At first he thought of Smiler’s Fair. It was the only other place so large he’d ever seen. But Smiler’s Fair had been made to move and, in the end, to burn. No fire could destroy Mirror Town’s huge, sprawling houses of marble and granite and every type of stone. Krish couldn’t see the city’s boundary, only broad street after broad street lined with vast buildings and narrower ways threading through green parkland. There were people everywhere, many dark-skinned and curly-haired like Olufemi and many more from all the nations of the world. All were dressed in flowing robes, but those of the dark-skinned folk were embroidered and brightly coloured. And they talked as they walked, or laughed, or gestured wildly with their hands. The others drifted along, smiling blankly, wearing simple white.
‘They’re slaves,’ Krish said. ‘All those people are slaves.’
Olufemi looked at him sharply and then away. ‘My people invented bliss and sell it to the Rah. Mirror Town is the womb of all slavery and grows fat from its fruits. Will you scorn your last refuge because of it?’
Krish felt his face heat with shame, because of course he couldn’t. He could see the wealth she spoke of in every building, no two fashioned in the same style. One sprawled low and long, its walls rounded likes enormous wormcasts and faced with amber tiles. Another had built upward rather than outward, spiked towers reaching towards the pale blue sky. Some had a profusion of chimneys and others none, and the nearest had been painted with abstract swirls that drew the eye into infinite loops.
‘But how does it all stand? How do people live here?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t the worm men … Why don’t my servants come to all those places kept in shadow?’
‘Why do you think you outlanders have named this city Mirror Town? Sunlight poisons the land against your servants: anywhere it has touched is safe from them until the moon is born again each month. When we first came to this place, my people fashioned a thousand mirrors and a thousand thousand more have been made over the centuries since. They are on every roof and street corner and in every building, and in no building are there any doors. The mirrors catch the light and send it into rooms and corners that would otherwise be dark.’
‘Cunning,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘If a people are going to sit still in one place, that’s the way to do it. Although this wouldn’t be the place I’d choose to sit. The sun’s hotter than a blacksmith’s forge. How does anything grow?’
‘The power of the runes is faded, warrior, and gone from the rest of the world, but some of it lingers here still. There are orchards and fields that would put the farmland of Ashnesland to shame, and around them nothing but sand.’ Olufemi’s eyes swept the city and her expression was hard to read. Krish wasn’t sure if she was glad to be home. ‘My people chose this desolate place precisely for its remoteness and no one visits Mirror Town except by their invitation.’
‘But we’ve come here,’ Krish said. ‘Will they let us stay?’
‘My family will welcome me.’ Olufemi croaked out a laugh. ‘Or at least they will make room for me. Long ago, the Fourteen Tribes washed up on this shore and my people fed and clothed them and sent them on their way. As for you – you’re nothing to them. For as long as they think of you as nothing, they’ll tolerate you.’
‘And what if they know who I really am?’ Krish asked.
‘The Brotherband knew who you were, and you killed them. The Rah treated you as their king and you betrayed them. Now no one who knows who you truly are will ever welcome you again. Be grateful that here at least there’s no one who wants you dead – for now.’ Olufemi stared at him a moment longer, then turned and began her descent into Mirror Town.
PART 2
Loyalty
24
Sang Ki approached the treetop village, as he’d learned to do, with trepidation. The small force around him were alert: some of his own Ashane, a few pressed Smiler’s Fair men and two hawks to lead them. Their weapons were drawn and they moved as silently as such a force could down the weed-choked track. The paths were ill-tended this far from the Moon Forest’s heart.
‘Don’t see anything,’ the lead hawk hissed to Sang Ki on his suffering carthorse. His mammoth had fled into the plains never to be seen again while his mother had led his forces on the long journey to the Moon Forest. The horse he’d found to replace it struggled beneath his weight and jostled an aching body that was proving appallingly slow to heal from the damage he’d done it.
‘Go then,’ Sang Ki whispered. ‘And good luck to you.’
He watched his men separate to ring the village, creeping through the fields that covered the ground below. This company was well-trained now. They’d had a good long while to practise their skills. The leaves had darkened over summer, the fruit and flowers swollen and bloomed and now the colours all around were red and gold and brown as summer had surrendered to autumn in the time they’d spent pursuing the Brotherband through the forest.
The nearest field was filled with wheat, tall and golden with fat, ripe seed pods. It worried Sang Ki that it remained unharvested, but he reminded himself that the sun shone less bright this far north, and the crops grew ready late. Still, he pictured what his troops might be finding. He’d seen it too often before: the slaughter and the mutilated corpses.
The Brotherband seemed to have a destination in mind. As he and Cwen had tracked them, they’d swept in a broad swathe south and west through the forest. But wherever they were going, they weren’t in such a hurry to arrive that they wouldn’t stop for a little sport along the way.
The horse shifted restlessly beneath him and he dismounted, groaning as he landed. His back hadn’t yet recovered from Laali’s final, fatal plunge. Perhaps it never would. Ah well, none of them could remain unchanged by this business, and the price he’d paid was far lower than some. Far lower than that Laali had paid. What did it truly matter if he could no longer bend his back more than a handspan, if he slept barely an hour straight before the pain in his joints woke him? At least he lived to wake.
He heard a rustle in the corn, his stomach clenched with fear, and then the Jorlith spear-leader Eyjolf walked out from between the stalks, a broad smile on a face that didn’t often hold one.
‘Nothing,’ Eyjolf said. ‘The village is whole, not even Janggok raids to trouble them in the last few weeks. I’ll give those bastards this: they’ve scared every other tribesman out of the forest.’
‘But they didn’t pass by here? Not even livestock gone?’
Eyjolf laughed a little wildly. He was drunk on unspent battle fury. Sang Ki had learned to recognise the signs. ‘Nothing, I tell you. They didn’t even know there was a war on, can you believe it? The thegns sit up there, untravelling, and the churls have their faces to the dirt. No Wanderers by and as far as they know it’s all as it’s ever been in the Moon Forest.’
‘I thought Cwen asked you spear-leaders to send out messages to every Jorlith outpost?’
It was the wrong thing to say. The other man bristled. ‘And so we tried, but do you know how many villages there are in the forest?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘Nor does any man. The Hunter commanded us, no place except Aethelgas or Ivarholme to hold more than 169 hearts. She wanted us spread over the whole forest and that’s what’s occurred, each village budding others and them budding in turn until there was a treeful of them. Too many to count.’
‘And this one was unharmed.’ Sang Ki took a moment to savour it. He wouldn’t have to watch as his force built a pyre for the mutilated corpses, though as far as he and Cwen had been able to figure, this village lay in the direct path of the Brotherband’s march. ‘Well, it’s good news. I dare say if they’ve not been attacked they can spare us lunch. There’s time to eat before we move on.’
Cwen had never been so far from the heart of the Moon Forest, though other hawks had. Sometimes the monsters fled here, though the trees were barely tall enough to shelter them from the sun and so widely spaced that clearings were common. But Cwen had been stuck close t
o Bachur’s side almost from her hawk day. She missed the Hunter fiercely. She would often turn to speak to her only to remember when she saw a plain and human face beside her that her mistress had gone. There’d been no word from her in more than three months.
Most often, the face beside her was that of the blacksmith, Alfreda. The tall, silent woman had become her shadow as she led her forces through the forest, sweeping the Brotherband before them. No, curse it. There was no need to lie to herself, though she’d told the soothing untruth to more than one panicked villager. Cwen was merely following in the Brotherband’s footsteps as they walked where they chose, always one pace ahead.
She approached the village, her towering shadow beside her, but she didn’t believe she’d see anything. This would be the third village now that the Brotherband had passed but hadn’t attacked. She’d like to believe it was because their numbers were falling. The Moon Forest’s villages weren’t undefended and Cwen had found the bodies of tribesmen along with their victims in most places. But as she looked through the thinning trees, she thought it was something else. The Brotherband weren’t fleeing from the Moon Forest, they were rushing to somewhere else.
‘So where are those gut maggots going?’ she asked.
There was no answer from Alfreda. The smith had yet to utter a word to her or anyone else, but she’d write her answer on a piece of parchment if it was important enough. And apparently she could talk; she’d been heard talking to her dead brother. Cwen didn’t understand it. She couldn’t imagine choosing to lock herself in silence. When she had an opinion, she wanted it heard.
‘No point hanging around here,’ she said. ‘We may as well see if your fire javelin is finished.’
It never looked as if Alfreda was listening, but she matched Cwen pace for pace, though her long, heavily muscled legs were clearly accustomed to striding out more. Maybe not now, though; she was still barely eating and would only ever take food when the boy Jinn gave it to her.
And there he was now, at the edge of the campsite waiting for their return, almost as if he’d sensed it. Cwen could see his smile, whiter in the white of his face, as he jogged to meet them.
‘No Brotherband?’ he asked.
‘No sign of them,’ Cwen confirmed, to him and the hawks who were guarding their campsite, beyond the ring of stake-lined ditches they dug every night. That had been Sang Ki’s suggestion. He was a strange man. Strange but clever, though he never used ten words when he’d a store of a hundred longer ones. It was a relief whenever their campaign to clear the forest split their forces and she didn’t have to share his camp at night.
‘Are you ready, Alfreda?’ Jinn asked. ‘I’ve been checking every hour and I reckon the clay’s done, but I ain’t sure. You don’t know how I’ve been tempted to crack open the oven and have a look-see myself. It’s only out of respect for you and your work that I ain’t done it, which I hope you appreciate.’
The boy never seemed to have a problem chattering on to Alfreda, despite her lack of response. And Alfreda had a soft spot for him, Cwen could tell. The expression on her face right now couldn’t be called a smile, but the smith looked less lemon-sucking than normal. She nodded at Jinn and turned towards the heart of the camp, where her forge lay.
It had taken them a long time to gather enough metal for this project. There were no copper or tin mines in the forest; the Hunter forbade it. Bachur didn’t like the thought of her people crawling up the earth’s arse where the worm men were. And few weapons were forged of brass when iron was so much stronger. They’d had to raid the homes of every rich thegn they’d passed for ornaments made out of the metal. It hadn’t made them popular, and even less so when they’d stripped each village bare of its defending Jorlith.
But Cwen’s force had grown into something respectable. Now if they met the full muster of the Brotherband, it would be the tribesmen who were outnumbered. She looked over her encampment, spreading far across the fields, and thought that Bachur would be pleased.
Alfreda’s wagon wasn’t far from Cwen’s tent. It had the Hunter painted on its side as most such wagons did. The Wanderers travelled under her protection and didn’t forget it. But Bachur’s face had been painted perfect and unscarred. That was fucking typical too. The folk looked away from any ugly thing, especially if they were the cause of it.
Alfreda strode eagerly to her forge. Making the weapon was the one thing that seemed to bring any life to her.
‘It’s exciting, ain’t it?’ Jinn said. ‘I’ve never been much for fighting myself. Too little for it, and too cowardly too. I ain’t afraid to admit it. I see the knives out and the blood flowing and I just want to make myself scarce. But this thing here, this could change all that. Even more than any arrow, it could mean a man don’t have to face his enemies to finish them.’ He looked suddenly thoughtful. ‘I ain’t so sure that’s a good thing, now I come to think about it. But I guess it’s a necessary one.’
Alfreda tended her kiln while Jinn spoke. Cwen didn’t understand the blacksmith’s craft, but she could tell the woman was an expert from the way she worked. There was no uncertainty in her movements as she broke open the outer clay and revealed the mould within.
It looked whole and Cwen grinned, but the smith was cautious. She touched it first with a thick, water-soaked cloth and, when that made no steam, lightly with her fingers. Then she lifted the whole thing out and placed it by her forge.
‘Did it work?’ Cwen asked.
Alfreda didn’t answer; she was too busy prodding and poking at the insides of the mould.
‘She’s got to make sure all the wax has melted away,’ Jinn told her. The boy had paid far more attention to the preparation of the weapon than Cwen had. She was only interested in the result.
‘And has it?’ she asked.
The mould cracked open, its two halves separating as neatly as a walnut. Alfreda cradled them like a mother with her baby, smiling.
‘Reckon it has,’ Jinn said.
It wasn’t easy to tell when the forest ended. The trees had been growing shorter for days, ordinary beeches and oaks and elms, not the vast moon pines and ice oaks Sang Ki had grown accustomed to. But that morning as they rode, he realised that grass was now a more common sight, the trees lonely sentinels in it.
His mother rode beside him, staring at the scenery disapprovingly. Too straggly for her, no doubt: too disorderly. It occurred to him that Seonu Hana had been born in exactly the right land, a place where snow reduced everything to the same neat blankness.
‘I believe,’ he said to her, ‘that we have entered the badlands.
And the Brotherband had too. His knowledge of this area was scant: it looked to him to be merely an infertile wilderness between the Moon Forest and the lands of the Rah. It was hard to imagine what the warriors sought here, but he was sure it must be something. They were savage, but not unreasoning.
‘King Nayan won’t thank you for this, you know,’ she said.
‘As the tale of Jaspal and the five gold seeds tells us, work should be its own reward. Besides, I think he might. We are, after all, helping to diminish his rebel son’s forces.’
‘The Brotherband do as they please. They aren’t this Krishanjit’s men.’
She’d made this claim before, but Sang Ki didn’t believe it. He’d seen enough Brotherband corpses over the last few months to know that each of them carried a mark Cwen had told him was the moon’s rune. Some only wore it on pendants round their necks, but many had it tattooed or branded over their hearts.
‘What about Winter’s Hammer?’ she asked, when that got no response. ‘There’s no one to rule there with you gone.’ With her gone was what she truly meant. He had a sudden, vivid memory of her sitting in her study, neat stacks of paper all around listing the food stores in the shipfort, the hunting parties and what they’d brought, the income from tithes and the outlay in taxes to the King. Perhaps she always had ruled Winter’s Hammer, even when his father was still alive.
‘And what
of Thilak?’ she said. ‘And Thilak’s murderer?’
There it was again, the subject they’d hovered above or landed awkwardly on since the moment she’d first seen the preacher Jinn and his mother Vordanna among Cwen’s followers. ‘He’s a boy,’ Sang Ki said.
‘And Nethmi’s pregnant,’ his mother said bitterly. ‘Is that reason enough for Thilak’s death to go unavenged all these months? I’d almost think you didn’t care!’
‘How can you—?’ Sang Ki began, then clamped down on his anger. It flared up far more often now, the flames fanned by his sleepness nights and pain-filled days. ‘We don’t know that Jinn had any part in it,’ he pointed out stiffly, ‘only that he disappeared shortly afterwards. Which, given that we intended to execute him, one can hardly blame him for.’
‘But we know that he’s a traitor,’ his mother said fiercely.
He stared at her, surprised by her venom. ‘Well, yes, but since he betrayed our enemies to join our cause, I don’t think we should complain.’
‘You’ve read enough history in your father’s books. A man who’s betrayed once will betray again – betrayal is in his nature.’
‘But Cwen has taken him under her protection, and we can ill afford to alienate her. Her forces—’ He broke off gratefully at the sight of the bird winging its way towards them. He’d learned to recognise the tuft-eared little messenger owls. They were clever creatures; he was considering taking some east with him when he eventually returned home.
‘Word from Cwen herself, I hope,’ he said, holding out his arm for the bird to alight. They were trained to carry messages between two particular people, and this one had a fold of parchment in a hoop round its leg. It tilted its head to eye him quizzically as he pulled it out and read it.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It appears Cwen has found our enemies’ trail. And that they have regrouped – they seem to be moving en masse.’
‘Don’t look so pleased. All that you’ve won against them so far are skirmishes and ambushes. They won’t be easy prey in a pitched battle with their full numbers.’
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 25