The next moment Yazizi came galloping past me, guiding her palfrey by legs alone as she frantically waved her arms. “Stop!” she shouted. Everyone pulled their reins, if only out of confusion. “Go carefully, and look down.”
I figured I might as well bite. A gentle kick in the sides got my horse inching forward, and the knight and squire came in on my flanks, all peering at the ground. Even with the three of us we almost missed it.
There was a faint border in the sand a few feet ahead, made almost invisible by the dust moving around it in thick whorls and eddies. When I listened, though, I could hear faint howls of wind echoing as if from the bottom of a deep well. Suddenly I understood. The Tzan hadn't stopped ‒ it had sunk into a deep, rocky ravine. We might've ridden right into it if not for Yazizi's warning.
“This is Khan's Gorge,” she said. “You will not find any settlements north of here. Perhaps a raiding party, Dargha or Vozerha, returning. The raiding season is almost over.”
Aemedd squinted from horizon to horizon, trying to figure out how far the gorge stretched. It looked all but endless. His voice rang out lazily, “Is there a way across?”
“A natural bridge a few hours west.” She brushed the fluttering hair out of her face. “Or, if you prefer, half a week's ride east to go around.”
“Spoilt for choice, then.”
He dug up parchment and ink from his satchel and began to scribble a rough map of our route so far. A speculative outline of the ravine appeared under his pen, together with a number of annotations in the holy tongue. He underlined the only two words in a language I could read: Aemedd's Gorge.
“Very well,” said the woman. “The girl goes first, and mind where you ride.”
We turned our horses westward and followed Yazizi in single file. It was a treacherous path, full of boulders and sharp rocks jutting out of the broken ground. Somehow she managed to steer us through it all without incident. After three or four hours of careful progress, the promised bridge rose above the dense cloud of dust.
It was a tall arch of orange sandstone, spindly, almost graceful in the way it flowed over the gap and melded into the far side without so much as a seam. The only crossing for leagues around. That alone endeared it to me plenty.
“Better to walk the horses,” said Yazizi. “They say there are spirits in the wind here, whispering. In Harari it's called Khesser Oz, the Bridge of Voices. Many animals get frightened and jump off.”
Sir Erroll scowled. “If one of us falls, you'll be joining them.”
“A man strong in his faith should have nothing to fear,” she replied, her tone dripping with polite humility. It was the first time I ever heard her talk back to the knight. Suppressed rage in the way he clenched his fists. He wanted to beat her, but didn't have enough of an excuse.
Yazizi pulled the palfrey around by the reins and dismounted. Her saddlebag offered up a length of rough Harari rope, which she threw at me. I understood.
It was a trick we used in the Army for dangerous marches. Walk single file, ropes around our waists tied to the next person in the line. I explained the idea to the others and started to bind us together. Yazizi and I went first, with Penn and the children behind us. I stole a quick glance to make sure he didn't have anything on him that would cut hemp.
We formed a line, reins in hand, and began to walk.
The wind changed with every step up the rough, stone arch. The violent updrafts at the edge of the ravine tapered off, and for a few seconds I neither heard nor felt anything. Hot desert air shimmered just above the rock. The only sound was the crunching progress of our boots over gravel and dust.
Then I heard it. A thin, reedy whistle threaded between the rocks, dancing on air currents that felt too cold against my skin. Its pitch warbled up and down at random. Always a new note, never the same one twice. Aemedd's camel grunted nervously and spat on the ground. Its head turned from side to side, searching for a threat it couldn't identify. The abrupt movement tossed the scholar about as he tried to hold on to the bridle. A few whacks with a stick quieted the thing, but it showed me what to watch for. Aemedd would never be able to control that beast if it bolted.
“The girl wasn't joking,” said Penn. He kept a tight hold on the reins as his horse pawed the ground restlessly. “I've never seen battle-trained horses so spooked.”
At the top of the arch, a crude path had been worn into the rock by generations of Harari raiders. It made the footing a little surer. The soft, whistling wind stayed faint, but became somehow more ethereal, more threatening. I had to shoulder my mare back into line when she sidestepped some bit of the path she didn't like. Violent snorts and the anxious clopping of hooves drowned out almost every other sound.
Then I saw something. A promontory near the apex, beside the path. It had a more deliberate look to it than the rest of the place, and when I got high enough, I confirmed what my instincts already knew.
Sitting on the promontory was a Harari border marker. Two oddly-shaped warstones, crossed, and a sun-bleached goat skull on a pike. More bones and several faded stains suggested that this place still saw the odd pagan sacrifice.
My eyes crossed and began to water, staring at the shrine. For a moment I wasn't sure whether I was seeing a pile of unusual rocks or a beam of purple light blasting endlessly into the sky.
Suddenly I heard someone speak behind me. The voice was high and male, but hard to make out as either Faro or Adar. The words were too faint and distorted to make out. I turned around to check, but the boys walked in silence, eyes down, dutifully holding formation. I almost called back to them before Yazizi tapped me on the shoulder.
“Move, and keep your horse calm. If you shout they'll take your voice and use it against you.”
I shut my mouth with a clop of teeth. The noise seemed to echo when there was nothing for it to echo against. Waving at the others to hurry up, I skirted past the shrine to the bridge's apex. My mare whinnied and complained all the way. She wouldn't go near the shrine, and made me give it a wide berth. The whistling wind had her chomping at the bit in terror.
Yazizi and I had just started on the downward slope when I heard a shout. This time it was even more like the squire's voice, and I couldn't ignore it. The message was clear.
“Riders!” Faro called in a panic. When I looked, he was jumping up and down, pointing at the horizon where the Tzan gave way to clear air. He was right. A huge cloud of dust followed hot on the heels of a Harari raiding party. A smattering of dirty Ducal uniforms among them, shiny helmets and bits of maille.
I chewed the inside of my cheek and said, “Bugger.”
At the back of the line, Sir Erroll took charge, hurrying everyone along. He encouraged his destrier with the flat of his sword. The two boys pulled together at their reins. I watched the animals go from fear to panic, but there was nothing for it now. We were on a piece of flat, exposed rock with no cover for miles around. Sitting ducks for a line of Harari bows.
It wasn't the camel that kicked up first. I happened to be looking over my shoulder when Faro and Adar's little gelding reared into the air. It shook the boys off like knocking down a pair of chess pieces, and pranced in a confused circle before charging to the edge, desperate to escape no matter what. It either couldn't see the gorge in front of it, or it didn't care.
It would've jumped if Sir Erroll hadn't got there first. He grabbed the reins and clubbed the horse over the head with his pommel in the same motion. The gelding stumbled, sliding halfway across the edge. The knight held its reins with dogged determination. Its back legs kicked on empty air. Not even Sir Erroll could bear the horse's weight on his own. Despite his ferocity he was being dragged down bit by bit, but he refused to let go.
I ran back to help. Together with Penn and Faro, we grabbed the rope around the knight's waist and pulled. The gelding's scrambling hooves began to scratch against the rock.
Leather snapped. The reins came away in the knight's hand, and the gelding went down with a shrill, fading whinny,
until the storm swallowed it up.
Sir Erroll didn't even pause. He roared, “Go, go!”
We did.
Stumbling down the steep slope, the horses almost running ahead of us, we made it down the Bridge of Voices. We took the ropes off as we reached the bottom. If only there were time to feel relieved.
We were back in the saddle moments later, threw Faro and Adar onto one of the pack horses, and rode like hunted men for the Northern border.
3. Book of the North
“The client's life is paramount, even at the cost of your own.”
- Contractor's Third Rule
The bridge slowed them long enough to get ourselves out of sight. Even Harari horses with Harari riders were afraid of that awful place. We rode as hard as we could for as long as we could, north by northeast, until the animals were spent and our backsides couldn't take any more.
Cramped, chafed, battered and fuddled on cactus wine, I let myself fall limp to the ground. It was a good spot. My mare was too tired to stray far. She contented herself nibbling at the dew-speckled grass around me.
It truly was the border. The horizon turned from yellow to green, and I loved it. The soft, springy hills, the flowers and berry bushes, the great purple carpets of heather. Then I heard water trickling over stone. Mindful of nothing else, I shoved myself up onto my aching feet and ran across the lip of the hill.
Oh, such beauty! A creek swollen by late summer rain, blue and gold where it reflected the blazing sun. Light shimmered on the scales of hundreds of tiny salmon as they darted along the surface. I staggered to the riverbank, dropped everything, and flung myself in. Rolling, splashing, luxuriating in the fast-running stream.
“That's a bit of luck,” said Aemedd, already reaching for a chart to annotate. “Going by our map and compass, this should be one of the Six Rivers. The Westfarn, if I am not mistaken.”
Sir Erroll said snidely, “It won't be the Eastfarn.” He shouldered past the scholar, though he had plenty of room to go around, and knelt by the river to scrub his face and drink deep.
The big bronze shield was still strapped across his back under an oilcloth cover. The cover had taken some convincing. He didn't like it, but the bronze reflected sunlight like a mirror. Out in the open, everyone and everything between here and the Catsclaws could spot that damned shield on a clear day.
Part of me understood how he felt. It was hard to keep my cloak fastened sometimes, when all I wanted was to wear my breastplate with pride.
The woman arrived at the edge of our little valley. Rather than celebrate, she stood there in deep deliberation. “If this is the Westfarn, then Dunoghan is downriver. They run pitch barges up the coast to Saltring.”
“Yes, Milady?” said Aemedd, not quite sure what was required of him. It made me smile. A mind far more devious than his was crackling away. I kept my ears just far enough above water to hear their conversation.
“We are being pursued, Professor,” she pointed out. “They've proven we can't shake them off or outrun them. If we go towards civilisation, we might be unmasked. If we avoid it, they'll run us down like... Well, like dogs. I don't intend to give them the opportunity.”
Sir Erroll laughed appreciatively, and when he spoke he made it sound like it'd been his idea all along. “We sneak in and hire a barge while they try to march a troop of bloodthirsty Harari through the streets. That will be interesting.”
The woman glanced at our collection of captured Ducal armour, then found me in the river. Her lips were like good wine as she smiled, deeply red and profoundly intoxicating. “I say, Byren, I think you'd make a smashing cavalryman in the Army of the North. Give Master Saldette his armour back while you're getting dressed.”
A stab of resentment burned in my belly, like it did every time she loosened Penn's leash. “Yes, Milady,” I ground out, and left the water. Swimming had lost its appeal. I laid myself flat on the bank to dry, while Faro set a pot to boil and Yazizi went foraging for something fresh to put in it.
After drying off, still in a foul mood, I unloaded the armour. I had my pick of three crude iron byrnies. The Harari had scrubbed them with sand and repaired the arrow punctures, but bloodstains still coloured parts of the maille. I picked the best of the lot and pressed Adar into service with soap and rags to clean it while I found gloves and a helm to match. The idea of taking off my breastplate for this was agony.
Leather straps cinched the maille to my size. The rings rustled faintly when I moved. The last time I wore this much armour was... during my Army service. It felt familiar and very odd at the same time.
Next I selected the rustiest, most arrow-holed sheet of iron and threw it into Penn's arms. “May it keep you safe,” I said. I might have slurred a little. The cactus wine tended to make words difficult.
He stared at it, pushing a finger through some unmended gaps. “This isn't mine. I kept mine in good nick. It didn't look like Feldish cheese.”
“Looks fine to me.”
That same spark of fury I'd caught before surged back. “This isn't a joke, Byren. If we get into a fight‒”
“You're not wearing it to fight,” I interrupted him. “We've already seen what you're like in a battle. You don't need armour to throw your weapon down and your hands up.”
I did have to give him his things back, eventually. I just took special pleasure in my secret orders to torment him.
Penn soon caught on to the game, relaxed, crossed his arms. “What is your problem with me, Byren? Did I kill a relative of yours? Steal the food out of your gob, perhaps? No? Then who pissed in your Goddamned pot?”
“It's not what you did, Penn. It's what you're going to do. We both know it, so why keep pretending?”
That shut him up. I grinned, took the scrap metal from his hands and gave him the sack where I'd stowed his stuff, including his old armour. He took it in stubborn silence. Went to the riverside to get dressed.
We ate, took a few hours of rest, and continued our ride. Sore but motivated by the thought of a bed and a roof overhead. The river was welcome company, too. For the first time since we entered the Harari steppe, the air around me tasted cool and fresh, full of the sweet smells of proper nature. A few small boats floated past us along the way. Peddlers and free farmers taking their wares upstream to Dunoghan.
I spared Penn only one glance in the whole trip. He looked all bright and shiny in the saddle, very well-equipped for a conscript. Supposedly his family had enough money to look after him. More likely that money came from the Duke himself, sponsoring Penn's mission.
I felt my teeth baring in an automatic sneer. I really wanted to bring him down.
The city rose out of the early night. Shadow of walls against a star-speckled indigo blanket. A thin crescent moon gleamed behind the clouds, dimmer than the torches and lanterns twinkling in Dungohan's distant windows. The place was tiny compared to Farrowhale or even Newmond, but fortified to Hell and back. Its reputation as a tough nut to crack was well-deserved. It had fallen only once in its long history, and even then, only because of Saint Sistian's famous treason to the Southern King.
Faro bugled a request to enter. The city watchmen returned the signal to advance and be recognised. “Who goes?” came the shout from the walls.
“Lady Silbane and entourage! We humbly request permission to enter and stay the night!”
Faro came to each of us, showing us in the light of a torch, until the guard made up his mind. The gate creaked open just wide enough to let us through single file.
We were welcomed by a double line of pikemen. Crossbows glinted through every arrow slit. On a good day Dunoghan wasn't far from the front lines, so they operated on a war footing. Every bag searched, every weapon inspected. Anyone with the fever would've been marched back out of the gate at spear-point.
“Papers,” grunted the Sergeant in charge. A hard-looking bastard with a squinty eye and one arm.
Penn came forward with a neatly-folded note from his saddlebags. I didn't know whether
they were the invented passports of a Ducal cavalryman, or his real orders as a Listener. Whatever was written there, it seemed to convince the sergeant. He handed it back and continued to the next phase of his inspection, eyeballing everyone and everything we carried as if we might buckle under the weight of his off-centre stare.
He said, “Your kit has an awful lot of Kingdom stamps on it.”
“So does yours,” I pointed out before our highborn could open their mouths and make things worse. A terrible breach of etiquette, but I was sure they'd forgive me. “Is your loyalty measured in stamps, friend”
His thin, leathery lips twisted into a grudging smile. The soldiers relaxed their posture at a wave of his hand. “You'd be the brassiest deserter I ever met. Alright, escort Her Ladyship up to Stone Manor. Lord Hough will want to receive any noble guests. The rest of you can kip in the barracks.”
A few of the locals accompanied us through the moonlit streets. Much of the town was paved in ancient cobbles, worn smooth by centuries of traffic. Apparently the local garrison kept a strict curfew. The streets were empty except for soldiers, dogs and whores.
I walked my horse, not just because my thighs were raw and the thought of another minute in the saddle made me sick to my stomach, but to stay close to our Ducal escort and guide. I struck up a conversation with a smile. “Any news from the front? We haven't heard anything good since we left Bishop Oake.”
“Got a bird in the other day,” said the boy. One of the locals, a true Northerner from his cherrywood skin. He puffed out his chest. “We've taken Farrowhale.”
I barely kept my voice under control. “What? So soon?”
“That's right! Apparently a traitor opened one of the posterns for us. We snuck damn near a regiment of our boys in before they knew what was going on, and by then the dice had already rolled. The inner city gate was still open when we got there.”
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