The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom

by Dickson, H. Leighton

  The gloved hands stroked the horse’s face, just stroked.

  “You can leave, you know. You’re not a soldier. No man is your master.”

  “Ah, right. That’s right…” The yellow eyes looked up at him. “What’s your name?”

  “Kerris Wynegarde-Grey. Yours?”

  “Of course. The brother.” The man shook his head. “Yahn Nevye.”

  “Oh yes. The man who cannot speak to falcons. Why of course?”

  Nevye opened his mouth as if to say something but the words never came. He shook his head again, turned and continued to stroke the horse’s face.

  “Right,” said Kerris. “Forget I asked.”

  “Are you afraid of anything?”

  “Me? Afraid?”

  “Yes. Are you?”

  Kerris grinned, glanced around the stables. They were alone and the golden haze was disappearing into twilight. “How long have you got?”

  For the first time in a very long time, Yahn Nevye smiled.

  “I am afraid of a great many things,” Kerris sighed. “I am afraid of losing my wife and my kittens. I am afraid of seeing my home again, and at the same time, of never seeing my home again. I am afraid of not being loved, of growing bored, of growing old. And I am afraid of the earth.”

  “The earth?”

  “Yes, of being crushed by the earth. Of being wrapped in her arms until the breath in my body grows so hot that I crumble inwards and disappear in a puff of grey fur. We have an uneasy truce, the earth and I. She terrifies me still.” His quick blue eyes glanced at the jaguar. “You?”

  Nevye sighed, made a face. “Falling.”

  “You’re afraid of falling?”

  “All of life is falling. You fall in love, you fall out of love. You fall out of grace, you fall into luck, you fall out of favour. You fall out of one life and into another. You fall on your knees, you fall on your face and when you hit the ground, all your bones shatter and you wish you didn’t have to get up again. Yes, I am very afraid of falling.”

  “Hm,” said Kerris. “Do you drink much?”

  The jaguar smiled.

  A sound on the stairs brought him back years in his memory, the sound of sharp angry clacking and Kerris smiled. A woman was leading her horse down the steps to the stables, clad in a uniform of thickest leather, dyed to match the silver of her pelt. Pewter shoulder plates stamped with the visage of a snarling lion, arm vambraces studded with steel and a multiple of straps along one thigh, holding her daggers and throwing stars in place. And of course, her boots, high, laced and white, with heels that looked like they alone could kill.

  Ursa Laenskaya scowled at them as she led her horse into the stall, began removing its tack.

  “Is the insignificant excuse for a lion going to teach the little chicken how to clean dung?”

  “As sweet as a summer rainfall,” said Kerris. “I’ve missed you, my love.”

  “Pah. I thought you drowned in the ocean.”

  “If wishes were horses…”

  Yahn Nevye glanced from grey coat to silver, eyes wide in disbelief. Kerris went on, unmindful.

  “Nice uniform. Is it new?”

  She snorted, pulled the saddle from the blue roan’s back. “Your brother promised to send me a new one but he did not.”

  “Ah, the life of a Shogun-General.”

  With the saddle in her arms, she swung around to the jaguar.

  “Him I understand. But you? What are you doing with the horses?”

  Nevye’s mouth hung open a moment.

  “Are you deserting?”

  “I…”

  “You are! I will kill you now—” And she moved a hand to the hilt of her sword.

  “He’s helping me, Ursa,” said Kerris. “With the horses.”

  “Helping you.”

  “Yes. He’s a very friendly, talkative fellow and I’m grateful for his company.”

  She scowled at the jaguar now.

  “Yes,” Nevye swallowed. “He’s teaching me where things go and, and about the earth.”

  There was silence in the stable for a very long moment until she shoved the saddle into Yahn Nevye’s arms.

  “Good. The Captain—” She cursed in Hanyin, stamped her foot. “The Shogun-General wants us upstairs by dusk. He has a plan to get the army over the Wall.”

  “Actually, my wife has a plan,” said Kerris. “Kirin has asked her to share.”

  “Then don’t be late.”

  She snorted and left the stables echoing with the sounds of sharp, angry clacking.

  Yahn Nevye released his breath and sagged against the stable wall.

  “Falling…and her. I’m terrified of her.”

  “Me too. But you get used to it.” The grey lion grinned and pushed himself upright. “Look. You have a saddle now. Still want to leave?”

  Nevye sighed, shook his head.

  “Good choice. She’d kill you before you left the Wall.” Kerris took the saddle from the man’s arms. “Well, let’s head up for more fun with lions.”

  The jaguar laughed, something he hadn’t done in years, and followed the lion out of the stall.

  ***

  It was late now and lanterns cast light around the office of the Captain. Across his desk, the Scholar in the Court of the Empress had rolled out her parchments for all to see.

  “Now, our main problem right here, right now, is how to get 3,946 troops over the Wall and into the Lower Kingdom.”

  Kirin looked at her. “3,946?”

  “Actually,” said Captain Oldsmith-Pak. “It’s closer to 4500 now. Enlistment is doubling almost every hour. We are taking only those who come with horses.”

  Standing behind her husband, Ursa Laenskaya snorted.

  “Well, well,” said Kerris and he looked up from the cushions. “I told you I couldn’t count the rear joiners. Bo?”

  The ambassador puffed a few good puffs on his pipe. “Feline soldiers have more than doubled Chi’Chen ones. I am impressed, Shogun-sama. Truly impressed.”

  Kirin nodded. “Go on, sidala.”

  “Anyway, we need a way to bring our troops over the Wall that doesn’t involve lowering everyone in baskets, which would take half a year or more and if there is indeed a Legion still waiting on the other side—

  “There is,” said Oldsmith-Pak.

  “Then they could make short work out of us with their arrows. So this plan can’t involve doing that, nor can it involve riding north to Roar’pundih. That would be a very long way and with our numbers increasing daily, we simply couldn’t manage it. We couldn’t stop to eat, to sleep, to have a leisurely scrub. Nothing. And at no point in our history has a force such as this carried on along the Wall for such a stretch. We are, in fact, making history.”

  She looked up at them, her emerald eyes serious.

  “So I asked the Captain to fetch the Mayor of Shen’foxhindi and to get some parchments of their digs. Everyone, say hi to Musaf Summerdale, Mayor of Shen’foxhindi.”

  Musaf Summerdale was a tiger, round of face and soft of middle. But his eyes were sharp and he bowed in almost perfect fashion.

  “What I learned here…” And the tigress bent low to move some papers over others. “Was that the mines go deep into the Great Mountains here…” She moved them again. “And here…”

  “Which is why they are angry,” said Kerris.

  “But it serves us well.” She straightened. “Why go over the Mountains when we can go through them?”

  There was silence in the Captain’s office.

  “Go through them?” said Kirin.

  “Yes,” she said and she nodded. “Setse says--”

  “Setse?” said Kirin. “Setse the dog, Setse?”

  “Um, yes?”

  More silence.

  “You are consulting a dog on the movement of Imperial troops?”

  “Uh…well, actually…”

  “That is treason, sidala.”

  “Kirin,” Kerris growled a warning.

&nbs
p; “Sister,” she corrected. “Or Fallon. I’m not fussy. And no, I asked Setse because she’s been there and I couldn’t find Sherah.”

  The cheetah raised her tea to her lips.

  Sireth cleared his throat. “What did you ask Setse, Khalilah?”

  She beamed at him. “I asked her about the terrain on the other side of the Wall. If it was all sheer and steep and cliffy like here and she remembered there was a plateau and valley about a day’s journey north.”

  “Where we were hurt. Arrows,” added Setse. She was looking around with quick, eager eyes. Her brother, on the other hand, was leaning against a window, arms folded across his chest. “Rah heal us.”

  Fallon bent back over her parchments. “I studied the maps of all the mine shafts in Shen’foxhindi. Oh mother, are there mine shafts! Like a regular rabbit warren! But I found something very interesting. There is an old shaft also about one day’s journey north from here that seems to bore right through the mountainside. Almost. They stopped because to continue would open a tunnel to the Lower Kingdom and that,” she looked up again. “That would be bad.”

  There was the sound of people shuffling as they processed her words.

  “Are you suggesting, sidal…sister,” Kirin said, frowning. “That we finish what they started, bore through the mountain and open a doorway to our Enemies?”

  “Yep,” she said and she smiled.

  Oldsmith-Pak shook his head. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What a weakness we would be presenting?”

  “And how would we do this?” asked Musaf Summerdale. “I mean, we could open it surely, but close it? It would be impossible to perfect a seal from the outside that the dogs could not breach.”

  “Kerris could.”

  And she looked at her husband.

  In fact, all eyes looked to her husband now, the grey lion laying on his stomach, a flask of sakeh in his hand.

  “Ah, I see now,” he said, blue eyes gleaming. “You clever girl, you.”

  She smiled.

  “Could you?” asked the Seer. He was smiling almost as much as the tigress. “It would require a complete and profound control of the elements. Something I am sure you are able to do, if only you were willing.”

  “Ah, well, I can move rocks…” he rolled to sitting. “Quite big rocks, actually. But this…”

  “We would have you too, wouldn’t we, Sireth?” and Fallon gazed at him, biting her bottom lip and holding her breath. “You are still the most powerful Seer in the land, right?”

  The Seer nodded, thinking.

  “And sidalord jaguar over there,” added the Scholar. “I saw him practically fling a dozen guards out the door with a wave of his hands.”

  Oldsmith-Pak growled.

  Seated on a cushion, happy to be a spectator, Yahn Nevye swallowed.

  “And not to mention Sherah.”

  “Ah yes, the Alchemist,” said Sireth and he turned to her. “A woman whose powers have no equal in all the Kingdoms.”

  All eyes fell on her. She was sitting, dangling a long black braid for her infant to swat, humming in strange, exotic keys.

  Kirin put his hands on his hips, the armour creaking with the movement.

  “So, sister, you are suggesting we take almost five thousand soldiers and horses into an old tunnel, have these four civilians move the mountain, let the soldiers and horses out onto some proposed plateau, a plateau that is known by the Enemy, and then have that tunnel blocked up as new by those same four civilians before the Legion stationed there has a chance to attack? That is what you are proposing, sister?”

  She thought a moment, her mouth twisting into many different shapes.

  “Yep,” she said finally. “That’s about right.”

  “Kerris? What do you say to this?”

  The grey lion shrugged. “I can try, Kirin. That’s all I can say.”

  “Sidalord Seer?”

  “I would love the challenge, Captain—forgive me. Shogun-sama.”

  “Sidalord jaguar?”

  “Uh, yes. Fine. I think.”

  “Sidalady cheetah?”

  And he held his breath, waiting for it.

  “Of course.”

  He released it and glanced up at both Oldsmith-Pak and Musaf Summerdale. They looked at each other, shrugged, nodded.

  “Well then,” he said. “We will bed down for the night. In the morning, we will take a small party and ride north. There we will commence our tunnel to the Wrong Side of the Wall.”

  There was little more to say after that.

  The Magic and the Mine

  It was a thing unseen in the history of the Khans—ten thousand soldiers moving as one, running across foothill and plain, through forest and frozen tundra, churning up everything under their boots and turning snowfields black as they moved toward the Wall of the Enemy. From Ulaan Baator they ran, rising from their blankets before the sun and bedding down again with the singing of the stars. It was the time of the Saran’temur, the Iron Moon and the days were very short. They lost men in the crevices of the mountains of KhunLun. They lost men in the thin ice along the rivers and lakes. They lost men in the avalanches caused by the pounding of their feet on the earth. They lost none to sickness, none to fatigue, none to temperatures of extreme cold. These were the Legions of the Khan. Nothing in all the known world could stop them.

  It was dawning as Irh-khan Swift Sumalbayar yawned and stretched his arms to the skies. While he was lean, he was very strong and the days already spent running only made him sharp, not weary. They had khava. They had wotchka. They ran down and caught reindeer and antelope and partridge and hare, which they ate while on the move. Even through the bleak wasteland of Gobay, where the steel frames of Ancestral towers stood like fists of bone, they had all they needed.

  It was almost dawn now and he cast his eyes across the vista of bodies. They spanned from one horizon to the other, as far as he could see. Some were still sleeping, others sitting around small fires, talking or drinking or both, and he could see the breath from their mouths frosting above them in the cold night air. The smoke from the fires caused silver to dance against the stars and he wondered how long it would take to make the village of Lon’Gaar. They were moving well but Lon’Gaar seemed a world away.

  There was a wail from the Khargan’s tent. It was the only tent actually and it was silhouetted against the purple sky by torchlight. He took a deep breath. Another Oracle. The Khargan was desperate for visions and was convinced he could beat them out of an Oracle if necessary. Pain was a useful tool but with Oracles, Long-Swift was not sure of anything. Oracles were chosen by the Moon—their eyes proved it. They were sacred in their giftings. It was a foolish thing, he thought, to harm the Oracles. A very foolish thing. Naturally, the Bear had thought otherwise.

  And to believe there was still one who had outrun them. A girl. A little girl. It was a miracle.

  He grinned to himself.

  He hoped she lived long enough for him to meet her.

  He wondered if she knew what the Khargan was doing to the Oracles.

  He wondered why she was moving towards the Wall of the Enemy.

  He wondered if in fact, there would be any war with the Cats that they could ever win because such a thing had never happened.

  He wondered why there were still songs in his head, songs in a language not his own and he wondered why he was dreaming of the Enemy or if anything had ever come from such fantastical dreaming.

  He wondered a great many things. He was such a man. But soon he would be called in to clean up the bones of this last Oracle before the men had a chance to see. It would not serve his Khan well to have the men see the desecration of Oracles.

  And so he set out for another mug of khava. It would steady his nerve until the job was done.

  ***

  It looked like a great wide mouth, frowning and ready to swallow them all in one go. Kerris shivered and looked around. There were at least twenty of them here, and as many horses, so one gulp m
ight not be possible. But with the anger he was feeling from these rocks, the Great Mountains might indeed take a nip or two out of them before the day was done.

  “It looks big enough,” said Kirin as he stood in the snow, hands on hips, surveying the opening to the mine. “Does it continue this wide all the way through?”

  Fallon looked down at the parchments. “Yep. Pretty much. It’s more like a cave, really, rather than a mine…”

  “Oh it’s a mine to be sure,” said Musaf Summerdale. “Quite profitable in its day.”

  “And why did you close it?”

  “The overhead strata became unstable. We lost two dozen men during the fall.”

  “And look,” said Kerris. “We have almost two dozen now.”

  “Kerris,” said Fallon, emerald eyes flashing. “It won’t happen. You and Sireth will make sure, won’t you, Sireth?”

  The Seer smiled. “We will do our best, Khalilah.”

  Fallon looked at Nevye, standing next to his horse, stroking its long nose. “And you too, sidi? You don’t like people to think you’re powerful but you are. I know you are.”

  The jaguar looked at her, swallowed.

  “Shar Ma’uul powerful,” said Setse and she leaned down to hug the neck of her horse. “Horse beautiful. I love Horse.”

  Kerris grunted. Dogs ate horses, not rode them and it was a testament to the will of Imperial stallions for the creature to have allowed the girl on its back. She had laughed and sang most of the day as their small team rode out along the Wall to the mine but her brother had refused a mount and had run at her side. Kerris was impressed. The fellow didn’t look remotely winded and he stood now, angry and guarded. Dogs were formidable enemies.

  “What about the horses?” asked Kirin. “Will we need to walk them in? That would be problematic, sidi.”

  “Not at all, Shogun-sama,” said Summerdale. “The mine is as high as it is wide for the most part, and well braced. Except, of course, at the end.”

  “Where the earth fell in,” said Kerris.

  “Exactly. Horses and riders should fit very well, perhaps six abreast. For the most part.” The tiger turned to the tigress. “Will we need yaks, sidala? Or diggers or carts? There will be much stone to move if we wish five thousand horses to go through.”