And what did he feel for her? Pity? Protectiveness?
She wasn't certain, but there was something in the way he held her, after she stopped crying, that seemed like neither of those things. It had seemed somehow desperate. And the oddest thing was that she understood that desperation, felt something akin to it. It was as if she had been growing a skin of stone, as if her face and fingers could no longer feel, any more than a piece of wood could. It was deeper than numbness. How long had it been since anyone held her, touched her? Even Tsem had been distant from her since the night they fled from Brother Horse's camp. She had not even realized how much she missed her contact with the Giant. She was hungry for any touch.
But Perkar's touch was something else again, something special. It was more akin to what she felt when Yen held her, but it wasn't even that. Yen's touch had been exciting, forbidden, and sweet. This was something that caught in her throat, and usually it came out as anger or spite. But last night it manifested as something else entirely, something with deeper roots. She wondered what she would have done had he kissed her. Had he even thought about it? She had feared that he would kiss her, last night, force her to decide what she felt or retreat from it. Now she wished the decision had been forced, for the one thing she did not need right now was this powerful new uncertainty.
What would she do when he woke? How should she react? She lay back and closed her eyes again, a mischievous smile on her face. Let him make that decision.
XXIX Forward-Falling Ghost
THE first day, Ghan was sure that he would die. By the second, he wished he would. No torturer of the Ahw'en could have developed a more fiendish device for torment than the hard Mang saddle and the horse beneath it. Trotting rubbed his thighs and calves raw; the middle pace shook pain into his entire frame. It was only the extremes—walking and full gallop—that did not immediately pain him, but in the next day he realized that the death grip he kept on the beast when it ran had to be paid for with cramping muscles and febrile pain along his bones. Thrice the meat and tendons of his leg knotting into a bunch near his ankle had sent him sliding to the ground, cursing and shedding tears of pain.
They did not stop for sleep, and as he had never been on a horse before, Ghan was entirely unable to doze in the saddle as did the rough barbarians around him. When he did drift off, it was only to awake, heartbeats later, in terror of falling. By the end of the second day he was haggard and speechless.
He did not understand the Mang language, though it contained vague echoes of the ancient tongue of Nhol, and many words were similar. But Ghe could speak with them somehow, perhaps through the same agency by which Perkar had “learned” the speech of Nhol.
Ghan gathered, before he became unable to take in new information, that the troop of horsemen had been searching for them, apparently at the behest of the man Ghe dreamed about, who was some sort of chief.
The only other thing that Ghan knew was that they were riding to meet this dream man. And, of course, that he would never live to do so.
To distract himself, he made an attempt to observe the men around him—if such creatures deserved to be called men. It did not help much. They all looked much the same, with their red-plumed helms, lacquered armor, and long black or brown coats. They all smelled much the same: like horses. They all jabbered tersely in an ugly language, and they all laughed at him, an old man who couldn't even sit a horse without considerable aid. His only comfort came from one of the surviving Nholish soldiers, a young fellow named Kanzhu, who stayed near him, caught him when he was near falling, and gave him water. Kanzhu was a cavalryman himself and knew well how to ride.
Ghe did not speak to him at all, but rode ahead with Qwen Shen and Bone Eel, both of whom seemed to have at least some facility with horses.
On the third day, he awoke to find himself lying in short grass. Someone was spattering water in his face, and a large locust sat on his chest.
“Master Ghan? Can you move?” It was Kanzhu. Ghan sipped gratefully at the water.
“I guess I fell asleep,” he conceded.
“Come on. You will ride with me for a while.”
“They won't allow that.”
“They'll have to, or leave you, and then they'll have to leave me. I won't abandon a subject of the emperor alone in these lands.”
A few of the Mang jabbered something at Kanzhu when he got Ghan up behind him in his saddle, but they eventually relented. The main body of riders was far ahead anyway, and they did not want to be left behind arguing.
“Don't they ever sleep?” Ghan growled weakly into the boy's back. The hard young muscles felt firm, secure, as if his arms were wrapped around a tree trunk. Had he ever been thus?
Probably not.
“This is some kind of forced march,” Kanzhu explained. “Lord Bone Eel, Lady Qwen Shen, and Master Yen seem to have struck a bargain with the leader of these barbarians, though no word has come back to us about where we are going—but I've heard a few of these men mention someplace named Tseba. If that's where we're going, they mean to get thereof. Even the Mang would never push their horses like this unless there was some dire need.”
“How do you know Tseba is a place, and not a person or a thing? Do you speak any of their language?” Ghan asked.
The boy nodded uncertainly. “Not much. I was stationed at Getshan, on their border, for a few months. I learned how to say 'hello' and a few other things. That's about all. But a lot of their places start with 'tse.' I think it means 'rock,' like in Nholish.”
“Can you ask how many more days to this place?”
“I can try,” Kanzhu answered. He thought for a moment and then hollered at the nearest Mang, “Duhan zhben Tseba? ”
The barbarian screwed up his face in puzzlement. Kanzhu rephrased the question in slightly different syllables. After a moment, comprehension dawned on the man's face, and he grimly held up three fingers.
“Three more days?” Ghan groaned. But then he gritted his teeth. He wouldn't complain anymore; barbarians and soldiers hated the weak, and while he could do nothing about the infirmity of his body, he could certainly stop whining.
“Three days then,” he restated, trying to sound positive.
MIRACULOUSLY, the next day was not quite as bad. Ghan speculated that most of his body had resigned itself to death and so no longer troubled him with pain.
Kanzhu trotted up that morning. He looked worried. “Something happened to Wat last night.”
“Who?”
“One of the soldiers, a friend of mine.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died,” Kanzhu stated simply.
Ghan nodded dumbly. Of course. What else but death would rate notice here, now?
After a few moments, Kanzhu cut his eyes back toward Ghan furtively.
“He wasn't stabbed or anything; I saw his corpse. He was just dead”
“Oh.” Ghan lifted his brows but offered nothing. What good would it do Kanzhu to know? It would only put him in danger. Two more soldiers vanished that night. Kanzhu said their bodies weren't found and confided to Ghan that he hoped they had deserted, though it was clear that he didn't believe they had. Ghan offered his sympathy, but his own worries were growing. This was a bad sign; Ghe was losing control. Though he had consistently avoided Ghan since the Mang had found them, he had ridden near lately, his face a frozen mask, his eyes like hard, black iron. It was as if the humanity in him were sleeping, or strained beyond reason.
Ghan tried to think it through, to understand what was happening to the ghoul. Though terrible pain still housed itself in his shoulders, his thighs—and weirdly enough, the muscles of his abdomen—it was no longer agony, and he had managed to drop into sleep during periods of walking, which were signaled, like the other paces, by a horn trumpet. This meant it was actually possible for him to think again.