Page 5 of The Boy Bride

He hadn’t been a dream or a vision; he was really here, the warrior angel pursuing Lill for leaving the Order. There would of course be no escaping him, but still Lill shuffled silently backward before the man looked in his direction. Then he turned and broke into a lurching run.

He ran blindly between houses, scaring a flock of ducks and dodging goats—maybe it was just one goat, but it seemed to be everywhere—until he reached the wall. The wall. It was pale yellow-grey and old and rough-hewn and impossibly high and thick. He had come over it, but no one who did that ever went back.

A wave of nausea rolled over him, and he leaned on the wall and doubled over to vomit on the ground. His head swam, and he was shivering uncontrollably. He heard voices and running footsteps approaching. Someone was touching him, pulling him firmly but gently away from the wall. He was shamefully weak. He thought again of that house with the fountain in the courtyard, but he knew they were not taking him there.

He let himself be led back to the round house where he had woken, where he was cleaned up and given water to sip as he lay propped on pillows. He felt feeble and dizzy and grateful to lie down.

Two people had brought him back: a woman and a man. The woman wore her hair in two long braids the colour of the stones of the fortress walls. Her gown, shawl, headscarf and apron were all black, with bands of intricate white and blue decoration rather like the flowers painted on the walls. She looked of an age to be a mother of grown children.

The man looked a similar age. He had darker brown, floppy hair with a stubby braid on one side, and a worried set to his pale, angular features. He wore a long, unbelted shirt of an ugly shade of yellow over loose trousers tucked into calf-high boots. Lill recognized him as the man who had been pushing the cart full of straw and calling to him to hold on.

“Now, lad,” he said, speaking Zashian, “you must rest. No running about. You hit your head, hey?” He rapped his knuckles against the side of his own skull indicatively.

“Ask him if he knows where he is,” the woman suggested as she took the cup of water from Lill’s hands. For a moment he wondered why she didn’t ask him herself. Then he realized that she was speaking the Mountain Pass language and must have thought he didn’t understand it.

“Do you know where you are, lad?” the man asked. “This is Umtúshta, in the Spring Pass, formerly the stronghold of Khashu Gukhártu, who⁠—”

“I said ask him,” the woman interrupted, “not tell him. Ask him, to find out whether the blow to his head scrambled his brains or not. Ask him his name, or whether he knows why he’s here.”

“Ah, ah—right. Lad, do you know who you are?”

“I’m Lill.”

He was feeling much better now that he was lying still. The earlier feeling of panic was gone. But perhaps his brains were a bit scrambled, because he had thought Umtúshta was Vanu Urártu’s stronghold, not whatever name the man had just given.

“Eh? What’s a Riru?”

“My name. Lill.”

Some of the men and boys in the Order had been from the Eastern Peaks—they took in foundlings, and there had been a lot of orphans made during the Great King’s decade-long campaign—and they’d all had difficulty pronouncing Lill’s name too. Something to do with the letter “l” and the fact that it didn’t end with a vowel. Deru and Rami, from whom Lill had learned what he knew of the language, had explained it once.

“Ree-ulgh,” the man attempted again, and looked pleased with himself. Lill smiled weakly.

“Lill,” said the woman. She pointed a finger at herself. “Gurti. And he is Tirtu Shuma.” She pointed at the man.

Lill smiled more widely and nodded. He would keep up the pretence of not understanding their language. It might prove useful.

“Ask him if he knows what he’s doing here,” the woman prompted.

“I know what he’s doing here,” the man replied, in the language they thought Lill didn’t understand.

“You do? How’s that?”

“I’m the one who sent for him. I got a message to Lord Davanu in Torakand. It was meant as a surprise, which your useless son nearly ruined by shooting at him.”

“But why under the Blue Heaven, Tirtu—what did you want him for?”

Tirtu gave her a smug look. “You will find out in good time, Gurti. Just see to it that you keep Khatu away from him, will you?”

Lill lay back on his pillows and closed his eyes. He knew why he was here: to become Vanu Urártu’s boy bride and, in due course, widow. He remembered the name of the man who had brought him up the mountain: Halza. He even understood now why Tirtu had said this was Khashu Gukhártu’s stronghold. Khashu Gukhártu was one of Vanu’s allies or vassals or however they termed it here, and it was in his half-ruined fortress—after Khashu himself had been killed—that Urártu had been walled up. The Lion’s own citadel in the Summer Pass had not yet been taken.

“How are you feeling?”

Lill’s eyes snapped open. He and Halza were alone in the room now.

“You shouldn’t have got up,” Halza went on after a moment, when Lill did not answer. “I thought you shouldn’t have got up. You need to rest.”

Lill gritted his teeth. He should not have shown so much weakness. He should be ashamed—was ashamed—to show so much weakness. But to protest now that he was well, when he wasn’t, would only show more weakness. He said nothing.