Hinterland

by James Clemens

  Master Sheershym approached and knelt beside him. “You’ll not make it to the camp. We’ll have to cut a litter for you.”

  Tylar just hung his head. “If I rest…” he said weakly.

  Rogger joined the master. “You can sleep the year away, and you’d still not be able to climb that far.”

  Harp already had his boys cutting and weaving another litter. They did it with a practiced speed. He also waved to two boys to run ahead and alert the camp of their pending arrival.

  “This weakness,” Sheershym said. “It is more than mere tired limb. I may not be the best healer of Saysh Mal, but even I can tell that what ails you goes deeper than broken bone.”

  He took Tylar’s hand and deftly unwrapped it. The broken finger had indeed healed crooked, evident when Tylar tried to clench and pull away. But in his exhaustion, he could not break even the elderly grip of Sheershym. Worse still, the two neighboring fingers, unbroken before, had also curled into calloused knots, and it appeared his wrist had locked up as much as his knee. It was as if the damage had spread, wicking outward into healthy flesh like some poison from a wound.

  Even Tylar gaped at the sight, surprised what the wrap had hid. His other hand rubbed his knee. His leg was plainly more twisted.

  “It’s like you’re going back,” Rogger mumbled.

  “Back where?” Sheershym asked.

  Rogger shook his head.

  The master sat on his heels and glanced between Tylar and Rogger. “Silence will not serve you here. Whatever is at work had best be attended with full knowledge.” This voice took on a tone of a master at the front of his students.

  Tylar nodded. “You know my story,” he said weakly. “A broken knight, healed by Meeryn of the Summering Isles as she lay dying. How she instilled her naethryn undergod into me, curing me at the same time.”

  “Who doesn’t know that tale by now?”

  “What many don’t know is that when I loose the naethryn, my body returns to its broken form.” Tylar lifted his gnarled hand. “When the naethryn returns again to my body, so does my hale form. But now…”

  Rogger finished. “He failed to loose the naethryn with the Huntress. And his body continues to slowly break and twist again, driving him back toward his crippled form.”

  “It started slow. An unhealed break. But it spreads ever faster. I don’t know why it’s happening, nor what it portends.”

  Sheershym asked a few more questions about what was broken in the past and now. By the time he was done, Harp had a litter ready. “Let’s get you up to the camp,” the master said, standing again. “I’d like to study this puzzle in more detail. ‘It is often the smallest thread that reveals the greater pattern.’”

  “Tyrrian Balk,” Roger said.

  Sheershym glanced to him. “You’ve read the work of the Arithromatic. You must someday tell me where you performed your studies.”

  They hurriedly got Tylar stretched out and continued skyward along a steep and winding path. It looked little more than a deer track, and probably was. Switchbacks climbed the side of a promontory of rock that jutted from the peak called the Anvil.

  As they climbed, Brant had begun to revive, mumbling and attempting to sit up on his litter.

  Lorr pressed his shoulder back down. “Stay put,” the tracker ordered.

  “Where…?”

  Dart kept to his other side. She found his hand and took it. “We’re heading up into the forest. Rest now. We’ll explain more when we stop.”

  He nodded, eyes rolling slightly. His fingers found the strength to squeeze hers, an intimacy that warmed through Dart and made the path seem less steep. Then he relaxed back into slumber.

  After several more turns, views opened and revealed how high they’d already climbed. The black river stretched below, winding back to the great mountain to the south. On the far side, the spread of green forest filled the lower valleys. But much remained hidden behind mists, including the Huntress’s castillion.

  Then the views vanished again under heavy canopy. A few shouts reached them from ahead. One last push, and they topped the rise and found a small glade where a crude camp had been set up. It was nothing more than sprawls of tented canvas across low limbs and netted hammocks hanging higher. Children and elders gathered, though some hung close to the forest edge, looking ready to bolt—especially when Malthumalbaen trudged into view. One of the youngest began to cry and buried his face in the skirt of an older woman leaning on a cane.

  “He won’t eat you,” the woman promised.

  “Dral might have,” the giant mumbled under his breath as he passed. “’Course after that climb, I’m not about to be that particular either.”

  Harp guided them forward and found a corner for them to rest and catch their wind. Water was brought in leather flasks. It tasted sour, but to Dart it was still the sweetest wine.

  Tylar settled to the forest floor.

  Sheershym appeared with a book tucked under one arm. “I would like to sketch a map of your injuries. Where they are now, where they were before. See what pattern, if any, might reveal itself.”

  Tylar groaned and shifted up into a seated position. “I feel stronger already.”

  “Because your arse was hauled up here,” Rogger said. “That’s why.”

  “And rest will not straighten a crooked bone.” Sheershym added. He waved Tylar back down. “First I’d like to inspect the mark Meeryn placed upon you. It is through there that the naethryn enters and leaves this world. Yes?”

  Tylar grimaced, but that was the extent of his further objections. With Rogger’s help, he slipped his shadowcloak over his shoulders, then unhooked the shirt beneath. It had been soaked through with his sweat.

  Rogger accepted the garment as Tylar shed it. The thief pinched it up with a sour expression. “If Delia saw this waste of humour, she’d burn you with her tongue for days.” He wrung out the garment, squeezing the sweat into a small fire ringed by stones. It sizzled and popped, destroying any residual Grace.

  Bare-chested, Tylar leaned back to the litter, plainly exerted by even this small effort. Still, a bit of color had filled his cheeks again after the rest.

  Sheershym leaned to study the black palm print centered on Tylar’s chest, the mark of Meeryn. He reached a hand toward it. “May I?”

  Tylar had his eyes closed and waved a few fingers of his good hand. “Do what you must.”

  Sheershym traced the black edges with a finger, then tested the flesh within the mark.

  Dart winced as she stood to the side, arms crossed over her chest. It was the first time she had seen Tylar’s hidden mark since back in Chrismferry. It made her uneasy to look upon it. It looked to her like a well of dark water shaped like a palm. She feared the master’s hand would pass into Tylar’s chest.

  But his fingers only discovered skin over bone.

  “I don’t feel anything amiss,” he said, straightening. “Let’s check the rest of your injuries. For the knee, we’ll need those leggings off.”

  The master waved to Dart and Calla. “Perhaps a bit of modesty is in order.”

  Calla shrugged and wandered a few steps away to where someone had spitted a rabbit over a flame. Dart also began to turn away, when a flash of light caught her eye.

  She turned back to Tylar. He had raised to one elbow and was tugging free the loop of his sword belt. “Wait,” she said and stepped closer.

  Tylar lifted his face toward her.

  Dart leaned closer to the mark on his chest, bending at the waist. “I—I thought I saw something…”

  Tylar glanced down at himself, his brow crinkling.

  The well of dark water that was his mark swirled ever so slightly as she stared closely. She had noted the same back in Chrismferry, as if something had crested just under the surface, stirring the waters.

  His naethryn.

  But that was not what had drawn her eye.

  Sheershym sighed with impatience. “I assure you, lass. Nothing is amiss.”

&n
bsp; Rogger warded him back. “Best let her look. She’s got eyes a mite sharper than ours. Sees things others miss.” He said this last with a wink in her direction.

  Dart kept her focus on the mark, only a hand’s breadth from Tylar’s chest. She waited. Maybe she was mistaken—

  Then it flashed again.

  Deep within the well, a trickling trace of green fire snaked across the mark and away again. Flames within a dark sea.

  “Did you see that?” Dart asked, startled.

  Sheershym glanced at her, shook his head, then returned to study the mark.

  Tylar caught her eye. “What did you see, Dart?”

  “Flames, stirring deep with your mark. Then away again.”

  “Flames?” Rogger mumbled. “What did they look like?”

  She frowned, picturing them, trying to capture how they made her feel. “Emerald but with a sickly cast. A feverish sheen to them.”

  Tylar touched his mark and found only flesh. “Green fire…” His eyes narrowed.

  “What?” Rogger asked, plainly sensing some recognition in the other’s voice.

  Tylar kept his gaze fixed to Dart. “Like moonlight off pond scum.”

  She slowly nodded.

  “I’ve seen such a flame before,” Tylar said. “It shone from the blade Perryl struck me with. Or rather struck Meeryn’s naethryn with.”

  “Who is this Perryl?” Sheershym asked.

  “A black ghawl,” Rogger said. “A daemon wearing another’s skin.”

  “His dark sword grazed the naethryn when it was last released. I felt the burn of the blade’s kiss.” Tylar touched the side of his chest. “Here.”

  Sheershym inspected the bruised flesh. “Where your rib is broken now.”

  Tylar nodded.

  Off to the side, Brant stirred and mumbled. “She…she…we must…” Then he drifted away.

  The master looked to the boy, then back to Tylar. “I fear young Brant might not be the only one poisoned here. That blade must have carried some corruption. It poisoned your naethyn—and as the two of you are bound together, you suffer for it, too.”

  Silence settled over them.

  “And if his naethryn dies…?” Rogger finally asked.

  Sheershym shook his head. “I cannot say. But I suspect the wear and break of your body reflects the vitality of the naethryn inside you. As you grow more crippled of limb, it maps your naethryn’s slide toward death.”

  “Is there some cure?” Rogger said. “Some powder to smoke the poison out, like you did with Brant?”

  “Such matters are far beyond my skills,” Sheershym said. His face looked especially waxen with fear, something unspoken.

  “What?” Tylar asked.

  “Even if there were a cure,” the master said, “I fear its potency might never reach where it is most needed.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “There has been talk and speculation amongst the masters since you rose to your regency. Arguments and thoughts shared by raven’s wing. One consensus is that the naethryn inside you…isn’t truly inside you. How could it be? Instead most believe it to be tethered to you while trapped half in this world, half in the naether. For any hope to burn the poison from the creature, you must bring it fully here.”

  “Which I failed to do before,” Tylar said.

  “And while poisoned, you may never be able to do.”

  Rogger shook his head. “A perfectly laid trap.”

  But it wasn’t the only one.

  Brant suddenly sat up on the neighboring litter, gasping out as if startled by the terror of a dream, “She…she…”

  A shout caught his words and finished his thought, coming from the forest, in the direction of the cliff’s edge. “She comes! She comes!”

  Dart straightened, along with everyone else.

  Even Brant gained his legs, wobbly but supported by Lorr.

  They all stared to the east, toward the burnt swath of the black river.

  The Huntress was on the move.

  “The river remains quiet,” Brant said. “Takaminara seems to show no interest in stopping the Huntress this time.”

  “She may not be able to,” Rogger said. “It must have cost her greatly to split the land the first time.”

  Their party gathered at a hunting lodge that overlooked the cliff’s edge. It had been turned into a watchtower by a pair of sentinels, boys barely past twelve. The lodge offered a wide view of the valley floor, once a green sea, now split by a black river.

  Brant shifted the arm in his sling. The firebalm had sealed his wound, and Grace already knit the tissue with a burning itch. Between his eyes, a throbbing ache persisted, the dregs of his poisoning. His left leg also felt numb and thick. But the walk here had helped return sensation with a fiery prickling.

  He was alive.

  But for how long?

  Harp stood at his shoulder. Brant could not believe how much his old friend had grown. Once shorter, he now stood half a head taller than Brant. But so much remained the same, too. The worried crinkle at the corners of his eyes, the way he tapped his chin when struggling with a puzzle, even the same crooked grin, offered when he’d first crossed to Brant back in the camp. Still, despite the warm and genuine greeting, there remained a darker look to his eye, something Brant had never seen before. Shadows that would forever haunt his friend.

  Brant studied the land below. In just the short time it had taken to come here, the Huntress had led her war party halfway across the river. She did not shy from its burn and stink any longer. Brant had heard the story of Harp’s flight. The Huntress, angered by their escape, meant to end this now.

  “They move swiftly,” Tylar said.

  “And so must we if we’re to reach the cliffs and the hinterlands beyond,” Rogger said.

  Brant had walked these lands as a boy. He knew them well. The Divide fell away into the hinter about two leagues away. A hard march, but one they should be able to make. They had already sent ahead the youngest and oldest, to await word at the cliff’s edge, in case Takaminara chose to protect them yet again. No one wanted to enter the deadly hinterlands unless there was no other choice.

  Now they knew.

  “We must go,” Brant said.

  Harp had everything prepared. While camped here, he’d had ladders woven of vine and sinew. They waited at the Divide, coiled and ready to be unfurled down the cliff into the hinterlands. But Harp had planned further strategies as well.

  “I’ll leave ten of our fastest runners,” he said and pointed to key high points. “Along the ridges here and there. With arrow and bow, they should be able to hold the pass, slow the others a bit longer. We don’t want to be caught on the cliff, still on the ladders. A few ax chops and we’d all be tumbling headlong into the hinter.”

  “How likely will her hunters be to follow us down there?” Tylar asked.

  “She won’t stop until we’re all dead,” Harp said with certainty. “But I’ve already soaked the ladders in poxflame oil. Once below, we can set the ladder afire. Burn them off the cliffs. It will take time for any pursuers to find another way down.”

  Brant read the appreciation and respect in the regent’s eyes as he nodded. “Very good,” Tylar said.

  Krevan stood at the lip of the cliff, a long glass to his eye. He finally lowered it. “Six score,” he said. “Eighty with bows. Forty with spears.”

  Harp frowned at him. “Six score? You’re sure of that count?”

  Krevan stared hard, not bothering to answer.

  Harp’s frown deepened as he glanced below. “The best of her hunters number two hundred. She comes with too few.”

  Brant understood what he meant. All attention had been on the war party that crossed the river directly. But the burn spread to the north and south, stretching out of sight in both directions, beyond the view of the sentries in the makeshift watchtower.

  “She sent others ahead of her,” Harp said and turned to them, his eyes wide with worry.

  “To cl
ose off our escape,” Brant said. There was a reason their god was named the Huntress.

  Confirming this, screams suddenly erupted, faint and distant, coming from the top of the pass. Where the others had been headed. Horns sounded from that direction, echoing darkly through the wood.

  The snare had been sprung.

  Responding to the horns, the Huntress called to them from below. Her voice carried to them, borne aloft in Grace.

  “I want only the Godslayer and the boy! To bring his stone!” Horns punctuated her words. “The rest will be allowed to leave my realm. But any further trespass will be met with blood!”

  “What are we going to do?” Dart asked as the horns echoed away. She stood with Lorr and Malthumalbaen at the door to the lodge. “You can’t go down there.”

  “Agreed.” Krevan pointed toward the Forge. “Best we fight our way through to the Divide. There are only two score up there.”

  “Two score of her best hunters,” Harp said with a sour shake of his head. “And they have the high ground. Even if we could make the cliffs, they’d burn us or chop us off the ladders.”

  The Huntress called again, pointing an arm. “Come to where the black rock meets the green wood! In the open. If you are not there when I set foot back to loam, your lives—all your lives—will be forfeit!”

  Brant watched Tylar study the spread of hunters below, his eyes narrowed with calculations. Though his body was broken, his mind remained sharp.

  Tylar finally spoke. “Krevan, lead the others toward the Divide. Gather everyone you can along the way. Keep them safe.”

  The leader of the Black Flaggers seemed ready to argue, but whatever he saw in the regent’s eyes held his tongue.

  Dart was not so reticent. “I can be of help,” she said.

  “No. If the Huntress spots anyone else below…” Tylar shook his head. “We dare not antagonize her any further. And I’d rather you’re safely away.”