I woke up to Paddy tugging on my sleeve. "Luis! Luis! My God! The house has burned down! Burned to the ground! And the people in it—if anyone had got out alive, they'd have come to the barn, but there's no one! No one but us!"
I sat up, thick-witted.
"Oi went out to take a piss and—it was gone." He was waving his hands like he was trying to dry them. "You can smell it. Like a great lunch-fire that's been rained on."
The loft was lighter than it had been. I got up and stuck my head out the hay door. The clouds were breaking up, and while there wasn't a trace of dawn yet, it wouldn't be long; the waning half-moon was peeking at me from well up the sky.
Jamila had stepped up beside me, looking too. "We might as well start," she said.
"Right." I could detect pigshit through the smell of horse and cow manure. But to butcher a piglet and roast some meat would take time, and just now it seemed like right away was the best time to leave.
We climbed down. I could see a little now, by the moonlight that filtered in. The farmer had a team, though no saddle we could find. Hopefully one was broken for riding; we'd find out soon enough. Jamila put a bridle on one of them and cut off the reins to riding length, while I saddled the Lizard's horses—I dubbed him "Luck," because for us he was. By the time we were ready, Paddy had milked half-a-bucket of milk, warm and sweet, which we swilled down for breakfast, all we could hold. Then, while I held off the sow with a pitchfork, he caught a weanling pig. He tied one of the cutoff reins around it, behind the forelegs, with a loop flipped around its neck.
With that we left, Jamila and I riding Luck, and Paddy on the farmer's horse, with the pig first dragging and finally trotting behind on its tether. We left the farmer's musket behind, but carried the Lizard's strange short gun in its saddle sheath. There still wasn't a trace of dawnlight, but we left feeling good.
We bypassed Kings Town on the south, and again on the east. While we rode, we told Paddy about the Lizard, and how the airboat torched the house, and showed him the Lizard gun. In the east, the sky began to pale. After a couple kilometers, the poor darned pig was about used up, so I hog-tied it with its tether and let the mare carry it, running the tether under the mare's belly behind Paddy. The pig squealed bloody murder for a while, but finally quieted.
Before we got to the high road, I stopped by a big Cottonwood tree, took the Lizard's gun from its boot, and tried it out. It was easy to use, and noiseless. And it not only zapped off a piece of bark as big as my palm; it also burned a two-inch-deep hole in the wood beneath. Paddy swore and crossed himself; I was pretty darned impressed too.
When we reached the east-west high road, there was already a trickle of travelers heading east. The sky was silver ahead of us, and only a few bright stars could still be seen. We'd only gone a little way before we saw a cluster of people stopped at a bridge ahead. A squad of the king's soldiers was out early, and seemed to be questioning them. I made sure I could get the Lizard gun out of its boot quick and slick and ready to fire.
As we approached, five of the soldiers came over to us. " 'Ey dere," a grinning sergeant called, " ere's some look just right to go fight de Lanksters. And you, cher," he said to Jamila, "I never see one like you before! You look just right to go long de army and 'elp keep it appy, 'ey?" He turned his attention to me then. "You got a warrant of exemption, mon ami?"
They weren't looking for murderers; they were an impressment section looking for battle fodder. Several travelers were squatting off to one side with a guard over them. I saw now that they were chained together by wrist irons. Our sergeant had the hammer back on his pistol; at least one other had his musket cocked. They were the ones I cut down with the Lizard gun. The sergeant's pistol went off as I hit him; we were lucky he didn't hit one of us. The others fell back in dismay; two dropped their muskets and raised their hands before I even told them to. Jamila was off the horse in an instant, disarming them—swords, pistols, everything—then made them take off their boots and socks.
"Come down here," she said to Paddy, "and see if any of these fit you."
Besides the soldiers, about a dozen people, mostly chained, had watched the whole thing. They'd been as scared as the soldiers when I'd used the Lizard gun, but now, seeing their captors disarmed and barefoot, they brightened up. Jamila released the captives while Paddy sized up the boots and tried on a pair. I'm not sure he knew what a good fit was—whether he'd ever had one or not—but they were better than his harsh, stiff, coming-apart clodhoppers.
I trotted over to where the troops had picketed their horses and selected two, for Jamila and Paddy. I kept Luck. We gave the others to the travelers, along with the rest of the boots, kept the two pistols we found, and threw the other weapons in the river. Then we sent the soldiers hobbling barefoot back toward Kings Town, no doubt cursing us. Most of the civilians were still watching as Jamila and I pulled the corpses off onto the roadside, straightened their limbs, closed their eyes, and weighted the lids with pennies, then wished their souls well. The way the Brothers are taught to do when they have time. It helps ease the evicted souls, and reminds us, if we need reminding, that death is a personal thing to the people it claims.
There was a crossroad a hundred meters past the bridge, and I turned south on it. Paddy wasn't surprised; he didn't know any better. Jamila didn't seem surprised either. It was as if she knew what I had in mind, but it might be she just trusted my muse and me. People who'd seen what had happened at the bridge were sure to talk about it, so let them see us turn south. We went about two kilometers, then turned around and headed back north, the direction we needed to go. By the time we got back to the highway, the people along there hadn't seen us before and didn't pay us much attention. We crossed it and went on north up the valley.
The road kept near the east side of it. The ridges were timbered, but the bottomland was mostly cleared, the ground fertile and the crops good. Here and there along the road were woods though, and around mid-morning we rode back into one of them, out of sight of any travelers. There, while Jamila and Paddy got a fire going, I butchered the pig, and we had roast pork for our first real food of the day.
I was ready for a nap then, but Paddy was looking at me as if he had a question. "What do you want to ask me?" I said.
"Well, sir, oi was hopin'—hopin' you'd take the time to start teachin' me the sword. Oi mean, us bein' companions now, ye know."
"How about this evening?" I said.
"I'll give him a lesson now," Jamila put in. "It'll do me good. Paddy, go cut a couple of saplings about like this." She made a ring of thumb and forefinger to show the size to get, and he went off, knife in hand. I looked her over.
"Don't be too hard on him," I said, then lay back down. I felt too full just then for sparring.
When they were ready, I sat up to watch. Her basic technique was flawless, but it was hard to judge how good she actually was because she was keeping it simple, and doing everything in slow motion so he could see. I was fairly impressed at how quickly he was getting the first principles. When they'd worked together for a quarter hour or so, she stopped and turned to me.
"You and I need to go a round, Luis, so Paddy can see what it looks like when someone's gotten really good. That slime gob back in Galway Town didn't give you half a workout."
I lay there looking pained. A demonstration for Paddy was at best a secondary reason for the invitation, I was sure. She wanted to test me. Which was fine. I got up and warmed up, then we faced off and started. I wasn't doing badly at all, and decided I was at least as good as she was. Then she opened up, and before long I'd been touched in enough places that I'd have been bleeding to death if our "swords" had been steel instead of chestnut.
She backed off and stopped. "You're good," she said. "Damn good."
Considering that she'd beaten me, I wasn't sure how sincere she was, but I settled for it. "Thanks," I said, and turned to Paddy. "You'll probably never see anyone better than Jamila with a sword. Protect her back and she could have killed that whole damn squad back there by herself, in a sword fight. And looked around for more."
She looked pleased. Paddy looked awed. We kicked dirt on the fire then, left the remains of the pig, and started up the valley again. That afternoon Jamila bought a loaf, a big sausage, and a slab of cheese from a farmwife, and we swigged down some buttermilk at the springhouse. Later we paused where a good-sized creek came down out of the hills to cross the road, and rode up it into the woods a way, to bathe. Jamila borrowed a gob of my soap and rode up a little farther than we did, to save Paddy's nerves, I suppose, or keep him from embarrassing himself with a hard-on. There was moss on rocks along the bank, and when we'd stripped, he and I scrubbed one another with it to save soap. While I dressed, I thought how I'd rather have washed Jamila, and my conscience started bothering me. I'd have to stop in a village somewhere and confess myself for what happened the night before.
By then, thunderclouds were building. After drought all across Hoozh and Ohio, it seemed as if it wanted to rain at least once a day now. Once, looking up, I saw what had to be an airboat, a little spot moving against the blue. High as it was, I'd never have noticed it, except that what we'd seen the night before had made me aware of them.
"Look!" I said pointing, and they both looked. It disappeared into a cloud.
"What?" Paddy asked. "Oi don't see anything."
Jamila had, though; her face looked troubled. "An eagle, Paddy," I told him. "It's moved out of sight now." I'm not sure why I lied. Maybe because, not having seen it, Paddy might wonder if I was trying to play a joke on him. Or maybe I just didn't want to worry him.
The sun was shining right then, but somehow things seemed a little darker.
We passed through several villages during the day, but I didn't take the time to see a priest. By hindsight, I didn't really feel remorse. In early evening we came to a village called Bergerac. It had an inn at the near edge, and we decided to spend the night there. The weather looked too threatening to sleep in the woods if we didn't have to, and Jamila and I agreed that we might as well spend some of the Lizard's silver.
The inn had its own stable. We left our horses there, paid the stableboy, and went into the inn. I carried my Lizard gun with me, in my pack with the business end sticking out. That way it didn't look at all like a gun, what you could see of it. For one thing, there wasn't any hole in what I'd have otherwise called a barrel.
The food was the best I'd ever eaten in a village inn, and we had wine instead of beer. We didn't spend any more time in the taproom than we had to, though, just enough to finish supper and a second drink. We didn't feel comfortable now, with so many people around; at least Jamila and I didn't. Our last two inns, at Galway Town and Kings Town, had proven dangerous. Get up to our room and out of sight, that was my thought, and by the way Jamila knocked back the last of her wine and got up from the table, she felt the same way.
I'd actually considered taking two rooms, one for her and me and one for Paddy, but somehow it didn't seem all right to split up like that. Not for the reason I had. And I wasn't sure what Jamila would think; it might be taking too much for granted. Anyway a hired boy took the three of us up the stairs and showed us the room that was ours. It had one wide bed—the usual thing in inns—wide enough for three to sleep longways or five crossways.
With the sun down it was getting dark out, so we took off our boots, took the pistols out of our belts, and arranged ourselves in bed with Jamila in the middle. I'd have to be chaste tonight, which I wouldn't have minded if I'd been sleepy in the first place, but I wasn't.
I don't think any of us was asleep yet when Jamila sat bolt upright. "We need to get out of here," she hissed, and clambered over me to the floor.
"What is it?" I murmured.
She just shook her head, pulled on her boots and started lacing them. Paddy and I piled out then, too. Paddy looked worried and unhappy; I suspect he'd never slept in a real bed before, and now he was losing out on the experience. He took longer than Jamila and I to get his boots laced and tied, but he hurried. Then we grabbed our packs. Jamila had shoved her pistol into her pack, so I put mine in my pack too, without asking why. She seemed to know what she was doing.
She was out the door first, and in the hall she turned not toward the stairway but toward the end that ended at a window. The shutters were open for air and light, and when we got there, she climbed out onto the roof of a built-on section, sliding down it to the edge, where she dropped her pack off and then jumped. I followed her to the edge and dropped my pack off too, Lizard gun and all.
Paddy looked worried; it was close to four meters down. I could hear commotion in the hall, and decided I'd better get him off first, or he might not do it, not quickly enough. "Jump," I hissed at him. He compromised. He went over the edge on his belly and clung for a moment.
"Here they are!" someone shouted from the window. He wasn't three meters from us. Paddy let go. I followed, landed rolling, and snatched up my pack. A pistol roared—Jamila's; she could see the window from where she stood. I pulled the Lizard gun out as I slung the pack on one shoulder, and we all took off for the stable while a body slid slowly down the roof and off the edge. There were two shots from the window, but they didn't hit any of us.
Our horses weren't saddled or bridled, of course, and in the darkening stable we couldn't have told which were ours anyway. The stableboy was just about to take the bit from the mouth of someone else's animal, and pausing, I boosted a surprised Paddy aboard. "Get!" I barked, and slapped the animal on the rump. It bolted for the back door, which was open for the light, and Jamila and I followed. I hoped Paddy could stay in the saddle—he wasn't much of a rider—but I didn't wait to watch. Jamila and I both sprinted in the other direction for the cover of a hedge, scrambled through a gap, ran behind a nearby house and across someone's kitchen garden into an apple orchard. From there we slowed to a trot, turning north into a lane lined on both sides with intermittent hedges.
There we stopped. "Now what?" I asked.
Her answer took me by surprise. "I don't know."
"Okay," I said. "Let's get behind a hedge and wait awhile. Then we'll go get our horses."
She shook her head. "We'll wait awhile, but forget the horses."
I shrugged. We went through a gap and hid till it was darker. I crouched there feeling bad about losing Paddy, but even with socks and better boots, his feet were in lousy shape for dashing around trying to dodge Lizards or whatever was after us. I'd done the right thing.
According to Bhatti and Soong, a warrior in close touch with his muse always does the right thing, even when it doesn't seem like it. And if you start second-guessing your muse, it may quit talking to you. Lots of people hardly ever hear from theirs.
Of course, a lot of that's from penalties.
Finally, when it was about three-fourths dark, Jamila got up and went back through the gap, with me close behind. She moved as if she had something definite in mind, and my muse told me to follow hers just now. We didn't backtrack, but I quickly realized she was taking us to the inn again. Changed her mind, I thought. We're going to get our horses after all. I'd hold the stableboy at knifepoint, I decided, while she saddled them.
But that wasn't what she'd had in mind. She remembered seeing a ladder lying behind the inn—I hadn't noticed it at all—and she leaned it against the wall below the window of our room. We went up it, then left it there in case we needed to run for it again. Our room seemed like the last place they'd look for us now, whoever "they" were.
After bolting the door, we went back to bed. This time we took off more than just our boots. Actually, she did, so I did. I felt a little nervous at first, being in bed with no clothes on and enemies around; it seemed reckless and irresponsible. If we'd been like that before, the Lizards or whoever they were would have gotten us for sure. But soon enough I forgot about worrying.