The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  The right-hand way seemed to be the northern slope of a sharp ridge. Riven found he was trudging with his left leg higher than his right. He slipped and skidded on ice beneath the snow, falling to his knees. A blast of wind struck him like a great hand and knocked him sideways. He fought himself upright, almost blind. Ratagan bumped into him from behind and helped him fight his way forward. They both yelled at Bicker to slow down, to wait, and he looked back at them impatiently.

  Something happened to the storm. It was as if it had suddenly climbed a dozen octaves. The wind shrieked across the mountainside like a gleeful and demented being, tearing the breath out of their throats and clubbing them to the rock. It gouged chunks of snow out of overhangs and hollows and sent them flailing along the ground like tumbleweed. They were beaten flat by its blast, and sank their numb fingers into ice and snow, seeking a purchase there to prevent them being plucked off the mountain. Riven felt Ratagan gripping one of his pack straps, anchoring him. Ahead Bicker clung to an ice-covered boulder like a desperate spider.

  And then the howling came over the wind, loud and gloating—and very close. Riven’s head snapped up instinctively into the blast of the wind, but the raging snow forced his eyes shut.

  Behind them Jinneth screamed into the storm.

  Riven twisted in Ratagan’s grip and looked back, shielding his eyes in one hand. It was hard to see, but he thought he could make out movement there—figures tumbling in the blizzard. Shards of other cries were swept away by the wind.

  Ratagan hauled himself upright. ‘It attacks!’ he cried, fumbling for his axe, but he slipped and the wind pushed him off his feet. Riven reached out for him frantically as he slithered through the snow.

  Jinneth ran into view, her hands still bound in front of her. She fell to the ground and crawled through the snow, which whipped up in a cloud around her. She was shouting something that Riven could not hear. Snow had invaded every crevice of his features, had filled his ears and fought to seal shut his eyes. He grabbed her as she came to him.

  ‘Where is Isay? What happened?’ But the storm snatched the words out of his mouth.

  He saw it then, looming out of the blizzard like winter incarnate, the icy points of its eyes glowing like stars. Its fur was matted with snow and ice hung in great spears from its blunt jaw.

  Incredibly Isay was upright, fighting it. His staff was battering the Giant as it advanced, and it tried to ward off his blows with great sweeps of its arms. But he was faltering. His feet could find no sure grip in the snow and ice and loose rock, and time and time again he half fell only to redeem himself with the skill of an acrobat.

  Even as Riven watched, the Myrcan’s staff snapped in his grip, shivering into two pieces, and Isay was smashed aside by one slap of a shaggy arm. The Rime Giant howled again, and met Riven’s eyes.

  It knows who I am.

  He was frozen to the ground, Jinneth’s weight half on him, anchoring him there. He could not move.

  I’m going to die.

  He heard Ratagan yelling into the wind and Bicker answering, but they were too far away. Nothing could stop those eyes. The Giant rushed on him like a mountain, its mouth agape—and flinched as a football-sized chunk of rock struck it in the head.

  Ratagan was up the slope with Bicker, and they were raining lumps of frozen stone down on the creature, their faces contorted with shouting that Riven could not hear.

  Another rock struck the Giant in the jaw and splintered blood into the wind. It roared with fury and started upslope.

  Isay appeared from nowhere with the broken end of his staff in his hand. He stumbled behind the giant, and in a thrust that took his feet out from under him, stabbed the splintered end into its groin.

  The Giant screamed shrilly and spun round, falling to one knee with its blood pouring out in a black, steaming rush on to the snow. Isay rolled away like a man possessed as it tumbled forward after him. It fell on its face, still screaming, and began dragging itself in pursuit, its legs kicking feebly, but Ratagan and Bicker climbed on its back like intrepid mountaineers. Riven saw Bicker’s sword sink to the hilt and Ratagan’s axe split the great skull. The Rime Giant stopped moving. Its blood began to freeze on the snow.

  Riven became aware that Jinneth was clinging to him, her face buried in his chest. He pushed her away and stood up, swaying against the battery of the wind. His three friends were staggering towards him, sculpted in white, their faces frozen masks.

  ‘I know where there is shelter!’ Bicker shouted in his ear. ‘We must be quick, or the woman will die.’ He pointed at Jinneth, and Riven saw she was only half-conscious. The shock of the Giant had almost finished her. He bent and slapped her face roughly until the eyes had regained a measure of awareness. Then he grasped her wrist strap and pulled her to her feet. They forged on into the storm, leaving the Rime Giant corpse a hill of snow behind them.

  THE BLIZZARD CONTINUED unabated, and they battled their way forward, bent almost double under its fury. They could hardly see and were reduced to their hands and knees, scrabbling through the ice-cocooned rocks of the mountainside. Riven was nearing his end. Only the fact that he could pull Jinneth on behind him kept him going—that, and the terror at the thought of losing sight of Bicker. So he ploughed forward relentlessly in the dark man’s wake, his feet and hands becoming suspiciously comfortable with their lack of feeling, and a drowsiness that he knew was the onset of hypothermia creeping up on him.

  Hands shook him, punching him, and he opened his eyes irritably. He had stopped to lie down in the snow. Jinneth was pummelling him, her hair a helmet of ice about her head and her eyes dull. He laboured to his feet, and set off again. Bicker had been fibbing. There was no shelter here. There was nothing but the snow and the stone and the Giants. He would lie down again in a moment, and get some sleep. He was not cold at all.

  His boots scraped on stone, and the wind disappeared. It was cut off at once. He opened his eyes again, but there was no light. He could see nothing. His shoulders hurt, and encrusted ice was cracking away there. He realised that two people were hauling him along, his legs trailing on the ground. The absence of the storm’s roar was like a great hissing sound in his head, filling his brain.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked in a mumble, but no one answered.

  He heard Bicker exclaim in surprise, and was placed on the floor next to Jinneth. Someone threw blankets over them both and began chafing his hands and slapping his cheeks. He snarled at them. Couldn’t they leave him alone? But then warmth lapped his face, light flickered beyond his iced-up eyelids, and he forced himself to look.

  A fire. There was a fire burning in the blackness, revealing rough rock walls all around. He thought he was back in the sewers for a moment, but no: it was Bicker and Isay who were building up the flames, taking thick faggots from a high pile by the wall and creating a bright, burning blaze. The smoke caught at Riven’s throat and he coughed, whilst at the same time he felt the first agony of returning feeling in his hands and groaned aloud. Ratagan ceased his chafing and buffeted him good-naturedly on the side of the head, dislodging half-melted ice.

  ‘Good of you to join us, my friend. Now keep your eyes open and count your toes. Take your clothes off and get warm. Bicker has worked a miracle.’

  Riven groaned again. There was a flaming pain in his extremities. His ears and nose were on fire. But he forced himself to wriggle out of his pack and limp over to the fire.

  Bicker and Isay seemed almost maniacal in the light of the flames, feeding the fire with feverish urgency. They had stripped down to their breeches and meltwater was glittering in their hair. Riven began peeling off his own sopping garments.

  ‘How the hell did you find this place?’ he asked Bicker.

  The dark man shrugged. ‘Luck, mainly. The Myrcans use it sometimes when they come this high. We have been fortunate. They—or someone—have left a goodly store of wood, which is a precious thing at this height. It has saved our lives, in all likelihood. How are your fingers and
toes? Have you feeling back in them?’

  ‘And some. It’s been a long night,’ he said tiredly. The warmth was lulling him into drowsiness even as he spoke.

  Ratagan came to the fire, half-carrying Jinneth. He had thrown a blanket around her and she was naked underneath. Her thawed hair hung about her face in dark tails.

  ‘The lady here is not feeling herself, I think,’ he said.

  There was an edge to his voice. He laid her down close to the blaze and arranged the blanket about her limbs with a gruff gentleness that made Riven smile. Beer was not Ratagan’s only weakness. He was a sucker for ladies in distress, even those who had tried to have him killed.

  Jinneth stirred feebly and moaned, and moments later, she opened her eyes. Her gaze sprang to the fire and to the four men around it. She sat up and the blanket fell away, revealing breasts with cold-hard nipples. Her eyes blazed, and she covered herself. ‘Animals!’ she spat.

  Bicker regarded her wearily. ‘We animals saved your life after you had tried to take ours, so save your outrage and give us some answers instead.’

  She glared at him but said nothing. He sighed and poked at the fire.

  ‘Why did you come after us?’ Riven asked her. ‘What was the point?’ His voice shook a little. He wished he had not seen her nakedness. It brought back too many secret memories.

  ‘You have power in you. I wanted it,’ she said simply, but her words did not ring true. There was bafflement on her face for a second, and she shook her head as if exasperated. ‘I don’t know. I had to follow you. I don’t know why.’ She sounded bewildered, and Riven had to stop himself from reaching out to her. Here, with the trappings of wealth and intrigue missing, she was more than ever like Jenny. She was young, adrift. He swallowed and looked away.

  Skeins of smoke hung in the air like streamers. There was no sound in the cave except for the crackling of the fire. Jinneth glanced round at their closed faces.

  ‘Where are you going?’ She sounded almost plaintive.

  ‘We seek the Dwarves,’ Ratagan rumbled. ‘We seek answers, a way to end the torment of Minginish.’

  ‘And you are the key,’ she said to Riven.

  He nodded dumbly.

  ‘You are fools,’ she told them.

  ‘And what are you?’ Bicker asked her quietly, but his eyes were hard. ‘What manner of woman are you—or are you a woman at all?’

  ‘Put her out into the blizzard,’ Isay said levelly, startling them. ‘I see nothing but ill in her.’

  ‘No!’ Riven exclaimed at once. They stared at him and he stammered under their scrutiny. ‘She has to come along with us. I don’t know why, but she’s supposed to be here, with us.’

  ‘Is it because of who she resembles?’ Bicker asked.

  Riven bent his head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I think it’s no accident she is here. I think she was drawn here as surely as I was.’

  Jinneth regarded Riven with wonder. ‘Who do I resemble? Why would I be drawn into this?’

  He looked at her. ‘You are the twin of my wife, who is dead.’

  She blinked. ‘You are a wizard,’ she whispered. ‘You and your companions. How else could you have escaped from the cells?’

  Ratagan barked with laughter. ‘We had help, lady, from a source you have never dreamed of. We used no magic. But what if we had? Would that then entitle you to hound us out of the lands of men and into these mountains, to mistreat our children, to confiscate our property? I think not.’ And he spat into the fire.

  Jinneth did not answer, but gazed at them across the fire. Isay’s implacable eyes, Bicker’s wariness, Ratagan’s anger; Riven’s twisted mouth.

  ‘You are men,’ she said bitterly. ‘What do you know of being a woman in this world, where you must warm a bed to get what you want? You who blunder through this life with your swords and your armour—what do you know?’

  ‘You have not done so badly for yourself,’ Bicker said.

  ‘Not so badly? Do you know how many times I have had to endure the slaverings of a man I loathe to reach my aim, how many times I have had to lie under a man at night and make noises like an imbecile to make him think I take pleasure in it? Do you? And you think it is a courageous thing to swing a sword...’ She trailed off.

  ‘Not every woman is so obsessed by the trappings of power that she must needs open her legs to every lord who comes along,’ Ratagan snapped.

  Jinneth stood up suddenly and discarded her blanket. She stood naked before them, with her hands on her hips, the firelight painting her skin in dancing colours. Riven stared at her for a moment and then closed his eyes with a low groan. Ratagan looked away with a flush creeping up his neck. Bicker buried his gaze in the flames, scowling. Only Isay continued to stare at her, a frown biting a deep line between his brows.

  ‘There is not one of you here who, given some wine and privacy, would not be happy to take this body of mine and use it for your own pleasure. Why then should I not get something in exchange?’

  She sat down again and tugged the blanket about her, a silver brightness welling up in her eyes.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ Riven whispered, but she did not hear him. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  Abruptly Bicker began rummaging through the packs. ‘Time we ate. Some hot food would do us good,’ he said.

  Isay helped him break out some of the soup blocks he had been hoarding since they left Rim-Armishir. Soon two blocks were bubbling and swelling in the party’s single copper pot. They were getting low on food. There was dried beef and fruit, more soup blocks and a small bag of flour, but it was over two weeks since they had set out and the packs that had once seemed so crushingly heavy now seemed feather-light, weighed down only by their personal gear.

  While the food was being prepared, Riven took the opportunity to take a brand from the fire and walk down the cave away. He was curious to know how deep it went, and he wanted Jinneth out of his sight for a while. Ratagan followed him, and together the pair explored in silence. The cavern continued off into the darkness for as far as their makeshift torch would let them see. It was narrow but high-roofed, and the floor was smooth. Their footsteps echoed off the walls.

  ‘More like a passage than a cave,’ Riven murmured, his voice loud in the quiet. They could no longer hear the others or see the glow of the fire. The smoke from his burning stick made him cough.

  ‘Perhaps we are in the hallway of a Dwarf’s mansion,’ Ratagan said, only half in jest. He perched himself on a blunt stalagmite comfortably and folded his arms. ‘Does it still hurt, to see her so near?’ he asked gently.

  Riven looked at him. He seemed part of the stone in the dim light. ‘Yes. More so, up here. They have become even more similar.’

  ‘And she is meant to be here, you say,’ Ratagan mused. ‘By who? I wonder. And is it a good thing, or a bad thing?’

  Riven shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s any good or bad in this. It’s just the way it’s turned out, like an equation. Something that must happen. Meeting the Dwarves may be the catalyst to some sort of reaction.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ratagan tried not to look mystified, making Riven smile.

  ‘Do you believe she is evil?’ he asked the big man.

  Ratagan’s brow furrowed. ‘Evil! What a word. A mighty term to be throwing about. No, I do not believe she is evil, though she does miserable things for pitiful ends. I think she does not truly know what she wants.’ He wrung his hands together as though washing them. ‘Killing is evil—taking a joy in it. Making laughter out of it. That is evil.’ His voice was heavy with grief.

  Riven remembered him slaughtering the Sellswords at the campsite, his savage laughter following their retreating backs. ‘We all get carried away,’ he said lamely.

  Ratagan looked up at him and smiled wryly. ‘Aye.’

  A cold air blew up the passage and they both shivered, for they were half-naked, their clothes drying at the fire. The brand in Riven’s hand fluttered like a trapped bird and a
lmost went out.

  ‘We’d better get back,’ he said, but for some reason neither of them moved. It was as though they were waiting for something to happen.

  They listened, and heard nothing but the slow drip of water somewhere and their own quickening breathing. Then the brand went out, and they were smothered in darkness. Riven moved instinctively to Ratagan’s side, dropping the brand to the floor. His heartbeat rose like a dull thunder in his throat.

  And then there was a light, a blue-white aura that slowly grew in the passage, lighting the walls and the high ceiling, spreading up and down in all directions; allowing them to see the four figures that surrounded them.

  Four figures no more than five feet high, but massively broad, their shoulders wide as doors. They had long, thick beards and their huge fists gripped heavy hammers. Their foreheads were bald and gnarled, and in the pits below them, their eyes glittered with a red light.

  ‘Dwarves,’ Ratagan said hoarsely.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘WE ARE THE Graijhnehr, the Folk of Stone,’ one Dwarf said. His voice was as deep as the rumbling of a subterranean avalanche, and the red light flashed from his eyes like the glow of coals in a fire.

  ‘We are the oldest of all the peoples of the world, and we live the longest. We have seen the life of Minginish running from the time when the great woods covered the Vale and the hill of Talisker was uncrowned by any tower, to the present, when winter has replaced summer, beasts roam the land and men turn on each other to no good end.’

  The cavern was low-ceilinged, Ratagan’s head scraping stone, but it stretched out to an immense distance on every side, the roof supported by thick pillars hewn out of the living rock. On the pillars were carved the shapes of men, women, animals—even Rime Giants and grypesh. Riven saw a gogwolf snarling on one, a Vyrman crouched on another, and a Myrcan standing stolidly on a third.