“Sorgrad’s the one you have to make listen to reason,” Shiv answered in an undertone. “ ’Gren’s just interested in drinking, eating, fighting and tumbling pretty girls, in whatever combination he’s offered. As long as he thinks he’s in with a chance of one or more, he’ll go along with whatever his brother tells him.”
I smiled to myself and picked up my pace, so I could keep Sorgrad and ’Gren in sight. Comparatively sheltered between the ridge and the high ground, the grass grew thicker, softer underfoot and dotted with bell-shaped blue flowers trembling on fragile stems. Bolder white flowers drifted around clumps of frilled and leathery green leaves topped with red flowers clasping some secret in their petal globes. I wondered again where all the goats had gone to let such prettiness bloom uneaten.
’Gren was soon bored with casting around like a badly trained hound and came to walk beside me. ”This isn’t so bad.”
“You want to try it here in winter,” I told him. We’d only been here at the very start of the season and that had been bad enough.
“Soft lowlander,” he chided. “Me and ’Grad, we’re used to harder living.”
“Hard living and your life and death at the whim of some Ilkehan’s boot heel?” I queried.
’Gren was unconcerned. “We’ll put an end to that.”
I was about to ask him what augury he’d seen when a sharp whistle from Sorgrad prompted Ryshad and Shiv to catch us up. We joined him at the top of a rise, just short of the river. He’d propped his rump on a handy lump of rock, the ever-present breeze ruffling his fine yellow hair, and was rummaging in one pocket.
“Apricot?” Sorgrad held out a little washleather pouch.
I took a sticky lump of dried golden fruit, tucking my other hand through my belt. “What’s to do?”
“Over yonder.” Sorgrad waved casually at the land running down to the river. The flow was narrow enough for crossing stones here, widening out below us into a broad estuary of sandbars and glistening channels. Black and white and pied birds waded and prodded for worms or some such in the shallows, darker shapes wheeling above them in the washed-out blue.
“There.” Ryshad pointed as a wide, triangular net suddenly swept up and around just beyond a shallow knoll crowned with yellow flower spikes.
“What’s he after?” wondered Shiv.
“Those.” I pointed at a squat, short-winged bird all black but for a white belly and a comical tuft of scarlet and yellow feathers behind each eye. “Look, he’s got one.”
The hunter had indeed netted one from a small flock coming in to land. The rest hit the ground with less of a bump than I expected from such clumsy-looking fowl and vanished down burrows. I laughed. “That’s what made those noises.”
’Gren studied the hunter’s lair. ”What are we going to do about him?”
“We cross there and we leave him alone,” said Ryshad firmly, pointing at the stepping-stones.
“Do we?”
’Gren demanded of me and his brother.
“We’ve no need to kill him unless he comes after us,” I told Sorgrad.
He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
That was enough to send ’Gren heading for the stepping-stones. They were slick with slimy green growth and Shiv hurried past me. “Wait a moment, ’Gren.”
The weed began to steam, drying from shining emerald to a muted green that crisped into a dull brown, the unceasing wind carrying the lightest wisps away. Sorgrad watched, intent, while ’Gren looked downstream, still keeping watch on the hunter.
“He’d kill him in a moment, wouldn’t he?” There was concern beneath Ryshad’s distaste. “And never give it a second thought.”
“It gives him an edge over the rest of us.” I shrugged.
“That’s kept him and me alive more than once. Believe me, I’d rather be with him than without him on a trip like this.”
“I know he’s your friend but I wouldn’t have him under my command,” said Ryshad slowly.
“I’m not asking you to like him and, anyway, he wouldn’t serve under your command,” I pointed out to my well-drilled beloved. “He’s a mercenary, though, and he understands discipline in a fight. Halice wouldn’t stand for anything less.”
“Just as long as he realises I won’t,” muttered Ryshad as we made our way down to the river and over without incident. As soon as we were across, all ’Gren’s attention turned to the way ahead, the bird hunter forgotten, as I’d known he would be.
Hills rose on either side as we followed the road inland. We all stayed alert for any other travellers but as the day lengthened into a long evening, no one came from either direction. I even began to relax until that realisation made me frown.
“Where is everyone?” I turned to Ryshad and Shiv who were bringing up the rear again.
“How many times did we have to hide last time?” Shiv nodded at the tangled bushes lining the route, their vicious thorns currently hidden by flourishes of leaves and the rosettes of pink-tinted blossom.
“Not even goat shit to tread in, is there?” frowned Ryshad.
I realised something else was wrong. “Weren’t there pillars marking this road?”
“What is it?” Sorgrad and ’Gren came back towards us.
’Gren slapped at something buzzing around his face as I explained. ”Cursed midges.”
Shiv looked at a stretch of flatter land where the pass the road was following widened out a little. “They’re coming from over there.” As if he’d given some signal, a cloud of little black bloodsuckers came roving towards us.
“Must be the time of year for them,” I grimaced.
“Hurry up and we’ll leave them behind,” urged Ryshad.
Shiv was still studying the peaty stretch beside the road. “These people are willing to kill to get off these rocks, because there’s so little decent land, isn’t that right?” He pointed to deep chevrons cut into the bog. “So why let those ditches clog up? This is usable land, if it’s drained.” It didn’t look halfway usable land to me but I’d take Shiv’s word for it. He’d grown up in the Kevil fens of Caladhria and there aren’t many bigger swamps.
“Livak, I found your pillars,” Sorgrad called out. “And here.”
’Gren was a little way beyond his brother, looking in the gully that edged the road.
We joined them to see dark stones broken and stained with the muck pooled around them.
“What’s this?” Sorgrad jumped down for a closer look and ran a finger down deep chisel marks obscuring overlapping lines set in an incised square.
“It was clan insignia of some sort.” Ryshad was studying ’Gren’s pillar. “This one’s defaced as well.”
Shiv hissed with frustration. “Usara might know how to read something from the stone.”
“We brought the wrong wizard.”
’Gren was ready to make a joke of it but no one else was inclined to laugh.
I looked up and down the road whose emptiness was taking on a sinister aspect. “Let’s get on.” I told myself not to be fanciful but kept a hand on my dagger hilt just in case.
“Here.” Ryshad handed me a few long, oily-looking leaves. “Rub those on yourself. It’ll keep off the midges.”
Sorgrad immediately began searching the side of the road until he came up with some smaller, hairier plant. “These are better.”
I smiled at them both and rubbed Sorgrad’s on my wrists and Ryshad’s on my neck. The sooner they both got the message I wasn’t about to choose between them and no one could make me, the better we’d all get along. More importantly, the midges didn’t bother me after that, be it thanks to one plant, the other or both. That was relief because I wouldn’t have put it past ’Gren to count my bites and make a score out of them, just to see who’d be more put out, my lover or his brother.
Ryshad and Shiv forced the pace with their longer legs until we shorter ones were half walking, half jogging. No one complained and we made good speed until we reached the jutting rise of stark grey rock that hi
d our destination.
Sorgrad recognised it too; he only ever needs one look at a map. “Who’s going first?”
’Gren took a pace forward, eyes bright with expectation.
Ryshad looked at me and Shiv and then nodded to Sorgrad. “Just a quick look and come straight back here.”
“Sit tight, my girl.” Sorgrad winked at me and the pair disappeared around the outcrop.
“I can’t hear anything.” Ryshad cocked his head.
I listened. “Birds, breeze.” But no voices, no sound of tools or the bustle we’d seen here last time.
Shiv rubbed his hands together. “Shall I—”
Sorgrad’s whistle interrupted him and we hurried round the curve in the road, my dagger ready, Ryshad’s sword half drawn.
“What in Saedrin’s name happened here?” I exclaimed.
“Dast’s teeth!” Ryshad’s sword hissed all the way out of its sheath.
“I don’t think we’re going to find any allies hereabouts.” Shiv surveyed the scene in the hollow of the flower-speckled hills.
The road was lined with small houses, a scatter of others on the grass beyond. Even allowing the Elietimm were generally short folk, I’d thought before these people risked bumping their heads on their rafters. Now I realised the floors of the low-roofed houses were actually dug a good half span below the ground outside. I could see that because every roof had been ripped off, walls left defenceless before the harshness of wind and weather. Every house looked to be built to the same pattern; a windowless, stone-paved room at one end, something that looked like a quern stone set in the wall that separated it from a wider room beyond. That had windows and a flagged floor, open hearth backed by an upright slab of stone to foil the draught of doors to the front and to rooms beyond. Earthen floors and tethering rings in those suggested byres or stables, finally more storage ending in a circular arrangement of tumbled stones above a stoke hole. That could have been a corn kiln, a brew house, a laundry vat or some other domestic necessity but no tools or utensils remained to give any clue.
“Look for some clue as to what happened here,” Ryshad ordered. “Keep someone else in view all the time.”
“Let’s not disturb too much,” I added. “We don’t want it too obvious we’ve been here.”
Ryshad nodded, sword at the ready as he strode down the road, Shiv at his side. Sorgrad cut off to one side, blade in hand. I reckoned me staying with ’Gren would be safest all round.
“Nothing.” He was poking his dagger in a soggy mess of part-burned thatch. “Whoever did this stripped the place.”
“Not quite.” I looked down into a house some way down the track. The central room was black with soot and charcoal where timbers had been stacked and burned. “How many trees have you seen big enough to make roof trusses? This is like melting down a stack of coin hereabouts.”
“So someone was making a point.”
’Gren shied a stone at something scurrying through the mire of the deep ditch separating the houses from the road. ”There’s nothing here to say what or who, though.”
I looked at the devastated houses. Birds much the size and hue of hooded crows were building nests on the ragged walls, plundering the scattered straw and turf that had once covered the roofs. Their chucks and caws emphasised the empty silence.
“Let’s see what the others have found.” We ran down the track to join Ryshad in front of what had been this settlement’s central stronghold. He held out his hand to me. “Think you can get in there again?”
“If you give me a boost.” That was a joke. When we’d come looking for Geris, the wall around this formidable house of stern grey stone had risen well above my head. Now I could step across the blocks marking the foundation.
“Not one course left upon another,” murmured Shiv in a portentous voice.
“Like something out of a bad ballad,” I agreed. But this was no comfortable tale to while away a winter’s evening.
“Let’s see if there’s anyone still in residence.” I took a cautious step up and over the broken wall, dagger in hand. Ryshad began a slow circuit from what had been the guardhouse while Shiv headed for the opposite corner. Sorgrad and ’Gren spread out to reconnoitre the far side of the compound.
“Didn’t we think this was a forge?” Shiv stopped to look at tumbled stones blackened with fire. There had been a whole range of buildings along the inner face of the wall when we’d sat and spied on the place before.
“And this would be the mill.” I kicked at the last charred heartwood of a tangle of roof timbers.
“Someone had wanted this house razed beyond hope of repair.” Ryshad was walking cautiously through the rubble where the whole front face of the house had been pulled down, side walls and back reduced to broken outlines barely waist high.
“This is where I got in last time, where the window was.”
I stepped through the empty air above the chipped stones. Broken wooden frames and splinters of horn were strewn across a floor hacked and cracked by malicious axes. The stubby remains of the internal walls sheltered sodden drifts of grey ash bleeding black stains across the pale flagstones. I shoved a piece of timber with a boot to reveal a stark white outline where it had lain. I’d say no one’s been here since this disaster struck.”
“But what was the disaster?” wondered Shiv.
“Or who,” said Ryshad grimly. I could make a guess.
There had been rugs on these floors, carefully woven hangings, polished stone tables. A family had lived here and many more besides within the compound and in the village beyond, making what passed for a decent life on these rocks. Now there was no one, beyond vermin lurking in the drains and the nesting birds rearing their chicks in a quiet corner. Where had the people flown? Or had they been netted like the fat little fowls on the riverbank?
Ryshad’s thoughts were following the same scent. “I can’t find any bodies, nor yet any bones,” he said as he joined me.
“Is that good or bad?” Shiv was unsure and I had no answers.
Ryshad looked up. “Where’s Sorgrad? Or ’Gren, come to that.” He looked annoyed.
“You just said keep someone in view,” I reminded him. “I’ll bet they can see each other.” I used my fingers for the whistle the three of us had used for more years than I cared to recall.
Blond heads appeared above a ridge behind the derelict stronghold and Sorgrad beckoned to us. “Come see.”
“What were you looking for up here?” To my relief Ryshad kept his tone mild.
“Goat shit,”
’Gren answered brightly. ”Catch a goat, it squeals, brings someone running. We want answers—”
I waved him to silence.
“What do you make of this?” Sorgrad invited as we scrambled to the top of the rise.
We hadn’t come this way on our previous circumspect visit so we hadn’t seen the stone circle the brothers had found. That was a shame because it must have been quite a sight before the sarsens had been toppled.
“Wrecking this wasn’t a quick or easy job,” said Ryshad.
I didn’t need a mason’s skills to tell me that. Each stone must have been twice my height, massive blue-grey rocks roughly shaped and raised with some trick I couldn’t begin to guess at. The colossal fingers of stone had been the innermost circle within numinous rings of ditch and banked mound. Once we left the rise behind us, this was the highest point on a wide expanse of tussocky grass running away into mossy hollows and a few scrubby thickets. I couldn’t see anything else before the plain blurred into the muted colours of distant hills.
“What was this place for?”
’Gren had a foot up on one of the prone megaliths like a hunter celebrating his kill. Splintered scraps of timber and a snapped-off length of braided hide rope were discarded close by. Perhaps that’s how the wreckers had brought the giants down.
“We found one before. That was a grave circle.” Ryshad wrinkled his nose with unconscious distaste.
Sorgren
squatted and casually pulled a finger bone from spoil dug from the pit where a stone had stood. “Sheltya lore links the bones of a people to their land and I don’t suppose these Alyatimm are any different.” He used the ancient Mountain name for the exiles. “You lowlanders are all for burning your dead but taking bones, breaking them, that’s a desecration in the Mountains, an act of war to the death.”
Ryshad nodded. “Break a rival’s house to rubble and dig up his ancestors, no one’s going to gainsay your victory.”
“If this is what passes for a shrine hereabouts, wouldn’t it be a pretty effective way of scuppering your enemy’s magic?” I couldn’t see anyone having a lot of confidence in the leader of the brown-liveried men now, even assuming he wasn’t already dead.
Sorgrad was scowling. “We’re not going to find an ally here.”
I’d been thinking the same thing. Still, I reminded myself firmly, we had Shiv and that meant magic to call on, as long as he could summon it without getting himself attacked. No matter, we’d got out of here without magic last time, thanks to Ryshad’s fortitude. Come to that, I’d been in tight corners when I’d worked some risky deceptions with Sorgrad and ’Gren. This was no different. We had our plan, we’d do what we’d come for and then we’d leave. Why did we need anyone else?
“No chance of supper,” grumbled ’Gren.
“Or a bolthole.” Ryshad’s face was grim.
“Someone’s still coming here.” Shiv was skirting around the edge of the circle, stopping here and there to poke a stick into the ditch that divided the sacred enclosure from the profane land around it. He pointed at a square stone set to one side within the circle.
’Gren, keep an eye out.” I followed Ryshad for a closer look and the brothers came too.
The stone was about the height of a table made to feed a farmhouse and maybe half as long again. The top was scored with interlaced circles and some had narrow hollows at their centre, steep sided and filled with rain. Judging by the grass growing thick all around, it had been left undisturbed by the wreckers.
I poked a long grass stem into one. “A handspan deep.”
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