Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Something was amusing the man which he wasn’t about to share with them. Again, that didn’t matter, not for the present. As long as he could take them to the Solurans.

  ‘Please, lead the way.’

  Corrain dismounted to lead his horse beside Kusint’s, since the Forest youth showed no sign of resuming his saddle.

  ‘What do the Mandarkin want in these woods?’ Kusint queried.

  Deor led the way along the narrower of the track’s forks. ‘They’ve been coming down since the spring, never too many and never staying long.’

  ‘The Mountain Men have done nothing to stop them?’

  Deor laughed derisively. ‘They’re too busy travelling from valley to valley, jingling their coin and wrestling their rivals for the right to court the fairest maidens. Can you explain that to me?’

  Kusint smiled wryly. ‘You have the Lescari to thank.’

  Corrain looked to him for an explanation. ‘How so?’

  ‘You know of their marriage customs?’ When Corrain shook his head, Kusint explained. ‘Mountain Men don’t own land as you do in the lowlands. Blood counts for all, for the women that is. They live out their lives in the valleys where they’re born and each daughter is granted a share in the wealth above and below the ground; in the forest’s furs and timber, in the iron or tin from the mines.’

  ‘The women?’ Corrain was astonished.

  ‘They don’t work the land or the mines.’ Kusint corrected Corrain’s misapprehension. ‘That’s for their husbands and brothers and sons to do, and to travel and trade what they win with their labours while the women stay to tend hearth and home. So when a woman’s looking for a husband, she wants a man with a strong back and shoulders to show he’s fit to work her land grant, and a heavy purse at his waist to show that he has the wit to make a good profit once he’s done so.’ Corrain was still puzzled. ‘What have the Lescari to do with this?’

  Kusint grinned. ‘It wasn’t only Solurans who came east with Captain General Evord, to put an end to the Lescari Civil Wars. He recruited score upon score from the Mountains, promising a far quicker route to enough coin to impress a bride.’ His smile faded. ‘Those who survived to go home won’t be wasting any time now that they’ve seen how short life can be.’

  Deor was walking half-turned to take a part in their conversation. ‘The Ensaimin sheep men will likely be surprised next year, if they persist in driving their flocks into the hills without leave.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Kusint agreed.

  That hardly mattered to Corrain. Quarrels in remote northern mountains had no bearing on Caladhrian suffering.

  But that wasn’t what was amusing their Forest guide. Deor was definitely keeping something from them.

  ‘You don’t mind these Mandarkin prowling your woods without asking leave of you?’ he challenged the Forest man. ‘I hear nothing good of them in Solura.’

  ‘Solura’s affairs are Solura’s own and we have no quarrel with Mandarkin,’ Deor said airily. ‘They don’t want our woods when Solura’s grain lands lie over the river. They’ll slink off home before the first snows close the passes. Wolves coming down from the heights in a hard winter are more to be feared.’

  ‘They hardly show the Folk the same forbearance!’ Kusint broke into the Forest tongue, vehement in his outrage.

  Deor’s answer lay somewhere between indifference and a taunt. Corrain laid a firm hand on Kusint’s arm. He wasn’t about to lose a guide to those Solurans, no matter what was upsetting the youth. ‘Let’s not—’

  Kusint snatched his hand away, scarlet faced. ‘The reason I’m merely of the Blood, as he would call it, rather than truly of the Folk, is because my mother’s camp was burned when she was a child. Her family were all killed and only Halcarion knows how she survived wandering alone. When she reached the Forest fringe, a family of woodcutters took her in as a fosterling.’

  ‘Halcarion’s hand must truly have sheltered her.’ Corrain really would rather the two didn’t get enmeshed in some quarrel.

  Deor was strolling onward. Corrain left Kusint to brood, glowering at their guide’s oblivious back. He concentrated on the narrowing path, lest his horse lame itself stumbling over a tree root or stray branches snag his gear. Even these stocky beasts weren’t suited to the depths of the forest.

  After a long stretch of silent walking, Corrain grew prey to doubts. This Forest man could be leading them astray. Deor would be hard put to rob the two of them single-handed, their two swords against the skinning knife sheathed on his hip. If he were to lead them towards lurking allies—

  ‘Wait.’ Deor stopped dead, his attention to the fore.

  Corrain looked to the rear, lest any attackers catch them unawares. Then a gust of wind blew shouts and the clash of steel down the track.

  Deor reached for an oak tree’s branch and swung himself up into the greenery. ‘Your Solurans have found the Mandarkin.’ Inside a few breaths, he’d disappeared with no more rustling than a squirrel.

  Kusint drew his sword. ‘Shall we lend a hand?’

  ‘Let’s see what’s afoot first. Tie up your horse. I don’t want to be walking all the way back to the river.’

  As he knotted his own reins around a sapling, Corrain peered up into the foliage. Was Deor waiting to come down and steal their food and coin? A Forest man accustomed to travel and trade would know the value of the gold they carried.

  The sounds of battle grew louder. Kusint shifted impatiently from foot to foot. ‘Come on!’

  The dun cob snorted nervously. Corrain scowled. They couldn’t risk taking the horses closer. They would have to leave them here, long enough to see what was afoot. If Deor was a thief, they’d just hunt him down. He could hardly get the horses up into a tree.

  Corrain drew his own blade and gave Kusint a quelling look. ‘We haven’t come all this way to lose life or limb in someone else’s quarrel.’

  ‘Any foe of the Folk is a foe of mine.’ Kusint was already questing ahead, slipping deftly through the trees.

  Corrain followed, trusting that the sounds of fighting would cover any noise of their approach. The clash of swords and bellowed insults grew louder though he couldn’t yet see who was skirmishing amid these accursed trees.

  ‘There,’ Kusint breathed.

  Corrain looked along the Forest youth’s pointing blade to see an open stretch of deer-cropped turf ahead. A forest lawn, that’s what Kusint called such an open space.

  Kusint dropped into a crouch. Corrain did the same. Together they edged closer. While the trees grew thinner, the flourishing summer undergrowth offered effective concealment.

  Corrain gripped Kusint’s shoulder. Kusint turned, his mouth opening with a protest. Corrain shook his head, his forceful fingers silently forbidding the youth to go any further.

  After a tense moment, he felt the youth’s muscles yield. They both hunkered down behind a tangled bramble.

  In the centre of the treeless glade, a handful of men stood back to back in a circle. They were surrounded by twice their number, fending off these foes’ determined assaults. All were equally skilled with their swords.

  Neither side showed any blazon. Those under attack wore heavy boots and coarse flax-cloth breeches beneath buff leather tunics overlaid with chainmail hauberks. Two wore coifs while helms obscured another two’s faces. One fool went bare-headed, a russet cloak swirling around him despite the summer heat.

  Their assailants favoured black leather tunics reinforced with metal plates overlapped like fish scale. Every man wore an open-faced helmet.

  Kusint tugged at Corrain’s sleeve and scratched a circle on a scrape of bare earth with his forefinger. He stabbed at it five times and mouthed a single word. Soluran.

  Corrain nodded. He was already bracing himself to stand, his spirits rising as he gripped his sword hilt. Their unexpected arrival would tilt the balance of this fight. What better way to put the Solurans under an obligation?

  A crack of brilliant light shot across the clearing. Its
unnatural violence left Corrain reeling. Cold sweat beaded his forehead, his shirt clammy beneath his armpits. Blood pounded in his ears as he struggled to catch his breath.

  Such light on the edge of sight could only be magic. His mind’s eye saw Caladhria’s marshes, the sedges exploding as Minelas’s vile wizardry brought down lightning to kill them all—

  ‘Talagrin’s hairy arse!’

  Kusint’s gasp of astonishment startled Corrain out of that nightmare memory. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Watch their swords.’ Kusint’s mouth hung half-open.

  The blinding crack seared the sunlight again. Corrain flinched but this time he saw what happened. A Mandarkin sword lay in shards on the grass, as shattered as some dish dropped by a careless servant.

  The rest still had their blades. They drew closer around the beleaguered Solurans. Corrain saw that they were intent on the man in the cloak.

  He must be the wizard. Corrain planted one boot on the ground, ready to rise, to run and attack the closest Mandarkin’s unwary back—

  ‘No!’ Kusint grabbed his wrist. ‘See?’

  The Mandarkin who’d lost his sword to the shattering spell stood over his broken weapon, looking down expectantly.

  ‘There!’ Kusint stabbed with the point of his sword.

  Corrain saw several figures crouched on the far side of the glade. One, short and slightly built stood up and gestured. Blue light flashed across the turf. The Mandarkin swordsman scooped up his blade and ran to rejoin his fellows. Razor sharp steel gleamed in his hand, as whole and as lethal as when it first came from the forge.

  The sweat on Corrain’s brow froze. He recalled Kusint saying that the Mandarkin had wizards too.

  ‘Halcar—’ Kusint’s exclamation died on his lips.

  Darkness as absolute as a moonless night enveloped those Mandarkin lurking beneath the trees. Azure magelight crackled through the shadow, giving it an eerie solidity. The Mandarkin wizard’s spell trying to counter the black shroud?

  If that was what it was, the attempt was to no avail. The Mandarkin swordsmen could only run out of the blinding darkness, three of them with their blades levelled lest some foe awaited them.

  Corrain watched for the wizard but he didn’t emerge. Was he sheltering inside the darkness? There was no way to tell. If the Mandarkin mage couldn’t see out, no one else could see in.

  His swordsmen met no opposition. On the far side of the glade, the Solurans were hemmed in by their attackers. Those first Mandarkin had redoubled their efforts to cut the men-at-arms to pieces, to reach the Soluran wizard.

  The only thing weighing in the Solurans’ favour was while their first attackers pressed them so hard, there was no room for new swords to join the fight.

  ‘We have to help.’ Despite his grip on the hilt, Corrain’s blade shivered.

  Their presence wouldn’t tip the scales so decisively now. The Solurans were even more badly outnumbered and although they had a mage to back them, so did their Mandarkin foes.

  He forced himself to his feet nonetheless. Kusint rose slowly enough to betray his own fears.

  The turf rippled clear across the glade. Corrain looked into the cloud of magical shadow. Where was this wizardry coming from? This grass was too short to be stirred by the wind and there was no breath of a breeze.

  One of the Mandarkin who’d fled the magical darkness sprawled full length. He planted a hand on the ground to push himself up. As he did so, another fell, as if he’d stepped in a rabbit hole. He landed hard enough to be left winded. A few paces behind, a third tripped and went headlong. The first man yelled, outraged.

  Corrain’s eyes widened. The grass was growing around the Mandarkin. Already finger length, in the next blink, it was a handspan long. More to the point, the green blades were twining around his wrist like pea fronds.

  The man scrabbled at his belt with his free hand. Corrain guessed he was reaching for a knife. Too late. His outspread hand was hidden by knotted stems. Now a swathe of green surged over his waist. There was a repellent cracking sound and the man screamed in agony.

  The other two were as securely pinioned. Corrain swallowed abrupt queasiness. The man with the breath knocked out of him lay motionless with a woven veil of grass obscuring his face. Only the third was fighting the clinging greenery. He had managed to sit up, using his sword on the tendrils tangling around his boots.

  ‘Saedrin!’

  Kusint and Corrain both recoiled as sapphire radiance burst through the darkness beneath the trees. A ferocious wind carried off black rags of shadow and whole sprays of leaves ripped from the branches.

  The Mandarkin mage stepped forth, flanked by two wary swordsmen topping him by a head and more. The Soluran wizard was still ringed by battling men-at-arms.

  Corrain could see that the opposing contingents were evenly matched in skills and ferocity. As soon the first Soluran was wounded, the scales would tip decisively.

  The Mandarkin mage thrust a bony hand upwards. A thunderclap tore the blue sky. Recollections of Lord Halferan’s death assailed Corrain once again. He shivered, anticipating a murderous lance of lightning.

  Instead, the ground shivered beneath his feet. Loose earth and little stones rattled against his boots. They surged into the air. As slack-jawed as Kusint, Corrain saw the skinny Mandarkin mage and his escort surrounded by swirling soil threaded with amber magelight.

  Corrain recalled a travelling jester providing festival-tide entertainment. The man had flourished a lump of amber as big as a grown man’s fist. He’d polished it diligently with a handful of wool and offered it to Lord Halferan. As the baron took it, breadcrumbs had sprung up from the high table’s cloth to cling to the clouded gold lump.

  Fiery light seared Corrain’s eyes. He blinked and realised it hadn’t come from the Mandarkin mage.

  ‘No!’ Kusint exclaimed with disbelief.

  One of the Solurans now brandished a sword outlined with flames. The Soluran wizard slapped a second man-at-arms on the shoulder. The man’s blade kindled instantly. As the blazing steel sliced through the metal scales on his opponent’s shoulder, the Mandarkin reeled away screaming curses. His sword arm hung limp at his side.

  Corrain imagined such a fiery sword biting into Aldabreshin flesh. He gripped his sword. Make haste and he could win Soluran gratitude by stabbing some Mandarkin in the back. Or he could cut the throat of that man slashing at the grass snaring his ankles.

  Thunder shook the trees and a knife of lighting slashed open the cloud of earth. The Mandarkin mage sprang forward, leaving his two burly guards lying dead, soil filling their mouths, eyes and ears.

  Four of those attacking the Solurans had already fallen victim to the burning blades. The Soluran wizard broke off from kindling his last defender’s sword and hurled a handful of fire at his foe.

  A single step took the Mandarkin mage three long strides in the blink of an eye. The grass that had sought to trap him was left curling around empty air.

  The Mandarkin flung a dart of lightning, his arm swift as a whip. Deadly sorcery pierced a Soluran swordsman’s eye. Blue magelight glowed through the links of his chainmail coif before he collapsed with his face blackened, the skin split to show the skull beneath.

  The Soluran mage yelled. A voice answered from behind Corrain and Kusint.

  Corrain spun around, his sword at the ready. ‘What did they—’

  His words were cut short, but not of his choosing. He could feel the breath in his throat and knew his mouth and lips were moving but he couldn’t hear a thing.

  He wasn’t the only one silenced. He saw Kusint shouting, exertion swelling the youth’s throat. No murmur escaped him. There was no birdsong to be heard, no rustle of the leaves overhead.

  The Soluran men-at-arms continued valiantly defending their wizard. The remaining Mandarkin warriors hacked at them with renewed savagery. All in silence. Their antics might have been a masqueraders’ dumb show, though bladders of fake blood couldn’t hurl scarlet into the air as vio
lently as the stump of a Mandarkin’s severed hand.

  Kusint seized his arm and pointed. Corrain saw a second cloaked Soluran advancing through the woods, escorted by a handful of implacable men-at-arms.

  Corrain raised his hands wide with his sword pointing downwards. He wasn’t about to relinquish the weapon so he could only hope that they would accept he was no threat.

  A sideways glance showed him the Mandarkin mage flitting around the lawn flinging his lightning bolts at the embattled Solurans. Except their wizard had ringed the men-at-arms with sorcery of his own. The Mandarkin spells bounced off a shimmering shield as insubstantial as the haze rising from a sun-baked road.

  The Solurans advancing through the woods ignored Corrain and Kusint completely. They only had eyes for the fight in the glade.

  An errant shaft of lightning scored a burning gash in a tree trunk far too close for comfort. Branches all around the lawn were smouldering. His shirt sodden with cold sweat, Corrain’s every instinct urged him to drop to the ground or just run. Any sane man would flee ordinary arrows, never mind these enchantments.

  He forced himself to stand. There’d be no hope of enlisting Soluran aid if they thought he was a coward.

  The newcomers’ wizard strode forward, intent on the Mandarkin swordsmen and cradling ochre magelight in his cupped hands.

  Corrain saw an attacker fall backwards. The man’s arms flailed wildly as he hit the ground. As his head arched back, his screaming face was visible within his helmet. Thankfully the unnatural silence saved Corrain from hearing his sickening agony.

  A Soluran stepped forward to drive the point of his sword into the fallen man’s gaping mouth. The blade went so far that he must have driven it through the back of the man’s neck and into the ground beneath.

  Kusint turned away, revolted. Corrain watched more of the Mandarkin fall, writhing in that same inexplicable agony. He saw their legs were twisted grotesquely beneath them, limp and useless.