He heard numerous accusations of petty theft, and four serious accusations of assault. Twelve children had vanished since reaching the haven, there were nine abandoned children no one would claim, and one chubby infant girl that two clans both swore on all the gods belonged to their house. He finally sent an exhausted Volias to rest but was himself up half the night, and the demands never slackened. Nor, when he made a judgment, were the petitioners satisfied, but would want to keep arguing for a different outcome.
Finally a new watch came on, headed by a vigorous old woman who took one look at his face by the light of her lantern and, turning to the crowd, declared the assizes closed for the night. She had a hard face and a bullying manner, and he’d never been so grateful for either.
“Get you some rest, lad,” she said in her country way. “You can’t make good judgments when you’re so tired, and them too tired to listen to what you do have to say. They’ll not pester you if you take your rest now.”
“No, truly, they won’t. If you’ll lend me a light, or someone to escort me, I’ll sleep by my eagle.”
She chuckled. “Eh! You’ll get no petitioners bothering you there, I’m thinking.” Then she winked at him. “Although you’re the kind might want bothering.”
He laughed for the first time in days, it seemed. “Truly, I need to sleep.”
A burly man escorted him most of the way, humbly silent out of respect for Joss’s exhaustion, or perhaps exhausted himself, for he had a stiff gait and favored one leg. Only over by the rocks, atop which Scar perched in his night drowse, did the man venture a question.
“Think you that northern army will attack a second time?”
“We have to prepare.”
“It’s said the soldiers wear a talisman, this ‘Star of Life.’ I saw one for myself, a starburst sigil hammered out of cheap tin. But what do they want? Where did they come from? The tales tell of war and trouble in the days before the Guardians came to stand at the assizes. And now—well—begging your pardon and no disrespect to you reeves, but it seems that with the Guardians vanished from the Hundred, bad times have fallen again.”
They were honest questions, and deserved an honest answer.
“I know not much more than you do, ver. I’ve heard tell that a man named Lord Radas commands another army in the north, likely larger and better disciplined although we don’t know for sure. We do know that the city of High Haldia has been overrun. What do they mean to do next? That I don’t know. March on Toskala? Or march again on Olossi? We’ll fight. Don’t doubt that. As for you and your people, you must return to your homes and fortify them. And plant your crops, else we’ll have famine on top of all else.”
“Are the Guardians gone forever? Or is it true, as some whisper, that they’ll return? I’ve heard it said that the Guardians never left the Hundred, but that they became cloaked in darkness and now mean to kill us all and rule those who are left behind. I heard it said that the man who commands this dark army is a Guardian.”
“That can’t be.” But perhaps he said the words as much to convince himself. A number of Captain Anji’s men had seen, and shot at, a man riding a winged horse. They had no reason to lie, and on the whole Joss had found the Qin soldiers to be temperamentally disinclined to exaggerate. Zubaidit had claimed to have seen winged horses, and so for that matter had the Hieros. The gods had created the Guardians to bring justice to the land, to stand in judgment at the assizes. The Guardians could not die.
And yet they had all seemingly vanished.
“Who else could raise an army?” the man asked. “Who but a Guardian would have the authority?”
“Why would the Guardians vanish, leaving the assizes without their oversight, and then reappear at the head of an army that has committed nothing but murder and mayhem, the worst kind of injustice? Everything that goes against why the Guardians were created by the gods in the first place? Why?”
The man bent his head, as though listening to another, softer voice. He scratched his beard. “Why does anyone lie or cheat or steal? Or do worse things, which we’ve all heard of and you, reeve, have surely seen plenty of in your time. When the Four Mothers shaped the world, they set all in balance. Afterward, the gods ordered the world, but it is our prayers that keep all in balance. But what if balance and order are lost? In one man, in one woman, that loss may give rise to a lie or even a murder. Yet that is only a single act. In many men, or in one with the power to sway men, the loss of order means chaos will rise. Then greed and fear will rule. That’s what I fear. That the shadows have risen, that order is lost.”
“What’s your name, ver?” said Joss, for he was struck by the man’s sober wisdom. “I’m called Joss, as you may have heard.”
“Heh!” He had a modest way of chuckling, and a friendly grin. “I’m called Pash, Fire-born like you. I grow rice and nai in a village on the plain, not far from here. We were fortunate. We gave shelter to a few refugees, and thereby knew to take flight ourselves with our most precious goods. We hid in the woodland. Some men then come ten days past, those running from the battle by Olossi, but they hadn’t time to burn anything for they were in such haste to flee north. They only stole a few of our stores, nothing we can’t replace.”
“Wise heads prevailed. I’m glad to hear it.”
“Let me ask you another thing, for I know you had a hand in the battle by Olossi.” Pash favored him with a close gaze, as if trying to sort out if his heart was in balance, or in chaos. “I have five daughters, ver, and not enough land to parcel out between them if each one hopes to make a living from it. There aren’t enough lads with decent portions nearby to make husbands for all of them. I saw the Qin soldiers. Is it true they’re looking for wives?”
“They made a bargain with the council of Olossi that if they could drive off the army, they’d be allowed to settle in this region.”
“I heard, too, that they’re cursed rich. That they’ve a canny merchant among them, a real Rat, if you take my meaning, who flayed the coins off those fat Olossi merchants and filled the outlanders’ coffers.”
“She’s an Ox, not a Rat, and a very beautiful woman, but, yes, that’s more or less how it happened.”
“Ah. You’ve an interest there?”
Joss laughed. “Not I, ver. She’s married to the captain. And she’s very young.”
“Good fortune for him. So these young soldiers, any one of them are well set up? Likely to be well endowed with land and coin? Worthy of one of my good daughters?”
Joss grinned. “As worthy as any man could be, ver.”
“Heh! You have me there, for I don’t think much of most men when it comes to my good daughters. But tell me true, reeve. If it were your own daughter, would you be willing to marry her to one of these outlanders?”
“I suppose they’re no different than other men in most ways. They held to their side of the bargain. They mean to settle here, and make their way. I’d seal no bargain until the lass had looked them over, but it’s worth a look.”
“My thanks, then.” He shifted his staff and, with a slight grunt as he bent one knee, seated himself on a stone wall. Scar’s shadow loomed above them, at the summit of the rocky promontory. “I’ll settle here to keep petitioners away, ver, if you’ve no objection and if your eagle won’t tear my head off.”
“My thanks.”
He picked his way up through the ruins. Dressed stones gave way to true rocks where the ground was too rugged to tame into architecture. At the crest, he paused to catch his breath. Behind lay the busy encampment, lit with watch fires, itself inhaling and exhaling with so many frail lives huddled in what fragile haven they could find. Before him, the hillside plunged down a steep slope impossible to climb. Because of the clouds, it was too dark to see anything. He felt out an open-sided overhang in the rock that offered a little protection from the night rains. Above, Scar had roosted for the night. After wrapping himself in a blanket, Joss lay down and closed his eyes.
THE DREAM UNWINDS itself in a
veil of mist, rising into the heavens as if the rocks exhale the breathe of life, which has in it the essence of all those spirits killed in the recent attacks. The dream is familiar, well remembered. He is walking through a dead countryside of skeletal trees and scorched earth. He is himself dead, yet unable to pass beyond the Spirit Gate. The mist boils as though churned by a vast intelligence. For years, at this point in the dream, he would see her figure in the unattainable distance, walking along a slope of grass or climbing a rocky escarpment, always in a place he cannot and must not reach because he has a duty to those on earth whom he has sworn to serve.
But this night he finds himself sitting up, still sheltered beneath the wide overhang. Scar drowses. The rains haven’t yet come. Mist billows in the air, and she emerges from it. A death-white cloak spills from her shoulders, enveloping her. She rides out of the air as if the air is a path. She can ride on the air because the horse has wings. Its hooves ring on rock as it halts a short distance from him and furls those impossible wings, tips hiding the length of her legs.
“Joss,” she says.
“Marit!” To hear her voice is agony, because he still misses her although twenty years separate them. “You’re dead,” he adds, apologetically, because it is after all a dream.
“Yes.” Her smile is sad. “Don’t carry this burden. Don’t mourn me, Joss. Let it go.”
“Is that you telling me, or me telling myself? Why do you haunt me?”
“I bring you a warning. At dawn, they’ll try to kill you. The guards you’ve agreed to meet by the ironwood trees are not guards but outlaws who have infiltrated this haven to murder you. Beware!”
“They’re just lads!”
“Look into your heart, Joss, and you’ll see their story doesn’t hold water.”
“Everyone is talking about how the temples have ordered it done. As it says in the Tale of Fortune: ‘Their spirits were buried.’ ”
“That’s not what I mean. You’re a reeve. Investigate!”
“Yes, and you’re a reeve, too.” The only woman he had truly loved, his first and only lasting passion. She was the only woman he had truly betrayed, and in the worst way: He’d never meant to abandon her to her cruel fate. “So why do I see you in the form of a Guardian, with a death-white cloak and a winged horse? What are the gods trying to tell me?”
“I don’t know what the gods are trying to tell you, Joss.”
“I wish you were here to tell me where that cursed woman Zubaidit and her brother are got to. Taken some side trail into the Soha Hills, but Scar and I haven’t found them.”
She looked away abruptly, breaking eye contact. “There’s a black tide trickling north and east through the Soha Hills, the remnants of the army.”
“Is it true a Guardian commands this ‘Star of Life’?”
“Lord Radas commands them.”
“Lord Radas of Iliyat?” He remembered the lord’s strange behavior, years ago, on the Ili Cutoff. Then he shook his head. “Maybe so. That doesn’t make him a Guardian.”
“How can any of us know what a Guardian is? They walk abroad, hiding themselves in plain sight. I see with my third eye and I understand with my second heart that they are corrupted, so I dare not approach them. They will destroy me if they find me.”
“Because you are a Guardian, or because they are? You speak in riddles.”
She looked back toward him without truly meeting his gaze. “I’m alone, Joss. You’re the only one I know I can trust.”
He tried to make sense of her words. “A man appeared before the Hieros in the Merciless One’s temple by Olossi. He demanded she turn over to him a slave, a ‘ghost girl,’ they called her. He was dressed like an envoy of Ilu, but he claimed to be a Guardian, and the Hieros believed him. He had with him two winged horses, and when he spoke, she said, ‘Every heart listened.’ As it says in the tale.”
He knew Marit as well as he knew any woman, though that knowledge was twenty years’ gone. For months, each least variation in her expression had been his most intense study. That cast of face—mouth slack, gaze drawn inward as thoughts raced—and the tension in her shoulders marked surprise and shock as a clever, powerful mind reassessed what it thought it knew.
“A man dressed in the manner of an envoy of Ilu, claiming to be a Guardian? On the trail of an outlander? Seen at the Devourer’s temple in Olossi?”
He nodded, but she was already turning her horse, moving for the edge of the promontory. She looked back over a shoulder. “I saw a woman and a man, traveling together, with three horses, camped in the ruins beneath a Guardian altar right where the Soha Cutoff begins its descent into Sohayil.”
“Marit!”
The horse opened its wings and sprang into the sky. A gust raked through the overhang, and he woke to find rain spraying over his blanket and boots.
“The hells!” He scrambled out from under the overhang, right into the teeth of the wind. Rain spat into his face, and he wiped his eyes as he stared into the darkness, but there was nothing there. By the time he crawled back into the shelter, found a brand, lit it, and searched the ledge, the rain had wiped every track away. He knew he would have found nothing anyway, no mark of a horse’s hoof. It had only been a dream.
The rain passed, the last drops splattering on stone. Scar chirped, rousing, and Joss saw distant objects in the east, evoked by the lightening that presaged dawn. He shook his head like a dog shedding water, and shook out his cloak, then rolled it up. In the dim light he picked his way carefully down the slope. There, sitting on the stone where he’d left him, was the farmer, Pash.
“Greetings of the day,” Joss said.
“Morning is coming on,” agreed Pash, who seemed remarkably alert for a man who had, presumably, stayed awake all night. “Whether it will bode good, or ill, I can’t say. You’re up early.”
“Where did you say you came from?”
“A little hamlet, you wouldn’t have heard of it. We call it Green Water for the particular color of a pool there, a holy place dedicated to the Witherer. It’s a day’s walk from Candra Crossing.”
“Know you anyone here in the haven that’s out of Candra Crossing? In particular I am looking for any person who might have served, or be serving, in the temple of Kotaru there.”
He chuckled. “Why, indeed, the old battle-axe who took command of us is a captain in the Thunderer’s order. You met her. Whew! She hasn’t the strength of arm I’m sure she had once, but she has that manner about her that is as good as a blow to the head, if you take my meaning.”
“I’d like to see her right away.”
She was awake, with the night watch, getting ready to turn their duties over to the day watch. She introduced herself as Lehit. It was true she was old enough that her youthful strength was gone, no great threat when it came to arm-wrestling, but none of the militiamen doubted her authority: A look is as good as a hammer, as the saying went.
At his question, she shook her head. “No youth named Gani apprenticed at the Thunderer’s temple in Candra Crossing since I’ve served there, and that’s been forty years. Best we send a party down to the ironwood grove with you. Or better yet, if you’ll give me a few breaths to sort things out, set an ambush. If they see us all coming, they’re like to flee. I’d like to capture them.”
So it happened that, somewhat after dawn, he walked alone along a track through muddy fields toward the grove of ironwood. The tops of these green pillars swayed in the dawn breeze. A lone figure stood beside the massive trunk of the closest tree, waving at him to draw him closer. Just out of what he judged to be bowshot, Joss bent as if to shake a stone from his boot.
Shouts rose from the trees. Joss straightened. The figure had vanished, but a moment later Gani burst from behind the tree and sprinted toward Joss with sword drawn.
The hells! Joss drew his sword. In recent days, he’d felt that weight too often in his hand, for as the old reeves who had trained him had always said, “If you have to draw your sword, you’ve already lost
control of the situation.”
Halfway to him, Gani staggered, stumbled, and fell facedown in the dirt with a pair of arrows sticking out of his back. He thrashed a moment, got his head up, and began crawling toward Joss with a grimace of determination on his beardless face. He was still holding his sword. A pair of militiamen jogged out of the trees, bows in hand. As Joss stared, they ran to the lad, tossed down their bows, and stuck him through with their spears as if they were finishing off a wild pig.
Joss trotted over to them, but it was too late. Gani lay with body slack and blood leaking from his mouth. “I thought we were going to capture them.”
The two militiamen—one a heavyset young woman and the other an older man—had fury etched in their expressions. Both spat on the corpse before turning to Joss.
“You’ll see,” said the woman. She tested her right leg, then groped at her right knee.
“How bad?” asked her companion.
“Eh. It’ll bruise, but nothing was cut. Now I understand why the holy ones ordered their spirits buried. Fah!” She spat again, wiped her mouth, and kicked the corpse.
“Here, now!” Joss hadn’t yet sheathed his sword.
“We’ll lay offerings at the Thunderer’s altar so his blood doesn’t corrupt us,” added the woman. “Come on.” She limped back toward the trees. Joss and the other man followed.