by GJ Kelly
“Dwarfspit. Listen.”
Insects buzzed, leaves rustled in the breezes, birds chirped and fluttered cheerfully about their business. Gawain eyed them, and chewed his lip. A sudden clapping of wings and a pigeon zoomed overhead, flapped along the avenue, and after thirty or forty yards and a hasty thrapping back-wing, settled on a bough.
Still, there was no repeat of the vague and distant sound they’d heard.
“If there is a third army here in the south, we need to know for certain.”
“If there is, Longsword, knowing about it and telling others of its existence are two distinctly separate challenges.”
“How far to the outskirts of the city do you think we are, Arramin?”
The elderly wizard cast a brief glance up through the canopy. “Two to three hours, my lord, though I confess I cannot be certain. I fear the medicine has left my mind a little sluggish.”
“It’ll pass,” Gawain muttered, remembering his own experience with the Eeelan t’oth.
Horses and their mounts waited in silence while Gawain watched the distant pigeon, pondering his decision. Their lives of course depended on the outcome of his deliberations. So too, possibly, countless more lives, anxiously awaiting his arrival to lead them against the dark armies in the north.
How will I know if I’ve made the right decision? A much younger Gawain’s voice asked inside his head, and the long-dead Captain Hass of the One Thousand took another sip of brandy before replying with a twinkle in his rheumy eyes:
All decisions are the right decisions, your Highness. If the outcome isn’t quite what you expected, why then, that’s when you must be creative once more, or simply make another decision according to the new information and circumstances you now possess.
But won’t the men know I’ve made an error, and lose their confidence in me?
No. Your men will follow you. If you tell them, there, over there is where we shall go, and find when you get there that a different place would be preferable, then you simply announce, well done men, now follow me over there!
And they will follow?
Yes. Unless they see that you have doubts, or see you falter or hesitate too long. How can you expect men to trust you if you don’t trust yourself?
“We’ll advance, with caution. Pickets and patrols we can cope with well enough should we come across any.”
If anyone had any doubts no-one voiced them, and at once, Elayeen eased her horse forward, the rest following. At their approach, the pigeon Gawain had been idly watching clapped its wings and flew back over their heads, south down the avenue.
The road seemed darker, the gloom around them deeper since the distant noise had brought them to a halt. Gawain glanced up at the canopy, and knew that in fact the light was probably the same as it had been for the whole of their journey along the avenue through the trees. Apprehension and caution, he knew, could dull senses as well as sharpen them. But there was nothing to cause apprehension now, there’d been nothing since that sound, no sign of an enemy, no sounds that shouldn’t be there, no Eldengaze rasping a warning of approaching darkness.
While it might make sense for an enemy to languish in their encampment and trust their defence entirely to a patrol of Kiromok, it didn’t make sense that the broad avenue had shown no signs of use at all. What commander would not make use of the ancient thoroughfare for hunting, scouting and spying, or even if for nothing else, use of the baths?
The army encamped in the Barak-nor in the far northeast, deprived of all natural foods, was even now subsisting on the most evil of diets transported there by the wagon-load from the far west. An army encamped at Calhaneth would avail themselves of woodland fare and leave traces of their hunting, especially on a broad path which ran almost arrow-straight and unobstructed for miles. A quick glance over his shoulder was all Gawain needed to reassure himself on that point, the tracks and churning of leaf litter and humus left in the wake of a dozen horses were clear to see, as clear as the scent of fresh-turned debris carried in the breezes from the south. Even the tracks of the Kiromok had swung off to the northwest a mile or so from the baths, leaving virgin forest floor, perhaps undisturbed for centuries.
Yet the sound had been there. Tyrane’s description wasn’t far off the mark, it had sounded like a throng cheering at a far-off tourney. Or an army hailing a general’s speech. Perhaps even a battle, though a short-lived one, unless the battle had raged and the wind carried the cries of men and horses away from them.
Gawain was suddenly aware of Allazar staring at him across the packhorses from his position on the left flank. “What is it?” he whispered.
“I was going to ask the same thing of you, Longsword,” Allazar whispered back.
“Oh. I was simply realising how effective the Kiromok is at denying territory. Even when there isn’t one there, you start thinking as though there were.”
“It is an insidious weapon.”
“And but for that sound, we’d be moving twice as fast as this.”
Allazar made no reply, it was clear that Gawain was thinking out loud.
Half a mile further along the avenue, Gawain called a halt.
“I’m moving ahead, about a mile or so. Rollaf, with me if you please. Elayeen, wait a few minutes, then continue at the walk. Keep a sharp watch. After about half an hour or so, proceed at the trot until you join me up ahead.”
“Something we should know, my lord?” Tyrane asked quietly.
“Something I want to check. I grow tired of territory being denied me by fear of Morloch’s spawn.”
Gawain dismounted, and with a pat on the neck for Gwyn, set off into the woods to the east of the avenue, Rollaf hard on his heels. They ran quickly and nimbly, just as they had when hunting the Kraal in the forest south of Jarn, and Gawain knew that the tall and wiry former poacher would have no trouble keeping up and moving quietly. It was certainly darker in the woodland away from the ancient road, but with nothing more troublesome than occasional fallen branches to navigate underfoot, they loped along at a brisk pace, rapidly putting distance between themselves and the rest of the group on the road.
Once they’d settled into the rhythm of the run, their breathing deeper but far from strained, Gawain began measuring time and distance by his footfalls, counting the trees as they passed, the gap between them quite regular, the forest here older than the road, older even than Calhaneth. Here, in the twilight world of the deep and ancient woodland, there was too little light for young trees to sprout and grow to challenge the authority of the old. Here, the old must first die, and clear a space in the sky with their passing before new growth could hope to rise up through countless years of leaf fall and fight for their place in the sunlight.
After twenty minutes, Gawain slowed to a walk, motioning Rollaf alongside him.
“No sign of anything. Nothing bigger than birds.”
Rollaf shook his head. “Ain’t right.”
“No. No sounds that shouldn’t be here either. Come on. I want a good two miles between us and the horses.”
And with that, they began running again, until Gawain decided the distance between themselves and Elayeen at the front of the group was sufficient. Then he swung west until they emerged onto the road again, and came to a halt. Gawain gave a brief hand-signal, and while their breathing slowed, they examined the ground underfoot. Fungi, lichen, leaves reduced to crumbling skeletons, and beneath them, rotting and decaying, rich, dark and earthy humus. And no sign whatsoever that any foot, hoof or wheel had ever passed this way. A glance at Rollaf told Gawain that the poacher was thinking the same thing as he.
“I know, my friend. It ain’t right.”
Rollaf nodded.
Gawain and the former poacher stood, and looked to the south, waiting for the group. They were still a long way off, unseen and unheard.
“See ‘em before we hear ‘em milord,” Rollaf whispered.
“Aye. That’s what I thought.”
And it was true. The first thing they
saw was Elayeen’s silver hair, but soon, with the light on the road brighter than in the forest proper, the whole group was visible trotting towards them. When finally the soft thudding of horses’ hooves met Gawain’s ears, he stepped a little further away from Rollaf, and waved his arms three times above his head.
When the group drew to a halt, Gwyn nickered a happy hello from the flank and bobbed her head once. Gawain glanced up at Elayeen, he careful to avoid her eyes and she his.
“How far did you see me, before I waved my arms?”
“Half a mile. Perhaps a little more. The forest is bright.”
“Thank you.”
Gawain mounted up and waited for Rollaf to do likewise. “The Kiromok must have good ears, or we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. We saw you before we heard you, and so would Morlochmen. My lady saw us long before they would, too.”
“What does this mean?” Arramin asked, when no-one else did.
“It means what it means. Before we set foot on this road, nothing had passed this way bigger than a shrew. No army has passed along this road, and no Kiromok either, not since the last carpet of autumn leaf was laid. We’ll proceed at the trot, my lady will alert us to the presence of anything likely to pose a threat.”
“You do not believe an army awaits us at Calhaneth, my lord?”
“No, Tyrane. Whatever sound it was we heard swirling through the forest on the wisp of a breeze, I do not believe it was from a dark army. Nor cheers from a tournament for ribbons and trophies.”
Gawain clicked his tongue, and they moved on at the trot. But still, in spite of Gawain’s confident assertions, ears and eyes strained to penetrate the gloom around them.
It was nearing evening when Elayeen slowed to a halt, cocking her head this way and that.
“The road ends ahead. Trees block it.”
“Wait here. Scouts with me,” Gawain whispered, and dismounted.
Terryn was deployed to the left, Rollaf to the right, and Gawain himself took the centre of the road, and they ran, nimbly and quietly, until shapes emerged from the gloom. Odd shapes, angular shapes not of nature’s making. Then, they slowed, and stooping cautiously, continued their approach. It grew lighter, the forest ahead thinner, newer, and then they saw the reason why.
They had reached the outskirts of the city of Calhaneth, and as before at the baths, trees had grown and erupted through cobbles and paving hidden below a millennia of debris. Walls collapsed, buildings unrecognisable, piles of rubble softened by centuries of leaf fall since seedling turned to sapling turned to tree. Here and there, taller and thicker walls had survived the woodland’s reclamation, and were visible for what they had once been, but weathered, crumbling, yellow lichens clinging where once perhaps tapestries had hung.
There was no sign of broad streets and avenues, no open green spaces. But a quiet click of the Terryn’s tongue drew their attention to the west, and they eased quietly towards the scout, gazing in the direction of his cocked and bolted crossbow. A statue, leaning perilously. It was being gently toppled a fraction of an inch at a time by the creeping girth of a tall and splendid darkwood tree. Lichen clung to the weathered stone, countless rains and snows and tree-baffled breezes taking their toll. In the statue’s left hand, what looked to be a trumpet or horn of some kind; in the right, held aloft and almost touching the trunk of the tree, a book; a silent stone herald calling those within earshot to come, and to learn.
With hand signals, Gawain deployed the scouts again and together they explored the vicinity, moving two hundred yards further into the ruins of the city. Finding nothing but more ruins and the going treacherous underfoot, they returned to the road, where a sweeping wave of Gawain’s arms summoned the rest of the group in the distance where they’d waited unseen in the gloom. When they had arrived, and dismounted, and stood before him, he softly announced:
“Behold, the outskirts of Calhaneth.”
There was sudden breeze, chill, which swept towards them along the avenue, and then the sound of rain spotting leaves, and it grew darker.
“We’ll camp over there,” Gawain indicated an ancient tree, broad of bole and thick of branch and leaf. It had probably grown there before the ruin of the once-great city.
“And the enemy, Longsword?”
“There is no sign. No sign of anything living save the trees.”
It wasn’t so much a camp as a hasty dumping of packs and saddles under the massive tree, and while soft rain fell, horses were watered, fed, and carefully tended. Kahla and Jaxon looked as though they had been crippled for life, and Gawain smiled in sympathy with their aches and pains. The hours of riding at the trot along the avenue must have felt to them like Gawain’s brief but agonising ride upon the Kraal’s back on the Jarn road. It did give him pause for thought, though. Assuming the canal was functional and assuming they made it to Ostinath, and assuming elves would allow them to travel along the Threnderrin Way to Shiyanath, riding at the gallop would be out of the question for the inexperienced Gorians. But that was a problem to be overcome another day and Gawain turned his attention back to Gwyn.
Once the horses were tended and resting quietly, Tyrane approached Gawain. “Do we scout deeper into the city, my lord?”
“No, the rain’s getting heavier, and it’s getting darker. There’s no need to risk it. According to Arramin, the canal lies on the north side of the city, almost directly opposite where we are now. I’ll not risk that until we have a full day’s light at our disposal.”
Tyrane nodded. “I think the wizard Arramin is a little disappointed now that we’re here.”
Gawain glanced across at the elderly wizard, sitting on his saddle wrapped in a blanket against the few drops of rain which made it through the huge blister of the ancient tree’s canopy. Arramin was gazing sad and wide-eyed into the gloom at the broken shapes between the trees, his bandaged hands resting on his bony knees and the oak staff propped against the bole behind him.
“I expect he’s carried an image of the splendour of this place all his life. Alas, Tyrane, reality seldom matches the pictures we paint in our minds.”
Capes and cloaks and blankets were drawn tighter about shoulders as the breezes stiffened and rain began teeming.
“Then let us hope we are not disappointed when we find this great water road he described, or we will have prevailed against the Kiromok for naught.”
“Agreed. Yet the baths were intact. The canal may be, also.”
“And the noise we heard, my lord?”
Gawain slung the Sword of Justice over his cloaked shoulder and glanced at the captain. “I don’t know. A trick of the wind perhaps, whistling through the ruins. Some elven artefact, maybe, or even a natural sound. I’ve heard tales of sighing caves in the southeast which on stormy nights strike fear into the hearts of ignorant travellers.”
“I know them, my lord, they are real. There is a small town there, in the bottom corner of Callodon. Port Yarris, it is called, more of a fishing village than a town I suppose. They go out in boats there, and fish the Sea of Hope. As a young officer, I was sent on the rounds of the land, and we heard that sound. It is eerie indeed, wind and wave combining to drive air through fissures and caves in the cliffs nearby. Though if you were ignorant of the reason for it as you say, my lord, aye, the noise would be unsettling indeed.”
“I think all of us will have an unsettled night tonight, Tyrane.”
“Aye, my lord.”
oOo
7. Calhaneth
The rain finally eased shortly after midnight, though sleep was difficult to come by. The slightest sound, a twig falling in the woods around them, night birds, small animals burrowing through the forest floor, all set nerves on edge on the outskirts of the ancient ruins. Only Arramin seemed oblivious to their eerie surroundings, a fresh treatment of salve on his hands, a sip of Jurian brandy, and he slept like a baby.
Night seemed interminable, each minute an hour, and each hour made all the more miserable by Elayeen’s hab
it of opening her eyes and scanning the semi-circle in front of the bole before leaning back against it and snoozing fitfully once more. Gawain was obliged to take a position to the road’s side of the immense tree, so that his ‘light’ wouldn’t block the eldengaze. Day or night, it made no difference to his blind queen.
There were, Gawain knew, only three reasons for their restlessness: the Kiromok, the sound they’d heard while on the road, and the assertions even before they’d begun their journey that ‘no-one ever goes to Calhaneth’. Well, now they were here. There’d been no sign of any dark threat, no sign that anything had visited or occupied Calhaneth in ages, and no sign of any reason for the oft-repeated taboo of travelling to the ruins. And still, even he started at every unknown noise in the night. Dawn, when it finally arrived, was met with a sigh of relief as well as a sigh of quiet remembrance for The Fallen.
While Kahla attended to Arramin’s hands, Gawain stood in the middle of the road facing the outskirts of the city, quietly chewing frak. It was a weary-looking Tyrane who approached him, a hunk of salt pork in his hand.
“Good morning, my lord.”
“Tyrane.”
“When the men have finished watering the horses we’ll give them a feed and ready them to move out.”
Gawain nodded. “There’s no rush, now that daylight is finally here.”
“Aye, and I’ve spent few nights where sunrise was as welcome as this one.”
“And yet there was probably no threat at all. Night magnifies all doubts, fears, and pains.”
“It does, my lord. But I’ll be glad to find this canal, and find it working too. These ruins are strangely oppressive no matter what the hour.”
“Good morning Longsword, Captain.”
“Allazar,” Gawain acknowledged.
“Although with the sun still so low the gloom of the forest makes for a poor dawn.”
“The Captain and I were making similar remarks. I think it might be wise to wait an hour or more before we set off. The more light we have the better when we pass through this city.”
