C. Cherryh - Wall of Shiuan

He laid his hand on hers when she had done; his hands were fine, long-fingered. She had never imagined that a man could have such hands. There were scars on them, a fine tracery of lines. She thought of the sword he carried and reckoned that he had never wielded tools... hands that knew killing, perhaps, but their touch was like a child’s for gentleness; his eyes were likewise. “Thank you,” he said, and showed no inclination to let her go. His head went back against the wall. His eyes began to close, exhaustion claiming him. They opened; he fought against the impulse.

“Your name,” he asked.

One should never give a name; it was power to curse. But she feared not to answer. “Mija Jhirun Ela’s-daughter,” she said; and daring much: “What is yours?”

But he did not answer, and unease crept the more upon her.

“Where were you going?” she asked. “Were you only following me? What were you looking for?”

‘To live,” he said, with such simple desperation it seized at her heart. “To stay alive.” And he almost slipped from his senses, the others waiting for his sleep, the whole house poised and waiting, nearly fifty women and an old man. She edged closer to him, put her shoulder against him, drew his head against her. “The woman,” she heard him murmur, “the woman that follows me—”

He was fevered. She felt of his brow, listened to his raving, that carried the same mad thread throughout. He slipped away, his head against her heart, his eyes closed.

She stared beyond him, meeting Cil’s troubled gaze, none others.

A time to sleep, a little time for him, and then a chance to escape. He had done nothing to them, nothing of real hurt; and to end slaughtered by a house of women and children, with kitchen knives—she did not want that nightmare to haunt Barrows-hold. She could not live her life and sit by the fire and sew, work at the kitchen making bread, see her children playing by such a hearth. She would always see the blood on those stones.

No wraith, the stranger: his warmth burned fever-hot against her; his weight bruised her shoulder. She had lost herself, lost all sense where her mad dreams ended, no longer tried to reason. She saw the others lose their courage, settle, waiting; she also waited, not knowing for what. She remembered Anla’s Crown, and knew that she had passed that edge where human folk ought to stop, had broken ancient warding-spells with as blithe a disdain as the stranger had passed the bits of feather at the door, innocent of fear that would have been wise to feel.

If there had been opportunity she would have begged her grandfather to explain; but he was helpless, his warding spells broken, his authority disregarded. For the first time she doubted the power of her grandfather as a priest—of all priests. She had seen a thing her grandfather had never seen—still could not see; had been where no foot had trod since the Kings.

The hold seemed suddenly a tiny and fragile place amid all the wild waste of Hiuaj, a place where the illusion of law persisted like a light set in the wind. But the reality was the dark, that lay heavy and breathing against her shoulder.

They should not destroy him, they in their mad trust in law and their own sanity. She began to wonder if they even questioned what he was, if they saw only an exhausted and wounded outlaw, and never doubted their conclusion. They were blind, that could not see the manner of him, the ancient armor and the tall black horse, that had no place in this age of the world, let alone in Hiuaj.

Perhaps they did not want to see, for then they would have to realize how fragile their safety was.

And perhaps he would not go away. Perhaps he had come to rum that peace of theirs—to take Barrows-hold down to the same ruin as Chadrih, to ride one last course across the drowning world, one last glory of the Hiua kings, who had tried to master the Wells and failed, as the halfling Shiua had failed before them.

She had no haste to wake him. She sat frozen in dread while the storm fell away to silence, while the fire began to die in the hearth and none dared approach to tend it.

Toward dawn came a stirring outside, soft scuffing on the pavement. Jhirun looked up, waking from half-sleep, her shoulder numb with the stranger’s weight.

Came Zai, shivering and wet, stout Zai, who had run to set the beacon. She entered blue-lipped with chill and dripping about the hem of her skirts, and moved as silently as she could.

And behind Zai crept others, out of the mist that had followed the rain: the men came, one after the other, armed with skinning knives and their boat-poles. None spoke. They moved inside, their eyes hard and wary and their weapons ready. Jhirun watched and her heart pounded against her ribs; her lips shaped silent entreaty to them, her cousins, her uncles.

Uncle Naram was first to venture toward the hearth; and Lev after him, with Fwar and Ger beside him. Cil rose up of a sudden from the bench by the door; but Jinel was by her and seized her arm, cautioning her to silence. Jhirun cast a wild look at her grandfather, who stood helplessly at the stable door, and looked back at the men who edged toward her with drawn weapons.

Perhaps her arms tightened the least bit; perhaps there was some warning sound her numbed hearing did not receive; but the stranger wakened of a sudden, and she cried out to feel the push of his arms hurling her at them.

He was on his feet in the same instant, staggering against the mantel, and they rushed on him, rushing over her, who sprawled on the floor. And Fwar, more eager to lay hands on her than on the enemy, seized her and cruelly twisted her arm in hauling her to her feet. In the loft a baby cried, swiftly hushed.

Jhirun looked, dazed by the pain of Fwar’s grip, on the stranger who had backed to the corner. She saw his move, quicker than the beat of a bird’s wing, that sent his dagger into his hand.

That gave them pause; and in that pause he ripped at the harness at his side and that great sword at his back slid to his hip. He unhooked the sheath of it one-handed.

They panicked, rushed for him in a mass, and of a sudden the sheath flashed across the room loose, and the bright blade was in his two hands, a wheeling arc that scattered blood and hurled her kinsmen back with shrieks of pain and terror.

And he leaned there in his corner a moment, hard-breathing; but the fresh wounds were on his enemies and none had they set on him. The stranger moved, and Fwar gave back, wrenching Jhirun’s arm so hard that she cried out, Cil’s scream echoing upon her own.

The stranger edged round the room, gathered up his fallen sheath, still with an eye to them; and her kinsmen gave back still further, none of them willing to rush that glittering blade a second time. In the loft were frightened stirrings, back into shadows.

“What will you?” Jhirun heard her grandfather’s voice ask from behind her. “Name it and go.”

“My horse,” he said. “You, old man, fetch all my gear—all of it. I shall kill you otherwise.”

And not a muscle did he move, staring at them with the great sword in his hands; nor did they move. Only her grandfather sidled carefully to the stable door and opened it, going to do the stranger’s bidding.

“Let her go,” the stranger said then to Fwar.

Fwar thrust her free, and she turned and spat at Fwar, shaking with hate. Fwar did nothing, his baleful eyes fixed on the stranger in silent rage, and she walked from him, never so glad to walk away from anything—went from him and to the side of the stranger, who had touched her gently, who had never done her hurt.

She turned there to face them all, these brute, ugly cousins, with thick hands and crass wit and no courage when it was likely to cost them. Her grandfather had been a different man once; but now he had none to rely on but these: brigands, no different at heart than the bandits they paid the marshlanders to catch and hang—save that the bandits preyed on the living.