Across the Face of the World (67 page)

Are they—?'

'In good time. I know how you must thirst for news, yet you must respect your hosts and allow us to tell you in our own fashion. Your thirst will be quenched. Come now; we have a fine roasted lamb, with warm beer and cool water to ease its passage.' He turned to the others gathered around the welcoming fire. 'My brothers, here are two members of the Company of the West. Make them welcome!'

Once again the magic of the Fodhram began to weave about strangers to their land. Their open-handedness, their laughter and their wholesome friendship drew the two weary travellers imme¬diately into the circle, warming and filling them inside and out. And when the feasting was over and the tales begun, their souls soared with the singers and storytellers. They struggled to keep their balance on an ice-covered lake that suddenly gave way; they gripped the sides of a birch bark canoe with white-knuckled hands as they drew ever nearer to Bircheater Teeth, menacing flint-sharp rock shards taller than a tree, thicker than a forest; they cowered in fear as the terrible warriors from Bhrudwo struck at them with fiery blades, only to be felled by the bravery of a sandy-haired mountain man who willingly gave his life that they would escape the sword. They stood weeping amidst the forest of spears, looking on the cruelly smoking remains of their sons and daughters; they crouched in horror on the edge of a vast black abyss as the screaming horde came at them again, repulsed only by the utter¬most effort, while behind them the black-eyed fortress looked on implacably. They drew breath in the forest under the stars, unsure for a time where they were, returning slowly to a reality that was subtly changed, enriched by the tales that still swirled around them somehow. And then they slept, Fodhram beside Firanese beside Mercian, each reassured that, although all was not well, not all hope had been lost.

The Company spent a night in Stanlow, the biggest town they had yet encountered. Arriving late in the afternoon, the trav¬ellers were indistinguishable from many other groups buying and selling wares at the northern frontier of Treika, and found lodg¬ings at a comfortable inn.

In the morning, Kurr used the bulk of the remaining money from the Southern Run to purchase two horses; a bay mare on which the women could ride and recover their strength, and a sturdy baggage pony. Neither was a shadow of the thoroughbreds he had of necessity given to the Fenni, but to be close again to any sort of horseflesh was a comfort to the old farmer.

Stanlow nestled into an elbow of the Sagon River, at the point where the Mossbank (known as the Fenbeck to the Treikans) disgorged its chilly northern waters into the broader, slower Sagon. A few leagues to the south the great Withwestwa Wood came to an abrupt end, giving way to cultivated fields, then to an open expanse of grassland, level country alternating with rolling hills. This country was known as the Northern Wastes, or Sheeldalian Muir in the old tongue, on which few trees grew. In late summer all this land was subject to hot winds from the southwest that roared down swiftly from the heights of Clovenhill. Such was the heat of this wind, called The Bellows by those unlucky enough to cross the Wastes in the autumn, that few crops could survive its withering blasts, and most of the land between Stanlow and Ashdown had been abandoned to the tall grasses and the wild animals.

Across this land the Westway ran straight and true, affording travellers the shortest possible route between the two towns. Its builders certainly had the interests of its users at heart. But to the members of the Company, who had passed through Breidhan Moor in winter and made the Southern Run, stories of ill-equipped or unlucky travellers suffering lingering, thirsty deaths seemed exag¬gerated, and they crossed this open land in four days. To the eye of the visitor the starkness of the landscape mellowed into an austere beauty, a welcome contrast to the never-ending greenery of Withwestwa Wood, and travelling was much easier. The only unhappy one was Farr, who had already begun to miss the joy of the great forest. It seemed to him he had lost both his brother and his heart in the soft light under the forest canopy, and now he was alone.

On the third morning out from Stanlow, the Company woke to a glistening, frosted landscape, and during the day hoar frost rendered the few poplars they passed delicate sculptures. The grass beside the path was brittle to the touch, and all still water froze into sheets of ice. The temperature did not rise above freezing level throughout the long, cold day and that night, after an exten¬sive search for wood, the Company set two fires and slept between them.

The days on the Northern Wastes were days of silence. Stella was locked in her own frozen world, speaking little beyond the briefest possible responses to questions. Parlevaag seemed to Kurr to be tortured by grief, unable to find consolation in the friend¬ship of the Company.

She needs to be among her own people, Kurr judged. Even Perdu cannot help her, though he speaks the language. Farr was plainly disconsolate at having to leave his friends the Fodhram, and nothing Kurr said helped to brighten his downcast countenance. The worry of a missing husband and son was telling on brave Indrett. Though she held her head high and took upon herself a greater share of the work, there were times during the day when even she retreated to gnaw at her fears.

That left Perdu, and it was to the adopted Fenni that Kurr found himself unburdening the cares of leadership. On the third and fourth days, they walked together at the head of the Company, discussing how they might approach the Council of Faltha, debating the merits of sound argument and of bribery. Kurr discov¬ered in the Fenni a slow but deep thinker, one who was able to reason, a practical man who had little love of argument for its own sake. He seemed to be bearing the separation from his wife and children more easily than the others bore their hurt, or perhaps he masked his pain more effectively, and talking to him allowed Kurr to avoid once again thinking about his own inner anguish.

The Company travelled of necessity as a tight group, Kurr having insisted that Farr and Perdu watch over Hal as he tried to befriend the Acolyte, as Mahnum had named him. Hal said little, as ever, to the other members of the Company, and his crippled leg obviously pained him.

Quite how he was progressing with the Bhrudwan warrior none of the others could tell. To them, the Acolyte was a wild power barely restrained. They had seen what he could do. It was, frankly, a regularly recurring source of amaze¬ment that he remained their captive, that he didn't burst his bonds like some giant of legend, slay them all, then fly away on magical wings. Each of them privately wondered why this man of Bhrudwo did not exercise the magical powers of which Kroptur the seer had warned them.

The bound Bhrudwan captive reminded Hal of the feral cat he'd found caught in a trap three, perhaps four years ago. It had been a huge thing, much larger than the few cats kept as pets by the villagers, and it backed away silently when he approached. Its behaviour had surprised him; he had seen cats caught before, and they were all spitting rage, claws and fangs. But not this one. It seemed to ignore its hurt, acting almost as if its pain came from the humiliation of having been caught. The youth had waited patiently most of that day, but the cat never let him approach it. Hal remembered burying the stiffening corpse later the next day.

So, with the Bhrudwan he was patient, a patience learned from many solitary times spent in the forest, and never made a move against the warrior's pride. The Acolyte did not speak any Falthan language, but then neither had any of the animals Hal had befriended. They communicated using a complex combination of gestures, words and facial expressions, which meant that the Bhrudwan warrior could not hide his thoughts from the young Falthan. But little obvious progress was made, and others in the Company counselled the abandonment of so risky an experiment, in light of what the Acolyte had so nearly done on the road south of Vindstrop House.

But Hal had been lax then, allowing the Bhrudwan access to his magic. He would not make that mistake again. Whenever he thought of the captive, he checked the barrier he had placed between the Acolyte and the source of his power.

Ashdown provided them with a soft bed and a warm night's sleep, and it wasn't until near midday that the Company left the new city on a hill above the Lavera River and passed through the ruins of Inverlaw Eich, the old waterfront town that had burned down less than fifty years before. It was said that no one survived the burning, started accidentally in a kitchen in the crowded docks, and that every house had been razed to the ground. It certainly seemed that way as the Company walked between the charred remains, old bones of a dead town slowly being reclaimed by the grasses and riverbank trees. The old town had been peopled by descendants of the original inhabitants of this wide land, so the story went, those who had escaped the atrocities of the First Men and who had not been forced to find refuge in Cloventop far to the west, but their heritage had perished with them in the ghastly fire that had swept through the town in a matter of minutes.

Yet within two years a new town had been built on a hill over¬looking the old town, the markets were as busy as before, and traders haggled with each other over what each claimed were the finest goods of Faltha. But these were different people, people from the south, new people who knew little of the Widuz or the old ways. Kurr had heard the story from the innkeeper and now wished he had not; he could almost hear the screams of the dying as his eyes rested on the skeleton of Inverlaw Eich. He was glad when they had left that place of ill omen well behind.

Now the road broadened, as Laverock, the great city of the Treikans, was less than two days'

march in front of them. To their left the Lavera, brown with sediment from Thuya Wood and Plutobaran, a thousand miles to the north, rolled slowly past them, sometimes hidden from view by majestic weeping willows or elegant, tall poplars. Sheep-dotted fields alternated with cultivated land, either already ploughed or about to be. Seagulls swooped behind horse and plough, farmers preparing to plant wheat, barley, oats and other crops for the markets of Laverock. Narrow paths swept back from wooden gates to houses in the distance, increasing in frequency as the Company drew closer to true civilisation.

On the last day before arriving in the Treikan capital, Kurr took Farr to buy food from a local farmer, leaving the others to sleep away the hottest part of the afternoon. Indrett found she could not relax, so she joined Parlevaag in mending the winter cloaks -though in this heat, such a contrast to the Wastes less than a hundred miles to the north, the task seemed nonsensical. But she bent her head to the task, trying not to think the thoughts that hovered like birds of prey above her vulnerable mind, picking over the bones of her loss even while she did something else. It was only when she looked up that she noticed the tears in Parlevaag's eyes.

It was as much her own need as that of her companion that caused Indrett to reach out and embrace the Fenni woman, and the common language of pain and grief superseded any barriers the spoken word presented. For the longest time, they clung to each other, sobbing out their darkness, giving voice to their sorrow, taking comfort in the closeness of another human being. Neither cared where their tears fell, nor did they notice the return of the farmer and the mountain man. It was only the stiffness of their limbs that ended the fierce embrace, and they drew away from each other, but held each other with their eyes. There was under¬standing there, something shared; they had been strangers, but now they were sisters.

That night the Company slept in soft beds as the inn and the whole city of Laverock was drenched by heavy rains. A storm had come up from the southwest during the hot, still afternoon and pelted the wide Treikan plains with rain and hail before dying out above the capital city. Indrett lay listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof and thought of her own tears. Nothing had changed - Mahnum and Leith were still lost - yet she saw things differ¬ently since she had shared her grief. The storm seemed to seal it somehow, as though the great outpouring had been sent to confirm she had been right to follow her instincts.

Tomorrow, she knew, the air would smell clean and the city fresh. With a relieved sigh, she closed her eyes and gave in to the weariness that surrounded her.

In the depths of Adunlok, the warriors of Widuz met to gnaw the bones of their defeat. Most of their army had been lost, either to the blades of the hated northern woodsmen or to the insatiable mouth of Helig Holth. The priest and his disciple were dead. And even if they had lived, the Mother could not be fed for some time, as the remaining captives had somehow been freed.

But what galled most of all was the death of Talon, their Eldest warrior. His body now lay on a low bench in the middle of the mess hall, situated on the central level of the stone fortress.

By his ever-defiant face, resisting defeat even in the grip of death, stood his younger brother, now by common assent the Eldest. His face seemed hardly less defiant than that of his older brother, and was creased by anger that mounted towards madness.

'Abjure? Concede?' the new Eldest shouted. 'Have the cowards from the north exchanged hearts with you all? How can we leave this death - these deaths,' he corrected himself, 'how can we leave them unavenged? We must strike now!'

'No.' The denial came from the Widuz Chief, under whose command the army had been destroyed. The defeat had robbed him of credibility, but his remained a voice that needed to be regarded. 'No,' he repeated, hoping that logic would suffice. 'We have been beaten once, in this holy place, where all the auguries were in our favour. How can we expect victory in a field not of our own choosing?'

With a yell, the younger brother of Talon leapt at the Widuz Chief, arms outstretched as if to strangle him; but at the last moment what sanity remained to him pulled him up short.

'What field is of our own choosing?' he cried in a voice shorn of restraint. 'What fields have we left to choose? Two thousand years ago, we tilled all the fields within a week's journey of Adunlok. Now those fields are tilled by others! Our fields! A hundred years ago, we hunted deer on the skirts of Blaenau Law. Now the arrows that fly there are not ours, and the meat does not end up on Widuz tables! Was this your choice?' He remained poised in front of the Widuz Chief.