'I have. Is this how they keep the peace?'
'Those who resist, who speak out, who cause trouble or break curfew — are cleansed. Their corruption removed.'
Corpses dangled from poles, tied by ropes around the wrists, hands swollen and so deep a purple they were almost black and lower limbs puffy and distended. The dead stank, while the guards had bound linen kerchiefs over their mouths and noses. Beyond the gate, more poles rose. Flies buzzed in black clouds.
'I'd call it slaughtered, not cleansed! The hells! Those two aren't dead!'
A lad, his arms streaked with the jagged red of infection spreading down from his choked hands, was unconscious, spirit drifting deep. A man whimpered as he struggled to get enough purchase on the pole with his heels to ease the strangling pressure of the rope.
She dismounted. His feet hung to about the level of her waist, making it impossible for her to reach the stake hammered into the top of the pole around which the chains looped.
Had said, 'They're already condemned.'
'By what court?'
Beside the gate, the night watch gathered.
'By the only court that matters. Those who command the army hold the power.'
' 'The cloaks rule all, even death'. Well, they don't rule me after all, do they? Help me.'
'It serves no purpose to try to save one here and one there when they're all condemned.'
'You disappoint me.' Warning flicked her ears. 'And you disappoint my good horse, too.'
She walked to the barrier, a bulky fence set in front of debris piled to impede movement and with a gate set in place to allow wagons through in single file. 'I need a ladder.'
The taste of their sergeant's sullen anger at being ordered about so arbitrarily flavored the air even as he kept his gaze averted. A ladder was brought. She carried it over her shoulders to the pole where the hanging man scraped with a will, as if thinking to escape her efforts. As she braced the ladder behind the pole, Hari dismounted. He came up very close behind her, almost embracing her.
'I'll help you,' he said in a low voice.
'Change of heart?'
'I'm not doing this for him. You catch him when he falls.'
Grasping the man around the thighs, she lifted. He grunted in pain. His trousers were fouled; she sucked in a fetid breath through her mouth and held on, hoping Hari would be quick. The chain released. The man's body collapsed over her, and she staggered back to avoid falling under him as he began screaming. Then Hari had him, and together they eased him to the ground.
'Eiya!' She cut the ropes, then probed his shoulders as he writhed. 'Nothing popped out, but he'll have a cursed painful time getting the blood back into his hands. The muscles must be torn from the weight. He can't have been up there long.'
'What do you mean to do with him?' Hari asked.
'Cursed if I know. Find him a place he can heal.'
'And thereby condemn whoever aids him as an accomplice, to be cleansed?'
'I can't just stand aside and do nothing! Help me with the other one.'
'A waste of time. The lad's near death.'
'How can you tell?'
'You're young to this yet, aren't you? It's a sweetness they get, when they cross beyond where they can be brought back. If you want, I'll kill him quickly.'
'Are you going to help me, or not?'
His gaze shifted past her. Anger had made her careless. She turned. The sergeant, marked by his shoulder braids, stood a prudent distance away, gaze still averted, shaking as though terrified by his own audacity.
'Lord, if you will hear me, I would tell you that the man you cut down was cleansed for being a spy. He was sent from Toskala to infiltrate our territories and scurry back to his masters with what news he could tell them.'
Marit rose. 'Take the lad down. Also, bring me a pair of saddled horses, rope, wine, and a sack of rice.' His abject obedience gave a rush that made her ears burn, and then at once she knew the shame of letting his fear feed her. Demons ate fear; that was what made them demons.
Hari nodded toward the lad. 'Listen with your second heart, and look with your third eye. His spirit is passing.'
The death rattle exhaled as softly as mist rises. The young spirit lightened within the night, a shudder of trembling confusion caught between death and the Spirit Gate. The wind quickened. Chains scraped on wood as bodies shifted. The odor of death grew strong, then faded abruptly. She sucked in breath — breath is life — and that quickly, the youth's spirit crossed over and was gone, joyful in its final release.
A pair of frightened soldiers brought a pair of saddled horses — decent mounts, to her surprise — and scuttled away. The accused spy screamed in pain as she and Hari bundled him onto the horse, and tied him on the saddle. Mercifully, he passed out. She tied the lead lines to her own saddle and strung the spare at the end.
They rode for a long while without speaking, her heart steaming hot with a bitter rage. The fields beyond High Haldia had a tidy architecture. This was fertile land, well populated, sufficient to feed High Haldia and besides maintain a brisk trade upcountry and downriver. The footfalls of the horses rang in the night, as loud as hammers. The unconscious man breathed in unsteady gasps, his pain like a haze of muddy pressure around his torso. Rain washed them, pouring for a while, and then they rode out of it. In the southwest, three stars shone in a break in the clouds.
'I don't know what I'll do with him now,' she said at last.
'Why do you bother?'
'Because I can't walk away.'
'Didn't you see the dead ones? The empty poles waiting? How will you save them?'
'I can't walk away from the one who is in front of me.'
His glance was shadowed by night, but she felt its brooding force. 'They'll feed on you. That's what they do.'
'These poor souls feed on you?'
'No. The ones who control us. They feed on us, who are their slaves.'
'Are they demons?'
'Maybe. If you turn around now, you might be free of them a while longer.'
'No.' She wiped her brow, still wet from the rains. 'To run is to be their slave. I'm going to fight. All I ask is that you stay out of my way, and don't betray me.'
'Don't trust me,' he said. 'I'm not like you.'
'You're the only ally I have.'
Looking at each other, they both laughed.
At length, she wiped away a tear. Within the strange shimmering gleam off the road, she watched his face, his wry smile, his habitual shrug as of a man who has trained himself to let water run where it may, making no effort to shield himself from the downpour.
'Don't make me like you too much,' he said, 'because it will end in grief.'
'Will it? That's up to you.'
38
The soldiers who had captured Shai had set up camp north of West Track, in woodland cover. It was dusk by the time the patrol reached a clearing with canvas shelters and one campfire. Men came to stare as the others tramped in.
'Make more noise, and you'll bring one of Horn's patrols down on us, you great cursed ass.'
'More important, did you find anything?'
'Field was picked over,' said the sergeant. 'Not a cursed thing worth carrying.'
