single-minded.”
The slope shuddered. Rocks shifted but the tremor was not violent enough to initiate a slide. The beached god wobbled and jiggled.
“It’s crazy with rage but doesn’t have strength for anything but trying to stay alive. For a long time, naturally.”
“Handy skill, reading a god’s mind without getting your own baked.”
“I’m not reading its mind, Heris. It would love to have me try. It would make me over into an ascendant Krepnight, the Elect, in three heartbeats. Then it would turn me loose on you and the others.”
“You know that without being able to read its mind?”
“It’s simple. I feel its emotions. I think about what the god side of me would do in its place, if I had its power.” Asgrimmur moved up for a better view of the shingle.
Heris joined him. “Is this safe?”
“It is now. For a while. If you want, you can go throw salt water on just to be nasty.”
“I didn’t remember to bring a bucket.”
“You’d be destroying only what it’s written off already, anyway.”
“And there are the priests.” She pointed.
“They’re no problem. He used them up to make Krepnight, the Elect.”
Hungry seabirds surrounded the dead already.
It seemed instructive that carrion eaters would not touch the Windwalker.
Heris asked, “Are you learning anything now?”
“I’m always…” He realized that the question was not general. “From the Instrumentality? Yes.”
“Is it anything we might find useful to the fight? Because if it is, I’ll stay here till my eyeballs freeze. But, otherwise, not. Otherwise, I’d just as soon get the hell out of here, now.”
“Give me a few minutes. Unless you have a pressing need.”
“I do have a need. But, go ahead. Knock yourself out. I’ve got nowhere to go but home.”
36. The Connec: Journey
Brother Candle had no trouble getting away from Khaurene in the confusion after the fall of King Regard. He did not go alone. More than thirty Maysaleans joined him, bringing carts, wagons, livestock, and wealth, as though begging for the attention of bandits.
They could help him, yes. He was sure he could not survive the journey alone. But, on the other hand, they could get him killed.
They wanted to leave Khaurene in a clement season, before Anne of Menand extracted her vengeance. Which they knew would come, as surely as nightfall.
What they would not hear was advice. What they would not hear was the Perfect’s warnings about the dangers of travel.
He told them to head south and cross the Verses Mountains into Navaya Medien, where the Church and Society had little reach and Arnhand had none. Where heretics were welcome so long as they brought useful skills and a willingness to work. Navaya Medien was a land depleted of people, first by a long-ago plague, then by two centuries of vicious, no-quarter warfare between Chaldarean kings and Praman kaifs.
Peace had returned. Peter of Navaya had pushed the war zone away to the south. The Chaldarean triumph at Los Naves de los Fantas guaranteed that the Pramans could not become seriously obnoxious for a generation.
But these emigrants were all intimates from the Khaurenese Maysalean community: the Archimbaults and their neighbors. Most were folk with whom Brother Candle had shared exile in the Altai. Ferocious Kedle Richeut, n?e Archimbault, was now a leader, possibly the most respected. But these days she wore a new name: Alazais Record, after a female Perfect murdered by the Society.
She used the false name because it was no secret that a young Maysalean mother named Kedle Richeut had loosed the shaft that made an end of Regard of Menand.
The band followed the southern road to Castreresone. That passed through friendlier country. At Kedle’s insistence each member of the group old enough to heft a weapon had brought arms out of Khaurene. Those had been easy to acquire in the confusion. Brother Candle added a codicil to every prayer imploring the Good God to shelter his people.
Nevertheless, trouble came near Homodel, which still showed evidence of the fighting during the Captain- General’s scourging of the Connec. Castreresone was not half a day’s journey away. But bandits were out and bold.
The travelers found the road blocked by four armed men. The leader wore knight’s armor but showed neither pennon nor device. He was the only mounted man. He held his helmet in his lap. His contempt for Maysaleans was manifest.
Brother Candle did not follow what the man said when first he spoke. His accent was thick. The gist, though, was that they should clear away from his wagons and livestock.
In a strong, calm voice, while handing her baby to her cousin Guillemette, Kedle said, “Clear the road. You get no further warning.”
At which the mounted man laughed.
His companions were less confident.
He bent to tell them something…
Kedle swung a ready crossbow out of a donkey cart and put a bolt into the knight’s right eye. She traded the crossbow for a spear and rushed the men on foot.
Every witness knew the girl was going to kill all three and there was nothing they could do. The bandits themselves knew.
The youngest, clearly unwell and only about fourteen, bolted.
Kedle hit the others like Death’s angel, wasting not an instant of their stunned inaction. She wounded the heavier by stabbing him in the inner thigh. He staggered back, making a whimpering noise. The other was twice Kedle’s size. His weapon was a rusty long sword. He wielded that with both hands, in wild strokes. Kedle backed away, circled, got the fallen knight’s horse on her shield arm side.
Strange things happen on battlefields. On this one the knight’s horse did not move after its rider got hit. The knight himself fell off and lay on his face in the road, his left foot still tangled in a stirrup.
The girl pricked the horse. It surged forward, dragging its erstwhile rider, shouldering the bandit with the sword. His guard was open for an instant. She slipped the head of her spear up under his chin and shoved. Then she went after the wounded man, who was making a limping effort to escape. He was losing blood. She ignored his pleas. She stuck him till he stopped moving. She seemed possessed.
She returned in a rage. “What is the matter with you people? Not one of you lifted a finger to protect yourselves. What if there had been more of them out there in the woods?”
Raulet Archimbault said, “Poppet, that’s why…”
“That isn’t why. You froze. Every last one of you. Like rabbits who hope the fox won’t notice. What happened to all those loudmouthed wolves who were howling before we left Khaurene? And you. Old man. Master. You’re the experienced traveler. Why did you just stand there with your thumb in your mouth?”
“I’m used to talking my way through confrontations.”
“You’re used to being too damned poor to rob and to not having women along. There wasn’t going to be any talking your way around those four.” She dropped to her knees beside the fallen knight, tried to recover her bolt. It would not come loose. She kicked the corpse viciously. Then she took his foot out of his stirrup so the horse would not have to drag a dead man everywhere. “Go on, horse.” She faced the party. “There would’ve been rapes and murders. You know it.”
She was right.
Kedle returned to her cart. She took the crossbow out and spanned it again, the while glaring around. “You people better not get my children killed.” Then, “Othon! Let the dead be. They don’t have anything we want.”
“But…”
