“The Elders talked with the soldiers, then came back to tell us that the strangers were from Low Branding. They were infantrymen, slow and stolid, with no horses, who must have marched on foot all the way across the Harrow Moors. They apologized for coming so close to our sacred lands, but they had known no other place and time where they could be sure to find us. They had come to make us an offer. As Chandlefort had hired whole hordes eight generations before, now they wished to enlist as much of the Cyan Cross Horde as would serve in the cohorts of Low Branding. They would pay us well for a summer’s service—they showed us a chest full of gold ingots that would be our advance payment.
“‘I do not trust these soldiers,’ Horde Chief Centaury said, scowling, to the gathered Horde. ‘Their captain has a bear-priest by his side, whispering in his ear. The Barleymill men have no love for us. I think they use Low Branding to disguise their plots. I think they plan to play some trick on the Steppes when our fighting men are far away. Or perhaps they want to throw away our warriors’ lives in some useless battle.’
“‘Traders say Low Branding’s war is weary and long,’ Elder Weld said. He was a white-haired, toothless man who wore smooth leather breeches from Garum and a necklace of copper disks that hung low on his chest. He had gone traveling for years among farm folk when he was young, and he had acquired some of their taste for soft and shiny things. ‘Perhaps they really need us? I think we are better than any farm-folk soldiers—they would be wise to hire us. We can buy more horses with the gold.’
“‘We can steal what horses we desire,’ the Horde Chief replied contemptuously. We all knew that he had little love for Elder Weld and his foreign ways. ‘Gold is nothing. This is a noose for a rabbit. Are we foolish enough to enter it?’
“‘We are strong,’ Elder Weld said. ‘If they try to betray us, we will kill them—for we are the Cyan Cross Horde, who gathered the Hordes and defeated four legions, and we are a match for any army in the world. If they are honest—well, I do not despise gold. Gold can be made into jewelry. Gold can buy dyed cloths. We will be the pride of the Steppes when we have earned those ingots with our mighty deeds.’
“Back and forth the argument went among all the men and women, and no agreement appeared. We warriors of the Cyan Cross professed disdain for farm-folk trinkets, but we dearly loved the way the ingots glinted. The history-singers said that Cyan Cross had once earned whole pounds of gold from Chandlefort—that was how we had built the temple on Bryony Hill. But to work for bear-priests? That would degrade the Horde. But to worry about danger from farm folk? That would also degrade the Horde. Elders and young, men and women, were all equally split. We wrangled till long after sunset.
“‘Enough,’ Horde Chief Centaury at last commanded. ‘We cannot make the decision tonight and we do not need to. The Shaman-Mother looks in Bryony Pool at the equinox tomorrow, and Our Lady will grant her a vision to guide us in our wrangles. We will continue this debate the day after the equinox, with Our Lady’s wisdom as our aid. Let us go to our tents now: We must wake early for the equinox rites, and we will commit disrespect to Our Lady if we say them yawning. But this decision I have made: Whether or not we take the gold, we will stay here long enough to purify the Hill of these outsiders’ polluting presence. Some of you warriors, keep watch over the Low Branding soldiers.’ He waved a hand in my direction. We drew lots for sentry duty. It fell out that my father, Dapple, drew picket duty, and I was sent back to my tent to sleep.
“I still slept in the family tent with my mother, Roan; my younger brother, Clary; and baby Mullein, my parents’ only daughter and my mother’s favorite. My older brother, Emlets, was already married, with a tent of his own and an infant son. I had my eyes on—well, any number of sweet beauties, but I would get no kisses from them till I had been blooded in battle. I did not entirely mind. I was young yet, and I confess that the prospect of kissing was still terrifying.
“I suffered bad dreams. Nightmares assaulted me of screaming and blood and roaring, and I tossed and turned. Bears trampled across the world and there was a greater roaring than ever, and I was no longer asleep, it was not a dream. There were screams throughout the camp, and flames, and the terrible growl of bears.
“I stumbled through the flap of the tent. The moon had set, but there was enough firelight to see by. There were soldiers everywhere, hellish horsemen in Low Branding livery, with burning brands to torch our tents and set our poor horses afire, and swords to slash at any man they saw, and at any woman or child. There were not twenty soldiers, but hundreds, thousands perhaps. They had been hiding—where? I have thought long about this. I think they lurked in the Harrow Moors. They would have ridden forth at sunset, reached us at moonset, and then the slaughter could begin. They must have killed every picket at once, for we heard no warning. My father must have died in the first minute of the assault.
“Bears raced among us, tearing, biting, mauling, scratching. They growled and roared, and ice ran through my blood. If not for the bears, I think we could have fought back. The Horde would have been hurt, grievously hurt, but we could have survived. The bears turned us from warriors into mewling cowards. I trembled and cried, and I could not grasp my spear and sword. I saw others likewise, shaking statues too terrified to fight. The bears displayed no mercy. They slew my friends before my eyes. They killed Emlets. At least my brother had a sword in his hand and killed one horseman before the bears butchered him.
“My mother, Roan, slapped my cheek with the flat of a blade and shook me roughly from my terror. She had Mullein in one arm, a dagger in the other, and Clary at her side. He blubbered as I did and clung to her leggings. ‘Sorrel, follow me,’ my mother shouted fiercely. Then she ducked and wove into the chaos, among the carnage, and I chased after her. I was a helpless boy, no warrior. I fled at my mother’s heels.
“She took us east through the dying Horde. Other families fled, while bears and soldiers pursued us all. My family was lucky, not brave. The soldiers did not see us in the flickering patches of darkness between the raging fires, and the bears found other prey. We lived.
“Then we came to the outer lines and there was no escape. A further ring of horsemen waited around our camp. Other refugees ran for freedom and horsemen came to cut them down. Some of the Cyan Cross still had their steeds, but they were no help. The soldiers rode Phoenixians, and they could outpace even our steppe ponies. They killed and they killed, and I knew they meant to destroy all of the Cyan Cross Horde. It was slaughter for slaughter’s sake.
“We had no choice—death behind us, death in front of us—we had to run. And we were lucky again. Some other family ran a second before us, and the horsemen near us bunched up by these first refugees. Only one laggard remained to keep the line.
“He saw us, of course. He raised his sword and galloped toward us. He thought we were easy prey. He was almost right. He thought I was the dangerous one and he charged me, but it was Mother, with Mullein in her arms, who leapt under his horse’s belly and hamstrung the beast. I ducked his first swipe and then I did not need to worry. The horse collapsed, screaming, and the soldier fell. His leg was crushed underneath his steed.
“‘Run!’ Mother shouted, and indeed we ran. I was a fleet-footed rabbit, a dazzling coward, and I ate up the dark turf. Horsemen and bears came after us, but I did not turn to look, for fear they would catch up with me. Mother and Clary and Mullein fell behind—then I did turn. I thought to take Mullein in my arms. My mother howled and gestured to me to go. I think I should not have obeyed her, but I was afraid to die and I fled. Once more I turned my back on my family and I ran till I splashed into a stream. Then I stumbled upstream, hoping the water would hide my scent from the bears. At last I came to a wet thicket, girdled with thorns, and I embraced it as my only hope. I wriggled between the branches and felt their sharp tips score my arms and legs and body. Only when I was at the heart of the thicket did I cease my flight and look for my family.
“I heard no one nearby, only far roaring and c
rackling flames. I saw only darkness and the bonfire that had been the Cyan Cross Horde.
“Somehow in the red dawn I fell asleep. I woke at noon in the cool muck, terribly weak. Through my bars of branches I saw that I had not come very far at all, less than half a mile from the camp. My thicket was on a little rise of ground, so I could see all through the desolated campsite and up Bryony Hill. I expected there would be men beating the earth for me and the other refugees of the Cyan Cross Horde, but they did not bother. I think there were no other refugees but me and that the soldiers did not realize they had lost me.
“The soldiers had finished their killing and their looting. They sat among our dead and cooked themselves lunch and gambled with one another, with our paltry possessions as their stakes. I remember smelling roasted horse meat and how my mouth watered. The soldiers did not seem discommoded by the carnage around them.
“The bear-priests had chained together the few remaining of Cyan Cross—all women and children, a few dozen at most. They wailed, but the bear-priests only tied the chains tighter. I recognized the Shaman-Mother among them by her white robes. I looked for my family, but I could not make out faces at that distance. The bear-priests cracked the whip and their prisoners, their slaves, began to march toward Barleymill.
“Up on Bryony Hill the bears were pulling apart our temple, stone by stone. Soldiers were setting up a log fort beside them. Where our white marble had shone, bear-priests erected an obsidian altar. I feared, I knew, that it would soon be stained heart red, heart brown.
“So the day passed. The next day most men and bears departed, bar a small garrison busy carpentering. I remained in my thicket, too fearful to realize that I was starving. That night I squirmed out of my refuge and fled into the steppes, more dead than alive.
“What happened after is very strange. I had thought the bear-priests had destroyed us so as to begin a conquest of the Steppes, but no further armies came eastward. The bear-priests have built a temple to Lord Ursus on Bryony Hill, and around the temple they have built a fort, which they garrison strongly, but the Steppes are still free and Tansyard. The other Hordes do nothing, only now they shy clear of both Barleymill and Bryony Hill. They do not want to risk destruction.
“Why the bear-priests attacked the Cyan Cross Horde and no one else, I do not know, but I think they wanted Bryony Hill very much. Why else would they try so hard to kill us all? They must have had some reason to destroy the Cyan Cross Horde. I cannot accept that it was death for death’s sake. That would be too horrible.
“There was no place for me on the Steppes. The Hordes would say, if I were a warrior, I should have died that night fighting. The Hordes would say, if I was a coward, I deserved to die. I thought so too, perhaps, but I still wanted my revenge. And so I left the Steppes for Chandlefort—arrogant Chandlefort, callous Chandlefort, but unmurderous Chandlefort, that still follows Our Lady and does not worship death. There I found employment as messenger boy. I am still no warrior, but I have been of some use in the fight against Low Branding and the bear-priests.
“And now I help you, Clovermead, because you try to save your father from the bear-priests. I think you are braver than I was when my family died. I very much want you to succeed. I will risk accompanying a bear-child, in hopes of saving her father.
“I miss my family very much.”
Clovermead was crying. “I’m sorry, Sorrel. I had no idea. I shouldn’t have asked you to talk. I never dreamed—it isn’t like that in the Heptameron. I never read of anything so awful.”
“I could not have imagined it either,” said Sorrel. “Sometimes I try to forget that massacre, Clovermead. I owe it to my family to remember how they lived and how they died, but it is often tempting to let them slip away, like a dream. That would hurt less.”
“I wish I could make it so it had never happened,” said Clovermead. “I’m so sorry.”
“Our Lady is in your heart,” said Sorrel. He made the crescent sign and gripped Clovermead’s hand thankfully in his. “I will always remember that of you.”
“There shouldn’t be such things,” said Clovermead. “People shouldn’t hurt so.” Sorrow for Sorrel filled up her heart and for a while there was no room in her for the whispers of the bear tooth.
Chapter Twelve
Army of Low Branding
The snow was two inches deeper the next morning. High cirrus clouds filled the morning sky and hid the sun. Their wispy billows glowed brilliant white with the sun’s refracted light. Underneath the glaring sky Sorrel and Clovermead rode around a wide, ice-capped lake filled with whirring sleighs traveling across the ice and edged all around with little villages and farms. Armed patrols on sleigh and horseback watched them pass and shook their spears at Shilling when he came too close to the lake edge. Here and there Clovermead saw burned houses through torn-off gates.
“Those destructions are not recent,” said Sorrel, pointing to some blackened ruins. “I have heard from Yellowjackets that there was much fighting in the Lakelands the first year of the war. Yellowjackets and Low Branding men wandered across the Lakelands, and each pillaged what they wanted. The peasants formed a militia next winter and fought against both sides that spring. They were inexperienced fighters, but they became better quickly, and they achieved most excellent skill at boat fighting. Yellowjackets, at least, no longer care to come to the Lakelands.”
“Who do they think rules them?”
Sorrel laughed. “That is an excellent question! I am told that Lady Cindertallow often asks it in the most nettled of tones. I suspect the Mayor of Low Branding makes similar queries. In the Lakelands they answer these questions politely but most vaguely. They assure each questioner that they are loyal. To whom? The reply is noncommittal, evasive. Chandlefort has not pressed them on the issue lately.”
In late morning they left the Lakelands. The south edge of the lake curved away to the east in a flatland covered by a low, thick forest of leafless beeches, maples, apples, and elms. Some miles later the trees thinned out, and soon Sorrel and Clovermead were riding along the borderlands between the forest and the plain. The dry plain was enormous, featureless, and almost bare of snow. The sere cold crackled into their lungs, and a keening wind whipped through the plain’s brown stubble of dead grass and flung frozen dust into their eyes.
“This is the edge of the true Salt Heath,” said Sorrel. “The farm where we took Shilling was also on the Heath, was also dry land, but that was the north Heath, not one smidgeon so harsh a place. Chandlefort occupies the largest oasis in the true Heath. That beautiful castle is easy to defend, for thirst is always its ally.”
“Does anything beautiful ever grow here?” Clovermead stared at the rocky rubble that littered the thin, scabby soil of the plain. “This is a feeble excuse for grass, which would disgust a sheep.”
“Orange poppies bloom during the spring rains, the years that it does rain. While they bloom, this grass is lemon yellow, and together they make the Heath look handsome.” Sorrel grimaced. “I would not live here by choice. The Steppes are lush; this is withered. Even your Timothy Vale, mountainous and closed in, I like more than the Heath. Only natives praise the Heath—and they are sometimes halfhearted.”
“It’s horrible,” said Clovermead firmly. “It’s as if—”
As if a great tooth had sucked the blood out of the land? said the tooth. You are right, Clovermead. I like this place. In time I will make all Linstock look like this. The tooth growled with quiet anticipation. Clovermead shuddered.
In early afternoon they came to a road. A few hundred feet west of the forest’s edge, by a small pool no more than ten feet wide, Snuff’s trail intersected the broad stone highway that ran from Low Branding to Chandlefort. A rose granite spire twenty feet high marked the intersection.
The earth around the pool had been churned to mud by hoofprints, footprints, and cart tracks. The begrimed water roiled with dark clouds, and the few plants at the water’s edge had been gnawed to the nub. Charred logs and
scattered mutton bones straggling for hundreds of yards along the road back toward Low Branding bore further witness of a recent encampment.
“The Army of Low Branding was here,” said Sorrel. “It contains four, five, six thousand men, by the size of these garbage heaps. They were here no longer ago than yesterday—I see the embers still glowing in their fires.”
“I can’t smell Father or Snuff,” Clovermead said angrily. “The stink of the army is too strong.” She snuffled at the air. “I smell bears. Hundreds of them.”
“I hope they are far ahead of us?” asked Sorrel.
Clovermead shook her head. “They were here today. Bears and men and horses all jumbled together. And I smell the stink of blood. Sorrel, can you make Shilling go faster? I’m worried about Father.”
Shilling galloped west on bare stones stripped of snow by tramping feet. The sun set with wintry speed, a pale blaze ahead of them all through the brief afternoon. The land sloped upward toward a high plateau. Clovermead saw a pair of falcons soar in high updrafts, but otherwise the Heath was bare and lifeless.
As twilight deepened the slope began to gentle. Clovermead heard tramping and neighing and trumpets echoing faintly over the rocks. Sorrel groaned something in Tansyard, half a curse and half a prayer, and made the crescent sign. Clovermead recoiled from the intensity of the stench ahead of them. They rode over the crest of the slope and onto the plateau itself. Spread out before them, a little ways distant, was the Mayor’s army.
The soldiers plodded in a thin line half a mile long. A thousand guttering torches clawed back the darkness and illumined the marching army. The standard of Low Branding, crossed golden scimitars over a silver fish thrusting up from a sapphire river, fluttered weakly at the army’s head. A score of smaller regimental banners followed behind that first standard, each emblem emblazoned in gold, silver, and sapphire. Each regiment in the line marched in a tight, distinct clump.
In the Shadow of the Bear Page 14