by Steven Poore
“Do you have coins?” he asked bluntly.
“Almoul never paid me,” Norrow replied, ducking his head to avoid Meredith’s gaze. He was evading the question as well, Cassia realised.
“But you have coins,” Meredith said. “You collected from the crowd last night.”
Her father exhaled slowly, as though the air in his lungs was too precious to release. “I doubt there’s enough to pay the tolls for four of us,” he said. The cutting edge of his words made it plain who he blamed for this.
Meredith’s expression finally changed, as he tilted his head to one side and raised his brows in something that might be amusement. He turned his head smoothly to look across at Cassia for a moment. She felt herself flush, uncomfortable under his attention, and uncertain how she could possibly help with or resolve the situation. Her father was about to get them into a terrible fight again, and this time he might have taken on much more than he could handle.
Just as the tension was becoming so unbearable she thought the guards must have to step in, Meredith turned back to her father and made a throwaway motion with one hand, a movement that looked as awkward as his swordplay had been fluid.
“You have coins. You will earn more in other towns. You will pay our way today. Come with me; we must pay our tolls.”
He waited until Norrow moved ahead of him, as if he was herding a stubborn animal to its pen. Cassia exhaled slowly, coaxing the mule back into motion behind them. That was . . . odd, she thought. There was no other word to describe it. Meredith might be a master swordsman, but he was a strange and unnerving man.
Baum fell in alongside her and watched the two men head toward the guard post. A smile quirked the corner of his mouth.
“Your father doesn’t travel well,” he observed.
“No,” Cassia agreed, before she could stop herself. She cursed herself silently for speaking out of turn, then sighed and shook her head. What did it matter, after all? “No, sir, he does not.”
“He’ll be all the more upset before the end of the day, I’ll wager,” the historian continued.
Cassia watched her father shrug his pack to the ground and delve deep into it for his purse. She didn’t like the sound of this, though it clearly amused Baum. The more foul-tempered Norrow became, the more likely it was that he would lash out at her.
“Why, sir?” she asked, dreading the answer.
But Baum only smiled at her. “Oh, the reason will come soon enough. More to the point, how are you this morning?”
She wasn’t sure how she should answer this question. She was tired and afraid, worried by her forced involvement in a treasonous plan against the Emperor, and the muscles in her shoulders and her neck ached from a tension she could not dispel. Layer upon layer of betrayal and abandonment. First by her father, then Hetch. And even old Attis had sought to buy her, though she could not understand why. Several times she had wanted to cry, but somehow the tears would not flow.
It was all this man’s fault, this strange old man who plotted the revival of the North. Now he seemed concerned for Cassia’s welfare, the morning after he had bought her like a sack of winter roots.
“I don’t know,” she said cautiously. It was the truth, after all.
Baum seemed pleased with that answer, nodding as though it had confirmed what he already thought. “An unsettling night,” he remarked. “But if it reassures you at all, we are not the monsters you may believe us to be. There are still men in this world who are infinitely more treacherous and murderous than either of us.”
But they are not here, right now, Cassia thought. Small comfort indeed.
q
By the side of the road, just outside the gates, a squared-off stone marker indicated the distance to Escalia and beyond that, to Devrilinum. Cassia had been to Escalia several times over the last few years, but Norrow had rarely ventured further south than that, and Devrilinum was completely unknown to her. She thought it must look much like its near-neighbour, and not much different to Keskor itself, with low buildings huddled together on undulating countryside, their roofs sloped to counter the snows of winter.
She occupied herself for a time by picturing herself in the market square at Devrilinum, reciting the story Baum had recounted last night. She was surrounded by a crowd that thronged six or seven deep, and they laughed and gasped, just as they would have if Norrow had told the tale. The soft clink of coins came frequently from a bowl that passed, unseen, around the circle.
But her mind could not maintain the illusion. Tarves and Rann Almoul were in the crowd somewhere, and she could almost hear Hetch’s voice, interrupting her as she tried to remember the name of the Berdellan king. After that her concentration crumbled and she imagined the circle of men shouting to outbid each other as she was led around the perimeter in shackles.
She sighed and paused for a moment to look around, kneading one fist in the small of her back to relieve the aches that had accrued over the morning. The Emperor’s March rose and fell with the terrain, rather than cutting through it as it did elsewhere. Coaxing the mule up the slopes and then being dragged down the other side was uncomfortable to say the least.
But she was faring better than her father, who was weighed down by his pack – and his purse. Norrow had fallen behind soon after leaving Keskor. As she looked back she saw him struggling along the road. His muttered curses were barely intelligible at this distance. Meredith rode his horse beside him, the great beast kept to an impatiently slow walk.
A fine company we make, so strung out along the road. Earlier there had been the best part of half a mile between the two riders and her father, and Baum had been forced to wait while Norrow caught them up. Cassia sensed her new master’s growing frustration. Clearly he had not banked on her father being so slow.
The sound of hooves approached from further up the road. Baum had given up waiting. Cassia tightened her grip on the mule’s rope.
“Can you move any faster than this?” the old soldier asked, in the tones of a man who was genuinely interested in the answer.
The day wasn’t remarkably warm, but Norrow’s face was ruddy and beaded with sweat. He looked angry, afraid, and ill. And old, she realised. It was as though the last day had aged him by more than a decade.
“Perhaps you should leave me behind,” Norrow said, pushing each word out breathlessly.
Baum laughed, but there was little humour in the sound. “Oh no, I don’t think so. Attis has no faith in your character, I’m afraid, and I trust his judgement now as much as I did when we fought side by side in Berdella. No, we’ll keep you with us yet.”
Cassia breathed out. The mule tugged at her hand experimentally, eager to carry on toward Escalia.
That gave her a thought.
“The mule can carry him,” she said. “It’s used to that.”
Norrow glared at her, his mouth thinning to a hard line, but he said nothing.
Baum grunted. “That ragged beast?”
“It’s stronger than it looks,” she said, smiling at the irony of having to defend the obnoxious thing against criticism. “When he’s too drunk to walk it’s the only way we can move on.”
Baum considered her for a moment, rubbing his lips with one hand. The mule tugged again, threatening to unbalance her, and as she turned to smack it with her free hand she caught her father’s eye. Her heart sank. He would not forgive her quickly for this.
“Will it be any faster this way?” Meredith asked.
“That, of course, is the real question,” Baum agreed.
Cassia took a breath before answering. I don’t think anything I say now could make the beatings any worse than they will be already. “Well,” she said slowly, “it could hardly be any slower.”
Meredith made a short, barking noise. It took her a few moments to realise that the lordling was laughing.
q
The packs she carried were heavy, once the weight had been redistributed. The mule bore Norrow and little more than that. But Cassia was us
ed to carrying extra weight, even if the load was uncomfortable and fatiguing, and she had no intention of falling behind. Just as she had always done, she sang under her breath and kept her eyes on the road a few feet ahead. She had long ago discovered that it helped her make reasonably good time.
And they were moving faster than they had done earlier that morning, even though the road now ran downhill more often than not. Keskor and its outlying fields had been left far behind, and the influx of farmers and traders from the small roadside villages had slowed to a trickle. They might not reach Escalia before nightfall, but they would surely be better than halfway there. There was an inn outside the town’s gates, one where Norrow was still tolerated, and they might be able to spend the night there.
Thoughts of the evening to come made her lose her rhythm, and she cursed silently while she regained her step, rolling her shoulders to shift the weight on her back. She wondered how long her father would wait before seeking her out. With the best of luck he would be in his cups quickly, too drunk to vent his anger on her. But her luck could not even charitably be described as good these past few days. Just as long as the bruising did not make walking too difficult, and she could still keep up with the others . . .
She forced her mind onto another track and glanced to her left, where Meredith’s silhouette blocked out the sun, which shone infrequently through the slow-moving clouds. The lordling had taken up station alongside her and had not moved away once. Was he there to make sure she could keep up with the others, she wondered, or to protect her from her father?
It was a curious thought. If she had breath to spare, and if she could summon the courage, she might have asked him outright. Either way, his presence kept her father at bay for the time being. He rode the mule in an uncomfortable silence, just behind Baum’s horse, responding to questions with grunts or reluctant one-word answers.
By her reckoning it was just past midday when Baum halted and looked back over his shoulder, smiling. He waited for them all to reach his position at the side of the road.
“How well do you know this land, sir?” he asked Norrow.
Norrow shrugged. When the words came, it was clear he didn’t like to say them. “As well as many. I was born outside Devrilinum.”
“So you’ll know what lies east from here?”
“Not much,” Norrow replied, venturing a foul glance in Meredith’s direction. The lordling’s blank stare quickly defeated him. “Old quarries, mined out.”
“The stone that made the North,” Baum said, nodding agreement. “Shipped as far afield as Trenis and even Hellea itself, I believe. But this is also where the ancient stones of Caenthell itself were quarried. Pyraete himself guided the first High King to this land and told him to take the stone from here. The rocks of the mountains are strong enough, but these are the stones on which the mountains rest, he said to Gallemas, when Gallemas thought to question him.”
“So say the stories,” Norrow grunted. “Shouldn’t we move faster for Escalia?”
Baum flashed a conspiratorial smile at Cassia. “Oh, so the stories say, indeed. Perhaps one day we shall find out for certain. But as for Escalia, we go no further on that road, I’m afraid. We head eastward from here, out into the country.”
He heeled his horse about and set off into the grasses. Norrow stared around, his mouth and eyes wide open in confusion, apparently lost for words. Cassia looked up at Meredith in disbelief – surely this wasn’t what Baum had meant, back in Keskor? There was nothing out there – no roads, no houses, nothing. The lordling only lifted one hand to point eastwards, his expression as impassive as usual.
“This day just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head.
q
The going wasn’t as bad as she had feared, to her surprise. For the most part the ground was hard beneath her feet, and the path Baum chose seemed raised above the rest of the land, which rolled in waves as far as she could see. Untouched and unfarmed, low bushes and stands of trees fought for their place amidst the long grasses. The only signs of life were the pellets left by rabbits and sheep. At least they might be able to catch something to eat out here, she thought, allowing her hopes to rise a little.
They travelled in single file. The ridge that Baum followed was too narrow for Meredith to ride alongside either Cassia or her father any longer. Instead the lordling took up his position at the rear, making certain they did not lag behind.
As the afternoon wore on, and the ridge did not deviate either south or north, Cassia was struck by a thought. Emboldened by Baum’s current good mood, she picked up her pace to draw closer to his horse.
“Sir, is this a trail that Gallemas had laid down?”
Baum tugged at his reins, forcing her to stop too. Behind her, Norrow muttered curses at the mule.
Baum nodded, a smile half-formed upon his face again. “What makes you think that, girl?”
Cassia felt heat rise into her cheeks and looked away quickly. At the ground, at the horse’s hooves, and at a thin tree that contrived to grow at an angle from the slope below. There was no reason to be embarrassed, she told herself angrily. Every small thing she learned could be used to help her, just as Hestella the Maiden had learned founding those tragedies that bore her name.
“This ridge – it’s too flat,” she said. “And too hard. And too long – it can’t be natural. But that means it must be really old.”
“And?” Baum prompted.
Cassia thought for a moment. “And . . . it had to be built to carry the stone from the quarries to the Emperor’s March?”
“And from there into the mountains,” Baum said. “Of course the March was known by other names in those days, and it ran by another route, passing by Keskor entirely. Keskor was a village, little more than a dozen herders’ cottages in all.”
He flicked his reins, and his horse resumed its steady walk. Cassia forced her tired muscles into motion, listening intently all the while. She hadn’t known any of this. The Factor’s school in Keskor taught Imperial history, and Norrow’s own tales rarely touched on anything so mundane as a quarry.
“Small towns grew up around the quarries,” Baum called back over his shoulder. “Towns like Kennetta, Gethista and Aelior. Thriving places; heralds of a new dawn in the North. The buildings sprung up as fast as the stone could be hewn from the ground. The townsfolk grew rich and hung golden tapestries from their walls. They lived in such finery and luxury that even the great lords of Stromondor were jealous of them; even the meanest of those labourers had servants to wait upon them.”
He pointed with his left hand. “Aelior stood over the horizon – the smallest of the quarry towns. Eventually this road will turn to find it, but that is not the road we follow. We seek the way between Kennetta and Gethista.”
Norrow snorted. “If these towns were so rich and famous, then why have I never heard a single tale of them, eh? Where are they now? There are no fabulous houses outside Escalia, I can tell you that now.”
Cassia winced at his abrasive tone – it was as though he wanted to annoy the man – but she had to admit he had a valid point. If Gethista had ever been a real place, it was one she knew nothing about. It certainly didn’t sound all that real.
Baum shook his head and Cassia thought she heard him sigh. “Just because it is no longer there, that does not mean Gethista never existed at all – nor Kennetta or Aelior for that matter, storyteller.”
Norrow hawked and spat loudly into the grass. As the day wore on he had become more difficult and bitter. Cassia knew this meant he had no wine in his pack. In this mood he was wholly capable of provoking a fight. She drew in a breath as Baum’s shoulders stiffened.
When he spoke, his voice sounded quite natural, almost conversational, but Cassia found herself slowing to allow his horse to pull ahead. “Perhaps you will allow me to enlighten you,” he said, without looking back. “Here is a tale you can add to your own stock, and it may be as you say – that none in the North now k
now it. When Pyraete had come to Gallemas and told him of these lands, where the rock was the foundations of the mountains themselves, the High King called for his sons, his lords and his banners, and he led them down to conquer and hold this new, god-given place.
“Gallemas’ scouts found three places where Pyraete’s stone was close to the surface of the earth. He named his eldest son, Gethis, as the overseer of the quarries, and it was Gethis who founded all three towns that stood in this region. He drafted the local farmers and herders to build for him, and employed them as slave labour in the quarries. Gethis was a hard, practical man who thought and planned for the future. When he set his mind to a task, it would be done – and done well. He planned these roads, you know? How else to move such massive loads of stone back up into the mountains?”
Cassia risked a glance back at her father, only to see scepticism plainly written across his face. For her own part, she had already wondered why such fabulously wealthy towns had vanished from history so completely that not even their names remained. And, as Norrow had already pointed out, how did the old man know all of this?
“And so the great work progressed,” Baum continued. “The earth was gutted in Pyraete’s name, and Gallemas saw the walls and towers of Caenthell raised high in the mountains. All along the way, throughout the project, prayers and sacrifices were made to Pyraete; thanksgiving for his blessings, and for the growing might of the North. In fact, if you look hard, you can still see the remains of some of the roadside shrines.”
He halted again and drew Cassia’s attention to a brush-covered mound at the bottom of the ridge. At first she took it for an overgrown shrub atop earth that had tumbled from the side of the slope, but after a moment she perceived the regular stone lines hidden under the branches and leaves, and recognised it for what it was.
“How did all this become lost, if it really was as you say?” she asked, marvelling at how much could be hidden in plain sight.
“Ah,” Baum said sadly. “What is history but an overlong tragedy? You wonder why the North was not always so great right from the very beginning? Or why those towns were never resettled?”
