The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  Werewolves. Bloody hell.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he asked, not sure if he truly wanted to know. The little man shrugged, losing his gaze in the fire. His skin was goosepimpled.

  ‘A wolf can travel faster in this country than a mounted man—and more silently, too. I thought we might take a tour round the surrounding hills and make sure there were no hidden surprises. And besides, it has been a while since I have wandered four-footed with my children.’

  Your children.

  ‘It’s one thing to write about it...’ Riven said dubiously. Werewolves. Bloody hell.

  ‘We did find something,’ Murtach went on. He looked at Riven closely. ‘A few miles out to the east we glimpsed the dark girl you and Bicker described from the Isle of Mist. She was wandering the crags. When we approached, she took to the steep places where we could not follow, and so we left her.’ He buried his eyes in the fire again. ‘Wolves can smell fear, and she was not afraid. They can smell other things also: she is dying, Riven.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ A chill caught him in the stomach.

  ‘I mean she is dying. She is bloodied and starved, though still swift on her feet. But how she is surviving out there, I cannot say...’ He trailed off. ‘Is she really your wife?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He saw dark eyes with no recognition in them. But Bicker had seen her wandering Glenbrittle, and she had been to the bothy. She had tried to come home.

  I don’t know.

  ‘I don’t know what she is,’ he said, blinking hard. ‘She doesn’t know me. She hardly seems real. I don’t know what she is.’

  The little man pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulders. The drizzle was already soaking it darker.

  ‘I’m half-inclined to pursue her tomorrow; perhaps if we had her, we would have a few more answers to all this. But I’m not sure we could catch her if we tried. I don’t think it is meant to happen. She is not merely a girl.’ He paused. ‘Maybe she is suffering the same fate as Minginish,’ he said obscurely. And then he stood up in one fluid movement. ‘It is my watch. Dawn is not far off. I’ll dress and let you get some sleep.’

  But Riven did not think he would sleep again that night.

  BY DAWN THE sky had cleared and was a hard, pale blue. They creaked awake and set to rousing the fire and cooking breakfast, the Hearthwares cursing the chill weight of their armour, hopping up and down to get the blood moving through their limbs. They ate breakfast standing, Riven wishing momentarily for coffee. But then Ratagan handed him a battered silver flask with a wink and he spluttered over strong barley spirit, the last of the cold burnt out of him. They rubbed down the horses roughly, saddled them, and then were on their way again, their fire circle buried under stones and heather tufts. They began to pick a path down out of the high land to where the towns and villages of Ralarth and its fiefs stretched green below them into the far distance, silent under the early sunlight.

  They were heading northeast, the morning light in their right eyes and their shadows cast back towards the Skriaig and Ralarth’s western border. If they strained their eyes they could make out the clusters of houses and farmyards that were Suardal to the north, the pencil-thin bars of smoke already rising from them and the meagre herds moving across the open country like ants.

  The day passed with little talk. It seemed the silence of the hills was infectious. They rode steadily downwards until it was grass under their steeds’ hoofs instead of rock, and there were trees and calm rivers meandering in the dips of hills. The sky clouded, grew overcast and heavy, and they waited patiently for the rain to start in on them again, knowing they would be in the warmth of Ivrigar by nightfall.

  Riven kicked his mount ahead until he was level with Murtach at the front of the column, Fife and Drum trotting effortlessly off to one side. Oddly, they did not seem to bother the horses. Perhaps they had been in the Rorim long enough for the animals to become used to each other.

  ‘Tell me about the shapeshifting. Tell me about magic,’ Riven said.

  Murtach looked at him with raised eyebrow. ‘Your own stories go a long way towards doing that.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  The little man sucked his teeth for a moment. ‘Magic. Now there’s a thing. A strange thing. Do you know, Michael Riven, that I and my father are two of the lucky ones?’ He turned to Riven. ‘They had witch hunts here a generation ago, or more. They rooted out those folk who were not... ordinary, and banished them from Minginish. People are afraid of what they cannot understand.’

  Werewolves and wheelchairs. Riven nodded.

  ‘The Warbutt was my father’s friend. He saved him from a mob. He could not save my mother.’ There was no inflection in Murtach’s voice. It had gone flat as flint. ‘As time went on, Guillamon became a trusted adviser, and eventually what you see now. But to do that, he had to forswear his... abilities. He has hardly used them since. Perhaps he has lost them by now. It is of no matter. These days we can joke about it, ask him to turn people into toads. Myself—I do not forget. An entire society was uprooted and destroyed, vanishing into the high mountains, never to return. And why? Because people were afraid of differences. My father has told me. There were witches who healed children and cattle, wizards who worked great things for lords. They were all swept away. And the land was made the poorer for it. The weaker.’ He smiled.

  ‘Mayhap if we had a few more wizards among us we would not now be in the straits we are in.’ Then the smile left him. ‘But there are those who blame the present plight of Minginish on the misdeeds of the past. They believe that the wizards and warlocks are still up there, in the mountains, working this evil on the land in revenge. People like Bragad believe this. They would be content to see another purge of the suspects, such as myself. It is one reason why you are here now, my friend. To keep Bragad from seeing another wizard in you. Such things would give him the freedom of action he craves. There would be pyres up and down the Dales and himself lighting them, redeeming the people. And they would believe him. In times like these, they are frightened enough to believe anything.’ He seemed to sniff the air. ‘The year turns already. It winds down into winter, and yet by rights it should be barely midsummer. There is indeed magic walking the earth. Perhaps it is in you. Perhaps it is in the dark girl who looks like your dead wife. I do not know. I think you carry our ruin in your pocket, Riven, but I cannot say how. And Minginish itself—it has a hand in it also, I believe. Your books do not tell the whole story. One man never can.’

  ‘Where did the magic come from?’ Riven asked.

  ‘You know the tale—you wrote it yourself. From the Dwarves, the Deep Ones of the Greshorns, the oldest folk of the earth. They gave the magic to a cripple named Birkinlig, and he took it to the lower land and in turn bestowed it upon his friends, his household. People came from far and near to see the wonders they wrought, and eventually, like the Myrcans, some of them accepted service with the lords of Minginish. Others went their own way, delving farther into the secrets that had been revealed to them, living in the deep woods of the high crags, visited by petitioners who sought aid. And so they scattered over Minginish, becoming the Hidden Folk. And now they are gone.’

  ‘Why a wolf?’ Riven asked him.

  ‘I can be anything up to a bear if you like. Or anyone. I found Fife and Drum as cubs, the dog-wolf slain by hunters, the she-wolf dying. And so I became a she-wolf myself, and rescued them and suckled them. And they became my children. Does that shock you, Michael Riven?’

  ‘A little.’

  Murtach chuckled. ‘It is not in your book, at any rate. In it I am an unreliable type, with too much of the wolf within me—is that not so?’

  ‘The stories are not always exact pictures. You know that.’

  ‘Yes, but it is interesting all the same. And now we find that the people who are troubling the Dales most at the moment are out of your own world—Bragad and Jinneth. Is there anyone else we should know about?’

  Riven shook his head wearily, though he t
hought there might be. Then he rejoined Ratagan down the column. Talking to Murtach was like fighting a duel, at times.

  Jenny is out there now, in those jagged hills to where the magicians and witches of the world were banished.

  He was beginning to see a glimmer of sense about this world.

  THEY BEGAN TO meet people in their travelling, and actually came upon a gravelled road that some lord of Ralarth had laid down decades or centuries ago, the wagon ruts deep in it. The Hearthwares and Myrcans were greeted with friendliness and something like relief by the people they came upon—merchants in covered carts, farmers with flocks and herds, women bent under loads of firewood or water, children trailing behind them and eyeing the armoured figures on the big horses in wonder. Fife and Drum received a few wide-eyed stares, but for the most part the people seemed to recognise them and their owner. Murtach was greeted by name more than once, and one of the Hearthwares bent to receive a spray of honeysuckle from a dark-eyed girl who ogled him with adoration, to the amusement of his comrades.

  At each village they came to, Murtach halted the company and paused to talk to the headman. Riven could not hear their speech, but there were always shakings of heads and grim looks. Some villages had wolf skins pinned to their doors, freshly flayed, and one they came to had the head of a Rime Giant set on a stake outside the headman’s house. The eyes had sunken in and the skull was showing through the thinning hair of the pate. A crow perched on it while they watched, and poked hopefully at the sockets.

  They moved on quickly, for they would have to retrace part of their way to make Ivrigar before nightfall. Murtach had learned of a great wolf pack that seemed to roam west of the Skriaig and had been seen by a few desperate hunters seeking deer beyond Ralarth’s borders. It was as great as an army, they said, and Rime Giants walked with it like shepherds. It was heading east. And there were grypesh also—the rat-boars who haunted the forests at night and stole into the streets when the moon was dark. They had carried off children. And where had the Hearthwares been then? And where had been Lionan’s fighting men, the retainers who were bound to protect Suardal as the Hearthwares were? No one had seen them for days. And the gates of Rim-Suardal were closed.

  They rode on. One village had slain three men from the north who had tried to steal food, and they hung like scarecrows on a crude gibbet. Murtach ordered them cut down, white with anger. Hearthwares were the law in the land. He told those responsible their hamlet would burn if it happened again. They listened to him in stony silence—a dozen half-starved men with their womenfolk clustered behind them, infants whimpering at their skirts. The column gave them what food they had left, and rode on.

  The farther west they went, the worse it became. They passed two prosperous-looking farmsteads that had been abandoned completely. One of them had the carcasses of wolves and grypesh, leathery and stinking, littering its yard. The mood of the party grew sombre. Even Ratagan seemed to have forgotten how to smile, and the sternness of the Myrcans deepened.

  They turned south at last and began heading towards Ratagan’s home as their shadows lengthened and the second day of the patrol drew to a close. None of them had any particular wish to be abroad after dark. It began to rain, a steady stream that blew in from the east and beat against the stony flanks of the western hills. The Hearthwares shifted uncomfortably as the water ran down inside their armour, and fumbled oilskin cloaks from their saddle bows. The Myrcans let it run down their faces unheeded.

  Then Tagan, the tracker, stopped and stood in his stirrups, his head up and his eyes narrowed. Murtach joined him. The two wolves stood by his horse with their ears pricked, and suddenly they began growling deep in their throats. Tagan pointed into the darkening hills, and Riven followed his finger. There was movement there amid the tumbled rocks that the dusk was making into a maze of shadow.

  A thin sound beside him, and Ratagan had unsheathed his axe from its case at his pommel. The rain dripped from it. It ran down his forehead and into the deepset eyes below, trickling into his beard.

  ‘I believe we have company, my friend,’ he said softly.

  Down the line, swords hissed out of oiled scabbards. A mule began to bray in alarm and a Myrcan struck it at once with his staff until it fell silent, blood oozing from its nose.

  ‘Grypesh!’ Murtach exclaimed quietly. They were moving in a dark tide along the contours of the hills. Riven could not make out individual animals, only the shape of the pack.

  ‘How many?’ he asked.

  ‘Three, four score,’ Isay said from behind him. There was a dreadful eagerness in his voice. Riven tried to dredge up images of their foes from his books, but the reality of the rain, the darkness, and the approaching pack left him no time to think.

  Murtach spun his horse around like a centaur. ‘There are too many,’ he said. ‘We must ride—ride for Ivrigar. Luib, free the mules. Leave them. Tagan, lead on!’

  And they sped forward with the squeals of the pack to their right as they were sighted, the clods and stones scattering from their horses’ hoofs, into a full, tearing gallop in the twilight. The rain beat at their eyes and the lurch of the uneven ground rollercoasted beneath them, jostling them in their saddles despite the grip of their tired knees. Riven felt a thrill of fear in his stomach, like liquid ice poured into the bottom of his lungs; and then it was all he could do to steer his terrified horse in Murtach’s wake, and stay aboard as it swerved past rocks and bushes, and leapt hollows with the thunder of the other horses like a storm in his ears, and the rain a freezing hail in his face that blinded him.

  Behind them, they heard the death screams of the abandoned mules, and their steeds accelerated even more whilst the grey ghosts of Murtach’s wolves darted beside them at an impossible speed. They clattered downhill as though they were chasing an enemy. But the enemy was behind them. They could hear the squealing roars of their pursuers over the tumult of their mounts’ hoofs. The horses were terrified, the foam flying from their muzzles and their eyes circled with white. But they were nearly spent also.

  Ahead, Murtach shouted and slowed. In a wide bowl there was the night glimmer of a stream which was churned to flashing silver as they thrashed through it, the spray soaking them to their thighs. And beyond it was the great black bulk of a building, rearing up against the night sky with lights flickering yellow and bright in its blankness.

  They milled together and dismounted, the two Myrcans immediately running to the rear to intercept the pursuit. Riven saw something like a black tide sweep out of the stream, and then there was the green glow of eyes everywhere in the chaotic darkness, and the Myrcan staves were whistling and cracking down to break bones and shatter skulls. The air filled with a crescendo of screams in which the horses joined. Riven hung on to his mount’s bridle grimly whilst it bucked and reared in a desperate effort to get away. Warm slobber hit him in the face. He heard Murtach shouting, someone banging on timber frantically. Armoured figures drew their swords and shouted incoherently, joining the fight to the rear. He saw Ratagan’s axe flash like a star and bury itself in a hairy snout, splintering black blood.

  Grypesh. They were like something out of a nightmare. They had the heads of rats; rats five feet long. But from the sides of their mouths projected the glistening tusks of boars, and they were crowned with great, bristling manes of stiff hair that ran down to the base of their spines. Their feet were clawed, but the legs were squat and powerful, the bodies ending in a hairless snake of tail. They squealed and roared alternately. Riven saw a Hearthware go down as one charged and sent him flying. He was immediately engulfed by three of its fellows. His ironclad limbs flailed in a scrum of fur and claws and wet teeth. But then Luib had stepped in, braining the beasts left, right and centre, hauling the stricken man back.

  There was a rumble, and then torchlight spilled out over them as the gates of Ivrigar were opened. They laboured inside, trailing their horses by the reins, half of them fighting a ferocious rear guard battle whilst the grypesh massed within the ga
te and strove to win through to the courtyard beyond.

  The rain grew heavier, slicking the ground. Riven drew his sword. The horses were free in the courtyard now, cantering about in terror whilst Ivrigar’s people tried to control them. Others were fighting to shut the gate, pushing against the sheer weight of the beasts in the gateway.

  They’re trying to get to me.

  The thought came to him in an instant as he stood, hesitating over whether to join the fight. The grypesh were clawing over their own dead to get through the gate whilst swords and staves and Ratagan’s axe took a fearful toll. But why?

  And then Ratagan went down with a grypesh at his throat, and Riven forgot about hesitating. He waded in with his sword swinging, and felt the jar down his arm as it almost decapitated an animal. He swung again and again, and felt the slow, red pain in his shoulder and ribs grow with each swing. The world flickered in his sight. He helped Ratagan away, the big man leaning on him for support and cursing his lameness.

  And then it was over. The gates boomed shut, and the last grypesh in the yard was slain. The rain covered Riven’s face, trickling off the armoured Hearthwares in streams. They were gasping like sprinters. Outside they could hear the rest of the pack throwing themselves against the timber of the gate and the outer wall. There was desperation and hate in their squeals. Riven felt sick.

  ‘Well met, my friend,’ Ratagan croaked. ‘We are for ever saving each other’s neck, you and I.’ He halted, striving to get his breath. ‘A fine tradition. Long may it—may it continue.’ And his grin was a flash of teeth in the torchlight and the flame-kindled rain.

  ‘Ratagan. My lord.’

  A woman’s voice in the crowd of warriors and attendants, and a slight figure appeared, hooded against the rain, the Ivrigar people making way for her. She threw the hood back, revealing gold hair that shone in the rain.

  ‘Come inside. You are hurt, and I must welcome you back to your home.’