The Pale Maraud

by Andrew McEwan

  Listening, Jerian heard. And watching, saw.

  Thus he was forewarned.

  *

  The unpractised voice which Jerian found sprang from his open mouth as he ran through woodland, forced outwards from behind the dubious shelter of his teeth by his excited lungs. The young man shouted names, spiking trees with their epithets and frightening creatures of dell, brake and glade. He was suddenly carefree, buoyant, full of himself as he ran and ran towards either hell or home.

  He put aside being an adult. He wished to relive earlier times, moments, although precious few, when he had not yet felt the weight of ghosted hands nor the call of songs raised by the advance of opposing armies; innocent days, when neither palm nor word made their manipulative presence felt and he was free to roam. Then an arrow struck him, grazed his chest, and as he fell a wall of silence transfixed the world.

  The blood hardened in his veins. Jerian lay on his side, the longsword drawn. He had been foolish, and paid. Surrounded, he waited for his assailants to move. The trees offered cover but left him blind.

  From out of that silence sounds emerged, telltales he used to number and locate his attackers. They were four, although one made more noise than three, suggesting three was the real measure of his opponents, the one a child or captive. Jerian slid on his belly, prepared his feet. The light slanted past noon through the gauzy vegetation, disguising shapes. He caught the soft glint of an arrowhead; the bowman stooped and cloaked, the shaft of the arrow dark. The wanderer never saw his face. Springing from hiding, noiseless and quick, he slid the blade across the man's throat, blood spotting the quarrel's flights as the string released its energy, sailing this messenger on a dying curve into the woods.

  Jerian kept moving now, hoping to confuse the remaining bowmen, force them to shoot wide. He spotted one, slowed a fraction, then dived over a fallen trunk, the arrow finding bark. There were shouts ringing through the trees, scramblings and curses as the body was found, argument and indecision that allowed him to pick his moment. Sprinting, he leapt between two men, decapitating the first even as he brought the sword round to strike the other. A bow sang, and its iron-shod projectile clawed his shoulder, sticking beneath the thick leather without piercing flesh. Nonetheless, his thrust fell short and the frantic bowman escaped with his life unbleeding, abandoning a small girl in a long white shift, slack-mouthed and bewildered as she took in the carnage. Jerian yanked the arrow loose and snapped it. The girl watched him, frightened, her dark eyes aglow with moisture. Breathing deeply, he wiped his sword before regarding her, thin and dirty, feet bare and toes curled in the powdery leaf litter. It did not occur to Jerian that he was her rescuer. He expected the child to run away. Wished it, that she disappear like an angel. But the girl remained, his now to shelter, to clothe and feed until he could be free of the obligation.

  *

  The river had narrowed considerably when next he came upon it, the white shape of the girl in tow. She smiled at the water, dropped the grimy shift and broke its placid surface. It was evening, and he marvelled at how her pale limbs shone, kicking and splashing, a plume of foam rising from her shoulders, her long hair spilling sheets of flashing silver as twilight closed about them.

  He squatted uneasily on the grassy shore. The sky was clear and the air warm; her laughter sprinkled with a thousand glassy jewels. She had whispered something to herself during the hours of the waning afternoon, poetry the heart knew best, as her language was not his own. Jerian had learned her name at least. It was Udioe, and she came from a city of tall men, a place beyond the horizon that was gold.

  Chapter Thirteen - The Bright Lands

  They proceeded north and east, the sun creamy and the sky mellow, the hills gentle and the land at seeming peace. Jerian made no attempt to talk with the girl. Her words were soft and strange to hear, spoken to no one close at hand. He thought to learn a few, but not to break her recitation. Udioe's voice floated like a mist, a transaction she and the elements indulged in, requesting sunny days and cool nights in return for words of honey. For Jerian, it felt strange not to be alone.

  Udioe took his hand as they walked through a valley speckled in wildflowers. Her tongue was still, the humming that of myriad industrious bees. Letting go she chased a butterfly, yellow wings flickering erratically as she danced with green stalks. And he watched her as he had in most things, taken by her simple beauty, the childish flurry of arms and tangled mass of hair. She was summer itself, her presence a mystery; her identity also. For what was she beyond a name? Who? Had the bowmen intended to ransom her? There were many answers he did not know. He followed where the girl led. He might have picked his own direction - but why, when it was unlikely to differ from this?

  Everything was fresh. There was an abundance of ripe fruit, apples and strawberries and others Jerian failed to recognise but which both he and Udioe ate with zest. The days were long and he seldom tired. The river lay to the south, yet they forded numerous broiling streams. Small deer, like rabbits, capered in groups of up to twelve, darting through copses and bushes; but he never did kill one of them.

  Udioe pelted him with juicy berries and scampered away, laughing, her white shift washed and dazzling.

  Jerian raced after, found the girl slumped in the languid shade of a tree, its bole ancient and peeling. He sat next to her. They rested.

  He must have dozed.

  Horses roused him, pounding the dry earth, six or eight at a gallop. He looked around for Udioe, but there was no sign of her. The low sun reflected off the riders' gleaming armour. Just five, their mounts stretching and the men on their backs poised and tall.

  Luckily Udioe had gone unnoticed. The day after their first meeting Jerian had fashioned her shoes from bark; she had worn these to please him, it transpired, for soon they were lost. Barefoot she had charged off in pursuit of the racing horses, and now returned. It was not long before she was smiling.

  On the fourth day since leaving the wood, the ground began to rise and fir trees cloak each hill's steeply sloping mantle. The weather held for the most part, although they were forced to find shelter the night past when it had rained heavily. Against the moonlit clouds the descending water had sparkled, each of millions of tumbling gems polished to perfection. The water had enticed him into making a cup of his lips, Jerian recalled. Outcrops of stone broke the monotony, grey and brittle intrusions about which grew heather and fern. Udioe was excited. She skipped ahead, impatient, while he measured his pace, teasing her, his eyes on the firs, his boots creaking. They came upon a gravel road, the highway well maintained and the first he had encountered in this land, following it a short distance before the girl once again struck a more direct route up what was fast becoming a mountain to dwarf any Jerian had climbed or seen. It was midday. By sun-fall they had wound a course to that mountain's farther side.

  The sky turned purple in advance of night's black lid. Housed in a narrow valley, the pale rock adopting the colour of bruises, was a cool lake in which they bathed, the quiet a guardian, neither wind nor animal disturbing the sheltering trees. Dressed, the day's march washed from his skin, Jerian wandered as far as a loose gradient of scree. From this vantage he could see down into the greater valley, lights at its heart, the captured flames of dwellings. Udioe stood beside him, her arm looping his. The yellow stars mirrored the silver.

  This was her home, he realised. He was afraid, had no wish to enter it - but unless he did his duty to the shining girl would not be done.

  Sleeping, he wandered again. And waking, felt Udioe next to him.

  Chapter Fourteen - Illhaven

  The walls were of dressed stone and unfamiliar to Jerian. For one hundred paces around the earth was scoured of vegetation. The broad, paved road ascended a low rise, a man-made hill sitting falsely amongst the upthrust crowns of nature. What lay behind the walls the wanderer had no way of knowing, as this was a human work beyond any he had experienced. Udioe's mood was similarly impenetrable. Jerian had thought
her to be delighted, this return for her a happy one; but could no longer be sure. The girl was listless, her smile forced, her poetry contrived, her descriptive voice undecided. Looking up at him as they approached, he saw both sorrow and victory in her large eyes, a gaze portentous and grim...

  There was a rusting portcullis above which shield-men stood watching. They were not they only traffic on the road, but the girl seemingly drew attention. Jerian walked in a half world of blur and mumble. People turned their faces from him, palms outwards as if in refutal. The girl took his hand, his own dry palm itching for the security of metal. But he was not here to fight. He brought Udioe, was her escort, and yet the nearer he came to the drab walls and aged iron, the more dire and threatening the gestures. He could see into the city, the houses and dim streets hung with produce, the wheeled carts and buckled animals. He wanted to run, to flee the closing net. Udioe's grip felt like stone. And then suddenly he was engulfed by shadow; the interior lightened, appeared less foreboding, the relief hitting his stomach like a cold draught of spring water. Shapes resolved into bustling lives, sounds into arguments and speeches. His fear vanished, was replaced by fascination. So many people. So much talk. So little room in the tall men's city.

  Udioe pulled him along. Everywhere was life and colour, foodstuffs and barrels, hectic activity. Hammers fell, striking orange sparks from blazing steel. Goats and sheep clustered in crude pens hastily knitted from saplings. Flags and banners capped every rooftop, while underfoot the street ran wet with sewage.

  The deeper they roamed into the city the more congested it became, with goods piled on goods, people on people, many layers of sustenance and function: chickens, potatoes, tailors and soldiers. These latter shuffled confusedly at their passing, weapons to hand, expressions questioning. However, none made any direct challenge. Jerian guessed they recognised the girl. Surprise registered, thus the perplexed manoeuvring. He saw that a number of soldiers ran ahead. There was a second wall inside the first, the street they followed ending at a sturdy gate that filled its arch like a pressed tongue the gap left by a missing tooth. This gate, or door, was divided in two. The left side ground open without echo and a woman stepped through the portal, slim and elegant in a gown trimmed at neck and hem with gold threads, scrolled borders. Udioe, after a moment's hesitation, let go of Jerian's hand and laced her delicate fingers with those of the woman's. The girl was next led through the gate which closed behind her.

  Jerian was abandoned, accorded neither thanks nor recognition, cut loose in the damp street like a beast of burden, a loyal but stupid donkey. He stood a while, undecided, then turned his back on the gate. He was a stranger, the city a vast unknown. Hunger gnawed at his belly and his joints felt swollen. Where from here? People cast him anxious glances. A few of the soldiers lingered.

  He began walking down the narrow, dirty street, retracing his steps amidst the stink and tilting houses, his senses assaulted from every angle. Without Udioe to act as guide his sole desire was to leave this place, to cast his gaze fully upon the mountains he could now barely glimpse over and between staggered, rotting eaves and towering stacks of crates, to view once more the unbroken horizon. Everything was so close in the city. He could not breathe. Everything was wretched, human, false. He recalled the village the owl had shown him years past, what he had thought then - and now, here, where the clustered world of countless individuals threatened to wash him away on a tide of alien filth and images, compressed shadows sawing at his eyes, their proximity, so many people, scorching his throat with bile.

  The soldiers followed. Jerian was soon lost. The street branched crazily and the buildings seemed all alike, dense and crowded. A thousand faces regarded him, the stranger whose own warped countenance was shielded in a gruesome helm. Perhaps he had been foolish to wear it; but it had not occurred to him to remove the dull metal. The girl had shown no fear of his mask. The girl, it appeared, had protected him.

  Slowing his advance, staying the burgeoning panic, Jerian forced himself to look at his surroundings more intimately. It was still early morning and the city was about its usual business. Or was it? Was the panic he sensed entirely his own, or did others, the common folk within the walls, feel equally uneasy? A greater trepidation? They faced an external threat. Was that the reason? No wonder he was viewed with suspicion. If the people were preparing for a siege, their overt hostility towards him was justified and necessary. For who was this veiled warrior? Friend or enemy? A spy or a mercenary? He had been foolish to leave so many questions unanswered. In truth, Udioe had enthralled him. Jerian had learnt his mistake, and now must act on it. He walked a short distance farther, coming to a market square. Trestles leaned at precarious angles and people milled excitedly. The buildings here were gaudy, two and three storeys, roofs slated, tiles blue and red, making chequered patterns. Men and woman poured in and out of these buildings, drunk and laughing, panic swamped with bravado and feigned confidence. He picked a door at random and entered. If nothing else, he hoped to lose the soldiers. Inside was smoky and dark, the noise redoubled, kegs and tankards spilling pungent brews, a merriment that at once repelled and attracted. The language spoken was unknown to Jerian, but he had been able to translate some of the words the girl used often, enough with luck to more fully understand the situation. And here the folk of this walled fastness chattered freely, paying him scant attention as he wandered amongst them.

  An army was expected, he discovered; but not its direction or number. There was much debate, a simmering violence. The nature of the enemy remained a mystery. That the battle was close no one doubted. Its outcome, however, was less sure and a rich source of argument. Farmers and woodsmen had fled to the city, more and more people whose lives were disordered. They were mostly native city-dwellers who thronged the taverns, and there was in their voices a growing hatred. If the true adversary did not ring them down, they might tear at their unwelcome cousins' innards. Or if the siege was long, those that had come seeking refuge might find instead themselves falling victim to a growing band of the disaffected seeking to lay blame at another's door, even if such actions meant their ultimate destruction. There would be shortages. There would be envy. There would be justice...

  But not all in this drinking house were so vociferous. A group of men, five in total, sat quietly round a table, each, mug in hand, the equal of Jerian in terms of attentiveness. They were tall men, residents, he thought, of that demesne bordered by the inner wall. Whether or not they cared to hear the drunkards' talk, he could not tell. Only that, like himself, they listened.

  *

  Once again he walked below the earth. The dead walked with him, spears inverted, faces expressionless.

  All the world unfolded before him, his to trample, theirs to conquer. It was an unfinished world, blurred where it should be focused, blunt where it might be sharp. It was a world of summer, even in the mountains.

  Jerian realised this world's pain. In his skull it manifested, and in his heart it froze.

  The world leaked into his body as he lay unconscious, cut and naked on a stone floor matted with rotting straw. They had stripped him of clothes and helmet, beaten him with the golden pommels of swords. But they had not killed him; believed he could not die. They had imprisoned him instead.

  His flesh torn, Jerian dared not move. The light was poor, what little there was draining in through a metal grille in the ceiling. A sick yellow light; fitful, it pooled around him like rancid butter. He lay still, waking, sleeping, making no effort to reach the water lowered to him, a stygian host of rustling beetles scrambling over the scraps and crusts dropped from above. The cell was warm, and although he lay paralysed his joints did not stiffen. Slowly the muscles wasted, yet they were muscles no longer bruised.

  When next he woke from indeterminable slumber, Jerian tensed from head to toe. He was weak, his movements ungainly, but he managed first to balance on his knees and second to stand, head tipped to the grate, drinking the light if not the water he found
there.

  Shadows afflicted him, a guard or some other bending to witness his climb. Then the light again, the shadows vanished, footfalls, a shout of alarm...

  Moments later another figure obscured the wan illumination. Jerian caught a glimpse of a man's gaunt face. The light flooded back, stronger now, and a scream of corroded iron resounded in the dank cell as the grille was levered from its bed. An improvised wooden ladder was lowered and the gaunt man descended. A moment more and he stood in front of Jerian, lips parted as if to speak, eyes hollow, black, staring, unable to comprehend.

  The wanderer had not made it beyond the pale walls of the city. Trapped against them, he had chosen not to fight. The soldiers treated him roughly, but that was as nothing compared to what awaited him at the hands of the tall men whose walled enclave was centred by a windowless keep. Horses grazed and were stabled outside this fortress within a fortress, beasts of war who were afforded more space than any of the cramped city-folk. A trench moat surrounded the stone keep, crossed via a drawbridge and in turn centred by the deepest of wells, the key to outlasting a siege. The people here were few and aloof, a race apart. With words and gestures they bade him remove his mask. He did so, they exchanged glances, two men and two women in a gravel courtyard beneath a noon sky the hue of frosted glass. One of the women held up a small mirror and had him look into it. His face was lean and whole. No disfigurement. Jerian thought to conceal his surprise, but the woman had studied him, witnessed the shock the unsullied reflection had caused. She stepped back, spoke a word, and the men drew swords. But again Jerian refused to fight, for even if he was successful against this pair surely there would be others, and no matter how many he killed, still he would remain lost in the city's human maze.