Monument

by Ian Graham

  Some, though, died at their fellows’ hands.

  Ballas heard a group of women gossiping.

  ‘They have got him!’ said one, excited. ‘The man in the Decree—he has been caught!’

  ‘Thank the Four,’ replied another. ‘What are the Wardens going to do with him?’

  ‘The Wardens? Oh, they had no hand in this. A group of weavers tracked him, and found him, and slaughtered him. He’s strung up, down on Blackstone Lane …’

  Curious, Ballas went to Blackstone Lane. The corpse dangled upside down from a signpost, its arms and legs bound, its clothing blood-drenched. It did not resemble Ballas. Though broad-chested, it was two hand-spans too short and the eyes were the wrong colour: a glacial blue shone from the bloodshot whites. But, supposed Ballas, the body more or less matched the Decree’s description. As if to prove this, a copy of the Decree was nailed to the corpse’s chest.

  Eventually, the citizens wondered if the sinner would ever be caught.

  ‘Perhaps he is dead. They say he has accomplices—an old man and a young woman … Perhaps they have all perished, from hunger or the cold.’

  ‘Or they may have taken their own lives,’ speculated another. ‘I couldn’t live, knowing the Wardens were hunting me. In the Church’s hands, their deaths would be terrible. It would be far easier to drink a gentle poison, or to open the veins of one’s wrists.’

  Ballas, Crask and Heresh changed their hiding place every day. The city had become oppressive, claustrophobic. Crask’s notion of themselves as deer in an enclosed forest seemed accurate. The hunters would soon come, Ballas knew. They could not be avoided for ever.

  On the twelfth day, Ballas left their current hiding place—an abandoned woodstore—carrying his bow and arrow, seeking a stray dog to kill. He walked furtively through Granthaven’s streets, avoiding other people, knowing that if he was merely glimpsed the alarm would be raised. He disliked acting with such discretion. He disliked listening for footsteps other than his own, or clattering hooves, or the creaking-open of window shutters … disliked anything that might indicate the presence of someone else—someone who could prove a threat. He disliked retreating into alleyways at the slightest suggestion of danger. He disliked, more than anything, his growing sense of claustrophobia. He had felt it on the moors. And now he felt it in Granthaven: the sensation of being entombed. The sky stretched upwards to infinity, there was plenty of air to breathe … yet it seemed he was buried alive.

  He had no choice but to grow used to it. To accept it as the nature of things—at least for now.

  At least until he reached Belthirran.

  Ballas heard claws rattling on frozen mud. Nocking an arrow to his bowstring, he stepped back into a doorway. A black and white dog trotted past. Its fur was filthy. Ribs showed through its skin. Yet its eyes were bright. It looked healthy, more or less. An habitual scavenger, it was in a better state than many of Granthaven’s human occupants. The present conditions of want, of hunger, were familiar to it.

  Following the alley, the dog paused. For a few moments it sniffed the ground. Then it turned and doubled back.

  Cursing softly, Ballas stepped from the doorway. Raising the bow, he took aim—then froze.

  From somewhere, there came shouting.

  ‘By order of the Pilgrim Church,’ began a man’s voice, ‘open your doors and step outside! Stand straight, and keep your faces uncovered.’

  Ballas crept to the alley’s entrance. In the road beyond, near a row of wooden houses, a group of Wardens had assembled. Some were genuine Wardens—those whose full-time job it was to serve the Church. Others were ordinary citizens, temporarily granted the status of ‘Under-Warden’: they possessed powers of arrest and lawful killing. But they did not wear uniforms. For badges of office they had, pieces of stiffened blue cloth, cut into Scarrendestin triangles and suspended from thongs around their necks. The true Wardens were relaxed, authoritative. The Under-Wardens seemed tense—and it was a tension they obviously savoured. In every man’s eyes, excitement glinted. They were part of a great, dangerous adventure. They bore weapons—and could use them with impunity, if the need arose.

  ‘Outside!’ shouted a black-bearded Warden. ‘Every citizen must vacate his home, and step into the street. No man, woman or child must remain indoors.’

  A door opened. A thin, raggedly dressed woman appeared.

  ‘What is going on?’ she asked, her voice a rasp—she was a whisky-drinker, Ballas suspected.

  ‘Are you alone in this building?’ asked the black-bearded Warden.

  ‘Yes—except for my children who were, until moments ago, sleeping …’

  ‘Bring them outside. We must search your home—’

  ‘For the magicker?’

  ‘The magicker?’ echoed the Warden, puzzled.

  ‘From the Decree.’ The woman lifted her chin. ‘That’s what he is, right? That’s what everyone reckons. Why else would the Masters want him so much? Why else would we be made prisoners in our own city, except to help you lot catch such a man?’

  The Warden’s composure returned. ‘Bring out your children,’ he repeated. ‘Obstruct us, and you will be arrested— understand?’

  ‘He isn’t in my home. Do you think I’d let someone like that near my offspring?’

  ‘We are to search every building in Soriterath. Now, do as I tell you—or it’ll be the cage elemental for you.’

  Further along the road, more Wardens poured from an alleyway. Swearing, Ballas ran back to the woodstore.

  Inside, upon the stone floor, a fire had been lit. Heresh sat nearby, a filleting knife in her hand. Lugen Crask was putting together an iron spit, stolen from a tavern’s kitchen. As Ballas entered, the eel-catcher looked up.

  ‘The hunt was not fruitful?’ he said, disappointed.

  ‘We have to leave. There is trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘A new hunt’s begun. The Wardens are moving through the city, peering under every bloody stone … Get up!’

  As one, Crask and Heresh rose.

  Crask said, ‘Ought we to be alarmed? There aren’t enough Wardens to search the city from top to bottom—are there?’

  ‘Every damned citizen has been made an Under-Warden. Or so it seems.’ Ballas strode out of the woodstore. He still held the bow and arrow—a flimsy weapon, crafted from an ash branch and catgut. Cursing, he tossed it to the ground.

  ‘What are we to do?’ asked Crask, wringing his hands.

  The Wardens are coming from the north,’ said Ballas, ‘so we move south.’

  ‘And then, once we reach the city wall?’ Crask’s eyebrows shot up. He flattened a palm against his forehead. ‘That is their plan, is it not? To—to drive us to the south, to herd us like sheep … Eventually, they will find us. We will be trapped at the city wall, with nowhere to run. Then the Wardens will just roll over us … Yet you would send us south? You would play into their hands?’

  ‘What else can we do?’ Ballas turned on the eel-catcher. ‘If we go north, we die. If we head east or west, they will be on us in moments.’ He spat on the ground. ‘If we go south, we stay alive—for a while, at least. It will give us time to think. To plan.’

  ‘To plan,’ echoed Crask, murmuring. ‘We have no options. What is there to plan for?’

  Ballas ignored him. ‘We need horses,’ he said.

  They walked briskly through Granthaven. As they went, Ballas sensed the Wardens, half a mile to the north. He thought of their single-minded purpose—and realised that, in all probability, they would succeed in their aim and kill him. There could be no escape from Granthaven. Not with the city gates barred.

  Ballas couldn’t be certain, but he suspected he was soon to die. He didn’t feel afraid. Or angry.

  Merely surprised—surprised that he should die on such an ordinary day. The sky was its usual winter blue, the sun a fierce frozen gold. At dawn, the magpies had cackled with their normal coarseness. Everything behaved as it always did. The sky
, the sun, the magpies—they hadn’t altered. The world was blind to Ballas’s circumstances. Or uncaring. Either way, his death would be inconsequential. Like any man, he would decay into bones, rotting flesh, tendons … Or maybe his corpse would be burned. If so, the fire would devour him as it would any lump of meat. Then again, maybe he would be fed to dogs. They would eat him like they would any piece of carrion.

  For a few seconds Ballas felt utterly alone. Then he grunted. The magpies understood perfectly what Ballas now understood: his death did not matter.

  Yet … yet he still wanted to find Belthirran.

  The Land Beyond the Mountains sang to him. He craved Belthirran more than life itself. To escape the Church would be a fine thing—not because it would keep him from death. But because it would mean that he had found Belthirran.

  That was the true incentive to live on. To survive.

  Such thinking made no sense. Why crave a place of refuge more than his own life?

  Ballas snorted, then shook his head. This was a poor hour for deep thinking. Such things he should leave to philosophers.

  The three fugitives stole the first horse, a chestnut gelding, from a tethering post outside a tavern. The second and third, black mares both, they snatched from a stable adjoining a private residence. They cantered south, putting distance between themselves and the Wardens.

  The light began to fade. Into the perfect blue, clouds drifted. Bruise-black, water-bloated, they crawled through the sky like warships through the sea. As they arrived, the sun departed, vanishing behind the horizon. Evening crept in.

  They halted upon a circular patch of open ground. Dismounting, Ballas noticed a faint burbling noise. Handing the reins to Heresh, he said, ‘Wait here.’

  He walked along an alley, on to a stream bank. Beyond the stream, a hundred yards away, the city wall thrust skywards: black-bricked, forty feet high, unscaleable. Iron spikes crested its upper edge. If the Wardens had any sense, they would have set clusters of broken glass there too. No Wardens patrolled the wall. Not on this side. More likely, they would be on the moorland side, waiting for Ballas to clamber over the top and swing down on a rope, or to risk an uncontrolled fall, hoping the tussocked ground would treat him gently.

  Ballas’s gaze followed the stream. It flowed through the wall by way of a sluice. For a moment, Ballas wondered if he could crawl through, out on to the moors. Then he saw the black bars of a lowered portcullis.

  For a time, he watched the stream. Rain started to fall. Heavily. The stream’s surface jumped with every droplet.

  Licking his lips, Ballas returned to the open ground.

  ‘Do you have any ideas?’ asked Crask. Despite his dislike of the cold, despite his cross-moorland grumblings of two weeks ago, Crask hadn’t raised his hood. Raindrops crawled down his forehead. Similarly, Heresh’s hood was lowered. Strands of hair, come loose from her ponytail, plastered her skin. Her dark eyes were intent. Yet they betrayed fear. She did not want to die.

  It wasn’t any dream of Belthirran that provoked her desire to live. But something else. She liked life, Ballas realised.

  Or, at any rate, preferred it to death … whatever death held, whether it was the Eltheryn Forest followed by the paradise as promised by the Four, or the pitiless oblivion predicted by renegade philosophers.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Ballas. He walked away from the open ground and followed an alley to a tavern. He stepped inside. The common room was empty, but for the tavern-master. The tavern-master, a broad man of middle years, grew tense. His gaze flickered to the wall.

  Ballas looked in the same direction.

  A Decree of Annihilation, nailed to the brickwork.

  Striding over, Ballas tore down the parchment. He tossed it into the fire. Then he approached the bar.

  ‘A flagon of whisky,’ he said.

  The tavern-master took a flagon from a shelf and handed it to Ballas. Silently, the big man left the tavern, returning to the open ground.

  Climbing up on his horse, he took a deep swig from the flagon. Then he offered the vessel to Crask.

  ‘This won’t solve anything,’ said Crask. Yet he accepted the flagon and gulped a mouthful. ‘Sweet grief,’ he murmured, shuddering. He gazed intently at the bottle. Then he held it out to Heresh. ‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘if I have been a poor father—if ever I have failed you—if I kept you too long in the marshes, when other circumstances would have pleased you more … forgive me. All I have done, I have done out of love.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Ballas softly. ‘Say nothing that’ll embarrass you later on.’

  ‘There will be a “later on”?’

  ‘Do as I say, and you will live,’ replied Ballas.

  ‘You cannot promise such things.’ Crask’s voice was flat— except for a faint shaking when he shivered from the cold. ‘You cannot say that we shall—’ He glanced at Ballas, then fell silent.

  Ballas stared fiercely at him.

  Crask smiled, edgily. It was hardly a true smile, just a forced quirking of the lips. He was frightened. Yet he understood that he could not show it. Glancing at Heresh, he said laughingly, ‘If he says we shall live, live we shall. If anyone in Druine is well qualified in avoiding death, it is this man. We have seen it before, haven’t we, my girl?’ He looked hopefully, earnestly, at Heresh. ‘His virtues are not ours. Indeed, we might think them vices … But they serve a purpose. They will help us.’

  Heresh drank from the flagon. Then she passed it to Ballas. The big man took a long swallow, downing a third of the whisky.

  ‘The Wardens will come out of that alley,’ he said, gesturing to the opening from which they had emerged minutes ago. ‘There’ll be a few on horseback. But most will be on foot.’ He held out the whisky to Crask. ‘Drink.’

  Crask took the whisky.

  ‘We must ride through them,’ said Ballas flatly.

  ‘You jest,’ said Crask, the flagon an inch from his lips.

  ‘We ride through them,’ said Ballas, ‘as if they were nothing but barley stalks. Darkness is falling. If we get beyond the Wardens, the night will hide us.’

  ‘I can smell burning.’ It was Heresh who had spoken. She was holding the flagon, handed to her by her father.

  ‘And I can hear screams,’ said Lugen Crask, tilting his head.

  Half a mile away, orange fire-glow rose into the gloom.

  ‘There were houses back there.’ Crask frowned. ‘I remember them clearly—a row of shanty buildings. Nothing more than huts. The Wardens are burning them down!’

  ‘And those who dwell within,’ said Heresh. Those screams are for more than the loss of some dwellings—they’re cries of agony …’

  ‘The Wardens cannot do this!’

  ‘Their bloodlust has risen.’ Ballas stared at the alleyway. ‘That’ll help us.’

  Heresh drank from the flagon. ‘How?’ she asked coolly.

  ‘Their discipline’s gone. Perhaps the Wardens might’ve behaved themselves. But the Under-Wardens?’ He shook his head. ‘They’ve got no training. And no sense of duty. Each man wants to kill. They’ll come thundering out, as wildly as marsh eels—and we’ll cut through them.’

  ‘You are an optimist.’ Crask smiled—and Ballas sensed his response was genuine.

  ‘The whisky is good, yes?’ murmured the big man.

  Crask nodded.

  Ballas took the flagon from Heresh. He drained it, drinking down the last fiery drop. Hoofbeats sounded in the alleyway. And the clatter of boots.

  ‘Through them,’ repeated Ballas, ‘and into the night.’

  In the alleyway a horse appeared—a black gelding, with a white star on its forehead. Ballas hurled the flagon, which truck the animal on its star. Whinnying, the horse reared up, dislodging its rider. Then it bolted back along the alley.

  Shouts erupted.

  ‘Now!’ roared Ballas.

  They surged forward into the alley, Ballas at the front, Crask and Heresh close behind. A dozen men, Wardens and Under-Wardens, s
tood ahead of them—then they cried out as Ballas’s mount ploughed through them. Hooves cracked bone and split flesh. Keeping his head down, Ballas hurtled onward.

  Suddenly his mount panicked. Rearing, it tumbled Ballas from the saddle. As he struck the ground, a set of hooves flashed over him, pounding his body as they went. Cursing, he dragged himself to his feet. He glimpsed Crask riding away. Then two Wardens sprang at Ballas. He rammed a fist into the first man’s mouth, bursting his lips and splintering his front teeth. The second Warden drew his knife, but Ballas kicked him in the crotch, then toppled him with a skull-splitting head-butt.

  A rider passed Ballas. Turning, the big man glimpsed a Scarrendestin triangle on a tunic front. And a sword, arcing towards him. He leaped backwards. The sword point etched a track across his upper chest. Ballas stumbled. The rider turned, and rode at him once more. He slashed out with his sword again but this time Ballas ducked under the blade. Grasping the man’s wrist, Ballas yanked him from his saddle. As he fell, Ballas stamped down hard on his neck, snapping it. Snatching up the slain rider’s sword, he whirled round.

  A Warden and Under-Warden were almost upon him. As the Warden drew his sword, Ballas swung his own blade clean through the man’s forearm—a savage, bone-cleaving hack. The Warden’s lopped-off hand fell and lay on the ground like a pallid crab. Screaming, the Warden pitched to his knees. Ballas kicked him hard in the face, tumbling him backwards. The Under-Warden faltered. Swinging the sword horizontally, Ballas sliced into his neck so that his half-severed head flopped sideways as blood fountained up.

  From somewhere, Heresh cried, ‘Watch out behind!’

  Pivoting, Ballas raised his sword to block a Warden’s down-swinging cut. Tilting the blade, he deflected the blow. Then he slammed a left jab into the man’s nose. As the man stumbled, Ballas drove the sword through his neck.

  Another cry rose: ‘No!’

  Amid the noises of death—amid the stuttering rasps and gurgles and croaks of the maimed—the whinnying of horses … this sound stopped Ballas in his tracks.

  From the corner of his eye he glimpsed Crask. The eel-catcher was staring along the alley. Ballas followed his gaze.