The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy)

by Elliott, Will

  ‘Eric?’

  ‘Case! You’re kidding me. Is that you?’

  ‘Stay down,’ growled a less familiar voice. A head popped over the edge of the rock wall nonetheless and had time to glance around before someone up there yanked its owner back down. Case waved, then remembered that no one could see him.

  He ran panting up the steep pathway, pausing for breath at the top. He passed the woman with the bow and arrow — he’d seen her fire, and the soldiers had seen her arrow sailing across. Now she turned at the sound of his steps and reached for her knife, crouching low like a hunter, but he was quickly up the path.

  Out onto the open platform and there he was, crouched down at its far end with a bunch of others, all armed. ‘Eric!’ Case called. ‘Don’t worry, I think the fight down there’s all over. They got a piece of that winged woman, too. What in Christ she did to them I’d like to know, but she’s hurt. She flew away.’

  Eric turned and stared about, as did a few others. ‘Case?’

  ‘They won’t see me. I got this weird necklace on, keeps me hidden. Magic, I guess. Safe here? These guys OK?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re OK. Are you?’

  ‘Need a drink and a bed. Back rub too if anyone’s granting wishes. You sure it’s safe? I see a lot of swords in their hands …’

  ‘Your friend?’ said Sharfy to Eric.

  ‘That’s his voice at least.’

  ‘I’m gonna take off the necklace,’ said Case. ‘Eric, you aren’t gonna believe the things I seen.’

  Eric laughed. ‘Try me!’

  Below, only two live soldiers remained. One had unhitched a mule from the supplies wagon, stuck a wounded friend on its back and slapped its rump. The mule didn’t move until the soldier started dragging it. They left behind the supply cart, with the second mule. ‘Weapons away,’ said Sharfy. ‘Fight’s over.’

  ‘Are you in charge now that Anfen got a face cut?’ said Kiown, who did not sheathe his sword.

  ‘Put it away,’ snapped Sharfy. ‘Anfen! Safe out here. They scared it off and it scared them off. Guess we won. And we got a visitor who can’t be seen.’

  Case took off the necklace. Eric spotted him, laughed and ran over. They embraced as the bandits murmured amongst themselves. Siel jogged up the path and stared at Case, her knife still in hand.

  Anfen emerged from the cave and gazed at Case, his Oriental-looking face a neutral mask, the sword Sharfy had thrown him held at the ready. He seemed about to speak, but let the pair have their moment, instead turning to the wreckage below. To the others: ‘Get down there, grab that supply cart. Don’t dawdle. They’ll send more out here now. We won’t get another chance through the pass.’ To Sharfy, ‘Stay with the Pilgrims.’ Anfen paused as he saw the necklace hanging in Case’s hand. ‘By Nightmare! And what might that be?’

  Case quickly stuffed it in his pocket and backed away, cursing himself for a fool: had Stranger not warned him to keep it hidden?

  ‘You’re safe from me,’ said Anfen impatiently. ‘Time’s pressing; we’ll deal with it later. But keep that thing hidden.’

  ‘You folks see a young woman in a green dress up here?’ said Case.

  No one had.

  Embarrassed, Case wiped tears from his eyes. ‘I thought they’d got you, is all.’

  ‘What about me? Thought I’d killed you with a message in the dirt. Case, I hope you didn’t come here to rescue me or bring me back. I’m not going, not yet anyway. This is a new start.’

  ‘Hadn’t thought that far ahead, to be honest.’ They followed the rest of the bandits who hustled along the ridge and down the steep pathway. Sharfy walked with them, listening. ‘Who opened the door anyway?’ said Case.

  ‘Not these guys. They just saw it was going to happen, and ducked in to get the morning paper.’ Eric lowered his voice. ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘You’re told true,’ said Sharfy.

  ‘Eric, you really won’t believe what I seen. They had me inside this big huge castle. I saw this guy, this sick bastard they call “friend and lord”. I stole his drink! Believe that? It was a good drop too, let me tell you. He’s their king or something, and I stole his wine!’

  Sharfy made a strangled noise, and was suddenly so agitated he hopped from foot to foot. ‘What? You saw Vous? How? Invisible! How close you get? Could’ve put a sword in his guts! Why didn’t you? No! Don’t speak of it. Wait for Anfen. Hush about that. Hush!’

  ‘You got it, I’ll hush,’ said Case, giving Eric a look that said: what a nut …

  Down by the roadside’s carnage someone had already beheaded the remaining mule. Eric paused, transfixed by the sight of Siel carving from its flank with her curved knife, her forearms covered in blood. It was that which tipped him over the edge in his gorge’s battle to cope with the bodies scattered over the road. He bent over and retched.

  Others went through the soldiers’ pockets, taking coins and such small tokens. Anfen crouched beside a survivor and asked questions, but didn’t get much response. ‘Valour men,’ he sighed, giving up. To Eric, ‘There’s a myth. The last-second reprieve on the battlefield for the dying, if they have fought well enough. Talking to the enemy wouldn’t help him get it. He’ll take his chances on a Great Spirit no one’s seen in a lifetime or so. If ever.’

  Sharfy added so the dying man would hear, ‘A Great Spirit he hopes came to watch combat that lasted a few seconds. If you call that combat. More like men under an avalanche.’

  But the man lay in pain keeping his silence, and they gave up on him. The others drank what water was left on the cart. They bagged and pocketed the meat strips and biscuits. ‘Same as what I gave you in the tunnels,’ said Sharfy, tossing a leaf-wrapped piece to Eric. ‘Keep it for later.’ He went through the discarded weapons. ‘All standard issue junk,’ he said. ‘All shit. Not even city-made. Castle-made. Cheap and nasty.’

  ‘Halberds are city-made,’ said someone else. ‘They’re quality.’

  ‘Too heavy for us,’ said Sharfy, ‘we’re in a hurry now.’ He looked pointedly at Kiown then picked up two swords, held one in each hand. ‘All the same weight!’ He laughed. To Eric and Case, ‘Pick one out, you two. Get a scabbard for it too, dagger if you want. Take a bow if you can shoot. What the shit, steal their dicks if you see one you like.’ Sharfy laughed. He patted Eric on the back and whispered in his ear: ‘You want to be a hero, you’re going to see a lot of this. Heroes kill the bad people, they don’t sneak past them. How many men you killed?’

  Eric swallowed. ‘Only seven.’

  ‘Must’ve done it pretty clean,’ said Sharfy, smiling. ‘You’re white as bone, seeing all this blood.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You sure? You look dizzy. How are your eyes? Fading in and out? Here, how many fingers am I holding up?’ In Sharfy’s hand were three fingers which had been cut off in the mêlée, perhaps from a stray swing while the Invia charged through the soldiers. He wiggled them in Eric’s face. Eric retched again and Sharfy brayed laughter like a barking hound.

  Siel wiped the mule’s blood from her hands with a soldier’s tunic. She had not spared Eric a look since he’d fled up the path, but now she did, and it indicated nothing to him at all. Something had clearly changed but he didn’t know what it was.

  Anfen took Case aside. ‘Friend, I think we should talk.’

  Case sighed and pulled the necklace charm from his pocket, its beads clicking together. ‘I was getting to like having it, but I’ll part with it,’ he said, handing it over.

  ‘Something like this no one ever really owns,’ said Anfen, holding the necklace away from himself as though it were dangerous. ‘I may return it to you, once I know more about it. I may not. Loup!’

  The magician jogged over to them, grinning. Loup wore no shirt, evidently proud of a torso still hard with gristly muscle, peppered with white hairs or not. Anfen handed him the charm. Loup’s eyebrows raised, and a toothless smile widened through his beard. ‘An oldie!’ he said, twisting it around his lea
thery fingers. ‘She’s an oldie, all right. Still got some kick in her, too! My word, she has got some kick.’

  Case said, ‘Someone told me dragons touched it, or made it. That probably means more to you than it does to me.’

  Loup nodded as though very impressed, and fingered its beads. ‘How long’ve I got her?’ he said to Anfen.

  ‘Learn what you can, sooner the better. But we must move.’

  ‘I’ll try. Oldie like this, won’t tell her secrets in a hurry! Need t’be coaxed, she will. Give her time, she’ll come good.’ He seemed to be muttering this to himself as he walked off, tenderly stroking the charm like an adored pet. ‘She’ll come mighty good, this one will, oh aye. Lots to tell, she has. Lots to tell.’

  Not far from the scene of the Invia’s carnage, on a flat, smooth piece of stone on the cliff face, the word ‘Shadow’ had been written in letters that looked like they’d been burned on with great heat, like a brand across the skin of cattle. There the word waited patiently to be seen by the next passing patrol.

  24

  The day’s march was at a hard pace, first a tense stretch through the mountain pass, locked in on both sides by dark grey cliff faces sheer and lifeless. Once through they cut across hilly terrain, the country green and picturesque with no visible threat of danger, nor people in the scoured and abandoned villages. There was only a silence eerily complete but for the wind. Even the birds there just watched without a sound, seeming to wait for something, perhaps more remains to pick over.

  Case had done his best not to complain at all this exertion, but he lagged at the back of the group until Anfen ordered the giant, Doon, to carry the old man on one shoulder. Loup, the folk magician, occupied the other shoulder. The giant frequently grunted in a way Loup understood to mean scratch, please. Loup’s gnarled fingers somehow knew which spot to scratch each time. Occasionally he’d say, ‘Not there, not for me! Find yourself a lady giant!’ and laugh as though it were the first time he’d made the joke.

  Doon was part of the reason Anfen had apparently considered chancing their arm against thirty armed and armoured castle soldiers, before the Invia had cleaned up that mess for them. ‘Swords and arrows won’t bother Doon,’ Sharfy told Eric. ‘Not unless he gets caught in a whirlwind of em. I seen Doon take eight spears in the back before he even slowed down. Trampled down the men who threw em and their horses, all wearing heavy plate mail. A week later, was like it never happened.’

  Kiown sidled up to him and whispered: ‘You will soon be fluent in Sharfy. Translation: three spears, three men, wearing maybe hard leather or light chain mail. The horses got away just fine. I was there. Still, pretty impressive.’

  Eric had tried walking with Siel, and talking with her, but she’d been too busy scouting the group’s right flank, with her bow at the ready, and he got the sense she was faintly annoyed by him being around. It was as though he’d said or done something to give away his lie: he was no prince, and perhaps now she knew …

  He’d walked behind her, watching her hips sway beneath the tanned leather, but quickly felt like a stalker and made an effort to stay away. Always, though, he found his eyes returning to her, no matter what else was going on around them. He longed for another chance alone with her, to do more gently what he’d already done, to get up and put his clothes back on without a sense of guilt and shame.

  As night approached the group went off road and split into two camps. Loup, Sharfy, Anfen, Eric and Case sat around a small fire. Outraged at his exclusion, Kiown sulked amongst the others some way further into the scrub, but Eric had seen the way Anfen tensed at the mere sound of Kiown’s voice, and was not surprised. Some of that group were already dozing on their unrolled mats, barely an hour after nightfall. Birds, silent in daylight, now cooed gently as though singing lullabies. Eric saw Kiown and Siel get under the same blanket, and it felt like the ground beneath him had opened up, swallowed him, and sent him plunging through some abyss with howling winds. He lay down on his unrolled mat and tried desperately to think of anything else, anything at all.

  The rest of Eric and Case’s group relished their campfire as the night grew cold, using wood Loup had spent some time blessing. From a distance it had looked like he was simply talking to the wood and slapping it gently. The resulting fire’s light and smell would carry no more than a dozen metres, allowing them to camp close enough to the road to hear the boots of passing patrols. Anfen had not actually expected them to range this way, but one came not long after they’d camped, marching fast and in formation. ‘Half an hour longer on the roads and we’d have run right into them,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Eric’s luck is catching.’

  ‘They’ve heard what happened to their mates,’ said Sharfy.

  Anfen nodded. ‘Question is whether they’re looking for us or the Invia. Who do they blame for that little party?’

  ‘Who would you rather they blamed?’ Eric asked.

  Anfen’s smile was grim. ‘Not us. I don’t want to be feared by them. Doon’s people were feared by them. There aren’t many half-giants left. They’ll get us all in the end. Those low on the list have a chance to fit in a full lifetime, perhaps.’ He lay back by the fire and closed his eyes. ‘Though I somehow doubt they’re sending foot-soldiers after a creature that lives in the sky.’

  They ate gathered herbs and stewed mule, which Loup blessed, making it taste like shreds of the finest juicy rump steak in a dozen subtle spices. When it was swallowed however the belly was not so easily fooled, and Eric felt queasy as soon as his plate was finished.

  ‘If they haven’t sent mages our way, they can’t be too worried about us,’ said Sharfy, whose face in the campfire light looked like a Hallowe’en mask.

  ‘Did you notice it took some while for their mages to come and guard the door?’ Anfen replied. ‘They’re probably busy trying to find whatever it is that wiped out an entire company of the castle’s soldiers and left no trace of itself but holes in the ground.’

  ‘What did that? And when?’

  ‘The same thing that’s been attacking travellers and wagon trains in the far south. A small patrol of our own was wiped out too, out in the middle of nowhere. We thought it was the castle’s doing. Then last month an entire mining station was slain near World’s End. And those were the castle’s assets. Probably the very cart you three robbed underground came from there.’

  ‘Ah, enough of that talk,’ Loup suddenly interjected. He rattled the charm’s dull silver beads and grinned, the firelight casting ghastly shadows on his face, making him look like he regularly dined on human flesh. ‘I figured her out a little, just a little, now that you stopped pestering me to make your dinner taste better, and the firewood blessed and all.’

  ‘Stop whining and tell us what you know, you old poser,’ said Sharfy.

  ‘Poser nothing! I saw you gobble that soup. And that mule we just ate was prettier than you, alive or dead or digested!’ They both laughed, but Sharfy’s rang a touch false, as though a nerve had been struck. ‘This kind of charm,’ said Loup, ‘oh aye, ten charms in one. All pretty handy on their own, mind! She’s a nice old girl.’ He lovingly stroked the necklace and grinned his toothless grin. It made him look none too wise at all. The others patiently waited. ‘Been alive longer than most of the cities. She’s an old darling, she is.’

  ‘We’ve established that she’s a nice old girl,’ said Anfen sleepily. ‘What else can you tell us?’

  Loup flashed his gums, clearly enjoying centre stage. ‘See these little beads? Each one’s a charm by itself. Some of em are active, some aren’t. You can switch em on or off, if you know how. I don’t. Could learn, maybe … problem is, we don’t know what we’d switch on! Maybe some aren’t friendly at all! Best to leave her rest a little, she may want her sleep. Right now there’s three of em working. This one …’ he picked out a bead no visibly different from the others ‘… keeps the wearer from being seen. Just like that! Handy trick? Oh, aye. Powerful, too! Wager it’ll keep you hidden in bright lig
ht, in a room full of people. I can’t ever do that, nor most mages I knew. Hiding out in the wild, see that’s different. Half that spell’s done by the trees and scrub.’ Loup gave a friendly wink to no one in particular, then picked out another bead.

  ‘This one here, see, this does something else. There’s power flowing into it, not out from it or around it like a whirlpool. Can’t be sure, and I’m nervous to toy with it, but I’d guess something from the wearer goes into the charm. What does? Well, hey now, that’s your guess much as mine. Right now it’s almost full. Real weak stream going in, just a trickle. Maybe I can get out again whatever’s inside. Maybe it’s something to do with this third switched-on bead, right here.’ He pointed at the dull silver knob. ‘This one I can’t seem to figure out at all. Strange old patterns she makes in the air about it. So let’s hear a little from the lucky gent who got to court this old darling.’

  Case had to be woken, and was not pleased about it, but he cleared his throat and told everything he could remember, in as good an order as he could, not even sure what he was leaving out nor what his memory had distorted. He didn’t recall much of the conversation between Vous and the Arch Mage. Sharfy and Loup were most intrigued by descriptions of Vous’s chambers, and by the story of his daughter. ‘Don’t know, I think my head was playing tricks,’ said Case. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time in my life I saw things that weren’t really there.’

  ‘She’s real,’ said Loup, grinning. ‘That’s young Aziel, like a bird in a cage. Talk is, Vous planted seed in one of them lady servants, in their silly grey robes, whether or not she wished it, no surprise at all. A hobby of his from way back. The Arch Mage talked Vous out of killing the mother, so the talk goes. He sees far ahead, that one. But only with a man’s eyes, mind, and so not in all directions at once!’

  ‘That Arch Mage didn’t look like the type to save anyone, to me,’ said Case. ‘Looked worse than those horned things near the door.’

  ‘Oh aye, he is,’ said Loup earnestly. ‘Worse cos he’s greater than them, but worse yet cos he’s saner than them. Enough magic’s poured through him as would cook any honest mage’s brain, but his brain’s still raw as fish! And rightly said, didn’t save anyone’s life from the goodness of his heart, that one. They got grand plans at that castle, and Aziel may have her part.’