362 - The twelfth card in a seer's deck

“Stay hidden,” he whispered, curling his body up to climb or cut the rope. “You can do more unseen.” What did he think I was going to do, dance around waving flags? We had back-up—I owl-called to them, “Emergency, get help, lots of help,” but that help would need time to get here. Gods and little demons, I was thinking; they’d never used traps before. Had they been thinking of him, same as when they’d had the unarmed guards? The way that one had said “We got one… think it’s the big one?” made me think so.

I crouched behind a bush. They came too fast for him to free himself before they could hit him. He straightened out downwards and drew, short-sword in his right hand, dagger in his left—he’d had the long-sword unclipped, so it had to be lying somewhere below him. In the flickering light I saw his face. Lips stone-hard thin, and the eyes… I’d heard the tales, of a stare that could stop a platoon of Arkans dead in its tracks, that had made one veteran officer fall over dead, his heart stopped. You know me, I am a story-teller’s daughter, so I shrugged these things off. Now… I was just glad I wasn’t in the way of it, that it was on my side. He was angry, you could tell—it had to be at himself, mostly—but it was also sheer will, inhuman certainty. While I was seeing it I forgot entirely that he was upside-down, very much helpless.

There were six of them. They rattled to a clash-kettle stop all around him, spears in their hands. I drew my two wrist-sheathed knives. My hands were sweating. It was all up to me. Damn you, why didn’t you listen to your command council, to Krero, to me? Save the reproaches for later, just save him now, I told myself. Don’t do anything dumb.

“Well, well, well.” The Arkans relaxed and straightened, their stances turning into swaggering. They’re always so manly when their opponent is in chains. The commander was not a solas, but a young Aitzas, some lordling getting his training, nose high in the air. “Looks like we’ve caught ourselves a sneak.”

“Does your fine self think it’s… him?” said one of the others, one-up. “This one is a Mezem fan… it’s hard to tell upside-down and in the dark, but he looks kind of right.” I cocked back one knife, waiting for the first flash of Arkan flesh not covered with red-painted steel. “He’s got the curly dark hair…”

“They all have curly dark hair, moron!” the lordling spat. He switched to snotty-accented Enchian to speak to Chevenga. “Why don’t you drop those sharp, dangerous objects, my boy, and we’ll let you down, hmm?”

Surprise, surprise: he didn’t drop his blades, but kept them en garde, as if he always fought hanging upside down, and didn’t say anything, either. I think he was worried they might know his voice. His eyes were calm, biding their time.

“Very well, backstabber,” the lordling said, the picture of boredom. “Have it your way. Illikren: stun him.”

If you ever had to fight well in your life, Gold-bottom, I thought, it’s now. The Arkan moved in, turning his spear around to hit him with the butt, swung it carefully. Chevenga’s short-sword came out for what looked like an easy parry. It was almost slow, deflecting the blow almost without a sound, and almost without setting him to swinging. The Arkan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He slipped around behind Chevenga and swung again, into another casual parry. And another. And another. That easy victory that should happen kept not happening, the sword or dagger or wristlet hidden under black shirt sleeve somehow happening to be in the way each time, as if by amazing luck. Didn’t matter which way Chevenga was facing, or whether he was looking or not. It was his weapon-manrauq.

The solas began to grunt angrily each time, hawked, spat, tried harder. “Shen, ser,” he said finally. “This one can’t hit the fikker. Can one of these others take a turn? This one’s getting tired.”

“You know,” said the one who first wondered if he was Chevenga, “I’m thinking—”

“Certainly another of those shall take a turn,” the lordling said haughtly, fingering another one of them in. “But that one stays. Both should have no trouble.”

I hadn’t had a good opportunity yet. I started to see that I was going to have to take what I could get. Chevenga could only defend, the Arkans being careful to keep their heads out of reach of his steel, though he took a deliciously vicious swipe every time one came near. He made doing two parries at once or a parry and a dodge or two dodges, from blows coming in any direction, look easy. I don’t know how he did it but he got them getting in each other’s way and almost hitting each other. I’ve never seen anything like it. Part of me just wanted to stare and marvel; part of me wanted it never to end.

But no matter how brilliant you are, in that situation, it’s only a matter of time. You can’t not get tired. They were like children at a nayanta party, striking with sticks as clumsily as if they were blindfolded. But the children always hit in the end, and the treasure spills out onto the ground. His manrauq could preserve him, for a while; only mine could extricate him, until help got here, and it seemed to be taking a fish-gutted long time.

And he was trusting me totally. He could have called me, ordered me to aid him any moment, forced me out by blowing my cover. But instead, every move was as smooth and confident as if he had a whole company double-timing to him in the woods and just had to hold out for a bit longer. The Arkans had all quit sneering and were marveling, and arguing again that he could only be one person, except for the lordling, who was maintaining his bored look through what seemed like a more-than-human effort.

Then I heard one blow end with a thump on flesh, not metal, and Chevenga’s breath catch. They’d got through. They went at him harder; he picked up again as if nothing had happened, fighting coolly. I had to make a move.

I reached for the metal in his hands with my thought, skimming part of my awareness off to swim in the space of the manrauq, shining motes locked in shimmering, hard-edged form. I set a hook of power into the steel, as I’d already done the usual way with all my own knives, making them sensitive to me. I shoved the work into the back of my head where it could maintain without my effort, like breathing.

I drew a deep breath, and started to hum, the lowest hum I could do. Let the clearing be filled with a sound like a kicked hive of bees, or the rumble after a distant flash of lightning. I made it directionless. They were busy, and didn’t hear, so I made it louder, my whole chest shaking with the sound.

“Come on, come on!” the lordling chided them. “We don’t have all night—this isn’t where we’re supposed to be, and he might have back-up coming.” Hah—he was nervous. Somewhere deep inside, he could hear me.

“These ones are trying, ser! Fikken, this is ridiculous. Illikren keeps hitting me.”

“You’ve hit me three times, shithead!”

Chevenga chuckled, smugly.

“Another of you idiots,” the lordling said. “Imikas, get in there.”

“With all due respect, ser,” said one of those who were just watching—you could hear the fear in his voice—“why don’t these ones just kill him?” Two others had definitely heard; they were glancing over their shoulders when their commander wasn’t looking, and making the torches dip and quiver by shifting their grip on them. This is only the beginning, Arkan rokatzk, I thought.

“Is that one out of its peasant mind, shit-for-brains?” I’d wormed myself close enough that when I saw two square thumb-lengths of bare skin on the closest one, just under his jaw, I knew I could get him with a fairly easy throw. Kill-target—worth the risk. “Have you ever seen a barbarian fight like that in your worthless life? Can that one imagine how much he’d fetch, if I could get anyone to believe this, in the Mezem”?

“Oh, no.” The way Chevenga said it froze me and made me look at him, and I saw it—the stare. His voice was like the voice of the Dark One, whispering life loose. “Fifty chains is quite enough, thank you.”

They all froze still as ice-sculptures. “I… told… you…” the one said in a faint croaking. Chevenga was the only one capable of moving, and he knew it. He grinned, and winked, and almost lazily threw his dagger, a throw like he’d played cniffta all his life, the blade trailing my thought-hook like a silken line, and burying itself in the lordling’s left eye. He crumpled down to one knee like his limbs were made of wood, and fell sideways in a sweep of arms that waved life away like a bad bottle of wine.

“Celestialis-shen-fikken-kaina-marugh…!” several of them said. My turn to throw, while my target stood flat-footed. My hand pointed the path the dagger had followed, from my fingers to standing brightly under the man’s ear. He sank, his head tilting sideways, and flopped flat onto the forest floor, his torch falling to smoulder in the wet loam. The ones still living swore worse.

Two down, and none of them had rank to call for help. I sent power along the lines to all the hooks. Softly, gently, Chevenga’s short-sword and my own knives that I’d put into Arkan flesh began to glow a yellow brighter than the torches. I let the sobbing in my breath leak into the hum. It was like lifting my own weight straight up. I told myself I’ve done harder things with manrauq, and eased myself up on one knee so my glow on the weapons wouldn’t break. I split off another piece of myself to find the second dagger Chevenga had drawn with his left hand, to make them both glow.

He… he looked… the crazy, embarrassing position suddenly looked purposeful, supernatural, a man inverted by choice like a bat, hanging for some greater reason like the twelfth card in a seer’s deck. His face gleamed with sweat, his black sweat-band solid like a tentacle around his brow. He suddenly laughed, those gold teeth flashing in the flame-light, a cheery, rippling, nerve-tearing stream of it, crazing the air, making even me feel ice down my spine.

“Who do you think you are fighting when you fight me?” he said. “All the world, and all its… denizens.” Right in line with what we’d planned for tonight—terror—though with an even darker tinge. They stood as if his laughter had driven nails through the tops of their heads, the supposedly-helpless one holding the free four in dread. I wanted to laugh, choked it back, then decided to let it out. I giggled, shrill and ugly, one short high burst of it that wouldn’t let them know where I was, and cocked the next knife back. I couldn’t ask anything difficult of myself, just nice easy throws, wait for the chances, juggle all the bits of self I had out. Concentrate on everything and nothing both at once. Stay in harmony with him. It was still four to two, with one of the good side still hanging in a trap.

I was floating in the sea of the bits of me, treading water, treading power, watching from a clear distance away in my mind. You know that place you can be, where you know your next move will be perfect as if practiced ten-thousand times? I was there, in the centre at last, drawing into a tighter and tighter point, like the smooth scent of brandy, the calm of a shark swimming.

“Fikket to Hayel, why are we being such cowards?” one of them yelled hoarsely, his voice sounding small and desperate against the hum like a single voice against the even roar of surf. “We’ve got Shefenkas, Shefenkas, no less, victory in the war, right here, strung up for our taking! Think of the reward we’ll get, whether we take him in dead or alive!” Two went on glancing around themselves nervously; he and one other tightened their stances and swung their spears around to strike with the points.

“Well, come, then!” said Chevenga. “I must seem easier to fight than my… friends.” As they closed in on him, I made the hum louder, made it seem like it was coming from outside me, shaking my skull like the drone of a wasp caught and stinging inside the eardrum.

They were stabbing instead of clubbing now, though, harder to turn for one without his feet on the ground. I exhorted him in my mind, Hang on, Invincible, Immortal, Beloved, Gold-bottom, hang on… “Ya-a-a-a-haaaah!” one of them yelled, an Arkan war-cry turning into triumph-cry, as his spearhead scraped along sword-edge the wrong way, the wrong fishgutted angle, and jabbed to a halt in flesh. He twisted the spear in the wound, hard, worked it back and forth a few times and then tore it out, loosing a spray of blood and a gasp from between Chevenga’s bared teeth. The stare was still there, but more pain-frenzied. He seized hold of his breathing by sheer will.

“See!” the Arkan shouted, holding out his blood-sheened spear. “He may be Living Greatest, he may be the scourge of the Empire, the killer of Triadas and vanquisher of Kallijas, he may have his eyes all starry for the Crystal Throne, with his mob of savages backing him—but he can still bleed.” He raised his head to look down his nose at Chevenga, something he had to raise his head pretty high to do.