The river lizards that had been basking on the banks for most of the day had begun rising up on their stubby legs and slinking their way into the water, warily eyed by the herons and storks stalking the reedy shallows.
Nights in this country, Tanakalian suspected, would not be pleasant. He could imagine all manner of horrid, poisonous creatures creeping, crawling and flying in the sweltering, steamy darkness. The sooner they climbed into the mountain passes the better he would feel. This notion of insanely inimical nature was new to him, and most unwelcome.
His attention was drawn back to Chancellor Rava and Conquestor Avalt as the unlikely pair—both riding chairs affixed to the saddled shoulders of four burly slaves slowly climbing the slope—rocked back and forth, like kings on shaky thrones. Others flanked them with feather fans, keeping insects at bay. A train of a dozen more trailed the two men. This time, at least, there were no armoured guards—nothing so obvious, although Tanakalian suspected that more than a few of those supposed slaves were in fact bodyguards.
‘Solemn greetings!’ called the Chancellor, waving one limp hand. He then snapped something to his porters and they set down his chair. He stepped daintily on to the ground, adjusting his silken robes, and was joined moments later by Avalt. They strode up to the Perish.
‘A flawlessly executed landing—congratulations, Mortal Sword. Your soldiers are indeed superbly trained.’
‘Kind words, Chancellor,’ Krughava rumbled in reply. ‘Strictly speaking, however, they are not my soldiers. They are my brothers and sisters. We are as much a priesthood as we are a military company.’
‘Of course,’ murmured Rava, ‘and this is certainly what makes you unique on this continent.’
‘Oh?’
Conquestor Avalt smiled and provided explanation, ‘You arrive possessing a code of conduct unmatched by any native military force. We seek to learn much from you—matters of discipline and behaviour that we can apply to our own people to the benefit of all.’
‘It distresses me,’ said Krughava, ‘that you hold your own soldiers in such low opinion, Conquestor.’
Tanakalian squinted as if he’d caught a glare of sunlight from some distant weapon, and hoped that this seemingly unconscious expression hid his smile.
When he looked back he saw Avalt’s own eyes widening within their cage of dyed scars, and then thinning. ‘You misunderstand, Mortal Sword.’
Rava said, ‘You have perchance already sensed something of the incessant intrigue compounding alliances and agreements of mutual protection between the border nations, Mortal Sword. Such things, while regrettable, are necessary. The Saphii do not trust the Akrynnai. The Akrynnai do not trust the Awl nor the D’rhasilhani. And the Bolkando trust none of them. Foreign armies, we have all long since learned, cannot be held to the same high comportment as one holds one’s own forces.’ He spread his hands. ‘Conquestor Avalt was simply expressing our unexpected pleasure in finding in you such unimpeachable honour.’
‘Ah,’ said Krughava, with all the percipient wit of a cliff goat.
Avalt was struggling to master his anger, and Tanakalian knew that the Mortal Sword—for all her seemingly oblivious insensitivity—was well taking note of this interesting flaw in the commander overseeing Bolkando Kingdom’s combined military might. A commander with a temper and, evidently, poor discipline in mastering it—particularly in front of strangers and potential enemies—was one who would squander his soldiers to answer some insult, real or imagined. He was, therefore, both more dangerous and less threatening, the former for the risk of his doing the unexpected, the precipitous; and the latter for what would likely be a blunt, unsubtle execution, fuelled by an overwhelming need for satisfaction.
Tanakalian ran through these details in his mind, forcing himself to inwardly articulate the lessons that he knew Krughava had comprehended in an instant. Now that the Destriant was gone, it fell to the Shield Anvil to seek a path as close as possible to the Mortal Sword, to find a way into her mind, to how she thought and those duties that drove her.
During these moments of reflection, Chancellor Rava had been speaking: ‘… unexpected tragedies, Mortal Sword, which have put us in a most awkward position. It is necessary, therefore, that we take measured pause here, whilst your formidable forces are poised outside the kingdom’s boundaries.’
Krughava had cocked her head. ‘Since you have not yet described these tragedies, Chancellor, I can only observe that, from my experience, most tragedies are unexpected, and invariably lead to awkwardness. Since it seems that the fact that we have not yet crossed into your kingdom is, for you, a salient point, am I to assume that your “unexpected tragedies” have in some way jeopardized our agreement?’
Now it was the Chancellor’s turn to fail in disguising his irritation. ‘You Perish,’ he now said, tone brittle, ‘have acknowledged a binding alliance with the Khundryl Burned Tears who are guests of the kingdom at the moment—guests who have ceased to behave in a civilized fashion.’
‘Indeed? What leads you to this assessment, Chancellor?’
‘This—this assessment?’
As Rava spluttered, speechless, Conquestor Avalt spoke sardonically: ‘How might you assess the following, Mortal Sword? The Khundryl have broken out of their settlement and are now raiding throughout the countryside. Burning and looting farms, stealing herds, putting to the torch forts and hamlets and indeed an entire town. But I am remiss in speaking only of material depredations. I forgot to mention scores of murdered soldiers and thousands of slaughtered civilians. I failed in citing the rapes and butchering of children—’
‘Enough!’ Krughava’s bellow sent all the Bolkando flinching back.
The Chancellor was first to recover. ‘Is this to be the manner of your vaunted honour, Mortal Sword?’ he demanded, red-faced, eyes bright. ‘Can you not comprehend our newfound caution—nay, our distrust? Have we been led to expect such treachery—’
‘You go too far,’ said Krughava, and Tanakalian saw the faint curl of a smile on her lips—a detail that took his breath away.
It seemed to exert a similar effect upon the Bolkando dignitaries, as Rava paled and Avalt settled a mailed hand on his sword.
‘What,’ demanded Rava in a rasp, ‘does that mean?’
‘You describe a local history of internecine treachery and incessant betrayal, sirs, so much so as to be part of your very natures, and then you express horror and outrage at the supposed betrayal of the Khundryl. Your protestations are melodramatic, sirs. False in their extremity. I begin to see in you Bolkando a serpent delighting in the cleverness of its own forked tongue.’ She paused in the shocked silence, and then added, ‘When I invited you into the illusion of my ignorance, sirs, you slithered with eager glee. Who here among us, then, is the greater fool?’
Tanakalian gave credit to both men as he saw the rapid reassessment betrayed in their features. After a tense moment, Krughava continued in a quieter tone, ‘Sirs, I have known Warleader Gall of the Khundryl Burned Tears for some time now. In the course of a long ocean voyage, no duplicities of character remain hidden. You assert the uniqueness of the Grey Helms, and in this you clearly reveal to me your lack of understanding with respect to the Khundryl. The Burned Tears, sirs, are in fact a warrior cult. Devoted to the very heart of their souls to a legendary warleader. This warleader, Coltaine, was of such stature, such honour, that he earned worship not among his allies, but among his putative enemies. Such as the Khundryl Burned Tears.’ She paused, and then said, ‘I am assured, therefore, that Warleader Gall and his people were provoked. Possessed of admirable forbearance, as I know him to be, Gall would have bowed as a sapling to the wind. Until such time as the insults demanded answer.
‘They have raided and conducted wholesale looting? From this detail I conclude Bolkando merchants and the King’s agents sought to take advantage of the Khundryl, imposing usurious increases in the price of essential supplies. Furthermore, you state that they broke out of their settlement. What manner of settlement requires a
violent exit? The only one that comes to mind is one under siege. Accordingly, and in consideration of such provocation, I reaffirm the alliance between the Khundryl Burned Tears and the Grey Helms. If enemies to us you choose to be, sirs, then we must consider that we are now at war. Attend to your brigade, Conquestor—it is tactically imperative that we obliterate your presence here prior to invading your kingdom.’
For all his doubt and suspicions and, indeed, fears, Tanakalian was not averse to revelling in pride at this moment; seeing the effect of the Mortal Sword’s words upon the Chancellor and the Conquestor he felt savage pleasure. Play games with us, will you? The Khundryl may sting, but the Perish shall rend and tear.
They would not call Krughava’s bluff, for it was no bluff, and they both clearly knew it.
Nor, Tanakalian knew, would they accede to a state of war—not here against the Perish, and not, by extension, against the Burned Tears. The fools had miscalculated, badly miscalculated.
And now would begin the desperate renewal of negotiations, and the footing that had heretofore been on a matching level—as courtesy demanded—was level no longer.
After all, you may at this moment face two bridling, angry armies, my friends, and find yourselves shaking with terror.
Wait until you meet the Bonehunters.
He watched as, following hasty reiterations of a desire to work things through peacefully, the Chancellor and the Conquestor retreated back down the slope—not even bothering with the ridiculous chairs. The slaves stumbled after them in a fan-waving mob.
Beside him, Krughava sighed, and then said, ‘It occurs to me, sir, that the Bolkando expected the Khundryl to prove little more than a minor irritant, confined to the region surrounding their settlement. Easily contained, or, indeed, quickly driven over the border into the Wastelands. That notion led, inevitably, to the conceit that we here could be isolated and dealt with at their leisure.’
‘Then an ambush was intended all along?’
‘Or the threat thereof, to win further concessions.’
‘Well,’ said Tanakalian, ‘if the Khundryl will neither remain close to their settlement nor retreat over the border, then it follows that but one course remains.’
She nodded. ‘As a barbed spear,’ she said, ‘Gall will lead his people into the very heart of the kingdom.’ She rolled her shoulders in a rustle of chain and buckles. ‘Shield Anvil, inform the legion commands that we are to march two bells before dawn—’
‘Even if that means we are pursued by the Bolkando escort?’
She bared her teeth. ‘Have you gauged those troops, sir? They could be naked and not keep up with us. Their baggage train alone is thrice the size of their combatants in column. That,’ she pronounced, ‘is an army used to going nowhere.’
She set off, then, to beat down the two Bolkando delegates, from flickering daggers to misshapen lumps of lead.
Tanakalian, on the other hand, made his way to the Perish camp.
The insects were maddening, and from the rushes lining the river birds screamed.
The rain thrashed down, making the world grey and turning the stony track into a foaming stream. The tall black boles of the trees to either side loomed into view and then receded in rippling waves as Yan Tovis guided her horse down the now treacherous trail. Her waxed cloak was drawn tight about her, the hood pulled over her helm. Two days and three nights of this and she was chilled and soaked through. Ever since she had departed the Cities Road, five leagues from Dresh, cutting northward to where she had left her people, league after league of this forest had begun to weigh upon her. Her descent to the coast was also a journey into the past, civilization fading into ghostly hopes in her wake. Patches of clear-cut meadow, bordered by snarled bomas of cut branches, hacked brush and root stumps, the triple ruts of log-tracks wending in and out; the rubbish of old camps and the ash heaps and trenches of charcoal makers: these marked the brutal imposition of Dresh’s hunger and need.
As with the islands of Katter Bight, desolation was the promise. As she had ridden through the old timber camps, she had seen the soil erosion, the deep rocky channels cutting through every clearing. And when in Dresh, resigning her commission, she had noted the nervousness among the garrison troops. Following a royal decree halting logging operations, there had been riots—much of the city’s wealth came from the forest, after all, and while the prohibition was a temporary one, during which the King’s agents set about devising a new system—one centred on sustainability—the stink of panic clogged the city streets.
Yan Tovis was not surprised that King Tehol had begun challenging the fundamental principles and practices of Lether, but she suspected that he would soon find himself a solitary, beleaguered voice of reason. Even common sense was an enemy to the harvesters of the future. The beast that was civilization ever faced forward, and in making its present world it devoured the world to come. It was an appalling truth that one’s own children could be so callously sacrificed to immediate comforts, yet this was so and it had always been so.
Dreamers were among the first to turn their backs on historical truths. King Tehol would be swept aside, drowned in the inexorable tide of unmitigated growth. No one, after all, can stand between the glutton and the feast.
She wished him well, even as she knew he would fail.
In the midst of pelting rain she had left the camps behind, taking one of the old wood-bison migration routes through virgin forest. The mud of the ancient track swarmed with leeches and she was forced to dismount every bell or so to tug the mottled black and brown creatures from her horse’s legs, until the path led down on to a sinkhole basin that proved to be a salt-trap—the plague of leeches ended abruptly and, as she continued down-slope, did not return.
Signs of the old dwellers began to appear—perhaps they were Shake remnants, perhaps they belonged to a people now forgotten. She saw the slumping humps of round huts covered in wax-leaved vines. She saw on the massive trunks of the most ancient trees crumbled visages, carved by hands long since rotted to nothing. The wooden faces were smeared in black-slime, moss and lumps of sickly fungi. She halted her mount beside one such creation and stared at it through the rain for a long time. She could think of no finer symbol of impermanence. The blunted expression, its pits of sorrow that passed for eyes: these things haunted her long after she had left the ruined settlement.
The track eventually merged with a Shake road that had once joined two coastal villages, and this was the path she now took.
The rain had become a deluge, and its hissing rose to a roar on her hood, a curtain of water sheeting down in front of her eyes.
Her horse halted suddenly and she lifted her head to see a lone rider blocking her path.
He seemed a figure sculpted in flowing water. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, loud, unexpectedly harsh. ‘Do you truly imagine that you can follow us, brother?’
Yedan Derryg made no reply—his typical statement of obstinacy.
She wanted to curse him, but knew that even that would be useless. ‘You killed the witches and warlocks. Pully and Skwish are not enough. Do you understand what you have forced upon me, Yedan?’
He straightened in his saddle at that. Even in the gloom she saw his jaws bunching as he chewed for a time on his reply, before saying, ‘You cannot. You must not. Make the journey, sister, upon the mortal path.’
‘Because it is the only one you can follow, banished as you are.’
But he shook his head. ‘The road you seek is but a promise. Never attempted. A promise, Yan Tovis. Will you risk the lives of our people upon such a thing?’
‘You have left me no choice.’
‘Take the mortal path, as you said you would. Eastward to Bluerose and thence across the sea—’
She wanted to scream at him. Instead, she bared her teeth. ‘You damned fool, Yedan. Have you seen the camp of our—my—people? The population of the whole island—old prisoners and their families, merchants and hawkers, cut-throats and pirates—everyone joined
us! Not even including the Shake, there are close to ten thousand Letherii refugees in my camp! What am I to do with them all? How do I feed them?’
‘They are not your responsibility, Twilight. Disperse them—the islands are very nearly under water now—this crisis belongs to King Tehol—to Lether.’
‘You forget,’ she snapped, ‘Second Maiden proclaimed its independence. And made me Queen. The moment we arrived on the mainland, we became invaders.’
He cocked his head. ‘It is said the King is a compassionate man—’
‘He may well be, but how will everyone else think—all those people whose lands we must cross? When we beg for food and shelter? When our hunger grasps tight our souls, so that begging becomes demands? The northern territories have not yet recovered from the Edur War—fields lie fallow; the places where sorcery was unleashed now seethe with nightmare creatures and poisonous plants. I will not descend upon King Tehol’s most fragile subjects with fifteen thousand desperate trespassers!’
‘Take me back, then,’ Yedan said. ‘Your need for me—’
‘I cannot! You are a Witchslayer! You would be torn to pieces!’
‘Then find a worthy mate—a king—’
‘Yedan Derryg, move aside. I will speak with you no longer.’
He collected his reins and made way for her to pass. ‘The mortal path, sister. Please.’
Coming alongside, she raised a gloved hand as if to strike him, then lowered it and kicked her horse forward. Feeling his gaze upon her back was not enough to twist her round in her saddle. The weight of his disapproval settled on her shoulders, and with a faint shock she discovered that it was not entirely unfamiliar. Perhaps, as a child … well, some traits refused to go away, no matter the span of years. The notion made her even more miserable.
A short time later she caught the rank smell of cookfires dying in the rain.
My people, my realm, I am home.
Pithy and Brevity sat on a rolled-up, half-buried log at what used to be the highwater mark, their bare feet in the lukewarm water of the sea’s edge. The story went that this precious, magical mix of fresh rain and salty surf was a cure for all manner of foot ailments, including bad choices that sent one walking in entirely the wrong direction. Of course, life being what it is, you can’t cure what you ain’t done yet, though it never hurts to try.
Dust of Dreams Page 27