Lord Vanu’s Wishes
Lord Vanu’s Wishes
It wasn’t some gift of prophecy that made Lill think of Vanu Urártu the moment he heard that Red Asp was dead.
It was just that they had been talking about him in the library, and he had been in Lill’s mind.
As he often was; the Lion of the Summer Pass had hung like a shadow over his life for as long as he could remember.
But it was true that Vanu had killed Red Asp, just as he had felled White Viper.
This time there was more detail to the story, less left to Lill’s imagination.
It was not a satisfactory story. Red Asp had been leading an army of Andun spearmen, on the king’s special orders, to make another foray into the Summer Pass.
This time they had not even made it up to the pass, had not been ambushed or had rocks dumped on them or their supply train raided.
They had been met in a field at the foot of the mountains by Vanu Urártu’s army.
No one had known he had an army, but evidently he had raised one from the mountain villages, and it had met the king’s force on the field in a pitched battle—the last thing they expected but the only thing they were, supposedly, well suited for—and routed them.
Vanu had met Red Asp on the battlefield, fought him, bested him, and killed him only when Red Asp refused to ask for mercy.
“How did he do it?” Lill asked one of the wounded men who returned, days later. There had to be an explanation, a trick, something. Maybe it was the same trick he had used to cut down White Viper, and Lill had to know.
The wounded man looked puzzled. “Swordsmanship, that’s how. Red Asp wasn’t a match for him.”
The tournament to determine the new leader of the Order began the day after that, and the surprise victor was Dumuz the knife-master. He took the name Yellow Adder, but Lill had known him for so long as Master Dumuz that he continued to think of him that way.
Lill was napping when someone woke him with a sharp kick. He rolled off his pallet, away from the kicking foot, and looked up to find Barda standing over him.
“My father wants to speak to you. Get up.”
“He’s Lord Vanu’s bride!” Halza called from his side of the fireplace. “Don’t mistreat him!”
Barda made a contemptuous noise. “Come on, outside.”
Lill scrambled to his feet and followed Barda out the door and up the path toward the great house. He started putting his hair into a quick braid as he walked, but he had nothing to tie it with.
The tables from last night’s dinner were still set up in the well yard, and two men were sitting on the benches. Two men Lill had not seen before. Something about that struck him as odd, but he couldn’t put his finger on what.
The older of the two men wore his iron-grey hair cropped short and had a closely trimmed grey beard and keen blue eyes.
The other man had longer, brown hair, with two narrow braids hanging on either side of his face, decorated with gold beads, and he wore a white cloak over a pink tunic, strikingly different from the black clothes of all the other villagers. He looked about thirty.
“Tie his wrists,” the older man said to Barda, holding out a coil of rope without getting up from his seat.
Lill stiffened but tried not to react, pretending he hadn’t understood. He flicked his half-braided hair back over his shoulder. What was this about?
“Yes, sir,” said Barda a little uncertainly. He took the rope from his father and turned back to Lill. “Hold out your hands,” he said in Zashian.
“Why?” Lill put his hands behind his back. “What’s this about?”
“Just do it,” Barda growled. “I’ll make you.”
“Lash his arms to his sides if he won’t cooperate,” his father said impatiently.
Before Lill had a chance to change his strategy—before the lord of Umtúshta had even finished speaking—Barda had looped the rope expertly around Lill’s body and begun to cinch it tight. He was fast; he’d been able to catch Lill unawares last night. And he knew that Lill wasn’t harmless himself.
“No kicking,” he hissed.
It was too late for kicking to have done any good.
Lill put up only a token, feeble struggle, mind racing.
What were they planning to do to him? What did they want?
Barda tied his arms firmly to his sides, wrapping the rope around several times.
It dug into Lill’s sore back and wrenched his injured arm, and he bit his lip against the pain.
Think, he had to think. He had to stay calm and think. He felt dizzy.
“Look what a tiny waist he has!” Barda remarked gleefully to the other men. “Just like a girl!”
Barda’s father ignored this, and the man in the white cloak pursed his lips and looked disapproving. Who was he, and why did his presence seem somehow … wrong?
Barda’s father was giving his son some instruction that contained too many words Lill didn’t know.
“Why?” Barda asked, frowning. “Sir?”
“Do as I say!”
Barda shrugged and tugged on the excess rope, a large coil still in his grasp.
Lill stumbled backward in the direction he was pulled.
Barda tossed the rope, and Lill twisted around to see it go up and over a limb of one of the fruit trees at the edge of the yard.
He had a moment to realize what was intended before he was jerked off his feet as Barda hauled on the rope.
The pain of the rope around his waist stole his breath and nearly made him lose consciousness. When he stopped swinging, gasping and nauseous, he saw that Barda had secured the end of the rope around the tree trunk, suspending him just a few inches off the ground.
The grey-haired man, Faru, got up from his seat on the bench and came toward Lill.
The man in the white cloak followed. They were both tall enough that they were still looking down at Lill, even when his feet were off the ground.
Faru’s blue eyes were very cold. Lill swallowed down a wave of nausea.
“I haven’t yet decided what to do with him,” Faru said, speaking right into Lill’s face but not addressing him.
Barda, by the tree trunk, shifted uncomfortably. “He’s Vanu’s to do with, though, so … ”
“Vanu is a—” Faru used a word Lill didn’t understand. Even his tone, icy and flat, didn’t help Lill guess his meaning. “And he has said already that he does not want to keep this one. We are sending him back over the wall. What I have yet to decide is: in what state?”
So they were trying to decide whether to kill him or not. Why? Just because they liked killing?
“He’s not keeping him?” Barda cried, sounding crestfallen. “Did he say that?”
“Your father has told you he did,” said the white-cloaked man, managing somehow to sound both unctuous and reproving.
“If Vanu doesn’t want him,” said Barda, “I’ll keep him myself.”
“You will not,” his father snapped. “No son of mine will lay a hand on a lowland boy whore except in violence.”
“Your father speaks wisely,” White Cloak intoned.
Barda bared his teeth at him.
Lill saw someone approaching behind the men, from the half-ruined great house. It was Khatu. He felt a flicker of hope. Khatu had seemed to like him.
“Da, I’m supposed to tell you—eh? What’s going on here? Are we doing the bride hunt already? But isn’t that a bit … ” He waved a hand doubtfully at Lill. “His feet are off the ground, there. Doesn’t look comfortable.”
“Your father is carrying out Lord Vanu’s wishes with regard to the lowland boy,” said White Cloak.
“Which are what? For him to be tied up and hung off a tree?” Khatu looked sceptical.
“Vanu has no use for this boy,” said Faru. He glanced at Lill and seemed to come to a decision. “Geld him and throw him over the wall.”
There was a moment’s shocked silence.
“Vanu wants you to do that?” Khatu said finally.
“He has spoken on the matter,” said Faru angrily. “He wishes the boy disposed of. If it were not so, I would abide by his wishes. As the oath which your grandfather swore compels me—as you well know. What message did you bring me, Khatu?”
“Eh? Ma wants to talk to you in the house.”
“Very well. Padunu, assist my sons in carrying out my instructions.”
“Of course, Lord Faru,” said White Cloak—Padunu, evidently.
Faru walked off across the yard toward the house.
Lill was having trouble seeing—his vision was fading out around the edges.
He had to think of something, but what? His legs were free, and he could kick, but hard enough to knock down one of them?
And there wasn’t one; there were three of them, all bigger than Lill.
“Of course I cannot assist with the actual, er, task,” said Padunu, folding his hands and looking superior. “That is not something that my sacred office will permit.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Khatu, who had been watching his father walk away, but now turned back. “We’ve got it. You can fuck off.”
Did Lill want him to go or not? He couldn’t think—he had no control over what was happening.
Padunu wasn’t leaving, though. “Your disrespect is ill-omened, Son of Faru,” he said. “I will stay to see your father’s orders carried out.”
Khatu rolled his eyes dramatically. Then he bent and grabbed Lill around the legs, hoisting him up and throwing him over his shoulder. Lill gasped in relief as the rope went slack.
“Untie that from the tree, will you?” Khatu said.
“What are you doing?” Padunu demanded.
“You know.” Khatu shrugged, which felt like an earthquake to Lill. “Gonna carry out those orders.”
Barda got the rope untied and slung the loose end to his brother, who caught it in his free hand.
Lill saw his chance to break free—a moment too late.
Before he could move, Khatu let out what was presumably a roar of bee-fuckery and began to run with Lill over his shoulder. Lill was too stunned to resist.
“What are we doing?” Barda demanded in a gleeful shout, pounding after them.
“We’re taking him and throwing him in Vanu’s window to make him reconsider!” Khatu shouted back.
Barda whooped.
“Please—don’t,” Lill protested with what little breath he could gulp in as he bounced on Khatu’s shoulder. His hair had slid over his shoulder and flopped in his face; he had to spit strands out of his mouth. “He—wants me—dead. I’d rather—not—”
“He’ll change his mind!” Barda shouted enthusiastically. “He needs to start thinking with his dick more, is all.”
“Fucking sun in the winter, brother!”
They’d reached their destination; Lill couldn’t tell where they were until Khatu slid him down off his shoulder and set him on his feet, where he swayed unsteadily. They were outside the house with the dry stone walls on either side, the only way into that compound on the west side of the fortress.
“I’m going to tell your father!” came Padunu’s voice from behind them.
“Quick, get him inside,” urged Barda.
“How are we going to do this?”
“What? This was your plan!”
Khatu laughed boisterously. “So it was!”
“Untie me and boost me up, and I can climb in that open window,” said Lill. He just needed the damned rope off, then he could move. Then he could think what to do next.
“Summer sun, that’s a good idea,” said Khatu.
“No it’s not,” said Barda. “He’ll try to get away. He’s got to go in tied up. Bet you Vanu likes that, anyway.”
“All right, you climb up and I’ll pass him to you.”
“What are you doing?” Padunu shouted, running up, white cloak flapping heavily.
“Never you mind, Shaman!” Khatu replied cheerily.
Barda swarmed up the stone wall of Vanu’s house toward an open second-storey window, and while Padunu remonstrated with them, Khatu hoisted Lill up so that his brother could grab the rope around his waist and heave him, one-handed, through the window.
Barda was nowhere near as big as his brother, and he nearly dropped Lill—and did, as far as Lill could tell, fall off the wall after he hauled Lill half over the windowsill.
Lill wriggled and rolled himself painfully over the stone sill and fell down inside. He landed on something soft and lay still, eyes squeezed closed, trying not to pass out.