other unstable compounds. It seemed incredible she had not even injured herself, when she clearly deserved to be blown to bits.

In this community of huge, fantastically intermarried families, Zanja's loneliness was becoming intolerable.

She experimented with touching Annis's arm, wondering if she herself would be blown to bits. Annis turned her head at Zanja's touch, and her glance was not unfriendly. "We should go away somewhere so you can practice shooting," she said.

"Sometime soon," Zanja suggested.

Annis smiled. Apparently, not all South Hillers were hopelessly unsubtle.

The land slowly put on the clothing of summer: first white and pink, then many shades of green. The Sainnites regularly hunted South Hill Company, commonly by daylight, less commonly by night. Lookouts within and without Wilton signaled troop movements with fire and flag, and, inevitably, when the Sainnites arrived at one or another encampment, their prey would have fled. South Hill Company set traps, lay in wait, and struck back, though their enemy rapidly grew cautious and canny and so did not fall for their tricks often. Thus, every fallen Sainnite was a cause for celebration.

Zanja occasionally led the Sainnites on a merry chase through the wild wood, but more often she and her food-laden donkey took refuge in a thicket as the soldiers marched past, and instead of fighting or fleeing she spent much of her time straining her prescience, trying to calculate where and when she might find thehungry Paladins, who, by making themselves difficult for the soldiers to find, also made it difficult for supplies to find them.

The second full moon that Zanja had seen in South Hill was starting to wane as she and her donkey climbed wearily into the highlands where Daye's company had retreated for a few days of rest. A startled, haggard picket challenged her, for even in a place so remote from the garrison they dared not relax their guard. Zanja gave the poor man some bread and dried fruit, and made her way into the camp, where her appearance was greeted with an exhausted chorus of huzzahs. Daye intervened to keep the donkey from being stampeded, and handed over the fresh supply of food to the cook, who in turn sent a phalanx of helpers to fetch buckets of water and start chopping vegetables for stew.

"Tonight will be our first night's sleep in three days," Daye explained. "And we've hardly eaten since yesterday."

"I could not find you," Zanja said apologetically. "By the time I was done dodging Sainnites. . ."

"Well, I don't blame you. It's just frustrating, not being able to send my people over to the nearest farm for food when we get hungry. The lack of beds and baths, well, that's not so pleasant either. You're looking pretty tired yourself." She examined Zanja critically. "How long since you haven't spent a day on your feet?"

Zanja shook her head; it was too much trouble to count.

"Too long, then. You rest with us tomorrow."

"People will go hungry."

"Let them shoot a deer or snare some rabbits, like we've been doing."

Daye told Zanja the way to a nearby hot spring, in a rocky meadow where the turf would satisfy the donkey. The spring was easy enough to find, for it was marked by flapping flags of drying laundry.

Though the pool's edges were trampled and some suds lingered, Zanja had the steaming, stinking place to herself. She tossed her dirtiest clothes in to soak, then lay herself down in the scalding, sulfurous water and decided she would never get up again.

People came to collect their laundry, and Zanja managed to exchange a few groggy words of conversation with them. They left; Zanja dozed, and was awakened by more laundry being tossed in to join hers. Then Annis came into the water and waded to the deepest, hottest part of the pool, where Zanja lay stunned by heat, with her head propped up on stone. Zanja put her hands on bare skin that was heated by the earth's center and slippery with minerals. Annis's hands stroked from ribs to hips and then to Zanja's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and Zanja let her kiss her, lazy and slow, and eventually her hands found their way to the insides of Annis's thighs. For a while Zanja was unmoored, half drowned, dazzled by sharp flashes of sunlight, of pleasure, of simple release. Annis was a laughing, easy, and uncomplicated lover.

When they had finished, Annis got up and began briskly pounding her sodden clothes with stones.

Bewildered, Zanja watched Annis sink to her elbows in soapy foam. Had she just been entertaining Annis, helping stave off boredom while her clothes were soaking?

"I had so much gunpowder in my clothes I was a walking explosion," Annis said cheerfully.

"I know what you mean," Zanja said.

"Listen," Annis said, not seeming to have heard. "I've invented something, and I think it might be rather fine. It flies! Don't tell Emil-I want to show him, and see his face light up."When Zanja lay with her fellow katrim, it had been both intimate and perilous, for the katrim were simultaneously fellows and rivals, who with no immediate enemy to fight, could only pick fights with each other. To lay down their weapons for a while and offer each other intimacy and comfort instead was never casual, though it was always a.s.sumed to be short-lived. But Annis's carelessness, Zanja thought, was insulting.

"That was fun," Annis said, as she hung her laundry on the bushes, and did not even seem to notice when Zanja failed to agree with her.

The wearying, hectic game of dodge, retreat, and regroup dulled Zanja's pain, but honed her intuition.

She stockpiled food at Midway Barn so starving company members could get supplies there even when it was impossible for Zanja to catch up with them. One night, she spotted the signal fires that warned Willis's company of an enemy attack, and she was able to guess where Willis would make his new encampment, and left food for them to find when they arrived. No doubt Willis would call it luck, or common sense. A few days later, she arrived at Midway Barn with a fresh supply of food, and was astonished to find Emil there, alone, sipping a cup of tea and reading a dispatch.

He was haggard, but grinned like a boy at her surprise. "I hear you've started leaving food supplies-not where the unit is encamped, but where they will be encamped soon. That's quite a trick."

"I've only done it twice."

"It's a pity you can't tell us where the Sainnites will be, the way they seem to do with us."

"It's a pity you can't do it either," she said.

"Yes. But apparently I can predict where you will be. Come with me to Bowen's Farmhold, will you?

Three survivors from Rees Company are guesting there, and sent a message asking to be admitted to South Hill Company. We'll be there in time for supper, and the Bowens always set a good table."

It was a fine day: bright and warm, and shot through with swooping birds that dove like flame from out of the sun and swooped over the treetops, ecstatic with pa.s.sion. The two of them took a high trail that Zanja had not followed before, with a slender rivulet chuckling along beside them. For half the morning, Emil thought his own thoughts, and Zanja, long accustomed to solitude, felt no need to interrupt with an attempt at conversation. They reached a high, remote meadow, where occasional fat bees shot past like pistol b.a.l.l.s. There, they sat in the sun to rest, and the donkey promptly set to grazing. Emil took a packet wrapped in paper out of his doublet pocket and handed it to her. "This is for you. You'd have gotten it much sooner, but it took my friend in Wilton over a month to find."

Zanja did not know what to do with a gift. "Untie the string," he urged. "You'll laugh when you see what it is."

She opened the packet, and then she did laugh, for Emil had given her a pack of fortune-telling cards.

"Emil, you are a desperate man."

"Yes," he said, suddenly serious.

"Glyphs!" she exclaimed, looking more closely at the cards."These cards were traditionally used to teach glyphs to schoolchildren. I'm afraid it's a rather artless deck. I've seen some that were almost too beautiful to touch-but I suppose you wouldn't want to be carrying artwork while running through the woods and rolling around in the mud."

Zanja shuffled through the cards, looking at the woodcut ill.u.s.trations, printed in brown, and the glyphs stamped on each corner in red. Most of the glyphs she had not seen before, but even those she was familiar with seemed much less ambiguous when paired with an ill.u.s.tration. She found a raven, who dove earthward with a message satchel round his neck. She found an owl, who flew across a chasm with a person dangling helplessly from one claw. She found a woman standing in an open doorway, and lay that card flat upon her knee.

Emil took up the card and examined it critically. "The Woman of the Doorway really should look less grim and more ambivalent."

"Is she going out, or coming in? Or is she simply unable to make up her mind?"

"They say she stands poised between the danger without and the danger within."

"Of course." Zanja took the card from him and traced the shape of the glyph with a fingertip.

"Uncertainty and judgment, and the dangers of decision. Possibilities and dangers and the fact of our existence here-" she tapped the woman's head, to show which "here" she meant. "Always deciding."

"To some fire bloods, the cards explain themselves. I suspected they might explain themselves to you."

She surrept.i.tiously wiped her face dry. What was wrong with her? She restlessly sought and found the owl card, and showed it to Emil. "Is the person being carried a pa.s.senger, or prey?"

"Ah, well. That is the heart of the question, isn't it? Do we seek wisdom, or are we kidnapped by it?"

Zanja said, half to herself, "It was the owl G.o.d that chose me to serve her."

"No wonder your way has been so hard. That glyph must be your name sign, then."

"Which is yours? No-I will guess." She sought through the deck, and pulled out a card: a man standing alone on a hilltop, with stars shaped like arrows falling down on him.

"Solitude," Emil said. "Also sometimes called Contemplation. The man on the hill sees forever, and might be destroyed by what he sees. Yes, it's my card," he added, as she glanced at him inquiringly, "Now tell me: What is the threat to South Hill Company? Just pick a card and let me do the thinking."

She chose a card that depicted a plain box, with the lock broken, the lid half open, and the interior hidden in shadow.

Emil said. "But what is in the box?"

She pulled out and tossed down a picture of a burning flame.

"Whose fire is it?"

She lay a third card down, and cried in disgust, "That can't be right!" It was the Man on the Hill.

But Emil spread out the three cards in the gra.s.s. "Am I the one who threatens South Hill? Well, obviously my judgment on this matter is questionable, but I don't see how it could be possible. Let's consider what else it might be. The flame, of course, is the elemental fire that enlightens and destroys: love, rage, desire, revolution, creation, and destruction. The box has to do with secrets that might be revealed, so pairedwith the flame it suggests elemental divination or revelation. When the flame is paired with Solitude, it usually means fire talent, fire logic, the solitude that comes with being a visionary. And all three cards together. . ." He looked at them, frowning.

"It might be a warning that for us to practice divination like this somehow makes you the danger that threatens South Hill. Or it might be a suggestion that divination will allow us to counter a danger that is not yet revealed."

"It might mean either or both of those things. But I see a third possibility-one that I want to reject because it seems like an impossibility." They sat a long time in silence, with Zanja gazing down at the cards and seeing how their meanings ceaselessly shifted and yet somehow began to stabilize. Emil had looked away from the cards, and gazed out at the vista that lay before them. He said at last, "When those falling stars pierce the heart, it feels like this."

"It feels like an owl's claw," Zanja said.

He turned to her with a warm, wry smile, his squint lines all furrowed against the sun. "Well, what do you now see in the cards?"

"I see that the Sainnites have a seer."

"If that's true, then he must be a madman. To nurture a seer takes great care and deliberation, and the Sainnites seem incapable of both."

"He may be a madman," Zanja said, "but what he's done to us so far, and to Rees before us, seems more like genius."

"Yet-however difficult and exhausting the process-we continue to evade his insight. That may be the best we can hope to do against such an enemy." Emil stretched out his stiff leg, preparatory to standing up. She stood and offered him a hand, which he clasped in his so gently that she found herself again bewildered. The Ashawala'i were never so demonstrative, except perhaps with their closet kin. "To h.e.l.l with protocol," Emil said. "Between the two of us, we can see through the tricks of an inexperienced seer- but not if I have to chase you across half the region every time I want to talk to you. These volunteers from Rees don't know it yet, but one of them-" he grunted as she helped him up, "-is going to be our new bread runner. Maybe more than one of them, since I suspect you won't be easy to replace."

Chapter Eleven.

The three units rotated positions again: Daye's unit occupied high ground within spygla.s.s sight of Wilton; Perry's unit retreated into the highlands for a few days of rest, and Willis's unit camped in between, in the thick woods west of the rich farmlands that surrounded Wilton. Since being promoted to runner, Zanja had traveled several times between Emil and Daye. It was never too difficult to find Daye's unit: it did not take a seer to know that they would be on one or another hilltop near the edge of the flood plain that surrounded Wilton. But to find Willis's unit would be tricky, even though, as far as Zanja knew, they had not decamped recently. She had been walking through the woods since sunrise, merely hopeful that she was following the right path.Sweating in the warm morning, Zanja slipped through a thicket and emerged onto clear ground again.

She paused to listen, and heard only faint bird song. Then a shot rang out, and a pistol ball smacked into a tree not a hand's breadth from her shoulder. A second ball whizzed past, singing in a high, thin whine, but by then she had dived into the thicket again. She paused to load a pistol and then crawled further into the thick woods, then lay down in the dirt and waited with her heartbeat thrumming in her ears.

The woods lay dead silent. The birds began to sing again. Her heartbeat slowed; her instincts told her that whoever had shot at her was gone. Still, she did not continue her journey until midday filled the forest with dull sunlight. It was afternoon when a watchful picket outside the encampment noticed her cautious pa.s.sage through the woods, and challenged her. "Why are you lurking?" he asked, when he recognized her. "Do you want to get yourself killed?"

Willis kept his camps in exacting order, with all the gear packed away, so it could be easily s.n.a.t.c.hed up should it become necessary to flee or fight. Lately, through, the Sainnites no longer chased the Paladins into the woods, and seemed satisfied to simply disrupt their sleep, night after night. It was a policy of persecution that did not subject their own soldiers to much danger, while continuing to wear out the Paladins. Willis had sent Emil an impatient message that next time the Sainnites approached his camp, he intended to attack rather than retreat. Emil had dispatched Zanja to find out his plans in more detail.

Willis sat talking with a sharpshooter who was said to be his lover, several other opinionated and incautious people, and a couple of his brothers, who tended to repeat whatever he said as though they had thought of it themselves. Whatever Zanja's a.s.sessment of their characters, these were seasoned and courageous fighters, and she supposed she might learn something about the value of aggression from them.

Willis spotted her and said with extraordinary joviality, "Well, well! Unfortunately, you have missed the midday meal."

"I was delayed by being shot at in the woods."

"That's strange. Perhaps a lone Sainnite is out there today. Either that, or it was that spy we've been watching out for."

Zanja said, "Well, I never saw who it was, but it makes no sense that someone who wants to avoid notice would have shot unnecessarily. Are you certain that it wasn't a member of your company taking a shot at me?"

"Well, if you didn't answer the hail-"

"No one hailed me."

"Then it was no Paladin. We don't shoot at our own."

"Of course not," Zanja said, and perhaps she might have left it at that, but the memory of the wasted afternoon rankled. "But how can I be confident that everyone in South Hill Company recognizes me as one of their own?" she asked.

She had said it quietly enough, but Willis reacted as she might have expected, with a roar calculated to make her regret having even mentioned such a possibility. "No one questions the truthfulness and honor of my people! If my man says no one answered his hail, then that is what happened!"

"No one hailed me," she said again.

"So it wasn't one of my people!""Then you have a sniper lurking in the woods, and had better beware. A solitary person could easily slip past your pickets."

"My pickets are always watchful," Willis said dismissively.

Mechanically, bitterly, Zanja gave him Emil's message, and then tried to listen closely as Willis and the others explained their plan to her. She had intended to ask Willis to show her the site of his intended ambush, but now could not convince herself to remain any longer than strictly necessary. If she left now, she could reach Daye's unit before dark.

"I didn't expect to see you again so soon," said Daye, when Zanja had found the encampment, shortly before sunset. They were dousing the cookfires to make it harder for the Sainnites to find them in the darkness, but the stew was still hot. The evening watch was already in position; the night watch slept; the day watch played cards or dice by the fading light. Daye claimed she had nothing important to do, and sat and chatted with Zanja while she ate.

"Is Annis away?" Zanja asked.

"She's conducting experiments again, now that she's got more gunpowder. That child is rather excited about something, but won't tell me what."

Zanja ate a few mouthfuls. "I need some advice," she finally said.

She had come to trust Daye during the months that she served under her command. Daye had been the first to congratulate her on her promotion, and to point out that now Zanja's swift mind would prove even more important than her swift feet. Now, Daye paused in plaiting her gray hair, and looked at Zanja inquiringly.

"I think someone in Willis's unit tried to shoot me today," Zanja said. "And I think that Willis commanded it."

"That man," Daye said, apparently not much surprised, "is an a.s.s. I've known him his whole life, and he has always been an a.s.s. It's hopeless." In silence, she finished plaiting her hair, and Zanja cleaned out her porringer with a bit of bread.

"I'm just a stranger-" she finally began.

Daye cut her off. "You're a smart fighter and that prescience is an a.s.set to the company. I'll talk to Emil."

"I can talk to him myself."