by Steven Poore
Meredith stood on the far side of the makeshift hearth, frozen in place, staring unblinkingly down at her. He held his great sword over his head as though he was about to leap at her and run her through.
Very slowly, very carefully, she lowered the stone to the ground and kicked it away, never taking her gaze from the lordling who stood poised to strike only a few feet away. Meredith’s eyes followed her movements intently, but he did not relax, even when she spread her hands wide to prove they were empty.
“Continue,” Baum’s voice whispered, away to her left. Meredith spun in place and the blade whistled down in a smooth arc, lifting into another dizzying sequence of forms, just as he had the previous morning.
Cassia edged backwards as quickly as she dared. She felt for her blanket and wrapped it over her shoulders. First light had come, but the night had been cold and damp, and even the thin blanket was better protection than nothing. Joining her father in his mean shelter had been completely out of the question.
The fire she had built and tended, until she was too exhausted to keep her eyes open, was still alight. Someone must have nursed it through the night while she slept beside it. Once Meredith stopped swinging that great sword of his around she might feel able to sit a little closer to it.
She glanced sidewards and saw Baum sat cross-legged at the mouth of his shelter, busy with a covered clay pot that steamed in the cold morning air.
“Sir, does he do this every morning?” she asked hesitantly.
Baum nodded. “Without fail. And thus, without failure. I think you surprised him. Not many people manage that much.”
“And if I had thrown that stone at him?”
He smiled and dipped into his pack for two smaller bowls that looked to have been fired from the same clay. “It would not have been a good idea, girl.”
Meredith spun and dipped, working his way across the space step by step. Cassia thought she recognised a few of the moves from the previous morning. Her stomach protested the lack of food last night, and she suppressed a miserable sigh. It was past time to check the snares. She hadn’t dared venture beyond the small camp after setting the fire for fearing of being ambushed by her father again. Or worse. With luck, at least one of the three would have been triggered, but she had left them so long that scavengers would almost certainly have snatched anything that had been caught.
Baum looked up as she moved, and raised one of the smaller bowls to her. “Here. It’s been cooking most of the night, I think. Plain, but more than fair.”
She took the bowl cautiously, realising the contents were hot. Steam brought the aroma of cooked meat to her nose and she breathed it in deeply, not caring that the clay came close to scalding her hands.
It’s rabbit? But . . . She looked up sharply. Baum returned an innocent smile and a shrug.
“It seemed a shame to let your catch go to waste, girl,” he said. He spooned up a mouthful of the stew with one hand and nodded with satisfaction as he chewed, pausing to wag an admonitory finger in her direction. “Eat up. It’ll be less fair when it cools down. Cold rabbit – bah . . .”
She didn’t need telling more than once. The bowl was empty too quickly, but she had not eaten so well in several days. She cast surreptitious glances at Baum while she ate, surprised and wrong-footed once again by his actions. He did not appear to be a man seeking to destroy the influence of the Empire in the North. Nor did he seem to be the hard military campaigner he had apparently once been. There was still a lean edge to him, an impression of capability, of something held back. But that was almost intangible – it came and went like a shadow on a cloudy day.
It was just enough to keep her from relaxing too much. And when her father finally crawled from his shelter, cursing under his breath and glaring across the hearth at her, she decided it was time to retrieve her spent snares and search for a source of water. If they had built a town here, there must be water nearby.
Baum passed her his bowl wordlessly. A part of her bridled – I am a bought slave now – but she bit down her temper as she realised she had even better reason to search for water now. She hurried away from the camp, aware of voices behind her. Baum had diverted her father by offering him some stew, she guessed. That was a blessing unasked for, and yet another act that countered her impression of him.
By daylight the land that had once been Gethista looked as though it still possessed some vestige of its past life. The overpowering grey skies gave way to lighter, wispy clouds that allowed the sun to filter through, and the ground was bursting with fresh growth. Cassia found a trickling stream that ran behind their camp, emptying into a small pool further down the hill. It was just large enough to fill all their waterskins comfortably. After that she plunged her head into the water and scrubbed hard at her face and arms. The water was so cold that it helped draw away the sharp aches of her new bruises, but it was still difficult to turn her head very far to one side.
She briefly considered running, finding a hiding-place somewhere deep in the long grasses that surrounded the rubble of Gethista. She had enough craft to live off the land, at least for a while, and she did not think that Baum would waste much time searching for her, especially since he had tasks awaiting him elsewhere. She was quite certain her father would not miss her. But Meredith – she told herself in vain it was the cold water that caused her to shiver – Meredith would not halt until he had found her. He might not be able to hold an intelligent conversation, but she could not doubt his determined nature.
Despite the meal she had eaten, her stomach roiled; an empty, queasy sensation as she saw the day stretch out before her. Another uncomfortable march through the untended country, with her father’s black moods continuing to threaten their safety. She wondered if she would have been better off remaining at the Almoul house – whether as a prisoner, servant, or slave, surely her future would have been more certain.
But then perhaps not. Neither Meredith nor Baum had yet threatened her, had they?
No, the fatalistic voice in her mind said. No, they had not. Not directly.
Not yet.
The day played out much as she had expected. Once she dismantled the shelters and repacked as much as she could onto the mule’s back, she discovered her own pack felt a little lighter than the previous day. She had no time to wonder at the difference, however, as Baum and Meredith had already cleared the remainder of the camp and the old man was impatient to set off.
Only Norrow delayed their departure: he insisted he be allowed to find a stout, straight branch to use as a walking staff, and by the time they finally left Gethista the sun had fully cleared the hills to the east and Baum’s face was set in a frustrated grimace. Cassia did not have the courage to go a near him while he was in such a poorly-checked temper and so, since travelling alongside her father was also out, she dropped back until she was walking just ahead of Meredith’s mare.
Around mid-afternoon the path Baum had picked out began to slope steeply downhill, following the stream into a gulley lined with sharp, spray-dampened rocks. They were forced to slow, leading the animals carefully and frequently deviating from the path to search for more gentle gradients.
Norrow’s constant grumbling counterpointed the lively gurgles of the stream as it fell beside them and gathered into small pools. Cassia slipped a few times and skinned her palms, but the pain soon receded as the need to concentrate on her surroundings took over. Even Baum cursed under his breath when he thought no-one else was in earshot. When he caught Cassia grinning at him he clamped his mouth firmly shut and glared at her, although the effect was spoiled by another loose stone underfoot.
Only the mule seemed content in any way; despite having to cope with the heavy packs hung over its back and, when the path allowed it, the weight of her father, the beast had never looked happier. Perhaps it enjoyed the change of view. All it had ever seen were dusty, winding roads and tracks between the towns of the province. Back and forth, back and forth, plodding slowly and endlessly from gate to gate.
Now, for the first time since Norrow had acquired it, the stubborn old mule had left its contrary streak behind. If only the same could be said for Norrow himself.
Remembering her father’s angry words the night before, Cassia tried to stay close to Meredith as they wound their way down into a valley that opened gradually before them. The lordling matched the mule’s calm temperament, as well as the beast’s intractable silence. She tried several times to engage him in conversation, but Meredith apparently too wrapped in his own thoughts to bother with talking.
He raised his head occasionally to gaze around at the walls of the valley, as though searching for some approaching threat, but even then he would only give monosyllabic replies to the questions she asked. How had Baum come so far in his company without wanting to scream at his unresponsiveness? Cassia could not have imagined a less likely partnership than these two men.
After a while boredom and frustration set in. They were dangerous companions when she travelled with only her father for company, but the events of the past day emboldened her. Why should it prove so difficult to draw a straight conversation from either of them?
“Can you teach me how to use a sword?” she asked.
Meredith blinked, frowning down at her.
“I’ve seen boys learning their formations and drills in the Factor’s school in Keskor. It looks easy enough for them, so it can’t be all that difficult, can it?”
Now Meredith’s face set into that familiar expression of dry amusement. “You wish to learn a weapon? You already have a knife. If you cut a staff for yourself tonight, you will have a most suitable weapon. You have no need of a sword. What would you do with one – attack rabbits?”
She squared her shoulders. “Why shouldn’t I learn anyway? All true Northerners should bare steel to their enemies – that’s what Pyraete said when he raised the great mountains, you know.”
It was part of a children’s story, not one Norrow told often, for fear of drawing unwanted attention from the Factor’s men, but it was one of the first Cassia had learned by heart. Norrow wasn’t beyond using his stories as a means to get what he wanted, so why shouldn’t she do the same?
Meredith smiled down at her. “Cut yourself a staff,” he repeated. “First we must see if there is steel within you.”
“Oh, there is,” Cassia said fiercely, her embarrassment gone as fast as it had risen. She and Hetch had practised with staves several times, and she was proud of her skill with them. Five times from six it was Hetch who would end up stunned on the ground or cursing as he clutched a fresh bruise and hopped from foot to foot in pain. To her mind this sounded like a challenge.
“We shall see,” Meredith replied.
It was a challenge, Cassia decided. Suddenly she looked forward to making camp that evening. And, now she’d had some luck in getting the lordling to open up, she pressed on with more questions.
“Do you practise like that every morning?”
“Without fail.”
“I’ve never seen any of the Factor’s soldiers do those moves. Is it something they do in other parts of the Empire? Or Galliarca?”
Meredith shook his head, his eyes on the hillsides once more. “It is not from the battlefield. It is a dance . . .”
He stared into the distance, lost in his own thoughts again, and Cassia realised there was little chance of him answering any more questions for the moment. She sighed and pulled at the straps of her pack to tighten them before turning her attention back to the winding pathway down through the valley, which had closed in around them once more.
After a minute or two she became aware that she was catching up to Baum, at the head of their small party. She hadn’t realised she was walking as fast as that, and she wondered if he had deliberately slowed his pace to meet her.
He turned in his saddle to nod a greeting as she came alongside. “The path becomes easier in another mile, if my memory does not fail me,” he said. “This was once a clear and fast route from the south to Gethista.”
Cassia nodded, though it was as hard to imagine anybody using this path as it was to visualise Gethista at the height of its glory, when all that remained was the collection of crumbled mounds where they had made their camp.
Baum changed the subject without warning. “Was that Pyraete’s Call To The North I heard you quote back there?”
Cassia nodded again, and he smiled. “I thought so. An old favourite of mine. I haven’t heard it in quite some time – is it still told up here?”
She had to think before replying. When was the last time she had heard her father recite it? “Not very often, sir,” she said. “The Factor does not like most of the older histories or legends being told in public – he calls them inflammatory.”
“I thought as much,” Baum said. “But they are still told in private?”
“Sometimes, sir. Rann Almoul has a written copy of the Call To The North locked in a chest in his study. Hetch showed it to me once when we were children.”
It was after that she had started the long battle with her father to be taught her letters. Rann Almoul’s treasured copy of the Call To The North was a delicate long parchment rolled into a leather case. The margins were decorated with elegant illuminations that depicted Pyraete and the other gods of the pantheon as they played and fought amongst each other, while in one corner the men of the North came from their strongholds to conquer the plains below the mountains.
The text was a wonderful collection of beautifully painted symbols that she could not understand, but Hetch read it out to her in hushed tones, frowning with concentration when he stumbled on an unfamiliar word. Meanwhile she dared to touch the parchment with the tips of her fingers, finding pinpricks on the slightly rougher underside where a scribe had used this sheet to lay out and copy another. She had seen the boys in the Factor’s school learning their letters by tracing texts in the same manner, and it occurred to her that this single sheet must be valuable indeed for it to be used to create other, lesser copies.
That knowledge was scant comfort when Rann Almoul caught them and beat them both, his face purple with rage as he punctuated his imprecations against the curiosity of meddling children with heavy, full-handed slaps that left the pair bruised for weeks. Norrow had no sympathy for her, and even thrashed her himself, as though Cassia had offended him rather than his sometime friend. But Cassia’s curiosity was already alight; she had to learn to read those beautiful words.
“That’s what made me want to be a storyteller,” she added. “All these stories my father knows – they’re all written down somewhere, aren’t they? And there must be even more written down that he doesn’t know. I want to learn them all.”
Baum regarded her with something bordering on amusement. She hoped he wasn’t about to make fun of her ambition, like Hetch had – until she poked him in the eye to silence him.
“An admirable desire,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it. “One can never have too much learning, girl. Even a little knowledge can be used as a lever to gain what you want. The god of knowledge lives in us all. Have you memorised the entire Call To The North?”
She shook her head. “No, sir. I never saw it after that. We weren’t allowed near Rann Almoul’s study again. My father knows some of it, but the rest he has to spin out. I think that might be part of why he doesn’t tell it often.”
“I see.” Baum nodded. “Ah – see if you recognise where we are now, girl.”
While they talked, the path had curved back on itself once or twice, winding down past a pair of high-sided hills. Now it veered sharply to the left to take a gentle way across a slope that would have otherwise been too steep to take the horses down. At the bottom of the slope, it met up with a road that she knew well.
“This is the South Road? We merely bypassed Escalia?” Norrow called from his position at the rear of the party. He sounded disgusted.
“Of course,” Baum replied.
“But . . . we’ve been along this road so many times,” Cassia sa
id. “I would never have thought Gethista was so close to us.”
Baum’s expression was unreadable. “When Gethista fell, it fell absolutely. I think Pyraete hid even the ruins of the cities Gethis founded. Perhaps some of his magic lingers in the hills, turning people away from those cursed lands.”
“So how did we pass through?” Norrow asked. “It can’t be all that cursed.”
Cassia looked back over her shoulder. The path into the hills already seemed harder to follow, disappearing from view long before it should have done. Was it a trick of the eye, or was it caused by the will of the god of the North? With everything Baum had said over the last couple of days, she was no longer certain.
“This was all a waste of time and effort then,” Norrow grumbled. He spat loudly into the undergrowth.
Baum stared at him until Norrow was forced to look away. “I don’t care to make public my travel arrangements,” he said bluntly. “I have my own reasons for coming this way, storyteller.”
Norrow’s mouth was a thin line of barely suppressed anger. “So where are we going? You employed me, but you still have not told me what for. Am I to tell stories to the mountains?”
Cassia held her breath.
For a moment it seemed Baum would lose his temper. Then he shook his head. “No, Norrow, I have ambitions far greater than that. But you will know more when we come to Hellea.”
Norrow stared after him. “Hellea? Hellea?” He slapped the mule and urged it forward onto the slope, forcing Cassia to step quickly out of the way before the beast could knock her over.
Cassia closed her eyes. Hellea was a land so far beyond her reality that it might as well be another story. And Baum had work there for her father. Would he be grateful for that? No, of course not. She sighed and muttered a quick prayer to Ceresel again, then adjusted her straps and followed the mule down the trail.
Chapter Five
The next day passed in a haze of rain, the clouds so heavy and low that sometimes Cassia could barely see the road ahead. Not that she paid much attention to her surroundings. Her thoughts were darker and more miserable than the weather. Even the distant promise of Hellea could not lift her mood.
