He shrugged. "There are horsemen out there—one at least, and he just rode off, I think, to find the rest. They'll be back soon, in force. When they come, hide somewhere; they may think you went on while I stayed here to hold them off."
"I will stay," she replied.
"No. Do as I say."
Hezhi gazed at the sprawling Giant. "Is he dead?" she asked.
"He wasn't a moment ago; I might have killed him trying to close his wound." He paused. "Among my people he would be counted a very brave man."
Hezhi nodded, tiredly. "I killed him," she said.
"If he is dead, he died for you," Perkar said. "That isn't the same as you killing him. Believe me, I've had ample time to consider the difference, and the difference is great. We all have to die, Hezhi. It's worth dying a little earlier if the reasons are good enough. His were; he told me he loved you."
"Yes," she agreed. "He did."
"Hide now," Perkar whispered. "Hear? The horses are returning. "
It sounded like a score of them, at least. He took a deep, painful breath. His heart beat weirdly, and he couldn't shake the memory of feeling it stop, of seeing the bloody point of a knife slide out the front of his breast.
"Maybe I'll die this time," he told Harka.
"And me working so hard to keep you alive? Very ungrateful."
"I get sick when I think about the things that have happened to my body," Perkar said. "No one should have to carry the memory of being stabbed through the heart. Death should soothe that away."
"I won't apologize," Harka said. "Someday you will thank me."
"I would thank you now, if I could be rid of you."
"Careful. You'll hurt my feelings."
He threw back his head and howled. "Come and get me, walking dead men! I'll pile your bodies around my feet, I'll trample on your sightless eyes!" He wondered if Eruka would be proud of him, quoting verse even as the end came. He howled again.
A horseman broke from the trees, another, and another. The lead horseman grinned at him, a smile that nearly split his head in half.
"If you insist, I suppose," the rider said. "Though that isn't really what we had in mind for the night's entertainment."
Perkar was actually struck dumb. More riders filed into the clearing, wild-looking men on lean, beautiful mounts, hair braided and ornamented with copper, silver, gold. They were all showing him their teeth, fierce, wolflike smiles.
"Ngangata?" Perkar choked out at last.
"Nice to be recognized by such a great hero," Ngangata replied, leaning with braced hands, palms on his saddle. "And I would spend some time singing your praises, except for the fact that a contingent of Nholish cavalry will be on us in about two hundred heartbeats. Brother Horse and a few others will slow them down, but we had best ride."
"Do you have mounts for us?"
Ngangata nodded, and a stallion and a mare were brought up.
"The Giant has to go, too," Perkar insisted.
"Is he alive?"
One of the Mang warriors knelt at Tsem's side. He spat something at Ngangata, who replied in the same tongue. Another steed was brought up, and three men wrestled Tsem up onto its back.
"They say he won't live out the night," Ngangata explained. "But they will bring him anyway, so that he can die on horseback."
XII
The Song of Perkar
Tsem surprised everyone. He did live through the night, and a second, as they put leagues between themselves and Nhol. And, Hezhi reminded herself, the River. She felt a dull ache with each footstep of the horse, with each breath of the old Mang warrior she clung to. She was not certain what the cause of her pain was, whether it was the loss of Qey and Ghan and everything she knew or whether it was the thing in her crying out for its father, for her to awaken it again. During the third day, when they had to tie her to the saddle to keep her from leaping off and running back toward Nhol, it seemed certain to be the latter.
Midmorning that day, the company stopped and dismounted near a tree—an unremarkable cottonwood, gnarled and ancient, roots feeding in a meager wash. The desert stretched out and away from them, a pitted and striated landscape of rust and yellow sand.
"What are they doing?" she asked the old man—Brother Horse, he was named.
"Offering to the god of the tree," he explained.
"The what?"
The men began burning bundles of grass; one placed a little bowl of something amongst the questing white roots of the tree.
"This is the first one—or the last, depending on which direction you're going," Brother Horse explained. "The god on the borderland, the edge of the empire of Nhol."
"The edge of the River's hunger, then," Perkar said from nearby on his own horse.
Brother Horse chuckled. "Not the edge of his hunger, but the edge of his reach. From here on the desert lives again."
"Then I shall offer, too," Perkar said. He smiled at Hezhi, seemed happy. Dismounting, he joined the other men. She felt only a terrible anxiety, as if some unthinkable thing were about to occur.
When they remounted, rode past the tree, an appalling, wrenching pain pushed her violently into oblivion.
When she awoke—not sure how much later—the pain was still fading, like the sting from a hard slap. She felt for her scale. It was still there, still itching faintly.
"Ah," Brother Horse said when he felt her stir. "Let me have a look at you." He called a halt, dismounted, reached leathery brown hands to help her down. Her feet felt light and sensitive on the hot sand.
"Yes, yes," Brother Horse said, smiling at her and mussing her hair.
"What? Yes, what?"
"Well, you see, child, I can see gods—always been able to. When I first saw you I said 'Now, that girl has something in her.' I could see it in there, you understand?"
She nodded. As she could see her father, when he called the Riverghosts, perhaps.
"Well, it's still there, but it's gone quiet. Can you feel that?"
She felt a faint tickle of joy, despite herself. "Yes," she said, "I think I can."
"Good. Come on now, cheer up. The River has lost his grip on you, too, and your friend may live yet!" Hezhi actually felt herself grin.
"Back up!" Brother Horse ordered, boosting her up onto the beast's back. When he was mounted, too, he gave a great shout, one that frightened her and delighted her at the same time. The animal beneath her surged, and she was reminded of Tsem carrying her. Yet this was different, a rushing thing that she had not understood or appreciated during their midnight ride out of Nhol. The landscape raced by, the horse a half-tamed thunderbolt beneath her. She did not shriek herself, but she almost did, and felt a brief, almost terrible shining joy, somehow more solid and real than the joy of a goddess. She thought of the little statue, the horse-woman, and was her, proud, fierce. Free.
"Now tell me," Perkar insisted, days later. A pair of boys and a girl laughed nearby, chased a wooden hoop across the red sand of the village square. Sparks swept up from the fire, twining up an invisible tree of wind to join the darkening sky. A cool dry breeze padded down from the mesa, breathed across them promises of autumn, coursed on east.
Perkar, Brother Horse, Ngangata, and a Mang warrior named Yuu'han gathered about the fire in what Brother Horse named a Wheel of Words. Hezhi sat outside of the circle as Brother Horse's eldest daughter, Duk, plaited up what little hair Qey had left her.
"Tell," Perkar repeated. "I don't believe that you just happened upon me."
"Why not?" Ngangata asked. "Isn't that the lot of a hero's friend?"
"Riding to the rescue? That sounds more like the hero to me," Perkar rejoined. "'The Song of Ngangata.' I like the sound of that."