K Parker - Evil for Evil

As if making fun of his self-induced melodrama, the oasis appeared suddenly out of nowhere about two hours before dusk. It had been hiding from them in a little saucer of dead ground, and the first Valens knew of it was when he hauled himself up the scarp of a dune and realized he was looking straight at the top of a tall tree. He was too tired to run toward it, or even to yell for joy; good, he thought, and carried on plodding. As he approached, the oasis rose politely out of the saucer to greet him. A stand of spindly trees, about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by a neat lawn of wiry green grass, fringed with hunched-up thorn bushes; beyond question the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life. He kept going until he was a hundred yards from the edge of the lawn, just in case it turned out not to be real; but when the sun sparkled on something in the middle of the stand of trees, he realized that he hadn't got the strength to cover the last stage of the journey. He sat down awkwardly in the sand and started to cry.

Presumably someone came along and helped him the rest of the way, because at some point he found himself standing on the edge of a pan of rusty brown water. It appeared to be full of Vadani, who'd waded in up to their shoulders and necks. Some of them were swimming in it; others were conscientiously watering their horses on the edge, their clothes dripping wet, their hair plastered down on their foreheads. They'd brought no barrels or water-bottles with them down the mountain, because water weighs ten pounds a gallon.

"There, you see?" Vaatzes' voice buzzing in his ear. "Just like I said it'd be. Piece of cake."

Brown, gritty water, more than they could possibly drink; but you can't eat water. They were talking about slaughtering the horses while there was still some meat on their bones.

"Or," suggested Ziani Vaatzes, "we could send a message to your in-laws and ask them for some food. It'd only be polite to let them know we're here."

The rest of the general staff looked at him as though he was mad. Valens thought for a moment.

"Not a bad idea," he said. "Assuming I can find volunteers. And assuming horses can go faster than men in this shit."

"I believe so," Vaatzes replied. "At least, that's the impression I got from the journals. According to the merchant, once you've crossed the desert, if you keep going straight on you come to the big salt pan, and there's always people there, even when the rest of the tribe's moved on. They keep a good stock of food and forage-not sure it'll be enough to last all of us very long, but anything we can get must be better than nothing. The main assumption will be that they've heard of you. I don't know how closely the ordinary Aram Chantat follows current affairs. I'd have thought the marriage of the crown princess would've counted as big news, but you never know. The danger is that if they don't know who we are, they'll swoop down and cut us to pieces for being foreign."

(The journals had been right about the sheds that the merchant had built here; the pen for the mules, the cover and even the grain bins. They turned out to be empty, of course.)

"I'm prepared to risk that," Valens replied confidently. "If I was bothered about that side of things, I'd be more worried about showing up without my dear wife. They'd only have my word for it that the Mezentines killed her; besides, even if they believed me, letting your wife get killed suggests a degree of carelessness that they might be reluctant to forgive. I wish now I'd taken the trouble to find out a bit more about the way they think."

Eventually, after a painfully embarrassing silence, Major Nennius volunteered. He set off with an escort of twelve very unenthusiastic troopers, leading a change of horses loaded with supplies. In his saddlebag was a carefully traced copy of the map, and a letter of credentials addressed to the Aram Chantat. The look on his face as he rode away reminded Valens unsettlingly of Orsea on his way to execution.

A full two days to reach the second oasis. No longer even any pretense that the food crisis was under control. Civilians couldn't be trusted to carry what little was left, and the soldiers were having trouble coping with the begging and screaming of mothers with hungry children; their friends, neighbors, relatives. At least a dozen horses were killed during the night; the carcasses were stripped bare in minutes, and fights broke out over the marrow in the bones. It didn't make it easier to handle to realize that it was panic, the fear of hunger rather than hunger itself. The worst side effect was exhaustion. Men and women who'd been rioting and scuffling all night had trouble keeping up during the day. Valens could no longer be induced to listen to the reports. He'd become obsessed with the idea that he could see a dust-cloud closing in rapidly on them from behind, the occasional flash of light. The fact that nobody else could see anything had no effect on his conviction. There was no point talking to him, the officers said, he wasn't listening. With Nennius gone, generally presumed dead, it was anybody's guess who was in charge. The officers went through their routines, more to occupy their minds than out of duty or hope. Nobody knew who had the map, or who was navigating, or who was in the lead. Reaching the second oasis inspired no celebrations, and nobody waded in up to the neck in the water this time.

Early the next day, Valens left his tent (for the last time; he'd given orders for it to be jettisoned as surplus weight). He washed quickly in the brown water of the oasis, then sat down under a tree to comb his hair. It was a last flicker of vanity, which had never been a particular fault of his at the best of times-his clothes were torn and caked in sand, all the work that had gone into them wasted, and he'd never cared about how he looked, provided that he looked like a duke; today, however, he took the trouble, because it really didn't matter anymore. His reflection in the water was thin and indistinct, so he combed more or less by feel. It wasn't a face he particularly wanted to see, in any case.

But there was another face looking down into the water beside his. He jumped up, slipping in the sandy mud and catching his balance just in time.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I startled you."

Valens, lost for words. "That's all right," he said.

Of course he hadn't seen her since Orsea died. He hadn't even asked after her, sent anybody to see how she was. The fact that she was here told him she'd managed to get over the mountains and across the desert. She looked terrible, in fact: her hair tangled, her face red in patches from the sun, the hem of her dress filthy, her shoes (stupid little satin sandals, believe it or not) wrecked like a barn blown down in a storm. She walked slowly over to him-she was limping-and sat down, her heels in the mud like a little girl.

"I wanted to tell you," she said. "I don't blame you."

If there was anything about himself that Valens was proud of, it was his ability to know if someone was lying to him. He tried not to exercise it.

"I'm absolutely furious with Orsea." She made it sound like he'd come home drunk and been sick in the wardrobe. "It was such a stupid thing to do. And so typical. If only he'd told me, I'd have talked him out of it, I know. It'll have been his idea of doing the right thing. I imagine they told him I'd be safe if he-"

"That's right," Valens heard himself say. "It's pretty clear from the letter we found that that's what the deal was."

"Letters!" She laughed. "Who'd have thought squiggles on a bit of dried sheepskin could cause so much trouble in the world. Letters and good intentions; and the other thing."

No need to ask what the other thing was.

"I had to do it," Valens ground on; he felt like he was wading in mud, and each time he dragged his boot out, his other foot sank in even deeper. "I couldn't have covered it up; if people had found out, I wouldn't have been able to lead them anymore, and they needed someone to get them-"