Ричард Морган - The Dark Defiles

Egar shot Barla a warning look.

“Sleep is a great healer,” the doctor said smoothly. “It unmounts the rider of consciousness so that the horse—the body—may rest from its exertions and recover from any wounds it has sustained. The wise rider does not attempt to mount an ill-used horse too soon.”

Durhan was not appeased. “Don’t fucking talk to me about horses, you city-dwelling twat. I asked you when he’s going to wake up.”

“Couple of days,” Egar improvised rapidly. “Right, Doc?”

Barla nodded. “Yes, I was going to say. Given the nature of his wounds, a few days should suffice.”

Durhan’s companion—a blunt, taciturn Ishlinak by the name of Gart—nodded slowly and fixed Egar with a speculative look.

“You sure about that, Dragonbane?” he rumbled. “Couple of days? That’s the word you want put out?”

Egar feigned lack of concern. “You heard the bone man.”

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t want to be you or your pet bone man here, three days hence, if Klarn still hasn’t made it back. That happens, the brothers are going to take it hard.”

“That happens,” Durhan echoed, “the brothers are going to want blood.”

Egar grinned fiercely, no need to fake it this time. “Anyone wants blood, that can be arranged. You just tell them to come see the Dragonbane.”

Alarm on Salbak Barla’s face, but the two Majak just grunted acknowledgment. It was steppe custom, close enough. It would wash.

“Couple of days it is,” said Gart.

“Yeah.” Durhan nodded at the doctor. “You keep him well, bone man, you hear? If you know what’s good for you.”

“Right, good.” Egar, shepherding them out of the bedchamber. “Now get everybody off the stairs and about their business. I want a sickbed honor vigil out there at most—five men or less, cool heads. You pick them. And no more shaking down the locals in the meantime. We need that shit like a pony needs skates.”

Durhan balked. “Tand’s men—”

“The lady Archeth has gone to deal with Tand. That’s her end, this is ours. You get the brothers straightened out for me, we’ll talk about the rest later.”

He got them to the door, ejected them into the hall, and nodded to Rakan’s men to close up again. Through the wooden panels of the door, he heard Gart’s voice raised against a growing storm of questions in Majak. He closed his eyes, allowed himself the brief moment.

Here we go again.

Back in Yhelteth, he’d sworn he was done giving other men orders. He wanted no rank, he wanted no responsibility. He’d tagged along on the expedition for a whole tangle of reasons that he now had trouble teasing apart, but longing for command was not one of them. There was gratitude to Ringil, some vague sense of obligation to Archeth—he was, after all, supposed to be her bodyguard these days—and the common-sense discretion attached to getting out of town after his clash with clan Ashant. And underlying, he knew, was a generous helping of nostalgia for the camaraderie of the war years. The quest had felt like the war again, at least the preparatory part. But he’d reasoned that while there might indeed be some fighting along the way—pirates, unruly locals, maybe finally the minions of this long undead warlord they couldn’t seem to find—still, he’d thought he could take his place in the line without having to worry about what other men thought or feared or needed.

Yeah, some fucking chance.

He went back through to the bedchamber, found Barla fastening up his satchel and looking distinctly queasy. He manufactured an easy grin.

“Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll walk you out.”

“Is that, uh…” The doctor swallowed. “Really necessary?”

“No, probably not,” Egar lied. “But it’s best not to take any chances, tempers the way they are right now.”

Also best not to mention that for most of Shendanak’s crew, the ones who hadn’t been off the steppe longer than a couple of years, a doctor was just a shaman without the Sky Dwellers to call upon. And fail to deliver the magical goods without the gods at your back, you could end up in a ditch with a slit throat—he’d seen it happen more than once to itinerant doctors from the south in Ishlin-ichan.

“Yes, well, uhm.” Barla put both hands on the closed satchel and looked down at it, as if considering a rapid change of profession. “Thank you. But could not captain Rakan and his men, uh…?”

“Better if it’s me.” Egar’s smile was starting to feel like smeared jam on his face. “Come on, let’s get you back aboard the Pride. Shanta could probably use another one of those stinking herbal infusions you make, and he won’t drink it if you’re not there to force it down.”

In the other chamber, Rakan heard the plan and nodded agreement with barely a word. He was a pretty shrewd lad for his age; he saw the sense in this. But as his men got the door, he beckoned Egar aside for a moment and the Dragonbane saw how his youth leaked through the façade of soldierly calm.

“When do you think my lord Ringil will return?” he asked quietly.

Egar shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine, Captain. A day there by boat, they said. A day back. That’s two, plus a day to do the digging and rest…”

“It’s been four days already. What if something’s wrong?”

“Well, they might have a hard time finding the grave marker, sure. Or, if the weather’s against them—”

“No.” Rakan’s voice grew tighter, lower. “Not that. What if this time he found the Illwrack Changeling?”

Near the opened door, Salbak Barla cleared his throat. Egar shot a glance that way, saw Rakan’s men hanging off their captain’s every word. He pitched his own voice loud and brisk.

“If that has happened, Captain, then pity the Changeling. Because Gil’s going to be bringing us his head on a spike and his balls wrapped around the haft.”

It raised weak grins among the men, which he counted a victory of sorts. He wagged a finger in salute at Rakan, led Barla out the door.

To his relief, both corridor and stairs outside were cleared of men. Durhan and Gart appeared to have followed their instructions to the letter. Downstairs in the tavern’s main bar, four Majak sat at a table, burning a blessing taper and playing halfheartedly at dice. Serving staff and a couple of local patrons aside, they were the bar’s only occupants. They grew quieter as the doctor and the Dragonbane came down the stairs, but they all lowered their eyes with appropriate respect. Egar paused at the table and sketched obeisance at the taper, nodded acknowledgment at the man he judged the eldest. Then he ushered Salbak Barla past, one proprietary hand on the doctor’s shoulder for all to see.

He felt their stares at his back, all the way to tavern’s front door.

Out in the street, it was still raining and the daylight had all but given up. A damp gray gloom hung over everything. Ornley had no formal street lighting, even here on League street, one of the town’s main thoroughfares. There was a local ordinance commanding residents to burn candles in their windows during the hours of darkness, but around here this kind of murk apparently didn’t count as dark, so—no candles yet. Egar and the doctor picked their way with care over rain-slick cobbles they could barely make out, and presently the street began to slope downward toward the harbor.

“What will you do if Shendanak does not waken in three days?” Barla asked him when they’d negotiated a hairpin curve that took them out of sight of the tavern.

“I’ll think of something.”

“That’s very reassuring.”

Egar shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Maybe he’ll be up and about day after tomorrow. I didn’t hit him that hard in the head.”