'I killed the last man who laughed at me. He was Tsardon but perhaps you are my enemy too. I'm beginning to think that everyone is.'
'He's rambling.'
'I had to leave. No one will help me so I am helping myself.' He held out his hands. 'I'm telling the truth. Let me go.'
Nunan looked at his hands. They were filthy. Stained.
'Am I supposed to believe this is blood? I'll ask you again. Where are you from? We aren't going to hurt you.'
'Gull's Ford.'
Kell raised her eyebrows and Nunan smiled. 'Get this man a drink and some food,' he ordered a scout. 'Sit down. I am Pavel Nunan, Master of Sword. This is Dina Kell, Master of Horse.'
The man didn't know quite how to react. He looked around for somewhere to perch and found a legionary had rolled a log up for him. He smiled nervously.
'Go on,' said Kell. 'Take the weight off those sandals. Perhaps we can find you something more suited to your road ahead.'
'You would help me?'
'We'll help anyone who kills Tsardons. It makes us allies does it not?' said Kell.
'But first, an exchange of information,' said Nunan. 'Tell me about Gull's Ford and more particularly its river crossings. Then perhaps we can advise you in return, maybe persuade you from your quest. What's your name?'
i am Han Jesson and nothing will keep me from finding my family.'
i can respect that,' he said. 'Tell me. This Tsardon you killed. Who was he?'
'He was the sentor of the garrison occupying my village,' said Jesson. 'He insulted the memory of my wife. I found him drunk on the street when I was leaving and now his own knife lies among his entrails.'
Nunan saw Jesson's hands trembling. 'Never killed a man before?' he asked.
Jesson shook his head. 'I've never thrown a punch before and now I am a murderer.'
if you're worried I'll see you stand trial,' said one of the scouts, bringing up a plate of cold food.
'Hey,' said Nunan. 'Enough.'
'Thank you,' said Jesson.
'How many of them are there?' asked Nunan.
'A couple of hundred, at most,' said Jesson. He brightened, seeing Nunan's expression. 'You don't mean to skirt the town, do you?'
Nunan shook his head. 'Where's the next nearest Tsardon garrison?'
'Don't hurt the people. They let the Tsardon in but they had no choice. They didn't understand.'
'Where is the next nearest Tsardon force?'
'Most towns have them but most of them are moving towards Neratharn or occupying Haroq. There is resistance in the Grand Central Plains but they have marched round it, most of them. That's what I've heard.' Jesson fidgeted. 'Don't hurt my friends.'
Nunan shrugged. 'We'll do what we can. But if there are sympathisers we cannot let them prosper. Look where you are now. Tsardon crawling all over your town.'
Jesson's eyes darkened. 'No one was a sympathiser until the Conquord ignored our pleas for help. You have brought this on yourselves. It is we who are the victims.'
Nunan raised his palms. 'Calm yourself, Han Jesson. This is not
the place to be airing your grievances however justified you think they are. Not everyone will understand.'
Jesson sat back a little. 'They are not sympathisers,' he said quietly. 'They had no choice.'
'Most of the people sleeping in this woodland were once citizens just like you and the good people of Gull's Ford. They learned to fight.' He stood, looming over Jesson. 'There is always a choice.'
He walked away to find a place to rest, leaving Kell to tell the man about the folly he was so determined to undertake. Tomorrow. Tomorrow the Gesteris Revenge would taste first blood.
Arducius put his head down, hunched his shoulders and let the mule pick its own path. The wind howled along the valley, driving icy sleet and snow into their faces. It whipped in gusts that threatened to pitch them off their mounts and found its way inside their furs, chilling their bodies. The snow under the mule's hoofs was at least a foot deep and covering a layer of ice on which it often slipped, sending his stomach cart-wheeling.
Try as he might, Arducius couldn't keep his eyes fixed ahead or on his animal's head. And every time he looked left over the drop he felt sick, deep in his gut, and his head spun. Jhered had said that morning that they were twelve thousand feet up. It felt more like twelve thousand miles. Nothing had prepared them for this.
They were eight days out of the horrible border settlement of Ceskas. Arducius was sure only Jhered's sheer presence had stopped them being attacked. They had only spent one night there while the two Gatherers bought animals, furs, supplies and whatever else they thought they would need but it had been a long and sleepless one.
Out here, the Conquord technically held sway but there were no legionaries, no House of Masks and no basilica. A clutch of a couple of hundred wood and stone dwellings clinging to a barren hillside. Their only purpose, so far as Arducius could tell, was to overcharge prospectors travelling into Kark from the west and to buy goods from the Karku cheaply and sell them on into Gestern at huge profit.
Jhered had shrugged when Arducius had told him and repeated that line about the reality of life outside of Westfallen. But he'd also seen Jhered talking closely to Appros Menas and later on Gorian had said that the Gatherers would be coming to call when the war was done.
No one smiled in Ceskas. All they did was stare and calculate what profit they could make out of the new arrivals, dead or alive. Arducius was glad to leave, as they all had been. Now he wasn't so sure. Now he'd do anything to see another face and know there was civilisation of any sort around the corner.
Beneath him, his mule swayed sickeningly as it walked along the narrow path that climbed inexorably higher and higher into the Karku mountains. Arducius couldn't believe anyone lived here, let alone that an entire race apparently thrived in this desolation. He dared another look around him, trying to convince himself that he wasn't as scared as he felt.
The snow had abated for a moment and through the narrow slit in his scarves, the world was white and terrifying. He could brush his right hand along an ice-covered rock face that soared much further than he could see. Ahead of him, peaks galloped away into the distance, getting higher and higher, dominating the land and lowering down, daring them to come further. And looking down past his left boot, the ground fell away onto the endless teeth of rocks.
He was behind Jhered, his mule blinkered like all of them, plodding on stoically in the tracks of the Exchequer. Ossacer rode behind him, then came Mirron, Gorian and Kovan. Appros Menas brought up the rear. All of them were covered in snow. Ice was building in the fur trim of their heavy coats and over the front of their thick, wool-lined leather mittens.
And this was one of the principal routes along the Karku border, so Jhered said. Others that went deeper into the country were easier but much longer and the Karku guarded them jealously. That was where they lived in great numbers so the stories went. In beautiful stone-built houses, set around high mountain lakes where the air was crisp and fresh and the grass green and hearty. It sounded idyllic. And a ridiculous notion.
Arducius sighed. The only vegetation he could see were a few gnarled trees clinging grimly to the mountainsides, and short brush and heather flattened by the wind and ice. How it lived here was a marvel but there it was. Arducius could feel the life energy pulsing slow and determined through the roots and into the leaves. They were like oases of light in the dead, cold, bleak rock. The only other energies he could sense around their small party were the fleeting lights of birds and rodents.
Ahead, Jhered pushed them on as fast and as far as he could each day. Arducius had watched him get ever more serious and concerned as they made their slow progress. He said little whenever they stopped, consulted his maps, gazed out at the ranks of mountains that hemmed them in on all sides. It all looked the same to Arducius. Awesome, but still an unending canvas. How easy it would be to enter here and never ever find the way out.
Like every morni
ng they had risen before first light, eaten a hot breakfast and been on their way as dawn crept over the eastern peaks. They rode without further food, pausing only to rest the mules or walk them if they could, until the sun began to set. It was a short day and a long night here. Further up, where Jhered appeared to be heading, they would enjoy more light.
They had travelled up steep clefts, over broad plateaus, through staggering gorges and across bleak low plains where the wind had battered the vegetation into submission. They had been on this path, winding higher and higher up, for two days now. Last night they had slept in a tiny alcove that had been hacked out of the blank mountain side by someone ages past.
Today, they had been more fortunate. An hour or more before the sun set, they came across a wide natural cleft in the rock. It was sheltered from the worst of the weather. Tough-barked trees grew up its sheer faces, heathers dug their roots into the thin layer of frozen earth and moss grew on every rock surface. The southern face was covered in snow and ice. The northern face was a riot of colour, quite at odds with almost everything else they had seen in the last few days. Jhered had not even paused to consider moving on and it was not long before their bivouac leather was staked to the walls and a fire was roaring in the lee of the cliff.
The Ascendants and Kovan had climbed gratefully from their mules, which were now tethered to trees at the back of the cleft, and had huddled together around the fire to thaw slowly. Jhered had set a pot over the flames Mirron had created and a thick vegetable and mutton soup was bubbling away.
In front of them, the snow was thickening again, blowing past the entrance to the cleft in a cloud of huge flakes. Jhered was staring at it from beneath his perpetual frown. Arducius saw that Gorian and Mirron were looking out at it too and the reason why had never changed.
'Just think,' said Ossacer. 'Thirty days ago, we were swimming under Genastro Falls and Father Kessian was helping us understand how to harness the wind energies.'
Gorian was smiling sadly, his head nodding at the memory. Mirron's eyes had filled with tears just like Ossacer's, and Arducius felt loss pulling at his heart.
'So short a time and it seems like forever,' said Mirron.
'And it's still hot in Westfallen,' said Gorian, rubbing his hands together harder over the crackling flames.
He, like all of them, had experimented with keeping himself warm by drawing on the energies around them. But high up here that meant using the mules or the scattered life of plants; and the former made the mules scratchy while the latter made the Ascendants too tired. It had been a great disappointment to Gorian not to be able to get one up on Jhered, who felt the cold like all of them. Of course he and Menas never complained.
'Get used to it,' said Jhered, not turning. 'Wishing yourself back home won't get you there. Winning the war will.'
'So you keep saying,' said Gorian.
'Because you refuse to accept what is front of your faces.'
'We've only got your word we should be doing this. Vasselis's men had it all worked out and it wouldn't have meant us freezing to death.'
Jhered turned and his gaze on Gorian was baleful. 'No, it would have meant you blundering into Atreskan rebels or Tsardon armies instead. If you think that a better path, then take your mule and go back.' He stirred the soup. 'Your argument is single-tracked and tedious. I don't care if you trust me or not. I don't care if you hate me or not. But you will do your duty to the Conquord as directed by me.'
'Why you?' said Gorian. 'What makes you so special you can order us around?'
Arducius saw Jhered's hand tighten on the spoon but his face didn't twitch a muscle. 'Because I am the commanding officer of any I demand. And I demand it of you.'
'Do you think we can really make a difference?' asked Arducius. 'How can we win a war that all the legions cannot?'
Jhered looked at him, at all of them, and his frown lifted for a moment. 'I really don't know. All I do know is that we have to make an attempt. We have to try. The Omniscient will welcome us into His embrace if we do so. If we do not, we deserve nothing and will get nothing.
'What part you will play and when, I can't see yet. But I do know this. What you have causes fear. And fear is the greatest weapon an army possesses. We could lose the Conquord unless we can turn the tide of the Tsardon advance soon. We have to try anything we can. We have to take their belief and turn it into fear.'
‘I won't hurt anyone,' said Ossacer. 'That is not what I was born to do.'
'Perhaps you won't have to,' said Menas, coming to the fire from tending the mules.
'How can we avoid it if we are to beat the Tsardon?' asked Mirron. 'How can you ask us to do this?'
'Because you are part of the Conquord and you must fight to save it!' shouted Jhered. 'God-embrace-me, girl have I not got through to you at all? If you ever want to return to the peace you knew in Westfallen you have to act now.'
Kovan stood. 'Exchequer Jhered, please. We've had enough. We're tired and cold and hungry.'
Jhered nodded and a brief smile crossed his face. 'All right, young Vasselis. Let's talk of anything else if it'll make you happier. But think on this. There are many ways to win wars and only one of them is to strike your enemy down and kill him. Think of your powers. Think of what they can do—' He stopped suddenly. '—what's wrong, Ossacer?'
Arducius turned round. Both Ossacer and Gorian were distracted, sampling the trails. Arducius couldn't sense anything out of the ordinary. His head and body were full of the power of the weather that he knew would not abate for days if they stayed here in the heights.
'There's something . . .' began Ossacer, clutching Arducius's arm.
The mules began to buck and strain at their tethers, catching some scent on the wind that howled like a thousand wolves around the opening of the cleft. Jhered, Kovan and Menas were on their feet in moments, swords from scabbards, shields grabbed from the ground.
'Get behind us,' said Jhered. 'Keep behind the fire.'
Arducius beckoned the Ascendants to him. Glancing back, he thought he saw shapes moving on the sheer faces of rock but it had to be a trick of the firelight.
From both sides of the path, creatures padded in, crouched low to the ground and ready to spring. There were four of them and at first, Arducius thought them dogs. But they were more like lions with the bulk of bears. They were completely white, from the tips of their snouts to their long tails, which were cocked like scorpions' stings above their backs. Their legs were powerful and their jaws packed with yellowed teeth for tearing and crushing. They had large eyes hooded by heavy brows and long hooked claws gripped the ice.
'Gorthock,' said Jhered. 'Get your shields in front of you. They'll work in a team so if they go for you, cover yourself. The other two of us must work fast and clean. Those jaws crush armour. Don't hesitate.'
Arducius caught the fear in Jhered's voice and knew they were in real trouble. He heard more skittering behind him and looked again but the walls were empty. It must be the sound of branches on rock. He turned back and Gorian was walking forwards.
'Gorian, stop.' Mirron's voice was panicked.
Jhered glanced left. 'Gorian, get back. This is not the time.'
'It is always the time,' said Gorian.
The gorthock had switched their attention to him now and he was already in front of the swords, too far from defence. Arducius heard low growls and the scratch of claws on rock and ice.
'What's he doing?' asked Mirron, clutching Arducius's sleeve.
'Watch,' said Ossacer
With his heart pounding, Arducius fixed on the scene in front of him and prayed that Gorian wasn't demonstrating fatal over-confidence. There was nothing Jhered or the others could do now. Gorian was kneeling on the ground, his arms outstretched in the direction of the gorthock. If they chose to strike, he would be killed.
Gorian was speaking but Arducius couldn't hear him properly. He was facing the nearest gorthock. The beast was staring at him while the others closed in on him, trapping him
. The furthest animal twitched and feinted a move. Gorian didn't flinch. He held out a hand and the lead animal came towards him, rising from its hunting stance.
'It's beautiful,' said Ossacer.
'I can't see through the weather trails,' said Arducius, sensing only the blaring life energy maps of the gorthock in the midst of the snow and wind.
'He's linking with them. Forcing his calm on them. His will.'
The gorthock put its snout in his hand then licked his palm. It growled again. Gorian moved his hand and massaged the loose folds of skin and thick fur under its throat. It nuzzled his shoulder. He stretched out his other arm and a second gorthock began to walk to him, as did the third. Their tails relaxed and fell to trail along the ground. The first one was sitting now, nothing more than a puppy under Gorian's control. He was moving his attention between them, calming them, taking their aggression from them.
Arducius saw the others watching on in admiration and amazement. Not Jhered, though. He was fixed on the last gorthock which had not moved from its striking stance. It was absolutely still but for a slight quiver along its flanks. Whatever control Gorian had over the other three, it had not affected the fourth.
There was a momentary pause that seemed to stretch to eternity. And in it, the path of fate was laid out. Mirron had started to scream the same instant that the gorthock leapt. Gorian hadn't seen it, so wrapped up was he in the warmth of the other three.
Its guttural roar split the dusk. Its body was a blur through the air. But it was still not fast enough. Jhered dived at it, shield outstretched, colliding with its flank and driving it towards the edge of the cleft and towards the path. It turned and scrabbled at the shield, locking claws on to it and trying to bite over the top.
The two slithered on, their momentum carrying them onto the ice. Jhered turned his body and jabbed his sword into the slick surface, trying in vain to slow them.
'Oh no,' said Arducius.
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