Read Online Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay - Free Book Online Page A

really, could be seen as another kind of burden, Tai thought, on his knees in meadow grass. He had a sudden image of his father feeding ducks in their stream. He looked out over the lake, a darker blue in the mountain air.
    He stood up. He turned to the Tagurans. Gnam had gone to the dead woman, he saw. He dragged her away from the wall, ripped his arrows out of her body, tossing them carelessly behind himself. Her hair had come free of its binding in that wind, spilling loose, pins scattered. Gnam bent down, spread her legs, arranging them.
    He began removing his armour.
    Tai blinked in disbelief.
    “What are you doing?” The sound of his own voice frightened him. “She’s still warm,” the soldier said. “Do me as a prize.”
    Tai stared at Bytsan. The other man turned away. “Do not claim your own soldiers never do this,” the Taguran captain said, but he was staring at the mountains, not meeting Tai’s gaze.
    “None of mine ever did,” said Tai. “And no one else will while I stand by.”
    He took three strides, and picked up the nearest Kanlin sword.
    It had been a long time since he’d held one of these. The balance was flawless, a weight without weight. He pointed it at the young soldier.
    Gnam’s hands stopped working his armour straps. He actually looked surprised. “She came here to kill you. I just saved your life.”
    It wasn’t wholly true, but close enough.
    “You have my gratitude. And a hope I can repay you one day. But that will be prevented if I kill you now, and I will do that if you touch her. Unless you want to fight me.”
    Gnam shrugged. “I can do that.” He began tightening his straps again.
    “You’ll die,” said Tai quietly. “You need to know it.”
    The young Taguran was brave, had to be, to have come back down.
    Tai struggled to find words to lead them out, a way to save face for the younger man. “Think about it,” he said. “The wind that came. That was the dead. They are … with me here.”
    He looked at Bytsan again, who seemed strangely passive suddenly. Tai went on, urgently, “I have spent two years here trying to honour the dead. Dishonouring this one makes a mockery of that.”
    “She came to kill you,” Gnam repeated, as if Tai were slowwitted.
    “Every dead man in this meadow came to kill someone!” Tai shouted.
    His words drifted away in the thin air. It was cooler now, the sun low.
    “Gnam,” said Bytsan, finally, “there is no time for a fight if we want to be away before dark, and, trust me, after what just happened, I do. Mount up. We’re going.”
    He walked around the side of the cabin. He came back a moment later, on his magnificent Sardian, leading the soldier’s horse. Gnam was still staring at Tai. He hadn’t moved, the desire to fight written in his face.
    “You’ve just won your second tattoo,” Tai said quietly.
    He looked briefly at Bytsan, then back to the soldier in front of him. “Enjoy the moment. Don’t hurry to the afterworld. Accept my admiration, and my thanks.”
    Gnam stared at him another moment, then turned deliberately and spat thickly into the grass, very near the body of the dead woman. He stalked over and seized his horse’s reins and mounted. He wheeled to ride away.
    “Soldier!” Tai spoke before he was aware he’d intended to.
    The other man turned again.
    Tai took a breath. Some things were hard to do. “Take her swords,” he said. “Kanlin-forged. I doubt any soldier in Tagur carries their equal.”
    Gnam did not move.
    Bytsan laughed shortly. “I’ll take them if he does not.”
    Tai smiled wearily at the captain. “I’ve no doubt.”
    “It is a generous gift.”
    “It carries my gratitude.”
    He waited, didn’t move. There were limits to how far one would go to assuage a young man’s pride.
    And behind him, through that open cabin door, a friend was lying dead.
    After a long moment, Gnam moved his horse and extended a hand. Tai turned, bent, unslung the shoulder scabbards from the dead