Page 43 of Something Human

It was the opposite of that feeling of flying that came over him in a fight. He had to think about every motion, and at the same time he felt distant from his body, as if some part of him simply could not believe he was doing this. The Daine headman was right there, looking at them. At least a dozen of his retainers were close enough to see, and Adares had been the centre of attention since he walked into the camp. Rus kissed him on the mouth.

He meant it, in some confused way, as the kind of parting gesture Adares would expect; and he offered it in an abandonment of his own honour in front of the hostile tribesmen of the Daine. Of course it was obvious from Adares’s expression that he hadn’t expected anything like that.

Rus straightened up. “May the gods bless you,” he said formally.

Adares spent a moment looking taken aback before he jumped up from his chair. “Rus, I—”

But he hadn’t expected the kiss; he hadn’t intended to say whatever he was about to say in front of the Daine headman and his retainers. Rus couldn’t let him make matters worse for himself. Besides, it didn’t really need to be said.

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

“Goodbye,” said Adares.

Rus turned away and walked toward his horse, trying hard not to limp, not looking back. Later, he thought it might have been at that moment, when he leaned down to kiss Adares in the Daine camp, that it dawned on him. He was not just going to risk his life—he was going to die.

CHAPTER XV

HE WAS SURPRISINGLY content as he rode back toward Tios. The day was warm, the sky clear overhead, birds singing in the trees. He rode leading the horse that Adares had brought from the temple, so that he could return it. He would explain, if he needed to, that a thief had tried to take it, and he had ridden in pursuit and recovered it. He hoped that story wouldn’t be necessary, though, as he would have enough lies to tell without it.

He thought over his time with Adares, pleasurably, treasuring up his memories of things they had said and done together. His life had changed irrevocably. Even if—as seemed likely—he and the Phemian never met again, Rus was different now, he thought, because they had been there together and done what they had done.

He still didn’t think you could call a man a “virgin,” but if you could—apparently in Firhat Kosoth, Pseuchaian, you could—then that was what he had been, and now he was not. But it didn’t feel as if he had stopped being something, rather as if he had begun to be something else. At the moment it felt like something better.

He had a friend at home, Kuth, who had trained to become kahar, but on the eve of his initiation, changed his mind and instead married one of the apprentices to the vahat, the girl who would have helped to ink his tattoos. People told the story to laugh about it, and Kuth always laughed with them, because that’s the sort of man he was, but if you asked him seriously whether he thought he had made the right choice, he would say yes, and that he had never regretted it.

Of course it was not quite like that for Rus. No one would know how he had changed, and there was no new life waiting for him, side-by-side with the person he loved, the way Kuth lived. Perhaps it was just as well that such a thing was not possible. He wouldn’t have known how to ask for it, even if it was, and he wasn’t sure it was what Adares would have wanted.

It was early evening by the time he reached the edge of the forest and saw the yellow walls of the Phemian holy place ahead of him. He rode through the gate prepared to tell his story about the stolen horse, but it wasn’t needed. There was no one there, only the remaining horses.

He returned the Phemian mare, dumping her saddle and bridle in the stable with the heap of other equipment. He went out of his way to avoid the corner of the courtyard with the door to the little back room where he had sheltered with Adares. He thought it would make him sad to see it now.

He rested for a little while, sitting outside the stable, before hauling himself back up onto the white mare and taking her at a slow walk out through the gate in the direction of the Luth camp. By this time, the sky was twilit.

The Luth had several advantages in warfare over the tribes of the Karhan. One was that they lived on campaign the same way they lived for part of each year, in the same comfortable, well-made tents with which they followed their herds down to the winter pastures and back up to the summer villages in the highlands. They were at home in their tents, and even Rus, riding toward Gunthanaruth’s camp at the base of the walls of Tios, couldn’t escape the feeling that he was coming home. He was bone-weary by this time, hungry, and ready to fall off his horse from sheer exhaustion, and there would be hot mead in the camp, fresh-baked bread, and spit-roasted meat, and he could already faintly hear the sound of someone singing from the nearest tent. He wondered where Adares was now and what he was doing.

The men at the tent where he arrived were strangers to Rus, but of course they could see what he was. They welcomed him respectfully.

“Come and share our fire, kahar,” they said. “Hathum, fill another mead-horn!”

Rus accepted the drink, and a few bites of bread and meat, but reluctantly declined the spot by their fire.

“I must see Gunthanaruth,” he said. “And if I sit now, I think I will not get up before morning.”

He left them and led his horse through the alleys between tents to the headman’s fire. It was crowded and lively with music and laughter. Gunthanaruth had brought his favourite bard with him, and he was singing, accompanying himself on the lyre. One of the captive Tak women whom they had taken in the summer sat by Gunthanaruth’s side, working on some inscrutable Tak handicraft in the firelight. She did not look unhappy, but there was no reason why she should. The Luth treated captives well—it was one of the things they said about themselves—and of course they were better off than any of the poor forest-dwelling tribes of the Karhan.

The rest of the fire was ringed by retainers and hearth headmen enjoying their chief’s hospitality. And of course Suthus. He was the current stathan, a cousin and childhood friend of Gunthanaruth. He had opposed this campaign, but in a friendly way, and when Gunthanaruth decided to pursue it in spite of him, of course Suthus had come along. His own days of riding bulls—or really of riding anything other than a placid, sturdy mare—were long past. He had been stathan for more than twenty years, since he was a young man.

Rus tethered his horse and approached the circle of firelight. One of the hearth headmen, seeing him, nudged Suthus and pointed. The stathan looked up, then started forward and half-rose, then sat down again abruptly, his eyes wide in his round face.

“Rusanarath?”

Rus made the correct obeisance to his superior, though not a very good version of it, and by that time Gunthanaruth had noticed him too.

“Rusanarath! Excellent! Come, come, join us. We heard you had fallen, and Suthus was distraught at losing you. But here you are after all!”

There were three ranks among the kahar, below the stathan and his deputy, and Rus belonged to the highest, the bull-fighters. Among them there was no official hierarchy, but the spirit of competition was strong, and everyone knew who was better than whom. Currently, it was generally acknowledged, there was no one better than Rus.

Gunthanaruth had shooed away the Tak girl and made room for Rus to sit at the fire beside him. He sank down onto the folded rug where she had been sitting, and stretched slightly to ease his injured leg, no longer troubling to hide his wince of pain.