Markswoman (Asiana #1)(69)
Rustan laid Samant’s blade on his chest and reached for the elder’s hand. It was dry and burning hot. Samant shuddered and opened his eyes.
“It’s all right, Elder,” said Rustan softly, “I’m here now, and so is your katari. As soon as you’re well enough to ride, I’m taking you to Herat to be treated by a medicine woman.”
Samant looked through him, unseeing. Rustan forced a few spoonfuls of sugar water into his mouth and, after a few minutes, the elder slipped back into sleep. Rustan leaned back on the mud-daubed wall, numb with weariness. He had ridden hard and fast across the Empty Place to reach the Hub of Kashgar, stopping only for a few hours every afternoon to rest his camel.
But no matter how hard he’d ridden, he hadn’t been able to get away from Kyra. Her face, words, and gestures were seared into his mind. Every step that he took farther away from her only sharpened his pain.
His anger toward her and Shurik had begun to cool as soon as he mounted his camel and left the camp of Khur. He regretted leaving abruptly without a word of explanation or farewell. But what could he have said that didn’t sound forced or melodramatic?
On the way to Kashgar, with only his camel for company under the silent stars, Rustan had allowed himself the luxury of emotion—grief for the one who had gone, fear for the one who stood poised on the edge.
He would find Samant and return to Kashgar, he’d decided. If he hurried, he could make it back before they all left for Sikandra Fort. He could at least say goodbye to Kyra, and wish her well.
Then he’d arrived in the village of the Ersanis, and Samant’s plight had taken precedence over everything else.
Now he longed to sleep, but he didn’t dare let down his guard, not with Samant in this perilous state and the Ersanis gathered outside the death hut, muttering darkly to each other. No telling what they might do if they thought a stranger was interfering with the directives of their ancestral spirits. Burn the hut down with the two Marksmen inside it, maybe.
But the death hut was too precious for the Ersanis to burn. It was where they laid their dying kin to feed the spirits of their ancestors. That was the only reason Rustan hadn’t moved Samant yet. It was currently the safest place for them in the entire village.
Samant’s breathing came shallow and uneven. Rustan closed his eyes and prayed that his breath would not stop. Samant was the Master of Meditation; at one time, many years ago, he had even taught Barkav. It was his skill, perhaps, that had kept him alive in the last ten days of utter isolation, without food or water, fever devouring his flesh and his katari buried in the soil beneath the entrance of the hut. An offering to the spirits, the Ersanis had told Rustan. Had been forced to tell him. He’d been surprised at their resistance, at the intensity of the Inner Speech he’d been compelled to use to get their compliance.
He could hear their thoughts: it wasn’t fair, depriving the spirits of what was rightfully theirs. The old Marksman was sick, he was meant to die. Another day or two and he would have died. Not their fault. Not anybody’s fault. And then that young one had to come along, digging up the blade offering, entering the death hut. No one was supposed to enter the death hut and live.
Right when Rustan captured that thought, and sensed the approach of the six terrified men who had been ordered to attack him, an alien smell hit his nostrils—a strong, musky odor, like that of a wolf. Rustan’s eyes flew open and he leaped to his feet, heart thudding.
It was a wolf. No, not an ordinary wolf. A wyr-wolf. It sat on its haunches just inside the door of the hut, a massive, gray-furred beast exuding an aura of power, regarding him out of pale yellow eyes. Though he should have been frightened, it was awe and wonder that swept through Rustan. It was the first time he had ever seen a wyr-wolf, although, like every Marksman, he had heard many stories about them.
And then the men burst inside the hut, moving through the wyr-wolf as if it did not exist.
Stunned as he was, Rustan had ample time to withdraw his katari. He could have killed the first with a quick thrust, spun around to stab the second, used the Inner Speech to immobilize the rest, and dispatched them one by one. It would have taken a lot out of him, but he could have done it.
Yet he didn’t. He had read the men’s intentions as soon as they entered. Stay your hand, a quiet voice told him, even though it went against his training, against his own instinct for self-preservation.
He was never sure, later on, whose voice it was. The wyr-wolf, who had by now vanished from the hut, if indeed it had ever been there? Or the blade that smoldered against his side? Or was it a voice from within, born of his own guilt?
It took every ounce of self-control he possessed, but Rustan stayed his hand. He let the men grapple him to the ground and tie his hands and feet. The katari they could not touch—it burned the hands of those who tried to take it, right through the scabbard.
The men dragged Rustan out of the hut into the afternoon sun and rolled him to the feet of the waiting shaman. Men and women cheered and gathered more closely around them. Rustan spat dirt and squashed his misgivings. He had done right, and if he was going to be lynched by a mob gone out of control, then so be it.
“We have no quarrel with you, Marksman,” said the shaman, a thin, bony man in a sheepskin robe. “But if you interfere with our rites, it will bring ruin on us all. The elder must die peacefully and be absorbed into our spirit world. If you object, then you must join him.”