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vendor, he could feel empathically that his money pouch was being eyed,
weighed. He dropped the silver and copper coins the boy gave him in change
back into the pouch and determined not to make that mistake again. -He must
hide his small supply of gold inside his pack and carry only coppers and
perhaps a silver piece where they would be se~en if he made a purchase.
Pretending he hadn't noticed anything, he walked away, Reading the two men
flitting through the crowd, following him at a safe distance. Together? Yes.
Very well. He Read crowds in several streets radiating from the forum mustn't
get caught in a deserted area. Reading the men trailing him, he wove through
the crowd to get out of their sight, ducked into a side street until they had
passed, and came out behind them. Then he eluded their search in the crowd,
and escaped through Northgate just as the strangers' bell rang. Soon the gate
was closed behind him for the night, the thieves remaining in Zendi.
For some time, Lenardo walked among people returning home from a day's
business in Zendi. The crowd gradually thinned, until he walked alone again.
He located a sheltered spot well off the road, ate a piece of fruit, and lay
down to sleep.
With a Reader's discipline, Lenardo was able to put himself into a light
sleep from which he would awaken at any disturbance. It was a troubled sleep,
as he usually slept on his right side; each time he would truly fall asleep he
would try to turn over, sending waves of pain through his sore arm. By morning
it was badly swollen, his right hand stiff and clumsy.
Still very tired, he set off along the road again, now in territory
completely strange to him. It was more of the same fields, peasant huts,
squalor and misery. He felt a kinship with the landscape.
He stopped to bathe his arm and spread ointment on it, but the pain just from
doing that was almost too much to bear. He drank feverishly at the brook and
staggered back to the road for a few hours. By early afternoon, he knew he
could go no further.
There was medicine for fever in his pack, an opiate that dulled the physical
senses and sent the mind roaming in precarious realms. He dared not use it
unless he were safe, where nothing could disturb his body. On the road, there
was no such place.
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There were hills off to his right, however. He had a full skin of water,
food, and medicine. If there was a cave in those hills where he might hide for
a night and a day . . .
When he left the road, he found it even harder to walk. His head seemed to
lift from his body, then return with a stabbing pain. Twice he fell, dragged
himself up again, and continued his nightmare journey. At one point he was
seized with teeth-chattering chills, but most of the time he was in a clammy
sweat.
His vision became distorted, and as he tried to Read both the way he walked
and the surrounding countryside, the two perceptions blurred into confusion.
He had to concentrated on his own steps, narrowing in to force one foot to
follow the other...
How long he traveled thus, he didn't know. He had reached the lower slopes of
the hills and was clambering over a rocky outcropping when he suddenly Read
people savages all around him.
Alert, he could have avoided them. As it was, they were upon him, hill
bandits on helpless prey. He only half understood what they were saying.
"An exile."
"No one will be looking for this one."
"They always have good clothes, sometimes money."
Then harsh hands grabbed him, and laughter rang out as he howled in pain,
trying to shake them off, reaching for his sword with numbed fingers that
scrabbled at the hilt. More laughter as he was disarmed, his cloak ripped
away, his arms twisted behind his back, forcing another scream from him.
He was staring into the face of a man perhaps his own age, but the face was
bearded, the mouth open to show teeth missing, and those present black with
rot.
"What have you got, exile? What can you give us for your life?"
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"Nothing," Lenardo gasped, knowing they wanted him to grovel and plead before
they killed him anyway.
The bandit hit him in the stomach. Gratefully, Lenardo blacked out. He came
to with the pain of someone twisting his branded arm again. "Beat him," the.
bandit instructed, and while two held him, others punched and kicked at him,
ever careful to keep him conscious. Against the pain in his arm, the blows
hardly registered. Hanging limp between the bandits, he waited for death to
release him from pain.
Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, stripped of scabbard, boots, money
pouch. Then one of the bandits felt under his shirt and pulled forth the
amulet old Quintus had given him.
There was a gasp. The bandits dropped Lenardo and the amulet as if both had
become red-hot.
"The wolf-stone!"
"Aradia!"
They scattered like startled birds, disappearing into the hills. Lenardo
tried to sit up. They had taken everything, leaving him weaponless, without
even boots to protect his feet from the rocks or a cloak to wrap up in against
the night. He needed water, but they had taken the water-skin too.
He tried to Read around him, not moving. There must be a spring somewhere in
these hills. He was deathly thirsty, and he had to clean the wound on his arm,
where the bandits had burst the blisters with their filthy hands.
Far, far up in the hills, he Read water. He couldn't stand; he could barely
get to his knees to crawl. After a while, it ceased to matter. He slumped into
unconsciousness.
Feverish sleep possessed him, thirst and. pain awakening him several times to
see stars overhead. One time he was freezing but couldn't find cloak or
blanket. Then he was burning, his lips splitting with thirst, the sun blazing
down on him. The pain in his arm was gone.
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Somehow he found the strength to turn his head, meaning to look at his arm,
but caught instead by a vision. Hallucination, he told himself firmly, but
still before his bleary eyes, swimming in and out of focus but stubbornly
remaining, sat the white wolf.
It was not the abstract alabaster symbol, but a living animal, dusty about
the feet, watching him curiously from a safe distance. Safe? Who was the one
hi danger here?
Perhaps the animal would tear him apart, and his troubles would be over.
The wolf rose and made a sort of whining noise, like a dog. It ran a few
paces away, turned to look at Lenardo, came back to its original position, and
whined again. Twice more it repeated the performance. Bemused, Lenardo
wondered, You want me to follow you, boy? I'm not going anywhere. Probably not
ever again. The effort of focusing his attention on the animal sent him back
into unconsciousness, and when he next woke, the wolf was gone. // it was ever
there.
He focused his eyes on his right arm, lying like a separate thing, swollen,
red streaks running from the yellow, scabrous brand up toward his shoulder. He
had seen such marks before. It meant his arm must come off if he were to live.
But I'm not going to live, he thought. Alone, far from help, he would die of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]