Ferro had never been one to give up at the first stumble.
Yulwei began to move slowly towards her, his bare feet padding on the rocks, bangles jingling softly together. That was very strange, now she thought about it. If he made a noise every time he moved, how had he managed to sneak up on her?
“What do you want?”
“I want to help you.” He came forward, until he was just over an arm’s length away, then he stopped and stood, grinning at her.
Now Ferro was fast as a snake with a knife and twice as deadly, as the last of those soldiers could have testified, had he been able. The blade was a shining blur in the air, swung with all her strength and all her fury behind it. If he had been standing where she thought he was, his head would have been hanging off. Only he wasn’t. He was standing about a stride to the left.
She threw herself at him with a fighting scream, ramming the glittering point of the knife into his heart. But she stabbed only air. He was back where he had been before, motionless and smiling all the while. Very strange. She padded round him, cautious, sandaled feet scuffing in the dust, left hand circling in the air in front of her, right hand gripped tight round the handle of the knife. She had to be careful—there was magic here.
“There is no need to get angry. I am here to help.”
“Fuck your help,” she hissed back at him.
“But you need it, and badly. They are coming for you, Ferro. There are soldiers in the hills, many soldiers.”
“I’ll outrun them.”
“There are too many. You cannot outrun them all.”
She glanced round at the punctured bodies. “Then I’ll give them to the vultures.”
“Not this time. They are not alone. They have help.” On the word “help” his deep voice dropped even lower.
Ferro frowned. “Priests?”
“Yes, and more besides.” His eyes went very wide. “An Eater,” he whispered. “They mean to take you alive. The Emperor wants to make an example of you. He has it in mind to put you on display.”
She snorted. “Fuck the Emperor.”
“I heard you already did.”
She growled and raised the knife again, but it was not a knife. There was a hissing snake in her hand, a deadly snake, with its mouth open to bite. “Ugh!” She threw it on the ground, stamped her foot down on its head, but she stamped on her knife instead. The blade snapped with a sharp crack.
“They will catch you,” said the old man. “They will catch you, and they will break your legs with hammers in the city square, so you can never run again. Then they will parade you through the streets of Shaffa, naked, sitting backwards on an ass, with your hair shaved off, while the people line the streets and shout insults at you.”
She frowned at him, but Yulwei did not stop. “They will starve you to death in a cage before the palace, cooking in the hot sun, while the good people of Gurkhul taunt you and spit on you and throw dung at you through the bars. Perhaps they will give you piss to drink, if you are lucky. When you finally die they will let you rot, and the flies will eat you bit by bit, and all the other slaves will see what freedom looks like, and decide they are better off as they are.”
Ferro was bored with this. Let them come, and the Eater too. She wouldn’t die in a cage. She would cut her own throat, if it came to that. She turned her back on him with a scowl and snatched up the shovel, started digging away furiously at the last grave. Soon it was deep enough.
Deep enough for the scum who’d be rotting in it.
She turned around. Yulwei was kneeling down by the dying soldier, giving him water from the skin round his chest.
“Fuck!” she shouted, striding over, her fingers locked around the handle of the shovel.
The old man got to his feet as she came close. “Mercy…” croaked the soldier, stretching out his hand.
“I’ll give you mercy!” The edge of the shovel bit deep into the soldier’s skull. The body twitched briefly then was still. She turned to the old man with a look of triumph. He stared back sadly. There was something in his eyes. Pity, maybe.
“What do you want, Ferro Maljinn?”
“What?”
“Why did you do that?” Yulwei pointed down at the dead man. “What do you want?”
“Vengeance.” She spat out the word.
“On all of them? On the whole nation of Gurkhul? Every man, woman and child?”
“All of them!”
The old man looked round the corpses. “Then you must be very happy with today’s work.”
She forced a smile onto her face. “Yes.” But she wasn’t very happy. She couldn’t remember what it felt like. The smile seemed strange, unfamiliar, all lop-sided.
“And is vengeance all you think of, every minute of every day, your only desire?”
“Yes.”
“Hurting them? Killing them? Ending them?”
“Yes!”
“You want nothing for yourself?”
She paused. “What?”
“For yourself. What do you want?”
She stared at the old man suspiciously, but no reply came to her. Yulwei shook his head sadly. “It seems to me, Ferro Maljinn, that you are as much a slave as you ever were. Or ever could be.” He sat down, cross-legged on a rock.
She stared at him for a moment, confused. Then the anger bubbled up again, hot and reassuring. “If you came to help me, you can help me bury them!” She pointed over at the three bloody corpses, lined up next to the graves.
“Oh no. That is your work.”
She turned away from the old man, cursing under her breath, and moved over to her one-time companions. She took Shebed’s corpse under the arms and hauled him over to the first grave, his heels making two little grooves in the dust. When she made it to the hole she rolled him in. Alugai was next. A stream of dry soil ran over him as he came to rest in the bottom of his grave.
She turned to Nasar’s carcass. He had been killed by a sword cut across the face. Ferro thought it was something of an improvement to his looks.
“That one looks a good sort,” said Yulwei.
“Nasar.” She laughed without amusement. “A raper, a thief, a coward.” She hawked up some phlegm and spat into his dead face. It splattered softly against his forehead. “Much the worst of the three.” She looked down at the graves. “But they were all of them shit.”
“Nice company you keep.”
“The hunted don’t have the luxury of choosing their companions.” She stared at Nasar’s bloody face. “You take what’s offered.”
“If you disliked them so much, why don’t you leave them for the vultures, like you have these others?” Yulwei swept his arm over the broken soldiers on the ground.
“You bury your own.” She kicked Nasar into the hole. He rolled forward, arms flopping, and dropped into the grave face down. “That’s the way it’s always been.”
She grabbed hold of the shovel and started to heap the stony earth onto his back. She worked in silence, the sweat building up on her face, then dripping off onto the ground. Yulwei watched her as the holes filled up. Three more piles of dirt in the wasteland. She threw the shovel away and it bounced off one of the corpses and clattered among the stones. A small cloud of black flies buzzed angrily off the body, then returned.
Ferro picked up her bow and arrows and slung them over her shoulder. She took the water skin, checked its weight carefully, then shouldered that also. Then she picked over the bodies of the soldiers. One of them, he looked like the leader, had a fine curved sword. He hadn’t even managed to draw it before her arrow had caught him in the throat. Ferro drew it now, and she tested it with a couple of sweeps through the air. It was very good: well balanced, the long blade glittering deadly sharp, bright metal on the hilt catching the sun. He had a knife as well that matched it. She took the weapons and stuck them through her belt.