“Sounds fair,” Romi said, scratching his ear with the stick and looking totally unconcerned.
“Only because you’re a completely uneducated fool,” Soza sneered. “To you, this collection is no more important than a sack of beans. You would have no idea how important it is that truly skilled persons are involved in its disposal.”
“I don’t know. It seems to me that if Master Kei is handling it, you couldn’t accuse him of lack of skill,” Romi said mildly. Karik silently cheered at the barb. “The simplest answer is for it all to go back to Darshek and then Master Kei and Lord Arman can confirm what’s to happen with it—we’re going back there anyway, what harm can it do?”
“I was planning to return to Urshek by the direct route,” Soza said, all stiff pride. “I was planning to take this very important collection back with me to Master Jezinke.”
“My country’s wealth should be studied by those competent to do so,” Kizinke said, using the long sibilants and formal structure of courtly Andonese, intended entirely as an insult, Karik was sure. “I cannot consent to it being treated as a trophy.”
“I’m sorry—I must have missed the part of Lord Arman’s instructions where he said your opinion had any importance whatsoever, Kizinke,” Romi said with a pleasant smile. “The collection is going back to Darshek, and that’s final. If I’ve made an error, then I’ll take the consequences of it.”
Soza began to expostulate. “This is outrag—”
“This is over,” Romi said, abruptly dropping the genial act. “Complaints to the authorities in Darshek, but for now, shut up. You too, Kizinke,” he added as the guide also began to complain. “Gods, spare me from scientists,” Karik heard him mutter as he stalked off.
“You’re a damn disgrace, Karik of Ai-Albon,” Soza shouted, his face purple with rage. “You shame your family and your profession. I’m disgusted I had any hand in your training at all.”
Karik felt a surge of nausea at the hateful words, but drew himself up to his full height. “I’m not ashamed of anything I have ever done. Like the captain, I’ll bear the results of my actions—as will you,” he added, unable to resist a little dig at Soza’s less than glorious history. “Now excuse me, I have work to do.”
He walked off, forcing himself to walk slowly and naturally, but once out of sight of the other two, he slumped forward, sick and shaky, resting his hands on his thighs and wondering if he would actually puke.
“Gods,” Kepi said quietly, coming up beside him and clapping him on the shoulder. “You’ve got balls of solid stone, my lad.”
“Th-that’s what my uncle Kei says,” Karik said, managing a smile, though his stomach was still threatening to turn itself inside out.
“Well, he’s dead right,” Kepi said. “You stand up for yourself and don’t listen to his shit. He gives you any more trouble and he’ll find his boots full of beetles one morning. You know how he loves insects.”
Karik grinned. Soza loathed beetles with a passion, and Kepi was most likely completely serious. “We’d have to listen to him complain all the way back to Tsikiugui,” he warned.
“It’d be worth it. But don’t you let him get away with that rubbish. I’d take you over ten of him, any day.”
“Thanks, Kepi.”
Kepi grunted by way of acknowledgement then went off to help Taz with the beasts. Karik stood up and saw Romi watching him from a little way off. He half-expected the captain to say something, but Romi only nodded as if satisfied, then went over to assist the others. Karik wondered if he’d made that decision purely to annoy Soza, or whether he understood the wrongness of what Soza had proposed. Probably both, he thought—Romi was perfectly capable of being deeply vindictive and completely fair at the same time. Which wasn’t a bad thing if you were dealing with Soza, Karik thought, still angry at the cruel assessment. He really didn’t care what Soza thought of him anymore, but he was outraged the man thought he had a right to say such things to anyone, let alone him.
It was an unpleasant coda to what had otherwise been a peaceful week, and set the seal on Karik’s estrangement from his former mentor, a fact he felt he should have regretted more than he did. The team was now overtly split, with Kizinke and Soza refusing to speak at all to anyone but Romi, and then only while briefly and rather rudely acknowledging his orders. To make the unhappy atmosphere complete, the weather began to display the famous summer instability that Wepizi had warned them of. Between the lightning and thunder, the hailstorms, and the icy atmosphere in the little group, Karik found it hard to remember why he’d ever let Kei talk him into this.
~~~~~~~~
Romi eyed the slope rising from the other side of the bridge with distaste. That was going to be a hard climb. “I will go ahead,” Kizinke announced. “With Soza and the pack beast.”
“As you wish.” Romi wasn’t mean enough to hope that the bridge would give way as their supercilious guide and his irritating lover crossed the swollen Gavime river, but he wasn’t generous enough for the thought not to cross his mind—not after the last week when the two of them had been so charming and pleasant to the rest of his team. The river was raging, fed by days of heavy rain on the slopes, and the crash of water through the narrow gorge was deafening. The bridge—wooden planks suspended about a hundred feet above the river on ropes between two stone supports on either side—looked worryingly frail to carry six men and seven beasts.
He watched Kizinke and Soza, their single pack animal on a leading rein behind them, cross the bridge without incident. “Let us get to the top first,” Kizinke shouted. “Safest that way.” Romi signalled agreement, then the two men began to slowly ascend the path up the scree and boulder-clad slope. They reached the top without incident and, once he saw Kizinke wave, Romi ordered Karik and the others to move across the bridge. It shuddered unpleasantly as the beasts began the crossing, and Romi couldn’t help a twinge of fear, though Kizinke had sworn it was strong enough to carry them, and it had borne Kizinke, Soza and the animals just fine.
Romi had just set foot on solid ground on the other side of the bridge when he heard Karik ask, “What in hells is he doing?” He pulled his mount to a halt and looked up. Kizinke had dismounted and walked a little way from the beasts. He was bent over a boulder—had he lost something? Or....
Romi suddenly realised what was going on. “No! Stop!” he yelled, though there was no point. The boulder Kizinke had been examining was already rolling towards them—and scree and rocks were now sliding towards the bridge, set in motion by the water-laden soil. At first, the liquid slide seemed slow, almost graceful, hardly a threat at all, but as it gathered speed, a low growling rumble grew menacingly louder with every moment, and suddenly rocks and pebbles were flying towards them at a terrifying pace.
“Turn! Run!” Romi shouted at the others as he yanked on his beast’s reins and whipped it into a run back across the bridge, chased by the sound of the rocks tumbling behind him. Karik was already moving, Kepi and Taz just a moment or two too slow in realising their danger, forcing Karik and Romi to stop at the halfway point, mounts panicking and screaming as their riders fought to calm them and force them back across the bridge. “Move, damn it!” Romi bellowed at beasts and men alike—but it was too late.
Boulders, rocks and earth hit the bridge supports with a crash like an explosive going off, pounding the bridge ropes and making the planks rock violently under the constant blows of stone against wood. Kepi’s beast reared up and though he flailed, desperate to find a grip, with a final panicked toss his mount tipped him, screaming, into the river. “No!” Taz roared, grasping helplessly after his friend, but with a sudden vicious snap, the ropes on that side of the bridge failed, and Taz too was falling, his beast kicking him away and flinging him into the waters below.
“Hold on!” Romi yelled, grabbing the surviving rope on the other side as his beast began to panic, thrashing and screeching in terror. Shoved by Romi’s beast, Karik’s animal lost its footing and slid into the river. Romi thr
ew out his arm for Karik to grab as his mount too was lost—Karik made a jump for it, managing to grab Romi, clinging onto him and the rope in sheer desperation. Chest heaving with fear and exertion, Romi thought at least the two of them were safe, but as the relentless surge of the landslide swept away the supports on the near side, the bridge gave way beneath them. For a heartbeat there was nothing, and then they were tumbling, hands still clasped, into the raging brown torrent below.
The icy water knocked all the breath from Romi’s body as they hit it and for a moment or two, he lost all orientation, not knowing whether he was up or down, the sudden loss of sound shocking after the pounding terror of the rocks hitting the bridge above. Now the only sound was his own heart, drumming in his ears. A few precious moments to try and judge which way to head, and then he kicked as hard as he could to reach light and safety and air. He thought his lungs would explode with the struggle not to breathe as he fought his way back to the surface, but there was something else he had to think about—he still had Karik’s hand in his, and whatever he did, he knew he must not let it go. Too slow, too slow...but just when he thought he must surrender to the aching desperation for air, he breached the surface, heaving in a huge breath into lungs that burned like hellfire, and tugging mercilessly on the hand he still held in a cruel grip.
Moments later, Karik’s head rose above the water line, and he gasped desperately for air. Romi didn’t wait for him to get his bearings—there wasn’t time. “Shore!” he yelled, shifting his grip to Karik’s shirt, and using his free arm to start pulling them across the river. Karik rapidly pulled himself together, and began to swim strongly without Romi’s help—which was good because it took all of Romi’s strength to fight the current. The cold stole his breath, and his muscles were seizing up—all he could do was focus on the shore, concentrate, grabbing Karik’s belt or shirt if he seemed to be slipping away. He’d lost two people, he would not lose another to the thrashing foam and the rocks.
He got a grip on a low shrub at the waterline and pulled himself half out of the water—as soon as he felt the slightest solidity under his feet, he grabbed for Karik and hauled, dragging the other man bodily onto the rocks. “Move!” he shouted, urging Karik to get all the way out of the freezing river before the cold robbed him of the strength to do so.
Finally they were both clinging to the rocks above the waterline, shivering and gasping. “K-Kepi?” Karik asked through chattering teeth.
“Gone,” Romi said, only now realising that both his friends must be dead. “Taz too.” There was nothing he could do from here—they had to get away from the river and get dry. He stood, numbed hands gripping a branch of a gnarled tree to pull himself up, and then tried to assess their situation. He couldn’t see Kepi or Taz, but the body of one of the beasts was snagged two hundred yards or so downriver. “I have to get there,” he said, pointing. “Wait for me.”
“Not on your l-life,” Karik said, pulling himself up. “Don’t be an idiot, R-Romi. We do it together.” He began to clumsily strip a branch from the tree supporting them, and Romi, realising what he was doing, helped with the task. Then it was a matter of keeping a grip on each other on the slippery rocks, and moving carefully down river to the beast’s corpse. Romi anchored himself on shore and held the branch with both hands, while Karik, being lighter, used the make-shift ‘rope’ to ease himself back into the river, and sliced at the straps to free the packs, tossing them to shore for retrieval later.
When he was done, Romi had to drag him back out of the water. “G-Gods, c-cold,” he said, shivering so violently he was barely intelligible.
“Sit back there, that rock’s dry and should be warmer.” He helped Karik move up higher, got his shirt off so it could be wrung out and spread on the rocks to dry, and then set some fire sprites around him to speed the process of warming up his companion. As Karik dried off, Romi scanned the river—no sign at all of the other men, or of the beasts. Their situation was bad—the supplies and tools Karik had just risked his life to retrieve would help, but not enough. He squinted up the slope, but couldn’t see Kizinke or Soza, which didn’t surprise him. Had Kizinke deliberately started that landslide? That was what it had looked like, but Romi hadn’t really been able to see with the angle he’d been watching from. It was too late for it to matter now, but if Kizinke hadn’t started it, then there was a slight hope he and Soza would come back to help. Romi thought it unlikely though—which meant it was just him and Karik now.
“W-we should look d-downstream,” Karik said, still shaking hard, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try and warm himself.
“If we can without risking ourselves, yes—but right now, we need to make sure we’re safe before we can help the other two. We don’t even know they survived,” Romi added bleakly.
“No. Can we g-get out of this gorge?”
“Not here—I think the walls might be easier to climb down river. They looked it as I was crossing the bridge. Are you ready to try?”
Karik agreed, though he still looked frozen, and pulled his shirt back on, shuddering as the wet cloth hit his skin. Romi fetched the gear he’d rescued—a bedroll, a bag of rock collecting tools and a small axe, Karik’s personal pack, spare clothes, waterproof cloak and diary, and a rope—and tied them to his back. When Karik protested, Romi gave him a hard look. “If we’re going to survive, we have to conserve our strength—you’re already tired from the river, and I’m bigger than you.”
Karik nodded—Romi was glad he wouldn’t have waste energy arguing minor points like this. Karik was too intelligent for that.
They began their slow progress, picking their way carefully among the boulders and rocks, using the scrubby bushes and low trees as handholds. Romi was beginning to think his suspicion was to be vindicated as he saw a hiqwiq on the cliff face ahead of them. If a hiqwiq could climb, then there should be footholds for a man.
Suddenly Karik stopped, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled. “Oy! Taz! Kepi!”
“Where?” Romi asked, climbing up beside him, then grinned as he saw his friends—both alive and apparently uninjured—standing on the shore a few hundred yards along the way. He added his bellows to Karik’s until Taz waved to show he’d heard.
There was no question now of trying to climb the cliffs. They needed to get down to their teammates—not as easy as it looked, and it took a good twenty minutes to make their way over boulders and scree to where Taz and Kepi waited patiently for them on a stretch of gravel bank. Romi embraced them with delight. “Gods, I thought you were dead,” he said, hugging Kepi.
“Ouch, Romi, careful. So did we,” Kepi said, rubbing his arm.
“Injuries?” Karik asked.
“Bruises. I banged my head,” Taz said, indicating where blood trickled down his cheek from under his hair. Karik insisted on checking them both out, but declared them fine. “We were lucky.”
“Huh, lucky my bottom,” Kepi said. “We rescued what we could from Taz’s beast—not much, I’m afraid.”
“Then we need to consolidate,” Romi said. “Karik, you and Taz see if you can scrounge up wood for a fire. Kepi, let’s see what you have.”
Kepi’s rescued items were similar to what Karik had retrieved—a bedroll, rope, a few personal possessions of no importance to anyone but their owner—but also, fortunately, Taz’s cloak, a canteen, a billycan, another, better axe and a metal bowl and spoon. They all had their knifes in their belt sheaths too. Little enough, but it might make the difference between surviving or not.
Taz’s beast was still caught on rocks, and with Kepi’s help, Romi retrieved the bridle, and most valuable of all, the saddle blanket. Despite the cold and the difficulty, Romi judged it worth it to carve a hunk of meat from the shoulder—who knew when they would come by food this easily again? “Maybe we should try and pull it out, butcher it properly,” Kepi said as Romi shook himself dry.
“We can’t carry it, and the corpse will make us vulnerable to predators. We should float it off th
e rocks, in fact.”
With considerable difficulty, they did so, Romi regretting the loss of the food source and the hide, but knowing they had very little option. The meat he’d retrieved could be cooked right now and carried—but they could not manage more.
Karik and Taz were returning just as Romi and Kepi came back to what, for want of a better word, they would call their camp. They had got some damp-looking branches—which wasn’t a problem with Romi’s gift—and, he was pleased to note, Karik was carrying greens and fungi in his shirt, obviously thinking along the same lines as Romi, that they needed to collect food while they could.
Though it was only mid-morning, Romi decided to cook their finds, so the murky river water could be boiled and cooled, and they could take stock of the situation and warm up. Though Karik had declared Taz not to be concussed, Romi thought he looked a little shaky, and they needed a chance to think about what had happened.
The fire cheered them a little, the roast fungi made a welcome snack, and Karik was already muttering about collecting leaves to make a drinkable tea. Of all the people to be marooned with, Karik had to be one of the most useful, with his extensive knowledge of the plants of the region. “Right, we need to plan if we’re going to get out of this,” he said.
“I want to know what happened,” Kepi said. “How in hells did that landslide start?”
“Later, Kepi,” Romi said firmly. “We need to concentrate on the task in hand, which is survival. Taz, we don’t have the maps—but you know the lay of the land best of all of us. We need to get back to civilisation as fast as we can, with autumn coming. Your advice?”
Taz sat back and rubbed his chin. “If we had the beasts...are you going to wait for Kizinke and Soza?”
“No, I think we better not count on that,” Romi said heavily, glancing at Karik and getting a minute nod—Karik was the only other one of the group who knew what Kizinke might have done. “You were saying?”
Staying Power (Darshian Tales #3) Page 37