‘The water, more likely. Don’t worry about it. But keep your head down near dawn!’
Gille took his share of helping Olvar, but still tended to bound ahead, although he made great play of looking around every corner. Once he scared a huge pair of herons from the reeds, and ran most of the way back to the others before he realised what caused all the thrashing and screeching. That dimmed his impatience for perhaps half an hour; then he was off again. ‘Take care!’ said Kunrad grimly. ‘I don’t think this can be any kind of portage now, not miles long.’
‘Might be, if they used skids,’ objected Olvar. ‘I’ve heard of longer, in the old days of the North, when the settlers were desperate. The marks would soon grow out, in this stuff. So—’ He stopped. Gille was up at the next bend, as usual, but he was skipping up and down and waving like an eight-year-old. ‘Now what’s the pillock found? You go, I don’t feel like hurrying.’
‘No. Getting strung out’s all we need. Take your time.’
Gille was still dancing around when they reached him, with a weird look on his face. ‘I’ve found what made this track!’ he hissed.
‘What?’ Kunrad’s sword was in his hand at once, and Olvar was drawing his bow.
‘No, no!’ insisted Gille. ‘It’s all right! It’s dead, long dead! Can’t you smell it? See?’
There was an unsavoury smell on the air, all right, more acrid than the usual boggy stinks, with a sweetish, musky undertone. Olvar sagged, but Kunrad looked cautiously around the corner at what lay in the path through the reeds. ‘I’ve smelt something like that along the way …’
‘Dead and decayed!’ interrupted Gille. ‘Wouldn’t like to meet something that size alive, but this is just a rotten old bag of skin!’
Despite his words he was keeping well back. Kunrad stepped forward and prodded the thing with his sword. It stank, and it was ragged and pale. ‘Like it was a giant slug or something—’ shuddered Gille. Then he saw Kunrad’s face.
‘Not a slug! You young idiot, keep your voice down! Not dead, either! At least, not the rest of it! Gille, you lackwit – haven’t you ever seen a snake before?’
Gille gaped. ‘A snake?’
‘Yes! This is its shed skin!’
Gille looked around at the almost circular tunnel, ten feet wide, with its crushed curved sides. Kunrad hooked the pale mouldering mass on his swordpoint, and they saw the girth of it, higher than his shoulder, or his head even, and the diamond pattern of scales the size of his body. ‘And you know why they shed them? Because they’ve grown! Olvar – where’s Olvar?’
‘Olvar!’ cried out Gille, then clapped a hand to his mouth. He was nowhere to be seen; and there was a sudden rustle among the reeds. Gille drew his bow; but next moment Olvar clambered out, doing up his belt.
‘More notches tighter—’ he began, and then saw the skin. ‘Hand of Ilmarinen! You mean this—’
The image was clear in their minds. The bulk crushing through the reeds, winding across the solider land, where it could move fast without needing to swim, the tongue flickering as it sensed its prey.
‘Yes. They shed, they get hungry, they hunt. We’ve got to get off this run.’
Olvar shook his head. ‘There’s just swamp here. Hardly even a spot to take a quiet – Maybe that’s why. Maybe it’s in there.’
‘Then,’ said Kunrad. ‘We move, and fast. And Gille, we stay together. Close. You never know what’s waiting.’
They spent one more night on the trail, in the shelter of more ancient uprooted trunks, and the young men slept. Olvar lay calmer, but still looked sick and sweaty. Kunrad’s was the first watch, and his eyes were heavy. After last night he was determined to keep to neutral thoughts, but that was no help, or worse. The musky snake-smell seemed still to hang around the path. Bats flitted across the reeds, sweeping up the last late insects, and every time they swooped into the pathway they made him jump, remembering those immense hunting wings. He was feeling feverish; but was it mere exhaustion, or would it swell into horrible delirium? He leaned back against a stump, and hung his head. This whole trek felt like a fevered dream. Some day, soon, he was going to have to cease dodging the point, and confess to the prentices.
He held up his bracelet. The direction it swung was still right, but it was scanty comfort. As he remembered the maps, the Marshlands stretched back from the coast some seventy leagues, in some places more, flanked nearer the coast by the desolate Debatable Lands. He had done his best to reckon how far inland the corsair citadel was, but in the end it was little more than a guess. By that reckoning they should be far from the sea by now; but it was still with them. Twice a day the water swelled up, though less visibly than before, and twice a day it sank; and for all his filter could do, it was still tinged with salt. There might be a day’s journey left, or a hundred. And the Marsh, and all within it, was still their master.
He looked up suddenly, and thought his nightmares had taken shape. There was a woman looking at him – a girl, rather. The face was not at all like his misty vision. It was awake, aware, but calm and clear-eyed. She was there, she was material; the rushes brushed about her ragged gown, and her dark hair stirred in the breeze. She was good to look at, peering shyly through the fronds; but her calm was eerie. Kunrad stood up, slowly, and put hand to sword. He was not going to be fooled this time. He would have to wake the boys, but not too urgently. She made no move; she was just standing there, as if to hold his attention. He wasn’t having any of it. He looked around quickly, but the tangle of trunks was so thick that nothing material could sneak up from behind unheard. He propped himself against a trunk for reassurance, and smiled at her, cynically. If he had to have visions, this he could stand; he was short of entertainment. What next? Would she shed her gown, or something? He fought down the urge to cheer and jeer as men did at fairground dancing-girls. ‘Getting a touch light-headed, aren’t we, boy?’ he told himself, and remembered to prod Olvar with his toe. Gille he couldn’t reach, and he didn’t want to shout. It might break the spell.
She straightened up, slowly. The gown was a fair touch, ragged enough to look pathetic, revealing enough to tempt a man’s curiosity. Probably a few corsairs had gone that way, and good riddance. She took a quick step back, which startled him; but he chuckled again. All right, maybe she was human, maybe she was some kind of refugee on the marsh; too bad. If she came to him, she’d stay a sword’s-length away until daylight; and if she went, well, too bad. He wasn’t going to follow, not if there were a hundred out there like her. There she was, beckoning. Now that was the limit. What normal women would behave like that? It lifted the shreds of her gown in a very interesting way. He almost burst out laughing. She could go on all night, for all he cared. All this fun for free! He leaned back against the trunk again, relaxing.
It wasn’t there. He toppled over backwards, just as his feet shot out from under him. He screamed. He was sliding down a slope into deeper darkness, and he clutched frantically at the soggy peat beneath him, digging his heels in hard. They whipped out into emptiness, and he heard things fall away, a long way, into water below; but his fingers tangled in root-fibre, clutched and held him. He kicked, got a purchase and shoved himself back up. There was a sudden rush behind him, and huge hands caught at his shoulders. He struggled, but heard Olvar shouting ‘It’s me, boss, it’s me! I got you!’
Kunrad let himself be hauled back up. ‘You all right?’ demanded Gille. ‘What got into you, wandering off like that? As well Olvar woke!’
‘I didn’t know,’ he muttered. ‘It … held my attention. Quite well. Just false enough to make me feel safe and superior. I could give it up, any time. And all the time, my legs were walking … Like a dream.’
‘A nightmare!’ rumbled Olvar. ‘Look at your destination!’ They stood on a low island, and by the side of the track opened a muddy pit, like a well.
‘Ever seen an ant-lion?’ inquired Gille. He kicked a stone half sunk in the moss, and it bounced down the slope. As it tumbled out into the blackne
ss he let out a low wail. It was a human skull.
It fell in silence. Then suddenly from below there was a musical note, a splash and a yelp, echoing in the pit. ‘Bullseye!’ chuckled Olvar nervously, backing away. ‘Would’ve pleased the late owner, I’m sure! Stop a moment!’ He pulled his flint and steel from his pocket, and dry kindling and bulrush stalks from his pack. It flared, and the smiths yelled and sprang back, reaching for their swords. The place was thick with bones, floored with them, and not just bones. Almost at their feet lay a man’s corpse, shrunken to little more than a skeleton, yet still clad in a mud-encrusted mailshirt and shreds of clothing, the bright colours absurdly fresh. ‘All twisted and … wrung like that!’ moaned Gille.
‘Like everything’d been sucked out of him!’ said Olvar, nauseously. ‘Everything! Aagh!’ In a paroxysm he hurled the bulrush. Falling, it lit the pit sides. They were lined with rough-laid stones, like any ordinary well. But as it reached the bottom, the bulrush flared with an explosive pop. Flame belched in the depths, and there was a frenzied shrieking that died away in a wail. They turned away, shaken. That flash had shown them the bottom, the ribcages like rotting ships upon the black water, the bobbing fragments green with decay.
‘Bad airs,’ said Kunrad. ‘They’ll do that, sometimes.’
‘The voice …’ said Gille. ‘Sounded human enough, didn’t it?’
Kunrad nodded.
‘Did it say anything to you?’
‘No. But the body did.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you see? Mail. Mangled, but not rusty; and those wide breeches, like the corsairs wore. Probably he was one. And not long ago, or the clothes would have been rotten. And the skin.’
‘Gah,’ said Gille, then looked at him sharply. ‘Not long? How long?’
Kunrad voiced the thought. ‘A day or two. At most.’
Gille hissed an obscenity, and looked wildly around at the reed walls. Olvar put his hand to his forehead. Nobody said anything more; they were sharing the same thought, the same feeling. The marshland was closing in around them. They had come this far, for this many days, and seen nothing at all of their captors beyond that one swift pursuit. Yet all this time, for all their efforts, and the terrors they had evaded, the corsairs had been on their heels, and they had never so much as noticed. Maybe they were closing in even now.
‘He could have been here for some other reason,’ suggested Olvar.
‘Such as?’ demanded Gille. ‘You know how they feel about the place, and I for one don’t blame them, if they’ve got to make their way around with just lodestones. No, if he ventured out here, it was after us.’
‘Well, maybe losing him will scare them off. But yes, they could be still about. We’d better up stakes at once. After that flash …’
‘Yes. Too visible. And it’s almost mist time, remember?’
They shuffled along in the half-light, stumbling frequently, looking back anxiously at the spot where they had lain. The sky should have lightened, but it did not, and there was no mist drifting. Instead they heard a pattering in the blackness, loud and drawing closer, like the fresh breeze that chilled their necks; and a curtain of drizzle swept across them. That was enough; they huddled down under the reeds for protection. But somehow they did not stop this breeze, and the waters wept down on them as the light reluctantly grew. Birds were crying, more birds than they had ever heard here; and as the drizzle thinned a little to let the late dawn through, they saw why.
Small wonder they had had no shelter; for the long trail opened out at last, on to the reedy slopes of a small mere, dotted with islands. Some bore a tree or two, little things bent and distorted by the prevailing winds, but trees nonetheless. Birds nested there, and waterfowl of all kinds and sizes flocked and squabbled about the grey waters. It seemed almost impossibly airy and alive after the dead green world of the reeds and the decaying swamp. Kunrad rose to his feet, shivering, lips working.
‘What is it?’ demanded Gille.
‘Don’t you see?’ Kunrad felt as if he would explode like the well.
‘What’s to see?’ groaned Olvar. ‘More reeds, more water, more marsh as far as the eye can see! Is there never an end to this place?’
Kunrad laughed. ‘Reeds, yes! True reeds, broad-bladed, not like the great frondy grasses we’ve been caught in. And shorter! So you can see past them! With those and those birds, I’ll wager that’s fresh water out there! This isn’t saltmarsh any more. This is sweetmarsh, river-fed, beyond the tide-reach!’
‘What difference does that make? Better class of monster? Still can’t see a bloody way out!’
‘But you only see a league or so! Look at the horizon – aren’t those trees there, real trees? More than here. It could be that near. It needn’t be much further. A day, two days. The edge. The Southlands, damn it! The way out!’
They gaped at him, as if hope hurt like the blood returning to a limb constricted. That was how he felt. Over the days past – how many days? – this awful world had become theirs, their horizons limited to the reed-beds. Open space and a hint of freedom was almost frightening. He slumped down on the green slope, and for a minute or two they rested, and watched the birds.
‘And that’s something else,’ said Gille after a while. ‘That smoked meat’s all but gone. I’ve seen nothing in the reeds I felt like eating.’ He reached for his crossbow and bolts.
Olvar looked troubled. ‘D’you have to? I just like watching the little buggers. Nice to see something cheerful and colourful for a change.’
Kunrad nodded. ‘There’s some meat left, yet, and plenty of biscuit.’
‘The meat’s maggot-fodder,’ said Gille, ‘and you, my lad, need some better food to help your guts heal. We’re weak enough, but you could be brewing something really serious.’
That was true enough, and they watched Gille as he wormed his way to the water’s edge. The birds were not especially concerned here, far from human haunts, though they did avoid the mouth of the trackway. There were ducks skidding about in plenty, but Gille had his eye on a flock of geese, brown-backed with dark heads, that bobbed on the open mere some ways off. Kunrad wondered how they would get anything that far out without a dog, but Gille had his own ideas. From behind a black-reed clutch he sprang up suddenly, and the whole face of the mere seemed to take off with a deafening rustle, a fluttering curtain of white bellies and underwings across the grey sky. The heavy geese rose more slowly, and Gille waited as they crossed the shoreline, then aimed his bow and fired. A snap, a hiss, a dull crack and one of the bright birds was a limp shape dropping groundward. Its fellows broke and wheeled in panic, and came skimming across the reeds over the watchers’ heads, honking loudly.
All three of them saw it. Not far away, some half a mile maybe, a huge arrowhead struck upwards, out of the reeds, straight into the panicky flock. Jaws parted, eyes gleamed, scales shimmered a fresh gold-green; then half the flock was gone, the jaws snapped and the shining bulk dropped back with a heavy thud. Gille came running back, the goose dangling forgotten in his hand.
‘Did you see it? Did you frigging see it?’
‘The pathmaker,’ said Olvar glassily. ‘Headed – in this direction, wouldn’t you say?’
Kunrad sprang up. ‘Nice shot, lad, but time to leave! A thing that size, just half a dozen geese aren’t going to keep it happy long.’
They scrambled down the slope, and along the banks of the mere where it was driest, looking back over their shoulders when they dared in case that huge pointed snout was emerging from the reedbeds, tongue flickering for their trail.
‘Across running water the first chance we get!’ ordered Kunrad. ‘It’ll help break the scent!’
‘Across it?’ panted Gille. ‘If I see that thing again I’ll provide it!’
They did not, fortunately. They leaped one small stream and skidded and splashed across the stones of a wider one, and out into the open fen.
This was a bleak place even on the edges of summer, but after the
reeds it seemed like a paradise, so much more open and alive. Here and there real grass grew in tussocks around the pools, and among it heathers and other flowers. Moths and butterflies flitted among them, and now and again bees; even the occasional questing hornet seemed almost normal. There were the same clouds of stinging insects, but also breezes to carry them off now and again. Fish stirred in the slow brown pools, some of them startlingly large, and it almost seemed worth trying to catch them. Kunrad would not allow it. ‘The corsairs! Forgotten them, have you? And in this open land we’re far more visible.’ He read the exhaustion in their faces, felt it run lead in his bones also, and relented a little. ‘When we’ve a day between us and the reeds, then we can stop. Maybe even risk a fire, if we’re careful.’
‘Cook your goose, Gille!’ said Olvar dreamily.
‘Provided,’ said Kunrad, ‘our late hosts don’t do it first.’
That night they reached a small island without any sign of pursuit, and behind a screen of bushes they managed to kindle a small and nearly smokeless fire. Strengthened by goose dripping, it dried their boots as they ate, and heated a little water to cook some roots of marsh samphire and other herbs. The residue served to bathe their afflicted feet. Kunrad lay back with an exhausted sigh. ‘Let it die now. I thought of smoking some goose-meat, but we’ll finish what’s there tomorrow.’ He rubbed his bristly chin. ‘I’ve enough fat in my beard to shave, almost.’
‘Leave it,’ said Gille sleepily. ‘Keeps the flies off.’
They slept that night better than for some time, and did not remember their dreams. Morning saw them weary and stiff, and their boots stiffer still, but they were in better heart than for many a day. The Marshes had been only another kind of prison; but now freedom, real freedom, might be within a day’s march. For Kunrad in particular it made a difference. His promise would be kept, his way open if he wished it. He could forget the armour, return to his old life or seek a new one; or he could follow the way he was driven, still. Neither choice pleased him; but they had to be better than this. And as he eased on his boots with painful grunts and the aid of goose-grease, he reminded himself that he did not have to decide, not yet.
The Castle of the Winds Page 18