I looked up and to the right. The road we'd taken was partially visible, a darker vein hanging tenaciously from the mountainside. Stood out on that vein, some distance behind, a file of miniscule black forms stole towards us. I couldn't make out details. I didn't need to. I was about to cry out when some urge made me look back down the other leg of the highway, towards Muena Palaiya. The shout strangled off in my throat. A matching procession was creeping along the road that threaded down to meet our own.
Estrada picked that moment to clamber up beside me. She looked at me bemusedly – the cart had ground almost to a standstill – and followed my line of sight.
"They've found us!"
The way those three words galvanised her tiny army was something to behold. It was hard to believe they were the same men who'd been singing, joking and tripping over each other's feet a few minutes before. The fish-merchants seemed even more alarmed by the transformation, as the rabble around them struck up a marching pace, as riders and carters stopped to scoop up those slowed down by injuries.
The cloud-piled sky chose that moment to shatter, with a cruel gash of lightning and a rumble that shook the earth beneath our feet. A liquid wall fell with the abruptness of a stage curtain. Immediately, the world was reduced to nothing but the road scudding by beneath us and rain so drenching that we might have been standing in a river.
Estrada lashed our horses, and they surged into motion. It was impossible to see ahead. Moaradrid's two approaching forces were utterly veiled from view, as was the tail of our own column. Though it was nowhere near evening it seemed like the most starless night, except when lightning lit the world blue-white.
When the thunder was silent, all I could hear was the rattle of the cart, the horses, and Saltlick pounding the road beside us. Though we couldn't have been travelling that quickly, I was convinced we'd hurtle over the edge at any moment. I gripped my seat and stared into the blackness, flinching at every slight turn and every flash or rumble.
It seemed miraculous that we reached the valley floor in one piece. It was stranger still to look back and see our party congealing out of the rain behind us, a battalion of sodden ghosts. Everyone had made it in one piece, as far as I could tell. It wasn't long before they'd surrounded us on every side, blocking the crossroads that joined the mountain road with Muena Palaiya and the rest of the Castoval. Mounteban loomed beside us, shaking water from his beard with fierce jerks of the head.
"Moaradrid's brigands are close," he roared.
"I know. It's now or never."
"They're not ready. It won't work."
"We have no choice."
Mounteban just nodded.
Estrada stood on the driver's board, rain-lashed, silhouetted against the pitchy sky. At the top of her lungs she called, "If we wait, they'll take us. So we separate. You have your instructions. We'll meet again four days hence at the designated place – or the Castoval is lost. Every man is on his own now. Good luck!"
The cheer that met her words seemed oddly wild amidst the storm. The crowd fell apart immediately, as though cleaved by some outside force. Estrada dropped back into her seat and drove the horses forward. Mounteban, his riders, and the greater part of the throng fell in around us.
Distant, hardly distinguishable from the drumming rain, I heard the pound of hooves.
Moaradrid's forces were closing – and here we were, as helpless as we'd ever been.
CHAPTER 11
Had there been anyone on that storm-lashed road to see us go by, we'd have made a strange and alarming spectacle.
First would have thundered past a convoy of riders and overloaded carts, all travelling far too fast for the drenched road, gear rattling, maybe a loosened barrel tumbling free. If lightning had chanced to flicker, they'd have seen the strain stamped on every face. They'd surely have gaped at the monster near the rear, struggling to keep pace, oblivious to the rain exploding from its back and head.
Then the last rider would have hurtled by. The noise – of clattering wheels, hooves, straining wood – would have faded.
Soon after, no more than a minute, the other horsemen would have appeared; looming out of the tempest, no attempt made to disguise weapons slung on backs and drumming against thighs. They'd have been travelling perilously fast too, and urging their mounts to even greater efforts – though without success. They'd have passed more quickly, like a moon-shadow. Not one would have so much as looked aside.
Moaradrid's men had been riding hard all day, and their horses were far from fresh. They simply weren't fast enough to overtake us. If they'd been closer at the start then it would have gone differently. But we'd lost more than half our following over the first two hours, as men peeled away at every junction, the wounded and old limping off towards farmhouses and hamlets. By the time they'd closed the gap, there was no one left on foot, and we were moving as fast as they were. All they could hope for was to wear us down.
And that was how it went for the longest time. They came closer, we pulled away, on and on through the dark and cold and endless rain.
Mounteban claimed that the force from Muena Palaiya had come after us and the rest had followed those who'd fled southward. No one apart from him found it important. In fact, Estrada would barely speak to him. Straight after the separation at the crossroads, they'd loudly fallen out. She'd asked why he was with us and not the other party as planned, and he'd grunted some excuse about choosing the wrong direction in the rain.
"Don't lie to me."
"Fine. I came to protect you."
"What makes you think I need protecting?"
"The fact that if you die, everything's lost."
"And them? What about them?"
That was the last she said to him, except for the occasional terse command. If not for that, even the decision to flee might have been open to question. Mounteban told her – soon after their argument, and possibly just to draw her out – that our pursuers were only a scouting party, no more than thirty men. If he was right, it meant we'd just about outnumber them in a fight.
"Of course most of our archers went the other way, so they'd have us there… but an ambush, perhaps…"
"We keep running," Estrada replied. And that was the end of that.
Those were the last words anyone spoke for hours. There was nothing to discuss. There was only the chase: its muted sounds, glimpses of shadowed forms behind us, and the ceaseless, hammering fear. They were gaining or we were, and each man could judge only for himself with a hundred half-snatched glances. With least to do, I kept a lookout more than anyone. I strained until my neck ached and my eyes burned. I couldn't see horses or men behind, only a single dark blot. I watched it grow larger, grow smaller – there was nothing else in the world.
Then suddenly it was gone. I didn't believe it. It seemed far more likely that the fault was with my vision. I strained until tiny lights seemed to pop and dance in the blackness. Still there was nothing, only empty road trailing into the rain-soaked night.
Someone called, "They've given up."
I kept staring. It was a trick, a trap. At any moment, that blot would reappear, maybe far closer.
Then we struck an incline that brought us higher than the road behind. At the same time, a little blurred moonlight fell in ribbons through the clouds. There they were. They'd fallen far behind; there could be no doubt of it.
Mounteban sent one of his bodyguards to investigate. He was a small, intensely quiet man that I'd barely noticed until then. There was something about him that made me want to avert my gaze – and now that I couldn't help but look, a quality to his movements that made the hairs on my neck stand up. He soon returned, and whispered to Mounteban, who related that their tracks made an about-turn and disappeared the way we'd come.
"It's far from good news," he added. "We've won a few hours' peace, that's all. The only reason they'd let us go is to report our position to Moaradrid, and to gather more men."
There followed a hasty meeting, to decide whether we'd
chance making camp or try to continue. It was obvious from a glance around what the answer had to be. Everyone looked fit to drop, and a few were already nodding in their saddles. Estrada's decision, however, was to carry on until the next crossroads. There we'd separate our numbers again, and keep going for an hour more to give everyone time to spread out. That way, if an attack came in the night then at least some might escape.
I couldn't fault her logic. Still, the rest of the journey was torture. Everyone's nerves were frayed past tolerance by the day's events. We were soaked to the skin, so that the noise of teeth chattering seemed to drown out even the clack of hooves. I was one of the better off, having slept and eaten at least. Yet even I wanted nothing more than to tumble into the dirt, where a cartwheel running over my head might put an end to my misery. Estrada's face was a mask, white as bone. I couldn't imagine what was keeping her going.
When we eventually reached the crossroads, a gallows stood waiting for us, outlined skeletally against the sky. Though it probably hadn't been used in years, it reminded me of that noose around my neck outside Moaradrid's camp, of kicking frantically to find purchase on thin air. The men seemed wraithlike as they slunk away, lit by the barest sliver of a moon. Their horses and cartwheels, which had made such a racket before, were muffled almost to silence now.
It crossed my mind that they hadn't survived the battle after all – that I'd been travelling in the company of phantoms too stubborn to accept their fate. Even if it weren't literally true, it summed up Estrada's resistance as well as anything. Sitting perfectly still beside me, her hair fluttering from gaunt features, she could easily have been some ghostly harridan risen to gather us up.
Another thought made me shudder: had I really been rescued from that hanging tree? Or was this all some absurd final torment?
I felt saner once we'd put the crossroads behind us, though the close-packed woodland to either side, with its abrupt nocturnal noises, was hardly more comforting. With nothing to see except huddled trees I found it difficult to keep track of whether I was asleep or awake. If we jolted through a particularly deep rut I'd start as though waking from a nightmare, only to discover everything exactly as I remembered it.
I didn't even notice when we finally did stop, until Estrada said, "This should be far enough."
Her voice was barely a croak. I doubted she could have gone further, whether it was enough or not.
There was a clearing to our left, down a shallow verge. We managed to lead the horses there, though they protested bitterly. The wagon, drawn level against the tree line, would be well hidden until sunrise. We unshackled the cart and led the horses beneath the canopy, where they set wearily to munching the short grass.
There was no possibility of lighting a fire. There were no dry clothes to replace our wet ones. There'd have been no point, anyway, for though the rain had stopped the ground was saturated. All Estrada could offer were a few threadbare blankets. No one had the energy to eat – no one except Saltlick, who immediately began stripping fistfuls of leaves. I lay shivering for a long time, drifting in and out of fitful sleep that was punctuated by his steady chomp-chomp, close yet distant-seeming, like the grind of a colossal sea on granite shoals.
I woke, with a terrible thudding in my head, to darkness. There was no noise, not even the shriek of night birds or click of crickets. As my eyes began to adjust, I thought I could make out the palest glimmer of dawn beyond the wooded canopy. Every muscle in my body ached, and my nose was dribbling with cold.
The only thing in my line of sight was Saltlick's back. Someone had thrown the awning from the cart over him, though it only covered as far as his stomach. There was nothing in the scene that made me want to stay conscious. I scrunched my eyes shut, in the vague hope of finding sleep once more.
Something tapped my shoulder – exactly the sensation, I realised, which had woken me in the first place. I rolled over, and found myself staring into Mounteban's dirt-streaked features. His one good eye narrowed. He placed a warning finger to his lips.
I sat carefully, partly to avoid making noise and partly to ease my thudding head. There was just enough light for me to see that everyone but myself and Saltlick were already awake, and crouched together in the centre of the clearing. No, not everyone. The silent man who'd made me so uneasy yesterday was absent.
Once he was sure of my attention, Mounteban pointed towards the road. I could see Estrada in the corner of my vision, attempting to wake Saltlick with minimal success.
I mouthed to Mounteban, "what?" and then, "soldiers?"
He nodded.
His scout materialised at that moment from behind the bole of a nearby birch, hardly two paces from us. He gestured towards the road as Mounteban had, and then swept his hand westward.
"Gone?" Mounteban whispered, and the silent man dipped his head.
Estrada, having succeeded in rousing Saltlick, crept towards us. "There'll be more. We can't use the highways."
"I can guide you cross-country," said Mounteban. There was a hint of triumph in his voice.
"There's no time."
"We're about a day from the river. We might be able to find a boat."
"Then what?"
"Then… I don't know, perhaps we could ask its owner if they'd consider selling. What did you think I meant? If you find my past so unsavoury, Marina, perhaps you shouldn't have recruited me in the first place." Mounteban's voice rose, until by the end he was almost shouting. He glared around red-faced, caught between shame and anger. The silence seemed tangible as he and Estrada glared across the clearing at each other.
For once, it was she who backed down. "You're right," she said. "We should get going."
We spent the next few minutes unloading supplies from the cart and distributing them amongst packs and the saddlebags of the two horses. It was cellarlike in the gloom beneath the trees, the trunks resembling columns and the foliage a dripping ceiling that creaked with subterranean stresses. A mouldy odour rising from the damp peat floor only worsened the effect. As we flitted from one arch to another, glancing furtively towards the road, the tension seemed to rise like stagnant water, until it felt as though one snapped twig would bring catastrophe upon us.
Things improved once we got moving. We ate on the march, and if the food was barely edible then the effort of eating was at least a distraction. Light was breaking in the east by the time I'd choked down my last mouthful, and walking had gone some way to warming me and drying my clothes.
We made an odd parade. Saltlick hung at the back, where he trudged along stolidly, focusing all his effort into moving with a minimum of noise. Estrada, who'd begun at the front with Mounteban, fell back after an hour to join him.
I did my best to maintain an equal distance between them and Mounteban's ruffians, the only remainder of our original entourage. I'd been trying to ignore them, but I couldn't help paying furtive attention now that we were intimate associates.
It was partly that I'd belatedly recognised one of them: the bull-shaped character towards the back was the Northerner who'd been on the door at the Red-Eyed Dog. However, I'd also been giving some thought to the question of Mounteban's disconcerting scout. That might be his current trade, but it hadn't always been. He was too small, too lightly built, and his skin wasn't the leathered bronze it would be from a lifetime in the open.
I could think of only one other vocation that required his peculiar skill set, and it was one even career criminals got nervous around. Before Mounteban had supposedly gone straight, I'd occasionally heard his name linked – in the most privately whispered conversations only – with that of a man named Synza. He'd been discreetly referred to as Mounteban's problem-solver; but always with the implication that the absolute last thing you wanted was to find yourself the problem in question.
I had a horrible feeling Synza and I were now travelling companions.
Yesterday afternoon we'd left behind the terraces that joined the Hunch and Muena Palaiya to the valley floor. During the night,
we'd penetrated the wooded region that continued to the riverbank, and which would eventually congeal into the forest of Paen Acha to the south. The whole region was pocked with farms and villages, even a couple of small towns, and tracks and roads laced it in every direction. For all that, it was scarcely populated, and it wasn't too hard to travel unnoticed, especially when most of our party had a proven record in that department.
Mounteban certainly knew the region well, no doubt from his days of shifting contraband between Muena Palaiya and the river. We followed a succession of paths for most of the morning, travelling through scrubby woodland or occasional meadows of high grass littered with bobbing thistles and bright splotches of wildflower. The sun was cool and watery, the sky still partly overcast. At least the rain held off, and the exertion of walking kept my temperature comfortable. There seemed little point in rationing my supplies, so I continued to eat as I walked, and sipped from one of my flasks.
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