‘I don’t understand, sir – you want us to put this on his wounds?’
Rhissa took the jar from her son. ‘Why would you have us treat this man if he’s a killer?’
‘He won’t attack you or your boy,’ Morn said. ‘It’s not his way. He’s unlikely to survive, but if he does, he’ll go back to his people, or perhaps just disappear into the mountains and live alone.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Tam said again. ‘Don’t you hate him for killing your teacher?’
Morn ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Hate is a heavy load to carry around with you. Rangieri are travellers by trade and by nature, and a traveller cannot afford to carry wasted burdens.’
He rose to his feet and I could see the anger was still there, burning underneath his skin.
‘You’d like the Rangieri, Falcio,’ he said to me as he set off down the empty street. ‘They’re full of stupid sayings like that.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Deserters
Men and women of all ages trudged along the craggy trail that wound its unrelenting, monotonous way through the sparse grass and over the rocks. They moved so slowly that further up the line they looked more like distance markers than people.
‘You soldiers?’ an old man asked, ambling up behind us, his walking stick providing a clacking counterpoint to the slap of his thin-soled shoes on the rough ground.
‘Just labourers, looking for work or food,’ I replied. ‘Or both.’
‘Sure. Sure you are.’
I gave the old man my best attempt at a menacing glare. Judging by the easy smile he offered in return, it hadn’t been particularly persuasive. Morn could pass well enough, but Kest, Brasti and I didn’t make convincing villagers. We’d had to leave our horses back in Den Chapier with Rhissa and Tam, although Arsehole had promptly run off to who knows where, no doubt in hot pursuit of a particularly intriguing butterfly. I hoped he’d find his way back at some point. We’d hidden our greatcoats in our packs before we’d joined the long line of those who’d left their villages and were heading for Avares, like pilgrims in search of a newer, better God to worship. The heavy woollen cloaks we now wore felt flimsy and awkward in comparison, hardly more than blankets tied at the neck with cord to keep them from falling off. I felt horribly exposed, both to the increasing cold as we plodded our way to higher altitudes, and to the stares of those around us.
‘Look like soldiers to me,’ the old man went on. His own cloak was practically threadbare, and I wondered how he planned to make it through the mountains. Those born and bred in the north must be better able to tolerate the cold than I could.
‘Labourers,’ Brasti said. ‘You know how I know? Because I’m listening to you flap your mouth and it’s quickly becoming labourous.’
‘He means laborious,’ Kest corrected.
The old man’s laugh followed us as we walked around a boulder that must have fallen from the mountain eons before. Brasti had a way of setting people at ease that I really envied at times like these. He would have made a half-decent spy, if not for the fact that he’d likely have walked around bragging about being a spy all the time.
‘A little help here?’ the old man called out, and I looked back to see the end of his walking staff was caught between two rocks. ‘Thought I saw something shiny in there. Damn fool that I am, I poked my stick inside. Now it’s stuck.’
Kest gave the old man a shoulder to lean on while Morn pulled the staff free. ‘Best not to poke at things,’ he said, handing it back before coming over to where I was waiting.
‘Fair enough,’ the old man said, rushing to catch up to us, ‘but since you helped me out of a little jam, let me help you avoid one: when we get to the border, just tell them the truth – that you’re former soldiers.’
‘We’re lab—’ Brasti began.
‘Won’t they kill us if they think we were soldiers?’ I asked. Telling people we were just farm workers clearly wasn’t going to work. We could try to act a bit, maybe attempt talking like labourers, but the chances were we wouldn’t be able to keep it up. Better to go with a lie that fit people’s expectations.
‘Not if you’re truthful with the bordermen,’ the old man said. ‘A soldier’s back is just as strong as a farmer’s, and there’s plenty of hungry veterans struggling after their discharge who’ve headed into Avares. That what happened to you four?’
My first instinct was to just agree with his assessment and leave it there, but that might have made us look too eager to follow the explanation he’d given us, so I embellished a bit. ‘We weren’t discharged, well, not exactly . . . damned captain decided he could make us tend his fields if he said our unit needed to stay together. That’s why we said we’re labourers.’
‘Son of a bitch. How can he get away with that?’
‘There were no generals left,’ Kest said, picking up the story. ‘And no Duke. Who’s going to tell him otherwise?’
‘So . . . I don’t mean any offence, but doesn’t that make you . . . ?’
‘Deserters?’
He nodded a little cautiously.
‘No. It’s like I told you, we’re just labourers.’
The old man gave a laugh. ‘Fair enough, fair enough. Still, though, best to just tell the warriors in Avares that you’re former soldiers. There’s a phrase they use in that rough tongue of theirs: “Tota valha, maksa verta”.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘“The truth will set you free, the lie will cost you blood”.’ The old man paused a moment to lift a flask to his lips. ‘The Avareans don’t take kindly to deceivers and spies.’
Brasti shrugged it off. ‘Well, I’ve never been a soldier and I don’t plan to be. I’m a poacher, born and bred.’
That statement had the virtue of being the truth and looking at Brasti, the old man believed it readily. ‘You should probably lie, then.’
‘Lie? I thought you said—’
‘The bordermen hate poachers worse than liars.’
That set off one of Brasti’s favourite rants, the one Kest and I like to call ‘Requiem for the Sainted Poacher’. It has no particular tune, the words are largely incomprehensible and it can go on for several hours. On the positive side, Brasti’s determination to convert the old man banished any questions he might still have had about Brasti’s background and, by extension, our own. We were soldiers, right enough, and although we might not be particularly honourable, we were clearly nothing to be concerned about.
‘Hells of a war that was,’ the old man said, probably more to change the subject from Brasti harping on about ancestral hunting rights than out of any genuine interest.
‘I imagine all wars are hellish,’ I said.
‘Maybe. I’m no soldier, never have been, but seems to me, we’ve never come so close to ruin as when that bitch decided she wanted to make the world her own. Saints’ praise to the man who one day puts the tip of a sword through her heart. Doubt I’ll live to see it, mind you.’
‘You never know,’ I said, giving myself a moment to savour the idea. Give me one chance, and with it, one moment of perfect clarity. Give me that, you Gods and Saints, and I’ll rid the world of half its evil in one strike. ‘Perhaps that day will come sooner than you expect.’
The old man clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Ha! Look at you now. Maybe we’ve got a hero here with us, eh?’
‘Not me,’ I said, cursing myself for showing my true desires . . .
‘Ah, I can see it now: you’ll ride south on a fine horse, ride right through the gates of Castle Aramor and past the bastard Trattari.’ He spread his arms in a ludicrous impression of a fencer. ‘Then you’ll bound into the throne room where you’ll cut the little bitch’s head off in one clean strike.’
I felt Kest’s hand on my arm before I could even make sense of the old man’s words. Aline. He’s talking about Aline . . .
Whether to distract attention from me or simply because he never pays any attention to the dangers in such talk, Brasti said, ‘You know, that’s the King’s true heir you’re talking about.’
The old man spat. ‘That’s for the King’s heir.’
A worn-down family passing us looked up momentarily at his words. ‘Come on now, she’s just a little girl,’ said the father, reaching out to touch the girl trudging along beside him. ‘There’s none of this her fault.’
‘You really think the girl’s to blame for all this?’ Brasti added. ‘She had no say in her parentage. It was Duchess Patriana who set about killing off King Paelis’ children – it was she who gave us Trin.’
‘Watch yourself now,’ the old man said, but I could tell he was still full of good humour. This was the kind of political discussion the common folk delighted in, taking opposite sides of grand arguments about who deserved the throne and who deserved the noose. ‘Duchess Patriana kept all of Hervor running like a well-timed clock. She was sent by the Gods to rule, that one. Harsh, sometimes, but ain’t that the way of those with power? No, I lived half my life in Hervor. Damned Greatcoats came and now the place is a mess. Thought if I went west to Orison, things would be better but, well’ – here he motioned to the mountains ahead – ‘you see where that got me. No, I’d take Duchess Patriana back anytime – and as to killing off the tyrant King’s bastards? Well, you know what we say in Hervor?’
‘What?’
‘Too bad Patriana missed the last one.’
*
The trail carried on its dull and mildly treacherous way for another three days before turning steeper. It was much colder now, and the pilgrims dragged themselves along like dead men not quite ready to fall down. At night we huddled together for warmth in ragged tents. Unlike travellers in the south, who’d have passed the time getting to know each another and trading stories about their home villages, these people appeared to be content to just listen silently to the wind whistling through the holes in their thin shelters while they waited for the sun to rise.
‘It’s hard to imagine anyone’s ever come this way before,’ I said as we renewed the march on the fourth day. I was used to long periods of travel but my mood was starting to take on the same grey hue as the landscape.
‘What do you mean?’ Brasti asked.
I hadn’t really meant anything; I was speaking more to remind myself I could than for any particular purpose. ‘Just that it’s a long way on foot and I doubt anyone’s come this way for years.’
‘This path is fairly well-worn, Falcio. I’d say people have been going back and forth between Orison and Avares for generations.’ He gestured at the people walking ahead of us. ‘They probably share more blood with the people of Avares than those of southern Tristia.’
‘That’s a troubling thought.’ It was, too. There were enough complications plaguing the country already without having to worry that a large number of country folk identified more with the barbarians over the mountains than with their own people.
A problem for another day, I thought. For now, all that mattered was keeping our heads down, getting through the mountain pass and finding Trin. We could investigate the latest beard-braiding fashions in Avares later.
‘Falcio . . .’ Kest warned, but I could already hear the commotion up ahead.
We ran a few dozen yards and found a young woman who’d taken a fall. A girl of six or seven, likely her daughter, was trying to help her up. The other travellers walked past them without a word. So much for the warm hearts of the north.
As I knelt down to look at the woman’s ankle, which was clearly sprained, the little girl started beating me away, crying, ‘Leave us alone!’
‘I’m trying to help,’ I said, holding her off with one hand while I reached into my pack.
‘Tillia, stop!’ the woman said. Her plain brown hair matched her plain brown clothes; everything about her spoke of poverty. To me she said, ‘We’re fine, sir. I’ll be fine.’
‘You won’t get very far on a sprained ankle.’ I pulled out a length of bandage, careful not to let the coat itself be seen, and started fumbling about to find my black salve. ‘This will help keep it from swelling,’ I said, showing her the salve on my fingers before working it into her ankle. I bound it up, winding the cloth around the ankle several times to give her a little support.
‘Thank you,’ she said suspiciously once I was done, ignoring the hand I’d reached down to help her up. She winced as she stood.
‘Thank you,’ the little girl repeated, as though hoping they were magic words that would make me disappear. When they didn’t, mother and child began plodding along the path.
‘Helped a nice lady in trouble, did you?’ Morn asked, after the others had passed us by.
I turned to look at him. He was smiling, but not with his eyes. ‘That was stupid,’ he said quietly.
‘How is helping someone in need stupid?’
His gaze went to the other travellers, who were staring at us as they passed us. ‘Being noticed is stupid. How much black salve do you think these people have ever seen in their lives? That bandage you took from your coat? It’s made of hemp from Baern, treated with wormroot from Luth: a ten-foot length of it costs more than these people would earn in a month and it might as well come stamped with the King’s crest right on it.’
He was right, of course. If the wrong people got a good look at the bandage, it would raise questions for which we wouldn’t have very good answers. But what was I supposed to do? Leave the woman to stumble around in pain until she couldn’t go on any more? Leave her and the child to rot amongst the rocks and dirt?
As if he sensed my uncertainty, Morn said, ‘You’re a decent man, Falcio.’ He clapped me on the shoulder and set out ahead. ‘You’d make a terrible spy.’
‘Well, I’ll leave that to you, then, shall I?’
He looked back at me uncertainly. ‘You know that the odds are that we’re going to get captured, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ I said. Now it was my turn to smile. ‘And you know what that means, don’t you?’
He caught my expression. ‘Oh, hells. Why me?’
I shrugged. ‘You’re the only Rangieri here, Morn. That makes you the natural choice.’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d find a way to kill me before long.’
I spent the next few hours largely alone with my thoughts. The old man – called Clock, although I hadn’t worked out if it was because of the tick-tock sound his cane made, or because he was constantly asking how long it was until the next break, matched pace with me. ‘Won’t be long now,’ he said. ‘A day or so before we reach the true mountains and then it’s just a hop over and we’ll be in Avares.’
‘A hop over?’ I said, surprised at his optimism. ‘Surely once we start getting into those mountains proper, people will start dying. It’s going to get colder and more treacherous – hells, how much have these people climbed before now?’
‘People don’t die where you’re from?’
‘We try as a rule to avoid it.’
‘Not all of us,’ Brasti said bitterly, a little way ahead of us.
Clock laughed. ‘You’ve got too much of the south in you, boy. Afraid of a little cold and hardship.’ He pointed to the long train of travellers ahead. ‘We’re hardy people – practically mountain-bred ourselves. We drink the cold and shit out warm sunshine. We’re as sure-footed as mountain goats. The hills are no threat to us.’
He was wrong. Not two hours later, as the sun was starting to set, the woman I’d helped earlier stumbled as she passed the edge of a fifteen-foot drop. She recovered her balance, but her daughter, who’d immediately grabbed her mother to keep h
er from falling off the path, slipped on the loose shale and slid down into the gap below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Broken Bones
‘Tillia!’ the woman screamed over and over again as I ran to the edge and looked down. It wasn’t a long way down, only about fifteen feet to a shallow ledge, but below that was another fifty-foot drop that would most certainly be lethal. The child was lying unmoving at the edge. ‘Someone give us some rope,’ I called out to the villagers – surely someone must have rope amongst their supplies? But everyone passed us by, shaking their heads and trying hard not to meet our eyes. A couple of people pressed a piece of fruit or hard cheese into my hand as they shuffled onwards, but that was it.
‘What in all the hells are they doing?’ I asked Clock, who was patting the young mother’s shoulder.
‘Walking on,’ he replied, the sanguine humour gone from his voice. ‘They’ve got families too, and they can’t risk getting hurt. They’re leaving the food so Yelena here can stay with her girl a while longer.’
‘They’d abandon her to die here?’
‘It’s cold on the mountains, boy. You said it yourself.’
‘So much for your northern sunshine,’ Brasti said.
I stood up and shouted to the villagers ahead of us, ‘Walk on if you want, but one of you must have a length of strong rope. Just leave us that.’
None of them acknowledged my words, or looked back.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Clock said. ‘A piece of rope might be the one thing that keeps them alive on this journey. Anyroad, there’s nowhere to tie it. They won’t want to see it slide down the mountain for no purpose.’
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