Kigh - Fifth Quarter Part 15

Hooves pounded behind her. Challenged, her gelding increased his pace. For a

time they raced neck and neck, and then both horses began to slow. Too much to hope that they'd run on forever..."Are you afraid of him, sister-mine?"Easy to respond to Bannon's arch tone and brush aside the actual question.

"Don't be an a.s.s."

"Well," Gyhard began when they were walking again, "that was interesting. I

a.s.sume you're unaware that racing on the Imperial roads is against the law and can result in heavy fines."

Vree carefully leaned forward to stroke the damp curve of chestnut neck, her

heart beginning to drum less violently. "It doesn't count as racing until a second horse joins in," she pointed out. "I wasn't racing. You were."

"You were merely allowing your mount to work off excess energy?"

"If you like."

Clearly, she wasn't going to tell him why she'd so suddenly needed to get away.

All things considered, he wasn't certain he wanted to know. "So, what were we talking about?"

"You. Who you were."

"Why not who I am?"

His question abruptly turned her mood. Her mouth twisted, and her eyes flicked over the length of his borrowed body. "I know what you are."

Gyhard i'Stevana squinted at the rapidly setting sun and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince himself that he could be home before dark.

"You should've stayed in Caraford," he muttered. "Should've diced with that toothless old man, choked down a bowl of disgusting mutton stew, and slept safely with the bedbugs until morning."

But he hadn't. And now it was almost dark.

He hunched his shoulders as a chill Fourth Quarter wind tried to push an icy gust down under his collar and kicked his horse into a trot. He should've stayed in Caraford, but he'd wanted to get home and surprise his family who weren't expecting him back for days.

Shadows in the forest flanking the trail grew deeper.

Fortunately, he'd traveled between the village and home a hundred times or more over his twenty-three years and couldn't possibly get lost. He knew every rock and every tree. Unfortunately, he also knew what might very well lurk behind them.

His horse suddenly shied sideways and he pulled it back to a walk, senses straining. He could hear nothing but the wind in the evergreens. See nothing but branches tossed against a darkening sky.

Moving slowly, so as not to attract undue attention should there be watchers in the dusk, Gyhard slid his light crossbow from its strapping and fumbled for a quarrel. Loading it would have been easier had the young stallion not continued to fight his control.

"Might be nothing," he muttered, hooking the string back under the steel claw and resting the loaded bow on his thigh-but he didn't believe it.

His eldest sister, who'd taken over the forest contract when their mother died, had sent him to ask their lord, the Due of Sibu for help. An early freeze and a desperately cold Fourth Quarter, had driven a small band of rough men whose lives had always been marginal onto the dark side of the law. Gyhard had insisted they could handle it themselves. His sister had disagreed.

I should've waited for the Duc. Come back with him.

A branch snapped. He twisted toward the sound.

Something hit him between the shoulder blades with enough force to lift him out of the saddle. His finger tightened on the trigger and the crossbow bolt slammed into the frozen ground barely a heartbeat before he did.

A small panicked voice in his head shrieked at him to roll over, to draw his long dagger, to fight. Gasping for breath, right arm folded under him at a torturous angle, he wished the voice would shut up. He swallowed, tasted blood, and struggled to suck air through teeth he couldn't unclench.

The boot caught him under the ribs and kicked him over onto his back. Jagged ends of bone grated together in his arm. He screamed.

The sandy-haired man standing over him smiled, slabs of yellow teeth barely visible in the midst of a bristling red beard.

Time slowed and Gyhard stared in horror at the descending spear.

I don't want to die!

The crude point dimpled his heavy fleece jacket, parted the leather and the fabric beneath it, then finally touched the skin of his chest. To his surprise, it hurt less than the constant agony of his arm. The audible crunch as the heavy steel forced its way through bone was the worst.

Terror opened his bowels.

Then time took up its normal speed again and whatever G.o.ds had cushioned him from the initial blow retreated. He felt the spear slam out through his back and into the earth, and he jerked like a worm on a hook. He no longer felt the pain in his arm because pain was all he had left.

Almost all.

Out of the waves of scarlet and black came one coherent thought. NO. NO. NO. NO!

Somehow, he focused on the pale-blue eyes staring down at him in rapt fascination. Frantically, he began to claw his way up the spear shaft toward them. He could feel the rough wood ripping new abrasions around the edges of the wound. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but not dying.

Then his right hand reached out and touched a filthy cheek and the pale eyes widened.

Smoke and fire and strange faces. Women he didn't know writhing under him. Blood l.u.s.t. Hunger. Rage. Too many images to make sense of. Gyhard pushed at them, shoved them away. When something called Hinrich pushed back, Gyhard clawed his way toward the center of the maelstrom.

Then he swayed, dropped to his knees, and stared in horror at the body impaled beside him. A body that quite unmistakably had not moved since it had been spiked to the ground. A b.l.o.o.d.y froth stained the golden mustache crimson as the dying man tried to speak. Failed. Died.

He was looking out of Hinrich's eyes.

But was still Gyhard.

Still alive.

Vree wet her lips and swallowed hard. Death happened. To friends, to foes, to everyone in time. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't known she would die and she clearly remembered a day in her early teens, a dagger in her hand and a crumpled body spilling blood onto the ground at her feet, when she'd accepted it as inevitable.

But to suddenly be in another body, staring down at the lifeless sh.e.l.l she'd worn since birth...

"What did you do?"

Gyhard rubbed his cheek, wondering why the telling of something that had occurred so very long ago affected him as it had. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. "I ran. The other bandits didn't even bother trying to catch me. Why should they? As far as they were concerned, they now had one less partner to share the spoils." His laugh held no humor. "I doubt they could have caught me anyway."

"Where did you run to?"

She could barely hear his answer. "Home."

The palisade around the steading had originally been built to keep out the bears and wolves and mountain cats that hunted in the forests of Sibu. Recently, it had served as a barrier against the approach of human predators.

Ice crystals forming in Hinrich's coa.r.s.e red beard, Gyhard stumbled to the gate, fighting to breathe through the st.i.tch in his side.

"Open," he gasped. "Let me in."

Ten feet and he'd be safe. Ten feet more and the nightmare would be over.

The crossbow bolt caught him in the left shoulder, flung him back, spun him around, and saved his life. The second shot whistled through the air a hand's span from his nose.

"No!" But pain and terror had hold of his throat and the best voice he could manage was a hoa.r.s.e croak. "No, please. It's me. It's me, Gyhard."

He could hear them gathering behind the wall, could hear shouts of Bandit! and Murderer! and his sister demanding to know why the first two shots had missed.

"No. It's me." He staggered back a step, then another. "It's Gyhard."

A quarrel smashed into the frozen earth at his feet. Another hissed his name as it drew a line of pain just above his ear.

He didn't want to die.

He turned and ran back into the shelter of the night.

Three days later, carefully hidden in a childhood sanctuary high in an evergreen, he watched his own funeral. Amidst the grieving were many howled vows of revenge and every adult member of the family carried a weapon close at hand. They knew the face he wore and would never allow it close enough for explanations.

Hinrich had killed him twice.

"I was in Hinrich's body seven years until I found the courage to... move on. Tomas was a distinct improvement. Young, dark, handsome; he had the most beautiful eyes..."

"Was he trying to kill you?" Vree interrupted.

"No."

She closed her eyes for a moment and almost wished she hadn't asked.

"Don't try to make me a tragic victim, Vree." His voice had picked up an edge. "I've turned the life I lost into an eternal life. Not a bad trade, in my mind."

"Your mind, my body," Bannon muttered.

From the corner of her eye, Vree could see his hand-all right, Bannon's hand- holding the reins. The white-knuckled grip seemed at odds with the tone of his voice. "Have you told this story before?"

This wasn't what he'd expected her to ask. The edge disappeared and he shrugged, the graceful motion seemingly dictated as much by the body he wore as his mood. "Once."

His face pleated into a thousand wrinkles as he smiled across his small camp at the young woman who sat crooning to her stillborn baby. As was common in the Capital when mother and child died in a birthing, Wheyra's body had been laid to rest with the infant cradled in her arms. Although no kigh lingered to be Sung back into the tiny body, the distraught mother had refused to leave the tomb without the baby. He had finally given in. He was fond of children.

One by one, he checked on the rest of his new family as they waited out the hottest part of the day in the shady hollow. The dry summer heat acted to preserve their tissues but direct sunlight did them no good at all. As the shadows moved and lengthened, he had to remain constantly vigilant lest one of them blacken and burn.

He called them by the names they'd answered to in life; names learned, for the most part, by clinging to the fringes of funeral processions.

Wheyra, Kait, and the cousins Aver and Otanon.

Once, he'd thought the dead would never leave him.

He knew better now.

Tenderly, he reached out and lifted Kait's clutching hand off the heavy brace of scavenged leather she wore around her neck.

"I know you don't like it," he told her, "but your head flops so without support."

Kait's brows drew slowly in above eyes narrowed with revulsion. "Noooo," she said.

He patted her hand. "Yes." The teenager had only joined the family the night

before when the distance between two of the flat-topped tenements had proved to be just a little farther than she could jump. Her wealthy parents had spent most of the funeral procession loudly complaining about the type of friends she'd been hanging around with.

"Noooo," Kait repeated, and she would have gone on had he not quickly hushed her.

Something was happening over by the tombs. "Don't move. Any of you." Leaning heavily on his staff, he started toward the road. He had no fear of leaving his family alone. They'd do what he said, they had no choice, and not moving was something the dead did very well. Nor did he fear that they'd be discovered by accident for living kigh would not come near. Three times guards had nearly stumbled on his camp. Each time they'd veered off without realizing they had.

It wasn't another funeral, he saw with disappointment as he shuffled into place behind a pair of merchants-who were not at all pleased at having their journey to the Capital interrupted by an advance wedge of guard wearing the Imperial sunburst.

"Yeah, hide behind that helmet," muttered the first.

"If I knew who you were, I'd take your spear and stuff it where the sunburst don't shine."

"The roads are for the citizens," snarled the second. "Not some polished flunky in a..."

"The Emperor!" came the call from the crowd closer to the city. "It's the Emperor!"