by Adrian Selby
Drogg’s the first to lose it over the horns one night, the thin wailing as bad as a bab scritching for milk. Takes me and Agura to keep him calm and not give away our position as he suffers. By dawn, after a mouthful of bilt and a few swigs of water, we’re moving off again. I find the land easier as we go, recalling the trails, the bluffs, ruins of hilltop outposts. With our chalk faces we hopefully will pass without suspicion from those stationed in them, small figures that must be on seeing mixes, but seeing nothing they need to send guards out to us for. I keep us in whatever streams and rivers I can find, to slow those that follow us. They’re not stupid, they will have been told that Amondell is our likely path. I hope Nazz has created tracks that will entice them away from us, but I don’t know where he’ll have been headed, away south of Amondell if he had any sense.
Horns are louder the following night when they start up. Closer. I cuss, for my efforts to throw them off or slow them have been in vain. We don’t speak as we prep for watches and take our rubs and mixes. I think even a word would set us all on each other.
Yame has an idea we could put guira in our ears. We have to sacrifice our pouches of crowell’s root, it being the least likely plant we’d need in the coming days. Pressing out the roots, we manage to get enough guira for half of us to plug up our ears. It makes a little difference, but the relentless howling of the horns blows and echoes with the wind. Hard to place how far off they are, how they keep their minds through it all. Then I remember the Kelssen theit, and how their mixes made them frenzied, not quite people at all.
We make no camp, huddle close together two on a watch. We’re up as soon as the gurgling and chittering of snipes begin, another day of burning muscle, our woollens stinking, salt-covered leathers and the skin of our feet rubbing away, blood in our boots, trying to repair the mess before we snatch a few hours. It’s bonded us if nothing else, even saw tears in Drogg’s eyes last evening as Salia helped his boots off and pasted his blisters and bloody skin. He told us a tale or two of how his life went when I got out a small flask of brandy to lift our spirits, one I always pack and keep for cold and hopeless nights. Easy enough to fall to villainy if you get your bad breaks in luck, whether you’re born to a bad da or ma, or crops rot, you lose your wife or fall in love with one who herself is in love with another, your friend as it happens, and you don’t hate him for it either. All this happened to him, and Gravy it was stole the heart of the woman Drogg himself adored, Adeik, who was the third in their banditry of vans, including one of mine. He was saying sorry now. But he’s worn out with lack of sleep, as nice as it might be to think he could change who he was now he’s an arrow away from dying and us depending on each other.
Next night, the horns are louder, there seem to be more of them. Makes no sense why they’re not pushing on to catch us when our path now must be so obvious to any among them boys that knows Amondsen lands—Rikele Way, Eirkeden’s Theit, Amondell. Yame it is barks us awake, her and Agura’s watch that night. She’s screaming, and I want to cuss at her as she does it, then I see she’s loosed an arrow, points to a knot of trees across a clearing. The horns are further off still, but I’m sad to see that one of them’s got Agura. Arrow in her chest. She’s fading. Salia kneels next to her, gripping her hand, but there’s nothing to be done.
“I fell asleep a moment, I did!” Salia says. “I would have seen these fuckers.” Ruifsen it is that grabs her as she makes to go off from the camp. She doesn’t resist him as he puts his arms about her and leads her back. Drogg goes to the edge of the camp and he’s bellowing at them, hands high, urging them at us. I kneel with Agura, Yame next to me. She looks about us, takes Ru’s hand and beats the ground because she cannot form words for lack of air. Then she’s gone. I can’t think then, I want to shout at Drogg to shut it and I want to bury Agura but we can’t. Cherry at least is thinking. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, we have to prep.” She goes round each of us. It should be me but I’m still coming awake, I can hardly stand. Cherry does Ru’s luta first, him and Yame on lookout while the rest of us put luta in and pack up in silence.
“They’re picking us off, Teyr, one by one,” says Salia then. “Because they can. We can’t even keep a proper watch.”
The others are looking at me for instruction or command, but I’ve got none.
“We have to keep for Amondell,” I says. “There’s hills about, passes that can be easily defended against many. Chances too to counter them, lose them, trick them with the chalk.”
“I’ve got thirty arrows, Teyr, and that’s the most anyone here’s got. We should attack. Why go on like this?” says Salia.
“Out here we’re dying either way, like this or running at them,” says Ru. “I’m sorry for Agura, I am, but while they aren’t coming at us, we use it to get to land that gives us more of a chance. Teyr’s right.”
“We need rest, water,” I says. “There’s shepherd hides and huts up in the passes we can find some food in.”
“We’re not going straight for Gruma then?” says Drogg. Yame laughs, earns a clip round the head from Salia.
“Maybe we would have, Drogg,” I says, “if we’d not been betrayed by Nazz and the others. And it’s them’s as guilty as those cunts out in the trees for all this. But we go near the fort anyway on our way into the highlands, we might have a chance of scouting it before pushing past and up the slopes to the Middry Hills, towards the Mothers.”
There’s nothing more said. Agura’s belt and food are stripped. A long day’s running ahead.
Following afternoon the rains come in heavy as we get through the woods and copses of the Shield. The wind’s howling, a storm. Sheets of water come at us like spray off the sea as we cross the hills and valleys of my bloodlands. My eyes hurt, my right eye most of all. No fire we can heat up the wax stick for it. I have only a vague sense of where we’re going, I’m in and out of my head, exhausted, mind curled up behind my eyes. But still I see a glimpse, feel somehow the hooves of horses far to our left. I’m about to say we should be careful, with the mist so heavy, the wind and rain so loud, when horses crest a hill behind us that we’d not long descended and others appear from our left. The lie of the land sharpens to me as I take a proper look at it, first in hours, I’m sorry to say. We’d run into a dell, my fault, for it reduced our ability to anticipate attack. The running’s lost me in my muscles, in the need to keep my feet moving. Tiredness, lack of sleep, had robbed me of the proper caution I should be taking, like it took Yame last night.
I hiss at Ru to take Drogg and run for the nearest tree, get in its roots. There’s patches of spruce about, thickening at the sides of the dell. Where we are there’s younger trees growing amid older ones that have been chopped for lumber, and we’re grateful for them for they offer good cover from arrows. Salia’s already moving with Yame, splitting away from Ru to make things harder for the whiteboys. Cherry gets it pretty quickly, and runs for a fallen tree to crouch against. Hard to know what seeing mix the whiteboys are on. My life depends on whether I take a fightbrew or a dayer now. Then a few arrows come in, the horns starting up around us, savagely loud, almost splintering the air. I keep low and find my way to another tree while I try to keep sight of Ru and Salia, the only two I can trust to make the right calls here. I sign to Ru, using field Farlsgrad, for that’s what Salia would also know. They reckon dayers are what’s needed, the whiteboys indulging themselves in putting some fear into us. If they were on their fightbrews they’d be running in under the illusion they’re immortal.
I slip luta into my eyes and punch the earth a bit while it gets in them, for it’s that or pick them out with a knife if it would ease the pain of it. The black eye comes good for all it hurts. A roiling whiteness flickers and sparks at the edges of its sight, the noise of the horns it must be, but I see clear enough where they are, the air they disturb. Fifteen horses at least, groups of five, two groups back the way we come, one to the left. They’re on foot now. Three, four of them are moving away from their hors
es, Cherry closest. I whistle and gesture for her to get luta in her eyes and watch for that movement. One flank covered as long as they don’t run at us now.
Over to our right, no horses there, no horns, and it feels like that’s exactly where they don’t want us looking. I gesture over at Ru to watch there, for the air don’t seem right, and then two thrushes fly out. Ru sees them, waves at me in thanks. He hasn’t even got a chance to pull Drogg out of sight of that flank, he being focused on the horsemen that followed behind us and their blowing, when a volley of arrows comes in, seven, sharp and clear to me. Drogg’s hit by one of them, and Ru’s pulling at him is all that saves him from a second finding its target. It’s hit him in his side, above his hip.
Salia sees what’s happened. She whispers to Yame and runs for Drogg, who’s led on the grass. Yame shoots at the first of the whiteboys on the right to see Salia breaking cover, misses by a whisker, but a fine reflex shot in this wind and rain and it’ll keep them behind their trees a moment. The boys at the back of the dell think they’re far enough off and us too occupied that they don’t need to stay behind their trees. Maybe they think it’s a taunt that’ll distract us. Seeing nothing of those advancing to my left, I get a line on one of them blowing his horn, a bit prouder than the rest, a bit too much belief in their control of what’s going on. He’s worth an arrow, the sighting of him once again a thrilling certainty, raindrops running down his puffed-out cheeks, spare hand on his hip as though he’s casually calling muster. I can’t draw the string quite as far without a brew in me, but the arrow lands square in his chest. He falls back a couple of steps and drops dead. The others run for cover, the horns falter there and it brings a smile to my face. I look over at Drogg, and it’s cheered him too to see it.
Cherry spots the ones on the right moving away now, maybe thinking better on the odds they’ve got, the quality of our shooting. I’m grateful for not even needing a dayer, for Salia signs too that they’re moving back on the left, the horns stopping. She carries on then treating Drogg.
Fucking whiteboys.
I sign for us all to move to where Drogg, Salia and Ru are, seeing nothing now by way of movement.
“I got the arrow out of him, sucked out what I could, but the poison’s in there. Touch and go, he shouldn’t be moved today, we have to let the bark and the mix do its work in there.”
“We can’t sit here,” says Ruifsen.
“We can’t leave him,” says Cherry. “We’re not losing another one today.”
“You have to,” says Drogg. “You made the right call, Amondsen, to keep going. This land is better odds—well, would have been.”
“I’m sorry, Drogg, I am. I was leading us. I didn’t … Cherry’s right, sure we can get you moving somehow.”
“Don’t, Amondsen, they’re on us, there’s only going to be more and I can’t walk. It’s bad luck is all it is.” He reaches up to hold my hand. “Helsen knew, didn’t he? He saw out the purse proper, and I have to do the same or even his death’s in vain, isn’t it, if you’re caught carrying me. No, I won’t let him dying or even Agura’s dying be pointless for me slowing you. Cherry, you look after Amondsen and this crew like you’ve been doing. Can you give me some of those spore eggs? Might be I can still do some good and take a few down if I hide in these roots and they come past this way.”
I glance at Salia, who looks up to me as he says it. Her eyelids flicker agreement. I kneel next to her at Drogg’s side. He’s sweating badly, grimacing a bit as the poison bites in.
Cherry looks away. Her heart’s too big for all this.
“It was better coming out here than hanging at the gallows, Amondsen. I hope you kill this Khiese and have a drink to all of us that’s died.” He smiles then. “Be good to see Gravy again. I know he don’t blame you for what happened, Amondsen. I don’t either.”
I lean forward to kiss him. His cheeks are wet, for no one readies for dying without some feeling.
“I’m grateful to you, Drogg. Sillindar keep you.”
“Try getting to your knees when you hear them, if they’re coming straight through,” says Salia. “The longer you rest still, the more chance the plant’ll give you the means to get up, if only so you can throw those eggs a bit further.”
Me and Cherry give him most of our spore eggs, five in all. Might do for a few of them, but at least he can break one himself to save him being tortured. She leans to kiss him too, whispers something to him which makes him smile. Then we go, passing through the spruce and into a thicker copse as lightning and an awful great crack of thunder send the air that I see, the song’s weave, into a violent rattled spasm.
Amondell
The horns have echoed on through the woods around Amondell, before us and behind us. We’ve used the last of the caffin, fought off a charge on Dedssen’s Fields and got into some thick trees, coal-dust gloom, the steep rising crescent of the start of the Middry Hills, the Amondell longhouse and my family a short walk away. We haven’t spoken since we left Drogg; there’s just me, Salia, Yame, Cherry and Ruifsen slapping each other about to stay awake, picking each other up if we’ve stumbled. But before I can think about where around here I could hide us for some rest, to stop and turn on them in trees I know like the back of my hand, there’s shouting ahead and four whiteboys are running up the slope, oblivious to us as we freeze still. An arrow comes back past them. Sword work echoes from the far side of the rise that looks over my home.
“Who the fuck’s fighting?” hisses Salia.
“Caryd,” whispers Cherry. “I saw her up the hill just then, running as fast as a wolf.”
I’m glad. “I don’t know what they’re doing here but I’m glad we found those fuckers. Ru, I’m going to take you and Cherry up the hill after those whiteboys once you’ve had some brew.”
We help each other to keep it down, hold our heads, hands over our mouths as we suffer through our change. Seems like we’re so tired we stoned the brew hardly trying to, like it just stands us up and opens our eyes proper. I gesture them all to follow and creep a few trees further up the slope. “Cherry, see the two ash, they should have circs on them, Auksen marks carved into their bark. Look up in the branches. There’ll be a few that have their branches aligned, ten of them in all running a line that overlooks the fort. You’ll get a good view around you from up there. Set up and shoot anything around you—you’ll find ledges have been nailed in to give you room to move about. I have to assume Gruma’s in the fort with my brother. Don’t let them spot you; sign me when you can see me, tell me what’s going on in there. Go. Rest of you with me.”
A childhood playing hunt the wolf; sightlines, vantages. I sign, Salia interpreting, creeping our way to the ridge overlooking our fort, moving in and out of great thick ropes and fingers of roots. We wait. Grunts, whistles, sounds used by the whiteboys to position each other and instruct. A rustle through ferns ahead of us, two more whiteboys running low uphill. Threeboots, hidden the far side of a trunk not forty feet from us, spins from behind it, prefers sword and knife. I’m taken back by seeing her, can hardly believe it. Nazz and the others are really here. The first of the two whiteboys also surprised by her manages a parry before her run carries her into him, her knife into his sword arm, drawn along it, out, into his chest. The other chatters and howls, his fightbrew leaving little sense in him. The Khiedsen drudhas never cared much for how the colour was paid, only that it give them an edge in battle. They had no edge against the brew Threeboots would be on, and Salia knows it. The other whiteboy goes at Threeboots, her back to us. Salia leaps out and runs at her, not a moment’s hesitation in seizing an advantage, even against a woman she ran with and shared pipes with all those years. The whiteboy might have lasted a moment longer had he not spotted Salia coming at them. It’s all Threeboots needs to go at him, force a bad riposte, and she runs him through. Hears the footsteps behind her, turns and, seeing the chalk before seeing it’s Salia, defends well as Salia presses the attack. It dawns on her then, who it is she’s fight
ing. As she tries to counter and press Salia back, her eyes widen.
“No!” She manages, swords ringing, a step back as they circle. “Don’t do this, Salia, please. Whiteboys are everywhere. Gruma is in the fort, he thinks we’re all here fighting as one. Where’s Teyr?”
“Fuck you, Threeboots, fuck your betrayal of us. Drogg, Agura, both dead.”
She thrusts, rolls the bind, but Threeboots is back out of her way. She’s fast. Salia is far the better sword, but Threeboots licks her lips and comes back at her, sword and knife. Threeboots gets a score with the knife, slicing the back of Salia’s glove, the back of her arm, but the leather takes the worst of it, the blood thickening quickly because of her brew as it runs out.
Ruifsen spots a couple of whiteboys, and Yame nods at him, getting arrows ready. There’s screaming coming from the fort. I try to keep sight of the world about us, the brew now lighting me up. I ready myself to jump to Salia’s defence for I’m no longer sure she’ll end it. Salia and Threeboots move in and out. Salia initiates; each time Threeboots is quicker, escapes where her lesser skill might have got her killed. Then she attacks, two blows parried, the third gets into Salia’s shoulder, but she rolls back and is spared a heavier blow. As she comes back at Threeboots, the smaller woman’s power tells, and in two swift strikes Salia’s knocked back, her sword swept out of her hand. Threeboots stands a moment before Salia, savouring it. As I burst forward, as she brings her sword back to thrust, an arrow punches into her chest, its angle high. It’s Cherry, above and behind us. Threeboots drops her sword, hand to the arrow shaft. She looks about her, sees me as I approach. In these moments it hurts me to see them fight, how all those years we shared pipes and cups had come to this bitter steel.