Page 46 of Something Human

Suthus nodded. “He is determined. I think he must have had it in mind all along—it’s why he didn’t allow the bulls to be properly slaughtered.”

“And you want me to fight,” Rus said.

Suthus looked up at him, his blue eyes strangely bleak. “Of course—who else? He’d never let me send Hath or Dudun, not when you’re here. And he has seen for himself that your wound is healed, or nearly healed. Of course I have to send you.” He stopped and passed a hand wearily over his face. “And of course you have to do your best—which, as we all know, will be very good indeed. I fear the hearth headmen will see this for what it is—a mere spectacle, like a bard singing after dinner, not a true appeal to the will of the gods. But I cannot tell Gunthanaruth this—he prides himself on his piety, but he doesn’t listen when I tell him that things like this are nothing but impious.”

This was uncomfortably, even dangerously frank talk, and Rus would have been hard-pressed to think of a response, if he had been trying. He agreed with Suthus in general; the bull ceremonies proved nothing. But there would be worse impiety done here than Suthus could know, because this time the bull was going to win.

CHAPTER XVI

HE REMEMBERED THAT it had been raining. He remembered that he had expected to die. He didn’t remember much else.

He stared at the leather ceiling of the tent above him. He thought he had woken and stared at it before, but perhaps that was a dream. His body hurt, all over, but with a special dull throbbing in his head. His mouth tasted foul, a familiar taste that he could not identify. When he tried to move, the spike of pain in his right arm took his breath away. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Theraka. That was the taste in his mouth. Theraka eased pain. It must have worn off. He lay as still as he could. Even the little movements of relaxing his muscles hurt. The throbbing in his head had built into a sharp pounding. But he was alive, and he had expected to die.

He couldn’t remember why.

Light from the opening of the tent flap stabbed at his closed eyelids. When it dimmed again, he opened one eye a crack and saw Kaman, the healer who had accompanied the warriors on campaign.

“Awake, are you?” Kaman grunted.

Rus made a hoarse noise, then tried to moisten his lips to speak. “What happened?” he managed finally.

Kaman was pouring something from a flask into a cup by the side of Rus’s pallet. “Broke your arm, but it was a clean break—I’ve splinted it, it’ll heal up fine. Nothing else broken, just cuts and bruises. You hit your head a good wallop, knocked yourself out for a spell, but didn’t crack your skull.”

That hadn’t been the information he was looking for, but Kaman was holding out the cup now and scooping Rus up to put it to his lips. Rus gulped down the liquid. More theraka—a strong dose, he thought, from the bitter taste. That reminded him of something he couldn’t quite hold in his mind …

Kaman laid him down again, lifted the blanket briefly to check on the splinted arm, and then left. Rus stared at the ceiling of the tent, waiting for the drug to take effect.

He slept, eventually, floating in the easy numbness of the theraka. He woke before it had quite worn off, and stared at the ceiling some more. It was dark now, and he could barely see it, but this didn’t bother him. He heard soft sounds of other people sleeping in the tent around him. He’d had a dream which he tried to remember but couldn’t. The drug made it hard to feel bothered or even bored, made his thoughts feel comfortably slow and unfocused.

He was thirsty. That reminded him of something.

Oh Water! Divine beverage! I will never drink wine again!

The words so unexpectedly spoken in Firhat Kosoth, and that beautiful laugh. You would fall off your horse.

It was like stumbling across buried treasure, like bright gold glinting up at him suddenly from the dirt. Rus smiled up at the tent ceiling in the dark. He had remembered Adares.

He also remembered now why he had expected to die. He had been going to face a bull and had intended to lose. It had been raining. There was still a kind of hole in his memory after that. And now the pain was returning, and he felt too tired to think much. He closed his eyes again and focused on that memory of Adares at the fountain, laughing as he splashed water on his face.

Later, after he’d drunk more theraka and slept and woken again, and it seemed to be morning, with a lot of noise and voices outside the tent where he lay, Suthus came in to see him.

“How are you feeling? No, no—don’t answer that. Not well, obviously.” The stathan sat down cross-legged beside Rus’s pallet. “You hit your head pretty hard. Do you remember—”

“Not even a little bit. What happened?”

“Ah. Well, you fought a bull … ”

“Yes, yes—in the rain, to decide whether we would leave or go on with the siege. I do remember that. It’s the fight that—that’s gone.” So utterly gone that he hadn’t been sure until Suthus said so just now that it had actually taken place.

“Well, we’re leaving.” Suthus gestured to the open tent flap behind him and the dismantling of the camp going on outside. “You lost, rather spectacularly.”

“Ah.”

He tried hard not to look pleased. Suthus, he saw, was doing the same thing.

“What did I do wrong?” Rus asked finally.