Moving Water
Page 18
“For the love—you mean there’s a river here? What if the Lady finds us? If we’re caught against that—”
“Alkir, Alkir.” He was laughing under his breath. “You just magic up fodder and stabling for these colts.”
It was actually a Gjerven farmstead, five or six huts in a stockaded compound, hens and pigs loose on the bare-trodden earth, even that rarity, a Gjerven cow, which we instantly milked. The horses were dispersed in a couple of lean-tos with liberal helpings of the ferryman’s doubtless precious earnn hay. We climbed into a hut, lit the usual Gjerven mosquito repellent of two dung-cakes on a clay saucer, and after staring fixedly across the sluggish brown ribbon beyond the stockade, Beryx came in and remarked casually, “The punt just broke its tow pulley. No crossings today.”
Despite his confidence mine was an uneasy sleep, ended near sunset amid the bustle as the others ate, packed or went off to saddle up. “Have a kanna,” said Beryx, cross-legged beside me, and took another bite at the creamy crescent of peeled fruit hovering before his mouth. “All we could find.”
Then the physicians descended. As Zem untied the bandage and Zam opened a Xhen leaf, Callissa materialized to snap, “That bandage wants changing. Isn’t there another one somewhere?”
Evis gulped and delved hastily in his pack. Callissa tied it on, cut short Beryx’s thanks, and stalked away, just as Karis tumbled up the steps.
“Sir, sir, she’s found us! There’s half a hundred savages out there with nothing on but their hats!”
Beryx’s face showed a hint of vexation. “Drat,” he said, as I bounded up. He let the kanna drop and strode to the door. Then his shoulders shook. Strung for instant perilous action I was enraged to hear him remark, as if at a parade, “I love those Gjerven helmets.” Pure mischief entered his look. “I wonder if. . . .”
His eyes fluxed, crystalline green and white. Reaching the door, I was in time to see the enemy breast the stockade, an unexaggerated fifty Gjerven warriors, complete with wooden spears and warpaint and towering white and crimson headdresses, a most impressive battlefront. Before the forehead band of every headdress snapped.
“Best battle I ever won,” he chortled, as the phalanx disintegrated into a yelling gesticulating wreck. “Come along. It now behooves us to depart.”
We cantered with expedition east along the river bank, back into the mud and the enveloping dark, unlawfully requisitioned another ferry punt somewhere downstream, and again turned north. “I like Gjerven,” Beryx announced into the splashy, mosquito-ridden dark, and laughter tinged his voice at my grunt of disgust. “Zyr, if that pearl of yours really can outrun the wind, you might try to catch a pig before we camp.”
Zyr did not catch a pig. He did find Vyrlase, the end of Stirian Ven, whence the highway fans in a score of tracks to the border forts. “Excellent,” approved Beryx, headed for the easternmost path. “Now we can get along a bit.”
At that I found my voice. “But surely we should go west? The further east the wider Stirsselian gets, and the worse—”
I stopped. The guards had never crossed Stirsselian, but barrack-tales would have painted it luridly enough.
“Alkir,” he chided, “you’re getting old. How did you last go to Phaxia?”
My jaw dropped. Evis muttered, “I’ll be—” Obsessed with crossing at the narrowest possible part, I had forgotten the Taven, the engineers’ marvel whose creation Mavash decreed when we invaded Phaxia: fifty miles of timber-cord causeways and pontoon bridges set just where Stirsselian turns salt, spanning tidal channels and clethra sloughs and evil black mud in one bold slash. The road that had borne an army into Phaxia, supported and provisioned it and brought its survivors back.
Evis asked eagerly, “Sir, will it be safe? It’s been a good six years—”
Beryx replied calmly, “It looked all right last week.” Evis, recovering, burst out, “Then all we have to do is ride!” With a chuckle, Beryx agreed. Adding a silent parenthesis,
Sometime in third watch it began to rain, a steady Gjerven downpour that would probably persist for days. While I thanked providence we were off Frimmor’s open uplands, Beryx said, “Good cover,” and Sivar grumbled, “Wish I’d kept me cloak.” But it had no bite. Recalling that night in Thangar, I almost managed to find a smile myself.
* * * * *
Chafed, sodden, chilled, we finally stowed the horses and snugged down in the thick Gjerven regrowth to wait for dawn. We were on the edge of the Astyros, the stringently maintained mile of cleared land that provides a glacis for the border forts. I said in Beryx’s ear, “If I remember right, Salasterne’s about three bowshots to the left. The next’s Colne Clethra, about five miles west. Three-hundred man garrisons. Watch-towers every half mile.” I felt him nod. “The Taven began about halfway between those two forts. There was a big heagar tree just by the first causeway.” I could see it still, a glossy green hulk that shaded a hundred yards of ground, bastion-thick trunk supported by secondary roots dropped from the boughs, wounded or resting soldiers in their nooks, trunk aflutter with hundreds of votive rags. “We’d stick a trophy there when we got leave, to be sure of getting it again.”
The gray light was broadening now, creeping horizontally across a shrunken world under a low weeping sky. As Stirsselian itself hove into view I felt a familiar sourness in my mouth.
You could not see much. The curse of Stirsselian is that you never can. There are no landmarks, no lookout heights, nothing to raise you above the swamp miasma for so much as the illusory relief of a view. From where we lay, the Astyros’ tumbled stretch of stump holes, dug-out roots, newly slashed or uprooted regrowth, ran head on into an olive-green and jungle-gray wall. Clethra trees, so uniform in height that not a head topped the rest to give you some estimate of their depth, so thick no light picked out the groves, straight-ranked and impenetrable as a close-order phalanx front. It does not show hostility. It has no need. It rests upon its strength.
Beryx blew a mosquito off his nose. Evis parted more leaves. Then he twitched, showering us all. “Sir . . . sir, you did say watch-towers? Then what in heaven’s name are those?”
A trumpet had called in Salasterne, lowering dark and idle behind its lofty stockade under the moontree’s limp black dangle of rag. At the sound, the desolation before us came to life.
“Ten . . . fifteen . . . twenty.” Imperturbably, Beryx tallied them up. “Must be cursed uncomfortable, roosting out there.”
He was not looking at the watch-towers. He was studying the troop-cordon, posted in pentarchies less than twenty yards apart, right along the Astyros. They had been masked by the rubbish. Now they rose, beating hands, huddled into drenched brown and green field cloaks, cursing the weather, the fire, the orders and each other with the fine munificence of disgruntled soldiery as they struggled to make their breakfast fires. When they moved I could see the tent-like protuberance above each left shoulder. They were archers, and they had slept with their bows.
Facing calamity, Evis was mute. Beryx blew another mosquito away and gazed on, eyes unreadable. My stomach was a cold, flat pit.
“No wonder,” I said at last, “she didn’t worry about pursuit.”
“Mm.” That sounded cryptic too. He squirmed back into the scrub. “No point in rousing that yet. We’ll post sentries and wait for dark.”
I drew some comfort from the thought that sentries would conserve his own strength. We huddled under the trees while the rain poured down to seal our wretchedness. Callissa, mercifully, said nothing. The twins were big-eyed and mute, but when Beryx woke they converged on him. “Be my guests,” he smiled, tucking one under each arm. “Driest rooms in the house.”
From his left armpit Zem asked with desperate composure, “Sir Scarface, you did kill the dragon, didn’t you? In the end?”
“Of course.” He sounded reassuringly matter-of-fact. “That’s why I’m an aedr, you know.” Zam’s head emerged, I saw others’ interest. Anything to occupy them, I thought.
Ber
yx evidently agreed, for he went on, “Magic was the only way to kill it, you see. So I had to find an aedr. Someone”—he looked sidelong—“who’d teach magic to me.”
Zam popped up too, eyes wide in gorgeous awe. “Fengthira?” He did not, I noticed, stumble over the name. “She taught you?”
“She did.” He was smiling faintly. “Yes.”
Zem was nearly bouncing in place. “So once you knew magic, you killed the dragon.”—“And then Everran was safe.”—“And you could be king again.”
The smile faded. “Not quite,” he said softly. “Once I was an aedr—I couldn’t go back to being a king.”
Puzzle pieces showering into place, I sat stone still lest I break the thread. Zem and Zam were thinking with their eyes. I wanted that thread intact too.
“Aedryx aren’t kings,” he told them lightly, smiling again. “It isn’t right.”
This digested, Zem asked a strange question. “But—an aedr could be a soldier—couldn’t he?”
“I don’t see why not,” Beryx agreed. The query that woke in his eyes was never answered. Amver pelted up from the southern sentry-point with a face shouting ultimate catastrophe.
“Sir, sir! There’s half a phalanx coming up behind us—’n they’re beating the timber on the way!”
Beryx’s voice slashed the tumult to bring Amver up as on a rope. “How far?”
“Sir, a mile, less’n a mile—”
“And how fast? How fast!”
“S-sir they keep halting, they gotta wait for the flankers, the timber knots ’em up—”
“Stand to your horse!”
A crack that lifted the whole camp. He was all aedr now, irises writhing in the heat of calculation swift as light. He glanced at the sky. Whatever he saw there, the resulting expression turned me weak with fright.
I had no time to ask. His face twisted in denial, conflict, distress. Then it set.
“Not Math,” he muttered. “But. . . .” And was on his feet with the lunge of a rearing snake.
“Sivar, take Zem. Karis, take Zam. Alkir, you know your tree? Be sure, man!” His eyes skewered me. I nodded, praying it was truth. “When we go, make straight for that. Lead my horse. Don’t talk to me, and whatever you see, don’t stop! You hear? Don’t stop!” He took six huge strides to the bay and swung himself up.
My hand shook on the wet clammy rein. Behind was the hubbub of panic half unleashed. Beryx shut his eyes, propped his left wrist on the bay’s wither, and drew the first harsh extended breath.
Nothing happened. His face contorted, his muscles shuddered, the bay backed under the merciless pressure on his ribs, crueler and crueler grew the battle for each riving breath. And nothing happened. A wizard tearing himself apart while we stared helplessly, doom closed on us, and the gray rain dripped from a bleak gray sky.
Only when I cast a desperate glance across the Astyros did I realize with shock that the rain was pelting down out there so hard its ricochets jumped from the mud, so hard that visibility had shrunk to a scant quarter mile, outposts, forts, watch-towers all lost in a sheet of solid white. My heart leapt, and sank. What use was cover, with guards posted twenty yards apart?
A surge of wind hit the trees. Behind it came the rain, beating clean through the foliage, pounding on our heads. The colts began to spin and plunge, it was pummeling us like fists. I heard the front wash on across the timber in one huge airborne wave. Overhead growled the fruity, thick-throated thunder that escorts deluge rain.
Beryx gasped and dropped, face down on the bay’s neck. With terror’s severity I jabbed the bit to restrain the horse. He was shaking as if every muscle were unstrung. I could just hear his words.
“Count . . . five hundred . . . or wait for yells. Then go. Fast as you can ride.” He straightened, head bowed into the deluge, black hair streaming waterfalls over a bloodless face. His back arched. As I counted ten I heard the resumption of those racking breaths.
Two hundred. Three. I was choking with tension and fear, not least that I would lose the count. Four hundred and fifty. Fifty-one. Evis bounced and gasped. “I heard something! From Salasterne! Sir—”
“Four-sixty—wait! Sixty-one . . . two. . . .” And tearing the rain like paper came the scream of Salasterne’s trumpets as they sounded the Attack, the Alarm, General Stand-to, Alarm, Alarm!
“That’s it!” It came out of me in a grunt as the colt, mad with waiting’s tension, fairly fired us into the rain.
How we got over the Astyros at that pace, in that downpour, I conceive to be a direct mercy of whoever-you-like. There was no visibility. I galloped for a stump I had laid in line with the heagar, picked another beyond it and bucketed on, praying that if Beryx’s colt tripped without a firm hand on the bridle he was long enough in the rein to gallop himself up. From behind came the dead thunder of hooves in mud and the yells of men too crazed to think what they were saying, over all was the cavalry rumble of the rain. . . . They’ll never see us from the road! I was yelling it in silent manic delight, And we can ride the cordon down—
With shattering instantaneity we burst out of the rain and tore in virtually clear air and full view of the forts across the last quarter mile of the Astyros, we would be atop the archers in twenty strides, my hand leapt for the bit as my mouth opened for a frantic futile Halt! and Evis’ black jammed its shoulder into me while he screamed and howled like a man watching his horse take out a close-run race, “Come on keep going it’s all right it’s all right!”
My eyes shot left, a smoky breakfast fire flashed under us and was gone with not an archer by, my eyes shot up and they were running, running like madmen, but not for us, they were bursting their hearts to reach Salasterne and nobody there would think about us, the trumpets were still shrieking and up every side of the stockade poured a flood of little bandy-legged men in spiked helmets and fish-scale armor and mud-brown cloaks whose color was more familiar than my own eyes. The colors of Phaxia. A surprise attack.
War reflexes are burnt deep. Even then my heart made an extra pump, my bridle hand leapt automatically for the wheel that would fling us to their aid and Evis nearly deafened me. “He said don’t stop, he said don’t stop!”
Before I could argue Stirsselian leapt at us, unmoved, inimical, blank, fresh terror stopped my breath. Then there it was, a midnight cloud above the clethras, the giant heagar.
I would undoubtedly have swept the whole unit clean past it onto the causeway without attempting to draw rein, I was too crazed to think of anything else. But as we tore round the tree’s buttress Beryx twitched and almost burst my head.
We ended half on the causeway, horses going mad in the same tranced drive to run as ours. He literally fell off the bay and crumpled in the mud, I abandoned both beasts to dive and catch him up. Hooves flailed about us while he jittered convulsively in my arms, far gone and driving himself to get out the last crucial commands.
I bellowed the orders and enforced them by sheer manic will. The colts fled broadcast, going like bolters, the humans stumbled past us onto the slimy, treacherous logs, he was pushing me with a nerveless hand, choking, “Go, GO!” Disobediently I lifted and dragged him with me, aware even at that pent-in moment of some change in the outer world. Then I realized what it was.
The trumpets had fallen quiet.
At the clethras’ brink I could not help one backward glance. Rain blotted half the Astyros. I could hear its tidal roar. Salasterne loomed black and distinct against that curtain of white. But no fiendish little knife-fighters capered in triumph on its catwalk, no bodies, Assharran or Phaxian, lay writhing or moveless in the mud. There were no Phaxians at all. Just a crowd of archers and garrison who confronted each other over arrow and sword-point, motionless, too thoroughly confounded even to scratch their heads.
We were on the first bridge, with Evis helping Beryx to stagger between us, before I finally understood. Then I yowled l
ike a cat-a-mountain and pounded bruises into his back.
“It was Pellathir, it was Pellathir, wasn’t it? You lovely crack-brained lunatic, they were never there at all!”
He was reeling, white and wet and spent beyond all but an attempt to laugh. He answered in mindspeech,
Then we both laughed so hard we fell over, and the others had to rush back in fresh panic to pick us up.
“Wrevur—” It slammed back at me. “Weather-work! You mean—you didn’t just conjure the Phaxians? You made the rain as well?”
I literally hugged him, still too delirious to care for anything but the stupendous splendor of the trick. “It got us out, didn’t it? When any mortal general would have sat down and cut his throat? Who gives a tinker’s ill-wish about Math!”
* * * * *
It was a long time before we sobered up. What if we were penniless, provisionless, horseless, shelterless, faced with a fifty-mile walk in pouring rain over an unscouted road to Phaxia? We had escaped Assharral. Foiled the Lady. Shared a stratagem that would have made military history, if any historian could ever be brought to write it down.
“And,” added Beryx proudly, “it didn’t kill a single man.”
We congratulated him as we trudged, contented except for Zyr, who was engaged in a wake for his colt. “Why,” I asked, “did we leave the horses behind?” At which Beryx shook his head. “Too dangerous out here. Besides, I hope it might—er—mitigate the crime.”
I could not see it mattered, now we were forever beyond the Lady’s power. Sivar had just asked with not-quite-pure facetiousness, “Sir, whyn’t you send all this rain off to Assharral?” when Evis, tail-scout as usual, called in a carefully wooden voice, “Sir! I think there’s something behind.”