their fear and anger, but Kesh remained mindful of the force of men that waited off to one side. He estimated their number at about one hundred, all wearing black gear. They showed remarkable discipline, lined up in tidy ranks with a trio of men, their leaders, in front. They appeared foreign in both dress and facial features. He had never seen anyone who looked quite like them, except in Mariha.
He elbowed into the mob surrounding the reeve and, finding the innkeeper, grabbed him by the arm. 'Heya! Heya! Pay attention! We need to bring in wounded men, maybe a dead one. An envoy of Ilu needs our help! Quick!'
Kesh's fierce words cowed the man, and the reeve looked his way with the calm expression of a man completely in his element.
'Go on,' said the reeve to the innkeeper. 'You heard what he said. Bring in any wounded at once. Find that envoy! If there are any innocent folk these ospreys killed, I'll need their name and clan, so we can make an accounting and see that any death tithe is offered correctly.'
Kesh tugged the innkeeper after him. The reeve, meanwhile, gestured to the others to move back to their wagons. Afterward he walked to the black-clad guardsmen. Kesh saw the envoy's bright blue cloak on the ground and he broke away from the innkeeper and ran to kneel beside him. The arrow had an ugly look to it. The shaft had broken four times and it was clear that the envoy had been tumbled when the horses were ridden over him.
'Is there a healer here?' he asked the innkeeper.
The man gave a groan of despair and shook his head. 'Nay! Nay! It's many days' walk to the closest temple devoted to the Lady! We haven't seen a mendicant in weeks.'
'What about the Merciless One? Sometimes there are healers there.'
'The closest temple is all the way north by Olossi.'
'I know that place,' said Kesh grimly.
'Eiya! Horrible!' wailed the innkeeper as he stared at the body. 'To have it known that an envoy of Ilu died here! No one will want to bide here or sup and drink at my inn. It's an ill omen! We're ruined!'
'Get a flat board-a tabletop-a door-something! We must carry him inside.' He looked up at the sky. 'It might rain, and it will soon be dark.'
The innkeeper needed no greater encouragement. He bolted back the way they had come. Kesh pressed a hand gently to the envoy's neck. He breathed still, if shallowly. Life pulsed in his body. The breath of the gods had not yet left him.
Kesh curled his hand around the arrow as close against the envoy's back as he could and tested its grip by slowly twisting it. To his surprise, it slid free easily. Amazingly, the point had not pierced the fabric of the cloak but only driven it deep into the body. He cast the arrow away and swiftly pushed the cloak to one side as blood gushed up through the yellow silk of the tunic. He got out his knife and slit open the back of the tunic to expose the wound. The tumbling by the horses had done the most damage by disturbing the point, but it was remarkable how the silk had not torn despite the speed and force of the missile. He pressed the heel of one hand on the wound to stem the flow of blood and closed his eyes, trying to sense the pattern of the body's humors beneath the skin, as it was said true healers might do who could breathe and smell and even hear the whispering complaints of illness or injury.
'Ssa!' came the whisper. 'Sshuu!' And then, 'Where did they come from? Who set them on us?'
Kesh opened his eyes to see that the envoy's eyes were open. One of them, anyway. He couldn't see the other since the man's face was turned to one side because he was laid out on his stomach.
'Please lie still,' said Kesh. 'Don't talk. I got the arrow out. Hang on. We'll get you to the inn. You'll rest there.'
The first winds heralding dusk sighed down off the mountains, and the cloak rose and sunk into ridges and hollows as if something living were moving inside it. The envoy did not reply, but perhaps he had passed out again. His left arm lay at an awkward angle, and bruises were purpling all along his back where hooves had struck him.
'How badly hurt?' The reeve crouched beside Kesh. He was younger than the envoy but a fair bit older than Kesh, a good-looking fellow with short black hair teased by a few strands of white. He stood at medium height, lean but very fit, and he moved with the strength of a man who has confidence in his ability to stick it out in a brawl. A dangerous man, in his own way, and not unlike his eagle in the way he examined the envoy with a keen gaze, without actually touching him, as predators seek from above the sign of their prey by studying the ripples in grass and the flash of sudden movement along the ground.
Kesh eased the heel of his hand off the wound. Blood oozed, but the gushing had stopped. He pushed the envoy's cloak off the body and into a heap at one side, then slit the tunic from neck to base and opened it like wings.
'Trampled and shot,' mused the reeve, 'but still breathing. Good thing those os-preys are all dead, as it's more merciful than the death they'd receive for killing a holy man.'
'He's still breathing! He spoke to me.'
The reeve grunted and glanced over his shoulder. Kesh looked, too, and saw that the black-clad guards had dismounted and spread out, and were hauling the corpses of the bandits into rows the better to tally, identify, and dispose of them. Locals and servants hovered close by, hoping to strip the bodies of second-rate but still precious silk.
'That's one band,' remarked the reeve, more to himself than to Keshad, 'but it won't be the end of it.'
'The end of what?'
'These attacks along the roads. I came south from Clan Hall to investigate.'
'I heard there's been trouble. I've been south some months. You'd think Argent Hall would have been patrolling.'
'So you would think. Worst, it turns out it's the captain in charge who has made common pact with these ospreys.'
'The captain? The one in charge of the border post? Captain Beron?'
'The same,' said the reeve. 'How do you know him?'
'I heard the clerks speak his name as I passed through earlier today. He seemed a decent man.'
But the thought struck him hard enough that he fell silent: It was my treasure the ospreys sought. He saw it, and let me pass, and sent these men after.
He said nothing, although the reeve waited, as if sensing that Kesh clutched a secret to his heart.
'Beron?' The envoy stirred. His voice had the hoarse gurgle of a man talking past blood. 'Dedicated to the Earth Mother at birth. Crane-born-did you see his Crane mark? Sworn to Kotaru the Thunderer. Well. It's no wonder.' That wheeze was, perhaps, meant to be a laugh, but it sounded more like a death rattle.
The reeve regarded the envoy with a look of mild amazement.
'What's no wonder?' demanded Kesh. 'Yet if you would be silent, uncle, we might save you!'
'Cranes are orderly… Thunderer likes discipline… Earth Mother arranges all things but… can be rigid. Overturn these.. 'He gargled on blood as he tried to suck in air.
'Overturn these,' said the reeve softly, 'and you have chaos.'
'It is easy to subvert a man… who is in all parts desiring order… imposed from without. Eh! Eh! Any envoy of Ilu would have advised against… dedicating this child… to Kotaru.'
'Uncle! Keep still! You must spare yourself.'
The reeve looked fixedly at Kesh as the innkeeper trotted up, gasping and grunting and leading a pair of men who carried a tabletop on which to bear the wounded man. The envoy closed his eyes. They shifted him over and hurried off, but Kesh grabbed the innkeeper by the sleeve.
'There's a pair under the Ladytree. A poor brave lad who I fear is dead. And my driver, who needs his wound washed and bound with a salve. If you have any starflower or soldier's friend, they are good for such injuries. Or Bright Blue, which stems bleeding-nay, it's too far south for that.'
The innkeeper gave him a fearful grimace and tore away, shouting at a pair of untidy lads loitering by the gate to come and give a hand, and he lumbered off toward the inn after the envoy while his servants, or slaves, ran toward the Ladytree.
'You know something of the healing properties of plants,' said the reeve, who had not once taken his gaze from Keshad during this exchange. He rose, brushing the dust from his knees, and when Keshad looked past him at the black-clad foreigners tidying the field, he looked, too, to see what caught Kesh's interest.
