‘Perhaps,’ Jatal grudgingly allowed. He gestured ahead. ‘See there, through the trees? The mountains?’
Still drawing in great lungfuls of air, the giant squinted. ‘Call those mountains? Those would be regarded as no more than pimples back where I come from. Boils, perhaps, those taller ones.’
Jatal almost ventured a smile, but did not. He frowned instead, and his jaws clenched. ‘Well, that is his destination for certain. The Gangrek Mounts. He is fleeing to Himatan. He cannot know we are after him.’
‘He would not care,’ the giant said. ‘No, he must be in a rush to get somewhere – or reach someone. Remember what these villagers are saying. After the army of the Thaumaturgs passed there came a train of wagons. Huge wagons. Each pulled by eight oxen. The train guarded by fifty yakshaka. That is what he pursues. That I swear by my mother’s remaining teeth.’
‘Alone? What could he hope to accomplish?’
The half-Trell gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Perhaps he thinks himself their match? Who knows. It matters not if we catch him first.’
Jatal nodded. ‘Indeed. It matters not, as you say.’ And he added, more to himself, ‘Nothing matters any more.’ He threw himself back up on his mount though foaming sweat streaked its sides and its muscles still quivered and jumped. He slapped his blade to its wet flank to set onward once again.
Scarza watched him gallop off and shook his head, frowning. ‘Ah, lad. It hurts now, I know it. But don’t go throwing yourself away.’ He drew in a great breath and hacked up a mouthful of phlegm, spat, then took hold of the cantle of his horse and set off in the prince’s wake.
After the foreigners had gone the rest of the nearby villagers gathered round the old woman.
‘What were they?’ one asked.
‘What did they want of us?’ another demanded.
‘The first was a noble,’ she answered. ‘From the south, I believe, if tales be true. The other was his monster servant. Summoned perhaps by the shamans of the south.’
The villagers were silent in wonder at this news. They knew it must be so, for Rhyu was their birthing-woman, their healer and fortune-teller.
‘They pursue death,’ she continued, peering after them with her milky half-blind gaze. ‘And will meet him soon.’
* * *
Scarves of mist coiled among the trees and stands of ferns and brush and for this Golan was grateful. Unfortunately, the day’s gathering heat would soon burn it all off. Then little would be left to disguise the shattered and trampled wreckage that used to be the encampment of the Thaumaturg Army of Righteous Chastisement.
Golan stood beneath his canted awning surrounded by his guard of yakshaka. It had been a night of complete and utter terror and chaos – terror for his troops and labourers, gut-twisting shame for himself. What would he tell the Circle of Masters now? How could he continue the march? And yet … what other option was there? Turn round? The river was behind them now. Not at sword-point did he think he could force the troops back over that river.
No. They were trapped. They—
The truth of what he’d just realized struck him with the clarity of a mathematical solution and he was stunned by its simplicity and its beauty. Elegant. So very elegant. It was a trap. The entire jungle, all Himatan, was a trap for all those who would seek to invade. The jungle naturally defends itself.
There was more to this as well – he was certain of it. A deeper truth. Yet he could not quite reach it. His mind was dulled by his fatigue. His thoughts tramped heavy and laboured. He refocused his attention outwards, rubbed his gritty aching eyes, and took a deep breath of the warm close air.
The last of the rain was drifting down as the clouds moved off to the southwest. Shafts of gold sunlight stabbed through the canopy. The cries of the wounded had diminished through the night. Now, only a low constant moaning sounded over the field that had been a scene of insane slaughter, suicide, horror and sick revulsion. Strangely enough, though they had been rained on all through the night, the surviving wounded now called for water. Low slinking shapes still haunted the verges of the surrounding jungle. The screams and the stink of blood had drawn every night hunter for leagues around. They had gorged themselves on choice viscera – sometimes while the victims still lived. What few cohorts and phalams could be organized had done their best to chase them off. The wreckage of the encampment was emerging now through the dissolving mist and Golan looked away.
He awaited the awful news. The butcher’s bill. He steeled himself to expect the worst – all the while suspecting that even that would come nowhere near the truth of it. First to dare approach was Second-in-Command Waris. The man came dragging himself up the slight rise, quite obviously exhausted and no doubt rather traumatized by all they had gone through.
The yakshaka allowed him entrance – over the course of the last day and night they’d had to cut down several soldiers who, in their agony, panic, or plain rage, had thrown themselves at Golan. Waris knelt to one knee.
‘I offer my head, Master,’ he began.
Golan cleared his throat of the thick sticky coating of catarrh that had gathered there. He spat aside. ‘No need for that as yet, Second. This is not of your making. I take full responsibility. Your report, please.’
Waris bowed even further. ‘A portion of those troops that fled into the woods are returning even as we speak – though much diminished. Creatures attacked them there. Yet ranks are being reordered. Surviving labourers are being put to work salvaging equipment. I estimate that we will be ready to march by noon.’
Golan found himself breathing more easily. ‘Well done, Second. Well done. You have my compliments. So enter it into the records.’
‘Yes, Master.’ He remained bowed, silent.
Golan felt his chest tightening once again. ‘Yes? What else?’
‘The bodies, Master. It would take a great deal of time to bury them all. And … well, the men may refuse to touch them.’
‘Ah. I see. Well?’
‘Might I suggest we dispose of them in the river?’
Relieved that the matter was so trivial, Golan waved his switch. ‘Yes, of course. Proceed, Second.’ Waris backed away, still bowed, until clear of the circle of yakshaka, when he turned and jogged off. Good, Golan congratulated himself. The army reconstitutes itself. Shaken and much diminished, yes. But not shattered. We march on. We must. There is no alternative.
Golan’s improved mood was short-lived. Another figure approached, this one gangly and stick-thin, with a long curved neck that somehow managed to support an improbably oversized head. Golan drew a deep steadying breath and awaited the arrival of Principal Scribe Thorn.
‘You live still, Master!’ Thorn announced as he closed, a quill tucked behind one ear, the heavy bag of papers swinging at his side. ‘I rejoice. Here so many you lead have passed on yet still you remain! Thank the fates.’
‘Your joy is noted, Principal Scribe. Have you an accounting?’
The scribe drew a sheet from his shoulder bag, squinted low over it. ‘I am hardly done, of course. It will take a long time to count all those fallen. So many! Such a catastrophe. Yet you have emerged unhurt, I see. That alone makes a victory of the night, yes?’
False gods! This man does not spare me. Golan pinched the bridge of his nose and rested his gritty eyes. ‘You do have an estimate?’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘Well?’
As he studied the sheet, the man’s black tongue poked out as if it too was curious. ‘I estimate a force of some three thousand remaining serviceable labourers. Of the troops, eighteen hundred are able to march.’
Golan’s breath fled him. Their remaining labour force had been halved again. Who would carry all the stores? Cook and break camp? How could they advance?
‘Sobering numbers indeed,’ Thorn continued, peering further down the sheet. ‘Yet encouraging news exists.’
Golan could hardly credit his ears. Encouraging news? ‘What possible good news could emerge from this disast
er?’
‘There are now more than enough stores for those surviving!’
‘Yet none to carry them.’
Thorn did not miss a beat: ‘You anticipate me.’
‘I believe I am beginning to, Principal Scribe. You have a report?’
‘Quite.’ Thorn replaced the sheet and withdrew another. He peered at it myopically, pronounced: ‘Once again the Army of Righteous Chastisement emerges victorious.’
Golan found that he had to turn away, his fists clenched rigidly round the Rod of Execution. A long low breath summoned the proper Thaumaturg-taught calm. ‘At the rate of these victories we shall soon have the entire jungle conquered,’ he remarked aloud, acidly.
He heard the scraping of the quill on paper and he spun. Thorn peered up from the sheet, quill poised, mild innocence upon his narrow pinched features. ‘You have more to add, Glorious Leader?’
Through clenched teeth Golan ground out, ‘That is more than enough, I am sure.’
Thorn shrugged indifferently. ‘We are all at your mercy, Master. What are your orders?’
That you throw yourself into the river. But no, that is unfair. The fault is mine. The responsibility mine and mine alone. He drew another steadying breath, peered down at the blackwood rod with its silver chasing. He tapped it into one palm. ‘Record this, Scribe – Master Golan orders that what surplus stores and gear the bearers cannot manage be divided up among the troopers and that the army advance onward into the jungle of Himatan. So it is ordered, so it shall be.’
Thorn’s shaggy brows rose while he wrote. He finished with a firm tap to end the entry, and bowed. ‘So it shall be, Master.’
CHAPTER XIII
It was almost impossible to compel the locals to enter any ruins or abandoned villages. ‘Do you not fear the ghosts?’ they would ask. ‘There are no ghosts,’ I told them. But they disagreed. ‘Ghosts live in all dark places in Jacuruku,’ they all assured me. ‘They are under bridges, in corners, under fallen trees, in all the old villages. They are afoot and very much alive.’
Infantryman Bakar
Testimony to the Circle of Masters
MARA HEAVED HERSELF up a muddy shore to lie panting, pressed into the muck, searching the surrounding dense fronds and hanging creepers. At her feet lay the carcass of a bizarre hybrid creature. A fine dusting of metallic blue and green feathers covered its naked torso down to scaled legs ending in feet bearing claws as large as daggers. Instead of hair, long brown feathers covered its head and back like a mane while its eyes, rolled dead white now, had shone green speckled with gold. The mouth held needle teeth still red with Mara’s own blood.
Shuddering, she kicked it further away. A bird-woman! Who would have thought the legends of Jakal Viharn true! Unlike the subjects of all those fantastic stories, however, this one had no wings and could not fly. She could run like a fiend, though. Probably chase down a hound.
The jungle rang all round with the cries and screams of a running battle that had continued through the night and into the day. Feet kicked the ground nearby and Mara spun, her Warren crackling about her, sending the litter of leaves and detritus flying. A guardsman appeared, hands raised. Leuthan.
‘Are you wounded?’
She waved him away. ‘No.’
He slid down to her. ‘You can stand?’
‘I am fine!’
‘Don’t get separated like that.’
She lurched to her feet, shook out her sodden dirt-smeared robes. ‘Do not lecture me. Everyone is separated, if you haven’t noticed.’
He laughed. ‘Well – we’re gathering at a rise to the southeast. No more running from these sports.’
‘Very good. Take me there.’
He gestured. ‘This way.’
Mara followed the Bloorian swordsman. Like everyone she’d met out of Bloor or Gris, he claimed to be the offspring of some noble family. Gods, how they’d fought each other in those petty kingdoms! Family against family, village versus village. Each valley an armed stronghold held against its neighbours. A war of all against all. She shook her head: sometimes she was convinced that the old emperor had done them all a favour when he’d swept them into his pocket one by one.
Shapes darted through the dense underbrush. Shouts sounded: Crimson Guard battle codes. Yet no grating clash of steel against steel rang out; these monstrosities used only tooth and claw. They passed the sprawled gutted corpse of a half … something or other. Half-lizard, perhaps. Grey-backed with a white belly. Mara didn’t really care. It was enough that it was dead. They were strong and fierce, these things, but no match for armed Disavowed – even if most of everyone’s armour had rotted off.
Next they came to the body of Hesta, an Untan swordswoman. One of the tiniest of all the Guard. Her neck had been broken and crushed as if she’d been taken by a predatory cat. Her face was upturned to the sky, pale now, with a look of complete surprise in her dead staring eyes. Mara exchanged a wary look with Leuthan.
So, he was here. One of Ardata’s favourites. Citravaghra.
Leuthan urged Mara onward. ‘This way.’ A moment later he stiffened, cursing. Something huge was crashing directly towards them through the underbrush. A humped grey shape emerged, wide arms brushing aside thickets of saplings. At the sight of them it bellowed a bull-like war call and charged. Though utterly wrung, Mara summoned what remaining energy she possessed. She tapped into her own vitality and felt it almost flicker out. She channelled the force outwards before her. The ground erupted, soil and earth peeling. The thicket curled up and amid the storm of dirt and flung trees the beast fell backwards, roaring his rage, and was sent tumbling, hammered and pummelled by the wreckage. Mara’s vision blackened and she felt Leuthan supporting her at the waist.
‘He’ll be back,’ he said, his words strangely distant and echoing.
Mara felt a warm wetness at her face and wiped at it to find a smear of blood across her sleeve. ‘What …?’
Then they were running, she half stumbling. They pushed through a bamboo grove. The stalks seemed to multiply and waver in Mara’s blurred vision. Things moved among them, inhuman eyes bright with intelligence and menace. After this, Leuthan half carrying her, the ground rose up to almost meet her.
In fact, the ground was rising. Leuthan was labouring up a steep slope, pulling her along by her waist, scrambling on all fours.
Large hands took her and she found herself squinting up at the tall wide figure of Petal. ‘I am spent,’ she gasped, blinking to clear her vision.
‘You look it,’ he murmured.
‘We’re gathered?’
‘Most of us, yes.’ He directed her attention to the left. Halfway down the dirt slope of the butte-like rise they occupied stood Skinner. He alone still wore his armour: the ankle-length coat of mail still glittered night-black. He carried his helm under one arm. His long blond hair hung loose, blown in the weak wind. He faced the jungle verge.
Mara’s gaze followed his out to the league beyond league of verdant green that was Himatan. Here and there treetops shook and shuddered as more of these creatures converged upon them. So many – who would have guessed the jungle would support such numbers? They must be gathering from all over the region. Everyone knew that a few haunted the groves of Himatan here and there, but she had thought them isolated D’ivers or Soletaken. Individual monstrosities. What she’d glimpsed here put her in mind of an actual race.
A people.
Ardata’s children. How different, then, from the title given to the Andii: the Children of the Night?
A great din of rising shrieks and calls and roars now rose all about and the tops of the bamboo stalks shook like blades of grass. Skinner raised his arms for silence while the ranks of the Disavowed assembled behind. What could these half-beasts want? Mara wished they’d just go away. She peered behind her to where stone blocks topped the rise, time-gnawed, heaved and awry. A structure of some sort. Perhaps a fort, or cyclopean statue. Towering emergents now topped it. Their fist-like roots gripped th
e ruins as if feeding upon the tumbled blocks. From the overarching branches a great forest of hanging lianas draped down among them. Their thick woody lengths supported fat blossoms in pink, blood red, orange and creamy white.
‘We do not want to spill any more of your blood,’ Skinner called down to the jungle.
Challenges and hooted mocking laughter answered him.
He raised his arms once more. ‘Let us talk. Know you that for a time I ruled as Ardata’s chosen mate. You bowed before me then. Do so again or retreat into your haunts and bother us no more. This is your choice. I give you until sundown.’
Fury answered the ultimatum. Trees shuddered. Torn branches flew to crash upon the rise. Yells and shrieks sent a burst of multicoloured birds to darken the sky. The cloud gyred about the top of the rise before moving on in a weaving dance of flashing iridescence.
Shijel edged down the slope to Skinner and the two conferred. Mara looked to Petal, who was rubbing his wide jowls. ‘What do you think?’ she whispered.
‘I do not know. I believe that we and they know they have us trapped. Skinner probably wishes to goad them into a rush.’
‘And if not?’
He frowned, his cheeks and many chins bulging. ‘Then I do not know how we shall escape from here.’
The jungle verge was quiet for a time. The sun continued its descent to the west. Clouds gathered in the north. She glimpsed dark shapes moving through the trees. She brushed dried blood from her nose and cheeks, adjusted the knot of her robes at her shoulder.
‘What are they doing?’ she whispered once more.
‘Talking things over, I presume,’ he answered, quite seriously. ‘I believe we have some time. Perhaps you should sit …’
She drew a shuddering breath. ‘Thank you. Yes.’ She meant to ease herself down but fell quite heavily. She drew her knees up close to her chest and rested her chin upon them.
The wind brushing through the dense leaf cover brought wave after wave of shimmering reflections. The rich shades of jade were almost seductive. It was a shame, really. The land was beautiful after its own fashion; desirable. Were it not for its backward recalcitrant inhabitants. Still, correctly handled campaigns of neglect, discouragement and stifling might get rid of most of them after a generation or two. It would be very much easier to do something with the land after that.
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