Deed of Empire, page 19
They rode in silence for a time as Egil took it all in. “Where is your brother now?” he finally asked.
Idoyu shrugged. “I told you: it is fables, lies, and half-truths. I have no brother.” Then he mounted his horse and kicked it into a trot, leaving Egil to ponder the meaning of his story alone.
16.
Alda — The Wandering Sands
* * *
Alda awoke tied to a horse. Not truly restrained however, just enough so she didn’t fall off. She freed her hands easily and glanced around. Isrim rode ahead holding her horse’s lead loosely. The other five horses trotted alongside. They rode through scrubby desert that was growing patchier by the moment. In the distance, Alda could see red sand dunes rising up, bare of tracks or plant life. Her left leg ached. White cloth clearly ripped from Isrim’s silks was bound tightly around her thigh. It had darkened in the middle but had not bled through. Meant the bleeding had probably stopped.
If the bleeding has stopped and the wound doesn’t sour, I won’t die from it. She looked again at the approaching dunes. Though I’m not sure how I’ll survive that. She knew that people lived there, she just didn’t know how. Shouldn’t we be carrying a lot more water? Food? Not to mention weapons against the creatures she’d heard lived there: snakes as long as caravans, scorpions the size of horses. She had no idea what weapon one used against the sand demons or the fire spirits.
Isrim turned his head around. “Ah, you awaken. Do you need me to loosen your bonds?”
Alda showed him her free hands and nearly toppled off her horse. “Flap-eared god of fools and royalty!” she shouted, righting herself and grabbing the reins tightly. The horse’s whinny matched Isrim’s laughter.
“You would think someone so dexterous would be a better rider,” he said.
She kicked her horse lightly, urging it up next to Isrim’s. She suspected it obeyed her because it wanted to be next to its friend more than for obedience to her wishes.
“If there was ever a horse in my neighborhood,” she said, “we ate it.” Isrim looked at her inquiringly. “I’m from Sellers Park.” She wasn’t sure that would mean anything to Isrim, but he nodded.
“I have heard of it. A difficult place for a young woman to grow up, I imagine.”
Alda shrugged. “How could I tell? I know no other.” She nodded ahead, out toward the dunes. “That looks a far more difficult place to me. Nothing but sand and monsters. Tell me, Isrim, why do we ride into the sands instead of taking the road north to Eidan?”
“The Duke will have sent birds ahead to his holdings in Eidan. It does us no good to flee from him and ride straight to his men.”
I hadn’t thought about the birds. Was my plan doomed from the start? “I can see the sense in that.”
Isrim squinted out at the desert for a time. “Besides, I doubt the monsters we may find in the desert are any more terrible than the ones in your Park.”
Alda thought of Heron. He may have a point. But…
“There are no scorpions bigger than me in the Park.”
Isrim barked a laugh. “I wish they grew to that size. You might be able to see them before they kill you.”
“That is not reassuring!”
“It wasn’t meant to be.” He framed his white moustache around a truly evil grin. “Make sure to shake out your boots in the morning after we camp.”
“Oh, black gods of night screams,” she muttered, “welcome a new terror to your host.”
They rode toward the dunes, talking about inconsequentials. Alda told him of the time she saw a trained white bear from the Frozen Lands dance in the Eidannian Market. Isrim spoke of teaching his three sons to ride and how the oldest one would pretend to fall off to make the youngest feel better about his lack of skill. She wanted to know more about how he had come to be exiled. Find out what kind of trouble they were riding into. But she couldn’t dare accidentally insulting him. Even if he left her a horse and some supplies, she didn’t like her odds of surviving more than a day or two out here. It galled her to be so dependent on someone for her survival, but this was Isrim’s land and only he would be able to guide her through it. So, she kept the talk light, not asking any probing questions, always alert to anything he might tell her that would give her more clue as to his character. Keep her from struggling so hard the next time she had to convince him of something.
Nothing appeared to her. Unless he was the most practiced liar she had ever met—and she had met plenty—then from the stories he told, he was a normal man, with a normal family and a normal life. Or what passed for normal to roaming bands of desert nomads, anyway. For instance, raising, racing, trading, and even eating horses figured into his life a lot more than Alda thought normal. But he spoke of those activities like she spoke of shopping in the Pallasoldi markets or buying meat pies from her baker neighbor: normal activities for a normal person on a normal day.
And not just a normal man, she thought. She was near certain that he was actually a good man. If I even know how to recognize one.
She certainly had limited experience in that area. It frightened her. How was she supposed to know how a good man would react to anything she said or did? She had been afraid of running into mythical monsters in the Wandering Desert, yet here she was, riding right next to a creature even more rare.
Bide a moment, Alda, she said to herself. He can’t be that good a man if he got himself exiled.
But that didn’t exactly ring true, either. It was difficult to imagine what a man such as him could have done to get booted from his tribe. With what she knew about bad men—much more than the reverse—it was far easier to believe that Isrim had been set up. Taken the blame for someone else’s misdeeds. Probably because he had something they wanted and they couldn’t get it any other way. That fit in much better with what Alda knew of the world.
It bears thinking about. If someone was out to get her traveling partner, she didn’t want to be there when it happened. Perhaps we will simply ride through the desert and never encounter another soul.
The landscape certainly seemed to promise that possibility. They had reached the base of the first set of dunes. They were made of red sand so fine it was near powder and taller than the tallest buildings in Pallasoldi. Isrim had them dismount and lead the horses up the first slope so that their hooves could “reacquaint themselves with the sand.”
Since Alda’s feet had never been acquainted with this kind of sand in the first place, she struggled. With each step, the sand collapsed beneath her feet and no matter whether her stride was long or short, she moved up the hill only the tiniest bit. When she finally reached the top, she was drenched in sweat and her wounded leg ached anew. Looking out over the trackless sand, broken only by the smooth mounds of what had to be a thousand dunes yet to be traversed, the thought of meeting anyone while they traveled went from improbable to impossible. But then a single word echoed in her head:
Water.
No one could cross a desert without it. And though her knowledge of geography was patchy at best, she knew the Wandering Desert was huge—and that’s if its boundaries hadn’t shifted recently. There was no way Isrim and she had enough water to get to Eidan.
So, there will be water to be found on the way.
And though the desert might be huge and whole tribes could be lost within it, she imagined the few spots where water was found would be quite crowded.
We will definitely run into other tribesman. Perhaps even Isrim’s people. She frowned. Almost certainly Isrim’s people, for we travel the paths he knows.
Suddenly, the mystery of Ill-Treated Isrim’s Onerous Exile, as she’d decided to call it, wasn’t a mental pursuit to pass the miles; it was a life or death quandary, for the most likely person to have set Isrim up was someone from his own tribe, perhaps even a family member.
And we’re heading right toward them, she thought, just as they reached the top of the dune.
Isrim looked back. “We mount now.”
She struggled onto her mare and chivvied it into motion, following Isrim’s horse down the far side of the dune. It was a pattern they repeated uncountable times during the day.
At least we can ride up the dunes, now. I’m not sure if I could walk up another one.
It did seem hard on the horses, though. At midday, Isrim called to change mounts, as the ones they rode were worn out despite not being called upon to go faster than a walk. Alda wondered at Isrim’s horse wearying at around the same time as hers, despite his greater weight.
Perhaps him being such a better rider has something to do with it.
When they were aboard new horses and back on their way, she had another thought.
“Wouldn’t camels be better?” she asked. She rode a big gray gelding now, far larger than her mare and less quiescent about carrying an inexperienced rider. Isrim rode close, calling occasional encouragement to the beast.
“Do we have any camels?” he responded.
“Well, no.”
“Then in what way are they better?” he asked, like a teacher speaking to a particularly stupid student. She frowned at him and he chuckled. Finally, he relented. “Camels are filthy animals, as are the men of the south sands who breed them. They are worthless in trade outside the sands, and if you ride one for too long you will be incapable of pleasing a woman.” He set his jaw. “And horse tastes better.”
“So, no camels then. Got it.”
Isrim rode silently for a moment, then sighed. “Actually, none of that is true, though it is oft repeated. Camels are as noble a beast as any other and fetch a fine price in the right markets. And their hump is a delicacy in most places they reside.” He looked over at Alda. “But my tribe is a border tribe and needs an animal that serves in the sand and the plains equally. So…” He waved his hand at their tiny herd. “Horses.”
It was not lost on Alda that though he’d been exiled, he still called them “my tribe.”
They changed horses twice more before the sun finally reached the horizon and Isrim called a halt. Their camp consisted of nothing more than hobbling the horses and laying cloaks down in the sand.
“No fire,” he said. “No tribes claim the trails so close to the Far Flung Road. Only thieves and raiders. Men of little faith and even less honor.”
Alda didn’t like the sound of thieves and raiders, even though she placed herself solidly in the first group. She had also been hoping for an actual meal after her long day and even longer night. But the thing that really struck her about his statement was…
“Those were trails?”
Isrim laughed as he attached feedbags to the horses’ faces and filled them with oats from his saddlebags. “Of course! How else could we travel so far and not become lost?”
“If you say so.”
“In two days,” he frowned, “or perhaps three with your wound and your riding…um…style, we shall need to turn north. There are no trails to lead us there. You will see.”
She couldn’t imagine it, but she trusted him. It’s not like I have the choice not to. “Will we get lost then?”
“Of course not! I have never been lost!” He lay down on his cloak and stared up into the darkening sky. “Though I have been a bit bothered about what direction to travel in on occasion.”
“That’s what lost is!”
“Ridiculous. Besides, it was only for a day or two.”
“Again,” she said, smiling despite herself, “that is not reassuring.” She lay down on the cloak Isrim had provided from one of his dead comrades’ bags.
“The Lessons only say I am responsible for you, Little Snake. Not a word of them says I have to reassure you.” He cackled good-naturedly. “Now, wrap up. It will be cold soon.”
“Cold?” she yelped. “In the desert? That makes no sense.”
“In the sands, all is in balance. The hottest days give way to the coldest nights. It is the rest of the world that makes no sense. Summer mountains capped with snow. Darkness that brings no reprieve from the heat. Endless water that cannot be drunk. I have seen much since being stripped of haras and herd. And the more I see, the more I believe the world has fallen so far out of balance that it will never recover. And when it tilts far enough, even the sands shift. It was not always called the Wandering Desert, you know. Eventually, the sands will run off the edge of the world like an hourglass, carrying us with them. Only there will be no bottom and we will fall forever in darkness.”
Alda didn’t think that was how things worked, but a world fatally out of balance was as good an explanation for what had been happening to her as any. She certainly had seen nothing that would disprove Isrim’s notion. Wrapping herself in the cloak like he said, she stared up into a night sky that contained more stars than she’d ever seen in the well-lit city of Pallasoldi.
Just before she dropped off, she heard Isrim say, “Remember what I said about scorpions in your boots. Knock them out in the morning.”
That chased the weariness right out of her and she listened to Isrim’s giggles turn to snores as she watched the stars march ever so slowly across the sky.
The next morning she awoke sore in places she had not been aware existed on her body. Groaning, she checked that the papers were still tucked into the back of her shirt, then extricated herself from the cloak that had kept her warm through the night but now threatened suffocation.
“Ah,” Isrim said from where he was removing the feedbag from her mare. “Warm yourself in the sun, Little Snake. The sand will take some of the pain away.” He bent to unhobble the horse. “We ride soon.”
Alda grunted in response. Stretching herself out on the warming sand, it did feel like it was leaching some of the pain out of her bones. Not enough, though. When Isrim’s short whistle gathered the horses to him, she struggled to get to her feet.
“Ugh,” she said. “I feel like the horses rode me, not the reverse.”
Isrim smiled, not unsympathetically. “It will pass. Ride for long enough and you begin to feel odd walking on two legs instead of four.”
Alda doubted any of that was true, but levered herself up onto the mare with the thought that the sooner she mounted the sooner she could dismount, and that once she reached somewhere civilized she would endeavor to only travel by coach or her own feet as the gods intended and never again have another creature’s bony spine rammed up between her legs.
“See?” Isrim said once she was mounted. He turned his big chestnut in a tight circle, ending with it pointing east into the rising sun. “Already it feels more natural.”
“About as natural as a monkey riding a tiger.” Which she had seen in the Kollah and Charnish Market one autumn morning when she was much younger. However, unlike the monkey, I am in no danger of being eaten by my mount. The mare, as if reading her thoughts, looked back at her with one big eye. Bah. What do I know of horses? Perhaps it would eat me if hungry enough. She kicked the beast into motion. At least then I wouldn’t hurt anymore.
They rode till mid-morning when they dismounted to change horses and Alda’s bandage. The wound traveled half the length of her thigh, but was shallow and already knitting itself together for most of that distance. A two-inch section toward the knee was deeper and pulled apart when the bandage came off. No blood seeped through after Isrim bound the wound again, however, and they carried on their way.
At camp that night, Alda was too tired for even Isrim’s warnings of snakes climbing into cloaks and scorpions nesting in footwear to keep her awake for more than a moment. She was asleep before the stars had traveled even a hair’s breadth across the sky. She did not dream.
She thought that yesterday she’d been as sore as a person could ever be, but the gods decided to teach her a lesson about assumptions. This morning, her back was numb and stiff, the insides of her thighs burned like there were coals in her leathers, and she couldn’t turn her head to the right. Isrim didn’t have to tell her to lie on the sands for a time; she could do naught else. Still, she crawled onto her mare when it was time to move and struggled through the day without complaint.
“If you’d been steadfast and refused to release me, Bontou would have already had me killed and I wouldn’t be in such twice-cursed misery.”
Well, without much complaint.
When they camped that night, she was asleep before Isrim had a chance to warn her of some new evil that might take up residence in her clothing while she slept. The next day he called a halt well before their normal remount time.
“Hobble the horses,” he said, throwing her a pair of the leather contraptions he’d used the last few nights. “We must go up this next dune on foot.”
She buckled them around her mare’s front legs first. The big gray made it a bit more difficult for her, but she managed to finish before Isrim was done with the other horses. He nodded at her as if her finishing two in the time it took him to do five was some kind of accomplishment.
And I suppose it is, considering he measures his horse experience in years and I in days.
They struggled up the dune. Isrim paused before the crest and dropped to his belly. Alda followed suit. He glanced back at her as if expecting questions, but she’d scouted enough targets to know that was what they were doing. If it was time for quiet crawling, then she would be quiet and crawl. No questions needed. He nodded again, definitely impressed this time, and they crawled the rest of the way up the dune and peeked over the top.
The sight of a color besides reddish-brown was so shocking that it took a moment to register in Alda’s mind.
