Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [279]
We lived, for the most part, on game.
And when we could not get it fresh, we went hungry, for most of what we carried had spoiled. Mercifully, there was water in abundance, and lush grass for our mounts. Would that we could have eaten the same! But Tifari and Bizan brought down game enough between them to fill our bellies two days out of three, and where we followed the river, Joscelin was able to fish. The fish, at least, didn't mind the rains.
Flies continued to plague us, and illness. Yedo, one of the bearers, caught a fever that laid us up for three days. At its worst, he raved incoherently, and his brow, when I felt it, was dry and burning for all the moisture about us. Willow bark might have helped, had we any, but we didn't. I sat with him through the night, sponging his brow, remembering Ismene, the Hellene girl who had died after we left Darśanga.
Ismene died. Yedo lived, the fever breaking before dawn, leaving him wrung-out and sweating freely in the damp air. Who can say why?
And then we broke camp once more, and slogged onward, treading through the sucking mire, making our slow way toward Meroë. The saddles chafed our horses and their proud Umaiyyati heads hung low, sodden manes plastered on drenched hides. It went no better for the donkeys, bearing heavy packs. We treated the sores with powderedsulphur, which turned to a damp paste in the humid air. It didn't help, much. Nothing did. Where there were sores, the blood-flies laid eggs at night. Imriel and I grew deft at picking them out, our fingers smaller than the rest.
"You could have been at court," I reminded him. "Eating poached quails' eggs and sugared violets from a silver platter."
He scowled at me from beneath his dripping burnoose. "I would rather be here."
To his credit, Imriel never complained—and he kept up with our company, his boy's hands grown adept at handling the reins of his gelding. The frailty of Daršanga's ravages had concealed a wiry strength and he had, Elua be thanked, a strong constitution. While the rest of us coughed, itched, ached and stung, beset by flies and agues and thorns, Imri remained hale. The worst injury he took was a fierce sunburn from riding bareheaded in the clear morning hours, his sodden burnoose hung from his saddle to dry.
I may say, once again, that without Tifari Amu and the others, we would have been hopelessly lost a dozen times over, wandering the highlands to catch sight of the river where it cut, deep and rushing, through gorges. Despite my best efforts to protect it, Raj Lijasu's map got soaked in the omnipresent rains, the ink running until the markings were blurred and unreadable. In the mountains, Tifari took the lead; in the plains, it was Bizan. And the bearers—Nkuku, Yedo, Bomani and Najja—contributed in no small part.
In this manner did we make our way north across Jebe-Barkal, mile by weary mile. We saw no other human life, which was as well, for our passage-tokens from Meroë were battered and mudcaked and wholly unrecognizable. We saw lions, at a distance, and my heart leapt at the sight. It was in the early morning, across the rain-washed plains, sun-gilded steam rising in the dawning heat of day. They'd made a kill, or found one—lions, Bizan told us, were nothing loathe to scavenge—and surrounded it, five females and a single male.
"Look," he said, pointing across the broad expanse of the river.
We drew our mounts to watch them worry an antelope's carcass, safe on the far side of the Tabara. I marked the awesome power of them, how muscles surged beneath their tawny hides. The syllables of the Name of God tolled within my mind, enumerating them in every part. One of the females lifted her bloodstained muzzle, gazing at us. The male padded to the river's edge, pacing back and forth, shaking his massive