‘Building some new den,’ she suggested.
Hesprec nodded cautiously. ‘First amongst Serpent’s gifts is learning. Can you get close enough to see what they’re about?’
Shyri’s eyes widened at the thought but she nodded resolutely. That spared Maniye the rest of the day’s march, leaving her to suffer in the tree’s shade while Hesprec rationed out their water.
‘Why is this come back to me?’ she croaked, after waking for the fifth time.
‘You walked too far, dipped too deep into your strength,’ Hesprec suggested. ‘We should have stayed still, even in the Plague’s shadow.’
‘We are still in that shadow,’ Maniye said bitterly. She knew that their travel had taken them such a small way – she could have run that far in a day without tiring herself, if she was well and strong.
‘We are under many shadows,’ Hesprec responded.
When Shyri came back, it was with no story that made any sense. The Plague People had taken lanterns out to a great flat rock in the grasses. It had been the haunt of lions and lizards once; now they had marked it out as their place, as though some great Plague festival was due. Once sunset had been and gone, Maniye could even make out the glimmer of it, cold and still as the enemy’s white-walled fortresses. And yet they had not brought their beasts to spin webs about the place and fence out the world. Instead they had just planted their lamps, marking out the spot and then abandoning it. Shyri said they were still nearby and overhead, but the rock itself they avoided. None of it made any sense. Maniye was still trying to formulate questions when Hesprec sat up with a hissing sound, then Stepped to a brown snake that lifted its head and tasted the air with its tongue.
Moments later she was a girl again, tugging at Maniye’s arm. ‘Go,’ she said urgently. ‘We go now.’
‘The Plague?’ Shyri’s knife was in her hand, her eyes on the sky.
‘Not the Plague. There are other shadows. Come on!’
They froze as a new voice broke in. ‘What has no feet yet always runs?’ it rasped, sounding as though it came from a man far closer to death than Maniye was. ‘The Serpent never did stay to finish a fight, never! Why else would the world need a fourth brother, to have held back the Plague People? And yet where are our altars? Where our priests and sacrifices? Banned by the Serpent that flees into a crack in the earth at the first tremble of the enemy.’
Hesprec was very still. ‘There is no fourth brother,’ she said, as much to herself as in reply.
Maniye’s weakness was abruptly far, far worse. She felt panic start in her, that she would be unable to fight. The Champion caught it and stamped it out, and she Stepped into its great bulk, hoping that it would lend her the strength to move its ponderous limbs.
A cadaverous man was striding towards them through the grass, and for a moment she thought it was the same one, the same Rat Speaker they had faced in the Horn-Bearer fortress. This was some ancient who had once lived between the Lion’s paws, though. He wore a cloak that hung about his bony frame and billowed like smoke, and his leathery skin was hideous, pockmarked and ragged with the traces of little teeth. About his feet the grass swayed and heaved with the passage of many bodies.
‘Did you think I would not know, when you passed through my domain?’ he asked. His voice was painful to hear, as tattered and scratched as he was.
‘You have no domain,’ Hesprec stated. ‘You only hide in the Plague’s shadow and eat their leavings.’
‘I have all domains abandoned by other gods,’ the Rat Speaker said, or the Rat said through him. ‘The Plague has no gods nor souls. But it has bones and meat, even though it is empty. How’s that for a riddle, Serpent Child?’
He strode closer, but Maniye saw how he stopped beyond the reach of Shyri’s knife. The Rat valued its mouthpiece for as long as it wanted to hear its own voice. Her ears flicked, and she saw other spindly-limbed men and women creeping towards the tree, some limping on two legs, others crawling on all fours. Not many yet – a half-dozen maybe – but probably enough.
‘You will run, O Serpent, as you always run,’ the Rat Speaker sneered. ‘As you fled your kingdom once, so you will flee back there again and live under the Pale Shadow, and tell your stories about how wise you are. And the rest of the world will rattle to our feet only, in the end.’ His eyes flicked to Shyri. ‘Oh, Laughing Child, what shame you bring to your god, to side against me now the world’s end is come.’
Shyri’s reply was to lunge forwards, leading with a knife that became the bronze-toothed jaws of a hyena. The Rat had misjudged how swift she was, and for a moment she had her teeth in the Speaker’s hand, worrying off a couple of fingers, then snapping at the ground and coming up with a crushed grey body in her jaws. She fell back as the grass shivered with motion all around her, back to the clear ground about the tree. For a moment the Rat Speaker just stood there, staring at his mangled hand as though unsure what to do with it.
‘The Champion and the Laughing Child will be our meat,’ that wasted voice proclaimed. ‘The Serpent we shall take, and torment and gnaw until she breaks and lets us in, and she shall be our Speaker to go to Atahlan. We shall make the Serpent eat its own tail.’
* * *
They all told each other they had chosen a meeting at midnight because the Plague People were more creatures of the sun than the moon, notwithstanding their recent night attack. The true people of the land had the noses of wolves, the glinting eyes of lions and tigers. The darkness was part of their world rather than the barren domain of the invader.
Kailovela thought to herself that it was a grand statement, but the truth of it was that they crept out under cover of darkness because most of those camped across the Plains there would have wanted to stop them. Yes, the Mother of the Bear had chosen this path, and the Kasra of the River, and some several chiefs and priests of the Plains, but even amongst the River Lords their ruler did not control the thoughts in their heads. How few would really countenance going to trade words with the Plague People rather than blows. To most it would be foolishness at best, treachery at worst.
Loud Thunder led them, because he would not be left behind and because he could not accept that not every dire consequence was a weight for his shoulders. Asman, the southern Champion, walked at his elbow, speaking softly of old times they had shared. Kailovela caught the names ‘Many Tracks’ and ‘Broken Axe’, people she would never know; places she had never seen. Asman had brought a handful of River warriors, none of them looking keen on the business but all with bows as tall as they were. Thunder had a couple of Wolf hunters and Lone Mountain, his cousin. Mountain had also refused to be left behind, but Kailovela was worried about the set of his jaw. He had been the first to feel the sting of the Plague People. Their darts and their Terror had come close to killing him. Lone Mountain carried fear with him, now, like something lodged in an old wound. That was why he came, of course. What the Bear could not ignore, it would fight.
In the midst of these fighters came the talkers, Kailovela amongst them. They had the little monster, of course, and they had the reluctant Galethea, and Empty Skin. And somehow we will turn the hearts of the Plague People, except surely they have none. Mother had been plain, though: everyone knew that this first tentative contact would not end anything, or even change much. But it was something new, in a war that had been lost each day.
Would there be demands? Would there be any comprehension at all? Kailovela had a thought that even if the individual words could be translated from one world to another, the meaning would stop at the border. How can we have anything to say to them? Despite it all, some small part of her was curious, even through her fear.
And fear will kill us the moment it is off the leash. Or worse. Will my wings be enough to carry me away?
But by then they had already set out into the dark, flanked by wolves.
Kailovela wished that the two Coyote were with them. Two Heads Talking and Quiet When Loud had always seemed ready to dance past all the spears the world mi
ght throw at them. Except that Quiet had Kailovela’s son in her arms right now, and besides, her own swelling belly had stripped her of freedom and fire; coming down to earth, becoming just as trapped as the rest of them. And surely all my thoughts should be bent towards my son. Shouldn’t he be all I think of, like a proper mother? But she shook the accusation away. Right now her child was the last thing she could afford to think of; let her cover her guilt with that.
She was torn from her reverie by a shout from one of Asman’s people, who had been watching the sky. For a moment their entire embassy was on the point of dissolution, everyone about to bolt into the grasses in every direction. Kailovela caught a glimpse of the swooping shapes, though, and knew them: not the ephemeral wings of the Plague People but the silent vanes of owls.
They stooped down before Loud Thunder and Stepped: two priests with grey faces, the white bar across their eyes standing out in the moonlight. The woman was Seven Mending, who had been a terror to Kailovela since she had left the Eyrie. The man was Grey Herald, who had gone to the dark places of the Plains to reawaken the Bat Society.
‘So, you’re going to do it after all, then,’ Mending said, without preamble. Her blind-seeming eyes took them all in at once and disapproved.
‘Mother’s will,’ Thunder mumbled, shrugging.
The Owls shared a moment of silent communion, and then Herald said, ‘Someone will tell the others of your deaths. It may as well be us.’
‘Raise no spear against the Plague Men unless they do it first,’ Thunder warned them, and Mending laughed.
‘If it comes to that, Son of the Bear, it will be too late to save any of you. The Terror will eat you whole.’
‘And you?’
‘Owl’s first child fought the Plague when we came to these lands. We are proof against them.’ Seven Mending stared past the Bear at Galethea. ‘This is your great weapon, then, your tame monster? And you believe it will make peace with its words?’
Thunder had obviously run out of rhetoric for he just pushed past them with a mutter about needing to press on, and his entourage went forward under the shadow of the Owls.
Towards midnight they saw the glow, like a piece of the moon fallen to earth. There was where the Plague People had marked the meeting place, just as the little monster had claimed. Asman, Thunder and Seven Mending conferred briefly, and then one of the Wolves and Grey Herald were sent off to scout, to make sure there were no warriors waiting in the grass. Kailovela could only think about the speed the Plague People could fly. After all, Eyrie raiders would not need to be crouching within spear-cast to spring an ambush; why should the enemy?
And yet Wolf and Owl both returned, stating that there was a party of Plague People within sight of the rock but not hiding, and some of them at least not seeming to be warriors. Kailovela felt it, the last teetering moment when someone might say, ‘This is a bad plan,’ and lead them back the way they had come.
They went to the rock.
It was strewn with the cold lanterns of the Plague Men, which burned pale blue or greenish white, and put Kailovela in mind of ghosts and dead things, as if she needed much prompting. At the edge of the rock they paused, knowing that someone must ascend into that unwavering light to show the enemy they had arrived. And surely that first soul would not be instantly struck down, for what would that gain the Plague People? But the Plague People did not think like normal humans, and to stand unshielded before their gaze was a terrible thing.
She saw Thunder girding himself to do it, but in the end Lone Mountain went first, taking his fear in his hands and carrying it as he stepped from boulder to ledge until he was at the top, a huge man in a cloak of bright Riverlands cloth washed almost grey by the lamps.
He held out his empty hands and stood there and at first nothing happened. The breeze ran its hands whisperingly across the grass on every side and the enemy made no move, either in war or peace. Kailovela was close enough to see the slight tremble in Lone Mountain’s arms.
She heard the sound too late, recognizing it only when the little monster tugged at her sleeve. The flurry of the grass around became the whicker of wings above, and with no more fanfare than that, the enemy were upon them.
She saw the warriors first, and part of her waited for the Terror to annihilate her, to make her no more than a bird, lost in a foreign land. They had their killing rods, and their eyes were on Lone Mountain, who would have made three of them even had they not been just hollow husks. There was a frozen moment when everyone was almost reaching for a weapon, almost running, almost losing themselves to fear.
But the warriors alighted on the far side of the rock and just stood there, and now there were more of them, not flying but pushing through the grass just like normal people. Some looked like the warriors, others were different – darker or stouter or more slender. One was a woman who might have been cousin to Galethea, though more pale even than she.
Lone Mountain backed off a few steps, to his edge of the rock. ‘How was this supposed to work, then?’
‘Come down,’ Thunder told him. ‘Unless you’ve learned how to make their words suddenly?’
Mountain scrabbled off the rock with more haste and less dignity than he had ascended.
The little monster stepped past Kailovela and her own wings flared into life, carrying her in a smooth arc past the bloom of the lamplight and off towards the Plague camp. Her high voice shrilled back to them in her chittering tongue, a clear invitation.
‘Who goes up?’ Obvious to all of them, what the creature was waiting for.
Galethea must, of course, but the silence stretched out. Kailovela saw that nobody quite trusted her on her own, yet nobody wanted to stand beside her in the harsh glare of the Plague People’s attention. How long could anyone stave off the Terror, pinned by their gaze in such a way?
But someone must, and Kailovela even started to say ‘I . . .’ before another slight figure stepped around her.
‘I have no soul to lose, no shape to be trapped in,’ Empty Skin said matter-of-factly. ‘So it shall be me. Come on, Pale Shadow. Let’s go meet our people.’
She took Galethea’s wrist and tugged, and then the two of them were ascending. That was their delegation then, an empty child and some bastard offshoot of the Plague People themselves.
She looked to the little monster, wondering if she would take her part in this, too. Perhaps she would stand there and talk on behalf of both parties, and then clasp her own wrist in agreement. But, bound to Kailovela as she was, the diminutive creature was not of the same world, and perhaps the Plague People did not trust her either. She had brought this meeting about, but now she kicked her little heels on the sidelines and looked often to the east, where her people reigned. She had been a prisoner of the Eyrie a long time, body and mind.
A heartbeat later the Plague ambassador dropped down to join them, and Kailovela’s stomach clenched to see him. They were wrong, she realized; they were wrong to do this, but equally they were wrong to think that the Plague Men were things of daylight. This was a night creature, a shadow creature. It was their priest, the grey-faced man with the blank white eyes that the Owl’s facepaint was only an echo of. He smiled, as a man of peace might, but it was only a mask stretched over the appalling hungry hollowness of him.
* * *
They had tried to fight, but mostly they had tried to run. The Rat Speaker himself seemed no great threat, but the grasslands around them were alive with movement, and ragged people would constantly leap at them, armed with no more than their grimy teeth and nails. Shyri tackled them for the most part, darting in to slash at necks and arms, or Stepping to crush legs and sever hamstrings in her jaws. Maniye just limped along as a wolf with Hesprec coiled loosely about her shoulders, an inconsequential and familiar weight. When any of the Rat’s votaries came too close, the Serpent would strike out, driving her fangs deep for just long enough to leave behind a gift of poison and then recoiling back to her nest between Maniye’s shoulder blades.
Then Maniye found a burst of speed from somewhere, tapping the last of her reserves to race out from under the Rat’s shadow, clutching for precious distance with Shyri at her heels. She never had a sense that she had escaped. Every step told her that the shamblers and the scuttlers were drawing close from every quarter of the Plains. Yet when she found another rock and collapsed atop it, virtually dragging her hind legs and tail clear of the grass, she had some few breaths to regain her strength, some few moments for last words.
Hesprec’s face was hard and angry. ‘Always the Rat finds some bolt-hole, no matter how often we overturn his altars and burn his nests.’
Shyri sat down heavily. ‘Yes, let’s talk of past things. Not like we’re in a hurry.’
Hesprec nodded to concede the point and turned her gaze to Maniye. ‘There are fights knives can’t win.’
‘Knife,’ Shyri corrected. ‘Didn’t see either of you stabbing anyone.’
‘Just so. Maniye, I need you to come on a journey with me.’
Maniye frowned. ‘What?’
‘To a place you’ve been before, many times. Because we are not fighting those bodies out there. We are fighting the thing they have given themselves to, which lives elsewhere.’
‘Now?’ Maniye demanded. ‘That journey now? What of your rituals, your places of power?’
Hesprec looked about them. ‘Ah yes, those would be fine things, but I have only my two hands and the Serpent. But you have been in and out of that place since the Rat first sank his teeth into you. His filth is in your veins still, sapping your strength. Will it be enough to carry us to him? Unless we make the attempt we cannot know. Shyri.’ She looked at the Laughing Girl. ‘Can you keep your knife busy while we do this?’
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 31