Marcus chucked some snow over it until the flames had been extinguished, casting the group into darkness, and then decided that since no-one else seemed to want to talk much, he may as well attempt to get some sleep for once.
In the end, it took four days for them to reach the foot of the Aglaecas. For their part, the mountains spent that time lurking on the horizon, growing steadily more apparent as the terrain grew steeper, the snow fell heavier and the temperature began to drop; all of these things impeded their progress in daylight, but failed to faze Fervesce as he quietly guided them through the darkness. For himself, Marcus discovered a new appreciation for the huge amount of camping apparel the group had stuffed into the coach. They’d even discovered, to their delight, a portable heater hidden amongst the tents that they’d begun to erect each night as a buffer against the wind. No amount of magic fire and blankets could truly dispel the cold of the mountain air, however, and after the third night, which had been the first truly freezing one, Marcus decided that he was never sleeping outdoors ever again.
The mood of the group remained much the same as they travelled. Marcus’s night-time conversations with Fervesce had come to an end, as the old man was now doing most of the work regarding their travelling, moving them faster by night to make up for the time they lost during the daylight hours. The strain was beginning to show, as the old man was looking haggard and now barely moved even when awake, preferring to lie back and concentrate whilst he worked.
Kendra has similarly withdrawn somewhat; on the first day after Tiski, she’d delighted in contemplating several clever plots that would somehow extract Marcus from his precarious position on Death’s hit list, but had failed to come up with anything that she judged worth sharing. Seemingly discouraged, she had instead produced a pile of books from somewhere and was steadily devouring them, whilst assuring Marcus that she hadn’t given up. Marcus was thus left without anyone he could have a non-gloomy conversation with, so he passed his time brooding and staring at the scenery.
They passed through three small towns over the course of their journey. The first town was a fairly sizeable hamlet, wherein almost all of the homes were abandoned. The reduced population had set up in the buildings around the town square, and eyed the group with such woeful distrust that Marcus felt incredibly uncomfortable after convincing Musk to stop the coach so he could go and track down some cigarettes. He overpaid the blank-eyed shopkeeper by a ridiculous amount just so he could escape quickly, and they moved on again. The second and third towns were fairly small, and appeared completely abandoned. They kept the coach rolling right through.
Marcus began to feel more and more conspicuous as they moved on, the only travellers in a seemingly empty land. The others appeared similarly spooked; Lucin now refused to leave the coach, even when he had to bunch up next to Fervesce’s sleeping form, and Musk had begun to constantly avert his eyes from the horizon, instead dedicating himself to a thorough study of the coach’s woodwork. Marcus was almost relieved when, on the third day, shortly after passing through the second empty village, he saw movement in the distance off to one side.
“Look,” he said, nudging Kendra and pointing. She delicately bookmarked her page and threw her book over her shoulder before looking up to see what he had seen.
A small group of indistinct figures were travelling in the opposite direction to them, shambling without order over the plains about a mile to the east. Although Marcus couldn’t make them out from a distance, they appeared to be slightly too large, and walked in a strange fashion..
“Orcs,” Kendra said cheerfully. “A roving band. Ooh, first contact!”
“You can make them out?” Marcus asked, squinting.
“Of course,” she said, encircling her eyes with her index fingers and thumbs and waving the rest of her fingers at him. “I have awesome-o-vision.”
Marcus decided to disregard that comment. “Will they attack us?” he asked instead.
“They won’t,” came the Assassin’s voice from over the front of the coach. “Small group like that is either a scouting party or lost, and they look lost. Probably they were part of a larger horde looking to join up with Keithus, and got lazy and were left behind. Orcs are generally lazy, and they won’t attack a big coach when they could raid an abandoned town instead.” Indeed, the orcs did appear to be heading straight for the town they’d just passed through, which lay behind them, cold, lifeless and full of forsaken belongings that stood ready for the taking.
“And I was so looking forwards to battling unearthly creatures,” Marcus said.
“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Kendra said cheerfully. “Bet you ten dollars you regret that comment in a couple of days or so. Do we have a deal? Go on, shake.”
Marcus ignored her waving arm, thoroughly aware that she was probably right. With that in mind, and given his incredibly shaky performance in Tiski, he’d taken to trying to learn how to properly wield Death’s scythe, practising with it for a while every evening when they made camp. Sadly, not even the Assassin had any idea what the proper method for using such an odd weapon was, so Marcus had taken to just swinging it around and getting a better feel for the thing. Strangely enough, this did seem to help; the more he chopped nearby trees to pieces, the more comfortable the weapon felt in his hands. Given this and how he now realised he had to concentrate in order to feel the weapon’s signature aura of imbued menace and distaste, Marcus felt sometimes like he was attuning himself to the weapon, and preferred not to think about what that might mean exactly. He’d contemplated giving up the scythe several times, and even considered the possibility of bartering with Death - his life in exchange for its location, perhaps - but the idea of being unarmed at the mercy of an angry skeleton who might not be inclined to make such a deal, and whom he was fairly sure he couldn’t trust anyway, didn’t seem like a great one. The problems of a life without the scythe seemed far more apparent than the worries that came with it, and so for now, for better or worse, it was his.
The situation was surely a sticky one, but he’d decided that he was, somehow, going to find a way out of it. Not that there was a plan, unless Kendra came up with something; he’d made plans a lot in what he had now begun to think of as his past life, on Earth, and none of them had ever come to anything. Considering that his time in the Mirrorworld had begun with a scheme to escape Portruss that had also been a resounding failure, he was beginning to think that maybe he just wasn’t very good at it, and so had decided to just go with the flow and see what happened, tactics be damned.
Musk had plans, however. As Kendra had been working on her schemes, Musk too had been refining whatever idea he had come up with for when they made it to Keithus. He was still reluctant to share it, repeatedly stating that he needed to see the situation with his own eyes first before he could truly commit to it, and glaring accusingly at Lucin as he did so. The short man had not yet managed to place his eyes in the head of someone close to their destination, and for all that he had a perfectly good excuse in that his Talent wasn’t attuned enough for him to be able to see that far, Musk was still taking it badly. Repeated failures, combined with the time they were losing due to the weather, and possibly the ever-present threat of what was waiting at the end of their journey, all combined to drastically shorten Musk’s temper, and more than once he ended up yelling indiscriminate, colourful curses at the sky, or boxing with loaded meaning against random bits of scenery.
Lucin, in turn, was becoming more and more dour and uncooperative, to the extent that the Assassin had tried to convince Marcus to take a bet of fifty dollars on Lucin still being willing to help when he actually became able to. Marcus had judged the Assassin to have the winning angle there, and had hastily changed the subject. The other man, who alone seemed completely unfazed by the deteriorating relationships all around him, had simply chuckled, and returned to his favoured occupation of steering the coach towards the mountains that continued to dominate the horizon.
When th
e group awoke on the fourth morning, they found that the mountains were now looming overhead; Fervesce had deposited them in the foothills. What was left of the road they’d been following continued north, and so they continued to follow it. Musk’s map claimed that it would lead straight to the foot of the Aglaecas Pass, and eventually, it did. Given that the road at this point could only be called a road by dint of being the flattest bit of ground in a landscape full of sharp angles, it still took most of the day for the Assassin to navigate their oversized vehicle through the terrain, somehow managing to not kill any of the horses as he did so. In the end, the sun had already begun to flirt with the horizon by the time they found themselves at the foot of the pass.
That wasn’t the only thing they found, however.
“Well, it’s not abandoned,” the Assassin said, after they stared at it awhile. “Look, smoke.”
Ahead of them lay a large log building, sprawled along the side of the track as if a hundred-foot lumberjack had tripped up, dropped his load, and then decided he couldn’t be bothered to go through the effort of picking it all up again. The building had a chimney, from which smoke was indeed rising. A sign hung over the ornate front door read ‘Traveller’s Rest’. It was a ridiculously quaint thing to find, a softer remnant of a nicer world lost among the cold, dark sharpness of the north. Unsurprised by the sight of it, Marcus realised that this must be the inn that Mud had spoken of, that he had run with his brother before fleeing in fear of his life. And someone was still here!
“What do we think?” Musk asked. “I don’t like it.”
“It looks nice,” Kendra said wistfully. Marcus had to agree; the hints of warmth and comfort with which the cabin teased his cold, tired brain were almost painfully desirable.
“Yes, but it’s at the foot of the mountain pass where our enemy resides,” Musk said, in a tone of voice that subtly wondered if he was the only one still in possession of his senses. “Forgive me if I’m a tiny bit cautious about this. If we’re expected, as it seems we are, this could well be a trap.”
“I’d quite like a real bed for once,” Marcus said. “I’m sick of sleeping outside.”
“Boot Lucin out of the coach, then,” Musk snapped.
They were almost alongside the building now. The Assassin graciously pulled the coach to a halt, quietly awaiting directions. Lucin took the opportunity to climb out of the coach and stretch his legs; even Fervesce stirred, glazed eyes taking in the situation.
“Look,” Musk said, aware that he was getting some funny looks, “this stinks of trap. And that aside, think about how much time we’ve lost over the last few days. If we pass this place by and find another location to set up camp, Fervesce can have us well into the mountains by morning. Right, Fervesce?”
The wiry old man, who had staggered out of the coach for a better look around, paused to peer off into the distance. The pass quickly faded from view, obscured by the falling snow. Idly using Lucin as an armrest, Fervesce addressed Musk. “Sorry to be the voice of dissent, old chap, but that’s a tall order. I could do it, but I’m at my wits’ end here. I won’t be any use to you tomorrow at this rate. But if I were to get a good night’s sleep.. I could take us straight up there in the morning, and do more besides. If you have more use of me in mind, then I say we risk the trap. I know this weather hasn’t exactly been kind these last few days, but we have to deal with what we’re dealt.”
Musk put his head in his hands. “Could you maybe keep up if we don’t stay? All we need is for you to get us to Keithus’s lair.”
“Maybe,” Fervesce said carefully, “I’m not exactly short on power, just tired.”
“Well,” Lucin put in, “I for one would like to have a nice warm bed tonight. If I’m going to be risking my life tomorrow I’d like to be well rested.”
“I might have known you’d be slacking off when we’re on the cusp of completing our mission,” Musk said sharply. “How about you Marcus? Early to bed or the safety of the world?”
“I think you might be over-reacting slightly,” Marcus said. “One evening isn’t going to make a difference either way. That army’s not going to sneak past us in the night, is it?”
“How do you know?” Musk shot back.
“Oh come on..”
“We are dealing with a wizard of unknown power here. I would rather not be taking chances.”
“Pleeeaase?” Kendra asked. Her statement was accompanied by what Marcus envisioned someone fluttering their eyelashes would look like if they’d heard of the term but never seen it done. “Do you have something in your eye?” he asked, and ducked a punch.
“No, seriously guys,” Musk said, sounding tired. “You know I hate to do this, but I can’t accept this idea. It’s too risky. I still have final say over where we go and what we do, and I say we press on. Now, come on, we’ve wasted enough time talking about this. All aboard, everyone.” And he turned to climb back onto the coach. No-one followed, as they were busily exchanging anxious glances. Lucin in particular, having shrugged off Fervesce, was looking at Marcus with an expression just short of pleading. As Marcus caught his eye, the short man looked meaningfully from Marcus to Musk, and then back again. Marcus frowned, not understanding, and Lucin repeated the gesture, wiggling his eyebrows for emphasis.
Ah, Marcus thought, as memory blossomed in his mind. “Veto,” he said aloud.
Musk froze, his back turned, his hand raised in the action of grabbing a handhold on the coach. “What did you say?”
“I can do that, can’t I?” Marcus asked no-one in particular. “If the leader of a mission makes a decision the second-in-command doesn’t agree with, I can force you to.. what was it?”
“Put it to a vote,” Lucin said gleefully, awarding Marcus with a vicious smile that was several levels more undesirable of an expression than the man’s usual distasteful frown.
“Are you actually going to do this?” Musk asked, turning around slowly as a definite undercurrent of anger seeped into his voice. “You’re going to invoke this joke rule just so you can get a good night’s sleep?”
“There are good reasons for this,” Marcus said, watching Musk’s fists with care, bunched up and rapidly increasing in size as they were.
“There are good reasons for not this,” Musk growled back, catching Marcus’s gaze and holding it steadily.
“Okay,” Marcus said quickly, breaking away to look at the others, who had assembled around him. “So we have two choices; we get there quicker but in a reduced state, or we take our time, risk a trap, and have a chance of being better prepared for whatever lies ahead. Who says we go on ahead?”
Musk raised his hand, and glared around at the others, but no-one moved.
“And.. who says we stay?” Marcus asked, fearing his safety in the result.
Lucin’s hand shot up first, shortly followed by the Assassin’s. After an apologetic glance at Musk, Fervesce’s arm joined the others in the sky, and Kendra rounded out the group, smiling at Marcus for some reason. With each progressive hand, Musk’s fists clenched tighter and tighter, and by the time four palms were waving a symphony at each other, the man seemed ready to explode. Marcus almost stepped back to avoid the blast, but, after a long moment, Musk exhaled and appeared to deflate. “Fine,” he said bitterly, “you win, we stay. On your heads be it.”
Lucin let out a whoop and made for the coach, the Assassin on his heels. Fervesce almost made as if to reach out to Musk, before deciding against it and walking away. Kendra gave Marcus another big smile and squeezed his hand as she too slipped by. Marcus found himself alone with Musk, feeling too awkward to walk away now that he was the last one.
“Haaa,” the man said, rubbing his still-enlarged fist against his forehead. “Typical. The one time I move to actually assert authority, and you play that trick. Maybe I was right before – this whole expedition is a joke. Maybe the real heroes are out there now, saving the day and laughing at us. Excuse me for a moment,” he addressed th
e air, before walking past Marcus, who exhaled for the first time in several minutes, and going over to stare at the nearby cliff-face for some reason.
Marcus turned to head back towards the coach, which was already rolling the short distance towards the cabin, but almost fell over from the shock of the quake that shook the ground as Musk buried his fist heavily in the rock. It exploded on impact, sending stray shards of stone rolling away comically and mushrooming the surface layer of snow up into the air, where it settled among the already falling flakes. In their midst, Musk silently surveyed his newly-created cave, nodded in satisfaction, and turned to follow the coach, oblivious to both the stares of the others and the minor avalanche that the echo of his efforts had awakened above, which crashed down angrily in his wake.
24
The proprietor of the log cabin turned out to be a large, jolly man who introduced himself as Fango, fair innkeeper of the Traveller’s Rest and proud king of the last port of civilisation on the lonely north road. He expressed no interest in the reason why such a strange group of travellers would be moving through an unlikely locale, a fact that instantly made him more suspicious to Musk, who glared at the man unabashedly as he showed them around his building. And it was a pleasant building; Marcus detached himself from the tour with vague murmurs of meeting the rest of them in the common room just so that he could go and fall face first onto a cleanly-laundered bed. He lay there, humming a tune he’d last heard on an old Earth jukebox, for some time, before rolling his way towards the bathroom and spending some time staring at his reflection for the first time in a while.
After bemusedly tapping on the glass to make sure that the signal wasn’t off, he was forced to conclude that the reflection peering back at him was, in fact, his own. It was skinnier than he had expected, with a face far thinner and paler than the one he had assumed he would see, cheeks that verged on hollow and a crown of hair that had darkened far enough beyond his natural brown as to appear almost black. Were it not for the strange light that glowed in his eyes, a light that he couldn’t quite pin down when he looked for it, but which nonetheless flickered in his peripherals when he diverted his gaze, he might have thought that all the colour was falling from him. Perhaps there was some reflection of his evolving state of mind to be divined from this, but Marcus was too tired to care, and so dived into the bath and washed his thoughts away with steaming hot water.
Mirrorworld Page 30
