Page 10 of Something Human

“No. In fact, no. Joking aside. Only some of their small, tame cousins, with much shorter horns. Good for milk, but not much use in a fight.”

“Mm. The people in Karhan have never tried to tame the bulls. We are the only tribe that rides them in battle.”

“Which causes you to be feared by your neighbours—I know all about that.”

“You know a lot about us, I think.”

“I really don’t. I should know much more—to do my job properly.”

“What is it, your job?”

“Oh, it’s not interesting.” That was a lie, and Adares felt ashamed of it immediately. There were plenty of secrets he would have been glad to share with Rus; this wasn’t even a secret, but to reveal it would have been irresponsible in the extreme.

Rus made no comment and did not ask the question again.

“I ought to know your language,” Adares said. “You put me to shame, speaking mine so well.”

“Ah, but that is only a coincidence. I thought it was just the language of Kos, remember.”

“That’s the sort of thing Kossians would be proud to hear. They like to think they invented civilization, single-handed.”

“Do Phemians think the same?”

“No, not really. We’re better known for our navy.”

“I’ve never been on a ship … ” Rus had closed his eyes.

“There’s nothing like it,” said Adares softly. “When the wind is in the sails, and you are so far from land that all you can see is a dark line on the horizon, and then just blue, glittering blue, far off into the distance, further than any man can see. And you see gulls sitting on the waves, and taking off into the wind, and fish that jump out of the water sometimes, and splash back down into the foam. And you can feel the waves rocking the ship as the wind drives it on, gently, on a calm day, rocking it back and forth … ”

At home in Pheme—in the days when he had thought of Pheme as his home—he used to put his little brother Chares to sleep sometimes by telling him stories. He had developed a knack for it, and Chares used to request his stories. It was not long before he could tell that Rus was asleep again. Adares got up from the bed, wishing he had someone now to tell him a story that would put him to sleep, maybe even to give him pleasant dreams while he slept.

He walked out of the temple storeroom into the sunlit, honey-coloured courtyard. The morning air promised a warm day, but warm for the mild Karhan climate, nothing like the heat of high summer in Pheme, where some days even the wind off the sea seemed hot. His first visit home from Tios had been in the summer. “Don’t you get homesick?” people had asked him, slouched in the shade on the balconies of their cramped city apartments, fanning away the flies, and draining cups of sour orange juice and weak wine because of the water shortage. “Are you mad?” he had been tempted to reply.

He turned a corner into the outer courtyard, and the temple of Anaxe, the central building of the complex, presented its broad, colonnaded front before him. There was a gallery below the carved and painted pediment, where the priests could stand to watch processions coming up from Tios. The view from there would be good, Adares thought. He would be able to see how the siege was progressing, and gauge whether there was any hope of getting past the Luth and back into his city.

He entered the hushed, dim porch of the temple and found the stairs that led up to the gallery. Emerging at the top, he leaned in the sunlight on the stone rail and looked out past the walls of the temple complex, across yesterday’s battlefield towards the city.

The smoke of funeral pyres clouded the air—the Luth respectfully cremating the fallen Phemians, that must be, since they did something else with their own dead, buried them or something. He could ask Rus if he really wanted to know.

The walls of Tios in the distance seemed to glow, as if lit from within, the yellow stone soaking in the sunlight. From here it was impossible to tell the state of their defences. The Luth seemed to have settled down around the walls, pitching clusters of hide-covered tents at a safe distance. He could see the bulky shapes of their remaining siege-carts standing ready. The real assault had not yet begun.

He thought again about his dream, about the beasts charging at the head of the Luth cavalry, the riders clinging to their backs. One of them had been Rus. Strangely, he realized he found it comforting to know that. It was as if a frightening shape in the dark had been revealed, at the lighting of a lamp, to be something familiar—an ally, a friend.

CHAPTER IV

RUS WAS AWAKE when Adares finally came back into the storeroom.

“Sleep well?”

“Yes … ” He stirred, pushed himself up slightly, then collapsed back against his pillows. “You’re back. I thought perhaps you had gone. I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he added quickly. “You have helped me, and it helped you to collect yourself after the battle, but when you learned I was one of the bull-riders … I thought maybe it was too much.”

“No, not at all.” Adares sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re one of them, sure—but you’re the one who pulled me out of that hole. I know you think I should have got over that by now because I repaid you and blah blah honour something something—I know what you tribesmen are like.”

“Clearly.”

“Anyway, I was brought up not to do that sort of thing. Slink away while the other party’s still asleep. Bad manners.”

Rus blinked up at him uncomprehendingly.