The avenue, with offices for administration on either side, led to a small gate set into the towering white walls that protected Corinthium on its landward side – though from what, he did not know, for the city had not been attacked by the Wattenwolden, the forest tribes, for three hundred years, since the time of their last great leader, Caradocius. Two soldiers descended from the gate tower, bowed, then slipped the crossbar and swung the gate open.
They rode out. Ferros, dressed for study, not sport, in simple wool trousers and short jacket, had been cold within the stone of the city. But they entered an early winter sunshine that still held some warmth and the vista before him – recently cropped wheat fields rising to a treed ridge – sent heat through his body. He inhaled deeply, the first breath he’d taken in weeks untainted by city stench. It cleared his head of all desire bar one: to ride, the faster the better.
‘Come then,’ said Roxanna, and tapped her heels – spurred, he noticed with a moment’s unease, aware of his own sandalled feet. The stallion moved into an easy canter. Ferros tapped, and was relieved when Serrana reacted instantly, soon catching up to her bigger stablemate.
They entered the forest on the ridge side by side and soon enough. An avenue of maple and beech stretched before them, autumn’s bounty carpeting the ground in red and gold. Roxanna slowed to a walk so he did too. On her huge mount, and with her height nearly the equal of his, she looked down at him, one leather-swathed breast almost level with his face – something he swiftly decided not to study. She jerked her head towards the light, like a tunnel opening, about two hundred paces away. ‘This track swings wide out to the right, then comes back in, leading eventually to our goal. But straight ahead, there are two fields – corn, but harvested, and bounded in hedgerows. In the meadow beyond them the land slopes straight down with a stream cutting across it. There’s a ford, and a bridge further up to the right where this track joins again. You’ll see it. On the crown of the next hill there’s a ruined Temple of the Sun. The bell tower still stands and on its eastern side, of course, there’s the remnants of the Dawn Window. There’s a bale of hay in that, sculpted into the rough shape of a man.’ As she spoke she untied one quiver from her saddle beak and passed it over. ‘There’s a circle painted here,’ she ran her fingers around her left breast, pushing out the leather, and this time Ferros chose not to look away. She pressed her finger into the very centre. ‘Aim your javelins for the heart, Ferros.’
‘Always.’ He took the quiver, tying it swiftly to his saddle beak. ‘Three javelins,’ he stated.
‘Three. The javelins decide the race. If you get there first, you can dismount, take your time.’
He nodded. If? The way she said it told him that she was certain he would be second. ‘Any other rules?’
‘No other rules,’ she replied, her eyes piercing him. ‘There is only winning.’
‘I see. And when does the race begin?’
‘Now,’ she said, and kicked in her spurs.
Shadowfire broke into an instant gallop. But so did Serrana as he dug in his heels and cried, ‘Yah!’
He was pleased to discover that the mare was fast – yet nowhere near as fast as the stallion, who burst from the avenue’s end and vanished down the slope with Ferros still ten lengths back. When he cleared the trees he reined in, had to squint against the brightness – to see Roxanna halfway across the field that had been corn, her mount’s hooves shooting clods of mud up amidst the stalks.
‘Yah!’ he cried again, urging Serrana forward. He felt it straight away, in the beast’s adjusted gait – the early winter rains had been heavy, and mud was flung from hooves as she strode. But she was lighter than the stallion and a glance ahead showed Shadowfire slowing a little as the land sloped upwards. ‘Yah!’ he called again, lowering his head flush to the mare’s neck.
He’d nearly caught up by the first hedge. Watched the stallion clear it by half the height of a man. Ferros had never been much of a jumper, it was not a skill often required on the desert flats. But he knew the essentials – and that Serrana would know them better than him. With a jab of his heels he flattened still more, let slip the reins, and gave the horse her head.
She cleared the hedge, not by the same height but handily enough. Landed and was off again, making up still more ground on the stallion in the second muddy field. As they approached the next hedge he was maybe three lengths behind. I’ll look into your eyes this time, Roxanna, he thought, and grinned, kicking harder … and nearly flying off!
Serrana had baulked. He was up and on her neck, feet clear of the stirrups. Desperately he grasped her mane, just held on. Slid back, found lost reins and stirrups. Cursing himself for an arrogant fool – he’d held her back on the jump, like an idiot – he turned the horse, retreated twenty paces, turned again, kicked her hard and headed again for the hedge, letting her control it now.
They landed easily again, the downward slope pulling them on. But Ferros could see that his slip had given Roxanna a better option – rather than drive for the stream at this valley’s muddy bottom, she had swung right and headed back up to the track that swung out of the forest and now swung back – to a bridge. It was wide out, she’d cross it and have to come back. But once on it, the big stallion would take the track fast, faster than his mare if he followed them.
Which left him no choice. He could see the ruined temple on the crest of the hill, almost straight ahead. She’d talked of a ford in the stream. He would have to try to find it.
Yet when he reached the water he saw that the stream was now a small river, swollen by the recent rains. He scanned it – again, rivers were not his expertise, raised as he was in the sands. It all looked like an even turmoil, no white cresting to show a shallower place. He glanced up, to see Roxanna covering the last of the wet slope to the track and the bridge.
Had he lost? Would she be waiting with three javelins buried in a straw heart, and that smile on her face? Then he sensed something, up through his seat, into his body. He might know little of flowing water – but the tawpan was bred in the northern forests which were threaded through with great rivers. ‘Yah!’ he cried a third time and, making sure that Serrana had her head, he urged her into the flood.
She did not baulk. Took to the water like a sea eagle – and plunged like one, for the water was immediately deep. Rider and mount went under. Cold shocked him; he gasped as they surfaced, reins gone, clutching the thick fur at Serrana’s neck. But he’d been right, she was a swimmer and struck out strongly, ears back, head high, eyes wide. There was some current and it pushed them downstream. Suddenly Ferros felt the horse’s body change, rise up. Hooves had found the riverbed; found the ford. Gathering herself, she scrambled them to the other bank.
The desert son had rarely been so cold. But there was no time to consider that. He wiped his eyes clear of water, the tawpan shook herself. A swift glance showed that Roxanna had cleared the bridge. He saw her flatten herself on Shadowfire’s neck and kick for the temple.
‘Let’s go!’ he cried, digging in his heels.
The slope was gentler, grassy, and Serrana took it fast. But as he crested the hill he saw the black blur peeling in from the side – the eastern side, he realised with a curse. The temple’s eastern window would face the rising sun, and Roxanna was galloping up to it.
He applied rein, thigh, heel, Serrana leaping forward as he bent, snatched up a javelin … and saw that there was only one left in the quiver. He’d lost one in the river. Yet there was no time to consider that for he saw Roxanna jerk her stallion to a stop, bend, heft and throw in one smooth movement. He didn’t look to check, though he did hear the whisper of metal entering hay. He knew she’d have hit her target. As she bent to her quiver again, he pulled Serrana to a sudden halt, leaned back, sighted and threw. His javelin made a louder noise, sliding in beside hers, scraping metal and wood. He bent and drew his second shaft, even as he heard his first enter true.
‘Yah!’ he called and heeled Serrana forward. He might have chosen not to ride the stallion – but he knew them. And Shadowfire did what stallions do when another horse, a mare no less, comes suddenly near. He jerked his head, throwing Roxanna off balance even as she reached for her final shaft. Cursing, she had to leave it, grasp the reins with both hands, control her mount. The beast swung around, and Ferros, who’d got his toes onto the metalled edge of his stirrups, used the pivot to vault straight forward, over Serrana’s head. He landed just as Roxanna got control. Reached before she could realise. Snatched the last javelin from her quiver, turned, and threw it. This time he followed it with his eyes, watched it fly as true, to slide in beside the others, straight in the bale’s marked heart.
He looked up at her. Wonder had sent her eyes wide. Fury narrowed them. ‘You … you cheated!’ she cried.
He left it a long moment before he spoke. ‘How is that even possible,’ he replied, ‘when winning is the only rule?’
Fire filled her eyes and her knuckles whitened on her reins. For a moment he thought she was going to bring the stallion rearing, to dash his brains out with its front hooves. Then the fire faded, she tipped back her head … and laughed, long and loud. ‘It was nearly a century ago,’ she said, finally, ‘that a man last bested me … in anything.’ She nodded. ‘I knew you were the right choice, Ferros.’
Raindrops hit him, an instant deluge. And he was cold already, from the freezing river water and with the heat of the chase fading. But her words sent a different kind of shiver through him. ‘For what?’ he said. ‘It is time I knew. What do you and your father want with me?’
She nodded. ‘You’re right. You deserve to know.’ Her gaze moved down him. ‘But first,’ she added, ‘shouldn’t we get you out of those wet clothes?’
There was no mistaking the change in her tone. He felt the heat in it, which transferred to his chest, and spread fast down to his groin. He grunted, took a step towards her, as she swung one long leg over the saddle horn and dropped to the ground. Straightened and waited for him, a different light in her eyes now, a smile on her lips, as he moved slowly forward. Almost as tall as him, and her in boots, their faces were level. He leaned for a kiss.
She placed two fingers on his lips. The expression in her eyes now was cool, amused. ‘One thing I’ve learned: making love against a wall in winter rain is fine for the time of the love-making … and swiftly uncomfortable afterwards.’ She ran her fingers from his lips, along his jawline, up to his forehead, brushing away the water drops there. ‘But if we ride fast before you freeze, we can have heat. Hot baths, warm towels, the best mulled wine. We can make love on silken sheets and lie beneath them afterwards in the fire glow.’ She leaned closer, her green eyes shining, her voice lowering. ‘Don’t you think that the first time we make love, Ferros of Balbek, we should make love as immortals with an infinity of time before us? Not like peasants with a snatched moment in a wet field?’
He wasn’t sure he agreed. The heat and swelling of his body told him differently. But he also knew that Roxanna was in charge of him. Of him here, and of his uncertain future. Until he knew what that was, he would do whatever she wanted. So he stepped back. ‘As you please,’ he said. ‘I would like to be warm again … in some manner.’ He reclaimed Serrana’s reins, for she waited where he’d left her. ‘Do we race again?’
‘I don’t think I could bear being beaten twice in one day. But let us go quickly nonetheless, before you die on me – and I have to wait for my pleasure till you are reborn. Here,’ she said, reaching to the cloak clasp at her neck, sweeping the garment off, ‘at least this will keep off the rain.’
He put up hands to refuse. ‘But you’ll be wet.’
‘True. Then I will be dry again, soon enough.’
They took the bridge road, an easy canter that broke into a gallop when they reached the avenue. The city gates opened without a command. By the time they reached the stable yard, though, the chill rain was falling even more heavily and Ferros found it hard to dismount, as if he were frozen into the saddle. It seemed the deep chill had taken over not only his body but his mind as well and the burn of desire he’d felt at the ruined temple was gone.
For a time he’d been free again: a soldier, a rider, a man, just a man. But as soon as he was back within the Sanctum, he was again an immortal, with all that meant, all that he did not understand.
A groom came and offered a hand but Roxanna waved him away, dismounted. ‘Allow me,’ she said, reaching up – her smile vanishing as she saw the expression on Ferros’s face. Mistook it. ‘You do not look well, Ferros. Let us get you warm.’
He ignored her hand, slid off the horse’s other flank. Took a breath. He did need warmth, but he needed something other first – an answer, from the only person he’d met who might be willing to give it to him. Stepping around his horse’s head, he looked into her green eyes and his look stilled the words on her lips. ‘What do you want of me? What do you all want of me?’
‘Let us get you to heat first, Ferros, then I will—’
‘No!’ She’d half turned away and his shout spun her back. ‘Answer me! What am I being … groomed for? Why should I care for the musings of Hypethus, or the three ranks of government? For the contrast between lyric ballads and Sonovian free verse?’
‘You’ve been talking to Streone.’
‘I’ve been listening to you all! And you have all given me lots of information – yet no reason. Why I should learn all this? Why I should care?’
She murmured something, stretched a hand to him but he jerked his away, stepped back. He was shivering uncontrollably but he knew that cold was only a part of the reason. ‘I had a life, Roxanna. One life. And it was plain enough. To fight for a cause I believed in: the empire. If such was my fate, to retire eventually to a vineyard and watch my grandchildren play. If other, to die in battle, for honour … for my comrades, the only family I have ever known. And now—’
‘You may still—’
‘And now you ask me to do it again. And again. For ever. To watch everyone I know and love grow old and die. Those grandchildren. Lara—’ he choked on the name, forced himself to continue, ‘to watch Lara, her youth, her beauty, watch it fade, watch her …’ the phrase that the general in Balbek had used came to him, ‘… claimed by time. While I—?’ She reached for him again and he stepped away, hands raised. ‘Immortality,’ he spat, ‘it is a curse! I only ever wanted one life, to seek all that I could be within it. Warrior, husband, father. That was going to be enough. To be remembered for a few years by a few and then be forgotten by all, my name fading on a family tomb. A family I created, for I am an orphan. But this curse robs me of all that. Robs me of—’
Tears came, the first since Ashtan, his brother in arms, had died, with those the first in a decade. His arms fell then, and Roxanna stepped between them, whispering words, gentling him as she had her stallion before the ride. He let her grasp him, hold him, allowed her words. ‘You are right, Ferros of Balbek. Because you are a soldier we thought it would be easier for you. To simply accept and obey.’ She pulled him closer, until their faces were a hand’s breadth apart. ‘But you are different. And you are being “groomed”, as you call it, for the same reasons you were raised to be a soldier. To fight for the empire against a danger greater than that empire has ever faced. Ever! It could mean the end of everything we know, of all this.’ Her eyes swept around the world before settling back on him. ‘For there is evil rising in the east—’
It was as far as she got, before Lara stepped out from under the dripping eaves of the barn.
From the moment she’d h
eard he’d gone riding – without her, with someone else – Lara had refused to seek the shelter and warmth offered in the stables. Preferred to shiver outside, and watch the water cascade off the roofs. Try to draw him back through the rain by the force of her fury.
He’d invited her! Three weeks it had taken him, telling her only a little of his days in the Sanctum. But even that little intrigued and her imagination did the rest, sketching a world so different from the dull, noisy neighbourhood near the port where they lodged. She’d explored those alleys and squares, even ventured where he’d warned her she shouldn’t, into the darker streets and warehouses of the docks. Yet though her own city of Balbek was smaller, life in both places was much the same – people hurrying and hustling to live, too busy to pause and talk. She’d made only one friend – an aged former whore called Carellia who’d survived the years of violence and disease with half a dozen teeth and a thousand stories. Lara would buy her hot, spiced wine, listen to the tales, wonder at how randomly life handed out its favours. Carellia had lost her one true love when he’d killed himself. Not from despair – from his desire for immortality. Suicide cults, using dark rituals that promised everlasting life, had sprung up and waned over the centuries. They were always supressed by the natural immortals in their Sanctum as an obscenity, even though rumour said that immortals sometimes were born in those ceremonies. Indeed, the ritual that day had produced one – but that one was not her lover and Carellia had turned whore the morning after his death.
Aside from her, Lara talked to no one. She knew she overwhelmed Ferros with questions when he returned each day, chattering as if she’d only just discovered the ability to speak. She suspected it annoyed him though he never showed it, was patient, took her out despite his tiredness to see the local sights, to visit taverns, archery contests, once a strange performance where masked dancers chanted to drums and pipes, which neither of them understood. But always, at night’s end, she asked him to bring her to the Sanctum, to share some of its wonders. Last night he’d told her that he’d arranged it.
Smoke in the Glass Page 14