by Ian Irvine
‘Kill it, quick!’
He had left Vivimord’s sabre back in his tent. Nish snatched a knife from his hip sheath and slashed at the creature, which blasted again and shot up out of reach. Gi ran underneath and tried to whack it out of the air. It spat a green gob at her, just missing her face and making the grass sizzle where it landed.
Hoshi hurled his spear at it, but it slipped sideways; the spear shot past its shoulder, out over the cliff, and was lost. The creature rose higher, rocking on its spans-long batwings. Nish scanned the ground for something to throw at it.
There were no rocks – the cliff edge was solid stone. The creature gave him a knowing look, then its rear parts began to swell; once they went off, it would jet beyond reach. Gi was staring at the sizzling patch on the blackened grass, shuddering. She hadn’t seen combat before, and had no idea what to do.
Nish had seen more than he cared to remember. Running three steps, he snatched the staff out of her hand and sent it spinning up towards the beast’s leathery right wing, too large a target to miss. The brass cap punched straight through the soft leather of its wing membrane and the spinning staff shattered the gracile bones. The creature dropped sharply and couldn’t recover. It spun down, just missing the cliff and the fisherwomen’s basket directly below it, and smacked into the water beside the defunct whirlpool.
It floated there on its spread wings, struggling to move, until a dark shape came up underneath it and, without ever breaking the surface, pulled it down. The ship unfurled its red sails and turned away.
‘Well done, Deliverer,’ said Gi, retrieving her staff and wiping it on the grass. ‘Sorry. I should have thought of that.’
‘Nish,’ he said absently. ‘Call me Nish.’ No one said ‘Surr’ in Gendrigore. His eyes followed the ship until it disappeared in the haze, and he could not help thinking that the beast had already reported his presence here.
The runners returned, along with local volunteers and promises of more, a total of fifteen hundred men from the three provinces of Gendrigore. From what Nish knew of The Spine, and the crude mud-maps he had seen, he was cautiously optimistic that fifteen hundred would be enough, even if not all of them could reach Blisterbone Pass. If he could get most there in time, and hold it for a week or two, the really wet season would isolate Gendrigore for half a year, and in that time, anything could happen.
The local militia, as yet barely three hundred strong, was poorly armed and virtually untrained, but he had run out of time. They were to rendezvous in the foothills leading up to The Spine with two other small militia sent from the southern and eastern provinces, Gendri and Rigore, in six days.
The weather was perfect for marching, overcast and relatively mild, but they made slow progress, for Nish’s troops took neither the threat, the march nor his training seriously. Every village broached barrels of beer, mead or fruit wine in their honour, and the revelry went on until late in the night. It proved impossible to rouse them early each morning, and even old Tulitine, who set out not long after dawn, was waiting in the next camp before the limping, sore-headed militia reached it. His only consolation was that the numbers swelled daily and he would have his full complement of five hundred by the time they reached the rendezvous point, Wily’s Clearing.
On the fifth afternoon of their march Nish had just given orders for the setting up of the camp when a young man burst from the forest above them, looking around wildly. His breath came in ragged gasps and he was so thickly coated in mud that he might have been dragged through a buffalo wallow.
He looked frantically back and forth, gasping and trying to speak, until someone pointed him in Nish’s direction. Nish started to run to him but stopped and, holding himself upright like the experienced and unflappable captain he must appear to be, strode across.
‘I’m Cryl-Nish Hlar, called Nish,’ he said. ‘Captain of the militia. Do you have a message for me, lad?’
‘Name’s Ekko. Been on watch – lookout – Blisterbone. Barquine –’ Ekko folded over, so exhausted that he was slurring his words.
Gi crouched beside him, listening to the gibberish. ‘He says, er … Barquine sent a carrier dove to his village, Nilvi, two weeks ago, ordering the watch, since Nilvi is closest of all to the pass.’
So Barquine had taken Nish’s warnings seriously after all; at least, seriously enough to keep a lookout for the enemy. ‘What did you see?’ said Nish, as more people ran across, until they were surrounded by most of the militia.
‘Watch-fire on Titan’s Peak, three days ago,’ gasped Ekko, ‘then on Currency Crag. The alarm. War –’ He bent double again and brought up a dribble of green vomit. ‘War is coming to Gendrigore.’
Ekko shuddered and stood up; he was extremely thin, covered in bruises, and his skin was loose, as if he’d lost a lot of weight in a short time. His eyes were deeply sunken, his nostrils crusted, and every bit of skin was lumpy with insect bites.
Nish had been expecting such news, but the desperation in the young man’s eyes shook him. ‘We thought as much lad. We’re prepared.’
Ekko looked around at the staring youths, then brought up more muck. ‘The God-Emperor’s troops are as numberless as the leaves of the forest. Where is our army?’
Chills radiated out from the middle of Nish’s back. ‘This is it; well, a third of it.’
Ekko looked at the motley woodcutters and peasants armed with home-made bows, spears, axes and a few rusty swords, then collapsed. ‘All lost,’ he whispered. ‘All – lost.’
Tulitine bent over the lad, then shook her head and called for a stretcher. ‘By the look of him, he was a well-built fellow when he left home. Now he’ll be lucky to last the night.’
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘He’s run all the way from the lookout at Blisterbone, the best part of twenty leagues, and he can’t have stopped for four days, up mountain and down, over some of the roughest country in the world. Hadn’t you better get this rabble into shape?’
‘I will,’ Nish said grimly. ‘There’ll be no drinking or wenching tonight.’
‘See you set a good example, then.’
The militia were quiet now; too quiet. ‘They need something to do,’ Nish said to Gi and Hoshi after Ekko had been carried to the healers tent. ‘We’ll have target practice with bows and spears, but first I’m going to round up all the grog and tip it in the river, and send the camp followers packing.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Nish,’ said Hoshi. ‘Collect their grog, yes, and put a trusted guard on it, but if you throw it out …’
‘They’ll mutiny?’ said Nish, a dangerous glint in his eye. ‘During the war against the lyrinx, the penalty for mutiny was death.’
‘They won’t mutiny,’ said Gi, carefully cutting half an ell from her black hair with a long knife. ‘They’ll just go home.’
‘Desertion in the face of the enemy is as bad as mutiny, and the penalty –’
‘Is death,’ said Gi. ‘That’s your answer for every problem, Nish –’
‘It’s not my answer,’ he snapped. ‘It’s the way war has to be, to defeat the enemy.’
‘It’s not our way,’ said Hoshi. ‘We don’t glory in war the way you do – Gendrigore has always taken care of our enemies.’
Nish gritted his teeth and reminded himself that he was a guest in this land, and the self-appointed captain of an army they’d never wanted to form. ‘Not even Gendrigore can take care of my father. The whole world answers to his command, and whatever he wants, he gets.’
‘And he wants you most of all,’ said Gi quietly. ‘Perhaps you should give yourself up to your father, Nish, and we can all go home again.’
‘I did not order Vivimord put to death; Gendrigore did.’ Nish knew it was a weak thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth. If he hadn’t come to Gendrigore, it wouldn’t be threatened now. ‘Gendrigore has shown itself to be rebellious and Father will be out to crush it whether he gets me or not.’
‘What good will crush
ing us do him?’ said Gi, puzzled.
‘To exercise power over the lives and deaths of others is Father’s greatest pleasure.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s the way some powerful men are. Believe me, I’ve seen it too many times.’
‘I do believe you, and it still doesn’t make any sense. Besides, Vivimord is dead. Your father can’t know what happened to him.’
‘We never saw the body.’
‘He was eaten.’
‘With great wizards, you always have to see the body,’ said Nish, repeating Tulitine’s words. They made plenty of sense now. ‘And the Maelstrom of Justice and Retribution disappeared, which seems a very bad omen to me.’
‘You don’t know Gendrigore, Nish,’ she said softly. ‘That’s not how we read omens here.’
‘How would you read them?’
‘The whirlpool is gone, but there is another whirlpool. Life goes on. Justice has been done and your father cannot know what happened to his friend.’
‘Of course he can. The whole of Gendrigore was talking about the execution weeks ago, and father has secret spies and watching devices everywhere on Lauralin; even here. He will know.’
‘Now you’re frightening me,’ Gi said. ‘I will gather up all the drink and guard it myself.’ She turned away, young, afraid and out of her depth, but determined to do her best. That’s what Gendrigoreans were like and he loved them for it.
‘Let’s get the targets set up,’ said Nish to Hoshi. ‘We’ve still got an hour of daylight.’
Hoshi carved man-sized blazes into half a dozen trees on the edge of the clearing, then organised the men into lines to fire at them. The archers fired, and mostly hit their targets, which was to be expected, since many of them lived by hunting. The men and women using slings came forwards, took aim and swung.
‘Only one hit out of eighteen,’ said Hoshi, inspecting the targets. ‘Still, early days yet, Nish.’
‘They’ve got a full week to learn how to throw, so there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Very good,’ Hoshi said with a flash of white teeth. He’d missed the sarcasm. ‘First rank of spearmen, come forwards.’
Thirty men, and a few women, ambled up. One was picking his teeth, another his nose, while a third was whistling so loudly that he could have been heard a hundred paces into the forest. Another group were chattering among themselves as if they were going to a party.
Nish felt like banging their heads on the targets. In the days of the war, the men under him had followed his orders without question, for everyone in Lauralin, from the smallest child up, had been used to the unrelenting discipline of the scrutators. How was he supposed to impose his authority on a people unused to discipline, when he had no authority in this land? There had to be a way to get through to them, but he couldn’t think of one.
‘Spearmen, throw your spears,’ said Hoshi.
Only five spears hit their targets, and two spearheads shattered on impact. Nish frowned. ‘I wouldn’t have thought the trees were that hard. Just as well the others missed, eh?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Hoshi, giving him a puzzled glance. He did not know what was wrong.
The second row of spearmen advanced to the line. Nish was heading for the targets to check the spears when Hoshi roared, ‘Stop, you fools!’
Nish dropped flat as a flight of spears whistled overhead, all but three spraying to either side of the targets. Another spearhead shattered. He remained on the ground until a red-faced and abashed Hoshi had routed the spearmen, then Nish directed them a furious glare and went to the targets. Hoshi came trotting after him, along with Forzel, a tall, handsome joker who was always immaculate. Everyone else wore homespun, but Forzel was clad in fine cottons and wore a silk kerchief around his neck.
‘Who made this rubbish?’ Nish said furiously, holding up one of the broken spears. The long, leaf-shaped blade had shattered halfway down. ‘The steel isn’t tempered properly.’ The broken metal tip had a rough, crystalline inner surface. ‘It’s not steel at all … it looks like cast iron. You can’t make spear heads out of cast iron.’
‘It won’t shatter on a man’s flesh, Nish,’ said Hoshi defensively. ‘It’ll kill him dead and all.’
‘Unless he’s wearing armour,’ said Nish, grinding his teeth, ‘and Father’s men will wear chest plates at the pass, where it’s cool. Hoshi, this won’t do. The spearmen need a lot of practice, but at this rate they’ll have broken all their spears before we set eyes on the enemy.’
‘We could take the heads off and just throw the shafts,’ Hoshi said brightly.
‘The balance and weight will be wrong. When they have to throw the real thing, they’ll throw short.’
‘Then we’ll make straw men for targets and hang them from the branches.’
‘Good idea; at least the spearmen can get in some practice tomorrow afternoon.’ He raised his voice. ‘Slingers, aim and fire.’
This time none of them hit their targets.
‘Forzel,’ said Nish, ‘keep them at it as long as there’s light.’
He walked away, trying to calm himself, but the pain in his gut was back, worse than ever.
‘It’ll be all right on the day,’ Hoshi said encouragingly. ‘What else could possibly go wrong?’
And that was the worst omen of all.
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘Where the devil is Maelys?’ said Flydd, looking around irritably.
‘It’s not like her to get lost,’ said Colm from behind him.
‘It’s just like her to get lost, actually. Maelys was always going off on her own when she travelled with Nish, and for someone who pretends to be so meek and mild, she’s got a reckless streak.’
Flydd turned, cursing her under his breath, though it was his fault. He’d pressed on too quickly, and she might easily have taken a wrong turn in this blackness.
Clap.
Colm nudged his arm. ‘Whelm!’ he whispered.
‘And not far from the junction of the three corridors, I’d say.’
Flydd began to ease his way along the wall. They were on the side of the tower shaded from the moon now, and there was no light at all, but he had a feeling that there was more than one Whelm at the other end.
He put his ear to the wall and subvocalised a spell of enhancement, hoping it would work. You never knew in a place like this, pervaded by another mancer’s Arts.
‘There’s an odd tang in the air,’ said a thick-voiced Whelm, a male. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Our master is hard at work in her eyrie,’ said a woman with a husky voice. ‘Never question our master’s work.’
‘I do not,’ the first Whelm said hastily. ‘But the master looked shaken after she questioned the black-haired girl.’
‘Because the Nightland still exists?’ asked the woman.
‘No – because there’s someone hiding in it.’
‘Did you hear that?’ whispered Colm.
‘I wondered why Maelys was behaving so oddly,’ Flydd said quietly.
‘She was distracted for ages after she got lost in the Nightland.’
‘So she met someone there and kept it from me, the stupid little cow. I’ll kill her!’
The Whelm female spoke again. ‘There’s an odd smell in the air. It’s that old conjuror, Flydd.’
‘Old conjuror indeed!’ sniffed Flydd. ‘If they come this way I’ll conjure the very life out of them.’
‘Run and check on the prisoners!’ cried the thick-voiced male. ‘I’ll search these passages.’
Flydd cursed. ‘They’ll soon discover my holes in the walls.’
Before they could move, a tocsin pealed in the distance. ‘We’ll never get back to Maelys now,’ said Flydd. ‘This way.’ He turned down the corridor, trailing his fingers along the wall.
Colm grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘We can’t leave her, Flydd.’
‘I thought you despised her.’
‘I do, but I’m not the kind of man to l
eave a companion behind.’
‘Neither am I; but we can’t fight seven hundred Whelm on our own.’
‘Then what’s the plan?’ Colm hissed.
‘We rouse the other prisoners and fight our way out. In that diversion, we may be able to find Maelys.’ Flydd pulled free and pressed on.
He nearly fell down a set of steps, cursed and felt his way below, trying to make no noise. ‘Get a move on,’ he muttered at the bottom. ‘There’ll be Whelm everywhere in a minute.’
‘It goes four ways here. Which way?’
‘Hmm,’ said Flydd. ‘I lay awake for most of the night, making a mental plan of the tower. The hall of the bloodline registers was on the left at the bottom, and the rooms with all the preserved bodies further on, then down. The level below that surely holds the prisoner’s cells and, if there are guards, we’ll have to overpower them as quietly as possible, then free the prisoners and run.’
‘If they’ve been here for years, they’ll be as cowed as slaves.’
‘They’re all we’ve got.’
Shortly they reached the hall of the bloodline registers and hurried through its darkness. The spines of the individual registers glowed green all around them. Despite his words, Flydd was fretting about Maelys as they pushed through the doors at the other end, then into the chambers with all the jars and coffins. The ice-clear lids shone a milky yellow, eerily illuminating the faces and bodies below.
What single-minded determination the Numinator must have, Flydd thought, to have followed her plan all this time, every idea and action directed to a single purpose. Not even the destruction of the nodes had stopped her. He could admire her for that, if nothing else.
He reminded himself of the scars she had given him, and the pain he would not forget even if he took renewal a dozen times. No, he had to put all extraneous thoughts out of mind and concentrate on breaking out of here. With his flask of chthonic flame, and the mimemule, that was still possible, but what then? Noom was unrelentingly harsh, and almost impossible to survive during the winter.
