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palm on her forehead, he had to fight to keep from jerking it away she burned
with fever. Her pulse was fast and weak and thready. She moaned, but it was
only gibberish. She had no idea where she was or who was with her.
"What can you do, holy sir?" the peasant said. "She means everything to me and
my lad."
"I do not think a healer can help her now," Rhavas said, and the man groaned
as if stabbed. Behind him, the boy started to cry.
Gathering himself, the man asked, "What is there to do, then?"
"I see two choices," Rhavas answered. "You can let her go on as she is, let
her go on suffering, or you can ease her pain."
"Knock her over the head like she was a horse with a busted leg?" The peasant
made a horrible face. "I
couldn't do that. I'd want to drown myself as soon as I did."
"I can," Rhavas said. "It would be very quick, very simple, and then she would
be at peace."
"No." The farmer shook his head. "I wanted you to cure her, by Phos, not kill
her. What kind of priest are you, anyways?"
That was a better question than the weathered man knew. Rhavas had to hope his
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face did not betray him. "Have it your way, then," he said, and stalked out of
the hut. The peasant's question still burned in his ears. "Curse you all," he
muttered under his breath.
The woman had been moaning, the man praying beside her, and the boy still
snuffling. Sudden silence slammed down inside the house. Rhavas had been about
to remount his Khamorth pony. Instead, he looked in once more. Now the woman
lay quiet. Her husband sprawled beside her, equally still. The boy had fallen
nearer the door.
Rhavas shrugged. Now they were all at peace. The farmer had asked what kind of
priest he was. He couldn't tell the man, so he'd shown him instead. And none
of the family would ever need another lesson.
This time, Rhavas did climb onto the steppe pony. He rode away without a
backward glance. What were three more bodies behind him? Skopentzana lay on
his conscience.
On my head be it
, he'd said, and on his head it was. Ingegerd lay on his conscience, unless
she counted as part of Skopentzana. The same applied to Koubatzes. And that
priest in Podandos lay on his conscience, too. Tryphon had also wanted to know
what kind of priest Rhavas was. Like the peasant and his family, he'd found
out. Also like the peasant and his family, he hadn't had and wouldn't have the
chance to do anything with what he'd learned.
Wearing the blue robe of a priest of Phos when he no longer believed in the
good god's primacy had irked Rhavas. Now, all at once, he laughed. There were
spiders that looked like the flowers on and among which they sat. Insects
never suspected them till too late. Was it not the same with him?
He came up to yet another checkpoint of Stylianos'. The soldiers there did not
seem to want to let him go on. That bothered him not only because it was a
nuisance but also because it upset his sense of logic and order. "Why hold me
back when so many of your men have let me go forward?" he exclaimed.
"You say you've been through other checkpoints," one of the men said.
Rhavas resented being reckoned a liar over such a small thing, especially when
he was actually telling the truth. "Look at me!" he said angrily. "Haven't I
been traveling for some little while?
Smell me, if looking at me won't give you clue enough. How could I have come
along this highway and not gone through a swarm of your miserable
checkpoints?"
Stylianos' soldiers muttered among themselves. Finally, with some obvious
reluctance, they let him go.
"You're not a spy," said the man who'd spoken before. "You wouldn't make such
a mouthy nuisance of yourself if you was a spy."
"Were." Rhavas automatically corrected him.
"See what I mean?" The soldier rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb to the west.
"Go on. Get out of here."
Thus encouraged, Rhavas did. He found more trees in which to encamp that
evening. Not long after he
went off the road, a troop of eastbound horsemen trotted along it. He counted
himself lucky that they hadn't seen him.
He didn't know whether he found himself lucky to be falling asleep in the
woods again. If he kept dreaming about falling off the Bridge of the Separator
. . . No, he didn't want to do that more than once.
He hadn't wanted to do it once, in fact.
Because he was so nervous about it, he lay some time awake. But when he did
fall asleep, he slept soundly. No dreams troubled him. The next thing he knew,
sunbeams sneaking through the branches overhead woke him.
He ate the last of the bread in his saddlebags, then started riding again.
Before long, he came upon . . . a checkpoint. He felt like cursing the
soldiers there just because they were an annoyance. Then one of their officers
asked, "What do you want, priest, coming out of the rebel's territory?"
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"You favor Maleinos?" Rhavas said in glad surprise.
"Yes, we do. But what about you?" the horseman growled.
Another officer stirred and stared. "Very holy sir! Don't you know me, very
holy sir?"
A lump of ice like Skopentzana winter formed in Rhavas' belly. He nodded
jerkily. "Yes, I know you, Himerios."
IX
Himerios and Rhavas rode toward the city of Videssos side by side. To Rhavas'
dismay, Himerios had no trouble getting leave from his superior. The other
officer just said, "Yes, go on do what you need to do."
"I know Skopentzana is lost," Himerios said now. "That news came down here
some time ago. I had heard you'd got free of the sack, but did not know if it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]