Before he left the circle, he stopped beside Grakk and Cannick, staring ahead. ‘He will talk now.’
Without expression, Grakk said, ‘I do believe he will.’
Cannick grunted. ‘It may take longer for him to stop screaming than it would have to frighten him my way.’
Gerens looked at the older man, his eyes burning as much as ever with cold fire. ‘Tell him I’m going for something to eat, then will be back. He has another eye.’
Despite the horror in the screams that threatened to drown out their words, Cannick almost smiled. ‘That might do the trick.’
Gerens shrugged and continued back to the remainder of the party, sitting by the chimney. Cannick gave Grakk a long look. ‘It seems we have two of them to worry about.’
The wiry tribesman shook his tattooed head. ‘That one is what he is. Born or made regardless, it is his way.’
‘You mean he feels nothing? He is incapable?’
Grakk frowned. ‘I think not. His feelings for the girl are clear. There was that stray dog he nursed from a broken leg back at the city. And as for him,’ he nodded at Brann, ‘there is a loyalty there that is singular and deep, though I know not from where it stems.’
Brann looked at them. ‘I don’t know either.’ He wasn’t entirely sure what they were talking about, but it might help them to know this fact.
Cannick smiled and patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you don’t, lad.’
Brann looked at the captive, both hands clamped where his eye had been and his screaming lessened, though only slightly. ‘He will still die? After he talks, he will die? Yes?’
Grakk looked at him curiously. ‘Would you like to kill him?’
Brann’s shrug spoke of his lack of concern. ‘Me, you,’ he pointed to a random Deruul across the circle, ‘him. Whoever, it matters not.’ He shrugged again. ‘Dead men do not seek vengeance.’
Grakk nodded. ‘In this case, you need have no worries of that.’
Satisfied, Brann left the ring of Deruul. Gerens’s mention of food had reminded him that he had walked away from the smoke before he had eaten.
He found Hakon standing slightly back from the circle, his face seeming pale. ‘You can eat?’ he said. ‘After watching that?’
Brann kept walking and the boy’s long stride fell in beside him. ‘Why not?’
Hakon looked down at him. ‘Of course. You saw worse in the pits.’
He looked up at Hakon. ‘I did worse.’
The large boy shook his head. ‘I grew up among warriors. I rode out first at the age of twelve to hunt raiders. I have seen much myself, have done much. But I haven’t even imagined such… such horrors. How can you think to…?’ His voice tailed off.
‘Thinking is a luxury, a weakness. You do or you don’t. You live or you die.’
Hakon was clearly trying hard to make sense of it. ‘The Brann I knew did think. The Brann I knew couldn’t have stomached that.’
‘I do not know the Brann you knew. But a man taught me.’
‘Taught you what?’
‘He taught me: I still live.’
‘Is that not stating the obvious? If you can say it, it must be true.’
He stopped and looked at Hakon. The big boy stopped with him. ‘That is the truth in it. While you can say it, you live. No matter what they do, who does it, you must make sure you are still able to say it. So you learn to do what you must to be able to say it. And when you say it, it is true. It is all there is.’
Hakon’s voice was a whisper. ‘You had nothing else. They took everything else from you.’
He was puzzled. ‘If not for that, what else is there?’
Hakon’s large hand clapped him on the shoulder and steered him towards the fire and the food. ‘If not, then nothing. But if you have that, if you still live, then there is so much more. But that is something for others cleverer than me to teach you.’ He grinned. ‘I would just teach you the wrong things with the wrong people. Most of them female.’ He walked towards the fire. ‘To be honest, all of them female.’
Brann frowned at his back. The boy at times made little sense, but there was something that made him good to be with. That must be why he was his friend. That, and the fact that he could hit hard, which was always useful.
When he reached the fireside, Hakon was talking to the quiet boy with the black hair. He seemed to have nothing but questions in him tonight. ‘That thing with the captive. What you did does not bother you?’
Gerens looked at him. ‘Did it look like it did?’
‘But how…? Why can you…?’
‘How can I do such a thing? It needed to be done.’
‘Maybe. And I could cut a man in two in battle, but I could not do what you did.’
The cold fire in Gerens’s eyes seemed to burn with intensity even greater than usual. ‘Hakon, you are my friend and you know well how little I like talking of myself. But as we have been through much, I will tell you this. I was young when my father… when I was left to help my mother raise our family. Killing livestock for the table is not a woman’s job, it was my job. It is not easy, often they look you in the eye, often they seem to know what is coming. But if you stick a knife in something living often enough, it becomes just sticking a knife in something, nothing more. So you do what needs to be done. As with tonight.’
Hakon wasn’t convinced. ‘So killing a pig prepares you for sticking a knife in a man’s eye?’
Gerens shrugged. ‘If it works…’
The big boy shook his head. He looked in Sophaya’s direction. ‘You are fine with this?’
She shrugged. ‘You would not believe what you would have seen had you grown up with me. Where you come from, the bad people you fight are the ones who threaten your town. Where I come from, the bad people you fight live beside you. Maybe I couldn’t do it myself, maybe I could, but I have seen worse.’
‘Each to their own, I guess.’ Hakon looked around them, and his face broke into a smile. ‘You are all bonkers. But I am glad you are on my side.’
Marlo laughed, the effect of the fumes not quite away from his head, and Sophaya raised herself on an elbow to look directly at Hakon with an eyebrow arched. ‘All of us, dear Hakon?’
The smile spread across the big honest face and into a grin. ‘You most of all. On both counts.’
They realised the captive’s screams had stopped, and a group of Deruul were carrying a limp form beyond the perimeter wall of what had once been a garden. They left by the gate.
‘The gods knew what they were.’ The others looked at him and Brann nodded at the group at work. ‘The men who came, they did not use the gate. It is a good thing to show respect.’
Grakk and Cannick sat beside them. Gerens looked at them, and Grakk said, ‘He talked.’
Cannick stretched. ‘In actual fact, we could hardly get a word in after we suggested that Gerens had nearly finished his meal. They had followed us for days, waiting for this place and the night of the smoke, as they had been told to do. By whom, he did not know, but I think we can all guess.’
Marlo frowned. ‘Why would Taraloku-Bana want a Deruul leader dead?’
‘He didn’t. They had another target.’ He looked at Brann. ‘You do seem to drive a great determination in this man, youngster. But if bandits, or deserters, or whatever they appeared to be, if they attacked a Deruul caravan for their goods and a foreign boy happened to die in the process, who would ask why that boy had been targeted?’ He looked at Grakk. ‘So what now?’
‘Now,’ Grakk said, ‘those men will disappear. Stripped, they will be a feast for the animals of the desert. What will burn, will burn, and what will not will be taken if it is serviceable, or left in some remote place if it is not. And as for us, we continue on our path.’
Hakon said, ‘We continue as normal? Despite this?’
Grakk nodded. ‘You would prefer to wait here? Or turn back on our own? Yes, we continue as before, although I agree that we should increase our vigilance. The impor
tance of reaching our destination is as great as ever, if not greater, given the determination of our enemies to rid us of our young charge. And whoever sent these men will wait in vain for news, as our young friend here has ensured that there is no one to bear it. More immediately, I suggest you sleep what sleep you can in the hours of this night that remain, for we leave at dawn. But first…’ He nodded at Cannick, who tossed a scabbarded sword and a long knife to Brann.
They felt good in his hands, and he eased the sword clear enough of its scabbard to see that its blade was clean and its edge sharp. But he was confused. ‘For me? To keep?’
Cannick nodded with a smile and Grakk said, ‘Indeed. You earned it tonight. Not from the way you fought, which is an ability we already knew you had, but by the way you stopped, which we did not know you would do. And it would be ungrateful of us were we to deny you the arms to defend yourself especially as, thanks to you, our young friend, we have the liberty to sleep tonight with breath in our chests.’
Brann slid the sword back into its scabbard and stared at the fire that was starting to burn beyond the boundaries of the ancient settlement in the emptiness of the desert night. His voice was flat, cold. ‘They had to die.’
Hakon nodded his shaggy head. ‘That is true. They attacked as cowards, against helpless men.’ He grinned. ‘Or so they thought.’
Cannick grunted. ‘A decent strategy against a more numerous foe.’
Brann’s gaze turned to him. This man thought with sense. ‘That is true. They looked to gain an advantage.’
Hakon’s brows raised. ‘You agree with their tactics, but still you say they had to die?’
‘Of course.’ Brann stared again as the Deruul started to return from their work to tidy the mess he had left, silent and impassive as their torches picked out their progress from the darkness.
‘They did not enter by the gate. They should have shown respect.’
Chapter 7
He had ordered his chair moved to the balcony. Once the afternoon sun had moved out of sight, the combination of shade and breeze made for a soothing effect. It helped him to think.
The view was spectacular, but he had to remind himself of that. When your eyes had opened to it each morning for the number of years that his had, it was just the view. But here, on the balcony, with only the balustrade between him and the horizon, it was the vastness that drew him. The endless sweep of the sky and the unbroken flatness of the Deadlands, could combine to throw a sense of overwhelming size that let him drift from distractions. Even the scattered peaks that sat where land met sky in a suffusion that hid the point where one became the other were no larger than his thumbnail.
His eyes saw far, but when he closed them he saw farther. His mind envisioned a small party, inching their way across the vastness, closing on the other extreme.
‘You think they still press on?’
He was so accustomed to her sharing his thoughts – and appearing unannounced at his side – that he no longer was even mildly startled.
‘I do. Those sent after should have returned. Not even a single one has yet arrived to speak of defeat, let alone all of them crowing in triumph. Even were they all to be dead, had the boy been killed then what was left of his own party would have returned with the next caravan, for their quest would have had no purpose.’
‘You know for certain the hunters have not returned to he who sent them?’
‘Of course. It is he who supplies a helpful share of my information, though he knows it not.’
‘And you know that he who sent those who followed knew where to send them?’
‘Of course. It was I who alerted him, though he knows it not.’
She was unhappy. ‘You play a dangerous game.’
‘All my life.’
‘It is more than your life at stake in this game.’
He stood and shuffled the few steps to the balustrade, resting his hands on the wide stone sill. ‘You think me unaware of that, crone? If he cannot survive the tests, he will not be of use.’
‘Even a stacked deck can lose if enough hands are dealt. Do not let your stubbornness kill what might be our only chance.’
His fingers pressed against the stone and his voice was a snarl. ‘You dare instruct me, woman?’ But she was right. He sighed. ‘This hand, as you would say, lies on the table. But I do not intend to deal again until we see the faces of the cards before us.’
‘You have played this game all your life?’
‘In the halls of power, is there any other game?’
‘And you always win?’
‘I still live, do I not?’
****
For days without end the camels strode on with a capacity for relentless movement that would have inspired wonder had not the stupor of repetition without any glimmer of interest from elsewhere reduced it to commonplace routine.
Brann found he had grown accustomed to the heat. He did not welcome it but, like the movement of the camel beneath him, it became just there, nothing more. He sank into a trance of thoughtlessness, much like a waking sleep, while they travelled but, at the same time, he seemed to sense when they were due to stop at mid-day or in the evening. Routine must do that. In the City Below, he had started feeding a rat that had started sniffing around his cell. It did not take long for the animal to start appearing shortly before the time when his main food of the day was due to be brought to him. Day after day, it would appear with precise punctuality until it snapped its teeth at his hand as he offered it a scrap, and he dashed it against the wall.
Without warning the hills on the horizon started to grow in his vision. He was unaware of when the change had begun, but as he squinted his eyes, he became sure: they were definitely bigger, more defined. As the day wore on, he was able to see more. The terrain rose from the desert gradually to differing heights, but further back the view was speckled with taller, steep peaks. The camels’ steps, too, began to reveal a change as the sand had a firmer feel, as if it sat on something more solid. He considered the way his senses had adapted to feel through the tread of the animal beneath him. It was beneficial to know your abilities and capabilities, to have an awareness of yourself. Sometimes it was what kept you alive. Sometimes it already had.
It was another day and half of one more, though, before the ground rose beneath them and took them to the start of what seemed a new world, startling minds that had become accustomed to endless unvarying sand. And it was a change that was as abrupt as it was different. Black rock made jagged by tiny edges and points that seemed more numerous than the grains of sand they had passed across, sloped up before them at a shallow angle until it was the height of the great outer wall of the city they had left.Marlo reined up beside Brann. ‘I have heard of this place. The Deadlands are known as such for nothing lives there. These lands before us, though, are a different prospect. Not only does nothing live, but the land itself seeks to kill you. Rocks that cut, blasts of steam that melt the skin, smoke that chokes, all is danger there. There is no benefit to entering the Blacklands, and many reasons not to.’
‘But if the Deruul’s route takes us through there…?’
Marlo smiled. ‘It will not. It is from the stories of the Deruul that we learn of this place. They will not enter it by one pace – I forget their name for it, but they speak of the land itself holding an evil within it.’
Brann looked at the dark terrain with increased interest. At random points along its front, ravines great and small were gouged from the rock, some reaching as deep as the desert floor, as if an axe-wielding god had hacked at it in a haphazard frenzy. One such entrance to its mysterious interior lay before them, its sandy floor running straight and flat for the length of two good bowshots before it angled out of sight.
But they did not take up its invitation to enter. Instead, Grakk was in deep discussion with Icham and a small group of the older Deruul while the rest dismounted, easing stiff limbs and wetting dry mouths. There was much pointing, studying of the sun and drawing wit
h fingers in the sand before the Deruul leader shouted a brief command to his men and Grakk approached his own party.
‘We camp here for the night, and leave at dawn,’ he said simply.
Sophaya tugged her camel into a crouch to better reach her pack hanging by the saddle. ‘So do we near our destination, dear Grakk?’
‘The initial part of it.’Hakon frowned. ‘The initial part? Surely we either get to our destination or we are not there yet.’
‘For some destinations, you must pass a certain point to reach them. On this journey, there is one such point, and we are close to that.’
The big boy nodded, thinking. ‘And when we pass this point, we are close to where Brann can be helped?’ He received a nod. ‘And Brann will be helped there?’
‘If he can be helped anywhere, he can be helped there.’
‘And we haven’t forgotten Einarr and Konall?’
Grakk moved his camel close and clapped Hakon on one broad shoulder. ‘You are a good boy. No, we remember them, but we must deal with one obstacle at a time. And we need,’ he glanced over at Brann, ‘this young mind and his knowledge of the palace and its inhabitants to help our other two friends within.’
He made to move on, but Hakon hadn’t finished. ‘And Loku? We have unfinished business with him. More even than we had when we sailed into this shit-hole.’ He shot a look at Marlo and Sophaya. ‘No offence.’
Marlo grinned and Sophaya shrugged, unconcerned.
Grakk’s look darkened. ‘I fear our original objective in obtaining the Empire’s aid against Loku will not now be possible. However, that does not mean we do not now have new objectives as far as he is concerned.’
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