‘We need to know so much, in these perilous places,’ mused Alya. ‘I wonder if these mist-creatures devour lives as you do, Nightingale? And what would their own memories be like, then? Very useful to us, perhaps. I may set you to catch us one. If you do, he’s yours.’
He was only half joking; but Nightingale whimpered and shrank down at the very prospect.
‘Well, that’s something new!’ observed Vansha drily. ‘A monster afraid of monsters!’
They all chuckled; but equally they all caught themselves glancing around at the cane, and the soldiers put hand to weapon.
Asquan nodded. ‘Just so. Were there not evils enough abroad in your wood, Nightingale?’
He looked up, sullen and sidelong. ‘Knew those! Simple things, near mindless. Could smell their purposes, make them serve me if I wished. This is more! No commanding, no touching it even. Smells cold, cruel. More like human evil!’
‘And that’s worse, is it?’ said Tseshya. ‘Fascinating. I don’t know about you, my lords and masters, but I’d be glad not to spend another night in the open!’
‘We can set fires, mount sentinels as usual!’ said Alya. ‘It hasn’t harmed us yet, has it?’
‘And build a cane fence!’ rumbled Kalkan. ‘Cane sharpens like spears! But I don’t mind admitting I’d still feel better behind a door! If there are any farms around here—’
‘We’d be mad to stray off the road to seek them!’
Kalkan thumbed his beard. ‘Aye, maybe. But if we come upon somewhere …’
They did. At first it was the smoke that trailed them, tantalisingly near, this way and then that, flirting with them on the wind. But it was only when dusk made the canes into a tangle of grey web that they saw anything, a faint flickering point of red that seemed like the only colour left in the world.
‘That can’t be far off the road!’ said Darzhan hopefully.
‘Might even be on it!’ said somebody, and there was a general rumble of encouragement.
‘And it might be full of Ekwesh!’ snapped Alya. He was feeling the oppression of the canes as badly as anyone.
‘You do well to remind us,’ said Asquan. ‘Ekwesh or worse. We’ll scout it out, first, a couple of us.’
‘Better we stick together!’ said Darzhan rebelliously. ‘Won’t get me rattling off through that stuff on my own – eh, lads? Even if Almur’s girl’s at the end of it!’
‘Especially if she is!’ chuckled Chiansha. ‘Fair shares alike, eh, Almur?’
Almur said nothing. He was usually quiet; but when Chiansha looked around to repeat his question, the words died in his mouth. Almur was nowhere to be seen.
Even Asquan was startled. ‘What? What d’you mean, gone?’
‘I mean, not frigging there!’
Alya was shocked to see how straggling their train had become. ‘Close up!’ he hissed. ‘My lord Kalkan, please gather them up!’
‘Of course!’ snapped the old warrior. ‘Can’t have this! Worse than women out berrypicking!’ He sent his mount cantering back down the path, gesturing to the others as he went, and they hurried forward to join him. There was still no sign of Almur, or his horse.
‘He was bringing up the rear!’ said Tseshya, sweating. ‘Like Lord Kalkan always wants a soldier there. He was behind me, last I saw, but with the canes, and this hazy light, that was …’
‘You didn’t hear anything?’
‘He never says much!’ protested Tseshya. ‘Not to me, anyhow!’
‘Can’t imagine why!’ snarled Kalkan savagely. ‘You’re so bright you couldn’t even spare an eye for him now and then?’
‘None of us were looking,’ said Alya pacifically. ‘That’s a mistake we’ll not make again in a hurry! But the important thing’s to find him.’
Kalkan snorted. ‘He’s a warrior! Maybe he’s just stopped for a leak. Or dozed off and wandered into the cane.’
‘His horse wouldn’t,’ said Alya. ‘They follow one another.’ He bit his lip, imagining a silent something reaching out from within the cane. It wasn’t as hard as he would have liked. ‘We’ll have to go back and look. Damn the hour! I don’t want to make camp this early.’
‘I don’t think anyone wants to make camp,’ said Vansha, glaring around. ‘I think we want anything with walls and a roof, if we can find it, and maybe a door to bar!’
‘He’s right!’ snapped Fazdshan, and the other warriors agreed. ‘We want to seek out that house!’
‘How d’you know it’s even a house?’ protested Alya, but he could almost feel the cold aura of fear that surrounded them. These men might fear little enough that was human and could fight, but their terror of the unnatural was almost more acute. Even Asquan the unbeliever looked cold and grim in this grey light. Whereas he himself—
Alya had his fires within him, and his driving purpose; and he had touched minds whose menace he could still taste. Mere shadows among the canes he found less immediately frightening. But he knew he must give in.
‘All right then! Darzhan, Fazdshan, Tseshya – go back after him, as far as you think worthwhile, while there’s any light at all. Look for any sidepaths or tracks he might have taken. Shout, if you think good; but save horn-calls for real trouble. The rest of us will spy ahead. That way, if there is any trouble at least one group can try to get the others out!’
Darzhan nodded glumly as he urged his unwilling horse around, chivvying Nightingale’s out of the narrow way. ‘Best we all keep our eyes open!’
‘On all sides!’ added Kalkan. ‘All, scholar!’
If I were Djalmur of the Thousand Eyes, I might manage that! I’ll do what I can!’
‘If you were Tseshya of the Half a Brain, I wouldn’t need to tell you!’
But for all their caution the main group came upon their object quite unexpectedly. They had expected to see clearings among the cane-brakes, as they had for the other farms; but not here. Alya, in the lead, pulled up his horse hastily, and looked around in case someone collided with him, they were huddling so close now. He waved at them urgently, to dismount, and swung from his own saddle to stalk closer
‘Well, will you look at that?’ breathed Vansha in his ear, and he jumped. ‘Our little home from home, isn’t it?’
Alya had hardly been able to tell it from the vegetation around. The building, if there was no better word, was made entirely of the cane, darkened with mud, moss and age. The rooftree stood about the height of his head, and sloped almost down to the ground; the few gaps in it, covered with crude smoke-blackened shutters whose every chink shone dully red, were almost at ground height. He thought it could not be a house, till he saw the steps leading down to the low dark door, large enough for a man of medium height. The other buildings behind it were no taller, and they lacked either door or shutter – granaries or stores, maybe. But for what? They were as dilapidated and moss-grown as the larger. And there was no trace of fields or cultivation, save what might be a small patch between them.
Vansha grunted. ‘So much for food or girls! Skinny little starvelings who slam the shutters tight at the sight of us, more like.’
‘Miserable enough,’ agreed Asquan, and Alya jumped again; he had materialised silently at their side. ‘Well, if our scholar is right, you can’t blame them.’
‘What’s all this mean?’ demanded Rysha. Everyone was clustering together again, unwilling to hang back too long. ‘What’s the bookworm been chewing now?’
‘A possibility, that’s all,’ said Alya. ‘A point we didn’t need to raise unless we came across somewhere – somewhere close to the road, like this. Asquan thought the reivers must know of the farms, tolerate them.’
‘Yes. Well?’
‘But the farms are much smaller and poorer than they should be. Why?’
Kalkan’s heavy brows knitted. ‘Ignorance?’
‘No! You know a lot, my lord, but not about the growing. Even with the simplest farming this ground should yield great harvests, far more than a few peasants can eat up. And if they’r
e trading the food, why aren’t they richer?’
Kalkan’s breath hissed. ‘So somebody’s taking it all!’
‘More, my lord,’ said Alya patiently. ‘This is not the work of free hands. Why farm here, however rich it might be, if you did not have to? Slaves do only the least work they can get away with, and can you blame them? Why should they strive to increase what will never be theirs? Most likely the reivers do more than suffer them; they most likely put them here in the first place, and for a reason I can guess. The mortal servants of the Ice, those towns the Nightingale placed on our map, this must be what feeds them. Farms all across this flat land. We thought we were still far from the dominions of the Ice. I believe we are already within them!’
That thought silenced them all. The shadow of the canes above them became suddenly less sheltering and more oppressive, and they looked around nervously.
‘The rivers flow from the Ice!’ said Vansha suddenly. ‘The taste of the fish …’
‘Harmless enough for now, I guess,’ said Alya. ‘But further north, who knows?’
‘That gives us more immediate worries!’ said Asquan. ‘Nightingale, do you smell anything?’
The creature’s head poked nervously out of the baggage. His snout snuffed the air. ‘Smoke. Stale food. Stale bodies, some yours. Others, but not many. That’s all. No more!’ He ducked back.
‘Stale,’ said Asquan thoughtfully. ‘No worse. Yet he seems afraid of something, all the same. Well, behind that door we will almost certainly find Ekwesh slaves – and maybe their masters. Still, I am tired of this wind and bone-rattling. Mine are doing quite enough of that as it is. And we must look for that wretched boy! So we can do little but knock – my lord Alya?’
Alya nodded, and he and Asquan rose to their feet. Alya rarely touched the spear and shield Asquan had insisted he have, but he pulled them from their rests on the baggage-pony now. The shield would help if there were archers lurking, at least. Asquan slithered – there was no better word for it – swiftly around through the canes and flattened himself against the low wall. Alya was in plain sight of the house now, but there were no alarmed cries, no shutters slamming, no rattle of weapons. He strode quickly forward, stooping to peer through a warped shutter, but saw nothing but smoke and red light. Asquan, watching the other windows, shrugged slightly. Alya levelled his spear and rapped lightly on the door, a simple slab of bound canes set at an angle, like a cellar hatch. Still nothing moved or made a sound. He reached down and flipped it back with a crash. Red light shone out at him, like an oven, but cooler. Faces stared back up at him.
Women’s faces; blank, unreadable. He cleared his throat, feeling ridiculous. ‘We mean you no harm. We’d be glad of shelter and a hearth, while we seek others of our party. There are … several of us. May we come in?’
The eldest face – not old – surveyed him, guardedly. A jerk of the head. ‘Come, then.’
Three of the faces vanished swiftly. Alya gathered his fur cloak and swung himself down the steps of tamped earth and cane, his shield still before him. As his eyes adjusted he was pleasantly surprised. He had expected a stinking, squalid den. This was bare enough, certainly, a single round room with cane inner walls and a trodden earth floor, little furnishing save reed mats; but it smelt clean enough, and it was well warmed by the big stone stove at the centre. Asquan followed, glancing round like a malign bird. There seemed to be nowhere anyone hostile could hide, though, and nobody in sight save the four women, three of them quite young, even pretty in a round-faced peasant way. The fourth was in early middle age, her face hardened by toil and care, but indeed, not old. They watched, unspeaking, as the others clambered down into their room, exclaiming, for all their talk, more at the sight of the stove than the women, and flocking to warm clammy hands and damp backsides. Nightingale slunk away into the shadows beneath the sloping wall, unnoticed.
‘You are … warriors?’ asked one of the young women.
Alya smiled at her. ‘Just for now. To help somebody.’
‘War helps nobody,’ said the older woman sharply.
Asquan looked at her. Hard-faced indeed, with a strange, intense look about the eyes. ‘Where are your menfolk? Are they hereabouts?’
‘They are two years gone,’ said the woman harshly. ‘My husband, my sons, taken to fight. These are their wives, poor creatures. They have not returned, unless their ghosts waded the streams northward. We live and work what little we can of the land, but cannot manage it all without them; and when we have enough, the Aikiya take it, and insult us for it.’
One of the girls spat juicily into the stove. ‘Men in armour, like you. They stole our men, now they steal our food.’
They looked plump enough, though. Alya guessed the overgrown appearance of the farm was a front to let them keep more food for themselves. More credit to their wit, then. ‘Not like us. We will take nothing. We have food we will share with you, if you like, as the price of a night’s lodging.’ Nobody demurred. He itched to get on, but even if they found Almur it would be too late. And even he felt it would be good to seize a night under cover while they could.
‘There are others to come,’ he added. ‘They’ve gone back to seek one of our band who seems to have strayed—’
The older woman sniffed contemptuously. ‘One lost? Then like as not you’ll never see him again. There’s perils in among the canes, as none know better than us as dwell here. Shapes to deceive fools, visions to lead them astray. They come from the river, mostly. With the mists. And before that, from the Walls, perhaps.’
‘You mean the glaciers? The Ice?’
‘Quiet!’ she snapped. ‘Those we don’t name. But … perhaps. For sure they’re worse the further north you go, like all things. Men don’t live on farms there, but must huddle together, far from their fields.’
‘Demons that eat flesh!’ chipped in one of the girls. ‘Worse even than the Ekwesh.’
‘I’ve encountered one of those,’ said Alya evenly. ‘He didn’t give me so very much trouble.’ The Nightingale looked hurt.
The woman smiled coldly. ‘You may be a hero, then, out of old tales. But one is not a hundred. I’d think about turning back, if I were you.’
Alya shrugged. ‘We can’t. We’re sworn. Another life depends on it, maybe more.’
The woman shrugged. ‘It’s nothing to me. Stay if you like, so you don’t foul the place up. Sleep on the mats, piss in the field out back, keep your paws off the girls. Show me your food and I’ll start the sunset meal.’
She was already boiling up grain when the door crashed open, and Darzhan’s massive frame came stamping through, followed by the others. They made for the stove with rumbles of relief, but little joy; and there was no fourth man.
‘You didn’t find him, then?’ demanded Alya.
‘We found him,’ said Tseshya grimly. ‘He’s across my horse out there. His, we didn’t find.’
Silence fell. Asquan hissed softly between his teeth. ‘So how did the poor boy meet his end? Could you tell?’
‘Tell?’ Darzhan shivered. ‘Just a guess, mind you, but having his head smashed like a pumpkin might have something to do with it! Stripped and smashed, not a stitch to know him by. Hardly have recognised him, if we’d not been looking!’
Alya felt suddenly cold, despite the stove. Asquan’s mouth twisted. ‘I believe I should examine him.’
‘You’re welcome!’ said Tseshya.
‘Just don’t paw him around!’ shouted Darzhan, as Asquan headed up the steps. The other soldiers echoed him.
‘Never know where you are, with that skinny old bugger!’ rumbled Kalkan. ‘Go after him, Chiansha, if he takes too long! Where did you find the body, lads?’
Darzhan scratched his head. ‘Off the road, about two thousand strides back, where the land dipped by that stream. The scholar tracked his horse, found him lying some five hundred strides deep in the cane, nothing round him but blood and, and, well, him. And tracks, but nothing we could make sense of. His horse went
deeper into the cane, but we didn’t want to follow. Not with night coming on.’
The picture that painted struck everyone silent for a moment. Alya felt a dreadful cold possibility forming. Then, almost at once, Asquan reappeared. The old bugger can at least use his eyes, where young oafs cannot,’ he said crisply. ‘The blow was a terrible one, but the poor boy never felt it. He was dead already. You should have seen from the blood on the saddle; though perhaps the ride back opened the wound again. He was stabbed in the back first, a small wound but deep. An arrow or a spear, I would say, with a narrow round point unlike any of ours; and his heart was still beating when it was made.’
‘I won’t ask how you know!’ said Kalkan gruffly. ‘But it explains the silence, at least, if somebody took him from the rear.’
‘But not the straying from the path!’ said Alya. ‘Hey, Nightingale! These things you’ve seen! Were there any of them around that last stream we crossed?’
‘Maybe,’ said the muffled voice in the shadows. ‘Maybe …’
‘As strong as a mule,’ sighed Asquan. ‘And about as intelligent, or fanciful. He wouldn’t have turned aside lightly, not without raising the alarm. Something made him. Some kind of illusion, if this woman’s right.’
‘Well, don’t look at me!’ said Rysha. ‘I need the dark, remember? It was no more than grey afternoon. If there’s things here can swing that in broad daylight, they’re more powerful than I. A hundred times!’
Shadow of the Seer Page 27
