Gradually, he rambled to a stop. Her eyes, dark amber flecked with green, smiled into his. He pressed her hand in thanks. His own fell away as he dropped into sleep.
"Powers!" she whispered. "We've got to tell the Temple!"
But outside, footsteps had already burst into a run.
Goat woke to a bucket of cold water sloshing over him. His eyes were gummed shut with blood. Outside, he heard trumpets blasting messages from one side of Temple City to the other. He caught shouting and the creak of carts. Dogs barked and children cried. In here, wherever here was, incense vied with the stink of red-hot metal.
He tried to stand, but the weight of clinking chains kept him trapped on a chair. Finally, one eyelid fought its way open. In the Temple, of all places. Right in the chancel, with ranks of priests, presbyters, and bishops glaring down at him from the choir-stalls. He saw his tribal axe talisman uncovered on his chest and groaned.
"At least get him something to drink!" snapped the healer. Goat turned stiffly, wondering why an imperious young woman in elegant robes was chained to a seat beside him. In the Temple. With…a full court? And the tribes about to burst upon them all! What were they thinking?
"Back with us then?" asked Jash's voice from his other side. "Just in time to—"
Goat couldn't turn his head that far, but he recognised the sound of a slap.
"You're wasting time!" the healer barked. "I've told you what he heard in his vision. The tribes are going—"
"No!" Perrick strode forward, posing in a sunbeam to fling out an accusatory arm. "I've told everyone you two Flatfaces and his bum-chum were plotting away in your jibber-jabber. He's even got the gall to wear his pagan trinket in our very own city! Why anybody trusted a couple of stinking apes running loose around the city in the first place when the tribes are practically at the gates I do not know, but you're not getting away with it." Preening for the Archbishop, Perrick folded his arms. "I've saved the city!"
"No, you haven't, you twat!" yelled Jash, exclaiming, "Ow!" as a Temple official clouted him on the ear.
"Your Holiness," Goat began, "I appeal."
"No, you don't. I find you most unappealing." The archbishop paused to collect the polite titters from his prelates. "Batzorig Chahotai, known as Goat, we of this city have housed you, shod you, fed you for seven years. And this, this treachery is how you repay our generosity!"
Goat worked desperately to moisten his dry throat. "I'm not a traitor! I'm trying to warn you, aren't I? I've done as much as anyone for this city. Since I first managed to crawl out of bed I've never taken a penny I haven't earned."
"Crawled out of bed? Were you too lazy to get up for a decent day's work?"
"No, Archbishop. My spine was broken and so was my skull, but I got myself secretly away to…to someone's riverboat, and from there to the Temple. I'm no traitor! I may walk like a crab, but without this place, I wouldn't be able to walk at all. This is my home! I've told you what I saw when the Powers touched me. The main attacks are from below!"
"Saw in a vision?" scoffed Perrick. "You're not sane, much less an acolyte blessed by the Powers. Who are you to have visions?"
"Novice," the archbishop growled.
Perrick sat down huffily. The archbishop pointed a bejewelled finger at Goat. "And why, Batzorig Chahotai, do you cover your real name with an appellation derived from the caprine?"
"I never done that!" Goat exclaimed. "I can't write."
Again, the court's snickers echoed round the aisles.
"If it please you, your grace," said Perrick, once more standing up. "We call him Goat as a joke, sir. No? Nimble as a mountain goat, see?"
The archbishop sat forward with a rustle of slithering silk. "And that's funny, is it?"
"Well yes, your grace. It's ironic, isn't it?"
The archbishop looked up quizzically from beneath lowered brows. After a long, long stare, he waved an imperious hand. "Explain."
"He's a cripple, see?" Lacking any visible response, Perrick licked his lips and went on nervously, "Your Grace, he can hardly walk a step."
"I do see." The archbishop's voice was as dry as a desert. "My fellow prelates and I will long regale each other with your dagger-sharp wit."
"Look," Goat interrupted, dodging another blow from the guard behind him. "Please, your graces, I'm telling you! We haven't got time! Listen to those war drums coming in the distance if you won't listen to me. It's a distraction! Right this instant, there are hordes of Monkey Tribe warriors crawling through the caves under our feet! We're already under attack! We've got to—"
Perrick shouted, others shouted him down. Goat was too hoarse to be noticed in the din. Why wouldn't they listen? His knuckles whitened on the armrests as he struggled to break free. It was only when the dragon trumpet blared from the highest tower that the racket died to appalled silence.
Ever since news of the invasion had reached from one end of the valley to the other, one citizen from every household had been compelled to attend defence training. Only the archbishop failed to recognise the savage tune.
"That's an attack on the west gate!" exclaimed Perrick into the silence. "See?" He whirled to point dramatically at the prisoners. "Told you they were lying!"
But nobody was paying him any attention. Every eye watched as the prelate military jumped to his feet and hastily bowed. "Your Grace, by your leave," he said, but he was running as he said it. Towards the west gate, Goat noticed with a groan.
"That's not the main assault!" Goat croaked.
Yet, in the distance, rose the clamour of axes on shields and a battle-song that screamed death.
Several of the prelates were upright now, also begging their grace's pardon before they dashed out. "Novice master," the captive healer said to Goat in a not-quite-whisper. "Infirmerer. Quartermaster. And that fat one scuttling out, that's the chancellor. Bet he's off to bury half the treasury for himself!" she shouted after the fleeing figure. A guard cuffed her on the mouth. Spitting blood, the healer laughed. "What? No takers?"
The archbishop snapped his fingers. A maroon-clad mage stood up on the back row and edged along the seats. His gangling progress downwards made him look like some exotic cranefly.
"The mages at the back," the healer said out of the side of her mouth, "they're the powerful ones." Goat looked a question at her. "The ones who keep an eye on the lower ranks," she went on. "And that one taking his time coming down the steps so he can give us a good mind-probe, he's our tutor, Doctor Brainspoon."
"Really?" squeaked Goat, then cleared his throat in an ostentatiously deep way.
"No, that's just what we in the aspirant class call him behind his back. A long way behind his back, actually, because he can read minds. Well, tell truth from lies, anyhow."
Suddenly, the man called Brainspoon was right in front of her. "Indeed, healer trainee." He smiled, a rictus rather than an expression of feeling. She instinctively pulled back until her head was up against the carven wood behind her. "I can do more than tell truth from lies." She turned away, bravado overwhelmed by contact with the invisible barrier that slimed over her. Yet when she looked down, her glorious robes were unsullied. She, however, was limp as riverweed.
Goat saw how drained she was, and fear rode him, but in desperation, he raised pleading eyes to the truthteller's. "War's come to my home and yours, milord." He jerked his head at the high windows. "Can't you hear it? But if you go believing the main force is outside the west gate, you're a fool."
"A fool, eh?" Brainspoon's cold, skeletal fingertips skittered over Goat's forehead, turning him until they were locked eye to eye. Cold moisture that smelt of the grave coiled into Goat's nose, forced apart his lips, nipped at his eyes, and flowed horribly down his ears. Smothering his skin, probing and moving on, it seemed as though green tendrils were growing into the void between the worlds. Roots as fine as hairs grew to shatter the darkness until there was no part of him that Brainspoon didn't know.
The mind-reader concluded. "This is neither spyi
ng nor treason. It is simply a man with a timely warning." He jerked his head as though listening. Blenching, he said urgently, "Archbishop, since the healer reported his words, I've had students probing underground. Batzorig Chahotai, known as Goat, is telling the truth. There is indeed an army swarming the lower caverns. They'll be coming through our sewers. I had a message," he added.
The archbishop peered at him suspiciously. "I didn't see a messenger."
"You wouldn't, Your Grace," he said blandly. "The enemy's target access points are— Bring me a scribe." A youth bobbed up right under his nose. "Oh, you are one. Well get the lid off your inkpot, boy! Their target points are Saint Urtulin's Wash House, St Kalidor's Duckpond, and the Peak Forest Torrent. That's Torrent with two Rs. Well, go on, lad! Take it to the prelate military. You'll find him at the west gate."
The scribe scampered off, an inky cherub thrilled to be trusted with this vital mission.
"Whatever shall we do, Archbishop?" asked one of the remaining prelates.
"Stop panicking, man! We'll fight, of course!"
Above the rising hubbub, Doctor Brainspoon made a forceful announcement. Forceful but somehow intimate, as though he were whispering in each individual's ear. Breaking off the debate, they left purposely for their emergency duties. After all, they'd practised the drill until they could do it blindfold. Literally.
"Sir?" said Goat. "Doctor Brai— Doctor?"
"Two things, if I read your perturbation correctly."
"Yes, Doctor." Goat got the read part. What the perurberters were was anybody's guess.
"Earth wins."
Brainspoon raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"You know, Earth wins." Goat thrust his pagan war god's axe out. "See those four points? Oh, I haven't got time to explain. Just read my head again. Let me show you what you're looking at."
Once again, those chilly fingertips seemed to claw into his skull. For his part, Doctor Brainspoon felt as though he'd plunged into a whirlpool of rage and pain and fevered nostalgia. He merged with Goat, assaulted in each heartbeat by the memories of Batzorig Chahotai. His family. His happiness. His pride when he passed the Twelve Winters trials with little more than a frostbitten toe.
Unlike his cousin, whose mount threw him not a hundred paces from the starting point, jostled by Batzorig's pony, which skidded on a patch of ice. Cousin Dorbei never forgot the way Batzorig had run rings around him. And later, on a friendly hunting trip out on the steppes, Dorbei rode rings over Batzorig, cracking his skull and trampling his body into the sun-hardened ground. Forever after, Batzorig would be Goat the cripple. Goat the madman who raved at the moon. Goat the shunned. Except in the bed he shared with Jash, where he was Beloved.
But best was the plan Brainspoon found in the thoughts of Goat, the points of whose talisman summed up the arts of war: deception, dissension, destruction, and the deadly use of the elements.
The healer—her name turned out to be Astiviar—and Goat were freed but confined to the infirmary. Astiviar sutured and Goat carted away amputated limbs. Jash joined a reluctant Perrick and a cohort of Defenders in the caverns. They poured flaming oil upon the waters and terrible shrieks rose from the tribesmen in the sewers below. Then they tipped down an extinguishing mix of dung and urine from the tanners' vats to more screams. The last of the aggressors underground were hunted through the caverns.
The prelate military got a gong for his valiant defeat of a much smaller force.
The chancellor was imprisoned for theft, but he died before he could reveal where he'd hidden his plunder.
The arrows, axes, spears, catapult balls, and other materiel, as well as the need to rebuild the west gate and parts of the sewage system before cholera wiped out the survivors, put the exchequer into debt.
Taxes were raised, and the price of food rocketed.
Perrick was flogged in front of the congregation. He may not have liked the stables, but he really didn't take well to clearing half-burned corpses from the sewers.
Astiviar was made full healer, her tutor, Doctor Brainspoon, having declared her heroic labours over battle-torn soldiers as thorough a practical exam as they come. His name, actually, was Lervin. But that's another story, because even after war, life goes on.
Goat earned full citizenship that day. He even got it. Lots of citizens crowded round to congratulate him. Others wouldn't touch him with a yardstick.
But in the snug hayloft above the Temple's horses, Jash lay in the arms of his Beloved, Batzorig Chahotai, and they were content.
The Feather and the Paw
Benedict Patrick
An extract from the teachings of the High Corvae
This story takes place in the early days of the world, when the creatures of the forest had not yet lost the ability to speak, when dog and deer and man would tread alongside each other through the woodland, conversing happily about their hopes and misfortunes.
The Leone, the Lionfolk, had long been aware of the great forest that loomed beyond their southern border but had paid it little attention, instead choosing to battle with the Mice and the Owls for spoils and plunder, and taking up arms against the Serpents for their own survival. However, one day, word reached the Lionfolk that the forest had a people living in it. Word also reached the ears of the Lionfolk that these people had a ruler, a king, and that the people of the forest were prospering.
This forest had lain to the south of Lionfolk land for centuries, and they had paid it little heed, right up until the moment they learnt it belonged to someone else. Then, inevitably, the king of the Leone ordered his armies to rank up and march upon the forest's border. After all, if the forest held value for others, then there must be something inside it worthy of the Leone’s attention as well.
Many in the Lionfolk armies were uneasy at the idea of approaching the dark forest. As children, the Leone had been brought up on stories of unnatural beasts that lived in the woods, tales of wolfmen and giant spiders that would carry away Lionfolk young if they misbehaved. Even among the adults, it had long been rumoured the woods were haunted. Settlements on the edge of the forest wisely chose to keep their farmland well away from the long shadows that the trees cast when the sun dipped in the sky. Children would go exploring, never to return. There was rumour also that the king of the forest was not human, that the people who lived under those dark boughs were in the thrall of a monster, a creature known as the Magpie King.
When word of these fears reached the ears of King Reoric of the Leone, he laughed, and then had a dozen of his soldiers flogged and humiliated for allowing bedtime stories to make them quake like children. He rode before his army, blond hair and bushy beard billowing in the wind, the rising sun reflecting off his golden breastplate, and his men felt inspired, ready to face whatever horrors the forest held in store for them.
This resolve lasted only until they came within sight of the forest itself, and within sight of the thing that was waiting for them.
There, perched on one of the treetops at the forest edge, black feathered cloak draped over his shoulders, the beak of his dark metal helm protruding forward like an accusing finger, waited the Magpie King.
The men of the Lionfolk army were uneasy at the idea of advancing further and, eventually, King Reoric travelled to the front line to investigate. The handsome ruler of the Lionfolk strode forward to confront the spectre that haunted his men.
"This place is not for you," the Magpie King said, haltingly, unfamiliar with the Lionfolk tongue. "This land, the forest, is not meant for you. Turn back."
Knowing he could not show weakness before his men, Reoric stood tall before this uncanny creature. He put his hands on his hips, threw his head back, and laughed.
"Be gone from here, monster," he told the Magpie King. "What once was yours now belongs to me. There is no army standing behind you, but you can clearly see the forces I have brought with me. Step aside and let me take what is rightfully mine."
The king of the Lionfolk raised his eyes to see the dark figure�
��s response, but the Magpie King had already disappeared, slinking back into the trees of his home.
Confident his foe had retreated, Reoric made his way back to his command tent and gave the order to infiltrate the forest.
But the Magpie King had not given up. Instead, he had moved back to the safety of the woods, ready to put his plan into action.
The route into the forest had been clear, and the Lionfolk scouts had already determined a path for the army to take through the woods. However, when the soldiers approached the border of the forest, new trees stood where only a few hours ago there had been none.
This was the early days of the forest, during the reign of the first Magpie King, when the people of the forest still had the ability to command the trees. In order to impede the progress of his enemy, the Magpie King had ordered a host of old, vicious trees from the forest's heart to march to the border and to confuse the invaders. When the Lionfolk attempted to cross the forest border, they became lost in a maze of wood, and grew deathly afraid. The legends their parents had told them of that dark forest were coming true.
Not wishing to return to their commander in failure, the soldiers spent their day trying to push through the wooden maze but, eventually, as night began to fall, they made their way back to the king with their heads hanging low. When King Reoric heard what had happened, without speaking he grabbed a burning branch from the fire and carried it over to the forest border. He spent the night walking along the new border, touching the branch to the dry leaves of the new trees, the amber light quickly consuming all it found, sending a beacon into the darkness, a warning to the people of the forest for trying to oppose him.
By morning, the trees had retreated, leaving the Magpie King’s forest open to attack once more. King Reoric again approached the forest to survey the border, and again the Magpie King was waiting for him, out of reach on the uppermost branches, watching and tired. Ordering the trees to keep the Lionfolk at bay had greatly drained the Magpie King's magic and left him fatigued. However, despite his exhaustion, the Magpie King raised his helm when Reoric approached and yet again addressed the invaders.
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