"There are many of them," Stark said. "All sacrificing to Old Sun to keep him going. It will be a while before the Goddess rules all Skaith. Where exactly are you taking us?"
"Down," said Ceidrin. "To the jungle. Once there, you may go where you will."
"We need weapons."
"There are none here but kitchen knives and reaping hooks—and those we cannot part with." He added, "Even if we would."
The squat and ancient bulk of the stone house swallowed them, swallowed the sound of music and the sight of dancers treading their mazy path. Inside was a different sort of maze, full of traps and pitfalls to discourage any intruder. Ceidrin, with the single flickering torch, led the way safely past these and into a network of burrows, poor and meager in comparison with the magnificent caverns of the House of the Mother, but adequate for persons who wished only to survive the winter—though Stark doubted that winter on the plateau was all that severe. The sanctuary was probably rooted more in ritual than in necessity, though food might be a problem; the heath would be a barren enough place even in summer.
"What do you do in these dens?" he asked. "Besides the obvious."
"The flowers and the grasses rest. So do we." In a sort of communal chamber, with a tiny fireplace and a roof so low that Stark must bend to avoid the interlaced and knotted roots that held it, Ceidrin opened one of several great stone jars that were set apart from corn bins and cisterns. The jar was packed to the top with dried flower heads. The compressed and dusty fragrance that rose from them was enough in itself to make the mind reel.
"In life they bring us comradeship, in death they bring us dreams. The winter is dark and sweet."
Reverently he replaced the lid and they passed on. The burrows were well stocked and clean. Nevertheless, Stark did not envy the Nithi their well-adapted lives.
They stooped their way along a narrow passage and finally came out abruptly into the open night, on a tiny ledge or landing like a bird's perch high above the jungle, which showed as a vast and spreading darkness far below. The first of the Three Ladies, newly risen, shed enough light so that Stark could see the way. Ashton saw it, too, and muttered something, a curse or a prayer or both.
Ceidrin put out his torch and laid it aside, because he needed both hands more than he needed light He started down.
The cliffs were broken, pitted with erosion, gashed by falls of rotten rock. The way was sometimes a path and sometimes a stair, and sometimes no more than chipped-out foot- and handholds across a leaning face. Warm air rising from below was twisted into turbulent currents that twitched and plucked at the climbers with seemingly malicious intent. Sometimes the path was cut inside the cliff, and here the wind rushed ferociously, almost hurling them bodily upward like sparks in a flue. Certain places held ingenious arrangements of ropes and windlasses, and Stark surmised that they were used to aid in the ascent of men coming back from the lowlands laden with spoil.
The great milky cluster rose higher. Her light strengthened. In the darkness below, a glimmer showed.
It spread and ran, became a silver snake winding through the black. A great river, going to the sea.
"How far?" asked Stark, shouting to be heard above the rush of wind.
Ceidrin shook his head with arrogant disdain. "We have never seen the sea."
Stark marked the direction, knowing that he would lose sight of the river later on.
The third of the Three Ladies was at her zenith and the first one had already set when they reached a hole in the rock no more than fifty feet above the treetops. Inside the hole was a landing and a narrow shaft straddled by a windlass with a mass of fiber rope wound on its drum.
"I will go first," said Ceidrin, "and open the way for you."
He lighted a torch from a ready pile and sat in the sling end of the rope. The two other Nithi men, who had spoken no word all the way, cranked him down with a creaking and a clacking of ancient pawls. The rope had been spliced in many places and did not inspire confidence. Yet it held. Ashton went down, and then Stark, fending off the smooth sides that trickled with condensation, growing green slime. A tiny chamber was at the bottom. In the torchlight, Ceidrin moved a ponderous counterweight and a stone slab tilted open.
"Go," he said, "to whatever arms await you."
9
They had come down from Irnan, across mountains wet with autumn rain, into the foothills. They were a small company. They had traveled fast and they had avoided roads and habitations wherever that was possible, swinging wide to the west, away from Skeg. But there were watchtowers, and wandering herdsmen, and hunters. And there were places where no other way existed except that beneath the wall of a fortified town, for all to see. And as they advanced into the softer lands, the population increased.
Here were more villages and more roads, and it was the time of the seasonal migration. Long lines of traders' wagons moved southward ahead of the snows that would block the high passes. Caravans of traveling whores and parties of wandering entertainers—dancers and musicians and tumblers, jugglers and singers and dark-cloaked men who practiced magical amazements—all of them with the coin of a summer's work jingling in their pockets, were returning to their winter circuits away from the nipping frosts. Bands of Farers, too, drifted toward the fat tropics, where there was plenty of food and tlun for the children of the Lords Protector. The Farers did not always keep to the roads, but randomly followed tracks known only to themselves. But no group of wayfarers could remain forever unnoticed and unseen, particularly not a group containing a half-dozen winged Fallarin and twelve trotting Tarf with four-handed swords, a ten of veiled riders in colored cloaks, another ten of men and women in steel and leather, and thirteen great white hounds with evil eyes, led by a boy in a blue smock.
It was only a matter of time. And Alderyk, King of the Fallarin, was not surprised when Tuchvar, who had been scouting as usual with the hounds, came back to tell them that there were men ahead. "How many?" asked Halk.
The company halted, with a subdued clatter of gear and a creak of leather. The beasts dropped their heads and blew, glad of the rest.
Tuchvar said, "The hounds can't count. The thought was Many, and close by."
Alderyk looked about him. It was an excellent place for an ambush. Far behind them was the terrain of crouching hills they had traversed that morning, lion-coated hills with autumn grass dry and golden on their flanks. From the hills the party had come into the midst of a vast field of ruins where a city had died and left its bones. Here they had followed a path like a cattle trail which showed on the weedy ground. The debris of centuries had filled the city's forgotten streets and covered some of the shattered walls; vision did not run far in any direction. Obviously someone knew the way through the tangle, but it was not the newcomers, and surely now that path could lead them only to disaster.
A spire of broken masonry lifted above the lower ruins. Alderyk said, "Perhaps from there I might see how many, and where they wait."
The spire was at least two hundred yards away, beyond his power of flight.
"Lend me Gerd," he said to Tuchvar, then motioned to one of the Tarf. "There may be pitfalls. Seek me a safe path."
The Tarf trotted ahead. Alderyk clapped his beast over the rump with the tips of his leathery wings and moved oil, with Klatlekt at his left side.
Gerd ranged himself on Alderyk's right, but not happily. The Northhound was uneasy in this company. The nonhuman minds of the Tarf were immune to houndfear and their swords were very sharp and long. The Fallarin had other powers. Gerd felt a whip of air flick across him, rumpling his coat the wrong way, and he shivered.
In a few moments, the ruins had hidden the others and they were alone. The sun was hot. Small things squeaked and chittered. Beyond these tiny sounds there was nothing. Even the wind was still. Men? asked Alderyk.
Not here. There. Watch.
Twice the leading Tarf warned them around treacherous places. The spire rose higher, its jagged outline clear against the sky.
> At length Alderyk sighed and said, "Enough." He reined in his mount and drew his small, wiry body erect, poised on the beast's back, while Klaflekt held its head.
Spreading his wings, Alderyk leapt into the air. A clipped bird, he had said of himself, a mockery. The controlled mutation that was to have given its changeling children the freedom of flight had been a cruel failure. The strong wings were not strong enough, the light bodies were still too heavy. Instead of soaring like eagles, the Fallarin could only flap like barnyard fowl going to roost.
Instead of joy it was labor. Alderyk pounded the air fiercely, feeling, as he always did, the raging frustration of not being able to do what his whole being yearned to do. To ease this yearning, the Fallarin had carved the cliffs of their mountain fortress, the Place of Winds, into a thousand fantastic shapes that mimicked all the currents of the high air, so that they could at least pretend to ride the whirlwind.
Yet, even so, he always felt a moment of exhilaration, watching the ground drop away beneath, savoring that exquisite instant when the wings seemed to have achieved mastery at last and when now, for the first time, the sky was truly his . . .
He clung, panting, to the spire at its crumbling peak.
And he could see.
The level land sloped gently to a broad savannah. Beyond the ruins, half a mile away, was a village. He could see the walls and the warm color of thatched roofs. It was harvest time but there was no one in the fields.
Alderyk saw where the men were. He took time to see, marking several things. Then he looked on either side, across the ruins. Finally he flung himself outward and fluttered down, the air booming under his wings.
He rode back to where the others waited.
Drawing his dagger, he sketched a rough map with the point in a patch of dusty ground.
"There is only this one way through the ruins. The villagers must use it to get their herds to the hill pastures. Men wait here and here, inside the ruins, in concealment. Other men wait here, in the open, by the end of the path. And I think these men are mercenaries, for I saw steel glinting."
"Mercenaries," Halk said. "Word has gone ahead of us. How many?"
"Perhaps fifteen here, and fifteen here, either side of the path. And thirty more in the open."
"We've fought worse odds, even without the hounds."
"There are more. Here, in reserve, are the village men—forty or fifty. And in addition there are Farers, a score or more, scattered about. There may be still others that I could not see, but these I am sure of."
Halk frowned. "And only this one way through. You're certain of that."
"From up there it was plain. Away from this path, we would have to abandon the animals. Whether we could get through afoot I don't know, but it would take time. And they would still be on the other side of the ruins, watching for us."
"We could return to the hills and find another way entirely," Sabak suggested.
"No," said Gerrith. Her face had become stern, the bones more prominent, the eyes almost bleak, except that they were not the color for bleakness. "There is no time. Stark has reached the river."
"What river?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. But he is moving more swiftly now, much more swiftly, to the sea. We must go straight ahead."
Tuchvar leaned in the saddle to stroke Gerd's head. "The hounds will take us through."
Gerd half closed his eyes. Memory stirred, of days long gone, of another hand, another voice. A hand and voice that he had helped to still forever in the streets of Yurunna. The guilt was with him yet. He whimpered and thrust his head against Tuchvar's knee. Houndmaster.
Good hound, said Tuchvar, and smiled. He looked at Halk. "Let us go, then."
They knew their battle order, all but the Irnanese among them, having fought their way together all the way from the northern deserts to the Fertile Belt: hounds first, then the Fallarin, and then the tribesmen.
The Irnanese objected to being fourth in line. "We are accustomed to lead," they said, and looked to Halk.
"If you wish to stand in the way of the Northhounds when they're about their business, you are free to do so," he told them, and nodded to Tuchvar.
Teach them, Gerd.
Gerd laughed, as a hound laughs, touching the Irnanese with a cold lash of fear.
"Are you content?" asked Halk.
They said they were.
"Then lead on, Tuchvar. And no one stops now—except for death."
Thirteen white hounds fled away along the path, baying. Their deep voices sounded in the ruins, rich and beautiful.
The waiting mercenaries, thick red-bearded men from some hill town along the edges of the Barrens, took sword and spear into their calloused hands. They set lozenge-shaped shields on their strong left arms.
Out beyond the ruins, on the clear ground, the second company of men readied their bows, nocking arrows to the strings. They listened to the belling of the hounds. They did not know that sound. They were brave men, yet some knot within them loosened and they trembled.
Kill? asked Tuchvar, galloping behind the bounds.
Too far. Soon.
The Fallarin rode high and forward, their wings half spread, so that they seemed to fly above their mounts. The Tarf paced them easily, carrying their huge swords like batons. The dusty cloaks of the Hann streamed out behind their striding beasts. The Irnanese rode more heavily, with a solid sound of iron. Kill? asked Tuchvar.
Now.
Good. Send fear.
The eyes of the running hounds burned like lamps in the light of Old Sun. And the baying ceased.
In the sudden quiet the mercenaries waited, in their ambush of ruined walls. They waited one hard-held breath, hearing how close their quarry came.
Terror took them. A thunderbolt of fear, a tearing agony that turned the bowels to water and the bones to brittle ice. Fear that drove the heart to beat itself within the rib cage like a frantic bird.
Some of the men dropped where they stood. Others hurled their spears blindly and tried to run. On either side of the path, then, great white bodies leaped among them, and those who still had breath screamed—once.
The Fallarin swept by, along the path. The second company of mercenaries, with their ready bows, began to run toward the ruins.
A wind sprang up, a whirlwind, rushing toward them. Dust and dry grass and fallen leaves flew up from the ground and spun wildly. Through the spinning, the mercenaries saw six small dark men with leathery wings. The wings moved all together, and beneath the skirling of the wind they thought they heard a singing like the very voice of storm.
They loosed their arrows at the winged men. Wind caught the shafts and flung them all away. Wind buffeted and blinded and confused, and when it had passed, the mercenaries saw the white hounds and the great swords of the Tarf and the companies of armed men.
"Throw down your arms!" Halk shouted. "Throw them down if you wish to live!"
The village men were streaming back through their own gate, trampling each other and the Farers in their haste. The mercenaries were outnumbered, and their noses twitched to the smell of sorcery. They had heard their comrades screaming among the ruins, and they saw how the jaws of the hounds were red and how they licked the redness from their muzzles, eager for more, and they saw how the eyes of the hounds glowed like coals in the sunlight. They calculated how much they had been paid, and decided that in losing half their company they had lost enough. They threw down their arms.
Gerrith rode forward. "Which one among you can guide us to the sea?"
No one spoke. But Gerd said, There.
Touch.
One of the men cried out and went to his knees.
"Come here," said Halk.
The man came.
"The rest of you, get gone."
The hounds struck them for sport and they went, running. When they had gone far enough, Halk moved his company on, keeping out of bowshot of the village wall.
"You have strong magic," said the mercenary
trotting by his stirrup. "But from now on you are hunted men."
"You shall tell us," said Halk, "about that hunting."
10
Stark and Ashton had reached the river when the morning mists were rising. They saw nothing but a muddy bank and a broad swirl of brown water gliding, and the sounds of a world awakening. There was not even anything with which two men lacking knives or axes might cobble together a raft.
Stark listened, and sniffed the heavy air. "We'll rest awhile."
They had rested along the way, but not enough. Ashton's face was gray.
"If something comes to eat me," he said, "don't wake me until just before the jaws close."
He lay between the buttressing roots of a huge tree and slept. Stark leaned his back against the tree and slept also, but lightly. A warm, sluggish breeze stroked his skin with uncleanness, and the taste of it in his mouth had the deceitful sweetness of poison. Something rustled.
He was awake in an instant. Some creature moved in the undergrowth. It was neither large nor menacing, and it was perhaps thirty feet away, upwind.
Stark moved toward it, delicate as a stalking cat. He did not know what it was, except that it was furry and fat and had a warm smell. It bustled down to the river to drink and he pounced and caught it and broke it between his hands. The flesh was not very appetizing but he ate it, saving the best bits for Ashton. "Field rations," he said, when Ashton woke. "I'm sorry there's no fire."
He might have made one, but apart from the time it would have taken to search for the materials, it did not seem the best part of wisdom. People are apt to be curious about strange smokes.
Ashton muttered something about getting old and soft, but he choked the raw meat down as Stark buried the debris. They drank—as little as possible, for the water had a foul taste—and then they continued on downstream, sweating in the unaccustomed heat, fighting the undergrowth, and keeping an eye out for things that might be unpleasant to tread upon.
After an hour or two they came to the trail.
It was old and well-used, worn deep in the jungle floor and beaten to a glassy smoothness. It came from somewhere to the northeast to meet the river bank and follow it south. Stark and Ashton took to it, grateful for the easy going but wary nonetheless.
The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith Page 6
