Shadow of the Seer

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘I also have been left as a burden,’ said Alya wearily. ‘And I also have suffered from these same Ice-wolves.’

  ‘Ah, them!’ hissed the old man, and his voice trembled still further. ‘Them, we should have been ready to face! Had the others not been so obstinate, had they but acknowledged my Lord Balhur as their rightful overlord, and not followed base pretenders! And now they suffer for it, aye, their homes razed, their fields smouldering, their women dragged off screaming in wagons, who knows where!’ He sniggered. ‘But why, he-he, that all men know! Only the other day I watched them – bathing in the river, he-he-he …’

  ‘You watched what, old man?’ demanded Alya fiercely. ‘You spied on the Aikiya? Saw the women they’d taken?’

  ‘Couldn’t light a fire while they were here!’ mumbled the old man. ‘Didn’t dare! Had to watch ’em, well hid. See when they went. Westward, most of ’em.’

  ‘The women? Westward too?’

  The old man shook his head tetchily. ‘No, fool! Why westward? That’s not their home, the savages, the maneaters, no! North, that’s where they live, north, under the eye of their cold masters. North, that’s where they take the women, whole wagonfuls, he-he …’

  Alya seized him by his ragged shirt. ‘And this time? Did they take these wagonfuls north, this time? Due north?’

  The old man, startled and frightened, shrank down into himself. ‘N-no, my lord! There was only one wagon this time, of women. Watched ’em bathing, he-he-he … Might have saved themselves the trouble, for those dirty bastards—’ He squeaked, as Alya’s grip tightened. ‘Not north, my lord! There’s no good way north, not any more. North and west, the river-road, the rough road. Road to nowhere, we called it; though there’d been towns there once, they said, greater towns even than my Lord Balhur’s! And now they’re paid for it, homes laid waste, fields smouldering, children devoured, he-he-he …’

  ‘It is clear what has come about,’ said Lord Asquan, when Alya told him the tale. ‘Pretty much as in the days of Volmur’s grandfather. A lord seeks to set himself up above the rest, to build a kingdom; or perhaps many do, not just this Balhur. There is civil war; but out here, nobody wins conclusively. Perhaps the agents of the Ice foment it; maybe their forces lend one side or another a hand, at first. It drags on, till recent times, even. Then when all sides are exhausted, when there’s a first faint shiver of peace, folk beginning to build again and till the fields – then the Ekwesh descend upon the remains! These folk have dug their own graves.’

  ‘And by the sound of it,’ put in Kalkan, riding close behind, ‘that old bastard dug deeper than most. I grudge him the food!’

  Alya looked back. They had left him with what little they could spare. ‘I do not. He has done us a great service. And his is a living death now, with only a still more miserable one to follow. At least it may sustain him till his family return, if ever.’

  ‘A touching reunion, that will be!’ said Asquan delicately. ‘Audible from here to the horizon, I doubt not. But, as you say, he has served us. This road seems to parallel the river, all right; and if I am not mistaken—’

  Vansha swung a long leg over the saddlebow and sprang down to look; then as quickly remounted. ‘Wagon ruts! One with that jagged seam! That’s our spoor!’

  ‘Provided that wagon still bears the women!’ said Asquan absently, peering into the grey distance.

  ‘The old goat seemed sure enough!’ grinned Kalkan. ‘A shame you could not wring the time out of him! But we may find more signs ahead.’

  ‘As I said,’ remarked Asquan, still oddly abstracted, shading his eyes. ‘What we find is not always what we want …’ Suddenly he urged his horse to a light gallop, ahead of the rest, away off the west of the road towards a stand of scrubby trees. Alya and Vansha, puzzled, led the others after him.

  ‘It can’t be the raiders! Or he wouldn’t—’

  Vansha had the keener eyes. ‘He’s getting down! It’s something there.’ A scatter of black birds rose, cawing and screeching. Some were bare-necked buzzards. Vansha reined in his horse suddenly. But then Alya had seen it too.

  The body lay almost under the branches; Alya was surprised that Asquan’s ageing eyes had picked it out, sooner than their own. The more so because it was already blending with the setting, the bright-hued shreds of clothing dulled and dirtied, the livid brightness of raw flesh brown and shrivelled now, blued and greyed with decay.

  ‘Beasts have dragged it. Wolves, perhaps,’ said Asquan, still detached. ‘And taken their fill, I fear.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alya. Vansha said nothing.

  ‘Might you nonetheless …’ Asquan paused, looking from one to another with bird-bright eyes. ‘Recognise … her?’

  The body had been eviscerated, the flesh gnawed off the limbs. The ribs gaped bare and empty. Other things, the birds included, had taken the eyes and much else, and more had been removed by dragging. The limbs were no longer complete, the lower jaw was gone. The hair remained, a nightmare frame of normality to the scarified, desecrated portrait of someone they had known.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vansha, rubbing the back of his hand across his lips. ‘Yes.’ He looked to Alya as if for confirmation, or perhaps simple support.

  ‘Kaqual,’ said Alya. He could not say how he might be sure, but he was. ‘I think it’s Kaqual.’

  Asquan nodded. ‘Not—’

  ‘No! Not Savi, no.’

  Not Savi! yelled his inner self, exultant with relief and horrified at itself in the same instant. He remembered Kaqual as a nice girl, jolly and plump, fond of dancing and singing. How did he dare feel relieved, let alone rejoicing? But he could not help it; and to judge by Vansha’s glassy expression, he was suffering the same inner battle.

  Asquan squatted down, calmly prodded the pitiful remnant this way and that with a dead stick. ‘Her head was wounded, seriously. And her ribs, I think, though it is hard to tell. She would have died quickly enough – and to judge by the condition of the body, three or four days since.’

  ‘The time would be right,’ agreed Alya neutrally, trying to control his stomach.

  ‘We should bury her!’ burst out Vansha suddenly, then looked from one to another, to Kalkan in particular, as if to be sure he’d said the right thing. ‘I mean – even though we’re in haste?’

  As if he feared to be too sentimental before all these warriors, thought Alya, grimly amused despite himself.

  ‘Damn right we should, lad,’ said Kalkan warmly. ‘Not poke around the poor thing more’n we need to, either!’ he added, with a glare at Asquan. ‘Stones’d be more use than earth, or something’ll just be digging her up. Jump to it, you all, and gather some!’

  There was no shortage of big stones in this rich dark soil, and it took them less than an hour. Anger fuelled them, and visions of brutalities they could not prevent. Rysha, silent as ever, joined them without prompting, and Alya saw her lift some substantial rocks easily enough. Only Nightingale, dozing among the baggage, took no part. Asquan stood by, arms folded; but at last condescended to add a few rocks to the top.

  ‘Why not, my lord?’ rumbled Kalkan. ‘Somebody might do as much for you, one of these days!’

  ‘Might even remember to kill him first!’ put in Chiansha, and the others laughed. Asquan simply smiled his faint smile.

  ‘Well,’ he remarked, as they mounted up once more, dusting the soil from their hands as if ready to grab Ekwesh throats, ‘the trail is all too clearly marked. But so is the distance. Do you still wish to continue?’

  ‘All the more!’ snarled Alya impatiently; and the other men bayed with anger. ‘What in Hella’s name are we waiting for now?’

  ‘Only to remind you that every way has a destination, and two directions. This may not be the only group of raiders travelling it. However hard we ride, we must still keep close watch!’

  Vansha spat and swore; but on seeing Kalkan’s sober nod, he said nothing. There was something to be said for Asquan’s coolness, Alya decided; a lesson for himself
, however brightly his inner fires burned.

  They rode in column then, and every so often one would gallop ahead, to spy out the road and the land around, for the least sign of life. But for the first two days there was little enough of that, save birds: small birds in the bush, and greater ones gliding through the grey airs. Once, spying from a low hill, Alya saw a great mass of them wheeling against the clouds, far to the west and south – almost like vultures over a prey, and yet their silhouettes seemed different, somehow. Vansha, straining his eyes, thought they had long necks, and that there were smokes in the air there, dark smoke. But that was far from their route, and perhaps better so. The river bent westward and northward now, and the road more sharply so.

  At first it merely cut off the river’s meandering curves, and they were glad enough of that. It was good to be away from it for a while, and not only for the cold dank airs it carried, the haze and fogs and clouds of small stinging insects it spawned. Its dark water was uncomfortable company, racing and boiling through shallow stony rapids one moment, then lingering in deep uneasy pools and lakelets, outwardly calm and yet crossed with sharp swirling undertows that could make bathing or fishing dangerous. Some of the deeper ones, shadowed under great rocks, were not places any sensible man would want to bathe, so uncanny they seemed; long smooth shadows glided beneath the surface, strange bubbles welled up. Even Nightingale, uncanny enough himself, preferred not to linger there; though he never bathed anyway.

  Now, though, the road moved further away altogether, across brown fells thinly cloaked with grass and heathery scrub. As if it followed some faster, more direct route; but to where?

  It was some days later, in the early evening, when Fazdshan, their scout, did not wait as usual for them to catch him up, but came galloping back at full tilt.

  ‘Smack atop the road!’ he panted. ‘In a notch above a river-bend, two thousand paces on, nice and cosy and damn near out o’ sight!’

  ‘Who, man?’ demanded Lord Kalkan. ‘Raiders?’

  ‘Who bloody else?’ demanded Fazdshan, wheezing with his haste. ‘As well we didn’t come sauntering round that bloody bend straight, or we’d have ridden straight under their camp!’

  ‘What exceptional luck we’re being so careful!’ murmured Lord Asquan. ‘How many?’

  ‘Fifteen, I counted. There’s a couple might be captives, but I couldn’t see clear!’

  ‘We could handle that many!’ grinned Kalkan. ‘Eh, lads? In our sleep! Ride down, and—’ He made pigsticking gestures with his lance.

  ‘Unfortunately I remain awake!’ snapped Asquan. ‘If we have no alternative, we must attack by stealth only! On foot!’

  Kalkan and the others looked dubiously to Alya, which both pleased and burdened him. ‘I also would like to ride over them!’ he said heavily. ‘But we cannot take chances, not yet. We’ll see! Rysha, we’ve asked little enough of you, thus far. But it’ll be dusk soon. Will you help? Your … shadows?’

  She fiddled with her hair, and said nothing; but at last she nodded. Her bony face smirked a little. ‘Since you ask the shadows nicely, my lord. Not when we’re right on top of them, mind. Even then it won’t be as dark as the dungeon.’

  ‘We’ll ride closer, strike faster. The wind’s in our faces, at least; it won’t carry the sound of hooves. But stay quiet, all the same!’

  The track was stony, but clear and largely dry, and it was less than half an hour before Fazdshan gave the signal. Alya halted the riders, and sprang down even as the others drew up, staring at the bluff the soldier indicated, topped with a line of windbent birches against the darkening sky.

  ‘Below that! Smell the fires?’

  ‘Only just!’

  Fazdshan shuddered. ‘They know how to keep down the smoke. I’d have damn near tripped over the bastards, if they hadn’t been having some shouting match over something!’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ said Alya, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Rysha, to me! Can you get us past that, unseen?’

  She eyed him sidelong, and scratched her head. ‘Miracles, my lord? No. Too many of us, with the horses and all. Easiest if there’s only a few, three or four. Maybe more when it’s darker – maybe. But then a horse’d whinny, and—’ Her gesture was brutal.

  Alya nodded. ‘Then we’ve no choice; we go in. One lot to attack, the rest follow. Vansha can lead them, and keep Nightingale with him in case of real trouble. In the vanguard, you, me; you, Fazdshan – and a fourth, a really strong fighter. Kalkan, I guess.’

  Rysha snorted. ‘That big oaf? Asquan, you mean!’

  Alya stared. ‘The old fellow’s a good counsellor, but – Fazdshan?’

  He had expected an explosive disagreement, but none came. The big soldier simply looked embarrassed, and shrugged. ‘They are both strong, my lord.’

  From someone so fanatically loyal, that was a serious admission.

  ‘Asquan,’ said Rysha bluntly, and only added, ‘My lord!’ as an afterthought. Asquan solved the problem by catching them up, along with Vansha, and Alya gave out his commands. He was relieved when Asquan only nodded approval, and drew his sword. For the first time Alya thought how heavy it looked in those spidery hands, already lined and spotted with age.

  They moved forward, the four, to below the crest, now rimmed with a faint glow of firelight. At first they walked swiftly, from clump to clump; then they ducked and stooped under the trees, and at last they crawled through the scanty undergrowth. Alya was relieved at how well the older man kept up. He wormed through the bushes with serpentine speed and energy, far more easily than the clumsy Fazdshan. Rysha was muttering to herself as she followed, an unpleasant, insistent sound at the edge of hearing, like some litany of spite or injury; her long bony hands looked almost animalistic as she crawled.

  At the crest, before the firelight could touch him, Asquan halted, cupped hand to ear. Alya could hear them then, the same harsh voices that had marked the most terrible moments of his life, the brief braying laughter; and a great loathing swelled in him, swollen by the grief and guilt of those who survive when many die. He did not live for vengeance, not yet; he could forget, if not forgive, if only Savi were somehow his again. But stilling some of those deadly voices would quieten his own heart.

  He turned sharply at the soft touch on his arm. Rysha’s face was already shadowed and unreadable; her whisper was unusually low, but that was only sensible. ‘We must touch, my lord, to share my sending. Now?’

  Alya tapped Asquan, and nodded; but he was still not ready for the blackness that rolled over him. It was cold, sunless and stifling, it had the shock of an icy welling wave, making him gasp for breath; then it ebbed a little, and he could see – not well, but enough. He remained crouching, but Rysha slowly rose, and held out her hand to him. Asquan’s claw closed on his arm, the other on Fazdshan’s, who flinched at the touch. It seemed weird, unnatural to stand like that, so clearly, overlooking death; stranger still, when they simply stepped out of the bushes and down the rough grassy slope towards their enemy’s firelight, as casual as travellers approaching an inn.

  Rysha was breathing heavily, her free hand clamped on the hilt of the short hunting falchion she had chosen. Asquan stalked along supple and catlike, treading lightly, his broadsword drawn and held close to his leg. Fazdshan, hefting his heavy lance-spear, trod intent and wary, of Rysha as much as anything else. Alya himself was racked by a weird tumult of feelings, beyond understanding. His heart pounded, his thoughts were in turmoil, the fires rolled and boiled within him, as if his limbs were each a flame. He was not afraid; he was too furious to be afraid. This felt right, it felt more than right. He could make the scrubby grass catch fire under his shoes, or so he felt, or shatter the pebble that merely skipped away; and no obstacle seemed more substantial than that.

  One of the figures squatting by the fire below looked up, out, straight at them. He squinted around uncertainly; but when somebody called, he gave only a slight shrug and went on peering into the dusk. The others ignored him. Then,
as they drew nearer, he sprang up, hefting his stabbing spear; but he was looking in the wrong direction. They were so close now, yet not close enough. Another moment, and the man would place them.

  Alya felt Asquan’s grasp free his arm. Before he could say anything, there was a rush, and the old lord was no longer at his side, no longer in the shadow. It made little difference. He was still a shadow as he glided forward, too fast to move, too silent to hear. The raider, aware of something in the dusk, tried to cry out, to spring back. Too late by far; a wind sighed, and the man flew backwards, his head turning in the air on a scarlet streamer.

  From beside the fire the others sprang up, brandishing spears; but they ran only towards Asquan.

  One crossed the path of the shadow. He spun around, with fear and fury on his blunt face; too late. The painted features, the firelight, the whiff of roasting meat on the breeze, they triggered Alya’s memory, and with it all the frustrations, the times when he could not strike out. Not now!

  His blow was almost a reflex, the impact a shock. The raider was flung aside in a tangle of limbs, almost unnoticed. The jarring bite of the blade, the dark blood; that was real. Then he was in a howling mêlée of men and weapons.

  He had thought the fire hot in him before, but now it roared like an open furnace, its tingle grown to a needling, goading force that scorched along nerve and sinew. He swung and struck, a sweeping, swinging stroke of the whole body that Asquan had shown him, a wide battle-clearing slash, a living shield that scarcely needed to connect. The hero’s sword, weightless in his hand, seemed almost a solid line of steel, that nothing crossed intact. At what he struck, he was only half aware.

  One face, contorted. Painted; a stabbing tongue of a spearhead flashed firelight in his eyes. He hewed the air, saw face and blade flung back into the dark, and did not know whether the roaring was in his ears or his throat. Another face, a spearhead thudding harmlessly across his mailed chest, and that too he struck down into the dark. Snarling, scarred faces, spears, slash, strike, shrieking mouths and swinging shields, till the pain in his ribs startled him, caught at his breath, a stab that skipped across his mailrings and lodged, hard, spinning him about. He rode with that, lashing out, two-handed, his feet skidding in blood-greased grass. He thought he had missed; but the spear did not come. A noise like axe on tree, a cry, a rustling fall in the dark. He pressed forward, driving the faces back.