Ofic: Out, part 19
Next chapter, one that was hard but masses of fun to write ^__^
Link to all chapters
Part 19
In the mind's eye, the last hour of the Siege of Essin looked like a Kurosawa's historical movie blended with a Westerner's peplum. Imagination was all Ryou had to rely on, though. He could hear a deep sustained booming sound that could be felt through the ground; the tromp of feet, the clash of weapons, war cries and screams and possibly cannon fire all so blended by numbers and distance that they formed a homogenous background noise that sounded like an earthquake. But all this was happening on the other side of the hill on which the forces had been camped; half a kilometre away in a dell near the river, Ryou couldn't even see the city's tallest towers.
The rear guard was composed of a few hundred men watching the dam, presumably to stop the defenders from making a sortie to destroy it and drown the troops invading them over the marshy ground where the forked rivers had flowed. Riders regularly came and went, stopping near a group of three men with plumed helmets. They didn't spread the information on how the day was going, though, so Ryou and the rest of the infantry were left in ignorance to listen to the noise of battle like continuous rolls of distant thunder.
The sun climbed higher. Ryou had kept Rand's cloak from yesterday and been thankful for it this morning, but now he let it drop off his shoulders onto the ground he was sitting on. His horse, cropping the grass phlegmatically, tried to eat it until Ryou pushed its muzzle away. He and his escort were a little off to one side, away from the river. The rest of the troop was also sitting down in small groups, shields propped against their backs. Only the men on the outer edges kept watch, patrolling. Some of the men laughed and joked, but most of them kept their eyes glued to the thickening palls of smoke on the other side of the hill.
A rider rode over the lip of the dell with a shout. A metallic rustle ran through the assembly as every man looked up and put a hand on their shields, helms or pieces of discarded armour.
The rider galloped up to the commanding officer. The leader of Ryou's little escort, who'd been introduced by Rand as Targuta, was instantly on his feet and then on his horse, trotting towards the officer corps.
As he got there, one of the plumed helmets turned and waved. A ragged cry erupted, men got to their feet, plucked their javelins out of the earth and slung on their shields. Ryou caught many grins of fierce anticipation as the troops streamed past him. Soldiers near the front of the lines shouted instructions which quickly got the men heading towards the hill at a rapid step in a phalanx of twenty men in three rows.
"Well?!" said one of Ryou's escort as their leader returned.
"Lucius got through like a breeze. They say some citizens of Essin helped a maniple over the wall to capture the gates; did so on the promise that it would be General Terentius who would be in charge of the city's surrender and not Lord Ghan." Targuta was smirking.
His fellow Hound burst out laughing; Ryou had caught his name earlier as Opiashal, a small man with a tonsured head. "As if Lord Ghan cares about those eunuchs! He'll have thundered through their streets before they could finish saying 'mercy', heading straight for the fortress."
"It's given us the day either way," Targuta answered, looking back over the hill with an air of longing. "The citadel will fall now. But they'll be desperate, they'll fight Ghan and Meromeidon every step of the way. Lord of Thunder, how I wish..." He busied himself with the set of his reins without finishing that sentence or looking at Ryou.
"We can be at the border quickly enough if we ride hard," said Opiashal in a hopeful way.
"Rand the Khinite told me the odds of the passer having already returned were worse than tossing dice and getting nine," Targuta replied, a remark that wouldn't have made much sense to Ryou if he hadn't been watching the nearest group of soldiers tossing oblong stones and half-heartedly betting on the outcome for the last hour and change.
"Well-"
"And then we have to go to the palace in Aksum. You remember what it was like when we rode that way with Dela the Kush, and getting through those streets during the day."
Opiashal's face fell.
"Anyway, since it sounds like Essin surrendered and we've not been here all that long, the General will put a seal of safety on the city by the time the fortress falls; no loot beyond tribute. And they'll have stashed the women in the temples as soon as the attack started."
"Fuck," muttered Opiashal as he turned to mount his horse.
"Shall we go now?" asked the third soldier who'd been mostly silent up until now. He didn't seem to care about Ryou, the war or the situation either way.
"Yes, let's move. Sezerena's troops won't be making any sorties now, they'll be too busy running from the Hounds." They were treating Ryou like a package, the latter noted. They weren't part of the party that had rescued Darius yesterday, they might not even know Ryou had all that much to do with that, so that just made him the weirdo foreigner whose escort needs had inexplicably dragged them away from a much desired war. Ryou had been a little nonplussed at all this eagerness and frustration; patriotism was all well and good in his modern mind, but not as good as the chance of not getting a limb or a head chopped off. Targuta's mention of loot and women went some way in enlightening him...
He followed his escort as they rounded the hill and headed away from the city, leaving behind them a small group of twenty disgruntled men still guarding the dam. This was it, Ryou realized as they crossed swathes of thoroughly trampled fields; this was the first step on his journey home.
The nervous tension of the men around him all morning had distracted him, but now Ryou's mind broke the muzzle of his self-discipline and started chewing over his memories of the past two weeks. A sterile occupation, but it was that or watch the butt of Opiashal's horse ahead of him.
So the entire town had surrendered at the mere thought of Ghan the Beast rampaging through their streets. Ryou just couldn't quite square that away with the man he'd traveled with and who'd teased him, listened to Ryou's fairy tales and given him his shoes back in the Broken Lands...Not that these things necessarily matched up. Darius had practically admitted, at different stages in their journey, that Ghan's reputation was exaggerated and useful that way. The citizens of Essin might have surrendered regardless of that incentive. A wind of liberation was blowing through these lands as the Imperium's hold weakened. Smart people would perceive that their ruler was backing the wrong horse and would try to get out of the situation without too much loss.
Hearsay and inflated reputations were not the way to tell how much of 'Ghan the Beast' was fact or fiction, and Ryou did not need such unreliable sources; no, he just needed to remember what happened to Yrmah yesterday. Ryou frowned as he remembered, sudden and jarring, the sight of finger stubs tumbling to the ground and the sound of summer rain...Good god, what had happened to that poor bastard anyway? Ryou's store of sympathy was rather short for the man who would have killed Darius and undoubtedly Ryou as well, but it was a fact that the prince of Kaides had or was soon going to be tortured for any information he might have, by Darius's orders.
...Ryou was fundamentally honest with himself, because he'd never had the capacity for fuzzy self-delusions. It was the sad, confounding truth that Yrmah's fate wasn't really horrifying him half as much as it should. His ethics were giving a few knee-jerk twitches, but when he thought of Darius, it was that curt dismissal that stuck most in his throat. Ryou had never thought of himself as a bad person before; he'd been a target for bullying for a variety of reasons, from his glasses and reserved nature to his intelligence, wealth and sexual orientation, so if someone had asked him this time last month, he'd have said he was a moral person who felt for those more unfortunate. Right, thought Ryou with an inner snort; I'm such a moral person that Darius chopping off someone's fingers weighs less than the fact he doesn't give a damn about me now that he's safe with his army again. At least I didn't sleep with him or I'd really feel used.
That thought hurt ten times more than it should, a sick sort of wretchedness that felt familiar, if out of place...
"Everything all right, sir?"
Ryou glanced up at Targuta who'd held his horse back a little until he was riding at Ryou's side. "I'm fine."
"We're climbing up to Essin's border," said Targuta, gesturing at the path ahead which had started to slope upwards shortly after leaving Essin's surrounding fields, and which was getting steeper. Essin was situated in a large river valley, with hills rising on either side. The border was automatically nearby, since provincial or country capitals were always built as close as was feasible to their source of international commerce and travel. Zaratusra in his wisdom had placed the Essin border up on a hilly pass at the end of Targuta's pointing finger, and so that was where they were going to go.
"If the passer is back, and if the Paths are favourable, we'll make Aksum city by evening," Targuta added. He seemed to have taken his exclusion from the war with dutiful philosophy and was now making sure the package was alright.
"I see," said Ryou, and since it was well past time he got his head out of its cloud of misery and into constructively planning his return home, he added, "What are we to do in Aksum exactly? Darius mentioned the King would help me deal with the Per Gathas. Do you have some kind of letter of introduction?" Ryou doubted that his business card would do the trick, even though he still had a few along with his wallet tied to his belt in a leather pouch.
Targuta gave him an odd look, and Opiashal, riding point up ahead, glanced back at Ryou with a frown.
"Rand the Khinite gave us a sealed tablet for Mlimar Par Saer, our emissary in Aksum. We're to contact him and wait," said Targuta.
"I see. I'm sorry to be an imposition on you," Ryou added.
This simple phrase, which Ryou would have expected hours ago if the positions were reversed, plunged his small escort into silent confusion.
"Um, that’s okay, we have our orders," Targuta finally said.
"I know. Thank you for your protection. I'll be traveling on much further than Aksum, but I think Darius only asked you to-"
"Hey," said Opiashal, twisting around in his saddle. But before he could say more, Tartuga barked "Eyes front!"
"Who's Darius?" asked the third man behind Ryou.
Opiashal had been turning away with a scowl on his face, but that got him twisting around again so fast that Ryou would have fallen if he'd attempted the same manoeuvre. "Don't you start!"
"Shut up, both of you," snapped Targuta.
"Huh?" said the third man.
Ryou glanced at the members of his escort. "Did I say something wrong?"
Targuta's diplomatic hesitation said as much as the set of Opiashal's shoulders up ahead.
"I understand you were the one who warned Dionysodoros and Jexen about Lord Ghan's arrival yesterday. You were traveling together, right?"
"That's right."
"You see, uh..." Targuta seemed to be fishing for a way to say something. "Our commander's name is Lord Ghan."
"I see," said Ryou, drawing his own conclusions from facts and Targuta's constipated attitude.
"He's talking about Lord Ghan?" The third soldier wasn't very quick on the uptake. "Is Darius his real name?"
"Shut the fuck up, Cregan," said Opiashal without turning around, his shoulder blades still reading Ryou the riot act.
"Whether it's his real name or not is not the point," said Targuta, leaping on the occasion to lecture his underling and thus avoiding having to do so with Ryou directly; Ryou's position in the Assyrian political spectrum must still be a total mystery to these grunts. "He's called Lord Ghan for a good reason and that's the name we fight for."
Because Darius Bher Polenius, with its reminder of illegitimacy and half Roman descent, was probably not good enough for King Leyam's half brother, Ryou surmised. He was a bit annoyed with himself that it’d taken him this long to even wonder why the man he’d known as Darius was going around as Lord Ghan in the first place.
"But is Darius his real name?" asked Cregan with the persistence of a mule.
Targuta seemed to be having an internal debate. Finally he nodded shortly. "Yunder was with the search party yesterday, and he asked Dionysodoros afterwards. Dionysodoros was pretty sure that was right, though he wasn't going to swear to it, and he has no business to. There are only two people alive who would use Lord Ghan's name, and that's King Leyam and Rand the Khinite, who's earned that right years ago."
A kernel of silence formed around the party, digesting the fact that Ryou was still alive and well after shouting Darius's real name over half of Essin province. Targuta looked even more constipated and glared at Opiashal up ahead as if this was all his fault.
Clop-clop-clop went their horses' hooves up the paved road, the animals huffing as the ascent got steeper. The path was well-maintained despite leading straight up into the hills. This was a road of commerce to other countries via the border perched somewhere above their heads. Ryou's mind paralleled their course, rising above the fruitless circling he'd been indulging in. The bit about Leyam had blotted out the rest to start with, but now the whole import of Rand's last words were coming back to him. Darius Bher Polenius...Rand, whoever he was - Ryou still hadn't figured that out - was not the kind of man to say things accidentally. That'd been a lot of information in that parting shot, as if Rand had thought it important that Ryou should know about it even though he was leaving and would never see Darius again. Rand had even given Ryou Darius's name back; his real name, the one even his Hounds did not know. Darius Bher Polenius.
A breeze caressed Ryou's hair...Just call me Darius...
Memories, intimate and intense, twisted up in Ryou's chest and fell on him like a blow. No, worse. That was what felt so familiar about this leaden, desperate feeling inside, this near-panic that could go nowhere. It was The Blow That Hadn't Landed...
At thirteen, Ryou had been the golden child, the eldest son. He'd never had to struggle to achieve; manners, scholastic merit, discipline, they all came to him naturally. He was the pride of his strict yet esteemed parents, and Ryou had completely taken all of that for granted until he'd fallen in love with the housekeeper's son, a boy two years his senior, and Ryou's father had found out.
The most frightening thing in retrospect was how Ryou had been so single-mindedly infatuated that it never even occurred to him how his parents would react. He and the other boy had kept it a secret because that only made it sweeter, more intense. Adult Ryou could only conclude that the hormones common to that phase of life had driven him temporarily insane. Though it was true he'd still been a child back then, and children do not think much about consequences, or wonder if their parents' love is conditional...
His father had convoked him to his study. President Ujiie Tsukasa had looked at his rows of books on corporate law rather than at his son while he lectured the latter on restraint, responsibility and why someone with Ryou's future would do well to grow up quickly and forget about these childish ventures.
In the midst of mortification and panic, Ryou had felt his heart freeze. "Are- are you asking me to break up with him?"
His father had turned around as if he could not believe his ears. "Are you mad? Of course you're going to break- to cease this puerile distraction of yours."
For the first time - for the last time - in his life, something unexpected had surged through Ryou, and the unmeasured words came out in a rush. "But I love him!"
Up to that point his father had registered only mild distaste at his heir going through an adolescent crisis and getting stuck on someone of the same gender vastly beneath him in social status. But at those words, his eyes had gone round, his jaw slack; Ryou had never talked back to him before, much less raised his voice. There could only be one result. His father's hand had whipped up-
...It'd stayed poised there, an aborted gesture that could not measure up to the infraction. Fingers slowly curled into a loose fist as self-control returned. But the look of disillusionment and disgust on his father's face made Ryou fall to his knees as if the blow had actually landed.
His father had slipped his hand back into the sleeve of his yukata as if he did not want it contaminated. "You-..." he had to take a breath, as well as several steps away. "You. Get up. Go. We will never talk about this again."
They never had.
The other boy had been made to apologize in front of everybody, including his own mother, for his inappropriate behaviour and his bad influence on the son of the household. Ryou had not looked at him, staring straight ahead, expressionless, instead. It was the only thing Ryou could do to protect him. His father had been watching, and he could do more than not strike a blow…The housekeeper had had no other choice but to hand in her resignation, but Ryou's mother - who was also Very Disappointed, as his father had made sure he was aware - found her another position. Yet there was always a conditional flavour to the arrangement in Ryou’s perception...Tokyo's upper families were closely connected. A rumour here, a word of advice there, a single phone call from Ryou's father, would do it. Ryou had been weak, and now his father was making sure his heir would have the incentive to strip this weakness out. If not, further punishment would be required to teach him the price of failure. Ryou understood this, the logic of it, and he would be damned if the boy and his mother were further harmed as a consequence of his failures; it was much more effective than punishing Ryou himself, and his father knew it. So president Ujiie watched his heir for any sign of a relapse, and Ryou showed nothing. That's where it came from. 'Show them nothing' was only an extension of it. Show Him nothing. That's when it'd started.
He'd never seen the other boy again, which was only for the best. He probably hated Ryou, and the only reason he didn't come over and punch him was because Ryou's father would have made sure the housekeeper would never find work again if anything to remind him of this episode ever happened. Ryou had forced himself to move far beyond that childhood stumble lest it trip him up again; it'd sunk so deep into the depths of his mind that to this day he could no longer remember the name of his first crush, or even what the boy looked like...
Damn it, why was he thinking about this now? Ryou removed his glasses and rubbed his face hard with his good hand. His horse chose this moment to shift its shoulders; Ryou nearly dropped his glasses as he made a one-handed grab for the saddle girth to keep from falling. He stuffed his glasses back on and looked around. They were climbing steeply, and the ridge of the pass between two hills was in sight.
"We're here," said Targuta, spurring on his horse to move on ahead past a decorative pillar.
"Is the passer there?" Opiashal shouted after him, but Targuta was too far up ahead to make out his answer.
Fifty meters further up, Ryou, Opiashal and Cregan could examine for themselves a circle of stone similar to the one Ryou had already crossed twice.
"Bugger those Per Gathas cocksuckers," muttered Opiashal.
"No passer?" guessed Ryou.
"No bloody sanctuary, is there," said Opiashal, pulling his horse away.
So the inn indicated the presence of a passer? Ryou's mind went back to the old woman who'd disappeared back in Palis. Because he could manage to feel worse, it seemed.
...That made him think of how Darius had tried to cheer him up after that incident in his own very unique way. Slapping Ryou on the shoulder, increasing the pace to keep their minds off things that could not be changed, but dropping a silver coin they should probably have saved in a temple altar in passing...
A medley of shouts and cheers shattered Ryou's reflection. He twisted around in his saddle to see his escort gathered to one side of the hill, looking down at a spot marked by a pall of smoke.
"What's going on?" asked Ryou, pulling his horse around and nudging it in that direction.
The three men were grinning at each other. Targuta graciously turned to share the expression and news with Ryou. "It's the banner, sir! The red banner of the Beast is floating over the citadel."
Ryou passed that through indifferent history lessons and his movie knowledge. "You mean Darius captured the fort already?"
They were so elated they didn't even pick up Ryou's gaffe on the name. "Like an arrow's flight, I tell you, like an arrow's flight," Opiashal was saying, leaning over to slap Cregan on the back. "Nobody stops Lord Ghan. Sezerena's head is on a pike right now or you can have my nuts in a bag."
"Is D- is your leader alright? Can you tell?" asked Ryou.
"What? Oh hell, sir, don't worry about Lord Ghan," Targuta answered. "He's invincible. Best sword in Assyria. Inder himself has His hand over that man's head."
Ryou studied their wide grins; they were completely confident in what they were saying. They really believed Darius was some kind of- of mythical figure of demigod proportions. Ryou had seen Darius chew on a squirrel when there was nothing else to eat, he'd seen the man covered in mud and sweat, seen him laugh and worry in that sombre way of his, he'd held Darius's bleeding body against his own after saving his life; Ryou knew Darius was just a man.
Just call me Darius.
And of course, once Ryou allowed himself to see the whole picture instead of dwelling on the personally painful bits, things suddenly looked quite different. Sure, Darius had told Ryou next to nothing about himself on the face of it, as Rand put it so well. Except for the tidbit of information, right off the bat, that he, Darius, was trouble, and that he didn't want to get Ryou mixed up in it. So he hadn't told him about Ghan or anything, no. But what he had done was share with Ryou his name, his real name which only a handful of people were even familiar with. He'd avoided mentioning his lineage, but he'd talked intimately about his family, his past, about getting Ryou to meet this brother he looked up to...And just before that bloody Yrmah came down on them, Ryou felt pretty sure that Darius had been about to tell him the truth, give him an explanation to all this, and yeah, now that Ryou cast his mind back past the shock of getting shot at with an arrow a few seconds later, he remembered Darius saying that he'd trusted Ryou for a long time now, but that he'd not said anything because he liked...liked what? Liked a friend to see something other than Ghan the Beast's reputation, maybe. Liked to see how he measured up as just a man in Ryou's eyes.
"Oh look, there's Meromeidon's banner. I think it is. Cregan, you've got the sharpest sight, is that the Lion's Head?"
"Yessir, and those are his men, see the way the sun catches their armour? Different than ours."
"But it's Lord Ghan who got Sezerena's head, personally and with pleasure, I warrant."
Darius...
The banner fluttered from the fortification, tiny yet clear in the dry air; the smoke from the burning gate was drifting the other way.
Why couldn't Darius have given Ryou a reason for dismissing him like that...? If Ryou only had a reason- it'd make all these things in his head make sense. It'd joint facts like, 'you've known him less than a month', 'you have nothing in common', 'you've been in danger or in pain or both since you've met him' and 'maybe what you feel for him is just a form of emotional dependency formed under the effects of stress, isolation and the reliance on his protection for survival'. If only he knew what Darius wanted.
If only Ryou himself knew what he himself wanted. Instead he was way out here sitting on a horse, thinking of the last time he'd felt something this achingly deep inside, back when he and someone he loved were in the same room, within touching distance, but not looking at each other as they cut all ties between them and walked away for reasons of duty, family and the safety of the other.
Ryou took a deep breath, pushed up his glasses and made the sudden but necessary decision. "Excuse me," he said to Targuta.
"Hm?"
"Can we go back down?"
"Oh, sorry, sir. We were just- come on, lads, we need to get moving. We have to go to the Anwat border; it'll take us a couple of days. I hope there's some kind of hostel on the road."
"There isn't," said Ryou, who had good cause to know having made the journey the day before yesterday. "But I meant, can we go back down to the Alliance camp? I need to talk to D- to Lord-" oh to hell with it. "I need to talk to Darius."
All three soldiers stopped manoeuvring their mounts around to stare at him.
"Uh, what?" asked Targuta.
"I need to talk to Darius," repeated Ryou, who had the feeling something under considerable pressure was breaking down inside him. Probably his sanity.
"But-" Targuta looked around in the apparent hope common sense could be conjured up from his two colleagues, the captured citadel below, the empty stone circle or his horse. "No, sorry sir. We've been ordered to accompany you to Aksum. Come on, men," he said sharply, as if putting the blame for this random and unreasonable demand on the dawdling of Ryou's escort.
"I understand that, but I really need to go back down. We can go to Aksum afterwards. Probably. I mean-"
Up until now, Ryou had been the package to bring to Aksum, and Targuta had obviously not considered too hard what his orders implied. Ryou could see himself in Targuta's eyes, vacillating between the man who'd been rumoured to have helped Lord Ghan, and the weird-looking foreigner taking liberties with Lord Ghan's name whom Rand the Khinite had ordered them to escort to King Ka's capital. In short, Targuta was now forced to wonder if those orders meant that Ryou was a V.I.P to be protected, or someone that was being marched to Aksum under guard.
Ryou should have helped sway that verdict in his favour, but his mind was whirling too hard to come up with any persuasive argument. His silence and dead-set expression tipped Targuta's decision, unfortunately.
"Apologies, sir," said Targuta with a curt gesture towards the road leading down the other side of the col, away from Essin and the circle. "We have our orders. You can't see Lord Ghan even if you wanted to, he's in the midst of a battlefield and too busy for details. Stay in Aksum until Rand the Khinite comes, and you can discuss it with him. Sir."
"You don't understand, I need to-"
- to talk to Darius, or Lord Ghan or whatever, and not just to get his version of events. Because whatever had been going through Darius's head this morning, it wasn't the only thing that mattered here. It would influence what Ryou eventually got from him, but it should not influence what Ryou desired in the first place, which was something he'd yet to figure out. Damn it, Ryou had been like this ever since he was thirteen; 'I know I can't have it so it is wiser not to want it'. Now he was going back to that same mould like the- the obedient office drone he was, and he didn't even know what he wanted. What the hell was he doing here in the first place? What did he want?
He wanted to sit by a campfire and get teased and laugh and hear stories. He wanted to ride through sunshine and through rain with a goal ahead and nothing left behind. He wanted to do something crazy based on instinct and desire rather than duty or logic, he wanted to burn his bridges and smile like he had no regrets.
He wanted Darius back.
If Darius didn't want him around, well then he was going to have to tell Ryou to his face, tell him as Ryou's friend Darius, not as bloody Ghan the Whatever surrounded by a dozen men who knew nothing about the two of them whatsoever.
Targuta had moved his horse forward to Ryou's right side; Opiashal had followed his lead and was boxing Ryou in from the left. Ryou's horse, not the brightest of creatures, took this as an indication that it was time to move on again and followed their lead, docile.
Ryou glanced back, past the soldiers herding him towards the road to distant Anwat and eventually Aksum. The path back to Essin would be patrolled by troops of mounted riders looking for escaped enemy soldiers. That road led to the besieged city behind its high walls, now full of Alliance soldiers possibly still fighting their opponents street by street around the citadel, which was also full of soldiers likely to strike first and ask questions later. In that respect Targuta was perfectly right, Ryou was never going to be able to see Darius that way.
Cregan gave Ryou a warning look and jerked his horse's head to the right to close the gap, ready to leap forward and intercept Ryou should the latter turn and try to bolt. But Ryou was looking beyond him, at the fortress in the distance, the blood red banner floating over it.
Then he looked at the circle of stelae they were skirting.
To him, it was no longer a simple strip of ground with a bunch of upright stones planted around it. Ryou's inner sense was stronger after walking the Paths behind two passers. He could sense it now, this small circle which was a crux of possibilities, constantly shifting and malleable to the human mind. The stream running through the circle was a mighty river of flux in his mind's eye, leading to a multitude of other planes. Not that he needed to leave Aksum at present, no. All Ryou needed to do was to go from here to over there, from this circle of beaten sod to that tower where a blood red banner floated, close enough in the still air where it seemed Ryou could almost lean over and touch it...
He'd just been thinking he wanted to burn his bridges and do something crazy; this undoubtedly counted. But it was that or loose two days going to Aksum, with the risk Rand would not listen anymore than these men, and then where would Ryou and Darius be?
Ryou kicked his horse's flanks and whipped the reins. The animal, the most placid critter in the entire army that Rand must have picked out purposefully for him at Darius's request, snorted in shock and bounced forward, more like a bunny than a steeple-chaser.
Cregan shouted behind Ryou. Opiashal made a flailing grab at Ryou's reins and missed.
Ryou's horse got the picture, sorted out its legs and cantered forward, away from the three escorting soldiers and right at the circle.
"Hey!"
"Oh shit!"
"No! Come back!"
Ryou ignored the dizzy feeling as he passed the border delineated by the stones. He pulled on the left rein, slowing his horse and tugging its head around. The circle was on a slope; the stream came from a natural spring that burbled up just beyond two of the stones and trickled across the empty space. But Ryou didn't want to cross the water. He didn’t want to leave this plane, just simply be in another spot of it. In Euclidian geometry - the local geometry of choice, no doubt - the shortest distance between two points was a straight line; in this instance, a straight line only a bird could fly. But that axiom only held true in the three rigid dimensions it was born in; not only were those dimensions influenced by other factors the Greeks could not have known about, but if one went further into abstract geometry and plunged those three dimensions into a higher space, they could be bent like a napkin and then the shortest distance between here and there was really no distance at all.
His unnamed sense stirred. Ryou didn't know how, but he knew he could do this. There was certainly some risk. Quite a lot of it in fact, and Ryou's bypassed common sense was busy calculating it and throwing up all sorts of red flags at each imponderable. But it was possible and that was all that mattered at this point.
Oddly enough, the thought that flashed through Ryou's mind as he kicked his horse into a run was of the president, his father. This, what he was doing here, was exactly what the president had seen in Ryou back then, during that shameful incident. The old man had known somehow that his otherwise disciplined son had this madness deep inside him, that he was capable of doing exactly what he was doing right now (well, not in any detail of course-) It was an oversimplification to say his father felt no affection for Ryou, or that he'd not operated in his son's best interest. He had forced Ryou down the narrowest path and held him on a tight leash because he was - they were both - afraid of what Ryou might do one day if he ever let his feelings take over fully and threw away all that he had accomplished.
Then again, since he was in the Outlands in the first place, hadn't he done that already?
The air around Ryou changed and his horse's hooves no longer touched ground.
TBC...
Next chapter should be out next Sunday, though I do have a bit of work to do on it yet and not much time to do it in...*ducks flying objects* but I'll try!
Link to all chapters
Part 19
In the mind's eye, the last hour of the Siege of Essin looked like a Kurosawa's historical movie blended with a Westerner's peplum. Imagination was all Ryou had to rely on, though. He could hear a deep sustained booming sound that could be felt through the ground; the tromp of feet, the clash of weapons, war cries and screams and possibly cannon fire all so blended by numbers and distance that they formed a homogenous background noise that sounded like an earthquake. But all this was happening on the other side of the hill on which the forces had been camped; half a kilometre away in a dell near the river, Ryou couldn't even see the city's tallest towers.
The rear guard was composed of a few hundred men watching the dam, presumably to stop the defenders from making a sortie to destroy it and drown the troops invading them over the marshy ground where the forked rivers had flowed. Riders regularly came and went, stopping near a group of three men with plumed helmets. They didn't spread the information on how the day was going, though, so Ryou and the rest of the infantry were left in ignorance to listen to the noise of battle like continuous rolls of distant thunder.
The sun climbed higher. Ryou had kept Rand's cloak from yesterday and been thankful for it this morning, but now he let it drop off his shoulders onto the ground he was sitting on. His horse, cropping the grass phlegmatically, tried to eat it until Ryou pushed its muzzle away. He and his escort were a little off to one side, away from the river. The rest of the troop was also sitting down in small groups, shields propped against their backs. Only the men on the outer edges kept watch, patrolling. Some of the men laughed and joked, but most of them kept their eyes glued to the thickening palls of smoke on the other side of the hill.
A rider rode over the lip of the dell with a shout. A metallic rustle ran through the assembly as every man looked up and put a hand on their shields, helms or pieces of discarded armour.
The rider galloped up to the commanding officer. The leader of Ryou's little escort, who'd been introduced by Rand as Targuta, was instantly on his feet and then on his horse, trotting towards the officer corps.
As he got there, one of the plumed helmets turned and waved. A ragged cry erupted, men got to their feet, plucked their javelins out of the earth and slung on their shields. Ryou caught many grins of fierce anticipation as the troops streamed past him. Soldiers near the front of the lines shouted instructions which quickly got the men heading towards the hill at a rapid step in a phalanx of twenty men in three rows.
"Well?!" said one of Ryou's escort as their leader returned.
"Lucius got through like a breeze. They say some citizens of Essin helped a maniple over the wall to capture the gates; did so on the promise that it would be General Terentius who would be in charge of the city's surrender and not Lord Ghan." Targuta was smirking.
His fellow Hound burst out laughing; Ryou had caught his name earlier as Opiashal, a small man with a tonsured head. "As if Lord Ghan cares about those eunuchs! He'll have thundered through their streets before they could finish saying 'mercy', heading straight for the fortress."
"It's given us the day either way," Targuta answered, looking back over the hill with an air of longing. "The citadel will fall now. But they'll be desperate, they'll fight Ghan and Meromeidon every step of the way. Lord of Thunder, how I wish..." He busied himself with the set of his reins without finishing that sentence or looking at Ryou.
"We can be at the border quickly enough if we ride hard," said Opiashal in a hopeful way.
"Rand the Khinite told me the odds of the passer having already returned were worse than tossing dice and getting nine," Targuta replied, a remark that wouldn't have made much sense to Ryou if he hadn't been watching the nearest group of soldiers tossing oblong stones and half-heartedly betting on the outcome for the last hour and change.
"Well-"
"And then we have to go to the palace in Aksum. You remember what it was like when we rode that way with Dela the Kush, and getting through those streets during the day."
Opiashal's face fell.
"Anyway, since it sounds like Essin surrendered and we've not been here all that long, the General will put a seal of safety on the city by the time the fortress falls; no loot beyond tribute. And they'll have stashed the women in the temples as soon as the attack started."
"Fuck," muttered Opiashal as he turned to mount his horse.
"Shall we go now?" asked the third soldier who'd been mostly silent up until now. He didn't seem to care about Ryou, the war or the situation either way.
"Yes, let's move. Sezerena's troops won't be making any sorties now, they'll be too busy running from the Hounds." They were treating Ryou like a package, the latter noted. They weren't part of the party that had rescued Darius yesterday, they might not even know Ryou had all that much to do with that, so that just made him the weirdo foreigner whose escort needs had inexplicably dragged them away from a much desired war. Ryou had been a little nonplussed at all this eagerness and frustration; patriotism was all well and good in his modern mind, but not as good as the chance of not getting a limb or a head chopped off. Targuta's mention of loot and women went some way in enlightening him...
He followed his escort as they rounded the hill and headed away from the city, leaving behind them a small group of twenty disgruntled men still guarding the dam. This was it, Ryou realized as they crossed swathes of thoroughly trampled fields; this was the first step on his journey home.
The nervous tension of the men around him all morning had distracted him, but now Ryou's mind broke the muzzle of his self-discipline and started chewing over his memories of the past two weeks. A sterile occupation, but it was that or watch the butt of Opiashal's horse ahead of him.
So the entire town had surrendered at the mere thought of Ghan the Beast rampaging through their streets. Ryou just couldn't quite square that away with the man he'd traveled with and who'd teased him, listened to Ryou's fairy tales and given him his shoes back in the Broken Lands...Not that these things necessarily matched up. Darius had practically admitted, at different stages in their journey, that Ghan's reputation was exaggerated and useful that way. The citizens of Essin might have surrendered regardless of that incentive. A wind of liberation was blowing through these lands as the Imperium's hold weakened. Smart people would perceive that their ruler was backing the wrong horse and would try to get out of the situation without too much loss.
Hearsay and inflated reputations were not the way to tell how much of 'Ghan the Beast' was fact or fiction, and Ryou did not need such unreliable sources; no, he just needed to remember what happened to Yrmah yesterday. Ryou frowned as he remembered, sudden and jarring, the sight of finger stubs tumbling to the ground and the sound of summer rain...Good god, what had happened to that poor bastard anyway? Ryou's store of sympathy was rather short for the man who would have killed Darius and undoubtedly Ryou as well, but it was a fact that the prince of Kaides had or was soon going to be tortured for any information he might have, by Darius's orders.
...Ryou was fundamentally honest with himself, because he'd never had the capacity for fuzzy self-delusions. It was the sad, confounding truth that Yrmah's fate wasn't really horrifying him half as much as it should. His ethics were giving a few knee-jerk twitches, but when he thought of Darius, it was that curt dismissal that stuck most in his throat. Ryou had never thought of himself as a bad person before; he'd been a target for bullying for a variety of reasons, from his glasses and reserved nature to his intelligence, wealth and sexual orientation, so if someone had asked him this time last month, he'd have said he was a moral person who felt for those more unfortunate. Right, thought Ryou with an inner snort; I'm such a moral person that Darius chopping off someone's fingers weighs less than the fact he doesn't give a damn about me now that he's safe with his army again. At least I didn't sleep with him or I'd really feel used.
That thought hurt ten times more than it should, a sick sort of wretchedness that felt familiar, if out of place...
"Everything all right, sir?"
Ryou glanced up at Targuta who'd held his horse back a little until he was riding at Ryou's side. "I'm fine."
"We're climbing up to Essin's border," said Targuta, gesturing at the path ahead which had started to slope upwards shortly after leaving Essin's surrounding fields, and which was getting steeper. Essin was situated in a large river valley, with hills rising on either side. The border was automatically nearby, since provincial or country capitals were always built as close as was feasible to their source of international commerce and travel. Zaratusra in his wisdom had placed the Essin border up on a hilly pass at the end of Targuta's pointing finger, and so that was where they were going to go.
"If the passer is back, and if the Paths are favourable, we'll make Aksum city by evening," Targuta added. He seemed to have taken his exclusion from the war with dutiful philosophy and was now making sure the package was alright.
"I see," said Ryou, and since it was well past time he got his head out of its cloud of misery and into constructively planning his return home, he added, "What are we to do in Aksum exactly? Darius mentioned the King would help me deal with the Per Gathas. Do you have some kind of letter of introduction?" Ryou doubted that his business card would do the trick, even though he still had a few along with his wallet tied to his belt in a leather pouch.
Targuta gave him an odd look, and Opiashal, riding point up ahead, glanced back at Ryou with a frown.
"Rand the Khinite gave us a sealed tablet for Mlimar Par Saer, our emissary in Aksum. We're to contact him and wait," said Targuta.
"I see. I'm sorry to be an imposition on you," Ryou added.
This simple phrase, which Ryou would have expected hours ago if the positions were reversed, plunged his small escort into silent confusion.
"Um, that’s okay, we have our orders," Targuta finally said.
"I know. Thank you for your protection. I'll be traveling on much further than Aksum, but I think Darius only asked you to-"
"Hey," said Opiashal, twisting around in his saddle. But before he could say more, Tartuga barked "Eyes front!"
"Who's Darius?" asked the third man behind Ryou.
Opiashal had been turning away with a scowl on his face, but that got him twisting around again so fast that Ryou would have fallen if he'd attempted the same manoeuvre. "Don't you start!"
"Shut up, both of you," snapped Targuta.
"Huh?" said the third man.
Ryou glanced at the members of his escort. "Did I say something wrong?"
Targuta's diplomatic hesitation said as much as the set of Opiashal's shoulders up ahead.
"I understand you were the one who warned Dionysodoros and Jexen about Lord Ghan's arrival yesterday. You were traveling together, right?"
"That's right."
"You see, uh..." Targuta seemed to be fishing for a way to say something. "Our commander's name is Lord Ghan."
"I see," said Ryou, drawing his own conclusions from facts and Targuta's constipated attitude.
"He's talking about Lord Ghan?" The third soldier wasn't very quick on the uptake. "Is Darius his real name?"
"Shut the fuck up, Cregan," said Opiashal without turning around, his shoulder blades still reading Ryou the riot act.
"Whether it's his real name or not is not the point," said Targuta, leaping on the occasion to lecture his underling and thus avoiding having to do so with Ryou directly; Ryou's position in the Assyrian political spectrum must still be a total mystery to these grunts. "He's called Lord Ghan for a good reason and that's the name we fight for."
Because Darius Bher Polenius, with its reminder of illegitimacy and half Roman descent, was probably not good enough for King Leyam's half brother, Ryou surmised. He was a bit annoyed with himself that it’d taken him this long to even wonder why the man he’d known as Darius was going around as Lord Ghan in the first place.
"But is Darius his real name?" asked Cregan with the persistence of a mule.
Targuta seemed to be having an internal debate. Finally he nodded shortly. "Yunder was with the search party yesterday, and he asked Dionysodoros afterwards. Dionysodoros was pretty sure that was right, though he wasn't going to swear to it, and he has no business to. There are only two people alive who would use Lord Ghan's name, and that's King Leyam and Rand the Khinite, who's earned that right years ago."
A kernel of silence formed around the party, digesting the fact that Ryou was still alive and well after shouting Darius's real name over half of Essin province. Targuta looked even more constipated and glared at Opiashal up ahead as if this was all his fault.
Clop-clop-clop went their horses' hooves up the paved road, the animals huffing as the ascent got steeper. The path was well-maintained despite leading straight up into the hills. This was a road of commerce to other countries via the border perched somewhere above their heads. Ryou's mind paralleled their course, rising above the fruitless circling he'd been indulging in. The bit about Leyam had blotted out the rest to start with, but now the whole import of Rand's last words were coming back to him. Darius Bher Polenius...Rand, whoever he was - Ryou still hadn't figured that out - was not the kind of man to say things accidentally. That'd been a lot of information in that parting shot, as if Rand had thought it important that Ryou should know about it even though he was leaving and would never see Darius again. Rand had even given Ryou Darius's name back; his real name, the one even his Hounds did not know. Darius Bher Polenius.
A breeze caressed Ryou's hair...Just call me Darius...
Memories, intimate and intense, twisted up in Ryou's chest and fell on him like a blow. No, worse. That was what felt so familiar about this leaden, desperate feeling inside, this near-panic that could go nowhere. It was The Blow That Hadn't Landed...
At thirteen, Ryou had been the golden child, the eldest son. He'd never had to struggle to achieve; manners, scholastic merit, discipline, they all came to him naturally. He was the pride of his strict yet esteemed parents, and Ryou had completely taken all of that for granted until he'd fallen in love with the housekeeper's son, a boy two years his senior, and Ryou's father had found out.
The most frightening thing in retrospect was how Ryou had been so single-mindedly infatuated that it never even occurred to him how his parents would react. He and the other boy had kept it a secret because that only made it sweeter, more intense. Adult Ryou could only conclude that the hormones common to that phase of life had driven him temporarily insane. Though it was true he'd still been a child back then, and children do not think much about consequences, or wonder if their parents' love is conditional...
His father had convoked him to his study. President Ujiie Tsukasa had looked at his rows of books on corporate law rather than at his son while he lectured the latter on restraint, responsibility and why someone with Ryou's future would do well to grow up quickly and forget about these childish ventures.
In the midst of mortification and panic, Ryou had felt his heart freeze. "Are- are you asking me to break up with him?"
His father had turned around as if he could not believe his ears. "Are you mad? Of course you're going to break- to cease this puerile distraction of yours."
For the first time - for the last time - in his life, something unexpected had surged through Ryou, and the unmeasured words came out in a rush. "But I love him!"
Up to that point his father had registered only mild distaste at his heir going through an adolescent crisis and getting stuck on someone of the same gender vastly beneath him in social status. But at those words, his eyes had gone round, his jaw slack; Ryou had never talked back to him before, much less raised his voice. There could only be one result. His father's hand had whipped up-
...It'd stayed poised there, an aborted gesture that could not measure up to the infraction. Fingers slowly curled into a loose fist as self-control returned. But the look of disillusionment and disgust on his father's face made Ryou fall to his knees as if the blow had actually landed.
His father had slipped his hand back into the sleeve of his yukata as if he did not want it contaminated. "You-..." he had to take a breath, as well as several steps away. "You. Get up. Go. We will never talk about this again."
They never had.
The other boy had been made to apologize in front of everybody, including his own mother, for his inappropriate behaviour and his bad influence on the son of the household. Ryou had not looked at him, staring straight ahead, expressionless, instead. It was the only thing Ryou could do to protect him. His father had been watching, and he could do more than not strike a blow…The housekeeper had had no other choice but to hand in her resignation, but Ryou's mother - who was also Very Disappointed, as his father had made sure he was aware - found her another position. Yet there was always a conditional flavour to the arrangement in Ryou’s perception...Tokyo's upper families were closely connected. A rumour here, a word of advice there, a single phone call from Ryou's father, would do it. Ryou had been weak, and now his father was making sure his heir would have the incentive to strip this weakness out. If not, further punishment would be required to teach him the price of failure. Ryou understood this, the logic of it, and he would be damned if the boy and his mother were further harmed as a consequence of his failures; it was much more effective than punishing Ryou himself, and his father knew it. So president Ujiie watched his heir for any sign of a relapse, and Ryou showed nothing. That's where it came from. 'Show them nothing' was only an extension of it. Show Him nothing. That's when it'd started.
He'd never seen the other boy again, which was only for the best. He probably hated Ryou, and the only reason he didn't come over and punch him was because Ryou's father would have made sure the housekeeper would never find work again if anything to remind him of this episode ever happened. Ryou had forced himself to move far beyond that childhood stumble lest it trip him up again; it'd sunk so deep into the depths of his mind that to this day he could no longer remember the name of his first crush, or even what the boy looked like...
Damn it, why was he thinking about this now? Ryou removed his glasses and rubbed his face hard with his good hand. His horse chose this moment to shift its shoulders; Ryou nearly dropped his glasses as he made a one-handed grab for the saddle girth to keep from falling. He stuffed his glasses back on and looked around. They were climbing steeply, and the ridge of the pass between two hills was in sight.
"We're here," said Targuta, spurring on his horse to move on ahead past a decorative pillar.
"Is the passer there?" Opiashal shouted after him, but Targuta was too far up ahead to make out his answer.
Fifty meters further up, Ryou, Opiashal and Cregan could examine for themselves a circle of stone similar to the one Ryou had already crossed twice.
"Bugger those Per Gathas cocksuckers," muttered Opiashal.
"No passer?" guessed Ryou.
"No bloody sanctuary, is there," said Opiashal, pulling his horse away.
So the inn indicated the presence of a passer? Ryou's mind went back to the old woman who'd disappeared back in Palis. Because he could manage to feel worse, it seemed.
...That made him think of how Darius had tried to cheer him up after that incident in his own very unique way. Slapping Ryou on the shoulder, increasing the pace to keep their minds off things that could not be changed, but dropping a silver coin they should probably have saved in a temple altar in passing...
A medley of shouts and cheers shattered Ryou's reflection. He twisted around in his saddle to see his escort gathered to one side of the hill, looking down at a spot marked by a pall of smoke.
"What's going on?" asked Ryou, pulling his horse around and nudging it in that direction.
The three men were grinning at each other. Targuta graciously turned to share the expression and news with Ryou. "It's the banner, sir! The red banner of the Beast is floating over the citadel."
Ryou passed that through indifferent history lessons and his movie knowledge. "You mean Darius captured the fort already?"
They were so elated they didn't even pick up Ryou's gaffe on the name. "Like an arrow's flight, I tell you, like an arrow's flight," Opiashal was saying, leaning over to slap Cregan on the back. "Nobody stops Lord Ghan. Sezerena's head is on a pike right now or you can have my nuts in a bag."
"Is D- is your leader alright? Can you tell?" asked Ryou.
"What? Oh hell, sir, don't worry about Lord Ghan," Targuta answered. "He's invincible. Best sword in Assyria. Inder himself has His hand over that man's head."
Ryou studied their wide grins; they were completely confident in what they were saying. They really believed Darius was some kind of- of mythical figure of demigod proportions. Ryou had seen Darius chew on a squirrel when there was nothing else to eat, he'd seen the man covered in mud and sweat, seen him laugh and worry in that sombre way of his, he'd held Darius's bleeding body against his own after saving his life; Ryou knew Darius was just a man.
Just call me Darius.
And of course, once Ryou allowed himself to see the whole picture instead of dwelling on the personally painful bits, things suddenly looked quite different. Sure, Darius had told Ryou next to nothing about himself on the face of it, as Rand put it so well. Except for the tidbit of information, right off the bat, that he, Darius, was trouble, and that he didn't want to get Ryou mixed up in it. So he hadn't told him about Ghan or anything, no. But what he had done was share with Ryou his name, his real name which only a handful of people were even familiar with. He'd avoided mentioning his lineage, but he'd talked intimately about his family, his past, about getting Ryou to meet this brother he looked up to...And just before that bloody Yrmah came down on them, Ryou felt pretty sure that Darius had been about to tell him the truth, give him an explanation to all this, and yeah, now that Ryou cast his mind back past the shock of getting shot at with an arrow a few seconds later, he remembered Darius saying that he'd trusted Ryou for a long time now, but that he'd not said anything because he liked...liked what? Liked a friend to see something other than Ghan the Beast's reputation, maybe. Liked to see how he measured up as just a man in Ryou's eyes.
"Oh look, there's Meromeidon's banner. I think it is. Cregan, you've got the sharpest sight, is that the Lion's Head?"
"Yessir, and those are his men, see the way the sun catches their armour? Different than ours."
"But it's Lord Ghan who got Sezerena's head, personally and with pleasure, I warrant."
Darius...
The banner fluttered from the fortification, tiny yet clear in the dry air; the smoke from the burning gate was drifting the other way.
Why couldn't Darius have given Ryou a reason for dismissing him like that...? If Ryou only had a reason- it'd make all these things in his head make sense. It'd joint facts like, 'you've known him less than a month', 'you have nothing in common', 'you've been in danger or in pain or both since you've met him' and 'maybe what you feel for him is just a form of emotional dependency formed under the effects of stress, isolation and the reliance on his protection for survival'. If only he knew what Darius wanted.
If only Ryou himself knew what he himself wanted. Instead he was way out here sitting on a horse, thinking of the last time he'd felt something this achingly deep inside, back when he and someone he loved were in the same room, within touching distance, but not looking at each other as they cut all ties between them and walked away for reasons of duty, family and the safety of the other.
Ryou took a deep breath, pushed up his glasses and made the sudden but necessary decision. "Excuse me," he said to Targuta.
"Hm?"
"Can we go back down?"
"Oh, sorry, sir. We were just- come on, lads, we need to get moving. We have to go to the Anwat border; it'll take us a couple of days. I hope there's some kind of hostel on the road."
"There isn't," said Ryou, who had good cause to know having made the journey the day before yesterday. "But I meant, can we go back down to the Alliance camp? I need to talk to D- to Lord-" oh to hell with it. "I need to talk to Darius."
All three soldiers stopped manoeuvring their mounts around to stare at him.
"Uh, what?" asked Targuta.
"I need to talk to Darius," repeated Ryou, who had the feeling something under considerable pressure was breaking down inside him. Probably his sanity.
"But-" Targuta looked around in the apparent hope common sense could be conjured up from his two colleagues, the captured citadel below, the empty stone circle or his horse. "No, sorry sir. We've been ordered to accompany you to Aksum. Come on, men," he said sharply, as if putting the blame for this random and unreasonable demand on the dawdling of Ryou's escort.
"I understand that, but I really need to go back down. We can go to Aksum afterwards. Probably. I mean-"
Up until now, Ryou had been the package to bring to Aksum, and Targuta had obviously not considered too hard what his orders implied. Ryou could see himself in Targuta's eyes, vacillating between the man who'd been rumoured to have helped Lord Ghan, and the weird-looking foreigner taking liberties with Lord Ghan's name whom Rand the Khinite had ordered them to escort to King Ka's capital. In short, Targuta was now forced to wonder if those orders meant that Ryou was a V.I.P to be protected, or someone that was being marched to Aksum under guard.
Ryou should have helped sway that verdict in his favour, but his mind was whirling too hard to come up with any persuasive argument. His silence and dead-set expression tipped Targuta's decision, unfortunately.
"Apologies, sir," said Targuta with a curt gesture towards the road leading down the other side of the col, away from Essin and the circle. "We have our orders. You can't see Lord Ghan even if you wanted to, he's in the midst of a battlefield and too busy for details. Stay in Aksum until Rand the Khinite comes, and you can discuss it with him. Sir."
"You don't understand, I need to-"
- to talk to Darius, or Lord Ghan or whatever, and not just to get his version of events. Because whatever had been going through Darius's head this morning, it wasn't the only thing that mattered here. It would influence what Ryou eventually got from him, but it should not influence what Ryou desired in the first place, which was something he'd yet to figure out. Damn it, Ryou had been like this ever since he was thirteen; 'I know I can't have it so it is wiser not to want it'. Now he was going back to that same mould like the- the obedient office drone he was, and he didn't even know what he wanted. What the hell was he doing here in the first place? What did he want?
He wanted to sit by a campfire and get teased and laugh and hear stories. He wanted to ride through sunshine and through rain with a goal ahead and nothing left behind. He wanted to do something crazy based on instinct and desire rather than duty or logic, he wanted to burn his bridges and smile like he had no regrets.
He wanted Darius back.
If Darius didn't want him around, well then he was going to have to tell Ryou to his face, tell him as Ryou's friend Darius, not as bloody Ghan the Whatever surrounded by a dozen men who knew nothing about the two of them whatsoever.
Targuta had moved his horse forward to Ryou's right side; Opiashal had followed his lead and was boxing Ryou in from the left. Ryou's horse, not the brightest of creatures, took this as an indication that it was time to move on again and followed their lead, docile.
Ryou glanced back, past the soldiers herding him towards the road to distant Anwat and eventually Aksum. The path back to Essin would be patrolled by troops of mounted riders looking for escaped enemy soldiers. That road led to the besieged city behind its high walls, now full of Alliance soldiers possibly still fighting their opponents street by street around the citadel, which was also full of soldiers likely to strike first and ask questions later. In that respect Targuta was perfectly right, Ryou was never going to be able to see Darius that way.
Cregan gave Ryou a warning look and jerked his horse's head to the right to close the gap, ready to leap forward and intercept Ryou should the latter turn and try to bolt. But Ryou was looking beyond him, at the fortress in the distance, the blood red banner floating over it.
Then he looked at the circle of stelae they were skirting.
To him, it was no longer a simple strip of ground with a bunch of upright stones planted around it. Ryou's inner sense was stronger after walking the Paths behind two passers. He could sense it now, this small circle which was a crux of possibilities, constantly shifting and malleable to the human mind. The stream running through the circle was a mighty river of flux in his mind's eye, leading to a multitude of other planes. Not that he needed to leave Aksum at present, no. All Ryou needed to do was to go from here to over there, from this circle of beaten sod to that tower where a blood red banner floated, close enough in the still air where it seemed Ryou could almost lean over and touch it...
He'd just been thinking he wanted to burn his bridges and do something crazy; this undoubtedly counted. But it was that or loose two days going to Aksum, with the risk Rand would not listen anymore than these men, and then where would Ryou and Darius be?
Ryou kicked his horse's flanks and whipped the reins. The animal, the most placid critter in the entire army that Rand must have picked out purposefully for him at Darius's request, snorted in shock and bounced forward, more like a bunny than a steeple-chaser.
Cregan shouted behind Ryou. Opiashal made a flailing grab at Ryou's reins and missed.
Ryou's horse got the picture, sorted out its legs and cantered forward, away from the three escorting soldiers and right at the circle.
"Hey!"
"Oh shit!"
"No! Come back!"
Ryou ignored the dizzy feeling as he passed the border delineated by the stones. He pulled on the left rein, slowing his horse and tugging its head around. The circle was on a slope; the stream came from a natural spring that burbled up just beyond two of the stones and trickled across the empty space. But Ryou didn't want to cross the water. He didn’t want to leave this plane, just simply be in another spot of it. In Euclidian geometry - the local geometry of choice, no doubt - the shortest distance between two points was a straight line; in this instance, a straight line only a bird could fly. But that axiom only held true in the three rigid dimensions it was born in; not only were those dimensions influenced by other factors the Greeks could not have known about, but if one went further into abstract geometry and plunged those three dimensions into a higher space, they could be bent like a napkin and then the shortest distance between here and there was really no distance at all.
His unnamed sense stirred. Ryou didn't know how, but he knew he could do this. There was certainly some risk. Quite a lot of it in fact, and Ryou's bypassed common sense was busy calculating it and throwing up all sorts of red flags at each imponderable. But it was possible and that was all that mattered at this point.
Oddly enough, the thought that flashed through Ryou's mind as he kicked his horse into a run was of the president, his father. This, what he was doing here, was exactly what the president had seen in Ryou back then, during that shameful incident. The old man had known somehow that his otherwise disciplined son had this madness deep inside him, that he was capable of doing exactly what he was doing right now (well, not in any detail of course-) It was an oversimplification to say his father felt no affection for Ryou, or that he'd not operated in his son's best interest. He had forced Ryou down the narrowest path and held him on a tight leash because he was - they were both - afraid of what Ryou might do one day if he ever let his feelings take over fully and threw away all that he had accomplished.
Then again, since he was in the Outlands in the first place, hadn't he done that already?
The air around Ryou changed and his horse's hooves no longer touched ground.
TBC...
Next chapter should be out next Sunday, though I do have a bit of work to do on it yet and not much time to do it in...*ducks flying objects* but I'll try!