In fond memory of Peter McNamara, without whose encouragement I would long ago have taken a different path.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Dedication
Maps
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Two
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Three
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part Four
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Part Six
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Part Seven
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Part Eight
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Part Nine
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Appendix
The Ashuak Chronicles
Voyager online
Acknowledgment
About The Author
Other books by Tony Shillitoe
Copyright
About The Publisher
Maps
PART ONE
‘The beginnings and endings of days are
wrapped in hues of amber.’
FROM Musings on Berak N’eth, AN ANTHOLOGY OF THOUGHT AND SONG BY A AHMUD KI
CHAPTER ONE
The air was rich with the heavy tang of eucalyptus as he rode through the mallee bushland, and when a flock of white corellas exploded from the branches of an ancient white gum, they startled his horse. He’d long ago left the main road, but this wild north-east country was unfamiliar to a man raised within the city’s walls, and he felt vulnerability stalking him. ‘Easy, Champion,’ he crooned, reassuring his mount with a neck rub, while the screeching corellas circled. By the time they resettled, he’d moved on, climbing a shallow rise, listening to the bushland sink back into dusk’s peacefulness.
At the crest, he blinked wearily. The trackside shadows were moving. He reined in, expecting a mob of kangaroos to bound from the bushes, but instead five soldiers stepped into his path, two with crossbows. He hauled his sword from its scabbard, and, reassured by its familiar weight, he yelled, ‘Get off the road!’
‘Get off your horse, Seeker!’ a voice ordered.
Behind him were five more soldiers, their weapons drawn—men he had trained personally. Whoever is behind this attack has a cruel mind, he decided. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’ he yelled. ‘You all knew my father! He sent me here!’ The twang of crossbow wires warned him to duck the murderous shafts, and with a savage kick he urged his horse forward. The men held their ground, but Champion charged through the line like wind through chaff, and Seeker felt relief knowing that he had escaped.
And then Champion stumbled and fell.
Seeker tumbled out of the mallee tangle into which the horse pitched, and straightened to face his attackers. The long bleeding wound across his horse’s shoulder showed why Champion faltered. He measured the odds, with the crossbowmen sprawled on the track, flattened by his charge, but the odds were still miserable.
He dodged the first man’s attack, tripped the second, parried the third sword and cut low across the fourth man’s shins. He ducked under another sword swing and blocked a thrusting blade. A quick stab right, a spin and sweeping cut, and two soldiers staggered back, clasping vicious wounds, blood trickling between their fingers. A sharp pain in his side was followed by a solid blow across his helmet. He rallied and drove back two attackers, but when he saw that the others were surrounding him he feinted and plunged into the bushes.
His only hope was to avoid being cornered. Moving, he was harder to hit and they had to take risks to get at him. He sidestepped a bush, turned, and caught a pursuer across the face with his blade. He ran to a thin gum tree, baulked as if going left, lunged right and smashed a chaser across the throat with the back of his gauntleted left fist. Instantly spinning right, he surprised another attacker, his blade flashing past the man’s horrified face. Then he ran again.
Barely ten paces on, he turned to confront the first pursuer. His sword sank into the man’s groin, but he misjudged the momentum and the fatally wounded soldier ploughed him backwards into the undergrowth. He pushed the soldier off and scrambled out of the bush on all fours, only to be met with a crunching blow across his shoulders. He rolled with the force, and felt a savage kick to the ribs as he tried to rise. Gritting his teeth, he swung blindly, and his knuckles cracked across metal. As he bellowed with pain, something smashed across his jaw and he flopped onto his back, blood pooling in his mouth, his lips smarting. A blurry shadow stood over him. He lashed out with a leg, rolled and got to his feet. A sword swept in. He ducked under the blade, caught the wielder’s arm, snapped it across his knee twice, wrenched the sword loose, hacked at the man’s head and pushed the hapless victim away. He spun to face yet another man, and his rage exploded. Reckless, he waded in, swinging his sword with violent abandon, until he broke through the soldier’s desperate defence and cut him down.
One soldier remained in the dusk’s deepening shadows. His posture was aggressive, but Seeker could see his fear. ‘Why did you do this, Hardfist?’ he asked, stepping forward. ‘Who paid you to betray me?’
‘It wasn’t my idea, Leader,’ the young man nervously answered.
‘Who paid you?’ Seeker repeated.
‘Seer Truth. He said we would have places in Paradise if we did this.’
Seeker understood. Truth was the man his father had warned him to beware. ‘Instead, you look like going to Hell,’ he said, with sadness. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’
‘Good. See if any of the others need your help. I have a job to finish.’ He turned away, spinning his sword hilt in his hand, glad that the fighting was finished. A cracking twig saved him. He leapt left, leaving a sword slicing harmlessly through empty air, and with a sharp back-thrust stabbed Hardfist in the throat. Using his strength to keep the impaled soldier on his feet, he turned, and grimaced when he saw the shock on the dying man’s face. With a grunt, he ripped the blade out, and let the victim crumple. The sun had sunk below the horizon, leaving the waves of cloud stained vermilion. He watched the light spread across the sky like wildfire, quickening in a final glorious blaze before succumbing to the smothering night.
A short time later, he trudged up the track, enduring the ache of the bruises and cuts received in the chaotic fighting, pressing his hand against the bleeding wound in his side. He regretted his decision to execu
te the wounded soldiers, but after Hardfist’s treachery he knew he could never trust his life with any of them again. The crossbowmen that Champion had trampled were lying on the track, and Seeker did not look down as he walked between them, no longer caring to see the treacherous faces of men he had commanded in the Queen’s army.
Champion was waiting patiently. Seeker checked the extent of the horse’s wound, and was satisfied that he could still be ridden. He wished that he didn’t have to put the animal through more pain, but he was still half a day across country from the village and he had to warn the Keeper of the Conduit that his life was in danger. With considerable effort, he slipped his foot into the stirrup.
Something thumped into his back, knocking him sideways out of his saddle.
Caught between deep, searing pain and an inability to breathe, he half-heard the approaching shuffle of boots dragging along the track. He knew he couldn’t roll any further because a metal rod protruded from his chest, so when the voice rasped above him he was still staring at the Queen’s regulation army boots a hand’s span from his face. ‘Sorry, Leader. Shooting a man in the back isn’t exactly fair, is it? But you see, your bloody horse knocked the shit out of me. I think I’ve got more busted ribs than I can count. You always told us if we can’t fight fair, fight any way we can. I did what you taught me, Leader.’
A voice inside wanted to say, ‘Nice work, Ditch’, but a stronger voice was impelling him to act. Summoning his waning strength, he spun on his shoulder, swinging his legs to take Ditch’s legs out from under him. Caught off guard, Ditch attempted to jump clear, but Seeker brought him down. Ditch hit the ground on his shattered ribs, and yelped, and when he opened his eyes Seeker was already slitting his throat.
Seeker climbed off the man and straightened gingerly. Pain throbbed bitterly through his chest as he struggled to breathe, and blood dripped from his mouth. He cursed, because he knew that he was also dying. He resisted the urge to wrench out the crossbow bolt. Battle experience told him that would just hasten his bleeding to death. He doubted he had the courage to pull it out anyway, and it was in an awkward position to reach. He fumbled for Champion’s reins, and after several agonising efforts he hauled himself into the saddle. ‘I need your help, Champs,’ he wheezed quietly, and with a gentle pat on the grey’s head he pointed the horse into the darkening bush.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Oh there will come a time,’ he warned, ‘there will come a time when men and women will rue what they have left undone. Mark my words, this will be so.’ The elder’s ragged green sleeves hung from his spindly arms, his rheumatic fingers pointing at the crowd. He coughed up a thick gob of yellow phlegm, and spat it emphatically into the dust, while the Summerbrook village crowd hung on the impending prophecy, ignoring the afternoon heat. Samuel, older than anyone in the village, was the voice of the future. He’d seen the season of crop failure two years before it happened. He’d warned them of young Woodchip’s drowning before the tragedy. He’d told them that the kingdom would be torn apart by war, and now there was a war between the Queen’s army and the Rebels lurching back and forth across the land. It was wise to listen to Samuel.
Meg squinted against the hot sun glinting off the river water between the wood-and-thatch Bakers’ and Farriers’ buildings, and used her right hand to sweep her red locks from her sweaty forehead. The crowd had already taken the thin shade from the tall white river gums. Samuel was a guaranteed source of entertainment for the villagers when he railed against the sins of people or foretold the end of time, but Meg had heard him too many times to find him interesting. She was puzzled as to why her mother was still fascinated by his ramblings—why so many villagers dropped their work to listen to the mad old fool.
‘Beware the coming of the Demon Horsemen!’ Samuel screamed, pointing emphatically at the clear blue sky. Meg looked up and only saw a lazy black crow drifting across the space between two stands of gum trees. ‘They will come,’ Samuel insisted. ‘It is our fate that they will come. They will purify us of our weaknesses and scourge us of our evil—two riders, as blue as ice, possessed of powers mightier than the highest kings in the greatest empires. The Demon Horsemen will ride across our lands and their horses’ fiery breath will scorch the earth. Pray you do not live to see this day. Pray you are buried deep in the earth when this terrible thing comes upon us.’
Bored, Meg prodded her younger brothers, Daryn and Mykel. ‘Time to get home. There are chickens to feed and the cow to milk.’
‘I want to listen,’ tousle-haired Daryn complained.
‘Me too,’ said Mykel, scratching his worn trouser leg.
‘He’s mad,’ she told them. ‘Living all the time up in that cave on the hill has left him with loose kangaroos in his top paddock.’
‘Show respect for the prophet,’ her mother whispered.
Meg turned to find Dawn glaring at her, and her littlest brother, blue-eyed blond Peter, sucking his thumb at Dawn’s side. ‘Mum, he’s not saying anything we haven’t heard before,’ she protested.
‘He tells us what is going to happen. It’s a Blessing.’
‘It’s a con,’ Meg mumbled, as she tugged impatiently at her green tunic laces. ‘He only does it to get free food.’
‘They will come!’ Samuel cried passionately. ‘And nothing, nothing can stop them when they come!’
‘I’m going home,’ Meg announced.
The road from the market, where Samuel always made his public prophecies, led over the arched wooden bridge into the village centre, past Archer’s Inn. Meg waved to the Archer children, who were laughing as they were having a water fight in the horse trough in the shade of a gum tree. For a moment, she was tempted to join them, but children’s games were no longer her province as a young woman in her sixteenth year. The narrow dirt road continued north, out of the village, but she turned westward at the junction. The grass, yellowed by the heat, crunched under her boots. As she headed towards her home, a familiar canine shape loped towards her from the farmhouse. ‘Sunfire!’ she cried. The golden dingo flattened his ears, his tail lolling from side to side as she patted his head, and he settled into stride beside her.
Her father, Jon Farmer, had built a single-roomed wooden hut when he first settled in Summerbrook, but in the intervening years had extended it to accommodate his growing family, and now it was a comfortable home, a place in which Meg felt happy—except that she wished her father was there. At the stone well, she winched a bucket up from the dark depths and guzzled the cool water. She poured a measure into a small pot beside the well and Sunfire lapped at the refreshing liquid, looking up in appreciation with his amber eyes. ‘Cow first!’ she declared, and let the rope and bucket drop back into the well.
She finished her daily chores as the sun vanished behind the purple haze of the western hills. Thin white smoke twisted from the chimney, showing that her mother was cooking their meal despite the evening’s warmth. The shadows of Daryn and Mykel dawdled towards the house, the boys having reluctantly fed the chickens and the pigs with food scraps. She looked for Sunfire, and realised that he was probably hunting the numbats and bilbies that abounded in the hills. Meg stored her rake in the lean-to shed, and heard Dawn calling her to eat as she emerged. This Fuar season had been the hottest she could remember, full of endless days of brilliant blue, cloudless skies and cold star-sparkled nights. The ground was parched, and everyone wished for rain. The cows, pigs and sheep on the common run huddled or squatted under the thin gum tree shade to escape the scorching sun, and dogs and cats were lying in the shadows, panting. Saltsack Carter, who brought in supplies and carried out goods to sell on his wagon trips, said that the eastern villages in Western Shess were suffering cruelly from the drought conditions. Animals were dying, crops failing. They were lucky to have the river in Summerbrook.
Hearing a rustling overhead in the gum tree, Meg looked up to see the shape of a grey possum waddling along a white branch. ‘Stay off the house roof tonight,’ she warned. She’d lost coun
t of the times her brothers and she, woken by possum grunts and growls, scrambled out of bed and pelted the creatures with stones. Yet they persistently returned. ‘If I could cast a magic spell, I’d turn you all into little stone statues.’
Her mother, Dawn, was putting plates in front of the three boys when Meg entered the house. ‘Daryn,’ Meg said abruptly. ‘You should be helping Mum.’
‘Sit down,’ Dawn insisted. ‘Leave the boys alone and eat.’
‘Give me that,’ Meg said, taking the mashed potato pot from her mother. ‘The boys should be helping you inside. They don’t do much outside.’
‘We do more than you!’ Mykel blurted indignantly.
‘Like what?’ she challenged.
‘We catch the fish.’
‘And we bring in the numbats and birds,’ Daryn added.
‘You spend all day trying to catch the fish and numbats, and don’t do anything else,’ Meg argued. ‘There’s plenty to do around the house. The barn roof needs repairing. The animals need constant water in this heat. You could be sharpening the plough blade ready for when the rains come.’ She scooped a dollop of potato onto Mykel’s plate.
‘There won’t be any rain for ages,’ Daryn told her.
‘How come?’
‘Samuel said there won’t be any,’ said Mykel. ‘He said we’re being punished for all our sins.’
‘For all your sins maybe,’ Meg replied.
‘Enough,’ Dawn interrupted. ‘Sit and eat.’
Meg sat, intermittently helping four-year-old Peter clean up his mess. ‘Any news of the war?’ she asked between mouthfuls.
‘Nothing,’ Dawn replied.
‘Samuel said the war would be upon us soon,’ Daryn said, excitement in his voice.
‘Well, Samuel doesn’t know everything. The war is a long way away,’ said Dawn.
‘Can we be soldiers like Dad?’ Mykel asked.
‘You’re ten,’ Dawn reminded him. ‘War is not for children. It’s not for anyone.’
The Amber Legacy Page 1
