An arrow passed over his head. He threw himself flat, arms out. The ginnies scrambled out of the cloak and onto his back. With his head twisted to one side, he saw with one eye as their crests flared and they opened their mouths wide to show threat. Mischief's claws poked into his butt. A stone dug into his cheek right below his eye, and Magic, that bastard, raised himself up with his forelegs on Kesh's head, pinching claw cutting hard right over his ear.
A foot slammed down a finger's breadth from his nose. It was a foot shod in leather trimmed and shaped unlike Hundred footware, which was mostly sandals. He'd seen such boots recently. Those Qin mercenaries had worn such boots, sturdy, strong, and indestructible. Too heavy and hot to market in the Hundred.
"If you keep quiet and don't move, Master Keshad," said a voice as soft as the breeze, "you'll live through this."
From this angle, he could see into the length of camp along the road. Fire flashed into life along the horse lines, eating out of the piles of hay. The horses screamed and bolted. They had all been cut loose. He could tell because they broke away from the ropes and stampeded in all directions, frantic to get away from the flames. Arrows whistled out of the night, some tipped with fire. Canvas shelters caught as men stumbled up to the alert. Burning hay spun in the wind. A man fell beneath the hooves of panicked horses. The captain hadn't cried out the "Beware!," but sergeants shouted at their men to "Come alive," "Get up!" "Rise! Rise!" "Get those beasts under control!"
His sergeant lay dead in the dirt beside him, lifeless fingers inert, just within reach of his left hand.
The boot was gone, the man wearing it vanished into the darkness. Kesh stirred. Magic shoved his head against Kesh's ear, took hold of it, and closed his mouth with the greatest delicacy around the lobe. He didn't bite. Not yet. Kesh didn't dare move.
A man who travels a great deal in troubled times knows himself wise if he has learned enough of the arts of war to defend himself, and enough of the arts of prudence to keep out of fights. Kesh had avoided many a fight in his years trading at Master Feden's behest, but he had also scored a few wins when forced to the wall.
Not today. Today, with the dawn scarce breathing its first light, he lay as flat and still as he could with the pressure of ginny claws on his tender skin. He smelled smoke on the air, tasted floating ash and scorched hay on his tongue as the camp went up in flames.
He listened.
Branches snapped. Arrows sighed. Swords sang a bright rhythm where men fought. Horses thundered past, escaping the tumult and the burning.
Men shouted; they grunted; they screamed. Men ran, heard in their stampeding footsteps. They fell. The blood of the sergeant crept close to his fingers before the earth drank down these scantling rivulets and that spring dried up once and forever.
The course of the battle ebbed and flowed along the road. Twice men sprinted past him into the trees. Once, no more than a stone's toss away, he heard a man gasp as death overtook him, as metal struck to the bone.
The Qin were Death's wolves, ghosting out of the night to devour their foes.
A soft footfall trod the ground behind him. The ginnies chirped in welcome. A slender, sandaled foot pressed down the undergrowth an arm's span from his staring eye.
"Up," said Zubaidit. "We're getting out of here."
The ginnies scrambled off him, but circled her warily, tongues tasting her savor. Rising to hands and knees, he realized belatedly there was light enough to see. Blood spotted her feet and legs. She had blood on her kilt, and a stripe of blood on her face, as though she had forgotten blood was on her hands and tried to wipe something else away.
"Follow close," she added. "You'll carry the ginnies. I have to be free to strike if anyone attacks us. They're not all dead, and even the least of them will kill us if they can. And there are other creatures abroad we must avoid."
"Like what?"
Like the ginnies, she tilted her head and licked. "Something that tastes very bad," she murmured, "and feels very old. We've fulfilled our obligations, yours to your old master, and mine to the temple. They can fight their own battles now. We're getting out of here. And we're never coming back."
From the road, the sounds of fighting were dying down, and what cries he heard were those of helpless men as their throats were cut. Bai did not flinch, not as he did. Gliding away, she seemed no different from the black wolves who had raced past him earlier.
As he got to his feet and grabbed his gear and chased the ginnies into the sling, he remembered that after all she was born in the Year of the Wolf. Generous to those they love. Loyal to clansmen. Sentimental, uninhibited, forthright, and courageous. Yet a wolf will tear apart any creature that falls into its clutches, even if it is not hungry.
She looked back at him. The blood slashed her skin like shadows. She half blended into the woodland cover.
"Kesh!" she hissed. "This is no game! Hurry!"
For the first time in his life, he was afraid of her.
45
Before the last march of the night, Chief Tuvi pulled Shai to the back of the line. "You're too inexperienced. You'll wait back here with the tailmen. Your job is to cut down any stragglers who run this way. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Best thing you could do is get in a kill or three, just to get blooded. You're little use to us otherwise." Chief Tuvi wasn't as encouraging as Tohon, but Shai hadn't seen Tohon since yesterday before dawn. About eight other men were also missing from the troop, but no one had bothered to tell him where they had gone.
They had left Olossi at about midday and marched as slowly as they possibly could out West Track to the intersection with West Spur. There, they had headed southwest, as if returning to the empire, moving as if led by hobbling ancients and delaying themselves with frequent stops. Late in the afternoon, when given the signal by the captain, they had simply pulled off the road as if to camp. As soon as dusk gave them cover, they had marched at speed through the night, past the crossroads that led down to Olossi and farther yet along the river bottomland east of the city. This was unknown country, but now the missing scouts appeared at intervals to give their reports. Late, as the waxing crescent moon sliced its way out of the house of the dead, the captain called a halt. Shai and a dozen tailmen took up stations along the road. Grooms led their horses into the trees. The rest of the company vanished into the night, hooves muffled by cloth.
For a long while they waited. There was no conversation.
Shai wanted to talk, but he dared not be first to break the silence, and he had a damned good idea that none of these tailmen would utter even one syllable. Every gaze was bent along the road. Shai had never seen such a road before. It shimmered, very faintly, as though a ghostly breath rose off it, like a cloud of breath steaming out of a warm mouth in bitterly cold weather. The other road they had traveled, West Spur, had exuded no such glamour.
A shadow passed overhead. He ducked. The others, those he could see, looked up, but there was nothing to see, only a cloak of stars and night thrown over the world. The wind died suddenly. An insect clik-clik-clikked. One branch scraped another. Strings creaked minutely as bows were readied. Swords whispered out of sheaths.
It caught them from behind, an explosion of wings and hooves and the crack of a staff as it met a hard leather helmet. One of the Qin went down, but the rest, these paltry tailmen, were already rolling, tumbling, jumping out of the way, finding a new position, a new angle. Shai stood there and gaped as a massive horse galloped out of the sky and right at him to trample him under.