Peril's Gate

by Janny Wurts

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be deep into the foothills as soon as may be.’ Braggen accepted an offering of tough bread and sausage from the boy. He chewed with tense economy, caught Arithon up, and arose from the straw, his Grace draped like a meal sack over his shoulder. The readied horses stood in the mule shed, two of them grain-fed post mounts, shod with steel caulks for sure purchase on ice, and three others, slope-shouldered mountain ponies with tough legs and feather-clad hooves.

  The head hostler hauled up the billets and tightened the last girth. At Braggen’s approach, he looked around, a man with a face like cracked shoe leather, and knuckles rouged as cherry wood knobs from the persistent cold. ‘Your man looks dead,’ he observed, clipped to exasperation as he strode to Braggen’s side. Tight buckles and stiff harness were his stock-in-trade. His chapped fingers made swift work of strapping the Prince of Rathain astride the restive mare chosen to bear him.

  Under the crusted dressing, and the wisps of blood-clotted gray hair, the subject under discussion never moved. His breaths came shallow and too widely spaced.

  Braggen said, emphatic, ‘If you’re caught under questioning, then assuredly, he’s dead. Or best still, he hasn’t ever been here.’ To the hostler’s startled glare, he shrugged without sympathy. ‘That’s why you get soft taking risk pay.’ Braggen took the reins of the unmarked bay gelding, adjusting the stirrups for his stout length of leg. The metal irons, with wise foresight, had been muffled with flannel. One less detail of two that might slow him; he broached the other forthwith. ‘The liver chestnut mare with the crooked blaze I brought in, did you mask her?’

  ‘Used walnut dye. Won’t anybody see that marking at all till she sheds to her summer coat.’ The hostler watched Braggen mount, a critical crook to his mouth as he satisfied himself that his fastest gelding would be carrying a man who could ride. Inspection complete, he passed over the laden horse’s lead rein. ‘The ponies aren’t stupid, either,’ he resumed, his brown eyes seamed with reproach. ‘Should follow your lead without a restraint, as long as their bellies stay full. Let them get hungry, they’ll find their way back here, no matter if they’re tied or not.’

  But Braggen was too shrewd to be hooked into pointless talk. He would not be raiding couriers, or harrying the road, but bound at a hagridden clip straight upcountry. Above the Mathorn foothills, blooded mounts would be useless, and a tied pony became staked kill for the wolves. Draped against the bay’s neck to clear the low-slung rafters, he gathered his reins, prodded with light heels, and wheeled his responsive horse toward the shut doors of the shed. ‘When you’re ready.’

  ‘You were the one who insisted on leaving before sundown.’ The bay snapped its head as though the rein had been jerked, and the hostler sourly relented. ‘Our morning string is let out to pasture this hour anyway. Serving girls are eating, and the Narms coach isn’t in. You get seen leaving now, it’s sheer rotten luck.’

  Braggen slapped his fist to his belt knife, his beard split in snarling agreement. ‘For eighteen royals, gold, we leave during daylight, and luck has no part of the bargain.’

  Surly now, his rough cheeks leached white, the hostler set the boy to peering through a knothole. Given the signal the yard was still empty, he slipped the bar in one motion. The doors swung open on soundless, oiled hinges.

  His square features frown lined, and his pinched shoulders huddled into his hay-sprinkled jacket, the hostler saw Braggen through, then closed and bolted the crossbuck doors behind him.

  ‘He’ll breach the pasture fence,’ he informed his shivering horseboy. ‘When he does, we aren’t going to notice until sometime past sunrise tomorrow.’

  Together, the pair watched the taciturn clansman spur away, masked almost at once by the striped fall of sunlight through the straight trunks of the aspens. Hard on the bay’s heels, the string of ponies flattened furry ears, forced to a brisk trot up the steep trail to the meadow.

  The old hostler shook his head, touched by a foreboding that clenched sour knots in his belly. ‘That man’s not from Halwythwood. Sure as foals suckle milk, if he’s of northern lineage, he knows something dangerous we don’t.’

  The horseboy stopped pressing nervous patterns in the snow with his boot toe. ‘The risk pay is serious? You think we’re going to be questioned?’

  The hostler pursed his lips. ‘Sure hope not. But I suggest you take a nap in the hayloft, just in case. Don’t stop drinking the beer I send up till you’re knocked puking flat and stunned witless.’

  ‘Sithaer’s blazing furies, man!’ The boy rolled his eyes. ‘Last time we did this, I had to chase strays with a tongue like mulched straw and a headache!’

  ‘You’ll have much worse,’ the hostler promised, his foreboding pressed beyond avarice to open regret. ‘I’ll cut the switch myself and warm your arse to match, if hell breaks loose after that fugitive!’

  Braggen did not need to smash through the fence. Surrounded by the curious herd given their hour of turn out, he found a cracked board half-screened by dead brush at the north end of the meadow. The damage had been pegged with a rusted, bent nail. Still astride to avoid marking two-legged tracks, the clansman jockeyed his gelding through the milling horses. He laid his mount and Arithon’s alongside the weak fence and lashed out, his booted foot still in the stirrup. The split board slithered free with scarcely a thump in the unruffled covering of snow.

  The mountain ponies became more than man’s match for devilment, nipping and crowding their larger fellows. To ripe squeals and kicks, the harassed herd shouldered past and poured through the gapped fence.

  The mare bearing Arithon plunged on her lead rein, more than anxious not to be left. Braggen curbed her rank fuss, his bay gelding steadied between iron legs. He drove firmly upslope, his trail masked by horses that careened and cavorted about him. The ponies frisked back through the mêlée, well content to follow the saddle pack holding the grain sacks.

  Braggen set a determined pace, spaced stints of steady, slow trotting to cover the maximum distance. Flanking the trade road, the terrain was mild, the hills lightly forested, with thin soil laid over slabbed granite unable to support stands of miring undergrowth. Sunlight speared through pale aspen, and evergreen, and birch, and punched the snow to lacework dollops and filigree. Flocks of pine sparrows flitted and chirped. Despite the hard winter, the valleys guttered and trilled with boulder-choked streams, splashing under drilled rimes of ice.

  Footing was best on the south-facing slopes. Bearing northward, Braggen chose the least arduous passage, as a horse might, who carried no rider. The loose ponies obliged, crossing and recrossing the path of their bridled companions. At due length, the clansman reached scoured rock, baked dry in the afternoon sunlight. He chose the straight course. Horseshoes with caulks would leave telltale score marks, but the scent would not hold for the dogs. If Alliance pursuit was delayed beyond nightfall, the trail would be harder to find in the dark than a dimpled track left in snow.

  By the hour the sun dipped, the hillcrests arose into ridges of jagged, seamed rock. Braggen crossed game trails cut by elk and deer, and once, the print of a great cat. Higher, even small game was scant, beyond the white ermine with black-tipped tails, cavorting in the deep snowdrifts. A raven soared against lucent sky, its wingspan as broad as a hawk’s. Behind, the low country spread like sugared burlap, sliced by the undulant, muddied scar of the Mathorn trade road.

  Ahead, upright cornices reared like etched planes of snapped crystal, and the high mountain summits buttressed the northern horizon, snagged at their peaks with flossed cloud. Braggen took his fixed bearings on the ranges, then bent his course more to the west. Clan raiders kept outposts between Etarra and Narms, and maintained well-stocked caches to allow furtive travel. From these foothills, they staged raids with swift strike teams, lightly burdened, that roved like wolves through the deep seams of the glens.

  Since luck had not favored an early encounter, Braggen toiled upward, guided by natural markers. Scouts from a manned ou
tpost must eventually notice the rider at large in their territory. Once that happened, the Prince of Rathain would receive their expert help to speed his flight over the mountains.

  Braggen stroked the bay’s soaked neck, his legs firmly pressed to its heaving flanks to steady it over snagged footing. If he begged fate for any one favor, he asked that his roving, northern kinsmen discover his presence quickly. For if he was overtaken by townsmen, he must stand down the enemy alone. Let him not be forced to draw the black sword, and recall his prince back to waking consciousness before time.

  Slim odds could be lengthened, if his liege could stay cloaked from the Mistwraith’s geas through the next day and night. That grace alone might buy enough time to shake off Etarra’s diligent company, if not the trained headhunters whipped on by the curse-tainted cause of s’Ilessid.

  Near sundown, the mare stumbled and cast off a shoe. Braggen eased her along on gimping, short strides, sore for the fact the rocks bruised her. He preferred to dismount and shift her unconscious load, but dared not leave any obvious signs to flag the eyes of a tracker. Sweating at the delay, his forward progress slowed to a crawl, he wove through a stunted thicket of evergreen. Westward, the sun set, washing the upper peaks carmine. Twilight fell, purple and shadowed. Before the light failed, Braggen found the swept patch of scree he had searched for. South-facing exposure had melted the snow, leaving clean stone and packed gravel. The site offered no shelter. Wind swooped and hissed down in bone-chilling gusts, moaning through the storm-broken hulks of blanched deadfalls left piled in the wake of a slide.

  Weary enough to sleep where he stood, Braggen slid from the saddle. He hitched his reins to a boulder, then undid the cords that secured Arithon with fumbling, cold-stiffened fingers. He transferred his limp prince to the bare back of the hardiest pony, and snugged Jieret’s bear mantle overtop. Long beyond needing the disguise of stained bandages, he unwound the caked cloth, then bundled up the fouled, cut hanks of gray hair and crammed the litter into a saddlebag.

  By then, early stars pricked the azure zenith. A fast meal, oats for the horses, and a rapid check to be sure of his weapons, and Braggen stripped the bay’s headstall. Leaving the saddle and pack with the grain bags, he looped a rope to its neck, then shortened the bridle to fit one of its small, shaggy cousins.

  ‘Sister, I’m sorry,’ he soothed to the lamed mare. ‘Find your way home to your stall as you can.’ Amid deepening darkness, he stripped off her tack, ditched her saddle in a snowdrift, then dusted the site smooth with a pine switch. Dogs would nose out his scent, no help for it. The detail was likely moot. Once Skannt’s trackers came this far with hounds, they would not be searching blind, but chasing down quarry in lethal earnest. Too slender to hope that the clever old hostler could keep Lysaer’s prize field troop beguiled. Once the worst happened, Alithiel must be drawn. Desh-thiere’s curse would resurge with Prince Arithon’s awakening and tag his present course like a beacon.

  ‘Give me my lead until daylight tomorrow,’ Braggen whispered as he muffled the bit rings his new mount seemed hell-bent on jinking with her tongue. He remounted bareback, sought out the argent spark of the pole star to ascertain his bearings. Then he kicked his fidgety pony due north, and prodded the one bearing Arithon. ‘Just twelve hours,’ he begged of the world’s unseen powers. ‘By then, let Deshir’s scouts find us.’

  In harsh fact, he received less than one, and no help from his kinsmen at all.

  By then, rugged riding had carried him above the high foothills. Before him, the midrange peaks sliced the wind, their rocky slopes stepped with fir. The valleys narrowed, seamed with silvered streams, the rimwalls and snagged ramparts like snow-covered bastions scraped by the dark scars of slides. The ponies proved surefooted on hard-packed ice. They managed the strewn fields of tumbled boulders, where the long-legged bay bred for speed as a road mount moved from stumble to scrabbling stumble. Working upcountry in careful, tight switchbacks, Braggen drew rein and attended the inevitable necessity of turning the animal loose.

  Full night had fallen. The mountains climbed upward, saw-toothed as black flint, with the sky a breathtaking backdrop of sequined sarcenet above. Behind, the land dropped away in desolate, rucked folds. Mottled forest frayed into the salt white of cleared glens, then the far-off, shaved square, yellow under the glimmer of lanterns hung in the posthouse coach yard.

  The glinting flicker of flame light between stood out like a cry in the darkness.

  ‘Black angel of vengeance!’ Braggen’s clipped oath snagged steam like gauze in the cold, while the chill in the wind reamed straight through him.

  That the expertise of Skannt’s trackers now trailed him lay beyond any reasonable doubt. Townborn trappers avoided these wilds, traditionally guarded by clansmen. Fine ermine pelts were not worth a cut throat, and the bold handful of woodcutters who pilfered the verges never ranged far from the road, nor would they dare fell a tree in the dead of the night.

  Braggen measured the distance. The weaving string of brands crawled upslope not even an hour behind him; which meant dogs had been on his trail just past noon, with the ruse at the meadow no more than an hour’s impediment. He counted six torches. By headhunters’ form, that meant a dozen armed men, a tracker, and two kennelmen moved against him. The stark dearth of options could be weighed on a split second’s thought. He could not run; the easy ground lay behind him. Against that disadvantage, which allowed his pursuit to close his lead far too quickly, he had spare mounts to lay down a false trail. One inadequate tactic, with nothing else in reserve but two recurve bows and his sword arm.

  Since the outset, he had ridden with the chance he might fail. Now, Braggen stared down the throat of bad odds, each passing second another strike fate would be counting against him. He must swiftly accomplish what had to be done, with no chance to fish for alternatives.

  Braggen dismounted. He unstrapped his own saddlebags, spare quiver, and bow, and hung them on the breast strap and surcingle shortened to fit the loose pony. He changed the bridle as well, then peeled back Jieret’s bearskin, robbed the cloak underneath from his liege’s back, and knotted the hood through the stirrup iron of his gelding’s vacant saddle. He left the hem trailing. A hard shove drove off the stripped pony, then the bay gelding bearing the grain sacks. If the pair ran fast and far enough, the cloth would act as a drag and leave tempting scent for the dogs. Braggen replaced the bear cloak over Arithon, then mounted the last, laden pony.

  Moving again, he reined toward the ridge, where he could keep watch on the torches closing behind him. He drove the game little gelding beneath him, used its strength without mercy to breast the deep drifts or pick safe steps on the uncertain footing. Over the granite ledges, he muffled the beasts’ hooves. Sound could carry for leagues in the clear winter air; and did, when the tracker’s dogs caught the fresh scent at his heels, and slewed off at a leash-pulling tangent. Faint over distance, the voices of men called out excited encouragement.

  Grim, his jaw locked, his rapid breath drawn through cold-reddened nostrils, Braggen picked through the scrub timber and boulders atop the high scarp. Apprehension prickled the hair at his nape. Below, he watched the streamers of flame judder and wink through the trees, nearer, and steadily gaining. Time had come for his next disposition. He dismounted again, transferred the provisions and spare arms onto Arithon’s mount, then jammed his cloak through the neck strap of the pony that had gallantly borne him.

  ‘Fly, brother,’ he urged, and dispatched the animal at a clattering run downward, into the bowl of the next valley. With luck, the tactic might buy him an hour, with trackers and dogs mired in deep drifts, chasing a trail that went nowhere.

  Alone with the tough chestnut bearing his prince, Braggen rechecked the packs that secured the provisions. He strung one of the bows, made sure knife and sword hung unhindered and loose in their scabbards. Then he drew his small dagger and sawed through the cords holding Arithon, except for the rag ties that bound his Grace’s wrists around the pony
’s thick neck. All but shaking with haste, Braggen unhooked the silk-wrapped sword from his back and clambered onto the burdened pony. A snatched whisper of apology; then he asked the beast for its heart, to carry its double burden across the swept rock apron under the spine of the ridge.

  So began the last leg of his journey from the banks of the Aiyenne, where he had accepted the vital charge his chieftain laid on him to finish. In darkness, under the cold scattering of stars, with no movement about him but the mournful north wind in the scrub pines, and the steam of the pony’s puffed breath, Braggen dug in his heels. The surly beast under him surged onward at a jolting, short-strided trot.

  His warmth shared with Arithon’s, one hand on the bridle reins, and the other clasped to the weight of Alithiel, the clansman traversed the iced spur of the rimrock that gashed the steep face of the hillside. The cold air held the clarity of liquid glass. Bare granite rang to the strike of bare hooves as the overburdened pony scrabbled for purchase. The crux was a cruel one, which risk told the worse: whether the noise would hasten discovery, or whether a descent into muffling snow would trade silence for crippling penalty. Beside miring swift progress, the inevitable fresh trail must reveal their scant resources to the enemy tracker.

  Braggen forged upward. Frequent sharp glances cast down his back trail marked the progress of his pursuit. He wrung what inadequate comfort he could from the fact that only one patrol hounded him. Had the Alliance commander realized his men coursed something more than a renegade clansman, the slope at his back would have been swarming with brands. As things were, in twelve hours, the valley would seethe with the tramp of advancing armed troops. Braggen threaded the scraped rock of the heights on the scant reassurance that no horn calls sounded. No shouts of alarm shattered the still night at his back.

  In time, one of the torches disappeared, then blinked back into sight, meandering through the low ground in tortured pursuit of the pony. The wily tracker in charge was no fool. He had split his pack; two torches still clove to the ridgetop.