Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

He didn’t move. None of them moved until the last of the column was out of sight, their cart rumbling after it. Baerd turned then and looked at Catriana. She was trembling, but he knew her well enough to know it was as much with anger as with fear.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, reaching up a hand to touch her arm.

‘I could kill you, Baerd, for giving me such a fright.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I would deserve to be dead. I underestimated them.’

‘Could have been worse,’ Sandre said prosaically.

‘Oh, somewhat,’ Catriana said tartly. ‘We could all be lying dead here now.’

‘That would indeed have been worse,’ Sandre agreed gravely.

It took her a moment to realize he was teasing her. She surprised herself by laughing, a little wildly.

Sandre, his darkened face sober, said something quite unexpected then. ‘You have no idea,’ he murmured, ‘how dearly I wish you were of my blood. My daughter, granddaughter. Will you allow me to take pride in what you are?’

She was so surprised she could think of nothing to say. A moment later, deeply moved, she went forward and kissed him on the cheek. He put his long, bony arms around her and held her to his chest for a moment, carefully, as if she was fragile, or very precious, or both. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had held her that way.

He stepped back, clearing his throat awkwardly. She saw that Baerd’s expression was unwontedly soft, looking at the two of them.

‘This is all extremely lovely,’ she said, deliberately dry. ‘Shall we spend the day here telling each other what splendid people we think we are?’

Baerd grinned. ‘Not a bad idea, but not the very best. I think we’ll have to double back to where we bought the ale. We need another cart and horse.’

‘Good. I could use a flask of ale,’ Sandre said.

Catriana glanced quickly back at him, caught the wry look in his eye, and laughed. She knew what he was doing, but she would never have expected to be able to laugh so soon after seeing a sword against Baerd’s face.

Baerd collected his bow and quiver from the grass. They shouldered their packs and made her ride the horse— nothing else, Sandre said, would look right. She wanted to argue but couldn’t. And she was secretly grateful for the chance to ride; her knees were still weak.

It was very dusty along the road for a mile or two because of the army, and they kept to the grass beside it. Her horse startled a rabbit and before she could even register the fact, Baerd had notched an arrow and shot, and the animal was dead. They traded it a short while later at a farmhouse for a pitcher of ale and some bread and cheese and then went on.

Late in the day, by the time they had made their slow way back to the village, Catriana had convinced herself that the incident had been unfortunate, but not really important after all.

EIGHT DAYS LATER they were in Tregea town. They had seen no other soldiers in the intervening week, their path having taken them far off the major roads. They left the new cart and goods at their usual inn and walked down to the central market. It was late in the afternoon, a warm day for spring. Looking north between the buildings towards the docks, Catriana could see the masts of the first ships to come up the river after the winter. Sandre had stopped at a leather stall to have repairs done to the belt that held his sword. As she and Baerd moved through the crowded square, a Barbadian mercenary, older than most, moving with a limp, and probably drunk on spring wine, stumbled out of a tavern, saw her, and lurched over to grope clumsily at her breasts and between her legs.

She shrieked, more startled than anything else.

And a moment later wished with all her heart that she had not done so. Baerd, just ahead of her, wheeled, saw the man, and with the same deadly, reflexive speed that had killed the rabbit, flattened the Barbadian with a colossal blow to the side of his head.

And Catriana knew—knew in that moment with utter and absolute certainty—that he was striking out not just against a drunken reserve guard, but against the officer who had touched him with a sword by that grove in Certando a week before.

There was a sudden, frightened silence around them. And then an immediate babble of sound. They looked at each other for a blurred, flashing second.

‘Run!’ Baerd ordered harshly. ‘Meet tonight by the place where you came up from the river last winter. If I am not there go on by yourselves. You know the names. There are only a handful left. Eanna guard you all!’

Then he was gone, sprinting through the square the way they had come, as a cluster of mercenaries began fanning out quickly through the crowd towards them. The man on the ground had not moved. Catriana didn’t wait to see if he would. She cut off the other way as fast as she could run. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sandre at the leather stall watching them, his face loose with shock. She was careful, desperately careful, not to look at him, not to run that way. That one of them, oh, Triad please be willing, one of them might make it from this place alive and free, with the names known and the dream still carried towards Midsummer’s fires.

She darted down a crowded street and then sharply left at the first crossing into the warren of twisting lanes that made up the oldest quarter of Tregea near the river. Over her head the second storeys of houses leaned crazily out towards each other, and what filtered through of the sunlight was completely blocked in places by the enclosed bridges that connected the ramshackle buildings