Chapter 7
The snow in the mountains was beginning to melt, so the Nansakar was running high, fast, and cold. It would have been madness to try and swim this group across—especially since none of the higher castes could swim—but Thera had thought ahead. Before she had sent home the casteless who had delivered the Sons of the Black Sword here, she had gotten them to drag one of their barges safely inland and leave it behind.
It had actually been Jagdish’s suggestion for them to stash a barge for future use. It was a good thing too, since Thera had been in too much pain at the time to think much beyond her burns. The Lost House had still been smoldering, Ashok was buried in the rubble, and she had only just met the small band of fanatical warriors who’d come so far to save her.
Of course, when she’d agreed she had only been thinking about how to get herself back to the Cove, not a whole village worth of people, two milk cows, several goats, donkeys, and two carts full of squawking chickens.
They found the barge right where Jagdish had told the casteless Nod to hide it. Luckily it had survived the winter and was still intact. The plan was simple. They tied all their ropes together and then Ashok and a few of the Sons had poled the barge to the other side of the river to attach their line to a sturdy tree. They had to battle a fierce current that wanted to carry them toward the ocean the entire way. They’d pushed so hard that Thera had been afraid their poles would snap, and then they’d be carried off, but they’d made it across.
Once their line was secure, the real work began. The process took an entire day, from dawn to dusk, with their strongest men taking turns poling back and forth across the rushing Nansakar. The casteless barge wasn’t very big. They could crowd at most fifteen bodies on at a time. If it flipped, or anyone tumbled over the edge, they’d surely die in the freezing water. If a demon were to come from below—and they weren’t too many miles from the sea—everyone aboard was as good as dead. Occasionally a massive log would float by, big enough to upset the barge, and they would have to time it to avoid the impact. For the passengers, the trip across the Nansakar was one of white-knuckled terror.
Ashok was aboard for every single trip.
Thera watched him, curious why he’d been so quick to volunteer for such a duty, because she knew how much he despised being on the water. In a land where anything deep enough to hide your legs from view might conceal a demon, everyone was distrustful of water. For Ashok it was more than that. To him water was the source of evil and the home of hell, because the Law declared it so. And though he’d learned to tolerate some criminals, the rivers, lakes, and seas would always be beyond his control.
Yet he remained out there, going back and forth across the white froth and tearing currents, pulling on the rope like an ox pulling a wagon. And when they’d land, and the shaking nauseous warriors fell into the grass, and new volunteers took up their poles and got aboard, Ashok just stayed there—soaking wet, surely chilled to the bone—and off they’d set again.
When one of the Wild Men’s cows panicked halfway across, kicking and thrashing, threatening to swamp the barge, Ashok had calmly stunned it with a fist to its thick skull, and then simply gone back to pulling the rope. They’d rolled a thousand pounds of unconscious beef off on the other shore, and Ashok had immediately gone back for more people.
Once half their force was on the south bank, it was Thera’s turn. Their prophet was precious cargo, and they wanted her on whichever side had the majority of the warriors. Since she’d been a smuggler, she’d spent more time on the rivers than anyone else here, but even for her this was the roughest water journey of her life. Churning, bouncing, and crashing, it was far worse than it had looked from the shore. The river was so turbulent and dark with silt that there could be a demon right beneath them and she’d never know. The rocking made her stomach clench. Water washed up over the sides, and spray soaked her clothes. The wind was so sharp it cut right through her damp coat. The shivering began immediately.
Children cried. Goats screamed. Men vomited over the side. Despite the wind and the water, Thera found that she could smell her own sweat, cold and fearful.
Through it all Ashok remained as relentless as a machine in a worker’s factory. He had the rope, because that was where he could exert the most force. She watched the powerful muscles of his arms and back tense each time he pulled. Ashok was a tall, lean man, yet hard as iron. House Vane was the home of some of the most physically imposing warriors in Lok, but she had never seen anyone near as strong as Ashok. Each time he pulled she could feel the force through the wood beneath her knees.
It was his will versus the might of the river, and Ashok was winning.
“Our last barge trip together was far calmer.”
Ashok grimaced as he tugged the rope again. “I drowned that time.”
So much for conversation. They made the rest of the crossing in silence.
It was a violent journey, but with an effective rhythm, so they made good time. The grinding of their wooden planks against the sand of the south shore was the most welcoming sound Thera could imagine. The waiting warriors waded out to secure them, and then the other passengers stumbled off. To her, this shore appeared to be the exact same kind of terrain as the one they’d just left, but from the tribe’s whispers of wonderment it might as well have been a whole new world to them. The Wild Men rarely ventured out of their swamp. The Nansakar might as well have been the edge of the world.
Though beached, Ashok still held onto the rope, only now it was to keep himself upright. He looked exhausted, wrung out as if his body was a rag and strength made of water. She didn’t understand what manner of magic it was which made Protectors so tough, but Ashok must have temporarily let go of it once he was certain they were safe.
“You should rest, let someone else take your place at the rope.”
He shook his head. “It is better if I do it.”
It wasn’t just the physical strain that was making him weary, it was how much the river weighed on his spirit. Thera could have ordered him to stop, to stay on land with her, to let someone else bear the burden for a few trips, but she wouldn’t force him to. It would be better to order the river to flow uphill. He might not care for these people, but he would protect them, no matter what. With Ashok, words were irrelevant, all that mattered was deeds. He would always do what he thought was correct. The man who had sworn himself to her would never ever quit.
It was one thing to know something. It was something else to truly see it in action. Thera tilted her head in respect.
Eyes heavy lidded from exhaustion, he just looked back at her. Ashok probably didn’t even grasp the magnitude of the realization she’d just had about him.
Or maybe, he did…As Thera gathered her pack and began to get off the barge, Ashok reached out and caught her by the sleeve. “Wait.”
“Yes?”
“Our last time on a river together, I may have drowned, but you brought me back.”
She had saved his life, putting her mouth on his and forcing her air into his lungs, and then pushing on his chest like they were a bellows, until he coughed up water and started breathing again. “The casteless who work the rivers call that trick the breath of life.”
“I don’t recall if I ever properly thanked you for doing that.”
“On the contrary, you woke up ready to murder us all and accused me of witchcraft.”
“I regret that now.”
It was because she’d interrupted his plans. He’d wanted nothing more than to die, and he’d continued living only because he was obligated to. She was afraid to ask if that had changed.
“It’s fine…” Then Thera lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper so the fanatics wouldn’t hear. “Though I’ll say the second time our lips met was much more entertaining than the first.”
Ashok raised an eyebrow.
“Prophet! You made it. Excellent,” Toramana shouted. The leader of the Wild Men was a thickset man, and the entire barge shook as he climbed aboard. “Come, come, we’ve built a fire. Warm yourself and dry your clothes before you get sick.”
As Toramana began to usher her away, she glanced back at Ashok. “I’d like to see how the third time goes.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“It is.”
It was unusual to see Ashok smile. “Then I have further motivation not to drown.”
“Huh?” Toramana had no idea what they were whispering about as he placed some furs over Thera’s shoulders. “This way, Prophet, let’s get you warm. My hunters on this side have already caught a deer, two rabbits, and a snapping turtle. We are very skilled like that. We’ll eat well tonight. The gods are blessing this journey already.”
Most of her band weren’t staying close to the river. No sense in tempting demons. Their fires had been built on a rise two hundred yards inland. As the latest arrivals walked along on still wobbling legs, she couldn’t help but glance back over her shoulder.
With rested men aboard to take over the poles, they started back across the river. Ashok wasn’t even looking at her, he was once again focused on the rope with that single-minded determination of his. As she watched them shove off, a strange feeling came over her. Since her marriage had ended, she’d been with a few other men. When you lived as a criminal, you had to do whatever was necessary to survive. It was a lifestyle that required you to be harsh, ruthless, and mercenary, or you’d end up as prey. Women had few advantages. Sometimes that meant seducing a strong man just to have an ally.
She just wasn’t used to actually liking them.