by Hugh Cook
Some distance downstream, Yen Olass pulled herself ashore and started looking for an otter-hole. When she found something suitable – a concavity under some tree-roots – she crawled into this shelter and huddled there in her fur.
For a while, Yen Olass lay in her otter-hole imagining the fish-smooth otter-king who would romance her by the riverbank, and the little little baby otters they would have together, and the excavations they would make to perfect their safe and secret otter-hole where nobody would find them not now and not ever, where nobody would ever find them or catch them or stone them to death.
Dreaming of the love her otter-king would teach her, Yen Olass fell asleep, and slept soundly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Yen Olass Ampadara woke in the early hours of night. She was cold, but the cold was not intolerable; wool, even when wet, tends to give warmth. She extracted herself from the hole she had been sleeping in, and scooped cold water from the river to appease the protest in her belly.
When she faced the river, the flow of the current was from left to right, meaning she was on the northern bank. Castle Vaunting, the ruins of Lorford and the Collosnon army were on the southern bank, somewhere upstream.
Yen Olass took off her boots and washed her feet and her foot bindings. Then she massaged her feet, wrung out the foot bindings, replaced them, then put on her boots again. Yen Olass had been around soldiers long enough to know that care of the feet is vital. When crutch and armpits are left unattended for a couple of weeks, and grow interesting growths of green fungus, that is unpleasant but not lethal; when feet go rotten, which can happen in a lot less than two weeks, an otherwise healthy person becomes a helpless casualty.
Low down in her gut, there was the beginning of a familiar and unwelcome cramping sensation. Mentally, she counted her calendar. Yes, her menses were due to begin. Swearing softly, Yen Olass hunted through the inner pockets of her weather jacket. Finding her box of volsh, she opened it, dipped her finger in the niddin-grease, and tasted it. Disgusting. She would have to starve for a little longer. In another pocket, she found her string of amber beads. Good for a bribe? No, there was no way for her to buy her way out of this mess. At last she found one of the pads she was looking for. It was soaking wet. She wrung it out: it would have to do.
Before padding herself, Yen Olass took off all her clothing, which meant taking off her boots again – if she had been under less strain, she would have organized herself better. She wrung out all her woollen clothing, knelt on her fur coat and did her best to force out any residual water, did the best she could with her weather jacket, then dressed again and put her boots back on. Already she felt warmer.
Now she considered the state of her body. The women of Monogail did not allow themselves to be disabled by their monthly flux; Yen Olass was more concerned with her bumps and bruises. She had been generously damaged, but all joints were in working order. Everything hurt, but she could still rely on her body to serve her faithfully. It was durable as a mule, strong, powerful, and well-fleshed to ward off starvation.
What now?
Madness had disabled the whole army. Yen Olass, knowing that she was not a dralkosh, knew the wizards in Castle Vaunting were to blame. Their power must be limited, because the spell no longer had effect – Yen Olass no longer believed herself to be an otter.
Remembering what had happened to the soldiers, Yen Olass knew they would now be ashamed and demoralized. They would be sleeping or drinking, or planning desertion. Now was the best time to attack the camp.
Yen Olass thought attack was her best option. She knew exactly what she needed: Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. The Melski male would be her salvation. By now, she knew colonies of Melski lived to the north, in the Penvash Peninsula. Surely they would take her in and shelter her. If not, she would take the mountain pass leading west from Lake Armansis to Larbster Bay on the shores of the Penvash Channel. There was said to be a small community of humans at Larbster Bay, and ships put in there to land travellers, to seek shelter from bad weather or to take on water.
Yen Olass followed the riverbank till she saw the army's campfires. Only a few fires: most people must be asleep. Or dead. The sullen hellfire glow from the moat of Castle Vaunting suggested that a senile sun was about to rise in the south. Yen Olass was cautious now, facing danger. Yet she felt no fear: instead, she felt strong, bold and alert. Concentrating on shadow and sound, she no longer felt her injuries except when she bumped against a tree-stump or scraped against a bough.
She approached the bridge spanning the Hollern River. She halted, and waited. Watching. Listening. Looking for sentries. Listening for a cough, a snore, a whisper. The bridge appeared to be unguarded. Yen Olass remembered the voyage across the Pale, and how one of the soldiers (a scar-faced man with red whiskers, who had proclaimed that 'you have to kill a man to be a man') had lectured his squad on nightfighting, saying that, with even a trace of light, a silhouette against a skyline can betray movement at night to the skilled observer. ('So watch the curve of the hill and the tit at the top, and look for lice scuttling, boys.')
Crouching low, Yen Olass crawled to the bridge and began to slither across. Then a plank creaked. Under her? Behind her? She startled to her feet and sprinted, her boots hammering across the bridge. As she reached the other side, a man shouted at her from somewhere in the ruins of Lorford.
Yen Olass sprinted for a ruined wall, dropped down beside it, crawled along on hands and knees in its absolute shadow, then went to ground. And waited. The man shouted again. She heard the swift squiff-squiff-squiff of blood as her heart pumped a pulse near her ear.
Nobody came hunting for her. But, now that she was in occupied territory, she felt smaller and less certain.
Picking herself up from the ground, she advanced on the unsuspecting army, moving in fits and starts, staying low and pausing often to look around. And listen. Soon she was passing tents, woodpiles, empty carts. She smelt latrines, woodsmoke, damp ashes – and food. Food! She drooled.
Yen Olass tried to estimate where the security section was. Sighting a camp fire which seemed to lie in the right direction, she set off toward it. When she drew near, she heard the men round the fire talking, but could not understand what they were saying. They were not talking in Ordhar, nor were they using Eparget. They had reverted to their own language, whatever that might be: this army had contingents from many regions of the empire.
All the guards from the security section seemed to have gathered round that fire. Doubtless they were talking murder or mutiny. Or desertion. Their voices were low, but angry. Going slowly so as not to make too much noise squelching through the mud, Yen Olass worked her way round to the back of the tents of the security section. Here, all was shadows and darkness.
Yen Olass eased a few tent pegs out of the mud, lifted the bottom of a tent and crawled inside. Into absolute darkness. She squatted there, waiting patiently for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. But after a while she concluded that there was no light at all to see by. Everything in the tent was very quiet. There was no sleep-murmur of dream voices, no sounds of bodies stirring in blankets, no snores, no creaking of joints, no whispering, no breathing. Yet the tent did not feel empty.
Yen Olass listened, screening out the noises of the outside world – faint guttural voices, occasional animal noises from a horse or an ox, the muted thunder of the flames still blazing in the castle moat. She listened, and she heard… moisture falling drip by drop. Each drip gathering itself in the darkness, meditating, then falling to plop into a pool of moisture. A leak in the tent? But it was not raining.
Suddenly Yen Olass was terrified. She lifted the bottom of the tent – and heard footsteps outside. Two men were walking through the mud. As they passed the tent, one said something to the other, and both laughed. Yen Olass crouched in the darkness. She looked over her shoulder, into the centre of the tent. But could see nothing but darkness within darkness.
When the two men were gone, Yen Olass slithered out, not
caring how much mud she collected in the process. The night air was cool and good. For a while she stayed there in the shadow of the tent, gathering her courage. Then she heard snoring from a nearby tent. Her first thought was:
– So someone is alive.
Yen Olass stole through the night to the snoring tent, pulled out more tent pegs and slipped inside. Again she squatted down, waiting. This tent was full of the warmth of people and the little noises of people sleeping. But were they prisoners – or soldiers?
'Hello, Yen Olass,' said a deep voice.
Yen Olass felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She knew that she had no occult powers of her own, but she was not prepared to disbelieve in the existence of occult powers – and it was a powerful shock to hear someone name her in the blind darkness. Her bounding heart was a rabbit, chasing away over the hills with a wolf at its tail.
'I know it's you,' said the voice. 'I can smell you.' 'You smell too,' retorted Yen Olass, which was not true. There was a chuckle.
'Humans can't smell out the Melski,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'Come here, Yen Olass. They've tied me up.’
Yen Olass crept through the darkness, wondering if she really did stink. On reflection, she presumed she probably did. Probably everyone in the Collosnon army was reeking of dirt and sweat, but humans who live in a communal stench seldom notice it. Indeed, when people live continuously in their own sweat, the smells they become particularly sensitive to are artificial scents, perfumes and soaps, which, in a combat zone, can sometime betray a newcomer at thirty paces or more.
'Can you really tell I'm me?' said Yen Olass. 'Or were you just guessing?’
She had not been taught the word for guessing, so she used the word for gambling instead. Hor-hor-hurulg-murg understood.
'I'm good at what I do,' said the Melski.
'That's not a proper answer,' said Yen Olass.
What she actually said, struggling with her limited vocabulary, was 'Your words are smoke', but again the Melski understood.
'It's what you should expect,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'Tarish are known to be glunskoora.’
'What's tarish?' said Yen Olass, getting to work on the knots that secured him. 'What's glunskoora?’
She could not translate these two words from the Galish; they meant 'monster' and 'inscrutable'.
'Later,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg, for, like most people, he did not like having to explain his jokes.
The Melski had a very good idea of what most people thought of them, but, confident in the possession of their own river forests, their own language and their freedom, did not mind making the occasional joke at their own expense.
'Ah,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg, as Yen Olass undid the last knot binding his hands. 'That's good. I'll do the rest.’
'Me next,' said another voice, which Yen Olass recognized immediately. Draven.
'What are you doing here?' said Yen Olass.
'Lord Alagrace left late this afternoon. He was escorting some of our wounded back to Skua. He's going to draw on the reserves we've got waiting there. He wants some men behind him who haven't yet been tainted by mutiny.’
'And?’
'And what do you think?' said Draven. 'Come on, untie me.’
Yen Olass was not at all keen on the idea. She wanted to escape with her Melski friend. She did not at all fancy the company of a murderous and unprincipled pirate like Draven. Nominally, he was her slave, given to her by the Lord Emperor Khmar, but in a world of men that ruling had never meant anything, and once they were in the depths of Looming Forest it would mean even less.
'Where are you?' said Draven, impatiently.
'Here,' said Yen Olass, afraid he would start to shout if she refused him. 'But remember, I saved your life.’
'My life? Nobody's asking you to be a hero.’
'In Favanosin,' said Yen Olass, suspecting that Draven was being deliberately obtuse. 'I saved your life.’
'Did you?"
'In front of Khmar. You know I did.’
'So you saved my life. Come on!’
Yen Olass set to work, wondering what had happened. She supposed Chonjara's faction had taken the opportunity to put some of Lord Alagrace's supporters out of action while they had the chance.
'Were they going to – what were they going to do to you?’
'Cook us and eat us for all I know,' said Draven, echoing tough-talking words which had originally been the intellectual property of the Rovac warrior, Morgan Hearst. 'They're frightened. Confused. Men are always dangerous when they're like that. The sooner we get out of here the better.’
Yen Olass was aware by now that others were awake, and waiting. She would have to take them all. But once she had set Draven free, he helped, and soon there were plenty of hands to do the work.
'Yen Olass?' said a voice.
'Here,' said Yen Olass.
'Is it really you?' said Resbit.
'It's me.’
And Yen Olass, glad to have at least one female friend in this unreasonable world of men, took Resbit into her arms and hugged her. Breast to breast and cheek to cheek, they embraced each other, protecting each other, comforting each other. Yen Olass wanted to sit down and talk right then and there, and find out everything that had happened to Resbit, but there was no time. The escapers were already slipping out of the tent one by one, and Resbit and Yen Olass had to follow or be left behind.
'Where's Haveros?' said Draven, when they were outside.
'He's not with us,' said Yen Olass.
'I know that,' said Draven, sounding irritated. 'And keep your voice down!’
Which was unfair, since he was talking louder than she was.
'Why do you care, anyway?' said Yen Olass. 'What's he to you?’
'We need him. And the princess, if we can get her. Take them east, to Skua. Lord Alagrace will reward us.’
Td've thought you'd've wanted to run back to your pirate friends,' said Yen Olass.
'It's a long way from here to the Greater Teeth,' said Draven. 'Even for a creature good at running, which isn't me.’
'We'll have a better chance in the forest,' said Yen Olass. 'If we go east, they'll ride us down.’
'We'll take horses ourselves,' said Draven. 'Can't women think of anything?’
'The Lord Khmar-’
'The Lord Khmar can't help you now,' said Draven. 'Stay here. I'm going to look for Haveros and the princess.' He slipped away into the night.
Yen Olass had been about to point out that the Lord Emperor Khmar had been a notable horse thief in his own right, in his younger days; from his youthful success, he had gained valuable experience which had saved his own armies from losing more animals than they had to. As a matter of policy, all horses were now corralled in the centre of the army at nightfall, wherever possible. On this campaign, the cavalry contingent was small, and all horses were safe in the centre; to liberate a horse would mean leading it through the tentlines. 'I can't ride,' said Resbit.
What a pair. A woman who couldn't ride, and a pirate – Yen Olass could hear him blundering away through the night – who had no idea at all about how to move quietly in the dark.
'I can't ride either,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'Even if I could, no horse would consent to bear me. Who chooses the river?’
'I can't swim,' said Resbit.
'I wasn't suggesting it,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. 'Do you choose to come north?' 'We do,' said Yen Olass.
There was a muttered consultation amongst the prisoners. Some of them, natives of Estar, were determined to try and slip away to find refuge in the south of the country, in the Barley Hills. Others thought it best to wait for Draven – he, after all, was a man, not a woman or a monster. In the end, only Yen Olass and Resbit accompanied Hor-hor-hurulg-murg through the darkness to the bridge, across the bridge to the far bank of the Hollern River, then along that bank, following the curve of the river, which soon saw them heading north toward Lake Armansis.
Yen Olass, in captivity, was very mu
ch a creature of daydreams and imaginings. But, following Hor-hor-hurulg-murg through the forest by night – in the dark, Melski could see better than humans – Yen Olass felt no need to indulge in dreams. Except that, toward morning, when they were all very tired, she did think just a little bit about how good a cooked breakfast would have been. It was more than a day since she had last eaten, and she was very hungry.
CHAPTER TWENTY
An otter woke in the forest. How had it got there? What was it doing there? Why did everything hurt so much? Why was the cold so vicious? Cold, hurt, and dazed by a mix of fatigue and dreams, the otter rolled onto its hands and knees and lay there, suffering. A piteous mewling sound escaped it.
Bit by bit, it remembered.
'Oh shit,' said Yen Olass, remembering.
She opened her eyes, but shut them again. The light was vicious.
'Caltrops,' muttered Yen Olass.
But here in the forest, the light was not the blinding dazzle that glances off snow and ice. The fault was not with the light but with her eyes. They were dry and tired. She wanted to rub them, but saw her hands were filthy.
Yen Olass tried to sit up. On the third try she succeeded. She flexed her hands, trying to get some life into her fingers which, at the moment, were as clumsy as bear paws. Dirt stained the map-lines on the palms of her hands. What had her mother said? 'These are the tracks of the herds which roam the other country. Remember them, in the place beyond darkness.' Now what had she meant by that?
She rubbed her hands together vigorously then stuck them into her armpits. But there was no warmth there, only cold, cold, river-wet fur. Had they been through the river during the night? No. But they had marched endlessly, endlessly.
Yen Olass glanced up at the sky, which had cleared to a taunting virgin blue. It was early morning, and it was positively frosty. She closed her eyes again, then, opening them, looked at the others. Who were both asleep. The Melski was grunting and twitching in his dreams. Resbit was snoring ever so slightly, sleeping so sweetly that Yen Olass had an almost irresistible urge to give her just the tiniest poke in the ribs. Perched on a tree branch overhead, a bird poured out endless streams of exuberant song: joy joy joy!
