Kunrad nodded, fascinated. ‘Worth seeing, indeed. I’ve heard so many tales about that place.’
‘Most of them short of the reality,’ wheezed the old man. ‘But it was not that I sought to show you, lads. Look now south and west, where the land lies like a cloak! Look, and feast your eyes!’
The land to the southwest lay like a cloak indeed, a garment flung down careless and wrinkled, and left bleaching in the sun, so that spring greenery mingled in a strange patchwork with dry yellows. Kunrad guessed the summer would bake it yellower, killing the grass and ripening what must be fields. But as he looked more keenly he saw a faint gleam, as though some brooch or fastening had been left in the cloak’s wide shoulder – ivory, perhaps, with a grey-green tinge, and flecks of bronze and gold that flashed suddenly in the first long sunbeams.
Kunrad smiled at the sight. It seemed tiny and distant, another piece of jeweller’s work; then his smile faded as he realised how wide that cloak truly was, and what size that brooch must be.
Kermorvan nodded. ‘They say Morvan was greater, and Kerys the Lost beyond the seas, where my forefathers were kings. That may be; but this is Ker Bryhaine, the Stronghold of the Land of Freedom as they call it, the greatest city of all this realm of men. My home.’
Alais brought her horse up to Kunrad’s side. ‘And mine, I suppose; though I scarcely remember it. I was – what? – seven when I was brought back here, briefly; and I hated every moment of it. Except our ancient house, perhaps, with its lemon tree in the court. But Father and my brothers were quarrelling …’
Kermorvan did not seem to hear; but he levered himself as upright as he could in the sling, and sighed. ‘Aye, my home. Some ten years since I have seen it, and I feared I might never do so again; for I would not return in shame and defeat.’
Alais stroked his matted hair. ‘None can say so now.’
Kermorvan snorted. ‘One can. One little bastard, in fact, is probably busy saying just that at this very moment! I’ve looked enough. Why do we hang about here? Ride!’
‘We’ve ridden half the night to get you here at dawn!’ said Alais severely. ‘You need to rest!’
Kermorvan grumped and grumbled. ‘Later! Nearer noon, if you must, to let these Northerners find some shade. Under the Forest’s edge, maybe! Surely we could reach that in a few hours?’
Alais threw her hands in the air. Gille swallowed. ‘The Forest? Is that safe, so close?’
Kermorvan chuckled, though it seemed to pain him. ‘Oh aye! The High Road passes by it, there’s no way quicker. At noon, anyhow. By night, or in winter, I confess I’d as soon not cross that way myself, but some do; the coast road’s poorer, and it adds three or four days to the journey, at least.’
‘So be it,’ Kunrad nodded. ‘We’ll breakfast at the bottom of the hill, and go on then till we near the Forest. Forward!’
He was more willing to take risks with Kermorvan now. The old man was weakening, visibly. His wounds kept opening, and shedding more blood; and fevers shook him, for all the healer could do. In the North such a journey would have killed him for sure; but here the climes were milder and the going easier upon the great high roads of the Southlands. If they were to get him anywhere it should be soon.
The road down the hill was the best they had found so far, its surface of packed yellow clay already growing warm in the sun. ‘How do you make your roads like this?’ Kunrad marvelled. ‘We’ve no such skill in the North. Shaped to the hill, so we always ride level and clear of trips and tangles! Even,’ he coughed, ‘if it is a bit dusty!’
‘Our artificers brought the skill from Kerys, they say,’ Alais told him. ‘Something to do with laying a bed of many layers, and drainage. And great labour; the lords must send peasants out during the growing season, when the women can tend the fields.’
Olvar’s impassive face twitched. ‘We couldn’t do that in the North. The first work they’d do is bury the man who suggested it!’
Gille, riding behind the leaders, coughed violently. ‘At least our clime keeps the dust down. Look out there! In this heat you can see people using the roads, just by the little clouds they kick up!’
Olvar nodded. ‘I wonder if Merthian’s one of them? It’s too far for me to make out, now. But I’ll be watching for a flash from the master’s armour!’
‘He’s gone, I’ll be bound!’ groaned Kermorvan. ‘Flicking his forked tongue around the city, no doubt! But we’ll stuff it back down his throat yet!’
Alais, Kunrad noticed, said nothing. But even in the warm radiance of sunrise she seemed pale.
None of them grew any happier as they neared the Forest. For much of the way it was hidden from them by the rolling hills, save for a few straggling trees at the vale’s end; but it grew in their minds. To the Northerners the Forest was a name of fear and horror greater than the Ice. Few had much reason to seek the glaciers; but the fishing and trapping by the banks of the Westflood and the Forest margins were rich, and every year hardy souls would cross the Meneth Scahas and camp along the Forest edge. Some returned with rich loads of furs, scoffing at the terrible tales; but others returned not at all, or broken by fear and hardship. To approach even its outmost arm so lightly was disturbing, although the road was wide and well established, and the prospect of shade welcome; the high sun smote their necks. They looked warily about, loosening swords in scabbards, before they at length chose a place they might dismount.
And that was as well. They crossed now between the two walls of the glen, and the Forest filled it from edge to edge like a dark wall. Near the foremost edge many stumps showed where vast and ancient trees had been felled, fir and pine and massive redwoods, some as wide as a small house. Lesser trees and bushes were scattered like shrunken remnants about those vast ruins; but in the glen’s mouth the great trees still towered, and beneath them heavy bushes of thorn and briar, and dank tangles of fern and bracken. Even the wind and the sunlight seemed to glance off their brooding gloom, leaving the stillness beneath untouched. Only the outermost trees glowed with a faint green corona, and the waving lines of alder and hazel that overhung a small shallow river flowing out of the wood. On a green sward by a sunlit pool, affording clear views in all directions, they dismounted with groans of relief. It had been a long ride, and many men went off among the trees, Alais in another direction, while the healer tended Kermorvan and clicked his tongue in disapproval of the old man’s oaths. Kunrad sprawled face-down by the river and splashed water over his head, though he had more sense than to drink anything from this eerie place unboiled. The coolness cleared his mind, and when he heard the first distant crashing he sprang up at once, and shouted.
That saved them, and their care in resting well away from the trees. If the horsemen who came charging from the shade had had bows, it might have gone otherwise; but they had to break cover too soon. Even the men among the trees had enough warning, and in the minute it took the attackers to reach the Forest margin, Kunrad’s men ran to their horses. One, spurring ahead of the rest, made straight for him as he remounted, stabbing at him with a long spear, Kunrad, sword in hand but one foot in the stirrup, ducked down behind his saddle and slashed out at the spear, smashing it. The rider reined in hard, but Kunrad hauled himself up and with little hesitation hewed him from the saddle. Mail rings flew, and the man fell dead to the ground. Swallowing hard, Kunrad stared at the dead face. Small wonder the man had singled him out; it was the scarfaced corsair who had first captured him.
The little river-mead was a mêlée, the corsair horsemen slashing this way and that, careless even of their own, but they were already outnumbered and encircled by Kunrad’s men, holding back and stabbing at every opening with their heavy lances. The men caught in the trees came rushing back now, not bothering with their horses, but hurling stones and hauling unwary assailants bodily from the saddle to fall on them, daggers flashing. Kunrad heard Alais scream his name, and saw two attackers riding around the main fight, towards Kermorvan’s litter; and one of them, even in the shadow
s, glittered like a statue of living steel.
With a wild shout Kunrad spurred forward, into their path. The shining man pointed, and more or less pushed the other towards him, while he rode on. Kunrad shouted again, and it came out as a slavering wolf-howl. The corsair took one look at what was coming at him, and hauled his horse’s head around, goading the staggering animal back towards the trees. Kunrad passed without a glance, charging after Merthian, still yelling like a man possessed; and so in a sense he was. Merthian saw him and spurred on, faster and faster. He gave one wild slash at the litter as he passed, sending the healer diving for cover, but he did not stop. Off towards the high road he galloped, and away in a cloud of shining yellow dust, while behind him his corsairs were beaten from their horses, or lifted kicking on the ends of spears.
Three or four, seeing this sight, broke away, but they did not follow. To the trees they fled, belabouring their horses with the flat of their swords, or to the northern edge of the vale, and the hills beyond.
‘And a warm welcome they’ll get, either way!’ said Kunrad grimly. He stared after the dust cloud, and decided he was not a good enough horseman to catch it up. ‘Let them go!’
‘Eleven dead!’ said Olvar, rubbing his knuckles in grim satisfaction. ‘Must be every man jack he had with him, counting the tail-turners, and not one of us more than scratched. Silly bugger, to throw his men away on a worthless ambush!’
‘Did he?’ Kermorvan sat up, in high good humour after his entertainment, as he put it; but his pale eyes were very cold. ‘I wonder. He’s off to tell his tale in Bryhaine – which he couldn’t very well do with a tail of known outlaws, could he now?’
Alais looked sick. ‘You don’t mean—’
‘Couldn’t just ditch them, could he? They’d have killed him, then; or denounced him! They must have been relying on him to buy them pardon. Whereas goading them into a convenient ambush – if it worked, so much the better; if it didn’t … Well, either way he’s rid of a nuisance, ain’t he?’
Olvar grimaced. ‘Makes perfect sense – if you’re Merthian.’
‘It does now,’ said Alais bitterly. ‘He wouldn’t always have acted so basely.’
Kunrad was still contemplating the dust. ‘Perhaps not, princess. And yet he was just as base in his plundering, wasn’t he? It was there always. Now he will be less able to deceive himself about his reasons. And so, hopefully, others.’
Alais considered. ‘Well, we’ll soon know, won’t we? It’s cost him most of his lead. If he ever had it. Look at these poor horses, at death’s door, most of them! Take off their tackle and let them, at least, run free!’
The land grew ever lower from there on, but still a rolling mass of valleys and rises, the wrinkles in the cloak. They came among villages once again, and tall houses set among their own lands, more splendid and less heavily fortified than those further north. Here and there, though, loomed massive, ancient-looking fortresses, though none as huge and solid as the Castle of the Winds. Their sentries kept a careful watch on the road, challenging this armed band as to its business – giving Merthian, as Gille pointed out, even more reason to be rid of his late friends. Of towns, as in all their way south, they saw nothing at all, to the Northerners’ surprise.
Alais was amused. ‘We have only a few – chiefly ports, like Bryhannec to the south, near Merthian’s lordship of Anlaithann. Larger than any Northern town I’ve heard of, mind you, save Dunmarhas and perhaps Saldenborg – if that’s how you pronounce it! And some of the villages on the great estates are quite towns in their own right.’
Kermorvan was struggling to sit up again. ‘That’s right! We had one once, in my great-grandpa’s day. We let the peasants run it on their own. Nice place, all little wooden cottages, carved and painted—’ He sagged back on to his pillow with a deep sigh. His fat had dwindled, and the skin around his jowls hung loose and bloodless. ‘All gone before my time, of course. All gone.’
Alais leaned over and stroked the grey hair tenderly, avoiding the bloodstained bandages. ‘Does it seem so strange to you, Kunrad? But who would need more, when we have Ker Bryhaine the city? Even I who have hardly set foot there count myself its daughter. For better, for worse, it is the heart of all that happens in this land, the focus of government, trade, wealth, of learning and amusement also. It stands for us; it is us!’
Kunrad nodded. ‘And that is why you must have a Marchwarden in the north, eh? Too far away to be governed directly; but another great city would become a rival, and a focus for rivalry. Better to vest the power in one lord, one your Syndics can place or remove at will. No doubt the powers of the Ice saw that long ago, in searching out your weaknesses, and moulded an ideal man for the post, as I would beat out a blade on my anvil.’
‘And made me a part of it!’ Alais writhed. Kunrad took her hand in silence, and she looked at him, hard. ‘Kunrad, how shall we ever make them believe us?’
‘They will, in time, when they look into the matter. Making sure they take that time may be the best we can do. How long do we have, now?’
‘Two days, no more. Merthian will be there soon.’ She cast an anxious glance at the grey-faced figure in the litter. One of his cuts was leaking a thin red trickle down his temple. ‘But that is not the least of my fears.’
The days that followed did not see them stilled. At every rise they crossed the wind now brought them the cool savour of the sea, and only Olvar thought it any different from the North. And as they turned their faces to it, drying their sweat under its salty caress, it showed them a gleam of light, a shining pinnacle that lifted like a lone mountain out of the low lying lands about. Always it was that trace nearer, that trace brighter, shining in many colours according to the time of day – in the morning an ivory glow, under the noon sun a hot ruddy gleam with a dazzling heart, and at evening ivory once again, shot with the pallid grey-green. At last, on the second morning after the ambush, as they came over the last long wrinkle in the land, the Northerners saw why.
They stood now within less than a league of the outer walls. And if these were not yet so wide as they would be, still they covered a vast span, spreading outward like ripples of stone from the low rocky outcrop on which the citadel was built. This outcrop, sloping gently up from the landward side, fell sheer away into the deep blue of the harbour beyond. Beneath the landward side the rooftops clustered in great swathes, just as to seaward gathered the tall masts of many ships. Those rooftops of slate and glazed tile, grey-green, blue and white, formed the setting of the brooch they had seen from so far; but the gem itself stood high and airy atop the outcrop, so graceful in form that its strength was not at once apparent.
This was the Citadel of Ker Bryhaine, crown of the city, heart of the land, sentinel of the sea beyond. Above the smooth grey stone of the outcrop there arose seven towers of increasing height, with walls and rooftops to link them, like a coronet encircling the frowning brow of the cliffs. And those towers were of pale stone brought from afar at great cost and effort, and shaped so seamlessly that, less than two centuries since it was raised, it might have been carven from one monstrous block of ivory. A thousand years hence the greatest armies were to break against that crowned stone still; and only when the Ice was at last thrown back, and all the lands were changed, were those walls at last overwhelmed by nature and by time, and by no human hand.
This Kunrad could never have known; but he might well have expected it, standing and shading his eyes. In part this was against the glare of the sun; for it leaped and danced about those tall pinnacles, sheathed in ruddy bronze and crowned, beneath the banners that curled and snapped from tall white staves, in circlets of blazing gold. But he shaded them also against a power and a majesty he had never seen the like of, save in Ker an Aruel itself. Here, though, it encompassed a city that could have swallowed all the cities of the North and still outnumbered them; that was stone where they were wood, and graven deep and majestic along its walls, where they were painted bright.
This was the city
he had seen on Merthian’s gold coin, in another life, and thought impossibly great. He felt as wild and coarse as any of the gulls that wheeled and yelled in the blue above, or the great ravens that beat and croaked above the hill they stood on. But the feeling passed, or rather grew to a greater wonder; for these people, with all their strength, had come closer to being conquered than his own, and from within.
‘They need us,’ he muttered to Gille and Olvar, who stood no less dazzled and gaping at his side.
‘I hardly see how,’ whispered Gille, ‘though I’d die before I admitted it! What are we to that?’
‘Free?’ suggested Olvar; but he too looked deeply daunted.
‘That’s part of it!’ said Kunrad. ‘But not what would please the Syndics, I think. We’ll have to show them something else.’
He turned to Kermorvan, expecting him to be glorying in the view. But the old man lay sprawled in the litter, his face grey beneath its bruises, his wrinkled eyelids fluttering. Saliva trickled from one side of his fluttering lips, thinly laced with red; blood had blossomed through the bandage around his ribs. Alais, bathing his brow with water, looked up anxiously. ‘He can’t go on!’
‘He must!’ said Kunrad harshly. ‘What can we do for him here? Within those walls at least he may find better care, even if he cannot speak for us he—’
‘Speak!’ whispered Kermorvan’s voice, thin and dry as old parchment. ‘Why are we halted, so close? Go on! Go on, damn you!’
‘Father? You—’
‘Go on!’
Kunrad looked to the healer. The bald man shrugged. ‘Well,’ said Kunrad. ‘As his lordship commands, Alais. Mount up, all! And keep your weapons to hand! We may find Merthian’s lies stand sentinel at the gate!’
Sentinels there were, in great numbers, outside the massive double valves that stood on their tall pivots of blackened steel, on the crenellations above, and on the tall wooden gallery capping that ivorine wall. Kunrad thought there must be some alarum, but Alais told him there were always as many, at every gate. More than anything else, that brought home to him the sheer scale of life within these vast walls, beyond which buildings were already beginning to spread. The next generation would be adding another circle of walls, no doubt. So much casual strength seemed reflected in the manner of the watchers, relaxed and unsuspicious before open gates. But when they caught sight of the little band, the change was instantly visible. The loungers snapped to alertness, weapons flew to hands, and there was a growing turmoil of voices which the officer who appeared did his best to ignore. He stepped out before a low barrier and held up his hand.
The Castle of the Winds Page 41
