Something about this man seated in a tall chair, his mail hood thrown back, his long iron-grey hair sweaty, his gaze utterly dismissive, sent a chill up Jatal’s back that was so strong it penetrated the strange numbing haze that blanketed his thoughts.
‘Why is this one here?’ the Warleader demanded of the priest.
‘You are done with him?’
‘Yes.’
Jatal hardly understood that they were discussing him. All he knew was that he faced his rival. He swallowed to clear his throat. ‘She’s dead,’ he murmured — or tried to.
The Warleader eyed him, frowning. ‘What’s that?’
‘She is dead. Andanii is dead.’
Pain twisted the man’s features. He gestured impatiently to the priests who were busy lighting candles and preparing some sort of draught. ‘Do not despair,’ he told Jatal, his voice tight. ‘Soon you will be as well.’
Puzzlement and outrage wormed their way through the fog of Jatal’s thoughts. He stood weaving, suddenly exhausted beyond all effort. ‘That is all you have to say? After all she chose to give you?’
The Warleader’s thick brows rose. ‘Ahh,’ he breathed. ‘I understand. All she gave me, you say. She gave me a great deal of her time, that is true.’ He pointed to the tall tankard of fluids the priests were mixing. ‘Now!’ he ordered. ‘We will do this now.’
‘But … my lord …’ one objected. ‘You must prepare further.’
‘Do you question me?’
The priest fell to his knees. ‘Forgive me, lord.’
The Warleader gestured impatiently for the drink. Another of the shaduwam handed it to him. He drank it in a long series of swallows, wiped the spilled thick dark fluids from his beard. He regarded Jatal once again with his dead flat eyes. ‘She encouraged me to talk — to tell stories. And I did. More than I ought to have. I was perhaps pleased by her attentions though I certainly knew better. And from listening to me all those evenings your princess came closest of anyone to grasping a certain secret. One not even she could believe. One she dared not pass on to anyone — not even to you. Especially not to you.’
He pointed to a lit candle and a priest brought it to him. The Warleader passed a hand through its smoke, wafting it to his face and inhaling deeply. This he did several times. Jatal assumed he was deadening the pain of the wound in his side, from which a great deal of blood had spilled to smear his armour.
‘And so, my prince,’ the man said, straightening, ‘I choose to give you something in her honour. Something which you do not want. Because, you see, I understand you now. You are just like me. You are a jealous man.’ He reached out and pulled a gripping tool from the table nearby. It was an instrument Jatal had seen physicians using in field infirmaries. ‘Now,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘But, lord, who …?’
The Warleader cuffed the priest aside. ‘I shall. Now.’ He pressed the instrument into the wound at his side, turning it and gouging. He gasped at the agony of it, even mitigated by the drink and the fumes he’d inhaled.
He withdrew a blood-smeared object and extended it to Jatal who took it, wonderingly, in both hands. The arrow must have passed almost completely through the Warleader’s body, for the point and most of the shaft had been broken off, leaving perhaps two hand’s-breadths of wood, and the fletching, embedded in the wound. Jatal turned it over, wiped the blood from its slick surface. All the while, the Warleader watched, his eyes glittering with something that might have been cruel satisfaction.
Jatal pinched the wet feathers to let their colour come through — though he suspected he knew already what to expect.
‘She did choose to follow me, Prince Jatal,’ the Warleader said, his voice now relaxed, even content. ‘She had something to give me, you see.’
The colours of the fletching showed through as Vehajarwi.
‘She gave me that. Because, you see, she had given everything else she had to you.’
Rising, the man closed his hard hand over Jatal’s on the shaft. ‘And now I give it to you. The gift of pain. True soul-destroying anguish. It is yours now. Carry it in your heart.’ He waved Jatal off. Turning aside, he addressed the priest: ‘Let him live. Let him live long.’ The man’s words seemed to come from a great distance. A hand pushed Jatal away. ‘Go,’ the Warleader called. ‘Go with my blessing and with my curse.’
Aware of nothing, Jatal stumbled away. He found himself under open golden sky, on a set of stairs; it was late afternoon. He looked down: he still held the bloody shaft in both hands. His cheeks were cold and wet. Shaduwam priests shouldered him aside, ignoring him. They led prisoners up the stairs: some were from among the mercenaries who had followed the Warleader, others were of the Adwami. None he saw were of the Hafinaj.
Blinking, Jatal started forward once more, his eyes on the arrow shaft. When he looked up again, strangely dizzy, he found he walked a narrow alley that opened on to a broad main thoroughfare. This he entered. A party of shaduwam brushed past him; they paid him no more attention than if he’d been a shade.
The wide approach ended at tall double gates in the walls of the Inner City. Jatal passed through the open gates to enter the narrow ways of the city proper. Its peasant citizens stared from open doorways as he passed. He stepped over corpses, through the ashen remains of burned-down barriers, past the bodies of horses, the still-wet remains of Adwami troopers, torn into fragments.
Oh Andanii … I betrayed you even while you held true. I am not worthy of your sacrifice.
A few of the peasant inhabitants followed him now, at a distance, as he stumbled along. Some, he noted, stooped now and then to pick up rocks. Something struck his shoulder, hard. He blinked, confused. The words of the poet came to him: Blood is brightest / Against the purest snow …
A blow to his head spun him into a wall. He leaned against it, dazed. Stones smacked into the brick wall about him. The crowd of inhabitants closed now, emboldened. Frenzied enraged eyes glared their murder at him. Clawed hands reached for him. They tore the bloodied robes from him; their ragged nails gouged his flesh; they yanked his hair as if meaning to tear the top of his head off. Hands fought to unbuckle the straps of his armour. Men and women spat and screamed their rage at him. Thumbs jammed into his eyes. Fingers pulled and tore at his lips. Their press squeezed the breath from his lungs.
My love … I come to you … Please do not turn from me.
A petrifying bellowed roar shook the stones beneath him. Light reached his eyes as the piled-on bodies scattered. An immense figure was there, straddling him, throwing the peasants like children to smash into the walls. His armour hung from him in tattered links and hanging straps. He swung the broken haft of his axe, pulverizing heads with each blow: Scarza, bloodied yet whole.
The half-giant lifted Jatal to his feet. ‘You’ll live?’ he growled.
‘Yes — no.’
The lieutenant eyed him with a strange expression. ‘Well, this way. The bastard betrayed all of us but we can still get away.’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘No.’ He peered down: he still held the shaft in both hands. The blood had dried, sticking his fingers closed.
‘Ah. I see.’ The fellow peered up and down the street, empty now that the mob had fled. ‘She’s gone then?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, lad.’
‘Sorry?’
‘For this.’
Jatal frowned, blinking. The axe handle blurred for him and he knew nothing more.
Pain brought him to consciousness. He brought his hands to his head and held it; a great bump had swelled up on the side of his skull just behind the temple.
‘Not broken, is it?’ Scarza’s low voice enquired from the dark.
‘I wish it were.’
‘I understand.’
‘No, you don’t.’ They were in a copse next to fields. A distant yellow glow marked what Jatal imagined must be the fires of Anditi Pura.