A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  At some point Polly screamed and they turned. She was down, rolling in the flashes, and they lost too much time finding that she had stepped on a sharpened stick—they were at the edge of a beaver meadow, in full darkness. The sky was lighter.

  Irene shook her head at no one. “We must keep going. Follow me.”

  Polly got up as if she were conjured and hobbled, and Irene led the way into the cloud of alders at the edge of the meadow. She couldn’t see individual stems, but the mass was visible and she clawed at it, pushed, slid, and the two women followed her, passing over and then under, so soaked by the rain that the alder caused them no hesitation.

  She burst through the alder just as she heard the roar behind her, an inarticulate cry of rage from the other side of the ridge.

  That pushed her as nothing else had, and she began to cross the meadow. She got three steps and her left leg sank in up to her thigh and she was down in the muck, pulling herself along, and the other two women were no better off. The rain was filling the meadow.

  She crawled, got upright again, and there were three mighty flashes of light, two a natural white and the third a malevolent red, but the combination gave her almost a full second of light and she saw the beaver dam to her right and called, “Follow me!” and got her feet under her. She was on the dam, and then crossing it, suddenly aware of how huge the dam was, and Polly, or perhaps Joan, screamed, and she turned. She placed her foot wrong, and in the darkness and rain, she fell straight into the deep water off the dam.

  It closed over her head, and she thought, briefly, of staying down in its embrace and ending it all, safe and clean.

  She thought, of all people, about Joan and Polly. After all, only she could see the shining beacon of the bacsa.

  The bottom under her feet was thick, sludgy silt, like Orley’s mind, and she overcame it and rose into the night. Her head broke the water and she struggled back up onto the dam.

  She knelt a moment, looking back. It was lighter; somewhere far away, dawn was coming. She could see movement, and she guessed it to be Joan, who seemed bigger and more competent now.

  It was then, curled up, coated in mud, atop the dam that she realized that she’d lost the knife.

  Her breathing grew shallow, and she had difficulty controlling the racing of her heart, and there was a staglike bellow from the ridge behind her, and a gout of red fire.

  For a moment, she paused and prayed. She wasn’t even sure to whom she prayed—perhaps the Virgin Mother, perhaps the bacsa. Perhaps Saint Aeteas.

  It was better than the whimper that might have escaped, and then she spat.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  * * *

  They could only run so far, and by the false dawn they were walking. Thunder rumbled to the north, close, and lightning flashed, but nothing fell on them.

  “Orley is awake,” Looks-at-Clouds said. As if to confirm her words, red light flashed to the north and west.

  Aneas raised an eyebrow. “I’ll try,” he said, and released his castings. There was no palpable effect, and no one had any breath to ask, and they kept walking.

  * * *

  Irene had to force herself not to look back, and the three of them crashed through the alders on the far side of the meadow. The growing grey light revealed it as wide, and the river that flowed through it was substantial, and Irene wished she had some means to destroy the dam.

  She did not, so she ran on. Light, and widely spaced beech trees on a ridge, gave them the chance to run, and all three women did, but days of torment told, and the running came in bursts punctuated by tortured walking. The bursts of speed became more infrequent, and the malevolent red light came on faster.

  “You got that knife?” Polly asked.

  “Lost it,” Irene panted.

  The other women didn’t even curse. But they did seem to deflate.

  From the top of the ridge, they could see in every direction despite the late-summer foliage, and Irene risked a glance back, where she expected to see Orley towering in his rage, but there was nothing to be seen. The meadow was broad and deep and most of it was hidden in a fold of the earth.

  But suddenly, red fire rose from the meadow, burning like the light of a falling star, and shot past her to the south. And then again, and again.

  “Come!” Irene said.

  “Fuck it,” Joan said. She slumped.

  “No,” said Irene. “We will win free. By God and Saint Aeteas, I will see you free. Follow me.”

  “Who are you?” asked Polly.

  Irene paused. “No one,” she said. “But your guide. Now shut up and follow me.”

  * * *

  They walked through the dawn, which was beautiful despite Aneas’s growing despair. To the north and west, thunder rolled on, and just at dawn, three massive gouts of red fire rose like false sunrises and fell to the south, and they felt rather than heard the huge workings detonate far behind them.

  Looks-at-Clouds slapped Aneas on the back and grinned.

  “Two leagues,” he said. “Stop. String your bows. Get ready. This will be ugly.”

  All of the rangers stopped.

  Lantorn dropped his pack. “Fuck it,” he said. “If I don’t die, I’ll come back for it.”

  Tessen nodded and dropped hers, took her bow and strung it, and Lewen did the same, bending it against the ground, a slim bow of a wood that seemed as hard as metal.

  The woods came alive with the first true light, and there were flowers by the banks of a stream; a meadow full of beaver who stood on their lodges and cursed the intruders, and then a flutter of faeries, burning in the morning mist like jewels.

  Looks-at-Clouds walked down among them when the others held back.

  “Unseelie things, faeries,” Lantorn said.

  But the bacsa had them land on each hand and each shoulder, and was bathed in their pastel light. S/he seemed to be singing to them, crooning tunelessly.

  And then they were gone, and the meadow was grey and empty.

  “We are closer than I thought,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “The faeries hate Orley. They call him the soul thief. The princess is still herself. She has strong walls and a tall castle. He has not broken her yet.”

  Aneas looked tormented.

  Looks-at-Clouds shrugged. “Women are far tougher than men think,” s/he said.

  Aneas looked around at his people. Swords were loosened, and every ranger put arrows through their belt, ready to hand. The irks put poison on theirs, carefully, and the time seemed to pass like honey dripping, and ten times, a hundred times, Aneas considered going, leaving them.

  But the odds were insane enough already. They needed to be prepared.

  He filled the time building webs and hanging them in corners of his palace, ready to hand, and Looks-at-Clouds did the same, his/her face serene.

  Then Tessen stripped the deerskin gloves from her hands and threw them into the water to her right. “Ready,” she said.

  “Ready,” Lewen said.

  The others nodded.

  “She is still free,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “I am about to...”

  Thunder crashed, quite close.

  “Deep V,” Aneas called.

  In a moment, the rest of them were gone, spreading in pairs to the right and left, so that Aneas was left with Looks-at-Clouds in the center. It was a formation they had practiced many times, and the Outwaller warriors went to the west while Lantorn led the rest of the rangers to the east.

  Aneas gave them a few more long minutes, and then started forward, with Looks-at-Clouds pointing directions to him.

  * * *

  Irene decided to stay on the ridge. It didn’t run directly to the moving point that was the shaman, but it was like a paved road compared to the valleys full of beaver swamp and alder hell.

  She kept going. But now she made herself pause for the other women, even when her whole being cried out for her to run. She was sure that she could outdistance Orley, though. Something had slowed him.

&nb
sp; But the other two women were slower and slower. The ridge petered out and they had to descend; one more ghastly marsh, with deep mud and cattails.

  “We are close to rescue!” she said, a dozen times, dragging them out into the open. They were most of the way across the open, falling from one hump of dry ground to the next, coated in mud and bits of rotting bark. Irene dragged herself up on the far bank, eyeing the next ridge for the easiest approach through the alders

  Joan sat down on a log and burst into tears.

  Irene struck her.

  Joan cringed, and Irene hated her—and herself, for striking the wretched woman. “Damn it, Joan!” she said. “We’re that close! Come on!”

  “Leave me,” Joan said. She was weeping.

  “Fuck that,” Polly said, “Grab her, Reen.”

  So the two women went some hundreds of paces, crashing through the alders, ignoring the cuts to their faces and the backs of their hands, and behind them they could hear what seemed like the baying of hounds. The antlered men were hot on their scent.

  They ran on, holding Joan between them, until the woman was shamed into running, or perhaps something changed in her heart, or the terror slipped a little away.

  “This is the last!” Irene said. “Almost there!”

  “Almost where?” Joan moaned, but Irene conveyed enough hope that the three broke into an exhausted stumble.

  And then everything happened at once.

  Joan fell. When she fell, she lay still, and Irene started back for her. She hadn’t looked back for a long time, and there were a dozen antlered men, close enough to touch.

  She had time to draw herself upright.

  Arrows came from every side, and Irene fell flat before she became a pincushion. She got a glimpse of one antlered man hit a dozen times, and another turning to race away.

  She lay in the leaf mold and panted. It did not seem that she could do any more, and it took time for her to realise what the arrows meant.

  Polly was behind a log. “Friends of yours?” she asked.

  Suddenly the forest was quiet. No bird sang, no one moved.

  She felt the pulse in her head.

  “Down!”

  Red fire burned. A ball of pure flame struck close enough to cause a flash through her tightly closed eyelids, and a wash of brutal heat that seemed as if it ought to dry her shift or burn it off her body.

  The heat didn’t go away.

  Orley had lit the forest.

  A stand of spruce caught immediately, almost exploding into a pitch-filled fireball despite the recent rain, and Orley cast again, searching for his foes, and another explosion rocked the woods, blowing age-old trees off their roots and igniting them like sticks tossed into a big winter camp fire.

  Irene could feel him casting.

  “Run!” she called, her voice all but lost in the roar of the swelling fire. But she was up, and Polly saw her, and she had Joan’s arm, and then Joan was up and the three of them ran south.

  Another gout of fire, this one to the right, very close, and Irene was blown off her feet by the wind off the fire, and sticks and splinters hit her. She didn’t pause. She rolled to her feet and ran.

  The woods were catching fire all around her. And the trees, as they caught, blew sparks and burning cinders into the air and they burned her and still she ran, with energy she hadn’t imagined she had just a few heartbeats before, and Joan and Polly ran with her, stride for stride.

  She looked up, and there was Aneas, shoulder to shoulder with Looks-at-Clouds. He was glowing a bright green, and even as she watched he threw and disk of green and gold into the air where it spun like a child’s toy.

  Calm as a statue, Looks-at-Clouds leveled two fingers and made a click with her tongue, and a slim missile of blue fire shot between the women and vanished over Irene’s shoulder.

  Then she smiled at Irene. “Welcome,” she said, as if she had time and nothing better to do than greet her lost friend.

  Irene felt the pressure in her head, and then a red flash, and fire fell on Aneas’s spinning disk and slid off, exploding into the woods to the west.

  The line of fire now covered the whole ridge.

  Aneas put his horn to his lips, and Looks-at-Clouds put his/her hands on the two women. Both women’s eyes widened, and they exhaled together.

  Aneas winded his horn, long and loud.

  Then he put a hand on Irene’s shoulder, as if to steady her. “Try this,” he said, cheerfully.

  Then he turned, and ran, and she followed him as if she’d had food and sleep and love for days.

  * * *

  The rest of the day was a blur of hellish running punctuated by draughts of raw ops from Aneas. They ran south for what seemed like an eternity, and stopped only while all of the rangers and most of the Outwallers hugged her.

  Irene, to her own consternation, burst into tears.

  Looks-at-Clouds embraced her, pressed his/her heat into Irene’s body, his/her ops into Irene’s soul. “Well done, love, well done,” the bacsa said.

  Despite the praise, Irene felt empty, neither afraid nor triumphant. Polly fairly burbled with energy when she knew that she was free; Joan never fell to the ground again. Irene felt that she was the one who was defeated, for a while, and then she let the feeling go and ran.

  They paused again when the Outwallers called something, and everyone gathered. Irene’s fatigue addled mind puzzled through their actions; they had downed their packs to fight, and now were recovering them.

  “He can’t still be following us,” Looks-at-Clouds said.

  “I can’t even find him,” Aneas said. “So we keep running.”

  Hours later, darkness was falling as they crossed another river on a big dam so old that most of the beavers’ work had turned to hard mud and spring logs.

  The Jack pointed upstream.

  “Giant beaver,” he said. “Beautiful critters, but no friends o’ man.”

  Aneas looked at the dam and then at the river.

  “We must,” Looks-at-Clouds said.

  “Get across,” Aneas ordered, and the little column trotted to the edge of the riverbank. The “pond” above the dam was vast, extending for three-quarters of a league or more, and the beaver house in the middle looked like a castle of firewood and brush, and green grass grew like a small yard on the roof.

  One by one, the rangers and Outwallers ran across the dam. It was narrow enough on top, and it was clear that Lantorn, at least, did not trust the riverbanks, and neither did the Jack, who put an arrow to his bow. But Mingan was the first across, and waved.

  And then something moved from the beaver castle, and the water in the middle of the lake seemed to swell and stretch.

  Irene found herself the last person on the wrong side of the river except Aneas. Looks-at-Clouds was casting something on the far bank, forty paces away, eldritch fire at her fingertips.

  “You first,” Aneas said. “I need to talk to the master of this place.”

  Irene didn’t wait or make a quip, because her head was so empty of thought. She’d had little sleep in six days, and her knees and legs shook with exhaustion, and each jolt of ops helped her less, and for less time.

  She took a dozen strides and fell, at full run, into the water.

  She sank over her head, but she was wearing only a torn shift, and had nothing to catch on the dam or hold her down except fatigue. She kicked once, and then strong hands gripped her and pulled her out of the water.

  She found she was laughing.

  “It’s easier if you stay on the dam,” Aneas said.

  “So you say,” she managed.

  She lay gasping, and then the mistress of the pond exploded out of the water by her dam. She stood on the muddy bottom, her tusks as long as a man’s arm, and chittered.

  Aneas held his arms wide as if he were addressing a council of Outwallers, and he spoke, or rather, chittered back.

  She lay on her back and looked up at the deep, rich fur of the great beaver. She was a
s big as a house, or a Rukh. Beautiful, her eyes deep and yellow.

  Her great tail slammed into the water. The sound of the slap was like a crack of thunder, and echoed off the hills.

  Aneas chittered again.

  “Get up and go,” he said. “Please.”

  Irene wanted to lie there, looking into the beaver’s eyes, forever, but she got up heavily, with no grace at all, and hobbled across the dam.

  She looked back, where Aneas stood alone.

  “This is the Black River,” Lewen said. “There is no good crossing for twenty leagues.

  “Bless this good creature,” said Tessen. “She listens to him. She is angry, but not out of all reason.”

  “And he has the way of it,” Lewen said approvingly.

  Twice more, the beaver slapped the water, but each time, it was with less ferocity, and the ripples lapped against the banks of the lake. But her tail summoned other beavers, and the sun was sinking.

  And then she turned and slipped into the water and was gone, and Aneas seemed to slump. He stood a moment, with the sun setting behind him, and then he turned and trotted over the long dam, as if every pace hurt him.

  “Keep going!” he shouted.

  Even as he managed the last dozen paces, two beavers struck the center of the dam.

  Irene raised her weary head to watch.

  The third time the beavers struck the dam, the whole center bulged, and then the old mud cracked...

  ...and the river burst through.

  “Old Mogon had best make good on my promises,” Aneas said. “Come. One more mile.”

  It was dark when they lay down. Irene was between Lantorn and Looks-at-Clouds, and her last waking sight was Aneas, awake, lighting his pipe at the fire. He and Lewen were standing watch.

  Looks-at-Clouds wrapped long arms around her torso and pressed into her from behind and she fell asleep, and any darkness in her was buried deep.

  * * *

  Two more days. They slept on the ground, with tiny fires, and they walked as fast as they could, sometimes running, a confused welter of advances and retreats as they sought to maintain contact with Orley’s forces without being overrun. The mountains began to flatten into long ridges and swampy plains. To the west, the Inner Sea began to loom with banks of clouds, and to the north lay the Great River. The Black River was always present, just to their left, in the next valley or two as they followed a series of narrow trails that led north and west, north and west again.