The Shadow of Tyr

by Glenda Larke

  The smugglers often came to visit, and the one who had such a funny name, Berg Firegravel, gave him pretty coloured beads to play with. He’d given him the obsidian necklet to wear, too. He liked to wear it no matter what Gev said; it made him feel like a Quyriot horseman. When he touched the runes on the beads, they felt as old as the stones of the Stronghold, and as mysterious.

  The times he liked best of all were when he rode behind his mother to free slaves or fight legionnaires. That was serious business, and no one laughed much then. Of course, he didn’t take part in any of the fighting; Ligea would hand him over to one of his bodyguards and he never actually saw anything of the battles, but it was exciting nonetheless. The long ride, travelling in the dark, having to hide and be as silent as an owl’s flight through the night—he felt so grown-up and brave.

  Mostly, though, he stayed back in the Stronghold with Narjemah.

  One day, I’ll have my Magoroth sword and I’ll glow like Ligea does when she holds hers, and people will be afraid of me, too.

  The horses tailed one another along the trail to the village of Prianus in the foothills, their footing sure, their ears pricked for the warning sounds that might presage a rock fall. They were fresh mounts; the ones they had ridden from Corbussia they had left at First Farm to be rested, groomed and put to graze in the far fields beyond the river.

  The track linking the farm and Prianus was barely discernible, little more than a desolate ravine bottom overhung with glistening shadowed walls of black, strewn with boulders and drenched with streams. It wound its way through the many narrow defiles of the foothills to disappear—on this particular day—into patches of damp mist and cloud as the snow-season edged reluctantly towards the dry. Eventually the ravine met the cart track that led to the village of Prianus.

  When Ligea had first ridden that path, Prianus had been abandoned, the nearby marble quarry disused and the cart track leading to more frequented roads largely overgrown. She had repopulated the village with freed slaves, now legitimate quarry workers who earned their living trading the marble to Tyr. They even paid their dues in the annual tax collection. Their real purpose was to be a cover for what happened beyond the village, further up the mountains towards Quyr, in the Stronghold.

  As the horses picked their way that morning, Ligea moved her mount up beside Gevenan’s. Arrant, as usual, rode behind her on their specially made saddle, loosely tied to her back so he wouldn’t fall if he dropped off to sleep. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘now that you’ve had time to look at this lot, what do you think?’

  Gevenan glanced over his shoulder at the riders behind them. Most had only the vaguest idea of how to stay on a horse. They were sore and aching and tired and scared: twenty-two newly freed slaves, imports from outside Tyrans, not one of them over fifteen years old, their misery written in their eyes. Behind them rode their more seasoned soldiers, several nursing the wounds that had been the cost of the slaves’ freedom.

  ‘Young enough to be malleable,’ Gevenan said at last, the optimism grudging. ‘But hardly old enough to light their wicks, this lot. Hades below, Ligea, I’m damned if I know how we can take the Exaltarchy on, if this is the calibre of recruit you give me. They’ll be snivelling in their cots at night, hankering after their mothers.’

  She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think nothing less than legionnaires with ten years’ experience and an overriding hatred of the Exaltarch would please you, Gev.’

  ‘I’m just practical. Ocrastes’ backside, someone has to be. We’ve been at this for more than five years, Ligea, and how far have we got? Sooner or later we’re going to run into a problem too big for us to handle. Our forces grow larger and more wide-flung. More people know about this place, and all the other safe houses and training grounds. That’s more people in a position to betray us. Sooner or later we will fall to treachery, you must realise that.’

  ‘I’m not so easily deceived,’ she said. ‘I can sense a traitor, as you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said soberly. ‘So you say. I’ll admit I was surprised by that bronzesmith, the Pythian slave. I would have staked my life on his loyalty.’

  ‘I sensed his intended treachery the moment he made up his mind to betrayal.’

  Gevenan shrugged. ‘I just have to take your word for that, don’t I? But it went against my grain to slide a sword into a man who had never done me any harm. Just because you thought he might—at some future time—betray us.’

  ‘I didn’t think it, I knew it.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘Next time, I’ll do my own killing.’

  ‘Yes, you should. Ligea, the real problem is that you can’t be everywhere, although you seem to do your damnedest to try. You said five years, remember? You’re behind schedule.’

  ‘Yes. I had thought that by now Temellin would be able to send some Magor to help me, but things haven’t gone as well in Kardiastan as we all hoped they would, or as quickly.’ She paused and considered.‘After the next snow-season, I promise. Full rebellion, Gev, from one side of the Exaltarchy to the other: Kardiastan, Altan, Cormel, the Western Reaches—in fact, everywhere from Corsene to Inge. Brand and Garis and Temellin, the Gharials and the Quyriots, we are all in agreement and there are others who will follow our lead.’

  She looked over her shoulder. ‘Gev, these folk are weary. Call a halt and we’ll rest up for a meal.’

  He nodded and turned his horse to give the order.

  She twisted to look at Arrant. ‘Awake, lad?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m hungry.’

  ‘So am I. We’ll eat the bread and meat we got at the farm, all right?’

  That was the day Arrant first realised his mother was mortal. That she could die. The day when he wondered for the first time what would happen to him if she did.

  They sat on the boulders in the ravine and ate the food the farm workers had packed for them. The plateau horses, as adaptable as goats, nibbled at the bushes growing in every crevice.

  The rescued youths from the Corbussian slave pens frightened Arrant a little, for all that they ignored him. They were too severe, too unsmiling, too tense. They talked funny, too. Occasionally their nervous tension would leak into his consciousness. He hated their unease. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to feel like that. Freedom was supposed to make people happy, wasn’t it? And he didn’t understand why they were so wary of his mother. She said it was because they were frightened by the Magor powers they’d seen her use.

  They’re silly, he thought. They should be glad she’d freed them. Sometimes grown-ups were so hard to understand. His mother was often mad at Gevenan, and yet he made her laugh, all the time.

  As they ate, he overheard one youth questioning Ligea’s bodyguard, Mole. He was called that because he had a large brown mole in the outer corner of his nostril—as big as a pancake, or so Gevenan said. It wasn’t really. More like one of the rosehips that the cook used to make into jam.

  ‘How much far?’ the youth asked. He was looking up at the sky, where dark clouds promised rain and an early dusk. He struggled with his Tyranian, his tone hovering on the fringes of fear. ‘We ride under the dark?’

  ‘If the weather holds,’ Mole replied, ‘we’ll be in Prianus come nightfall. The Stronghold’s further.’ He smiled at the youth. ‘Somehow, I don’t think the Magoria will ask you to ride all night. We’ve almost reached the spot where this ravine joins the track to Prianus. After that, the ride’s easier.’

  ‘What—what happen us at this place, Stronghold?’

  ‘You can go home if you know the way and want to risk the journey. Or you can seek work elsewhere. Or you will be trained. To be a soldier, perhaps, or a horse-handler or any one of a dozen diff’rent things, ’pending on what you’re best at. So as you can fight the Exaltarchy. The only thing you can’t do is betray us. We kill people who do that.’

  That was true. Arrant wasn’t supposed to know it, but he did. Sometimes he understood things he wasn’t supposed to, like that conversation about betrayal and t
he bronzesmith.

  ‘Where are you from, lad?’ Mole asked the youth in a friendly fashion.

  ‘Ba’Azam in Janus. Name of me, Polvik. We cross sea to here.’ His voice told how he marvelled at that. ‘I not know world so very, very big. Water far, many days.’

  ‘How did you become a slave?’

  Polvik’s face went dark. ‘Big fort of Ba’Azam have many soldiers. S’posed make safe us from Blue-beards. Bastards of desert, you know? Acheron rot damnable souls! But legions bad too. One soldier took sister of me, she eleven only. No man want she after. Soldier give trinkets. I say, pay more.’

  He shrugged. ‘Big fight. They say Polvik hurt legionnaire.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Sold me. Chained, with same bastards of desert. Marched to sea, sold to trader of Tyrans. New master, he take me Corbussia, want sell me again. Then you come. And her.’ He nodded in Ligea’s direction. ‘Lady of numina.’

  ‘She’s no numen,’ Mole growled. ‘She’s a Kardi Domina. And you be polite about her, youngster, or you’ll have all of us to contend with. She’ll do right by you, if you do right by her.’

  Polvik’s eyes gleamed. ‘Reckon she send Polvik home?’

  ‘Better give up any dream of seeing Janus for a while. Takes a lot of money to get back, and you’d only get caught for escaping from Corbussia. Work for the Domina. But you’re free now; you can do what you want. Just choose wisely, and remember who put the collar round your neck. And who took it off.’

  The lad’s face darkened. ‘Not forget. Not never. But…fight Tyrans soldier? Always they win.’

  A slow smile spread over Mole’s face. ‘Ah, that’s the glory of it, lad. They don’t. Not always.’

  Arrant stopped listening. Something was making him uneasy. It was an odd feeling that started in the pit of his stomach and spread outwards, causing his heart to thump and his limbs to weaken. He swung his head towards his mother, to find her looking at him. She felt it too.

  She stood, calling for quiet.

  Everyone hushed. When all was silent, she raised her cabochon to her ear. The golden glow of it illuminated her face, the savage indent on her cheek smoothed over in the light. Arrant thought her beautiful. It was just plain silly that some people found her scary. Her scar never troubled him, though others sighed and said it ruined her looks.

  ‘There are people on the track to Prianus,’ she said quietly. ‘Legionnaires. Fifteen of them, maybe. Damn. They’ll cut us off from the village. And the Stronghold.’

  ‘I not hear,’ Polvik said.

  Ligea smiled at his disbelief. ‘Arrant will confirm it, won’t you, lad?’

  He raised his cabochon and listened the way she’d taught him. ‘Nasty men,’ he said. He heard nothing, but sensed the presence of strangers whose intentions stirred a terrible unease in him. His cabochon was like that. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it did one thing, but wouldn’t do another. When it didn’t behave, Ligea always frowned, a dark look he didn’t like.

  ‘He means legionnaires,’ she said, sounding impatient. She was always cross when he used the wrong words. ‘We’ll either have to return to the farm, or ambush them.’ She glanced across at Gevenan. ‘They’re on gorclaks. And we only have fifteen men, three of them wounded.’

  He shrugged. ‘Ambush. Safer for Prianus.’ ‘None can escape to tell what happened, or where.’

  ‘Still safer. We can surprise them.’

  She nodded to the ex-slaves. ‘You lads, you stay here with Arrant and Timnius and the horses. The rest of you, come with me—we’ve got to be in place before they get to where this ravine meets the quarry road, and I don’t want to take the horses. Darius? How’s that wound of yours? Do you think you’d better stay behind too?’

  Darius grinned. He wasn’t about to miss a fight.

  ‘I can still pull a bow. Just don’t ask me to run anywhere,’ he said.

  ‘Fine then. But you’d better take your horse.’ Ligea took out her sword and looked down at Arrant, her face lined with worry that hadn’t been there moments before. The concern sobered the excitement welling up inside him in a way no words could have done. ‘Stay here with Timnius and look after the horses and the new men. You can tell them if you feel anyone coming. If there is danger, then remember, I’m relying on you to stay hidden.’

  He nodded. He liked obeying orders. That’s what real soldiers did, and he liked to show he could be a real soldier too.

  ‘And while you are waiting, you can practise your positioning powers. I want you to tell me afterwards everything that happened. All right?’

  He nodded, but felt only dismay. He knew he would disappoint her. Again. She turned to go and the men, hefting their bucklers and weapons, followed in silence. He looked across at Timnius.

  Timnius was a horse-handler, not a fighter, hardly older than the ex-slaves. Arrant liked Timnius because he sometimes let him help groom a horse, even though he did have to stand on a bench to reach.

  ‘Make sure all them horses are well tethered,’ Timnius ordered the ex-slaves who were now all staring at him, wide-eyed and scared. ‘We don’t want any pulling free when they scent blood.’ He glanced at Arrant. ‘All right, lad, you find a safe rock to hide behind, in case any of them soldiers escape and come this way. Any trouble, you duck down and hide, as small as a mouse, understand?’

  He nodded. None of this was new to him.

  He found a safe spot; Timnius approved of it and moved off to tend the horses. Arrant tried to concentrate the way Ligea had taught him, but his mind danced away as it often did when it should have been focusing. Wanting to please her, he tried to count off on his fingers the number of men he sensed, but he soon lost count. He wasn’t sure if that was because there were too many, or just because his counting got muddled.

  He felt a roiling of emotion, but it came at him from every direction, all mixed up: fear, anticipation, excitement, boredom. He couldn’t tell if it came from Ligea’s men, or from the ex-slaves, or from the legionnaires. Nothing had happened yet, he felt sure. He tried to seek out his mother’s feelings, but lost her in the tangle. Then, after a while, all the emotions drifted away and he felt nothing at all.

  He began to feel sleepy. The regular burp of frogs nearby was monotonous; nothing else seemed to move or make a sound. He sat propped against a boulder and looked up at the clouds, now covering the sky from one side to another, promising rain yet not delivering. Lightning made flashes behind the dark billows, so far away he couldn’t hear the thunder. He dozed.

  An ant woke him, crawling across his face. Before he could brush it away, a hot jab of fire poked into his mind, like a scream of pain and despair that was felt rather than heard. He sat up, shaking, but everything around was quiet. The ex-slaves were scattered among the rocks with the horses and packs, some drowsing just as he had been. Timnius stood, alert, leaning against a boulder, looking up the ravine towards the quarry road. Arrant flicked the ant away and took a deep breath to slow down his thudding heart. He knew what had happened: the fighting had started.

  His mother wanted him to listen with his mind, to read what happened. But he didn’t want to know, not if it meant feeling someone else’s pain. Not if it meant that awful jab in his head. Still, he wanted to please her. He tried to listen, to feel, but there was nothing. Just silence, broken only by the reality of burping frogs, snuffling horses, trickling water.

  He wriggled unhappily. Why did he find it so difficult? His mother didn’t. And she didn’t seem to get jabbed in the head, either. At least she never said she did.

  Bored, he looked around for something to do. He played for a while, building a stone bridge across a rill that trickled towards the stream. That was fun.

  Then he felt the emotions once more. Terror, shock, rage: it all rampaged through him, leaving him gasping, breathless, quivering. It was closer. There were big animals. Gorclaks? He tried to feel his mother, but someone else’s terror consumed him. He had no control over anything he felt. Other minds came and wen
t at random, dropping emotions into his, like boulders into a pond. The waves they made eroded the solidity of boundaries, causing pieces of his body to react in unexpected ways. His heart pounded, his mind howled, his stomach heaved.

  He ran, screaming, back towards Timnius and the others, feet scudding, leaping bushes and stones. Some vestige of Ligea’s training asserted itself and he screamed words, not mindless sounds. ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ he shouted, over and over.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Timnius shouted orders to the others, sending them to seek cover. Most of them took only their own horses and packs. Timnius hurled abuse after them, and a few came back to help untie and herd the remaining animals away into the brush. In the confusion, the horse-handler found time to grab Arrant and shake him to stop his yelling. ‘Ocrastes’ balls, will you shut up? Go and hide!’

  Arrant quietened, shuddering, and turned to do as he was told. And saw his mother’s horse, still tethered by the track. She would be awfully mad if the legionnaires stole it. He untied the reins from the bush and led the horse to a boulder. From there he scrambled up onto the animal’s back and into the saddle. He swung its head around and headed away from the rough track.

  He couldn’t go far. Beyond a thin line of brush, the walls of the canyon rose steeply from a tumble of stones into a shiny rock face. Shivering, he halted the horse behind a tangle of thorn bushes. From the saddle he caught glimpses of Timnius, helped by several of the youths, hurrying to and fro untethering horses, slapping their rumps to send them away into the scrub.