The Free

by Brian Ruckley

  The basket was small and neatly woven of willow stems. Yulan untied its lid, and held it open just enough for Drann to peer inside. To see those three pristine, immaculate white doves.

  “Ordeller’s?” Drann asked.

  “Yes, her own. They’ll make for Curmen the moment we give them the air.”

  Yulan laced the basket closed once more, and tucked it under his arm. One of the doves within was mewing to itself.

  “What message are you sending?”

  “One that’ll set every bird the Free has, anywhere, flying within a day or two. Telling our people to scatter. Look to their own safety.”

  “All of the Free?”

  “Every man and woman,” Yulan nodded. “The School may come for them. Those of them it knows about, anyway. We can’t be sure what Wren did, not until Kerig’s fit to talk, but it will have been ugly. Bloody. She might even have killed the commander of the School’s Clade.”

  “Sullen,” Drann said miserably.

  “Well, you can find a grain of fortune even in the deepest shit pit, if you reach far enough down,” said Hamdan, falling into step beside them. “Sullen meeting his end’d count as a decent-sized grain.”

  “It would,” agreed Yulan, “but he’s not one to call dead until you’ve seen the corpse lying at your feet. Whatever’s happened, we’ll have the whole School, Clade and all, hunting our people wherever they are. It’s what they’ve wanted to do, most of them, for years. Decades.”

  Yulan sat, with a hide spread across his knees on which to lean, and scratched out the messages to Ordeller. While he did it, Drann stood and gazed at the three towers on the horizon. Now larger, but still indistinct. They must be truly huge, he was coming to understand. Taller by far than any tree he had ever seen, or could imagine. As he frowned at them now, trying to squeeze some clarity from the distant sight, he realised that they were horned. Unlikely as it seemed, they sported at their very pinnacles curving ornaments like the horns of bulls.

  Hamdan caught the line of his gaze.

  “Sorentine,” the archer said. “They did like their bulls. There’s a whole empty town a few miles past those monstrosities, the Threetower that cursed road runs to. Kingdom and Empire alike just upped and walked away from it, when they decided they didn’t want to be friends after all. Straddles the border, so anyone who wanted to hold it would have to fight for it, and neither of them liked that idea.”

  “And Towers’ Shadow?” Drann asked.

  “Beneath them,” grunted Hamdan. “Before them.”

  He clearly did not want to talk of that.

  One by one, the doves came out from the basket. Yulan clasped them tenderly in his big hands while Hamdan fastened the messages to their legs. The archer muttered in irritation as he struggled with the delicate task.

  “You need seamstress fingers for this.”

  But he did it, and Yulan threw the birds into the air, where their wings snapped out and they hauled themselves up and away. Everyone watched them go, those pale shapes dwindling and darkening off into the distance, bearing ill tidings.

  Only when the last of them was out of sight did Yulan drop his gaze. He seemed, just for a moment, to be lost in thought, eyes open but unseeing. Then he looked around him. The muscles in his jaw flexed.

  “Everyone gather round,” he said, not loudly but clear.

  They all did, save Hestin and Kerig. The Free stood, their horses behind them, in a wide half-circle, and waited for Yulan to speak. To Drann, it had the solemn air of ceremony.

  “Akrana stays with the wagon, Hestin and Kerig,” Yulan declared. “And four of yours, Rudran. Kerig’s in no state to survive a hard pace. Nor’s Hestin any more. The rest of us, we ride for Towers’ Shadow and we don’t stop until we’re there. Then we turn ourselves about and we find a way to hold Callotec. We hold him until the Clamour catches up.”

  “How long will that take?” Drann asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Yulan bluntly. “We hold him for however long it takes. Towers’ Shadow is not falling to that little butcher who wants to be a king. He is not crossing into the Empire. Neither is the Bereaved. We’re taking it, and we’re using it to bend the School to our will.”

  Drann heard no trace of doubt in the words. Not the thinnest vein of uncertainty, or the faintest crack through which the notion of failure might be admitted.

  “We’re going to find out now whether we’re a match for the Free of old,” their Captain said to the rest of them. “Whether we’ve lost what they had, back in those glory days.”

  “You know what Merkent would say?” Rudran asked. “Stop talking, stop thinking, and do the bloody deed.”

  “That he would,” said Yulan. “That he would. And I’m not going to fail the memory of that grey-bearded old bastard by doing anything less than the bloodiest of deeds. We ride, we turn, we fight. And we live for ever, because what we do these next few days won’t be forgotten.”

  And that was all. That was how it was decided. Drann had somehow expected more, but a change had come over Yulan, and all of the Free. There was nothing to be discussed. They were becoming hard as one of their blades.

  He set himself in the saddle, and was pleased that it felt a less hostile place than it had in recent times. He no longer believed that the horse despised him and spent its every waking moment, alone in its horse head, plotting miseries for him. His body no longer felt quite so obviously ill formed for the whole business of riding.

  None of that crowded out the knowledge that what was coming would be hard. Quite likely, he supposed, that at the end of it his every fibre would be back in the land of crippling aches and pains. He told himself it could be no worse than the first day or two had been, and tried to think of it no more. He gave the horse’s neck a gentle stroke. Then he thought better of it; decided that something more determined, more assertively companionable, was required. So he patted its shoulder, firmly, a couple of times.

  “Riding hard,” he muttered to the animal. “You be good to me, I’ll try to be good to you.”

  Rudran stood up in his stirrups and shouted out, loud and clear: “You know what else Merkent would have said? Piss on doubt; let’s do it anyway.”

  It was worse than Drann had told himself it would be, and that did not surprise him at all. Through day and night they rode without ceasing. Sometimes walking, sometimes cantering. When they did the latter, Drann just held on, tried to copy the style of those about him, and trusted to the beast – for beast he now feared it to be once more – beneath him to stay on the right course.

  They passed lonely cottages, one that even had light burning at its window in the dusk. Whoever was in there must surely have quailed at the sound of horses in the night, and breathed easy only after they had swept on and away.

  They crossed streams and rivers. Once, the water was high and hard enough to churn almost to Drann’s feet in the stirrups. He could feel its force, pushing at the horse’s flank, making it sidestep and toss its head in unease.

  Through grassland and across hillsides, they saw no one as they rode. In the night, when they rode slowly on even though the moon was thinning and sometimes masked by cloud, Drann saw the light of a fire, far off to the south. It was hard to tell, in that bottomless black distance, how great or small it might be. Its direction meant it could not be Callotec, and it was thus of no consequence. But it did make Drann think for a while as he bounced along, hands cramping on the reins, how strange it was that there was a world out there filled with people living their own lives, unaware of all that he was caught up in. People sitting around fires, sleeping, loving one another, while all unknown the Free rode through the night to battle.

  30

  Dog-Lord

  Callotec’s meagre little army was much diminished. All the injured who could not walk had been left behind, along with two carts and most of their supplies. He had no need of those who could not fight. It was tempting to imagine that the Free, unseen by any scout for longer than anyone
had dared hope, might be defeated. Departed. Callotec did not believe that. Not until he walked across the ashes of Towers’ Shadow and into the Empire itself would he believe that.

  There were birds flocking in the trees along the riverside. He wished he had a hawk on his wrist to send arrowing after them, to tear them out of the sky. More diverting, certainly, than the downcast company of the man riding at his side. Kasuman was proving a disappointment, as far as Callotec was concerned.

  “Why did you steal the Bereaved away from your fellows in the School?” he asked the Clever.

  “Because they refused its use when Crex demanded it. Because it, and the School itself, has no just purpose in my eyes save the preservation of the legitimate order. The legitimate throne. I feared they would deliver it into the hands of the Council.”

  It was what Callotec would have wished to hear.

  “Do you still have it, that same fire in the belly that led you to such daring in a noble cause?” he asked.

  “I have not lost it, sire,” Kasuman said. “I am merely weary.”

  The man would have to learn a touch more resilience, or at least the pretence of it, if he was to serve any purpose in the new order of things, Callotec thought. For now, he was necessary, though. Allowances could be made, perhaps, until that need diminished.

  “Perhaps it would cheer you to educate me somewhat,” Callotec suggested.

  “If I can, sire.”

  “Very good. Well, then. There is a village between here and our destination. Towers’ Shadow. Have you heard of it?”

  “No, sire.”

  A lie, undoubtedly. A man who would lie to a king would be well advised to perfect the art first. Callotec did not believe there was anyone of any consequence in the kingdom who did not know – or think they knew – the cause of his fall from his cousin’s favour. Just as there was no one who did not know that some spiteful souls still named him Dog-Lord when he was not there to hear them. Perhaps it was a well-meant lie, though. A dutiful falsehood, to spare a sovereign’s discomfort.

  “No matter. I mean to raze it as we pass. A nest of traitors, best burned out. I wondered… might there not be a place for the Bereaved in this plan of mine? It was my intent to bring a fine pack of hunting hounds with me when next I set eyes upon the place, but… well, circumstances have conspired against that intent, clearly.”

  Kasuman pursed his lips thoughtfully. He did not appear wholly averse to the idea. That cheered Callotec considerably.

  “Is that something that might be done?” he pressed.

  “It is difficult, sire. The Bereaved is not a thing easily restrained once it is stirred into activity. A single… execution, such as that of your mutineer… even that was testing. Any reluctance I might feel in seeing it thus employed arises only from that danger. It might be that attempting something of grander design would invite complete devastation. I could not promise you that such a beginning could be ended.”

  “The Regent Queen did it, did she not?” demanded Callotec irritably.

  “At great risk, yes. Perhaps she, and the School of her time, did not fully understand quite what dangers they courted.”

  “There are but two tamed Permanences in all the world, and we hold one of them! Are you telling me that we cannot use the thing? What is its purpose, then?”

  “Oh, but it can be used,” said Kasuman quickly, holding up a placatory hand. “When all else is lost, when there is nowhere else to turn. Then, certainly, it can be used. But its greatest purpose is the possession of it. The promise, in the minds of your enemies, that you will indeed use it when that last moment comes. If they ever doubt that, its purpose and power alike are lost. So be of no doubt: it can and must be used, when that necessity is inescapable.”

  “And settling the debt of Towers’ Shadow is not such a moment,” Callotec acknowledged in disappointment.

  “Perhaps not?” Kasuman agreed tentatively.

  “Very well. We shall have recourse to more traditional means, then. But that will require a little more time. We must hurry on.”

  He turned about in his saddle and stretched, looking down the length of the column that followed him. It was not an overly impressive sight. Tired and ragged men, soiled by days on the road. But numerous enough for his purposes, he thought.

  “Faster,” he called out. “You can rest after we reach Towers’ Shadow.”

  The pace did increase a touch. Less than he would have wished, but it was something.

  “I’m pleased to see you can still find the fire within when it’s needed, Kasuman,” he said as they trotted along. “We will need such vigour in the next Hommetic Kingdom.”

  31

  The Doves Had Come

  The doves had come to Ordeller in the gloaming. She had not heard them at first, for she was washing down the floor of her kitchen. Scrubbing and splashing away while the Emperor sat on the edge of the cooking hearth scratching his nose and watching her. It was one of his favourite stations, that, when the fire was recently extinguished. The stones kept the heat, and he liked heat. Ordeller suspected the weather of these wild lands did not agree with him. Whatever his distant homeland – she struggled to imagine a place so foreign as to contain his kind in abundance – it was a good deal warmer than Curmen. That much she knew well.

  The cleaning done, her back aching as it did more often with each passing year, she carried a dozen tankards and cups out to arrange on the serving counter. It might be a vain hope that anyone would be wanting to drink tonight – trade had been thin before the Free passed through, and positively emaciated since – but she liked to keep up the appearance of a welcome. That was when she heard the bells tinkling. She stood there, arms laden with the apparatus of drunkenness, and angled her head, squinting towards the stairs. No doubting it. A silvery little jangling of bells.

  Her birds, those trained to home here to her lodging house, had been taught to peck a little red-painted square of wood when they were in want of seed or water. From that square, suspended in the dove house, up amongst the rafters, Ordeller had dropped a vanishingly thin, thread-like string. All the way down through floor and ceiling into her own rooms. And at the end of that string were bells. She thought it a rather clever trick, and took pleasure in its success whenever it worked. Upon such small pleasures was a modest but contented life founded.

  At the sound of the bell, she sighed and set her load down, all higgle-piggle on one of the big drinking tables.

  “I’m going to see to the doves,” she called to the Emperor, still occupying his warm hearth throne.

  He made no reply. He never did.

  Ordeller climbed the stairs slowly but steadily. The higher she climbed, the lower her spirits fell. Message birds, in her experience, as often brought good word as bad, but it was always easier to imagine the latter had arrived, for some reason.

  And it had, this time. Word both bad and sad. She sat there in the cramped dove house, up in the eaves, surrounded by dust and feathers and the smell of droppings, and was slightly surprised that as she read the messages Yulan had sent, she felt a little like crying.

  She had liked almost all of the Free that she had met. Oh, some of them, like that cold-skinned sow Akrana, took a bit of getting used to, but in the main she had found them full-spirited and well-mannered. And they paid her more than she had ever earned from selling wine and ale to the impoverished folk of Curmen, of course, but that was neither here nor there. She would have liked them in any case.

  Miserable, she went down to her room and laboriously copied out the message Yulan commanded her to send out on every bird she had. Tell those who received it to send it on, with every bird they had, until it spread through the Free like a chain of whispers. The School is coming. Run. Hide. Set no store by anything but your own safety.

  Yulan was scattering the Free. Perhaps never to be unscattered. What a sad ending, she thought, if ending it was, to something that had been so grand and glorious. So vivid, in a world grown drab.

&nb
sp; It took her a long time to affix so many messages to so many fragile legs. On impulse, she kissed the head of each pale dove as she set it loose through the hatch in her roof. She watched them flutter away into the twilight, drifting off in all directions one by one.

  Then she closed the hatch and went back down to the kitchens, where the Emperor was looking half asleep. Folded up nice and comfortable.

  “Sorry, old friend,” she said quietly to the ape. “I think we’ll be needing to take a little journey. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure, but cautious is wise, reckless is not, as my grandfather used to say.”

  She frowned as she said it, and wagged a thoughtful finger at the Emperor.

  “Or it might have been my uncle. Long time ago. Anyway, I wonder if that cousin of mine in Linden Grove is still alive. Can’t remember his name. Never liked him, whoring pig that he is. But he’s got a roof he might lend us for a little while, you and me.”

  The grey-black ape stirred only a little at all this. He looked at her with eyes barely half open. A great deal more interested in sleep than in what she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Ordeller smiled. “No need to rush. We’ll get some sleep in our bones first. Be on our way tomorrow, perhaps.”

  Ordeller packed what she would take with her that night. Not much. She had ample treasure to buy anything she might need when she got wherever she was going. There was a tiny old cart tucked away in a corner of the stables somewhere. Hardly anything to it but two wheels and a couple of spars, if she remembered right, but it would meet her needs. She would have to buy a donkey, of course. That should not be difficult, given her willingness to pay whatever price was asked.

  She slept poorly, finding such a multitude of things to fret over – Yulan’s difficulties, her own uncertain future, the Emperor’s ingrained dislike of change of any kind – that as soon as she managed to still one of them, the next popped into its place.