The Mission
Tirtu and Halza fretted about it all the way back up to the caves.
“Are you sure Lill will be all right?”
“He’s such a little thing—a delicate flower!”
Of course I’m not sure, Vanu thought. You could never be sure anyone would come back safely from a dangerous mission. But he knew what Lill was capable of, and this wasn’t such a dangerous mission for him.
He ignored Tirtu and Halza and walked by the head of the horse pulling Faru’s litter.
Otoni’s daughter was frightened of him at first, but eventually she got over her fear enough to let him carry her.
Otoni tried to look after Faru, who was doing his best to make sure they all wanted to leave him for dead.
He had an arrow in him, and he didn’t trust anyone to get it out, except maybe Padunu. He seemed to feel the shaman had gotten himself captured on purpose just when Faru needed him most. He wasn’t entirely lucid.
Halza had been very worried that Vanu would kill the servant who had been guiding the horse. When Vanu had instead given the boy some gold that he’d brought along for this type of use, Halza had seemed stunned with relief.
Faru had fallen silent by the time they reached the turn-off to the cave. Glancing back, Vanu saw that his eyes were shut. Maybe he had died. Vanu couldn’t summon any feeling about that one way or the other. But it made a difference in how they needed to handle him to get him into the cave.
“He still alive?” Vanu asked.
“Yes,” said Otoni, looking shocked. “Er, I think so.” She bent and checked for his pulse. “Yes. I really want to get that arrow out of him, though. I don’t know how much longer he can hang on.”
“What d’you need for that?” Vanu asked. “Water, light, bandages—anything else?”
“A knife. That’s about it.”
Vanu jerked his head in the direction of the cave. “Carry him in. Leave the horse.”
Halza and Tirtu hoisted up the litter and manoeuvred it in among the trees. Otoni’s daughter had fallen asleep with her head on Vanu’s shoulder. He hoped that was comfortable for her.
They made it back to the cave mouth, but there was no way to get Faru safely down the ladder into the tunnels.
So they huddled in the upper cave, around the glow of the lantern Padunu had left behind.
Tirtu went down to the underground stream for water while Halza unwound his own sash and Faru’s sash for bandages, then commandeered Tirtu’s sash and was eyeing Vanu’s when Otoni told him that was probably enough bandages.
Vanu sat with his back against the rock wall of the cave and Otoni’s child in his lap.
Outside it had begun to rain, pattering on the leaves of the trees and dripping to the forest floor.
He felt distant from himself, as if he had come out of Umtúshta a stranger, and he was watching this tired, emotionless man perform strange actions that had once been the fabric of his everyday life.
Killing, giving orders, wiping blood off his sword.
Watching people he cared about walk into danger because it was necessary.
“Lill told me that he came to Umtúshta to protect his family,” said Halza, squatting against the cave wall beside Vanu.
“Or … no, I’ve got that wrong. He owed someone a favour for taking care of his family.
I suppose they must have fallen on hard times …
I assume he comes from a noble family, considering … well, everything about him.”
Vanu looked at Halza. At another time he might have wanted to hear more of this story that Lill had told the other lowlander—not that he imagined there was any truth in it, but it seemed to be a different lie than he had heard before.
“Don’t feel like talking,” he growled.
Halza apologized and scooted away slightly, looking cowed.
Otoni got the arrow out of Faru—did a good job of it, as far as Vanu could tell—and bandaged him up. He woke and showed some signs of life, mostly moaning and snarling at Otoni. Vanu himself dozed off for a while.
He wasn’t sure how much later it was when he woke to hear, over the sound of the rain, someone moving through the forest, approaching the cave.
He glanced back toward the tunnel entrance, making sure it was not visible from where they sat, and tossed a pebble to wake Halza and Tirtu, who were sleeping slumped awkwardly against one another on the opposite side of the cave.
A moment later, Padunu walked into the cave, alone.
“Where’s Lill?” Halza cried, jumping to his feet. “Why isn’t he with you?”
“Oh no,” Tirtu groaned. “You got away on your own, didn’t you? Lill’s out there looking for you!”
Padunu ignored them. He pushed back the hood of his cloak, shedding drops of water, and addressed Vanu.
“Lill said to tell you he apologizes for ‘going beyond the parameters of his mission,’ but he saw an opportunity to set me free, and he took it. He is now on his way to Dukka to look for Khatu.”
Vanu nodded. He’d expected it would go like this. Tirtu and Halza exchanged stunned looks.
“You mean … ” Halza started.
“What did he do?” asked Tirtu.
Padunu snorted. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised. Am I the only one who remembers how he dropped out of that apple tree on your head, Tirtu?”
From their expressions, it did look as if they’d forgotten about that.
“That sweet little fellow who came to get me?” said Otoni. “I like him! Has he got secret skills? How lovely!”
Padunu came further into the cave to peer down at Faru. “He’s alive, I take it? A very tidy bandaging job,” he added approvingly.
“Thank you,” said Otoni. “He took an arrow to the groin—a pretty nasty wound. I got the arrow out intact, though. If you had any calendula … ”
“Yes, yes, of course. Back at the great house.”
“But what did Lill do?” Tirtu pressed. “How did you get away?”
Padunu, never one to need much prodding to talk, launched into the story.
“The people who found me and laid hands on me at Otoni’s home forced me to return with them to the village.
It is in a sadly ravaged state following the raid.
Some homes have been burned, others were still smouldering when I got there, and the residents—those who have not been carried off as hostages—were largely in the streets, in a state of great distress.
My captors, refusing to accept my word that I was no friend of Arakhu Vinu—indeed, as you well know, he bears me an implacable grudge—found a place to imprison me in the tower attached to the village great house.
My status as a shaman protected me from any worse fate for the time being, but I was of course extremely fearful that, should they discover the, er, lapse in my past, they would conclude—erroneously—that I am not deserving of the protection of my rank. ”
“Yes, yes—get on with it,” said Tirtu impatiently. “Then what happened?”
“Lill appeared at the window of the room where I was being held. I do not know how he got there—the room, as I said, was in the tower, quite high up—but he arrived there undetected and proposed a plan whereby he would create a distraction to empty the lower floors of the tower, unlock the door of my place of confinement, and escort me down the stairs to freedom. I do not know the details of his plan, but it was quite effective. He brought me to the edge of the village without detection, and there we parted ways. Are you satisfied?”
Vanu found himself smiling in the darkness. So when Lill had told Padunu to say he’d “seen an opportunity” to free him, what he really meant was he’d come up with a brazen plan on the spot. Vanu was not surprised.
He felt suddenly ashamed of himself. What was he doing, dozing in a dry cave with a warm toddler in his lap, while Lill was climbing towers and creating diversions in the rain? He beckoned Otoni over and carefully passed her the sleeping child so he could get to his feet.
“Gonna go back up top with you, Shaman,” he told Padunu. “Fetch provisions. Check on the girls.”
He’d also talk to Gurti, so she didn’t have to get the news about her husband’s state from this windbag. That would be a better way of passing the time while they waited for Lill to finish storming—no, that wasn’t the word—infiltrating Dukka and rescuing Khatu.
They used some of the surplus bandage cloth, soaked in lantern oil, and a dry branch from the floor of the cave, to make a torch, so that they could leave the lantern with Otoni’s party. (In Vanu’s mind it was unquestionably Otoni’s party.)
They had gone down the ladder and climbed up past the underground stream before Padunu, who was walking behind Vanu, spoke.
“Lord Vanu, your bride—what is he, exactly?”
Vanu replied without glancing back. “He’s Lill. He’s mine. That’s all anybody needs to know.”
“I am sure that is true,” said Padunu. Then, after a moment, “Is it—it is not, I trust—all that you know?”
“No.”
“Excellent. I will say no more about it.”
Vanu doubted that, but for the moment Padunu made good on the promise, and they walked on in silence.
Lill had never done a rescue mission before. It wasn’t something he’d been trained for; the Sword Defenders were not bodyguards, and they would not waste time rescuing each other, no matter what the Twenty-One Martial Virtues said about loyalty.
So breaking Padunu out of that tower had been an interesting experience.
Lill knew what he would have done to escape from captivity himself, but he’d had to think about what Padunu could manage.
Not climbing down the slippery stones of the tower, Lill assumed.
And not fighting his way through the people downstairs; he couldn’t even wield a weapon, as he’d made clear many times.
But he could follow instructions, when he wanted to, and he had a strong instinct for self-preservation.
Putting all of that together, Lill had thought of a plan to get the shaman out of the tower, and as soon as he’d thought of it, he’d wanted to put it into action.
He hoped Vanu wouldn’t mind that he had done so instead of reporting back first as instructed.