Sperrin struck suddenly, opening up a wide furrow down the creature’s side. The axe clattered to the ground. The merrow sat down hard, dark liquid pouring out around its hands where it tried to hold its insides in. It glared, first at Sperrin and then at my father.
“Harbor. Betrayer,” it said again, the words harsh and guttural. Then a longer phrase, spoken this time to me. It took me a moment to puzzle it out. “What gods take, only gods can return.” I couldn’t ask what the creature meant: By the time I had figured out the words, the luminosity had passed from its eyes.
* * * *
When I had explored the sally tunnels in the past, I’d emerged high up on the riverbank, with a steep slope between me and the wide river. This time we went further, by a different branching. I’d explored by lanternlight as a girl, and had missed many branches in the flickering candleflame. Now, with the passage marked by the glow of ancient runes, finding the right path proved easier.
Afternoon light pierced the tunnel ceiling as we neared the passageway’s end.
The passage widened into a sort of storeroom, with a rough-cut plank floor laid over the ground to keep dampness off the stacked barrels and crates. A ladder led upward to a trapdoor in the wooden ceiling. Light passed through the ceiling unevenly, presumably through windows in a room above.
Sperrin seemed to know exactly what to look for. He quickly pulled out clothing, boots, oilskins to keep off rain, traplines, and a variety of knives in different sizes. Raider supplies. Even packages of food wrapped in dried leaves and string. I hoped the supplies were restocked regularly; I had a brief but horrific image of trying to eat food left over from the last war.
“Can you use a knife?” Sperrin asked me.
I looked at him. “If you mean on food, yes. If you mean, do I know where the pointy end goes, yes. If you mean, do I have your back if the gods attack, then no.”
He nodded. “That’s about what I thought. Same for your father?”
Would you trust a madman with a knife right now? Even if it turns out he’s just angry and frustrated instead of out of his mind? Apparently my expression answered Sperrin well enough. He handed me a pair of longish, slim knives with sheaths and thigh straps.
“Wear these for now. I’ll try to teach you to use them while we’re on the road. Don’t try to use them against any gods—they won’t help and will just get you killed.”
So will not using them, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.
Motioning for us to wait, Sperrin climbed silently up the ladder. After looking through the floorboards for a long moment, he seemed satisfied. Knife cocked in his left hand, he pushed the trapdoor open with his right, set the trapdoor down all but silently, and clambered into the room above.
With a loud clatter my father bolted away from us, back toward the castle.
He disappeared up the tunnel before I could react.
What’s he doing? I wondered, and then, What should I do? By then Sperrin was down the ladder and past me, into the sally tunnel after my father.
* * * *
Ten minutes later, Sperrin returned, pushing my father forward by the scruff of his neck. The chancellor looked like a housecat caught making a break for the garbage barrels.
“Restrain your father,” said Sperrin, pushing him toward me. “Before he gets all of us killed. Count to fifty and then send him up the ladder. You follow after him.” Without another word, Sperrin climbed the ladder to the room above.
I thought my father might refuse to go up the ladder, but he ascended pliably enough.
We emerged into a shack lit by late-afternoon sun, no different than any of the dozens of fishermen’s houses that dotted the slope on the cityside riverbank. Somewhat fewer shacks occupied this stretch of the river, which faced the massive graveyards of the Westbarrow. The shack was completely bare, just rough-cut pine plank walls and floor. The door stood open; presumably Sperrin had gone outside.
I closed the trapdoor and stood with one foot on top of it. My father seemed docile enough, looking out one of the eight-pane windows, but I saw no reason to take chances. I could see a little bit out the front door: a small porch, with a flight of weathered wooden stairs leading downslope to the river and a decaying dock. Sperrin squatted on the dock, looking more like a fisherman than a soldier. I supposed that was deliberate.
I glanced at my father and followed his gaze out the window. Half a mile upriver, I could see the cable from the ferry had been snapped or cut. The near side hung limply in the river. Refugees crowded the shallows there, wading the river in hopes of reaching the Trade Road that circled the Westbarrow. At least nothing seemed to be menacing the refugees. But watching people flee our hometown wrenched me. My father seemed strangely unaffected, whether from madness or from having already lost everything he cared about losing.
Sperrin
Downriver from Westbarrow Ford: The day after the Loss
I closed the door as I reentered the cabin. I noted Ketya unobtrusively blocking her father’s potential escape routes. I hadn’t wanted to leave them alone, but I had needed to scout the river crossing.
“You might as well sit and rest,” I told the two of them. “Sleep if you can. We will be rowing across after nightfall.”
“Why not just wade?” Ketya asked, nodding at the crowd of refugees at the ford upriver.
“I think we don’t want to draw that kind of attention,” I replied. “Anyone looking for surviving channelers or government officials will start there. We would be making things more dangerous for them as well as for us. Unless the gods return again, those refugees will find food and shelter a few miles up the Trade Road. If the gods return, they’ll die anyway.”
“So where are we going if we’re not taking the road?”
“We’ll cut through the Westbarrow and link with the Mountain Road on the other side. No need to take the Trade Road at all. I know the Mountain Road well enough to get us to one of the mountain forts, and from there to Whitmount eventually. We can be helpful there.” I looked over to the chancellor, staring out the window unmoving. “You and your father should try to sleep,” I said again.
“Sleep? How are we supposed to sleep?” said Ketya. “I don’t dare close my eyes.” She shuddered at some memory from the last few hours.
“You learn to rest when you can,” I answered. “Mourn later. Now you need rest, whether you want it or not.” That would have been good advice for a soldier. Which she wasn’t, of course.
“What about you? Don’t you need rest? Why don’t you sleep instead?”
I nodded to her father. “Because I think I would wake with one fewer guest. I will rest when I need to.” I didn’t feel tired, despite the fighting of the day. Part of that came from soldier’s training, and years of fighting. But mostly it came from the surge of energy from the killing I’d done. I had missed the fighting. After trying to leave the things I’d done in the war behind, a part of me hated the reminder of how much each kill energized me. But a bigger part of me loved it.
We would need that energy tonight, I knew.
Eventually, I managed to get Ketya and the chancellor more-or-less bedded down. While they slept—or rather tried to sleep in Ketya’s case and pretended to sleep in the chancellor’s case—I went through each of their packs, adding from the stores below and repacking as necessary for the journey into the mountains.
Chapter 10
Ketya
Downriver from Westbarrow Ford: The evening after the Loss
The second time my father bolted, he didn’t make it as far. Sperrin’s hand shot out from his bedroll and grabbed the chancellor’s foot, sending him sprawling. My father hit the cabin floor hard and sat up slowly, clutching his elbow.
The glow of fires lit by the mass of refugees camped upstream illuminated the cabin dimly.
“I don’t know if you’re mad or not, but I will tie your hands if I need to,” Sperrin said. “Even if it means—”
A scream cut off the rest of his word
s.
Something momentarily blotted out the light from the campfires.
“They are...the gods are back, aren’t they?” I asked hollowly.
My father laughed, but said nothing.
By now screams had spread through the encampments. Fires flickered as refugees tried to fight horror with torches.
Sperrin let go of my father’s foot, stood up, and walked to the window. He watched for a minute, saying nothing as he studied the situation.
Finally he replied. “I don’t think so, Ketya. Those aren’t godlings attacking the camps, anyway. They may have returned to the city but not here.”
“What’s attacking them, then?” Something else swooped down and carried off a pair of screaming refugees.
“Fey, I think. Allies of the gods, like the merrows. The gods had a lot of allies who were left behind after the war. The Empress’s power restrained them. Whichever god attacked the palace also made sure that every hill creature and hidden sprite knew that nothing was restraining them any longer. The fey want this land for their own, I believe.”
“The gods promised it to them,” I whispered, though we all knew that much already. I had memorized clause 116 in the Talisman, where the gods backed away from that promise. But they never broke it exactly—just suspended it for the duration of the peace. The terms of the treaty bound none of the hill creatures and other faeries. As long as the Empress’s magic held and the gods withheld support, they dared not attack openly. But clearly the situation had changed.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell us what is happening?” Sperrin asked the chancellor. My father smiled improbably, but said nothing.
Turning from the window, Sperrin walked to our packs and picked his up. “Come along, you two,” he said. “Horrible as this distraction may be, there’s no point in wasting it by not crossing the river while we can. We only have an hour until moonrise. We need to be across before then.”
I nodded, and even my father seemed a little shaken by the thought of passing so close to the carnage upstream.
“Will there be merrows on the river?” I asked.
“Probably not, if we’re quiet enough. They prefer salt water, and there are richer targets. I need you both to be absolutely silent while we cross, though.”
“Of course,” I said.
We walked quickly and silently down the stairs, following Sperrin’s shadowy movements. As we passed our packs down to him and stepped off the dock into the rowboat, I could see that he had already loaded it with blankets and provisions.
As soon as my father and I took our seats, Sperrin unstepped the oars and cast off. He sat facing us, his back toward the opposite shore as he rowed. Sperrin had muffled the oarlocks with extra blankets, I noticed. That must have been what he was doing while kneeling on the dock earlier.
Except for the almost imperceptible dip of the oars, we sculled silently on the wide, slow river. In the darkness the far bank seemed invisible.
The screams upstream gradually fell silent as well, and the fires vanished. Perhaps a bend in the river hid them, I hoped, but after the events of the last day I didn’t really believe that.
A faint, cool breeze came from upstream. The air smelled like blood.
I hadn’t expected such utter blackness. I couldn’t see my father beside me, or the black water an arm’s length away.
Sperrin and my father didn’t seem to be bothered by it. My father’s breathing relaxed, and I realized he slept.
I couldn’t even hear the oars dipping into the water anymore, couldn’t hear Sperrin’s steady breathing.
The air closed in, worse than in the tunnels: even darker with no light and no idea if we were even going in the right direction.
Finally I couldn’t take the silence any longer.
“They used to call this the River of the Dead,” I whispered. It sounded impossibly loud. I expected Sperrin to shush me, but I needed to hear my own voice, to know that I wasn’t alone and lost in the darkness.
He didn’t respond, just kept rowing silently.
“They renamed it because no one wanted to buy fish from the River of the Dead. It was my father’s idea. No one fishes across from the graveyard, though.”
This time he did silence me, with the briefest gesture to my forearm. I couldn’t see his hand in the darkness, but somehow the touch of his fingertips felt reassuring.
A faint edge of moonlight glinted on the horizon.
“How close?” Sperrin barely breathed the words, but I heard them clearly. How does he do that? I wondered.
I looked over my shoulder. A dark line indicated the shore, only a few boat lengths away. Beyond that, I saw the edges of a stone wall, and glimpses of glowing blue behind it.
“Almost there,” I said, trying to imitate Sperrin’s quiet voice. The words came out as a hoarse whisper instead.
He seemed to already know, perhaps sensing a change in the water’s depth. He let the boat glide to the bank, then leaped out to grab the bow and bring it noiselessly to shore.
“Quickly,” Sperrin said in the same quiet voice. “There is cover in the barrows. But we need to pass the wall before we are noticed.”
The moon had risen a little further, enough to illuminate the stone line of the wall more clearly beyond the irregular shadows of the rocks and scrub trees along the riverbank.
I touched my father’s arm and he woke instantly. He followed me from the boat without complaint.
“Make for the wall,” said Sperrin. “I will be right behind you.” He took the packs from the boat, then kicked the bow away from the bank. Slowly, the boat drifted out into the river, until the current and darkness took it.
Sperrin
The Westbarrow: The night after the Loss
The chancellor feigned sleep for most of the river crossing. Beside the chancellor, I could hear Ketya’s ragged breath as she grew increasingly terrified.
I focused on keeping the oars steady and silent.
It took all the self-control I had not to leave the two of them and join the fight upstream. Not that it was much of a fight, but there would be something to kill. I might make a difference.
There will be plenty of fighting on the Mountain Road, I told myself. My duty is to protect these two. It didn’t really make me feel any better, not when I could hear screaming and the whirring of wings not far off.
I forced myself once again to focus on the oars.
By the time we reached the far bank, the noise had stopped. We had made it across without the girl’s nerve breaking entirely, and without any more disruptions from the chancellor. Better than I had expected, really.
I wasn’t completely sure what Ketya had seen in the theater and the tunnels. Other than the odd blue light, I had seen nothing. Perhaps what she had seen on the stage really was an older form of magic that had been reported extinct for centuries, and that she had never noticed in all her previous visits to the theater. Or perhaps it was her mind showing her what she wanted to see after a night filled with desperate losses. And maybe my mind too—there was that moment where she’d looked oddly transformed, before shifting back to herself.
One of those losses she mourned might have been her father. I didn’t know what to make of the chancellor’s condition. Someone would have to make some tough choices in the weeks ahead, if the chancellor didn’t return to his old self. I hoped I wasn’t that someone. My gift was for battles and tactics, not grand strategy.
The moon had barely begun to rise, but the night promised to be bright. We would need to find shelter in among the barrows: Too many of the godsent creatures and their allies hunted by night.
Ketya and her father moved quietly enough; the noise of the river covered what sounds they made. I stayed a little behind them, waiting until they had reached the slight shelter of the wall’s cemented stones to catch up to them.
“Can you climb the wall?” I asked them. “We can find a gate if we must, but we might not be the first to find it.”
Ketya e
yed the stone wall dubiously. “If you can boost me,” she finally said. Then after a pause: “Perhaps you should boost my father first.”
Whatever impulse had caused the chancellor to run before seemed to have quieted, at least for now. Docilely he accepted my boost and scrambled to the top of the wall.
“Stay low,” I said when the chancellor looked like he might stand on top of the wall.
“I would like to see the fate of the refugees,” the chancellor replied. “They are in my care, even if I cannot care for them at present.”
“We’ll get a good view of that spot when we reach Longhold Hill. It will have to wait until then,” I said. “Right now if you stand you will be backlit by the moon. And most likely eaten.”
The chancellor seemed about to muster an indignant response, then thought better of it. He slithered across the flat top of the wall and lowered himself to the other side.
By then, I had already boosted Ketya. She scrabbled for handholds, but finally pulled herself to the top.
“Stay there,” I said. “Stay very still.” I waited for any sign we had been noticed. When I felt satisfied we hadn’t been, I carefully handed our packs up to her.
“Lower them to your father on the other side, then climb down yourself.”
When she had cleared the wall I scrambled up and over as silently as I could. I landed softly in a springy patch of moss beside their packs.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I said to the chancellor and Ketya, sitting nearby on the moss, backs tight against the wall to keep themselves out of sight. “We are nowhere near safety yet. Don’t relax just because we didn’t die on the river. Still plenty of time to die tonight if we’re careless.”
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