“What of the crossroads?” asked Valgrif. “From the peaks we saw enemies stationed there.”
“The standingstones are always watched,” said Kirishgán. “We must keep to the woods and fields if we are to have any chance. We will cross the Mitrath, north of the crossroads, and the Isima Road farther west. But we go swiftly. When the dogs do not return at nightfall, Macadra’s riders will know something grave has happened, and converge here. They are still scattered, chasing false leads. But gathered together they could watch every inch of both roads, and cut us off from the sea.”
“We would travel faster without our mountain gear,” said Lunja.
“Leave it, then,” said the selk. “There will be no more climbing, until you scale the boarding ladder of the Promise.”
They dropped their tarps, picks, and grapples in a heap, and covered them hastily with snow. Then they set off running, west by northwest. The forests here were beautiful, with columns of golden sun stabbing down through the moist, moss-heavy trees. Pazel, however, was in too much pain to enjoy them: his blisters were leaking blood into his shoes. When they jumped over streams he imagined ripping off his boots and plunging his feet into the clear water. But much worse than the pain was the awareness that he might—somehow, unthinkably—be fated to kill the friend who had joined them.
Time passed. The snow stretched thinner and at last disappeared. Here and there the forest gave way to patches of soggy meadow. Then the wolves came bounding back to the party and announced that the first road, the North—South Mitrath, lay just ahead.
They crept on until it opened before them, broad and dusty and stretching away straight as a ribbon to north and south. All was still. From where he crouched Pazel could see hoofprints and the marks of wagon-wheels. Far off to the south rose the four standingstones of the crossroads. To the north the road climbed into gray, forbidding hills, studded with the ruins of old homesteads and keeps.
“Many riders have passed here today,” said Hercól.
“Soldiers of Macadra,” said Kirishgán. “No one lives here any longer. These were the outer settlements of Isima. And deep in those hills lies the fairest spring in all the Efaroc Peninsula, where the first selk queen, Miyanthur, gathered wild strawberries as a courting-gift to her betrothed. I used to swim there as a child, thousands of years after Miyanthur’s time, but still centuries before the rise of King Urakán. We asked him to build his road elsewhere and leave the hills untouched, but he was a king and had no time for talk of strawberries. The land is healing slowly, however. And the berries are still there.”
“Unlike the king,” said Hercól. “Well, we are fortunate: the road is empty, and the crossroads are distant enough, unless there is a telescope trained on this spot. We must chance that. Come swiftly.”
They stepped out upon the high, hard-packed road. Pazel felt very exposed, here in the bright light of a sprawling sky. Hercól came last, frowning at the hoofprints to either side of them, and sweeping a pine limb lightly over their own tracks like a broom.
It was a relief to plunge back under the trees. They ran on, west by southwest, racing the setting sun. Now and then the wolves paused and cocked their heads, but Pazel heard nothing but their own pounding feet. An hour passed, and then the forest came to a sudden end. They were at the second crossing.
They crouched down in the grass. This road, the Isima Road, was wider and clearly more traveled. To the east, Pazel saw the four standingstones once again. They had rounded the crossroads unseen.
“Clear again,” said Neeps.
“For the moment,” whispered Neda in Ormali. “But we’ll be in plain sight even after we cross the road, unless we crawl that is. Tell them, Pazel.”
She was quite right: the trees had been cleared for at least two miles on the far side of the road, and the grass was merely elbow-height. Still, they had no other choice, and so on the count of three they dashed across the road and into the grass. Once more Hercól brought up the rear, sweeping their tracks away. But as he reached the edge of the road he suddenly raised his head like a startled animal, then sprinted toward them, waving his hands and hissing.
“There are soldiers riding hard out of the east! Scatter, scatter and lie low! And be still as death, unless you would meet your own!”
They obeyed him, racing away into the grass. Pazel found himself near Kirishgán and no one else. They threw themselves down and waited. Moments later Pazel heard the sound of horses on the road. It was no small contingent: the host was surely hundreds strong. Then a man’s voice barked a command. The pounding hooves slowed, then stopped altogether.
Now there were several voices, murmuring impatiently. “Ride in, then, have a look,” shouted the one who had halted the company. “But be quick—you know how she deals with latecomers.”
Pazel heard a swishing sound. One of the riders had spurred his horse into the grass.
With infinite care, Kirishgán moved his hand to the pommel of his sword. The rider drew nearer still. Pazel saw a helmet gleam through the grass-tips, and sunlight on a dark dlömic face. Kirishgán met Pazel’s eye. Don’t do it, don’t move! Pazel wanted to shout. But he could do no more than slightly shake his head.
Five yards from where they lay, the rider turned his horse and looked back in the direction of the road. “Nothing here,” he shouted. “You saw a dust-devil, Captain, if you want my guess.”
“Don’t speak to me of devils!” shouted a second voice, from closer to the road. “We’d be out of these wastes by now if the maukslar hadn’t smelled something odd in the mountains. Well, get out of there! We have that cursed dog-pack to locate yet.”
The rider spurred his horse back toward the road. Kirishgán took his hand from his sword, and Pazel let himself breathe. Not today, thank Rin in his heaven. At a shout from their captain, the host galloped on into the east.
The travelers regrouped. “Four hundred horsemen, and fifty more on sicuñas,” said Prince Olik. “An Imperial battalion, no less.”
“And the maukslar was with them,” said Thasha. “I wonder if it had taken Dastu’s form already.” Her eyes were bright. “The mucking idiot. I expect they’ve killed him.”
“That is one possibility,” said Kirishgán. “Let us not speculate on the others. But it is the fate of your mage that worries me now.”
A heavy silence descended, and it fell to Hercól to break it. “We must try to keep our spirits up, as Ramachni would no doubt implore. Well, Kirishgán, what shall we do? Crawl?”
“Yes,” said the selk, “crawl. And that is not a bad thing, for very soon we shall bid this good land farewell. It is fitting to touch it with our hands, to breathe the air closest to its skin. The wicked have many servants—even the selk have been corrupted now and again, to our shame. But stone, snow, grass, forest: these are ever willing to help us, in their humble ways. I shall ache for this land when we depart. It is an ache that can only end when I find my way back here, or my errant soul finds me.”
So they crawled, knees aching but sore feet relieved, and passed slowly across those miles of open grass. An hour later, the host of riders swept back westward along the road, sounding horns for the pack of athymars that lay dead at the foot of Urakán.
Finally the trees resumed, and the travelers stood and continued their painful run. The ground rose and fell; sharp rocks pierced the earth among the roots and leaves. The forest was pathless, dense. They scrambled down into ravines, pushed through walls of savage thorns, forded rivers with the icy spray about their hips. But that night Kirishgán brought them to the shelter of a cave, and the fire they built in its mouth warmed them all. There the selk told them a tale about Lord Arim and Ramachni, and their battle with Droth the Maukslar-Prince. It was a harrowing tale, and the others listened, rapt. All save the wolves: they paced uneasily in and out of the cave, and raised their muzzles often, appraising something on the breeze.
“What do you smell, Valgrif?” Myett asked, rising and touching his flank.
T
he wolf looked down at her. “Nothing, little sister,” he said at last. “The enemy is far away.”
That night Pazel slept deep, his fingers and Thasha’s interlaced. He did not dream, except for a single, phantom moment, when he thought a dog’s tongue licked his chin. But at daybreak Myett was sitting cold and apart, and the three wolves were gone without a trace. Then Pazel knew. Valgrif had smelled salt. He feared no living thing, but waves and surf filled his heart with dread. Waves and surf, and farewells perhaps.
They nibbled some seed-cakes, sipped wine against the morning chill. Hercól and Kirishgán swept out the cave, hiding every trace of their visit. Then the travelers set off through the last of that dense wood. In time they came out upon a windy plateau and crossed it running, scattering a herd of spotted deer. From the plateau’s rim they saw a silvery tongue of water below them, twisting among dark cliffs, and tracing it with their eyes for several intricate miles, the sea.
22
Practical Men
No man can know his deliverer, nor yet the thief of his soul. Their faces are covered; they swirl in the mob at the masquerade ball. Wine flows, and dance follows dance, and we are never certain of their names until that Midnight when all masks are removed.
—Embers of Ixphir House
by Hercól Ensyriken ap Ixhxchr
1 Fuinar 942
For Ignus Chadfallow, Mr. Uskins had become an obsession. Not only had the first mate achieved something no other human ever had—recovery from the madness produced by the plague—but he had actually rebounded into a state of clear and lucid thought greater than any he had previously enjoyed. He was a smarter, saner man. And today Dr. Chadfallow was no closer to discovering what had cured him than on the day his investigation began.
Now the captain himself had the plague. All the signs were clear—the lemon sweat, so easily overlooked; the wild swings of emotion; the slowly mounting struggle to think clearly. It had cost Rose a great deal to admit the latter, but in the end he had done so: right there in front of Fiffengurt, Marila and Chadfallow (Lady Oggosk had yet to awaken from her faint).
“Need I describe what would follow should my condition become known to the crew?” Rose had asked them. “Have no doubt: it would be anarchy and death. There is no one else around whom to rally. Fiffengurt is easily the most capable sailor—” The quartermaster looked stunned by the compliment. “—but he is tainted by mutiny, and he lacks the fire and rage of a commander. Elkstem is pathologically quiet, and thinks only of things mechanical. Coote is too old, Fegin and Bindhammer too stupid. That leaves no one; that leaves a deadly void. Ott and Haddismal will attempt to fill that void. They’ll try to run the ship like an army camp, at spear-point. The gang loyalists will conspire against them, and one another. The dlömu will withdraw; there will be murders, riots, suicides. And all this at a standstill in a protected bay: on the open sea matters will be infinitely worse. Do you doubt these predictions, any of you?”
They had all stayed silent. “Very well,” said Rose. “Chadfallow tells me to expect a few more weeks of life. I wish to use them efficiently, provided the crawlies do not manage to overwhelm us somehow.”
“You’re not even angry!” Marila had blurted. “That we kept the truth about Stath Bálfyr from you, I mean.”
Rose’s eyes had smoldered at that. He appeared to struggle for words, breathing heavily, staring her down like a bull. At last he said, “I have been anger’s slave for sixty years. I will not die a slave. I will die trying to save this ship, and if that means cooperating with fools and mutineers, I will do so. But understand this: if you hide anything from me, ever again, I shall treat you to a death more slow and excruciating than ever Ott devised for a traitor to the Crown.”
After his words there fell a silence, in which they all heard Oggosk snoring in the captain’s bed.
“Fiffengurt is quite correct, all the same,” grumbled Rose. “Knowledge of the crawlies’ deception would only have led to our abandoning the South that much sooner. And I know we must not do that, without the Nilstone. I too have seen the Swarm.”
“Then what shall we do presently, sir?” asked Fiffengurt. “The duchess has it right, I’m afraid: we’re better off not trying for a landing, easy as it seems to drop a boat over the side.”
Rose had stalked slowly away from his desk, around the formal dining-table and the admiral’s chairs, to the smaller, round meeting-table near the stern windows. He had placed his hand on its dark surface.
“What shall we do? Wait for the tide to turn again, and then slide back out of this bay before sunset. We will not spend the night here, even though a mile of deep water lies between us and the closest beach. Never again will I underestimate the crawlies.”
He raised his eyes, but they were closed; he was looking at something held tight in memory.
“The nearest islands are small and dead. But forty miles to the east stands one with greenery: we will find fresh water there, and silage for the animals. I saw no good landing spot, but we will manage.” He opened his eyes. “There remains an overriding danger, however.”
“Macadra?” Chadfallow had offered.
Rose shook his head. “Sandor Ott. He will move against me if I give such orders without explanation. And if he learns the truth about Stath Bálfyr, he will kill everyone who knew and said nothing. I do not know if Haddismal’s men will side with him or with me, but the odds are in his favor. As he told me once, treason nullifies a captain’s powers. He will cry treason, and the Turachs may choose to believe him.”
“We’d have to hide in the stateroom,” said Marila.
“Yes,” said Fiffengurt, “until he starved us out.”
“We will have to come up with another reason for leaving,” said Chadfallow.
Rose gave him a withering look. “In this whole, enormous Southern world, Ott has taken an interest in just one place: Stath Bálfyr. He believes this island to be his gateway for attacking the Mzithrin, for stabbing Arqual’s enemy from behind. Nothing else interests him. Tell me: what reason for abandoning it will he accept?”
“Perhaps if he thought we were mistaken,” said Chadfallow, “if he believed that Stath Bálfyr were really that island to the southeast—”
“He has studied the same charts and drawings that I have, and he is no fool,” said Rose. “He knows where he is. And he will skewer anyone who tells him a less-than-perfect lie. Now be quiet.”
He still leaned on the table, head cocked to one side, brooding. Finally he stood and walked to the wine cabinet and drew out something that did not look like wine. It was a large glass jar of the sort that Mr. Teggatz had once used for lime pickle and other condiments. Rose brought it back to the desk and slammed it down before them.
Marila screamed. Fiffengurt and Chadfallow turned away, quite sickened. Inside the jar, floating in a red-tinted liquid, was the mangled body of an ixchel man. The left arm and both legs had been torn away, leaving only shreds of skin. The abdomen too was torn open, and the head was a ruined mass of hair, skin and fractured bones.
“Sniraga brought this one to Oggosk a fortnight ago,” said Rose. “I hoped it was a rebel from the clan, one who had stayed aboard when the others deserted us in Masalym.”
“Sniraga killed one of the ixchel who attacked Felthrup,” said Marila, with tears on her brown cheeks.
“Belay that sniveling,” said the captain. “I have moved beyond sparing your lives and am trying to save them. When Ott asks me how I learned the truth about Stath Bálfyr I shall display this crawly. He will be angry that I did not let him take part in the supposed interrogation—but not as angry as he would be to learn that the real source was you, and that you hid the truth for months. If he should learn that, I will be unable to protect you. Throw yourselves over the rail, or take poison if the doctor can provide it. Anything quick and certain. Do not fall into his hands.”
From the bed, Oggosk was moaning: “Nilus, Nilus, my boy—”
“We are finished here,” said Rose.
“Quartermaster, you will begin preparing a landing party, just to keep up appearances. My countermanding order will reach you in a few hours’ time. As for you, Doctor, I hope your investigations may yet save a few of us from dying like beasts.”
A fine hope, thought Chadfallow now, but very possibly in vain. For the hundredth time he tried to focus his thoughts on Uskins. What stone had he left unturned? Diet? Impossible; the man ate the same food as any officer. Habits? What habits? If needling others and gloating at their misfortune counted as habits, well, the man had broken them at last. Sleep? Average. Drink? Only to impress his betters, when they too were drinking. Lineage? A peasant, from a crevasse of a town on the Dremland coast, though he had claimed noble birth until an old friend of the family exposed his charade. Abnormalities of blood, urine, feces, hair follicles, ocular secretions, bunions, breath? No, no, no. The man had been remarkable only for his malice and ineptitude. Remove those and he was painfully normal.
As the victims mounted, Chadfallow had started going without sleep. He questioned Uskins repeatedly about his interactions with Arunis, whom Rose had commanded him to observe for some weeks. The first mate recalled no telling moments. Arunis had never touched him, never tried to give him anything, only grunted when Uskins delivered his meals: “I was beneath his notice, Doctor,” he’d said, “and for that I shall always be grateful.”
And their capture in Masalym? Uskins had been sent to that awful human zoo, but so had eight others from the ship, including Chadfallow himself. They were never separated in those three days, which Uskins had spent largely hidden in a patch of weeds. He was mentally frail before the plague struck, certainly. But on the Chathrand that was hardly a distinguishing trait.
At his wit’s end, Chadfallow even turned to Dr. Rain. The old quack at least let him talk without interruption, and this helped Chadfallow sort his observations into mental drawers and cabinets. Rain took it all in gravely, and then sat quietly doodling in the corner of sickbay, face to the wall: the living emblem of a doctor’s pledge to do no harm.
The Night of the Swarm Page 54