Everything had gone wrong. But at least he was still alive.
He heard what was not a sound, felt the shadow although it could not be seen in darkness. A prickling sensation ran from his ears to his neck, and his throat went dry, and he was suddenly horribly, terribly, genuinely scared, so badly that he would have wet himself if he hadn't just peed.
He stepped away from the trees, thinking at first that the threat came from beneath the canopy, but as he set a foot on the slope of the road's underbed, a shape passed low over him. He and the other sentries ducked, covering their heads although nothing came close to hitting them.
On the road behind them, the shape descended sharply. His breath lodged in his throat. The creature made the transition effortlessly from flying to trotting. When those mundane hoof-falls slammed on the road, he choked and gasped, and scrambled up to the road's pavement to stare after it as it moved away from them and toward the tent.
He would have called it a horse with two heads, one equine and one human, each one streaming wings like smoke. But as it came to a halt a little away from the campfire, it separated as its rider dismounted; it was a person wearing a voluminous cloak that had gusted out in the landing. But the horse really did have wings, fanned out at first as it came to earth and then folded in against its body. They swaddled its flanks like a monstrous growth.
" 'Rid us of all that is evil,'" he muttered.
"What did you say?" asked Twist.
"What is that thing?"
It was the wrong question to ask. Twist and Rabbit looked at him, chins lowering as might muzzles dip on dogs who are thinking of taking a bite out of you.
"You don't know?" asked Twist.
"Heh," said Rabbit suspiciously.
"I've never been out of the south," said Kesh in a choked voice. "Never saw such a thing before." He sorted through his choices and opted for belligerency. "You want to make something of it? I can't help it I'm not well traveled like your sort. I have to go where the mistress tells me, and she doesn't stray far, let me tell you. She works for the temple, and they don't let their hierodules off the leash. If you take my meaning."
"Heh. Heh." Rabbit scratched himself. "Like to see that."
The creature and its rider vanished inside shed and tent respectively. One of the guardsmen detached himself from the campfire and jogged down to the sentry post.
"Where's the new one?" he called when he was within earshot. It was the sergeant of their company. "Master wants him to come."
"Heh," snickered Rabbit.
"He always interviews the new ones," said Twist with a sneer. "Sees right through you, if you take my meaning."
Kesh did not, but he saw no chance to escape with three armed men beside him and he with only a knife and an unstrung bow for which he had no arrows and no facility. So it would end badly after all, and just in the teeth of his victory. Fortune had turned its back on him, that was clear.
He trudged to the tent with the sergeant beside him.
"Young man come to my company a month back," remarked the sergeant, "and didn't take to our way of doing things here. So I had to break all his fingers. I did that, you see, to get him to tell me why he'd come. It seems some folk from Nessumara had sent out a few likely lads to scout the land, see what was up. I just don't like folk who will go tattling tales of me to people who don't like me. But he fessed up pretty quickly after I got to cutting off his fingers."
"Did he now?" asked Keshad, thinking of the marketplace and how you could never let your true feelings show. "What happened then?"
"Oh, it seemed a kindness just to slit his throat. I'm not one for drawing it out, although I admit a few of my soldiers asked me to let them have a go. I don't think that's right, once you've gotten what you need. I just killed him. Most likely the vultures ate him, if the Lady was feeling as kindly as I was. Here you go."
He motioned for Kesh to go through a rigged-up entryway made of hanging cloth and in under the canvas roof. Kesh heard the sounds of the creature moving within the shed. It seemed to be eating or drinking; it made horse-like noises, so that in hearing it one would think it a horse. But horses had wings only in the old stories.
In the stories about the Guardians, who had long since vanished from the Hundred.
If this was a lord's resting place, then it was no better furnished than the hovel of a simple farmer. There was a pallet covered with a thin blanket, a folding table on which stood a bronze ewer and basin, and a small traveler's chest so old its edges were smoothed to a shiny curve and its planks were warped.
The man sat on a stool, still dressed for travel. If he was a lord, then he wore clothes common to every laborer: a long knee-length linen jacket dyed an indeterminate color that the candle flame did nothing to distinguish; wide-legged trousers; knee-high boots that looked well worn and scuffed. His dark cloak pooled around his hips and thighs as if he had scooped it over them to keep himself warm.
He looked up as Kesh halted uneasily before him. He had a strange cast of face, a little broader across the cheekbones, a shade different in complexion, the shape of the eyes more exotic, twisted and pulled. Something about his features seemed passing familiar. He might be an outlander, or else the son of some hidden corner of the Hundred whose folk rarely left their home valley, a person glimpsed once and recalled now in a spin of dizziness. No, Kesh had never seen this man before. His eyes were so brown as to be black, and they were like holes driven into Kesh's heart to lay bare his secrets.
He spoke with a slight drawling accent that Kesh could not place. "You were picked up by this troop yesterday afternoon, so I hear."
"Yes." Kesh kept it short. He didn't know how to address him, or how to stop from breaking down into tears out of fear.
"Before they found you, the troop was met by a reeve who was carrying a hierodule who said you are her slave."
"So I hear. I didn't witness that meeting myself."
"Naturally." Almost, he might be about to smile, but instead the expression made Kesh shiver as if a ghost were breathing on his neck.
The candle burned straight up. There was no wind, nothing to sway that flame. The horse bumped and snuffled within the shed.
"You are not what you claim," said the man.
Kesh could say nothing, because he was pinned by that stare. The air had grown as hot as the hell where dance those lilu who have not yet found a crack through which to wiggle out onto the mortal world. He was hot and cold together, so frightened he thought he might faint.
"It would matter to the others, although not to me," said the man cryptically. "I ask, and you must answer. Do you mean to harm me or mine?"
"No." The word was forced out of him by a vise gripping and squeezing until only the truth was left. "I care nothing for you or yours."
"How can you know, since you have not asked who me or mine are? Yet strange as it seems, you are telling the truth. Very well." He raised a hand as though the effort taxed him. "Go. Best if you not come to my attention again."