At this point there was only one decent, honourable thing for us to do. Faro, Sir Erroll and I didn't need any prompting. We threw lines to the battered survivors and hauled them up the bank. Three of His Majesty's Household Rangers knelt among us and shivered. Maybe they thanked us, in between the coughing and spitting up water. I didn't hear it.
The sullen eyes of Descard d'Ost travelled from me, to Sir Erroll, to the woman. He knew he was done. Six men could have taken us. Three bedraggled and exhausted souls didn't stand a chance. “Well,” he said, raw and sour. “This has deviated from plan.”
Before any of us could stop him, he had his fingers around the hilt of his big knife, and put it up against his throat, trying to work up the courage. The blade trembled in his grip. His men watched and waited for him to lead them. Rangers weren't supposed to be captured alive, and Descard had just presided over the battalion's worst failure in living memory. Death held his only way out.
Nobody could fault his courage in a fight, but here he continued to hesitate, long enough to give the woman all the opportunity she needed. She said his name, arresting his attention with that roses-and-wine smile. It was the first time she'd given him anything but the cold shoulder.
“If I may,” she said, “would you hear me were I to offer an alternative to suicide?”
A flicker of hope lit in his eyes. It lasted barely a heartbeat, but by then I already knew she'd hook him. He spat back, “A traitor's alternative. How generous. I may not be able to fulfill my duty to arrest or kill you, but I can at least die with honour.”
“As you wish, brave Ranger. Your corpse won't be any impediment to me. On the other hand, am I to understand that your mission is only a failure if I never return to Kingsport?”
He gave her a hard, narrow look, but nodded.
“And you have an oath to protect all the members of House d'Aranet?”
Another grudging nod.
“Then we have an agreement,” she purred. “When the floods clear up, I give you my word I'll accompany you to my brother's court and give every praise for your heroic efforts to capture me. After we recover the sixth bronze.”
“After.” The knife withdrew an inch. Descard's face worked through a range of uncertain expressions as he weighed the words. “Across the Edge of the World.”
“Oh, don't tell me that makes you go all weak in the knees, my Lord. I won't hear it from a man who was prepared to cut his own throat a moment ago.”
His Adam's apple bobbed, swallowing. “I... I have your word?”
“Upon the Kingdom I've always served, my Lord.”
She offered him her hand. The last of his resistance shattered. He dropped the knife into its sheath, then brushed his lips across her wrist. In different circumstances it might've been an informal courtesy. Here, it was an oath of loyalty till death. The other two Rangers followed his example. They never thought of shouting a protest, so thoroughly had she bewitched them.
By the time we turned our backs on the Six Rivers, I couldn't see the rest of Descard's platoon. That was the last I thought about them. Nothing and nobody on the other side of the delta mattered to us now.
We moved some of our baggage around so the exhausted Rangers could ride double with us. Nine of us trudged out of the flood plain. The land grew firmer, from mud to hard earth and rock. Hills began to roll and rise. The moment we found a grove of trees, clinging onto some sodden hillock just above the flood plain, we dismounted and threw ourselves to the ground. Our makeshift canvas tent offered just enough shelter to get a fire going, helped along by copious amounts of tinder and lamp oil. There we sat, slept, and slowly dried ourselves out.
It was morning again before we were in any shape to travel. Looking down, the floods had climbed halfway up our hill. The noise and speed of it unnerved me. Thank the Saints the hill's other side was higher, offering us a solid path into the north, where all we had to contend with was the endless driving rain.
I was used to it. Flood season was something that happened every year. Yazizi, on the other hand, took it hard. She looked sickly and miserable. Instead of going pale, her smoky skin turned slightly darker and mottled, almost stretched. Her forehead glistened with a sheen of sweat under her hood. Red-rimmed eyes caught me staring at her, and she sneezed.
“I'm sorry for taunting you,” she groaned nasally, hugging herself. “Please, make it stop.”
I shrugged and gave her an apologetic smile. The rains wouldn't let up until we were well into the Catsclaws, maybe not even then.
We camped again on higher ground, poked a fire to life, and ate our first hot meal in a long time. Hot tea, too, for all of us. It was one of the best meals of my life. After camping cold for a week, nothing could be sweeter.
Descard and his boys ate with us, but kept their own company and stayed aloof of our conversation. No wonder. The ink hadn't dried on our little alliance yet.
Putting down his half-eaten bowl, Aemedd of Leora gave us a cough and a death's head grin. “It just occurred to me we haven't held a toast. Crossing the Six Rivers during flood season is a feat deserving a round of drinks, no?”
“I was never worried,” said Sir Erroll. His mouth became a smug line, half-hidden under his moustache. “Only Divine providence could've carried us this far. We're doing God's work. Surely I'm not the only one who feels it?”
“Don't look at me,” I retorted, “I was expecting to be dead.” I gulped the last mouthful of tea from my cup and raised it over my head. “A toast! Somebody find us a bottle and pour!”
Faro grinned and fetched one of the wineskins from his saddlebag. The others, too, raised their cups one by one. Sir Erroll glared at me for some reason I didn't understand. I caught the woman staring at me with an unsettling gleam in her eyes. When I returned the attention, she only smiled and looked away, leaving me embarrassed for it.
Once the squire filled our glasses, I pronounced the occasion. “Lady, gentlemen, to Divine providence. May it keep us safe on all our journeys.”
The wine turned out to be more bilge-swill from Kingsport, but I could overlook its flaws under the circumstances. I'd have drunk neat tannin if I could be sure it had some alcohol in it.
Faro didn't come round to pour a second time. The woman ordered us to pack and get ready to travel. Grumbling, I did what I was told, and soon we set off to negotiate the little bumps and valleys of the Green Country. We kept the Aranic's craggy cliffs and cold, unwelcoming beaches in view on our right. As long as we had that landmark, we'd always know where we were.
On a clear day we might've been able to see the white tops of the Catsclaws in the distance, but we were a long way away from sun and summer. The land faded to grey mist in the space of a few miles. I felt relieved when the Rangers volunteered to scout. No one did it better.
The weather didn't improve, but our spirits lifted anyway. The Six had seemed like certain death. Instead we'd conquered them and left them behind. Our next battle with certain death was weeks away, when we finally crossed over the Edge. And we no longer had a troop of elite soldiers out for our blood.
We spotted the first signs of humanity around mid-afternoon. A forlorn shepherd grazed his sheep in the rain. If he noticed us, he gave no sign of it, but kept his eyes down and passed on by. Next we found the village where he lived or went to market. We gave it a wide berth. The villagers didn't pose any threat to us, but I saw the sense in leaving no trail for the Duke's Listeners to follow.
The sun went down. That is to say, the sky became gradually darker until I couldn't see a hand in front of my face. No moon, no stars. We camped in the shelter of a rocky hillside and let ourselves be lulled to sleep by the wind's low, mournful howl.
The next day we came across a larger town with a hard-scrabble look to it, wrapped around a bay so tiny it didn't even have a proper name. Badly-kept roads surrounded it on the landward side. A glance at our map named the place as Withershale, which held a militia of no less than thirty fighting men. We gave it an even wider bi
rth. We'd have to stop for supplies at some point, but with so much fresh water falling out of the sky, we could last at least another week.
So it went. We rode for days, always north, and every night it got a little colder. Yazizi kept sniffling, and it didn't surprise anybody when Faro caught it too. Soon enough Sir Erroll and I suffered the same fate. It amused the Rangers to no end. Grinning, Descard brewed another one of his herbal concoctions, and made us drink every repulsive drop. It helped. A bit.
Aemedd took some of the strange remedies, but spat them up again as quick as he could swallow. He didn't improve. Every day I wondered whether we'd find him dead in his blanket, but no, not yet.
“I've been thinking about what you said, Professor,” I told him one morning, sharing a cup of cold tea. “You know what the sixth piece is, don't you? What it looks like.”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, I believe so.”
“And you're not going to tell me.”
He gave his characteristic, thin-lipped smile. It made him look like a dead frog. “As a scholar, one should provide evidence to support one's theories. Evidence is all that separates us from mere philosophers. The bronze itself should be enough to bear me out.”
“Has anyone ever called you an insufferable pedant, sir?”
“Most of my colleagues, all of my students,” he admitted, sharing the same light-hearted note. “But if I don't keep men to a certain intellectual standard, who will?”
“There must be benefits to confiding in someone, even for a scholar.”
He paused. Actually thought about it for a minute. “Perhaps. I'll think about it, Byren.”
He excused himself to double over in endless, phlegmy convulsions. After a solid minute he showed no signs of stopping, so I gave up and helped get our horses ready for the trail.
Aemedd wouldn't give me anything more that day. Still, I suspected I was getting through to him, or at least wearing down his resistance. The more I watched him, the more obvious his isolation became. He didn't speak to anyone except the woman, and she only gave him the time of day when she needed him.
She'd probably gotten tired of trying to pry the cards from his chest. Of all of us, Aemedd was the most resistant to her charms.
The grey days blurred together into an endless procession of walks, rides and rest stops. I'd almost forgotten the colour of the sky by the time one of the season's rare dry spells moved in. The clouds broke and for a few hours we basked in warm, gorgeous sunlight. We also spotted a contingent of Ducal infantry travelling along a local road. At Descard's instructions, we hid in a ditch ‒ up to our thighs in brackish water ‒ and watched them pass.
It took hours. Mosquitoes buzzed round my ears and landed on every inch of exposed skin. I could almost feel them sucking the blood out of me. I gritted my teeth through it, waiting for the Rangers' cue.
“The latest draft,” I observed as I got a closer look at the enemy. “Children and old men marching to the butcher's.”
“We've all been scraping the bottom of the barrel.” Descard's mouth twisted. “I love my King and my country, but if Lady Ioanna's right... If your bronzes can win the war for us... Then helping you should've been my duty all along.”
“It wasn't our idea to march all the way back to Kingsport,” Faro muttered with surprising vehemence. No one shushed him, because most of us happened to be thinking the same thing.
The Ranger had the good grace to look embarrassed. He kept his mouth shut until the troops were far enough out of sight. We wrung out our clothes, mounted, and rode on while the resentments simmered between us.
That day, just before sunset, we caught our first glimpse of the mountains. They were close. Even so, I had to squint to recognise them, washed out and turned blue by leagues of hazy humidity. It held a strange significance for me. In all my travels as a Contractor and damn near ten years of soldiering, I'd never been this far north. Everything would be new and unknown.
The weather held long enough for us to make camp in the dry and light a little fire. It was pleasant while it lasted. By sunrise, the rain had started up again.
We ate light that morning, stretching our last few days of food. We'd have to restock at the next village we found.
Luckily we came across another road, a thin ribbon of dirt slithering through the ever more rugged landscape. It looked as rough and rocky as the moss-covered hillsides around us. Weeds choked much of the surface, although fresh wagon tracks told us it was still in use.
We followed the road to a small hamlet perched on the Aranic coastline. Not quite a fishing village, by the obvious lack of boats and nets, but beachcombers and cliff farmers. I could see people gathering whelks and crabs and seaweed deposited by the endless battering waves. Others scraped lichen and barnacles off the rocks. The beach and its dunes were grey and black, made up of pulverised stone and coral continually washing up on shore.
In the village itself, a handful of craftspeople worked under the shelter of their awnings, weaving baskets, drying fish and carving seashells. Basic stuff. I didn't see a smithy or even a leatherworker. The local pub was essentially somebody's front room with a bar at the back.
People stared at us in the gormless, open-mouthed way which suggested they didn't get a lot of travellers 'round these parts.
We tied our horses to the single solitary hitching post outside the aforementioned pub. It didn't see a lot of use. Though far from starving, I didn't think anyone in this place could afford to ride instead of walk. Brushing the rain from our cloaks, we filed into the pub to get warm, and gave the proprietor a look at the most interesting group he ever saw.
Opening the door rang a bell, which summoned the landlord, a pot-bellied Northerner poured from the same mould as every other innkeeper who enjoyed a dip into his own beer. The lines on his face didn't mark him as an old man, although his dirty black hair hadn't receded so much as vaulted from his forehead.
A frown began to form when he took in the nine travel-worn faces in his front room. “Can I,” he hesitated, “help you?”
“We need things,” the woman responded in perfect Northern, her voice so light and friendly that no one could feel intimidated by it. She reached into her pouch and laid out no less than three silver ladies. The coins clicked onto the counter one by one. “A meal, supplies for the road aheads, and a sit-down by your fire while you prepare them. I promise we won't make too much trouble.”
She glanced down at the coins on his counter, and made a tiny gesture as if preparing to sweep them away. He swallowed and made placating noises. Holding up a finger, he disappeared out back a moment and shouted something indistinct in Northern. Piles of food and jugs of wine began to appear on the counter. In the meantime we went to the big stone hearth in the corner where a heap of glowing ashes still spewed out some warmth.
“Forgive our wariness,” the landlord said as he hobbled back in with another armful of cheese, hardtack and dried sausage, and began to wrap them. I couldn't help but notice that one of his legs ended in a wooden peg below the knee. “The only strangers who tend to come here are His Lordship's recruiters.”
He gave that last word a bit of a bite, as if he wanted to say 'press gangs' but knew better. He looked furtively from face to face, knowing full well that six of our group were men of military age. Any fool could tell we had weapons. That tended to mean either recruiters or deserters, and neither would be very welcome.
The woman nodded, showing appropriate gravity. “An unfortunate business. No, I am merely passing through on my way to one of my husband's remote estates. We need our taxes to continue the fight.”
“Your husband, Milady?” he asked with characteristic irreverence. A Southerner would've never dreamed of questioning a noble-born like that. It was one of the things I rather liked about the Northern peoples.
“Sir Karl of Silbane,” she lied, smooth as silk. The name meant nothing to him, but then, nobody could keep track of all the lesser knights and nobles who came and went in times of war. The rest of us �
� me, at least ‒ stared at her in shock and horror. Ruby lips pursed in a smug, serene smile. She clearly thought it was the height of comedy.
Sir Erroll was even less amused than I. He glowered at the hearth, fingers clenched into fists. I wondered if I ought to start sleeping with my eyes open.
“If you're travelling near the mountains,” the landlord said delicately, not quite admitting that he'd never heard of a place called Silbane, “you should take care. The roads en't as safe as they used to be. People say it's raiding parties from the Claw tribes, even as far south as us.”
“Really?” She quirked an eyebrow. “I thought the mountain folk owed fealty to the‒ to the Duke.”
“They used to. Loyalty at sword-point. Now, with all our armies stretched to breaking, who stops them going into business for themselves?”
He shrugged and left us to think about his warning.
We were almost dry when the landlord finished our last parcel, the silver already tucked away in his apron, and watched us like a hawk until we went away. We stowed the food, decanted wine and water into our skins and flasks, then savoured one last moment of dryness before we marched out the door. No point wasting time on farewells. A group of locals passed us on the way out and gave us long, funny looks.
“Coguro's balls,” Faro whispered once we were mounted and on our way, taking care not to let his master hear him swear. “This place is rural, isn't it?”
I chuckled. “It's about to get worse, my boy. Forget this. Forget the steppe. Up there,” I pointed in the general direction of the mountains, “are some of the true wild places of our world. Places where there's no men at all, not even farmers.”
“Try intimidating small girls, Byren, you'll have better luck.” He flashed a devious grin. “Just keep yourself alive. Without you I'd be sorely pressed for someone to talk to.”
I playfully cuffed him on the back of the head. He laughed.
We rode on.
We didn't see many signs of civilisation after that. Much of the North was miles and miles of trackless wilderness, where the land wouldn't support more than an occasional farmstead or a clump of mud-brick huts. Even animals were hard to find. Rabbits, and mountain goats who licked moss and lichen off the rocks, and that was about it.
Written in Blood Page 35