Kill the Dead(41)

Groaning, he submerged, arms, eyes, flesh, mind, full of the girl. All his sight was paleness and darkness, and he could only smell fragrant skin and hair. Her pressure against him was unendurable and he would die without it, and his hands made magic, passing over her, and hers magic in his hair, along his sides, locking him with a fierce strength into the single position he wished to obtain, retain, remain in, cry out in, perish in—

The water exploded.

Thunder caught him by the hair, the shoulder. He was dragged backward. Where he had adhered to her, his body seemed to tear like rent cloth. He yelled insanely, hearing himself. He flailed with his empty arms, sprawled, went down. Water sprang over his head; he gulped it, trying to drink his way back to the air. Something pulled him from the water, turned him. A savage clout across the head rocked him. He half fell again into another hard resilient mass, which in turn dragged him once more.

Crowing for breath, blinded, crazy, he landed on his knees on iron-like earth. He hung his head and coughed water. And the instrument also coughed water from its sound box. As his eyes cleared, he beheld four slender horse legs, shod in metal, pecking at the soil in front of him. And behind those, another four, and another four.

Delight had turned to a dull physical ache. He felt sick. He was afraid. Gradually, he heard the silence of the girl in the pool, and half turning, he glimpsed her. Her face was raw with rage and terror.

Out of his own terror, Myal made himself look up, beyond the legs of the horses.

They wore mail, the three men, and great cloaks, furled like wings. A murky jewel flashed on a hand or wrist. Another smouldered muddy red. Unfriendly faces made of marble and framed by unfriendly courtly wavelets of hair glared at Myal, then at the pool, the girl.

“You,” one of the men said, not looking at Myal.

“Me?” asked Myal.

“You are a fool, to go with that. Don’t you know live flesh from necrophilia?”

Myal choked. He crawled into a bush and attempted to throw up. None of them interfered with him. He heard a dim ominous exchange over his dry spasms. The three riders, some duke’s bodyguard or earl’s men from the look of them, were haranguing the girl in the pool. They called her filthy names, the word “deadalive” was mingled contemptuously among them. They did not fear her, so much was obvious. They spat on the ground, saying she was a thief. They promised her weird punishments that had to do with graves, worms, flames, wheels. And she, she shrieked back at them, her voice high as a bat’s.

Myal slumped on his side, the instrument wedged under his shoulder blade, his knees under his chin. He had some vague incentive to crawl away, to get out of the wood and up the slope, to Parl Dro. Before he could realise the ambition, one of the riders came over, leaned from the saddle, and yanked Myal back again onto open turf. The rider glared at Ciddey.

“There are punishments for those who consort with stray ghosts. The forest hereabouts is rife with bloody undead. Didn’t you know? Those who harbour them or encourage the deadalive, deserve to join them. Not gently, either. Like to know some penalties?”

“No, thank you,” said Myal politely.

“I’ll tell you anyway. There’s one school of thought which advocates slashing off the offending part—a hand, say, if you gave them a hand to hold; an ear, if you listened to them, and a tongue if you spoke to them. In your case, rather a nasty amputation, in view of what you were considering doing.”

It was so vile, it had to be a joke.

Myal laughed queasily. The men laughed, loud and long, riding around and around him, making his head spin. Then one spurred his horse straight into the pool. The animal looked fearsome as it leaped, eyes rolling, mane flying, the ivory counters of its teeth bared. As the forehoofs hit the water, the rider’s hand whirled up, gripping a cleaver of sword. Myal saw Ciddey’s white face flung back and the sword crashing down on it. He imagined the impact of skin and bone, green-cinder eyes, kissing mouth, with honed excruciating steel. Someone threw a colourless bag over his head and her scream became a long thin whistle, or a long thin wire, and ceased to matter.

He came to, lying face down in a horse’s mane, legs either side in an uncomfortable riding posture, hands securely tied under the beast’s neck.

The horse was running. Two other horses ran, one on each side. The right-hand horse had two riders, the left seemed strangely overcrowded too, but its nearer rider held the reins of Myal’s horse firmly in his fist.

Everything had ended, inevitably, in misery, mistake and injustice.