‘How much time do we lose if we go to N’gara and they aren’t there?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘A week,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘More, if Tapio kills us.’
He and Gas-a-ho barked their laughter, and it rang from the rocks and low bluffs around them in the still autumn air.
Natia Qwan had to smile. ‘You think that’s the right thing to do,’ he said.
Ta-se-ho shrugged. But he relented. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If Tapio and Mogon bury the axe and make friends, they will be the most powerful allies in the north country, and we could not do better than to offer our people to them. Mogon’s brother and father were never bad to the people.’ He made an odd motion with his head. ‘They were never particularly good, either,’ he admitted.
‘And this Tapio?’ Nita Qwan asked.
Gas-a-ho leaned forward. ‘The horned one says he is a deeply cunning shaman – almost like the old gods. He says you must never go to sleep in the halls of Tapio, or you wake to find a hundred years have passed.’ He realised he had probably said too much for a young person, and looked at the ground.
Ta-se-ho lay back on a giant sleeping bench meant for a daemon nine feet tall. ‘Tapio fought a war against our forefathers,’ he said, dreamily. ‘All the stories about the faeries under the earth and the war underground are about that war. He is very old.’
Nita Qwan had never heard such stories. ‘Does he hate the Sossag?’ he asked.
Ta-se-ho cocked one moccasined foot over the other. ‘I doubt he even remembers us. But we most definitely remember him. We used to hold all the land around N’gara. This was Sossag – the people of the western door. Tapio took our great towns and sent us to flee into the Burned Lands in the north.’
Nita Qwan sighed. ‘So much for our embassy, then,’ he said.
Ta-se-ho shook his head. ‘No. We have a good life now. Tapio might help us – he took what he wanted, and we survived. Not unlike the sorcerer who wants our Sacred Island. Listen, Nita Qwan. These Powers happen. It is best to accept the change and avoid death. If we can lead them to fight among themselves—’ The old man chuckled. ‘Well, all the better. If Tapio and Thorn destroy each other, the Sossag will laugh.’
‘And be stronger,’ said Nita Qwan.
The hunter shook his head. ‘That’s your brother talking. Stronger is for those who seek strength. The people want to live. Life is not about strength. Life is about living. The matrons know this – you need to know this, too. We do not seek an alliance to make us strong. We seek an alliance to avoid as much trouble as we can avoid, so that hunters can hunt, and mothers can raise children.’
Nita Qwan looked at the old hunter with new eyes. ‘You sound as if you hold the Powers in contempt.’
The old man puffed rapidly on his pipe to keep it lit. ‘You know the kind of child who must keep showing other children how smart he is? While other children run and play and eat and love their mothers, this little boy or girl cannot stop being smart. You know this child?’
Nita Qwan laughed. ‘All too well.’
‘Powers. Mostly, they are people who never learned to live.’ Ta-se-ho leaned back and chuckled. ‘Mind you, I’m an old man with no magic. If I could kill a deer a mile away with a flick of my fingers, I’d be a different man. But I’d never learn to hunt. And I love to hunt.’ He sat up. ‘I lack the words to explain better.’
‘You are a philosopher,’ Nita Qwan said again.
The older man nodded. ‘I could learn to like this word. But let me tell you a cold fact. The Inner Sea will freeze in a week. If we are going to paddle, we’d best paddle fast.’
And hour later, they were paddling south, for N’gara.
Lissen Carrak – Abbess Mirim and Sister Amicia
The Abbess read the latest message from Harndon carefully while Sister Amicia waited patiently, hands in her sleeves.
The Abbess winced once, and then her face stilled. Careful observation indicated she was reading the whole message a second time. This time she bit her lip.
She made a face – a very un-Abbess-like face. ‘Do you know anything about the contents?’ she asked Amicia, who shook her head.
‘Ma dame, I was at my place by the Southwark ferry, in the chapel, when the royal messenger came. As his message was for here and the sabbath was passed, I brought it directly. He had other stops to make.’
Mirim tapped the arm of her chair. ‘The King has appointed a new Bishop of Lorica who believes that the whole of the Order of Saint Thomas falls within his remit.’ She smiled – not a real smile, but a combative one. ‘I suspect that Prior Wishart and I will agree that he has no power over us, but equally I can see some trouble looming.’
‘The new Bishop of Albinkirk is a fine priest,’ Amicia said.
‘He called!’ Mirim said. ‘Hah, and caught us all in our shifts. Washing day, and the new Bishop comes to the gate! But Ser Michael turned out the guard for him, and we put on a passable show, and got the washtubs into the kitchen. He really is a very pleasant man, and his theology is refreshingly modern.’ Mirim took a scroll of the table under her elbow. ‘He issued you a further license to say mass whenever there is no priest present. And he appointed us a new chaplain – Father Desmond. A scholar, no less! We’ve all been on our best behaviour.’
Amicia curtsied again. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting him.’
‘You must be tired, dear sister.’ She paused. ‘There is a good deal of muttering about the liberties you are accorded. Please be at mass tonight, and at matins, so that all here can see you at your devotions.’
Amicia flushed with instant anger, and fought it back down.
‘And we need you to help us knit the defences back together. The choir – the hermetical choir – needs to practise while you are here.’ Mirim put a hand on her head. ‘Who ever thought that convents were places of rest?’
The Sacred Island – Thorn and Ota Qwan
When the moths hatched into larvae, it was incredibly disturbing for Ota Qwan. When the larvae hatched in the hung-up corpses of men who had been his companions, it made him think about things he didn’t want to, so he busied himself on errands. He gathered the early crop of young warriors of half a dozen tribes who had been inspired by Speaker of Tongues’ vision, and he led them on a short campaign – first, to overawe the Abenacki, and then further east.
No Abenacki force rose to meet him. South of the chain of streamside villages that lay in the heart of the Abenacki nation, he rested his war party and met with a delegation of elders. He demanded warriors and threatened them with destruction, and the two older warriors who had held senior commands that spring reacted with fierce words.
He shrugged. ‘Thorn will be your lord, now,’ he said. ‘Submit and grow in power. Fight and be destroyed.’
He left them to decide, and turned south and east. He had a branch from Thorn that allowed him to control the Ruk who suddenly infested the low country by the Inner Sea, and six of the lumbering giants followed him. The rest stayed clear of his path. He had expected to feel the power flowing through him; instead, there was nothing but the sight of the Ruk doing his bidding.
After six days’ travel the war party emerged from the rock-strewn marshes near the town of Nepan’ha. He walked forward on the first snow of the season and met with the headwoman, Big Trout, who was up on the catwalk of the palisade wall, holding a spear and wearing a fancy caribou-hide coat.
‘Thorn demands your submission,’ he shouted.
‘He should come and make that demand in person,’ she said, ‘and not send some witling to do it for him.’
‘He will destroy you,’ Ota Qwan promised.
The old woman turned, raised the hem of her coat and showed him her bare buttocks. She launched a long fart, and all her people laughed.
‘Tell your sorcerer to go pleasure himself with a birch tree!’ she shouted.
Ota Qwan allowed his anger to take control of him. He felt taller – stronger – and indeed he was. He raised the branch that Thorn had gi
ven him, and pointed at the wall.
From far away, there was the sound of bellowing. The ground began to shake.
A dozen Ruk lumbered forward.
The men and women on the wall had bows and spears, and the Ruk suffered much as they attacked. Four of them died outright.
But it takes a great deal to kill a Ruk. Those who withstood the withering barrage of missiles ripped the palisade down with their bare hands and went into the town. They launched themselves on an orgy of destruction, ripping buildings to the ground and killing anything they could catch – sheep, horse, or child.
Ota Qwan followed them through the breech with his fifty warriors. He pointed a hand in either direction, and ordered his senior warriors to clear the walls.
‘And then?’ asked one of the young Abenacki.
‘Then kill them all,’ Ota Qwan said.
That was not the Outwaller way. But the men were young, and they already saw much in Kevin Orley that they wanted to emulate.
Ten hours later, the last desperate mother was found huddled in a root cellar and had her child ripped away and killed. She was raped, and beheaded. His young warriors were covered in blood, and some were sick with what they had done and others curiously elated. Rape was new to the Abenacki and the Sossag – in Outwaller warfare, women were taken home, adopted and made wives. Otherwise, the matrons punished you.
Only Thorn had no matrons.
And he was there. Thorn came, wearing Speaker of Tongues.
‘What you have done, you have done for me, and for your people,’ he said. He went and knelt gracefully by the corpse of the last woman killed. ‘It is horrible, is it not? She was a person, and you took that and made her a thing.’ He rose. And smiled. ‘Listen, my warriors. We do this to save the rest. After Nepan’ha, no other town will resist me. This will save many lives – yours included. But also the lives of other women, and other babies.’ He walked through the rubble and the burning hides of what had been the central longhouse, to where Big Trout’s corpse lay in the doorway, her big axe still in her hands. ‘She was a fool to insult Ota Qwan, and doubly a fool to resist, and the deaths of all these people lie on her, not on you. When a leader accepts the responsibility of command, she accepts that she will bear the guilt. This fat woman owns the guilt you feel. So piss on her – pour your fluid on her and rid yourself of what is hers.’ He smiled beatifically. ‘For many years, you Outwallers have honoured the corpses of your enemy dead. Stop that. Desecrate them as fools and traitors. Our way is The Way. Be soft no longer. Be hard. Trust me on this.’ Speaker did as he said – he paused and pissed a long stream on the corpse, and the fat woman seemed to melt a little, and suddenly the warriors crowded around to do the same – and as they did, found their memories of the obscenity cloud over.
Speaker of Tongues smiled. Men are so easy to use, he thought. I will make them animals, and then they will be fit to live in the Wild.
He swirled his great cloak of wolf skins and vanished.
All the warriors cheered, and the Ruk bellowed.
Kevin Orley would have liked to have been satisfied. But he couldn’t help but wonder why the sorcerer didn’t pause to heal his wounded. And his memory of the taking of the town was untouched.
Thorn left his men with a slight shudder of revulsion, rather like a surgeon closing a jar of leeches, and returned through the aether to his place of power.
He then passed a day in casting and watching. The first of his special moths was about to hatch, and he had to catch it at just the right moment to finish its accession of power. Or so he told himself, while another part of his great and web-filled mind confessed that he simply wanted to be present when his creation hatched.
He watched Ghause and the Earl. He watched her dance naked, spending power like water. He watched her cast, and was annoyed and transfixed and transformed. He sent more moths, and then more still, to observe her from every possible angle in every possible part of her life.
Sometimes he heard her speak his name. It was as if she was already calling to him, over the leagues that separated them.
He watched her subsume a witch woman, and he groaned with pleasure.
She was, in her earthy way, much more complex than he had imagined, and much more powerful, and he chuckled and increased the power of his own wards.
He looked to his defences in case of material attack against her husband.
He watched other scenes, as well, through other moths and other beasts – but what they told him was not enough to build a whole scene. His creatures in Harndon gave him fragments of a picture that he couldn’t understand – a sea of angry faces in fire-lit darkness; the Queen shouting at a young woman. The Queen weeping. The Queen, reading old parchment.
And in the subterranean corridors beneath the old palace, his other creatures were all dead. He had lost every moth, every rat, every living thing that he had created or recruited, seduced or suborned to enable him to read his own notes – or Harmodius’s notes.
In the safety of his island, he’d begun transforming other creatures – some badgers, for example, as underground spies – but he had nothing when he needed it, and this caused him immense frustration. Even the cats he had used to maintain his spells binding Harmodius were lost to him – killing mice and roaming the castle corridors, their feline minds locked against him.
Without context, his moths alone were not useful, and he cursed the time it took to move them over vast distances and the power he had to expend to monitor them. Moths could take two months – and several generations – to reach their targets.
His attempt to plant moths on the Red Knight had failed, and all the insects he sent west to watch his nearest neighbour – the famous Tapio, who had refused to be his ally in the spring – were dead.
Thorn stood and thought in unmoving, superior indignation. If Tapio killed his sendings, then the arrogant irk was going to continue to keep his distance, or worse. Why will the Wild not unite? he asked himself. Because each individual seeks only his own good. Thorn sat in the dark, watching the chrysalis case of a caterpillar as long as a man’s arm, embedded in the corpse of a man, and nodded to himself. I will unite the Wild by force, and save it. If they cannot see to benefit of my idea, I will shove it down their foolish, ruggedly individualistic throats.
Unbidden, the picture of the Red Knight standing against him at Lissen Carrak, and seizing control of his boggles, rose before him. ‘You are just some parvenu merchant’s son trying to ape the manners of his betters.’
He tried to focus his rage the way he would focus power for a working. His father had been a merchant – what of it? I will be God, he thought at the distant figure. And you will be nothing.
He managed his hate – massaged it and relived each petty humiliation of the siege – he dwelled on the moment in which he mis-sited his trebuchet batteries, and he savoured how completely he’d been out-thought the night of his great attack.
He took all that hate, and channelled it into the caterpillar like a man giving a scrap of wool to a scent hound.
When he was done, he felt lighter by the weight of much fear. It was a powerful working – akin to the spell he’d thrown on the men who had raped Nepan’ha. Hermetical workings that altered the internal reality of the sentient mind were so delicate that manipulatting the life force of a moth was child’s play by comparison, but he was beginning to see how he could perform such miracles.
After a while, he ceased his efforts to monitor the world, and turned to his preparations to deal with the Earl.
Near Osawa – Giannis Turkos
The men who surrounded them were all Outwallers – all Northern Huran and Kree, with topknots and dyed deer-hair in bright red. But they had crossbows – heavy, steel-bowed weapons, all new made.
It was the crossbows that decided Turkos, although his decision was almost too fast to be described as thought.
Even as they emerged from the shadows to gloat over their prisoners, he reared his horse – his precious
horse, that he loved, Athena.
She reared obediently, and her broad stomach and long neck took all six of the crossbow bolts meant for him. And because she was all heart, she landed on four feet and continued forward after her iron-shod forefeet crushed the skulls of two warriors.
And then she fell.
Turkos landed on his feet and drew the heavy sabre he wore – as long and heavy as an Alban knight’s sword, but slightly curved and with a reinforced point that added authority to every cut.
Two more warriors fell – one with an arm cleanly severed and the other with the whole side of his face caved in from the backbone of the blade – cheekbones shattered, jaw broken.
His reckless charge into their midst created more chaos than he had any right to expect – one Kree put a heavy bolt into a Huran from behind in his haste to engage the foe. But these weren’t boggles – the older warriors were already recovering, drawing weapons, or standing clear and taking aim.
Turkos threw his best offensive working from the amulet at his neck. It was a sheet of lightning that flickered blue in the sunlight, and he laid it like a carpet, running close to the frozen earth, as his grandfather had taught him to. Men with protections wore them high, and no one can ignore a sharp blow to the ankle.
The warriors fell like puppets with their strings cut.
None of them were injured in any meaningful way, and it was the only hermetical protection he had. But knocking men down changes their view of a fight, and the veteran warriors began to consider sheer survival. He dispatched the man who fell closest to him, a sloppy blow that nonetheless buried his point in the man’s skull.
A warrior near to him got to one knee and reached for him, and he seized the man’s arm as the armatura taught and broke it and slammed the pommel of his sabre into the man’s face, knocking him unconscious and waiting for a crossbow bolt between his shoulder blades. He whirled – his time of grace was over, and he was praying to God and Jesus and the Virgin Parthenos and all the legion of saints—
The old man had put an arrow in the nearest Kree, and the rest of them were mere crashing noises running into the woods.