Map’s Edge

by David Hair

  ‘I need your help.’

  Knew it . . .

  ‘You and I can save everyone,’ he started. ‘We have a meld like no other.’

  ‘That might be true, but each time we do it, it’s like dousing myself in oil, then dancing round a bonfire.’

  ‘I know, but if we’re to survive this, we need that option. I think we can get everyone across that bridge during the night, though I’ll need to scout it first – but we’ve seen Bolgravian sorcerers heading that way. I can’t take them on alone, but together, we can. We’ll have Vidar scouting for pickets, and you and I can deal with the sorcerers. We can do this, Kemara.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ she protested.

  ‘I do – I really do – and believe me, I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice! But those are Izuvei sorcerers out there – I can’t take them on alone.’

  ‘And that’s supposed to be encouraging? I’m not trained for this!’ She looked around angrily and saw the Sisters were assiduously pretending not to listen, but Moss Trimble – bless him – was all ears. She threw him a look of appeal, thinking, Get me out of this, Moss. ‘I’m better off here, healing the injured.’

  But when he spoke, the sailor surprised her. ‘With respect, I think you should do it,’ he said. ‘The defence won’t hold long enough for us to need healers here. If there’s hope of escaping, we have to take it.’ He faced Raythe. ‘I’m coming too.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Raythe said.

  Kemara stared at the two of them. ‘I haven’t said I’m going,’ she started, then stopped. Do I even have a choice? ‘I’m neither a servant nor a soldier for you to order about,’ she said mulishly, then caved. ‘All right, fine, I’ll do it.’

  Moss turned to Raythe. ‘I can fight with blade or gun. Let me come.’

  ‘I’ve got Vidar – he’s plenty. The fewer of us, the better.’

  ‘If you meet soldiers, Kemara will need someone to shield her. Let that be me.’

  ‘I’m not helpless,’ she insisted, thinking, All this damned chivalry will get someone killed.

  Raythe was staring at Moss, who was facing him squarely. She didn’t know many who’d face down a sorcerer in an eyeballing contest and she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or annoyed. No man had ever looked out for her in her life, and she’d never asked one to.

  Maybe he’s worth keeping around . . . That was a thought she’d not had in a very long time.

  ‘We don’t have time to waste debating this,’ Raythe grumbled. ‘It’s your call, Kemara.’

  She looked at both, then said, ‘Moss has saved my life at least once. He has my trust.’

  Moss gave her a grateful look, but Raythe grumped, ‘Fine. Let’s move. It’s dark enough to hide us, but the ringlight will light our way. Meet me at the western end of the ledge behind this hill in twenty minutes.

  Kemara gave the Sisters of Gerda a few last instructions they clearly didn’t need before retrieving the mask from its hidey-hole and hooking it inside her skirts. She scurried through the maze of palisade fencing behind Moss, who revealed a sure sense of direction, and found Raythe already waiting, huddled beside Vidar, who was looking decidedly bearish in his furs. The planetary rings basted the darkness with pale silver.

  ‘No guns,’ Raythe said, ‘and no sound. There’s a gap in the palisade near the ravine; that’s where we’ll slip out. Vidar goes first to clear the way. If we’re seen, we fall back.’

  ‘Retreat, and tomorrow we all die,’ Vidar growled.

  ‘Aye, but if the alarm’s raised, pressing on would be stupid.’ Raythe turned to Kemara. ‘Our role is to deal with the sorcerers. Don’t be frightened of them, just concentrate on your own spells and you’ll be fine.’

  He’s fought in battles. For all her self-reliance, she’d never done that, so she took the words to heart.

  The men looked to their blades and Kemara girded herself mentally for what might be required. Then Vidar led them to the gap and one by one they slipped through, out into the night.

  *

  ‘Where’s my father?’ Zarelda asked Jesco urgently.

  The Shadran looked up from sharpening his longsword. ‘Zar, darling, you just missed him. He’s off gallivanting behind enemy lines.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘What—? I’ve been waiting to see him for ages—’

  ‘No one told him,’ Jesco said, apologetically. ‘He’s trying to find out if we can sneak everyone away via that bridge we saw from the viewing ledge.’

  ‘So he’s already gone?’ she exclaimed. This was typical of her father, always throwing himself into things and telling her afterwards, leaving her to guess how close she’d come to being orphaned this time. ‘I hate him sometimes.’

  ‘He’s doing his best, love.’

  ‘Sure, for everyone else,’ she snapped, stalking away. Banno, who’d been hovering nearby, came to meet her and they found a place where they couldn’t be overheard to confer.

  ‘What do we do?’ he asked. ‘Talk to my pa?’

  She set her jaw, trying to force her anger aside and deal with the problem. Cool heads win battles, her father always said. So, let’s think coolly: do those smoke plumes, if that’s what they were, really matter now?

  ‘If Father succeeds, we’ve still got to slip everyone out of the fort under the Bolgies’ notice,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘And if he fails . . . then we need a plan. At worst, summoning the grass fires over the hills could be a distraction, but at best, it might save us all. So I still think we should do it.’

  Banno looked at her doubtfully. ‘On our own?’

  ‘I have a familiar. I know how to light a fire and call the wind. That’s all mundeus sorcery – my speciality.’ She’d never done anything of the sort in such large scale . . . but she felt certain she could manage.

  ‘Then do you even need to go there? Why not just light a fire outside the walls?’

  ‘That’d never work,’ Zar replied. ‘It’d be too small and the Bolgravs would just snuff it out. It has to arrive in a massive wave, more than they can deal with.’

  ‘But we don’t know what’s out there,’ Banno answered. ‘There mightn’t be enough grass on the hills to carry the fire to here. It wasn’t even a big smoke plume – perhaps it was the last remnant of an old fire?’

  ‘We’ll never find out without looking,’ she replied, not in the mood for sensible doubts. ‘We have to do something. We can go and see, so at least we’ll know.’

  ‘But there’ll be sentries—’

  ‘It’s dark – they’ll never see us. Come on, help me, Banno – please.’

  She couldn’t say why, but she felt a real need to be acting, not just waiting. Mental images of that awful day when Colfar’s rebellion collapsed and the imperials hit the baggage train were etched on her mind for ever. Rape, torture and murder awaited those taken alive, all the horrors of an army unleashed.

  I don’t want to survive a losing battle.

  She looked up at Banno, beseeching him to be the man she needed, the one who’d back her, whatever.

  He didn’t disappoint. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said. ‘But if we tell someone, they’ll forbid it. It’s just you and me.’

  ‘That’s how it should be,’ she told him, kissing him with all her strength. ‘You’re the best – now let’s go.’

  *

  Larch Hawkstone passed up and down his picket lines all evening, slipping between the men dotted along the half-mile left flank of the hill-fort. His diligence was born of fear: his Borderers were able enough, but Vyre’s men included hunters like Cal Foaley, who could move like ghosts. So he took it on himself not to sleep, and to keep his men on high alert. The Izuvei warning rang in his mind; he too was sure that Vyre might try something here.

  So why hasn’t Lord kragging Persekoi positioned a secondary line behind my pickets? Are they hoping to lure Vyre in? he wondered. If that was the case, then clearly his men were considered expendable, and that thought made his blood
boil. He felt a perverse envy for Vyre’s people: they might be on the losing side of this war, but at least they were going to die free.

  Dead’s just dead, he rebuked himself, as he reached the next post and surprised Virgus Boril taking a piss. ‘Eyes open,’ he hissed at the former trapper, who should’ve known better.

  ‘It’s all quiet,’ Boril grumbled.

  ‘O’ course it is, and it’ll stay quiet after you get knifed.’ Hawkstone peered about: Boril had a good spot, in a pile of boulders with a good view of the fort, although now the cooking fires were out, it was just a dark silhouette. ‘Stay alert – I’ll just pop in on Simolon, then I’ll be back.’

  He crept out into the dark again, looping behind his pickets and approaching from the rear so he wouldn’t be taken for an enemy. He found Simolon in position at the very edge of the ravine, where the churning whirlpool below muffled all other sound. It was clearly the point of maximum danger.

  I should move some support in here, he mentally noted.

  ‘All good, Sim?’ he asked, staying low. They were overlooking the near end of what looked like a viewing ledge, complete with a low fence of wooden poles, most of them broken. The planetary rings lit the wet ground, making the dewy grass glimmer, and revealing the shapes of eerie ruined towers over the ravine – an awe-inspiring sight.

  So I wasn’t imagining it, he thought, dumbfounded. What is this place?

  Simolon leaned in and muttered, ‘This is where I’d come, if I was Vyre. Right here.’

  Hawkstone agreed. ‘I’ll tell Virgus Boril to come join you and shift the others closer. Has there been any movement?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Simolon replied. ‘Boss, I don’t like this place. I reckon it’s haunted.’ He peered across the canyon and shivered. ‘It’s nearly autumn. I’ll bet we’re gonna be stuck here all kraggin’ winter. My wife’ll bugger off with some other fella.’

  That seemed all too depressingly likely.

  Hawkstone clapped Sim’s shoulder and started to rise—

  —when a feathered shaft of wood slammed into Simolon’s eye, snapping his head back. He slid to the base of the crevice where Hawkstone cowered, already dead.

  Hawkstone rolled out backwards and went slithering towards a dip where he might be able to hide, but an arrow rammed into his right buttock and lodged against his hip bone. His whole body convulsed in blood-hot agony and he couldn’t hold back a sharp cry. He prayed the sound had been drowned by the gurgling water below, bit down on the pain and concentrated on slithering towards a hollow he’d spotted, reaching it just as dark shapes slid into Simolon’s post.

  Krag it, I should’ve stayed in camp. I should’ve stayed in bloody Teshveld.

  But he was here and all he could do for now was to lie still. The flintlock beneath his hand was primed and ready – but that was only one shot, and after that he’d be at their mercy.

  Better to let ’em by. I gotta live through this if I’m to save Rosebud tomorrow.

  He saw faces lit by the ringlight: Vyre himself, and the bearskin hunter who’d been at his cabin. He prayed again, this time that those yellow eyes hadn’t spotted him. Then he saw the hard-faced redheaded healer go by: the blind sorcerers had called her a mizra-witch.

  A fourth face flipped briefly into view and he stared at straggly whiskers festooning a face he knew.

  That’s Toran fecking Zorne – what the krag?

  Then he heard stealthy feet coming his way. There was just a chance that they might miss him if he found a dark enough hole, so clamping his jaw against the howling pain of the shaft in his buttock, trying not to think that his life could end right now, in this humiliating, meaningless way, he flattened himself and kept crawling—

  —until the ground fell away before him and as he started rolling, the barbed arrow ripped his flesh open, but came free. His whole mind blank with numbing agony, he struck a boulder and blacked out.

  *

  ‘There was someone else,’ Vidar growled in Raythe’s ear. ‘I plugged him, but he’s gone.’

  ‘Then he’s still alive,’ Raythe whispered. Kemara and Trimble had passed on and so should he, but this was a loose end. ‘We’ve got to find him before he raises the alarm.’

  ‘I’ll find him,’ Vidar replied. ‘You need to go on, keep with Kemara.’

  Raythe agreed. ‘Absolutely: I’ve got to be with her, especially if those Izuvei show up.’ Kemara and Trimble were already out of sight, lost in the gloom. We’re barely over the fence and it’s going wrong already.

  They stood at the edge of a small ditch. They could both smell the stink of blood, but the place was full of shadow and there was nothing moving below. If we could chance some light, this’d be over in moments, Raythe thought glumly, but it’s not worth the risk.

  After a moment, he whispered in Vidar’s ear, ‘Find him, kill him, then catch us up.’

  He moved silently back to the edge of the ravine and began working his way along. He couldn’t be more than a minute behind Kemara and Trimble, but they were invisible in the darkness ahead. As he hurried on, the wind rose, tearing the thick clouds like shredded sails and revealing the greater arc of the planetary rings in their shimmering glory. It also illuminated a pair of figures more than a hundred yards ahead and about to disappear behind another fold in the land.

  He sped up, slithering precariously on the wet moss, and now he could see the arch of the bridge, only half a mile or so away, lit by the ringlight dancing on the river below. It was tantalisingly close – and looked to be whole.

  It really could be our salvation – as long as those blasted sorcerers haven’t stationed a regiment on it.

  But they’d seen no sign of anything like that. The Bolgravs thought them pinned in and they’d spotted only the two Izuvei going that way. ‘Gerda willing, they’re already back in camp,’ he whispered to himself.

  *

  On a cloudy night with plenty of cover, sneaking out was easy, and Zarelda had had years of practise. Her father had no idea what she got up to some nights. So ghosting past the Bolgravian sentries was child’s play, even with Banno next to her.

  Once they were through the cordon, they ran, reaching the eastern hills and within ten minutes they were clambering up. From up there, they could see the Bolgravian campfires closing around the hill-fort like jaws. Zar prayed to Gerda that her father was okay and that he’d make it back, then she cast her eyes ahead.

  As they approached the ridgeline, the clouds parted and the planetary rings gleamed in an unearthly curve over their heads, radiant platinum lighting the landscape. They crested the hill – and stopped, completely stunned.

  There was fire in the valley below: many, many fires, and they weren’t burning wild. She could see one huge central bonfire, and at least three clusters of what must be cooking fires spread across a wide plain that stretched westward towards more hills.

  We’re not alone, she thought numbly. There are other people here.

  Before them was a poumahi arch guarding a path down the hill: this one was not only carved in ferocious detail, but the two smoking torches lighting it showed it was painted a fresh, vivid red.

  ‘Deo on high,’ Banno breathed, ‘is it another expedition? More imperials?’

  Before Zarelda could frame an answer, a lone figure stepped between the pillars of the arch and roared out a shrill challenge in a language she’d never heard before.

  4

  On the bridge

  Larch Hawkstone came to his senses as boots above him dislodged dirt and small stones trickled down onto him. His arse felt like a Pitfiend had rammed a burning spear into him, but he gritted his teeth and fumbled at his flintlock, loading just as a dark shape appeared above.

  He twisted and pulled the trigger, the hammer slammed down . . . and the powder fizzled out.

  Then a body slammed down on him, shoved the weapon aside and a knife flashed. He threw up a hand, somehow managed to catch the wrist of his assailant, moaning as the man’s weight crushed his r
ibs, pushing out most of his wind.

  It was the Norgan bearskin – Vidarsson, he remembered – and with his eyes glowing amber and his bestial snarl, it looked like he was already halfway to a blood-fit.

  I’m doomed. No one was close enough to save him if he shouted and he was about to lose the battle to keep the knife out of his chest, so he used his last breath to squeak, ‘What’s a Ramkiseri doing with Vyre?’

  ‘Hawkstone?’ The Norgan’s face went from ferocity to frown. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Please,’ he begged, ‘my daughter’s inside that fort.’

  Vidarsson placed the knife against Hawkstone’s throat, but he didn’t cut. His face was incredulous. ‘You have a daughter in our caravan?’

  ‘Angrit’s girl,’ Hawkstone panted, terrified, knowing the next second could be his last.

  ‘Little Rosebud?’ Vidarsson asked. ‘She’s yours?’

  ‘Yes, yes she is – I gave her mother money, but I couldn’t look after them,’ Hawkstone blurted. ‘I wanted to, but the Governor had me travelling all the time – and Gravis owned her. All I ever wanted was a family.’ As he spoke, he knew he meant every word.

  ‘You’re helping the Bolgies,’ Vidarsson rasped.

  ‘No choice – I got commandeered – but I swear to you, I’m only here for my girl.’

  ‘By the Pit, Hawkstone . . .’ Then Vidarsson’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s this shit about a Ramkiseri?’

  ‘That man I saw with Vyre and the Ferrean healer – Kemara Solus, yes? That bastard’s a Ramkiseri agent. It’s him what’s led this entire pursuit. We thought he was dead when the frigate went up, but I swear, the man with the healer is him.’

  ‘Trimble’s a Ramkiseri?’ Vidar was having trouble taking Hawkstone’s words in.

  ‘Trimble? That’s not his name. He’s called Zorne – Toran Zorne.’

  ‘Zorne?’ Vidar had clearly heard the name, presumably from Vyre. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Please, Vidarsson,’ Hawkstone begged, ‘I won’t raise the alarm, I swear on my daughter’s life. Warn Vyre – there are Izuvei sorcerers waiting for him at the bridge. Warn him, so he can get my Rosebud out of this shit.’