deeper pits left by the nail-heads. Maybe it was still somewhere close, in which case at least some of his troubles could well be over. He swung his head, looking round, and saw another print, identical, and then another, at just the right interval. He'd found the wretched animal's tracks, so he could follow it until he caught up with it, and…
The fourth print he found was of an unshod hoof. Definitely his horse, then.
He hurried along the trail of prints. As he'd anticipated, it was heading straight for the water. Logical: horses get thirsty too. He wondered how much of a head start it'd have on him by now. Not too much, he hoped. The miserable creature would just be ambling along, grazing as it went, in no particular hurry. And it shouldn't be too hard to spot in this open, flat country.
He stopped. He'd reached the edge of the pond, a black beach of glittering mud, with two hoofprints in it; the water beyond, like a silver inlay in rusted steel. For a moment he forgot about the horse. It was only when he thought, And now I'll be able to fill my water bottle, too, that it occurred to him to wonder where the horse had gone from there. No hoofprints leading back the other way, after all. It looked for all the world as though the stupid animal had swum out into the middle of the pond…
Horses do swim, of course; but not unless they're made to. The horse had come this way, arrived here, but not gone back. There was no sign of it to be seen anywhere. Therefore, it had to be here still, somewhere.
Fear again. Not something he wanted to go through a second time in one day, but it swooped and caught him up before he could ward it off with deliberate thought. As he struggled to breathe, he shouted at himself, It's all right, all you've got to do is go back exactly the way you came, you know that's all firm footing. The very thought made him lose his balance. He staggered, as though drunk, and when his misplaced foot touched down there was nothing under it to take its weight, nothing at all, like standing in slow, thick water. He jerked his foot back, felt something sucking on his boot, but the seal broke and he wobbled helplessly on one foot, a ludicrous object, hanging in the balance between life and death. For two long seconds he knew he had no control over his body or his destiny; it was all to be decided by subtle and accidental forces of leverage and balance. His foot touched down, sank a heart-stopping two inches, and found a firm place.
At least it explained what had become of the horse. He sucked in air, although his lungs felt sealed; the battering of his heart shook him, as though someone behind him was nudging him repeatedly in the back. The insides of both his legs were wet and warm, and he spared a little attention for the momentary feeling of revulsion.
Well, he thought. I can't move. Under no circumstances am I going to move my feet, ever again.
As if they'd heard him and wanted to tease him, his knees had gone weak, to the point where they were endangering his balance. He knew what he had to do. Very slowly, keeping his back perfectly straight, he folded himself at the waist, bent his knees and squatted, stretching out his left hand as far as it could be forced to go so as to test the mud directly in front of him with his fingertips. Only when he was absolutely sure of it did he finally drop forward and kneel. That, he reckoned, was about the best he'd be able to do.
He looked up. There was the water, a thousand million gallons or so, but impossible to reach under any circumstances. He knelt and stared at it, almost as though he believed he might be able to train it to come when he whistled; but it didn't move, not even a ripple or a spread of circles where a water-fly had landed on its face. He laughed, a sound like his mind grating as its gears slipped their train. He was out of the mud, but he was completely and irrecoverably stuck. Big difference.
A certain amount of time passed. Mezentine precision could calibrate a scale to measure most things, but not time spent in terror, despair and that particular sort of shame. Once or twice he almost managed to nerve himself to move, only to fail when he made the actual attempt. He noticed that the water had a strange, colored sheen to it, and that one of the stones near his hand was crusted with yellow crystals. He thought: I shall spend the rest of my life here, and nobody will ever know what became of me. Maybe the horse had the right idea, after all. What would it feel like, drowning in mud? You'd try and breathe in, but nothing would come, the reverse of holding your breath. There'd be panic and spasm, but surely not for very long. Does pain actually matter if you don't survive it?
Something was different. He was aware of the change long before he realized what it was, probably because it was so mundane, among all the melodrama. Nothing but the light fading (and how long could he hope to survive once it was dark and he couldn't see the danger?). He was tired, he realized, more tired than he'd ever felt in his life, now that the panic had turned to terrified resignation. No chance at all that he'd manage to stay awake. Sleep would come for him, quiet as a poacher; he'd slide or roll into the mud, and…
The water turned red as the sky thickened; sunset brought a sharp chill that finally gave him a legitimate reason to tremble. Mosquitoes were buzzing a lullaby all round him. In spite of everything, it was impossible to believe that when the sun came up again, he wouldn't see it. He'd been in a battle, a tangled skirmish at the very end of the Eremian war; his horse had been shot under him and he'd ended up lying on the ground, trapped beneath its dead weight. All around him there'd been dying men, Mezentines and Eremians jumbled together, too damaged or too weak to move. He'd listened to them for three hours, shouting, screaming for help or yelling abuse, groaning, begging, sniveling, praying. He'd heard their voices fade one by one as the long wait came to an end. That he'd been able to understand; this-a healthy, strong man, uninjured, not yet starved or parched enough to be more than inconvenienced-was too arbitrary to be credible, because people don't just die, for no reason. He fought sleep as it laid siege to him; at first ferociously, as the Eremians had fought the investment of their city; then desperately, a scampering withdrawal in bad order to inadequately fortified positions; then aimlessly, because there really wasn't any point, but one has to do one's best. On his knees, supporting his weight with hands flat on the ground and fingers splayed, he let his head wilt forward and closed his eyes, allowing the equity of redemption to drain away. No point in keeping his eyes open when it was dark and there was nothing to see. Could you drown in your sleep, without ever waking up? If so it was a mercy, and it would be churlish to…
He was dreaming, and in his dream a man was standing over him, prodding him spitefully with a stick. It was an unusually vivid dream, because the prods hurt almost as much as the real thing would have done, had he been awake. The man began to shout. He dreamed that he opened his eyes and saw thin, gray light, the sort you get just before dawn; he saw the man with the stick, and for some reason he was straw-haired and fishbelly-skinned. Curious, almost perverse. Why, in his last dream before death, should his mind have conjured up an Eremian?
'Fucking wake up,' the man yelled, and stabbed him with the stick, catching him on the edge of the collarbone. You can't hurt like that and still be asleep.
He saw the man's face. It was smooth, unlined, but horribly spoiled by a long, shiny pink scar. 'If you don't wake up now,' the man was bawling, 'I'm bloody well leaving you here, all right?' He raised the stick again for another jab. Instinctively, Cannanus began to flinch away, remembering just in time not to move.
'I'm awake, for crying out loud,' he gabbled; and as he said it, it occurred to him that there was a man, a fellow human being, there with him in the bog. 'How did you get here?' he demanded. 'It's a bog, you'll be eaten…'
The man looked startled, as though a friendly dog had snarled at him. 'Oh,' he said, relaxing a little, 'I see what you… It's all right,' he said, 'I know the path, so long as we stay on it we'll be fine.' Something must have occurred to him; he asked, 'How long have you been there?'
'All night,' Cannanus replied. 'Can you get me out of this? Please? I'll do anything…'
'Just keep still and don't thrash about, or we'll both be in trouble.' The man's voice had something about it, unfamiliar yet acting directly on him, as though the words didn't really matter. Authority, he supposed, but not the stern, brutal voice of a man giving orders. Rather, it was someone who naturally and reasonably expected to be obeyed when he told you what to do; it reminded him a lot of Duke Valens, but without the edge.
'It's perfectly simple,' the man was saying. 'We just go back the way I came. You can see my footprints, look. Easiest thing would be if you followed them exactly, put your feet on them. Oh, and don't let me leave without my sack.'
For a moment, Cannanus didn't recognize the word. 'Sack?'
'Sack. Come on, you know what a sack is.'
Sure enough, there was a sack; two-thirds empty, but the man grunted as he lifted it onto his shoulder. 'Mineral samples,' he explained, unasked. 'Sulfur. That's what I came here for, though it's pretty well picked clean now. One of the few places you can still find clean, pure sulfur crystals; I got some mined stuff the other day, loads of it, but it turned out to be filthy, full of crud, no use at all.' He paused to let Cannanus catch up; he was racing ahead, as though there was no danger. 'I expect you're wondering,' he went on, in a cheerful voice, 'why an Eremian should risk his neck to fish a Mezentine out of a bog.'
