by K. J. Parker
“There aren’t any others.” Musen froze for a moment, as though his own raised voice had startled him, then took a deep breath. “Are you all right? Are you hit?”
“I don’t think so. But I’ve got pins and needles in my leg.”
Musen stared at him. “Teucer, don’t be such a fucking girl. They could be back any minute. We’ve got to go.”
Out of the question, obviously. First, they’d have to go through the bodies, make sure there weren’t any other survivors; then they’d have to bury the dead, and then carefully select as much in the way of supplies and useful equipment as they could realistically carry; best part of a day’s work, even under ideal conditions. They couldn’t just—
“Now. Or I’m going without you.”
“They can’t all be—”
“Now.”
Musen turned away, and it was as though there was a rope round Teucer’s neck; he felt himself being pulled to his feet, and staggered as his numb leg refused to take his weight. Musen was walking away. Teucer staggered again, nearly lost his balance, found it again, skipped a step or two to catch up. “Where are we going?” he called out.
“How the hell should I know,” Musen said. “Home. Anywhere. Away from here, before they come back.”
Musen had always been a fast walker. Pilad reckoned it was because he was so much shorter than everyone else; he’d got used to going very quick, just to keep up.
Teucer stopped dead. Musen hadn’t noticed. “Wait,” he shouted.
“What?”
“The others.” He meant Pilad. “We can’t just—”
“Screw you, then,” Musen said, and walked on.
Teucer gazed at his back as he got smaller and smaller, and he felt himself filling up with panic, like a bucket under the pump. Bastard, he thought, callous, unfeeling bastard. Then he broke into a run.
Musen, he realised, was marching up the slope. That wasn’t a good idea, because once they reached the top they’d be against the skyline, visible for miles. He wanted to point this out, but he had no breath, from running uphill. He tried to go faster, but it simply couldn’t be done; he couldn’t run any more, and walking flat out he was just about keeping up. He opened his mouth to yell but sucked in air instead. He filled his lungs till they hurt. It wasn’t anything like enough. The backs of his legs felt like they were about to burst.
When they were nearly at the top and he’d finally got close enough to be heard, he saw that Musen was heading for a fold in the hillside, just under the skyline. It was practically a sunken lane, and they’d be more or less invisible until they reached the end of the ridge. Smart. The sort of thing Pilad would’ve done. Also, they’d both come the same way, earlier, but he hadn’t noticed the fold in the hill, and Musen had. It suddenly occurred to him that Musen wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t sure what he thought about that.
“Right.” Musen stopped, bent forward, his hands on his knees. He was breathing hard. “What were you saying?”
“What?”
“Earlier. You were saying something.”
Yes, but it was too late now. From there, they couldn’t see the place, or the bodies. “Nothing,” Teucer said. “Forget it.”
Musen had no problem with that. “The way I see it,” he said, “we’ve got no food, no water, we don’t know if those bastards are going to jump up at us any minute. I think—” He paused and straightened up. “I think the way we came is that way there.” He didn’t point, barely nodded. Teucer had no idea where he was referring to. “But if the bastards knew to hit us back there, stands to reason they know the country, which means the roads. So, if we go back the way we came, there’s a good chance we’ll see them again.”
Teucer shivered. He’d never have thought of that on his own.
“So,” Musen went on, “we need to head back in the same direction, but not following the road. Which means picking our way across this shit. It just keeps getting better.” He scowled, then turned to face Teucer. “What’ve you got?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Food,” Musen explained. “Water. Got any?”
Teucer had to think. “No.”
“Shit. Nor me.” He pulled off his quiver and threw it away. “What are you doing?” Teucer asked.
“We’ve got arrows but no bows,” Musen said. “The hell with that. Also, the last thing we want to do is look like soldiers. Get rid of it.”
Slowly, Teucer took off his quiver. Only three viable arrows; the rest had got split or cracked when he’d fallen down. His quiver. Not his match set, with which he’d shot the possible; his best business arrows. Somehow, he couldn’t believe the possible had ever happened. He dropped the quiver on the ground. “Good boy,” Musen said. “Well, nothing for it. We’d better start walking.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home, of course. Don’t know about you, but I’m through playing soldiers.”
“But they’ll—”
Musen gave him a scornful look. “Like hell,” he said. “If they ever find out what happened to our lot, they’ll assume we died, too.” Suddenly he grinned. “Cheer up,” he said. “We’re dead. Which means we’re let off. It’s just you and me now, God help me.”
He’d been vaguely aware for some years that Musen didn’t like him very much. There was no reason. It was just that Musen said and did things that irritated him, and clearly it worked the other way around. It really didn’t matter, hadn’t mattered; they’d always been with the others, never alone together for more than a few minutes. There were plenty of people in Merebarton, after all. Had been.
“We can’t just wander off like this,” he said to Musen’s back. “It’s not right.”
“You do what you like.”
Musen was right, of course. It surprised Teucer how little that seemed to matter. But then, he thought, kingdoms and empires are like that, too. If there’s a war, it stands to reason, one side must be in the right and the other side must be wrong, and the wrong side must realise that, people aren’t stupid. But they go on being wrong, all through a war, to the last drop of blood, because— He had to think about that. Because the side you’re on matters more than pure Truth, it has to, otherwise people couldn’t live their lives; everyone’s wrong sometimes, and you don’t just weed them out and throw them away, like rotten fruit in the apple loft. You stick by your family, your village, your country. Now, here was Musen, clearly very smart, clearly quite right, and every instinct was urging him to argue, dispute, induce him to change his mind and do the wrong thing, just because they didn’t like each other. The horrible thought struck him that Musen was his side now, all of it. Pity about that.
He ran to catch up.
“So,” he said, “you reckon it’s this way.”
“Yes.”
“Fine. How far till we reach some water?”
“How the hell do I know?”
Uphill now, a long, steep climb. It was getting harder not to think about water, and food. Musen turned out to be considerably fitter than he was, or he had more stamina or willpower. The better man, in any event. Probably, Musen didn’t need him at all, he’d be faster and better off alone. If this is a joke, he thought, I’m not laughing.
Two days in Musen’s company, without food, with black ooze from bog pools to drink. It tasted strong rather than foul, but that evening he was convulsed with stomach cramps that made him whine out loud. Musen was fine.
On the third day, he saw a river. It wasn’t even that far away. “Look, over there,” he called out, but Musen was already scampering down the steep scree slope. Teucer, figuring that a twisted ankle wouldn’t really help matters, followed on rather more carefully.
“This is good,” Musen said, when he finally stopped drinking. “This must be the Swey, so we’re past the Greytop. It should be all downhill to Spire Cross from here.”
Teucer was on his knees beside the water. He couldn’t wait to stick his face in it and drink till he burst. But first, there was something he n
eeded to point out. “We’ve been here before,” he said.
“Don’t talk stupid.” Musen was lying on his back, staring up at the sky.
“We’ve been here before,” Teucer said. “This is where it happened. Well, a bit further on. But look, that’s the hill we climbed, and that’s the fold of dead ground where we went so the horsemen wouldn’t see us. You can just see the edges.”
“Balls,” Musen said, but he sat up, wriggled round and scowled at the hills behind them. “Nothing like it,” he said.
Teucer cupped his hands and plunged them under the water. “We’ve come round in a circle,” he said.
“We can’t have.”
The water was wonderful, clean and cold, and the more of it he drank the more he wanted. “All right, then,” he said. “You take a walk down the riverbank, can’t be more than half a mile. I can tell you exactly what you’ll find.”
“Fuck you,” Musen said. He got up and walked away until he was out of sight. Not long after that, Teucer heard a familiar noise and looked up. A column of crows was twisting up into the sky, shrieking and yelling. Disturbed while feeding, Teucer guessed.
Sometime later, Musen came back. He had two bows, four quivers looped over his neck and two big knapsacks hanging off his elbow. He looked terrible.
“I got us some stuff,” he said, dumping the packs and scrabbling at the quivers until he was free of them. “Looks like the bastards went through it all pretty good looking for food, but they missed a bit. There’s a water bottle each, too.”
Teucer stood up. “I thought you said no bows.”
Musen shrugged. “Changed my mind. Well, there might be deer, or hares or something. Anyhow, I figure the bastards are long gone. We’ve been walking around here for three days and not seen them.”
There was something Teucer wanted to ask, but he didn’t. “Fine,” he said. “So, now which way?”
Musen sat down, took a leather bottle out of one of the packs and plunged it in the river. “I figure where we went wrong was, we went up that fold instead of down it. We go down it, pretty soon we should be able to see the beacon on Greytop, and then we’ll know exactly where we are.”
Teucer thought for a moment. “There’s a beacon.”
“Of course. Part of the military relay. Everybody knows that.”
“You knew there should be a beacon,” Teucer said, “and you couldn’t see it, and you still kept on going.”
“Sure.” Musen lifted the bottle out of the water and pressed the stopper in tight. “Your fault. I couldn’t bear the thought of the smug look on your face if I’d said I thought we’d come the wrong way.”
“Ah,” Teucer said, and filled his bottle.
The village appeared out of nowhere. They climbed out of a steep, dry combe on to a skyline littered with granite outcrops, and suddenly there it was: two dozen buildings, with smoke rising from the chimneys. They hadn’t seen it because the valley in which the village lay was so deep. There were springs running down the hill into a lake; the village was at the far end. The valley was absurdly green, as though it had been painted.
“Not on the map,” Musen said, as they scrambled down the slope. “Maybe the government doesn’t know about them. Well, it’s possible. Some people don’t like paying taxes and sending their sons off to fight. Crazy, but there it is.”
“Oh, come on,” Teucer said. “You can’t hide a whole village.”
“You say that.” Musen stopped to tug his leg free from a briar, the first one they’d seen for a month. “You know Ranmoor, over between Merebarton and the old top road? Never been on the map, not ever. Surveyors came round, time before last, never heard of it. They only stumbled on the place because one of their mules broke loose and they had to go look for it. And the Ranmoor people weren’t even trying to stay hidden.”
“How do you know this place isn’t on the map?” Teucer asked.
“Because I saw it,” Musen replied. “The officer’s map, at Spire Cross. Made a point of studying it, just in case.”
“You can’t read a map.”
Musen laughed. “If you say so.”
“You can’t read.”
But he could, apparently. A man of infinite resource and many hidden talents. It was a shame he was so objectionable. “Who taught you?”
Musen didn’t answer. Bastard, Teucer thought. Not that it mattered; couldn’t matter less, and it was just as well he had such a useful skill, as well as such a splendid memory. But who had taught him? And why had either of them bothered?
It took an agonisingly long time to get down to the valley. Each ridge they crossed proved to be hiding half a dozen more, and in places there were sheer drops or steep slopes of shale, guaranteed to break a leg, probably a neck as well. Going round meant going back up again. “You’ll notice there’s no road to this place,” Musen said, as they headed uphill for the fifth time. “You ever been to a village with no road?”
“No road this side of the valley,” Teucer pointed out; “could be one the other side,” but he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Musen was right. A green paradise with a lake in the middle; enough grazing for enough sheep, and, at the far end of the lake, where the biggest stream came down off the hills, there was a flood plain, fat with accumulated silt. You could grow anything. And fish, too. Who needs the world when you’ve got all that?
In which case, he thought, maybe they won’t want strangers.
Maybe the same idea had struck them both at the same time. They slowed down, kept off the skyline as much as possible; they were dawdling, as though waiting for dusk. Eventually Musen said, “Chances are, they don’t bother locking their doors.”
Teucer had been thinking the same way. “You mean stealing.”
“I think it’s called foraging when you’re a soldier.”
“If they catch us—”
“Then they’ll string us up, just exactly like they’d have done if we’d walked in and said hello, but with a good reason. Same difference.”
No arguing with that. There was a stand of ash trees on the west side of the village. Maybe two hours to sunset. Musen was already heading that way.
From the edge of the trees they could see the village street. Windows glared yellow, like eyes. “We’ll wait till everything’s gone dark,” Musen said. “That one there looks like an inn, so I’m guessing that outhouse back and left is a hay barn.”
Teucer couldn’t help grinning. In Merebarton, everyone strung up their sausages in the hay barn rafters under the thatch, where it was cool, dry and dark. And cheeses, in racks on the back wall, and shelves of store apples. And it wasn’t really stealing, because – well, it wasn’t, that was all.
“So,” he said, after a while. “Where do you think we are?”
Musen thought for a long time before answering. “I think,” he said, “that the other side of those hills in front of us is a long, high moor, and the far side of that’s the Asper. If we can find that and follow it south-east, we go round the side of Spire Cross and from there on it’s due south, downhill all the way. I think,” he added.
Teucer realised that he trusted him. “How wide’s this moor?”
“Two days,” Musen replied. “Maybe three, I don’t know. But I reckon, if we can load up enough stuff for seven days, that ought to do it. By missing out Spire Cross we cut off a bloody great big dog-leg. And there’s that much less chance of running into anybody, and if we do we can see them a long way away. Don’t know about you, but I don’t want to meet anyone till we’re safely back in the Ridings.”
Seven days. How long since he’d left home? He realised he’d completely lost count. Also, he’d known Musen for eighteen years and completely misunderstood him. “When we get back—”
“If.”
“When we get home,” Teucer said, “we’re going to have to tell—”
“Yes, all right.” It was too dark for Teucer to see Musen’s face, but he didn’t have to. “Cross that bridge when we get to it. Right n
ow, let’s just think about getting some food.”
Teucer straightened his leg. He’d been lying at a bad angle and he’d got cramp. “When did you learn to read?”
“None of your business.”
Teucer and Musen had only been out together with the long net twice, because usually Teucer went with Pilad and his two cousins and their friends, and Musen netted with his father and uncles over Rawbarrow. On those two occasions, they’d been on opposite ends of the operation. Teucer had sat completely still in the pitch dark, seventy yards out in the field, clutching two stones, while Musen and Ecnas from Spin Pike crept forward to hang the net. That was the difficult bit; agonisingly slow, patient work, because you’re between the wary, long-eared rabbits feeding out in the headlands and the safety of their home, stringing the thirty yards of net on to pre-planted stakes along the bank. One sound, one sneeze, one faint rustle of cloth as one trouser leg brushes the other, and the rabbits hear you and bolt for the warren, before the net’s in place; ruined, wasted, and everybody’s stayed up all night for nothing. Teucer had been a net man five times; one time he’d trodden on a snail, of all things, crunch, too soft for Pilad to have heard it at the far end of the net, but plenty loud enough for seventy-odd rabbits. When Pilad gave the signal and the beaters came out of the dark, yelling, whistling, clashing rocks, they ended up with four rabbits for a whole night’s work. Pilad had shrugged, said he guessed he must’ve made a noise; nobody believed him. Just bad luck, they’d said, a fox must’ve come by earlier, something like that. But both times when Musen hung the net, they’d taken more than sixty.
Please, Teucer thought as they set off towards the hay barn, don’t let there be any snails.
Nor there were. Instead, there was a man who’d stepped out of the inn for a piss. He’d finished, and was contemplating the stars or something of the sort, dead still and quiet, invisible. Musen walked straight into him.
“Watch it,” the man said, staggering and clutching Musen’s arm for balance. Musen punched him in the eye. But the drinker wasn’t so easily disposed of. He still had Musen’s other arm, and he was very big and strong, and now he was furiously angry. “What you do that for?” he roared. “Hey, I don’t know you. Who are you?”
