Survival, she realizes, is its own kind of wisdom. Scalper wisdom.
She almost snorts aloud at the thought. But running, it seems nothing could be more true. All things perish. All things are weak, execrable. Nothing more so than the conceits of the perpetually wronged.
"A smile?" someone says.
She turns and sees Soma pacing her. Caste-noble tall. Lean and broad-shouldered. With his gowns torn and twisted, he resembles the Disowned Prince that the other girls used to dream about in the brothel-the fabled customer who would rescue rather than abuse.
His dark-lashed eyes seem to laugh. There is a relentlessness to him that she does not quite trust, she realizes. A strength out of proportion to his foppish character.
"We all… start laughing… at some point…" he says between breaths.
She turns away, concentrates on what shreds of ground she can glimpse between shadows. On the long and hard trail, she knows, a twisted ankle means death…
"Knowing how to stop…" the man persists. "That is… the real trick… of the slog."
Unlike her sisters in the brothel, Mimara had despised men like Soma, men who continually apologized with grand gestures and false concerns. Men who had to smother their crimes beneath pillows of silken guilt.
She much preferred those who sinned with sincerity.
"Mimara…" the man begins.
She keeps her eyes averted. Soma is nothing to her, she tells herself. Just another fool who would grope her in the dark, if he could. Sticky his fingers with her peach.
The world rises into the sphere of Cleric's light, then pours into oblivion. She peers at the oncoming ground as it vanishes into the shadows of those before her. Running. There is peace in flight, she realizes, a kind of certainty she has never understood, though she has known it her entire life. Running from the brothel, running from the mother who abandoned her there: these are fraught with doubt and worry and regret, the heart-cracking recriminations of those who run to punish as much to flee.
But running from Sranc…
Her lungs are bottomless. The Qirri tingles through her thought, her limbs. She is little more than a feather, a mote, before the forces that inhabit her. And there is a thickness to it, an eroticism, being the plaything of enormities.
I have the Judging Eye!
Anasurimbor Mimara marvels and laughs. Galian joins her, then Pokwas, then the rest of the company, and for some reason it seems right and true, laughing while fleeing Sranc through a cursed forest…
Then Cleric stops, his head bent as though listening. He turns to them. His face burns so bright beneath the Surillic Point that he seems an angel-an inhuman angel.
"Something comes…"
Then they all hear it… to their right, the dull scuff and drum of someone running. The air whisks to the sound of drawn weapons. Squirrel is in her hand.
A stranger staggers as much as leaps into existence. His hair is tied into a Galeoth war-knot. Blood slicks his right arm. Exhaustion has beaten his panic into resignation-you can see it on his face. And Mimara realizes that her flight has yet to begin. To flee, to truly run, is to throw yourself as this man has thrown himself, past effort and determination to the convulsive limit of endurance.
To run as they ran in Cil-Aujas.
The man crashes into Galian's arms, bawling out something inarticulate.
"What's he saying?" the Captain barks at Sarl.
"Skinnies!" the withered Sergeant cackles. "The skinnies are on them!"
"Sweet Seju!" someone cries.
"Look!" Pokwas cries, peering into the blackness that had delivered the man. "Look! Another light!"
Everyone, the newcomer included, turns in the direction the Sword-dancer indicates. At first they see nothing. Then it materializes, a floating point of white, appearing and disappearing to the rhythm of intervening obstructions. Sorcerous light. They glimpse figures as it nears, at least a dozen.
More men-surviving Stone Hags…
Even from this distance you can see their fear and haste, but something slows them… A litter, she realizes. They carry someone on a litter. The small mob passes behind the grand silhouette of a tree and she glimpses the man they carry-the sorcerer…
Galian and Pokwas are shouting. They've thrust the sobbing Stone Hag to his knees as if preparing to execute him. "No!" Achamian is crying. "I for-"
"He's a Hag!" Galian cries as if mystified, as if summary execution is a courtesy compared with what the man deserves-a scalper who hunts scalpers.
The Captain pays no attention whatsoever, instead mutters to Cleric, who peers into the blackness behind the approaching party. She watches the bald head turn, the white face smile. She sees the glint of fused teeth.
"Haaaaags!" Sarl gurgles. His eyes are squeezed into crescents above his cheeks.
The fugitives begin calling out as they approach, a cracked chorus of relief and desperate warning. Within heartbeats they blunder into the greater light of Cleric's Surillic Point, terrified and bleeding. The litter is dropped. Some skid to their knees. Others raise abject hands before the weapons brandished by the Skin Eaters.
Mimara feels someone clutch her sword arm, turns to see Soma standing grim beside her. He means to give reassurance, she knows, yet she finds herself offended all the same. With a jerk she pulls her arm free.
"No time!" someone is screeching-one of the Hags. "No time!"
All is argument and confusion. In the gaggle of shouts and voices they fail to hear the loping approach. Now they stand rigid and peering, their ears pricked to the invisible rush. Twigs snapping. Throats grunting. Feet kicking.
Mimara is dead. She knows this absolutely. She and Soma are standing on the periphery, several paces from the commotion of the latest arrivals-from Achamian and his life-preserving Wards.
"To meee!" she hears the old Wizard cry. She hears the inside-out mutter of sorcery, sees shadows tossed, lights plumbing the barked blackness.
They come howling out of the black. Crude weapons held high and wide. Faces twisted into ravenous sneers. Streaming between trunks. Unshod feet kicking up humus.
The first flies at her like a thrown dog. She parries its crazed swing, ducks and strings the thing as it sails past her. Others follow a mere heartbeat behind. Too many blades. Too many teeth!
Then something impossible happens. Soma…
Somehow before her, when he had stood behind. Somehow catching each raving creature in its instant. He does not fight as scalpers fight, matching skill against ferocity, hammering strength against wild velocity. Nor does he dance as Pokwas dances, trusting ancient patterns to parse the surrounding air. No. What he does is utterly unique, a performance written for each singular moment. He throws and snaps his body. He moves in rings and lines, so fast that only inhuman screams and slumping bodies allow her to follow the thread of his attack.
Then it's over.
"Mimara!" Achamian is crying. She sees him fighting his way toward her.
He clutches her tight against his rank robes, but she is as numb to the smell as she is to everything else. She returns his hug out of reflex, all the while watching Soma standing above the twitching dead, watching her.
She survived. He had glimpsed her stranded, had expected the worst, yet there she stood, utterly untouched. Holding her, the old Wizard did his best not to sob in relief. He blinked at the panicked burning in his eyes…
Exhaustion. It had to be.
They turned to the roar of the Captain, who held the prostrate Hag sorcerer upright. The infamous Pafaras. The man was at least as old as Kosoter, but he possessed nowhere near the stature and strength. He was Ketyai, though his unkempt beard lent him a barbaric, Norsirai countenance. His accent suggested Cengemis or northern Conriya. He swayed in the Captain's grip, capable of standing on his left foot only. His right was bootless-bare and purpling. His foul leggings had been sawed open to the thigh, revealing blood-sopped bandages about his shin. When Achamian had first glimpsed him on the litter, he had assumed the man was simply wounded. But now he could see the leg was broken-severely broken. The length of his right shin was only two thirds that of his left.