Tanith Lee - Birthgrave 02 by Vazkor Son of Vazkor

Author:Vazkor, Son of Vazkor [Vazkor, Son of Vazkor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:49+00:00

2

The krarls take forty days or more to achieve that trek from the mountains to the easternpasture, or from pasture back to mountains, stopping as they do each sunfall to camp, and many days by water or when they fight their wars, and slow with women on foot, their herds and their bickering. With the fast horses of Eshkir, tough despite their thin bellies, and the short camps and few diversions, we were in sight of the rock walls in thirteen days and climbing them in fifteen, and came to the outposts of the city in twenty.

Demizdor seemed recovered, though she was not, and rode consistently as any of the men. For me the journey was less uneventful. A broken rib had pierced my right lung; I was choking up blood, and finally they began to believe with chagrin that their prize would expire before they got him home. So they took the space to bind my ribs, and fed me, as they always did, like a sick animal that disgusted them. I healed quickly enough to be surprising to them, and soon rode upright, bound in my saddle.

“This is Vazkor’s, no doubt of it,” Zrenn said. “I have heard stories that he recovered from a slit throat on a certain occasion.”

A couple of the men declined to accept the tale. They were all of the silver rank, comrades and not master and hirelings.

Zrenn only glanced at me, and said for my benefit in slurred krarl speech, “If it heals so well from wounds, it will be able to endure a good deal of wounding before it dies.Poor puppy-dog. It would like to bite and cannot find its teeth.”

Indeed, some of my marrow was returning into me. I hadbeen near gone, and not lamenting, but as my ribs knit and the pain and debility left me, life burned up, and I could have howled like a dog in earnest to get out of the ropes they had locked me into, and caress Zrenn’s gullet with my boot. Then I would glimpse Demizdor, and the lead would sink in. me again.

She was waiting for a chance to aid me,I thought at first, like a child. At length this puerile deception would not do. I began to see how her pride hung on her disdain. Thus: Let me come close to her and Ishould win her once more. But this would not do either. As the last red-brown autumn days sloughed from the land and my life, I realized she had turned cold bitch on me, and no lover’s stroke remained to break her ice.

I was still sick enough that it made me sicker. But we were in the mountains eventually, and I began to have other events to dwell on.For one, my future as scapegoat in the city.

The city, I saw it in its cage of mountains, black on the yellow sky of sunset. And two hours after, having entered its walls, I saw it by the light of torches, yellow on the black sky of night.

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