Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

The wheelhouse obstructed the others’ view; they had not missed their companion yet.

“Did you see an arrow?” Ott demanded.

“No, Master,” said Hercol. “But look at the prisoners now.”

The youth was being held with his forehead to the deck, but the sack on the other’s head had been pulled off. Ott could make out none of his features, but somehow, even on his knees, there was pride in his bearing. He twisted about to look up at his captors. Suddenly he cried aloud:

“Don’t you know the law? It is death to touch me.”

“That is no soldier!” hissed Hercol as one of the captors kicked the kneeling figure in the stomach. “That is Prince Olik!”

“By damn, it is!” said Alyash. “Well, well-he did say he wasn’t popular. But it’s not our problem, Stanapeth. You wanted to go for the Nilstone tonight. You can’t play hero-to-the-fish-eyes as well.”

“Alyash! We are looking at regicide!”

“You are-I’m looking at dawn in the east. Think a moment, you softhearted fool. Dastu and your little girly will be waiting outside that blary nuthouse before long. Are you going to just leave ’em there? Oh, devil’s arse!”

A second bowman was down. This one crumpled forward onto his knees and remained that way, chin to chest. Still the executioners at the bow saw nothing-they were bending the struggling prince over the rail, holding him by his arms and his hair, and one was testing the sharpness of a knife-but this time Ott caught a glimpse of something tiny and airborne lifting away from the fallen bowman.

Alyash was ready to burst. “Do you know what that was? It was a crawly in one of their wing-suits! That prince has crawlies working for him! But it’s a bit late all the same.”

The dlomu was lowering his knife to Olik’s throat.

“A good, quick death,” said Alyash. “That prince will hardly feel a-”

Ott’s bow sang. The dlomu with the knife staggered backward, with a surprisingly low cry of pain considering that the arrow had passed through his leg above the knee.

Hercol was already sprinting for the boat. Ott rose and followed. “You mucking bastards!” Alyash roared behind them, but he came on too. Ott was his commander, and he knew just how far insubordination could go.

The dlomu had seen them, were scattering, drawing their weapons. The deck was some ten feet forward and thirty feet below the rim of the berth. Hercol flung himself into space, and Ott followed, and wanted to scream with the joy of it, free fall, the longest since his leap through the palace window in Ormael, and slaughter at the end of it, beside the best man he’d ever trained. He made it as far as the rigging-of course he did, a given-brought down bushels of the rotten canvas, turned as he fell, and had a yard of sound rope pulled taut between his hands to catch the first blow aimed at him. The dlomu was crushed under his knees; the sword was gone; Ott whipped the rope around his neck in a blur and jerked and that was one of them, still kicking but dead, and then almost wondering why he did it Ott rolled, and took the body with him, held tight by the twisted rope, and felt the prick of his next foe’s blade pass through the man and half an inch, no more, into his own chest. He kicked. The dlomu tumbled. They were trained but not sufficiently; Hercol had slain two at least. Ott’s next kick disarmed his opponent. He felt a webbed hand claw at his face, seized it, wrenched himself atop the dlomu. As his elbow crushed the other’s heart Ott found himself saddened at the thought of an Empire forced to rely on such mediocre assassins. Give me a year with them. They’d never be the same.

His sadness did not last long, however. Their final opponent was fleeing. Ott assumed he’d try to break over the plank onto solid ground, and the dlomu at first seemed intent on doing just that. But something overcame him as he ran, and oddly, he veered away from the plank around the starboard side of the wheelhouse, like a runner circling a very small track. And when he emerged to portside the spymaster thought for an instant that he’d been replaced by someone else. The dlomu was singing-a weird, wordless noise-and what had been a clumsy fighter was suddenly Great Gods!

They clashed. The man was his equal; Ott was forced backward, his moves defensive; the keening dlomu was suddenly imbued with a speed and grace that would be the envy of any fighter alive. He wasn’t thinking; he was possessed. When Alyash came at him with his cutlass the dlomu spun away from Ott, his thin sword whistling, falling short of the bosun’s jugular by a quarter inch. Hercol was in the fight as well, now, but the three of them, for Rin’s sake, were barely holding the man at bay. Ott danced backward and nocked an arrow. The man sensed it somehow, pressed after him; Ott had to twist the bow around to save his own neck from that damnable, flimsy-looking sword. Another spin; Hercol leaped backward, sucking in his chest; Ott twisted, and felt the sword’s tip graze his jaw.

Rage, and the certainty of time running out, awoke something long dormant in Ott. He leaped straight up, mouthing a bitten-off curse from campaigns long ago. His foot lashed out; the singing ceased. The dlomu fell with a broken neck upon the boards.

“Great flames, what a fighter!” said Alyash, gasping for breath.

“What happened to that man?” said Hercol. “He was the weakest of them all. He was hanging back, terrified, only darting with his sword.”

“Don’t you know?” said a voice behind them. “It was the nuhzat, gentlemen. You could see it in his eyes. Here now, won’t you help that boy, before he falls?”

The hooded youth was bent over, trying to pull off the sack over his head by pinching it between his knees. Hercol steadied him, then wrenched the sack away. It was the village boy, Ibjen. He was nearly hysterical with fear, and jumped away from the bodies on the deck. “The nuhzat!” he cried.

“You needn’t speak the word as if it means ‘plague,’ ” said Olik. Then, turning to the others, he said, “You saved our lives. May the Watchers shower you with favor.”

“The nuhzat!” cried the boy again.

“Silence, you fool!” hissed Alyash. But of course it was too late: the dead man’s singing had been as loud as a scream. Ott looked up at the Chathrand and saw the row of lanterns, the mob of dlomic soldiers, gazing at them over the empty berth. They were repeating the same strange word, nuhzat, nuhzat, murmuring it in fear and doubt.

“But Ibjen, it is perfectly natural,” the prince was saying as Hercol cut their wrist-bonds. “Dlomu have had the nuhzat since the dawn of our race.”

“Natural, my prince? Natural as death, perhaps. We must get away from these bodies, wash ourselves, wash and pray.”

The soldiers on the Chathrand were growing louder, more frantic.

“You realize,” said Alyash, “that we’re not taking another step toward the Great Ship? We’ll be lucky to get out of here with our skins.”

Hercol turned to Olik. “What is this nuhzat you speak of?” he demanded.

“Why, a state of mind,” said the prince (at this Ibjen broke into a sobbing sort of laughter). “It is a place we go inside ourselves, in times of the most intense feeling. Or used to: it has almost disappeared today. A pity, for it offers much. It is the door to poetry and genius, and many other things. Very rarely it manifests as fighting prowess. But there’s an old saying: In the nuhzat you may meet with anything save that which you expect. Usually only dlomu can experience the state, but in the old days a small number of humans were able to learn it as well.”

“Learn it? Learn it!” Ibjen threw up his hands.

“If they counted dlomu among their loved ones,” added the prince. “And strangely enough those humans were the last to become tol-chenni.”