The Line Between

He saved my life, in every likelihood, for we left that gate and half a dozen like it behind as we continued our malodorous excursion, while the driver, all unwitting, paid our toll each time. Only with the last barrier safely past did we slide from the cart, tumble to the roadside and such cover as there was, and rise to face each other in daylight. We reeked beyond the telling of it — in honesty, almost beyond the smelling of it, so inured to the odor had our nostrils become. We stank beyond anything but laughter, and that was what we did then, grimacing and howling and

falling down on the dry grass, pointing helplessly at each other and going off again into great, ridiculous whoops of mirth and relief, until we wore ourselves out and could barely breathe, let alone laugh. The old man's laughter was as shrill and cold as the mating cries of shukris, but it was laughter even so.

He was old indeed, now I saw him in daylight, even under a crust of filth and all that still stuck to the filth — straw, twigs, dead spiders, bullock–hair. His own hair and brows were as white as his mustache, and the gray eyes streaked with rheum; yet his cheeks were absurdly pink, like a young girl's cheeks, and he carried himself as straight as any young man. Young as I was myself, and unwise as I was, when I first looked into his eyes, I already knew far better than to trust him. And nonetheless, knowing, I wanted to. He can do that.

«I think we bathe," he said to me. «Before anything else, I do think we bathe.»

«I think so too," I said. «Yes.» He jerked his white head, and we walked away from the Queen's Road, off back into the wild woods.

«I am Soukyan," I offered, but to that he made no response. He clearly knew the country, for he led me directly to a fast–flowing stream, and then to a pool lower down, where the water gathered and swirled. We cleaned ourselves there, though it took us a long time, so mucky we were; and afterward, naked–new as raw carrots, we lay in the sun and talked for a while. I told truth, for the most part, leaving out only some minor details of that place —things I had good reason not to think about just then — and he … ah, well, what he told me of his life, of how he came to hail me from that dungheap, was such a stew of lies and the odd honesty that I've never studied out the right of it yet, no more than I have ever learned his own name. The truth is not in him, and I would be dearly disappointed if it should show its poor face now. He was there — leave it at that. He was there at the particular moment when I needed a friend, however fraudulent. It has happened so since.

«So," he said at last, stretching himself in the sun. «And what's to be done with you now?» — for all the world as though he had all the disposing of me and my future. «If you fancy that your followers have forsaken you, merely because we once stank our way past them, I'd greatly enjoy to have the writing of your will. They will run behind you until you die — they will never return to their masters without you, or whatever's left of you. On that you have my word.»

«I know that well enough," said I, trying my best to appear as knowledgeable as he. «But perhaps I am not to be taken so easily.» The old man snorted with as much contempt as I have ever heard in a single exhalation of breath, and rolled to his feet, deceptively, alarmingly graceful. He crouched naked on his haunches, facing me, studying me, smiling with pointed teeth.

«Without me, you die," he said, quite quietly. «You know it and I know it. Say it back to me.» I only stared, and he snapped, «Say it back. Without me?»

And I said it, because I knew it was true. «Without you, I would be dead.» The old

man nodded approvingly. The yellow glint was stronger in the gray eyes.

«Now," he said. «I have my own purposes, my own small annoyance to manage. I could deal with it myself, as I've done many a time — never think otherwise — but it suits me to share roads with you for a little. It suits me.» He was studying me as closely as I have ever been considered, even by those at that place, and I could not guess what he saw. «It suits me," he said for a third time. «We may yet prove of some use to each other.»

«We may, or we may not," I said, more than a bit sharply, for I was annoyed at the condescension in his glance. «I may seem a gormless boy to you, but I know this country, and I know how to handle myself.» The first claim was a lie; of the second, all I can say is that I believed it then. I went on, probably more belligerent for my fear: «Indeed, I may well owe you my life, and I will repay you as I can, my word on it. But as to whether we should ally ourselves … sir, I hope only to put the width of the world between myself and those who seek me — I have no plans beyond that. Of what your own plans, your own desires may be, you will have to inform me, for I have no notion at all.»