Ammadin started over to join them, but Zayn came hurrying up to her. He was carrying a lead rope in one hand.
‘I’ve roped the two geldings into the pack train,’ he said. ‘Do you want to take that young buckskin mare?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Ammadin said. ‘She’s never been accepted by the bell-mares. We might as well sell her.’
‘We?’ He smiled, his head cocked a little to one side.
Ammadin found herself utterly tongue-tied. She really had started thinking of them as a ‘we’, she realized, not as ‘myself and my servant’.
‘Just go get the horses,’ she said.
Zayn laughed, but he jogged off, heading for the herd. She reminded herself that such thoughts could be dangerous, especially about a man who kept secrets. She realized that morning that if Zayn weren’t constantly lying to her – or speaking on the edge of lying, at any rate – she might well have given in to her attraction and slept with him. As it was, she had no intention of letting him close to her.
When the time came for the two halves of the comnee to separate, everyone felt a profound reluctance to do so. People went back and forth, saying farewells and reassuring their tearful children. Packing up the last of the gear caused squabbles within families over who was going to take what. All of this cost the travellers hours. The pale sun had climbed high above the purple horizon before the long line of horses and riders formed up, followed by a single wagon carrying Ammadin and Apanador’s tents. Twenty-two humans and three times that many horses set out, heading due east, to one last round of goodbyes from those left behind.
Every time Sentry chimed, Ammadin would get out her crystals and scan for Zayn’s enemies, but she learned nothing of interest until the next morning. In the first light of dawn, Warkannan and his nephew still slept, but Soutan was sitting out in the grass, bent over something he held in his lap – a thin slab of slate, she thought at first, but a peculiar blue light flickered on its surface in what looked like random patterns. Although she watched for some while, she could make no sense of them. Finally, when she heard Maradin calling her from camp, she gave the puzzle up and shut down her crystals.
‘What the hell are you doing now?’ Warkannan said.
From his seat in the tall grass, Soutan looked up, swore, and clutched some flat thing to his chest with both arms.
‘Sorry,’ Warkannan went on. ‘But we’ve got the camp struck. We’re just waiting for you to come back so we can load the pack horses.’
‘Surely you don’t expect –’
‘You to do some actual work? May the Lord forbid!’ Warkannan resisted the urge to heap up sarcasm. ‘I want to wait till the last possible minute to saddle up, is all. We can’t afford to be caught out here with galled mounts.’
‘That’s true, yes.’ Soutan laid the object into his lap again. ‘I’ll just shut down.’
‘Good. What’s that? A writing slate?’
‘No, of course not! Do you see a pen in my hand?’ Soutan ran a finger along the long edge of the slate. ‘This was a gift from Nehzaym, may your god bring her joy. It produces visions, and I was hoping to get a vision of how to fix my injured crystal.’
This explanation sounded even more peculiar than most of Soutan’s chatter. The sorcerer frowned at the slate, tapped the short edge with one finger, then picked up a length of black cloth from the ground beside him.
‘I’ll wrap this up and put it away,’ Soutan said. ‘Then we can ride out.’
‘Good. I’ll get the horses saddled.’
They set off on a morning so achingly hot that a pale gold mist hung at the horizon. No matter how badly he wanted to make speed, Warkannan coddled the horses. Every time they reached water, he called a halt to let the stock drink, and at the top of every low rise they paused for a brief rest. Warkannan would dismount and walk a little away from the others to look back, shading his eyes against the sun. In the middle of the afternoon he saw the sign he’d been looking for – a plume of dust rising. He pointed it out to Arkazo and Soutan.
‘The comnee,’ Warkannan said.
‘It must be, yes,’ Soutan said. ‘I cannot tell you how infuriating this is. That wretched witchwoman has a living crystal, and I don’t. Good god, she can spy on us whenever she feels like it, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.’
‘That worries me, too, but you’re right. There’s nothing we can do about it, so it’s in God’s hands.’
‘Inshallah,’ Arkazo murmured.
Soutan pursed his lips in a scowl, then shrugged.
‘I suppose that’s as good a way to think about it as any,’ Soutan said. ‘We should reach the Rift tomorrow, if they don’t catch up with us, anyway. That would be a damned nuisance.’
‘Can’t we go across by a different route?’ Warkannan said.
‘There’s only one way across. The Riftgate. You’ll see when we get there.’
‘Will I? Then we’d better get moving.’
Warkannan kept up his rearguard watch all afternoon. Some three hours before sunset, the dust plume disappeared. He could assume the comnee had made camp. A soft wind sprang up, bringing with it cooler air. Warkannan decided to risk pushing his own stock and kept his men riding for another couple of hours. When they camped, though, he found a spot well out of sight of the trail.
After they ate their evening meal, Soutan carried his mysterious slate out into the grass to mutter spells where they couldn’t overhear. Warkannan and Arkazo unloaded the canvas packs to take an informal inventory. They had food left, dry hardtack, cheese, some flasks of oil, some saur jerky. Charcoal they still had as well, and cracked wheatian for the horses.
‘We could travel another week easily,’ Warkannan said. ‘Soutan tells me we’ll reach the trading precinct before then.’
Arkazo nodded, then looked away, his eyes full of tears. War-kannan found himself remembering the time Arkazo had fallen off a pony – he must have been no more than six – and broken his wrist. He had stood the same way, desperately trying not to cry, afraid to catch his uncle’s eye for fear he would.
‘Kaz?’ Warkannan said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I was just thinking.’ His voice shook badly. ‘We’ve got extra because Tareev isn’t –’ He broke off.
‘Isn’t here to eat his share. Yes, that’s true.’ Warkannan laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you?’ Arkazo spun around and looked him in the face. ‘You don’t act like it’s bothering you in the least. You’ve forgotten all about it, I’d say.’
‘I’m a soldier, Kaz. I don’t think you realize what that means. I’ve lost friends out on the border. I’ve seen plenty of dead men who weren’t friends. You never get used to it, never that. But you learn to keep it inside and get on with the jobs that need doing.’
Arkazo caught his breath with a noise that might have been a sob, might have been a sigh.
‘I’m sorry,’ Warkannan repeated. ‘This is why I didn’t want you to come. This is why I didn’t want Tareev to join us.’
Arkazo concentrated on wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeve. Warkannan waited, saying nothing more. At last Arkazo looked his way.
‘We’d better get this stuff packed up.’ Arkazo’s voice was steady again.
‘I’ll do it. You build a fire, and make it bright if you’d like. We’ve got the fuel.’
In the last of the daylight Warkannan repacked the supplies, distributing the weight among all the packs so that no one horse carried more than the others. Arkazo laid a fire; when the light rose up, he crouched in front of it, but Warkannan stayed standing, looking off to the long purple grass where Soutan sat hidden. Against the darkening sky a flock of cranes flew overhead, soaring on naked wings – he could see the dotted stripes of phosphorescence along their thin necks and dangling legs. They shrieked, banked and wheeled, then flew off back the way they came. Arkazo shuddered at the sound.
‘I have a bad feeling about this place, too,’ Warkannan said. ‘Tell you what. Go
bring the horses into camp. Hobble and double tether them.’
Arkazo got up and trotted off to follow orders. When he returned, and the horses were secure, Warkannan brought their weapons over to the campfire and laid them within easy reach.
Not more than two hours later, Warkannan’s intuition proved itself true. They were just thinking of putting out their fire when Warkannan heard a cry that sounded like a distant howl of laughter out in the dark downs. He and Arkazo were on their feet in an instant, but Soutan knelt and began fumbling in his saddlebags.
‘What is it?’ Arkazo said.
‘What do you think?’ Warkannan said. ‘ChaMeech.’
In little bubbling shrieks, the cries came closer, circling round the camp, calling back and forth, closer, ever closer, ringing them round before they could think of running. Warkannan drew his sabre and made a silent pledge that they’d pay high before they brought him down.
‘Grab that axe,’ he snapped at Soutan. ‘It’ll be better than nothing.’
‘I have all the weapons I’m going to need.’
Soutan got up, holding a long tube of silver metal. When he barked a nonsense word, one end of the tube glowed with a warm yellow light. Soutan twisted a metal band at the other; the glow turned into a beam. He flung up his hand and sent a spear of light into the sky. Out in the dark grass the ChaMeech fell abruptly silent. The ruby on Soutan’s headband flared red as it caught a splinter of the unnatural glare.
‘They recognize this wand, you see,’ he said, and his tone was peculiarly off-hand. ‘It holds an ancestral spirit, and it means I have magic.’
Soutan called out another incomprehensible word. Golden light spewed like a fountain from the tube and flooded the camp. The horses tossed their heads and danced, but fear kept them silent and their double tethers kept them in place. Trapped in the light stood six mottled red and purple ChaMeech, crouched with their weight thrown back on their hind pair of legs, their mid-pair propping them tense and leaving the front pair, the pseudo-arms that ended in a single finger and opposed thumb, free to handle their long spears, edged at the point with obsidian flakes. At the end of the long graceful necks the bulbous heads turned this way and that, while their doubled pairs of eyes blinked against the glare.
‘Their heads!’ Arkazo was shaking where he stood. ‘They’re so big.’
‘They’re big all over,’ Warkannan muttered. ‘And remember: you can only pierce their hide along their necks and stomachs.’
Holding his lightwand up high, Soutan began to chant in a language Warkannan didn’t recognize. Slowly, a few at a time, the ChaMeech fell back until they hovered at the edge of the pool of light. Only the biggest remained, an individual about ten feet from his flat, fleshy snout to his stub of rudimentary tail. Around his loins hung a red tattered kilt made out of captured cavalry tunics, and at his throat hung a foot-long tangle of charms, beads, and coloured strips of cloth. When Soutan stepped forward, the ChaMeech lowered his head slowly and submissively. The purple sac of skin on his throat filled and deflated, over and over, in a steady silent pulse. Soutan’s lips moved, but Warkannan could hear nothing.
For a long time the pose held: the sorcerer with his shaft of light held high, the monstrous warrior crouched before him. Suddenly, with a long hooting cry the ChaMeech flung up his head and spun round, shockingly graceful, and bounded off into the night. Shrieking and mewling, his men followed. Warkannan let out his breath in a sharp grunt and Arkazo frankly whimpered. Golden in the unnatural light, Soutan looked them over in cold contempt.
‘Well, Captain, do you see now what magic can do?’
‘Oh yes.’
Soutan smiled, a cold twitch of his mouth. ‘Let me make something clear right now. Once we put Jezro on the throne, I shall expect to be treated as I deserve.’
‘I don’t think you need to worry about that.’
With a laugh Soutan snapped out another peculiar syllable. The light in the tube went out, leaving them all blinking as badly as the ChaMeech. Only later did it strike Warkannan just how easily Soutan had won his battle of wills, as if in some silent way he’d been communing with the ChaMeech instead of fighting with it.
Ammadin woke long before the rest of the comnee. In the pale, reddish light of dawn she took her crystals and walked out into the grass, though she stayed well within sight of the camp. A soft wind blew from the east, bringing a faint scent. She tossed her head back and breathed deeply, catching the all-too-familiar smell of male ChaMeech, acrid with rancid musk. If any females travelled with them, the male stink would cover their softer scent. Still, she opened Long Voice and tried calling for Water Woman. When she received no answer, she opened Spirit Eyes and began to scan.
Eventually she saw the ChaMeech in the shelter of a ring of spear trees, six warriors, lying asleep in their usual fashion, huddled and heaped half on top of one another, with their spears, body decorations, and sacks of food strewn around them on the ground. The sorcerer and the two Kazraks she found camped only a few miles away. Either they’d been lucky, or the sorcerer carried magic powerful enough to scare off the warparty. When she went back to camp, she told Apanador that the trading party needed to stay in camp for the day.
‘They’re probably hoping to drive off a few horses,’ Ammadin said. ‘If the herd’s hobbled, they can’t.’
Apanador nodded his agreement. ‘Six ChaMeech?’ he said. ‘That’s a good-sized warband, but it’s not big enough to attack the camp in daylight. At night – well, we’ll post guards.’
‘Good idea. I’d better prepare a few surprises of my own, just in case.’
At last! Warkannan thought, and in a way, the sight was worth waiting for. He stood at the edge of the Rift with Arkazo and stared, simply stared for a long time. At their feet lay dusty bare ground, which sloped down some hundreds of yards to a straight drop. In turn the cliff plunged down so far that he could only guess at the distance – a mile, perhaps. On the far side mist rose and hung across the cliff face like smoke. He could make not even an educated guess about the width of the canyon, though he could see that it yawned here at the top and narrowed at the bottom. From his viewpoint the floor looked like a carpet woven out of orange and purplish-brown foliage, brushy and tattered, perhaps fern trees, perhaps not. Water gleamed through the occasional breaks in the cover.
‘Uncle?’ Arkazo turned first north-east, then south-west. ‘How far does it run? From here it looks like it goes on forever.’
‘Not quite.’ Warkannan smiled at him. ‘But far enough. Over a thousand miles, if those maps Soutan had are correct, all the way from the southern ocean to the northern one.’
Arkazo whistled under his breath and shook his head. Warkannan returned to studying their route down. The Cantons would have been cut off from the west irretrievably had someone not carved a road out of the cliffside at this spot. In switchbacks wide enough for three riders abreast it snaked down, each slab laid into a cut at a gentle angle like big steps made of tan rock. Down the middle of each slab ran ruts, ground out of the rock by generations of comnees and their horses.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Soutan came strolling up. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
‘It lives up to its reputation,’ Warkannan said.
Arkazo smothered a laugh. Soutan, surprisingly enough, smiled as well, then turned back to Warkannan. ‘We’d best get on our way,’ the sorcerer said. ‘We need to get out of the Rift before nightfall. The ChaMeech present no problem, but every now and then you run across a longtooth hunting in those trees.’
‘If we end up having to run for our lives,’ Warkannan said, ‘I’d just as soon do it in daylight. I take it there’s another road on the other side?’
‘Just like this one, yes. This is the Riftgate I told you about. The Ancients made it.’
‘I’ve got to hand it to them. They were pretty damn good at building roads.’
‘They were good at building a great many things, Captain.’ Soutan paused, staring across the Rift, and for a
moment he looked close to tears. ‘Ah well, time to get moving!’
‘Good. Now, we can’t ride down. We need to be on the ground and leading the stock in case one of them panics. Each man will lead his riding horse. We’ve got four pack horses, and Tareev’s horse, too, so that makes eight horses for three men. We’ll rope them up like this: three for me to lead, three for Arkazo, and Soutan, two for you.’
Soutan nodded, then began scratching under his headband again. A drop of blood trickled down his forehead.
‘Take that thing off,’ Warkannan said, ‘and let me treat that sore under it. We’ve got a first-aid kit in the packs.’
‘I never take this off.’ Soutan’s voice snapped with rage. ‘Don’t you ever try to lay one filthy finger on it, do you understand me?’
‘Shaitan! I try to help you and all you do is bite like a wounded animal.’
Soutan snarled like one, too, and marched off, heading for the horses, which they’d left tethered nearby.
‘God give me strength,’ Warkannan muttered. ‘God, don’t let me throw him off the cliff on the way down.’ He took a deep breath, then turned to Arkazo. ‘Let’s get going. The climb up won’t be easy on the horses, and I agree with our sorcerer on one thing: we don’t want to be in the Rift when night falls.’
The horses proved nervous when it came to stepping down onto the first switchback. They snorted, rolled their eyes, and danced back from the edge. Like most cavalrymen, Warkannan had more patience for horses than he did for H’mai. With soft words and the touch of his hand he finally managed to coax his own grey gelding down. Seeing one of their own start the descent gave the others some courage. They followed – reluctantly, tossing their heads, pulling at the lead ropes, but they followed. The first turn in the road gave the horses more trouble, but in the end they swung themselves around and kept on walking. From then on, herd mentality took over, and in a line the horses marched calmly down the switchbacks with the men at their bridles.