Hosea stopped for a moment, and carefully selected one of the largest; he popped it into his mouth and smiled.
Ian did the same. It was more tart and less juicy than he was used to, but there was wild rich sweetness that he had never quite tasted before. Following Hosea’s example, Ian gathered them by the fistful and relieved his hunger and most of his thirst, getting only a dozen or so scratches for his effort.
Hosea produced a pair of quart-sized Ziploc bags from his rucksack, and handed one to Ian. It took only a few minutes to fill both of the bags, not even beginning to dent the supply of berries, and another moment to inflate the bags to protect the fruit, and stow them away in the top of their rucksacks.
The brambles tapered off as they climbed; the stony soil, finally, was broken by only a few stubborn plants and by the path. The path had seen better centuries, Ian decided. He kept away from the crumbling edge, and every once in a while had to leap a thankfully small gap in the path, being sure to land well beyond the cracks.
“Is one permitted to ask why such a difficult route has a built-in path?”
Hosea shrugged. “It’s old, but one of the Old Ones, known as Fenderel, used to live in a cave near the top, living on honey and melted snow. He … was generally thought to be wise enough that many walked up to consult with him.” Hosea shrugged. “Eventually, the people in the village at the base of the mountain built a toll road up the side of the mountain. And then, not to be outdone—or to compete for the pilgrim traffic; it’s hard to tell—the people in the village at the base of the mountain on the other side did the same.”
Ian looked up the slope, toward the icy peak. “Is he still there?”
Hosea shook his head and smiled. “No. There was too much traffic, and he had retired to the mountain for privacy, after all. One day he was gone.”
“Whatever happened to him?”
“He left.” Hosea shrugged. “I don’t know everything.” His smile was friendly, but distant. “Not anymore.”
Ian had gotten so involved with what was in front of his face, and with not looking down at the way pebbles and rocks kicked over the side would skip down the mountainside, that they were well around the side of the mountain before he looked down and out.
Far below, a thick, twisting silver-gray river cut across a landscape all quilted in the dark, rich greens of the forests and earthy yellows of the grain fields. A strand of puffy cloud floated halfway down the mountain, it seemed, casting part of the valley into shadow.
The air was clearer than Ian was used to; he could make out individual people, as a gang of what must have been farmworkers—no, peasants—moved through the green rows below, weeding or picking or something.
“There’s Harbard’s Crossing,” Hosea said, pointing.
The river twisted around a small peninsula where a few low buildings stood, one of them right at the river’s edge. A twin to it stood on the opposite shore. As Ian watched, a barge was unloading on the far side, a team of something, probably oxen, pulling a cart onto the road, and toward where the road disappeared in the trees.
Ian nodded. “By nightfall?”
Hosea shook his head. “Tomorrow’s nightfall, perhaps. The day after, more likely. The road is not as easy as we might wish, and the landing farther than it seems.” He looked up at the blue sky. “The day gets no younger, and neither do I.”
By the time the sun set, turning the western horizon all rosy and golden, Ian had long decided that Hosea was right; the road was longer and harder than he would have thought. It twisted like a snake that had swallowed a Slinky as it wound its way down the mountain’s face. Ian decided that the builders must have had some religious prejudice against straight lines.
They made a rough camp beside a small cirque lake, no more than fifty yards across, fed on one side by a trickle of stream that emptied on the other. There was no sand on its shore: just rock, and clear water.
Ian already had the Sierra cup out of his pack, but Hosea held up a finger, then knelt down by the stream and cupped his hand, bringing it up to his lips. He smiled and nodded.
Ian dipped his cup. The water was so cold it made his teeth hurt, and it tasted vaguely of pine. By the time Ian had had his fill, Hosea had gotten a small fire started in a charred depression in the bare rock, and was busily harvesting fallen wood from upslope for it.
A quick supper consisted of a couple of sticks of surprisingly tender beef jerky from their packs and the remaining raspberries, both washed down with gallons of cold water.
Hosea seated himself tailor-fashion across the fire from Ian, his face lit almost demonically in the flickering firelight. “I’ll take the watch, young Ian. I have little need of sleep, and you have much need of it.”
No argument there, at least on the latter. Ian spread out his plastic groundcloth on the stone, took off his shoes and slid into his sleeping bag, the ground hard underneath him. As he pillowed his head on his arms, his last thought was that he was going to have trouble falling aslee—
A scream brought Ian awake in the gray predawn light.
The night had been horrible, filled with light sleep punctuated by constant wakings, seemingly every few seconds. Every scritching in the trees had had him almost leaping out of his sleeping bag, and every change in the night breezes had woken him, too. Even the time he could sleep was just a set of nightmares, of Torrie and Maggie and Torrie’s mom being hung on hooks, flayed alive in front of his eyes. He would wake in a cold sweat, jerk up to a sitting position, then force himself to lie back down, sweaty and cold in his sleeping bag. When you’re on your own, you learn to take what sleep you can; Ian could force himself to fall asleep, if not to stay sleeping.
So it took him a moment to realize that this scream wasn’t from a dream, but from something or someone else.
He leaped out of his blankets in the predawn light to see Hosea stagger back from something, some thing Ian couldn’t recognize in the gray light before dawn. It was the size of a huge man, and vaguely man-shaped, but it was covered with a mat of what could have been thick locks of greasy hair or horribly long, greasy wattles of leathery flesh.
It shook its massive head to clear the wattles from its eyes, and lunged for Hosea again, thick arms reaching out for Hosea’s face or head.
I’m no hero, Ian thought. The only thing to do was to run, maybe grabbing his things, better not. Only an idiot would stoop to pick up a sword by the hilt, fling the scabbard aside with a quick swing, then charge on whatever-thehellitwas, sword in front of him, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Ian’s shouts were incoherent, even to his own ears, as he stumbled toward his gear, ignoring the way cracks and ridges in the hard stone surface cut through his socks and into his foot, then scooped up his sword and scabbard, flinging the scabbard aside with a quick swing, bringing the sword back into line, into an ideal line, as he ran at the creature.
With a deep growl, it threw Hosea aside as though he was a rag doll, then turned toward Ian.
He had no chance. He would have to run away, and hope that he could run faster than it, that Hosea wasn’t badly hurt enough, hoping—
He lunged, in perfect extension, realizing at the last moment that his fencer’s reflexes had betrayed him, that he would barely touch the beast’s chest with his sword tip, that instead of being run through it could merely stop and bat his sword aside with one of those massive arms, and then it would be upon him.
But his muscles and nerves followed the familiar path, and as the sword tip touched the creature’s chest, clouds of smoke erupted from the point of contact, as though the thing was a huge, smoke-filled weather balloon that had been pricked.
It screamed, and raised a hand above the sword, ready to slap it aside, but Ian had already remised, and executed as gorgeous a thrust as he ever had in a real match, this time bringing the tip of his blade into the monster’s lower belly, again rewarded by a smoke spume.
This was too much for whatever it was; clutching its massive hands to it
s belly, it fled down the road, leaping off into the thick brush a few yards in.
Crashing sounds diminished in the distance.
Hosea had propped himself up on his rucksack, one hand cupped tightly over the dark stain spreading across the right side of his waist. His trousers were bloody and torn in several places, and there were scratches all over his face and what Ian could see of his chest.
Ian knelt next to him, fumbling with the strings of Ho-sea’s rucksack. “Is there a first aid kit here?”
“No time,” Hosea said. “It’s not the cuts; they can hurt me, but will do no more than that. It’s the poison—its saliva is poison, and it always licks its claws before it attacks.”
Well, Hosea knew more about this thing than Ian did. “What was that?”
“A wicht, perhaps that’s the best name for it, or a bergenisse. A bergenisse. They used to be all over the mountains in Vandescard, but I had been given to understand that the last one had long since died, at least here.” The foam of spittle at the corner of his mouth was red.
Hosea’s fingers spasmed over the wound on his hip. “And it burns, it burns.”
“What can I do?” Ian asked, desperate.
“Harbard’s Ferry—Harbard’s wife is a healer, and he has some of the skill himself.” Hosea tried to rise to his feet, but his knees started to shake and to wobble; Ian got one of Hosea’s arms around Ian’s shoulders and helped him to his feet.
“I shall walk as far as I can,” Hosea said. “I may well be able to walk far enough.”
With that, his eyes rolled up, his eyelids rolled down, and he dropped to the hard stone limp and lifeless, only a slow pulse at the base of his throat and the slight flow of oozing blood at his hip indicating that he was alive.
Ian knelt next to him. He would have to bind the wounds first.
Ian had to keep it simple.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Rest for three breaths.
Ian stood for a moment, not lowering the poles of the travois he dragged behind him. He had to keep it simple, not think about anything beyond the next eight steps, and the next three breaths he would take while he stopped.
Breath One. As he got more tired, the world had narrowed, from the broad and lovely expanse of the mountainside and valley below to the six or so feet of path in front of him, all the rest gone. But tunnel vision was vision, and all he needed to do was keep pulling.
Let it out and take:
Breath Two: How long had he been walking? He couldn’t even guess. The only thing he could tell was that his palms were rubbed bloody from the poles, that his back felt like somebody had stabbed him in it several times, and that there was six feet of decent road in front of him.
Release and try:
Breath Three: Just keep your eye on the road.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Rest for three breaths.
He couldn’t tell if Hosea was still breathing as he lay on the blankets that Ian had converted into the bed of the travois, and he could only hope that the two rucksacks had stayed tied to it. His sword—he couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from it, not after what it had done to the bergenisse, whatever that was—hung at his side.
Third breath; exhale, and pull.
There was no point in counting; there was no point in not counting. Yes, there was a point in counting, he reminded himself. Without those eight steps, Ian would have spent all day waiting to catch his breath.
The trick, he decided, was to lower his expectations. He would expect to hurt, to ache, he would understand that his lungs would burn with a distant fire that grew always close. He would expect to be cold and rained upon, and it didn’t matter. He would expect that his forehead would turn red and blister in the noon sun, and that there would be no respite for the pain, for the tendons burning like wires in his shoulders, for the blistering and peeling skin of his forehead, and that there would be no end of pain for his hands.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Rest for three breaths.
The poles of the travois were sticky under his hands; some surely from the sap, some from his own blood.
Not good, Ian, he thought. Not good at all. He should let down the travois for just a moment, and see to his sore, bleeding hands, to lie down or sit down for just a moment, to rest his aching feet.
But he knew that if, even for just a second, even just once, he were to let go of the poles, he would never be able to pick them up again. He was Ian Silverstein, dammit—a human, made of flesh and blood, and this was too much to ask of flesh and blood. It was always too much.
He ought to set the travois down and go back and check on Hosea. Really, if the old man was dead, then Ian could rest, for at least a while.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Rest for three breaths. Now, was that eight steps or only seven he had taken?
Step.
Step.
One to be sure it was eight, and another to stop himself from cheating.
And again:
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Rest for three breaths.
It occurred to him that the road had stopped twisting a way back, and that he was walking on smoothed cobblestones, interlaced with a thick moss. How far had he come? How much farther was it?
“Havadh er derein isti vejen?”—What’s the matter? a rough voice asked.
Ian looked up, too exhausted to be pleased, or even surprised, that he had understood the Middle Bersmal with the idiosyncratic emphasis, much more like something out of Old Bersmal, or some language even older.
What do you think is the matter, asshole? he thought. But he didn’t say that.
A man stood in front of him, wearing only breeches and boots, his lined face wreathed with white beard and white hair, both the hair and beard streaked with gray and black and dirt in places. His face was wrinkled like old leather, the creases dark even against his sun-darkened skin.
Ian would have guessed his age at about seventy, but he stood like a strong young man; under a mat of snowy hair, the muscles of his torso were firm like a bodybuilder’s, although a bodybuilder’s chest wasn’t crisscrossed with old scars like this old man’s was.
“Havat‘ defeiler engroden?” he asked.
“Not I,” Ian answered in the same language. “I am only fatigued. My companion is the one who has been hurt. He was savaged by a horrible thing—a bergenisse, he did call it.” Ian didn’t remember letting go of the travois, but his bloody hands were now free, and in front of him, gesturing.
“Can it be?” The old man was already kneeling by the travois. “By the hairy balls of—Orfindel!” he said, laying a hand on Hosea’s shoulder, and shaking Hosea’s limp form gently. “Orfindel, can you hear me?” He took Hosea in his arms and stood, showing no effort at all. “Come. I am the ferryman, called Harbard, sometimes known as Harbard the Old. My wife, Frida, is a healer, and Orfindel has need of one.”
Ian’s tunnel vision was narrowing, but he followed Harbard for about five steps before he fainted.
Chapter Eleven
The Middle Dominion
“Move faster, ye, ” Herolf said, turning around for a moment to glare at the four humans, then turning back. “We have another four or five days to travel until we reach the edge of Dominion territory and I can
turn you over to the House of Fire, and I’d sooner it be four than five, and just as soon it be three, were ye to ask me.”
Torrie was surprised that the four of them were allowed to walk unfettered, but he didn’t feel like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Could they have forgotten to do it? That didn’t make sense. They even were allowed to space out a bit as they walked in the middle of the party, preceded by half a dozen Sons, followed by twice as many.
No, it wasn’t out of carelessness. A Son could easily out-sprint the best of them. But that was just in the short run, and that gave Torrie an idea. Uncle Hosea once said that humans were the best, most stubborn runners, that a healthy man or woman could run any other creature on the planet into the ground. It was a hunter’s thing—but maybe it would work for the prey, too?
Okay, he thought, assuming I can break away, how could he manage to take the others with him? Or maybe not all the others—if Herolf only had one Thorian del Thorian in hand, what could he afford to do to him?
Nothing, probably. And with Torrie free, maybe Torrie could do something useful. He remembered stories Uncle Hosea used to tell about the Vestri, and particularly Dvalin’s Folk, and about how important the status of guest was to them. If he could find one of their burrows—and did Uncle Hosea say where the Vestri were to be found? Torrie couldn’t remember. Torrie hadn’t asked him a lot about the geography of the mythical countries that Uncle Hosea’s stories flowed from; he hadn’t been planning to have to fucking walk through them, either.
Ahead, the road followed the ridges toward the mountains rising off at the horizon, while to the west and below, the river Gilfi twisted all silvery through the valley.
Ten miles away? Fifteen, maybe? Fifty? It was hard to tell. It didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
The worst of it was the way Dad acted. It was as though the Sons had taken all the spine out of him.
He would flinch every time one of the Sons walked by, throwing his arm out defensively, as though for protection, no trace of threat in his manner.
The Sons despised that, both wolf and bitch. So did Torrie, although he didn’t say anything. What would he say? Show a little spine, Dad? Act like you’re a man instead of a coward?
The Fire Duke Page 13