Tyrant

XV

Brennan heard shouting and running feet. The tyrant’s lackeys coming to finish the job, he assumed. His end drawing near. It was not. Something strange was happening. He blinked. That did not clear his eyes as he hoped. He had to wipe blood away with the back of his hand.

There were arrows flying again. Down among the trees, some kind of battle was happening. He saw a handful of mounted men ranging through the little copse, spilling beyond it. Cutting down fleeing figures. Slavers.

Confused, his mind unable to take hold of the world, Brennan looked around. Some of the tyrant’s men were running past him. Arrows were chasing them, arrows flickering down from the heights. He saw the tyrant himself mounting a horse, down on the very lowest slopes. Riding away.

‘Can you get up?’

Brennan glanced round. Hamdan was standing there, holding out a hand.

Wordlessly, Brennan took it and heaved himself unsteadily to his feet. He left blood all over Hamdan’s palm. The archer regarded it impassively.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he said.

‘You came,’ Brennan murmured. His voice sounded faint even to his own ears.

‘We did. Later than we would have liked. I’m sorry.’

Hamdan looked out into the waste. Nodded his head that way.

‘They came too.’

A line of reflected light out on the plain. Dust rising behind it. A hundred glinting chest-plates and shields and helmets of polished metal. A hundred giant horses clad in the gleam of the rising sun. Orphanidons.

‘We can’t press the fight as we’d wish,’ Hamdan said ruefully. ‘Not with such a fierce kind of audience.’

Brennan breathed out. A great gust of released tension.

‘Another few heartbeats and one particular beast is going to be out of your range, I’d say,’ the archer said, squinting after the retiring slavers. At the tyrant who rode near the rear of the company.

‘Would you like my bow?’ Hamdan asked.

Brennan took the bow. Hamdan gave him an arrow. Uncertain, Brennan set it to the string.

‘Should we not…?’ he began, conscious of the bright wall of Orphanidons advancing slowly and steadily upon them.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ smiled Hamdan. ‘There’s time to do the world this one small favour. I’d do it myself, but I thought you might want the privilege.’

‘You’re less likely to miss,’ Brennan murmured, raising the bow and drawing back the string. His body felt wholly unequal to the task.

‘Well, I’ll do it if you shoot wide. He’s at the edge of your range, not yet at the edge of mine. But I don’t think you’ll shoot wide, will you?’

Brennan said nothing. He eased the point of the arrow a little higher against the blue sky. His wounds protested furiously. He shut them out of his mind. Forgot them for just those few moments. They could have him when he was done with this.

‘Breathe steady,’ Hamdan said quietly. ‘Feel the breeze.’

Brennan did both. He loosed his grip on the bowstring. It snapped forward and the arrow sprang up and away. Brennan saw it spinning as it climbed, then it was just a long fleck against the blue. And it was turning down and falling. Seeking a home.

‘Very good,’ said Hamdan, already turning away.

Brennan watched as that frail fleck of wood fell and fell and found the home it sought. The slavers’ tyrant twisted a little in his saddle. His horse drifted sideways as he slumped.

They had saved forty-six of those who would have been slaves in the end. They had slain more slavers than that. Brennan still did not know if it was enough. But it was what had been possible.

There were no horses for the slaves, save a few Rudran and his lancers had taken from men they killed. Children rode on those, and the weakest and sickest of the adults, Marweh’s husband among them. The rest walked.

The Free-the eighteen of them who lived-rode behind the weary, ragged company of villagers. Between them and the two hundred or so Orphanidons who were shadowing them on their journey out of the Empire. Always just on the edge of sight. Always there, their steel catching the sun, their horses raising pillars of dusty earth. Always watching.

Brennan did not care. It was over. He watched Marweh and her son as he rode. They walked at the front of the group of village folk, hand in hand. His head dropped now and again as his exhaustion tried to claim him. He would start awake. Remember himself after a moment’s confusion. His many wounds were bound and salved, his thirst and hunger quenched. Wren, who had done the binding, had told him he would not die. But the weakness remained. And the pain.

Yulan came to ride beside him for a time.

‘You did well, you three,’ the Captain of the Free told him. ‘All these people’d be lost to us, and to themselves, if you’d not done what you did.’

‘They did well, Lorin and Manadar. They died well.’

‘Their shares will go to those they named,’ Yulan said. ‘Just as they wanted it.’

‘Lorin had two wives,’ Brennan murmured numbly.

‘He did. Kallina in Sussadar and Janeth Lena in Armadell-on-Lake. One half of his share to each. Manadar left his to a mother and a father and two brothers in Harvekka. And one tenth part to a serving woman in an inn near Armadell. Who is about to become richer than the inn’s owner, at a guess.’

Brennan glanced at Yulan. It had never occurred to him that the man would know so much of just two among the many scores who followed him. But seeing him now, seeing the sorrow etched into his handsome features, he understood a little more of what it meant to lead the Free. What it took.

‘You could be among the men who carry the word and the coin to those who don’t yet know they’re awaiting it, if you want,’ Yulan said.

Brennan nodded.

‘Yes, please.’

They rode along in silence for a while. Both of them watched the horizon far ahead. Safety, and home, should appear there before too much longer.

‘And you?’ Yulan asked. ‘Will you come back afterwards, or do we need to portion out your share too?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brennan said without thinking. It was honest. He had not known how honest until he said it.

‘You will know, in time,’ Yulan told him.

‘Maybe tomorrow will mend it,’ Brennan said softly. An unbidden thought he had meant to leave unspoken, that somehow would not stay that way.

The Massatan looked at him, a fleeting puzzlement on his face. Then smiled sadly.

‘Maybe it will, Brennan. It does sometimes.’

Yulan closed his eyes.

‘Some tomorrows are a long time coming,’ he said. ‘For now, tell me how they died. I’ll want to remember that.’

Brennan did. And so, as they rode together, he shared some small part of his burden with the Captain of the Free.