Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2)

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Of Weft and Weave (Dica Series Book 2) Page 27

by Clive S. Johnson


  Sconner drew his face nearer Nephril’s and whispered, “Ah be sure we be on t’Braithgang, but ‘ow far up ah knows not.”

  He felt Sconner turn and look through the trees’ dark silhouettes, towards the nascent eastern sky. “Won’t be long afore we can spy out us answer, though,” he said as Nephril looked that same way and saw departing blackness. Nephril turned back to the river and peered hard into its still stubborn darkness, tried to find what little the dawn light might show.

  Within their cave of trees Nephril could see little more than Sconner’s outline, but only just, the glint of an eye within, the metal cup of a rowlock at his side and the spider-silk line of the wet rope behind him. It took the sun to stir further from its pillow before the verdant walls and oily black water gave up anything more.

  While they waited, Nephril tried to remember anything about the Braithgang, anything at all, anything of use. He knew it was a broad river, as its name implied, broad and shallow and spilling into the Eyeswin’s mouth. He knew it meandered leisurely through the Vale, its headspring somewhere in the Strawbac Hills, that it watered many a farm along its short life, where it succoured vine and orchard, and swelled grape and fruit.

  Its name also implied it furnished passage for goods, that its broad way carried crafts laden with produce for a once insatiable Dican appetite. Maybe it was still true, maybe barges and rafts even now took trade out across the estuary to Utter Shevling. However, as the light grew more revealing, and Sconner once more rowed them steadily upstream, Nephril began to doubt it.

  The sky had remained cloudless, the sun’s dawn light rapidly becoming harsh and bright, but it revealed nothing more than a tangle of dense undergrowth hemming in the slow flowing river. What they could see spoke of nothing about men or their labours. Along both overgrown banks, as far as the eye could see, no wharfs or quays, no bridges or stores or towers arrogantly blotted Nature’s page.

  Perhaps it wasn’t surprising for there, well west of Leiyatel’s gaze, they were far enough from her bosom for its succour to be lost, for her charges to have fallen on harder times and hence passed beyond the land, in one way or another. Many would, no doubt, even now be harbouring fast dwindling memories of the Vale as they began knuckling down to their chores in Yuhlm or its like.

  He was just thinking how utterly deserted the whole place felt when Phaylan pointed to starboard and cried, “Is that a mill over there? Look, there, beyond that spread of bramble … under the willow. Do you not see?”

  Lord Que’Devit was the first to reply. “You’re right, mi lad. Looks like some sort of mill.”

  They soon all spotted those few unnatural edges in amongst Nature’s clutter, the ones that betokened the hand of man. Sconner even saw a way to it when he caught sight of some steps hidden in the dark shadows of a riverside laurel. As he pulled towards them, he warned everyone to keep low, out of the way of the branches now beginning to rake the boat’s prow.

  They floated into a spacious and lofty, branch-vaulted chamber, the cool air thick with midges and the smell of wet earth. The boat’s meagre bow-wave feebly lapped at the bottom step of a granite flight, the risers above laced with ivy, their treads thick with moss and strewn with dappled sunlight.

  Behind them and through the shrouding branches, out on the river, Phaylan watched geese glide uncertainly down; feet stretched out before them, heads arched in seeming dismay, wings flapping uncertainly as they collided with the water. Before they slid from sight, he noticed how they quickly puffed and preened as though embarrassed. A thud and the boat’s rocking soon brought his gaze about and left him staring at a close flight of steps.

  It didn’t take long to disembark. The barren nature of the steps soon carried them to an equally barren yard. The only life it boasted came from the narrow nicks between its huge paving slabs. Along one side a seemingly ancient and largely dilapidated wall looked to be on its last legs, holding back a lethargic woodland. Opposite, on the other side of the yard, rose the blank wall of a building.

  All but Phaylan gathered there, grouped around Sconner, all but Nephril expectant and unsure. Phaylan, though, had rushed off, as is the wont of youth, and found an entrance to the building at its furthest gable end. He looked in to a strangely bright interior, an unrecognisable tumble of debris greenly lit by leaf-filtered light slanting in through long lost slates.

  As all about, a thick covering of moss had removed much in the way of shape, much form or colour, a hotchpotch of discarded and crumbling debris. Gorse and fern had sprung up between, their filigree fronds adding some delicacy and poise. Phaylan was about to explore when Lady Lambsplitter gently took his hand. “Come on, my lad, no time for discovery and adventure. Steermaster Sconner has something to say to us all.”

  The pilot had, at his own disbelief, finally identified where they were. Even in his relatively short life he could remember the place being far from what they’d now found. He was convinced they were in a river port long ago named Ufflangcoss, a previously bustling and busy place.

  He’d only ever visited it once before, and then at his father’s knee. “We’d come to buy netting, new stuff them’d started wefting ‘ere. It were said to resist rotting and ne’er stretch, not as they’d notice. Whether it did or no Ah can’t rightly say, but Ah knows it cost us old pa a dollop, fair brought us all to gruel and water for a week.”

  His eyes had become downcast in the retelling, but then lifted and peered disbelievingly about. There’d been something about that yard and its mill, something that had affirmed his memory, that had laid aside any lingering doubt.

  Despite its dilapidation, he now knew with certainty where they were, and to prove it, more to himself than the others, he led them to the corner of the yard. There, he squatted down and brushed aside the undergrowth, peered into the gloom it hung onto and laughed as he pointed.

  “See?” he eagerly asked. “Does they not see us mark, there, clear in the face o’ that stone?” They all crowded around, knelt down and peered in.

  Just beyond his brown, calloused finger a deeply inscribed symbol still stood proud. An ornate and classical letter ‘S’ formed a scaly outline to a fish. Quite plainly they were in the Ufflangcos where he'd idled away his time waiting for his father to conduct his business.

  Lord Que’Devit and Phaylan were the only ones left little more enlightened, for Lady Lambsplitter knew of it through her wide reading, whilst Nephril remembered it well, if somewhat at very great distance. Although Nephril knew quite a lot about its history, its slow but steady growth from a parochial market village to an important trading port, the only thing that interested him now was its relatively easy access to the Lost Northern Way.

  It had had later advantage of a new road, one that had extended the western reach of the then Northern Way. Summerseat Street, as they’d named it, veered around poor footings of shale and sand along the northern shore of the estuary, then inland a few leagues to where it could more easily amble across the Vale of Plenty.

  It had been laid at a time when enough was sufficient, when clean, level and well drained fulfilled the need. It hadn’t, though, been fashioned to endure through the ages, unlike the Northern Way, and so Nephril worried if it would still be passable.

  He knew that beyond the yard, beyond Sconner’s youthful scratchings, the town sat upon a shallow hill, proudly above the Vale and so commanding views along the sweep of the river's gentle curve.

  Where the Braithgang broke into unnavigable cascades and falls, around the base of the town’s northern slope, Summerseat Street had once stridden out eastwards. It had meandered its way between woodland and copse, avoiding deep stream crossings or swampy peat footings, and so rose and fell as the rolling land dictated. Nephril knew it would be the best they’d get, even if now largely overgrown and unmarked, that it would give them their easiest path to a reunion with Melkin and the Galgaverrans.

  Sconner had, meanwhile, been trying to find words to replace his nervous, throat clearing coughs. “Ah’
s afraid ‘tis furthest Ah can take they. There’ll be ships as wanting us guiding on the morrow, ships awaiting me off us point.”

  His eyes flicked at them but soon strayed to the far end of the yard. “As right as us memory serves, there be a main thoroughfare past ‘ere. Takes they all the way to Summerseat Street, if Ah remember us pa’s words right.”

  Sconner shuffled the more but still couldn’t meet their eyes, particularly Lambsplitter’s. Que’Devit seemed to feel something of why. “Never fear, Master Pilot, you’ve done us grand service already, that you have.”

  For a brief moment their eyes met, and it made Que’Devit’s heart crack. At first he’d no idea why, but when he saw Sconner’s gaze linger a while on the Lady, he understood well enough.

  Que’Devit seemed the only one with a voice now. “We all owe you our lives, Steermaster Sconner, most certainly we do. We’re all deeply indebted and ever will be.” He paused, but only briefly, his eyes momentarily finding Lambsplitter’s. “You’re a fine fellow, a rare thing indeed … a man worthy of more…” He stopped when he realised the difficult ground looming ahead.

  “I’ve distant family in the Vale,” he added, in a lighter tone. “Ones who couldn’t refuse me refuge, I’m sure, but...” He turned as innocently as he could to Lady Lambsplitter. “…my good Lady, is there any prospect of such sanctuary for yourself?”

  She seemed startled, surprised at the question but also uncertain. It was plain she’d not given the matter much thought if any. She'd been completely elsewhere, pondering Nephril’s journey and trying to understand the reasons for his patent subterfuge. Que’Devit’s words had forced her up against the matter, though, and so brought a decision.

  She tried to sound disarming, as though her proposition was of a most trivial and mundane nature. “Err, no, no I've no family, or friends come to that, anywhere in the Vale. Not a one. All those I know dwell within the castle I’m afraid, but…” Her voice became even more casual. “I wondered if Lord Nephril might not find comfort in my companionship, wondered I may be of use to him in his … his … in his duty to the Certain Power.”

  Nephril had hoped she would have had prospects of her own, as Que’Devit clearly had, and so felt disappointed, but a disappointment now strangely tinged with an ancient and forgotten thrill. It was a long time since he’d felt anything for a woman, his countless years having successfully conspired against that normally enduring male trait. She was certainly a fine woman, but there was something more to it than that, something more than the line of her breasts, the swing of her hips or the pout of her mouth. It seemed, despite his age and commensurate common-sense, that his long withered interest had somehow been stirred anew, but as though it had been stirred from afar.

  More worryingly, she was undeniably a Dican, and a noble one at that, of that very blood destined to die out before Leiyatel could be refreshed. She should really be the last person with whom to plunder the mysteries of the Repository. So, why on earth did it feel so right then when he softly replied, “I am sure Leiyatel would find thine assistance most useful, mine dear, most efficacious in her furtherance.”

  It wasn’t only Phaylan who looked at Nephril with consternation now, but also Sconner. Where Phaylan’s expression had been driven by his full knowing of their purpose, Sconner’s came from the heart.

  “Lady Lambsplitter, if Ah may be allowed to…”

  When she whirled about to face him, though, innocent enquiry sitting easily on her soft features, Sconner’s face just flushed, and with it, his words simply failed him, and so the Lady remained forevermore none the wiser.

  29 In the Nick of Time

  However much you rush, and whatever state of anxiety you allow to drive you thus, the time taken to leave anywhere is proportional to the size of the party involved. Even more so when many of its members are disparate in nature and one downright obstinate.

  Twenty five Galgaverran priests would be one thing, but Melkin and Storbanther’s repeated loggerheads annulled their power to overcome Penolith’s nagging worries, none of which added much expediency to their departure.

  The black smoke the previous day had hung over the western districts and had then drifted menacingly beyond the Great Wall hemming in Uttagate. It had brought Penolith a rare insight into fear and disquieted her so much she’d almost felt ill. She couldn’t think of Nephril and Phaylan without becoming lightheaded and queasy.

  Constant and dark premonitions invaded her undefended mind, ones Storbanther certainly couldn’t quell, nor even Drax with his normally settling matter-of-fact manner. None of them could really convince her of Nephril’s likely wellbeing for none of them could rightly convince themselves.

  They’d eventually left the sconce well after the sun had risen high enough to blind them to their way along Eastern Walk, between the gate’s sentinel towers and out to its junction with the Lost Northern Way. The sun had been so glaring it was only their hollow footfall that announced their arrival at the bridge, beneath which the Eyeswin glided silently by.

  Storbanther led, his stick-like frame tilted forward, as though he’d need to push through the very morning air. Close behind him came Penolith and Pettar, he forging some innocent, easing chatter as a distraction, and between themselves and their priests, Melkin chatted idly with Drax. As they turned the junction, Melkin caught sight of the priests behind, their overburdening even now beginning to show.

  Melkin again bemoaned Storbanther’s overbearing demeanour, how he’d ignored quite reasonable objections and refused to restrict their needs. Even Drax had found a corner in his allegiance to comment on how odd Storbanther seemed to have become.

  The man himself then began crying out, “There! What’s that? Eh, over yon, on t’knoll?” Storbanther was peering wild-eyed across the fields that bordered the road, to a small knoll some distance away. The sunlight fell behind it, making a silhouette of its outline, its top jagged with bramble and bracken and rocks.

  Pettar was the nearest to him. “What have you seen, Master Storbanther? I can see naught myself. What’s caught your eye?” It was as though Storbanther hadn’t heard, for he continued to peer distractedly at the knoll. They all did the same, scanned the dawn-lit outline but saw nothing of note.

  Storbanther then spun around and stared at them all, accusingly. “Didn’t thee see t’bronzen army then, eh? Tha’s not got eyes in tha’s ‘eads?”

  All they could do was stare at him until something seemed to snap behind his features, and then he smiled. “Come on then, what’s thee all waiting for? Get a move on!” With that he was off once more, leaning against an imaginary wind seemingly set on blowing him home. Amidst frowns and confusion, they followed-on, the long undisturbed knoll soon forgotten.

  Conversation died for a while, awkwardly, despite Storbanther having forged well ahead and out of hearing. Indeed, the very countryside seemed quietened; the fields beside the road empty but for wisps of fast dissolving mist, the dry and dusty road itself cushioning their footfall, the castle’s great, grey walls plainly deep in their own ageless slumber.

  Little changed in that first hour, other than the sun’s steady ascent, and with it the drifts of mist slowly burning away. The knoll soon fell behind whilst the castle wall stayed indomitably marching northwards, so near in its hugeness yet so far away across the Eyeswin and its bordering meadows. The Eastern Gate too fell behind, its outstretched arms rebuffing the knoll with its two great, squat terminal towers like clenched fists.

  Ahead, still some few miles along the shallow Eyeswin valley, the wall rose onto its craggy footings with the meadows at their feet lifting to steep escarpments. Those with keen eyes could just about make out where the wall abruptly seemed to end at the crags’ tumbling fall.

  Of course, it didn’t really stop there. It turned sharply westwards, its impregnable mass then carried by the striding sheer crags below, against which the Eyeswin’s course glanced by. Behind that fortified corner, Uttagate nestled in its age-long security, the joy of
early morning sun forever its forfeit to fortune. There, the wall started its forty mile stretch along the skirt of Mount Esnadac’s northern flanks, to the shores of the estuary and Grayden’s mausoleum-topped head.

  The Eyeswin itself couldn’t turn quite so quickly, and so curved in a lazy arc out onto the Vale of Plenty to be some six miles north of the wall as it too headed west for the sea. Sensibly, the Lost Northern Way did likewise, kept passing close to the river.

  Before their party could gain the Vale, though, the road took them as near to the wall as it ever would, passing a squeezed-river’s width away from its foundation crags. There, the usually docile Eyeswin was goaded to anger by the closely gathered valley, the rock of the crags long worn to a deep cleft, the road snaking perilously close to its edge and dizzyingly high above its treacherous gap.

  By now Pettar had had enough of the priests’ suffering, and so pleaded, “Just a half hour halt, Master Storbanther, if you wouldn’t mind? The priests are fair done in.”

  Storbanther glared at him, as though affronted, sneered and then belittled, “Tain’t a maid’s outing tha knows. Not doin’ it for us own good.”

  “But, Master Storbanther, we’d make far better progress for a rest. Look at them all.”

  Storbanther did, but with disdain and repugnance. “A load o’ shit-snivelling wasters, that’s what they is. Bloody waste o’ good, clean breathing air.”

  Had it not been for a strangeness about Storbanther's face, Pettar might have continued pleading. Had it not been for the distinct impression that one of Storbanther’s eyes was noticeably lower than the other, then Pettar may even have delivered his riposte before Melkin did. “Now look here, Master Storbanther, don’t you think…”

  Penolith was quick to intervene, just as Storbanther started shaking. “Now, now! All of you, take heed of my words.” She paused long enough for Storbanther to lose his tremors and the others to turn and face her. “We’ll rest here an hour, an hour I say, no less and no more.”

 

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