Page 33 of Something Human

Kammel might not have approved of Adares’s choice of ally, but giving up comforts for the sake of a wounded comrade was the sort of thing that always went over well with warrior chieftains. It was gratifying when good policy and natural inclination coincided so well.

Adares wished there were some way he could have casually put his arm around Rus’s shoulders at this point. But of course that wouldn’t have gone over well at all.

“Now,” he said, “let me tell you my plan.”

In the middle of explaining to Kammel what he wanted him to do, realizing that Rus had had nothing to drink, Adares passed him his half-finished bowl of mead. Their eyes met for a moment as Rus hesitantly accepted it, and Adares was startled by the expression that he saw there. It was almost awe; it couldn’t have been very far removed from the expression that he himself had worn as he watched Rus kill the bull. Adares wanted to laugh out loud then, but he restrained himself.

By the time Rus left the Daine camp, it was buzzing with activity. Baghan Kammel was striding from one tent to another, conferring with his retainers, finding out if any of them had been on a boat before; around them, the warriors and squires were finishing their chaotic packing up of the camp, and passing worried rumours about why their headman was talking of boats. Adares had been presented by one of Kammel’s elderly aides with a map of the Karhan coast, painted on a piece of horsehide, and he was trying to make sense of Daine cartography, which seemed puzzlingly abstract and decorative. He looked up when Rus appeared by the arm of his chair.

“I think I should go,” Rus said.

“Already? You … you’re sure you’ll be all right? You don’t want to rest a while longer?”

Rus shook his head. “I’m no use here. My use now is to go back to tell Gunthanaruth that I have been riding in the forest and seen the Daine camped in the hills. I would—” He ran his hand through his hair, looking at the ground. “I would rather do it soon, while it is still almost true. Either way, it is a lie—and I don’t mind that, for your sake I don’t mind telling it—but if I go soon, it can’t be proved it’s a lie.”

“I’ve told them to leave some of the tents up,” said Adares. “The ones they haven’t taken down yet—with the banners flying—so that if Gunthanaruth sends a scout, he’ll see something.”

“Ah,” said Rus. “Good. You think of everything.” His tone was genuinely admiring.

Adares shrugged. “I can be efficient, sometimes.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the chieftain gesturing in his direction as he talked to one of his men. Any moment he would come striding over with some question.

Rus said, “I will try to make sure the towers by the harbour are abandoned. But if I can’t—”

“If you can’t, you can’t, and we’ll have to take them by force. If anyone seems suspicious, don’t press the issue. I don’t—” He stopped. What he didn’t want was for Rus to put himself in danger; but it seemed wrong to say it, and he knew Rus wouldn’t listen anyway. “Well. Do what you can.”

“I shall.”

Rus stood for a moment, running the tips of his pale fingers along the edge of his jaw, which bore a three days’ accumulation of scarcely perceptible blond beard.

“Well,” said Adares, “I guess … ”

He did not finish the sentence. Rus had made up his mind; only now did Adares realize what he had been hesitating about. He leaned down, tipped Adares’s face towards himself, and kissed him.

It was a brief, chaste kiss—Adares was so surprised, it could hardly have been otherwise—but it was still recognizably a lover’s kiss, in front of the entire Daine camp and their headman.

“May the gods bless you,” Rus said, straightening up.

Adares was on his feet a moment later. “Rus, I—”

“Ah, better not, I think. Goodbye, Adares.”

“Goodbye,” said Adares.

He watched Rus walk to his waiting horse, mount, and ride away into the enveloping forest. He had been about to say, “I love you.” He had wanted to make it clear, as he should have done long before that last moment, that this hadn’t been some uncomplicated interlude for him any more than it had been for Rus. He thought—he hoped—the reason Rus had stopped him was because he already knew.

Kammel came over to ask more anxious questions about boats. Neither he nor any of his men ever said anything about the kiss. The Phemians had different ways—everyone knew that—and the Luth, well, they were of course beyond the pale. You could expect anything of a Luth.

CHAPTER XI

IT WAS THE first, and the most unorthodox, of Adares Phyleros’s military successes—or the second, if you counted the fact that he had managed to survive his own heroic suicide on the battlefield four days earlier.

It all went more or less according to his plan. The Daine cleared themselves a trail through the forest, to get to the Naukos West road without detection, then followed the road down to the coast, where they found the naval yard with its skeleton crew, prepared to destroy their boats and workshops before letting them fall into enemy hands. They were pathetically grateful to find they didn’t have to.

The first flotilla with its load of Daine warriors set out just after dark, before moonrise. Adares, in the prow of the foremost boat, led the way around beneath the cliffs at the harbour’s mouth, and the whole string of boats passed safely through the narrows and into the harbour. Here, Adares saw with relief that the ships that had been prepared for the refugees were no longer at anchor. That meant they must have had time to get away before the Luth took the watchtowers.

They beached the boats and came cautiously ashore. While a few workers from the shipyards took the boats back, the first wave of Daine warriors approached the eastern watchtower above the narrows. They found it empty, although the signal fires had been left alight. The western tower was still garrisoned, though only sparsely, and its occupants, taken by surprise, surrendered quickly to the Daine. The second wave of boats came, with extra vessels which had not been brought the first time; they rowed straight through the narrows, without skulking by the cliffs, now that the towers were retaken.