by Glenda Larke
“El,” Dibble whispered. “I think we’re the only ones left alive.” He gazed around, troubled. No one was stirring and the cries and grunts of the wounded were stilled. “And we didn’t kill most of them.”
“No.”
They both climbed wearily to their feet. Elmar leaned heavily on his staff, with Dibble supporting him under one arm. He could not have battered away anything larger than a butterfly right then; it was all he could do to stand upright.
“Elmar,” one of the two riders said, as the last of the mist drifted away, “it’s all right. Sit down before you fall. We’ll attend to any problems left here.”
He gaped. And sat down so suddenly he nearly pulled Dibble off his feet.
I’m delirious, he thought. He blinked, but the man coming towards him was indubitably Lord Jasper Bloodstone. Who should have been back stormshifting in the Quartern. Finally he blurted, “Lord Jasper! What the weeping hells are you doing here?”
“Saving your disrespectful arse, I hope. Although by the way you’re bleeding over everything, I’m not so sure.”
“Lord Jasper?” the other man asked, turning to look at the Cloudmaster.
“Ah, well, yes, actually. I’ll explain that later.”
“Yes, I rather think you’d better!”
“Umber, there’s one still alive over there…”
“Lord Jet,” the other man replied, without even looking at the fallen waterlord as he dismounted. “I think he might still be breathing.”
He’s the watergiver, Elmar thought. And one who knows Lord Jet, too.
The man called Umber walked unerringly to where Jet still lay. With an ease that spoke of a confident familiarity with his mount, Jasper dismounted. Elmar rested by the roadside, his head spinning, feeling sick.
“I’ve tied up the arm,” Dibble said, “But it really needs stitching, I think. The leg’s not so bad.”
Umber looked up from where he was kneeling by Jet’s prone body. “Fractured skull, I would think. He may make it.”
Who the sandhells is he? Elmar grimaced. Pain was finally making itself felt, and he couldn’t decide which injury hurt the most.
“No chance,” Jasper said. He started to draw his sword.
“No need,” Umber said. He sounded surprisingly cheerful. “Never did think he was much of a human being.”
Then, as they all watched, Jet’s body shrank. His bones danced and jerked as his flesh and sinew dried. His water melted the snow around him, until he was a twisted carcass, as dry as carrion scorched in the sun and draped with his clothing, in a patch of bare earth. The cloud of vapour that had been his life wisped away in the wind.
Dibble looked utterly shocked.
Umber grinned at him. “Easy when a waterlord is unconscious.”
“I was told he tried to kill Terelle,” Jasper said, unrepentant. Without sparing Jet a further glance, he cut away some cloth from the garb of one of the dead to bandage Elmar’s leg.
Sunlord save us, Elmar thought. Has the Cloudmaster found us another stormlord?
“Umber and I will throw the bodies off the road into the ravine,” Jasper continued. “Better do that first in case someone comes. Dibble, see what you can do about the alpiners. Perhaps we could keep two for you and Elmar, then unsaddle the rest and set them free to find their own way home?”
“Not if home is Verdigris Manor,” Umber said. “We don’t want any hint of this getting back there as a warning that we’re on our way. I’ll check their branding.”
Half-unconscious with fatigue and pain and blood loss, wrapped against the cold in his own cloak as well as Jasper’s, Elmar watched as the large man checked the alpiners he and Dibble managed to catch, decided they were all army mounts from the Southern Marches, and shooed all but two of them further down the track by lobbing snowballs at them.
He was no longer sure what was real.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Red Quarter
Dune Singing Shifter
God’s Pellets
If only we had rainlords.
How many times had he wished that in the past half-cycle or so? Kaneth wasn’t sure, but too many to count. His requests to the Cloudmaster had been in vain; Jasper had replied saying there simply weren’t enough rainlords in the Quartern. Those they had didn’t want to come to the Red Quarter. And Jasper wasn’t going to force them.
I wish they knew what the Red Quarter is like, he thought. Hauntingly beautiful, a tough red land that spoke to anyone who loved to ride and hunt, a place for a man who didn’t like hard streets beneath his feet and walls blocking the view, for a woman who liked the open skies, for people who liked the idea that children could never be born without the right to water. A world where the youngsters ran free as they grew.
He smiled, amused. It was also a place where a man like Kaneth Carnelian was prompted into the poetical. Still, who would blame him if they could see things like this? His pede, Burnish, had topped the rise of a dune, and he was looking across the expanse of Dune Singing Shifter. Fire creepers covered the slope in front of him, their ruby blossoms spilling like gemstones down the incline. In between the creepers, the furry white flowers of the smoke-bush were ruffled by the breeze. He listened, expecting the gusts to bring the wispy sound of the dune wren’s song from a perch at the top of a prickly bush.
But there was only silence.
His body tautened. His hand dropped to his scabbard and he loosened the tie at the top to make his scimitar easily accessible. Next to him, Cleve drew rein. Burnish greeted the newcomer pede with its feelers.
“You see something?” Cleve asked quietly.
“More what I don’t hear. The birds are silent. Signal to expect an encounter.”
Cleve raised his hand to make the signs, while Kaneth scanned the bushes ahead, peering into the folds and twists of the sand valleys. “Must be over the next rise,” Cleve murmured. “I can’t see anyone from here, but there are bodies of living water out there.”
“How many?”
The man shrugged. He may have been a water sensitive, but Kaneth already had ample evidence that he wasn’t a particularly good one, although his mother thought otherwise.
“Want me to take a look on foot?” Cleve asked.
He nodded. “Take two men with you. Leave your pedes at the base of the slope. And remember they may sense you.” And how I wish we had a rainlord! He thought of Ryka, safe back in God’s Pellets, and pushed the thought away. Let’s hope their sensitives, if they have them, are no better at the details than Cleve…
Cleve signalled two of the warriors to leave their own pedes and mount up behind him. No one spoke; from now on they would use only signs. The three men rode into the valley, dismounted, hobbled the pede’s antennae and began to climb the opposite slope.
He’s good, Kaneth thought. Just as good as Elmar, although he doesn’t have the experience yet. So why don’t I like him much?
The answer came swiftly. Because I don’t trust him.
And yet the man had never given him reason to wonder about his trustworthiness. He’d killed enough of Ravard’s men to prove himself several times over. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Gesturing for the rest of the troop to follow—thirty men, five myriapedes besides his own—Kaneth urged Burnish down into the dune vale. After hobbling the two packpedes and leaving them behind to graze, he deployed the troop in a line halfway up the slope to the next rise. He himself sat alone on his pede in the centre. He watched as Cleve, with his two men well spaced, approached the crest of the dune. Uneasiness lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He hefted his spear. Behind him, his men did likewise.
Before Cleve was able to peer over the edge, the whole ridge vanished behind a wall of heaving pedes and armed men.
Weeping shit, Kaneth thought. The bastards must have had a sensitive, too. They’d been waiting just on the other side of the crest. He stood, foot wedged under the saddle handle for stability.
Wait for
the moment. Time it right. Wait… Now!
He launched his chala spear at the driver of the pede bearing down on him. It ripped out the man’s throat. Blood spurted, a shower of it. The pede, a young one, balked, then reared. It didn’t like the smell. Two of its riders were unseated; all the spears thrown flew wild.
And then he was in the middle of a whirling mass of men and pedes and flashing scimitars. Thought didn’t exist any more, only reaction. And determination that he wasn’t going to die, not this time. Yet somewhere he must have been noticing the things that mattered: how many pedes they had, how many men—and who their leader was. Not Ravard. A bald man. Probably a fellow nicknamed Redpate then, a pedemaster from one of the nearby tribes of the dune. Their numbers were evenly matched with his God’s Pellets troop, but the attackers had the advantage of the higher ground.
“’Ware ziggers!” someone yelled.
A high-pitched shriek in the air, rising still higher. No, not one, several shrieks. The heart-stopping, fear-inducing shrilling of ziggers on the move. Shrivelled hells. Were these tribesmen sand-witted? In close combat, a zigger was easily confused and didn’t much care whose nose or eye it ripped open.
No time to worry about it.
If he died, he died.
A screaming red figure leaped from a pede onto Burnish, jabbing spear in hand. Kaneth flicked the reins and Burnish slewed. The warrior was jerked off balance. With his pede prod, Kaneth parried the clumsy thrust coming his way. He tucked the reins into his belt and drew his scimitar. With a savage swipe of the blade, he slashed at the man’s wrist, almost severing his hand. In silent shock, the warrior toppled.
Unrestrained, Burnish bolted free of the melee. It took Kaneth a moment to retrieve the reins and haul the animal back into the fray. At least the manoeuvre gave him a clear view of the battle. It wasn’t going well.
A zigger homed in on him. He whipped his palmubra from his head and slammed the beetle into the hard segments of his pede. He saw one of his warriors cut another zigger in two with his sword; not a bad stroke from the back of a pede in the middle of the battle. Bleeding miraculous, in fact. He couldn’t hear any more of the little monsters.
His gaze sought and found Cleve. He was still on the ground, attacking the enemy tribesmen from below by hacking at their legs. Effective, especially when their pedes were fully loaded with riders and therefore sluggish. Dangerous, though. A pede used its mouthparts as weapons.
Yelling the man’s name, he gained Cleve’s attention and signalled him to kill Redpate’s mount. Cleve hesitated. Annoyed, Kaneth tried to approach closer, but the pede was flanked by others and no one was slipping through. He yanked Burnish to a halt and, needing more mobility, leaped to the ground, scimitar in one hand, jabbing spear in the other. He dodged through the battle seeking Redpate’s mount, then attacked it head on. It sought to run him down, so he ducked first under the flailing feelers, then dived to the ground, rolling onto his back with his jabbing spear held to deflect the snapping mouthparts. The pede couldn’t stop in time and it flowed over him, instinctively drawing its low-slung body upwards by straightening and pulling its legs inwards.
The soft belly was an arm’s length above his prone body as it passed. When the last segment brushed overhead, he jabbed his scimitar up and used the momentum of the beast to rip it open. The blade was wrenched out of his hand. Hot guts spilled, writhing like worms, rich-smelling, dragging through the bushes. The beast bellowed and reared, throwing itself sideways. Kaneth emerged from under the rear end, nicked by a sharp-pointed foot. He jumped to his feet and looked back.
The wounded pede thrashed. Its riders toppled. It flung its feelers around, slicing through the fallen. Redpate scrambled out of the way, his face white with shock. Kaneth felt a moment’s pity as he spun his dagger into the man’s neck and watched him topple. To make sure he was dead, Kaneth grabbed up a fallen scimitar and slit his throat. Glancing around, he saw Cleve dodging the whiplash of the antennae as he fought another of the unseated men. Before Kaneth could go to his aid, Cleve finished him off. Another armsman put the pede out of its misery.
“Dune god save you, Sandmaster,” Cleve said, as they ran for Burnish. “You should’ve been squashed as flat as a sand-louse.” It could have been a joke, but the deep anger in the man’s voice told Kaneth otherwise. Another thing he needed to think about when he had time.
“Sound the retreat,” he said as Cleve mounted behind him.
“Why? We got them beat!”
With an effort, he restrained himself and the sharp retort on the tip of his tongue died unspoken. “Do it.” As he swung Burnish back towards the bottom of the gully, Cleve unslung the bullroarer from where it hung on the carapace. Kaneth slowed briefly to give another of his own unseated warriors a chance to climb up. The man grinned his thanks.
As they rode on, the bullroarer circled over his head with the rhythmic sound unique to the tribe of God’s Pellets. His men pulled out of the fight, and the attackers let them go. The fatal wounding of the pede and the death of their leader had turned the outcome of the battle Kaneth’s way, as he’d known it would. As far as he could see, the attackers had no extra mount to replace the one that had been lost, and Redpate’s death had rocked them. He suspected they had been on a day’s foray out from their encampment, perhaps just a hunting trip, when they had sensed the God’s Pellets men.
Once Kaneth reached Cleve’s pede, he halted to let him dismount and to wait for everyone to reassemble. “What happened to the rest of the ziggers?” he asked.
“It was an accidentally broken cage,” one of the men replied. “I think most of them were squashed, lucky for us. One of their own men got one in the ear.” He grinned and added, “Serves him right.”
“Are we missing anyone?”
“Yes, Benwith,” another said, naming one of the men Cleve had taken on foot to the ridge.
“You certain?” Kaneth asked.
“Unless you can live with a spearhead buried to the haft in your eye.”
“Blast it. That was rough luck. He’d just got married too.” Pedeshit, I hate that. He would never get used to it, never. “Any others?”
“Pol here has a broken arm,” Cleve said. “And his brother was smashed in the mouth with a pede prod. Lost some teeth.”
Before he could respond, a pale-faced Pol said, “The lad, Guyden. He fell off my mount right early and I lost sight of him.”
“Anyone see what happened to him?” Kaneth asked.
“I can see those white beads of his,” one of the men replied. “They’ve put him up on one of their pedes—look!”
Kaneth stared back at where Redpate’s men were still milling around what had been a battlefield, collecting the wounded. One thing, with those damned white beads of his, Guyden was easy enough to spot. He sighed. “Right. Let’s go get him. Pol, you and your brother wait here.” Everyone knew his policy: it was paramount that prisoners be either rescued or killed. They couldn’t afford to have someone tortured to reveal the secrets of God’s Pellets.
“Crescent!” he shouted, indicating the configuration he wanted. “We’ll try talking first.” He took the centre and as they advanced upwards, the pedes on the two wings paced faster and further out until they cupped the attackers. Kaneth pulled off his tunic, wrapped it around his scimitar and held it high as a sign they were ready to parley.
The warriors mounted as they approached, neither showing aggression nor accepting the parley by similarly sheathing a scimitar.
Kaneth halted some distance away. He spoke into the silence. “I am Lord Kaneth Carnelian, otherwise known as Kher Uthardim.” Glibly lying, he added, “I can take your water.” While speaking, he glanced to where Guyden was mounted, apparently unharmed.
“Give us the lad and we’ll let you return to your camp.”
The men exchanged glances, hesitating, then one of the older warriors gave a nod, and gestured to Guyden. The lad dismounted and ran to climb up behind Cleve. Kaneth signalled his men to l
eave. He waited until they were clear, but still didn’t move himself. He had no intention of turning his back on any of their attackers and he just had to hope that none of them called his bluff. There was no way he could take anyone’s water, although he supposed he could move the sand under their feet—and probably bring the whole dune down on top of himself as well.
They took the hint and urged their mounts up the slope, bearing their dead with them. When only the slaughtered pede was left to mark the battlefield, Kaneth rode after his men. Sometimes, he reflected, it was handy to have your enemies scared of you.
The troop arrived back at God’s Pellets just as the sun was setting the next day. Burnish was about to enter the canyon leading to the inner valley when Cleve dismounted, sent his pede onwards with his riders and approached Kaneth to ask if they could talk. Kaneth curbed his annoyance; he wanted to see Ryka and Kedri. He wanted a bath and a meal and time to be with his family. But the young warrior had been brooding ever since the fight on Dune Singing Shifter, and he knew he had to deal with it now, or face worse problems later.
“Of course,” he said, then added with slight hope, “if you feel it can’t wait.”
Heedless of the irritation in Kaneth’s voice, Cleve continued, “You know what will happen the moment we enter the camp. My mother will hover and Lord Ryka and your son will have all your attention. But I need to ask you to explain why you did what you did on Dune Singing Shifter.”
“Very well.” He gestured to the driver on the pede behind him to lead the way in, saying, “Tell the camp Cleve and I will be there shortly.” He stayed where he was as the others filed past into the canyon. “I’m guessing you want to know why I asked you to kill the pede.”
“More than that.”
“Well, get it off your chest and we’ll talk about it. We’ll walk the canyon.” He tied the reins to the saddle handle and slid down to the ground. He poked Burnish with his prod and it ambled happily after the others in its meddle, dreaming perhaps of green grass and rest and as much water as it could drink.
