Fall of a Kingdom (The Farsala Trilogy) (8 page)

O
NLY THREE DAYS LATER
, despite all Soraya’s attempts to slow their journey, they reached the parting of the ways.

It had rained the night before, long and cold, though it was early for that kind of rain. The oiled silk of the pavilions and the braziers had kept them dry and almost warm. But the morning was cool and cloudy, and the Trade Road was a sea of mud. Her father had finally lost patience with it, and the party had climbed the low cliffs at the first path they found. They’d ridden over the grasslands till they reached this small, muddy trail that meandered over the plains toward the mountains, just visible in the distance.

Soraya sighed and pulled the warm, woolen robe tight around her. Her father had insisted on rough, practical clothes—almost as if she were truly going to be abandoned and he wished to give her the best chance of survival. In truth, silk, or even fur, would be ridiculous on this cold, muddy ride.

Soraya had resolved to face this moment with the same proud dignity she’d managed so far, but it was dificult, under the gaze of the witnesses and the hard-eyed armsmen the gahn had sent to actually escort her into the wilderness. These men had joined the others this morning, since her father had refused to travel with them for the whole journey. Right before they arrived, the two Suud tribespeople, with their corpse-pale skin and strange light eyes, had stolen away, just as Jiaan and the young peddler-forger had done earlier.

The plan
is
working,
Soraya assured herself. She had nothing to worry about but boredom and loneliness.
Years
of boredom and loneliness, with no marriage in sight. On the other hand, her mother wouldn’t be there. Soraya sighed again, but resentment stiffened her pride. She cherished that pride as the wide-eyed servants, who hadn’t been let in on the secret, touched their heads, their hearts, and gestured to their bodies as they bowed, indicating that all those things were at her service. Her father’s armsmen, who knew at least part of the truth, were brisker about it. But they looked sober enough to keep up the act.

Pari’s warm, teary embrace almost undid Soraya and would have convinced any watcher that Pari hadn’t a clue what was really going on.
She’s not faking either,
thought Soraya grimly, patting her cousin’s shoulder. Pari’s emotions were open to the world. She would laugh at flowers or weep over a dead bird. It was something Soraya liked about her cousin, except when she had to deal with the storm. “Come now, there’s enough water around without you adding to it.”

Pari sniffed, giggled, and pulled her horse away. Soraya mustered all her control, turned to face her father, and instantly realized that despite the gravity of the long-term situation, the farce of the moment had overtaken him.

“Be brave, daughter.” His voice was somber, but his eyes laughed. “Azura will surely shelter the innocent, as he did so often in ancient times. Your heart is pure.” His lips twitched, and Soraya had to hide her face in her hands, maidenlike, to conceal her expression.

“Stop laughing,” she muttered. “I hate this.”

She pulled herself together and met his gaze. She tried to think of something ridiculously maudlin she could say to get back at him, but nothing came to her.

“I go at your bidding,” she said. Pari and the others might take it for acting, but it was true. So true that tears stung her eyes. Soraya reined her horse around abruptly and set off down the track at a trot. If they had any decency, they’d leave her alone for a while. Forever.

But she’d not gone more than a hundred yards when she heard a horse thundering up behind her at full gallop.
Boors.
They could have given her a moment. Anger flared. She turned to tell them what she thought of their courtesy, their manhood, their ancestry, and anything else that might occur to her, but then she stopped, open-mouthed, as Rakesh galloped up in a torrent of splattering mud.

Her father reached out and swept her off her saddle and onto his lap, hugging her hard. “Did you think I’d let my leopardess go without a proper good-bye?” There were tears in his eyes.

Soraya hugged him. Her own eyes were damp. “It makes a good show too,” she mumbled into the fur of his cloak. “Like that cursed blanket on the echoing dome. Why didn’t you let me reveal the truth about that?”

“Ah, there’s truth and truth, and revealing that one might have gained you an enemy that neither of us needs right now. There’s little enough of magic in the world, cub. Small blame to the temple for making its own.”

“It’s still a cheat,” said Soraya, straightening to look at him.

“I know.” Her father shrugged. “But since I’m planning another cheat, with you in the center of it, I can hardly complain. Keep a stout heart, daughter. I’ll take the Hrum apart and come for you as soon as I can. And there you’ll be, a beautiful maiden, sheltered by Azura himself. They’ll be tripping over themselves to marry you!”

Her arms went round him again, hard and warm and true, however the world might cheat. “I know you’ll come.”

Even if it took
years.
Soraya sniffed, but there was no point in complaining.

“I love you, leopard cub.”

“I know.”

He sighed and put her back into her saddle with an ease and strength other men could only envy. Then he turned Rakesh and cantered off.

Soraya turned her horse the other way, wiping frantically at her tears. She’d never be able to remove all the signs of grief before those cursed armsmen caught up with her. And curse the man for oversetting her, for sticking her with this whole impossible mess. She was glad she’d said “I know” instead of
I love you, too.

AS THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED the flat plains near the cliffs gave way to rolling hills, then the tree-covered foothills of the mountains themselves, for Soraya no longer tried to delay their journey. Her blankets—no longer quilted silk, but coarse sheepskins and wool—were warm enough. But the small tent the hard-faced armsmen pitched for her each night held no temptations to linger.
Get it over with.

She shivered as they passed into the forest and the road began to climb more steeply. Soraya disliked being surrounded by trees. Their dense, towering shadows concealed Azura’s sun, and she couldn’t see more than a dozen yards in any direction. At least she didn’t need to imagine enemies behind them—her enemies rode beside her.

Only Jandal spoke to her at all beyond the necessities of the journey, and even he, for all his courtesy, kept a distance between them. The temple’s witness, who’d seemed friendly enough when traveling with her father, had turned stern and silent in the presence of the gahn’s guards. It was all part of the act, and she knew it, but Soraya had never before been surrounded by people who ignored her.
By all means, get it over with.

Once into the mountains they kept traveling deeper, higher, and Soraya thought they were heading west, though it was hard to be certain surrounded by trees. She’d never gone much past the foothills; she hadn’t realized the mountains were this vast. Or this high. It grew colder, and the very air seemed thin and useless.

They made too much noise to see any game, but Soraya saw the scat of gazelle and wild goats on the trail, and the days were filled with birdsong and the squirrels’ scolding chatter.

She might have thought they were riding in circles to confuse pursuit, but they kept going up and mostly north until the morning of the sixth day after they’d left her father, when they started down.

The track, small to begin with, had narrowed to a trail, then to something that could barely be described as a path. Now her guards left it altogether and turned east, traveling through groves and across the rock-strewn meadows of the high country.

In the early afternoon they reached another meadow, running down a long slope with a shallow ravine to one side. Beyond it rose a series of dark-clad, rugged peaks that looked as if the ocean’s waves had been cast in stone and made giant upon the land.

“Here,” the leader of Soraya’s guards pronounced. “Get off the horse, girl.”

Soraya sat and looked at him, with the pride of twenty generations of the House of the Leopard in her eyes. They could abandon her here, without ceremony or dignity, but no common armsman could call her “girl” and order her about. And he of all people should realize that someday she might be coming back.

His face remained expressionless, but his horse snorted and stamped as his grip on the reins tightened. Did his weather-beaten cheeks darken a bit?

“If you would please to dismount, Lady Soraya?”

It was no longer an order. Soraya snorted and slid from the saddle.

“Take her back to my father,” she instructed Jandal regally. “She’s a fine mare.”

“Very fine,” he agreed. He looked as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words. He turned his horse and cantered off in the direction of the track.

The priest made the signs for protection from various djinn over her heart, her forehead, and her hands. Ironic, since she was being offered to the djinn. Or was it some subtle message? Who cared?

Finally the priest and the guards mounted and followed Jandal, without a backward glance. Almost as if they were enticing her to follow.

As if she weren’t huntress enough to have retraced their route back to the path at any time. In fact, if she’d really been abandoned, that was probably what she’d have done. The last town they passed was in the foothills, three days’ ride back. It would have been a long walk, with cold nights and no food except a handful of late berries. But Soraya could have done it, if she’d had to. If the watchers wouldn’t have followed her.

She hadn’t been aware of them until she reached the foothills, though she didn’t know if that was where they started trailing her or if they’d been there all along.

It was her own guards who’d betrayed their presence. She’d seen her warders cast too many searching glances over their shoulders. Then she’d noticed the way the last man in the troop would dismount at any fork in the trail and, under pretext of checking his girth or his horse’s hooves, overturn three stones in a line or point a stick in the direction they’d taken. It was almost insulting, how obvious they’d been.

So Soraya had no doubt, as she settled herself on a rock in the middle of the meadow and wrapped her long robe around her, that she was being watched. She wondered how Jiaan would get past them, but that was his problem. All she had to do was wait.

Time passed. The view palled. Throwing small stones at a bigger rock a few yards away palled. Combing out her hair and rebraiding it didn’t take nearly enough time.
Where is the djinn-cursed fellow?

And more important:
What will I do if he doesn’t arrive?

He would come eventually, of course, to take her to the refuge her father had spoken of with such careful vagueness. But how long would it take him to get past the guards? Candlemarks? Days? No one had told her how long she should wait—only that Jiaan would come to take her away. If he hadn’t come by nightfall, she would have to find shelter and food, but she had no idea how to build a shelter—that was servants’ work. Soraya scowled. She could hunt if she had her bow, but as soon as she’d left the company of her father, the guards had taken even her eating dagger from her. She had no weapons and no shelter—only the hope that a peasant-born boy little older than she would be able to smuggle her past…how many spies?

All she could do was wait.

The morning wore into afternoon. If Jiaan hadn’t arrived by evening, Soraya resolved, she would find some shelter in the woods and start walking back at sunrise. Playing at being a sacrifice was all very well, but she had no intention of turning herself into one because that incompetent peasant couldn’t do his job. She could make her way back to town…if her watchers allowed it.

The sun was warm, but it was worry that pushed Soraya to her feet. If she was going to wait till dusk, she would need water. At least they’d had the decency to leave her near a stream. The ravine’s banks were several yards deep, but only the first yard or so was sheer; the rest was a steep slope of loose gravel. Nothing her boots couldn’t handle. Soraya swung her feet over the edge and slithered down in a small avalanche of pebbles and dirt. At the bottom she brushed off her buttocks and went to kneel by the stream. Her cupped hands had just touched the water when a soft, fierce voice whispered, “What in Azura’s name took you so long?”

T
HE IDIOT BRAT JUMPED
, looking wildly around. “Don’t do that, Lady,” Jiaan hissed. “I don’t think they can see you, but I can’t be certain.”

At least she had the wit to turn her motion into a twisting stretch before she bent to drink.

“Where have
you
been?” she whispered, her face inches from the water. “I’ve been waiting for
marks.
”

It hadn’t been marks, but Jiaan felt that way too.

“I’ve been waiting for you to get your…self off that accursed rock and get into the trees. Or at least somewhere I’d have a chance to reach you,” he muttered. “Did you expect me to gallop into the meadow and pluck you up under half a dozen eyes?”

The girl looked startled. “Six of them?”

Jiaan snorted. “Three of them. Two eyes each.”

There had been eighteen of Garshab’s spies when they’d started out, three bands of six. The commander’s huntsmen had lured twelve of them off, changing the markings on the trail, making themselves visible and suspicious—though they had excuses for their presence ready, if they were caught. “It doesn’t matter what anyone suspects,” the commander had said. “As long as no one actually sees Soraya in the company of any man of mine.”

“How was I supposed to know you wanted me to head for the trees?” the girl complained. She’d spotted him now, in the prickly bushes where he’d been lurking under the assumption that she had to go to the stream sometime. Azura be thanked, she wasn’t looking at him. She pulled off her coat and dipped her hands in the water again, bathing her throat and forehead. “If I’d just gone wandering off, I’d probably have gone in the wrong direction. If you wanted me to go somewhere, you should have told me so back on the road when we were planning.”

“How could I tell you what direction to go when I didn’t know where they’d…? Never mind. Please, Lady Soraya, just get your drink and go back to the rock. Give me enough time to get out of here, then head for the woods to the north. That’s toward—”

“I know where north is.”

“Pretend you’re going to relieve yourself,” Jiaan went on grimly. He wished he dared to say all the things he’d been thinking up for the last mark. “It won’t give us long, but they’ll assume the man they posted there is watching you.”

“How boorish.” Her lips barely moved. She stood and stretched again. “Will he be watching me?” She started toward the bank.

“No. He tripped over something and hit his head. He’s not dead, but he won’t notice much for a while.”

“Killing him would be safer.” She scrambled up the slope, almost on top of him. Gravel rained through the leaves, onto his hair.

“He’s just doing his job, you…” He didn’t say it loud enough for her to hear him.

JIAAN CRAWLED ON HIS BELLY up the ravine, and any rocks his battered knees and elbows had missed on the way down they found on the way back. He didn’t dare to stand, even bent over. From where he was, he could just see the tops of the trees to the southeast and southwest, where the other men had stationed themselves. If he couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see him, but if he stood…

Only one band of six had been trailing the lady for the last four days, and just yesterday one of them had broken his ankle when a stone turned underfoot—a simple accident, but it was almost enough to make Jiaan believe that Azura was listening to his prayers.

The commander had told Jiaan that his best chance to steal the lady Soraya away would be just before dawn. He hadn’t dreamed it might be possible in the bright sunlight of midafternoon—and evidently, Garshab’s watchers hadn’t either. As soon as it became apparent that the fool girl had settled in the meadow for the duration, two of them had gone off to set up a temporary camp, leaving the other three to watch. The man to the north had been stationed where he could see into the ravine as well, but there was no one guarding his back—and Soraya wasn’t the only one the commander had instructed in woodcraft.

Jiaan had seen his opportunity and seized it—just like the commander, like a real deghan, would. Now, as the ravine passed into the cover of the trees, Jiaan made certain he was deeply within the forest before he scrambled out and over to a bush where he could look back into the meadow.

The girl was sitting on the rock again. She had picked some flowers and appeared to be trying to braid them, but she was failing. To Jiaan’s nervous eyes, she seemed far less relaxed than she’d been earlier, but perhaps her other watchers wouldn’t be so critical. She picked another flower. And another.

Jiaan gritted his teeth. She couldn’t know how quickly he had scurried up the ravine. It was
sensible
of her to wait till she could be certain he’d made it out. She plucked a flower, discarded it, and reached for another that suited her better. Jiaan swore and went to check on the armsman he’d hit over the head.

The man still lay in the bushes where Jiaan had dragged him, near to his post, so that his fellows would find him once they began to look.

He had moved a bit, lying on his side now, with his legs curled toward his chest. He moaned softly with each breath, but at least he was breathing. The blood on his face had dried, and no fresh blood was flowing. According to the weapons master, he would recover, Azura willing, if he was well cared for. If assistance reached him in time.

It might be better for Jiaan’s mission if he was never found, but Jiaan couldn’t bring himself to be that ruthless—a weakness of his peasant blood, perhaps. But even the commander had said it would be better if no one was killed.

Jiaan took several deep breaths, hoping to quiet his twisting stomach. This was the first time he’d struck a man down in earnest.

He crawled back to the edge of the trees and saw that the idiot…the lady Soraya was finally moving, picking her way up the meadow with a casual ease that was…
sensible.
He ungritted his teeth, but they soon clamped together again.

Nothing stirred to the south as she entered the woods, looking around as if for a likely spot.

“Over here,” Jiaan whispered. “Farther in.”

“In a moment,” she said, though she moved toward him. “I really do need to relieve myself.”

“Piss in your pants,” Jiaan hissed—the djinn take proper respect! He would not fail his father for this girl’s whims. “How long do you think it will be before they decide you’re taking too long and come to investigate?”

Soraya glanced over her shoulder, then walked more briskly. The moment there was enough cover between them and the meadow, Jiaan leaped to his feet and grabbed her wrist, dragging her through the whipping branches at a dead run. She scrambled after him, one arm raised to shield her face, but she was quick and surefooted and didn’t slow him down.

“Where are the horses?” she asked softly.

“Just over this rise.” Jiaan was already pulling her up the low slope. He was certain the trees were thick enough to conceal them. He thought they were. Besides, Garshab’s spies shouldn’t even be looking at this slope…yet. “I left the peddler holding them.”

“The peddler? Why did you bring him along?” Her tone was decidedly critical.

Jiaan ungritted his teeth, again. “I didn’t have enough time to take him on a tour of the countryside, in the opposite direction from where you were heading, rent horses for all of us, and keep in touch with our trackers, who were dealing with their trackers! We had no way of knowing where they were going to leave you until just now, so we didn’t dare let you out of sight.”

“Oh.”

He bent down, hauling her with him as they pounded over the low crest. Then he let her go, scrambling as quickly as he could down the slope to where the peddler waited with three horses and his mule.

The peddler was already tightening loose girths when Jiaan reached him. He’d said very little during the last eight days. Jiaan hadn’t been with him the whole time; he’d had to rent the horses and had preferred not to bring such an…uncertain man with him when he met the trackers. He was young—hardly older than Jiaan himself—but Jiaan had seen enough of him to know that he wasn’t a fool and that his weak hand hindered him very seldom.

There was only one girth left; Jiaan tugged it tight while the peddler hoisted himself into the saddle and took up the mule’s lead rein. He’d refused to leave the beast behind, though Jiaan had pointed out that it was rare for the jackals to take a full-grown mule, even if it was hobbled.

Jiaan tossed the lady up to the saddle as soon as she came gasping up behind him, and then he grabbed her reins to stop her from cantering off. “No! We don’t run till we’re well away. I don’t want them to hear the hoofbeats.”

The girl glowered, but, unlike Fasal, she had no quirt. After a moment she nodded curtly, and he let go of the reins and leaped into the last empty saddle.

In fact, Jiaan sympathized with her. The need to run, to send his horse careening through the trees and flying over the meadows, set its spurs to him as well. But the longer Garshab’s spies took to realize she was gone, to search the woods, to find their injured companion, the longer their own lead became.

Over a quarter candlemark passed before the distant shout echoed among the hills. They’d found their colleague.

Jiaan looked back at the rise that lay between them and pursuit. No movement. Another meadow lay before them, and it would take a long time to go around it, through the trees. It would take the spies some time to figure out where they’d gone, and the echoes confused the direction a sound came from. Jiaan grinned and urged his horse to gallop through the open space, avoiding the raised burrows of the ground squirrels with practiced ease.

The horses the inn had rented to him weren’t the pride of the commander’s herd, but they weren’t nags, either. His mare’s dark mane whipped back into his face as she ran.

The girl drew level with him, her legs wrapped tight around the barrel of the dappled gelding. She rode like a deghan, like she was part of the horse, and she flashed him a triumphant grin as she passed him by.

She reined in, sensibly, as they entered the trees. Jiaan did the same and then looked back to see the peddler trotting slowly over the field, bouncing in the saddle like a sack of grain, the mule trailing behind him.

Jiaan’s mouth tightened with annoyance, but all he could do was wait and pray the watchers didn’t make it to the top of the rise anytime in the next day or so.

“Is he going to fall off?” The lady’s voice was coolly amused.

“Probably,” said Jiaan grimly.

In fact, it was only a few moments before the peddler trotted up to them, panting and flushed with the effort of staying in the saddle.

“You have to keep up,” said Jiaan in his best imitation of his father’s command voice.

“Duckie’s not being a charger,” said the peddler, in the stubborn tone Jiaan had come to know well. “And I’m not breaking her legs, galloping over rough ground like a…deghan.” His voice went expressionless on the last word, making it ten kinds of insult.

The girl scowled.

Jiaan sighed. “Let’s go.”

Perhaps another quarter mark later they came to a thinner grove, and Jiaan looked back at the rise. Three of the watchers stalked slowly over the low ridge, paying careful attention to the ground. Tracking. Garshab would have sent his best huntsmen for this task, but as the men continued down the slope and no one followed, Jiaan realized he’d eliminated two of them with one blow. “One of them is staying with the man I hit. Good.”

The peddler’s brows lifted. “With just three coming on”—he gestured to the bow and quiver that hung from Jiaan’s saddle—“couldn’t you be leveling the odds even more?”

“Not without giving them proof that someone came to the lady’s rescue,” said Jiaan. “The whole point of this is to get her away without being seen—and especially without being identified as the commander’s men. Later he can claim that Azura shielded her or some such thing. As long as they can’t prove he had a hand in it, it doesn’t matter. That’s why he wants to use you, since you have no previous connection to him.”

Jiaan turned his horse and set off again, and the others followed. The peddler was frowning. “But those fellows you said were witnesses, they saw me in the camp. That’d be a connection.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said the girl dryly. “They’re on Father’s side. They’re sworn to tell the truth if they’re asked, but who’d ask them about you?”