Thunder looked around. Some of his people had vanished away with this new development; others were with him, staring at him as though he had any answer for them. We need more, to rush them. And many would die when they made the attempt. He was struck with the understanding that these Plague warriors were acting differently – not oblivious to the world that they destroyed, these were hunters come to take human prey. Something had changed amongst them.
So we finally got them to notice us. Well done, us.
Thunder found a Deer hunter and a Hawk from amongst his followers. ‘Go bring more,’ he told them, because he was out of ideas that didn’t involve terrible bloodshed. We must drive them away. We can’t just flee every time they come, or what kind of war host are we? And yet he only had one success to his name, and it had come with surprise and favourable weather, and with all the advantages an attacker might devise or crave. Defence was an entirely different matter against an enemy as implacable as the Plague Men.
He felt their Terror, prowling around in that open space amongst the abandoned tents like something independent of the Plague People themselves.
More warriors were creeping in, one at a time, pairs or small bands. Soon there would not be hiding places enough. Thunder knew that the Plague People must grow tired of the Swift Backs fire soon enough, and then they would not lack for enemies to hunt. So we attack and become the hunters. But that ground between him and the foe was littered with dead Tigers, was strewn with more Wolves than he cared to think about, so many of his host just exterminated before anyone knew what was going on.
He Stepped, and it was the sign for all of them to ready themselves. We are enough, or if we are not enough, we are all there are.
He led from the front because that way he wouldn’t have to see all those who wouldn’t follow. He saw the Plague People in motion, and surely that ghastly light would leap up again to guide their aim. Thunder charged into their Terror like plunging into icy water, feeling it slow his limbs and sap his strength. His soul shied away from them, and he wished he could do the same.
Then there arose a sound that came to him through his feet and chest, not his ears. It was a keening, lonely cry, filled with centuries of bitterness and loss, and it left him cold and forlorn but the effect on the Plague Men was far greater. It struck them like a great wave, scattering them across the ground and up into the sky. It seemed to madden them; Thunder saw them clutch their heads and call out desperately to each other, their implacable order broken. The Terror broke too, in the echo of that unheard sound, and Thunder was abruptly at top speed, plunging forwards with a stampede of beasts at his heels.
The shivering sound came again, and now the stars were being swallowed by great web-veined wings as the Bat Society made their arrival known. Thunder saw the Plague warriors break, and for a moment they were utterly undone, prey for anyone who chose to cast a spear. Then they regained some semblance of themselves, pointing their rods at the wings above and spitting death randomly across the constellations. A moment later they fled, taking to their own wings and skimming across the ground, beyond Thunder’s ability to make them out.
But how far will they go, and how many more are there? Thunder knew that this attack on his war host was only a part of the whole. This was no random blunder into their camp, but an assault backed by an intent the Plague People had previously lacked. Now they know it’s war.
Kailovela wanted to fly, but her child weighed her down, and the night sky was full of terrifying sounds. The northern war host was still coming to order – some tribes had sent off their hunters without knowing what was going on. Others had already begun packing their tents determinedly, assuming the worst had happened. Kailovela could only stand in the shadow of Mother’s sled, and hope that some stampeding tide of fear didn’t come to tear her loose from it.
She had Empty Skin and the little monster with her, virtually hiding in her skirts. Mother herself stood atop the sled and stared out into the dark, occasionally barking out an order at any Bear unwise enough to be seen.
If my arms were empty, I would go away, she told herself. She was not sure if it was true. She did not love Loud Thunder, but his huge dog-like earnestness, his confusion, all the strength he was so careful about using, it was wearing her down. He would make a good friend if he was only content to stay at just that distance.
Abruptly new faces were pushing their way towards Mother, with a half-dozen of the Bear looming from the darkness to intercept them. Kailovela flinched back – the Plague People! But in truth that was her second fear. The first name that came to her mind was Yellow Claw. Her former mate had not forgotten her, of that she was sure.
The next heartbeat showed her they were neither Eyriemen nor the hollow creatures of the Plague. Mother’s sharp voice hauled back her people, though she did not dismiss them. ‘What do the Sons of the River want here?’ she demanded.
Kailovela pressed close, seeing lean dark men and women wearing armour of ridged hide and padded cloth, wielding spears and swords edged with stone teeth. At their head was a youth – surely the youngest amongst them, and yet he had a presence to him she knew well from others: some Champion of the south.
The dark youth looked from Bear to Bear, in their great shadows yet fearing none of them. ‘I seek Loud Thunder.’
Mother hunched forward. ‘He is doing his duty. Probably. You are the boy who came to the Stone Place and made peace with our gods. Asmander, the Serpent called you?’
‘Asman now, Mother.’ The Champion plainly re-evaluated who he was talking to. ‘Mother, that same Serpent sends me to seek sanctuary here for a guest, a strange guest. May we have the hospitality of your fire?’
Mother shrugged hugely. There was no fire there by the sled, after all – the northerners found the Plains air stifling and precious little cool had come this night. ‘If you must. Don’t wander.’ She sighed, shaking her head so that her long, tangled hair swayed like a grey curtain. ‘My idiot son plays war leader, of course. I will go shout until everyone has stopped running about like mice. Stay here.’
She slumped off the sled and Stepped. The sullen, shapeless strength of her bear shape sent the southerners back a step as she shambled off into the dark.
Asman looked about, and gave a handful of brief words to his people that had them setting down their weapons but keeping up their watch – a neatly diplomatic balance. They did have someone in their midst – a slight shape, hooded and cloaked – but to Kailovela’s eyes it seemed more prisoner than guest, and something more . . .
Empty Skin stepped out from behind her and skipped forwards, past the first of the southerners before anyone had seen her. Asman called her away, but in the next breath she was standing before that shrouded figure, reaching up to tug at the cloak. Kailovela heard her accusation: ‘I know you!’
One of the southerners reached for her, arrested by the growling of one of Mother’s people, who apparently felt possessive about the Seal girl. In that moment, Empty Skin had flicked back the stranger’s hood and the moonlight fell on a face that matched it for paleness.
Kailovela froze, for she saw past the face into that emptiness – the same that gnawed within the little monster, and yet somehow she had grown used to that. But here was one of the enemy, the very enemy themselves . . .
The Bears were reacting in shock – some Stepping to human forms with raised axes, others growling threats into the faces of the southern soldiers, who seemed none too happy themselves. Asman had his hands up, calling for calm, and then . . . and then . . .
The pale creature did something. Kailovela was watching her hollow face as it happened; she saw it as well as any pair of human eyes could see it.
It was a beautiful face. It had always been so, but the elegance of those white features had been destroyed by the hunger within. Now the beauty came to the fore, the emptiness masked and layered over until she really had to look for it, or she would pass it by. And the Bears’ growls became uncertain and the loathing they all fe
lt for the creature’s emptiness ebbed. Love me, demanded the pale creature, and if they did not quite love her, still, it balanced out the hate a little.
Something moved within Kailovela, something resonating in empathy with whatever had been done.
In another moment, she would have said something. Any words would have been a mistake. Any kinship she claimed with this creature would have lessened her in the eyes of the world, and yet she felt it, just a sliver of it, as though some poisoned bolt had lodged in her at birth, and slowly festered into this.
Then Empty Skin had pushed forward, so heedless of the River spears that they did not know what to do with her. ‘Is it you?’ she asked, less certain now. ‘You took me in . . .’
‘I do not know you,’ the pale woman said, trying to back away but constrained by her guards. Her voice was another shock: weirdly accented, and yet true words coming from that hollow mouth.
Then the little monster spoke, high and desperate, and the pale woman’s eyes went wide as moons and she answered back in the same staccato language.
Kailovela felt a sudden access of jealousy, ridiculously. She is mine. Only I can understand her. But this pale creature knew all words, it seemed, one foot in two worlds. And on the back of that, a revelation that must have struck Empty Skin at exactly the same time. The Seal girl looked back at her, astounded. When their gazes met, Kailovela all but heard pieces closing together into a plan.
But then Thunder was back, bellowing orders. The Plague People were on the offensive. The Plainsfolk were already sallying forth to cover the exit of their wounded and helpless, and the Crown of the World would hear them. Those who would not fight must move. This land would be ceded to the Plague People by the morning, until a united front could be made to retake it.
Kailovela tried to speak – tried to force her voice high over the tumult at first, and then tried to bring that other force to bear, the way she had seen the pale woman do it. She had never had any mastery of it, though. It had always just acted through her, in spite of her, until she cursed it and cursed it without ever knowing that it was truly a thing apart from her, a magic in her blood that drew all eyes and hearts.
She could not do it. They would not listen to her. The Rivermen were moving off and yanking their guest-captive with them, leaving Empty Skin staring after them with hungry eyes. Kailovela shrank back against Mother’s sled, drawing the little monster with her.
‘You know, don’t you,’ she told it. A bare handful of words had passed between the creature and the pale woman, but there was an understanding there, a transfer of knowledge. That we can use? The hollow little thing stared at her, and Kailovela realized that it was as surprised as she was. Was the pale woman its kin, its ally or a familiar enemy? Plainly it had no idea.
As the camp began to disintegrate around them, all the warriors in the world rushing off into the night, Mother’s heavy hand fell on Kailovela’s shoulder.
‘We will talk of this later,’ the huge Bear woman rumbled. ‘I know what is in your mind.’
‘And?’ Kailovela asked her.
‘A fool’s idea,’ Mother told her flatly. ‘But perhaps the wise have used up all of theirs.’
23
‘The Horn-Bearers were proud,’ Shyri told them softly, as the fortress loomed dark against the darkening sky. ‘They were greater than other men – like your Bear, even – broader of shoulder, stronger of arm.’ Her voice had a gentle rhythm to it, one recounting an oft-told story. ‘The hide of their Stepped shapes was armour, and the armour they wore beneath was so thick and heavy that none other than their warriors could wear it. Across all the Plains, none dared oppose them.’
The fortress was of packed earth, its walls raised high and capped with a slanted roof. There had been projections once, Maniye saw, but they had broken, leaving irregular nubs that time had worn down. Perhaps there had been carving, too, but the hand of the years had smoothed it away. When they were hard up against the base of those walls, deep within their shadow, Maniye reached out and touched the surface, expecting to feel it crumble like dirt. Instead it felt like rough stone, abrasive to the fingers like sand could be, unyielding. At her back, Kalameshli growled quietly, still Stepped and plainly not liking the smell of the place.
‘Who would not want to be strongest?’ Shyri continued. ‘Who would not want the earth to shake at their tread? To be proof against spear and arrow? Surely it is what all peoples want. And the wanting is good, sometimes. Sometimes it is better than the having. For in their strength and power the Horn-Bearers looked upon the world and asked, “We are supreme amongst men, and yet we are not gods, and the distance between us and the gods has not decreased, for all that we have climbed.” And they looked into the great well of the night, and across the great space of the grassland, and began to wonder what still stood above them and around them, that they could not see, but that was greater than them.’
At last the old Wolf priest took up his human form, if only to snort derisively at the foreign story. ‘All very well,’ he grunted. ‘How do we get in? You said they sealed themselves up.’ There were no doors to be seen, nor windows in all that slab-like expanse, only little holes that Maniye could barely have put a hand into.
‘Oh, seal the gates they did,’ Shyri confirmed, breaking from her ritual cadence to grin at him. ‘Old growler, know that the Laughing Men have ways even the Serpent cannot know, when it comes to the cracking of bones and the eating of dead flesh. When all was done for the Horn-Bearers, do you think we did not crack eggs like this, to suck the yolk inside?’
‘So?’ Maniye pressed, for all that seeing Kalameshli’s nose tweaked was amusement in itself.
‘We climb.’ Shyri’s grin that had excluded Takes Iron, let her in easily. ‘I am a great climber amongst my people, but you are a tiger.’
‘And I?’ Kalameshli demanded peevishly.
I didn’t ask you to come. The words hovered on Maniye’s lips. She didn’t know why he had, but that strange bond he had forged with Hesprec apparently extended this far, or else he wanted both the Plains and the River to acknowledge the superiority of the Wolf. Which superiority was not to be found in climbing walls, however.
Shyri did climb well, but Maniye in her tiger shape could flow up the walls like moonlight, wait at the top and then come back down to see what was taking the Laughing Girl so long. Kalameshli himself . . . well, wolves were no great scalers of walls, and nor were old Wolf men. He grunted and hissed and scrabbled a quarter of the way up before his pride finally gave way and he permitted them to help him. Even then he cursed them under his breath at every one of his own slips and mis-steps.
Then they were atop the wall, crouched in the gully between its top and the slant of the roof. Maniye had expected windows up here – places where defenders might have stood to fight off invaders who had climbed so high. She saw only shafts a fist wide that must give a fickle light onto the chambers below. Entry fit for serpents. Or rats.
Shyri was hunting, though, creeping along the gutter and testing the stone. As she moved, she continued to speak in a low voice, so soft Maniye had to stay on her heels to hear.
‘As the years passed without challenge, the Horn-Bearers grew more and more fearful,’ Shyri whispered. ‘In their minds grew the shadow of some great evil that must come and consume them. And, as they were foremost of all the tribes of men, so would the shadow light on them first. And, as the eyes of all the other tribes were envious upon them, so might the strike come from any of those others.’ To speak so, as they crept upon the enemy, might have seemed foolishness, but instead Maniye felt that the words were a kind of spell. By telling the fate of this place’s masters, Shyri was weaving a shroud of dust and ages about them, to pass unnoticed by sentries who did not need ears or eyes to know their coming.
Now Shyri stopped, having found something to interest her. She drew a knife and tested it against the stone, its tip seeming to magically create a crack there that she traced until it outlined a square hat
ch.
‘Oh, those Horn-Bearers,’ Shyri murmured. ‘They had the world, but all it won them was a fear that their treasure might be taken from them. And so they ceased to deal with other tribes, and spurned their traders and their priests. And the Laughing Men watched this, and drew closer, and waited, for we had the first hint of their long death in our nostrils.’ She snickered, but even that was part of the telling. Then her knife blade bent alarmingly and she scowled, coming out of her reverie. ‘Come make yourself useful, one of you. Bring your iron.’
It was Kalameshli who shouldered forwards, still smarting from his failures as a climber. He took his iron knife and investigated the crack around the portal carefully, listening to the sound the metal made.
‘And they raised these walls, building great fortresses wherever they dwelt,’ Shyri breathed, watching him work. ‘And at first they placed great gates in their walls and spears about the gates to keep out all enemies, but as they sat in the silence, in the shadow of those walls, their fear did not lessen, but rather it grew in their minds, feeding on the silence and the shadow.’
‘This has been barred from within,’ Takes Iron growled.
‘By the Horn-Bearers, or by whoever took Hesprec?’ Maniye asked.
‘If they took her some place other than this, we will never know where,’ Shyri said in her normal voice. ‘The Rat has her; this is a Rat place.’
‘Well.’ Kalameshli rolled his shoulders, which were still wiry with a smith-priest’s strength. He took out the skin he rolled his tools, selected a bar of iron that narrowed to a flat edge at one end, and placed it in the crack precisely, feeling where the bar must be. ‘We will not enter quietly,’ he told them, ‘but with all your gabbling, what chance was there of that?’ In his other hand was one of his small hammers. Perhaps it was the very one that he had beaten out Hesprec’s teeth with, the first time they met.
Maniye was anticipating a sound like thunder, like blasphemy in this quiet, dead place, but instead there was a single sharp beat, no more than two stones cracking at each other, and then Kalameshli was levering up the square stone. She could see the loops on its underside where a bar of wood had been slid, to hold it closed. The loops were stone, thumb-thick and ancient, but the wood was but a stick, torn from one of the Plains bushes, and it was fresh enough that the broken end was still white with dying wood.
The Hyena and the Hawk (Echoes of the Fall Book 3) Page 25
