Page 2 of Something Human

The Luth had not risen from where he knelt in the grass. Something about this struck Adares, even through the fog in his mind, as strange, and it was this that caused him to hesitate, to look back down at his rescuer instead of hastening away across the battlefield. That was when he finally noticed the crossbow bolt.

It was half hidden by the folds of his kilt, and it had obviously been in him for some time; there was a trail of dried blood down his leg. It was a small, slim atropa-wood bolt, more of a dart really, a style recently imported from the east. Adares’s mind spun off on a trail of irrelevancies. A couple of officers had been disciplined recently for allowing their troops to use atropa bolts, and Adares recognized the bolt from examples he had seen at the trial. The defender had made an ugly argument that amounted to claiming that barbarians were not quite human. The prosecution had demolished it.

The bolt had gone in from the front, just above the young man’s knee, and pierced upward through his thigh, the point just emerging on the other side. He’d had the sense not to try to pull it out himself.

With an effort, Adares marshalled his thoughts. Atropa was a slow poison, and it had a reliable antidote. But the young Luth was shaking with exhaustion from the effort of lifting the cart; if he could have made it across the field to the Luth camp before, he couldn’t do it now. And even if he could, it wasn’t likely that anyone there would even know that the bolt in his thigh was poisonous, much less have any of the antidote on hand to treat him.

In his present state, Adares could not even begin to explain all this in any of the Karganian languages that he knew—and the Luth language was not one of them, anyway.

“You saved my life,” he said simply, picking a language at random. “Let me help you.”

The Luth looked up at him. There was fresh blood soaking into the hem of his kilt where the strain of lifting the cart had caused the wound to bleed again.

“The Luth have won,” he said, in the same language that Adares had used. He did not speak it any better than Adares. “You should go. I do not need help.”

“Yes, you do.” He pointed to the bloody flights of the bolt. “It is very bad. I can fix it.”

The Luth shook his head, tight-lipped. “No. It’s Phemian wood. It’s poison. I know.”

Adares gestured hopelessly, the words eluding him. “Yes, but—I can fix it for you.” In theory, anyway. Right at that moment, he was not at all sure that he could fix anything.

The look on his rescuer’s face reminded Adares of how he had felt a few minutes before, when he first realized that someone was trying to save him. This young man had believed he was doomed as surely as Adares had believed it when he lay in the mud under the cart. He had done all that work to pull Adares out from under the cart, and shown him mercy when he saw what he was, believing it was probably the last thing he’d do.

“I will help you,” Adares repeated firmly.

For the first time, he looked around at their surroundings, trying to make sense of where he was. The valley was a carpet of churned-up earth and wreckage: dented bronze helmets and leather shields with spears through them, dead Phemians prone between the hooves of dead horses with dead Luth still tangled in their reins, lying where they had fallen. Neither side had gathered up its slain, but here and there in the distance anonymous figures moved, stooping, from body to body, casting long shadows, either looking for survivors or looting corpses. Adares looked towards Tios, perched on a steep angle of land which thrust out over the battlefield. He could see that the bulk of the Luth forces had already regrouped around the base of the city walls. He shivered and looked away.

To his left, the forest that covered most of the region crept down into the valley, dark with pine trees. Looking in that direction, Adares found what he had been seeking: the warm colours of tiled roofs and stone columns, standing out against the background of trees on the lower slope of the nearest hill. It was an old temple complex, one of the first that the Phemian colonists had built after Tios was founded. It was still in use, but it would be empty now, as all the population outside the city walls had been brought in to shelter in Tios at the first sign of the Luth attack. It was some distance away, though not as far as the walls of Tios. And Adares remembered being taken on a tour of the complex, and the priests proudly showing off their pharmacy. He thought he even remembered where it was.

He pointed. “Can you walk that far?”

The Luth looked, considered, and nodded. His hand reached out toward the spear that he had rolled away. He paused, looking up at Adares.

“To lean on?” he said.

Adares nodded. It was just as well. He did not feel sure of his ability to support anyone just then without falling over himself.

Still, by the time they were halfway across the valley, Adares found he had taken the younger man’s arm. The walk was agonizingly slow. They leaned on each other, dragging themselves along by what felt like pure will. One foot in front of the other, on and on. Adares tried not to look at the faces of the men lying still on the ground, for fear of seeing someone he knew. He thought from the way his companion stared fixedly at his feet that he was doing the same thing. Now and then they crouched down to avoid attracting the attention of the scavengers. Neither of them had spoken since they left the scene of the rescue.

Finally, after Adares had settled into a kind of dreaming numbness in which it seemed they were always dragging themselves forward and never getting closer to the temple complex, abruptly it loomed up in front of them.

They hauled themselves up the broad stone steps and through the gate under the colonnade into the tranquil, paved courtyard beyond. It was, as Adares had expected, deserted of all human occupants. Mourning doves cooing under the temple eaves made the only sound.

Or not quite the only sound—from somewhere Adares could also hear the faint, enticing trill of running water. He recalled a petition that the priests had made, back when Hesteios was still archon, for pipes to be laid to connect the temple complex to the main water supply of Tios. Of course—they had a fountain here. Turning a corner, they found the little tiled shelter housing the fountain, which was pouring sweet, fresh water out of a limestone lion’s head into an ornamental basin below.

As desperately thirsty as Adares was, his manners hadn’t quite deserted him, and he gestured towards the fountain, offering to let the Luth drink first. And Adares’s rescuer, who must have felt that the poor soul he had dragged out from under the siege-cart was in a worse state than he, was making the same gesture, the same offer, at the same time. They stared at each other for a moment. Then, quite suddenly, they both burst out laughing.

They staggered to the fountain together, weak with laughter, the Luth clinging to Adares’s tunic, Adares gripping the Luth’s tattooed shoulder. They fell down together at the basin and drank greedily from the stream of water at the same time, like a pair of lambs suckling from their mother side by side. When they drew back to catch their breath and caught each other’s eye, they began laughing again.

“Oh Water! Divine beverage!” Adares apostrophized the stream. “I will never drink wine again!”

The Luth, who had drunk his fill already, was leaning against the edge of the basin, laughing. Adares gulped down more water and kissed the nose of the stone lion, calling it a thrice-blessed fountain, of all fountains on earth the sweetest and purest, deserving to be praised forever by poets for its heavenly wetness. The Luth cupped his hand expertly and swatted a big spray of water from the basin up into Adares’s face. Adares swiped his forearm through the water and sent back an even bigger spray.

“Ah, that’s lovely,” said the Luth, and leant over to scoop up more water and splash it on his face.

Adares sat back and tugged at the buckles of his breastplate, which he had not had the sense to remove until now. He pulled the wretched thing off at last and threw it clattering onto the pavement. He washed his muddy face and hands in the basin, and then sat back, leaning against its stone rim.

He pressed his hand to his bruised chest. “It hurts to laugh,” he remarked.