by Robert Ryan
Clouds eventually scudded across the sky, and they drew to a halt. There was no sign of their pursuers, and they moved off the road into a grove of trees. They rubbed the horses down and ate a cold meal of bread and dried meat. Then they settled themselves as comfortably as they could and slept. Lanrik wondered if they should set a watch, but the Royal Guard would not have been able to keep pace even if they had followed at once.
It was after dawn when he woke. Erlissa was still asleep nearby, her hair tousled, and her head resting on one arm. Aranloth was awake and had been busy. He had collected tinder and started a small fire over which he was heating water. The canopy of trees dispersed the smoke.
The lòhren looked in his direction. “Nothing like a warm breakfast to start the day.”
Lanrik could not agree more. “Warm breakfasts are the Raithlin’s delight,” he said. Over the years he had eaten more cold and quick meals before the sun had risen than he cared to remember.
He glanced at Erlissa and found that she was awake and looking at him, her eyes were large and dark, but her expression unfathomable. She sat up, yawned, and ran her hand through her hair and frowned with dissatisfaction at what she found. She muttered something that Lanrik did not catch.
They ate their meal within the cool dark of the trees. The road beyond remained quiet; the only movement was of a nuthatch working its way down a nearby trunk in search of insects with its characteristic head-first approach.
When they were done they checked over the horses. None of them showed signs of soreness or injury from the long ride, and they saddled them and moved into the open. The sun was bright, the day was clear, and the turf on the road, though still wet with dew, was springy and fresh. It was a good time to ride, and they would make sure they left the Royal Guard well behind.
They started slow, allowing the horses to warm up, then increased the pace. The countryside around them was changing. The villas of the wealthy were now gone; only farmsteads remained, and those were becoming infrequent and separated by thick tracts of forest. The land was rising into downs, and the ground was rockier, no longer the chalky soil of Galenthern, and the stands of beech that he was used to were replaced by oak.
It was a new type of county for him. He must find a new way of life, too, but what direction should he take? Nothing stood out. The skills he had were not useful except to the Raithlin. Had he wasted his life learning them?
Erlissa rode beside him and looked over.
“What’s the matter, Lan,” she asked.
He did not like telling people his problems, but there was something about her easygoing manner that encouraged it.
“I’m worried about what I’m going to do when this is over. The other cities have scouts, I guess, but they’re not Raithlin, and I don’t have the training for anything else.”
Erlissa shrugged. “Something will turn up. You’re young and determined and could be successful at any number of things.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “I think you already know that. What bothers you isn’t the future but the past. You feel it’s a shame to let your skills and the traditions of the Raithlin go to waste.”
Lanrik pondered her statement.
Erlissa smiled. “I’m getting to know how you think, but tell me this; do you still believe in the Raithlin creed?”
He did not hesitate. “Of course.”
He remembered the words he had spoken over Lathmai’s cairn. The creed was widely known throughout Esgallien and beyond. He must have said it thousands of times, and he repeated the words once more.
Our duty is to serve and protect
Our honor is to fight but not hate
Our love is for all that is good in the world
“It’s curious,” Lathmai said, “but there’s nothing there about the Raithlin skills. There’s nothing about how to track or throw a knife. Instead, what’s valued is a way of life. The creed is a code to live by; you can uphold the Raithlin values in everything you do in the future.”
Lanrik sighed. He knew she was right, but it would not be the same. “I’ll think on it,” he said. “And thank you.”
She gave him a smile.
They rode all that day, and there was no sign of pursuit. The road was a lonely strip of civilization in the wilderness, travelled by few this far away from the city, but they still saw the occasional farmer who preferred to live in the wild and drive fattened cattle into Esgallien once a year.
The land continued to change; the patches of oak forest grew larger, wolves howled in the distance, and the road still climbed.
They camped late that evening in a stand of trees by the roadside. A cool wind blew from the west, and they sheltered comfortably in the lee of a small but steeply sided hill. A hollow had been gouged out of its side by wind, rain or human intervention. It was not deep but offered shelter and they used it. A small fire-pit, lined with blackened stones, and obviously the remnant of other travelers, was set in the middle.
They ate another quick meal and settled down to sleep early. The wind moaned over the hillcrest through the night; the boughs of the oaks creaked, and the wolves howled against the dark. Clouds skimmed low and thick, blocking out the stars and bright Halathgar, but brought no rain.
Lanrik slept poorly. In the pre-dawn darkness, when the wind stilled and the trees grew silent, he lay still and thought about what had brought him to this moment. It seemed a long time ago that he had buried Lathmai and his life had been forever altered.
Something else troubled him though, and he was not sure what it was. The horses were silhouetted nearby, and at first he did not know what it was about them that disturbed him. Then he realized their ears were twitching, responding to sounds that he could not hear.
Swiftly he rolled to his feet and drew his sword. The noise woke the others, and they looked at him groggily as he surveyed the darkness. He saw nothing and began to feel foolish. Then he noticed in the slowly growing light the pale glitter of naked steel. Someone had crawled within twenty feet of the camp.
“They’ve found us,” he said.
Aranloth, staff in hand, came to stand by his side.
The steel blade flickered. There was a shuffling noise, and a voice came out of the dark.
“You’re surrounded,” it said. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
The speaker stood up and came into view. He was tall and dressed in the uniform of the Royal Guard. He walked forward calmly, sword in hand, and as he did so five others followed. Their swords were drawn too, and Lanrik did not like the eager expressions on their face.
The tall man was their captain, and he spoke again. “This is a dangerous situation, but it needn’t be. You’re outnumbered, and there’s no point in fighting. You know who we are and where our orders come from.”
He paused a little then added, “And you know we must have the sword.”
Lanrik detected something about the captain that he liked. Prudently, he had not mentioned the king directly, and his hesitation indicated distaste of the task set for him.
The light was increasing, and Lanrik looked him in the eye. “And if I give it to you, what then?”
The captain returned his gaze steadily. “I’ll not lie to you. My orders were to kill you and take the sword, but if you give it to me freely, you can go. I’ll not kill an unarmed man.”
One of the guards behind him grunted. “You may not, but the rest of us will. We didn’t enjoy that long chase. It was the hardest riding we’ve ever done, and we want some entertainment for our troubles.”
The other men laughed, but the captain turned to them coolly.
“Remember that you’re Royal Guards, not gutter criminals, regardless of the tasks that you’re sometimes given.”
He turned back, and Lanrik felt a sense of desperation. There was no way out of this. The captain was a good man, but he was sworn to serve the king and would not leave without the sword. And he might not be able to control his men even if they got it.
Lanrik cou
ld not give him the sword. He did not especially believe in prophecies, but on the other hand he had seen some strange things. And Aranloth, who knew about such matters, had warned him Murhain must never get it.
If he had to fight it would be one against six. He did not know what help, if any, the lòhren and Erlissa would be able to give. He looked at the captain and felt sick. He liked the man, but he was their leader. If he was killed quickly it would surprise and confuse the others. It was clear that he was the thinker of the group, and without him they would be leaderless.
Lanrik looked at Aranloth. He seemed a picture of calmness, giving no indication of what he would do, but he read in the lòhren’s expression that he knew what would happen next and was ready for it.
Lanrik suppressed his reluctance and turned to the captain. “I’m sorry,” he said.
He saw perplexity in the man’s eyes and then sudden understanding, but Lanrik was already whipping out a throwing knife. Draw and throw were one motion, and the blade hurled into him. It ripped at his throat and bright blood spurted into the air.
The other guards were dismayed. Lanrik leapt at them, sword drawn, but before he reached them Aranloth was there, his staff swinging wildly among them, and the crack of wood on bone was loud as he struck one on the head.
He joined the lòhren and another man went down, the shazrahad blade having slipped easily through his defenses.
The three remaining guards fled into the trees and crashed through the undergrowth. In moments hooves thudded southward on the road.
Lanrik quickly glanced about him. Two guards lay dead. Erlissa was kneeling over the captain, but there was nothing she could do: he was dead too. She looked up at him. Blood was splattered over her hands and arms from trying to staunch the wound, and tears brimmed in her eyes, but she said nothing.
He cleaned the blood off his sword and walked through the trees onto the road. The other guards were gone, and the clouded sky was red with dawn. He gulped in fresh air and tried to steady his hands.
A few minutes later the lòhren joined him. They watched the slow surge of the sun over the horizon in silence, a sun that three other men would never see again, and Lanrik felt bitter. He had killed the captain, a decent man who had dutifully obeyed his orders. He did not know his name, and would probably never discover it, or if he was married or a father.
Aranloth leaned on his staff and waited.
“Why?” asked Lanrik. “Why did it have to be that way?”
Aranloth seemed to know what he meant. “It would have been easier had the captain not been a good man. But he was. He was following the orders of his king, and it wasn’t his fault the instructions were wrongful – yet he paid the price.”
“A heavy price for another man’s greed.”
Aranloth nodded. “That’s so, but it’s often the way of things. The world teems with injustice, hate, greed, envy and incompetence. A man can only pick his way as best he can, trying to choose right from wrong.”
“And what of my choices?” asked Lanrik.
The lòhren looked at him for the first time. “I know what choices you made and why you made them. I made my own, as the guards did also. If you thought your actions wrong, you would not have committed to them. Had you reacted differently the sword could be on its way to Murhain as we speak. The ruination of the realm might be at hand, and we would probably be dead. The other five wanted to kill us even if their captain was willing to let us go.”
Lanrik kicked the ground. “Was there nothing else I could have done?”
Aranloth sighed. “I’m old, Lanrik. Older than you know. I’ve seen many decisions go awry; just as many of the good as the bad. Sometimes there are no good choices, yet life forces us to act anyway. But you’re not the first to experience this. The Raithlin before you have done so, back to the days of Conhain, and even before when they served the Halathrin. They found their way to an understanding, and you will too.”
Lanrik thought of the long history of the Raithlin, of his own teachers and the words of advice that had filtered down through the generations. The Raithlin creed that he had recently discussed with Erlissa came to mind. It was the wisdom of men who had been forced to kill, or see those they loved killed instead. It was an expression formulated by people who had endured worse than he had. He whispered the simple words and found they had new meaning:
Our duty is to serve and protect
Our honor is to fight but not hate
Our love is for all that is good in the world.
13. They Have Many Names
It took the travelers over a day to reach Caladhrist. The road, arrow-straight all the way from Esgallien, twisted like a writhing snake on descending the gorge.
The landscape was barren. Massive boulders and sweeps of shattered rock littered the steep sides. Loose stones clattered beneath the hooves of the horses, and a cacophony of noise came from the miners: shouted instructions, yells of encouragement, curses and raucous singing.
They followed the road to the bottom. The air, heavy with smoke and dust, made them cough, and the ridges that hemmed them in cast groping shadows.
Erlissa shuddered. “It feels like the bottom of a grave.”
Aranloth lifted his gaze from the barren ground and looked about.
“Many men have died here. Caladhrist has been mined since Conhain’s time, and over the years, there have been accidents. But it was mined even before that. The Halathrin were here long ago, though even they weren’t the first. They found the workings of other people before them, their tools and excavations, and their bones too. Not men killed by mishap they say, but sacrificed. They believe the gorge is haunted by the spirits of the restless dead.”
“The Halathrin discovered bodies in the swamps of Galenthern too,” added Lanrik. “It’s said that they found the traces of a strange and cruel civilization all over eastern Alithoras.”
“Strange and cruel are matters of perspective,” Aranloth said, guiding his horse around a pile of rubble. “Who knows what those people would think of us and our ways? Of their existence though, there’s no doubt. Nor of the men who died here. The miners claim that on some nights they can hear dead men’s voices in the hiss of the wind over the ridges. Superstition, of course, and yet it’s not a favorable place for lòhrengai.”
They continued along the bottom of the gorge in silence. Much of their travel since the fight with the Royal Guard had been quiet. Erlissa was withdrawn, and Lanrik thought she was avoiding him. That she was upset over the killing of the captain he knew, but he did not know how to heal the breach between them. Necessity had forced his actions, but he would not be able to convince her of that. Perhaps it was better not to try.
They slowed to skirt a massive pile of rubble, and Aranloth chafed at the delay.
“We have to hurry,” he said. “It’s a hundred miles to the nearest oak grove in Enorìen, and the mistletoe berries must be picked when the moon is midway between full and dead. That’s only three nights away.”
Lanrik thought something else was making the lòhren uneasy, for the time constraint had been there since the beginning. He wondered what it was while the road meandered past old workings, piles of broken stone and washes of gravel and sediment. There were miners and soldiers all about, but most were on the valley sides and few at the bottom.
Erlissa looked about her in disgust. “It’s hard to believe that something as beautiful as gold comes from a place like this. How do they do it?”
“With back-breaking work,” Aranloth said curtly.
It seemed as though that was all he was going to say but then he expanded.
“Veins of gold are scattered through the sides of the valley but finding them is difficult. The labor of digging by hand to seek them would be enormous. Instead, they divert water from a creek several miles away and hold it in clay-lined tanks at the tops of the ridges. When they’re ready to explore a particular place they release a wave of water. It sweeps away the overburden of soil exposing the bedr
ock and any gold-bearing veins.”
Erlissa looked around her with new understanding. “No wonder it’s such a mess here. What happens then?”
“If a vein, or lode, is found they attack it with fire-setting. That involves building a fire against the rock and when it’s hot, quenching it with water. That makes it easy to break up, and the barren debris is swept away with another release of water.”
“What happens if the lode runs deep into the bedrock?” Lanrik asked.
“It often does,” Aranloth said. “In Caladhrist the veins are usually horizontal, and the miners drive adits, a kind of tunnel, to follow the lode right into the sides of the gorge. The adit is made at a slight angle to dewater it, and sometimes shafts are sunk from above to provide better air movement.”
Erlissa lifted her hand and exposed her twisted gold bracelet. She turned it back and forth in the light, admiring it.
“All the hard work is worth it,” she said.
Aranloth looked closely at the ornament. “A remarkable piece,” he said.
“It’d be worth a lot of money if you ever sold it,” Lanrik said.
Erlissa shook her head sadly. “Perhaps, but it was my mother’s, and I’ll never part with it.”
Lanrik felt stupid. Of all the things he could have said . . .
They soon passed beyond the middle of the valley and approached two miners seated around a ring of burnt stones, the fire long since cold. They had the faces of rough men; people who had worked hard all their lives for little profit and had endured hardship. Dust and grime covered their hands and clothes; their yellowed fingernails were cracked and chewed short, but they were well mannered.
As Erlissa neared, they stood and tipped their hats, the oldest coughing behind his before speaking. He had a jutting beard that might once have been red like the remnant of hair on his head, but was now yellow-white.
