Megan Lindholm - Luck Of The Wheels

Ki saw him release the man. She saw it in Goat's face, in the sudden slumping of his narrow shoulders. She didn't have to turn to see the lynchman tumbled flat in the road like a puppet with cut strings. But she did turn to watch Dellin as he climbed down the box and slowly crossed to where Willow lay.

He lifted the girl with an ease not entirely Human. He spoke something over the limp form in his arms, and when she began to stir, he set her carefully on her feet again. Neither one of them paid attention to the man who lay in the street, weeping silently. Dellin spoke softly to Willow as he took her hand and led her toward the wagon. He brought her alongside it, gestured her up toward the box. She lifted her face and for a long moment her eyes locked with Goat's.

'No!' she cried out, in a voice low and harsh as a cat's growl. Her eyes fixed on Ki and went wider. 'I won't go with you! I won't ride with traitors and freaks! I won't become one such as he! I won't! I'd rather die!' She broke free of Dellin's light touch, spun and was gone in a staggering run.

'She speaks the truth,' Dellin said, and with a start Ki knew his words were meant for Goat. The boy watched Willow run away with heartbreak in his eyes. 'She'd rather die,' Dellin went on mercilessly. 'Andshe 'probably will, if she keeps radiating it to the Humans around her. Thick as their mindskins are, still a few will hear her, and enough will feel her death-hunger to find a way to satisfy it. This,' and his sweeping hand included not just the fleeing girl, but the smouldering city as well, 'is what comes of Jore blood misused, to a Human's end. This is what comes of Jore and Human mingled without wisdom or conscience.' His grave accusation brooked no denial.

'You can't say all this is his fault!' Ki objected, and was surprised at the depth of her feelings.

But Goat, his pale eyes wide, nodded with equally grave acceptance. 'Yes, Ki, it was.'

'You are strong, and your Jore talent is great in you,' Dellin observed.

Goat nodded again. With a strange humility, he added, 'Stronger than you, Uncle. And more talented.'

Dellin stared at the boy, re-evaluating him. When he spoke, there was acceptance in his voice. 'It is good for both of us to recognize that before we begin. So, Gotheris. Now is a deciding time. Will you go on with me, and learn? Or will you flee, as that girl does, frightened by the wideness of the plain she glimpses?'

Goat's silence seemed long to Ki. She listened to the crackling of distant fire, the restless shifting of the horses in their harness. 'I will not flee, Uncle,' Goat replied at last, and some small corner of Ki felt absurdly pleased, as if she had made an unlikely bet with herself, and won.

'Remember that you have decided that.' Dellin mounted the box, took up the reins and shook them. Goat remained where he was, leaning on the scat between them. He watched the scorched buildings and toppled stalls as they passed them, as if memorizing their outlines. Ki watched the hitch-lurch of Sigurd's uneven stride.

She felt empty, she decided at last. She was cargo on her own wagon, just a thing along for the ride to Villena. She had felt too much in the last few days. Like a musical instrument treated too roughly, the strings of her emotions were broken and dangling inside her. No matter how they were plucked, no further sound could be wrung from them. She swayed slightly as the wagon rumbled down the street.

The town slowly changed to farm acreage. A field of stubble had burned into a great black square. Goat spoke suddenly. 'The thing I liked best about Vandien,' he said without preamble, 'was how he felt when he was angry with me.'

Ki felt as if a bandage had been ripped from a wound scarcely closed. But Dellin turned to the boy, and his surprise was plain. 'What?'

'I didn't know, then, the difference between us Goat fumbled for words. 'I couldn't separate what he felt from what I felt,' he said slowly. 'So his anger was mine.'

'So?' Dellin prodded.

'He was angry at me because I was not... honorable. To myself. He believed I had betrayed myself, by not being a better ... man.' Goat spoke the word hesitantly, as if he feared laughter. No one even smiled, and the boy took courage. 'A lot of folk have hated me. Or wished me dead. But no one had been angry with me that way before. Even my father: his anger was always full of sorrow, mostly for my mother and himself, and how hard I made their lives. But Vandien's anger believed I was cheating him and myself, by being... dishonorable. He made me feel that... that I was angry with myself, for being less than anhonorable ... man.'

Goat stopped speaking. The wagon creaked on, and Ki thought about the strangeness of the legacy Vandien had left the boy. At first, it was about ... that girl.' Points of color suddenly appeared on Goat's cheeks. His fingertip traced a knot in the plank seat. And I was angry back at him. Because he made me so uncomfortable about what I had done. But then ... after Kellich ... Vandien felt that way again. About himself as well as me.' Wonder came into Goat's voice. 'It was as if he had claimed me, because he judged me as he judged himself.'

Goat touched Ki's hand shyly, to be sure she was listening. 'That was why I attacked that Brurjan. Because I thought he would have, and I wanted to do as he would have done.' The boy's voice tightened. 'I'm sorry he's dead. I wanted to hear him say I had done the right thing.'

Ki clutched the boy's fingers briefly. 'You saved my life.' She tried to give him what he needed. She couldn't say Vandien's name, refused to feel her grief. 'He would have said that you'd done the right thing.'

They passed a smouldering farmhouse. A flock of chickens, refugees from the fire, were taking dust-baths in the road. They squawked angrily as the passage of the horses disturbed them. Farther ahead a stray horse grazed by the road. They were almost abreast of it before Ki spotted the crumpled rider in the ditch.

'That's the smallest Brurjan ...' she began, but was interrupted by Goat's sudden cry. The boy sprang to the seat, and then leaped to the road from the moving wagon, to fall face down in the dust. He was on his feet and scrambling toward the body before Dellin could even halt the team.

'Gotheris!' Dellin cried in rebuke and alarm as the boy put his hands on the body.

'Goat! Leave him alone, he's already dead!' Ki added.

'He's not!' Goat declared, and the hope in his voice stunned Ki until he lifted the oversized helm and bared the dark curls beneath it. Her heart slammed into her mouth. Emotions fountained in her, her anger, her fears, but she found herself in the road, and she knelt beside him, almost afraid to touch him. He was arrayed like a Brurjan, and his clothing was richer than anything she had ever seen, but it was Vandien.

'He's dead,' Dellin said gently, but she paid no attention. His skin was cool, his arm a terrible grey, but she turned his face away from the dust and slipped her hand inside his shirt. Cold chain mail. She set her fingers to his throat, touched the light pulsing under the angle of his jaw. 'He's alive!' she declared fiercely.

Dellin clambered slowly down from the wagon and came to stand over them. He did not stoop to touch the body, but Ki could almost feel the soft brush of his mind as he probed.

'Ki,' he said at last, and there was infinite pity in his tone. She felt his touch on her thoughts, felt his attempt to soften the impact as he said softly, 'It's only his body. He's not ... in there.'

'No!' Goat's voice was shrill in her ears, but more, it screamed within her as he pushed aside his uncle's comforting touch. She felt scraped raw as his mind-touch ripped away her half-formed acceptance of Vandien's death. 'Don't let go!' he told her fiercely. 'Hold on to his life for him!' His clutch at her feelings was as rough as his uncle's was skilled. It was like the embrace of a stranger, and she would have struggled against it if she had known how. Her hearing had gone woolly. Someone whispered, 'Stop. You'll only die with him, he's gone out of reach,' but it was no one she knew and his words didn't matter. What mattered, she found, was sitting down in the dust and dragging Vandien's body half into her lap, cradling him against her as she put her cheek on his forehead. Holding onto him. Refusing to let him be dead. She brushed her lips against his hair. She held him closer, but despite her grip she sensed him slipping away.