by Rob Scott
‘Who is it?’ Steven asked.
Gilmour peered back along their trail, and was surprised to see no one approaching across the plain. ‘They must be in the streambed,’ he said, scanning the area until he detected a faint cloud of dust and dirt billowing up from the twisting crevasse they had been using to mask their movements. ‘There,’ he pointed, ‘past that stone wall on this side of the far field.’
Steven, Mark and Garec all strained to see where Gilmour was pointing, but none of them had improved their vision with Larion magic; they saw only the barren expanse of fallow fields.
Garec rode back down into the gulley and dismounted, then patted his frothing horse gently on the neck. ‘Not much further,’ he said encouragingly, then sprawled on the ground and pressed his cheek against the frozen dirt. The sound was unmistakable. Rising to his knees, he called, ‘They’re not far, but nowhere near as many as earlier.’
‘Well, that’s good news,’ Mark said. ‘I think.’
‘It’s Brand,’ Gilmour said.
‘How do you know?’ Steven asked.
‘I checked – nothing that will alert Nerak – and I can feel that it isn’t Malakasians.’
‘That may be,’ Garec said, ‘but we should keep riding, nevertheless.’
‘My horse can’t keep it up much longer.’ Mark ran a hand through the animal’s mane.
‘Mine either,’ Steven added.
Garec said, ‘We’ll slow the pace. Mark and I will hang back and just trot for a while. They’ll see our trail run up the side of this gulley. When they get to the top, we’ll know who’s back there. If it’s Brand, we have nothing to worry about. If it isn’t, we’ll ride up behind you. You’ll hear us coming like rutting thunder.’
Garec looked at Mark, who pressed his lips together and nodded. ‘Give your horses a rest, but canter just the same. Get as much distance out from us as you can. If we get separated, we’ll find you in Wellham Ridge tonight.’
‘You understand that we can’t-’ Gilmour started, ‘that Nerak would-’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mark said. ‘I don’t want that motherless bastard knowing where we are either. I just hope Steven’s blanket still covers us when you two are gone.’
‘I don’t know,’ Steven said, apologetically.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Garec said. ‘It’s not us he wants, anyway. We could stand naked out here singing bawdy songs and he wouldn’t look twice at us.’
Steven laughed. ‘Well, can you blame him?’
‘Go.’
Garec and Mark watched them lope off southwest. Garec asked, ‘How many arrows do you have?’
‘Maybe twenty. You?’
‘About the same.’
‘We can’t stop them with a couple of bows and a handful of arrows.’
‘I know,’ Garec said, thankful that Mark hadn’t suggested they make a stand there on the riverbank.
‘This is not good.’
‘We can’t run the horses any longer. We have to hope theirs are in a similar condition.’
‘We’ve been riding hard for more than fifteen days now. If they’re coming from Orindale, they’ve been in the saddle for two, maybe three. They’ll catch us, Garec.’
The bowman didn’t reply, but turned back towards the knoll above the stream and watched as it gradually shrank to a lump. Still, no one emerged from the winding riverbed. ‘I suppose all we can hope to do is delay them long enough for Gilmour and Steven to get free.’
‘Or pray it’s just Brand coming up to cover our backs.’
‘That too.’
When Brand and what remained of his squad burst from the streambed, it was like watching cavalry emerging from an underworld kingdom. His horse was swathed in froth, its nostrils flaring and bloody, as he led five men and women Garec recognised from their journey south.
As he closed on Garec and Mark, he started shouting, but his incomprehensible cries became obvious as a rank of Malakasian riders rose up from the streambed and began pursuing the Falkans across the plain. They fanned out like unfurling wings on a low-flying demon, narrowing the gap as the nearly spent freedom fighters struggled to get away.
‘Stupid bastard,’ Mark spat, ‘he’s led them right here. What in hell is he thinking?’
‘He must have decided to cover our flank, and then was seen riding off.’
‘With five soldiers?’
‘I don’t know,’ Garec said, ‘maybe there were others; maybe they led some of them away.’
‘Shit and shit and shit, this is bad,’ Mark spat. He nocked an arrow and waited. ‘How long until they’re in range?’
Garec’s hands began to tremble. ‘Let’s ride, Mark. We can’t stop them. There are – what? Fifteen or twenty of them? We can’t… let’s run for it. Come on.’ He was scared.
Mark shot him a withering look. ‘How long until they’re in range, Garec?’ He was ready to die; this was his moment. Brynne was watching; his final stand would make her proud.
Garec gripped his pommel with both hands until they stopped shaking. He focused on the advancing line and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’
Mark held the bow ready as Brand’s voice came to them across the field, shouting ‘Pick them off! As many as you can!’
‘Now?’ Mark’s voice was urgent. ‘Garec?’
‘What?’ He shivered. Please don’t make me do this.
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now, now!’ He felt the air go out of his lungs. He couldn’t fire. He hung his head.
Brand’s voice came again. ‘Garec! Garec, kill them, Garec!’
Mark loosed his first shot and shouted victoriously when one of the Malakasians fell. He nocked another arrow, aimed over Brand’s head and fired into the Malakasian line. This one took a horse in the chest, and the animal tumbled headlong across the frozen plain. As he fired over and over again, nocking, drawing and loosing like an automaton, he paused only once to look at Garec with a mixture of pity and disgust. There was no time to talk, so he carried on trying to wound or kill as many of the soldiers as possible before they closed for the hand-to-hand fight.
Garec wouldn’t fight; it was up to him, Brand and five exhausted soldiers, to defeat an entire squad of Malakasian cavalry.
Three dead. Four dead. Five injured. Six dead. Mark kept a mental tally. Seven injured, maybe dead. Eight injured. Nine dead.
And then Brand was with him.
‘What the holy hell is the matter with you, bastard?’ Mark screamed in English, too fired up with adrenalin to remember to speak Common.
‘What?’ Brand shouted despite the fact that they were side by side. Two of his soldiers had drawn their bows and had joined Mark, firing into the charging line.
‘You led them here,’ Mark screamed, ‘what were you thinking?’ He fired again. Ten injured. Eleven dead.
‘I lost men leading them away from here,’ Brand said, drawing his short sword and charging into what was left of the Malakasians.
Mark tossed his bow aside, shrugged out of his quiver and drew his battle-axe. Throwing his head back, he screamed, then dug his heels into his horse’s sides and galloped into the fray.
Garec never moved, and those few moments were the longest, hardest of his life. He didn’t have the strength to watch, but focused on his horse’s trailing mane, gripping the pommel of his saddle tightly. His stomach clenched at the screaming, and he winced when his face was splashed with someone’s blood. The noise of battle was gruesome, terrifying, unbearable: the sounds of suffering, pain and death.
Someone threw a sword and it slashed across his horse’s rump, opening a deep gash. With a furious whinny the animal reared and Garec fell to the ground, where he lay, immobile, waiting to be trampled to death.
Then it was over.
Only Mark, Brand, and a woman named Kellin remained in the saddle; everyone else lay dead or wounded. Brand dismounted to see to his injured soldiers, trying to keep his face immobile as he realised none would survive to see the mid
day aven; Garec rolled onto his side, his back to the carnage, and rested his head on the icy field.
Later, when the pyres were lit and the dead had been given their rites, the four remaining partisans mounted and rode slowly towards Wellham Ridge. Garec, without a horse, rode in silence behind Kellin. He was too ashamed to look at anyone; he couldn’t stand the thought of what he might see in Mark’s face: disappointment, regret, anger, hatred. Instead he watched Kellin’s light brown hair moving against the heavy weave of her cloak.
It was dark when they arrived in the village, but Steven and Gilmour were not difficult to find; they were sitting together in the front room of a tavern called the Twinmoon. The ever-shrinking group was reunited, but Garec, dejected and embarrassed, excused himself. He would go in search of a new horse in the morning; he told the others to leave without him and neither Mark nor Brand argued.
Steven looked closely at Garec, and agreed.
‘Please,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow or the following night at the latest.’ As long as they rode south and followed the river into Meyers’ Vale, he wouldn’t have any trouble finding their trail. He needed the space to think; if being alone meant he was captured, interrogated and killed by Malakasians, well, that would be fine too.
THE SLAVE QUARTERS
As the door closed behind him, Alen let out a long sigh. ‘Too close, old man,’ he murmured to himself.
He had spent the past several days ignoring his new body’s responsibilities while he searched Welstar Palace for the slave magicians. A thousand Twinmoons ago these men and women would have been trained as Larion Senators, but since the collapse of the Larion brotherhood, Nerak had brought Eldarn’s most promising young sorcerers here to serve his own mystical needs.
Alen guessed that six or seven enslaved magical hunters were permanently searching for him; over the Twinmoons there had never been a break in the energy sweeping the land for some sign of him. His home in Middle Fork had been his only refuge – every time he had ventured out, even just into the village for bread, he had been at risk of discovery. Over the past fifteen Twinmoons he had stopped bothering; his house remained camouflaged, but he used little more than a rudimentary cloaking spell when he left the protection of his home for the nearest tavern, where he invariably drank himself into a stupor.
Alen was determined to find and kill these magicians, and Bellan, Prince Malagon’s only daughter. He had intended to find and challenge Nerak himself to a battle that would – hopefully – end both their lives, but Nerak had fouled his plans by travelling east. Alen flushed with anger at the thought that he and his friends had made the trip to Malakasia for nothing – even the Larion far portal, the only way to send Hannah back to Colorado, was in the east, under Fantus’ protection. There had been no need for Hannah, Hoyt and Churn to accompany him into the palace, but he hadn’t had the heart to tell them they had come this far for nothing.
When they were taken prisoner, Alen had decided he had to live long enough to see his friends safely back to Treven, or onto a barge headed north to Pellia; only then would he return to the palace to await Nerak’s return.
Now, while they recovered from the rigours of their imprisonment, he spent every spare moment searching for the slave magicians, and for Bellan. He also made sure the Malakasians didn’t discover three empty cells, which wasn’t always easy: this morning he’d got a little lost in the endless corridors and nearly blown it, running into an officer as he hustled down to intercept the morning mush delivery. It was rare for an officer to actually make an appearance in the dank prison levels, and this time it nearly cost the old Larion sorcerer his cover.
‘Late this morning, Sergeant?’ the lieutenant asked pointedly.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Alen said, saluting smartly. ‘I had word that new prisoners were coming in, and I wanted to be sure we had cells available on that wing, sir.’
‘I know nothing of new prisoners, Sergeant.’
‘No sir. Confused information, sir.’ Alen took the trenchers from the soldier, who had probably been standing rigidly at attention from the moment the officer had entered the hall. ‘Thank you, Tandrek.’
‘In the future, Sergeant, I would appreciate it if you would not go haring off without checking with me first,’ the young lieutenant said, still irritated. ‘You are responsible for the security of these halls and the feeding of prisoners, not a one-man welcoming committee. Deployment of cells and sentences is my job. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Alen tried to salute smartly, but a dollop of gloop splashed on his boots, ruining the effect.
‘And get those polished before you come upstairs, Sergeant.’
‘Yes sir. Sorry, sir.’
The officer strode down the hall and left without looking back.
Alen breathed again and looked at Tandrek. ‘Thanks,’ he said quietly.
‘No problem, Sergeant – bit of a shock to see him down here this morning. I don’t suppose we’ll see him again for another ten or twelve Twinmoons.’
Alen laughed. ‘Take a break, Tandrek. I’ll deal with this.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. Sir, Abbott is out for a few days. Boils.’ He winced in sympathy. ‘Should I take care of the deliveries to the lower chambers?’
‘Yes, do. Good thinking,’ Alen said, his close escape leaving him a little distracted.
‘Thank you, Sergeant. All right if I borrow a cart from the scullery? They get real food down there and it’s too much to carry in one journey.’ At Alen’s nod the man saluted and left the hallway.
Alen sighed in relief again and moved off down the dark hallway. He had memorised the path from the scullery hall to Hannah’s cell, down the moss-covered stone ramp and through the old archway to Hoyt’s cell, then across the hall and up two flights of spiral steps to the cruelly small enclosure selected for Churn. At each door he emptied the day’s mush into a pile that was smelling worse each day, left that trencher on the floor and retrieved the previous day’s bowl.
No one had yet questioned why he was making the food run. Tandrek didn’t care why his superior insisted on lugging the trenchers through the dank, humid prison; he was pleased to be relieved of that unpleasant duty and often bragged to his fellow squaddies that he had the easiest post in the platoon.
As he stepped inside Churn’s former cell and dumped the trencher’s contents into the pile in the corner, Alen slipped and nearly fell to his knees.
‘Gods, but this is disgusting. I can’t believe they find anyone to make it, never mind feed it to other…’ His voice trailed off as he looked at the foetid pile and the flies that danced around it.
They get real food down there.
‘Down there,’ he murmured, ‘down where, Tandrek? What lower chambers?’ Alen picked up the old trencher and ran back to the scullery.
‘Tandrek!’ Alen cried. ‘Thanks the gods of the Northern Forest; I was beginning to think I’d rot down here!’
The soldier, a little shocked to find his superior hunting for him in the catacombs, assumed he had committed some grave military offence and snapped immediately to attention. ‘Sir!’
‘Where are we?’ Alen was out of breath, and completely lost in the maze of passageways beneath the old keep. ‘We must be three hundred paces beneath the mountain. This rutting sergeant must-’ He caught himself. ‘I’ve never been down here.’
‘Of course not, Sergeant,’ Tandrek said, surprise on his face. ‘This is Abbott’s job – your predecessor assigned him and you never rescinded or changed the order, sir: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, you said, sir-’ He broke off, not sure if repeating his sergeant’s words back to him was the right thing to do.
‘Of course, Tandrek, you’re right.’ Alen hit his head lightly and laughed. ‘My rutting memory: can’t remember anything from one day to the next. And Abbott’s sick and you take on his duties when he’s down
…’ He held his torch up to illuminate the young soldier’s face. ‘So where are we?’
Tandrek laughed, then immediately stifled it, ‘Sorry, Sergeant.’
‘No offence, soldier ‘
‘If you don’t mind me asking, Sergeant, what are you doing down here?’
Alen had to cover himself for one more day; that’s all he needed to finish his business here and see his friends safely down the river. ‘I’m trying to familiarise myself with the whole prison,’ he said. ‘I don’t send my men to do jobs I’m not prepared to do myself. I need a better idea of our overall responsibilities if I’m to be an effective leader.’ He knew from the sergeant’s memories he’d not long been assigned to Welstar, but he couldn’t make out how much the man was supposed to know about the various levels. He didn’t want to over-egg the pudding, but he needed Tandrek on his side, even unwittingly.
‘I’m ambitious, Tandrek, and I’m still young: I intend to be an officer, and when I get promoted, I will need effective men under me. Knowledge is the key to that,’ he said.
Tandrek grinned. ‘Well, Sergeant, since it’s just me and you here, I’ll stick my neck out and tell you we all would love to have you as our lieutenant – Willis is a horsecock! Sir!’
Alen chuckled, playing along. And as it’s just between me and you, I didn’t hear that, soldier! Going deaf in my old age!’ He clapped Tandrek on the back and looked around. ‘So where is this chamber?’
‘Right down here, Sergeant.’ Tandrek pointed, and started down the hall. Their torches cast surprisingly bright light in the narrow passage, which looked as if it had been tunnelled through the bedrock on which Welstar Palace was built. It felt like a mineshaft to Alen, the roughly hewn walls making him feel a little claustrophobic. He imagined a cool breeze blowing across his face and shook his head in an effort to clear his thoughts, but it came a second time and he realised it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him.
‘Tandrek, is that a draught?’
‘Yes, Sergeant. There are fissures in the rock down here, a system of caves in the hillside behind the palace. There’s plenty of air blowing in.’ He stopped, and Alen saw someone had carved a crooked M on the wall. ‘From here, I have to remember it in couplets, sir. Right-left, left-left, right-left,’ he chanted, turning into a new passageway with each instruction until the tunnel widened and ended in a pair of large double doors, not unlike the oak doors lining the halls in the prison wing.
