by Erron Adams
What the hell! he thought. Worst comes to worst, I’ll kill the bitch and burn the ring off her! He ran to the horses, leapt on the one carrying Caylen, cut the others loose, and wheeled away into the night.
Bowman sat up. His face throbbed and hot liquid trickled down one cheek. In his blurred vision he saw Keemon making off with Caylen on a horse. Sounds were coming closer. He heard voices. The little voice that had spoken to him from the bow he’d fashioned in the Night Forest was one of them. Go back for me, and get away, it said. Take food. Move fast. Be silent. Don’t be seen.
He did.
***
Word reached Unconnu of Keemon’s flight with Caylen.
The storm inside her building, she sent to see that the Outlander was still safely held. But they didn't find Bowman, only the empty tent he'd been left trussed in. The rough-hewn bow and arrows he'd been carrying when captured - source of much amusement to the Imperial Guards - had also gone.
This was all that could be told to Unconnu. The messenger who came back was white-faced in his fear of her.
***
Chapter 27
The Scattering
In a rage, Unconnu struck the loyalists that night.
By the time Denaren and Oyen regained the situation, half their men lay dead. Denaren called the rest in a circle.
The rebels had withdrawn to reload crossbows. Unconnu, having vented her initial fury, was in no hurry to complete the job. She had the enemy surrounded, with only grass for cover, and her own men would use that to advantage when they made their next advance.
Still, the loyalists were alerted now; subsequent attacks would carry a higher price. And every one of the Guards she had at her disposal counted if the Outlander was to be apprehended in the days ahead.
Not to mention Keemon. Her mind boiled with the images of things she had in store for him. Even so, she grudgingly admired the man’s resourcefulness, the blade-sharp decisions with which he cut his way through life.
What would Keemon do now? she wondered. That treacherous heart would seal the rout with little or no further loss. What would he do now?
She smiled as the answer hit her.
***
“They’ll cut us to bits out here if we can’t close and use our swords!” Oyen said to Denaren. He looked around at the bodies, and the bent figures of the fortunate tending the wounded. “Damn them, they already have.”
Denaren scanned the dark circle at the edge of his vision. “We have to get through them somewhere.”
Oyen snorted. “Easier said than done. I wonder how they slipped past our sentries?”
Denaren gritted his teeth. “In a word, Unconnu. Her sorcery again, damn her!”
“That doubles the case for leaving. Why wait around to see what she does next?”
They didn’t have to wait long to find out what that was. Summer had dried the grass well, and the chill Autumn night had not yet wet it with dew. Unconnu’s next assault began as intermittent crackling, then the gentle breeze brought acrid smoke to the loyalists. As the fire took hold, it draughted the smoke up and away into the night, revealing the steadily advancing waves of orange flame.
Behind the flame, salvos of crossbow bolts scythed through the grass, and the loyalists. Denaren yelled for his men to lie low. The fire and the rebels came on.
A lull in the breeze stopped them twenty yards out. Smoke began to stand in the air, and the rebels hung back, unable to pick a safe course through the murk.
Unconnu’s Lieutenant swore. “We had them, we damn near had them! If that wind comes back our way, we’re in trouble.” He turned to Unconnu. “Isn’t there something you can do?”
She scowled. “There are many things I can do!” She turned back to the fire and raised her hands to it. Her eyes closed and she stood as though pressed to an invisible wall.
As she did, morning broke in the East, its crimson sheets of sky smudged by the fire smoke. The loyalists, better able to see their smoky targets in the sudden light, rose and sprayed a steady rebuke out at the foe that had tightened round them.
One shot fired blindly by a loyalist who then ducked back behind grass to reload, caught Unconnu in the stomach, ending her spellcasting in a shriek. She sank to her knees and looked down.
The bolt had missed bone and gone cleanly through her. She placed one hand on the red hole in front, the other on her back, where a matching hole burbled red. Not allowing herself the luxury of a curse, she bent her powers to a new spell. In moments the bleeding staunched. She rose to her feet.
The Lieutenant regarded her in open-mouthed shock. He’d heard stories about Unconnu, many stories, but never been witness to the kind of event those stories got wrapped around.
“Are…are you alright?” he asked.
“No, you fool, I’m injured.”
What else could she tell him? That he would have to carry the burden of battle from here, she needing all her powers for renewal? She jerked her head towards the loyalists.
“Get on with it!” she said. Then she winced and turned away, looking for somewhere to rest.
But a new sound caught her ear; she turned to where it emanated in the East. A wavy line was descending the inner slope of the caldera-like water running down a wall. She squinted; it was hard to make out details at this distance, in such poor light. As the line reached the level of battle and swung in its direction, the low thunder of hooves became distinct.
The riders wore no particular uniform, no pennants flapped from bridles, no bugle sounded. But the equestrian mastery of the riders was unmistakable to Unconnu. Her eyes glazed and her mouth fell slowly open like that of a just-slaughtered beast, its spirit climbing the high air, its cabled brawn unwinding. The riders kept rolling over the hill like a herd migration that had turned to stampede.
Only one tribe could appear out here in such numbers, commanding respect like this from the horse, other than Palace Kasina. A foe Unconnu had no power left to fight. She shook off her torpor.
“Jindi!” she shouted to the Lieutenant. “Get me to a horse.”
Without answering he swept her up and ran.
***
“Where are the others?” Yalnita asked as she stepped back from Oyen’s bear hug.
After the joy of their reunion, Oyen looked suddenly distraught. “John Bowman and Caylen have gone missing! They just walked out and vanished!”
“Nobody just vanishes!”
Denaren spoke. “They did. We believe Unconnu had something to do with it.” He looked over her shoulder at the Jindi going around the bodies of the rebels, dispatching those who still lived. “How did you find us?”
She smiled. “A mounted troop? You were easy enough to track. We almost caught up yesterday, but night beat us, so we camped. Then one of our sentries saw the fire,” she tossed her head “and we came.”
“I’m ever grateful you did. We’d never have bested this lot otherwise. Quite the opposite, in fact!”
“You’re welcome. It’s just a shame we failed to bring Unconnu to the net as well.”
“You’re not the first to fail on that score,” said Oyen. “She slips through any net, from what we’ve seen.”
Yalnita frowned. “So where to now? Do we go after Caylen, John Bowman, or Unconnu and Keemon? And where did they all go?”
“Some of our men say they saw the crone heading in that direction. Alone. No one else escaped the Jindi attack.” Denaren pointed.
Oyen followed the finger. “That’s Animarl; has to be. Unless she doubles back. She could go to the Palace, I suppose.”
Denaren shook his head. “Unlikely, without the men she brought here. Her failure would be obvious; she’d lose face with any followers she still has in Kasina Nabir. And alone, in these parts, she’s vulnerable, no matter how powerful her sorcery. The only one she can count on, or at least could, is Keemon, and he’s gone missing too. Now she’ll either want revenge on the man, or at least she’ll want to know why he left. No, I think she’ll try to track d
own Keemon first before she goes anywhere.”
“Well, we know where he’d be headed,” said Oyen. “Same as it seems Unconnu’s gone. Same as we should be heading.”
“Perhaps,” Denaren said. “The only thing that worries me is if Caylen and John Bowman went to Grealding.”
“I doubt that,” said Yalnita. “They wouldn’t be well received. We all left that place on bad terms, and Caylen and John Bowman were at the heart of the trouble. Besides, they’ll be wanting to cut Keemon off before he gets more of his weapons. No, I think Oyen’s right: they’re all heading for Animarl, and so should we.”
***
Part VII
Homecoming
Chapter 28
Snowblind
They'd made a snow cave at Keemon’s insistence, and crawled in. Just short of Animarl, on the plain of few trees, with the blizzard building, fear and cold had overtaken him. He'd roped the horse under a rock ledge, and they'd spent a frenzied hour digging in the growing drift.
She felt no need of such shelter. No snowstorm could impede her reunion with Bowman. But Keemon held the whip hand, or liked to feel he did with the gun holstered underneath his shirt. Whatever, she thought. Her thigh was still healing, and the ride from Twins Fall had been tiring. She would save her strength for the confrontation she knew must come.
And He must come, too. This now became her silent mantra. It would take the three of them to do what must be done. She'd scoured the close landscape with her Rory-honed instinct, but he wasn't there. At one stage she could feel fever building in him, then it stopped. Just like that. What came next was a nothingness, as if the storm had whited out all signals.
And yet she knew he wasn't dead, it wasn't that. Only the connection had been broken. He'd been using that damned mind again, unable to sense her presence the way she could sense his. In time she'd change that, if she got the chance. But even in this world, chance was all the things beyond control, and she'd lost him. Given time, if she could reinstate the connection, there was no harm she could not undo.
But he'd have to meet her in Animarl first, of his own power and will.
He must come.
***
No one.
He wondered if the snow was early for Animarl, if it was usual to be this heavy, or was this light? Where he came from, snow was something rarely seen. Rain yes; rivet-driving squalls of the stuff at times. But this quiet smothering that blew off peaks and drifted around down here in the abandoned orchard's stick-figure trees, this busted-pillow billowing of searching wraiths, wetting and freezing where it touched while it choked the familiar outlines he needed to steer by, was something new. It unsettled him as surely as it settled over every known face.
He'd made Lake Mountain in a dream so soft he never felt his feet touch as he put them down, step by dreamy step. He sensed only that his chest pounded as the dream swept him up the mountain slope. The lake itself seemed to be a magnet for snow, the melty stuff vanishing as it settled on the mirror surface, and he'd trudged the way down through sludge and whitened bushes just to see it. But it had nothing to offer, only the eye that held a plate of snowy sky up for him to see, and from behind the subterfuge, eyed him mysteriously.
By the time he'd made the ridge again, everything was white, and he snapped out of torpor long enough to sandbag his predicament. He stuffed his failing boots with grass a fallen tree had sheltered. He ate the last of the food he'd scrounged from Twins Fall. He wrapped the Guard's cloak that he'd also liberated, tightly round him, covering the stickbow and shafts in the process. Then he blundered down the buried slope, praying for an entrance to the Falling Path.
Prayed like he'd almost never done: meaning it. Prayed to a god he knew all rational thought denied. Prayed and felt lost, deserted by reason, his mind giving up on him, its claws relaxing, slipping out of the flesh it anchored to, rising like prayer smoke.
Prayed and in that distracted state fell into the first of the entrances. The wrong one, not the one with the gnarled pine exactly thirteen paces away in the direction of the rim. But it told him he was in the right area, and his eyes hunted around as he light-stepped over the white ground, looking for the twisted branches that would point him home.
Then, when he found it, the drunken stumble along the freezing passage to Animarl, delirium building with the cold until he stumbled out into blinding light in the snow-drowned valley.
No one.
He looked up and saw the entrance to the Cave of Origins, a foreboding black cavity in a whitened skull. He’d found no sign in the snow, and guessed if Caylen and Keemon were here, they’d sought shelter inside the mountain. He tracked across the valley towards the Cave.
***
Trudging through snow to the Cave, they’d let the horse go to fend for itself in the valley. Caylen tied a rag, torn from her shirt, to the entrance.
“To tell him we’re here,” she said.
“We don’t need him!” Keemon threatened.
“Oh yes we do,” she replied calmly. “Remember, Keemon, this is something that can only be given. Your strength means nothing here.”
He turned away, his eye twitching. Caylen secured the flag and they went inside.
At first they found a small alcove that was reasonably dry and draught-free. Caylen kindled a small fire from sunrock, feeding it with dried bat droppings.
Keemon paced, thinking. Maybe this was the time to chance his arm, to kill her and get the ring for himself. Bargain be damned. Then again, if she was telling the truth – and he’d never really understood how you could tell that - he’d be left with a body and an unwilling ring. "Sure," she'd said, "You could hack it off, but it wouldn't work any more; it would be worthless to you. If it's not freely given, it's just another ring."
He’d have to wait for Bowman, as she insisted, at least for a while. Since she seemed sure he would come.
“What if he doesn’t get here?” he said.
“He will.” She sighed and sat back, closed her eyes. Of course he’d come. Where else would he go? Unlike them, he’d be on foot, but if he made Twins Fall ahead of the blizzard, if he managed to get to the Falling Path in time, he’d be here soon. She had made sure Keemon came overland, hadn’t told him about the shortcut underground, to give Bowman the chance to gain ground on them.
If he made it to Twins Fall on time. If he managed to negotiate the tricky warren of tunnels through the Falling Path. If he wasn’t sick, or injured, or re-captured.
But she knew he wasn’t, and knew he had. She could sense him again, as if being back in Animarl had re-established the connection. Now, if she could just focus, if Keemon would just be still, if the walls would just stop vibrating….
She looked up. Keemon looked back, wide-eyed. He looked at the wall behind her.
She could hear it now, a far-off rumbling that came closer and grew, that threatened to burst into their alcove like some god that roared and tore the walls down on them. Dust sifted from the ceiling and the floor jumped, throwing Caylen through the fire.
She leapt up, brushing coals off. “Yeeow, shit!”
“C’mon!” Keemon had her by the arm. He pulled her back towards the tunnel they’d entered the alcove from. When they got to it, she shook his hand off.
They looked both ways. The choice was easy. One direction offered a creeping wall of dust cloud, the other remained clear. They took it running.
Repeatedly, the ceiling ahead fell in or the floor collapsed into another tunnel far below. Walls, too, were coming down, more often than not revealing another passage beyond. The honeycombed mountain was recreating itself.
It forced them down side tunnels again and again and again. They ran like creatures in a regenerating maze that hunted them with each transformation.
They finally exhausted their options before a sheer wall of rock. Keemon pounded and kicked and gouged and swore at it. Caylen turned to face the rumbling that came steadily closer. Something tunnelled under the floor towards them.
&nb
sp; “It’s herding us,” she said. She sounded reassured.
Keemon gasped in the thin, dusty air. “What! Are you crazy? What’s herding us?”
Caylen looked over at him and smiled. As she did a new hole appeared in the wall beside the cop. Beyond it, another tunnel, clear of dust and well lit, beckoned. She stepped past Keemon and through the hole.
“The mountain,” she answered, reaching out to draw him in.
***
Coming closer, he made out the strip of torn shirt that flicked about in the wind. When he got to it he bent and sniffed, to make sure – something he’d made a mental note to do more often since Yalnita smelt the blood-in-water when they’d found Boyle’s band – and went in.
There’d been some sort of commotion. Dust hung in the air and the rill was damming up here and there as it cut new channels. He could only see one clear way, a lightened passage dotted with landfall-blocked entrances on either side. He took it.
After he’d gone about an hour inside the mountain he stopped and listened. It was hard to be sure - rock was still falling and water gushed from the new ways it kept finding - but there seemed to be a regular sound amongst the chaos, of something on foot, following him. A sound, or something below sound, a subliminal presence his Rory training detected.
He turned around to run and found there were now two passages before him. One was bright, wide and airy; the other seemed to be an old way that had mostly caved in and offered dark seclusion. Choosing fear, he scrambled into it away from light, and lay waiting, an arrow nocked to his stickbow.
The sounds of pursuit became undeniable. Looking out from the darkened tunnel he saw a figure come into view. It was stooped, and he guessed it to be tracking him by the footprints he’d left. He stepped from the dark tunnel with his bow drawn.
“Freeze!” he said. The figure stopped and looked up at him. Bowman lurched back in shock. “God, Rain Dog!”
