Assail Page 47

  ‘What is it to you? An outlander.’

  He’d never considered himself proud of where he’d come from – quite the opposite, in fact – but the accusation irritated him deeply. ‘I’m no outlander. I’m from the southern plains.’

  Baran peered back, grunted. ‘Ah. That explains much, then.’

  Kyle waited, but the fellow offered no further explanation. Much later in the night, when they reached the wooded crest of the valley, Baran turned and peered back once more. He grunted again, sounding impressed, or mystified. ‘What did you do to rile them up so?’

  Kyle struggled up the crest and squinted down and behind. Far off, torches bobbed and wove through the woods. ‘Killed a few,’ he said.

  ‘Hunh. Well, they’ve never shown much offence at murder before.’ He motioned to one side. ‘This way.’

  As they jogged, Kyle remembered Yullveig’s words. ‘Is your sister here?’ he asked. ‘Erta?’

  ‘She has returned north. I believe she came to see more sense in my father’s words.’

  ‘But you do not.’

  Baran’s large teeth flashed bright in the dark. ‘I prefer to fight to the end. I do not care if there is no grace in my leave-taking.’

  ‘Your father refuses to sink to their level. I respect him for that.’

  ‘Yet all your respect will not save his life.’

  Kyle bit his lip. That barb struck hard and true. Also, it was this man’s people and way of life being swept from the face of the earth – best not to argue the finer points of it with him.

  Baran was now leading him due east across a wide shallow valley. With dawn, he halted, pointed onward. ‘Lost Holding beyond.’

  Kyle had to wait to catch his breath before he could answer. Keeping up with Baran had taken all he had. ‘My thanks. Won’t you reconsider? Come with me? We should all gather together, present a united front.’

  The Heel flashed another grin behind his russet beard. ‘Form our own army, you mean? Speaking of sinking to their level.’ He shook his head. The wind blew his loose mane about. ‘No. That is not us. Not how we do things.’

  Kyle nodded his understanding. ‘Then, this is farewell. Thank you, Baran, for saving my life.’

  The Iceblood inclined his head in salute. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Good hunting.’

  Baran hiked up his spear and grinned again. ‘Indeed. Let us hope they’ve followed far further than they ought.’ He jogged off.

  Kyle watched him go until he disappeared into the woods, then turned to the east and Lost Holding hidden somewhere among the morning mists flowing down the shoulders of the Salt range.

  * * *

  She awaited them on the crest of a low hill: a single dark figure in ragged untreated hides standing slim against the purpling north sky. Tall spring grasses and blue wild flowers blew about her knees. Her black hair whipped in the contrary winds.

  Silverfox eased up from driving her lathered mount and the beast immediately halted. Foam dripped from its lips with each laboured breath. Steeling herself, she wrenched one numb leg to raise it up over the pommel of her saddle. The scraping of her raw thighs was an agony to her. She almost fell when her feet hit the ground, only managing to remain upright by grasping at the saddle’s girth-strap.

  Old, she reflected grimly. I am already old. Yet I see myself as a young woman. Perhaps everyone comes to do so, and I have simply reached the self-revelation prematurely. An achievement for a girl not yet into her twenties. But not surprising, considering I carry millennia-old awarenesses within.

  Rubbing her thighs to ease feeling back into them, she hobbled up the rise to join Kilava.

  ‘Summoner,’ the ancient Bonecaster greeted her.

  Silverfox flinched – the woman always managed to infuse such disapproval into each use. ‘Kilava.’

  Behind the woman, down a series of gently descending grassy hillsides, lay the glittering surface of a broad bay, and the body of a wider lake, or sea, beyond. Ships lay at anchor in the bay, and a camp of sorts was spread out along the shore. Smoke from fires rose into the air. Already, mounted scouts were cantering out to investigate their presence.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked Kilava.

  ‘The locals name it the Sea of Dread.’

  Studying the waters, she could well imagine why they would do so; the rigid grip of the Jaghut magics of Omtose Phellack yet lay hard upon it, though it was rotting and slipping away even as she watched. Like ice beneath the heat of a summer sun, she reflected. In this case, the end of its time here upon the land.

  ‘It is all that remains of a great ice-field that once covered all this region,’ Kilava explained. ‘One of the last remaining glacial lakes.’

  Silverfox motioned to the north, where mountains remained visible in the dusk – the unmistakable gleam of ice shone about their peaks. ‘Yet some remains.’

  Kilava did not turn to look. ‘Yes,’ she allowed. ‘High in the mountains.’

  She did not need to add … our destination.

  Silverfox sensed the presence of Pran and Tolb as they came walking up. Her Imass followers arrived to stand ranged along the crest of the hill. They were motionless but for their tattered leathers and hanging fur wraps and cloaks flapping in the wind. She watched the closing mounted scouts suddenly wheel, wrenching away, to turn and gallop back to their camp. One even fell from his mount and ran now, arms waving, after his horse.

  ‘Where are they?’ she asked Kilava.

  ‘Close now. Very close.’

  ‘You have not spoken to them?’

  The Bonecaster shook her head, brushed her hair from her face. ‘No. They know my choice. They would attack. I might not be able to extricate myself.’

  That casual admission brought home the slenderness of their chances to Silverfox. We are too far outnumbered. She wondered, then, whether she was in truth driving them before her. Or were they merely pursuing their goal while she chased after? One and the same, perhaps. In any case, the restrictions imposed upon Tellann in this region inhibited them all.

  We walk as in the old days. Tirelessly, yes. But just the same.

  Chaos had broken out within the camp. Figures ran to the boats drawn up upon the gravel beaches, pushed them out.

  ‘And who are these?’

  Again, Kilava did not turn away to glance. ‘Outlanders. Strangers. Not a scent of the Jaghut about them.’

  Silverfox nodded her agreement. She, too, saw none of the other race in them. ‘We follow the coast north, then?’

  Kilava lowered her chin in assent.

  Silverfox drew breath to speak again, paused, then continued regardless. ‘And … did you warn many off?’

  ‘All those I could reach.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Irritation wrinkled the Bonecaster’s features. ‘As I said – I did not do so to soothe your conscience.’

  Silverfox fought to subdue her own annoyance. ‘None the less … thank you.’

  Something heavy fell to the ground behind and Silverfox turned; her mount had collapsed. Its side shuddered for a time, drawing in and out like a bellows. Then this too stilled.

  Two Imass broke ranks to jog onward down the hillside. Silverfox turned an eye on Pran Chole. ‘What is this?’

  The mummified mask that was the Bonecaster’s face remained immobile as ever. He extended a stick-thin arm, no more than bone sheathed in leather, towards the camp. ‘You have need of a horse.’

  Silverfox thought about that, then tilted her head. Yes, she supposed she did.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE PRAIRIE WAS one of tall grasses whipped by a chill wind. Tall menhirs leaned drunkenly like a giant’s set of toys tossed and forgotten across the landscape. Why Shimmer found herself here, she had no idea. The sky was clear, a hard frosty blue, with the moon low in the south. Strangely, the moon looked different: larger, and far less mottled. Another bright object also blazed in the day’s sky, something that trailed a long train of fire behind, just as the Vi
sitor had. To the north – if indeed that direction was the north – lay a horizon to horizon wall of snow and deeper azure blue glowing ghostly in the moonlight.

  She wondered if this was Hood’s demesne, his Paths, where the dead wander eternally, forever wringing their hands as they bemoan past choices, mistakes and lost opportunities.

  As if on cue, a figure rounded one of the nearby markers and approached. He was grey-haired and bearded, in long tattered brown robes that bore scorch marks and a scattering of burn holes across the weave. She recognized Smoky. One of the Crimson Guard dead. What they called their Brethren.

  It occurred to her at that moment that in fact the Brethren constituted by far the majority of the Crimson Guard. The chained spirits of their dead, held to the mortal realm by the power of the Vow they swore to K’azz. The Guard, then, could in truth more accurately be regarded as an army of the dead.

  Smoky gave her a nod in greeting. ‘Shimmer.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  The mage scratched his chin beneath his scraggly beard. ‘We don’t rightly know. Most of us think it’s the spot we swore the Vow – only how it looked long ago.’ He shrugged. ‘No one knows for certain.’

  ‘You’re remarkably unconcerned about it all.’

  ‘I’m dead, ain’t I?’

  ‘Why am I here?’

  He regarded her more closely. ‘Looks to me like you’re making up your mind.’

  ‘Making up my mind? About what?’

  ‘About where you belong.’

  ‘Making up my mind? You mean, about whether I’m dead or not?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  She snorted her impatience. ‘Well … I want to return, of course.’

  He shrugged his bony shoulders once more. ‘Yeah. Figured as much. Off you go then.’

  ‘What? Just like that?’

  The old fellow looked annoyed. ‘What do you want? A band to play?’

  ‘But isn’t this … Hood’s realm?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. These are not Hood’s Paths.’

  ‘So what do I do?’

  He waved her off. ‘Just – decide.’

  ‘Right.’ She decided, then, that she did not belong here. At that moment another figure rounded the rock to regard her from a distance. She immediately recognized his rotund form. His sodden robes. He raised an arm in sad farewell.

  She lurched forward, ‘Petal! No …’

  But the ground slipped from beneath her feet, her vision dimmed, and she found herself spinning in a way she had no words for. She was suddenly certain she was going to be sick.

  She coughed, nearly vomiting, and sucked in a great chestful of cold crisp air.

  A man yelped in surprise directly above her and she snapped her eyes open. She was lying on some sort of cot, naked, her arms tied above her head, while a man, similarly naked, sat between her spread legs.

  ‘Hey, Rosell,’ the fellow called. ‘She ain’t dead after all. Like you said.’

  ‘Told ya,’ a voice answered from outside her vision.

  This fellow leaned over her and slapped her cheek – none too gently. ‘Just warming you up, sweetheart. You’re so cold in there you near shrank my cock.’ He grinned down at her with broken grey teeth. ‘Welcome to Destruction Bay.’

  Her answer was to hitch up her legs round his neck, twist her hips, and spin him over the side of the cot to slam his head into the dirt floor with a satisfying snap of his neck. She then brought her legs up over her head and pushed against the wood headboard she was tied to. The board burst. She rose from the frame in time to block a knife-thrust from Rosell, wrap the cord strung between her wrists around his throat, and set her knee against the back of his neck. She pushed there until she began to see black spots in her vision, then she let him fall, limp, and stumbled to her own knees, utterly spent.

  After catching her breath, she used the knife to cut the cord. She scavenged trousers, a shirt, and oversized leather shoes from what she could find among the meagre possessions scattered about. She then staggered from the hut’s entrance, a mere hanging rotten blanket, and stepped out with the knife tucked up her sleeve.

  She was on a broad mud flat, perhaps a raised floodplain. A clutch of dilapidated huts and shacks lay about. White smoke rose from a few smoke-holes. Great chunks of flat ice dotted a shore of black gravel. She lurched down to the shore. To the south rose the tall ice cliffs of the channel they had just navigated – or failed to navigate. She studied it and was dismayed to see that she was on the south shore. The wrong shore.

  For some obscure reason this one further development was too much for her. She felt an uncontrollable urge to howl. She splashed out up to her knees in the frigid waters then collapsed, her face in her hands, and shuddered in spasms of weeping. She felt disgust and revulsion at everything: the cold, the touch of the grimy clothing, her sweaty clinging hair. She splashed the clean frigid water over her face and squatted there until she was utterly numb.

  The coarse physicality of it all nauseated her beyond explanation. Gods! She’d come back to this?

  Footsteps crunched in the gravel of the strand. She closed a fist on the grip of the dagger and raised her eyes a touch to peer over one forearm: it was Bars in his leathers, a mail coat over one shoulder. He extended a hand. ‘Knew you were about.’

  She felt as if a death sentence had been reprieved. She clasped his hand, rising. The mail coat was hers and he handed it over. ‘Thank you,’ she told him. She was surprised by how much his massive presence reassured her. Any others?’

  ‘Gwynn’s here. Lean and Keel.’

  She stared, horrified. ‘That is all?’

  ‘No. The Brethren say K’azz is on the north shore with others.’ She nodded at his words. The Brethren, of course. ‘Then we must rendezvous.’ Bars did not answer and she turned from peering across the channel. He was watching her with a strange expression in his dark sad eyes, something like worry. ‘Yes? What?’

  ‘We must go on?’

  ‘Yes. We must. We have come too far. Paid too high a price for anything else.’

  ‘Do you really think there are answers to be found here, Shimmer?’

  ‘K’azz does. He knows the truth – and I swear I will get it from him.’

  The big man heaved a troubled sigh, eyed the north shore. ‘Well, then … we’d best be going.’

  She peered about: rowboats and launches lay pulled up on the strand. ‘Gather the others. I’ll secure a boat.’

  Bars offered a mock salute and crunched off across the gravel. Shimmer headed to one of the larger launches.

  She had their boat-master guide the vessel close along the north shore of the Sea of Gold. They had agreed upon a price for the crossing, but it was no doubt dawning upon the man that any said pay might be long in coming, if it came at all. With nightfall, she had him put in and they built a fire and lay down round it, save for Bars and Keel, who took turns guarding and sleeping in the boat. When morning came, Shimmer was surprised that the man was still with them. But then, the boat was his livelihood, no matter where he might find himself.

  Bars made tea that morning. And with that familiar ritual, she felt that some sort of normality had returned.

  They were packing up when footsteps sounded among the surrounding rocks and K’azz appeared in his hunting leathers, hopping from boulder to boulder. With him came Cowl, Black the Lesser, Turgal, and Blues.

  Shimmer clasped each in a great hug. ‘Good to see you,’ she kept saying. ‘Good to see you.’

  Blues accepted her greeting with an embarrassed flinch. ‘I’m sorry …’ he began.

  ‘There was nothing you could’ve done.’

  He wiped his eyes. ‘Still … it galls.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ She turned last to K’azz. The man appeared unchanged; same painfully thin features, same skull-like mien with pale sky-blue eyes that sometimes seemed completely colourless. His leathers, however, looked far worse for wear. ‘The ice fell on us,’ she told h
im.

  ‘Yes. Bad luck.’

  She shook her head from side to side in slow negation. ‘Not good enough. It targeted us.’

  He pursed his thin cracked lips. ‘The Vow, then. No doubt.’ He made a move to enter the boat but she blocked his path.

  ‘Not good enough any more, K’azz. What about the Vow?’

  The commander glanced about and she followed his gaze. Bars was standing very close with his thick arms crossed; Gwynn stroked the snow-white beard he was growing; Lean stood nearby, truly lean now, having lost so much of her plumpness; and Blues was frowning as if troubled by his own suspicions.

  K’azz did not look to Cowl, who stood behind, hugging himself, rocking back and forth on his heels, grinning crazily as usual. The mage even offered Shimmer a wink. Completely dismissive of him now, she merely pulled her gaze away.

  K’azz would not look up. He drew a hard breath. ‘It concerns the Vow, Shimmer. We aren’t welcome here.’

  She nodded at that. ‘Very well … that’s a beginning. What else?’

  K’azz raised his eyes and she was shocked to see actual pleading in them. ‘Isn’t that enough, Shimmer? Isn’t it clear we must not continue?’

  ‘No.’ The denial was blunt and harsh. ‘I see that you still refuse to speak and so we must continue onward – to get the truth of this. We owe it to all who have fallen.’ She thrust an arm to the south. ‘They paid with their lives! And I will collect on it.’ She brushed past him. ‘Either speak up or stand aside.’

  He was left standing alone on the shore. For a moment, she saw him as nothing more than a thin ragged figure, haunted and torn, then she hardened her heart and turned to Bars. ‘Push off.’ K’azz stepped on board at the last instant. She faced the boat’s master who held the side-mounted tiller. ‘What lies up the coast?’

  ‘Scattered camps, ma’am. One big one the gold-hunters established over an old town up there. They call it Wrongway. Past that they say is a fortress named Mantle.’

  She eyed K’azz where he sat alone in the bow. ‘Are you going to help?’

  ‘The path is due north. Follow the coast for a short time then strike upland.’