Brian Ruckley - Tyrant

There was not much by way of shelter from curious eyes out there on the higher ground. What little there was, they found. The few bushes had more or less no leaves. There were boulders here and there, most smoothed and rounded by centuries of wind-blown sand. Cracks and crevices ran up and across the flatter expanses of exposed stone. Trying to remain unseen took a great effort. A keen concentration of mind and a control of body. Lorin had that, and Brennan sought to mimic it with every step.

There were loose pebbles, most resting in crannies but some just lying there on slabs of rock. Lorin disturbed none of them. His feet made no sound on the stone. The leather of his boots did not even creak. Brennan could not quite match that silence. He could hear his own footsteps, soft as he tried to make them. He could hear the arrows in the quiver at his waist shifting against one another.

He took some comfort from the fact that the higher they rose, the more noticeably the wind flowed over them. It was blowing across the face of the hill and out onto the plain. It might carry faint sounds away with it. Unfortunately, it did not carry off much in the way of heat. Even the moving air felt drying and hot. The harsh sun was beating back off the naked rocks. Brennan imagined himself to be a ball of dough, thrust into a baker’s oven.

He heard a buzzard’s cry above and stared up at the dark bird, circling and rising. Waiting for the bread to be thoroughly cooked, he thought.

Lorin pulled him into the lee of a big, round sandy-coloured rock. There was a pool of shadow that came as the most soothing relief. Brennan would have drunk that shadow down if he could, to hold its coolness within him. That was not why Lorin had chosen the spot though.

‘Someone up above us,’ he whispered. ‘Couple of hundred paces, on the top.’

Brennan was surprised. And shamed in a way. He had seen nothing.

‘He’s looking the wrong way,’ Lorin told him. ‘Or not. He’s watching Yulan’s likely approach, if the rest of them were coming here. Can’t really blame him for that, I suppose.’

‘I suppose not,’ Brennan said.

‘We can kill him for it though.’

Once Lorin had pointed the watcher out, Brennan did not feel quite so bad about having missed him. All that could be seen was a bent knee, jutting out from behind a low cairn someone-many someones, more likely-had built atop the rounded summit long ago. Why anyone in their right mind would spend sweat and strength to gather rocks, carry them up there and pile them in a little tower, Brennan could not guess.

‘You want to go?’ Lorin asked him.

‘Yes,’ Brennan said without hesitation.

‘Good. Draw your knife now. He might hear it leave the sheath if you wait until the last moment.’

Brennan clamped the blade between his teeth so that he would have both hands if he needed them on the ascent, and so that he could not accidentally strike metal against stone. He left his bow and sword and quiver full of arrows there with Lorin. He would not need them.

‘Come at him into the wind,’ Lorin said.

Brennan did that. He cut across the slope before turning round and up. Put the solid body of that cairn between him and the man he meant to kill. He went carefully but not as slowly as before. He trusted the breeze to drift away any slight sound he might make.

For the last hundred or more yards, there was virtually no cover. Much of the hill’s summit was just huge, open slabs of smooth rock. He covered the ground quickly, in a low crouch. His senses were sharp now that violence was coming, and his eyes took in every tiny feature of the surface before each stride. Not a pebble shifted as he passed; not a single crack tripped him.

Only for the final few footsteps up to the cairn did he slow. He measured every movement. Carefully, so carefully, he took the knife from his mouth and readied it. Even then, at the very last, with only a few yards and the stones of the cairn between him and the other, he took the time to stop and wait until his heart had slowed. He cleared his mind and felt his breath pulsing in and out. He delicately lifted his right foot and set it silently down a little further forward. Shifted his weight onto it.

When he moved again, he did it as fast as he possibly could. A huge surging push from his right leg, pumping his arms to carry him forward and round the cairn.

To his credit, the slaver was not asleep. He was rising, levering himself up and away from the cairn as Brennan reached him. He was lifting his spear from where it lay on the ground beside him. This was no fight fit for a spear though. This was knife work.

Brennan reached for the man’s mouth with his free hand, even as he reached for the heart with his knife. He missed the mouth. His hand hit the slaver’s cheek instead, hard enough to slap his head around.

Brennan was moving so fast he easily bore his unbalanced opponent over backwards. They fell together, and Brennan let his full weight land on the man’s chest. He scrabbled again to cover his mouth as he did so. The choking, dying cry that burst out was muffled before it found any strength.

The knife was deep in the man’s chest. Mortally so, Brennan was sure, but he pushed and twisted it as hard as he could in any case. The slaver bucked and flailed beneath him. Warm blood spilled out between the two of them. A lot of it.

Then the man went still. There was no more breath fighting to get past Brennan’s suffocating hand. Open eyes stared up at Brennan and they were empty. Whatever had been there a moment ago had departed. Brennan rolled away. His knife hand and chest were soaked with blood. He wiped the blade clean on his trousers.

His own heart was pounding now, and he was breathing hard. His head ached, echoes of the blow Marweh had delivered pounding through it. Just for a moment, he closed his eyes.

‘Well done,’ he heard Lorin saying.

Lorin chose one of the smallest stones from near the top of the cairn. He stretched his arm back, gathered his strength for a moment or two and then flung the stone as hard and far as he could. It tumbled away and then went tip-tapping down the hill. It bounced and bounded down the slope, its descent knocking out a faint message.

Manadar, far below, heard that message. His head-a tiny black dot-rose above the lip of the gully where they had left him with the horses. Lorin waved. Manadar emerged, leading the three animals.

‘Be hard work, hauling them all the way up here,’ Brennan observed.

‘You want to go and help him?’

In truth, Brennan did. That was his instinct. Hard work was a part of what he needed, he thought, to dislodge doubt.

‘No,’ he said instead, because that seemed to be the answer Lorin expected.

Rather than watch Manadar struggling up, battling reluctant horses as much as the incline, Brennan searched the slaver’s body. The man was not heavily laden. He had some flatbread in a folded cloth and a few copper coins in a pouch. Brennan examined his spear just in case it was worth keeping. Probably not, he judged. The shaft was not perfectly straight, and the binding that held the rough iron point looked about ready to let go. If slaving was a trade to make men rich, this man had not reaped the benefit. Most likely, Brennan supposed, whatever gold was flowing ended up pooling in the tyrant’s pockets.

With a fleeting twinge of guilt, Brennan tore the dead man’s shirt apart. He used some more or less clean scraps of it to wipe away as much as he could of the man’s blood from his own clothes.

While he did it, Lorin was ranging across the top of the hill. He was still keeping low, trying to make himself a little less obvious, but he could not see as far and wide as he wanted to without accepting some small risk of being seen himself. Soon, he gave out a sharp, wordless hiss to attract Brennan’s attention.