Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [139]
"The wolves of Angra Mainyu are mighty hunters!" Tizrav greeted them in Old Persian. "Will you share our fire? We have beer," he added, hefting a skin.
"Why do you enter Drujan?" The leader lowered his bow a fraction. The others did not.
"Why?" Tizrav grinned. "This fine D'Angeline lordling has got himself in trouble and finds he has nowhere left to flee. Go and see, if you do not believe me. The guard at Demseen Fort has doubled and the lady's angry kinsmen are waiting. But my lordling here would sooner give her to the Mahrkagir if he will accept his sword in service."
The Drujani conversed among themselves in low tones, and my ear for Old Persian was not yet keen enough to decipher what they said. One of them laughed and rode forward. "Why should we believe you, Akkadian lick-spittle?" he asked, stroking Tizrav's cheek with the point of a nocked arrow. "Why should we ride to the border, when there is sport to be had here?”
To his credit, Tizrav did not flinch, even when the arrow's point scraped against his leather eyepatch. "My ancestors ranged these mountains when the House of Ur cowered in the deserts of the Umaiyyat. Do you disdain me for the sake of a line drawn on a map, son of darkness?"
Another of the Drujani spoke from the shadows beyond our campfire. I could not make out his face, only that he wore a girdle of bones about his waist, human finger-bones. Raising one hand, he pointed at me.
"Stand aside," Tizrav muttered urgently to Joscelin. "Stand aside!"
He paused, and then did, offering a sweeping Cassiline bow to the Drujani. Tizrav approached me where I knelt beside fire.
"Forgive me," Tizrav said under his breath, yanking back my veil.
The firelight was brighter without the sheer panel of silk before my eyes and I blinked against it, gazing up at the Drujani. Two of the riders startled; one laughed. The one who had pointed fingered his girdle of bones, and a slow smile spread across the face of the leader. It was not a pleasant smile.
"She is for the Mahrkagir?" he asked.
"I have sworn it." It was Joscelin who spoke in crude Persian, his voice raw.
The Drujani with the finger-bones murmured to his leader, who listened intently and nodded. The girded one, I thought, must be some manner of novice, an apprentice-priest. "The embers of despair gutter in your spirit, lordling," the leader said to Joscelin. "Is it as the goat-thief says? Are you willing to swear your sword unto darkness?"
I bit my tongue, longing to translate for him, but Joscelin understood well enough. The skin was tight over his high cheekbones. "Drujan died and lives. I am dead to my family. If I may live again in the Mahrkagir's service, his sword is mine." There was genuine anguish in the words. How much truth? My heart bled to wonder. I could not begin to reckon the price of what I'd asked of him.
It was enough to convince the apprentice-priest.
"Men will embrace anything to live," he said in a young, hard voice. "Even darkness. Even death. What of the woman?"
"You see her." Joscelin gestured at me. "As faithless as she is beautiful, a servant of our goddess of— " the word twisted in his mouth, "—whores."
It was the Habiru word he used, but close enough, it seemed. The Drujani conferred and settled on a translation, and the apprentice-priestlaughed, high and breathless, before whispering to the leader.
Who smiled his unpleasant smile. "The Mahrkagir will be pleased," he said, putting up his bow. "You see, his mother was a whore." He jerked his chin at Tizrav. "We will believe you, lick-spittle, and ride to Demseen Fort to count the guards. If you are lying, we will find you and have much sport. If you are not..." He smiled again. "Well, she may pray that you were."
And with that, they were gone, melding into the darkness