Tyrant

V

All the rest were waiting for them. They had paused to water and rest their horses for an hour or two, and made the simplest of camps. Some had unrolled bedding so that they could close their eyes, however briefly. Someone had made a quick, small fire to roast a bird Hamdan had shot. The Free could make themselves comfortable-comfortable enough, at least-almost anywhere.

All of them, though, were awake and assembled to meet Brennan and the others as Hamdan led them in. Rudran, a red-bearded giant of a man who led the Free’s small company of lancers. He was there, with half a dozen of his men. Another half-dozen, more motley and less neatly attired than the lancers, who were swordsmen or spearmen.

Wren and Kerig, she smiling, he as usual with an almost-scowl on his face. They were lovers, those two, and more importantly Clevers. Capable of shaping and channelling the raw entelechs of which the world was composed. Less imposing, but far more dangerous than all the fell warriors gathered around them.

There was one who was not of the Free too: Surmun, the contract-holder. He bore the parchment that set out the particular task they had agreed to perform. The idea was that he could show it to anyone who questioned their right to do whatever they judged necessary in fulfilment of that task. In reality, few if any contract-holders ever had to show anyone anything. People tended not to challenge the will of the Free.

No one seriously thought a piece of parchment carried any weight within the Empire. But tradition and habit lay heavily on the Free. More often than not, a contract-holder rode with them. This particular contract-holder had barely spoken to anyone for days. He was not overly pleased with the course events had taken since he acquired his position. Exploring the fringes of the Empire of Orphans had not been one of his ambitions for the role.

And there was Yulan. The Captain of all the Free, latest in the long line of great warriors to lead this greatest of all the battle companies. His skin had the same soft, dark tone as Hamdan’s, but he was much taller and more powerfully built than the archer. Most strikingly, his head was almost entirely shaved. A perfectly smooth scalp surrounded the topknot into which he tied a single long lock of oiled black hair.

Lorin neatly and wordlessly cut Marweh’s bonds with a knife from his boot. He made no move to help her dismount, and she slipped and slumped clumsily sideways, almost falling to her knees. Lorin handed his reins to Brennan and went straight to Yulan. The two of them fell at once into muted but animated conversation.

Brennan and Manadar jumped to the ground. They tethered their horses to an ancient, desiccated tree trunk which lay close by. Inevitably, they were surrounded by curious questioners.

‘You lose the slavers or something?’

‘Why are you boys looking so glum?’

‘How’d you find a lady to bring along with you in this empty pit of a place?’

Brennan let Manadar answer the questions. He was not in the mood for recounting their misadventure. He led Marweh to a broad, flat stone embedded in the dry earth and sat her there. She was watching Lorin and Yulan. Brennan did too.

Lorin was pointing the way they had come. Drawing maps and movements in the air with his finger. Yulan was nodding. They had not-at least so Brennan hoped-lost the slavers. Lorin still held in his head the directions and distances. He evidently thought there could yet be a meeting of swords and a breaking of shackles before their quarry was too deep into the Empire to be reached.

Brennan stripped bedrolls and saddles and empty waterskins from the horses. Out of habit and long training he began checking their hoofs, one by one, for stones or wounds. The animals lifted each foot when he tapped their legs. They were patient and tolerant of his rather distracted ministrations.

He was brushing sand and grit from a hoof when he became aware of a presence at his side. He let loose the horse’s leg and looked up at Yulan.

‘Feel like a fool?’ the Captain of the Free asked him with a smile.

Brennan nodded.

‘A bit.’

‘Remember it, that feeling. It’ll make you work to stay clear of it in days to come. But it doesn’t sound as though what happened was much of your fault.’

‘It wasn’t Lorin’s either,’ Brennan said impulsively.

Yulan smiled again at that. A little ruefully this time.

‘Well said. True or not, well and loyally said.’

He ran one hand slowly, from front to back, over his bald scalp.

‘When a day goes sour, the man who gives the orders owns the fault. Only he knows how deserved or not that ownership is. Only he knows how important it is to remember the fault and the feeling it brings.’

Yulan turned away.

‘Rest a little,’ he said as he went. ‘We’re going to war very soon now before that war slips away through our hands like your water did.’

There was not a man among the Free who thought Yulan anything but a great leader as far as Brennan knew. Wise in judgement; fearsome in battle. In the nearly four years he had commanded them, none had fallen beneath an enemy’s blade. Yulan would be a legend one day.

Few knew him well though. Few came close to him. A handful, the most trusted, were no doubt his friends: Hamdan, Rudran, some of the Clevers perhaps. For the rest-those like Brennan who served lower in the ranks-well, they were left to wonder, to imagine.

The story they whispered was that Yulan shaved his head after something went wrong the very first time he led the Free into battle. Something that the Free failed to prevent, and in that failure saw their proud history tarnished. Those who knew the tale did not speak of it. Those who did not know it were left to murmur among themselves that the shaven head of their Captain meant something in the traditions of his Massatan people. It meant shame or regret or contrition. Nobody knew exactly what. Perhaps, Brennan thought, it was Yulan’s own inner judgement on how much of the fault for a sour day resided with the man who gave the orders.

Brennan hoped Lorin would not be judging himself too harshly for what had happened in the night. That might, he suspected, depend upon what happened next. In the possibly bloody hours and days to come.

Despite Yulan’s instruction and his own deep weariness, Brennan could not rest. His mind was more awake than his body would have wished.

He sat with the rest and ate a few morsels of roasted bird flesh. He did not speak much. None of them did for close to an hour. There would be good-natured taunts and jibes about lost water and the farmer’s wife who fooled the Free eventually, but for now everyone had more pressing matters on their minds. Some lay down and closed their eyes. Hamdan kicked sand over the little fire to extinguish it.

Marweh sat in the deepest silence of all. Wren, the Clever, took her some food and water, which she accepted with nothing more than a grateful nod.

‘Poor woman’s as lost and fearful as she could be,’ Wren said as she squatted down beside Brennan and Hamdan.

‘Might be less so if she’d not tricked us,’ muttered Brennan.

‘The harm’s not mortal,’ said Wren calmly. ‘Yulan and Lorin seem to reckon we’ve time yet to do what we came here to do.’

‘Sooner the better,’ Brennan said. ‘I’ve never been so hot or grimy in my life. And every night, some evil swarm’s been biting me. Never hear or see a thing. But the itching, that I feel.’

‘Probably sandflies,’ Hamdan grunted. ‘Could be sting-ants. Maybe ghost scorpions.’

‘Ghost scorpions?’ Brennan repeated, alarm raising his eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘No, not really,’ Hamdan said with a straight face.

‘Oh. I’d believe anything out here. Never seen so much angry life and so little water. Can’t seem to shake my thirst, no matter how much I drink.’

‘You give it time. You stay with the Free long enough, you’ll see worse places than this. Anyway, there’s a whole pool a couple of hundred paces beyond that hummock,’ Hamdan said, jabbing a thumb in the relevant direction.

‘A pool?’ Brennan echoed him, almost disbelieving.

‘Cool and fresh,’ Wren confirmed.

‘Let me clean myself,’ Marweh said unexpectedly behind them. ‘I haven’t been better than half-clean since the night I was taken.’

‘It’ll not kill you to wait another while,’ Hamdan told her without looking round. He was usually a good-humoured and rather forgiving man, but he had not yet found much amusement in the tale of Marweh and the waterskins.

‘Let the woman wash,’ Wren scolded him. ‘We’ve another hour or more before we ride on. For all that you men moan and bleat, she’s suffered more and worse than any of us. Just because she wounded your pride, you shouldn’t make yourselves cruel.’

Hamdan shrugged.

‘I’ll take her,’ Brennan sighed.

It looked like luxury. Brennan understood that it was just a long, shallow pool fringed by a few reeds and some small trees a bit-but not entirely-like the willows of his homeland. He understood how meagre and modest a place this would have seemed to him not long ago. And understanding all that, it still looked like luxury. After a few days breathing the heat and the dust of these wastes, it was almost intoxicating to see the sun glint on the surface of real water and to hear a gentle breeze stirring through those thin-leaved fronds.

There were dead trees and fallen branches at the water’s edge too. Perhaps there was not always water here; perhaps not all the trees had the stubbornness to wait out long, dry times. He noticed that and gave it no heed. He had eyes only for the life, the green. And the water that was here now, today, above all. It had drawn a flock of desert doves. They thronged the far side of the pool, little gems of soft colour.

Brennan knelt and scooped handfuls of the wonderful wet up to his lips. Marweh, beside him, did the same.

‘This land’s harder than any of you, slaver or Free,’ she murmured once they had slaked their thirst.

‘We don’t belong in the same breath as them.’

‘No? Men with swords all look much alike to my kind.’

He frowned at her, though in truth he was more annoyed at himself than her. He should not be concerned by what she thought of the Free.

‘I’m here to bathe, aren’t I?’ she asked.

He nodded distractedly, still staring at her. After a moment or two, she raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

‘You think what I deserve, after all of this, is to be humbled some more? You think I want any man but my husband to set eyes on me when I bathe?’

A few years ago, Brennan would have blushed at that. A woman even talking of her nakedness would have left him scrambling for excuses or a hiding place. Not so now. He had grown to manhood in more ways than one among the Free. Still, he should have thought of her modesty sooner. Much as he chafed at what she had done, and thought her a fool for it, he had no desire to humiliate her.

‘I’ll stand over there,’ he said, just a tiny trace of truculence in his tone. He did not want to appear too apologetic any more than he wished to appear cruel.

‘With your back turned.’

‘Fine. But you talk to me while you’re washing so I know you’re not swimming off.’

She laughed at that. The first time he had heard anything approaching amusement from her.

‘You think I’ll splash away, naked, into the desert?’

He shrugged, and set his back to the water.

He heard her clothes falling to the ground and water lapping at her ankles as she waded out. Then splashing, the fall of drops. The sound made him unexpectedly uncomfortable. Just a little. He could even imagine that if he listened to it for too long, or thought about it too deeply, he might rediscover the ability to blush.

‘Thought you were going to talk,’ he said gruffly.

‘About what? Can’t you hear well enough that I’m right here?’

‘I suppose so.’

She was quiet for a little while. Not long.

‘Do you have a family then?’ she asked. ‘That old one of you has two wives. How many have you got?’

‘None. I’ve a mother, and a brother and sister. Back where I came from. I’ve not seen them for years. Never knew my father.’

‘Ah,’ Marweh said, as if he had spoken more than he knew.

There was a gentle splashing and a pattering of drops on the surface of the pool. Brennan imagined her to be shaking her hair.

‘Ah, what?’ he demanded.

‘Think you’ve made yourself a new family, do you? A whole warband of fathers?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you do what you do then? You men of blood. Is it just that you like the fighting, the killing? You like the strength of it all, and the lording it over others?’

Brennan shook his head without knowing if she was even watching him. She could not be more wrong, he was sure, but he did not quite have his own words for why. He had heard many others among the Free speak of it now and again though. They had words.

‘It’s not that I like the fighting,’ he said. Which was not entirely true. It did excite him; he was not afraid of it. ‘In all the Kingdom there’s one who doesn’t bend the knee to anyone: Crex the King. There’s him, and there’s the Free, and there’s no one else. We’re the only ones save him who could be called by that name and have it be true. There’s no lord above us; there’s none below us.’

‘That what you do the fighting and the killing for then, is it? Nothing to do with all the gold, I don’t suppose.’

When she asked the question like that, Brennan did know the answer. He did not give it to her because he did not think she would really understand it, or entirely believe it.

The gold had never been that important. Not to him anyway. The Free did indeed make those who survived it rich, and there were those who fought and sometimes died for that very reason. They were not him. He fought and might die for those who did the same thing alongside him. For the shared, bright life they lived, that none who did not share it could ever fully comprehend. For the suffering they had shared, and the pleasures they had tasted and the fears they had conquered together. Yes, for the family they had become, some of them, just as Marweh said. Not that he was going to admit as much to her.

‘I don’t know how you can do it, all the killing,’ Marweh was saying. ‘Even men who deserve nothing better.’

‘We do what we must. You farm. I fight.’

He heard her rising out of the water, and instinctively started to turn his head a little.

‘You keep your eyes to yourself until I’m dried and dressed,’ she warned him, and he half-raised an apologetic hand. Kept his back to her and his gaze fixed on the dry grass before him. It was so close to the pool, that grass, yet still yellow and brittle-looking. Step just a few paces from the water and everything here was thirsty.

‘We all do what our nature calls us to,’ he said.

He had heard that from Lorin a while back. Lorin and Manadar, both of them, had movement in their nature. Unsettled. If Brennan was honest, he was not certain what his nature really called him to. Perhaps it would come to him one day. For now, it was enough to be a part of something much greater than he could ever be alone. To be among friends and family.

‘We all do what our nature calls us to,’ Marweh repeated, closer behind now. ‘I like that. We do what we must.’

Something in her voice, almost sad and resigned, made him start to turn once more.

He never did set eyes on her. There was only the blur of movement and the ferocious impact across his temple. Then points of light tumbling across his vision. A spike of pain punching deep into his head. Darkness. Falling.

As he fell, he heard the flock of doves rising from the far side of the pool. Erupting in a clattering of wings.

Then nothing.