"Keep down."
"How do you know he's still there?"
"Quiet."
"But how do you know?"
"Because I do."
Sha-Kutan placed his hand on Lee-Nin's shoulder to hold her down behind the wall of the barn they hid within, away from the open window. She glared at him.
"I will tell you when he is gone." Sha-Kutan could sense the man clearly.
"How will you know?" Lee-Nin clutched a wide-eyed Sao-Tauna to her chest.
Sha-Kutan ignored Lee-Nin's repeated question. If he did not answer, possibly she would cease to ask. He turned away from her and concentrated on the man in the street. The man she had recognized. The man who hunted the girl.
We should wait for him to check the barn and kill him.
We should flee through the back and leave him behind us.
To follow us again and find us again and be killed another day?
So we can confuse the trail and lose him for good.
The only way to lose him for good is if he is beneath the ground.
And the men who follow him?
A large party requires a large grave.
"Well?" Lee-Nin pushed his hand from her shoulder. Silence did not calm her concerns.
"He is entering the building across the street." Sha-Kutan rose to confirm his sightless senses with his eyes. The man, the warden commander Lee-Nin had identified, walked through the door of an inn named the Red Crow.
Too hard to kill him and his men now.
We could wait.
We cannot.
They had hidden in the barn just after sunset, when she spotted the commander warden near the crowd of pilgrims they followed through the small town's main street. They had been with the band for weeks, pretending to be a family following the new star, and had so far eluded the men who pursued them. The commander had not returned for more wardens as Sha-Kutan expected. Instead, the man hunted them with only four men. Four men who now helped him search through the night-cloaked town for Lee-Nin and Sao-Tauna. They could not wait where they hid for much longer, or they would be found.
"We go now." Sha-Kutan stood up, watching the inn to make sure the men did not return to the street. "If we leave through the back of the barn, we can cross the field and be in the woods before they leave the inn."
"The pilgrims will notice us missing." Lee-Nin placed her hand on the frame of the open window and pulled herself to her feet. "He'll ask them about us."
"Yes, but they will not know where we have gone. The commander and his men will need to start their search afresh." Sha-Kutan turned and headed to the small door at the rear of the barn. He did not need to look over his shoulder to sense Lee-Nin and the girl following him.
They ran through a field of rye behind the small town, staying low to the ground, or as low as possible in Sha-Kutan's case. When they entered the woods, they spent several minutes observing the town to make sure no one made to follow their path across the field.
"What about the dogs?" Lee-Nin pushed a branch aside to better see the field.
"The dogs will follow you. They will not follow me. They may go to the barn, but will not cross the field." Sha-Kutan walked into the forest, heading south. They would need to find another road to travel.
"Why would the dogs not follow you?" Lee-Nin stalked after Sha-Kutan, Sao-Tauna's hand in hers, the girl's tiny legs rushing to keep pace.
Sha-Kutan sought for an answer that would not lead to more questions.
"They will not like the way I smell."
"Something the dogs and I agree on." Lee-Nin picked up Sao-Tauna as they trudged through the trees.
They walked in the night-veiled forest, trading sips from a water skin Sha-Kutan wore over his shoulder. Mercifully, to Sha-Kutan's mind, Lee-Nin did not question their direction or intentions. After an hour, they reached the moonlit edge of a narrow road and stopped to eat a quick meal of dried meat and nuts, supplies Sha-Kutan had purchased in the town before Lee-Nin spotted the wardens pursuing her.
"Should we find another pilgrim band?" Lee-Nin broke a chunk of meat from the dried strip in her hand and gave it to Sao-Tauna. The child gnawed on it eagerly. "It might be safer to travel alone and stay out of sight."
"We will be seen when we stop in towns for supplies or trade with farmers for food." Sha-Kutan took a swig of water to wash down the dried beef clinging to the back of his throat. "We will be less noticed in a crowd."
"We could enter towns only at night and steal the food we need." Lee-Nin looked at the stick of dried meat in her hand as she spoke.
An odd suggestion for a woman of supposedly high birth.
Not for one who lies about who she is.
Sha-Kutan had queried Lee-Nin on several occasions over the past weeks about the true reasons the men hunted her and the girl, but she evaded his queries as he avoided hers. Sha-Kutan knew the men hunted the girl foremost among the two. He could not sense what made her unique, but her difference struck him plain as a fist to the face. The girl posed a danger to someone, and that person sent men to kill her. The more interesting question centered on why Lee-Nin would risk her life to save another woman's child.
"More important than how we travel is where." Sha-Kutan looked along the road as the moons rose toward their zenith in the sky. "Do we still head west to the coast as the pilgrims do?"
"Star people." Sao-Tauna pointed to the west.
The child spoke little and infrequently, but had no trouble making her desires known.
Do we continue to follow the whims of a child?
Are they merely whims?
Sha-Kutan exchanged a look of mutual resignation with Lee-Nin. They would proceed west, toward the coast.
The child's plan is still the best idea.
To follow a child's plan does not seem like a good idea.
They finished their meal and continued along the road for a few more hours. As the moons rose to their apex in the night sky and cast a hazy ivory hue over the fields and the nearby woods, they searched for a good place to bed down for the night. As they walked, Sha-Kutan's senses revealed someone ahead. Several men.
Coming around a slight bend, they saw a narrow stone bridge fording a wide stream, the light of the twin moons sparkling like liquid silver along its gently flowing surface. Three men sat on the stone walls of the bridge, drinking from clay jugs, watching them approach. A small fire burned in a pit to the side of the bridge.
"Pilgrims?" Lee-Nin sounded skeptical. "Bandits?"
"Stay here." Sha-Kutan dropped his sack from his shoulder and walked toward the bridge. As he neared the men, they hopped from the stone of the wall and stood across the entrance to the bridge. The largest of the three men, nearly as tall as Sha-Kutan himself, stood between the other two. They had short swords and long knives at their belts. The armaments looked well used, but the men wore them poorly.
"Kinnao there." The large man raised his hand as Sha-Kutan came within a few paces and stopped. "Evenin', traveler."
"What do you want?" Sha-Kutan looked between the three men. What he sensed and smelled of them told him what they desired — what such men always craved. He knew their kind well. He had been one of their kind once, long ago, and might still be were it not for a humble Pashist priest.
"What kinda greeting is that, friend?" The large man spread his hands. "We're fellow travelers offerin' a simple service."
"Ya pay ta cross the bridge." The man to the left coughed and spat something yellow and gelatinous to the ground.
"Ya don't pays, ya don't cross." The third man, the shortest, puffed his chest out to emphasize his words and the threat implied by them.
"If you want to rob us, we have no coin." Sha-Kutan looked at the large man, knowing him to be the leader, the one the others would follow. "If you wish to rape the woman and child, you will not. If you wish to kill me, you will not. If you wish to step aside and let us pass, you will be accommodated."
"Who said aught 'bout murder and rape?" The big man stepped forward, hand on the hilt of his sword.
"I know what you are and what you do." Sha-Kutan stood still as the man closed the gap between them. "I see you."
"And I see you, and yer all alone, and ya got no sword." The big man looked into Sha-Kutan's eyes. "Ya think yer big, but I's gutted men bigger than you."
"So have I." Sha-Kutan held the man's gaze. "And far more than three." But not without a sword, and his still rested in the canvas sack back with Lee-Nin and Sao-Tauna. Possibly he should have strapped it on. It might have dissuaded the men before him, or made killing them easier, if necessary.
"The wicked man's life is as sacred as that of the saint. The saints knows this; the wicked do not."
Jandu Laanta.
A wise man. Three unarmed is risky.
They could die another way.
And She would sense us yet again. And the woman and the girl would see.
They might leave then.
There are other paths that do not require death.
Yes.
"Ya gonna say somethin'? Ya gonna make a move? Or is ya gonna stand there and stare me ta death?" The big man grinned, his hand twitching on the sword hilt.
"I am going to show you something." Sha-Kutan looked deep into the large man's eyes, opening up a part inside himself, an inner door to a vast chamber, a minuscule filament of the essence within seeping out and touching the man before him, reaching into his mind, into the inner, ephemeral substance at the core of his being. The man gasped, his eyes going wide, his throat working to suck in breath that his frozen lungs could not obtain. He moaned, his eyes continuing to stare into Sha-Kutan's, his body shaking, sweat breaking out across his forehead. The scent of urine and feces filled the air as the man stained his pants. The man's companions screamed and ran across the bridge and into the woods.
Sha-Kutan broke the contact, closing the inner door once more, looking away while the man staggered back, mumbling and moaning as he turned and stumbled into the trees. Sha-Kutan watched the men go, crashing from branch to trunk, the sound of their flight growing ever more distant. He sensed others behind him but did not turn to them.
"Did they think you smelled bad?" Lee-Nin stepped beside him as she stared into the shadows of the woods.
"I asked them to leave." Sha-Kutan turned away from the forest.
"You're very persuasive." Lee-Nin turned to follow his eyes.
"I spoke in a way they could easily understand." Sha-Kutan looked to Sao-Tauna as the girl rested her head against Lee-Nin's thigh, her eyes drooping with exhaustion. "We should camp here tonight."
"What if those men come back?" Lee-Nin glanced again at the woods.
Sha-Kutan took the sack of their possessions from her shoulder, ignoring her question as he prepared a campsite for the night. Lee-Nin grunted at his silence, shaking her head as she moved to assist him while Sao-Tauna curled up to doze in the short grass beside the fire near the bridge.
Sha-Kutan gathered fallen branches to feed the fire, looking eastward as he carried them from the woods.
If She sensed it, She will prove harder to misdirect.
It was the right thing to do.
Yes. Odd that right things can cause so much concern and wrong things so little.
Not odd. Instructive.
Sha-Kutan nodded to himself as he placed a log on the fire. He lifted the sleeping form of Sao-Tauna and placed her nearer the flames. The summer nights could be cool. Lee-Nin sat to join him, and they apportioned their rations between them. The girl could eat when she awoke. They took their meal in silence, Lee-Nin frequently looking to the woods. The men did not return, and she and Sao-Tauna slept well that night.