Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  At first; but before many days passed the first changes became apparent, beneath their very feet. Here and there the stony brown mud of the ways exposed a patch of rough stone roadbed or, to Vansha’s astonishment, even the paving that had covered it, like protruding bare bones. Alya’s father had told him of the mighty ways of stone that had once crisscrossed the whole land, but it was a very different thing to be riding over them now, thousands of years gone. ‘What could they have used such things for?’ demanded Vansha.

  ‘Trade, war, women!’ Asquan told him. ‘Filling your belly or your girl’s, emptying someone else’s. What does any human use anything for, otherwise?’

  ‘Huh!’ put in Fazdshan, Kalkan’s man. ‘Heard you’ve filled a few other things, in your time! Honour, my Lord Vansha; honour, power, that’s what they meant to us. That’s what the Ice stripped from us!’

  Vansha stared angrily down at the remaining paving, cracking beneath his mount’s hooves. ‘We could have had so much!’ he whispered, almost to himself.

  ‘I’ll settle for Savi, right now!’ snapped Alya, urging his horse forward. ‘We can’t be far behind, but their wagons will go faster on this stuff! Ride on!’

  Soon they were finding more than bare paving. Someone had tried to restore these roads, someone recently; but the effort had been clumsy, tamping broken rocks into potholes, banking earth to support the collapsing roadbed. ‘Primitive!’ snorted Tseshya, whose horse had just stumbled over an ill-filled crack. ‘Like the way they did it under the last king. Volmur at least set people to study the old skills, to see it done properly!’

  ‘I was thinking that myself!’ remarked Asquan. ‘But the old king’s writ never ran this far north and west. Someone else has been doing this.’

  ‘The raiders?’ suggested Fazdshan, scanning the horizon hopefully. But anything that broke the bleak skyline soon resolved into a cluster of rocks or scrubby trees, growing out of some sheltered dip or hollow.

  ‘Hardly. No, there may be some other folk stirring here, beginning to unite once again. And that would be something to watch for, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘As friends or foes, either way,’ agreed Alya.

  ‘We hear rumours of folk far westward,’ said Asquan thoughtfully. ‘Nascent kingdoms even, like ours, warring with one another. Some even talked of settling in these inner lands. But this is right on Volmur’s bounds! And I see no other sign for thousands of paces in any direction – not so much as a wisp of smoke.’

  ‘Well, it’s one more thing to watch for. Any signs – anything. We had better pass the word on.’

  At last, when the trail became hard to see in the dusk, Alya was persuaded to halt once more, though his heart misgave him.

  ‘The wagon ruts are still wet! They could be only an hour ahead!’ he raged.

  ‘Or days,’ said Vansha grimly. ‘We are used to a drier country. Even your family’s place was high-lying, but this is low, with rivers, they say. Anyhow, even if the bastards are that close, we’d likely blunder past them in the dark.’

  ‘Unless they light fires!’

  ‘Then we would see them from here, if at all!’ said Asquan firmly. ‘It will do us little good to come upon them weary and half starved, too. Be wise, sit and eat!’

  They found themselves not far from one of the smaller, scrubbier patches of woodland. Shelter and firewood were rare enough, so that they made eagerly towards it. ‘But under the eaves only!’ commanded Alya. ‘And nobody must stray deeper! Woodlands here can hold all manner of strange perils!’

  ‘Like me!’ fluted the Nightingale, and tittered. His large eyes glimmered unhealthily bright in the gloom. Alya noticed Rysha staring sidelong at the creature once again, and her thin lips writhed. She was not smiling.

  Nobody gave an order; but everyone drew their weapons. The trees were quite young, birches mostly and much of an age, and at this time of year their foliage was yellowing fast. They grew densely, on a small rise, surrounded by thorn thickets as tangled as those in Nightingale’s wood.

  He was looking around suspiciously, and sniffing. ‘Funny place, this! Smells strange!’

  ‘How so?’ demanded Alya quietly. ‘Tell us more. You must try to be helpful.’

  Nightingale ducked his face down petulantly. ‘How’m I supposed to be sure? All these stinking men around. Stinks, all of them; and that she-devil there, she stinks! There’s another here. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Another stink?’ Asquan swung his horse this way and that, towards the fringes of the wood. ‘They tell of beasts in these lands – but I see nothing.’ Then he exclaimed, and his horse shied as Nightingale shot up, like a bolt from a bow, off the back of the baggage pony and on to its crupper. From there he bounced again, apelike, and seized an overhanging twig of birch that did not look able to bear a bird’s weight. Up it he sprang, to the branch and along, on all fours. He looked so like a small child playing that Alya almost called him back; but Asquan held up an abrupt hand. And indeed, Nightingale was moving through the trees now with a speed and agility that were less and less childlike, downright sinister in fact. Alya and Vansha exchanged glances. Perhaps they had been lucky he had been lazy and complacent, and not scurrying around above their heads.

  He had vanished completely into the twilight now. ‘And will it break my heart if the little demon doesn’t come back?’ muttered Vansha, into the silence. ‘Not much!’

  For long moments there was only the soft swishing of the branches, and Alya began to wonder. Then there was a sudden heart-stopping flurry, and down came the Nightingale in a shower of leaves, on to Alya’s saddle.

  ‘Helpful!’ he panted, ducking his snout of a face, and his waxy fingers thrust something into Alya’s hand.

  ‘A – what is this?’ demanded Kalkan, peering over. ‘Some piece of mason’s trash.’

  ‘A trowel. Caked with mortar, but very rusty.’ Alya hefted it. ‘Somebody’s been building something. Show me, Nightingale; and thank you! Stay back, the rest of you!’

  But when he reached the trees, he found Vansha and Asquan still at his back. ‘Well, brother, someone should at least know what happened to you!’

  Alya sighed, and crept forward after Nightingale. Now wasn’t the time to start arguing about authority, least of all with Vansha. Apart from anything else, the little creature seemed immune to thorns, and Alya, whatever his gift could do for him, was not. Swearing under his breath, he struggled through to the crest of an earthen rise, trying not to dislodge any stones, and raised his head very gingerly, in the direction Nightingale pointed.

  ‘A bloody house!’ exclaimed Vansha, when Alya waved them on. ‘Houses! Right down in the dip! Could be a whole village, smack in the middle of the wood! Solid stone walls, better than ours by the look of it! Who’d be building there?’

  ‘Someone who didn’t want to be seen!’ said Asquan quietly. ‘A clever ruse in a hard land. See there, by the bottom of the bank? There are foundations there, for a surrounding wall, I guess. A solid one.’

  Vansha snapped his fingers. ‘The road repairers! We wondered where they were! Why, every patch of woodland we’ve passed could hold a hidden settlement, a town even.’ He reached for his sword. ‘They might be back any moment!’

  ‘I think not!’ said Asquan. ‘The trowel has been lying for a while, a year or two. And there is weed overgrowing the walls, in places. And see! At that wall there, that could be fire damage. And that one is toppled. I do not think they will be back, somehow, these builders. They grew overconfident. If they had stayed far from the roads they might have remained concealed. No, they will not be back.’

  They cast about them swiftly, as if the trees might hide watching eyes; and went swiftly back to their horses and their followers. ‘A timely warning!’ said Tseshya drily, as they dismounted to make camp. ‘The hunters who blunder upon the bear’s lair—’

  ‘Fall prey, little wonder, to beast who lurks there!’ capped Asquan. ‘Very quaint, I’m sure. What our proverb-peddler is trying to say i
s that we want to come up with the raiders, but carefully. Tonight we set a double watch!’

  They hid the fire as best they could, in the lee of thorn bushes. These billowed the smoke back around them, in the flaws of wind, but at least kept the light hidden at any distance. Alya, obstinately taking first watch while the others curled up in their blankets, scanned the night urgently for some other flicker of flame; but saw none. The night invaded his spirit, as he watched; and only exhaustion drove him off to sleep.

  His awakening was hardly more welcome. Over a cheerless mess of biscuit, water and smoked meat, Asquan spelled out his deliberations. ‘If this land has been raided so recently, there is a good chance there are more raiders about than the Citadel force. It always seemed so small to me, a mere detachment, perhaps. So we must be on the alert, constantly. I suggest we get going at first light, but stop and look about carefully, every hour or so.’

  Alya ground his teeth. ‘That will slow us still further!’

  ‘He’s right, though,’ said Vansha unhappily. ‘We could run into a large band of them! Or just some mingled tracks, even, but end up following the wrong one! I’m as impatient as you are, brother – but we’ve got to be sure!’

  ‘Then the sooner we’re away again, the better!’ snapped Alya, and shouted angrily to the rest. There was some cold satisfaction in the way they scrambled to mount up again, but little joy. He scanned the horizon, under lowering cloud, thinking of Savi’s face, framed in her long hair, wondering if she looked upon that same wintry sky, if indeed she was still beneath it. Every hour seemed to be taking her further from him, every setback. The flames flickered beneath his skin, the eternal maddening tingle in his back and thighs. He should have ridden on her trail straight away, on his own if need be, however little sense it made. He dug in his heels, and they cantered away.

  Before the day was out, however, he realised how right Asquan had been to be cautious, and said so. This land, that looked so empty, was a living scar, marked with wars old and new. There had indeed been a recent attempt to settle it, by a folk whose clothes and weapons, what scraps remained, nobody recognised. They had built their stone walls in the heart of woodlands and the shelter of steep vales cut by the small streams that increasingly crossed the land, invisible behind thorny undergrowth, some of which seemed to have been deliberately planted to conceal fields and plantations. It had done them little good.

  There had been whole villages, some larger than the Citadel, small towns almost. Even these had been burned out wholesale, leaving only skeletal remains of birches still standing, leafless and charred, about their margins.

  ‘But some of the fields have been planted more recently,’ puzzled Vansha that evening. ‘This year, I mean. After the towns were destroyed. There would have been a harvest; but it’s been left to rot. Not even weeded.’

  ‘If you say so,’ sniffed Asquan. ‘I have always kept a healthy distance from horny-handed dung-slingers and their toil – preferably upwind.’

  Alya said nothing. He was scanning the way ahead, as usual; and Nightingale with him.

  The next day brought them closer to the truth, for about midday they came upon something new. Another wide river crossed the land, slow and marshy; and across it, as derelict as the road but still standing, ran the remains of a stone bridge. Ruined as it was, it was still passable; and the enduring might of it made them stop and stare. Even Asquan could not belittle it. ‘I have seen the rubble of others like it, far away to the west and south; but this … What this must have been, when it was new-built!’

  ‘Like Volmur’s walls,’ said Alya. ‘That gate. I can believe in it, now!’

  Kalkan tugged at his beard. ‘There were mighty folk here, before the Ice and its jackals came.’

  ‘There still are!’ said Vansha, his face as hard as the smooth-chiselled stone; and they rode across in bitter pride.

  But what awaited them at the other side soon whipped it out of them. All along the bank the ground was muddy and churned up, and there were the remains of many fires.

  ‘More of the swine!’ said Alya, between his teeth, as they searched the trodden ground.

  ‘A great many more!’ said Tseshya, who seemed to be a good tracker. As if this was another rendezvous. It’s certainly another crossroads, with ways in every direction.’

  ‘Could be, couldn’t it?’ agreed Alya thoughtfully. ‘Strange that they’re both by rivers.’

  ‘But not very navigable, and with no easy landings. That’s a nasty-looking rapid up there to the north. So I don’t think anyone’s gone off by boat, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I suppose so. But I remember my father saying that the meltwaters flowing down from the Ice can carry something of its evils with them.’

  Tseshya nodded thoughtfully, as he scanned the ground. ‘It’s written. They say fell creatures follow the watercourse, sometimes, as if it still carries influences to direct them. But that’s only up north, while the water’s undiluted and icy still. I shouldn’t imagine it would matter much here. Well, I give up on this. They’ve ridden over the wagon tracks. It’s been raining, too. They’re all blurred now.’ There was a hint of relief in his voice, like a child eager to go home.

  ‘We can’t give up!’ Alya spurred his horse down off the bridge, glaring at the ground as if it had offended him. The fires glowed within him, but his heart was cold. Anything could have happened, and what trace would remain? Here and there ran what might be ruts, but he could not tell how many, or whether they were still the same. Alya sprang down. ‘There must be some indication … See, here – horses, wagons …’

  ‘Too many!’ groaned Vansha, joining him. ‘This is an army! And our quarry’s muddled up in it all, and I can’t find which way they go! You?’

  No! There was one wagon with a traceable wheel-track, a jagged seam in the metal tyre; but it’s lost in the mire and mess. Some one way, some another … !’

  ‘Some, days back,’ added Tseshya.

  ‘This is serious!’ said Asquan quietly. ‘We city folk are not your match as trackers, even the hunters among us; we will not find what you cannot. We will have to search the countryside around, and that will take still more time!’

  And indeed that was all they could do, spreading out, looking for some trace of the wagons with the women. But what they found first was not a track at all.

  ‘Smoke!’ called Tseshya. The others, still searching afoot, came running up the low hill to join him, dropping down so as not to be seen on the skyline. There, away to the westward, there was indeed a faint thread rising, greyer than the afternoon sky, from among a patch of low rolling hills little more than a thousand paces ahead.

  ‘I found what looked like wagon tracks leading west!’ said the scholar urgently. ‘Followed them a little, to see if they became clearer. Then I saw that!’

  ‘And then you made trouble for yourself!’ grinned Alya. ‘No excuse to slope off now, is there?’

  Tseshya groaned.

  ‘Never mind, scribbler!’ chuckled Kalkan. ‘One more thing to be philosophical about. Besides, where would you have gone?’

  Tseshya shrugged. ‘Somewhere! Far to the east, maybe, to the remains of the kingdoms by the Sea. Maybe even off on one of those ships they’re building.’

  Most of the others laughed and jeered. ‘What, to the land of ghosts?’ Fazdshan scoffed. ‘I could show you a quicker way!’

  The polished man travels easily and without haste,’ said Tseshya austerely. ‘And at least I might find some educated company!’

  ‘It doesn’t sound so stupid to me!’ said Alya, wistfully. ‘I should like to try that, myself. I saw their messenger. He believed!’

  ‘I saw him too, brother!’ said Vansha grimly. ‘Maybe he did; but fools believe in many things. For now, we must move after that smoke!’

  ‘With care,’ said Asquan. ‘But I do not see them making camp in the middle of the day. We must be prepared to find something different.’ He glanced at them, sidelong. ‘P
erhaps worse.’

  What they found, though, was not what any expected, good or bad. The smoke rose from the side of a suddenly steep down, and huddled against its lower flank, surrounded by burned-out trees, they found yet another farmstead, broken and burned, but still half standing. The smoke did not look like leftover embers, and so Alya and Lord Kalkan dismounted and made their way down, with great care, while the others covered them from above with bows. When they reached the yard, it seemed to be empty and devastated, and there were no signs that anyone had been there lately, raiders or otherwise. The smoke was escaping from under the burned-out rooftree. Kalkan found a door, and with Alya flanking him, kicked it hard and sprang aside.

  It was merely propped up, not on its hinges, and it fell in with a deafening crash. There was a cracked shriek from inside, but when they peered in, the room looked empty, save for a little fire of leaves and debris. Suddenly they both jumped, as what passed for a heap of rubbish in one corner stirred.

  When Kalkan stalked forward and prodded it with his spear, it squealed in a human voice, old and cracked. The heap dissolved in a flurry of scrabbling terror, to reveal an old man, filthy and skinny, barely alive, his eyes the colour of stale milk. He could talk, though, and in words they more or less understood, though the dialect was strange. When they gave him a little food, he accepted at last that they were not going to slay him, and he told them something of what had passed over his land.

  ‘War, my lords, battle and war! All my life, and am I not of seven score summers and more? Aye, and me the one my Lord Balhur once called the greatest manslayer in his service! Towns I laid waste, fields I burned, enemies I slew before the faces of their wives and children, I!’ His voice became a screech. ‘And now my lord is long in his grave! And what am I, but a bundle to be left behind by the cold hearth, an inconvenient burden my cowardly piss-pant grandchildren choose to forget when they flee the Ice-wolves!’