Perkar followed the trail of dark fluid with his gaze, thinking.He remembered the hideous strength of the Crow God, the casually summoned lightning. He remembered Good Thief's doom, and how easily the fickle Blackgod might have chosen Ngangata instead. “Whatever it was—the Blackgod or some local spirit—it has done us a favor,” Perkar finally said, trying to keep his voice even. It felt shaky, and he seemed to have trouble backing it with breath. “I think we should leave here now, before whatever it is turns on us.”
“Good,” Ngangata replied, heat creeping into his voice. “I wanted to see if you had even that much sense. If you had chosen otherwise, I would have clubbed you unconscious, magic sword or no. What kind of stupid idea came into your head and sent you down here alone? Playing the hero again? Haven't you learned your lesson by now?”
Perkar knew he couldn't explain to his friend, but he owed him something. He raised his hands—almost as if in defense—and tried to think of something to say.
“No,” Ngangata snapped. “I don't want to hear it. You always think you're right, think you know exactly what you should do. Challenge me to a fistfight because I didn't know my place. Attack the Huntress. Leave me on the island with Brother Horse, because you knew it would be better for me—”
“You were dying,'” Perkar said, faltering beneath the rush of Ngangata's words.
“Always you know what to do, and always you are wrong. Then you say ‘I surely was wrong that time, but now I know better, and next time I'll be right.’ You stupid cowherd.”
Perkar flushed with shame. He wanted to tell Ngangata that it wasn't at all like that this time, that he hadn't thought he was right, he had just wanted not to be terrified. He had needed to do something. But he couldn't say that. What came out instead was quavering, uncertain sounding.
“I just… you've all been fighting my fights for me while I lay on my back. I wanted to do something myself.” Not a lie, not as unspeakable as the truth. He might have been able to tell Ngangata, but Yuu'han was there, judging him with that hard Mang judgment, and he simply could not.
Ngangata just frowned and started for his horse, his ration of words apparently spent for the day.
“Wait,” Perkar said. “I wasn't wrong about leaving you on the island. I was right about that. You would have died on the River. If you hadn't, you would have died when the soldiers attacked me in Nhol. I didn't want you dead.”
“ You don yt want, ” Ngangata snarled, spinning on his heel. “You don't want this, you don't want that. Maybe I don't want to see you killed doing some damn stupid thing like this, did you ever, ever consider that? And maybe Hezhi and Brother Horse don't want you killed, or they wouldn't have risked their lives in the otherworld to get your stupid ass back.”
He strode violently over to Perkar and, quick as a snake striking, slapped him so hard that he rocked back on his heels and sat down, violently, his teeth snapping with the impact.
“Now get on your damn horse and ride back up the hill with us and start using your head for more than a battering ram.”
So saying, he leapt upon his stallion, gave heel to it, and in a flurry of dust was gone, leaving Perkar, blinking, on the ground watching him depart.
Yuu'han regarded him placidly, then offered him a hand up.
“If it's any comfort,” Yuu'han confided, “I don't much care if you five or die. I say you should feel free to ride down on our enemies anytime the mood strikes you.”
“Thanks,” Perkar said, spitting blood onto the warming sand.
“We should take Moss with us,” Yuu'han added. “Could you help me tie him to one of these horses?”
“Yes, of course.” Perkar went to get one of the horses standing about.
“You didn't warn me that he was going to hit me,” Perkar complained to Harka.
No, I most certainly did not, ” the sword replied.
THEY broke camp when Ngangata and Yuu'han returned with Perkar and Moss. The latter was unconscious, tied unceremoniously across the saddle of a horse Hezhi had never seen before. When she saw this, she expected to behold Perkar strutting about, full of his brave deed, and she was prepared to give him the tongue-lashing he deserved. Instead, she saw him looking more ashamed and uncertain than ever.
He wouldn't speak to her, other than to mumble a few apologies and to make certain she understood he was thankful to her for saving him from the Breath Feasting. After a few moments of strained silence, she kneed her horse up ahead to where Ngangata rode vanguard. There she pried the story from the half man, who doled it out in short, clipped phrases.
“What's wrong with him, though?“ Hezhi asked. ”Wasn't it better that he didn't have to fight?”
Ngangata lifted his odd, square shoulders. “I don't know. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding him.”
“You've known him for a long time.”
“No. Only just over a year.”
“Really?” Hezhi thought she understood the general outline of Perkar's story—what Ngangata jokingly called the “Song of Perkar.” But this part of the tale she did not know.
“How did you meet?”
“We were both members of the expedition to Balat. Of the five of us, only we two survived.”
“It must have made you close. You seem like brothers.”
That seemed to amuse Ngangata. “The first time we met we insulted each other. It may have been my fault. Later on we fought—with our fists, not with swords. That was his fault. After that…” He trailed off, but after a moment's thought picked up the thread and sewed it a bit further. ”There is some good in him, you know, of a peculiar kind. Being as I am, I act as a sort of sieve that most people flow through, if you know what I mean. Perkar nearly went through, but in the end, he stayed. Whenever that happens, I count the person a friend, because it happens so rarely that I can't afford to ignore it.”
“You mean most people are repelled by your appearance.”
He shrugged. I am repelled by it. There is nothing I hate more than a mirror or a clear pool of water. Well… maybe there are things I hate more, but I dislike seeing myself.”
“I don't find you ugly,” Hezhi said.
“You stopped in a different sieve long ago—your friend Tsem. So I would count you a friend, were we to know each other better. But you would never marry me, or bear my children.”
That startled her. “I haven't—”
He waved with the back of his hand. “I only wanted to show you how alien the thought is to you. I have never given any thought to courting you.”
Hezhi bit her lip. “Or anyone, I guess.”
“Or anyone,” he confirmed.
“Then you should, because I think someone would marry you, Ngangata. You are a good man, thoughtful. There must be a woman who wouldn't fall through the sieve.”
He smiled. “Show me this woman and I will court her,” he allowed. “I am not as fatalistic as Perkar. I take what opportunities come my way and do not spend time regretting those that do not. Show me such a woman, and I will take my opportunity.”
“I'll keep my eyes open,” Hezhi said. “But you should, too.” She glanced at him and then away to the increasingly hilly land. “We haven't spoken very often,” she said.
“No.”
“I must ask you a question. I must ask you to answer it truly or not at all.”
Ngangata raised his thick brows and waited.
“Can I trust Perkar?”
The half man pursed his lips and rode silently for so long that Hezhi believed he had taken the offered option not to answer at all. But finally he nodded.
“It depends on what you mean. You can trust Perkar to always try to do the right thing. That doesn't mean that you yourself can trust him. In the end perhaps you can, because the people he knows are dearer to him than Perkar himself comprehends. He believes, for instance, that it is the failure of the expedition to Balat that gnaws most at him—the fact that he let his people down. And he does feel that. But what strikes him most deeply is that the actual people who trusted him died: Apad, Eruka, his king. Now he struggles to right those wrongs, and it may blind him to certain things. Do you understand the distinction? Perkar believes in the pursuit of higher causes. That is why I call him a 'hero.' But when he focuses his vision too narrowly on saving the world, he can make terrible mistakes, and it is usually those close to him who suffer for it. In that way he is very dangerous, Hezhi. You should be careful of Perkar. He means no harm, but people die in his wake, nevertheless.”