Everything was pain.
Jeyan stumbled and fell as the rope about her ankle suddenly tautened again. Harsh cords biting into her wrists prevented her from breaking her fall and only at the last moment did she manage to twist round and take the impact on her arm and side instead of her face. Exhausted from the chase, howling inside at the death of her companions, and throbbing from the blows she had received, the fall winded her and she made no effort to rise. Instead, she closed her eyes in the hope that she would never have to open them again.
The mood, however, was transitory and, as a tugging at her ankle brought her back to the bright day and the silent Ennerhald, it was replaced by a black and vengeful hate. She rolled over to face her tormentor. As previously, she had been brought down because he too, had stumbled. She tried to kick him as he struggled to rise, but her legs were leaden and would not respond.
Had she been able to deliver a blow of any power, the soldier could not have stopped her, for the gash that she had slashed in his arm was long and deep and was bleeding profusely despite his attempts to bind it. His strength was failing almost as fast as hers.
Seeing both his comrades and the two dogs slain in the narrow alley, and having managed to subdue the object of his pursuit, the soldier’s immediate intention had been to kill Jeyan. But the pursuit, the two dead bodies and the wound in his arm bore graphic witness to this individual’s ferocity and cunning; however improbable it seemed, this scrawny youth must indeed have been Hagen’s assassin. To kill such a person in battle anger would be to deprive the Gevethen of their prey – and that could bring untold consequences down upon him against which no plea would be heard. But to return with Hagen’s murderer bound and helpless; that was another matter. There would be reward for that indeed. And now, two less with whom to share it.
Whether it was fear or greed that motivated him, the intention to deliver his prisoner alive was now firmly locked into his mind and, despite his weakening condition, a determination, fully the match of Jeyan’s own, was keeping him moving forward.
He had fastened the rope around Jeyan’s ankle to his belt, as a precaution against dropping it, and as he scrambled painfully to his knees Jeyan managed to jerk it. He lurched forward, instinctively reaching out with both arms. The wounded arm collapsed as soon as it took his weight and he pitched forward with a cry as blood burst out of his crude bandage. Unfortunately, the effort had spent all Jeyan’s immediate resource and she could take no advantage of the situation. Instead, she rolled on to her back and gaped sightlessly at the blue sky fringed by the ragged canyon walls of the Ennerhald buildings.
A numbing blow struck her arm. The soldier had recovered and, lying on his back, he had been able to deliver a powerful kick. Somehow Jeyan did not cry out, but she arched up and made no effort to keep the pain from her face.
‘If I have to, I’ll kill you, boy,’ the soldier said as he wrestled with the binding around his arm. ‘Make no mistake. I don’t have to take you back alive. There’ll be plenty who’ll identify you as Lord Hagen’s killer when your body’s stretched out in the Citadel Square for public exhibition.’
Jeyan twisted her pain into a balefully glittering knot and dropped it into the well of hatred which now had almost total possession of her. It overflowed.
‘You’ll be in hell before me, you piece of Gevethen filth,’ she spat, through her bruised and bloodied mouth. ‘Look at your arm. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. You’re dying. Go on, porky – die – squeal and die.’ She swung a feeble foot at him but missed. The soldier was no Citadel fop however, and Jeyan’s goad merely helped him to recover. By way of recompense he delivered two more kicks, both harder than the first.
With unexpected agility he was on to his knees and then his feet and a powerful hand was dragging Jeyan painfully upright. Her legs could hardly support her. ‘Be quiet,’ the soldier said, shaking her. The very softness of his voice carried more menace than any roaring curse. ‘I’ve had worse hurts than this further from safety before now. If you want to stay alive, just keep quiet and hope that I don’t feel myself about to pass out, because if I do, I’ll make sure you don’t escape by pinning you to the ground with your own knife.’
He gave her a violent push that sent her sprawling again, then he yanked her upright by her bound hands. ‘And the next time you go down, boy, I’ll kick you until you get up. I can kick you all the way to the Citadel if I have to.’ He snarled into her face. ‘In fact, it’s something I’d enjoy doing.’ He dropped her again.
Jeyan had no doubt that he would at least try to fulfil this threat. She shook her head frantically. ‘No more, no more. I’ll do my best to walk, but I’m dizzy,’ she gasped.
They had gone only a few paces when the soldier faltered and propped himself against a wall to avoid collapsing again. Jeyan made no attempt to escape, however. The rope around her ankle was a very effective restraint. From somewhere she found another resource.
‘I’m sorry I cut you with the knife,’ she said plaintively. ‘You frightened me, chasing me like that. I didn’t know what to do. I just lashed out. And the dogs – they’re my friends, they look after me. They’ll attack anything that threatens me.’
The soldier, clutching his bleeding arm, glowered at her, but said nothing.
Jeyan slumped against the wall alongside him and stared down at the arm. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ she said guiltily.
Still no reply. Exaggerating her distress, she went on, in rasping breaths, affecting kinship in suffering. ‘Look, we’re both lost here. I don’t know where I am. I only know a little bit of the Ennerhald – near the city. I usually beg – I never come this far in – there’s all sorts of strange people in here. And I don’t know anything about Lord Hagen. I didn’t even know he was dead. And there’s scores of dogs round here. Fierce dogs. People use them for protection. Why don’t you let me go – save yourself before you lose too much blood.’
She bent forward to look into his eyes. She had been hoping that his silence meant unconsciousness, but it was not the case. He was wide awake and alert. With an effort, she kept the disappointment from her face, and nodded towards his injured arm. ‘Look, the blood’s coming out with your heartbeat. That’s bad. I know it’s bad when it does that. Go and get help before it’s…’
A ferocious back-handed blow across the face ended her plea.
‘Keep quiet, I told you!’ The soldier snatched at the rope attached to her ankle, partially unbalancing her. She lurched into him, taking some satisfaction in bumping into his injured arm. It cost her another blow which left her on her knees, her head ringing. She pushed herself upright again. To her horror, the soldier was staring at her intently.
Let him not see I’m a woman, she thought frantically, all her fears re-doubled. She dropped her head. A hand gripped her chin cruelly and jerked her upright so that the inspection could be completed. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked tremulously, the grip blurring her words. ‘You’re hurting. I’m trying to do what you want. I can’t help falling over.’
The hand twisted her head round to look along the crumbling street. Over the broken and crooked rooftops at the end could be seen the five towers of the building where she had started that morning. ‘Don’t worry about being lost, boy. You recognize those, don’t you? All we’ve got to do is keep walking towards them, isn’t it? Then even I know the way.’ He shook her head viciously, making it throb. ‘What were you doing there? Enjoying the purging? You’d have been better to run and keep running after what you did. The Gevethen see everything, and they can reach everywhere, believe me, I know. Whoever paid you to kill Lord Hagen did you no favours.’
Jeyan did not need to be reminded where they were, she knew exactly, and it was imperative that she get away from her captor as soon as possible. ‘I didn’t kill Lord Hagen,’ she protested. ‘I didn’t kill anyone – I’ve never killed anyone. Why would I…’
Her head was jerked round again. The soldier’s face was barely a hand’s width from hers and his scrutiny was as intense as before, though it was apparent to her that he was having difficulty in focusing.
Squeal and die, pig, she thought vehemently, though no sign of it appeared on her face.
The soldier growled through clenched teeth. ‘Your dogs killed our men in the tower. You led us a dance all over this place just so they could do the same again. And I’ve seen you use that knife of yours. You killed Lord Hagen all right – I can smell it all over you. We know our own kind, don’t we? We brothers in blood, we’re different, aren’t we? No hesitation, just…’ He jabbed a finger into her chest and seemed to gather new strength. ‘But keep it up, keep it up. Shout your innocence as much as you like, you’ll have plenty to shout about when the Gevethen’s Questioners – Hagen’s people – his loyal people – start working on you.’ He came even closer, malevolently confidential now. ‘They always enjoy their work. It frightens me just to be near them, and it takes a lot to frighten me, I can tell you. But I might ask if I can come and watch after what you’ve done. Then again, perhaps they’ll do it in the Citadel Square for everyone to see – bit by bit, nice and slow, just to discourage any others who might be thinking the same way.’
For the first time since she had been captured, Jeyan’s fear threatened to become screaming panic; her knees and bowels began to yield as the scene described by the soldier appeared before her, lit vividly by his wide and shining eyes. Then the gaze was gone as the eyes screwed tight; the soldier’s relish in this anticipated celebration fading before more pressing needs.
When they opened again, there was simple puzzlement in them. ‘But there’s something odd about you,’ he muttered, shaking his head to clear his vision. ‘Something odd. I can’t grasp it, but…’ He grimaced and pushed himself off the wall. He was swaying. Jeyan was little more steady herself and the throbbing in her arm from the kicks she had received was merely the focus of the pain that suffused her entire body. She looked around at the familiar landscape, her haven, her hunting ground, now almost mocking her as blank-eyed windows and shattered doorways gaped, indifferent to the drama being enacted before them. And beyond, the five towers, which had once held her high and invulnerable to view the city at her will, had become a menacing hand, signalling to all where she was to be found – even she was not totally immune to the soldier’s fears – the Gevethen see everything.
Then she changed.
So far she had been contending with the fears of the moment, but the soldier’s gleeful reference to the Questioners and what lay ahead had set light to truly deep and awful terrors. And too, lurching inside her was an emptiness which Assh and Frey had once occupied. Their mother had attacked her when she stumbled into her lair in search of a refuge of her own, and she had killed the animal. Following who could say what instinct, the pups had trailed after Jeyan and she had tended them. They had been with her ever since, at once free and bound. Despite her other fears, the emptiness was bleak and awful, and such as she had not felt since her early days in the Ennerhald following the death of her parents. Now, as she stared at the soldier, his shadow swaying raggedly over the uneven ground, and felt the gaunt hand of the towers at her back beckoning the city to her, the emptiness welled up and became one with the terror. Their combined momentum pushed her beyond anywhere she had ever been before. She would not be taken alive into the city. Either she escaped from this failing butcher here and now… or she died.
She dropped to her knees and slumped forward on to her elbows, ‘I can’t go on,’ she said. An exasperated gasp of pain and weary anger greeted her. Head lowered, she watched the unsteady legs out of the corner of her eye. They were covered in blood and more was dripping constantly, some splattering on to soiled boots, some on to the sun-dried roadstones, cutting new rectangular valleys along the ancient weathered joints.
The sight awoke no compassion. Rather it rekindled the bloodlust that had filled her in the dismal little room where she had been cornered.
Drip, drip. Squeal and die, pig.
Affecting to make an effort to rise, she took her weight from her hands and clenched them to her as if in pain. As she did so, she surreptitiously took hold of the rope that was fastened to her ankle. It tautened as the soldier tottered back with a view to delivering a kick and, unconsciously, he took support from it. The tug rang through Jeyan like a signal and, animal now, she gathered all her pain and rage into a single intent and hurled herself at him. Already off-balance, and suddenly losing his unwitting reliance on the rope, the soldier staggered back. Bound hands flying at his face and mouth screaming, Jeyan crashed into him. When she felt him toppling under this impact, she relaxed and lifted her feet off the ground so that her entire weight landed on him as he struck the ground. Immediately she hammered her clenched fists into his face, then jumped to her feet with the intention of stamping on it. Reflexes rolled the soldier out of the way, but the defending arm that he raised was his injured one and it took the full force of Jeyan’s descending foot. Crying out, he flailed it desperately, knocking Jeyan off her feet as she tried to stamp on the arm again. Then there was only milling, blood-spraying confusion, with Jeyan wriggling and thrashing wildly to do what hurt she could, where she could, and to prevent the soldier from retaining any grip he succeeded in fastening on her. In so far as she was aware of what she was doing, she was also trying to snatch her knife from the soldier’s belt. And as they rolled over, so the rope faithfully measured out the consequences of their every move, entangling them, releasing them, gripping tight, flying loose. Then it was around Jeyan’s hands and across the soldier’s face and as she threw her weight to one side again, so it wrapped itself painfully about her hands binding her to her enemy even more firmly than before. Only when she twisted and turned her hands to free them did she realize that at the same time it had looped itself about the soldier’s throat and that his uninjured hand was clutching at it.
Freedom came into sight. She could escape this nightmare. A touch of the future came to her; showed her herself snatching cached supplies and running, running, deep into the forest, far beyond any search. All it needed now was one last effort.
Ferociously, and oblivious to the pain in her hands, she twisted the rope tighter and tighter, leaning backwards and driving her heels into the ground for purchase.
So absorbed was she in the destruction of her captor that she did not see the figures appearing round a corner of the crooked street. Nor did she see them suddenly start running towards her. Only when hands that were not her own came into her narrow, desperate focus did the world become again anything other than a protesting skein of twisting fibres. And only as they gripped her wrists and forbade them movement and a knife sliced through the rope, jerking her loose, did she return to the Ennerhald.
And to the Citadel Guards surrounding her.