by R. J. Grieve
“Great-turog did this,” whispered Gorm. “Saw him. Took a battle axe and smashed head. Tulthak!” He turned and spat contemptuously into the grasses. “Stone lady won in the end. Great-turog all dead now.”
“If I am not mistaken,” began Bethro, in the tone of voice that did not admit such a possibility, “this bridge is what was once known as a Bridge of Tears. It is quite astonishing that it is still standing after all this time, for no other one is known to have survived. In the days of the Old Kingdom there was a belief that the dead must cross water before they were buried, to prevent their spirits attempting to return to the land of the living. Every city had such a bridge. I wonder where the city is now?”
“No city here,” contradicted Gorm. “Sad place. Cross bridge now.”
He was preparing to start up the slope to the bridge, when suddenly he whirled round to face the burial ground again, whipping his sword from its scabbard behind his shoulder. In a flash the two younger men had done likewise, steadying their horses, which had started to sidle uneasily, picking up the Turog’s fear.
Gorm stood, every sinew tense, sword extended, surveying the graveyard with suspicious eyes.
“What is it, Gorm?” Sareth asked, her eyes also probing between the monuments.
He held up his hand to signal silence and continued to scan his surroundings.
Sareth’s horse began to nervously back towards the bridge until restrained by its rider.
After a few tense moments, Gorm finally sheathed his sword and turned once more to the bridge.
“Did you see something?” Vesarion asked, his sword still drawn.
“No. Heard something. Maybe nothing.”
Bethro gave a superior smile. “Perhaps it was a ghost, Gorm?”
The Turog gave a snarl and was about to turn on the hapless librarian, when Sareth intervened on her protégé’s behalf.
“Gorm has very sharp hearing, sharper than a human’s, so I would not dismiss his concerns so lightly, if I were you, Bethro.”
Eimer, in contrast, was clearly taking matters seriously. “I think we should investigate, just to make sure.”
“No!” cried Iska. “We should get out of here! I don’t like this place in the least!”
“Iska is right,” agreed Vesarion. “This place is the perfect spot for an ambush. A whole regiment of Turog could be hiding amongst those sepulchres - and I doubt you could take them on all by yourself, Eimer.”
He led the way up the steep slope to the bridge, with Gorm bringing up the rear, walking backwards, still prey to misgivings.
The neat cobbles that had once paved the bridge were now largely invisible, hidden under an accumulated layer of soil and old leaves. A tall weed, with pungent yellow flowers, had taken the opportunity to colonise the space, but it was the weed that caused Vesarion to stop and examine the ground closely.
He summoned Eimer. “Look,” he said, pointing to a trail of broken yellow flower-heads that clearly marked the recent passage of someone, or something, across the bridge.
When Gorm saw it too, he instantly went down on all fours and started sniffing around in a rather hound-like fashion.
“Turog,” he finally announced. “Maybe six, maybe more. Big ones, too. Many heavy boots.”
“Your kind? Or Red Turog?” Vesarion asked.
“Can’t tell. Red Turog means big trouble.”
Acting on his words, he set off at an ungainly run towards the far end of the bridge and disappeared into the grasses without waiting to see if anyone was following or not.
For three tense but uneventful days, they crossed the great plain, heading unerringly northwards, mystified by the absence of any mountains.
The only blot on the journey was Gorm, who, convinced they were being followed, kept checking behind him in an unnerving way that soon was unsettling everyone – especially as there was nothing to be seen, even from the height of the saddle.
The Turog, in the meantime, found an outlet for his unease by twice managing to purloin Vesarion’s silver box. By this time, it was becoming something of a ritual. Vesarion, after lighting the fire, would securely place the little box in his pack and with equal inevitability, it would be missing the next morning. He would say nothing, but with an air of weariness, he would cross to the culprit and hold out his hand, who, equally silently, surrendered the desired item.
Then, on the morning of the fourth day, they crested a rise to see something in the indistinct distance that explained the lack of mountains.
The sun had hidden its face since they had left the bridge, lurking secretively behind a covering of low, grey clouds that pressed heavily on the plain, right down to the horizon, rendering it cool and a little cheerless. Now as they halted on top of the ridge, staring at the shifting, gauzy veil of purple-white, smeared with grey in the far distance, the clouds began to part company with the land. They gathered up skirts of silver rain and caught up petticoats of white mist until bit by bit they revealed what they had hidden for so long – the indigo-blue flanks of a range of majestic mountains.
“The Mountains of Discelion!” exclaimed Eimer.“They were there all the time!”
“Turog call them Cloud Mountains,” volunteered Gorm, “Nearly always covered in cloud.”
As they watched, the low clouds rose higher and higher, unveiling more of the mountains. Darker smudges on their lower reaches suggested patches of forest, but when the boiling cauldron of grey and white finally lifted altogether, it could be seen that the jagged, glistening peaks were thickly draped in snow.
As they crossed the rolling plain, drawing closer to their goal, the day grew sultry and dull. The cheerful wind, their almost constant companion, died away completely to be replaced by utter stillness. Every delicate frond of grass hung motionless in the air and the only sounds to be heard were the steady thud of the horses’ hooves and the occasional creak of a saddle. In the distance, the slate-grey clouds had descended once more to embrace the peaks. They seethed fretfully around the snowfields and descended into every fold and pass as if in pursuit of vengeance. By the afternoon their undersides began to be occasionally lit by flickers of lightning, turning them a strange greenish colour, and long afterwards, across the still plain, the faint grumble of thunder would reach the ears of the travellers.
Gorm told them that thunderstorms were common in the Cloud Mountains, sometimes creating torrents of rain that turned the streams in the valleys into roaring cataracts. He also informed them that they had now reached the extent of his knowledge of the area. Stopping suddenly at some invisible line drawn across the ground known only to himself, he announced that he had never been closer to the Cloud Mountains than that. He then opened his mouth to deliver his usual valediction about something that incurred his displeasure, when he caught Bethro’s eye and thought the better of it.
“Mountains dangerous,” he advised, altering what he had been intending to say with dexterity. “Full of wolfs and storms and too much snow……and other things, perhaps.”
“What other things?” Iska asked, alarmed by his ominous tone.
“Don’t know. Told you, never been there. Other Turog tell many stories – but maybe not true,” he added comfortingly.
They were now so close to the mountains that they had to tilt their heads backwards to look up at the dizzying heights. The range seemed dauntingly immense, but as it turned out, the Vale of Rithlin was not difficult to find. Its size and distinctive funnel shape rendered it unmissable. It burrowed its way relentlessly into the heart of the range, immensely broad at its base but rapidly becoming narrower and steeper as it forced its way between the outlying ridges of rock. Although the valley was grassy where it met the plain, much further up, it became masked in bristling, dark-green pine forests that smothered every ridge and fold, except here and there where the bare, iron-hard rocks exposed their bones to the sky. Higher up still, the trees began to thin out as they became dusted with snow and then stopped with great abruptness altogether at the line a
bove which the snow permanently lay, winter and summer.
As they watched, the restless clouds swirling around the heights opened and closed, constantly changing the vista. Sometimes they allowed a glimpse of the hard majesty of the peaks. At others, they cloaked the pinnacles only to reveal the lower slopes draped in dark swathes of damp forest. Every now and then, a stray shaft of sunlight found a fleeting pathway through the besieging army of vapour and lit the snowfields, turning them to a mosaic of searing white, dappled with splashes of blue and mauve shadow - a moment of the most exquisite beauty that would be gone in an instant.
When the company reached the lower slopes of Rithlin, they made good their word to the Keeper and unsaddling the horses, turned them loose. However, their mounts showed a marked tendency to linger with their human acquaintances, especially Vesarion’s horse, which came and nudged him in the chest with its nose.
He ran his hand over its mane. “Listen, my friend, the Keeper has asked us to return you to him and from the look of those mountains, this is no place for you. So be off with you. Find your way home to your comfortable stable.”
Almost as if it understood, it tossed up its head and turning away sharply, cantered off down the valley followed by its brethren, their long tails flying like banners behind them.
Vesarion watched them for a moment, then turned to Eimer. “We must hide the saddles well, just in case Gorm’s suspicions that we are being followed are correct.” He glanced up at the forbidding peaks. “It looks like from here on we will have to rely on our own two legs. I hope you have a good head for heights.”
Eimer laughed. “I have, but I can’t vouch for Sareth. Ever since we were children, if she stands on anything higher than a chair, she gets the overwhelming urge to throw herself off.”
Sareth pulled a face at him. “Very funny, little brother, but if I recall rightly, most of the time I was pushed off!”
A busy river took up the centre of the valley, tumbling over rounded stones on the lower reaches, but as they followed it towards its source it began to leap vigorously down rocky steps in miniature cascades as the gradient steepened. Although the forests above them were in shadow, the sun occasionally peeped into the valley, warming the short mountain grasses and bringing out the scent of thyme as it clung to the bare rocks. Up and up they climbed, following the course of the stream, its cheerful chatter constantly in their ears, until they came to a place where a spur of the mountain thrust itself forward in a bare, knife-like ridge that effectively sundered the valley in two.
Vesarion and Eimer briefly investigated first one branch of the valley then the other, and it soon became apparent why they had been told to take the right fork.
To the left, the rocky walls drew together to form the sides of a precipitous gorge, sculpted out of the hard stone over the millennia by the actions of the persistent river. The gorge stabbed like a knife into the bowels of the mountain and soon vanished into unpromising gloom.
The right hand way rose upwards at a steady gradient, through tufted grass interspersed with rocky outcrops and increasing patches of loose, grey shale, until it reached the eaves of the silent pine forest.
Only one member of the company was not paying any attention to the upward view. Gorm was perched on a rock, his back to the mountains, staring down the valley to the plains beyond.
Eimer, rendered jittery by days of this activity, finally lost patience.
“What now?” he demanded sharply. “We haven’t seen a thing since you imagined you heard a noise at the old burial ground. I just wish you would stop that. It’s driving me mad. I mean, just look down there!” he declared, casting his hand towards the now distant plain. “From this height, we can see right down the valley to the open grassland and there is absolutely nothing in sight. So just stop it, Gorm!”
Bethro repressed a smug smile that his arch-enemy was getting a ticking-off but Vesarion said nothing. His keen eyes had not missed the Turog’s anxious frown and a slight, inexplicable unease within him was responding to it.
Gorm, too, said nothing but merely jumped down from his vantage point and began the ascent towards the forest.
They reached the fringes of the forest just as darkness began to settle. No pleasant forest here, like the Wood of Ammerith, with sunlit leaves and birdsong. This was a silent place, dark and labyrinthine. There was no sound of any bird save the occasional lonely cry of an eagle as it glided between the peaks. In the manner of pine forests, it had no undergrowth under the sunless, perennial canopy. The dry ground was uniformly brown, thick with old pine needles that deadened every footfall. It stretched barrenly beneath the trees, littered here and there by fallen branches and pine cones.
When they stopped to make camp, Eimer and Iska went off in search of firewood, while Sareth busied herself with unpacking provisions. Vesarion, ever mindful of security, scouted out the surrounding trees, leaving the two arch-rivals pointedly ignoring one another. Bethro was sitting on his blanket, peering short-sightedly in the poor light at a book of poems that had inexplicably fallen off a shelf in the Rose Tower into his pocket. Gorm, rather threateningly, had taken out a whetstone and was engaged in sharpening his already keen sword, running the stone along the edges with loving care.
However, when a faint sound echoed around the silent valley, they both raised their heads from their respective occupations and stared into the enveloping dusk, ears straining.
Vesarion came scrambling up the bank from the river.
“Did you hear that?” he demanded of Eimer.
For once, all trace of the Prince’s usual levity was gone. “Yes,” he replied seriously. “There is no mistaking a wolf’s call.”
Faintly, the unearthly sound issued again, echoing between the peaks like a lonely spirit, but it came from a slightly different direction to the first cry.
Vesarion cocked his head to listen. “They are some distance away. We get them sometimes in the Westrin Mountains. Usually they keep away from settlements but occasionally, when a pack gets too big, they get bold and start to attack livestock.”
“Have you hunted them?” Eimer asked.
“Yes. A dangerous business, for they are both cunning and strong, moreover horses are useless as they panic once they get the scent and can’t be controlled, so they must be hunted on foot. The best weapon is a crossbow – provided you are both quick and accurate. It is not advisable to get too close. I’ve seen men attack them with long spears and it’s a chancy business. I wouldn’t like to have to fight one at close quarters with a sword. The one thing that usually keeps them away is fire, but if Gorm is right about us being followed, lighting a fire will give away our position.”
“I think it’s worth the risk. These wolves are certainly real, whereas I think Gorm’s fears are all in his head.”
Vesarion hesitated. “Agreed, but we must set a watch.” Then lowering his tone, he asked: “Do you think Bethro can be trusted to stay awake?”
Eimer’s grin, never long absent, reappeared. “Just tell him that if he falls asleep, he will end up as a light snack for a passing wolf. That should do the trick.”
But as it turned out no one got much sleep.
Every so often, a faint, eerie howl would issue forth, echoing between the peaks and along the rocky valleys. Although it was not Vesarion’s turn to be on watch, he found sleep was a stranger to him. A vague restlessness had been present in him ever since they had left the old burial ground. He had at first thought that he was just being influenced by Gorm’s behaviour, but now he knew that it was something deeper; some primeval instinct for danger that he hadn’t known he possessed - although how accurate it was, remained to be seen. Quietly arising from his blankets, he approached Sareth who was on guard, standing alertly at the edge of the trees, peering across the valley. The fire had long since died out and the only light was a pale, ghostly moonlight spilling weakly from behind a veil of silver-edged clouds. When she heard his step, she spun round, reaching for the hilt of her sword, but her
hand dropped back to her side when she saw who it was. He took up station beside her, gazing out across the silvered valley as she had been doing.
“You seem a little on edge,” he remarked softly, so as not to awake the others.
“You could say that,” she conceded ruefully. “I know the wolves are some distance away but there is something in that unearthly cry that awakes a very primitive fear in me.”
They both listened for a moment as it issued forth again.
“It is a sound I have often heard in the Westrin Mountains,” said Vesarion quietly. “But I have never become accustomed to it. Although they normally avoid people, sometimes they get gripped by what can only be described as a killing frenzy. When they are like that, they fear nothing and are utterly relentless in pressing their attack. A few years ago, I had to hunt down one such pack near Ravenshold. A hard winter had driven them down from their normal hunting grounds into the valleys and they were decimating any livestock left out in the fields overnight. I had twelve huntsmen and twenty of the Ravenshold Brigands with me, good men in a fight, not easily intimidated, and yet we lost two of them.”
“How many wolves did you kill?”
“Fifteen. Some of the huntsmen prefer longbows because they are quicker to re-load but the steel quarrel of a crossbow causes most damage. It takes great skill to hit them, for they move quickly and make use of cover.” He stopped and listened again as another long wail rang out. “Their calls are definitely coming from different directions. There seem to be many of them in these mountains. Let’s just hope they keep their distance, for we have only one crossbow between five of us.”
