Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4)

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘The village, you moron. Not the temple.’

  The two men crossed into the naos where the rough-carved commemorative altar stood, and for a moment the view from the stairwell was clear. The soldiers would certainly want to climb the tower for a good look, and when they did the two women would be trapped. Taking a deep breath, she beckoned to Nisha and stepped out into the hallway, tiptoeing lightly, her teeth clenched tight. Quickly, she moved to her right, where a small side chapel stood. It was hardly more than a niche, really – a tiny apse with a single window and a statue of some caprine deity. Time to gamble.

  Entering the room, she ducked to the left of the archway, where there was almost enough space for a person. Nisha followed suit to the right, the two women pressing themselves back against the stone. If the men decided to be thorough, all would be lost.

  A few heart-stopping moments later, the soldiers’ voices rose once more as they emerged from the main naos of the temple into the gallery, talking in low voices of the plague. Both men had short blades in hand. No one was taking chances after the man in the tower, clearly. Jala bit her lip and tried not to shake as the searchers came closer. Then, when they were mere feet from the archway, they turned, apparently satisfied with peering in from the hall, and disappeared into the stairwell.

  The sound of their echoing footsteps and ongoing conversation would hide small noises from below, and Jala quickly slipped out of the side chapel and padded across the gallery, Nisha behind her again. The two women emerged into the road, and turned sharply to the right, sidling along the temple wall and then turning the corner where the building’s main bulk would hide them from the tower. Now that they knew they would be observed from the belfry, they would have to be very selective in their route lest they be seen.

  But their route where?

  Jala chewed on her lip again as she turned into an alley that ran at a sharp angle, which should hide them from the tower. ‘Where are we going?’ whispered Nisha quietly, and Jala slapped a finger across her lips. They were in the most dreadful danger right now, and even the tiniest sound might give them away. In the pressing silence as the maid looked sheepish and fell quiet, Jala listened. She could hear the muted conversation of the men in the tower as little more than muttered sounds. There were shouts further across the village as another pair searched buildings. And there was the sound of occasional shouts from outside the settlement, but nothing else. No birdsong, or animals…

  …apart from a strange low rumble, so quiet you had to concentrate to hear it.

  What was it? She frowned and listened hard. It sounded like a cart rattling over an uneven road, but deeper and slower. A rhythmic rumble. And something else – another noise almost hidden beneath that rumble, which itself was barely audible. Whatever it was, it signified a possibility. Dead, empty houses filled with plague ghosts held no chance of refuge from a thorough hunter like Halfdan, and simply fleeing the village would be suicide with the ring of men watching closely. Anything different had to be investigated. Not risking speech, Jala gestured for Nisha to follow, and padded on along the alley. At the end she paused again, listening until she picked up that odd, unidentifiable rumble, then turned towards it. Another junction, another pause, and a dreadfully dangerous moment where their latest road would put them in view of the tower for precious heartbeats.

  They rounded a corner back into the shadows, and even as Jala caught the sound of a shout from the tower, signifying that they had been seen, she realized what the rumble was, now loud enough to hear even over the other noises.

  A mill.

  It sounded like a waterwheel turning. And that other noise, submerged beneath the rumble, was running water. A mill race. No matter that the village had been dead for more than a decade, the water in the race was still running, and still turning the wheel. Astara was watching over them, preserving her Pelasian daughters, for the wheel was one of the symbols of the goddess. Jala was suddenly sure that this was the right thing to do – that they had been given a path by the divine.

  Beckoning Nisha, throwing caution to the wind and a prayer to the goddess, the empress ran down the alley, following the sound, certain that it would somehow harbour their salvation. By now the rumble of the wheel and the babble of the water was loud enough to hear even over the distant shouting and the pounding of their own feet.

  The two women turned a corner and came to a halt.

  The watermill was mostly still standing. From this angle, they could see into the second floor, where the internal mechanism had fallen apart. The heavy grindstones had collapsed through the rotting timbers, one tangled precariously in the rotting beams, poised to fall, the other broken in two on the street outside. Yet the spindle that drove those great stones was still turning with the flow of water. From here, Jala could just make out the glittering line marching off up the slope from the village, around the curve of the hill, where it could only emerge from some subterranean channel, given the fact that they’d not seen it before. Once more it smacked heavily of the goddess’s intervention. Jala had no idea of the source of the water, but its destination was a certainty: the plain below and, finally, the sea.

  ‘Nisha, do you trust in the goddess?’

  The maid’s brow furrowed, an unsettling sight above that empty socket, and she shrugged. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘With your life?’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  The empress smiled. ‘Following the path Astara has laid out for us.’

  Nisha simply gave a single short nod, and Jala grasped her hands. ‘Come on, then.’

  The sounds of shouting were increasing in volume as the enemy closed through the narrow ways of the village. Despite the maze-like alleys and their endless intersections and the tight-packed crumbling houses, the village was not over-large, and they had to be close to the far side now, especially given the need for the water to exit down the steep slope of the spur. If the goddess was not being kind, they could be trapped against the encircling watchers. Faith. She had to have faith, despite all that had happened. For Pelasians faith was part of life, not some lip service way to blame gods for the failings of nature, or of men. The goddess would provide.

  Ignoring the worryingly close shouts of Halfdan’s men, the two women scurried across the street and in through a hole in the wall, just large enough to traverse at a crouch. Inside, the grinding and rumbling noises were suddenly intense, and the spindle continued to turn as did the horizontal shaft that drove it, the wooden gear, even with its broken teeth, still functioning well. The slosh and gurgle of the water was audible from the mill race, and without pausing to look at anything else, certain of why they were here, Jala crossed to the large wheel, which turned with surprising speed.

  The wheel sat in a purpose-built mill race and what was probably a fairly sedate stream further up in the mountains had clearly been funnelled through a channel in the rock and down into this race, all constructed with the precision of a military engineer, increasing the flow and pressure of the water to best drive the wheel. Thus a small mountain stream here, by the mill, became a fast, deep torrent of water powering through the edge of the village. The channel had been carved in the bedrock of the spur, but had been subsequently lined with smooth stone slabs to ensure best functionality. Jala, aware of the ever nearing shouts of the hunters, looked critically at the channel, her mind filling with horrible memories of that plunge into the river at Raetis and the near-drowning they had both suffered as the current carried them eastward in the dark.

  That time had been terrible and this time the water was shallower, narrower and lit by morning light. Yet the dangers would be just as great, if different. Moving to the edge of the torrent, she looked downstream. The water ran under the street then emerged briefly before disappearing once more under a house built curiously on a low bridge. Beyond that she had no idea where it went.

  Faith.

  It was all about trusting the goddess now.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she asked
quietly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come anyway.’

  Without waiting further, the empress lowered herself into the channel, gripping the sides, and then let go. The pull of the water, combined with the slope of the channel sent her immediately barrelling off downstream and she had to do nothing to propel herself, just use her hands and feet to try and keep herself straight and avoid banging her head. Once or twice as she was carried away from the mill and beneath the street, Jala felt her head clonk on the slabs, but never hard enough to damage, and once or twice she was submerged, having to hold her breath and suck in air when the opportunity arose. It was as though the river at Raetis had been a test run for this.

  She tried to look behind to make sure Nisha was with her, but there was simply no chance of turning her head in these conditions, and quickly she resigned herself to only seeing what was immediately around her.

  The world suddenly exploded into light between the road and the next house, then oppressive black again as she disappeared beneath the bridge house. As she was buffeted and battered, she suddenly saw the gleam of sun on the water below her feet, which, in a matter of two heartbeats, became the end of the tunnel and daylight, and in one of the most heart-stopping moments of her life Jala burst forth into the sun from beneath the house just in time to tip over the edge of the spur and pick up speed where the channel cut vertiginously down the slope. For a brief, panicky moment, voices were almost audible above the water, and she realized she was passing close to one of the mounted pickets. She had no idea whether he’d seen her in the channel and could only hope not as she shot past him, half drowned, at the speed of a diving hawk. She had no time to wonder how far down the slope the engineers had bothered with nice smooth paving, because suddenly there wasn’t a slope any more.

  With her heart thundering apparently in her throat, the empress shot from the end of the channel into the open air, where she plummeted for what seemed an eternity.

  She hit the surface of the water toe-first, grateful that chance had granted her that form and not a belly-flop, which might well have killed her. For a moment the world went silent apart from the thumping of her heart, which, after the deafening torrent in the channel, was exceedingly odd. A strange blooof sound signalled a second form plunging into the water close behind her and she spun, using her hands to turn and holding her breath, to see Nisha, struggling with one working arm, trying to keep herself upright and move back towards the surface. Pride and relief powering her, Jala pushed her way through the water to Nisha and helped her. As the two broke back out into the air and heaved in deep breaths, Nisha laughed, and Jala hurriedly slapped a hand across her mouth, rolling her eyes upward. Somewhere above, Halfdan’s men were still there.

  Quickly, the two women swam to the edge of the pool. Here, another stream joined the mill race, and together they formed a small river that flowed from the pool beneath an old rickety bridge and off towards the sea in the east. The pair crawled up onto the dirt and Jala looked up. Atop the slope, so far above, no one was looking down. They had slipped past the pickets.

  Astara had been kind.

  And better still, just beyond the pool, a small wood covered the side of the shallow valley that led down to the sea. Trees sporting their spring foliage would hide them more than adequately from the plague village above as they once more gained some distance on their pursuers.

  They were almost safe.

  Chapter XXII

  Of Gulls, Ghosts and Evasion

  The two fugitives slipped between the buildings of one of the sleepiest little towns Jala had ever experienced. Built of warm, brown stone and mostly daubed with whitewash, the town was probably four times the size of the village they’d fled that morning and yet boasted no such monument as that great stone temple. The town, which the milepost just outside announced to be Burbida, simmered gently in the heat, the only sounds the wheeling gulls that filled the sky and the occasional bark of an irritated dog.

  Jala and Nisha made their way swiftly through the streets down towards the port, and they had reached the central square before they saw another human being. Even then he only added to the sleepy feeling, since his fruit stall sat idle while he lounged back beneath a cypress tree, snoring gently while his dog lay curled beside him, occasionally kicking a leg out as he chased something in his dream.

  It was easy to forget the desperation of their plight when faced with such almost unbearable ordinariness, and the two women were starting to relax without any conscious effort to do so. Nisha veered towards the unguarded fruit stall but Jala shook her head and motioned to keep moving. Down the gently sloping street they hurried. The first sign of real activity they experienced was when a door opened onto the street and a woman with a face like an old saddlebag ejected a bucket of excrement into the street. The two fugitives skirted around the mess, which ran down the channel outside the house and wedged against a stepping stone, and strode on.

  A few more figures were out and about as they got closer to the water, but even these were generally silent, or at best involved in a little light conversation with one another, and they were still few and far between. Of course, it struck Jala that it was still more than an hour until sunset. The menfolk of the town would be out at sea, fishing in small flotillas, while the womenfolk were busy in their houses and with their families. And in a place like this, only the youngest of children would be free to play. Anyone old enough to help haul a rope would be out on the boats, which might be a problem for two women in urgent need of transport.

  The road opened out onto a wide area of dockside, dotted with numerous small jetties that marched out into the glittering water. The overwhelming smell of dead fish made the women gulp and swallow nauseously, and the area of the waterfront was covered with the tat and debris of fishing wharves everywhere. At the centre of the square sat a well house, somewhat incongruous this close to the waterfront, a squat brown building with a low roof, one door and a basin on three of the four sides filled with water. The buildings curved around the dock area in an arc, their fronts given over to rope, sail, and net-makers and the like. At the far end of the long wharf a small team of men were sawing planks while a new fishing boat gradually took shape close to the waterline.

  Jala felt her spirits sink at the sight of the empty jetties. While they’d come down the long, shallow valley unmolested as the ghost’s men searched the plague village, she could hardly believe that Halfdan was not now in close pursuit. Certainly she didn’t strongly rate their chances of passing a night in Burbida without being set upon once more. As soon as the hunters had convinced themselves that their quarry had somehow slipped through their grasp and fled the hilltop village, this fishing town was the natural next port of call.

  With a glimmer of hope, Jala spotted a fishing boat at the opposite end of the wharf to the shipbuilders, neatly tied to the furthermost jetty. It was a small affair, and would certainly never make it across the open sea to Velutio, but that had never been Jala’s plan. It was a matter of getting out to sea. Once they were gone from here, they could go anywhere and would be almost impossible to follow. Grabbing Nisha, the empress ran over to the boat. An old man with rheumy eyes and sagging skin was busy folding a canvas sheet in the boat and his eyes remained on his task as the two women hurried up to him.

  ‘Would it be possible to hire your boat?’ she asked directly.

  The old man huffed and shifted his fingers, putting the last fold in the canvas and laying it on the jetty. Finally, his task complete, he looked up into Jala’s face. ‘Eh?’

  ‘We two are in dire need of transport. We need a boat and I have money to pay handsomely.’

  In truth there was not an awful lot in the purse she’d taken from the dead man in the tower. By the standards of the capital it would hardly keep a man for a day or two, but she’d be willing to bet that it would go a lot further somewhere as small and provincial as Burbida. To emphasize, she drew out the purse and shook it with a tinkling of coins.

&nb
sp; The man shrugged. ‘No.’

  Jala straightened. ‘I really will pay well.’

  ‘Can’t,’ said the old man flatly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need another crewman. My son should be out on the water with me, but he’s sick with the flux. Without him I can’t sail. And I don’t want to leave town with him sick, anyway.’

  ‘Look,’ Jala said, trying – and failing – to keep the edge of desperation out of her voice, ‘we don’t need to go far. Take us two villages along the coast in either direction, and I’ll pay you well. We’ll take another boat from there.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  Jala heaved in a breath. This was not what she needed at all.

  ‘Can we not help you?’

  ‘Can you sail a boat?’

  For a moment, the empress almost lied, but the lie would be uncovered the moment they untied from the jetty, so she stepped a pace back. ‘No. But we’re quick studies and we’ll do whatever you say.’

  ‘Still no. Too late in the day to sail now. And I’m not leaving my son.’

  ‘Please,’ pleaded Jala, and Nisha nodded vigorously next to her.

  ‘The answer’s no, woman. Now leave me alone.’

  Nisha opened her mouth to upbraid the man, but Jala, sighing, grabbed her and pulled her away. As the two stomped disconsolately from the waterfront, the maid grumbled. ‘We should have pressed him. Threatened him. If he only knew who you were.’

  ‘But he doesn’t. And we know nothing about boats. If he says he needs another, then who am I to argue? And he might be right about it being too late. Are we really prepared to sail in the dark? No. But we can’t stay in Burbida. Maybe we should head along the coast a mile or two and find somewhere to shelter for the night. Then in the morning we can decide whether to come back or move on and find somewhere else.’

  ‘I…’ began Nisha and then stopped dead in her tracks. Jala frowned but a moment later she too saw the figure. White-haired and pale-faced, travel-worn and looking much more drawn than Jala remembered, Halfdan stepped out of an alleyway, sword in hand. The empress looked this way and that. Other armed men were emerging from the other streets into the open space by the wharf.