Tyrant

VIII

The hill was much larger than it had appeared. It was also further away than Brennan would have guessed. It took them a good two hours to get close enough to make out any details of the terrain.

Those details were not unexpected. Bare, yellowish rock. A few frail shrubs rooted in crevices and crannies. There were gullies on the lower flanks of the hill, extending out into the flat ground beyond. They shallowed and shrank the further from the slopes they reached, until they disappeared altogether. There must be downpours here, Brennan supposed. Brief, sudden storms which sent water pouring off the hard heights, scouring out channels for itself down onto the plain. Where it flowed and spread and sank away, sucked up by the parched earth.

‘I don’t much like this,’ Lorin said as they drew closer to the great rocky mound.

‘No? You amaze me,’ said Manadar sarcastically.

‘This is not so far from where I told Yulan he might find his quarry. Unless they changed course, there could be a hundred slavers on the other side of this hill.’

‘What should we do?’ Brennan asked.

‘Well, if there’re eyes up on top, they might have seen us by now,’ Lorin said, ‘but they might be careless, or tired, or not there at all. Either way, it’d do no harm to make ourselves a little harder to see.’

He angled his horse a touch to the side and led them down into the tail end of one of the long, sprawling gullies. They worked their way along the bottom of it, its sides rising higher and higher until they passed their heads. There was some dry vegetation down there in the bed of what, perhaps for only a day or two a year, must be a fierce-flowing river. Browned seed-heads that said there had been flowers here, in times past. There were no flowers now.

Soon enough, the ground beneath their feet was starting to rise. They halted, looking up the deep notch cut into the side of the hill. Lorin swung himself down from his horse. Brennan and Manadar copied him.

‘We need to walk someone up there,’ Lorin said, hooking a thumb towards the top of the hill. ‘Make sure there’s no eyes there before we take the horses up.’

‘That’ll take time,’ Manadar murmured. ‘She’s walking away from us, step by step.’

‘Do you boys listen to anything I say? Told you before: never hurts to take every care. Can you not smell it?’

Brennan looked around, puzzled. He could smell nothing but his own dried sweat, filling clothes he had been wearing for days. Manadar, similarly confounded, shrugged.

‘Trouble,’ said Lorin emphatically. ‘Bloody, bad trouble. This place reeks of it. This whole contract reeks of it. You want to see the far side of the next day or two, you’d better learn to smell the way the wind’s blowing.’

‘I’ll go,’ Brennan said, gazing up towards the rocks above.

‘Not alone. Manadar, you keep the horses here until you get some sign from us.’

Manadar started to protest as Lorin pressed reins into his hands, but the older man was far beyond any patience for debates.

‘Brennan here’s the closest thing we’ve got to an archer. I’m more likely to need him up there than you and your sword. And some time soon I’ll need my horse more than either of you, so don’t lose it.’

Brennan followed closely on Lorin’s heels as they worked their way up the gully, and then out onto the slopes of the hill. He tried to put his feet where Lorin’s went, and to keep his back bent just the same and his head bowed just as low.

There was not much by way of shelter from curious eyes out there on the higher ground. What little there was, they found. The few bushes had more or less no leaves. There were boulders here and there, most smoothed and rounded by centuries of wind-blown sand. Cracks and crevices ran up and across the flatter expanses of exposed stone. Trying to remain unseen took a great effort. A keen concentration of mind and a control of body. Lorin had that, and Brennan sought to mimic it with every step.

There were loose pebbles, most resting in crannies but some just lying there on slabs of rock. Lorin disturbed none of them. His feet made no sound on the stone. The leather of his boots did not even creak. Brennan could not quite match that silence. He could hear his own footsteps, soft as he tried to make them. He could hear the arrows in the quiver at his waist shifting against one another.

He took some comfort from the fact that the higher they rose, the more noticeably the wind flowed over them. It was blowing across the face of the hill and out onto the plain. It might carry faint sounds away with it. Unfortunately, it did not carry off much in the way of heat. Even the moving air felt drying and hot. The harsh sun was beating back off the naked rocks. Brennan imagined himself to be a ball of dough, thrust into a baker’s oven.

He heard a buzzard’s cry above and stared up at the dark bird, circling and rising. Waiting for the bread to be thoroughly cooked, he thought.

Lorin pulled him into the lee of a big, round sandy-coloured rock. There was a pool of shadow that came as the most soothing relief. Brennan would have drunk that shadow down if he could, to hold its coolness within him. That was not why Lorin had chosen the spot though.

‘Someone up above us,’ he whispered. ‘Couple of hundred paces, on the top.’

Brennan was surprised. And shamed in a way. He had seen nothing.

‘He’s looking the wrong way,’ Lorin told him. ‘Or not. He’s watching Yulan’s likely approach, if the rest of them were coming here. Can’t really blame him for that, I suppose.’

‘I suppose not,’ Brennan said.

‘We can kill him for it though.’

Once Lorin had pointed the watcher out, Brennan did not feel quite so bad about having missed him. All that could be seen was a bent knee, jutting out from behind a low cairn someone-many someones, more likely-had built atop the rounded summit long ago. Why anyone in their right mind would spend sweat and strength to gather rocks, carry them up there and pile them in a little tower, Brennan could not guess.

‘You want to go?’ Lorin asked him.

‘Yes,’ Brennan said without hesitation.

‘Good. Draw your knife now. He might hear it leave the sheath if you wait until the last moment.’

Brennan clamped the blade between his teeth so that he would have both hands if he needed them on the ascent, and so that he could not accidentally strike metal against stone. He left his bow and sword and quiver full of arrows there with Lorin. He would not need them.

‘Come at him into the wind,’ Lorin said.

Brennan did that. He cut across the slope before turning round and up. Put the solid body of that cairn between him and the man he meant to kill. He went carefully but not as slowly as before. He trusted the breeze to drift away any slight sound he might make.

For the last hundred or more yards, there was virtually no cover. Much of the hill’s summit was just huge, open slabs of smooth rock. He covered the ground quickly, in a low crouch. His senses were sharp now that violence was coming, and his eyes took in every tiny feature of the surface before each stride. Not a pebble shifted as he passed; not a single crack tripped him.

Only for the final few footsteps up to the cairn did he slow. He measured every movement. Carefully, so carefully, he took the knife from his mouth and readied it. Even then, at the very last, with only a few yards and the stones of the cairn between him and the other, he took the time to stop and wait until his heart had slowed. He cleared his mind and felt his breath pulsing in and out. He delicately lifted his right foot and set it silently down a little further forward. Shifted his weight onto it.

When he moved again, he did it as fast as he possibly could. A huge surging push from his right leg, pumping his arms to carry him forward and round the cairn.

To his credit, the slaver was not asleep. He was rising, levering himself up and away from the cairn as Brennan reached him. He was lifting his spear from where it lay on the ground beside him. This was no fight fit for a spear though. This was knife work.

Brennan reached for the man’s mouth with his free hand, even as he reached for the heart with his knife. He missed the mouth. His hand hit the slaver’s cheek instead, hard enough to slap his head around.

Brennan was moving so fast he easily bore his unbalanced opponent over backwards. They fell together, and Brennan let his full weight land on the man’s chest. He scrabbled again to cover his mouth as he did so. The choking, dying cry that burst out was muffled before it found any strength.

The knife was deep in the man’s chest. Mortally so, Brennan was sure, but he pushed and twisted it as hard as he could in any case. The slaver bucked and flailed beneath him. Warm blood spilled out between the two of them. A lot of it.

Then the man went still. There was no more breath fighting to get past Brennan’s suffocating hand. Open eyes stared up at Brennan and they were empty. Whatever had been there a moment ago had departed. Brennan rolled away. His knife hand and chest were soaked with blood. He wiped the blade clean on his trousers.

His own heart was pounding now, and he was breathing hard. His head ached, echoes of the blow Marweh had delivered pounding through it. Just for a moment, he closed his eyes.

‘Well done,’ he heard Lorin saying.