Page 4 of Something Human

Instead, he rinsed the blood from his hands and sat back against the fountain basin, hugging his knees. It was growing cold as the sun went down finally, and his short, sleeveless tunic did not provide much protection against the damp Karhan night.

In Tios they would be thinking by now that he was dead. It was bad that he was not there at such a time, but he could not see any way he could get back into the city now, with the whole strength of the Luth army between him and the walls.

Looking across the courtyard, he noticed that a door at the back of the small temple to the horse god stood open. The back room, behind the temple altar, would make a good place to shelter for the night—probably the best they could hope for, since the priests would no doubt have locked their house and the main temple doors before they left.

He looked down at the Luth.

“Well, that’s one question answered, anyway.”

“What is?” His voice came out hoarse, as if with disuse.

“I always wondered whether you wore anything under those kilts or not.”

The Luth’s eyes went wide, and his hand flew automatically to the fabric between his legs, before he collected himself enough to laugh. But laugh he did.

The answer was yes. There was a loincloth of sturdy, good-quality linen under the blue kilt. The tattoos went all the way up the Luth’s thighs, further than Adares had any need to expose in the course of bandaging him. Still, it was a closer look than he’d ever had of a Karhan tribesman—certainly of one of the Luth.

Of course he’d had a good look at a few Karhan women in his years in the province, including a couple as fair of hair and skin as this young man, and even one with tattoos—they hadn’t been visible until she took her clothes off, and came as a rather exciting surprise. The young Luth’s combination of pale skin with hard, lean muscle was very different, though, and rather beautiful.

“Do you feel better?” Adares asked.

“Yes. Not so sick.” He pushed himself up gingerly onto one elbow. “Not so poisoned.”

“Excellent. What’s more, you haven’t got an iron-tipped piece of wood sticking through you. I was just thinking, it’s getting cold and dark. There’s an open door over there—we should go inside and see if we can find a more comfortable place to sleep.”

The Luth nodded and sat up all the way. Adares took his arm and drew it around his shoulders to help him up. They made their way slowly across the courtyard to the open door and into the dimness beyond it. Adares let the Luth down gently onto the stone floor, where he could sit with his back against a wooden chest that stood by the door. He left the door open for the little remaining light from outside.

“There should be a lamp,” he remarked, straightening up. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

After some blundering in the semi-darkness, he did succeed in finding a lamp, which was full of oil. Carrying it carefully, he found his way through the darker end of the room to the door that opened onto the main chamber of the little temple. It was latched on this side, but not locked, and when he opened it, he saw beyond it a faint glow in the tripod at the centre of the ambulatory, where the sacred fire had been banked and not quite gone out. Praise be to Soukos.

He stirred the fire with a poker propped nearby, found where they kept the extra coals, and added some. In the shadows, the votive horse statues that lined the walls stared down at him with blank eyes and flaring nostrils. He thought of his own horse, and of the team of shaggy white Luth horses that had pulled the cart he had ridden into. He lit the lamp from the fire and returned to the back room, shutting the door behind him. He came back to where he had left the Luth, and shut the outer door as well.

In the light of the lamp, Adares could see that the room they were in was part storeroom for temple paraphernalia, part quarters for some temple functionary—probably an assistant priest or votary servant who was in charge of keeping the sacred fire lit and the ambulatory swept. There were barrels and piles of folded linen near the far wall, a heap of empty lamps and bronze censers, a little shelf with a dish of dried figs, a bowl of apples and walnuts, jars of oil and honey, and a few other things on it, and pushed up against the left-hand wall, draped with striped blankets and a warm fur rug …

“A bed! Look—could one ask for more?”

Adares fetched down the dish of figs and came over to sit beside the Luth. He set the lamp on the floor and offered him the dish.

“I’m Adares, by the way. Do you feel up to telling me your name?”

“It’s Rus.” He took one of the figs and looked at it dubiously. “What is this?”

“A fig. All the way from Pheme. They’re good.”

“They’re food?”

“Why do you think I’m eating one?”

“I don’t know,” said Rus drily. “You are a Phemian. I hear strange stories.” He took a bite of the fig and chewed appreciatively. “It’s nice. Sweet. This is one of your holy places, is it?”

“Yes. Well, this is the back room, the holy part is out front. But the whole complex is temples. I suppose your people don’t build temples, do they?” Nobody in this part of Kargania did, and he knew the Luth were at least semi-nomadic.

“No. We have sacred hills. Built by the gods. It makes more sense.”

“When you put it like that. But we build stone and brick houses for ourselves, with tiled roofs and paved streets and fountains in the gardens. It would look bad if we couldn’t do at least as well for the gods we worship.”

“Fair enough. We do make stone circles—you know, with standing stones. But they don’t keep you dry when it rains.”