Birds shrilled from the trees at their clumsy passage, jays like screaming sapphire darts, woodpeckers cackling mockery overhead, catbirds trilling eerie calls that belonged to no other bird they knew. Tiny chickadees spun and swooped before their eyes, making them flinch and almost lose their seats; pheasants burst from the scanty undergrowth, startling the horses. Crows thrashed and jeered overhead, sending down showers of twigs, and Nightingale jibbered back at them. Alya, fighting to keep his seat, envied him the breath.
Vansha’s horse reared suddenly, kicking at the air, and he fought to control it. Alya wheeled around to help him, but his own horse was suddenly almost as startled, its ears flattened back, head tossing. He saw why, in the earth at his feet; a single chance print, perhaps, but very new, the water still oozing back into it. A bird’s it was, surely; but of such a size that his own two feet together could scarcely match it.
Even Nightingale stared. Then he hauled bodily at the rope. ‘Come! Race for the light, or I am not answerable!’
Their mounts wanted nothing better, and crouching low in their saddles the riders dug in their heels and clung. All above them was thrashing turmoil, a storm of greenery speeding by, spraying down leaves and twigs upon their heads. Out of it something stooped, and Alya yelled as talons raked his ear. But then they were among tall slender beeches, on a clear and open floor, and beyond them, in the distance, hints of open sky, and the steep slope flattening out. A single screeching cry sounded behind them, and Nightingale, wheeling about, urged them on. But nothing followed, and gradually they slowed the horses to a walk.
‘Forest of Birds!’ said Vansha feelingly. ‘When we took this creature, I thought it was all we had to fear in here!’
Nightingale leered around at them. ‘All woods and forests are the Lord Tapiau’s – did you forget that? And throughout his domains he has many servants, jealous as any distrustful peasant of his petty square of earth and dung. This one I could withstand, while I laired in my clearing, for my whistling could topple many trunks; and it let me be. But now it has seen me bested and bound by pissy little men. It is still not safe to linger. Come!’
Vansha growled. ‘He’d better be the help you expect.’
Alya, fingering his stinging ear, smiled. So much power there, if he could only unleash it; if he could only win its trust. ‘I think he will be. For a time, anyhow. Who knows? I cannot feel it, not yet; but perhaps he is our first glimmering of hope.’
CHAPTER 5
Darkness Answers
‘WILL you look at the size of the place!’ exclaimed Vansha.
He was sitting back in his saddle, openly gaping at the jagged line of walls that sprawled across the river-plain ahead, in the sinking sun’s long shadows. Walls with rooftrees behind them, great and small, and here and there like vicious teeth a tall tower. The greatest tower of all rose at its heart, its pinnacle a dull green gleam.
‘How many folk d’you think live in there? Must be hundreds upon hundreds!’
‘Thousands, I’d guess,’ said Alya. ‘Maybe tens of thousands. Smells like it, doesn’t it?’ He had seen greater in his visions, much greater; but this was real, and here.
Vansha shook his head. ‘But how do they all live? Not by honest farming or hunting, that’s for sure!’
Nightingale, squatting at their feet, cackled. ‘One upon another, the way of the world. Wolf upon sheep, cat upon mouse, flea upon smaller flea; so all kingdoms are. At least my folk ate up men honestly, and did not tell them it was good government, and their loyal duty to lend their bones for gnawing!’
Alya glanced at him. ‘For one who never stirred from his forest, you seem to feel you know a lot about ordinary men.’
‘I was not born in the forest! I fled the ways of common men. And I have drunk up the minds of many, lived a thousand lives. Some is with me yet.’ Nightingale fingered his full lips. ‘Let me see … Ah, yes. There was a lord not long since, fleeing through the forest, when others were being clapped in dungeons or simply chopped up in public. Though he could have saved himself the trouble, heh! He knew this Volmur. Proud, selfish, weighing everything from wine to women by what makes him stronger and grander, increasing his wealth or his name. You’ll need to impress him. Mighty thews find favour, but only if it’s him they serve.’
Alya nodded. ‘For that I thank you. And I think we should do something about you, in return.’ He unhitched a sack that had held their food, and tipped what little was left into a saddlebag. ‘You should be able to fit into this.’
Nightingale screeched like a daw. ‘Into that? I’ll choke!’
‘Then would you rather be led openly through a place where you’re a known bugbear? Where many might recognise you, from legends if nothing more? I thought not!’ The pale creature had skipped instantly into the bag and squatted down, pulling it up around his head. Once again he weighed surprisingly light in Alya’s hand, but the horse shied nervously as he was hung at the saddlebow.
‘Don’t blame the poor brute, either!’ said Vansha. ‘Well, here we are, my brother – two bare-assed country lads, come for to see the King. How’re we going to get within spitting distance?’
‘Two country lads who’ve bagged a local demon,’ said Alya lightly. Vansha looked at him, sharply.
‘Not half so miserable as you were, are you?’
‘Are you? We’re getting somewhere, at last. If we can find the power to save Savi anywhere, it’s here. Fast horses, armed men … You couldn’t call it happiness, brother; but it’ll serve till happiness comes along!’
They turned their tired mounts to the slope, and trotted down to the broad road that ran through the wide fields below. When they reached it, it looked less impressive. It had been cleared and levelled, once, long ago, and a sturdy roadbed laid, of great stones and gravel well drained; but the surfacing had been allowed to wear away for so long that deep ruts were worn in the top of the very stones, and much of the gravel was gone. Here and there it had been mended, clumsily, with jumbles of stone and even great logs, now half rotten and slippery. Carts came clattering and thumping by, drawn by lowing oxen, their iron-shod wheels striking sparks from the flints in the road; and their drivers cast curious eyes at the young men on the proud horses, ill-clad but well armed.
Neither man paid them much heed, for they could not take their eyes off the walls that loomed larger ahead, marking off a wide section of the plain between two broad streams, no doubt for both water and defence. It was their sheer size that fascinated Vansha; but for Alya it was something more.
They rose in two distinct parts. Uppermost, and most visible, was a strong wooden palisade of massive treetrunks, visible beneath a clumsy facing of clay that would make them harder to fire or hew. The top of the palisade was not neatly level, but rose and fell like jagged teeth. Around it ran a rough battlement, also of wood, with here and there a roofed shed for archers to shoot from. It all looked quite new and recent. But at the front of the wall, most massive and dominating, the trunks were rooted in something else entirely, a huge cliff-like course of stone that ran from channel to channel like one of the very bones of the earth itself, lying exposed.
And as he stared, Alya felt a great thrill of wonder; for this enormous thing was not natural. Worn and battered, and in places strangely calcined, but still immensely strong, it was the remnant of a wall made by men, and in the same manner as the buildings he had seen fall.
Vansha refused to believe it. ‘Shaped, maybe, out of some ridge already there. But d’you see any chinks, or joints? No. Even in times past they weren’t that mighty!’
Yet as they came at last under their looming shadow, he was forced to swallow his words. The wall of Volaghkhan was irregular, creating the jagged profile above; and it had once been carven with many shapes, blurred now and broken. Seams and joints there were, but even in ruin impossibly clean and close, visible only where the rock had flaked a little or been hewn, or where streaking water had hardly made an impression. The seams made the outline of the v
ast stone blocks all too clear; and indeed, here and there before the wall, more blocks as vast and as carven lay strewn, too huge to remove. It must once have been at least as high as the palisade.
‘Were they giants, the folk of old, to raise such a thing?’ marvelled Alya. ‘And did they shape stone with their hands, or their teeth, or what? Some art we have lost, surely!’
‘One that’s been taken from us!’ grated Vansha. ‘I’d never have believed it, till now – but once we must have been so much greater. We wouldn’t have been mere yokel dungboots, you and I, but heroes, loremasters, men of power … Maybe this Volmur has the right idea, after all. At least he strives to shape some kind of new beginning!’
The road led them to a clear gap in the wall, though the palisade continued above it, unbroken, on a bed of logs and timbers, sagging somewhat in the middle. There the stone wall ended and began again, with inner faces so sheer they might have been sword-cut. In both of them were embedded the rusty remains of hinges so vast that they suggested gates of a ridiculous height. Fit for giants, indeed; but nothing remained of these. Some way behind, on massive worn flagstones, a much lower gate of ironbound logs stood open, but with a barrier in front, and spearmen lounging by it, the picture of bored arrogance. They did not bother to raise their spears as the young men approached, but nor did they raise the barrier.
‘Market’s all but over, country boy!’ said one, as they approached. The others grinned.
Alya, who might once have been abashed, grinned in his turn. ‘We’re not here to buy or sell. We’ve something to show the court.’
‘That should be worth seein’,’ said the guard, with complete lack of interest. ‘Toll’s three-farthing each for mounted men, but since it’s late we’ll pass the pair of you for a penny.’
Alya bridled, but Vansha’s answer was immediate and contemptuous. ‘What d’you think we are? If the King levied tolls, he’d have ’em posted, to stop you lining your pockets!’ He swung from his saddle, right before the barrier.
‘Didn’t say it was the King’s toll, did I?’ said the guard sullenly. Alya saw spears swinging up to the ready. ‘One of our perks. You’re not townsmen. If you shitkickers never get in here, the King’s not going to hear much about it, is he?’
The spears were at Vansha’s chest. Alya almost reached for his sword; but then thought better, and caught one spear by the shaft and snapped it with a twist of the wrist. Vansha snatched a spear in either hand, and slammed them down on the barrier with his full weight. A hunter’s sinews stood out in his shoulders. The shafts bent and broke, sending their wielders staggering. He seized the barrier and threw it back.
The first guard cursed and poised his spear. Alya caught him by the scruff of his mailshirt and lifted him flailing from the ground. ‘Kicking all that shit builds up a lot of muscle!’ he said quietly. ‘You should try it some time.’ He rode through the barrier and dropped him on the other side. Vansha had already remounted.
‘Oh yes,’ Alya added, turning in his saddle. ‘That reminds me – which way to the court, an’t please you?’ The bag at his side gave a sudden screeching cackle.
One of the soldiers pointed, mute. ‘Thank you kindly!’ said Alya, and they rode off. They had the sense to get around the next corner before they burst out laughing.
‘Country boy!’ gurgled Alya.
‘Shitkicker!’ chuckled Vansha, and then, more seriously, ‘But they had a point. That’s what we are – how we look to them!’ He waved a hand at the scurrying crowds of folk on foot, jostling past the horses in the narrow street. ‘That’s how we’ll look to the King. Think he’ll give us a hearing?’
‘Maybe you’ve a feeling for all this,’ admitted Alya. ‘But we’ve no money for finery – hardly even food,’ he added, aware the air seemed to be alive with mouthwatering smells of roasting and baking. ‘We daren’t sell the horses, and we can’t stop to earn some! So how are we going to even get in to see him?’
Vansha stooped, and seized the sleeve of a hurrying passer-by. ‘Good sir! We need to come to the King, and swiftly! How best can we reach him?’
The man looked hunted and careworn, but he took in the weapons and the horses swiftly enough. ‘Depends, young masters! Most days I’d say bribe a servant at the King-House and wait a week. But today’s been Spring Market, and he’s out and about the town, showing off his fine self. He’ll come back soon and hold feast in the Great Hall tonight. That’s why everyone’s so busy. Got to clear the street!’ Even as he spoke, there was a great blare of horns and drums, and he looked round swiftly, with a face full of alarm. ‘There! What’d I say? The Great Beast is coming! Time for mere humans to hide!’
Everyone seemed to be scattering for the side-roads, even the better-dressed folk. Two runners came by, beating bronzen tubes like bells, and then a line of pikemen, weapons lowered, forcing the way clear with the shafts. They balked a little at two hefty young men, mounted; but Vansha and Alya backed their horses into the mouth of an alley, forcing back those already there, and the pikemen prudently decided that was enough. None of the other folk protested, even when the horses trod on them. ‘I think even just having a mount and a weapon makes a man of you, here,’ whispered Vansha. ‘That’s encouraging.’
Alya agreed. ‘Says something about how they think! Let’s see what we make of this Volmur!’
Even as they spoke drums stuttered, discordant trumpets wailed, and the pikemen began to shout in time to them. The head of a procession wove its way out of one of the side-streets and into the main street. Wove, because it was swaying from side to side across the full width of the street.
‘Are they drunk, or dancing?’ muttered Alya.
‘Looks like both!’ grinned Vansha. ‘Cheerful, anyway!’
It was colourful, certainly. The procession was led not by warriors, as they’d expected, but by dancers and tumblers in gaudy rags, juggling with balls and beakers and rusty swords. Another, on his own, was tossing up what they recognised as the black helms the raiders wore. One spun flaming torches in the air, and Alya almost yelped with surprise as he suddenly sprayed fire from his mouth.
But immediately behind him, with a great clamour of bells and drums, came something more startling. A great snaking thing the length of many men wound down the street, a long green and yellow body rearing and plunging from side to side, rolling to reveal massive golden scales on its belly, flapping ridiculous little wings on its back. Before it, rearing still higher, rose a monstrous green head with rolling eyes and red lolling tongue. It stooped, snapping its jaws at the squealing crowd; but another head, blue-scaled this time, swung up beside it, and yet another, in bright red, bit playfully at the crowd opposite.
It was only as the young men saw the capering dancers who lifted the heads on poles, and the line of legs beneath the winding body, that they fully realised this huge serpentine horror wasn’t real, saw that its scales were painted on to cloth, the heads of crudely carven wood. ‘But why three heads?’ demanded Alya of the walnut-faced man behind him. ‘No beast like that could exist!’
The man shrugged. ‘Why? Why not, young lord? ’Tis the Great Dragon that stands for the Ice, and that’s how they allus shown him, time out of mind, since I were a nipper! Three heads, one each for the three mighty lords that they say rule the Ice, Taoune and his lady Taounehtar and the Frost-King Surdar! Allus with the fire-eater going before!’
‘And the King coming along behind!’ said Vansha drily. ‘I see!’
They could hear now what the pikemen were chanting, and some of the crowd. ‘Hail to Volmur! Hail to the Bright Daystar, the Winter Sun! Hail, all hail!’
Behind the monster, as if driving it, trotted a double line of mounted warriors, wealthy ones by the look of their gear, with their lances at the hunting port, though they swayed in their saddles and sang. Spearmen and bowmen ran about their feet like hounds, brandishing their weapons. And behind them, on a high seat borne on poles by twelve mailed men, there came a hardly less awesome figure. He
stood rather than sat, hanging on with one hand so all could see him; and indeed he was a splendid enough sight.
The renowned King Volmur was a man of huge frame, taller than most men and looking taller still as he rode, massive about the shoulders and breast, though they sloped off to a great spreading bow of a belly. Robes of red, red as a winter sun indeed, poured across him in folds and falls, trimmed with great swathes of the finest furs, marten and ermine, with beaver across the shoulders to bar rain. About the wide sleeves ran cuffs of rare spotted daggertooth fur.
‘A sign his splendour’s worth at least one life!’ whispered Vansha. ‘For every skin that’s brought back, a hunter’s life is lost, and the price is set high accordingly!’
The King’s face, what could be seen of it, was scarlet as his robes, rolling-eyed and roaring thunderously, though not a word could be heard above the hubbub. Angrily he tossed the black hair that fell about his shoulders. It was streaked with grey, but his spreading beard, unusually thick among all these folk, was curled and glossy black still. A circlet of gold crossed his brow, wreathed now with spring leaves; but beneath the robes the glitter was gilded mail, and in his free hand he brandished a long sword as if it were a huntsman’s whip, to lash on his minions in the monster’s tracks.
The procession’s message was clear: King Volmur is driving the Ice before him.
But though the crowd was whooping lustily enough at the colour and the spectacle, the cheers did not seem that much warmer for the King’s own person, and not all took up the chant. The tumblers had had as much acclaim, or more. And the files of warriors who trotted behind him, mounted men and foot, were not intent on the dragon but upon the crowd, eyes swinging this way and that, and they were grimly sober – a bodyguard, and an alert one, against a living threat.
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