They climbed a switchback trail that led to a knife-sharp ridge of rotten rock. The far side sloped down into a high mountain valley. It was a dark night but Fisher could make out a stretch of woods below. Badlands set Jethiss down in the hollow of two large leaning halves of rock, then sat rather heavily. Fisher eased himself down next to him. Badlands felt at his mouth. ‘I think I lotht a damned toof!’
Coots came to stand over them. ‘You’re always okay ’cause you land on your head.’
‘Same as you ’cept it’th your ath!’
Coots gestured to Jethiss, who lay unconscious. ‘How’d your friend do that?’
‘I don’t think even he knows,’ Fisher answered.
Coots grunted his acceptance, then rubbed the wide bulge of his stomach. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, peering about. ‘I’m gonna hunt something up.’ He walked off into the dark.
‘Better be thoft and thewy!’ Badlands called after him, then groaned and cupped his mouth.
Fisher tucked a roll of bedding under Jethiss’s head. ‘I’ll take watch, if you like,’ he told Badlands.
The brother waved a negative. ‘Naw. You thweep. My mouth hurths.’
Fisher nodded, edged down further into his seat against the rock, tucked his hands under his arms, and let his chin fall. After the exhausting rush of the encounter with Yrkki, sleep came quite quickly.
The delicious smell of roasting meat woke him. He sat up, blinking. Badlands and Coots were crouched at a small fire. Two skinned and gutted rabbits roasted on sticks over the flames. Jethiss sat nearby, arms draped over his crossed legs. He appeared troubled and distracted; Fisher could imagine why. What the man had accomplished was the manipulation of Elemental Night. Something open to the mages of his kind, yet he had made no mention of such a capacity. Who knows what else might lie hidden in him?
‘Found the trail of your buddies,’ Coots said, and licked fat from his fingers.
‘Thank you.’
‘Easy to follow. They only have a few days on you.’
‘Thanks.’ Fisher searched among his feelings: he found no desire to return to the raiding party. He’d much rather strike straight north. ‘I thought we were heading to the Lost Holding.’
Badlands carried a swollen purple-bruised mouth and cheek. He slurred: ‘It’s othay. You doan’ have to come.’
‘I want to. What of you, Jethiss?’
The Andii was staring at the fire. ‘It matters not to me,’ he murmured.
‘We’ll come with you, then.’
The brothers exchanged dubious looks. ‘We move pretty fast,’ Coots explained.
‘We’ll keep up.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to the rabbits. ‘Eat up and we’ll go.’
Fisher discovered that the brothers were not exaggerating. After they’d eaten and drunk from waterskins and Fisher had rubbed his teeth with a green twig, the brothers kicked dirt over the fire then took off at a run. Fisher was quite startled, but followed quickly. Jethiss came after. Soon, Fisher found that he had to increase his pace considerably in order to keep the brothers in sight.
The Losts ran pell-mell down slopes, dodged trees, jumped from fallen logs and leaned into steep slides of loose talus and broken rock, guiding themselves with a hand. Fisher struggled to follow. His breath came hard and his chest burned. But as the sun climbed overhead his legs loosened up and his breathing eased. He found his pace, and glancing back saw that so too had Jethiss, as the man followed with an easy loping gait.
He came abreast of Badlands. Or rather, Badlands fell back to him; the man ran with a hand pressed to his mouth, breathing loudly, leaning over to spit blood, cursing and wincing as he went. He fell back behind Fisher, then Jethiss as well.
Coots did not stop for any sort of mid-day rest or meal and so Fisher had no choice but to follow. The man appeared to be striking a course far more east than north. They crossed steep mountain shoulders and narrow valleys, scrambled up naked rock ridges, shuffled and half tumbled down the other sides into dense forests of conifer and slashing stiff-branched brush that exploded in sharp bursts when Coots bulled through.
By late in the day Fisher was stumbling, exhausted, hardly able to lift his burning bruised feet. He pushed through a thick copse of spruce and caught the welcome sight of Coots standing motionless on a rock outcropping that jutted from the mountain shoulder they were descending. The sun cast an amber-gold light over the valley side from where it sizzled on the western horizon.
Coots stood shading his gaze to the north. Fisher joined him, panting and gulping the biting chill air. The Lost brother shot him a sidelong glance and grunted his approval.
Fisher swallowed to wet his burning throat. ‘What is it?’
Coots gestured, inviting him to look. He stepped up, shaded his gaze. To the north, the mountain slopes graded down in falling arcs to reveal hazy foothills beyond. Past the hills, a body of water glimmered golden yellow in the sunset. Beyond the flat glittering field of water, mountains rose so far away as to be deep blue. These rearing heights climbed to snow-white peaks tinged with a hint of sapphire. The sunset washed the ice-capped heights in a glow of salmon-amber.
‘The Salt range,’ Fisher said. He did not add that the mountain range looked no different from what he remembered growing up beneath its looming bulk.
‘Aye.’ Coots pointed a blunt finger below. ‘And the Sea of Gold.’
‘Hazy,’ Fisher observed.
The man’s eyes, narrowed beneath his shelf-like hairless brows, appeared troubled. He rubbed one of his gold earrings between a thumb and forefinger. ‘Aye,’ he murmured, thinking.
Jethiss joined them. Fisher cast him a glance and was envious to see that the Andii did not even appear winded. That was just not fair.
‘We’ll camp here,’ Coots said, and he eased himself down on the rock, grunting and grumbling. He unrolled a strip of leather to reveal what was left of the roasted rabbit, and passed it round for them to pick at.
Badlands finally came staggering in. He had a hand pressed to his mouth and was keeping up a steady stream of slurred cursing as he came. He sat heavily. Fisher offered him the rabbit but the man winced at the sight of it and waved it off.
‘I’d better have a look at that,’ Coots said.
Badlands flinched away. ‘Theep y’ham hanths off, y’ox!’
‘You might get an infection,’ Fisher said.
‘Thalker can thake a look.’
‘Stalker does the cutting and bonesetting,’ Coots explained.
‘He might not make it …’
‘I’ll make it!’
Fisher shrugged. Fine. They’d see, he supposed. He turned to Jethiss. ‘How are you?’
The Andii shrugged.
Fisher wished to improve the fellow’s mood. ‘There are powers in the north. Perhaps one of them might find your name …’
The man’s head snapped up at that, his gaze suddenly sharp and fierce, as if Fisher’s words had awakened something within him. A memory, perhaps. For some vaguely troubling reason Fisher wished he hadn’t mentioned the possibility.
When night came Coots stood and peered out over the cliff’s edge. Curious, Fisher joined him again. He squinted down to the black glimmering slate-like expanse that was the Sea of Gold. A blush of lurid yellow light glowed in a halo around the sea.
‘A lot of fires,’ Coots rumbled, explaining. ‘Smoke by day, fire by night. Looks like war in the lowlands.’
‘We go round, I take it?’
The big fellow nodded. He ran a hand over the ridged and scarred armour-like pate of his skull. ‘Aye. We go round.’
* * *
On the eighth day riding north skirting the Sea of Dread, Kyle, Lyan and Dorrin pulled up short to stare at an amazing sight.
As far as they could see in a line running behind the low bare hills along the coast there stood a forest of bare spires: ship’s masts. A long parade of them, slowly edging along. Kyle and Lyan exchanged wondering glances. Then Kyle urged
his mount east in a slow walk for a closer look.
They topped a hill that allowed line of sight on the shore and stopped. It was an immense convoy: a long train of roped ships being pulled by teams of men, plus the occasional horse and mule. Kyle had seen such things before, of course, mule teams pulling barges on canals, but this was the first time he’d seen the concept applied on the shore of a sea. He counted over twenty ships in this one flotilla.
‘Looks like they’ve found a way around your Sea of Dread,’ Lyan remarked.
Kyle rested his forearms on the saddle pommel and shook his head in awe. ‘Nothing like naked greed to find a way through any barrier.’
A susurration of noise reached them from the nearest teams of men and women heaving on the ropes. Individuals came running inland from the shore, knelt, and trained crossbows in their direction.
‘They think us hostile locals,’ Lyan said.
‘Yes. We’d best be going.’
A chuff of dirt behind stiffened Kyle’s back and in that instant he realized their mistake – they’d all been looking in the same direction. He turned his head, knowing what he would see: a cordon of soldiers advancing upon them from farther inland. It looked like they meant to drive them to the coast.
Lyan’s blade shushed against its wooden sheath as she yanked it free. She kneed her horse to stand between Dorrin and the soldiers. Kyle did not draw his weapons. He urged his mount down the hill a short distance. The men raised their crossbows and spears. ‘What do you want?’ he shouted in Talian, knowing exactly what it was they wanted.
‘Give up your horses and you can go,’ one answered in thickly accented Talian.
‘They are ours and we will keep them!’ Lyan shouted.
One of the crossbowmen brought his weapon up to aim and a fellow near him knocked it down. ‘Don’t shoot, y’fool! Might hit a horse.’
‘Here’s mine!’ Lyan yelled and kneed her mount into a charge down the hill. She whooped a war-cry as she came and Dorrin followed in her wake.
She thundered past Kyle, who could only urge his mount onward to join her. A spearman directly in her path jabbed but she parried with her blade and the man leapt to save his life. Dorrin followed close behind. A crossbowman drew aim on Lyan and Kyle twisted his mount over to charge him; the man dropped the weapon and leapt aside.
Then they were through, galloping for a draw between the next two shallow hills. But when Kyle brought his horse over he saw Dorrin’s mount running riderless, its saddle empty.
He yelled, turned in his saddle: the lad lay in a heap on the flat between the rises. The soldiers were closing on him. Kyle yanked his mount around, just as a scream of shock and rage announced that Lyan had discovered what was happening.
Kyle reached Dorrin first. Dismounting at a run, he yanked the boy up by one arm and flinched upon seeing a bolt impaling his leg. Some crossbowman had snapped off a lucky shot. He tossed the lad over his saddle and drew a hatchet. ‘Hang on!’ he ordered. Dorrin nodded, his face snowy pale and glistening with sweat, and wrapped the reins around his hand. Clenching his teeth against the necessity of it, Kyle struck the horse’s flank with the impaling spike.
The horse screamed and reared, then took off in a spray of kicked-up dirt. Dorrin hunched low, hugging its neck. Kyle turned to face the closing men and women. He counted fifteen.
Damn the Twins’ luck. Nothing for it. He switched the hatchet to his left hand and drew his blade.
The men and women spread out in an arc, facing him. He snapped a quick glance behind, saw Lyan leading Dorrin away on his mount, the lad’s horse following.
‘Togg turd!’ one man shouted. ‘At least we can make you pay!’
Then one of the spearmen stepped forward, pointing. ‘You!’ he bellowed, and charged. In the instant the man closed Kyle noticed that he wore a tattered blue cloak. Shit.
‘Die, Whiteblade!’ the ex-Stormguard yelled in rage.
In a single movement Kyle swung, hacking the head from the spear, spun, sliced through the haft and the man’s leading arm at the elbow, looped his arm in an arc and took off the fellow’s head cleanly through the neck.
The dismembered corpse fell, spraying arterial blood from neck and arm.
In the stunned pause that followed, Kyle charged.
The first he reached actually turned to run. Kyle cut him across his back, severing his spine. He caught a sword blow from another with his hatchet, then swung, cutting through the sword arm. He severed a spear as it thrust, took off the spearman’s leading leg at the knee.
A crossbow bolt hissed as it brushed past his head and he wished he had a damned helmet. The thought drove him to charge the remaining crossbows. The nearest, a woman, reflexively raised her weapon to protect herself; Kyle sliced through the stock and ironwork and took her forearms with it. She woman stared in horror at the severed stumps of her arms, her eyes rolled up white, and she toppled. Kyle meant to close on the remaining two crossbowmen but four swordsmen were dangerously close. He remembered the trick he had learned from the Silent People and threw his hatchet, taking one bowman in the stomach, and charged the other. This one backpedalled, terrified. Kyle pressed forward until the man tripped then took off one foot as it flew upwards. He spun to meet the swordsmen, blade raised in a guard, but no one was pressing the attack. The survivors were running.
He eased his stance, let out a long hard breath. The wounded crossbowman, screaming curses and clutching his ankle, he left alone. He bent down to retrieve his hatchet, and walked away. Their friends may, or may not, come back for them. The lesser wounded might make it to the coast.
He didn’t care. He was just tired of the stupidity of it. The needlessness of it. He had been forced to defend himself and now he was a killer. He cleaned the blade on the blue cloak of the dead Stormguard, carefully sheathed it. This one he didn’t recognize, but it made sense that many of them would now be out selling their spears. He walked on, trying to spit, but his mouth was too dry.
Atop the next rise he found Lyan tending to Dorrin. She’d torn his trouser leg and removed the bolt and was now tightly wrapping the wound. Mercifully, the lad was unconscious. Kyle was worried; the boy had lost a lot of blood.
He cleared his throat to speak, croaked, ‘We have to move.’
‘I know,’ she answered without stopping her work. Kyle nodded, though she wasn’t looking. ‘Saw you fight,’ she said, and glanced up. He saw something new in her eyes, something that troubled him. ‘That was plain butchery.’
He went to collect the horses.
That night, across the small fire, Lyan cradled Dorrin to her chest, giving him her warmth. He’d woken only for brief moments, groaned his pain, and shut his eyes once more. Sweat now gleamed on his face and Kyle feared a fever. It occurred to him that the lad might not make it and the thought brought a terrible squeezing pain to his chest that made it hard to breathe. The boy had shown such good sense, such endurance, such patience and wisdom beyond his years. Kyle suddenly realized that if he had a son, he could only hope for one such as this. The band across his chest became a burning acid gash and he blinked away a swimming blur in his eyes.
He decided, then, what he would do in the morning.
When Lyan mounted, Dorrin held in her arms before her, Kyle did not mount as well. Instead, he stood next to her leg looking up at them. She drew breath to tell him to hurry, then realized what was going on and swallowed.
‘Take the horses,’ he told her.
She shook her head.
‘Take the horses and buy healing for the lad.’
She continued shaking her head, only now looking away, blinking.
‘Go.’
She nodded then, curtly, and lowered her head. He sought her mouth and found it hot and wet with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, half choked.
‘As am I,’ he answered just as faintly.
She twisted away, kneed her mount gently forward. The two other horses followed. Kyle watched them go then turned to face the n
orth. He had already looped the straps of a few waterskins over his shoulders, and now he set off at a jog.
*
After two days he imagined he had entered the region of desert plains that his people’s stories named the Vanishing Lands, or the Lands of Dust. It was a broad northern desert of dwarf trees, lichens and brittle brush, with a scattering of clumped grasses and tiny wild flowers. Clouds did pass overhead, occluding the sun, but none released any of their life-sustaining rains here. The air was frigid and painfully dry. His lips chapped and split. He was ruthless with his limited supply of water; one mouthful in the morning, and one at noon. The heights of the Salt range, a deep aqua-blue in the distance, taunted him with their gleaming shoulders of snow and icefield.
He passed the remains of people, and even of horses. Most lay half buried in clumps of meagre soil. Wild flowers surrounded them like burial wreaths. The bones were very old, or at least appeared so, wind-gnawed down to stumps where exposed to the gusting dry air.
The nights were the worst. There was no cover to be found anywhere. He lay wrapped in a blanket, exposed to the buffeting winds. At times these rose to storms that lashed him with tossed sand and gravel. All the warmth would be sucked from him and only uncontrollable shivering kept heat in his bones. He would wake with dunes of blown dirt gathered up his sheltered side.
One night something large banged into him, tossed by the wind. He reflexively lashed out to snatch it. It took him some time peering at the thing in the starlight to identify it, but eventually he realized that what he held was an eroded, battered, wind-tumbled human skull.
He kept it with him as he walked the next day, turning it in his hands. It wasn’t old, that much he was certain of; bones yellowed or greyed with age. This skull still held that bright whiteness of bone picked clean. Bones also roughened with age, became more porous, and lost mass. This skull still held heft, and was smooth where not abraded through rolling and bumping.
While he paced along studying the skull, something bright caught his eye on the ground and he stopped. His arms slowly fell and he let the skull thump hollowly to the bare rock beneath his feet. He had wandered into a field of bones. The remains lay as far as he could see in every direction. They gleamed whitely, humped together in small depressions where the winds had swept them up. Ribs lay snug in natural cracks of the exposed granite bedrock. Wide scapulae lay flat where the winds could not budge them. The round dome of a skull was caught up against a knot of rock.
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