03 - Liar's Peak

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  That night they camped in a forest of spruce saplings, situated on a sloping hillside. Their movements stirred up the ash of an old fire, which explained the uniform age of the trees around them. The men woke up grubby and black; some headed for a small stream at the bottom of the slope, to wash themselves. Emil called out to stop them. The soot, he shouted, would dull the shine of their pasty Stir-land faces, which would otherwise glare like bobbing lanterns in the gaze of enemy lookouts. Franziskus caught Filch and Merwin edging down to the bank anyway and corralled them with a stern head shake.

  “Surely he don’t mean us,” Filch said.

  “We’re not Stirlanders, not exactly,” Merwin agreed. “Well, we’re from Stirland, but we’re not human. Precisely speaking.”

  “Our faces aren’t so pale as yours. We’re sunburnt farmers.”

  “Nut-brown, I’d say. Nut-brown is what our facial tone is.”

  Franziskus shook his head. He felt like the tutor he’d had as a child, always saying no to him and his brothers.

  Filch held out begging hands. “Please. It’s a terrible-bad affront to a halfling, to make him go around like a ragamuffin.”

  Bodo stomped down to end the argument. “We’re soldiers now. If the sergeant says no washing, then filthy we will be.”

  The day was a slow tramp up ever-steeper grades. Earthen ground gave way to naked stone. The horses would go no further. Jonas dismounted to coax his on, but its hooves could not navigate the rock’s uneven surface. Emil heaved himself down from his saddle and waddled over to confer with the lieutenant.

  Jonas addressed a quiet reproach to Angelika. “You should’ve warned us.”

  “Of what?”

  “To do something about the horses.”

  Emil said nothing. He wore the chagrined look of a man who knew he’d made a stupid error.

  “Do what about the horses?” Angelika asked.

  Jonas was unabashed. “We should have found a place to put them earlier in the day. Now we’ll have to go back and—”

  “Find a place to put them?” She looked to Emil. He closed his eyes and gritted his molars.

  “Yes,” said Jonas. “A stable or pasture.”

  “Do you recall seeing a safe place to leave horses since we entered the borderlands?” The men were watching, so Angelika struggled to muffle her body language.

  Emil spoke without moving a muscle. “If we’d left Hochsmoor on better terms, I would have left them there. After that, I was only thinking to stay away from inhabited places, since that’s where the Kurg might be. To be honest, the question of stabling never crossed my mind.”

  “And you said nothing, Angelika?”

  “What was there to say? I figured you meant to bring them as far as you could, and then…”

  “And then what?” Stifling his agitation, Jonas turned his back to the company. “And then what?” he repeated.

  Angelika shrugged. “Then you… eat them. Don’t you?”

  Jonas’ words hissed through a gate of shuttered, pearly teeth. “Eat the horses?”

  “I assumed you intended a last feast for the men. There’s not much forage up here.”

  “You expect me to eat Firebrand? Who was given me by my uncle? Who is bred from the stallion my father rode to battle?”

  “When you brought him up here, I reckoned you weren’t so attached to him.” She noted how the lieutenant’s hand had become a fist. It was not, she reasoned, in his interest to strike at her now. “I’m sorry to learn otherwise. But these horses, Jonas—”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “These horses, lieutenant”—she spat the word out like rotten fruit—“they’re dead already. Whether you let them loose here, or walk half a mile back down the slope and do it, they’re going to be eaten by someone or something. Wolves, bears, skaven…”

  “I can’t allow it,” said Jonas. “I cannot.”

  From his posture, it seemed that Emil agreed with her plan, but would not risk a rift with his commander by saying so. Not when he had her to shield him. “It might be the Kurgs who catch these steeds. You want to feed your enemy?”

  “The horses can find grazing, below.”

  “If they’re lucky, they’ll be caught and devoured. If not, they’ll starve. If you love that horse, you’ll grant it the mercy of a painless death.”

  He shook his head. He was out of argument but meant to hold fast anyhow.

  “Don’t be stubborn.” She immediately wished she hadn’t said the word. It was never a helpful one, when trying to dislodge a man from his position. “You’ve over seventy mouths to feed,” she continued. “When the men get hungry—and they will—what do you want them to think, when they remember what you did with the horses?”

  “Do it then,” said Jonas, breaking from them to stand near his horse. Emil went among the men, asking who among them possessed the needed skills. Bodo the halfling held up his hand. Back in Hochsmoor, he said, he was the village butcher. Emil marched the bulk of the column on while a few swordsmen stayed to assist the halfling. Jonas stood, stroking Firebrand’s muzzle and speaking to it in a low, reassuring tone. Angelika could not bear to watch him; she fetched Franziskus and went ahead with the others.

  Twenty minutes later, Jonas joined the others. He passed Angelika by, his eyes blazing. He leapt up to the shelf-like rock that afforded a grander view of the purple peaks ahead. Men found stray branches and laid firewood down in a sizeable depression that would serve as a natural firepit. Soon both carcasses were produced and spitted over a devouring flame. The smoke of cooking horses drew a small party of shy, ill-nourished wolves to the periphery of the camp. Seeing them, Jonas ran to seize a Chelborger’s bow. He let an arrow fly at the boldest wolf; it pierced the creature’s side and knocked it dead. Its kin yelped away, leaving Jonas to mourn in peace. He ate from the meat of neither horse.

  The feast, including a suitable time to lie about and digest, stole over four hours of the company’s time. Then they moved on, each step a little shorter and more difficult than the last. A chill flowed down from the whitened summits looming over them. Soldiers wheezed and sweated. The tightness in the chest, the laboured breathing—these were familiar symptoms to Angelika and Franziskus. An acuter distress struck Jonas and his men. They mopped at brows; they slipped and tripped and hauled themselves sluggishly onwards. The halflings seemed oddly unimpeded. They bounced like goats on hard-boned feet from one rock to the next. Merwin began a collection of alpine flowers, stuffing them willy-nilly into his sleeves and pockets. Franziskus theorised that their race had to be related to the dwarfs, who were born and bred for mountain travel.

  The rocks grew steeper still, forcing the men to grab for handholds as they impelled themselves upwards. As they scrambled, the gradient changed, from twenty degrees, to twenty-five, then nearly to thirty. The rock face extended for at least a mile to the east and west. To the left, it terminated in the steep drop of a canyon, too sheer and deep to act as a pass. It was bounded on the right by a thrusting granite wall, the foot of a peak that extended into the clouds. Straight ahead of them, the slope disappeared abruptly from view, suggesting that it flattened into a plateau.

  Angelika listened to the groans of the men as they battled the elevation. Even Franziskus and the halflings had slowed to an exhausted creep. She circuited between boulders to reach Jonas, who had placed himself on point position and was now the furthest up the hill of any man. He had not sought her counsel since the horsemeat feast.

  She hadn’t disputed his choice of direction. This stretch of mountains was proving to be even less accommodating than those of the Blackfire Pass. Even so, there had to be navigable passageways between the peaks since the Kurgan had found and used them. Neither she nor anyone else in the company possessed a map of the range; if such a thing existed, it was a secret of the dwarfs. They would have to locate its passes and switchbacks by trial and error. For every day of penetrative movement into the mountains, they could easily face two of dead ends, false hop
es, and retraced steps. When deciding where to go, they would often reach juncture points where one guess was as good as another. She’d allowed Jonas to make the first guesses, but now it seemed like it was time to double back and try another way in.

  A soldier’s foot freed a salvo of rocks and they bounced down the slope, sending the men behind him dodging to evade them. Each impact of rock on rock clattered and echoed. Angelika frowned—the sound could probably be heard for miles. For nearly an hour her sense of hazard had been rising.

  The problem was not that the rock face led to nowhere. In fact, it seemed to disappear about a hundred feet ahead of Jonas’ position, flattening into a plateau of unknowable size and shape. A flat expanse of gravelly ground would seem like a gift from the gods, if they could reach it. And it could well lead to a switchback or other pass. However, a primary rule of mountain survival was that any spot favourable enough to struggle toward was also sufficiently attractive for some hostile other to occupy.

  Angelika imagined a likely layout and pictured the company from the point of view of a person concealed up the plateau. Hiding would be easy, an ambusher could stay out of sight simply by hugging the ground. Worse, a row of boulders perched near the lip of the plateau. Angelika counted at least a dozen of them, each capable of concealing a muscle-bound Kurg from toe to top-knot.

  She’d got within twenty-five yards of Jonas when a strangled moan rose from behind her. She turned to see a grey-templed swordsman clutching his chest and gurgling. His right arm shot out from his side, stiff as a rod. His face puffed and froze. He sank backwards, his legs locking straight as the rest of him collapsed. Comrades tripped over rocks to reach his side. A low order hissed from Emil’s lips: no one else was to move. He strode to join the man’s helpers. They pried off his breastplate and loosened his collar. The fallen man stiffened and twitched. Emil straightened himself about ten minutes later. He shook his head, his tight expression unmistakable: the man was gone.

  The cause of death posed no puzzle to Angelika: his heart had given out. It was a common thing in warfare. Maybe one in twenty-five of the corpses she found after a battle hadn’t a mark on them—they’d succumbed to burst blood vessels or ruined heart muscles. All the more reason to hunt for an easier route.

  Jonas passed her on the way down the slope. “I suppose you want us to eat him, too,” he muttered.

  No, she thought, but you’re going to want to drag him along with us, instead of leaving him where he fell, and that’s foolishness aplenty.

  The lieutenant surprised her. He made his way down through the rocks to confer with one of his swordsmen. The fellow listened impassively, then removed his helmet and wrapped an arm in a phylactery of black fabric. This insignia marked him as a lay officiate of Morr, the death god. Evidently the dead soldier would be interred on the spot. Four of the dead man’s comrades carried the body to a comparatively even place, laying him out with the gentle care of parents tucking a child into his bed sheets. The acolyte of Morr performed a muttered ceremony. It was not the complete ritual a full priest would do, but the petty version would suffice. It was more than many dead soldiers got.

  The acolyte muttered a blessing, then knelt to ritually close the man’s eyes and dust his face with dirt. Each of the original sword company then proceeded past his body to lay a stone over it, until they’d built up a modest, mounded cairn. The Chelborg Archers and assorted stragglers abstained from this duty; apparently they were not yet fully the fallen man’s comrades, and therefore unfit to take part in his death rites. Filch, oblivious to this nicety, had a hefty stone in hand and was ready to advance on the burial site. Bodo grabbed him by the collar to stop him embarrassing himself.

  When the man lay completely under a blanket of stone, Angelika approached Jonas. She showed him the features of the terrain, reminded him of the noise the company had made already, and pointed at the spots where enemies might be hiding. “This feels bad to me,” she said. “We’d best turn around.”

  Jonas peered at the rocks along the plateau line. From this more distant vantage they looked smaller, like tiny slate-coloured toadstools. “No. Sterr died to take this hill,” said Jonas, using the name of the fallen man, which Angelika had not known. “The men will not let it beat them now.”

  “Jonas, our enemy is not a hill.”

  “We’re to turn around every time you feel bad? We’re here to make war. And call me by my rank, Angelika.”

  Jonas ordered the company to resume its climb. They commenced their new assault against the rocky incline in tighter order, going up in waves of four and five.

  Angelika stood watching them. So what if he disregarded her advice? It made no difference to her whether he fulfilled his orders. Whatever those were—their exact nature seemed vague, even to Jonas. Yes, it was an irksome set of circumstances. And yes, it was beyond contradictory that he’d spent so much effort to inveigle her into this, only to balk at her best advice. And yes, yes, certainly, it was supremely tempting, when confronted with bullheadedness of this magnitude, to argue. To prove herself correct. She was right and he was wrong. That was not the question.

  The question was: how to recover the ring? This was the only thing, she reminded herself, she ought to care about. Not the safety of his men. Not the fate of the Empire. Not even the preservation of her self-respect and obvious Tightness in the face of overwhelming folly. Arguing with Jonas would not get her ring back. He might think he wanted her to be smart, to be a good scout for him, but his behaviour said otherwise. Deference, that’s what he wanted. Loyalty. Assurance that he was as wise and good and strong as this father he kept on about, whether warranted or not. She had to win his trust back, so she could search his pack for the ruby. It was not her task to bludgeon sense into him, or to shine a brilliant light on his inconsistencies. She would cater to his pride, and swallow her own.

  If he did have the ruby, though… For every dram of lost dignity, every instant of stolen freedom, she would make him pay. When it was back in her hand, that’s when she’d be proven right.

  Angelika rushed, clambering through the rocks, to catch up with the others. Now everyone was well ahead of her. Franziskus and the halflings were off to one side. Bodo had determined the ideal series of stepping stones and had jumped his way into the lead, hopping with goatish surety from one boulder to the next. Filch repeated his circuitous yet speedy climb with nearly equal agility. Merwin acquitted himself with less aplomb, stopping on every third rock to regain his balance. Franziskus followed their general path but left the leaping to the experts. Angelika shrugged and headed towards him.

  Already, certain of the soldiers flagged. They paused to wheeze and puff. Angelika imagined that they envisioned their friend’s collapse, and aimed to pace themselves. Others pressed on, Jonas especially. Whether out of carelessness or a desire to instil spirit in his men, he’d plunged ahead and was now on point. He made up in speed what he lacked in sense, Angelika thought: he was almost thirty yards up the slope already.

  Instinct drew her gaze to the plateau’s edge. A blur of exposed flesh moved between two of its man-sized rocks.

  “No!” she shouted. “Move it!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The boulders rocked, resisted, loosened, and fell. They crashed down into the stream of climbing men. Three of the massive stones rolled down together. Others came soon after. One landed on a long side in loose gravel, lodging in a crater of its own making. The others rolled violently down into the disordered column of climbing men, who exclaimed in breathless panic. Each time they bounced, the boulders flattened limbs, caved-in rib cages and split helmeted skulls. Panicked soldiers tried to run, but struck their shins on the small rocks around them. They fell, or, worse, flattened themselves deliberately on the unwelcoming ground, making themselves bigger targets for the cascading rocks.

  Angelika was seized by the same terrified impulse, but found the willpower to stay stock still. It was the best way to decrease the odds of being hit—just as the pers
on who walks in a rainstorm stays drier than one who dashes through the droplets. Ahead of her, Franziskus and the halflings ducked for cover, falling to their knees and pointing their heads downwards. At first, she thought this to be an echo of the same awful error committed by so many of the soldiers, lower down. Then another boulder, the largest yet, tumbled off the lip, right above their position. It sailed through the air right where Franziskus’ blond head had been and it crunched into the slope a yard past him. He’d figured the geometry right: from his position, much higher on the slope, dropping down had been the clever choice.

  The same rock now bounced Angelika’s way. It hit a sharp granite jut, knocking off a spray of shards. The strike altered the trajectory of its bounce, directing the stone closer to her. It touched down again, but its orbit was unaltered. Angelika postponed all breathing. It sailed through the air. It crunched onto the slope, wildly rolling. Its course was now set.

  She looked at the loose stones around her feet. An ill-balanced leap onto any of them could send her unpredictably flying, forward, back, to either side.

  If she stayed put, she was almost certain that it would not hit her.

  Almost.

  She turned sideways, to become a smaller target. She exhaled and held it, rendering her profile infinitesimally smaller.

  She felt the air pulled from around her as the big boulder blasted past her. It kept rolling, veering toward the canyon, which eventually swallowed it up.

  She turned her attention back to the plateau line; only a pair of dangerously large stones remained there. Outsized figures groaned against them, waging a doomed campaign to sway them from their places. Down on the slope, the surviving Chelborg Archers rallied, setting arrows in their bows. The ambushers scurried and dropped from view. Missiles arced up to the plateau and they caromed off rocks or lodged in grassy clods of earth. The attackers might be pinned down by the Chelborg fusillade, but, so long as they stayed flat, would not be struck by it.