The Sunset Warrior - 01 Read Online Free

throwing me into the Corridor. I came directly here to—”’
    The Saardin made a brief sign and the scribe was silent. Stahlig stood up and turned to Freidal. ‘Why has this man been restrained?’
    The Saardin’s good eye blazed. ‘Sir, I wish to know if Borros will live and, if so, whether his faculties have been impaired. When I have the answers to these questions I shall entertain your queries.’
    Stahlig wiped the back of a hand across his perspiring brow. ‘He will live, Saardin. That is, I believe he will. As to his faculties, I cannot tell you until he has regained consciousness and I have had a chance to test his reflexes.’
    The Saardin thought about this for a moment. ‘Sir, this man was quite violent when my daggam arrived. He fought them although they wished him no harm. They were forced to subdue him and to make certain he would stay that way. It was as much for his protection as for others’.’ For the first time Freidal smiled, giving his face the look of a predatory animal. It flashed and was gone, leaving no trace that it had ever been there at all.
    Stahlig said: ‘It is an inhuman way to treat anyone.’
    Freidal shrugged. ‘It is necessary.’
    He left them abruptly, posting two daggam at the threshold to the room and admonishing them to leave as soon as the Medicine Man had satisfied himself as to Borros’s condition. ‘If he dies, I hold you personally accountable,’ he told Stahlig, and this served as his farewell.
    Stahlig hissed softly when they were alone in the room with Borros, the nervous sound of released tension. He sank into the cubicle’s lone chair and his shoulders slumped. He clasped his hands in front of him. They trembled slightly. Ronin thought that he looked very frail and very old and he felt pity stir inside him.
    ‘I am a fool.’ Fatigue. ‘I should never have asked you to come here. I thought for a moment as I thought many years ago, when I was young and foolhardy. I am an old man and I should know better.’
    Ronin put a hand on his shoulder. He wanted to say something but no words came to him. Stahlig looked up into his face. ‘He has marked you now, do not forget that.’ Ronin tried to smile, found he could not. Stahlig rose then, and returned to his ministration of the Magic Man, turning his back on Ronin, who stood, immobile and silent, regarding the dark countenance of the singular man with yellow skin, strapped to the bed, smoky orange light flickering now and again along the considerable lengths of his translucent fingernails, like the traces of some unimaginably mysterious animal.
    So it was that when Borros opened his eyes Ronin saw it first, and he called softly to Stahlig, who was at that moment searching his bag.
    The eyes were long, that was all he could tell, for they were in deep shadow and Stahlig was bent over him. ‘Ah,’ the mouth said. ‘Ah.’ He blinked slowly several times. His eyelids drooped. His lips were dry.
    Stahlig lifted a lid, peered at the eye. ‘Drugged,’ he said very softly.
    ‘Ah,’ the Magic Man said.
    Ronin leaned over so that they could talk without fear of being overheard. ‘Why drug him like that?’
    ‘The Saardin would tell us it was to calm him. But I do not believe that was the reason.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Wrong drug, first of all. Borros is semiconscious, but he is still affected by whatever it was they gave him. Had he been sedated, he would either be out completely or awake and wondering what had happened to him.’
    ‘Ah. Ah.’
    Stahlig said quite clearly: ‘Borros, can you hear me?’
    The lips ceased their noises and a tension came over the figure. ‘No,’ the lips said weakly. ‘No, no, no no—’ A bubble of spittle had collected at one corner of the mouth, and now it inflated and deflated with the piteous cry. ‘No, no.’
    ‘By the Frost,’ breathed Ronin.
    The head moved from side to side as the mouth worked. Tendons stood out along his neck and he strained against his bonds.