‘Also by foot. They tramped all over my little boys. Eliar was right in the thick of things, naturally, and he was really doing quite well until he came up against the Aryo himself – who just happened to be armed with a battle-axe. Eliar took a wild swing at the Aryo’s head with his sword, and the Aryo blocked it with his axe. Eliar’s sword broke off just above the hilt, and I thought, “Well, goodbye, Eliar”. But the boy surprised me – and he probably surprised the Aryo even more. He threw what was left of his sword right at the Aryo’s face and went for his dagger. Before the Aryo could regain his balance, Eliar was all over him, and he was working that dagger double-time. He must have stabbed that poor nobleman two dozen times, and he left a gash as wide as his hand with every stab. I didn’t really think that ornamental dagger of his was worth all that much, but it certainly leaves big holes in people if a man uses it right. The Aryo’s men swarmed Eliar under, of course, and they took him and some of his men prisoner and went back into the city with them.’
‘Who was this woman you mentioned before?’
‘The Aryo’s daughter. There’s a girl who can probably cut glass with her voice from a mile away. We could hear her very clearly when her father’s soldiers carried his body to her. We even heard her when she ordered the soldiers to come out of the city and chop us into little pieces. I didn’t think real soldiers would take orders from a woman, but Andine’s got the kind of voice you can’t really ignore.’ Khalor winced. ‘It seems that I can still hear her. But for all I know, I really can. You’ve never heard a voice like that one. It’s only been two and a half weeks, and she might very well be still screaming about how many yards of our entrails she wants draped over every tree in the vicinity.’
‘Andine?’ Althalus asked.
‘That’s her name. It’s a pretty name for a pretty girl, but she’s got a very ugly mind.’
‘You’ve seen her?’
‘Oh, yes. She stood up on top of the city wall to gloat while her soldiers butchered us. She kept screaming for more blood and waving Eliar’s dagger around. She’s a total savage, and she’s the ruler of Osthos now.’
‘A woman?’ That startled Althalus.
‘She’s no ordinary woman, Althalus. That one’s made out of steel. She was the Aryo’s only child, so they’re probably all bowing to her and calling her “Arya Andine”. If Eliar’s lucky, she just had him killed outright. I sort of doubt that, though. More probably, she’s been carving pieces off him with his own knife and making him watch while she eats them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that she’s trying to come up with a way to cut out his heart so fast that he’d still be alive long enough to watch her eat it right in front of his face. Stay away from that one, Althalus. I’d advise you to give her forty or fifty years to cool down before you go anywhere near her.’
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_d53c1bdf-4157-56d0-bf0a-2cba01e44552)
‘Why should we care if she kills him, Em?’ Althalus asked. ‘It’s the Knife we want, not some half-grown little boy from Arum.’
‘When are you going to learn to look beyond the end of your nose, Althalus?’ Her tone was a bit snippy, and there was enough condescension in it to be offensive.
‘That’s about enough of that, Em,’ he told her crisply.
‘Sorry, pet,’ she apologized. ‘That was a little nasty, wasn’t it? What I’m getting at is that everything is connected. Nothing happens in isolation. Eliar’s probably some crude, unschooled barbarian from the back country of Arum, but he did pick up that Knife back in Albron’s arms-room. It might have been a whim, but we can’t be sure of that until we test him. If he can’t read what’s written on the blade, we’ll pat him on the head and tell him to run along home. If he can read it, though, he’ll have to come with us.’
‘What if he’s like I was before I came to the House? I couldn’t even read my own name back then.’
‘I noticed. It won’t matter whether he can read or not. If he happens to be one of the selected ones, he’ll know what the writing means.’
‘How will we know if he’s got it right?’
‘We’ll know, pet. Believe me, we’ll know.’
‘Why don’t you enlighten me? Tell me what the word on the blade is.’
‘It varies. It’ll mean something different to each person who reads it.’
‘Emmy, that doesn’t make any sense at all. A word’s a word, isn’t it? It’s supposed to have one specific meaning.’
‘Does the word “home” have a specific meaning?’
‘Of course it does. It means the place where a man lives – or maybe the place he originally came from.’
‘Then it has a different meaning for each person, doesn’t it?’
He frowned.
‘Don’t beat yourself over the head with it, pet. The word that’s carved into the Knife-blade is a command, and it tells each one of the people we have to locate to do something different.’
‘It can’t just be one word, then.’
‘I didn’t say that it was. Each reader will see it differently.’
‘It changes, then?’
‘No. It’s permanent. The writing stays the same. It’s the reading that changes.’
‘You’re starting to give me a headache, Em.’
‘Don’t brood about it, Althie. It’ll make more sense to you once we get the Knife. Our problem right now is getting the Knife – and Eliar – away from Andine.’
‘I think I’ve already got the answer to that one, Em. I’ll just buy them from her.’
‘Buy?’
‘Pay her to give them to me.’
Althalus, Eliar’s a person. You can’t buy people.’
‘You’re wrong about that, Em. Eliar’s a captured soldier, and that means that he’s a slave now.’
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘Of course it is, but that’s the way things are. I’ll have to rob a few rich people to get enough gold to buy Eliar and the Knife. If Arya Andine’s as dead-set on butchering Eliar as Sergeant Khalor seems to think she is, I’ll need lots of gold to persuade her to sell him to me.’
‘Maybe,’ she murmured, her green eyes going distant. ‘But then again, maybe not. If we use the Book right, she’ll be more than happy to sell him to us.’
‘I’ve come across vindictive ladies before, Em. Believe me, it’ll take a lot of gold. If Sergeant Khalor was anywhere at all close to being right, she’s developed a strong appetite for Eliar’s blood by now. Let’s see if we can find some rich man’s house. I’ll rob him and then we can go and make Andine an offer.’
‘There are other ways to get gold, Althalus.’
‘I know – mining it out of the ground. I don’t care for doing it that way. I’ve seen a lot of deep holes in the mountainsides of Kagwher, and from what I hear, only about one in a hundred has turned up even a speck of gold.’
‘I believe I can improve on those numbers, pet.’
‘I still don’t like chopping at the ground, Em. It makes my back hurt.’
‘That’s because you don’t get enough exercise. Let’s move right along. We have several days’ travel ahead of us before you get to start digging.’
‘There isn’t any gold down here in the low-country, Em.’
‘There is if you know where to look. Ride on, my brave boy, ride on.’
‘Was that supposed to be funny?’
They rode south across the parched grainfields of Perquaine for the next several days, moving at a steady canter. It was about mid-afternoon on the third day after their meeting with Sergeant Khalor when Althalus reined in and dismounted.
