“Telling me things I already know is no kind of argument,” Yulan said. Drann could not remember seeing him so cold, so stern. “And you didn’t seem too concerned about such matters when you were trying to kill the Weaponsmith.”
“Hatred’s a powerful motivation.”
“That, I know. But you’ll have to find something else to serve now. This needs everything, from all of us.”
“Yulan —’ Wren began, but he silenced her with a stare that matched her own in ferocity.
“There is no other way. Not short of opening the Clamour’s cage. You think that would be the better choice?”
That Wren thought it at the very least a choice worthy of more consideration was plain in her face. She did not look away, did not flinch from Yulan’s fierce certainty. She had iron in her. More than Drann had realised. But then Kerig spoke.
“Well, I’d need a tree,” he said glumly. “A big one.”
Yulan pointed. Perhaps two hundred yards ahead of them, some way from the trail, there was a soft, smooth hillock. Nothing grew upon it save the wispy, sere grass that cloaked all this land. Nothing except a single tall, spreading tree on its very crown. An oak of some sort, Drann guessed.
“Oh, joy,” muttered Kerig.
They gathered beneath the shade of that great tree, and a strange ritual was enacted. Drann and the two archers – one of them Lebid – who were to stay there with him stood apart. They were mere audience to what followed.
Everyone dismounted. They stood in a line, each beside his horse. Kerig went silently from one to the next, to the next, with a knife. From each of them he carefully cut a few strands of hair and bunched it all together in his hand. The same with the horses: he cut hair from their manes.
When he came to the wagon, he neatly took a tuft from the bull’s tail. The beast turned its heavy head to stare menacingly at him, but by then he was climbing up to sit beside Hestin. With gentle hands, he eased the Clever’s hood from her head, folded it down on to her shoulders.
It was the clearest sight Drann had yet had of Hestin. The most painful, now that he knew her to be not so very much older than he was himself. Forty years of hard labour could not have produced a face more worn, more wearied. Nor forty years of hunger skin so sallow. Kerig delicately cut a frond of her limp, thin hair, then lifted back her hood. Hestin never once showed any sign that she even knew he was there.
When it was Yulan’s turn, he turned his back on Kerig. Reached up and unpinned the knot of slick black hair atop his bare head. The single long lock fell heavily down. Kerig cut away its end. To Drann’s eye, he seemed a little less gentle with that cutting than he had been with others.
Kerig reached Wren. The last in line, the closest to where Drann stood. He took a snip of hair from her horse’s mane. Then from her. He looked down at it, packed in there with all the rest in his hand.
“There’s a lock I’ll not be letting go of,” he murmured. “Not while there’s life in my fingers.”
“Oh, there’s life enough in your fingers for a long while yet, my love,” Wren told him, brushing his cheek with her fingertips. “Believe me.”
They embraced. Wren pressed her face into Kerig’s neck.
“This will be the last time,” Drann heard her say, muffled and soft.
“You’ll get no argument from me on that,” her husband said.
Before the rest of them left, Yulan pressed a fold of calfskin into the palm of Kerig’s hand.
“Hamdan’s hair, and the others,” he said. “Everyone who’s not here.”
Kerig took it wordlessly. He turned away and walked over to the tree and sat down beside it. Yulan watched him for a moment or two, thinking thoughts Drann could not guess at. Then he turned away, and sprang up into his saddle.
First Rudran’s lancers went trotting away, then Yulan and Akrana riding alongside the wagon. Then, last and slowest, Wren. She was the only one of them to look back. Kerig held up his one free hand, palm outwards, fingers spread. Wren did the same. Then she let it fall, and turned away and rode after the rest of the Free.
Drann sat in glum silence. He watched Lebid and the other archer tethering the eight horses Yulan had left with them. He watched Kerig clumsily wrapping a long cord around his wrist. The hand in which he held all that hair stayed firmly clenched. Drann wondered if he needed some help, but the Clever did not ask and Drann did not offer. He felt young, and ignorant. Not a part of the Free. He never would be that, he was coming to realise. He felt less regret than he would once have expected.
Kerig spread his hand against the tree trunk, splaying his fingers over the coarse bark like a flat spider. The loose ends of the cord looped around his wrist hung down. They coiled in the sere grass.
“Tie me to the tree,” he called to Drann.
Who at first was not quite sure what he meant.
“Tie the cord around the trunk,” Kerig snapped. Irritated. Or frightened; which was a much more unsettling thought.
Drann hurried to do as he was told. The bole of the oak was massive. Two men, linking hands, might have been able to encompass it. The cord was long enough for him to bring its two ends together on the far side of the tree from Kerig, but not by much.
“Tight,” he heard Kerig saying. “Do you know knots? It needs to be tight.”
Drann did know knots. He pulled the cord taut, and closed the circle with a knot he doubted anyone would part without a blade. Returning to Kerig’s side, he could see that the Clever’s hand was held tight against the tree, pressed as flat as the uneven bark would allow. It could not be comfortable. Kerig did not seem troubled by it. He sat there, cross-legged, with an oddly placid expression upon his face now. He was looking at his free hand, resting in his lap; or at the fistful of hair – human and horse – it gripped.
“Important, the knot,” the Clever murmured. “I pulled loose once, a few years ago. Almost got Merkent killed.” He looked up and fixed Drann with a wry smile. “That would have been an unfortunate claim to fame, eh? Getting the Captain of the Free killed. Of course, he was dead anyway inside three or four months. At least it wasn’t my fault, though.”
Drann nodded, unsure of what to say. Rather than say nothing – and in his usual disregard for that part of his mind that told him saying nothing would be a fine choice – he resorted to the first obvious question that occurred to him.
“It’s going to hurt?”
Kerig rolled his eyes.
“Sorry,” Drann said quickly. “Foolish question, I suppose.”
“Foolish as they come. It’s beautiful here, don’t you think?”
Drann had not considered it. Now, gazing around, he supposed that Kerig was right. The sun was creeping down from its zenith, and illuminated the hillock with the kind of flat, dry light that would be better suited to midsummer. It lacked the fierce heat of that season, but the deep shade cast by the tangled canopy of the great oak tree was still welcome.
The tree was a lonely thing, standing there atop the rounded hill. For a hundred paces in any direction, off down the gentle slopes, there was no other vegetation save the thin yellowed grass. Patches of almost bare earth here and there, so desiccated that Drann imagined any breeze would raise dust. But there was no breeze. Just the blue sky, the stately tree, the whining song of grasshoppers.
The horses were listless, but quiet. Lebid and his fellow archer were silent too. Lebid lay on his back in the grass, arms cupped behind his head, a long stem of nodding grass tall in his mouth. The other went from horse to horse, lifting one hoof after another to check for stones or splits.
It was beautiful, Drann supposed. Absurdly calm. A gentle moment.
“Won’t be quite the same when I’m done,” Kerig said. “When Yulan’s done.”
“Is he punishing you?” Drann asked.
“You think I’m in need of punishment?”
To that question, Drann was reasonably certain, there was no good answer. For once, he allowed good sense to lock his lips.
&
nbsp; “Maybe he is,” Kerig said softly, without bitterness. “But he’s doing what needs doing, as well. If I had done nothing to offend, chances are I’d still be here. Tied to this tree. Short of letting loose the Clamour, this is the Free’s greatest trick. I’m the Free’s greatest trick. You should account yourself lucky that you’ll get to see it. Few have. Only done it twice before. It’s not the kind of trick a man can play many times without running out of life. Especially when it’s not his season. So, yes,” he gazed off into the distance with unfocused eyes, “this is going to hurt a great deal.”
“I’m sorry,” Drann said, for want of anything better.
“Give me some water,” was all Kerig offered in reply.
Drann held his water pouch to Kerig’s lips. Some of the water spilled over the Clever’s chin. It fell on to his tunic, and stained it darkly.
“Now get me a strip of cloth,” Kerig said afterwards. “There’ll be a shirt in one of those saddlebags over there you can tear up. You need to bind my hand closed so that I don’t lose hold of this hair.”
19
The Long Three Hundred
They left Hestin and the Clamour and three of Rudran’s horsemen in the lee of an overhanging rock face. The horsemen dispersed themselves to mount a watch, but in truth they were not there to stand guard. The Clamour, and therefore Hestin herself, would not be endangered by anything that might stumble across them out here. It was the Permanence itself that needed watching. There was to be violence; there was to be much shaping and twisting of the entelechs. These were things that could, on occasion, disturb the Clamour and test Hestin’s control over it. It was only the crudest of wisdom to have some folk on hand to bring warning, should the worst happen.
When they parted, Yulan noted that Hestin’s cloak of leaves had a healthy green to it. It was not taxing her overmuch to keep the Clamour quiescent. She did not seem overly tired, or ill. With even the most modest of good fortune, nothing would go awry.
The high ground flanking the Old Threetower Road was more rugged than that they had recently traversed. Knolls of bare, cracked and layered rock burst from the short sward as if they were boils blistering on a giant’s back. Between them the ground was undulating, punctuated by sudden dips and rises.
Without the Clamour’s wagon to haul, they could move quickly and with a good deal of shelter from prying eyes. Yulan was not, in any case, much concerned with concealment. Hamdan and his archers were still out there, scouting. Hunting. Any outriders Callotec had scattered to guard the line of his march were unlikely to raise the alarm before an arrow stilled them.
If the Clevers that now rode with Callotec were somehow keeping more subtle watch… well, there was not a great deal to be done about that. It seemed unlikely, though. That sort of continuing exertion while on the move was beyond most Clevers; certainly those accustomed to the gentle life of the School. It was punishing. Very few were able, and fewer still willing, to make the sacrifices required.
They found Hamdan sitting on a rock, close to the little valley through which the Threetower Road ran, quietly smoothing the flights of his arrows with his lips. His fellow scouts were still mounted, passing a water skin from one to another. They held the reins of not only Hamdan’s horse but two others.
“He had two riders up here,” Hamdan said as Yulan and the rest drew near. “Not very good at their business. Didn’t even see us coming.”
“Another two likely over there somewhere, then,” Yulan said, jabbing his chin towards the high ground on the far side of the valley. “Best to get on with things, just in case they’ve got better eyes.”
“They’ll be looking the other way, but yes.” Hamdan cupped a hand to his ear and raised his eyebrows in exaggerated expectation. “I don’t hear them yet, but I think our guests should be here at any moment.”
Yulan vaulted down from his horse and waited for Hamdan to carefully slot his arrows back into their quiver. The two of them went forward alone.
The last few yards they covered on their bellies, sliding on the dry grass, easing themselves up to the point where the high ground dropped sharply and suddenly.
The slope down to the roadway was precipitous, but smooth and grassed. The shallow river that had carved the valley was little more than a trickle. The road ran on the near side of the riverbed. There were only some thirty or forty paces of flat, open ground between the foot of the slope and that riverbed, with its jumble of rounded rocks. A few thorn trees dotted the line of the watercourse, but other than that there was no shelter. It would make for a good killing ground.
Some way down the road, Yulan could see Callotec’s band approaching. They looked to be, as he had hoped, thinly stretched out.
“Three hundred, give or take, like Ordeller said,” Hamdan was whispering beside him. “No more than a third of that mounted, the rest walking. Three wagons, and close to a dozen mules carrying supplies.”
“Order?” Yulan asked as he pushed himself back from the skyline.
He trusted Hamdan to have done his work well; there was no further need to see it with his own eyes.
“At least fifty Armsmen marching up front. Swords, from the look of it. Then two score or so of riders. They’ve got the best horses, the prettiest helms and robes, so I’d guess that’s Callotec and Kasuman and their hangers-on, whatever Clevers they’ve got. Then the wagons, each with a driver and guard and a couple of lancers riding alongside.”
Yulan got to his feet and brushed dirt from his knees. He flicked little specks of it from his fingers as he and Hamdan walked back to their horses.
“That where the Bereaved is, you think?” he asked. “On one of the wagons?”
“The second, I’d guess. There’s a passenger there, all caped and hooded and hidden. Size of a boy.”
Yulan patted his horse’s massive neck. The animal was immensely strong. Not as fine as the one he had lost on Creel’s last contract, but good enough for what was to come.
“Try not to put any arrows in it, then,” he murmured to Hamdan. “Might get ugly if you prick a Permanence.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Said with a smirk.
“And after the wagons?” Yulan asked.
“Mules, with handlers and guards. Then better than a hundred on foot, spears and bows. Most of them look to be levy, not Armsmen. Some School Clade in there, though. Another fifty or so lancers behind them. A long way behind. Rearguard.”
Yulan glanced up, and blinked against the sun. It was low enough to serve its purpose. The Old Threetower Road was almost in shade. If Callotec and his men looked up as Yulan and his crested the top of the slope, there was a good chance they would be gazing into the full glare. It would last only for a moment or two, but the smallest advantage was worth the taking if offered.
The battle to come took shape in his mind. He did not have to sink much effort into that shaping. It came to him almost unbidden, as a pattern made by shadows on a wall might suddenly take on a recognisable form. He could simply see what was possible, what was not. What would likely follow if he chose to do this, or that.
“I’ll take Rudran and the lancers into the hundred behind the wagons,” he grunted, swinging up into the saddle and turning his horse about. “Scatter them, keep their archers out of it. Akrana and Wren can deal with the rearguard. You and your bow boys shoot for Callotec, and anyone around him. Anyone who looks like they might be a Clever.”
“What we always do,” Hamdan said with a grin.
“What you always do.”
“You want us to keep one or two Clevers alive, for looking after the Bereaved?”
Yulan thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“Bereaved’s not like the Clamour. Doesn’t need someone who understands it to keep it quiet all the time, as far as I know. To use it, maybe, but we’ll not be using it. So, no: kill as many as you see fit.”
They trotted back to where the others waited behind a rocky outcrop. No one interrupted while Yulan curtly issued his instruc
tions; no one’s attention wavered. Not even Wren’s, though he knew she would have other thoughts on her mind.
He watched her and Akrana more closely than the rest as he spoke, even so. If things went awry, it would be them, if anyone, who might avert complete disaster. He saw nothing to worry him. He trusted them.
Hamdan returned to the edge of the gully with his archers. They lay flat on the ground, only Hamdan himself sliding forward far enough to peer down at the road. Yulan and Rudran and the riders lined up further back, well out of sight. Fifteen of them, strung out. The horses were restless, quiet but uneasy now that they sensed something imminent. On their right, perhaps thirty paces distant, stood Akrana and Wren.
Altogether, a score or so of the Free, and three hundred awaiting them in the valley below. It would be brutal, Yulan knew. But they should win. If his people were better than Callotec’s – and they were – they would win. If Kerig was strong – and he was – they would win.
He reached down and freed his knife from its sheath on his calf. He held the tip of the blade poised above the ball of his thumb and watched Hamdan. He felt his heartbeat, marking off the moments. Pacing out this last little stretch of quiet. It paced, and paced. Slowly.
Hamdan, without looking round, raised one hand and gave a casual, almost dainty, beckoning flutter of his fingers. Yulan sank the point of his knife into his thumb. Blood swelled out, a delicate red orb. He returned the knife to its place; sucked away the blood. Then kicked his heels into his horse’s flank.
Yulan and the riders crested the skyline in the same moment that the archers’ first arrows took to the air. The fifteen horsemen plunged down the slope, loosing screams to sharpen the pounding of hoofs. It was like falling, Yulan thought; plummeting like a stooping hawk.
They came so fast, so sudden, that heads were still turning, weapons still being drawn, alarms still being cried, as the fifteen crashed into the side of the long three hundred.
The Free Page 19