i need to get on.' An object thudded to the ground by Shai's
knees. The man walked away as Shai stared at the buckle; the wolf's head stared back at him, black on silver. He sucked in an inhalation as he grasped it.
Hari!
Dead. Dead. Dead.
With a trembling hand Shai touched the shattered rib cage. Closing his eyes, he tried to snare the lingering whispers of a spirit from the sun-warmed bones.
These were not Hari's bones.
A man shouted.
Shai started back, his hands cold and his chest heavy. He scrambled on hands and knees through the scatter of bones, touching leg bones, arms, fingers, a mandible. So many dead men, carved by death out of life and sent fleeing through the Spirit Gate. But none of them were Hari.
Yet Hari had been dead when he had last been wearing the belt buckle. Hari's wolf sigil ring had come to the family through convoluted channels, more by accident and chance than purpose, so Shai believed. Hari's ring, too, had whispered of its owner's death. But Hari's bones were nowhere to be found, or at least, not here where he had left his ring and his buckle. Weeping, Shai sank onto his heels, head cupped in his hands. The obvious answer sang in his ears: Hari had died elsewhere, and another man had robbed his corpse and worn his fine ring and buckle until he himself was caught by the death that attends those who march to war.
Enough.
An eagle rose out of the outcropping, whose bare stone shouldered above dirt in rough surfaces and ragged spills of rock like massive frozen waterfalls. Men flowed out of the rock, spurting from between ridges, cascading down the slope.
They had seen him.
They were armed.
He tied Hari's belt buckle into his sleeve and leaped the stream, landing up to his knees in the rushing cold water. He splashed through and scrambled up the far side as shouts were loosed at his back. He sprinted up the slope to the shelter of the low-lying scrub. Thin straggler vines whipped his face; branches caught in his clothes
as he tore through. His cap came off. The racket he made as he thrashed through the brush was trail enough for his pursuers.
He dropped to hands and knees and scrambled among narrow trunks, squiggled into a thicket and lay, panting, on his belly. He eased around, to watch the way he had come. Branches snapped and slithered as four men pressed past not two body's lengths from him. He could not see their faces, only their legs. White and pale pink flowers danced in the taller scrub trees as the wind rose, melding with the stamp and disturbance made by the searching men. Maybe rain would blow through, discourage the hunters, and leave him free to-
A thorn pricked him. He shifted to get out from under it. The point pinched harder.
'Get up,' said a man.
The point of a spear jabbed hard enough to break the skin.
Cautiously, he eased up to hands and knees.
A kick planted into his rear sent him sprawling into vines and thorns. A second kick caught a hip, and as he struggled to get out of the thorns, the kicks kept pushing him back in until he simply went limp and lay like he was dead. Blood tickled along his spine; his skin stung where the spear had poked him.
The spear jabbed a new spot.
'Get up,' said the same voice, in the same flat tone, no pleasure in it, no giggling sneering gloat.
He had learned a few tricks from the Qin soldiers. With a spinning roll, he knocked the point off his back and got his hands on the shaft with a wide grip. He wrenched the spear out of the man's grip, twirled it, and smacked him upside the chin with the shaft.
The man dropped right into Shai, his weight smashing him backward into a bush. Shai shoved him off, then levered the spear under him to push himself up.
Too late.
Others pushed into view. Two had swords, three had spears, and one had a bow nocked with a ready arrow.
'Not bad,' said the bowman, standing in back of the rest, partially screened by brush. 'Kill him now, Sergeant?'
'Give us the spear, lad.'
They looked like ordinary folk on the surface, bedraggled from tearing through the scrub, but their eyes were hard and their clothes
mismatched, and they carried their weapons like they wanted an excuse to use them. Three had lips stained red, the sigil left by sweet-smoke, whose mark he'd seen on Girish. The addicts looked ready to kill if given the order. The fallen man groaned as he staggered to his feet.
'Cursed outlander!' he growled. 'Can I rip his balls off?'
'Neh. The master will want to know what he's doing here pawing through the battlefield right where Lord Twilight was raised. Looks like he was traveling with that ordinand.'
Had they captured Edard, too?
Was it better to fight and die, or give up your freedom now in the hopes of winning it back later?
He released the spear.
A man grabbed it and smacked him alongside the face. He blacked out.
And came to retching, with them dragging him through grass. They had been joined by more soldiers.
'Walk!'
They pulled him past a pile of clothing discarded on the ground, only there was a man still in that clothing, a face staring up at the sky and mist rising out of the nostrils in a roil of confusion.
'Why will folk never listen to me when I try to warn them? Heya! Shai!' Edard's ghost writhed toward him, mouth widening in an exaggerated grimace. 'Did I tell you my clan's password to make contact in Toskala? Someone needs to know. 'Splendid silk slippers', like in the tale. Same as our badge.'
Shai had never been so afraid in his life, to see a ghost calling his name as its cloudy essence chased after him.
But of course, no one else could see. They just thought he was struggling to get free.
'No fighting, or I'll let Twist cook and eat your balls after he's cut them off.'
'Don't want to eat them,' said Twist, to the laughter of the others. 'Want to make him eat them raw.'
They chortled. Dizzied, Shai blinked as Edard's ghost hazed his vision.
'One moment I was walking down to find where Eridit had gone, and the next… Eiya! Am I dead?'
The ghost seemed less angry than puzzled as the gang of men marched through him. He drifted toward a ridge of rock adorned with curtains of orange-flowering vegetation. The way the vegetation fell down the crag made it seem there was rock all the way down, the crevice itself easily missed, unless you knew it was there because a young woman had recently dragged you in there and done what she wanted, not that he hadn't wanted it just as much.
'Aui!' said the ghost. 'There Eridit is! Safe, at least.'
Shai saw her eyes, a patchwork face behind orange flowers. As she saw him see her, fear made her face ghastly. Fear for him? Or for herself?
He stumbled purposefully, drawing their attention, and surged up so they crowded in to pressure him forward, weapons bristling like so many iron thorns ready to impale. They didn't examine the nearby rocks.
Edard's ghost had vanished.
And Shai was their living prisoner.
PART SIX
