Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  He twitched his reins, and Ariadne went forward into the water, which was icy cold, and they crossed. Twice she slipped on the round stones, but then they were up the sandy bank, warm in the bright sun.

  Aranthur found that he was looking at the hole in the sky.

  Chimeg, the next across, nodded and pointed at it.

  “It looks like an anvil,” Aranthur said.

  Chimeg nodded. “We have named it Karkar Byn Boprok.”

  Aranthur watched Omga leading a line of packhorses, loaded with fodder and firewood, across the treacherous ford.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “The Dark Forge, or the Black Anvil,” Chimeg said. “Our Baqsa says there is a prophecy.”

  “Baqsa?” Aranthur asked.

  “Spirit tamer. Witch. You Byzas have so many names for the…malas.” She shook her head.

  “Am I a baqsa?” He meant it to be funny.

  She frowned. “Hope not. They have their balls cut off.”

  “What’s the prophecy?” he asked, wriggling in his saddle.

  Chimeg shook her head and curled her lip. “Best not to ask.”

  Once they were across the river, there was a good road, neat cobbles laid in sand and gravel. They followed it up and up, over two unbroken bridges, until they reached the top of the ridge and the road turned. There, a few stades away, was the village of Ilija.

  There were no people, no livestock, not even a chicken or a cat.

  Aranthur listened to the scouts, glanced at Vilna, and motioned towards the top of the pass.

  “Let’s move on.”

  Vilna nodded, but his face betrayed hesitancy.

  “Too fucking empty,” he said.

  Aranthur didn’t like that Vilna was shaken. But he pretended to be unfazed; he imagined that he was Equus, and he met the news with a bland smile.

  “Ah, well,” he said. “At least we’ll see our foes coming.”

  He almost added “old chap,” he was so attuned to Equus in that moment.

  The track came to the foot of the incredible cliffs, and turned sharply to the right—the south. The track ran along the base of the cliffs, through a rubble field of fallen rock: boulders as big as temples, some half buried in the gravel, some standing proud like sculptures. And above them on the cliffs, an incredible line of old Safiri runes. Aranthur rode out into the field beyond the fallen rock to look at the runes.

  “Varestan?” Aranthur asked Sasan.

  The Safian nodded. “You are a good scholar, my friend. Better than me. Do you know what it says?”

  “I only know the rune for ‘King,’ which I see two times. Maybe a third. There’s been a rock fall.”

  Sasan nodded. “King of Kings, ruling over kings. It is the most famous inscription in Varestan that is left to us.” He glanced at Aranthur. “They ruled the world, my people. And now…”

  Aranthur frowned. “I thought Varestan was a Dhadhian language.”

  Sasan shrugged. “My people are part Dhadhian. Or so the legends say.”

  By mid-afternoon, Omga had come back with two of Sasan’s riders to say that the old border fortress sat with its gate wide open and the barracks inside thoroughly looted. An hour later they rode past it, and they started down the long trail into Safi. Sasan’s people all gave a long war cry that echoed down the valleys.

  Vilna changed the outriders. He trotted over to Aranthur, who was dismounted, resting his pony.

  “Listen, Bahadur. I am worried.” He glanced at Sasan. “I do not want to send this riff-raff out in their own homeland. They will never come back.”

  Aranthur thought a moment, and then walked over to Sasan. There was rain in the air, and the Safian was fishing in his saddlebags for gloves.

  “Can I trust two of your people to go out as scouts?” he asked bluntly.

  Sasan thought for a moment.

  “Haran,” he said. “And ’Asid.”

  Aranthur nodded.

  “Haran and ’Asid,” he said to Vilna.

  “If they betray us, I…” He narrowed his eyes. “I know this Sasan is your friend.”

  “Haran and ’Asid.”

  Aranthur got a foot in the pony’s stirrup and mounted.

  “Ayi, Bahadur.”

  Late afternoon: heavy, wet fog and light rain. Aranthur was already aware that their outriders had vanished, even before Vilna reported.

  “I’ll find them,” Sasan snapped.

  He put spurs to his horse and was gone into the mountain mist that swirled around them.

  “They are gone,” Vilna said darkly, but he was quickly proven wrong. The three riders came back up the trail, and Sasan reported.

  “Haran here wants us to go across the next stream and bear away a little to the north.” He raised his hand. “Only for tonight. I went and looked. He’s right—a good campsite and easy to secure. We’re high up—it will be cold. We want a fire.”

  “We need food,” Vilna said. “And I worry.” But he smiled at Haran. “This was well done.”

  “The mist ends just ahead, and then you can see forever.”

  Haran was smiling, all his teeth showing. Aranthur thought that he knew exactly what Vilna thought, and was testing them, or playing some game.

  “I worry too,” Aranthur said. “I worry about everything. Right now I’m worrying that there is no story to explain who we are. There’s no traffic here—no wagon ruts, no hoof marks, no nomads.”

  Vilna nodded.

  Qna Liras shook his head.

  But as they rode, they passed through the edge of the mist, and suddenly they were in a sunny day, and the whole of Safi seemed laid out at their feet.

  The Masran reined in and pointed off over the rolling hills of Western Safi, towards the distant ridge that they all knew marked the edge of the Kuh.

  “Two days at this speed,” he said, “and we’re in the desert.”

  Vilna nodded, but later, when rations had been cooked over a tiny fire, carefully set under a magnificent birch tree, hundred of years old, to spread the smoke, he sat down with Aranthur.

  “Safi bad,” he said. “Desert very bad.”

  “I know,” Aranthur said.

  Vilna shook his head. “We need food,” he said again.

  Aranthur nodded. “So much to worry about.”

  In the morning they rode down the pass, but not by the main track. Instead, following Haran, they went a little farther north before going east. They toiled up a thickly wooded ridge and came out on a grassy slope that seemed to continue into a grey and rainy infinity.

  “I like rain,” Chimeg said. “We can’t see the fucking Karkar Byn Boprok.”

  It was true, and Aranthur felt it too. He also felt it in a lessening of the winds of power.

  They smelt the woodsmoke before they saw the village at midday. Then the heavy rain hit them, and they were in the squalid village before the scouts could warn them. A handful of terrified Yezziri cowered in the tiny village square. They were so poor that the men wore only simple tunics, their legs were bare, and the women were wrapped in old scarves and heavy wool coats.

  Sasan rode forward and spoke, the rain rolling off his turban and down his back.

  Aranthur understood everything Sasan said, but not much of what the villagers said.

  “This is what we used to call a ‘two chicken’ town,” Sasan said bitterly. “It’s been taxed to the point where most people just move away.”

  “Two chickens?” Ansu asked.

  “In the whole town, there might be two chickens,” Sasan said.

  Ansu smiled without mirth. “That’s… terrible.”

  “They think we’re Pindaris, and I’m letting them think that. The head woman is afraid we’re collecting taxes.” Sasan grimaced. “I’m afraid I let her believe that, too. No one will comment on rapacious Pindari tax collectors.”

  They gathered a day’s worth of grain from the hollow-eyed villagers. Aranthur felt shame at oppressing such poor people.

  V
ilna was disgusted. “Dirt men,” he said. “They should fight.”

  Aranthur shook his head. “Not that easy. They don’t know how to fight.”

  Vilna made a sign. “Everyone knows how to fight.”

  They rode on. In late afternoon they came to another village, this one destroyed. There were perhaps a dozen residents living in the ruins. They looked too feral to be fully human, and they vanished like wraiths when the scouts rode into the town. But to the south and east of the town they found a farmstead—probably some nobleman’s country house. There were bodies in the courtyard, or rather, skeletons, a few with bits of hair still on the skulls. Animals had not been kind.

  In the outbuildings, Sasan’s men found grain: a huge store held in grain jars set in the floor, big pithoi large enough to hide a man. They refilled all their stores and added sacks of oats and wheat. After carefully combing the house, Aranthur agreed that they could use it. Despite Vilna’s entreaties, he kept the evening patrol for his own command. He went almost a parasang south and east before turning for home, riding a long circle around the manor house before checking his night pickets.

  Dahlia declared the beds unfit for people, so they all laid out horse blankets on the boards of the manor house hall, and slept around the hearth.

  Aranthur was awakened by the sound of horses, and he was out of his blankets, the sword in his hand, before he heard familiar voices. Sasan went to the door, a long-barrelled puffer visible in his right hand. The Safian looked back as Aranthur lit a candle.

  “Haran,” he said.

  The Safian brigands had been trusted with some watches, usually with a pair of Nomadi to supervise them.

  Haran came in, followed by a stranger.

  “A traveller, or so he says,” Haran commented. “I think he is a holy man. One of ours.”

  A lean man in a magnificent green silk turban bowed deeply. The rest of him was as scruffy as a beggar, but he had across his shoulder an ornate axe inlaid in silver and gold.

  “Now, all the gods be with you, masters,” he said. “Surely you have made of this ruin a Daru’s-safd, the very abode of delight.”

  Sasan stepped forward and took the man’s hand.

  “I am Sasan Khuy. You are a Seeker of the Gods?”

  “I am Mir Jalu’d,” the green turban said. “And I do indeed seek, although for the moment, I would be delighted to accept some of that soup, and perhaps a little stock that I smell in the air, and then we can all get to know one another better.” He smiled around.

  Vilna had a puffer aimed at his head. Dahlia was holding a spell, the pale blue lines of power leaking from her hand like talons of beauty. Qna Liras… was not there.

  “A witch!” Jalu’d said. “By the gods!”

  He went to her, and raised his hand in greeting, and Dahlia stepped back.

  “Another move and I blow a hole in your head,” Vilna said.

  Jalu’d looked around, and then very carefully put his great axe on the floor.

  “I am a poor seeker for wisdom, sworn to poverty,” he said. “I am no threat to anyone.”

  Aranthur glanced at Haran. “Couldn’t you have just sent him on his way?”

  Haran looked down, obviously embarrassed.

  “He took me by surprise, Lord, and he is very… persuasive.”

  Sasan handed the man a bowl of soup from the pot on the hearth. Jalu’d sat down, bowed three times to north, south, and east, and ate the bowl with noisy appreciation.

  “I’ve known a dog with better manners,” Dahlia said in Byzas.

  “Do you keep your dogs two weeks without food, Lady?” Jalu’d held out the bowl, and crossed his hands on his forehead. “More, please, for the love of the gods. Witch lady, I will be your slave. Just seeing you with the Secret Fire on your fingers makes me feel that there is yet hope in this fallen world.”

  Sasan took the bowl and filled it. Vilna kept his puffer aimed at the man below the folds of the huge turban.

  “Are you not an Eversham, yourself, brother?” Sasan asked.

  Jalu’d looked around, his mouth already busy with the second bowl of soup. Ansu handed Jalu’d an oatcake; Aranthur had attempted to make his mother’s oatcakes, with modest success.

  Jalu’d devoured it, though it was mostly burnt. Aranthur gave him the remnants that the others had spurned. Then he went back to the soup.

  Dahlia folded her working away into the Aulos.

  “They’ll be here in about six hours,” Jalu’d said.

  “Who will?” Aranthur asked.

  “The Pure. Perhaps a Servant, perhaps an Exalted,” he said, in sing-song Byzas. “Any spark of power and they come. I’ll guess they saw you yesterday. I know I did.”

  “How do you know that?” Dahlia asked.

  “I am alive, where most of my order are dead. Once I would have told you that I was above the petty struggles of men—that I sought only the truth of the gods. But three years under the Pure and I know a new truth. There are times when the search must be put aside until the Evil Ones are defeated.” He sat back and unleashed a long belch. “Delicious. I would accept a cup of wine.”

  “Wouldn’t we all,” agreed Aranthur.

  Jalu’d shrugged. “It seems a poor return on your provision of a meal for my poor starving self, but perhaps we should move on.”

  “How did you find us?” Sasan asked.

  Jalu’d smiled. “I was wandering, as I do. I heard a bird in the air say that the Pure had been defeated on the plains of Armea, and I thought, perhaps it is time to wander that way. And then I met a fox who said he had dined on cooked bones from men with many horses, and I knew you must be outriders of some foreign army. And then I meet villagers who say that Pindaris came to their town, but took only grain, killed no one, burnt nothing. And I think these are no Pindaris I’ve ever heard of.” He shrugged, still sitting, Vilna’s puffer still pointed at the nape of his neck. “And yesterday, I felt baraka in the Eversher, and not the dark stuff the Pure spew. So I listened with my heart.”

  “And I think many things. But mostly I think, these people, if they are foreign, they will camp somewhere. Why not Kirman’s fine house, where you and I both know there is grain under the barn floors?” He sat back and crossed his hands on his naked belly, which, despite his posture and his heavy meal, showed heavy muscle. “Nomad, if you will kill me, let me only say that it is kind of you to wait until my belly is full, for the first time in two years.”

  Vilna looked at Aranthur. Aranthur looked around for Qna Liras, but his eye caught Sasan’s.

  “He is a Seeker,” Sasan said. “I have met dozens of them.”

  “He could still be a spy of the enemy,” Vilna said.

  Sasan shrugged. “I cannot imagine a Seeker doing such a thing. They do exactly as they please, and if they are killed, they say, ‘So be it!’.”

  Dahlia laughed. “I like the sound of that. Perhaps I should be a Seeker.”

  “I would be happy to have you as a disciple,” Mir Jalu’d chuckled. He made a lewd face. “Or as a lover, if you like.”

  Dahlia frowned. “I’m not available.”

  Jalu’d nodded. “I am, though. Almost always. Especially lately.” He looked around. “Shall we go?”

  “We cannot go anywhere without Syr Qna Liras,” Aranthur said.

  Qna Liras stepped out of the deep shadows on the other side of the hearth.

  “I’m right here,” he said.

  Jalu’d stood, and faced the Masran Magos. Then he bowed at the waist, as supple as a dancer. The Masran repeated the gesture, and each man extended his hand, and they brushed the knuckles of their hands.

  “Now let all the gods be praised, each by name.” Jalu’d began to sing a hymn in Safiri.

  “He is as he calls himself,” the Lightbringer said. “We should heed him, and flee. Dahlia, you cannot summon power here.”

  Dahlia flushed, as she had not a moment before.

  “Yes, Harlequin,” she said.

  They rode south
into the darkness, and eventually the sunrise in the east lit their path. Riding in the dark had its dangers, and one of Sasan’s men, the dour Kalij, fell into a gully and broke his hip. The whole column had to halt; the man could not ride, and had to be put in a litter between two horses.

  He seemed very surprised that he wasn’t left to die.

  They moved on, and the light grew.

  The high birches and the broad, weed-choked fields were giving way to drier ground with fewer watercourses. The rain had stopped, and they rode into an increasingly hot day.

  Omga came galloping back, reporting that there was a band of mounted men across the next valley.

  “I wasn’t seen,” he said with Steppe smugness.

  “East and east,” Vilna said.

  They left the road at a stream bed chosen by Sasan, and they rode up the stony stream bed for perhaps five stades. Then they went over a sandy ridge. Beyond it, to the south, was a broad plain and a distant river. In the south, the line of jagged mountains had become a mere smudge of hills.

  Sasan sat on the ridge, looking east like a man in a dream.

  “Shabriz, and Farfaz across the river,” he said. “Half of Safian poetry is about these places. Oh, gods, I have missed home. Smell the cypress? The jasmine?”

  Ansu pointed. “Civilisation.” He was looking into the middle distance. “Look,” he said. “Smoke. Charcoal burners, I believe.”

  Aranthur looked, and then looked away, and looked back.

  “I’m not sure. I swear I can see an army camp. Look at the layout.”

  Vilna nodded. “Too far.”

  “Do not cast,” Qna Liras said. “I can feel the enemy. Down there somewhere.”

  Aranthur stood in his stirrups.

  “I will ride down the ridge and look…”

  Vilna waited until he had his seat.

  “A word with you, syr?”

  Vilna’s Byzas was not always the best, but this one phrase he had with aristocratic fluency, leading Aranthur to smile slightly at how often the Steppe officer must have said it to young Byzas officers. He dismounted and walked his horse back over the ridge, to a small stand of trees.

  “Vilna—”

  “Syr—no. You will not scout down the ridge. Please. It is the wrong thing to do.”