by Kari Cordis
And who had helped the Border Patrolman?
The memory of the swordfight plagued him whenever the other left him alone. It woke him in the middle of his light sleep at night, the acrid smell of fear and sweat, the malice of intent in the faces of complete strangers, the sickening thrill of steel reverberating as it hit bone. He had once worried how to tell Loren he wasn’t coming back to Harthunters with him. Now he worried that the excitement of the fight was rousing his Sheelman blood. He was a killer, from a long line of the most brutal, merciless murderers on earth. What if once he got started, he couldn’t stop? What if he turned into some sort of demented zombie and sprang on his friends? He watched himself anxiously for signs of madness…which for some reason didn’t improve his sleep any.
After several unrestful nights, it was a relief to have the road top out onto the Emerald Pass. He glanced back as they officially entered Cyrrh. The Empire and all that was familiar, routine, normal, lay in a broiling golden haze of heat and humidity behind them. There was only one thing he would miss there, and he still held out hope that she would follow them. Loneliness washed through him, joining the deepening pool of self-pity he used for wallowing in. With mournful resolution, he turned slowly to face his future.
Technically, Jagstag was just the Sentinel outpost that guarded Cyrrh’s side of the Pass. But it was so much more evocative than whatever name had been given to the Imperial trading settlement a few yards away that it grew to cover them both, lasting through centuries of tales to develop its own fabled mystique.
The mercantile buildings still took up the majority of physical space, however, boring, Northern-style houses and shops. Most of it was lodging or services geared to the big trading caravans that came through—taverns and general stores and inns with enormous fenced yards for the strings of loaded wagons. Most trade points were lively places, Northerners being so spirited when it came to barter and profit, but Jagstag seemed subdued. A quiet hush lay over it, the few people moving around without talk or tarrying under the looming, lush green mountains.
They passed through the whole town, Melkin oblivious to the smell of breakfast that was making his troupe slow longingly behind him, noses twitching. They rode until they’d passed the last of the Northern buildings, until the trail crested out and all that was left was a high palisade rising up on their left and nothing but the trail descending into a textured sea of forest in front of them. The wall of neat logs to their left paused in its purposeful march, a big gate interrupting the intimidating height. Melkin led them through it, and they forgot all about breakfast.
Behind the fence…lay Cyrrh.
They’d ridden into a large, circular courtyard, lined with stables, barracks, watering troughs and hitching posts, its packed surface scrupulously clean of weeds or trash. The big Cyrrhidean flag with its delicate tree in gold flew overhead. But aside from these mundane background features, they could have wandered onto a fantasy stage set.
Every building was carved and decorated with fantastic art, the wood alive with scrollwork, twining greenery, shapes of men and animals, all glowing softly with heavy varnish and the efforts of polish. Behind the big, main building, stairs could be seen carved out of the hillside that towered over it, winding liquidly into the steep mountains where Cyrrhideans had stood Sentinel for millennia.
In the courtyard, the hitching posts were lined with something out of a dreamscape. Great Cyrrhidean stags stood chewing their cud with the quick nervousness of the deer family, their graceful heads swiveling alertly at the Northerners’ arrival and topped by enormous, forward-angled racks of gold-tipped antlers. Unreadable, their big, dark, lustrous eyes stared at them through thick veils of lashes. Stagriders with only their heads showing over the huge shoulders of their mounts were busy at work with them, brushing the greyish-tan coats or cleaning their restless hooves. The men, dressed in mottled cloth that the eye tended to roll off of, paid them much less attention than their beasts did, talking and laughing amongst themselves with the self-sufficient camaraderie of a tightly knit military unit.
Into this scene, padding nonchalantly across the compound, came a beautiful, tawny gold panther, coat replete with glossy rosettes of bold black. Its flat, pale green eyes didn’t even acknowledge them, and though their horses whinnied and shied, the hyperalert stags didn’t even twitch. Rodge made some strangled attempt at speech.
“Jag…” Loren breathed.
“Thanks, Loren,” he snapped, finding his voice. “I didn’t recognize it from its black spots and huge fangs.”
“No, look…”
Sure enough, the big cat walked up onto the barracks porch and flopped down by the side of a…Jagscout, apparently. The Sentinel reached down and absently rubbed the huge cat head resting against him without even opening his eyes.
“You’re gonna catch flies with that thing hanging open like that,” Loren said smugly to a gape-mouthed Cerise. She snapped it shut and flung him a dirty look.
Melkin dismounted, favoring his arm, and as the rest of them followed suit, the door to the main building opened and disgorged a small group of uniformed Sentinels. At their head, striding purposefully across the yard towards them, was a compact brown man with steady, mossy green eyes.
“I’m Traivallion, Traive,” he introduced himself quietly, coming to a stop in front of them and inclining his head over his bent arm in a strange courtesy. No rank, no title, but he was unmistakably in charge. You could tell from the sudden alert, respectful stillness in the yard activity, the rising to casual attention of the dozing Sentinels on the porch, the bevy of aides behind him awaiting command. All of them wore a cuirass of hardened leather over their muddy-colored cloth, but Traive’s was the only one with a rampant gryphon stamped onto its scuffed surface.
“We have heard about your ambush,” he said gravely, eyes flicking to Melkin’s arm. “Our healer awaits you inside, along with some chow. We shall talk on the trail; I would have you in Lirralhisa as quickly as possible.” That was all. He inclined his head briefly, tossing over his shoulder to a waiting stagrider, “Thirty minutes.” At a beckoning gesture from one of the aides, the Northerners followed him up the stairs to the main building, heads swiveling around at the lavish architecture and implausible local population.
Judging from his speed and finesse in cleaning and sewing Melkin’s arm, the Jagstag healer got a lot of practice. The Master was joining them almost before the food was all out. The Northerners, falling on the scrambled eggs and smoky rack of bacon like they hadn’t eaten in a week, barely paid attention to the Sentinel trying to prepare them for travel in Cyrrh. He made a lot of obscure references, but the one he finished with was pretty clear, and their heads all reared up from spicy potato slices to stare at him: “In fact, it’s probably best if you assume everything in Cyrrh is deadly.”
Though they’d bolted the meal with more appreciation than manners, when they came back to the courtyard, everyone there seemed to have been long ready. The reins of five stags were being held patiently at the foot of the steps, and the party was led without pause right over to them. The boys and Cerise glanced at each other. Surely…surely THEY weren’t going to—
“You’ll have to leave your horses here,” Traive said, and they turned to see him at the top of the steps, pulling on leather riding gloves.
“Whatever for?” Cerise demanded, frowning. “We’re quite used to our own mounts.” Loren took one look at her and moved resolutely toward the biggest stag. Ari followed; he wasn’t about to miss this chance, either. Rodge just stood, looking unhappy. He wasn’t real pleased at having to leave the Empire again to begin with, and now things were definitely showing signs of deteriorating.
Traive paused halfway down the steps to answer courteously, “Horses don’t travel well in Cyrrh, Lady. The stag are much more nimble and have better reflexes. Plus, they are accustomed to the jungle and not as likely to spook unnecessarily.”
“Tekkara is very sure-footed,” she’d begun imperiously, when Mel
kin interjected crabbily, “Mount up, Cerise.”
The stag felt strange, with its narrow, straight back and the view through a tree of antlers. Ari could feel it tensing alertly under him. Loren gave him a half-doubtful, half-exultant look. The saddles had both high pommels and high backs, made of gorgeously tooled leather, and…leg straps. Ari sat there fascinated as a rider literally tied him to the saddle. He wasn’t sure he liked being so bound, and, well, why?
“I DON’T need to be buckled into my saddle,” Cerise said testily, clear, loud and with overtones of outrage.
Traive, his blunt, rugged face showing no sign of impatience, turned in his saddle to once again address her. “The stags are much more quick-footed than horses, my Lady. They can bolt and dart so quickly that those unused to them may find themselves dislodged at, er, inopportune moments.”
“Your concern is touching…Traive,” she said coldly, with biting sarcasm at the abundant and offensive informality, “but I assure you, I’ll somehow manage to hang on.”
She urged her beast irritably away from the rider attempting to attend her—and was suddenly on the ground. The boys stared, uncomprehending. Furious, confused, she looked around with almost comical accusation. To a man, the stagriders sat composed and with universal expressions of polite patience. She sprang angrily to her feet, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and quickly remounted. Again she attempted to snatch the reins and again, inexplicably, ended up hind-end first in the dust. It was as if the stag was simply stepping out from underneath her.
Rodge, by now with a beatific and faintly justified smile on his face, was mounting his own stag as Cerise took a third go.
Traive, the exact same expression on his face, said in a gravely solicitous voice, “My Lady, we are under some time constraints. Perhaps, just until you are used to the stag, you would allow…”
She submitted, fuming.
Finally, they moved out. The Sentinels fell in around them and Ari felt the anxious tension of the last few days ease away. There was an air of profound competence, augmented by a good quantity of flashing steel, in this group of quiet men…though why a full dozen were needed to escort them, he wasn’t sure was an honor or an insult. Or forewarning.
“Those are cute little axes,” Rodge chortled from between him and Loren, good mood restored. “Handy, I’m sure, for any menacing tree limbs daring to cross our paths in this oh-so-deadly land of Cyrrh.”
All the Sentinels were dressed alike, with hardened leather breastplates over their murky pants and blouses, knee high boots of thick leather, long-wristed gloves, and snug, worked- leather helmets that looked like they’d be suffocating in the heat. There was a long knife at each hip and, hanging in a back brace, crossed axes that could be grabbed over a shoulder. Ari peered closely at these last...at the delicately balanced heads, their fine edge, the intricate designs etched into the blades.
Loren, who’d spent more than a couple disciplinary minutes behind an axe chopping a pile of trees, was thinking the same thing he was. “I don’t think those are for wood…”
Only Traive wore a sword. None of them wore the leg straps.
The trail was wide as they started out, the untamed forests of Cyrrh indistinguishable from the tame ones on the other side of the Dragonspine…to Ari’s disappointment. This was supposed to be a magical land. Squirrels and pine martens frisked through the overhead branches, rabbits and a skunk flicked through the underbrush. Birds called, a peaceful breeze soughed through the leaves…he couldn’t believe these surroundings had spawned such wondrous tales.
They headed straight north, paralleling the towering mountains and passing several trails that forked downhill to their left. Loren, after the last one, asked the nearest stagrider, “Is Lirralhisa in the hills?”
“Nay, lord,” he replied. “But the air is of so much a temperate and more wholesome nature in the heights that we do not descend until we must. The Sirensong lies at the belly of this valley and her air is so thick and hot, her waters so dangerous, we would not rush to her embrace.”
This eloquence was delivered with such unaffected sincerity, the man’s soft, lilting accent so marked, that four heads swiveled in unison to look at him.
“Uh,” Loren said, then smiled charmingly. “I’m not a lord yet. My name’s Loren, of Harthunters.”
“Well met,” the Cyrrhidean said, crooking his right arm and bowing over it. “I am Rhuquisel, Rhuq.”
Rodge and Ari introduced themselves, answered with that same odd, very courtly courtesy. Cerise loftily ignored them. The path climbed a low hill, and Ari took the opportunity to look back behind them. Cyrrh fell away from them in swathes of green, green on green on green. Not all of it was waving tree tops, though. Not that far beyond Jagstag, hugging the flanks of the Dragonspine, the country stretched away in neat, ordered rows of some botanical enterprise, an orchard maybe.
Rhuq, seeing his interest, supplied, “Tea and coffee plantations. So beloved are their fruits to Northern tastes, we’ve had to plant leagues of them to satisfy.” He grinned amiably.
“I’m sure it didn’t hurt your coffers any, either,” Cerise mumbled crassly from behind them. She sat stiffly, offense in every line of her sharp person, face pinched and eyes flashing.
“That’s Cerise,” Rodge and Loren said pretty much in unison. “Her talents lie mostly in the anti-bureaucrat realm,” Rodge elaborated thoughtfully.
“LADY Cerise,” she snapped. “What kind of people don’t introduce themselves with rank or title? How do you keep order?”
“Or keep track of who you outrank?” Rodge said behind his hand to Rhuq.
Rhuq, gazing at her, stirred himself to say, “In Cyrrh, my Lady, we’ve found that the Lord Regent can die as easily and basely as the lowliest Sentinel of the Torque…here, rank means nothing off the parade ground.” To the boys, he said behind his own hand, “She’s very beautiful.”
“You want her?” Rodge offered hospitably.
Ahead of them, Traive turned in his saddle, warning quietly, “It is best to move as silently as possible until we reach the first Torque—there are many things in Cyrrh that it is preferable not to attract the attention of.”
“Like what?” Cerise said provokingly, without dropping the volume of her voice at all.
“Hopefully you will never need to name any of them,” he said gravely.
She grimaced angrily at his broad back, but everyone stopped talking for a while. It was easy to get back on edge, Ari found. The unmistakable wariness of their escort had them all soon scanning the innocuous countryside like the ghosts and goblins of campfire tales were lurking around the nearest tree boles. The stags, too, were terribly alert, moving in quick, jerky strides that were much more unsettling than the smooth, rolling gait of a horse. And they didn’t make a sound—no sticks accidentally snapped, no stones clicking on hooves or being ticked out of the way, no whuffling, snorting or passing gas. Were it not for Traive and Melkin’s low conversation ahead of them, Ari wasn’t sure he would have heard the whole party passing even standing a few yards from the trail. It was a little eerie.
That contagious sense of alertness may have explained why all the Northerners jumped when a nearby stagrider whipped out one of his axes. It had been sitting, apparently aimless, in mid-air for only a fraction of a second before something long and slender and pale blue fell across the upturned edge. Neatly bisected, it fell away to either side, leaving a smear of blood to mar the intricate tracings. The whole thing took less time than to count ‘one.’
“What was that?” Cerise hissed. The boys stared stupidly at the axe, which was being deftly cleaned and returned to its holster.
“Little Blue,” the stagrider said, just above a whisper.
“Little Blue?!?!” she demanded in a low, strangled voice, “Little Blue?!
“What a cute name,” Rodge said weakly.
“WHAT WAS IT?” Cerise cried in a whispered howl.
Rhuq moved close, with a soothing motion. No one else had eve
n seemed to notice. “A Lesser Blue Skysnake,” he explained calmly. “They live high in the branches and sometimes drop down on passing prey—or just for no reason at all.”
“They’re poisonous?” She didn’t look the least bit relieved.
“No, no. They eat insects, mice and moles, small birds, eggs.”
“Is, uh, is there a BIG Blue?” Rodge asked, scanning the trees nervously.
“Of course,” Rhuq said affably, as if they were discussing leather tanning practices.
“What do they eat?” Loren asked brightly. He and Ari had done more than their share of snake hunting…though they’d never had one appear in quite this aerial manner.
“Oh, well, things like wild piglets, fawns, small children—”
“You said they weren’t poisonous!” Cerise shrieked in a whisper.
“They’re not,” Rhuq assured her, surprised at her bulging-eyed vehemence. “They’re constrictors.”
She stared at him, horrified. Rodge gulped.
“They swallow their prey whole…”
“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Rodge nodded quickly.
This effectively quelled Cerise’s petty rebelliousness and she didn’t say a word for the next three hours. Ari was in delights, not just over the silence, but for the thick, rustling, beautiful scenery he’d resigned himself to. He loved the forest…especially now, when he preferred to stay out of sight of civilization for maybe the next sixty years or so. He’d spent almost his whole life in the North and now the thought of ever returning immersed him in dread. He was irrationally certain that the first person to see him would rush at him with whatever weapon was handy, screaming Enemy!
They broke late for lunch, dismounting awkwardly by an idyllic little pool in an emerald glen. A few late flowers were blooming and the stag immediately lowered their antlered heads to grab mouthfuls of the lush grass. Darting dragonflies, tiny and brilliant as jewels, sparkled in the air like iridescent magic.