by Rob Scott
Garec shivered. ‘The sounds of it dying – those coarse coughs, like barks, were so unnerving I could hardly sleep. Just when I thought it was dead and was finally going to lie still, it started up again.’
‘Steven said he did something so that the almor couldn’t escape, then it was just a matter of following it up into the hills,’ Mark said. ‘Even with the staff to keep him warm, it can’t have been much fun hiking back with no coat or sweater.’
Garec looked at Steven, asleep beside the fire in the great hall. When he came in earlier that morning, wet, cold and worn out, he’d just assured them they would be safe going down to the stables to check on the horses, then he curled up in the tapestry they’d been using as a rug in front of the fire and promptly passed out. Now, with both sorcerers sleeping off the rigours of the night’s work, Mark and Garec were left to make preparations for the journey south.
They probably wouldn’t travel far before stopping first, most likely in the village at the bottom of the valley, where there was at least one decent inn. Garec, folding blankets as tightly as he could, started to imagine a wooden table piled high with winter delicacies – gansel stew, thick sauces, fresh bread – followed by a long night’s sleep in a comfortable bed – until Mark interrupted, shattering his fantasy.
‘Do you want to take the rest of this down there, or will you wait for me?’
‘I’ll wait,’ Garec replied. ‘Together we can make it in one trip.’ He stood and stretched, reaching for the buttressed stone ceiling until he felt his muscles loosen. He had lost weight since leaving Estrad; he shuddered to think what his mother would say when she saw him. He hadn’t been especially large before setting out from the orchard that grey morning; but he imagined he now looked like one of Malagon’s wraiths. Garec promised his absent parent he would spend an entire Moon eating if he ever saw the end of this business and returned home.
Both Garec and Mark were looking forward to leaving the Larion stronghold; they had spent much of the past twenty days or more idling the time away while Steven and Gilmour worked. Garec noticed Gilmour never opened Lessek’s spell book, and though Steven flipped through the pages from time to time, it wasn’t that often, so it appeared that whatever magic the two men hoped to employ in their ultimate battle with Nerak, it would only come from the hickory staff, the Windscroll and Lessek’s key.
With little else to do, Garec and Mark had explored the Larion library, investigated all the decent vintages in the wine cellar – careful not to step in or near anything that might be damp – and had spent many avens perfecting a game Mark called Larion Golf, something he developed to take his mind off Rodler’s death. He couldn’t help feeling guilty, thinking the almor had been waiting for him specifically, but eventually he realised the demon wasn’t actually choosy: it wanted them all dead.
After a sleepless night agonising over his treatment of the smuggler, Mark took himself in hand. He called Garec over and spread a large piece of parchment out on the floor beside the fireplace. The parchment was covered with crosses, arrows and circles, and near the top were the words Larion Golf, The Front Nine, Par 27. He read it out for Garec, who couldn’t decipher the loops and whorls of the foreign script.
‘This, my friend, is how you and I are going to practise archery without boring ourselves to death,’ Mark said proudly.
‘What do those words mean?’ He ran a finger across the top of the folio.
‘Shoot straight and win drinks.’
‘My kind of game, then,’ Garec laughed. He studied the parchment, recognising it now as a crudely drawn map of the palace, from cellar to towers. ‘How do we play?’
Mark set up a course of nine holes of archery golf. Each had a tee, a series of wooden targets to hit from a particular spot at a particular angle, and a difficult, near-impossible final shot, through masonry cracks, lattice windows or stone crevices.
He’d worked out a tally system too: they teed off together, took three shots per hole, and counted once for every time a bowstring snapped. If their arrow reached each of the interim targets, and then embedded into the final target without bouncing off, deflecting, or missing entirely, it was scored par for that hole. Every time one of the competitors had to draw and fire again – either at an interim target or at the final mark – he had to add one shot to his final tally.
At the end of nine holes, the winner got to wait by the fire while the loser went, alone, into the wine cellar to fetch whatever vintage the winner requested. It was up to the winner to decide whether or not to share the wine, but every time Garec won – and of course he won every time – he graciously split the wine. In Garec’s opinion, Mark had earned the drinks simply for creating Larion Golf. Garec had never known how much fun shooting an old palace full of arrows could be.
Now he picked up Mark’s quiver and checked the contents. There were few arrows left with decent tips and many had damaged fletching. ‘We have to get you some new shafts and tips,’ he said. ‘And I need to teach you how to repair these.’
‘No laughing, Wonder Boy,’ Mark smiled. ‘Just because you’ve spent your whole life practising doesn’t mean you get to laugh at the beginner when he narrowly loses in heated competition.’
‘You never finished the course within six shots – and just look at these arrows! It looks like you clipped every stone in the place.’
‘I said, no laughing.’ Mark took one of the arrows and examined it; he grimaced when he saw how badly the tip had eroded.
‘I am joking,’ Garec said. ‘Most great archers need fifty Twinmoons to learn what you’ve learned in one; you’re an outstanding shot.’
‘But I’m not you.’
‘No one is me, Mark.’ Garec’s voice dropped. ‘I have-’
A special gift.’
‘If that’s what you want to call it, fine.’
‘I still don’t know how you do it.’ Mark said, ‘and the more I learn, the more in awe I am. Like those shots through the lattice window: they’re impossible. I didn’t make one. You never missed.’
‘I’m not just an archer,’ Garec said. ‘I’ve moved beyond that. My bow is more like a part of me – and you’ll be that good some day.’ He was confident Mark would become one of Eldarn’s great archers. ‘You have a natural affinity for it.’
‘For killing? I would never have thought that about myself.’
‘I meant for archery,’ Garec corrected. ‘Killing is something altogether different.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You will.’
Mark diverted to a safer topic. ‘So what do I need to fix these up?’
Garec laughed. ‘How about a whole new quiver full of decent shafts? These are all a mess. You won’t get one straight shot out of the bunch. It was a great game, though.’
‘That it was,’ Mark said. ‘Can we get fletching and tips in the village down here?’
‘Probably not,’ Garec said, ‘but I’m sure we can find someone with polished stones.’
‘Stone tips?’ Mark was unconvinced. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Oh, you’ll get used to them. I have a whole quiver full of stone tips, most of them polished myself – they can be deadly effective.’ He swallowed hard at his choice of words.
Mark didn’t comment, but as he tied down the last of Steven’s belongings with a half hitch and hefted both sacks over his shoulder, asked, ‘Ready?’
‘Yes. Should we see if Gilmour is awake?’
‘No,’ Mark shook his head; ‘let them sleep. Who knows what kind of night Gilmour had? They deserve an extra aven; we can get the horses ready and be on our way just after midday.’
‘After you,’ Garec said.
Outside a strong wind blew the dry snow into flurries. The day was slate-grey, the sun a white ball shrouded in layers of clouds, dimly visible, and the cold was intensified somehow by the lack of colour. Garec hesitated beneath the stone archway, where his feet were still dry. Several steps down, the ankle-deep snow – disturbed h
ere and there by Steven’s boot prints – waited for them. He looked over at Mark, chuckled nervously, and stepped onto the stone walk.
‘Well, that was harder than I thought it would be.’
‘For me too,’ Mark said. ‘I’m glad we took the plunge together. Still alive?’
‘Still alive.’
The duo covered the distance to the top of the staircase quickly, as if hustling would keep the memory of the almor from detecting them outside the palace, then hurried down the steps, past the anomalous cottonwood-birch trees, to the narrow defile where the Larion Senators had kept their horses. A wooden stable, one box wide, but several hundred paces long, ran against the south wall of the gorge. The Larion Senators had been famous for their frugal lifestyle, but from the look of their stables, they had invested plenty of time, energy and resources in their horses.
The thin, craggy passage ran back into the hills away from the university campus until it opened onto a hidden meadow in a shallow box-canyon. The two men secured saddlebags and packs, tied down blanket rolls and bridled their horses in preparation for what they assumed would be a brief, late-day trip down the draw and into the village.
Baggage stashed, they wandered along the enormous stables, hoping to find a bale of hay, maybe left by Rodler or other border runners, for the animals were also suffering from too little food and looked barely capable of carrying the packs, let alone riders too. In the picturesque meadow at the far end of the stables, Garec and Mark found the remains of a dilapidated fence and an old corral.
‘Would you look at that?’ Mark said. ‘They stabled the horses in that crevice and brought them out here for exercise and training.’
‘Ingenious,’ Garec agreed, ‘look at this place. It’s perfect for it.’ He peered back through the narrow gorge. ‘I wouldn’t want to have been a stable hand, though.’
‘No way,’ Mark agreed. ‘You’d walk ten miles a day just feeding and watering them.’
‘If that means a long distance, then I agree,’ Garec said. ‘You-’
The first arrow missed Garec, passing over his shoulder with an audible pffft! to bury itself in the flesh above Mark’s right knee.
Mark cursed in shock and fell, his hands wrapped around the colourful fletching; blood bloomed across his leg and seeped between his fingers. It was a deep wound.
Garec reacted in an instant, diving on his friend and shouting, ‘Don’t pull it out! You’ll make it worse!’ He dragged Mark towards a clump of aspen trees growing between a stand of rocks that had fallen from the gorge. He didn’t bother to look back; he knew where their assailants were, on the forested hillside to the east. The hunters had a clear shot at them until they reached the rocks. Blood oozed from Mark’s leg, leaving a dark crimson trail.
‘Come on,’ Garec said, his voice charged with fear, ‘we’re dead if we don’t get out of here.’
An arrow zinged past his head; another stabbed into the ground beside his hand. A third struck him in the calf, and he heard a fourth hit Mark with a dull thud. They had to keep moving. Ignoring the pain, Garec clawed and scraped his way through the snow to dive behind the rocks.
Mark continued screaming.
‘Let me see it,’ Garec shouted over him, ‘let me see where you’re hit.’
‘Just here,’ Mark groaned, ‘just in my knee.’
‘There was a second,’ he gasped, needing to catch his breath. It wouldn’t be long before whoever was firing at them came down to finish the job. ‘I heard it. The second one, where did it hit you?’
Mark pointed with a bloody finger, indicating Garec’s side. As if seeing another person’s body, he stared down at the second shaft, buried halfway into his hip. Garec had heard the thud, but he hadn’t felt anything.
‘Rutting whores,’ he cursed.
Mark pulled himself up behind the rock, his knee ignored for the moment. ‘How many are there?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t have time to look – if we’d stayed out there, it wouldn’t matter how many, we’d be dead.’
‘Good point,’ Mark said, drawing an arrow from his quiver. ‘Get ready,’ he directed, his hands trembling as he tried to fix it on the string.
Garec’s stomach turned; he made no move towards his bow.
Mark took aim along a Larion Golf-battered arrow and fired into the trees on the opposite side of the corral. The arrow flew up and away from his target. ‘Missed him,’ Mark growled, and fired again, this time at a shadow that passed beneath the outstretched limb of a clumsy oak tree. Again, the imperfect shaft flew high and wide. ‘Mother-!’ He turned on Garec, ignoring the blood-stained snow beneath his knee. ‘Give me some of your arrows; these are rubbish – I can’t even hit the bloody hillside.’ He checked his friend’s hip again. ‘Are you all right? Can you shoot?’
Garec groaned, stammered something, then fell silent.
‘Garec!’ Mark shouted, worried he might pass out. ‘Garec, I need you. We’re in a bad spot here, buddy. You’ve got to keep it together.’ Angrily he continued to draw and release, aiming at anything that moved. After a minute or two of wild shooting, he realised there was no return fire.
Crouched beside Garec, Mark put the bow down and waited.
A squad of Malakasian archers, border guards from the look of their uniforms, stepped from the trees on the opposite side of the meadow and began marching down, obviously a well-disciplined group. Garec peered over the rocks to count them: nine. He shook his head. He could have dropped all nine of them before they reached the near side of the corral. The errant shots had lulled them into thinking they were in little danger. Mark was skilled, but he had no experience in battle and his injuries and his excitement had caused the shafts to fly all over the place. The squad obviously assumed Mark was the only one capable of mounting any kind of defence.
Little did they realise that in two breaths they could all be dead – if Garec decided to stand and fight. Dropping his forehead to the cold stone, he closed his eyes. He wouldn’t do it.
‘We’re dead now,’ Mark whispered.
‘Throw out your bow,’ Garec said, ‘throw them both out. At least let them see we won’t be fighting back. They know they’ve hit us. Maybe they’ll take us prisoner.’
‘Terrific.’
‘It’s better than any alternative we have,’ he said. ‘Throw out the bows.’
Mark did, and Garec watched as the squad slowed. Several of the men nocked arrows, aiming at the rocks, taking no chances.
Garec shouted loudly, ‘We are injured and unarmed!’
A husky voice answered, ‘Stand up. Now.’
‘We have to,’ Garec said to Mark. ‘They’ll kill us if we don’t.’
‘Look at the way they move together,’ Mark said. ‘They’re well trained.’ He winced with the effort to get up. ‘We have to hope they’re well-trained soldiers and not well-trained killers.’
‘They’re soldiers,’ Garec said, ‘look at their uniforms. This far from Malakasia, and they’re that disciplined: these are proper soldiers, border guards, probably.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right.’ Mark leaned on the rock for support. He could feel his knee was badly injured. Garec put a supporting arm around his waist, in case one of the soldiers might mistake falling down as reaching for weapons.
‘And the other weapons,’ the voice came again. Garec couldn’t see who it was, but he was somewhere to their left.
Garec drew his hunting knife and tossed it out in front of the rocks. Mark did likewise.
‘Anything else?’
‘No,’ Garec shouted back.
‘Come out slowly and lie down, face-down, away from your weapons.’ The disciplined line advanced as one.
‘Let’s go,’ Garec said. ‘I don’t think they’re going to kill us.’
‘Because they would have already?’
‘Something like that. But look at that fellow on their left, the short one with the stomach. He’s the one in charge.’
‘So what? Fat peop
le don’t kill indiscriminately?’
‘Look at his uniform. He’s not an officer. He’s a sergeant.’
Mark grimaced with pain. ‘I hate to belabour a point, Garec, but so what?’
Garec was sweating, despite the chill; he was losing too much blood. He looked forward to lying down in the snow, at least there he could rest for a moment and cool off. His heart was racing, he was breathing heavily and on the verge of losing consciousness.
He pulled himself around the rocks, motioning for Mark to do the same. ‘Look at his gloves,’ he said softly. ‘They aren’t standard issue. He’s in knitted mittens, and he’s not carrying a bow. Old, unarmed sergeants in knitted mittens don’t kill indiscriminately.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he’s out here by himself, that’s how. He’s been around for a while, long enough to substitute standard-issue gloves with something one of his daughters made for him back home, probably because he was complaining about working in Gorsk. His squad is disciplined, and no one has fired a shot since we threw out the bows. Finally, where’s his lieutenant? Back in the barracks, nice and warm beside the fire, because he trusts this guy.’ Garec felt his head loll momentarily to one side; he shook it several times to clear his thoughts. ‘We’re not going to die, Mark, not here.’
‘That’s great news, thanks.’ His voice faded as he fell forward in the snow.
Dropping down beside him, Garec winced as he jerked the arrowhead in his side. The squad moved into position, surrounding them.
‘Lay down, son,’ the sergeant said, coming forward. He pulled off one of the knit mittens and tucked it beneath his arm for safe keeping, then reached up to remove a wool hat emblazoned with the crest of Prince Malagon’s Border Guard. ‘Where are the others, son? Still up at the palace?’
Garec tried to remember what Rodler had said when Mark first threatened to kill him. ‘We’re from Capehill,’ he said. ‘We do a bit of book business down there. That’s all. This old palace has a library, most of it rotten or torn up, but there are a few volumes here that bring a decent price at home.’
The sergeant nodded. He had arranged his thinning hair to cover as much of his pate as possible, but there wasn’t much left to cover the pale skin, dotted with liver spots. From the look of his paunch, he was a beer drinker. His yellowing teeth suggested a tobacco habit. Garec thought this man might be any of their grandfathers; what he was doing serving along the Gorskan border at his age was a mystery.
