The Blackgod

blanket and settled it over both of their shoulders. He took her hand in his and was gratified when she squeezed back.

“Thanks again for saving my life,” he murmured.

“Shut up. This is exactly what I'm talking about,” she cried, beating his chest with her palm. “Just tell me something, something of no importance at all.”

Perkar thought for a long moment before he finally said, “I know a story about a cow with two heads.”

“What?”

“A head on each end. My mother used to tell me that story. There was a fox who owned a cow with two heads—”

“Tell it, don't summarize it,” Hezhi insisted.

“It's a silly story.”

“Tell it, I command thee.”

“Your wish I grant, Princ—Lady Hezhi,” Perkar amended. “It seems that in the long ago, in the days when people and animals often spoke, and the cooking pots had opinions, and the fence-rails often complained of boredom, there was a fox who had no cows. And he asked himself, 'Now, how might I gather a fine herd and Piraku—' ”

“Is this a long story?” she interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

And for a time they pushed away death and destiny, and Hezhi grinned at the antics of the fox and his magical cow, and in the end they fell asleep, curled together.

HEZHI awoke first, uncertain of where she was. Her arm was asleep, and something warm was next to her.

She remembered then and extricated her arm with great care from where it lay beneath Perkar's back. He was still sleeping, and she gazed at his face, astonished and confused by her feelings.

It was nice, the way sleep smoothed away his pains so that she could see the face of the boy he had been, once, before their destinies became bound. The boy he might have been. How old was he? Twenty at most.

And what did he feel for her? Pity? Protectiveness?

She wasn't certain, but there was something in the way he held her, after she stopped crying, that seemed like neither of those things. It had seemed somehow desperate. And the oddest thing was that she understood that desperation, felt something akin to it. It was as if she had been growing a skin of stone, as if her face and fingers could no longer feel, any more than a piece of wood could. It was deeper than numbness. How long had it been since anyone held her, touched her? Even Tsem had been distant from her since the night they fled from Brother Horse's camp. She had not even realized how much she missed her contact with the Giant. She was hungry for any touch.

But Perkar's touch was something else again, something special. It was more akin to what she felt when Yen held her, but it wasn't even that. Yen's touch had been exciting, forbidden, and sweet. This was something that caught in her throat, and usually it came out as anger or spite. But last night it manifested as something else entirely, something with deeper roots. She wondered what she would have done had he kissed her. Had he even thought about it? She had feared that he would kiss her, last night, force her to decide what she felt or retreat from it. Now she wished the decision had been forced, for the one thing she did not need right now was this powerful new uncertainty.

What would she do when he woke? How should she react? She lay back and closed her eyes again, a mischievous smile on her face. Let him make that decision.

XXIX Forward-Falling Ghost

THE first day, Ghan was sure that he would die. By the second, he wished he would. No torturer of the Ahw'en could have developed a more fiendish device for torment than the hard Mang saddle and the horse beneath it. Trotting rubbed his thighs and calves raw; the middle pace shook pain into his entire frame. It was only the extremes—walking and full gallop—that did not immediately pain him, but in the next day he realized that the death grip he kept on the beast when it ran had to be paid for with cramping muscles and febrile pain along his bones. Thrice the meat and tendons of his leg knotting into a bunch near his ankle had sent him sliding to the ground, cursing and shedding tears of pain.

They did not stop for sleep, and as he had never been on a horse before, Ghan was entirely unable to doze in the saddle as did the rough barbarians around him. When he did drift off, it was only to awake, heartbeats later, in terror of falling. By the end of the second day he was haggard and speechless.

He did not understand the Mang language, though it contained vague echoes of the ancient tongue of Nhol, and many words were similar. But Ghe could speak with them somehow, perhaps through the same agency by which Perkar had “learned” the speech of Nhol.

Ghan gathered, before he became unable to take in new information, that the troop of horsemen had been searching for them, apparently at the behest of the man Ghe dreamed about, who was some sort of chief.

The only other thing that Ghan knew was that they were riding to meet this dream man. And, of course, that he would never live to do so.

To distract himself, he made an attempt to observe the men around him—if such creatures deserved to be called men. It did not help much. They all looked much the same, with their red-plumed helms, lacquered armor, and long black or brown coats. They all smelled much the same: like horses. They all jabbered tersely in an ugly language, and they all laughed at him, an old man who couldn't even sit a horse without considerable aid. His only comfort came from one of the surviving Nholish soldiers, a young fellow named Kanzhu, who stayed near him, caught him when he was near falling, and gave him water. Kanzhu was a cavalryman himself and knew well how to ride.

Ghe did not speak to him at all, but rode ahead with Qwen Shen and Bone Eel, both of whom seemed to have at least some facility with horses.

On the third day, he awoke to find himself lying in short grass. Someone was spattering water in his face, and a large locust sat on his chest.

“Master Ghan? Can you move?” It was Kanzhu. Ghan sipped gratefully at the water.

“I guess I fell asleep,” he conceded.

“Come on. You will ride with me for a while.”

“They won't allow that.”

“They'll have to, or leave you, and then they'll have to leave me. I won't abandon a subject of the emperor alone in these lands.”

A few of the Mang jabbered something at Kanzhu when he got Ghan up behind him in his saddle, but they eventually relented. The main body of riders was far ahead anyway, and they did not want to be left behind arguing.

“Don't they ever sleep?” Ghan growled weakly into the boy's back. The hard young muscles felt firm, secure, as if his arms were wrapped around a tree trunk. Had he ever been thus?

Probably not.

“This is some kind of forced march,” Kanzhu explained. “Lord Bone Eel, Lady Qwen Shen, and Master Yen seem to have struck a bargain with the leader of these barbarians, though no word has come back to us about where we are going—but I've heard a few of these men mention someplace named Tseba. If that's where we're going, they mean to get thereof. Even the Mang would never push their horses like this unless there was some dire need.”

“How do you know Tseba is a place, and not a person or a thing? Do you speak any of their language?” Ghan asked.

The boy nodded uncertainly. “Not much. I was stationed at Getshan, on their border, for a few months. I learned how to say 'hello' and a few other things. That's about all. But a lot of their places start with 'tse.' I think it means 'rock,' like in Nholish.”

“Can you ask how many more days to this place?”

“I can try,” Kanzhu answered. He thought for a moment and then hollered at the nearest Mang,