we use oil of naya, as they did at Olossi? How do we transport a lot of oil quickly, if we do, when river transport down the lesser Istri might be blocked?
The words, by themselves, had no tangible meaning, like a tale sung at festival time, but their voices had an edge so sharp that Nallo found her own shoulders tightening in response. A great ravening beast was lumbering down on them, and they just sat there helplessly in its path.
46
The Istri Walk was the great thoroughfare of the Hundred, wide enough to accommodate two wagons rolling abreast on the raised central pavement with well-trodden dirt paths flanking the walk on either side. Marit found it eerie to pace its measures in such solitude. Every village was closed down tight, not one person out on road or path except for gangs of farmers working the fields without the usual songs to pass the time. Everything was too quiet, Marit thought, not with the lull before the storm but with the shock of destruction after.
The trailing edge of the army appeared roadside, the detritus of their passage: a naked toddler with a distended stomach sucked its dirty thumb; a lad herded a paltry herd of skinny goats along the verge; a man with a crutch limped away when he saw them, keeping his head down. People had been scavenging for wood and kindling, for there was not a scrap of forest litter on the ground besides rotting vegetation.
Wagons blocked the road, but the riders broke into a canter and flew over them. The guards bobbed their heads in obeisance, afraid to look her in the eye.
'Who built this road?' Hari asked. 'I've never seen anything like it. Not even in the Sirniakan Empire.'
'No one knows,' said Marit. 'Even the tales don't say'
'I see such a path one time,' said the girl, who called herself Kirit.
'Where?' asked Marit when it became obvious she wasn't about to say more.
'In the grasslands. Just one place. A big tower. No one lives there, only demons. A road like this one, I see there.'
'Who built it?'
Kirit shrugged. 'Demons.'
They passed a second barrier, set at the outskirts of a village overrun with soldiers sitting at their ease on porches, but chatter died as the three cloaks passed. In the fields beyond the village, the army had set up its main bivouac, rank upon rank of traveling tents amid hundreds of campfires. As the long quiet spilled down to dusk, they rode into the camp, their cloaks billowing as the wind caught the edge of coming night. Twilight, mist, and death, they approached the heart of the enemy, identified by a trio of huge tents. Evidently Lord Radas liked his comforts.
Aui! Her chest felt tight, and her throat constricted. Hari was breathing raggedly, maybe not aware he was doing so. As for the girl, she likely was a demon, because as small and helpless as she looked, she acted no differently than if she'd been riding into her home village, not that Marit could begin to imagine a village filled with people with such ghastly pale faces and hair.
And for that matter, she thought, mind skittering at random as she shied away from the confrontation looming before her, did demons live in villages? Did they have kinfolk and lovers, or only prey?
The walls of the tents rippled as the wind sighed, like a beast breathing as it waited to consume them. Soldiers gathered at a distance. Marit and Hari dismounted, but Kirit remained on her mare, strung bow resting over her legs and three arrows caught in her left hand.
The entrance to the tent was swept back. Marit inhaled sharply, but the people who scurried out wore the badges common to prosperous merchants and householders, the kind of folk you met in the council hall. They kept eyes averted, and yet a stench of fear and greed rose off them as they hurried away under escort, soon vanishing into the crowded camp beyond. A second group strode out in their wake, captains outfitted in soldiers' gear and with the posture and authority of men accustomed to getting their way through physical prowess. She knew their type: Kotaru's ordinands, local militia commanders, any man who has built a fence around a territory and considers it his own and the gods help you if you think to challenge him. Yet they, too, kept their gazes lowered like children showing submission to a bullying parent.
Hari went inside, the pale cloth swallowing him. One gulp, and he was gone.
In the rightmost tent, cloth twitched. If someone had been peeking out, she had missed them. She looked at Kirit as the young woman surveyed the assembly with her cold blue gaze. Gawking soldiers hurried away, leaving the guards and the captains. Their fear pricked her.
Inside the tent, a man shouted, voice breaking into a ragged sobbing keen stabbed by grunts of pain.
'The hells!' Her lips were dry, and her hands cold. She gripped her staff and used its tip to flip the heavy entrance flap aside, then followed it into the interior.
Lamps burned in open space. A man writhed on a fine wool carpet, blood leaking over the green and gold pattern.
'Hari!'
Two men stood beside Hari, one holding a sword laced with blood and the other holding an arrow loosely woven between the fingers of his right hand. The swordsman looked up, revealing the face of a young man, grin twisted with cruel pleasure.
'Clean it, and sheath it,' said the other man, and the soldier obeyed mutely.
Lord Radas faced her, looking no older than the day he had ordered her killed. He blinked, not startled but considering. His was a pleasant face, but something dwelt deep there that she could not call human. 'The cloak of death. I glimpsed it many years ago, and thought it lost, but now you are come. I welcome you.'
Hari twitched, hands clutching his stomach. From the stench, the soldier had done a serviceable job of gutting him, because his guts were leaking out. His gaze fixed on her, his soft 'uh uh uh' enough to make your skin crawl, but he did not beg her for aid. Aui! She cursed herself for not having drawn her sword beforehand. Could she take them?
By his grip on the sword, the soldier was ready to strike again.
'Why did you do it?' she asked.
Radas's voice was as soft as his shadowed eyes. 'He has to learn not to displease me. In this way, he comes to understand that for his carelessness there are consequences. He brought it on himself.'
'What carelessness?'
'It's shameful, how carelessly he commanded the army we sent to support our allies in Olossi. Our task is made more difficult by his failure. It brings more harm and trouble to those who desire order. All the many people who suffer from these disturbed times want order, and they shall have it. Only now it will take longer and be more messy.'
Perhaps he was insane. Perhaps he was simply the land's most selfish liar. Hard to say, since he was veiled to her sight, and she was cursed sure he could see nothing in her likewise. He did not even seem to recognize her as the reeve he had ordered killed twenty years ago. Maybe because of that, he did not frighten her.
'What is your name?' he asked, his tone an imitation of kindly concern.
'I'm called Ramit.'
'That's right. Yet you fled from me. That was over a year ago.'
'I was unaccountably detained. Otherwise I would have come sooner.'
Perhaps he believed this bland pap. She found herself oddly irritated that she could not know, when all other people lay open to her third eye. Great Lady! Was she becoming accustomed to holding that axe over their heads?
'I'm satisfied. You are here now.'
She gestured toward Hari, whose grunts faded as blood leaked out between his fingers. 'May I assist him?'
'No. I would prefer you did not. He'll recover.'
'So you can punish him again in like manner?'
Wise uncles might smile so, sadly shaking their head at youth's foibles. 'He must suffer the agonies he has earned. Those who do harm must be punished.'
