He helped the girl kneel. She leaned on one arm, spilling more than got down.
'Slow down.' Shai sucked water, savoring its cold bite. Then he cupped his hands so she could lie down and drink what he tipped into her mouth.
Vali knelt beside them, gaze darting along the bank, up into the trees, always seeking, never still. The ghost fluttered her hands helplessly as the boy she followed splashed into the water and flung himself into the current.
Roaring with anger, guards waded after him. They paddled; he dropped beneath the surface where the current streamed close against a high bank on the opposite shore. His hair floated atop the water, marking his position, and then he and his pursuers vanished around a bend. The ghost chased along the bank in their wake. Shai kept drinking, not sure when they'd be allowed to drink again.
'Drink more,' he said to the girl.
'I can't walk.' She rubbed at her grimy thighs. A runnel of blood had dried at one knee.
The soldiers came splashing back through the shallows, dragging the boy, who sobbed and struggled. They threw him on the stones and began beating him methodically with the hafts of spears as he tried to protect his head with upraised arms.
'Leave off!' The sergeant sauntered forward. 'Find me stout sticks and big rocks.' He surveyed the huddled mass of captives, with their knees dripping and their chins damp. 'You want to join us, be a soldier, you learn how to kill.' As soldiers brought him sticks he thrust them into the hands of the reluctant captives. 'Just like the lords command us to do. Go on, then. Hit him as hard as you can. Aui! Don't make me mad at you.'
He grabbed a boy and shoved him up to the prone youth, who
was trying to crawl away, his face bloody and his look dazed. In Shai's eyes, all movement slowed.
The lad holding the stick tapped the lad's leg. The sergeant cuffed him so hard he reeled. 'Hit. Or I'll kill you for disobedience.'
Down the sticks came, one by one, some breaking over the body and others holding firm. The captives looked as dazed as if they were the ones being beaten, but they kept hitting and hitting and those who hesitated were struck until they, too, took a turn. Until the lad's face was crushed in.
But he wasn't yet dead. His spirit still inhabited his body, although from the blood running from his nose and the hollow where his skull had been caved in, it was hard to imagine how his spirit could reside there.
'Here, now, what about the ox?' Twist trotted over to where Shai crouched silently by the stream, the girl lying on the ground beside him, her head turned to watch the beating. He shoved on Shai's shoulder, but Shai had braced himself, so he wasn't shifted.
He grinned, looking right up into the man's ugly face. 'I chop wood. I chop wood.'
'Give him an axe,' laughed the soldier. 'Let's see if he can lop off its head in one go.'
The sergeant waded over. 'The hells! Are you a cursed horse's ass? You don't go giving a fellow with arms that size an axe, you gods-cursed lack-brain. Get on now. Time to get moving.'
The horses were brought, the captives prodded into lines.
Vali uncurled from the ball he'd made of himself. 'Whsst! They overlooked me, thank the gods.'
Shai sat rigid, not sure he could ever move again. If he closed his eyes, he saw sticks rising and falling in the hands of frightened children; if he opened them, he saw the body, and the ghost girl patting the beaten lad to try to rouse him.
'Heya!' murmured Vali. 'Best get moving, you don't want to get killed.'
'He's not dead,' muttered Shai.
Vali looked at him sideways. 'He looks dead.'
The familiar prickle of warning raced along Shai's skin. In Kartu Town, they burned those who could see ghosts, for being tainted
with the evil eye. Here, they killed those who weren't obedient. No use taking chances.
'Get up,' he said to the girl.
'I don't want to be beat like that,' Yudit whispered, struggling to her knees although she hadn't the strength to rise.
'Get moving!' shouted the sergeant.
Whips cracked. Horses clopped through the shallows and plunged across breast-deep at the ford. The captives slogged through, shivering, but the worst cold was surely in their hearts, knowing what they had done.
'You there, ox! Get moving!'
He scooped up the girl and slung her over his back like a sack of wool to be brought down Dezara Mountain to market. Not much to carry. Vali slogged along beside, his expression thoughtful, his eyes seeking.
As he waded the ford, the sergeant yelled after him. 'Best leave her if she can't walk on her own. You fall behind, too, and we'll kill you, too. You're not that much use to us, ox.'
'He's too stupid to understand your meaning,' said the one called Twist.
Shai clambered with difficulty up the far bank, Vali balancing him with a grip on one elbow, and shifted Yudit to a marginally more comfortable position over his shoulders. He filled his belly with breath, finding strength. Then he fell into line with the others, abandoning the dying boy and the ghost who would not leave him.
39
In the Barrens, underground, lamplight flickered. Nallo ceased cutting on the face of the tunnel immediately and crawled with mattock in hand back past the second lamp and toward the bottom of the shaft. She crouched under the hole, a hand gripping the rope in case she needed to tug for a lift out. Down the tunnel, the flame dimmed, pulsed twice, and flared to a steady flame. Behind her, Mas was using the back of his spade to tamp down the debris in a
bucket, seemingly unconcerned. He'd done similar work before. He had an instinct for danger.
'Doesn't it get to you?' If she thought too much about the space in which they crouched, she'd scream.
'Neh. We're getting four times the rate of buyout toward our debt contracts as the ones working aboveground. Even the lads taking the extra shift of militia training only get half rates of what we do. It's worth it. I might stay on after I've paid off my debt, work for coin.'
'They'll be working on these irrigation channels for years.'
'So they will. I can make a tidy sum, hope to start a house of my own.' He moved up beside her with the bucket. 'Let me get this hooked up. You want me to do cutting?'
She refused to show weakness, although her shoulders and legs and back ached. The supervisor had told her this was man's work, best fit for short men so the tunnel roof didn't have to be cut very high, but a strong woman could fit into narrower spaces than most men. She had proved her worth. Wiping sweat from her brow, she returned to the face of the tunnel. Behind, the winch creaked as the full bucket was hauled up. Mas began to fill another.
She cut with the mattock, checking her direction by lining up on the two lamps. He shoveled and filled. Later, they switched out. Increasingly they heard the faint hammering vibrations of the team working in their direction from the shaft ahead, but they remained yet a fair distance apart. The winch reeled up full buckets and lowered empty ones. The work would have been monotonous, if not for the memory of the fall that last week had buried two men, and the water that had drowned the boy from Old Fort before that, and the old man who had asphyxiated when they'd sunk their first attempt at a mother well.
The second shift was lowered on the rope. Nallo and Mas chose to walk out along the conduit toward the mouth about half a mey distant. The gentle pitch and clay floor made the journey an easy one; shafts offered light and air about every two hundred paces. Mas was a scrawny older man, toughened by years of hard labor.
'You going to try for the militia, Nallo?'
'Neh. I'm too tired after my shift to do any drilling. The Qin don't want women in the miiitia units anyway. What about you?'
'Neh, I'm too old for that.' He halted in the darkest part midway between two shafts. 'Eihi! We've got debris here.'
