Battleslave Page 7

  It was all for her and it was all for nothing.

  “I scorned him,” she whispered. “I…told him he offered me nothing.”

  “Come, ensaak,” Emalek said, tone softening for the first time. “It’s still a long way. We won’t bind you again.”

  Wasari made a sound of protest, grip tightening on her arms.

  “Just don’t attack us again?” Emalek added.

  Wasari nodded curtly in approval.

  Talitha nodded. “Alright.”

  “You give your word?” Emalek arched one long dark brow.

  “Yes. Just…let’s go.” The anger and fury winked out like a doused fire. Hate would not undo what had been done. Rage would not change her mistakes or save Ashek.

  Briefly, she remembered the heat of Ashek’s kiss that night they’d been ambushed in the Narrows. Before that, the kiss goodbye on the plains before Ilios. Even before that, the hunger of his mouth in the bathhouses of the barracks, a knife pressed to his throat.

  He’d always given everything he was and accepted everything she was.

  In return, she’d told him he wasn’t good enough for her. But he had kept giving.

  Talitha closed her eyes. She wouldn’t weep now. When had tears ever accomplished anything?

  “There’s a well in the village just a few dunes away,” Emalek said. “We can get a hot meal, rest for a bit, and…get you some better clothes.”

  Talitha looked down. She’d forgotten she was in the undyed, boxy tunic of a battleslave, torn and stained these past few days.

  Emalek was being unexpectedly kind. “Let’s go.”

  She found herself back aboard Emalek’s sirrush, her arms around his waist for balance again. Her mind spun and her chest ached. A thousand invisible anvils seemed to be pressing down from all sides.

  The world had never felt so heavy.

  Chapter Nine

  As promised, a township came into sight less than an hour later.

  It was more of a hill station than a town. There was an oasis and palm grove. A livery pen stood with some dozen sirrushes milling aimlessly as they licked at salt blocks and nosed at gorse shrubs. A few houses and what passed for a market squatted low in the hillside, overlooking the largest canyon Talitha had ever laid eyes on.

  The grey limestone spanned more than a mile down at least, so far it was impossible to see the bottom. An eagle swooped in the distance, golden wings outstretched.

  Talitha recognized the shape of the canyon—a river bed. Yet the size was unprecedented. Miles of crevices, cracks, and knots jutted from the paths carved by ancient rivers. Just the thought of how much water must have once flowed over these ancient stones was mind-boggling.

  She peered from behind Emalek with wide eyes, scarcely believing what she saw. She’d seen countless natural wonders and amazements. None of them prepared her for this.

  In the distance, she could make out gorse shrubs and stubborn trees tangled into the distant cliffs and slopes of the canyon. The dark shapes of wild goats perched delicately along the ridges. A flock of wild sirrushes loped far below, their echoing warbles the only way Talitha knew for sure they were sirrushes. They appeared more as ants.

  “Not far now,” Emalek said, offering information freely for the first time that day. Perhaps for the first time since she had met him.

  The well was the center of the town as it was the center of most towns. A metal grate covered the opening and a bucket with a rope hung from a crank. Two men lounged on the steps of the well’s gazebo. With pipes puffing pale smoke, burning a rich scent and laughing at private jokes, they might have been two friends relaxing if not for the daggers at their hips. They were perhaps the most unintimidating guards Talitha had seen.

  The gazebo was unmarked, devoid of all the usual good luck talismans and symbols to honor Enki, the water god. There were no marks to Anakti for strength, Nigna for wealth, or any other of the usual village patrons. Instead, the sides were painted with a script she couldn’t read. A handful of letters that were vaguely familiar, but she had seen many ancient and foreign texts in her studies as a child.

  Talitha straightened behind Emalek out of habit as the guards looked her way.

  Kurzik dismounted and approached one of the men before the well. Were these people Hudspethites, too?

  At this point, she would hardly be surprised. They had been extinct in her mind just a few weeks ago. At present, anything seemed possible.

  Kurzik exchanged low words with the men. Talitha and Emalek were too far back for her to hear what was said, but she caught their happy greeting and then the sharp drop of voices as Kurzik didn’t return their excitement.

  One of them pointed to Talitha. Kurzik nodded and gestured to the larger group of warriors.

  After a few moments, one of the guards stood. “Come then.” He reached for the crank of the well, wiry arms thin and lean as a warrigal’s legs.

  Talitha’s throat ached, a reminder that she hadn’t had water since that morning. The sirrushes warbled and barreled for the trough at the sound of water.

  “Off,” Emalek muttered, lightly elbowing Talitha’s side. She slipped down and the sirrush slammed sideways, narrowly missing her shoulder.

  “Easy, boy,” Emalek growled. “Not so fast.”

  The first drops of water flooded the trough and the animal dove. Behind her, another sirrush chirruped and lunged after it. Talitha sidestepped, a clawed foot passing narrowly close to her toes. Cursing, she took a step back.

  “You alright?” Emalek shouted, still atop his sirrush by the time the animals crowded around the trough, gulping away their thirst.

  “Fine.” Talitha stepped toward the gazebo, out of the way of the parched sirrushes.

  Kurzik handed her a ladle of water, cupping it carefully so as not to spill.

  Talitha had always been taught she was to drink last. As a young ensaadi, she had once taken a drink first and her grandfather had whipped her until she vomited it back up. Ever since, there had always been a guilt, a shame attached to being the first to drink.

  Yet this time, Talitha accepted the ladle and another, soothing her throat and the thick dryness in the back of her mouth by the time the others joined them.

  One of the guards handed her a corked hollow gourd, filled with water. He offered a shy smile with a few missing teeth. She accepted the flask with a nod.

  She pretended to ignore the stares of the guards. Before long, a wrinkled woman draped in scarves appeared beside one of the houses, leaning on a walking stick and staring. At her feet waited a young boy, picking his nose.

  Word of newcomers spread fast in a place like this.

  Talitha slipped to the side so that the shadow of the gazebo shading her overhead. Emalek had managed to extract himself from his sirrush. He smeared sweat from his brow while the animals drank, accepting the ladle from the guard with a clap on the arm. They knew one another.

  The Dunedrifters had a home. That was the single most strange thing she had learned all day.

  Smearing a hand over her face, she pretended to adjust her hair. Taking the opportunity to turn her head, she squinted toward the sirrush pens at her back.

  The fresh animals were lean and lithe, much like the ones she and the others had just ridden in on. A large buck with piebald scales snorted and kicked at a younger colt. The hatchling shrank back, head lowered in submission. Behind the piebald, a doe nipped at his flank and he whirled around, snapping and hissing.

  Those animals had been penned up for some time. They were fresh.

  Talitha ducked behind the press of the Dunedrifters’ sirrushes. More and more people stepped out to point and stare at the travelers. They all looked to Emalek and the Dunedrifters, not thinking their ward might slip away. Crouched low to the ground, Talitha did just that.

  She slid behind the corner of a low hut. There didn’t appear to be anyone watching the penned sirrushes. Bandits would be few this far from the inner Sandsea and in broad daylight with a band of travele
rs to entertain the bored villagers, there were more important things to do.

  Talitha had to circle twice before she found the halters stashed between the stacks of dried gorse for the sirrushes’ feed. She picked a middling sized one and kicked around for a saddle. The only saddle there was old and broken with cracks and tears in the folds of the leather.

  She settled on a musty blanket, a few leather straps, and a coil of rope. With the water flask hooked onto her belt, she slid inside the sirrush pen.

  The piebald bull snorted and snapped his teeth when she came too close, so she settled on a lithe little doe. The female was the color of sand, golden scales with a whorling pattern of black scales splashed across its back.

  Talitha clucked soothingly as the doe stomped. It probably hadn’t been ridden much. Talitha just hoped it was saddle broken. “That’s a good girl,” she crooned, slipping the halter over the doe’s head. “Easy, sweetling.”

  Strapping the saddle blanket in place, Talitha swung aboard the female moments later. She kicked it toward the main gate, maneuvering carefully alongside before swinging it open.

  The other sirrushes warbled and chirped in excitement. Some pressed in around the others and Talitha had to swat the reins to keep them slamming her off sideways.

  “What are you doing?” An unfamiliar male voice shouted. “Stop! Thief!”

  Talitha ignored him. Knees squeezing the sirrush’s ribs for balance, she leaned over and managed to wiggle the latch free. After that, it took only a nudge and the gate flew open. Talitha spurred her sirrush out and in seconds, the rest flooded after them before she could stop them.

  Emalek shouted over the braying of some fifty sirrushes charging toward the sand. “That bitch!”

  Chapter Ten

  It took Talitha the remainder of the day and part of the night before Radir came back into view.

  She hadn’t stopped to think before stealing the sirrush and racing back across the Sandsea, but the hours of silence and solitude left her little choice.

  Ashek was dead. She knew it. Yet she couldn’t believe it.

  Something in her needed to see it, needed to face it. If she really had just lost him, too, she would carve out Naram’s heart and stuff it back down his throat.

  The sirrush warbled and chirruped, tiring. The animal had made a valiant speed, but there would be no return journey back across the sands—assuming she made it that far. She’d have to steal another sirrush if it came to that. After all, who knew if she would live that long?

  Her mind reeled in circles.

  Was she betraying her people by not placing them first? That was her first thought. Was she betraying Ashek’s sacrifice by not fighting to survive herself? Was this an insult to the price he had paid?

  But how could she live with herself knowing she had let him die?

  The city came into sight again. Its walls stood squat and stout under the moons, nestled in the hills like a coiled snake.

  Talitha reined in her sirrush and the animal groaned, slower with every step. She’d pushed it too hard.

  The sun would be rising soon. The distant horizon was blushed a rich rose color already.

  Vaguely, Talitha remembered the bodies that had decorated the front gates. If a traitor had been executed, that would be where he was hung.

  A tightness coiled in the pit of her stomach. She needed to see how he had died. She didn’t deserve to be spared that.

  Nudging the sirrush on, Talitha headed for the city gates. A lone rider approaching at dawn might be unusual, but who would expect an escaped slave—or a fugitive ensaak for that matter—to be returning to the front door?

  Talitha clenched the improvised reins tighter, hoping no one would look too close. She had run out of water some hours ago and was just lucky that she’d been riding at night.

  Approaching the gates, a glint of gold caught her eye to the left. Squinting, she just made out shapes in bronze armor milling in an odd formation. Ilians camped outside the walls?

  From the pomp and ceremony of Naram’s reception, she doubted he was being made to sleep in the dunes. There weren’t enough of them, in any event.

  A narrow road ran outside the walls of the city, squashed between the wall and one of the old mine trenches on the far side. The tunnels formed a defense from any approach, but it was hardly an ideal place to camp.

  Talitha reined in her sirrush. She was still a mile or so from the gates.

  A few local villagers with their baskets and bundles of sticks already paused to stare in the direction of the Ilians. None of them had sirrushes.

  Talitha would be too conspicuous with a mount. Swinging down off her sirrush, Talitha unbuckled the blanket and stripped off the halter. She slapped the sirrush on the flank and the animal warbled mournfully. It meandered away, head low and snuffling at the sand.

  Poor creature. It would probably die of exhaustion and thirst before it found water.

  Talitha unfolded the blanket and draped it in an awkward wrap over her slave’s tunic, bringing it up to cover her face partway. The halter she untied and unraveled until it was a coil of thick rope. She had no idea what she would do with it, but these were all the tools she had besides an empty water flask.

  This was the most under-planned adventure of her entire life.

  Talitha had spent most the night in the saddle and her muscles creaked as she headed off in the direction of the Ilian encampment. Her eyelids drooped and a heaviness had settled into every last one of her bones. Under resourced, under watered, under planned, sleep deprived…every disadvantage she could have possibly had.

  Scrubbing her fingers against her scalp, Talitha shook her head sharply. She would face this even if it killed her. And it very well might.

  She pulled the blanket a little tighter around herself. Dressed like this, she was nothing. A nobody. No one would know who she was or even if she was a man or a woman.

  A small crowd had gathered around the Ilians. The villagers paused, pointing, but lingering a respectful distance away. They would stop, stare for a few moments, then move on.

  As she drew closer, Talitha’s heart lodged in her chest. Her chest clenched and her heart skipped a beat.

  The sun cleared the horizon and bronze armor glinted from atop a pole. What she had thought was a banner was a man still in the bronze armor of an Ilian. He’d been strung up by his wrists, body dangling more than three feet off the ground. His arms had been dislocated. Dirt and blood and filth covered him so thick that she hadn’t realized it was bronze armor at first. The armor was dented and dirt caked his bloody wounds from a beating Talitha feared to imagine.

  Inhaling a sharp breath, Talitha had to stop. If she didn’t she would have run to him.

  The road in front of the wall ran parallel to one of the veins left behind by the mining. Ashek had been strung up with his back to the gorge. Anyone who tried to rescue him would have to make it past the guards first and approach from one of two directions.

  How long had he been hanging there? Was he still alive? That question consumed her entire mind. She had to…needed to…

  Talitha couldn’t take her eyes off him. She drew closer, barely breathing, not trusting herself to do anything but put one foot in front of the other at a measured pace.

  She joined the loose circle of villagers, head angled down. Her heart pounded and she forgot every aching muscle and strained limb in her own body.

  “Sand rat, you dead yet?” shouted one of the guards, an Ilian.

  Talitha didn’t recognize the man, but he had probably served her at some point. Every one of them had—in some capacity.

  Ashek didn’t move. His head hung, but even though his hair she could make out the dried blood smeared across his face and the gash over his temple.

  “Hey!” The soldier rammed the butt of his spear into Ashek’s side.

  The Dunedrifter twitched, a choked groan forcing its way out his lips.

  The sound nearly cracked Talitha’s heart in two. But he was
alive.

  Still alive.

  “Guess not,” the soldier yawned, rubbing his face. He turned to another soldier, crouched beside a small fire. “Maybe if we—”

  “Don’t you dare,” the other soldier snapped back, a man with a shaved head and a pipe that smelled of bitterweed. “The ensaak said we’d hang next if we hurried the dying.”

  The first soldier made an exasperated noise and plopped down beside his commander.

  Standing before the wall, alone and unarmed with Ashek mere paces away, surrounded by guards, and dying a little more with every moment…what was she supposed to do? Talitha had survived a brusii and a duneserpent, poisoning, assassination attempts, and more battles than she could count. Yet in that moment, with all she had left strung up in front of her, she couldn’t imagine a way out.

  Talitha turned, easing deeper into the loose crowd of villagers. She snatched a jagged stone off the ground. It was the closest thing she had to a weapon. Was she this desperate? She tested the weight of the stone in her hands before hurling it past the villagers. Apparently, yes.

  The rock struck a young Ilian in a red sash, the mark of a noble house. He must be one of those highborn princelings Gilsazi was always complaining about having to teach and train.

  Entitled, self-righteous. Cloud sniffers, they were called. It was said by the other soldiers they were so stuck up, they always had their noses pointed to the sky.

  The Ilian was on his feet in an instant, sword in hand. “Who threw that? Tell me, who?”

  The villagers shifted, looking to one another.

  Talitha kept her head down. It didn’t seem anyone had seen who it was.

  There was no time to think or question or wonder if she was being a fool—besides, she knew the answer. This was all but suicide, but it was happening now. Ashek was in front of her and this was her last chance.

  She needed to get him down. She needed to get him down more than she had ever needed anything in her life. She picked up a second stone.