Janny Wurts - To Ride Hell’s Chasm

‘Near enough,’ the duty officer allowed. ‘The drunk and disorderly kept our hands full. We’ve been worked to the bone every watch, a night-and-day grind since the hour of Devall’s arrival. Here, let me.’ He pushed past, insistent. ‘I should rightfully be the one to try waking him.’

Jussoud’s huge hand shot out and caught the officer’s shoulder. ‘Not this way, you won’t. The wrong move with that man could get us both killed.’ Not pleased, as the stableboys burst into giggles, he took brisk charge and gave orders. ‘Set down those buckets. Quietly, mind! Then I want every one of you down those stairs, quick! Tell the cook to brew me a cauldron of hot water. After that, get on back to your chores.’

As the boys shed their burdens and bolted, the nomad steered the duty officer back towards the doorway. ‘When the water boils, you’ll bring it, alone. I’ll fill the tub and make ready, meanwhile. Best we let Mykkael sleep while he can. When the time comes, I’ll waken him wisely, from a distance with a tossed pebble.’

FALLEN ASLEEP UNDER THE BLACK-LASHED STARE OF THE PRINCESS OF SESSALIE’S PORTRAIT, MYKKAEL LAY IMMERSED IN THICK DARKNESS. HE forgot he still breathed. Hurled beyond mere exhaustion, his clogged senses felt sealed in a deadening field of black void. The featureless stillness did not last, but quickened to the unruly prompt of a witch thought. An uncanny movement twined through his mind and unreeled a ribbon of dream…

He knew her, felt the pounding race of her heart. His awareness flowed into the well of her most intimate self, until he felt the raw skin of her heels, chafed to burst blisters through the exertion of her headlong flight. Emotionally buffeted, he rode the crest of her terror, then shared her mind through a breathless interval as she snatched shelter in a hidden glen, touched gold under east-slanting sunlight .

The moving tableau of her thoughts spun and circled, flinching back from examining the grievous discovery that had shattered her life like a flung stone. Threat to Sessalie drove her beyond care for herself. Although sorrow knifed through her, vivid enough to sap her will to keep living, she battled its cry of futility. Through the salt sting of tears, and the ache in her chest caused by hours of running, she laid her head against the sweated neck of the mare who nuzzled her, begging for sweets .

Throughout, the horses surrounded her with their inquisitive warmth. Missing their accustomed ration of grain, they demanded, exploring her with the hay-scented puffs of their breath .

‘You’ll want for nothing,’ she soothed, though her voice cracked .

The horses forgave the actual truth, that she had no such assurance to give. Their empathic herd sense stood as her mainstay against overwhelming despair. All three pairs, the horses’ innate nobility gave her a gift beyond price: the generous trust of their confidence. She bespoke them by name to steady herself Bryajne, the tall buckskin, who tucked his blunt, hammer head over the refined crest of Covette. She, a petite chestnut who flaunted the sculpted grace of her desert breeding; Vashni, the grey who carried on like the stud he was not; and Fouzette, whose stout forelegs still dribbled blood from a recent plunge through the briar; Kasminna, who delighted in nipping any creature caught unsuspecting, and Stormfront, whose dark coat gleamed with a silvery tarnish of dapples under the glare of the sunlight …

Then the flick of a pebble stung Mykkael’s exposed side. Witch thought and dream shattered like glass, hammered through by the prompt of blind reflex. From his prone state of oblivious sleep, an explosion of ingrained physical instincts hurled him half dazed, not yet wakeful, through the practised response of a consciousness tuned by barqui’ino .

He grabbed and threw in one sinuous move, his raw senses reacting without the encumbrance of intellect. Sword and harness flew. Sheathed steel and strap leather scythed with deadly force back along the pebble’s trajectory. The entangling missile slammed into the fast-closing wood of the door, followed hard by the throwing knife Mykkael always kept at close reach under his pillow. His schooled body hurtled after. Knuckles clenched and palms open, he poised the heel of his hand and the bone edge of his forearm to strike, while his bare skin sampled the flow of the air for the slightest warning of movement. He would kill by touch, his eyesight centred with absolute focus on the obstacles that could impede him.

He leaped the filled wash tub, one-footed, and landed without missing stride. Drill after drill, the brute course of his training had aligned his primal nerves to respond to what was , not what should be . Expectations were wrung still. The ferocity that propelled him was a high art: the unswerving clarity of an existence honed down to the pinpoint frame of the moment.

Mykkael reached the door, shoulder tucked to smash planks with a strength of will that ranged beyond flesh and muscle; and stopped. A hairs-breadth shy of destructive impact, hard breathing, he rocked on his heels and went still. The cold, feral force of his being became leashed. The change was distinct, as he released the taut stream of barqui’ino awareness and reclaimed the dropped thread of his reason.

The panel cracked open. Jussoud’s silver eye dared a cautious glance through, followed by white teeth as he managed a smile of shaken appreciation. ‘Two masters?’ he said. ‘I’d heard of one man who could claim that distinction.’

Mykkael pulled in a deep breath to arrest the jolting flash of adrenaline; his move almost casual as a sleeper just roused, but far too precise to seem ordinary, he braced a hand on the doorframe. The fingers, rock steady the instant before, now jittered with backlash withdrawal. ‘To my shame,’ he admitted.

‘I could guess?’ Jussoud dared. ‘The one who first schooled you was better, in name. But he could not teach the technique you just used to cut short an entrained attack.’

‘Certain steppelanders might suppose that.’ Mykkael stepped back, bent, hissed a breath through shut teeth as he grasped at his spasmed muscle and tried to limber the seized joint of his knee. When that effort failed, he uttered a curse, gave in to necessity and hobbled. He raked up his thrown sword and harness from the floor, and released the jammed swing of the door panel.

Touched sober, Jussoud stepped inside. The trailing sleeve of his robe fluttered as he reached out and freed the stuck knife. He handed the blade back. Then he paused. Cool in the pale silk of his eastern dress, he provoked with no more than his patient stillness.

Mykkael’s sultry glare met his silence like a slap. ‘You want to know, truly? I wouldn’t tell Taskin.’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Jussoud’s equable nature stayed limpid with calm. ‘Your privacy is your own. No one else needs to know you. I don’t give any man orders, whether or not he’s hell-bent to destroy himself, body and mind.’

‘I’m a practised survivor.’ But the admission rang bitter. A disjointed backstep saw Mykkael to the wash tub. He caught the rim, now trembling like hazed game, and managed to brace his rocked balance before he fell over. Pinned down throughout an obstinate pause, he stared in fixed quiet through the arrow slit. Then he said, ‘A beggar child wandered into the camp. One of the advanced aspirants was caught unawares. He reacted on reflex, and brained her.’ Mykkael swallowed and stared down at his hands, as though they belonged to a stranger. ‘I could not live with a memory like that. The shame of abandoning tradition was much easier. I broke oath and changed masters, left the first without asking permission for release, then spun lies to gain sworn acceptance with the second. I started again, on false pretext, as a novice. My first defection was found out, of course. Though I shared no secrets between the two do’aa , my name is still sealed with a death threat.’