by John Gwynne
He frowned, looked back at the river, then rode Dilis on, down a gentle slope and into the water until it lapped at her hocks. It looked as if the waters did not rise any higher. Bleda patted Dilis’ neck and she dropped her head to drink from the river.
Ellac joined him, Yul, Ruga and Saran following.
‘A ford,’ Bleda said.
‘Aye. A good place to cross,’ Ellac said, ‘or –’ He paused, looking left and right, following the river as far as he could see, both north and south. He touched his reins, his horse moving left, through the slow-flowing water. He stopped after a hundred paces or so, turned to look back at Bleda.
‘What?’ Bleda asked. He felt his nerves starting to fray. Constant riding, exhaustion and the weight of responsibility heavy upon his shoulders.
If Jin catches us, we will die. All my people, the last of the Sirak. Because of me. My leadership. My decisions.
‘I am thinking, we could ride a league or two in these shallows, until we reach another ford.’
‘Why? The Cheren would find our trail when we leave the river,’ Bleda said.
‘Yes, they would,’ Ellac said. ‘But first they would have to stop here, send riders to the far bank, and ride both north and south until they found our trail again.’
That will slow them, help to widen the gap again.
Bleda rolled his left shoulder as he thought on Ellac’s suggestion. His arm ached where the old warrior’s arrow had pierced him. Yul had pushed the arrowhead through, clean out the other side of Bleda’s arm, then snapped the shaft and pulled it free. Bleda had his lamellar coat back on, now, and was thankful for it, though his wound was itching and he could not reach it to scratch it. It was driving him insane.
Yul and Saran both grunted their approval of Ellac’s plan.
‘That is a good idea,’ Ruga said.
‘Ellac, you are wise beyond your years,’ Bleda called out.
‘Then that would be wise indeed,’ Ellac said, water splashing as he cantered back to them. ‘The old wolf is the more cunning,’ he said as he reached them.
‘Cunning is good,’ Bleda said. ‘Cunning is what we need right now.’ He clicked his horse on, riding along the shallows, his warband moving into the river after him, churning the water brown.
‘Ruga, what river was that?’
‘The Ider,’ she said.
‘I don’t remember these lands,’ he said, much to his shame.
How can I lead my people when I do not even know the land?
By asking for help. Pride can be a poison.
‘You were taken when you were eight,’ Ruga said, with a shrug. ‘You have not ridden the Sea of Grass all your life, like most Sirak.’
‘No,’ Bleda said.
‘But you are Sirak, here,’ she said, fingers brushing her heart. ‘And here –’ a tap of her temple.
Bleda glanced at her and smiled.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
They were riding at the head of the warband, the Ider River three days and sixty leagues behind them. They were deep in the south of Arcona now, heading for the southern passages, running for Ripa. The grass was not so green, the earth dustier. Groves of trees spotted the distance, mostly twisted, sun-blasted husks. He turned in his saddle and looked back. His warband was riding in tight formation at a steady canter, scouts on the flanks and ahead. He looked behind them into the distance and swore under his breath.
Jin was back.
For two days the dust cloud of Jin’s warband had disappeared, Ellac’s idea at the river slowing his enemy. But now they had caught up again. He turned and looked forwards.
‘You know when you stopped me killing that old warrior,’ Ruga said, ‘the one that put an arrow in your arm?’
‘I know the one.’
‘Why did you say those things to him, insulting Jin, goading her?’
‘Because I needed to make sure she would follow us. If she wasn’t sure it was me, she might have sent a warband a few hundred strong after us. And I wanted her and all the Cheren in Arcona to follow me, to give any survivors in the Heartland a chance to escape.’
Ruga looked back at the Cheren warband, then forwards.
‘Your plan may have worked a little too well.’
‘Ha, that is the truth of it.’ Bleda laughed. ‘I think Jin must be angrier than a hornet-stung bull.’
In the distance he saw the shimmer of hills and mountains, marking the southern rim of Arcona. Beyond those mountains were the deserts of Tarbesh. To the east Arcona’s plateau was bordered by the southernmost reaches of Forn Forest. That was his goal.
‘How well do you know this land, and the route to the Tethys Sea?’ Bleda asked her.
‘Well enough,’ Ruga said. ‘As well as anyone, better than most. My kin travelled often in the south.’
‘Good,’ Bleda said. ‘Out of my captains, who would you say knows these southlands as well as you?’
‘Ellac,’ Ruga said without hesitation. ‘Out of all, he is the only one I would say knows them better. He was born here.’
‘Ellac,’ Bleda said, an idea starting to form in his head.
‘I won’t do it,’ Ellac said.
‘You will, because I am Lord of the Sirak, and it is my wish,’ Bleda said. ‘But even if I were not, you would still do it. Because you know it is our best hope, and because I ask you as my friend, not my subject.’
‘Ach, don’t try your clever words on me,’ Ellac spat. Bleda saw panic in his eyes. ‘My place is with you. At your side. That is the oath I swore to your mother.’
‘You swore to do all in your power to protect me,’ Bleda said. ‘That is not staying at my side. Do what I ask, that will be protecting me. It will be the best chance at protecting us all.’
A silence between them, Ellac looking from Bleda to the others – Ruga, Yul, Saran. All stared back at him, stony-faced.
‘You could go,’ Ellac said to Yul.
‘I could, but I would get the warband as lost as a deaf and blind rabbit.’ Yul shrugged. ‘I do not know these lands.’
‘You, then,’ Ellac said to Ruga.
‘I am asking you,’ Bleda said. ‘It is the most important task, and I only trust you to do it.’
A long, indrawn breath from Ellac, expelled angrily.
‘All right,’ Ellac said. He pointed a finger at Bleda. ‘But you better live to see me the other side of this.’
‘I will do my absolute best to honour that,’ Bleda said.
‘And you –’ Ellac pointed at Yul – ‘make sure he keeps his word, and his head.’
‘If it is within my power, then it is already done,’ Yul said.
‘Good, that is settled,’ Bleda said. ‘Now, strip every bush, every tree, I need as many campfires as we can make.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
JIN
Jin raised her hand, a horn blast echoing her command to halt.
It was the dark end of twilight, when shadows had merged and night was settling into full dark. Riding any longer would risk broken legs for mounts.
But Jin’s heart begged her to continue.
We are so close. I can almost smell the sweat of Bleda’s warband. Their fear.
It had been a hard chase, even with spare mounts they had ridden their horses close to exhaustion. And when they had reached the Ider River and fallen behind by another day, Jin had almost screamed with frustration.
But we are close now. On the morrow we shall catch them and I shall have my vengeance. I think I will nail Bleda to a tree and watch him skinned.
In the distance campfires prickled into existence, like stars in the night sky.
‘They are making camp,’ Tark said beside Jin. ‘A wise idea.’
Gerel gave Tark a dark look. ‘It is wise when my Queen says it is wise.’
Jin smiled.
Gerel would say day was night if that was what I commanded.
‘It is wise,’ Jin said, looking around. Streams ran like veins of black blood in the darkness. �
��A good place to make camp.’
Calls rippled along the wide column of Jin’s war-host, horses were led to streams, paddock posts and ropes hammered into the ground.
Jin dismounted and led her mounts to the paddocks, unsaddled them, rubbed them down, checked their hooves, Gerel her constant shadow. When she was done she slung her saddle over her shoulder and found a campfire, sat and leaned against her saddle. Gerel passed her a spit of roasted lamb and onions wrapped within a stone-warmed flatbread. She ate silently, thinking on what the morrow would bring.
‘My Queen.’ A hand shook Jin awake. ‘They are moving out.’ It was Tark, his arm splinted and wrapped in a bandage.
Jin sat upright, a sharp pain in her neck where she’d slept awkwardly on her saddle. It was as dark as pitch, embers glowing in the remains of the scraped-out fire-pit. Gerel grunted close by, pushed himself up onto one elbow.
‘What do you mean?’ Jin said, reaching for her water bottle and standing. She drank, then poured water over her face, blinked.
‘See for yourself,’ Tark said.
They strode through the camp, Jin picking her way through and over sleeping bodies. Tark stopped and pointed.
Jin squinted into the darkness.
A thousand pinpricks of light were moving in the distance. Torches. Moving south, away from her. Jin looked to the east, saw no sign of dawn, no patch of grey on the horizon.
‘What are they doing?’ Gerel asked, joining them.
‘They are risking their horses,’ Tark said, disgust in his voice.
‘A desperate act,’ Jin said with a sneer. ‘Bleda thinks I will not follow until dawn, that I will not risk broken legs for my horses on this ground.’ She looked to the east again. ‘How long until dawn?’ she said.
Tark shrugged. ‘The night is far from done.’
Jin looked at the moving torches, kicked the dusty ground.
‘Raise the warband,’ she said.
Gerel put a horn to his lips.
The ground was rising beneath Jin’s feet, a gentle incline. She held a torch in front of her, checking the ground before each step, leading her horse by the reins, another mount tied and following behind.
The glow of Bleda’s torches was far in the distance, but still visible. Jin stepped around a cluster of rabbit-holes, came across a guttered campfire, saw another at the edge of her torchlight.
‘This is where they made camp,’ Tark said beside her. He was bending low, studying the ground.
‘We need to move faster,’ Jin said, staring at the faint glow of torches in the distance.
‘We should check their camp, this could be a trap, an ambush,’ Tark said.
Jin had thought of that, but in the end the thought of losing Bleda was so horrific that it made the risk worth it.
I have close to four thousand warriors. Even if this were an ambush, we would crush him.
‘I will not lose Bleda,’ Jin said.
A long moment, Tark frowning, then he dipped his head.
‘Onwards, then,’ he said.
They carried on, following a thousand torches into the night.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
BLEDA
Bleda called a halt. Grey light was seeping into the world, an orange glow in the east as the sun clawed its way over the edge of the world.
‘Douse your torches,’ he called out, throat dry. He thrust both of the torches he was carrying into a stream, then walked along the flank of his horse, took the torch strapped to his saddle and plunged that into the water, another hiss and burst of steam. Finally, he strode back to his second mount, Dilis, having a long-earned rest from carrying him, and took the torch fastened to her saddle, too, and doused that one. Behind him a hundred and eighty warriors did the same.
He squatted beside the stream, drank from a cupped hand, then filled his water bottle.
‘Drink,’ he said to his horses, leading them to the stream-bank. ‘We will not be stopping for a while.’
They dipped their heads to the cold water, Bleda standing and looking behind. His warriors were spread along a hillside path that followed the stream bubbling out of these hills. They were tired, dust-covered, but an air of satisfaction rolled off them. Of a ruse gone well.
Yul was sitting on a boulder, running a whetstone along his sword-edge.
‘They followed us, then,’ Ruga said.
‘Aye,’ Bleda said, looking past his small warband and into the distance. ‘And it looks like all of them.’
Behind them, threading between two gentle hills, was Jin’s war-host, thousands of lit torches making the air about them glow. They were low in a valley, dawn not touching them, yet.
The most vital part of his plan had been for Jin’s warband to cross his campground long before there was a hint of dawn’s light. Otherwise they would have seen the tracks of eight hundred horses heading south-west, away from Bleda’s force of one hundred and eighty, who Ruga was leading south-east, towards the mountains that bordered the desert lands of Tarbesh.
‘They will know, now, though,’ Ruga said. ‘Even the Cheren can count.’
‘Aye,’ Bleda grunted.
‘They could still turn back, once they realize they’ve been tricked,’ Ruga said, ‘or split their force and send half of them back. It will be a long journey, and a big gap, but they still have spare mounts. Ellac doesn’t.’
‘I know. They must continue to follow us. All of them.’ Bleda strode to his horses and unbuckled a strap, pulling out a rolled package from behind his saddle. He shook it and held it out. A blue deel, blood staining the left arm, and a vest of lamellar armour. He dropped it on the ground beside the stream.
Ruga looked at the clothing, then at Bleda.
‘You are relying heavily upon Jin’s hatred for you,’ she said.
‘I killed her father. Shamed her with a Ben-Elim half-breed.’
Ruga nodded. ‘I would hate you, too.’
‘MAKE READY TO RIDE!’ Bleda cried out. He took his bow from its saddle case and strung it, checked his sword over his back, made sure it wasn’t sticking in its scabbard. Finally, he checked the hidden knife in his lamellar coat, the one he had used to cut Uldin’s throat.
His warriors went through similar routines, then they were climbing into saddles, leather and iron creaking and jangling.
Bleda shifted in his saddle, then looked at Ruga.
‘It’s going to be a long day. Lead us on,’ he said, and then they were moving out, the drum of hooves filling the air.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
JIN
Jin reined in her horse and stared down at the ground.
Behind her the war-host was letting their mounts drink from the stream, filling water bottles, chewing on cured meat and hard biscuit.
Jin felt frozen, just staring at the blue deel and lamellar vest on the grass beside the stream.
Tark was already on the ground, looking at tracks. He approached the deel and vest, prodded it with the butt end of his spear shaft.
‘That is what he was wearing,’ Tark said. ‘When he gave me this.’ He touched a red scar on his cheek, still raw, not quite healed.
Rage bubbled up inside her, a pressure within her chest. It had been close to boiling over from dawn’s first light, when she had seen Bleda’s warband on a hillside in the distance. Not the thousand she thought she was following. Not even two hundred. She had been tricked.
Tark squatted and stuck his spear butt into the stream, fished out a sodden torch.
‘A good trick,’ he said.
Jin flashed him a dark look.
‘We could go back,’ Tark said. ‘They have spare horses here, many hoof-prints were deeper, heavier than others. My guess is the bulk of the warband went south-west from their camp, but it is these who have the spare mounts. That would make sense now. Speed is their only hope of escaping from us.’
Jin pulled in a deep breath, trying to dispel the red fog in her head. All she could think about was Bleda, of pushing a sword into his ch
est, slowly, watching his mouth open to scream, seeing in his eyes the knowledge that Jin had won.
She shook her head, looked behind, then forwards. Gerel sat his horse close by, silent and brooding.
‘No, we go forwards,’ Jin said. ‘Bleda is here. We find him, kill him, then the Sirak have no lord, they are finished.’
‘And the other warband, the bulk of their strength?’ Tark asked.
‘The other warband is heading for the Tethys Pass,’ Jin said. ‘Once we have killed Bleda and his two hundred, then we shall travel west. We shall either catch them before the pass and kill them, or follow them into the west and kill them there.’ She shrugged.
‘I like it. Either way, all the Sirak die,’ Gerel said.
‘Yes. But Bleda first,’ Jin said.
Tark prodded the deel and lamellar vest.
‘This could be a ruse, to keep you on this trail, stop you from turning back. Bleda might not even be here.’
‘It could be a ruse,’ Jin acknowledged. ‘But I don’t think so. Bleda is too proud. He would not allow someone else to lead this band, so outnumbered and unlikely to survive. He is too noble to allow that. No, Bleda is with them, I am sure of it.’
‘Well, then,’ Tark said, swinging up into his saddle with a grimace, his arm not healed yet. ‘Let’s be about catching him.’
‘Find Bleda, help me catch him, and your place and fame amongst the Cheren will be guaranteed for all generations.’
‘I will find him for you, my Queen. It is what I do.’
Tark slowed in front of Jin.
They had been riding hard for more than half the day, the sun high and hot. Beneath them the ground was changing. Rolling foothills shifting to steeper inclines, valleys and cliffs, the ground moving from grassland to dusty shingle.
‘What is it?’ Jin asked as she reined in beside him.
‘Something . . . strange,’ Tark muttered, swinging from his saddle.
They were in a wide, stony valley, a number of gullies separated by cliffs leading up into the mountains. Tark walked to the end of the valley, stooping before the entrance to each gully. Jin clicked her tongue and her horse trotted after him.
