He ducked inside the cave two hours later. His legs ached from the climb and his body sagged with exhaustion. Three times he had lost his footing, nearly falling down the steep side of the valley. His fingers were bleeding from the climb and his trousers and shirt resembled a beggar’s filthy rags.
His heart leapt into his throat at the sight of Ka-poel. She was curled up in one corner of the cave, his jacket draped over her, using her hands as a pillow. Taniel skirted the facsimile of Kresimir and knelt beside her.
“Pole,” he said, gently touching her shoulder.
Something pressed against his throat. He inhaled sharply and looked down his nose at the long needle clutched in Ka-poel’s hand.
“It’s me, Pole.”
One green eye regarded him for a moment and then the needle was withdrawn. She sat up, shaking the sleep from her head.
“Kresimir,” Taniel said urgently. “What has happened with Kresimir?”
She cocked an eyebrow at him for a moment and then her face lit up. She pointed at the doll of Kresimir, which was bound in the center of the cave. She walked her fingers through the air and then chopped the other hand viciously.
Taniel snorted. “He’s not going anywhere?”
Ka-poel nodded, a victorious smile on her lips.
“How?”
She tapped the side of her head, then pointed at the doll again.
For the first time, Taniel noticed the symbols written in the dust around the dolclass="underline" a series of vague lines pointing away from Kresimir. They made little sense to him. “What do those mean?”
She made a fist and pointed.
“I don’t–” He stopped and frowned. Then he saw it. They weren’t symbols, but fingers. Kresimir lay in the palm of a hand – her hand, if Taniel wasn’t mistaken. “He’s in the palm of your hand. You don’t have to be awake to keep him under control?”
A nod.
“How the pit did you figure that out?”
Ka-poel rolled her eyes as if looking into one corner of the cave and made a vague gesture.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Both of her eyebrows rose and she gave him the flat look she always used when she was pretending not to understand him. He snatched her by the arm. “Pole, what the pit is that supposed to mean?” He couldn’t help the urgency in his voice. How did she know that Kresimir was still under control? How did she know what symbols held power?
She shrugged, then drew in the dust with one finger and spread the other hand out toward Kresimir’s doll.
“You were experimenting?”
A nod.
“With a god?”
She gave him a sheepish grin. Whatever sleep she’d managed while he was away had done her a world of good. The lines under her eyes had diminished. Her spirits seemed up. She hadn’t smiled in a week.
Taniel released his grip on her arm and ran a hand through his knotted, dirty hair. Several pine needles came away and he tossed them in the corner of the cave.
“How can you possibly know what might or might not work? Pit, I wish I understood something – anything – about your sorcery.”
She pointed to herself. Me too.
“You don’t know anything about your own sorcery?”
She gave him a half shrug, then held up five fingers. She drew in the dust for a moment, then pulled a finger across her throat.
“I didn’t catch any of that, Pole.”
She snorted angrily.
“Be careful experimenting with sorcery, Pole,” Taniel said. “I’ve heard of a few Privileged and powder mages teaching themselves the rudiments. But untrained adepts who try to go further just get themselves killed. They burn themselves to a crisp with the Else or blow themselves up or get powder blindness or… pit, I don’t know how your sorcery could kick back at you, but it will happen.” He rubbed his eyes. “You’re bloody well controlling a god. I’m not sure how you haven’t been strangled with your own powers yet.”
She made a gesture and a consoling smile. Me neither.
Just great.
Taniel fetched the rations he’d stolen from the Adran soldiers. He and Ka-poel set upon them hungrily. The biscuits were hard and salty, the dried beef as stringy as catgut, but he’d never tasted anything quite this good. He went through two meals’ worth before he forced himself to stop eating. He’d get cramps something fierce, and…
The taste of hard cheese brought back a memory that he’d wished to forget: Kresimir standing victoriously over where Adom – Mihali – had once stood. These soldiers were only eating marching rations because Mihali was dead. Taniel kicked the pack of rations away from him, feeling suddenly ill. To his great surprise, he felt a tear roll down his cheek.
He quickly brushed it away.
Ka-poel took him by the arm and forced him to lie on the cold of the cave floor, his head in her lap, then began gently rubbing his temples. He stretched out, careful not to touch Kresimir’s doll, and felt the pain begin to bleed out of his legs and arms and his mind begin to drift.
He started awake, opening his eyes to find his head still in Ka-poel’s lap, her soft hand pressed to his cheek. The cave was well lit by the sun, telling him it was just past noon.
Taniel stifled a yawn and told himself to get up. He needed to be back out there, watching for more Adran squads, but Ka-poel was warm, and despite the cold of the cave floor he felt as if he had been sitting in a hot bath for hours.
“I have to… Pole, is that blood on your finger?”
The tip of Pole’s finger was smeared with crimson. She pressed it to her lips and looked down at him for a moment, her thoughts elsewhere. She then pressed the finger to his right cheek. He reached up to stop her, but her other hand took his in a surprisingly strong grip and she ministered to first one cheek, then the other. He could feel the blood drying on his face.
She licked the blood off her finger and more welled up in its place. It was her blood, then. What was she doing? Was this sorcery? Some kind of savage ritual?
He pushed her away and got to his feet, feeling strange. “Pole, what are you doing?” He wiped one sleeve across his cheek and looked at it. Nothing. Very strange.
Further questions were met with a yawn.
Taniel left Ka-poel passively regarding the doll of Kresimir. He headed out of the cave and climbed to the apex of the mountain, where he followed the ridgeline.
The canyon down to his right was where he had ambushed the squad of Adran infantry. It would take them half the day to make their way back to where their company camped. If they marched double-time, they would only now arrive.
Taniel didn’t need to be that close.
He continued along the ridge, keeping to the eastward side, where he was least likely to be spotted by any sharp-eyed scouts. The ridge began to narrow dangerously, giving him fewer places to hide, but he continued on until he reached a sharp, flat slab of rock beyond which the sky stretched out like the serene surface of a mountain lake. He crawled to the edge of the rock on his hands and knees and peered over the edge.
Veridi Valley was a jagged rend between two tall, gray-capped mountains. The floor of the valley had to be at least a thousand feet beneath him. A river less than twenty feet across trickled down the middle, and tough mountain brush bristled along the valley floor. The canyon where he’d ambushed the Adran soldiers let out into the Veridi Valley to Taniel’s west. The valley, in turn, let out into another, and that led twenty miles or more to the plains of Adro.
On the valley floor were the dots of at least a hundred tents: a company of Adran soldiers. Taniel had little doubt now that they had been sent by Hilanska – and he guessed that every one of them had an air rifle. Where had they gotten the air rifles? From Kez?
Did these men know that they were betraying their country?