Mark moaned and rolled onto his side, still asleep.
Garec listened for sounds of the soldiers outside. He thought he could make out two or three voices, but they were muffled by distance and wind; even straining, he was unable to eavesdrop on the conversation. ‘Mark,’ he said sharply, ‘Mark, wake up.’
Mark shifted again and opened his eyes. ‘Garec?’ He tried to lift his head, but was overcome by dizziness and fell back into the blankets.
‘I’m over here.’
‘Where are we?’
‘In a Malakasian tent; they were a border patrol. How’s your leg?’ Garec pushed himself up on his elbow.
‘I feel like I’ve been shot.’
Garec laughed and a blast of pain ran through his hip. ‘Me too.’
Without opening his eyes, Mark said, ‘Lovely place, this Gorsk. Remind me to look into the local timeshares; maybe we can go in on one together.’
Garec asked, ‘Can you walk?’
‘Walk?’ Mark was incredulous, ‘Garec, I don’t even know if I can sit up.’
‘That’s the querlis – it’s powerful, but you’ll heal very quickly. It does make you drowsy.’
‘Drowsy?’ Mark laughed again, a happy drunk. ‘I feel like I’ve been hit over the left-field wall. Sorry, it’s a baseball reference. You wouldn’t know.’
‘We’d say you’ve played the ball in a chainball tournament, about the same thing, I guess,’ Garec said. ‘Versen used to say that every time he drank Ronan wine.’
Mark forced himself to sit up. ‘So how do we get out of here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Garec answered. ‘There’s less snow here, so I guess we have to assume they brought us down the valley. It looks like it’s getting dark outside, but I don’t know how long we slept.’
‘So we don’t know how far we’ve travelled, and we won’t be moving very quickly with these injuries. If we can get to high ground, I’m sure we’ll be able to see enough to find Sandcliff, or at least the village below it.’
‘Can you climb?’
‘No,’ Mark was honest, ‘probably not, but together, we have two good legs. We might be able to drag ourselves up high enough to get our bearings.’
‘That’s not much of a plan.’
‘No. Where are our weapons?’
Garec looked around. ‘Not in here, as far as I can see.’
‘How about our cloaks?’
‘Mine’s here.’ Garec peered through the gathering darkness. ‘That might be your coat, bunched up beneath the foot of your cot.’
‘All right, so assuming, they don’t come in here and beat us to death, or torture us to give information we don’t have, we might be able to get past a guard late tonight.’
‘I doubt it,’ Garec said. ‘If they don’t beat us or tie us up, they’ll have that woman—’
‘Raskin, he called her; did you see the way she pulled that arrow out of my knee? I’m going to need surgery.’
‘Field surgery?’
‘Real goddamned Rose-Medical-Center-in-Denver surgery!’
‘She’ll treat us again.’
‘What, with that queer stuff?’
‘Querlis, yes.’
‘Great,’ Mark sighed, ‘another beating with the pharmaceutical cudgel. We’ll never get out of here if she keeps us doped up on that.’
‘But it’s good for our injuries, the best thing we have in Eldarn,’ Garec insisted.
‘Can we get some in a village somewhere?’
‘It’s difficult to find, but any significant town will have querlis. Traver’s Notch has healers.’
‘Then I’m skipping my next dose,’ Mark said, shifting enough to get his feet onto the ground. He rested his face in his hands.
‘You’re not ready to travel, Mark.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘but I will be if we can get clear of this camp. Have you been able to see outside?’
‘Just that it’s not as snowy.’
‘Let’s do that first.’ He braced himself on the cot and pushed up with his arms, trying to stand, but as he did so, the tent flaps opened and the woman came in. Mark allowed himself to fall back into the blankets. ‘Ah, Dr Mengele, lovely to see you,’ he said.
‘What are you doing up? You shouldn’t be putting weight on that leg.’ She moved to his bedside. ‘Here, let me see it.’
‘No way!’ Mark spat and swung for her, tumbling her into the wooden table at the back of the tent. The table collapsed over her, spilling packs, supplies, food and what looked like medical implements. Rolling to her feet, Raskin advanced with her own fists clenched. She stopped when she saw the tent flaps open.
‘Now that wasn’t very polite,’ said the sergeant, who had followed her in. He crossed quickly to Mark’s cot.
‘I don’t want her touching me again,’ Mark said angrily.
‘No, son, you don’t want me touching you.’ He slammed a fist down on Mark’s injured knee and Mark screamed, curled into a ball and rolled from his cot.
The sergeant stooped to help Mark back into bed. ‘I hated to do that, son, but I can’t have you striking my soldiers. Raskin is the best healer we have in the northern corps, and you’re lucky to have her looking after you.’ He covered Mark with a wool blanket, careful to tuck the edges beneath the young man’s writhing frame. Now, get control of yourself, because we have to talk.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Garec threatened from his cot.
‘Or you’ll do what? Shoot me with that fancy bow of yours?’ The sergeant turned to Garec. ‘I noticed you didn’t fire one shot this morning, not one. And that after we stuck two arrows in you. Then you throw out one of the nicest rosewood bows I have ever seen. So I figure you’re either a coward or a rich coward. Either way, you shut yourself up until I tell you to speak. I’m not interested in getting involved in a lot of bureaucratic nonsense. If you’re border runners, you’ll go to the lock-up and await your hanging. I don’t read, myself, but books are books; I don’t begrudge a man the chance to make a bit of silver. I don’t like fennaroot runners, and you two claim to be root runners as well as rare book dealers. But you’ve got no root on you, you’ve got no books on you, so what am I to do with you?
‘I tend to hang fennaroot runners, and though you didn’t have anything on you today, if I hang you, no one is going to care. Unless you had it stashed there at the university, you’re lying to me, because I know there is no place to sell fennaroot on that hillside – it’s not a popular spot, that hillside, doesn’t draw a lot of visitors, especially not in the winter.’ He looked over at Mark again.
‘I don’t believe you know a way into the palace, because I don’t know a way into the palace, and I’ve been up here since before both of you were even born. If you had any root on you, you’d be dead. If you had any books on you, we might negotiate for a small fee, and you’d be on your way. But you didn’t have any books, and you don’t have hardly any silver at all. So what do I do with you?’
‘I think—’ Garec interrupted.
‘Shut yourself up firm and quick, boy. I am not making a joke with you,’ the sergeant said firmly. ‘I will ruin your life right this moment if you don’t shut your lip right now.’
Garec complied without another word and the sergeant continued, ‘So, boys. There’ve been reports of some strange goings-on up at the palace: clouds that move against the winds, explosions, demon screams late at night. The villagers complain and our captain sends us up here to check on the place. Mind you, our lieutenant didn’t come along with the rest of us, because that would have meant getting up off his delicate little backside, and he doesn’t like to do that during this season. So we make the trip up and find you two, book dealers with no books, root runners with no root. I am a very reasonable man, me, and I didn’t kill you. I actually had my girl treat you with querlis, because I do not, not for one moment, believe anything you have told me.’ He spat onto the frozen ground by Mark’s head.
‘I am not famous for having border runners
rush to tell me the truth, and normally I would just hang you boys and be done with this situation. But there are too many coincidences here. First, you aren’t who you say you are; I can see that. Second, you appear at the same time we get reports of odd – some might say magical – goings on up at the palace. And third, we find you two just at the moment our orders from Capehill fade to a trickle. You see, we here on the border receive our orders from a general in Capehill. He doesn’t come up this way too often, because it’s cold and grey and the wine doesn’t travel well out here in the territory. We have received no orders in the past Twinmoon except to come out here and check up on things. Now, rumour has it that Prince Malagon is dead – gone, killed, hiding out in a basement in Orindale, whatever – and I can assure you boys, I don’t care one rutting pinch if he’s on a dairy farm enjoying sexual relations with a heifer. But when I put all these pieces together at the same time, something tells me I need to keep you two alive long enough to satisfy my curiosity that these things are not somehow all related. What do you think?’
Raskin had begun changing the dressing on Garec’s injuries, peeling away the querlis leaves and replacing them with a fresh poultice. So much for escaping during the night. He nodded his thanks when she finished and watched as she moved warily to Mark’s cot.
‘If he so much as twitches, you leave his wound untended, you hear, girl? He can tie it up himself if he’s that tough.’ The sergeant stared down at Mark as he spoke.
‘So, boys, what do you think of my summary? Am I about right?’
Garec had been trying to work out their story. ‘You’re right about much of it, sir, although we truly don’t know anything about any screaming demon or magic clouds. We do know a way into the palace, and we do have a stash, root, a few books and a purse of silver we left inside. We were going to go back for it, after we made a run down into the village for some supplies.’
The sergeant grinned at him. ‘I’ll give you ten points for coming close to the truth, boy, but you missed it, didn’t you? Just by a bit, but you missed the truth.’ With that, he pressed the flat of his palm against Garec’s injured hip and began to lean forward. Pain flared up despite the fresh querlis and Garec groaned, fighting the urge to scream.
‘You want to try again, boy? You two weren’t going into that village for supplies. That village is a day-trip. You two were carrying everything you own, and if you were going in for supplies, you’d have taken more than the few copper Mareks you had on you. You were on your way out of those hills, right?’
‘Yes, yes, all right, all right,’ Garec spoke as quickly as he could between shallow breaths. His leg throbbed with every heartbeat, and his foot began to twitch involuntarily as his body fought the need to pass out. ‘You’re right. We were leaving.’
The sergeant withdrew his hand. Garec rolled onto his back, sweating.
‘We were leaving for a few days. We’d done the first part of our job. The books were there in the library and the root was hidden inside the palace scullery.’ Garec decided to try lying one more time, assuming that if the sergeant pressed against his hip again, he would be unconscious until morning, anyway. ‘Our job was to get the root across the border and to hide it at Sandcliff. Our partner is the one with the connection here in Gorsk. He sells the root, brings the silver back and we return three days later to carry both the coins and the books across the border into Capehill.’
‘Ah, a partner now? This is getting thick, isn’t it?’ The sergeant approached again. ‘And I am quite sure you will be happy to share your partner’s name, will you not?’
Garec prayed the sergeant really had been a border guard as long as he claimed. ‘Rodler Varn of Capehill,’ he said. ‘I’m Garec Haile; I come from Randel, down in Rona, but I live in Capehill now. That’s Mark Jenkins. He’s from the South Coast, obviously, but he lives in Capehill too, at least for the autumn harvest and our winter runs across the border. We get into the palace through a drainage track that runs from the scullery to the gardens. It was a fluke; our partner found it one morning running from a squad of your guards.’
‘Rodler Varn?’ The sergeant glanced at Raskin, who tried to hide her excitement. ‘That name might be familiar … Rodler Varn. Hmmm.’ Garec could see the Malakasian was prevaricating; it was quite clear that young Rodler had been eluding them for some time; he was probably quite a thorn in their sides. ‘And you say he’ll be stopping by the palace in the next three days?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Don’t play games with me, boy. What you say in the next two breaths may save your life – your Southie friend’s life, too.’
Garec felt a rush of adrenalin; the wind had changed in their favour. Now was his chance to misdirect the greedy border guards. ‘We can take you back. We can get you inside – though not many can fit through the opening. You won’t be able to, and the others we saw this morning, they won’t fit either.’
‘Mox and Denny,’ Mark said quietly.
‘Good memory, boy,’ the sergeant said with a laugh. ‘You were paying attention this morning.’
‘One tends to remember the names of people who have been so helpful.’ He shot Raskin a grim look.
‘Right. Denny and Mox. They won’t be able to fit, but she will.’ Garec indicated Raskin. ‘We could get her inside.’
‘And she could open the doors for the rest of us?’
‘I don’t know,’ Garec answered. ‘We’ve never tried to open them. We figured if anyone – you in particular – was monitoring the palace, you’d know if the main gate had been breached.’
‘Wise of you, young man, very wise.’ He turned to Raskin. ‘You’ll go inside with them.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Rutters, yes, Sergeant,’ Raskin said
‘Good, good. We’ll ride up that way in the morning. Trust me, boy, if you have someone waiting in that scullery for my soldiers, they’ll be dead. You, too.’
He turned back to Raskin and said, ‘Send Mox and Denny back with two of the others to watch the place. I don’t want young Rodler Varn of Capehill coming and going before we can snare him. Have them go up the draw south of here. It’s faster.’
Raskin looked concerned. Are you sure? The regular path up there is—’
‘It’s cold enough. No one has seen or heard one of them creatures in the last Moon. With this snow, they’ll all be down on the plain hunting livestock. It’ll be all right.’
The sergeant pulled his hat down over his ears and tugged the knitted mittens back on his hands. ‘If we do capture your partner, boys, you’ll have the fun of a tag hanging down in the village.’
Neither Mark nor Garec replied; they hadn’t been invited to speak. Garec was feeling drowsy as the querlis began to take effect, but before allowing himself to fall asleep, he made eye contact with Mark. They had learned something useful: none of the ranking officers were alarmed about the strange happenings at the old Larion keep; they hadn’t even bothered to send out a full platoon. That was good news for the partisans: they had infiltrated Gorsk and engaged in a noisy battle with Prince Malagon’s minions without alerting the entire army.
The challenge now was not just to escape, but to make sure no one managed to spread the word that a company of partisans had breached the walls at Sandcliff.
Garec’s vision began to blur and he slipped smoothly into the darkness. His last thought was that Mark had been right: Nerak hadn’t sent anyone to Sandcliff, because he thought the almor and the acid clouds would kill them off; he hadn’t even alerted his own border patrols. Garec hoped to make it a mistake the fallen Larion sorcerer would regret.
At midmorning the following day they came upon what remained of Mox and Denny and the two soldiers dispatched to assist them at Sandcliff. Mark and Garec were riding one behind the other on a large roan which was quite comfortable carrying both men as long as it didn’t involve galloping. They were still groggy with the lingering effects of querlis, and in pain, even though the poultices had reduced the swelling and spe
eded the healing process. Raskin had visited several times during the night to make sure they were drinking enough water and, in the aven just before dawn, to change their dressings for the ride back to the palace. Garec didn’t believe they would have received such attention had Rodler’s name not been mentioned; he suspected transporting a few bandoliers of fennaroot was the least of the young man’s crimes north of the Gorskan border.
They had been riding for nearly an aven, the roan’s reins securely attached to Raskin’s pommel, when they heard the sergeant cry out. A flurry of activity as soldiers dismounted and ran forward preceded screams of horror. One of the guards leant over and vomited repeatedly in the snow.
Raskin remained in the saddle, her sword drawn. Neither Mark nor Garec made any move, both watching their guard carefully: it was obvious something nasty had happened to her colleagues.
Garec wanted to sympathise, for Raskin had been good to them. He had lost Mika and Jerond, Versen and Sallax – he knew what was going through Raskin’s mind as she listened to her fellow soldiers crying out to the gods of the Northern Forest. He set his jaw, determined not to feel sorry for the border guard: she, like the rest of them, was Nerak’s servant, and thus his enemy.
He gave her credit for being a steadfast soldier; maybe if she’d grown up in Estrad she might now be fighting for the Resistance.
‘It was grettans,’ Garec said.
‘Shut yourself up,’ Raskin scowled. She sat straighter, trying in vain to see what was happening ahead. After a bit, she said, ‘What makes you think it was grettans?’
‘Look at where we are,’ Garec said. ‘This is a game trail, running from the pond we passed near your encampment. Every animal in this forest probably comes down here for water and I imagine grettans hunt back and forth across the trail, waiting for the opportunity to attack downhill. They would be deadly fast downhill.’
The soldier, despite her discipline, began to shake. ‘Oh, gods, Denny—’ she whispered to herself. ‘Poor Mox—’
‘Go and see for yourself, Raskin,’ Mark said in a kindly tone. ‘We aren’t going anywhere – neither of us could even get off this horse without help, and it would be suicide for us to try and outrun you with two of us in the saddle. We’ll be here when you get back.’
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