The War, page 39
“’Ware though,” muttered the shortest of them, lifting a hand. “We are like to find more of the caretakers in these parts.”
They paused at the edge of a courtyard, but it was shadowed and lanternless, and they struck out along the edge of it, keeping to the shelter of the tall pillars. It was at the end that one of them stumbled and with loud cursing fell across a body lying at the foot of one column.
“So there are people in here after all!” said the short one. “Stop your spitting, Pirta, and get away from him. He may be armed.”
Pirta backed away.
“No, see,” said the third—“his leg is splinted. He is one of the sick.”
They stood looking down at the young man, who lay helpless on his back, staring at them with wide-open grey eyes.
“He is afraid,” laughed Pirta. “I will kill him.”
The change in the young man’s face showed that he had understood at least the gist of what was said. He pushed himself up in a rough, quick movement and launched himself backwards so that his back was braced against the pillar behind him. With defiant face, he waited.
The short man knocked Pirta’s knife aside as he yanked it out, and drew his own sword to point it at the Ordenian’s chest. “Boy,” he said in broken, accented common tongue, “any money in your clothes?”
The young man twitched his head in a small shake.
“Any trinkets? We let you live.”
“No.” His voice was clear, quite steady, a little scornful.
“Brindi,” said Pirta viciously in Runnicoran, “Let me at him.”
Brindi stepped back with a shrug. “Do what you like. Then, let us go find the chambers where the doctors sleep and search them. I say we will find gold there if there is any in this place.”
The other two mumbled agreement. But at Brindi’s last words, the young man’s face whitened and a fresh agitation sprang into his eyes. Without a second of warning he pounced upon Pirta and struggled to wrest the knife from his grip.
The fight lasted barely seconds. As soon as Pirta recollected himself, he knocked the young man aside, hurled him to the ground, and set about beating him with the pommel of the knife. All the while he raged under his breath and cursed the Ordenian savagely.
“Nin co’ rai?” demanded the gruff voice of their captain coldly behind them.
“Pirta,” growled Brindi, hauling the wild-eyed man off his victim. “The Kurik.”
Pirta spat, but as the captain’s eyes fixed on him he shuffled back and ducked his head.
“Kurik Alétun,” explained Brindi humbly, “we were just—”
The captain cut him short with a wave and looked at the young man choking for breath on the floor. His sharp dark eyes widened. “Richardson,” he said aloud.
Their eyes met. The young man’s breath heaved in and he turned away, his head sinking with the droop of despair.
Alétun watched him, strange thoughts boiling in his head. He could take this man back to the Paraki, as he had last time. Orders were orders. But last time he had not known that Richardson was also Damachrus. Having known him for a short time, he remembered the young Richardson oddly like a wayward son, and it had dismayed and disappointed him when the boy proved traitor. He did not want to doom him to the life of inhuman torture that the Paraki in his madness would subject him to, should he bring him back.
The three soldiers were waiting, puzzled. “Kurik Alétun . . . ” tried Brindi cautiously.
No-one would be the wiser . . . yet the thought of disobeying orders went against the grain of all that Captain Alétun had learned in twenty years of soldiering. The two choices were before him, equally plain and equally ugly, and he could not make himself choose.
The soldiers shifted and shot looks at him and one another. Mordred, Richardson, Damachrus, lay with his head hidden against the stones.
Captain Alétun spoke harshly. “Kill him,” he said, and with the sharp movement of decision he whirled and strode in the opposite direction down the courtyard.
~
“Mirda!” called Priscilla. “Mirda King!”
Mirda spun around quickly in answer, shaking back the ringlets that flew into her face.
“I sent Hala upstairs some time ago, and she’s not returned.” Priscilla’s sharp chin was frowning downward in perplexity and the beginnings of concern.
“That’s all? Don’t worry, Priscilla, I’ll go look for her at once,” said Mirda quickly, giving a supportive smile to the older woman.
“There’s a good lass,” said Priscilla, patting her arm.
She did not need to tell Mirda to hurry; Mirda had worked in the hospice long enough to know that delay was never affordable and never approved. She flew up the stairs and started down the long, open colonnades that lined the upper floor of the hospice, calling Hala’s name.
She had entered a small, empty ward whose vaulted shadows stretched over the floor when she saw the five figures approaching, dimly lit by the thin luminance of the moon. “Hala!” she called, but they were masculine shapes. “Have you seen Hala?” she cried out to them, hurrying closer.
One of them turned and said something strangely unintelligible to another, and they laughed. And the light glinted off their swords, and Mirda realized, too late to flee, the truth.
“You call for Hala,” said the one who had spoken earlier, now in the language her ears could understand. “If Hala is a girl like you, she is dead, and you are about to be dead like her.”
Murmurs of grunting laughter echoed around him.
“Maybe we should not kill her,” said another man suggestively.
Mirda, looking swiftly around at their grim faces, understood in her very core they were earnest, and just how deadly in earnest they were.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said clearly, sincerely, reaching out to them because it was the only thing she could think to do. “None of us do. Please don’t hurt me. Have I done anything against you?”
They stared at her. Then the spokesman took a step forward and pointed at her. “You make these sick ones well. They get up and they come back to kill us.” He shrugged. “You kill us, girl.”
“I would help you, too, if you were sick,” said Mirda steadily. “I help them all because they are like brothers to me.” She leaned forward, pouring all the plea in her heart into her eyes and words. “Would you not help your brother if he were hurt? Oh, can’t you see how foolish it all is?” Her voice trembled with the intensity of her emotions, but she dared not let the tears fall. Tears were weakness here, they would not help her. “We are not supposed to fight one another. We ought to be at peace. Will you not leave this place, and take your swords to those who are not defenseless and innocent?”
“If we let you go,” said the foremost roughly, “you will tell everyone. No more talk.” He stepped straight up to her and snatched her, and there was a ting of steel as he drew his knife.
Mirda screamed, and heard it echoed by more shouts all around her. The man who held her uttered a strange cough as a sword slid through his abdomen, and his staring eyes rolled up.
His grip on her relaxed, and Mirda crumpled sobbing into Therelane’s arms.
~
Therelane held Mirda gently, bewildered and alarmed and grieved all at once. He thought maybe he should be dealing with the other soldiers, but he realized that they had fled, perhaps believing that since one man had had a sword, the rest of the physicians behind him would be similarly armed. So he held Mirda, patting her shoulder to soothe her, and a part of him was happy, very happy, to be holding her like this.
Mirda came out of her tears quickly, with a half-laugh, and tucked her arm willingly under his, resting her head on his chest as her panting breaths quieted. Therelane, blind with pure ecstasy, scarcely felt Irene jerking his arm until she slapped his shoulder.
“Therelane, let go of her—she’s fine now—and come here. There’s things to be done. I’m afraid they got all over the hospice before we were aware of it, and they won’t all flee like those did.”
“Aye—aye,” stuttered Therelane, coming fully back to the world. “What are we going to do?”
Irene stared far away, her youthful, hardened face frighteningly sober. “Therelane, do one thing for me, you silly, indecisive dreamer-boy.”
“What?”
“Tell the girl you love her. She’s waiting for the word.”
“I—” he started.
“No-one cares if you lost your hand, Therelane. At any rate, she doesn’t. And that’s what matters. Will you tell her?”
And because she did not sweep away, rushing to the next thing that had to be done, Therelane knew she needed to hear and that he needed to tell her.
“Yes,” he said, and with that promise he felt a light yet profound weight settle on him. “I will tell her.”
“Good.” Irene whipped away.
~
Consciousness returned to Inspector Dickson by degrees. He was first aware of his side, which throbbed with a sharp pulse of pain. Then he remembered how it came to hurt like this: the cruel force of the arrow as it struck—the peculiar clarity of Mordred’s frantic words through the daze of nauseating pain—two people hauling him to a bed—a flash of blinding agony as someone removed the arrow, and merciful oblivion.
Then they had left him here, alone. Even before he opened his eyes he knew he was alone; it was something in the blank silence of the room, devoid of any other’s breathing. Very well; it was not the aloneness that bothered him, but the sense of unprotection. A strong conviction rested on him that he was not safe until he found other people.
And so, despite the burning flares that shot through his side, he stood on shaky legs and stumbled out of the little closet. He reeled like a drunkard, clutched at the walls for support. His head was hot and light. One small voice said he was mad to try walking on his own, but the rest of him felt duty-bound to finish what he had started.
By the time he had gained the corridor, he felt so ill that he had to sit down. He slid to the floor and let his spinning head dangle between his knees. For the first time, he wondered where Mordred was and why he had not been in the room.
Then he began to hear the voices.
They were so garbled and meaningless that he thought they were in his mind, and then as his head cleared he realized they were real, quite real, only speaking in another language. It sounded as if they were quarreling.
Inspector Dickson sat a moment longer, turning everything over in his head. They must be Runnicorans—of course they were. That meant that Runnicorans had shot him, and Runnicorans were in the hospice, and—
He shook his head wearily. It was over. The city was being overrun. And he knew as well as anyone could that Orden did not have the strength to repel the attack.
What was the general thinking, in Mitheren, alone though surrounded, because he alone bore the full grief of his country that was falling to pieces? Would he regret as Mitheren, the final stronghold, fell, that he had not found a safer place for Inspector Dickson?
Inspector Dickson pulled his thoughts away from useless introspection and pushed up to his feet again. Though his instinct was first to flee from the quarreling Runnicoran voices, a deeper sense impelled him to follow them. He needed to find out what was afoot, if he could, and how many of these were crawling through the hospice. Was he the only inhabitant left alive?
He staggered down the hall, and peering around the edge of a wide archway he saw them—three men, glowering and shouting at one another, coming almost to blows. He drew back fractionally, but they paid him no heed whatever.
Again, Inspector Dickson thought, where was Mordred in all this dark, torn madness? Why had he not been in that room? He felt the ugly stirring of that old sense of compassion whenever Mordred was injured, and suddenly his mind was flooded with all the instances of vulnerable, tender Mordred that he had ever seen. He shoved them resolutely out. He did not need to think of that, did not need to worry about Mordred now . . .
And then he saw him, lying just beyond the arguing Runnicorans, bloodied, limp, and still like a discarded rag.
In that instant he knew what a pretense, what a stupid, childish, game that fight had been.
Why had they gone on hating each other for so long?
If only he had spoken that day. Or any of the others. If only he had not let every cutting word rankle like a festering wound. If only he had admitted how much he was in the wrong.
And now he never would.
He dropped to his knees and wept, out of anguish, out of grief, but more than anything out of the repentance for all that he had said, all that he had done, and the failure to say the words he should have said.
It was not the angry roars that halted him but the sudden hush. He lifted his eyes and one man lay bleeding on the floor. The short one who held a drawn sword grunted to his companion and gestured to Mordred’s body. And Inspector Dickson, to his everlasting confoundment and joy, saw Mordred’s chest jump in a quick, gasping breath.
He put a hand to his head, bewildered. Incomparable and heady gladness washed over him, mingling with the inner sorrow that still held him fast. He could scarcely make sense of up or down.
“Utinna,” the second man was saying to the first with a nod. The short one strode forward, straight towards Mordred, his sword lifting high.
Something cut through Inspector Dickson’s heart like a knife, one single thought, shearing away all his tangled emotions and clenching into a knowledge so pure it hurt.
Mordred must not die—Mordred must not die.
Mordred must live.
Inspector Dickson sprang to his feet and charged at the armed man with a shout. The sword went flying at their collision, and they thudded to the floor together, rolling, snarling, striking at one another. Inspector Dickson knew that he must win in seconds or he would not win at all, and that gave him the strength of desperation. As the soldier snatched out a knife, Inspector Dickson with another yell seized at the blade and ripped it straight out of the man’s fingers—but it spun out of his own, slipping to the floor.
The wild burst of strength was fading out of him. With the last of it he flung one punch, dead sure, into the middle of the Runnicoran’s throat, and slumped backwards—not knowing whether the man were dead or unconscious, and for the moment not caring, either.
Then he remembered the second man, and dragged himself painfully up, wondering why he was not already stabbed and bleeding out.
But that soldier was gone. In his place stood a slender, wide-eyed young man, a sword that was not his own stained and glittering faintly in his hand. “Mordred,” he said, staring past Inspector Dickson. And he dropped the sword and leaped to Mordred’s side, raising him up with wonderful, instinctive gentleness, so that Inspector Dickson had to look away, because the love between them was too plain a thing, and one that he had no share in himself.
“I came back, Mordred,” Fenris whispered. “I promised I would come back. I found your sword and I came.”
Inspector Dickson looked back and saw Fenris easing Mordred down again. But Mordred’s eyes were open, lucid. “You came, Fenris,” he said. “It’s all right.” His voice was hoarse and rasping.
“Mordred, are you hurt?”
“Not much.” Mordred touched Fenris’ hand. “I’m all right.”
All at once he stirred, his eyes widening and filling with panic. “The soldiers. Fenris, where did the soldiers go—Inspector Dickson—”
“Mordred, Inspector Dickson is right here.” Fenris struggled to hold his older brother down.
Mordred’s taut frame went slack as the import of the words got to him. “Here,” he repeated blankly. “Why?”
Fenris looked at Inspector Dickson.
“I woke up,” said Inspector Dickson tiredly. His tongue felt thick, and he ached all over, and pangs shot up and down his whole right side. He did not want to explain anything. “I woke up and left the room and followed voices here. That’s all.” He stared at Mordred, confusion and curiosity rising in him, and his voice sharpened unconsciously to interrogation. “What did you mean, the soldiers and me?”
Mordred’s head snapped up and he locked eyes with Inspector Dickson. “The soldiers were going to search the doctors’ rooms,” he said very slowly, stiffly, as though the words were wrung from him against his will.
“And?” pressed Inspector Dickson, bewildered still, not sure he understood. “What did you think to do about that?”
Mordred grew cold, cold as ice, the proud, angry chin lifting high. “What do you care? I would have stopped them—I—” He broke off, his voice wavering. “Forgive me.”
He buried his face against the stone.
Inspector Dickson stared at the dark head turned so stubbornly away, shutting him out, and was shaken. What an admission and what a plea! No wonder that Mordred hated him, he thought in a muddled sort of way.
His side felt scalded with heat. It was probably bleeding again, he thought dully. The pain flared up again, hard-edged and frozen hot like an iron screwing deep into his midsection, and he gritted his teeth.
“What are we going to do now?” he mumbled as the wave subsided. “It’s not safe here.”
“Someone will come soon.” He saw the desperate hope in Fenris’ face, the distress building in his eyes. “I can’t leave you here. Mordred, I can’t leave you again.”
Mordred stirred and lifted his head a fraction. “It’s all right, Fenris,” he said softly. “Someone will come.”
They waited in silence. Someone moaned further off in the courtyard. The battle-noise distantly reached their ears.
“Inspector Dickson,” came Mordred’s voice. “Did you save my life?” He said it so quick and low that Inspector Dickson was all but convinced he had imagined the question.
“What makes you wonder something like that?” he asked at last.
“They were arguing over how to kill me,” said Mordred, and again he spoke in that very quick, low tone, so that Inspector Dickson had to strain his ears to understand. “Pirta wanted to kill me slowly, and Brindi wanted to hurry so they could raid the doctors’ chambers, and finally he and the other one killed Pirta. Then Brindi came to kill me, but someone fought him off. I thought it was your voice I heard.”
