Eternal Sky 01(51)
She had lived under two skies, Rasan and Song, and passed through the lands ruled by Qersnyk skies on her road between. This one, she did not know. It unsettled her, as if its backwardness were somehow a personal transgression. Whose sky is that, anyway? From what cradle has this evil sprung?
Whose conquest is marked by this sun?
She readied herself for another run. The coat would be worse to carry than wear, she decided. But the boots—the boots would have to go.
She pulled them off, balancing on one foot then the other, and stuffed the felt liners back inside them. A bit of cord she found in one pocket made a sling with which to bind them to her back. They’d thump, but not too badly, and the quilted fabric at least was soft, even if the soles were not.
She tested the road with her feet. The track was worn smooth by many hooves, and on the trail here, she had regained a lot of the callus she’d lost during her convalescence. Yes. By the light of her own wizardry, she could make this run.
She risked one more glance behind her. Now sunset dazzled on the last tips of the city. Soon it would glide up the mountains and fall into the sky and be gone. She remembered Temur saying they came with the morning. Whoever they were.
Samarkar lifted her gaze to the ridge where Tsering had waited for her just a few hours before. She drew one breath. Another.
She leaned forward into the sweep of the hill and began.
* * *
At first it was easy. Light lingered in the sky, one foot followed another, and she’d come along this road three times already. Before long, she crested that rise. Under the tree where Tsering had waited, she greeted the calls of insects and night birds with an immense and ragged relief. She found the water and food that Tsering had left for her. She found her stride, she found her breath. She found her light as the track faded into dim blueness before her, and one by one the unfamiliar stars and planets gleamed bright in the dark.
She ran. She breathed. She ran.
The chill of night fell around her. Her breath plumed in the air. Her bare feet left perfect outlines in the frost as she called warmth into her limbs. Her own summoned light was cooler and bluer than the clipped sliver of moon that rose late and set early and hardly drifted higher than the reach of the mountains. As she climbed, the fields she ran through gave way to trees then low scrub scattered with boulders as tall as a house.
Ten li in, the other set of footprints in the frost first crossed hers. Samarkar hurdled them on instinct and was three steps beyond when she realized it would be wise to investigate. She slowed, dropping momentum with floating steps, and turned back.
From a height, they might have been the marks of a man—a big man, barefoot—but when Samarkar crouched beside them she saw the four toes, the pinprick marks of retracted claws. Her own running steps showed the ball of her foot, the spring of toes; this one was more like an animal’s pad. But an animal’s pad if the animal in question ran on two legs, like a man.
Still crouched, still bathed in her own cool light, Samarkar brought her awareness of the surrounding empty—or more precisely, air-filled—spaces to the fore. Outlines of scrub, rock, small moving things. Nothing of a size to leave a print like this—a print fresh since the frost settled.
“Hrr-tchee,” she said under her breath, trying to force her human voice to make the snarl and chuff of the ancient warrior race’s name for itself. Her people called them Cho-tse. She’d seen one once, in Song, when it came to treat with Prince Ryi’s father. It was an enormous person, with the ruff and ears of a beast, a striped coat, lambent eyes, and a heavy lashing tail. She did not relish meeting another in the moonless night.
Samarkar rose to her feet. Could the carnage in Qeshqer be the result of Cho-tse action? They come with morning.
Surely, Cho-tse warriors would come not with dawn, but with the dark.…
In the darkness, something snarled. A purring rumble was followed by a series of chuffing booms, distant but loud enough that for long moments after, Samarkar listened to echoes ring from the surrounding cliffs and stones. She felt the coughs in her chest; they rattled her like the sounding chamber of a drum. Somewhere ahead of her Tsering had probably made camp for the night by now, and that cry in the dark wouldn’t make the horses any easier to handle.
Samarkar began again to run.
The coughs chased her, sometimes close and sometimes far, and twice more she passed over Cho-tse footsteps on the trail. She had never been fleet of foot, but now she tried, aware as she did so that she had no idea how far she had yet to run, and that she risked exhausting herself. She knew also that the light she needed to see her path marked her for anything that cared to track her through the night, and yet running in darkness would be an advantage only to the Cho-tse—if it stalked her.