She turned back to the fire and fell silent, features sagging with fatigue. “I had hoped our final meeting might be joyous, that when you came it would be with tales of a wife and family, a long life lived in peace.”
He reached for her hand, knowing it would feel nothing, but let it hover there for a moment. “It grieves me to disappoint you so.”
She said nothing and he sensed that her vision was fading. He returned to the stone, extending his hand then hesitating. “Good-bye, Nersus Sil Nin.”
She didn’t turn around. “Good-bye, Beral Shak Ur. If you win your war, return to the stone. Perhaps you’ll find someone new to talk to.”
“Perhaps.” He pressed his palm to the stone, daylight returning in an instant, banishing the night’s chill. He drew a breath, forcing authority into his voice as he turned to address the Seordah. “The blind woman has spoken . . .”
He trailed off when he saw their gaze was elsewhere, all twelve Seordah chiefs now on their feet staring at something to the side of him. Dahrena stood nearby, eyes wide in wonder. He turned and the song surged.
The wolf sat on its haunches, green eyes regarding him with the scrutiny he remembered so well. He couldn’t recall its being so large before, standing at least as tall as he. After a moment it licked its lips and raised its snout, a great howl rising to the sky, loud enough to banish all other sound, filling the ears of all present to the point of pain.
The wolf lowered its snout, the howl fading and for a heartbeat silence ruled the forest, then it came, rising from the trees for miles around, the answering howl of every wolf in the Great Northern Forest. On and on it went as the wolf rose to trot forward, its great head level with his chest, nostrils twitching as it sniffed him. He could hear its song, the alien tune he remembered from the day Dentos died, the music so strange as to be baffling, but one note was clear and unmistakable. Trust. It has trust in me.
The wolf nuzzled his hand, its tongue lapping once, then turned and bounded away, a blur of silver in the trees, soon vanished from sight. The great howling faded with it.
Hera Drakil and the other Seordah came forward, forming a circle around him, the shadowy warriors emerging from the trees to surround him, men and women of fighting age all holding their war clubs out before them as one. Hera Drakil raised his own club, holding it flat and level. “Tomorrow,” the Seordah chief said, “I will sing my war song to the rising sun, and guide you through this forest.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“No fires are to be lit, no wood cut, no game taken. All men will remain in their companies and not wander away from the line of march. We walk only where the Seordah tell us.”
He saw some of his captains exchange wary glances, Adal’s face betraying the most unease. “And punishment for transgression, my lord?” he asked.
“Punishment won’t be needed,” Vaelin said. “The Seordah will enforce these rules, of that they have left me in little doubt.”
“I would be remiss, my lord, if I did not report the temper of the men,” Adal went on. “Open dissent is quickly quelled, as per your order, but we cannot still every tongue.”
“What is it now?” Vaelin ran a weary hand through his hair. The meeting with Nersus Sil Nin had left him troubled, the scarcity of knowledge she could impart leaving an irksome uncertainty. Also, he was coming to realise why he had never relished command. They’re always so endlessly malcontent. “Boots too hard? Training too tough?”
“They’re scared of the forest,” Nortah said. “Not that I blame them. Scares the life out of me and I’ve yet to set foot in it.”
“I see,” Vaelin said. “Well, any man too craven to walk through some trees has my permission to leave. Once they’ve surrendered their arms, boots, supplies and any pay they’ve received to date, they can make their way home and wait for a Volarian fleet to appear and enjoy the ensuing spectacle of slaughter. Perhaps then they’ll consider the true price of cowardice.” He rested balled fists on the map table, sighing through gritted teeth. “Or you could just give me a list of the most vocal grumblers and I’ll have them flogged.”
“I’ll speak to them,” Dahrena said as the captains fidgeted in uncomfortable silence. “Allay some fears.”
Vaelin gave a wordless nod and gestured for Brother Hollun to give his daily report on the state of the supplies.
“What did she tell you?” Dahrena asked when the captains had been dismissed. From outside the tent came the noise of the camp breaking up as the army prepared to march into the forest. “To have befouled your mood so.”
“It’s more what she didn’t tell me,” he replied. “She had no answers, my lady. No great wisdom to guide our path. Just a tired old woman suffering her final vision of a future she hates.”
Dahrena said nothing for a moment, but her gaze lingered on his face. He noticed it had done so since they returned from the forest. “The wolf,” she said. “You’ve seen it before.”
He nodded.
“So have I. When I was very little, the night father found me, it blessed me with its tongue . . .” Her gaze was distant, almost trance like. She blinked, shaking her head and rising. “I should go and make some speeches.”
◆ ◆ ◆
In the end there were none who refused to enter the forest, Dahrena’s words once again carrying sufficient weight to ensure loyalty. They love her, Vaelin decided, seeing the ease with which she moved amongst the men, the laughter she exchanged, seemingly able to recall every face and name without effort. He knew it was not a gift he held, most men who had followed him had done so out of duty or fear. He could only hope their love for her and fear of him would be enough when they finally met the Volarians.
The North Guard were first to enter the forest, dismounted and leading their horses through the trees, dozens of Seordah warriors on all sides looking on in stern silence. Vaelin led the First Regiment of Foot next. He had divided the army into ten regiments of about a thousand men each, numbered accordingly, though he had allowed them to decide on their own banners. The First were mostly miners and had adopted a banner showing crossed pickaxes on a blue background. They were led, albeit with much assistance from a North Guard sergeant, by Foreman Ultin from Reaver’s Gulch.
“Me, walking the great forest,” he said in wonder, eyes wide as he stared about. “Commanding a regiment at y’lordship’s side, too. And my old dad said I’d never climb no higher than emptying the foreman’s piss-bucket.”
“How long since you left Renfael, Captain?” Vaelin asked him.
“Just Ultin, if you please, m’lord. Even the lads can’t keep a straight face when they call me captain.” He glanced back at his men. “Ain’t that right, you disrespectful dogs?”
“Kiss my hole, Ultin,” one of the men in the front rank said. He blanched a little at Vaelin’s stare and quickly looked down. Vaelin stilled the rebuke on his tongue, seeing the sweat on the man’s forehead and the fear on his comrades’ faces, their eyes constantly roaming the trees.
“More’n fifteen years, m’lord,” Ultin said. “Since I left the old stinkhole I called home. Can’t say as I miss it much. Just another mean mining village, full of mean people paid mean wages by a mean lord. One day I heard about the Reaches from a tinker, said a miner could earn four times as much there, if he didn’t mind the cold and the savages. Got meself on a ship soon as I had enough for a berth. Never gave no thought to goin’ back, till now.”
If there’s anything to go back to, Vaelin thought.
Each regiment was given a Seordah guide, Hera Drakil leading the First, his communication confined mostly to pointing or holding up a hand to signal a halt. He seemed even more reluctant to engage with Vaelin than he had at their first meeting, avoiding his gaze and keeping to his own language, forcing Dahrena to continue as translator. The wolf, Vaelin surmised. They don’t appreciate being made to feel fear in their own forest.
The S
eordah chief led them to a clearing around a shallow creek where they would camp for the night. In accordance with Vaelin’s orders no fires were started and the men were obliged to huddle in their cloaks, eating cold hard-tack with some cured meat. There was little talk and no singing, men often starting at the sounds of the forest.
“What’s that?” Ultin asked in a whisper as a faint wailing came to them from the surrounding blackness.
“Wild cat,” Dahrena said. “Looking for some female company.”
Vaelin found Hera Drakil perched on a large boulder in the middle of the creek. The water was shallow but the splashes gave ample signal of any visitors, the Seordah’s eyes narrowing at Vaelin’s approach. He offered no greeting and went back to unstringing his bow, a flat-staved weapon with a thick leather-wrapped centre. Vaelin noticed his arrows were headed with some kind of dark shiny material rather than iron. “Can you pierce armour with those?” he asked.
Hera Drakil took one of the arrows and held it up, the edge of the head catching the moonlight and Vaelin saw it was glass rather than flint. “From the hill country,” the Seordah said. “Have to fight the Lonak to get it. Cuts through anything if you get close enough.”
“And that?” Vaelin nodded at the war club placed within reach. It was about a yard long, double curved like an axe handle with a notched grip and a blunt head resembling the misshapen head of a shovel. A wicked ten-inch spike protruded from the wood an inch short of the head. “Will it hold against a blow from a sword?”
“Why not try?” The Seordah looked him up and down. “Except you have no sword.” He laid his bow aside and picked up the club, holding it out to Vaelin. He took it and tried a few swings, finding it light, the grip comfortable. The wood it was fashioned from was unfamiliar, dark and smooth, the grain hardly perceptible under his fingers.
“Black-heart tree,” Hera Drakil explained. “Wood is soft when it’s cut and shaped, grows hard like rock when placed in fire. It won’t break, Beral Shak Ur.”
Vaelin inclined his head and handed the club back. “You haven’t asked what the blind woman told me.”
“She said we should join with you. Her visions are well-known to the Seordah.”
“But you were going to deny her words.”
“Your people have no gods, neither do mine. The blind woman lived many years ago and had visions of the future. Most came true, some did not. We are guided by her, we do not worship her.”
“What do you worship?”
For the first time the Seordah’s face showed some sign of amusement, a grin coming to his lips. “You are standing in what we worship, Beral Shak Ur. You call this place the great forest, we call it Seordah, for it is us and we are it.”
“To fight our enemy you’ll have to leave it.”
“I’ve done so before, when I went to see your land with the last Tower Lord. I saw many things there, all of them ugly.”
“What you’ll see this time will be uglier still.”
“Yes.” The Seordah put his club aside and rested back against the rock, closing his eyes. “It will.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lyrna
“I t’s there again!” Murel said, pointing in alarm and making the boat pitch as she rushed to the bow. “Do you see?”
Lyrna looked at the sea, catching sight of the great fin before it slipped under the water once more. They’re always hungry.
“Maybe it likes us,” the outlaw with scarred cheeks suggested. His name was Harvin and he claimed to have once commanded a band thirty men strong, his capture and imprisonment the result of betrayed love for a beautiful woman of noble birth, a story Iltis had greeted with open contempt.
“Sold out by some tavern doxy you forgot to pay, more like,” he had laughed.
They bickered constantly, often to the verge of violence and Lyrna had given up trying to placate their temper. If one killed the other, then at least the rations would last longer.
“Fell in love with the brother’s beautiful face when it rammed the hold,” Harvin continued. “Just couldn’t stay away.”
“You criminal scum!” Iltis bridled.
Lyrna turned away as the argument began its inevitable escalation, eyes scanning the waves for sign of the shark. Four days adrift on the ocean and their only companion a red shark. She wondered why it didn’t simply tip the boat over and eat them at its leisure. If it could sink a ship, what challenge did their boat represent? Her thoughts kept returning to Fermin’s last smile, his bloody teeth. Given all I have to give . . .
Next to her Murel stiffened as the fin reappeared, her scabbed fingertips going to her mouth. It was closer this time, tracking an arcing course towards them through the swell. Murel closed her eyes and began reciting the Catechism of Faith. Lyrna put an arm around her shoulders as the fin grew ever larger, Iltis and Harvin abruptly forgetting their argument. The fin veered away some twenty yards short of the boat, the red-striped body of the shark rising from the water, a huge black eye gleaming above the waves for a moment. Murel opened her eyes, whimpered and closed them again. The shark gave a brief thrash of its tail and disappeared under the surface.
“It’s gone,” Lyrna told a sobbing Murel. “See?”
The girl could only shake her head and slump down in exhausted fear, her head resting in Lyrna’s lap.
Lyrna surveyed her small wooden kingdom of five hungry souls and wondered again if it might have been kinder to abandon them to the hold. They had managed to scavenge some supplies from barrels found bobbing in the water the morning after the ship went down, mostly pickled fish that made her gag the first time she tried it, however hunger had soon overcome such qualms. Her biggest fear had been the lack of freshwater but this soon disappeared under the weight of rain that threatened to swamp the boat on a daily basis, forcing them to bail continually, albeit untroubled by thirst. Their oars consisted of two short splintered planks from the ship’s deck, the outlaw and Iltis spending much of the first day paddling a westward course until a quiet youth named Benten, a fisherman from Varinshold and the only sailor amongst them, pointed to the early evening stars and judged them fifty miles east of where they had started the night before.
“Means we’re a good ways south of Varinshold,” he said. “The Boraelin currents flow east at these climes. Paddle all you want, won’t make any difference.”
East. Which meant Volaria, in the unlikely event their food held out that long. Lyrna had read enough sea stories to know the extremes to which hunger could force desperate people, the tale of the Sea Wraith looming largest in her mind. She had been one of her father’s first warships, built at considerable expense and some said the finest ever to sail from a Realm port. She had disappeared in a storm off the northern coast sometime in the second decade of Janus’s reign, presumed lost for months but eventually found drifting south by Renfaelin fishermen. They had discovered only one crewman on board, a gibbering loon gnawing on the thigh-bone of one of his crew-mates, a pile of skulls stacked neatly on the deck. On her father’s orders the Sea Wraith had been burned and sunk for no sailor would set foot on her again.
Murel’s head shifted on her lap and Lyrna saw that she was sleeping, faint groans of pain coming from her half-open lips as the dreams made her relive the torments she had suffered on the ship. Lyrna resisted the impulse to caress her hair, knowing any touch was like to provoke a flurry of screams. I’m sorry, she thought as Murel’s eyelids fluttered and she jerked in her sleep. Seems I won’t be bringing down their empire after all.
The boat pitched again and Lyrna looked up to see Benten standing in the stern, hand shielding his eyes against the sun as he gazed east.
“The shark?” Lyrna asked him.
The young fisherman maintained his vigil for a moment more then stiffened, turning to her with a grave face. “A sail.”
The others all turned, the boat threatening to tip over with the movemen
t. “Volarian?” Iltis asked.
“Worse,” Benten said. “Meldenean.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The Meldenean captain rested his arms on the rail and stared down at them with faint curiosity and no small amount of contempt. “I think I prefer you land-bound enslaved, it seems fitting somehow.”
Iltis brandished the chains he had kept at his side, probably, Lyrna suspected, for killing Harvin should it become necessary. “Slaves no longer, freed by our own hand.”
“And the ship?” the captain enquired.
“Sunk, along with our captors.”
“And anything of value they may have carried.” His gaze roamed the boat, lingering first on Murel then finding Lyrna’s scars. “And what use did they have for you, my beauty?” he asked with a grin.
Lyrna forced her anger away, knowing if they sailed on it meant death for everyone in this boat. “I am well learned,” she replied, knowing the true reason would only provoke more laughter. “And speak many languages. The master wanted a tutor for his daughters.”
“Really?” the captain asked, continuing in Alpiran, “Have you read The Cantos of Gold and Dust?”
“I have.” And very nearly once met the author.
“Where does the heart of reason lie?”
“In knowledge, but only when married to compassion.” A word I hope holds some meaning for you, she added silently.
The captain’s gaze narrowed a little. “And Volarian?” he asked slipping back into Realm Tongue.
“Yes.”
“Read it as well as speak it?”
“I do.”
He waved at his crew. “Bring her aboard. Leave the others.”
“No!” Lyrna shouted. “All of us. Whatever you need my skills for, I’ll only help if you take all of us.”
“You’re in no position to bargain, my burnt beauty,” he replied with a laugh. “But, just to demonstrate my generosity, we’ll take the pretty one too.”