Phoenix Unbound
Page 27

She didn’t acknowledge his backhanded compliment. “What will you do to your cousin when you see him again?”
Ten years of smothered rage threatened to boil up inside Azarion. He pushed it down, back to the cold, dead place that had kept him alive for so long. “Kill him and mount his head on a pike outside my tent.”
He cocked an eyebrow when she tilted her head and gave a shrug of her own. “That seems only fair.”
This time, Azarion didn’t bother hiding his grin. “You may not look like a Savatar woman, Agacin, but sometimes you think like one.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stealing horses was easier than Gilene imagined. Either Azarion was as good a horse thief as he was a gladiator, or the drunken sentries and grooms paid to watch the stable yard and take care of the animals had imbibed enough wine and ale to drown an army. It might have been both, as she soon rode away from Wellspring Holt on a stolen chestnut mare, heading toward an unknown future.
Azarion rode beside her on a bay mare with white fetlocks. While Gilene had to use all her concentration to stay on her horse’s back and not fall off, he rode with ease. The Savatar were known throughout the world as excellent horsemen, and obviously ten years fighting in the Pit weren’t enough to make him forget how to ride.
A pouch containing the foods he’d stolen earlier at the market as well as rations and leftovers uneaten by the drunken stable hands was tied across the back of his saddle, and he was armed with a crossbow, a quiver of arrows, and two knives—courtesy of one of the sentries, who didn’t see Azarion creeping stealthily up on him until it was too late.
Gilene didn’t ask whether the sentry was dead or merely knocked unconscious, and Azarion didn’t offer an assurance either way.
They rode east and north through the night and by dawn had passed out of the heavily forested territories belonging to Krael and into more open terrain where the trees grew in solitary majesty or clumped together in small clusters. Fields of waist-high grasses brushed the horses’ bellies as they galloped toward the distant silhouettes of the Gamir Mountains.
Azarion pointed to a set of hillocks that marched east under a rising sun. “We’ll stop there and take shelter in one of the barrows to rest the horses and sleep through the day.”
“Another grave?” she grumbled. “What is this desire of yours to sleep among the dead?” She covered her mouth to stifle a yawn. She was saddlesore and irritable, and unprepared to spend hours in a tomb, no matter how much she might want to get warm and fall asleep.
“One of those barrows will be big enough to house even the horses. We’ll be warm, out of the wind, and with a roof over our heads.” He nodded toward the sun. “That’s a blood dawn rising. We’ll be in for storms later and can wait them out until nightfall.”
His reasoning was sound enough. Still, she remembered a similar argument before they stepped through the shattered gate and into Midrigar. What had lurked there made standing in the middle of a savage gale seem safe.
Her expression must have revealed some of her thoughts, because Azarion guided his horse closer to hers. “These are old barrows, scoured clean of spirits and anything of worldly wealth. And they were built to honor the dead, not imprison them. Midrigar is an abomination. Barrows are simply resting places—mostly for the dead, sometimes for the living.”
“Barrows sometimes house wights,” she argued.
“True. Those ahead don’t. Just the occasional mouse or a colony of bats if grave robbers cut their entry hole into the roof.”
Her hands felt frozen to the reins, and the two shawls Halani had given her before they parted ways did little to ward off the cold. She was tired and far from home, with a stranger who kept her for purposes of which she wanted no part. They had escaped a demon thing in a cursed city and found solace with free traders who dealt in questionable goods. The idea of sleeping the day away in a barrow next to the bones of the departed didn’t seem all that strange at the moment. She just hoped her fear of a lurking wight didn’t come to fruition.
Azarion took her silence for agreement and tugged on her mount’s bridle to get her moving again. They reached a gradual rise just as the sun’s lower edge cleared the horizon to spill morning light across a flat landscape that purled and swayed in a tide of tall, pale-plumed grass. She gasped at the sight. “Have we reached the Stara Dragana?”
Azarion spared her a glance, his attention mostly on the barrows before them. “Within its western borders. This part of it belongs to the Nunari, vassals of the Empire. The city of Uzatsii sits about a league from here.”
The grasses parted on either side of a shepherd’s road that led to three hills clad in a flowering carpet of sweet vernal. Made by the hands of men instead of the whimsy of nature, the middle hill was the largest barrow. A rectangular doorway built of stone was framed into one side. A stele, twice as tall as a man, stood sentry to its right, and as Gilene rode closer, she spotted pictograms carved into the stone. Arcane and enigmatic, they decorated the stele from top to base. She could only guess their meaning and prayed they weren’t curses to warn away any who might wish to enter the grave mound.
Azarion halted his horse at the stele and motioned for Gilene to do the same. He dismounted for a closer look. Gilene waited, silent, until her curiosity got the best of her. “What does it say?”
He traced the carvings’ outlines in the air with one finger. “It tells a story. This is the youngest of the three barrows, built for a Nunari chieftain named Gisrin and his family. According to these carvings, he was a great warrior who slew a thousand men and sired twenty-seven sons with five wives.” His mouth curved in a smile at Gilene’s snort. “Keeper of the fastest herds, blessed by Agna, the Great Mare.”
Gilene shifted in the saddle. “That’s all very impressive, but is he cursing anyone who enters his barrow?” She wanted out of the cold but didn’t want to fight off a wight defending a grave just to find a little warmth.
Azarion nodded. “Aye. According to the stone, if we enter, we’ll suffer baldness and sores, and our cocks will fall off.” Amusement glittered in his eyes. “Not that the last should concern you.”
A bubble of laughter rolled into her throat and threatened to escape. She disguised it with a cough, refusing to let her captor see how his commentary delighted her. They were adversaries working under an uneasy truce. Friends shared laughter. She and Azarion were not friends.
“Come,” he said and gestured for her to dismount. “Lead your horse in behind mine. This grave mound is tall. The ceiling will be high enough for the horses to enter.” He patted his mare’s neck and gave Gilene a wry look. “Horses are herd animals with a strong sense of themselves as possible prey. If there’s danger in the barrow, they’ll know it long before we will.”
In the end, her need for warmth overrode her fear of angry spirits. She nearly fell out of the saddle, stiff from hours of riding. She pushed away the helping hand Azarion offered. “Lead on,” she said and took up her horse’s reins.
The animals didn’t balk as they passed through the barrow’s tall entrance. Wide enough that she and her mare might have walked side by side across the threshold, the barrow doorway was edged with stacked stone and cut birch timbers mortared into solid earth. A shallow depression in the soil outside the entrance marked the place where a stone had once been wedged to seal off the entrance. Its remains spilled in a pile of broken rock stacked against the mound’s base.