"Are you thinking of Tallea?" Maggie whispered, and Orick nodded. Maggie patted his head, then petted him behind the ears. "She was a good one. We will all miss her."
"I know," Orick grumbled.
There was a rustling in the far corner as Ceravanne came awake, and sat up and looked over toward them, as did Gallen. "Do not be too hasty to grieve for Tallea," Ceravanne said from across the room. "Death is but a temporary state for many. She lived her life to the benefit of others, and she died to save us. The Immortals will be loath to let her perish."
"But she feels dead to me," Orick grumbled.
"Think of her as a friend who sleeps, but who will waken again."
"Aye, but when she wakes again, she wants to be a Roamer. She'll be different."
"I should think you wouldn't mind the differences," Ceravanne said. "She'll have fur, and she'll look more like you. You were becoming close friends. I should think that when she is a Roamer, you will be closer still."
"Och, she may resemble me," Orick said, "but I have to wonder what thoughts will lodge in her head. Certainly not human thoughts. And what will her heart feel? No, Tallea is gone forever."
Maggie patted his head. "By her own will she is gone," she whispered. "She died well, as she wanted. We should be happy for her in that. But I think she lived a sad life. She wanted others to depend on her, to own them and be owned—too much. It was a burden for her."
"So it's love you're accusing her of?" Orick said. "And I should be happy that she'll feel it no more?"
No one spoke for a long moment, and at last Gallen said softly, "I lived as a Roamer once. You are right to mourn for her, Orick. Roamers feel a certain closeness, but it is not love, and so Tallea now loses some of her humanity. Still, they can be happy. They revel in their own freedom, and their days pass quickly because they are unencumbered. She will learn to hunt for grass seeds on the plain, and squat beneath wide trees in a fireless camp, where she will have no care while she sings at the stars.
"And so, while you mourn her, take care not to mourn too long. This is the reward she has chosen, and if you had ever suffered under the emotional encumbrances of a Caldurian, perhaps you would feel that she has chosen wisely."
Orick thought for a long time, and his spirits seemed to lift a little. Maggie quickly kissed him on the snout, and when Orick said, "You know, I'm at least as hungry as those Derrits," she knew that he was feeling better, but he was also reminding her of her duty.
She went back and watched the road, letting the others sleep through the long night. And as she waited, she clasped her hands and twisted, exercising her wrists as she often saw Gallen do, and she whispered of her need to Gallen's mantle, saying, "Teach me!"
And so during that night, she moved in the darkness, exercising her body in new ways, swinging Gallen's sword as best she could while the mantle sent her visions of foes.
Only once that night did she spot a Derrit—a great brute of a male walking down a ridge on the far side of the canyon, carrying a greatsword in one hand, with a war hammer in the other.
Chapter 27
Two hours before dawn, Gallen woke Orick with a kick. And Orick lay on the floor while Ceravanne packed, listening to the others talk in the main room of the guard shack. Maggie had chanced a small fire in the guard house and made a quick breakfast of cooked oats with cinnamon. It was their first hot meal in days, and to tell the truth, they would not have risked the smoke from a fire except that they had eaten all else. The cheeses were gone, as were the wine and corn, the plums and peaches. They were down to apples and oats, and they couldn't tell when they'd eat a cooked meal again. So it was the oats.
Orick had been living off his store of winter fat for days now, and he was beginning to feel a gnawing hunger that the others would soon share. Yet bears are tough, and Orick knew that the hunger that was a mere annoyance for him would quickly become dangerous for the others.
He was lying on the floor, thinking of these things, when Gallen came back and kicked him again. "Wake up, sleepy," Gallen said, laughing. Orick felt as if he'd hardly slept at all, and he grumbled to Gallen, "Why must you rouse me so early? I'm dead tired."
"Better dead tired than merely dead," Gallen said, squatting beside Orick's ear. "We ran a good bit last night, but the next few kilometers of road are well exposed. Once dawn comes it won't be safe to travel that road for the wingmen, and we must make good time today. I fear the Derrits will be hunting us tonight."
"Och, I thought we left them all behind?" Orick grumbled.
"The Derrits and the wingmen own these mountains. The wingmen flocks are everywhere, and as for the Derrits, you saw how big they are. You saw their stride," Gallen warned. "They can run a hundred kilometers in a night without breaking a sweat, and they can track by scent as well as any wolf. We ran for six hours last night, but if a Derrit hunting pack gathers, they'll reach this spot in less than two."
"Do you think they'll come after us?"
"I think they'd have come for us last night, except that you and I made a good accounting against some of their number. But they won't be satisfied to eat the dead we left behind." Gallen leaned closer and whispered so that Maggie and Ceravanne wouldn't hear. "I told you once that this road is a place of terror for the Inhuman. They would not likely brave it this time of year. In the fall, Derrits do their hunting for the winter. They kill men and animals, and bury them in a cache to eat later. In one of my former lives, I was a soldier who hunted Derrits here. Thirty-two men were in my command, and a dozen Derrits fell upon us in an ambush, slaughtering them. They buried my men in a huge pit, piling the dirt upon them all. I was sorely wounded, and I was buried with them. I dug myself out of the grave after four days, and for the next week I dragged myself across this rocky road; trying to escape, until the Derrits came for me again. It was only by chance that they lost my scent, passed me as I hid in the night. The next day I was able to make it down into the river, float for hours in the icy water until the Derrits had no opportunity to catch my scent again. A fear of this place must bum in the memory of every Inhuman."
"So you think the Derrits will come for us? We only heard one other Derrit back there."
Gallen leaned close, watching through the open door as Ceravanne and Maggie hunched over the cooking fire. "I did not want to tell you, but twice I had Ceravanne turn aside into smaller hallways because my mantle smelled Derrits ahead. We heard one, but I smelled dozens. Believe me, we'll not get away from them this easily."
"Are you going to tell the women?" Orick asked.
"I think Ceravanne already knows the risk, but I do not want to frighten Maggie. What will come, will come, and perhaps our best efforts will avail us nothing. So now, my friend, if you will pick your shaggy carcass up off the floor, I think we should eat quickly, and then be running."
Orick obliged him, and in moments they were off, jogging on nearly empty stomachs through a maze of gray canyons, over the barren road. Their only light came from stars and moon, and just as the sky began to lighten, the road dipped precipitously, leading them deep into the gorge.
Before they could take the road down, Gallen stopped, and they stood panting while Gallen gazed far behind along the mountain slopes. A light snow dusted the tops of the peaks silver in the moonlight, and down near the bottoms were dark clots of pine forest running the slopes. But Gallen watched the gray middle slopes, almost featureless in the night, where the ancient road was bordered on one side by a precipice, on the other by walls of dark stone. The mountain chain here formed a huge S, so that though they had run perhaps forty kilometers since sunset, they were only fifteen kilometers as the wingman flies from the gates of the city, and with his mantle Gallen was able to see much of that road from this last bluff.
He stood for a long minute, then his breath caught in his chest, and his face became hard, impassive. Orick knew that look.
"What is it?" Ceravanne said, panting. "What do you see?"
Gallen looked up at the sky. It was growi
ng light, a dimming of stars on the horizon. "They're after us," he said.
"How many in the hunting pack?" Ceravanne said, looking back up the trail.
"Twenty . . . or more." Gallen pulled out his incendiary rifle, checked it. He had only two shots left, as they all well knew.
"So many?" Ceravanne asked in dismay. "We'd hardly make a meal for a dozen of them."
"They're hungry," Gallen said, slipping his rifle back into its holster. "Let's go. They'll have to hole up for the day in that guard shack. But they'll be after us again tonight."
He turned and sprinted down the road, into the depths of the gorge where the dark trunks of massive pine trees rose above them, and the road was overshadowed by vine maple and ironwood. On the slopes above, the world had seemed dead, sterile, but Orick was surprised that down here there was plenty of game—rabbits, squirrels, jays—things too small for the Derrits to bother with, all of them rustling through the detritus as they searched for their morning meals.
For that day they ran, scurrying from thicket to thicket like mice as Gallen watched for signs of wingmen.
So it was that near dusk, Gallen led them into the woods along the river. From high above, Orick had seen the river as nothing more than a silver ribbon in the canyon below, but down here he could see that it was more. Now, in the early fall, a cool flow rushed over boulders, flowed rippling across gravel bars. But all along the riverbank were great logs, cast up on the shores by the raging floods that tore down this canyon in winters past. Often, the river had gouged passageways through narrow chasms or left huge piles of flotsam. For nearly two hours after dark, the group made its way downstream through this mess. Then well after dark, under the light of the triple moons, Gallen led them all into the water, and they waded back upstream for several kilometers, often sloshing through pools that were chest-deep, until they passed the point where they'd first set foot off the road.
The water did not seem very cold to Orick, but all of his human friends complained of it, and Ceravanne often slipped on the mossy rocks.
When the women could wade no more, Orick let them sit astride his back, and carried them surefooted up to a tiny tributary creek that had become only a small flow of water. In the spring the creek must have been much larger, for it had eroded a deep and narrow gorge into the hillside.
"This will have to do for the night," Gallen whispered when they stopped at last, sheltered in a tiny nook. He pulled out the blankets from the packs, and they made a dismal camp behind a small tree.
Orick looked up and down through the gorge. He estimated that the walls were perhaps a hundred feet high here, and twelve feet wide. "I'm not very cozy with your strategy, Gallen," Orick whispered. "Sure, the Derrits could easily swagger through here two abreast."
"Aye," Gallen said, "that they could. But I'm hoping that they'll think we've headed downstream through the woods. The road takes us downstream, to the southeast, and I'm hoping they'll believe we've still gone that way. If they waste enough time hunting downstream, then we'll win through the night and they'll have to continue the hunt tomorrow. But even if we don't fool them, at the very least they'll have to split up and check the banks both upstream and down. That leaves us maybe five or ten to contend with at a time—not twenty."
"I thought the three we fought gave us more than ample exercise," Orick grumbled. "I really would prefer to leave these ones alone."
"Well, go to sleep," Gallen said, "and maybe you'll get your wish."
Orick tried to stay up the night, but in time he settled onto his paws. His heart was hammering heavy in his chest, and he was cold and hungry and miserable, but he thought of Tallea lying dead in the city of Indallian, naught but Derrit food, and though he missed his friend, he was glad to be alive.
"Gallen," Orick whispered, for both Maggie and Ceravanne had fallen asleep and were already snoring lightly.
"Aye?" Gallen asked.
"You've got Tallea's memories stored in your mantle, right?"
"Aye," Gallen said.
"Well," Orick wondered aloud, "how many people's memories can be stored in that thing?"
"Just one."
"And what would you do, I mean, if tonight a Derrit caught you? You couldn't save yourself the way you saved Tallea, could you?"
"Not without erasing her memories," Gallen said. "The memory crystal holds a lot, but I'm part of the Inhuman now, and I've probably got more memories than this one crystal can handle."
"So would you do it? Would you erase her memories to save yourself?"
Gallen thought for a moment. "The Inhuman in me would. Most of those people desperately want more life. They crave it. But the Gallen O'Day in me wouldn't do it."
Orick grunted. "I think that if you have to do it, you should. You should live for Maggie. Tallea would understand that, and she would forgive you."
"I'm not sure that I would forgive myself," Gallen whispered. "It's an unpleasant thing to have to consider. Go to sleep, now."
"No, you go to sleep," Orick said. "I'll take watch for a bit."
Orick lay watching quietly for a minute. Maggie had kept watch last night, so Orick was hoping to split it tonight with Gallen. Orick figured that the lad was worn to the nap, and he needed some time off, so tomorrow he considered taking watch with Maggie.
For a long time, he stared down the slope, and only the croaking of a lone tree frog kept him company.
Orick closed his eyes to rest them for a moment, and when next he woke, there was a fierce wind blowing down through the canyons. It did not buffet the small group much, sheltered as they were, but it was singing through the rocks and the trees.
He looked over at Gallen, who sat up awake and alert. "Any sign of them?" Orick asked, and Gallen looked over at him.
"I heard five or six of them walking upriver about an hour ago," Gallen said, "but the wind must have blown our scent away. Go back to sleep. It's nearly dawn."
Orick could not go back to sleep, since he felt so guilty about falling asleep during his watch, so he asked Gallen to catch some more shut-eye, then in an hour he woke them all. They ate a cold breakfast of the last of the apples.
"That was a good trick you gave them," Orick said after finishing his two apples. He eyed the cores that the others were eating as he talked. Without any more food to keep them going, he wanted to accentuate the positive. "You knew the wind would blow the scent away?"
"I hoped it would," Gallen admitted. "I've been through these canyons many times, and often at night the cold mountain air funnels down these slopes. It was a chance we had to take."
"Well," Orick said, "you've pulled us out for the day, but what about tonight?" He only hoped that Gallen had some kind of plan.
"That is a tough one," Gallen admitted.
"Farra Kuur?" Ceravanne asked, tossing Orick an apple core.
"Yes," Gallen said, "that is what I was hoping."
"It's a long stretch of road before us," Ceravanne considered. "We'll be hard-pressed to make it. " "Farra what?" Maggie asked. "Farra Kuur," Gallen said. "A few kilometers south of here, the canyons narrow again, and down the road fifty or sixty kilometers, there was a fortress called Farra Kuur, virtually impenetrable. If we can make it there, and if the bridge is down after all these years, we should be able to hold the Derrits off for another night."
"If the bridge is down?" Orick said.
"Drawbridges," Gallen said. "Farra Kuur is burrowed into the spur of a mountain between two very steep chasms. Drawbridges were carved from great sheets of stone to span the gap, and the Makers created giant gears to raise and lower them."
"Certainly the bridges aren't in working order," Ceravanne said.
"They were three hundred years ago," Gallen said hopefully. "And the gears and chains were all well oiled back then. The Makers build for permanence. But even if the bridges aren't working now, so long as the bridges are down, we should make it into Farra Kuur. And once we're there . . . well, we'll see what I can do."
Orick didn't w
ant to talk about the battle that would inevitably come tonight even if they made it to Farra Kuur, so he said, "Making it to this fortress of yours sounds like a fine idea, but it won't do us much good if we starve. You wouldn't happen to know where we might find some food around here?"
"Keep watch for mushrooms, berries, nuts," Gallen told him, "pick anything you find. We'll be running through the forest all day, and if we're lucky, maybe a young deer will impale itself on my sword," he joked.
"Are you sure that's wise, eating these strange berries?" Orick asked. He'd seen some small red berries the day before, but he'd been afraid to harvest any, not knowing if they were poisonous. And he didn't even want to chance the mushrooms he'd seen, for none were of varieties familiar to him.
"All mushrooms, berries, and fruits that you will find here on Tremonthin are edible—" Ceravanne said, "but one. The deathfruit grows on a bush low to the ground, and is dark purple, darker' than a plum. It is to be eaten only by those who are sick or horribly injured, those who seek death."
Orick considered this good news, and they took off, climbing up the narrow gorge till they hit the road once again, and for most of the day, Orick foraged as he ran, eating a snail here, swallowing a few acorns there, nibbling a mushroom.
That day they ran among rounded hills beside where the river flowed, and once they stopped by the riverbank where the soil had a blue tinge so that Ceravanne could harvest some of the Healing Earth. They took off again, but shortly after that they lost the road altogether, for lush grasses and woods now covered the ancient road as if it had never been.
Still, Gallen kept a straight course, and on some high hills they would find themselves climbing over the remnants of a stone road that was worn and cracked, until well before noon they came to an ancient fortress that lay nearly all in ruins. One of its walls stood intact, rose to an incredible height of perhaps two hundred feet.
Beyond The Gate - Book 2 of the Golden Queen Series Page 36