Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  Jemel had seen the Dead Waters, but they were poison and just another wonder of the Sands. Besides, they didn't move, except when the djinni moved them. They only lay like a salt plain, vast and glimmering and useless, harbouring nothing good. Or had done, till Elisande came to interfere. They might grow sweet again now, he supposed; then they would be a wonder indeed, so very much water and all of it to drink. Then let the Beni Rus and other near tribes look to their borders; so much water must spell a great quantity of war.

  There was less water here, immeasurably less if it were or could be measured by the moment, but even so he had to sit and stare, no, gape in a way that he had not - he thought, he hoped - at that other shore, before those other waters.

  Jemel had seen an inland sea, but he had never seen a river. Neither had he ever seen a bridge. He knew the words from stories, and from talking with his friends; he had seen aqueducts and castles, and thought he knew both how water would flow within a course — slowly, quietly - and how men would build a crossing-way above it, strong and straight and practical.

  But this was Surayon, and he was wrong and twice wrong, as a young man often is when he imagines that things will be as he has drawn them in his mind.

  For all the seeming gentleness, the roundness of the valleys bowl, the slopes were steep above. This much he knew; the palace was set at the road's height and he and Marron had ridden down from the heights today. The headwaters that fed the river were set far higher, up where only goat-paths and foolish children climbed, and there were many of them in the mountain ranges to north and east and south. Snowmelt and spring rains would bring a torrent in their season; even here in summer's lee, Surayon never ran dry and neither did its river. There was always rain, blowing in from the sea and caught by the mountain wall; the Sands were dry because Outremer was not, and this was the wettest of all of Outremer. If the rains should fail, there were still springs and hidden lakes high above, lakes that froze in winter and glared back at sunlight so that they could feed frosty streams with their meltwaters all summer long. Such streams plunged toward the valley, young and hectic; met each other, and became a rabble; heard others like themselves, and raced to meet them too.

  And so soon, very soon, all come together, they made this river that Jemel sat staring at: this riotous roaring body that flexed ice-green muscles and spat a bitter, glittering froth, that even at this dead end of its season was still a fury contained but not caged within its channel of rock, that threatened to reach out and snatch him in.

  If he'd not been mounted, if he'd been standing on his own weak legs and closer to the bank, he thought it wouldn't need to make so much effort. He thought he'd have been sucked in simply by the noise and the rush and the irresistibility of it. Even seated with hands gripping saddle-horn and heels clamped into horses sides, he still felt dizzy, unrooted, plucked at, dismayed.

  He didn't think to wonder what men might call the river. It was a wild thing and far beyond the impertinence of naming. As well name the lion that kills your flock at night, the eagle that takes a lamb, the sun that drops you dead after it has soothed its own thirst by drinking all your water from your skin ...

  And then there was the bridge.

  Something broad and solid and built entirely of stone Jemel would have looked for, knowing how the Patric mind turned always to weight instead of speed, how they felt that a castle conquered a land: a very fixed point with squat heavy legs driven deep to deny the force and chaos of the river, armoured perhaps at either end with turrets and embrasures, perhaps even gates against a more deliberate enemy. Serviceable and ugly he would have expected it to be, and defensible in Patric terms, which meant standing and standing and never giving way.

  Instead he saw a bow bent against the sky, a challenge against all reason. When he saw people and horses use it as a bridge, he thought that was brave and impertinent, another kind of challenge. Even when he was close enough to see that it actually was a bridge, innocent as he was he did not for one moment believe that all bridges were like this, nor even - or especially not - all the bridges that the Patrics built.

  Before and some way before the road ever reached the river, it met a stone embankment, a ramp, a pier that lifted it into a smooth, steep climb to echo the fall of the hillside behind. Leaping from the piers end came the bridge itself, a tracery of beams interlocked to form a single graceful, high and unsupported arch that bent too steeply and stretched too far surely to be any unaided work of man.

  It spanned not only the river, but a wide margin of land on either bank. Jemel couldn't see any reason for that, unless it were the simple reason that they could do it, they could build so high and so strikingly and therefore they had done it, for their own triumphant pleasure and no more. Which perhaps was more djinn than human — he remembered the levelled mountain, the soaring pillar - and certainly not at all Patric.

  Roads followed the line of the river on either bank, but again at a distance from it, so that the footings of the bridge served as crossroads. The margin beyond was thickly grassed, right to the river's edge; land here in the valley might be fertile, but there was little enough of it and none to spare. The Sharai did not farm, but even to Jemel’s inexperienced eye that grass looked rich and long, ready to be cut and dried in the sun to make hay for the winter.

  Today at least, though, another use had been found for those broad margins. Thin but constant streams of people were trailing in from west and east, some on foot and some on horseback, none of them on the roads. Those would be sacrosanct, Jemel guessed, not to have warriors or urgent messengers delayed by refugees. Where the people met at the bridge armed men were taking their horses from them, except for those who were fit enough to ride but too hurt to walk. The impounded beasts were tethered in lines beneath the bridge's arch. Close beside them Jemel could see a few figures lying in the grass, men and women too exhausted or too badly wounded even to ride any further, defeated perhaps by the prospect of the long climb up to the Princip's palace. Children could be carried in a man’s arms or a woman's at need, they'd met a few such on the way, but these would need stretchers if the djinni didn't come for them.

  He and Marron rode slowly on towards the bridge, shifting their own mounts onto the grass to leave this road free for the refugees. Some were burned and smoke-stained, some were bleeding or had bled; all looked numb, defeated, too worn to show the fear that must be eating at them. Scanning the sky and the far horizons, Jemel saw firesign everywhere but no hint of any enemy.

  Two men from the bridge's guard came walking towards them, hands on sword-hilts, not quite threatening but visibly wary of strangers in Sharai dress. With an effort, Jemel kept his own sword-hand in plain sight on the horse's reins.

  'Who are you, and where are you bound?'

  'Guests of the Princip,' Jemel replied economically. 'Where bound? I think perhaps here. He sent us to watch the road, and to help the wounded; but they need no help that we can give' — unless the djinni come, that's better help than any, and they'll never know that we gave it — 'and that road watches itself.'

  The one man smiled thinly, while the other went on watching. 'Aye, we've had thirty years to build for this day. The croplands are labyrinths, both sides of the valley. They'll slow down any army.'

  Slow, yes, but no more than that. Not halt, and not defeat. The Sharai liked to fight in the open, on the move, on horse or camelback; they would hate that maze of walls and shadows as much as they hated sieges and castle warfare. He thought perhaps that was why Rhabat had always been a place of truce, because no tribe would want to battle for it. But hate it or not, the tribes would enter the labyrinth and take it, field by field if they needed to. It wasn't a castle or anything like, it couldn't be seriously defended.

  No more could the Princip's palace; and the town of Surayon had walls, but no other fortifications that Jemel had seen. No keep, certainly no castle, nowhere to make a stand. And yet they'd had thirty years, and knew that this day must come ...

  Are all
your defences meant only for delay?' he asked, as soon as the question occurred to him. It won him a suspicious scowl, but after a moment he got his answer too.

  'Well, if the Princip mounts you, he must vouch for you -though I'll dismount you myself, in a moment. Yes, lad, they are. We couldn't ever fight and hope to win, there aren't enough of us and never will be. We could build a castle stronger than the Roq de Rancon, and it would still fall in the end. So we delay and delay, and pull our people back into the high vales, where the roads don't run. There are stronger defences there, walls from cliff to chasm, and no space for siege-engines to reduce them; those we can hold for a while.'

  'And when they fall? Or when there is no food, when your stores are gone?'

  'Then we're gone too. Princip's guests or not, I'll still keep some of our secrets in the folds of my own mind. But they won't have the massacre they've come for, neither your people nor his,' with a nod at Marron.

  It is the Patrics who seek your deaths, Patric - my people want only the land and the holy places...

  But at that moment a woman came shambling towards them, her head swathed in a crude blood-soaked linen bandage that came down to cover one eye and half her cheek, but still couldn't cover the whole of her hurt: he could see the clotted tail of a curving slash reach out from below the bandage, almost to the corner of her mouth.

  He didn't need to see the way she shied away in a touch of pure terror, that moment when she lifted her gaze from the road to see who sat the horses. Even on so little evidence, a thumbs-length showing of a wound, Jemel could name the weapon and the blow that did that to her, and neither was Patric.

  Head-cut from a scimitar, from a mounted Sharai, and he could have been ashamed of his people, except that shame would be no use to her, nor him, nor anyone. He sat quite still, watching as she edged past on the further side of the road, as she lowered her head and trudged on to face the hard climb up to the palace and some measure of healing, though she would carry the scar for life and had probably lost the eye already. Then he turned back to the guard and said, 'You might have given her a horse. Or I could go after her and offer mine ...'

  'No,' the man said, as Jemel had known that he would. 'She's fit to walk, if barely. Horses are reserved for fighting men, that's why we're here. We'll take yours too, if you ve no pressing need for them.'

  Neither he nor Marron could argue any pressing need, now that they'd seen the situation on the road. He thought perhaps that was another reason why the Princip had sent them here; it might have been the best use he could make of them, to deliver two more mounts from his stable.

  The guard was already reaching for his bridle. Jemel would have nodded, dismounted, handed over the reins with no argument, except that just then there was a shout from across the river.

  He looked, Marron looked, the guard turned to look -and no question now of handing the horse over, bow-backed nag though it was. It was still a horse. The guard's hand fell away and he ran for his own mount or any mount, shouting to his confreres while he ran; Jemel slammed his heels in hard to kick forward past his suddenly pale, motionless friend and ride to the bridge.

  On the further bank, the slow line of refugees had become a turmoil, a hectic race to cross the river. The guards on that side were at the horse-lines, fumbling with saddle and harness, their desperation clear to be seen. Tension breeds clumsiness; grace and speed come from confidence. That was a Sharai law, and confidence was a Sharai characteristic; boys were taught to trust themselves.

  Even where they couldn't trust their mounts, or their companions. Jemel had no faith at all in the beast he rode, it was only that he'd sooner be on horseback than afoot; he had little enough faith in Marron's following him. Quite apart from that oath the boy had sworn and clung to so determinedly, not to kill again, there was something else to hold him back from this.

  It was riders that had made the people flee, that had sent the guards to horse and kept Jemel in the saddle: riders breaking out onto the grassland, with swords in their hands that gleamed not at all in the sunshine, that were dull and stained with hours of use already.

  There were not many of the riders, a dozen or so. Still, they were enough to sow panic just with their appearance; and it was that same appearance that had seized Marron in the moment of his first seeing them. They were Patric, of course, mounted on heavy Patric horses. No surprise in that. But the officer who led them wore white dress with a black cloak thrown over, though the black was ripped and the white was darkly marked; the men who followed him wore black entirely, in sign of their brotherhood.

  Jemel could name the brotherhood, just from that first sight of them. Marron had belonged to it, had been a brother among brothers and was still not properly free, although they had cast him out. They would burn him as a witch, Jemel knew, if ever they could catch him. Jemel was his only shield, and would have felt more comfortable in that role if he'd been sure of his ward. Marron was still troubled by his slaughter at the Roq; he might see some dark justice in his being given over to the flames. Worse, he might almost welcome his capture, if it could lead to his meeting with the knight Sieur Anton d'Escrivey.

  Worse yet, Jemel had sworn an oath to meet with Sieur Anton d'Escrivey on his own account, and could not be ungrateful to see those black-clad fighting men appear on their horses. His only other chance to keep the oath had been for Marron somehow to lead him to that meeting, all unwitting this way it could happen more naturally, by Gods mocking will or his own steel determination. If those ravens were abroad in Surayon, Jemel might contrive to find his man, if they were not simply tossed together. That might even be Sieur Anton on the destrier there, a gift already given, if Jemel could believe it hard enough.

  Oath clashed with oath, ringingly in Jemel's exhausted head. If he rode on, if he crossed the bridge that spanned the river Marron would follow, with one reason or another but truly only because Jemel had gone before; if he held back he would make a coward and a traitor of himself.

  In truth, there had never been any question about it. He rode on, to the stone footings of the bridge and so up.

  At first there were ridges of stone in the cobbles to allow shod hooves a grip in whatever weather. Soon, though, the surface changed. Daunted by the steepness of the wooden arch, his horse defied his heels for a moment, standing stock-still, tense and shivering. He needed hands and voice both to urge it forward again; it needed to find where fillets of wood lay like ribs across the planking to give it purchase. They were there and it did find them, and slowly learned to trust as its shoes bit and did not slip.

  Slowly was the only way to make the climb in any case, against the flow of terrified foot-traffic. The bridge was no narrower than the road had been, its breadth surprised Jemel as much as its height and grace, but here the press was urgent; his horse might have balked in the crush or even been driven back by the sheer weight of it, except that he drew his scimitar and held it high. The people squeezed themselves ever tighter together in response, to let him pass. Some screamed when they saw him and cowered back, looked half inclined to fling themselves into the roar of the torrent sooner than face him. More seemed too numbed to care, hurrying only because their companions hurried them.

  The bridge rose and rose, the people surged past; at last he reached the crown of the arch and checked the horse. There must be an end to this flow. Let it dwindle and die, let the animal see the cross-pieces where it could safely set its feet for the descent, let the riders see that the bridge was defended.

  Let Marron come up to join him, if Marron came. It would be a choice, perhaps a statement: I ride with you who are my brother or ‘ride to face those who were my brothers or ‘ ride to seek him who was my master, any of those or all, they might all be one in the muddled mind of a boy who had lost and lost and lost again, seeing everything he'd ever come to value taken from him.

  Already there were fewer refugees fleeing over the bridge, past Jemel where he sat watching, waiting on the height. More figures milled on the grass
below; some ran east or west along the river, while others dearly meant to stay and fight. Only those had taken horses; Jemel was impressed.

  The riders were still some distance off, but coming straight down the road towards the bridge. Hoping to take it, no doubt, and to hold it until the main body of their troops came up to reinforce them; looking upstream and down, Jemel could see no other way to cross the river. This would be pivotal, then, its defence crucial to Surayon. He sighed softly, thinking that this was not why he had come to Outremer, nor why he had brought Marron out of the palace today. Perhaps there was after all a god directing events, setting the two of them at the heart of the day's most vital battle from a spirit of sheer mischief.

  At his back, he heard the slow sounds of a climbing horse. It might be Marron, urging his mount up with difficulty and determination; it might not. He thought the guards would be coming too, though he thought that they would make an easier, swifter job of it.

  He sat without turning his head, watching the riders close towards the bridge, watching the last of the refugees scatter right and left before them, ignored for now but hardly safe so long as these men or others like them rode free in Surayon.

  'Ransomers.' A voice at his back and it was Marron, of course it was; he had been sure that it would be. 'Yes.'

  'What will you do?'

  Jemel laughed, he couldn't help it. ‘I will fight, of course. I have fought Ransomers before.' And lost Jazra to them, and found you. The debts were complex and confused, running both ways; it was simpler far to fight.

  'For Hasan, you fought before. For his visions, his grand dream. Will you fight for the Princip now?'

  "The Princip has Hasan. That makes it easy,' which was not true, but easy at least to say. The Princip had visions also and his own grand dream, but they were Patric and had no place in a Sharai imagination, just as a Sharai had no place in a Patric army. 'What will you do?'