by Jude Fisher
The last time Aran had seen her, she had been parading about in the hall at Rockfall in a pair of exquisitely expensive but ridiculously impractical beaded slippers bought for her by some infatuated young man, her skirts held immodestly high and her laughter ringing off the rafters. She had been then a very pretty girl – Aran was not blind to her attractions, even if he thought her a silly, attention-seeking little minx, with her sharp tongue and her flirtatious glances – but the world had changed shape since then. Her opulent golden hair was lank and stringy, and her face was peaky, her chiselled features made bony by privation and suffering.
‘Kitten!’
The warmth in his voice undid her. Tears sprang immediately from those red-rimmed eyes. When she came stumbling out of the door of the rude hovel she had been hiding in, the effects of her captivity became even more evident. She wore a robe of filthy homespun gone to rags at the hem, beneath which her feet were bare and callused. Arms like sticks clutched a swollen belly, and when she saw him looking at this new attribute in silent amazement, she wept even harder.
Then he was across the ground between them in three short strides and holding her close, the bones of her shoulderblades as spiky as chicken wings beneath his soothing hands.
‘Oh, Kitten, what has happened to you?’ Even as he asked this, he felt dread squeeze his ribs. If Kitten Soronsen, most beautiful of all Rockfall’s girls, had been so ill-used, what chance was there for his older wife, or his feisty, intransigent daughter?
The tale she told him between her sobs was a strange one indeed, and though it was a somewhat different version to the story he might have heard from others’ lips, still it was most painful and disturbing. Stolen by raiders and brought to the castle at Forent, where the lord was known to have an eye for the exotic, Kitten had for a brief while enjoyed special treatment at the hands of her new master on account of her beauty and spirit. But then he had gone away, and the rest of the stolen Eyran women had been taken out of the castle. She did not know what had become of Bera or Katla, except that they had been sent to the slave-market. She had been kept on in the Forent seraglio but the women there had been spiteful, jealous of her looks and the privileges that Rui Finco had conferred upon her. In addition, they had become uppity of late, and had started to question whether the Lord of Forent had a right to keep them locked away to use for his pleasure or that of his guests; for such was not the way with other women in the world. They had taken to removing their veils in private, and some bolder ones had even refused to wear the traditional sabatka at all, claiming the lovely silk robes were all of men’s design, another way to imprison them and keep them in their bondage. Eventually, it seemed, there had been some kind of rebellion in the women’s quarters at Forent, and one day they had simply walked out; for security had been lax since the lord had sailed away to war.
Kitten had stayed, not knowing where else to go or what else she might do other than please the noblemen she had been accustomed to serve. Except that they had all sailed away too, and the only men left in the castle had been the castle staff, all of whom were too shocked by the disappearance of the women and consumed by fear for what their lord might do on his return to care about the fate of one enemy captive, no matter how pretty or well versed in the arts of love.
For days she had sat in the women’s quarters and waited for food and wine to be brought to her at the usual times, but of course, no one had come, and eventually she had been forced to venture out to seek whatever sustenance she could find. She had not made it far. The local militia had taken over the castle and were making the most of its cellars while its lord was absent. Drunken, rowdy soldiers were everywhere. When they had accosted her, she had been haughty with them: and that had not sat well with their captain, who had been intensely irked to discover the famed seraglio missing. She would not tell Aran the details of that day, or the long night which had followed.
The next morning, bruised and light-headed with forced wine and sweetsmoke, she had run away, and passed out in the arms of a baker on his way to the market. She had woken in a filthy room, and there the baker’s sons had all had their way with her. The baker had kept her tied to the bed for three days: on the fourth, his wife broke the door down, carried Kitten out to the yard and put her on a nag.
And now . . .
And now, Kitten wept ever more plaintively and could not go on.
‘We will get you home safely to Rockfall,’ Aran promised her kindly.‘No one there will judge you for your condition.’ He did not add ‘for there is no one there left to judge you’ but the words hung on the air between them even so, and Kitten just sobbed the louder.
By the time Manso Aglio and his men breasted the ridge of the hills overlooking the small town of Vero, in the pretty wine-growing region bordering the White River twenty miles south of Cera, they had accumulated a very significant army. Refugees, starving slaves who reckoned joining up might at least get them fed, ragtag militia bands from the length and breadth of Istria’s coastal area; all these had swelled the numbers to over six thousand. Much as Manso would have liked to kick his heels in Vero, which boasted a particularly robust red wine, he knew they would have to move on in a day or two at most, simply because they’d have eaten everything the townspeople had to offer, and all they had hoped to keep in safe storage, too.
On the other hand, the sharp edge of hunger often drove men to braver deeds and a faster result. Maybe it would do no great harm to make Vero a rest stop after their long march. This far inland, the settlements were unscathed by the war; though everyone had a story to tell about relatives on the coast, friends lost, property destroyed; atrocities committed. Manso had heard it all – and worse – before. It had taken him twenty-two years to make captain, and while he’d done his damnedest to avoid any dangerous action in the last war, he’d seen comrades spitted, burned and hacked to death. Besides, after eight years in the Miseria, nothing surprised him any more about the violence man could do to man – or woman.
He shaded his eyes against the low sun. The town in the valley below looked as picturesque and prosperous as it had always done. Smoke rose from chimneys and stretched vaguely out on the still air; rooks stood silent guard in the leafless trees; cows cropped pastures. Excellent, he thought: roast beef tonight, with trenchers of bread and a thick wine gravy. His mouth started to water.
Something broke the cover of the trees down below, causing the rooks to fly up in a complaining cloud. Manso slipped down from his mount and waved his hand and the men behind him fell silently back below the ridgeline. He moved into the cover of a brake of bracken and watched, curious.
Three figures, on horseback. He squinted. They came on up the hill, hugging the edge of the wood, where shadow obscured their identity. But moments later a fence forced them out into the sunlight, and Manso gasped. The first man he knew only too well; and as the riders approached, he soon realised he knew the third figure, too.
‘By the Lady—’
He stood up out of the bracken, frowning.
The lead rider stopped dead, then turned and said something to his companions. Then he pressed his mount ahead of the others to greet the man on the horizon.
Tycho stared at the dark, fleshy man before him, searching his memory. He had seen this soldier before, he was sure of it. He smiled uncertainly. After a pause, the man smiled back. His silver-capped teeth gleamed in the sun. ‘Captain?’
‘My lord.’ Beneath his breath, Manso Aglio swore vilely. Of all the men he had ever worked for, Tycho Issian was the most unpleasant. Apart, he thought unwillingly, from the Vingo boy. He shuddered: a fit ending that one had made. Already his mind was working at speed. If the Lord of Cantara had sent out the bird which had arrived in Forent a fortnight ago from the siege at Cera then something dramatic must have occurred that he should be here, riding south with only two companions and no guards at all.
‘My lord, your bird arrived only a few days ago: we have marched swiftly to relieve the city.’
Ty
cho Issian waved a hand dismissively. ‘Cera is as good as fallen: you would be wasting your effort.’
Manso’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Fallen?’ The unspoken question hung heavy on his lips: Then how did you escape, my lord?
‘The Eyrans overran the city. I managed to rescue this lady and her son before the barbarians could take them.’
The captain looked past the nobleman’s shoulder to where these two sat their horses. The woman had pulled her veil aside and turned her face up to the sun. Her eyes were closed: she looked blissful. He felt a wave of sudden heat enfold him from the groin upward and could hardly drag his eyes away from her to glance at the man behind her. Now he breathed in sharply: for this one he knew as the sorcerer, Virelai: the man who had stolen his appearance in the attempt to free the other Vingo boy from the dungeons. He had never thought of him as a creature who had been birthed by any mortal means, let alone between the thighs of such a beauty. What misbegotten chance could have thrown such a strange trio together?
Manso beckoned the Lord of Cantara to join him on the ridge. He grinned, indicating the troops below. ‘As you can see, my lord, I think we should have little trouble taking back the city. We have already repelled the barbarian horde from Forent and its vicinity; now we can drive the rest of the Eyran scum back into the sea where they belong.’
Tycho regarded the vast army, scowling. ‘I think not.’
‘No?’
‘You will escort us to the Moonfell Plain.’
‘Moonfell? Why the Moonfell Plain? There is no need to defend the fairground – it’s a wasteland—’
‘That’s an order, Captain.’
Dark thoughts scudded through Manso’s head. He could strike this nobleman’s head off where he stood: who would stop him? There was a new order in Istria now, and it had nothing to do with blood lineage and inherited wealth.
Tycho took a step backwards, suddenly afraid. The dark thoughts had shown in those wide and brimming eyes, and he had not been mistaken, for now Manso Aglio’s hand had travelled to the hilt of his sword. He opened his mouth to cry out, though the one who saved him came as a complete surprise.
The Rosa Eldi, appearing silently at the Lord of Cantara’s side, covered the captain’s sword-hand with her cool fingers.
‘You will ride with us to the Moonfell Plain, Manso Aglio. It is my will.’
She removed her hand and watched with detached interest as the man’s pupils flooded black and a ridiculous smile lit his face.
‘I will ride with you through the very fires, my Lady.’
‘Indeed.’ She inclined her head, then rode back to where Virelai sat waiting, his face screwed up in concern and consternation.
‘Why did you not let the man kill him?’ he whispered to her. ‘Surely that would be for the best.’
The Rose of the World smiled enigmatically. ‘There is a plan and a pattern for all things,’ she said serenely. ‘And even Tycho Issian is a part of that pattern.’
His prize lost to him once again, and apparently gone of her own free will while naming him ‘enemy’, Ravn Asharson lost himself for a while in black moods. He allowed his men to rampage where they would; he turned blind eyes towards the violence and excess which surrounded him and drank himself into a stupor night after night. Sometimes he had women of the city brought to him; but they did not look like her, and more often than not, he sent them away. Those he kept expected brutality and rape; what they got was maudlin tears and impotence. Some light in this northern lord, once known as the Stallion of the North, had gone out. He was like a dead man walking.
Forty-two
Between the living and the dead
Katla Aransen could not even walk; or rather, Saro Vingo would not let her. What the cat had told him echoed around his skull like a mantra – it will not last . . . you do not have our resilience . . . be careful with her.
Katla had returned to consciousness with a vague sense of something being very wrong, a burning pain in her side, and the ability to move barely a muscle. For a few terrible seconds she had thought herself paralysed by whatever blow her demonic brother had dealt her, though she could remember little of the battle, and nothing at all of being wounded; then she looked down, and found herself bound hand and foot. Around her, the red-lit interior of the Mountain of Fire bobbed and swayed in an hallucinogenic manner. Perhaps she had not woken up at all: she struggled to do so and the physical effort of it made her yelp with pain.
Saro, walking ahead of her with her feet drawn up to his shoulder, turned his head.‘Stop that!’ he demanded, so sharply that she did.
The next voice came from behind her.
‘It’s for the best, Katla, so that you don’t disturb your wounds.’
The voice was Mam’s: and that the mercenary leader should say such a thing suggested she was in dire straits, for she knew Mam would soldier on no matter how horrible her injuries, and would expect the same of anyone else.
She examined her circumstances more closely. It seemed they had bound her tight with strips of clothing, cords, anything that came to hand, and splinted the bundle with long swords still in their scabbards so that she could not bend and flop.
A chill spread through her limbs. Abruptly she was cast back to the weeks following her own burning, when her wrecked hand, bound into a club of bandages, had caused her such agony in both flesh and mind. Then she had thought herself crippled for life; and that had just been her hand. If her friends had bound her so to save her from these wounds, how much more dreadful must they be?
‘Saro . . .’ Her voice trembled. She bit her lip to stop the trembling; then started again. ‘Saro, tell me truly, how bad is it?’
Saro Vingo turned slowly so that she saw his profile, limned scarlet by the volcano’s weird light. At this awkward angle, his face appeared haggard and the one eye thus presented red-rimmed and distressed. He seemed unwilling to look at her, and it looked as if he had been crying. That scared her even more.
‘Saro—’
‘Katla. It’s . . . not good. You have a wound in your side which mustn’t be disturbed. If you walk, I fear you’ll split it open. Bëte licked it till it healed over, but she said it wouldn’t hold. We have to get you to the Rosa Eldi if you’re to heal properly.’ Even as he said it, his words rang hollow. It sounded like something out of one of the more far-fetched fairytales his mother had told him as a child.
This was all too much for Katla. She recalled the sight of the great cat, with its lolling red tongue and gleaming fangs. That . . . beast . . . had licked her wound closed? Now, she wished she was dreaming; but if that image was unsettling, the idea of being brought like a slain deer to the woman she had seen in the Halbo court was more disturbing yet. She shuddered.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I won’t be trussed up like a sacrifice and presented to that witch!’
‘She’s not a witch: she’s the Goddess.’
‘I don’t believe in goddesses.’
‘Or gods? Or sorcery? Or the resurrection of the dead? Katla, you have surely seen too much by now to deny such things?’
She looked away. After a while she said simply: ‘Anyway, you don’t even know where she is, except somewhere along the north coast. I could be like this for weeks – and what sort of state do you think I’d be in by then? Are you going to unwrap me every few hours so I can piss? Untie me at once. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl!’
This volley of words struck him head on. Saro grimaced and glanced back at Mam. The mercenary leader flashed her teeth at him. Then she said: ‘Girlie, if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it myself. Saro’s right: if you walk, you’ll rip the wound open, and that’ll be the end of you. I’ve lost enough of those I care about not to want to lose anyone else.’ Her regard was stony.
‘What do you mean . . . ?’ And suddenly Katla was visited by the image of Persoa being hurled against the rocks by the dreadful thing which had once been her brother, and how he had lain there, unmoving. ‘Ah
. . . I’m sorry, Mam, so sorry.’
There came a choking sound from behind her head which moments later turned into a sort of strangled cough. Katla felt tears prick her own eyes.
She lay there mute and motionless as they carried her out of the mountain, not daring to ask the questions that plagued her. Is my brother dead? And Tam Fox, what about Tam Fox? Had he been a dead man, revived? She had seen him drown, had seen him sink beneath churning waves with her own eyes. And yet he had looked whole and hale: his skin ruddy with the life of the living. She did not know how she felt about the idea of him, alive or dead, though; so she put that thought away. Instead, as though determined not to indulge her wish for avoidance, her mind presented her with the extraordinary sight of the dead down in the fiery pit, digging and unearthing, casting boulders up into the light, apparently excavating a god; and that did not reassure her of her understanding of the world at all. Everything felt like a dream, the worst kind of dream, which returned to haunt the waking hours with ever more graphic memory. But the crimson flare of pain in her side reminded her that consequences had come of this dream, consequences which would prove to be both real and lasting. Nothing would bring back the dead; and she might be joining their long ranks sooner than she had ever planned.
The long climb left the bearers winded and panting, ready for a rest. But as soon as they emerged from the cave-mouth, a woman’s voice assailed them.
‘Aiee! My son. Aiee!’
The next moment, Katla found herself laid on the ground beside another bundle, one of skin and bones. This bundle had no eyes and no lips. She looked away, repulsed.
‘Alisha, Alisha,’ Saro soothed the woman. ‘Ah, Alisha. It had to happen. Let him go now.’
But Alisha Skylark continued to rock and to keen, the tears running down her face. ‘He is gone, gone.’
Despite the discomfort of lying on the rocky ground, Katla regarded the nomad curiously, having barely registered her presence on the way up the mountain. The skin-and-bone creature must be her son. Her long-dead son. Moved by the woman’s distress, she reached out an instinctive hand and gripped her arm. For a moment she was disorientated by the sensation of buzzing, of a vital connection. ‘We have all lost someone,’ she said softly.
