by David Hair
That was how Kemara saw it too. ‘Can they?’
‘Definitely. They were like us, a few generations ago. But some folks let the wilderness into their souls and end up no better than the animals they hunt.’ His expression was somewhere between pity and revulsion.
‘Then what do we do? We can’t hold them off if we can’t see them coming.’
The Shadran considered, then replied, ‘We move.’
Kemara shook her head. ‘It’s a clear night and I’m guessing their night sight will be better than ours. And I don’t know if Bess can move at all.’
‘She might have to.’
Dear Gerda, must we decide between Bess and her unborn, or the rest of us?
Then she looked up at Jesco as inspiration struck. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
*
To her surprise, Jesco approved her plan, even though it meant staying put and taking the ferali head-on. Or it was maybe because of that; he seemed to live for danger.
It didn’t take long to ready their little surprise, then they pulled Kemara’s cart back about thirty feet behind a makeshift rampart of saddles, baggage and the Shapples’ wagon, picketing the animals behind them. They let the fire burn low as the darkness deepened, to aid their night-sight. Above, the planetary rings cleaved the sky in two, lighting the stark plains and deepening the shadow of the forest. The air cooled, the birds fell silent and the wind dropped away entirely.
Ronno took cover under the wagon, while Jesco and Kemara huddled behind the saddlebags.
‘Hey, Healer,’ Jesco said, ‘seeing how we’re all about to die, why not tell me your story?’
She gave him a dubious look. ‘You first.’
The Shadran chuckled. ‘Sure. Born in the south, orphaned by Bolgravian cannons, grew up sleeping rough in the markets. Survived by . . . well, you can guess. I was a pretty boy, in demand. Then a rich man took me in, taught me the blade and found I was good. You can make a real living that way in Shadra, fighting duels of honour on behalf of nobles and merchants. In the end I had to run. I came north, got caught up in the Pelarian wars – that’s where I met Raythe and Varahana. The war was fun, but we lost, so we came west.’
The lack of self-pity or relish in his voice, the sheer matter-of-factness, struck a chord in Kemara, reminding her of herself, or how she’d like to be – only he had a charm she’d never had. Even her friends thought she was a grumpy so-and-so.
‘And what about you?’ he asked, smiling in that heart-melting way – although he clearly wasn’t interested in melting her, or any other woman.
‘Well . . .’ She hesitated from habit, because she wasn’t used to revealing her past. She had rehearsed versions of the truth for such moments, but somehow, she suspected he’d quickly see through them. And she was scared, and talking did help.
‘I was born in Ferrea, obviously.’ She displayed a thick tress as evidence. ‘I was going to be a Sister of Gerda, but then—’ She stopped abruptly, wondering if she should actually tell him.
‘Then?’
She swallowed, gathering her nerve, and repeated, ‘And then—’
—and then someone shrieked savagely and what looked to be a dozen feralis came howling out of the darkness. She blurted a curse, mixed fright and relief, and snatched up the taper she’d kept smouldering, while Jesco thumbed the hammer on his flintlock.
She touched the taper to the thin trail of powder at her feet and a line of fire instantly shot off into the darkness, setting light to the grass at the feet of the charging wildmen, dazzling their eyes and exposing them in the light. Their savage cries changing from bloodlust to alarm, they recoiled, automatically bunching together.
Kemara snatched up her pistol and fired at the same time Jesco did, while Ronno’s bow snapped into life, and this time his arrow struck home. Three of the attackers were knocked off their feet and sent sprawling on the ground; they cried out in pain, but the rest came on.
Jesco touched the torch he’d prepared to the embers and made it roar to life, then brandishing the flaming brand in his left hand and his blade in his right, he launched himself at the half-blinded wildmen, slashing the belly of one, then opening the throat of the next, before slamming the torch into the face of another. In seconds, half the attackers were down.
But the rest were swarming past him, coming full tilt at Ronno and Kemara. Ronno shot again, his target folding in two over the arrow in his belly, but there was no time to reload her pistol, so Kemara had only her dagger. She drew back her arm and threw it at the man coming at her, a tower of sweaty muscle and leering eyes. It flew straight and true, embedding itself deep in his chest, making him stagger. His face crumpling into disbelief, he ripped it out – but as he sucked in a wet, choking breath, he crashed to the ground, gasping like a beached fish.
But the next man was on her, hitting her like a charging bullock and knocking her onto her back. She flailed weakly, gasping as her lungs emptied, unable to catch her breath and utterly dazed. Engulfed in his meaty stench and crushed by his weight, she wondered if this was it – only then realising that he wasn’t moving.
Tentatively running her hands over his body, she discovered an arrow buried in his left side. She thrashed out from under him and only now did she catch sight of Cal Foaley, who was sweeping past and first hamstringing Ronno’s attacker, then slashing open the ferali’s throat as he turned.
Jesco gutted another – and at last the remaining two fled, wailing. The first got ten paces before Foaley snatched Ronno’s bow from his shaking fingers and shot him. The second managed another dozen paces until he was barely visible in the smouldering grasslands, but Foaley’s next arrow took him cleanly in the back and he went down like a felled bull.
Kemara rose to hands and knees, gasping until her lungs filled again. The fight had taken about thirty seconds in all, and somehow, they’d killed ten men and emerged relatively unscathed. Jesco’s coat was slick with blood, but he was moving freely, as if none of it were his.
Jesco gave Cal Foaley a broad smile – a genuine knee-trembler, if Foaley had been that way inclined. He clasped his hand and pounded his back, exulting, ‘I knew you’d be out there – I was counting on it.’
‘If I’d been standing with you, it still wouldn’t have deterred them,’ Foaley growled, ‘so I waited, downwind and out of sight, to take ’em by surprise. These animals are predictable.’ He turned to the trapper, clapped his shoulder. ‘Good shooting, Ronno. You found the rhythm of it, right on time.’
Ronno mumbled shyly, then hurried to his wagon, leaned in and hugged his family.
Jesco strode to Kemara, pulled her upright and embraced her, and for a moment she wished he was another, before just enjoying the physical contact and the relief of survival. ‘This one’s a warrior too,’ the Shadran said grandly. ‘No one I’d trust more at my back.’
Cal Foaley gripped her shoulder in turn, his weathered face not unlike those they’d slain, but there was intelligence and humour in his eyes, not just that blank hunger. ‘I saw it all. Fine work, Mistress.’
She gave them a grateful look, then looked round.
Dead eyes caught her gaze, and mutilated bodies, sprawling in unnatural poses, soaking the ground in gore. All of a sudden her knees went, her gorge rose and she was vomiting up her dinner, despite having seen plenty of blood in a life dealing with illness, injury and childbirth.
Jesco knelt beside her and laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s normal, a reaction to the violence,’ he told her. ‘We all go through it.’
‘I know,’ she told him, still humiliated. ‘You’d think I’d be fine, given that giving birth is at least as gory.’
He shuddered. ‘You’re not wrong. But listen, I’m sorry about this but we need to move, in case more come back.’ He looked round at the bodies and added, ‘Besides, I’m too lazy to bury these bastards and they already stink.’
Kemara sighed, washed her mouth out with water and went to the wagon, where the two children were sittin
g, staring out with terrified, awestruck eyes. She dreaded to think how much they might have seen. But Bess was sitting up and before she could say anything, the trapper’s wife said, ‘I heard. Let’s just go.’
‘My cart’s got springs round the axle,’ Kemara told her. ‘It’ll be a gentler ride for you.’
Ronno replied gratefully, ‘Aye, let’s do that, then.’
As they moved off into the night, with Bess in the back of Kemara’s small cart and Ronno driving his big wagon, Jesco trotted by on Boss, his warhorse. Leaning down, sounding deeply conspiratorial, he said, ‘I believe you were just about to tell me your deepest secrets when we were so rudely interrupted?’
She clicked her teeth and Beca began to move, then she poked out her tongue and said, ‘Missed your chance. You’ll have to wait until the next time we face certain death.’
‘Can’t wait.’
Kemara snorted. ‘Maybe not, but I’m in no hurry.’ Then she tapped the pistol in her belt. ‘Do you think I can keep this? Did Eidan have, um, kin?’
Jesco shook his head. ‘Just a few friends.’
She tried not to think about that poor young man and what would still likely befall his body. But perhaps when the wildmen didn’t return, the ferali tribe would move on and his body would lie undisturbed in the woods.
‘ “If I die alone, let the wolves devour my bones”,’ she quoted from an old poem. ‘ “Let the crows eat my eyes, and the starlings take my hair to nest”.’
‘ “But give my sword to my son, so I’ll be with him when the fight is won”,’ Jesco added, concluding the verse. ‘Keep Eidan’s pistol, Kemara. He’ll be with you when you next fight.’
‘May that be many, many years from now,’ she wished.
‘Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.’ Jesco nudged his horse into motion. ‘Come on, if we push it a bit, we should catch up with the rest of the caravan by dusk.’
*
Raythe raised the sextant and took his sighting along the dimly visible arch of the planetary rings. He jotted down the readings. They now twenty-three days out of Teshveld: three weeks and more than three hundred miles from their starting point. They’d made excellent time, aided by the Ghost Road and good weather. Jesco, Kemara, Foaley and the Shapples had rejoined them after only a day, and thank Gerda, Bess’ condition had stabilised. Kemara reckoned it’d been mostly a trapped nerve, made worse by a touch of stomach illness.
But that was a week ago and now a new problem faced them. Here, where snow-tipped mountains hemmed in the north and east, the Ghost Road abruptly ended. It ran up to a cliff overlooking the sea – and stopped. A mountain loomed above them, the final tooth of a jawbone of peaks running all the way from the northern alps to the breakers. There was no obvious path forward.
‘What the krag were they thinking?’ Elgus Rhamp complained, as the leaders convened to view the dismal outlook. ‘Who builds a road up to the edge of a fecking cliff?’
‘The Magnian Emperor probably thought if he built a road, the sea would get out of his way,’ Jesco chuckled.
He was the only one smiling. Elgus looked bewildered, Vidar was mumbling into his beard and Mater Varahana was looking skywards, as if she suspected Deo of personally testing her faith. Beside her, Kemara was glaring at Raythe as if this were entirely his fault.
He cast about for some clue as to why the empire would run the road up to the edge of a sea cliff which fell hundreds of feet to a rugged, boulder-filled shore where waves hammered the rocks. A mountain range blocked their way, and trying to pick a path under the overhanging cliff would be impossible, even for those climbing, Vidar had reported. There was no clear way forward.
Surely this route was surveyed before they started work – why start a job you can’t finish?
Varahana joined him and gazing thoughtfully about, suggested, ‘Maybe they intended building the road around the western flank of that peak there, but the land fell into the sea? They had no other route, nor means of getting past here, and abandoned the project.’
‘Likely,’ he agreed. ‘How long ago, do you think?’
‘Eighty years.’ She indicated a nearby boneyard. ‘The dates on the gravestones are likely the year the road was abandoned. I don’t think they went further.’
‘Damn.’ Raythe gave a deep sigh. ‘Perhaps there’s an inland route the surveyors missed?’ he said, although he doubted it.
‘How did your cartomancer’s party get to Verdessa?’ Kemara asked, joining them diffidently.
‘They sailed directly. That was never an option for us.’
‘But we set off not knowing whether it was passable,’ she noted sarcastically.
‘It will be,’ he said firmly, ‘even if we have to dismantle each wagon and reassemble it on the other side of these mountains.’
Sir Elgus waggled his fingers in a pseudo-magical way. ‘Can the praxis aid us?’
‘Perhaps,’ Raythe replied. He’d been mulling over the same thing. ‘I’ll work something out. Let’s set up camp: we’re due a rest day or two anyway, and it’ll give us a chance to think.’
*
There was clear ground atop the cliff, levelled by the road-makers long ago, and the rocky ground and coastal aspect had limited the regrowth. The wagons fanned out, the travellers claiming spaces and bustling through the myriad domestic chores. Raythe saw to his own tent, chivvying Zar into her chores, then they joined the throng around the main campfire, where the day’s catch was being cooked alongside a spiced root stew and loaves of flatbread.
A few men brought out musical instruments after the meal, led by a skinny young harpist called Norrin. Jesco was among them with his fiddle and without need for discussion, the musicians led off with a series of gentle jigs and reels, while those listening clapped along and sang if there were words to the tune.
Then, amidst boisterous applause, Kemara rose and swayed through a gypsy havasi, sweeping her hands about her gracefully while her hips and shoulders quivered and gyrated. The single men – the majority in the caravan – watched hungrily. She was one of the few single women here, a volatile gender imbalance on such a journey, and already she was fighting off suitors, despite her status as a novice of Gerda. Then other women, mostly the married ones, joined her as the wind rose and sparks flared from the bonfire. The next dance was a polka and men flooded the space, seizing hands and spinning their partners energetically.
Raythe saw his short-haired, boyish daughter watching the dancers wistfully and slipped an arm over her shoulder as he sat.
‘I wish I could dance,’ she said.
‘I haven’t said you can’t.’
She shot him a look. ‘You’ve never taught me.’
‘It’s not exactly High Praxis – figure it for yourself.’
She twitched, vacillating between the desire to join in and fear of making a fool of herself.
‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘Remember, in a few days you’ll likely manifest and gain your familiar, and after that you’ll be so caught up in new things you’ll forget what relaxation is.’
‘I can’t wait.’ Her aura was growing stronger every day and if he were to exercise witch-sight, he knew he’d see all manner of spirits flitting about her, invisible, bodiless bundles of energy and will seeking a host and partner. The one she chose would become closer to her than a husband or lover.
Cognatus fizzed into being, landing on his shoulder in parrot form and cooing at his daughter.
Yes, I know, Raythe agreed, mind to mind.
The familiar shrieked excitedly, flapping ghostly wings. It might not understand his words – praxis-spirits understood only Old Magnian – but it caught his mood.
His gaze shifted to Mater Varahana, who was also watching the dancing with a wistful expression. Under the Deo Orthodoxy, single women weren’t permitted to dance in front of men, let alone priestesses. The Vara he knew was cultured, educated and aloof, but she’d once waltzed in Magnian royal palaces. He wondered what she’d have become if her famil
y hadn’t pushed her into the Church.
Someone he’d have liked to know; that he was certain of.
After a few dances, the priestess rose and called out, ‘Tomorrow morning, an hour after sunrise, I will hold a service for the faithful. I expect to see you all present.’
There were a mix of dutiful and fervent declarations of attendance, then someone called out, ‘Let’s have a tale of the Second Age.’ Varahana frowned, then gave a nod of agreement: the Second Age ended with the rise of the Holy Church after the fall of the pagan Aldar and most tales of those times held a strong moral lesson.
Jesco leaped to his feet and putting aside his fiddle, declared, ‘A tale of the Second Age? I know just the one. Gather round, and I shall tell you of Vashtariel, last God-King of the Aldar.’
This roused a cheer and in moments, Jesco was in the midst of the encircled crowd, the centre of attention and in his element. He smoothed back his hair, struck a pose and began.
‘Mother Church teaches that there are twelve marks of damnation – twelve horrendous sins, any one of which will send us to the Pit for all eternity, should we die unshriven.’ Jesco winked broadly and said, ‘See Mater Varahana for details.’ That got a laugh.
He struck his declamatory pose again and went on, ‘But in the Second Age, the Aldar who ruled acknowledged no such sins. To them, honour was all, a special kind of honour they called mana. To be known as fearless, magnanimous, lusty and eloquent enhanced your mana. They strove with rivals in ritual contests. Insults were answered in blood. Humility was weakness, pride was strength. And sorcery was the highest art of all: a terrible form of sorcery known as mizra, so powerful it could tear the world apart.
‘In truth, the Aldar were raised to break every stricture we live by: they killed, they stole, they ravished, they boasted, they preened and they shone. They sought not to serve their gods but to emulate them in arrogance and hubris. Better to be renowned in sin than forgotten in virtue, they said. Being of both genders at once, every sensual pleasure and vice was open to them. And Vashtariel, King of the Aldar, lived a life of infamous excess, even by his people’s standards.’