Elephant Thief Page 6

  Lord Rhys, who had been curt and silent all day, stirred. “Get down,” he commanded.

  “Fine.”

  I shed his cloak, lifted my legs over Hami’s ears and twisted round so I lay belly down on his head. Hami recognised the trick from our childhood games and lowered his head, letting me slide down along his trunk to land neatly on my feet. I raised my chin in challenge to Lord Rhys who was left alone up on the elephant.

  His mouth thinned, but he too swung his legs over to one side. However, instead of clambering over Hami’s head, he simply jumped down, bracing himself against the hard impact. Ignoring me, he walked past me and started giving orders for setting up camp.

  Behind the farmhouse a meadow led down to the river we’d seen meandering across the plains, and I decided to give Hami his long delayed bath. Owl trailed me, silent as the bird she had taken her name from, but her company seemed to be considered sufficient to keep me from bolting. A reasonable assumption, unfortunately. Even if I managed to run away on Hami, they would catch me again quickly, unless I could do something about the horses. I had pondered that problem all day, but so far had not come up with any brilliant ideas.

  At the bottom of the meadow, a creek emptied into the river and formed a protected inlet. Swollen with rain and muddy, but Hami didn’t mind that. I shed most of my clothes, down to a thin tunic over trousers, but realised I had nothing to scrub the elephant with.

  “Do you think there’s a brush somewhere up at the farm?” I asked Owl.

  She nodded and gave a shrill whistle. A moment later Lord Rhys’s squire came running, and she sent the boy off to fetch a brush. Once he returned, I turned up the legs of my trousers and waded into the cold water. At my command, Hami lay down, wallowing from side to side so I could reach every last spot of his thick hide. He loved this part and willingly extended his legs and trunk for me to scrub.

  Fascinated by the sight, the boy offered to help. I accepted gratefully.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Wynn.” He cleared his throat and puffed up his chest. “But you may call me the Hawk.”

  I bit down on a smile. “A fine name, Hawk.” Delighted, he beamed at me.

  We splashed round the big, grey bulk of the elephant while Owl sat down on the grassy verge, polishing her knife with a soft cloth and keeping watch on us with her slanted eyes. Hami gurgled in ecstasy when we rubbed his big, flapping ears, scratching all the hard to reach places. Wynn laughed, and in response Hami sucked in a trunk full of water and squirted it all over the boy, making him squeal.

  I remembered how we used to give the elephants their nightly bath back at Roshni and all the kids wanted to help with Hami. He loved playing with children, yet always stayed mindful of his greater strength. I had learnt to walk by holding onto his legs and ever since he had protected me.

  I smiled at Wynn. “A shame we don’t have any oil. When my father served at Roshni’s court, we used to rub on almond oil until the elephants gleamed. And sometimes we painted their foreheads in bright patterns with coloured chalks.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “For luck,” I explained. “At every full moon the governor holds a procession through town with torches and music.”

  The boy’s face lit up. “Oh, I would like to see that!”

  I sighed, remembering the dancing and lovely food. Moon cakes had been a favourite with both Hami and me. “It is a fine sight.”

  The soft brush soon looked rather worse for wear. “I don’t suppose you have any pumice stone?” I asked.

  “What is that?”

  “A light, porous stone. Ladies in Sikhand keep their feet soft with it, but I use it for grooming elephants.”

  The boy shrugged. “I’ve never heard of it, but perhaps Lady Cerwen might have some. We can find out tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “We should reach the Eyrie by late afternoon.”

  I wondered if this Lady Cerwen was the Eagle’s wife, but didn’t ask. It didn’t concern me after all. When Hami was finally scrubbed from trunk to tail, I took a step back. “Would you like a quick ride as thanks?” I asked Wynn.

  The boy’s eyes went wide. “Oh! Could I?”

  With a few soft commands I made Hami kneel in the shallow water and helped the boy scramble onto his back. He whooped with excitement when Hami heaved himself to his feet and walked beside me back to the shore. “Just wait till I tell the boys back home about this! They will be green with envy.”

  I laughed, but stopped abruptly when I spotted Lord Rhys standing next to Owl. How long had he been watching us? His eyes flicked over me, taking in my wet hair and the muddy clothes clinging to me in a single glance. I blushed and hurriedly gathered up my discarded clothing, pressing it to my chest in an untidy pile.

  He jerked his chin at Wynn. “Cook wants you to help with the food.”

  I made Hami kneel again, and the squire jumped down and ran away, waving to me cheerfully. “Thank you, Lady Arisha!” Owl glided away in his wake, leaving me alone with the Eagle. Not completely alone, I reminded myself, I still had Hami. As the elephant chose that moment to wander off and started to pull up some greens for a small bite, the protection seemed rather inadequate.

  “So you served at the court of Roshni’s governor?” Lord Rhys asked abruptly. Well, that answered the question of how long he’d been there listening.

  “My father did.”

  “Is that where you were heading?”

  I shrugged, wondering if I would be welcome there after Father’s big row with the stable master. “Perhaps.” Loud munching announced that Hami found his snack delectable.

  The corners of Lord Rhys’s mouth drew down contemptuously. “Did you enjoy court life? Pretty dresses and having to do no real work?”

  “We did do real work,” I snapped.

  “What, carrying the governor round so he could lord it over the common people?”

  He seemed determined to despise me, but I remembered helping with building roads and clearing logs from the forest. Hami might have done all the lifting and carrying, but I too had been bone tired in the evenings. Still, what did I care for his opinion?

  “That’s none of your business,” I retorted. Let him think of me whatever he wanted.

  At my sharp tone Hami had ambled over to us and extended a leathery trunk over my shoulder, but his presence seemed to impress Lord Rhys as little as before.

  He tapped Hami on the side, just as I had done. “Kneel down.”

  To my satisfaction, Hami just continued munching steadily, his mouth moving from side to side. He didn’t listen well to other people without me catching his attention first and anyway, a bath signalled the end of his working day. Elephants were creatures of habit.

  “How did you get the elephant to kneel down?” Lord Rhys demanded to know.

  “I asked him.”

  “What is the command?”

  I smiled sweetly. “Kneel down.”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. “When we get back to my base, you will teach my men how to direct the elephant.”

  “No.”

  “The more you cooperate, the sooner you can return to your life of leisure in Sikhand.” The contempt in his voice made clear what he thought of that.

  “No.”

  He stepped closer, glaring down at me across the bundle of clothes in my arms. “My patience is not infinite!”

  I swallowed hard, remembering the tales told about this man, but straightened my spine. “No. I will not assist you in killing more people.” For what else could they use Hami for?

  Lord Rhys snorted. “By the Lady of Darkness, that’s rich, coming from a Sikhandi.”

  “I have never lifted a hand against any of you!”

  “Of course not, that’s not the Sikhandi way. You don’t lift your hand against your enemies, you poison them.”

  Once again I cursed Prince Maziar. He had made any moral position in this conflict supremely difficult! Yet how could
more violence be the answer to past wrongs? “And you slit their throats while they sleep,” I said. “Is that any better?”

  “Lady, watch what you say!” He released his breath in a soft hiss and reached out to stroke a finger along the side of my neck. “Remember, there’s nothing to stop me from giving you to one of my men.”

  I stilled. But then I thought of Wynn asking me to call him the Hawk, Lord Taren’s easy smile, the kindness of the old cook and the silent courtesy of the other men and realised I no longer feared them. They might kill Hami, yes, but would not touch me.

  “You should not threaten something you’re not willing to carry through,” I threw at Lord Rhys.

  I brushed past him, calling to Hami to follow me. But at the top of the hill I stopped and looked back over my shoulder. He hadn’t moved from his position, but I caught the glitter of his eyes in the gathering dusk. A dangerous man. The place where he had touched me burned with heat, as if he had marked me somehow.

  * * *

  I was glad to reach the house, where Lord Rhys’s men were busy setting up camp. They might be a bunch of rebels, but downright harmless compared to their leader. Something in his manner deeply unsettled me and it was not just his reputation for violence. Rumour had it that he’d lost some of his family in that infamous night of Prince Maziar’s treachery, which explained his rage. Yet it seemed to be directed so personally at me, as if he wanted to put all Sikhandi wrongs at my door. I shook my head. Surely I was being irrational.

  The men had collected a large pile of grass under a cherry tree, complemented with beets, yellow turnips and more cabbages, and I left Hami contentedly munching away at his evening meal. Once more they used hempen ropes to tie him up, still not realising he could push over a whole tree if he wanted to.

  In the farmhouse, an inner room had been set aside for Owl and me, the windows barred from outside to make sure that I couldn’t sneak out that way. As the door had long since rotted away we had little privacy, but at least a fire burnt in the hearth. Owl held up a blanket for me while I changed into dry clothes and soon after Wynn arrived with bowls of food.

  “No meat and cooked separately,” he announced and handed me mine. “Lord Rhys’s orders.”

  I stared at him in stupefaction at this unexpected kindness. Lord Rhys might read me like a book, but I could not make head nor tail of the man! One moment he threatened me, the next he respected my religious scruples.

  To take my mind off his unsettling behaviour, I motioned to the rooms. “Wynn, what is this place?”

  “Oh, it used to be a stud farm. Lord Rhys’s family owned it.”

  “And what happened to it?” I couldn’t forget the cairn outside. Several of the men had picked up stones to add to it.

  The boy shrugged. “The Sikhandi came and burnt it down.”

  “And the people living here?”

  Owl’s harsh voice cut in. “They burnt too, locked in the barn. We buried them where the cairn is. And afterwards we tracked down the bastards who’d done it and slit their throats.” It was the longest speech I’d heard from the Khotai woman yet.

  I fell silent. Had Lord Rhys known the people who had died? Probably.

  “That was five years ago,” Wynn added helpfully.

  Prince Maziar’s work then. The man Lord Rhys had killed with his own hands. Again I wondered if he had lost any of his close family to the poisoning that night at Glynhir Castle. Quite probably, as it had been Prince Maziar’s aim to take out the whole of Aneirion’s nobility in a single stroke, thus facilitating his invasion. Not that it had helped him in the long run.

  Wynn left us to our meal and silence fell, while in the other room the men were talking and playing dice. The old cook told riddles and from the laughter greeting them I got the feeling that I was probably missing a hidden meaning. Somebody had deposited my bags in one corner, and once I’d finished my stew, I took out my belongings to check them over. Touching the smooth, satiny wood of the lute soothed my inner turmoil and I took my time to tune it properly.

  I hadn’t played for a while, not since my father fell sick, and at first my fingers felt stiff on the strings. I did not have my mother’s effortless talent anyway, but it sufficed for my own entertainment. The rain had recommenced, drumming a soft counterpoint on the ceiling, and I chose a melancholy lament that somehow suited my mood.

  After a while Wynn crept in and sat by our fire, but I paid him little attention, concentrating on the complicated fingering. Not wanting to disturb the men in the other room, I played quietly, when suddenly I realised that the place had gone strangely hushed. Looking up, I found them crowding at the doorway, listening attentively.

  One of them, with a jagged scar along his jaw and a tooth missing, beamed at me. “Lady, do you know any Aneiry songs?” Eager murmurs greeted the question.

  I tried to cast my mind back to a song my father’s servants often used to hum while cooking, a simple, catchy melody with none of the technical difficulties of Sikhandi court music. The moment I struck the first tentative chords, the man broke into a smile. “Ah, the Miller’s Daughter!” He started to sing along.

  By the time we reached the chorus, everybody joined in. What a strange sight to see these rough, fierce looking warriors croon away at a love song!

  “What about the Maid of Caregywen?” one of the others asked when we were finished and sang the melody in a clear voice.

  Not wanting to disappoint them, I did my best to accompany him and luckily they didn’t mind the odd false note. One song followed the other, until my fingers ached from the unaccustomed exercise.

  “A drinking song!” one of the men at the back called at the next break. “Let’s have the Donkey, the Bull and the Cockerel!”

  The man with the missing tooth frowned. “She’s a lady, you dolt,” he called. “She wouldn’t know that kind of song.”

  That made me laugh. “You’d be surprised!”

  And I launched into one of the favourites of the Victorious Fifth, with a tune not so different from theirs, that told the story of a soldier who met a girl in every town. They caught on quickly to the repetitions as his conquests accumulated in the chorus.

  “Almond eyes, almond eyes, weeping at our sad good-byes,” we all bawled lustily and with much feeling, “by the dawn I must be gone, for the emperor calls me on.”

  Suddenly silence fell. I looked up. Lord Rhys stood in the doorway, his arms crossed on his chest. My fingers stumbled and the lute gave a dissonant protest. He said nothing, but the men dispersed to their tasks, some of them to take up guard duty outside. They reminded me of nothing so much as children caught out by a stern nurse.

  Defiantly I played on and finished the song, but my fingertips ached and afterwards I put the lute away. Lord Rhys sat down at the fire in the other room, ignoring me, and soon Owl and I settled down to sleep. Yet when I curled up and closed my eyes, my last memory was of him watching me while the fire cast bright light and deep shadows across his face.

  SEVEN

  We continued our journey the next day, but with less haste. As the fertile valley opened up, small hamlets dotted the landscape, prosperous places with storks’ nests perching precariously on thatched roofs. Black and white cattle grazed in fields enclosed by hedges, while sheep and goats roamed the hillside, and every now and again I spotted herds of horses.

  Lord Rhys’s company travelled openly now, with no attempt at concealment. He still had scouts out, but quite obviously he did not fear discovery by Sikhandi patrols. Of course, over the last years our influence had been steadily decreasing, so now we only controlled the area around the main camps and the road into Sikhand. Except for the occasional punitive expedition, none of our soldiers moved very far away from that anymore.

  Every so often, the road would skirt one of the villages, consisting of sturdily built wooden houses with chickens and pigs roaming freely in the muddy lanes or kept in wattle and daub pens. Occasionally, in the bigger villages, there might also be a smithy or a m
ill. But invariably the whole population would come running to exclaim at the elephant and its riders. Lord Rhys they greeted respectfully enough and he usually exchanged a few words with the headman, but me they just stared at. Yet none of them showed any fear of Hami, as if the fact of Lord Rhys riding him guaranteed his harmlessness.

  At midday we crossed another stream bringing icy melt water down from the mountains. A row of stepping stones, currently submerged, led across the ford and the fast flowing water foamed around Hami’s feet. Lord Rhys called a halt and directed his men to picket the horses downstream from us, well away from the elephant, who still made them nervous. As they knotted a rope around Hami’s rear foot and tied it to a birch tree, I wondered how much farther it was to this Eyrie. Surely if I wanted to escape I had to find an opportunity soon.

  With Owl away in charge of the scouting, I had nobody watching me in particular and sauntered over to the horses to pat them and surreptitiously collect my bags from the packhorse. Carrying them slung openly across my shoulder, I strolled back and sat down near Hami. Next I took out the lute and checked it, as if that had been my sole purpose.

  The cook had lit a fire to make tea and handed out rolls of bread and dried jerky. I felt rather guilty when one of the men brought over my meal, smiling at me. “For our bard,” he said.

  They were my enemies, I had to remind myself, even as I thanked him. Stroking the horses just now had reestablished my rapport with them and I slowly extended my senses to them. Feelings of tiredness swept over me, but also the knowledge that there was a warm stable waiting down the road. The tasty grass under their feet, the security of travelling in a large herd, but below that also nervousness at the large, unknown animal not far from them.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated, slowly building up a sense of alarm. While I hated having to frighten the poor beasts, I needed a distraction to make good my escape. Also Lord Rhys’s men would not be able to follow me quickly on foot, which would give me the time to throw up more distractions across the road. Something is wrong, I thought at the horses. You want to run as far away as you can.