Rebellion

CHAPTER 40

Tali took hold of the dead man’s ankles, trying not to look at the ruin the horse’s hoof had made of him, and heaved. He barely budged; he was several times her weight. She went around to the side, pushed her hands under him and heaved.

He rolled over and flopped to the bare, gritty ground. Ants were already swarming there, going at the blood, and Holm’s head was covered in it. Was he alive or dead? She wiped the worst of the blood off and felt his face. His nose was broken, his left eye black and swollen, there was a triangular cut across his left eyebrow and a long gash from that side of his forehead around into his thin hair. And oddly, his muscles were knotted. In someone unconscious, she would have expected them to be relaxed.

“Holm?” she said softly.

He did not respond and, when she lifted his eyelids, his pupils hardly reacted to the light. Concussion. She leaned back on her heels. What was she supposed to do?

The thorn bush rustled and the red-whiskered villain let out a sharp groan, as if another of the thorns had pierced him. Good, I hope it hurts.

“Crebb?” he called. “Give us a hand, would you?”

There was no answer. Tali assumed Crebb was the burly blackbeard. She crouched lower, turning in a circle, but saw nothing, heard nothing. Had he run off? She did not recall anyone crashing away, though in the drama of the attack she might not have noticed.

She slipped Lizue’s knife from its sheath and laid it on the ground while she finished checking Holm. There was blood all over his face but none in his mouth, and no ribs or limbs had been broken. They’d mainly attacked his head and shoulders, thumping him with cudgels then punching him. They hadn’t intended to kill him, then.

The horse was tearing at the coarse grass, watching her from one eye. She rose and stroked its flank. The beast snorted. It seemed to like her. She weighed nothing on its back and had treated it respectfully, unlike its red-whiskered rider. She would try to get Holm onto the saddle.

She took him under the arms and heaved. Holm was not a big man but Tali’s heart was pounding by the time she got him to a sitting position. She held him upright, worrying about the concussion. Head injuries were dangerous and unpredictable. If his skull was cracked, and a piece of bone was pressing on the brain, a tiny bump could kill him.

“Where are you, Crebb, you bastard?” yelled the man in the thorn bush. There was no answer and the rustling resumed, then he said to Tali, “Coming for you, bitch.”

She had to hurry. Crebb might come back any second, with more villains. Or Red-whiskers might free himself from the thorns.

Tali shortened the stirrups so she could reach them from the saddle. She would need them if she were riding holding Holm, otherwise she was liable to drop him. Taking hold of the dangling reins, she led the horse back. It shied at the body and the smell of blood, whinnied and stamped around in a circle, wild-eyed, tossing its head and almost stepping on Holm’s face.

“No!” She cried. Tali laid her hands on its long neck. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” She rubbed the horse’s nose, spoke quietly to it for a minute, and it steadied.

She led it away a few yards, upwind of the blood, and tethered it to the far side of a bush, putting it between the horse and the body. She would have to lug Holm yards further, but it could not be helped.

The horse began to tear at another clump of grass. She took Holm under the shoulders again, and heaved. The top of her head gave a painful throb, like a warning. She turned around and around. Was it Crebb? The hairs on her arms were standing up. Was he stalking her? She scanned past the thorn bush, froze. The red-whiskered fellow wasn’t there.

How had he got free without her hearing him? He must have slipped out when the horse had panicked; he could be anywhere by now. She dragged Holm up beside the horse. The saddle looked a mile high. How could she get his dead weight up there? She would have to lift him well above her head.

She might have managed it when she had been a strong, healthy slave, but Tali could not do it now. It left only three choices: try to make a litter, capture Crebb or Red-whiskers and force them to put Holm on the horse for her, or heal him here and now.

She had no axe to cut saplings for a litter and no rope. The second alternative was even more hopeless. How was she to capture a big, brutish villain, then force him to do her bidding? She checked around her. There was no sign of either man, no sound. But Red-whiskers would not have gone far. He wanted revenge.

She considered her last option, healing.

Tali had always been able to heal without magery, for that gift was common among the Pale, though hers had never been strong. She could heal a cut, bruise or minor infection, though not broken bones, and serious wounds had been utterly beyond her. But with healing magery she might do all that, and more. Though -

You can be a destroyer or a healer, but not both. You have to choose — then keep to that choice.

If she chose to use her magery for destructive purposes — to defend herself, or attack an enemy — she might lose her ability to heal. Yet if she used her gift to heal, would she lose the ability to defend herself with magery? She looked down at Holm’s battered, familiar face. He needed her help, now. It had to be healing.

Where was Red-whiskers? Tali walked around, peering behind the bushes. The uncertainty was more worrying than knowing where he was. She retrieved her knife and put it beside Holm. Quick, while you can.

She laid her hands across his broken nose and drew power, hard. The top of her head burned; she eased off. Fool! The master pearl gave her access to more power than human tissue could withstand. If she used it recklessly, it could cook her brain.

She tried again, gently, gently. Drawing a tiny wisp of power, she channelled it into her healing gift, visualised the nature of the injury, then felt the bone and cartilage of Holm’s nose shift under her hand as it pulled back into shape and the broken bone began to grow together.

The bone would take hours, perhaps days, to regain its former solidity, but she could leave that to his natural healing processes. Tali touched the cuts and gashes, one by one, and the skin began to knit under her fingers. There would be scarring and bruising — she was a novice after all — but he would be whole again.

“Holm?” she whispered, when she had finished. The tension she had seen in his muscles previously had eased away but he lay as still as before.

Had she missed something? Or did he have internal injuries? If he did, she could do nothing about them — she could only heal those injuries she could see and understand. She opened Holm’s eyes. His pupils still did not react to the light. There had to be a head injury.

Tali was so absorbed that she forgot to check around her. She probed his skull all over, pressing gently with a fingertip. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Then, on the right side of his head, above the ear, it gave in a small depression no bigger than a coin. One of the blows he’d taken had cracked the skull in a small, ragged circle.

Tali had her hand over the depression and was preparing to move the bone back into place when the horse whinnied. She went for the knife, which was on the other side of Holm, but Red-whiskers charged from the bushes and kicked it out of her hand. The blackbeard, Crebb, hauled Tali up by the hair, put his arms around her middle from behind and held her in an unbreakable grip.

“Got you!” said Red-whiskers, and punched her in the mouth.

She sagged, staring at him in terror. The lower half of her face was a mass of pain, running all the way up along her jawline to the sides of her skull.

Tali had suffered a number of beatings in Cython, before she had mastered Nurse Bet’s bare-handed art, but she had never experienced anything like the savage glee with which Red-whiskers had attacked her.

He drew back his fist for another blow, then clutched at his side, groaning. His own jaw hung oddly, dislocated when the horse’s shoulder had struck him. His face was a swollen mess and each tortured breath made a bubbling sound in his chest. Had a broken rib punctured a lung? He also had dozens of bloody punctures from the thorn bush, and some were red and shiny.

Red-whiskers twitched, grimaced, shuddered. He was in agony and wanted to inflict as much pain on her. He thumped her again, then clutched at his chest. Strands of pink saliva hung from his gaping mouth. Tali swallowed a mouthful of her own blood, wondering if it would have any healing powers on her.

Red-whiskers spat blood onto the ground and raised his fist for a third blow.

“Enough!” said Crebb. “You’ll kill her.”

“Want to kill the little bitch,” slurred Red-whiskers.

“No! Where do you think I’ve been while you were lazing in the thorn bush?”

“Running for your gutless life. You’re never around when the dirty work needs doing.”

Crebb dropped Tali beside Holm and put a hobnailed boot in the middle of her back. “I can safely leave that to you. Someone has to do the thinking.”

“All right, I’ll bite,” Red-whiskers said sullenly. “Where did you get to?”

For the moment they weren’t looking at Tali. She slid a hand across Holm’s skull and located the depressed fracture. It was a far more difficult healing than fixing his broken nose, and more dangerous, too. If she moved a splinter of bone the wrong way, he could die.

She wasn’t sure she could do it. What if she had judged wrong? No, hesitation would be just as fatal; just do it. Forcing the pain in her mouth and the throb in her jaw into the background, she drew power to ease the cracked skull bone into place.

“Followed their tracks back across the dunes,” said Crebb. “They came from the sea, you moron. Across the mudflats from the iceberg that stranded last night.”

He whistled up the other two horses. They came running, their manes streaming out behind them.

“Who cares where they came from?” Red-whiskers drew back a massive boot, as if to kick Tali in the head. She could see the hobnails in the sole.

Heal, heal! she thought frantically.

Crebb thrust him aside. “Enough! There’s a reward, a big one.”

“Never heard about no reward,” Red-whiskers said sullenly.

“Because you can’t read. There are notices along the road. A big reward for an old man and a young blonde woman who’ve come from the sea.”

“How big?” Red-whiskers’ manner implied a hope that it be not too big, so he could forgo it and get on with his battery.

“Big enough to satisfy both of us — for life.”

Heal, heal! The skull bone was hardly moving at all. Was she doing something wrong? Tali was starting to panic. If she did not succeed in the next minute, it would be too late. Once the villains tied her up there would be nothing she could do. Heal, heal!

Red-whiskers said hopefully, “Don’t suppose the reward is for dead or alive?”

“If they’re dead, our own lives are forfeit,” said Crebb. “They’re wanted alive and unharmed.”

“What for?”

“How would I know?”

“What are you gunna do with your share?”

“Haven’t got it yet.”

“When you do?”

“Head north where there’s no stinking rock rats.”

“They’ll come,” Red-whiskers said gloomily. “Reckon they’ll hold the whole of Hightspall in another month.”

“Reckon they won’t,” said Crebb. “Resistance is building up in the mountains.”

“I didn’t hear that. What’s going on?”

“A bloke called Deadhand. A great warrior — he killed Arkyz Leatherhead in five minutes flat.”

“Arkyz is dead?” said Red-whiskers.

“Deadhand took his head clean off in a single blow and sent it flying thirty feet into a dung heap.”

“Where was this?”

“Some upland fortress in the Nandelochs. Place called Garramide.”

“Is that where you’re heading?”

“My fighting days are over, and my spending days are just beginning. I’ll be heading well past Garramide. Enough talk. Help me get them on the nags.”