He cared less for his people than for his comfort. Those who lived within the coastal cities appreciated this view. But most of the people lived in less grand style, in tent cities along the fertile river plain, and it was form these communities that his expeditionary force to the Altanatea had been drawn.
While the cities basked in peace, wealth and the confidence that they could not be taken, not by M’rystal, nor even by the combined strength of the City States, hostile eyes watched his kingdom from the lands of the League of the Conil Nachta. They watched from a place where the river was deep and wide, and where a large community of the Sons of Lorn sprawled contentedly on its farther banks.
A valley, deep cut between craggy hills, lead down into the tribal lands of the Conil Nachta, but no settlement had been built there, for there seemed to be little reason to defend the gorge.
A single guard stood on his high, wooden platform at the river’s edge of the Lorn settlement. His mind was half asleep. The day was hot, and his thick robes uncomfortable; this high and out of easy glance of the women and children below, he had removed his death’s-head mask and sand wrap, and stared lazily across the flapping tents and great canopies, the entrances to the underground halls. Animals moved about, their bleatings and bayings filling the air with confusion of sound. Children laughed, and from the food tents came the sound of seeds being ground, and vegetables chopped.
When an arrow struck him in the temple he probably knew little more than that he had fallen asleep. He toppled off the tower, fell heavily on the dry ground below. For a moment there was a shocked silence as the children and women gathered around him. A few men ran to him, and one of them, a tall warrior wearing the chest emblem of a swordsman, plucked the arrow from the dead man’s skull.
Dogs barked.
Someone shouted that riders came from the rivers, and for a second everyone who crowded around the body noticed the distant splashing of water.
They looked up. Fifty men, clad in the distinctive robes of the Conil Nachta, raced across the deep waters, swords flashing in the sun, faces wild with triumph at the surprise.
They raced up the river shore, and rode among the tents, dealing death and causing havoc. Torches were flung on to tents, which blazed high, and soon the sound of flame drowned the cries of the dying, and the screaming of the women.
Understrength, with most of their menfolk in the north, the defence was weak and short lived.
A troop of the Sons of Lorn rode from beneath a great, white canopy and burst among the raiders, their huge, curved sabres eating lives with every stroke. But they were cut down by the greater numbers, and by the arrows that flew thick as flies around a corpse.
Blood quickly stained the prayers to the desert gods that were carved on each man’s blade; but there were none, not even gods, who could save this settlement from destruction.
A voice cried, in the brogue of the Conil Nachta, a brogue familiar to all Sons of Lorn. “This is easy prey. Our League brothers will have the country in less than a day!”
“Treachery!” screamed a furious warrior, his face hidden beneath an animal mask.
He struck at the raiders all around him, lifted his sabre to strike at one who came close and was unbalanced on his horse.
Desert wind blew the raider’s strange hood from his head, and golden hair tumbled from its hiding place. Not a man at all, but a woman, and the warrior of Lorn spat in contempt, turned away, unwilling to sully his sword with such a despicable prize.
The woman struck him swiftly. The look of contempt remained on the unmasked head as it rolled across the hard ground.
When the settlement was burned finally, and half the warriors lay beheaded and blood-soaked, the warriors of the Conil Nachta fled back across the rivers, and were seen to turn west, vanishing across a rise and into the distance. Wailing, sobbing, screaming, the shattered occupants of the Lorn community gathered themselves together. Some of them walked to the river, peered into its raging depths. There was no ford there: there had never been a ford there. The raiders had crossed the Nachta as if by magic.
From a high ridge, above the river, a man watched the burning settlement. There was a bad taste in his mouth, but he knew that what had been done had been right. He watched the conference of those warriors who had survived, saw the masked elders make a gruesome sacrifice to the desert gods of war. After a while he saw the dark flights of birds rise into the hot air, circle the smouldering encampment and then fly north, soon vanishing into the distance.
He grinned at this, and turned his horse about. The outfit of a warrior from the League of Conil Nachta was slung across his saddle. He himself wore dark leather. High boots protected his legs and a band of green cloth tied back his hair.
His name was Silver.
“I liked that not at all,” murmured Moonshadow darkly.
“Nor I,” said Raven, “but it was a small price to pay for what we shall achieve.”
The Nachta river rushed past them, the last few kli to the ocean. They sat on the jutting roots of a great tree that grew almost from the water itself. Across the river were high cliffs hiding them from the eyes of any warrior patrol that might have been riding between cities.
The forest lands on this side of the river were dense, here, and many tribal towns were scattered throughout them. Earlier in the day they had seen the smoke and fire, from a long way inland, which told Raven that Spellbinder, too, had achieved his part of the alliance-breaker.
After a while Spellbinder led his band of Altanate troops to the river and climbed from his horse, stripping the loose Lorn clothing from his body.
He bathed his face in the river, then rose and stared into the sky. “Have you seen the messengers?”
Raven answered no. “But they will have flown, Spellbinder. You can be assured. They flew from Lorn within minutes of our raid.”
Spellbinder smiled, dried his hands on his leather before pulling it on over his dark mail. “The friendship between Lorn and the Conil Nachta will not survive the first cry of outrage. Not a man on the Altan’s territory will stop to think of trickery. They will think only of treachery and flee back to their homeland and war.”
“And the war,” said Moonshadow, “will be the normal state of affairs here, unresolvable, eternal.”
Spellbinder smiled and reached to the spit where a small animal carcass cooled from the cooking. “It is not unresolvable wars that concern us, Moonshadow, but those that result in triumph, for in triumph there is order, and in order there is—for the present, at least—wrongness.”
A flight of birds scattered noisily through the woods behind them. Raven was on her feet instantly, eyes narrowed and searching the darkness. Silver crouched low, his sword held before him, and a moment later he called, “Look!”
Distantly, winging their way north, went the carrier birds of the Conil Nachta, homing in on those who had trained them how and where to fly. Silver smiled, then jumped to his feet as a great spear thudded into the fire before him, sending ash and wood fragments flying into his face.
Swords slipped quickly from sheaths and the men of the Altanate grouped together, scouring the woods for the danger.
“They followed us,” called Spellbinder. “Prepare for a fight!”
Even as he spoke the warriors of the Conil Nachta rode from the forest into the clearing. Each man as tall and muscular as Argor, and sat astride a wide-flanked horse with all the confidence and arrogance of a man who knows he is invincible. They wore dark brown clothes, bound tight to their bodies with leather straps. Bronze gleamed at their waists, and silver helms decked their heads. No masks for the Conil Nachta, but mean, intensely blue eyes watched from tanned, leathery faces; most of the horse warriors wore long, straggly beards, unfashioned and uncombed. Their helmets sprouted horns as wide as Lifebane’s, but curved downwards. They all wore short cloaks, held to their breasts by thin, ivory-handled daggers.
“By the Wastes!” cried the leader. “They seek to truck us by hiding thei
r nature.”
“They stink of Lorn,” cried another. He drew back his bow and let fly an arrow straight at the heard of one of M’rystal’s soldiers. The man screamed as the force of the arrow sent him flying backwards. In the momentary distraction the Conil Nachta galloped from the forest and swarmed among Raven’s followers.
Numbers were poorly matched. There were but a handful of the horse warriors, and they fell quickly as each found himself attacked on all sides.
Reluctant to effect more unnecessary killing, Raven leapt into the waters of the Nachta, with Moonshadow following her. When they surfaced it was to observe a brawny warrior galloping into the deep waters and striking at them with his short-bladed sword.
Raven defended herself as best she could, but found herself without a weapon as the man, from his position of strength, knocked her blade away. He fell from the saddle and forced her beneath the water, pushing down with his knife as she fought to hold the point away from her throat. Under the water he seemed more animal, more fiercesome than before, as his hair floated out and his cheeks swelled with his contained breath. She was beneath him, longing to suck air into her lungs and restore her weakened body.
Just as she thought she must surely suck water in and die, so a hand pulled the warrior above the water’s surface. Raven leapt up after him, treading water, and looking for a way out of her predicament. Moonshadow was wrestling with the man from behind, his arm around the warrior’s throat, his other hand holding the killing blade away from Raven.
Silver splashed into the river and called to her. She glanced in his direction and saw him toss her a sword, which she caught despite the frantic kicking of the man before her, and the flow of the river carrying them down to the sea.
She thrust the blade into his head and he screamed briefly, shrilly. Moonshadow released his grip and the warrior floated beside Raven for a moment, watching her, puzzlement on his face as if he could not comprehend the fact of his death. He sank, then, and redness flooded about Raven. Moonshadow struck strongly back across the river and dived to the river bed, surfacing a moment later with Raven’s sword. As she took the weapon from him a great spear struck the water near to her, and she was reminded that the danger was not yet over.
Clutching the wooden-shafted weapon she crawled ashore, thrust the spear upwards at the man who led the Conil Nachta and drove it hard between his ribs. He hacked at her, and at the men who harassed him, and finally spurred his horse through the ranks of the Altan’s soldiers and towards the forest. The spear stuck from his body, almost rigid.
He turned and glared at Raven, and his face streamed with sweat, his body dripped blood. A few of his men rode back to him, quitting the fight.
Raven felt a terrible emotion as she watched the proud war-lord, dying on his horse, defying her with his stare until the last moment. She watched as he wrenched the spear from his lungs and cast it away, grimacing as he did so and finally emitting a piercing shriek of anger, and pain, and frustration. He slumped forward in the saddle and one of his warriors reached for the bridle of his horse and led him into the forest.
“By the Skull!” Raven cried, anguish in her voice. “Must we destroy everything that is proud, every man that is worthy?”
Spellbinder placated her with a hand on her shoulder. She sheathed her sword. Her face was dark, her hair saturated and lank as it draped about her shoulders. The warlock said, “’Tis the preservation of pride and worth that is one of the goals of your life, Raven. You must always swallow your feelings, as you have to swallow your hatred for Donwayne, and obey the calling of those who guide you.”
Raven shook her head, almost in despair. “Time runs through me, aye. But must the blood and life of these lands run through me as well?”
“It will seem bad more often than it will seem good,” said Spellbinder. “But you are sensitive to change, and your instincts guide you more than any spirit of destiny and fate. The death you deal, Raven, is the death you make as a response to your innate knowing.” And quietly he added, “So it goes.”
“Oh Spellbinder, enough, enough!” She was weary of his mystic talk. She turned from him.
Moonshadow faced her, his own face dark, his eyes ablaze with an intensity she had seen but rarely. His strength was returned after two days, on board the ship as they had sailed south, when his body had been racked with its shadow illness.
“I must go north,” he said. “It is the time of reckoning for me, for the Crugoan. I must say farewell, Raven.”
Spellbinder said, “We all go north, Moonshadow. We all seek the same goal.”
“But I can waste no more time,” said the strange man. “For my own time grows short. I cannot survive another plunge into the infernal weakness of a new moon. Before the cycle is completed again, I must face the Crugoan, and destroy it.”
“Stay with us,” said Raven. “We seek the Crugoan’s host, whichever of them it be. Our destinies lead north, to the Frozen Peaks, and there is little reason in riding apart.”
Moonshadow agreed, thoguth without much enthusiasm.
Fourteen
“A powerful man grieves the loss of power more than the loss of manhood. This is what makes him strong.”
The Books of Kharwhan
“So swift and simple an attack,” said Karmana, “can break an alliance of such power and such frightening prospect.”
Spellbinder grinned wryly. “The giant Kragiriag, in Ishkarian mythology, was destroyed by a simple hollow straw and a dust mote, blow into its eyes by a ten-year-old girl.” He looked at the woman from the northern tribes. “Your own warriors, simple people, perhaps, by certain standards, would take an empire to subdue them. The weakness of greatness is that it is vulnerable to the insignificant.”
A sudden wave tossed the flimsy ship to the starboard, and both of them clutched the railings hard. A mist was rising to the west, and a cool wind blew the tangy sea spray across the deck and made them shiver.
They were long past Lym, now again an open port, the blockade having been one of the first fleets that they had passed on their journey north. They had not seen all the ships that had, no doubt, fled south, but each dawn the cry of the watch was of “sails to the port” or, “Fleet approaching.” With the utmost caution they had watched the vessels streaming past them, to be lost in the fog or across the horizon. And on land, no doubt, the story was the same, with the armies of each race storming across and around the great desert, back to their homelands.
M’rystal had his kingdom back.
They docked at Salit, and rode due east to Kahrsaam. Raven led the way through the gates of the city shortly before dusk of a day, numberless among the days they had travelled. No one doubted in the slightest that Belthis and Donwayne had had ample time to escape to their haven in the Frozen Peaks. No one believed that the travelling was finished.
The streets of Kahrsaam were lined with the dead. They hung, grotesque and bloated, from gallows erected on every street corner, and in every square. Sons of Lorn and warriors of the Conil Nachta, captured by the swarming armies of the Altanate before they could escape across the Lym. It made Raven’s heart grow cold to see so much carnage, to see so many brave men, noble warriors, slung by their stretched and blackened necks in such ignominious fashion.
M’rystal was a cruel man, and she would have expected no different fate for those who had opposed him.
She wondered at the fate of Belthis, and whether or not he had escaped the Altanate, or whether, indeed, he had ever been here at all. And Donwayne. He too was at the forefront of her mind.
She looked at Karmana, and the dark-haired girl was pale-faced and tense as she canned the swinging, naked corpses, searching among the disemboweled and mutilated remnants of men for a shape and a face that might have been Karl ir Donwayne.
Then the stench of decay, the foul odour of rotting guts, made her draw her cloak across her face like the others, hiding her senses from M’rystal’s insensitivity.
How could a man subject this
people to such an abominable stink? Raven realised that it was his way of punishing them.
He himself was safe in the clean air higher on the hill at the centre of Kahrsaam. His subjects, those who had refused revolution for fear of never seeing their sons again, they would swelter and gasp in the blue, fly-filled air, until his wrath decayed as the Sons of the southern kingdoms decayed and passed into the air.
M’rystal welcomed Raven and the others with a fanfare of horn and trumpet, and a display of pleasure such as Raven, and even Jirrem, had never seen before. M’rystal, glad in flowing blue robes with a glittering gold helmet on his head, opened his arms as he stood upon the high steps of his palacae, and every magnificently armoured soldier in the great courtyard dropped to his knees and lifted his broad-bladed spear above his head.
Raven rode between the ranks of these humbled warriors, and the courtyard echoed to the clatter of hooves as all her mercenaries followed her. The air shrilled to the great blasts of the bronze instruments, and priests and seers swarmed down the steps to greet Raven as a heroine, and a savior.
Raven passed them all as abruptly and curtly as her legs let her. With Silver on her one hand, and Karmana at her other, she went up the steps to face M’rystal.
“Raven!” he cried, beaming. “You have today become a Goddess in the Altanate. All of you. And when you bring back my dear Krya, as I know you shall, then your godhead shall be tenfold.”
Spellbinder laughed as he followed Raven up the steps.
“And Spellbinder too,” said M’rystal. “You shall, if you so desire, become my personal warlock. You shall stand beside me—”
Raven cut him short.
“Enough, M’rystal. We come for payment, and for promises. There shall be no further action from us until you have signed certain treaties, and filled our saddlebags with some Universal currency.”
A Time of Ghosts Page 18
