“Oh! Was she was the one you traded away to another Warlord – for horses?”
“Horses and archers, yes. So she’s not even in one of my Sections any more, and I don’t know if I’d be able to get her back.”
“Was she all right? Did she have a hard time adjusting? I can’t imagine her here, in these rough clothes, with short hair.”
“Bulraney had her with his Captains for a while, but one time when I came through, he offered her to me. He was always giving me things, currying favour, you know? So he’d be sure to get what he wanted from the resupply. She was a beauty, right enough, he thought I’d want her. But she didn’t like being passed on to me like a haunch of meat. I don’t know whether there was someone here she liked, or maybe the arrangement just suited her, but she hated me. No, no—” He held up a hand when Mia began to protest. “It was true, she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She didn’t try to avoid the inevitable, like you did,” and his eyes crinkled a little with amusement as he spoke, “but she always insisted I take her from behind – so she didn’t have to look at me, she said.”
Mia made an incoherent sound, half shocked but also not really surprised. Tella could be tempestuous, undoubtedly.
“Then she started playing around with other men,” he went on, “or not coming to my bed at all. Well, I couldn’t allow that, it made me look foolish. When we went to the War Council last winter, I let her try out the other Warlords. That’s usual, by the way, there’s a lot of swapping goes on and she didn’t mind. Then I traded her to the one she liked least. Several of them wanted her, they were all trying to outdo each other with offers, so I got a very good trade in the end. I don’t regret it, but it won’t have endeared me to her.”
“Well!” She wasn’t sure whether to be dismayed or amused by the story. Tella and Jonnor had both had difficulty settling here, it seemed, and both had been punished for it, in different ways. And Hurst had got into trouble too, and nearly got himself killed for it. It was tricky to be a Karningholder one day, with Companions, servants, guards, Skirmishers, indeed an entire Karning at your disposal, and the next to find yourself nothing, no more than a common swordsman or whore. It would never be an easy transition.
It was lucky, perhaps, that she herself was quite timid. Even so, she had stood up to Bulraney, and been angry with Dethin more times than she could remember. It would hardly have been surprising if he’d sent her to the Section House, or even to Supplies.
But Dethin was still watching her reaction, so she smiled and shrugged. “Well, Tella was always a survivor, she’ll be all right.” He smiled in relief.
Hurst arrived to report that the prisoner had eaten a little of his supper and was now asleep. “Or at least, he’s curled up on the bed, wrapped in blankets, facing the wall. Gantor thinks he’s just pretending. We’ll interview him properly tomorrow. Just you, me, Gantor and Tanist, for now.”
“Ah. Not me, I’m afraid.” Dethin swung his legs round to the floor so that he faced Hurst, his expression blank again. “I have to go north again tomorrow. There’s some – business to deal with.”
“Another battle?”
“Just harassment around the walls – quick in and out. We try not to damage the builders, just burn the scaffolding, that sort of thing. Anything to slow them down. Seventh and Eighth are getting together. I should be back in about eight days or so. I’ll come back here then, and if you’re still here, I’d like to come with you on your little adventure. But don’t wait for me – if the moons align, as the saying is, then just go. But Mia – you need to decide if you’ll come with me or stay here…”
“I’ll stay with Hurst,” she said, before the words were properly out of his mouth.
There! She had decided, and in the end it was easy. All this time she had wondered which of them she would choose, but her heart had known the answer. When their roads came to diverge, she knew at once who she wished to walk beside.
Hurst looked openly pleased. Dethin’s face crumpled momentarily with – what was it, grief? Disappointment? Hard to say. As soon as it appeared it was gone, replaced by his usual expressionless mode.
“Good,” he said. “Hurst will look after you. But…” He turned to Hurst. “You will need to deal with this other woman tomorrow.”
“Mallissa,” Hurst said quietly. “I’ll see to it. Shall we go to bed?”
They were all subdued, for it was their last night as a three. Dethin seemed lost, somehow, standing watching Mia as she began to undress. She felt it too, an odd disconnectedness. She was more conscious of the two men than she had been before. To ease her own awkwardness, she went to Dethin and put her arms round his neck. He responded in kind, pulling her tight, burying his face in her hair. She lifted her face and kissed him, long and slow, and he drew her into a passionate embrace, hands touching her body, which started her tingling in all the right places. He was learning fast! Laughing, she freed her hands and began to unfasten his clothes, her fingers struggling with unfamiliar clasps and buttons and ties. Then he was laughing too, and fumbling at her tunic and tearing his own clothes off and pulling her onto the bed with him in a tangle of naked limbs.
And then he was kissing her, lips warm and soft on her breasts, sliding down her belly and then…
“How do I know if I’m doing this right?” he said, head lifting for a moment.
“You’ll know,” Hurst said. He was naked too – how had that happened without her noticing? Hurst bent to caress her breasts and Dethin went back to his task, and… oh, by the Gods, that was good! She couldn’t restrain a sudden cry.
“That’s the spot,” Hurst said.
She felt she was drowning, her whole body caught up in a maelstrom of sensation. It was almost too much, with both of them involved. She gasped, and then was hit by a sudden fit of the giggles. They both stopped and looked at her.
“More of this, or something else?” Hurst said.
“Something… you… right now…” she panted.
He complied at once without a word, and again she cried out as he entered her. She thought it would be quick, but although every thrust was exquisite pleasure, he finished before her. She could hardly bear it! However, both men understood her urgency. Hurst rolled away and Dethin took his place almost without a pause, and this time the waves of pleasure crashed over her at last and brought her relief. When she came to herself, he was just reaching his own conclusion.
She lay exhausted, arms and legs spread wide, as Dethin caressed her face with delicate little butterfly kisses.
“Gods…” was all she could say. “Gods…”
“You know,” said Hurst, propping his head on one hand and grinning from ear to ear, “for myself I’d have no objection to continuing this arrangement whenever cousin Crannor happens to be passing by. This is so fucking good.”
~~~
Dethin left at first light, his inscrutable face back in place. Hurst was busy all morning, officially meeting the newcomers and interviewing the captured guide. Mia tidied Dethin’s rooms, and then went down to the basement to find clothes, for she hadn’t been able to bring everything with her from the Warlord’s House. As always, they were too big for her, so she collected sewing things from Runa, the old woman, and went back to Dethin’s room to sew. Late in the morning, Hurst came to find her, and help her carry her things across to his room. She was now the Commander’s woman.
“What did you do with Mallissa?”
“She’s with the Captains now. I decreed that they needed one extra woman, and lo – it was done.”
“You have a lot of power over these women,” she said, uneasily remembering what Dethin had done to Tella.
“For the moment,” he said, unconcerned. “With luck, we won’t be here for long.”
But she felt a prickle of fear. What would happen to her when he went back up the tunnel? Would she belong to Heddizan?
That afternoon, Hurst asked her to go into the tunnel to see if she could read the signs beside the gates.
“Me? Why?”
“Because you can read Kannick Old Script.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll have a go.”
It was more difficult than she’d thought to dredge up from memory the symbols and convert them to sounds. She had no trouble remembering while sitting quietly in the library at the Ring, or in her own room at the Karninghold, but the tunnel was a dark and threatening place. Hurst stood to one side, holding the torch for her, while Gantor was showing Tanist and Groonerst how to read the numbered code on the wall and open the gate. The clicks and clunks, the metallic whine as the gates opened, the click-thud as it closed again, the water rushing beneath her feet and the flickering light beside her, all combined to chase coherent thought from her head. Every time the gate thudded shut, Gantor would turn and call, “Any luck yet?” and Hurst would shout back, “No, she’s still working on it.”
After a while, she shook her head. “I can’t think. It’s too hard to remember, and it’s years since I read anything like this.”
They all stared at her, disappointment etched on every face.
“Well, how are we going to….?” began Hurst, but Tanist hushed him.
“We still have our guest in the lockup. He’ll be more co-operative in time, I’m sure.”
“If you torture him,” Mia said quietly.
“Only if we have no other option,” Hurst said. “I’ll ask around if anyone else reads Kannick Old Script.”
“Most of them can’t even read their own names, in any script,” Gantor muttered.
They gave it up, trying as best they could to convince Mia that it didn’t matter at all, but she knew they were depending on her. The signs would most likely guide them to the Ring, and without the ability to read them, they would easily go astray, or wander the tunnels much longer than necessary. She was downhearted, and only picked at her food at supper, while the men tried very hard to maintain an air of forced joviality. She was not consciously thinking of the wall markings, but a sudden shift in her mind brought instant clarity, like a breeze clearing fog.
“Brellett!” she said. “Brellett car… um car-sent dri… dri-forna.”
“What?” There was an abrupt silence, and they all turned to stare at her.
“The first three words, they only work reading right to left. Brellett carsent driforna.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” said Walst.
“I’ve no idea. But that’s what the marks say.”
“Oh bugger!” said Gantor. “Bugger bugger bugger. That’s not Kannickian at all.”
“No,” she agreed. “They’ve used Kannick Old Script to write some other language. It sounds Grivordian to me.”
Gantor gave a strangled cry. “Karshen’t! That’s what it must be – east. Karshen’t is east. And tryfour’nya is some number or other, I forget what.”
“A distance, maybe?” Tanist’s eyes were gleaming. “What about the first word – brellett?”
“Not a clue,” Gantor said. “But – Gods, that’s clever. Everything’s backwards, and they use Kannick Old Script for Grivordian words. Very devious. But Mia’s equal to it. Well, there’s one thing settled, Hurst – now she has to come with us, for sure.”
For a moment, Mia thought she must have misheard him. But then she saw the look of dismay on Hurst’s face and the way they all looked at her and then their eyes slid away in embarrassment, and realised that they had intended this all along, but hadn’t quite got round to telling her yet.
“Gantor—” Tanist began, and Hurst said, “I’m not sure—” at the same moment, but Gantor was defiant.
“No, she has to come with us,” he said. “There’s no alternative. She’s the only one who can read this script.”
“She could teach us,” Tanist said.
“No time. Have you any idea how complicated Kannick Old Script is?” And they began to argue about it, obviously a familiar point of contention amongst them. Yet none of them had thought to mention it to her, that they expected her to follow them through the tunnels and help them reach the Ring. And all so that they could kill Those who Serve the Gods.
“No,” she said. That one word dropped like a blanket over their raised voices. “No,” she said again into the silence. “I won’t do it. Whatever you’re planning to do at the Tower of Reception, I won’t help you do it.”
42: Hours (Hurst)
Hurst was frustrated. If Mia wouldn’t go with them, they couldn’t leave until she had taught Gantor all she knew of Kannick Old Script – if she would do even that much. He understood her feelings, for she had always been a devout and obedient follower of the Gods. Of course it must seem like sacrilege to her, even to consider the possibility of taking swords into the Ring, the one place where the Gods were known to make direct contact with mortals. Yet he had to convince her. Whatever the Gods might be, their Servants and Slaves were corrupt and evil beings and must be removed; of that he was certain.
There was another cause for concern, too. It would take them several weeks to travel through the tunnels all the way to the Ring. Even with the carts to help, it would be a slow process, and it would be impossible to avoid other travellers. Once the winter quiet began, there would be no new recruits coming through, but the tunnel builders would be around, repairing any damage and digging out a new stretch of tunnel beyond Supplies.
“They close off the tunnel below us, as well,” Ainsley told him. “They lock the door to the kitchen and stairs, so we can’t get into the tunnel at all.”
“That’s no problem,” Gantor said. “We can get in through the ruined Godstower. But are they moving around down there the whole time?”
“Oh no, just the first few days, and then the last few. It’s pretty quiet the rest of the time. They’re all out beyond Supplies, I’d guess. So we just need to wait until they’ve all passed through, then we can start off.”
“We?” Hurst said, and was amused to see how crestfallen Ainsley looked.
“Well – I’d love to be part of it,” he said in a small voice. “If you’ll have me. I’m an ex-Skirmisher, I know which end of a sword to hold.”
“That’s a matter for discussion nearer the time,” Hurst said more gently. “I can’t take all the best men and leave this place unprotected, can I? But it seems we’ll have a few weeks to prepare.”
Fortunately for Hurst’s sanity, Mia was quite happy to spend hours down in the tunnels with Gantor and an escort of armed warriors in case of unexpected encounters, slowly reading the reversed writing on the walls while Gantor struggled to construct the meaning behind it.
They’d found several people who came from the former Grivordia, so they took one or two with them each time to see if the words triggered any memories. There were a few, as well, who’d had what Gantor regarded as a proper education, so they tried those, too. Two turned out to have some knowledge – Runa, the old woman, had grown up speaking Grivordian at home, and one of Mannigor’s mentors, Krennish, had studied Grivordian with the Scholars. Between them, with painful slowness, they translated the engraved words, Runa cackling with glee at her sudden importance.
When they had exhausted the possibilities of the first gate, they walked up the tunnel to the next one, where there was also a camp cave, untouched since they had left it, and access to the ruined Godstower. Gantor had hopes of working out how to open the door of the Godstower, but it was buried under a mountain of rubble.
“Whatever happened here?” Mia asked, gazing over the great stone blocks scattered about like toss-stones.
“No one knows,” Gantor shrugged. “I haven’t found anyone who remembers.”
This time the translation was easier. Many of the words were the same, or similar enough that they could guess the meaning. They sent someone back to fetch Hurst to explain it to him. As Mia read out each line, Gantor translated.
“So – ‘tunnel east first’ – then something we can’t make out – ‘to the south’ or ‘along the south’. That’s the tunnel name. Then the distances. ‘Air ent
rance hole in ground’ – we read that as ventilation shaft, yes? ‘Sixteen garon’. Well, we don’t know what a garon is, but it was seventeen garon at the last gate, so it’s about that distance, between two gates.”
“Maybe it actually means ‘gate’,” put in Krennish. “It must be difficult to measure actual distances down here, maybe they just count the gates.”
“Good point. Then this bit here means ‘room of refreshing’, so that’s a camp cave.”
“And that’s seventeen there, isn’t it?” Hurst said, squinting at the dots. “Even I can read the numbers. But Gods, I’d go cross-eyed if I had to stare at these dots all day.”
“I know. Mia’s the only one who can make sense of them. ‘Seventeen garon’. Then ‘place of crossing, two hundred and seven garon’, that’s the junction with the other tunnel, and this next line, see? That’s the name of it, erm, Mia?” She recited the words. “Right, ‘tunnel south east’, and another one going south. See? You get that? But then here, the bottom line – ‘tower of mages’, that’s how we read it, that’s where we’re going.”
“Tower of mages? What does that mean?”
“Tower of the magicians. It’s the old name for the Tower of Reception. Very old name, actually.”
“What kind of superstitious nonsense is that?” Hurst said.
“Oooh, not nonsense,” Runa said, tutting at him. “The connections are very quiet now, but they’re still there, C’mander.”
Hurst raised his eyebrows at Gantor.
“She talks like that all the time,” he whispered. “She really believes in magic, you know.”
“Well, we all need something to believe in,” Mia said.
As they began to walk back, Gantor said, “And what do you believe in, Mia?”
She tilted her head to look at him, half amused and half surprised. “Is that a trick question? I believe in the Gods, of course.”
“And what else?”
The Plains of Kallanash Page 44
