Entangled (57 page)

‘No, Driff!’ Ria pulsed. ‘No! You’ll kill us all.’

Through the open channel of thought-talk she could feel the restless energy of his body, see the red haze of madness fogging his mind. ‘No!’ she pulsed again – and this time she sent it out like a lash. ‘Get down, Driff! Right now!’

She saw him hesitate, felt resignation wash over him together with another more complicated emotion she couldn’t name, and watched as he lowered himself silently back to the ground.

Sakkan was straining and grunting and hadn’t noticed anything. His hairy arse bobbed up and down over the spiky grass. He groaned, two more squeaky farts followed and suddenly he was launched on a massive, noisy, stinking shit that splattered out of him in a rush. He grunted and strained again. Two more bursts of loose turds followed, then he was done. He snatched up a handful of leaves and dry grass from the ground, cleaned himself, shouldered his axe and strode away.

For what felt like a very long time no one moved. Then Ligar emerged from a bush just an arm’s length from the pile of excrement. He was holding his nose and glaring with disgust in the direction Sakkan had departed. ‘That man feeds on rotten meat,’ he said.

With the Illimani gone, and the first faint hints of the oncoming evening already touching the afternoon air, Ria and her companions resumed their trek towards the Gate of Horn. Bont was sullen and morose, infuriated by the continuing delays. Ligar walked with the Uglies. Once again Ria found herself beside Driff. ‘So it wasn’t just Brindle,’ she said, ‘who got you to come over to us. Sulpa and Sakkan made you torture and kill your own mother and father. That’s enough reason for anybody to change sides.’

‘Sulpa was my god. I admired Sakkan. I was happy I had killed mother and father for them! Until the day you captured me I never questioned
what I’d done. Then Brindle got inside my head. Showed me right and wrong. He showed me how they’d USED me. Sulpa, Sakkan, Martu, all of them. That’s how they do it. They make you dive into evil so deep you can’t get out and then you’re theirs for ever …’

He paused, set his wild blue eyes on her: ‘I want to tell you about my vision, when we ate the Little Teachers.’

Ria nodded: ‘Please, yes. Tell me.’

‘I was shown everyone I have killed,’ Driff said. He rubbed his forehead with the long, strong fingers of his left hand: ‘All the innocent dead. I did not remember there were so many. They came to me one by one, Ria. They reproached me …’

She had to be honest: ‘You
did
take their lives.’

‘They told me they’ll wait for me when I die.’ He shivered: ‘They’ll make me pay for every death.’ He put his hand gently on her arm. ‘How can I satisfy the dead?’ he asked her.

‘Save the living,’ she answered at once. ‘Help us kill Sulpa. Your ghosts will move on.’

Ria felt relieved when Driff withdrew his hand. She hoped very much he wasn’t forming a romantic attachment to her. She wasn’t in the mood for that kind of thing at all.

As the late afternoon wore on into the long summer’s evening, the landscapes through which they trekked became ever more rugged and boulder-strewn, criss-crossed with plunging ravines, and heavily overgrown with gorse and brambles. They came to a thunderous waterfall on the upper Snake, where rainbows played within the cascade, and followed the course of the great river eastward into a narrow valley. All they had to do now was continue to follow it upstream towards its headwaters until they reached the steep gorge in the Gate of Horn that Ria had seen in her vision. There they would begin the search for Bont’s family and the other survivors of the Clan.

They hadn’t gone far before a roe deer burst from a thicket in front of them and Ria killed it with a single stone. They field dressed it on the spot, Grondin slung it over his shoulders and they were on their way again.

With the sun still in the sky they continued to make good time despite the rough and increasingly mountainous terrain. But as darkness settled around them, with moonrise still a long way off, they were
forced to slow their pace. First Oplimar, then Bont, cursing and tumbling, suffered painful falls. Neither broke a leg but Ria shuddered at how easily either one might have done so.

Nor was this their only consideration. All of them were exhausted, not just from two days on the march with no sleep, sustained only by nuts, berries and tough strips of dried meat, but from the days and nights of fighting and running they had endured before that.

Ria called a halt and for once Bont, limping from his fall, did not object.

They were following a clear broad track rising through trees. The river was forty paces to their right. A hundred paces to their left a rocky outcrop loomed against the darkness. They found shelter there, under an overhanging ledge where the light of a fire would not be seen, and sat with their stomachs rumbling while the deer roasted. It was not a large animal, but to Ria, at the end of that hard day, it was a mouth-watering feast.

Before they had reduced it to its bones, heavy clouds closed in overhead and a drenching rain began to fall. The ledge kept them dry and the fire was warm despite the sudden chill that came with the downpour. With a sigh of frustration, mingled with relief, Ria accepted there was nothing to be done but the one thing they all needed to do most.

Jergat took the first watch while the others slept. Ligar would replace him, then it would be Ria’s turn. If the clouds cleared enough to show the moon everyone was to be wakened and they’d get on the move again.

It seemed only heartbeats later when Ria felt Ligar’s hand jog her shoulder. As she sat up with a start, he held a warning finger to his lips.
‘Listen,’
he pulsed.

The fire was out. Heavy drops of water still fell from the rim of the ledge but the rain had stopped. The moon glimmered through scudding clouds and tendrils of damp mist clung to the ground.

In the distance, approaching down the track from the direction of the Gate of Horn, Ria heard gruff male voices raised in anger.

They were speaking Illimani.

‘How many?’ she pulsed.

Ligar’s thought-voice was uncertain: ‘Hard to say. Five? Maybe six?’ He fingered his bow: ‘Shall we take them?’

Ria listened to the voices again. She counted more of them than Ligar had – at least eight, possibly ten. They were locked in a heated argument, getting closer, but she still couldn’t make out individual words.

She didn’t like it. There was hardly time to set an ambush, they really didn’t know how many they would be up against, and wasn’t it more important to get the Clan’s survivors back than risk everything by picking a fight in the dark? ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll let them pass.’

There came another burst of coarse shouting, much closer now, and a chorus of children’s voices arose, crying out in fear and despair.

Ria surged to her feet with a stone in each hand.

Some of those terrified children were pleading for mercy in the language of the Clan.

‘Wake the others,’ Ria pulsed to Ligar. ‘I’m going to find out what we’re dealing with here. Remember we have thought-talk and wait –
wait!
– for my command.’ She was already running, swift and soundless, towards the track, darting from tree to tree. Moonlight came and went with the clouds, now bright, now dark again. Faint and pale in the east, still no more than the softest blush brushing the sky, she could sense the approach of dawn.

An immense pine had fallen here in some recent storm. Wrenched free out of a gaping crater in the earth, its huge branching root mass offered plentiful cover and a good vantage point. Returning her two throwing stones to their pouch, Ria climbed and burrowed in amongst the roots where they overhung the track.

The Illimani whose quarrel had alerted Ligar appeared out of the trees less than a hundred paces away. There were four braves in the front rank. Right behind came thirty, maybe forty children, some weeping and protesting, others glum and silent, herded into a pale formless pack. Four more Illimani flanked them, two on each side. Finally there was a rearguard, also of four.

The braves were still making a lot of noise, shouting their argument back and forth, and Ria already had the gist of it. They’d captured the children yesterday. Standing orders required they take them to Sulpa for sacrifice but many in the group resented the diversion and wanted to kill them right away.

‘They’re slowing us down too much,’ one barked. ‘There are battles to fight.’

‘We serve Sulpa,’ another reminded him.

‘We’ll serve him better by finding the Light in the West than climbing down mountains in the dark with a bunch of snivelling kids.’

‘Anyway, they’re
our
captives. Sulpa doesn’t even know we’ve got them. We can do what we like with them.’

Ria had heard enough.
‘To me!’
she pulsed to her companions as she unsheathed her knife.
‘To me! We have twelve to kill.’
And with the words she sent a clear mental image of where she was and what she saw.
‘Bont, Ligar. Get up ahead to take out the leaders. Grondin, Oplimar, Jergat – the rearguard is yours. No mercy. NO MERCY! Driff, take their right flank; the left is mine.’

The Illimani front rank and the foremost of the children were already passing beneath her perch. The moonlight strengthened as the clouds continued to clear, and with a pang of recognition Ria spotted Bont’s seven-year-old son Nibo and his five-year-old daughter Maura.

It could only mean one thing.

This little Illimani war band had been into the Gate of Horn, found the Clan survivors she’d seen in her vision, and massacred the adults. Bont’s Sabeth was certainly dead.

Abruptly a brave at the front called a halt. He was a short, stocky man, older than most of Sulpa’s toughs, with a wild shock of grey hair and a snoutlike snub nose. ‘Very well, lads,’ he growled, raising his voice to be heard by those at the rear. ‘I’m sick of you all complaining. Here’s as good a place as any to get rid of these snot-nosed kids.’ He drew a knife and turned on the children with an evil grin: ‘Might as well have a bit of fun while we’re at it, eh?’

Ria looked down. Directly beneath her, one of the two guards on the left flank roared with satisfaction and unslung his axe. The children wailed.

‘Ready?’
Ria pulsed to her companions.

Instantly a resounding
YES
came back.

‘
Then hit them! Hit them now!’

Flying out of her body, far from her own time and place, Leoni felt elated when she saw Ria had understood her warning and had run with her companions into the shelter of a little wood. Elation was replaced by turmoil when the big warrior she thought of as Bear-Skull marched into the same wood to take a shit, but he unloaded and marched out again without noticing anything.

Leoni flew over Bear-Skull’s head to his regiment, already half a mile away, and watched the five hundred men streaming down the long slope into the huge forest from which Ria had so recently emerged. They marched in a disciplined mass and looked unbeatable. Yet they were only a fraction of the much larger army she’d seen gathered round Sulpa by the river when he’d destroyed Ria’s Clan.

Where were all the rest?

Leoni hurled herself upwards, thousands of feet into the sky.

In all directions, near and far, rose ominous pillars of smoke, and in the distance, like ants swarming, she could just make out another long column of marching men. Who could doubt the Illimani were everywhere, in huge numbers, killing everyone they could find?

When the last of Bear-Skull’s regiment had disappeared into the forest, Ria emerged from her hiding place with her companions and Leoni watched them scrambling up the slope in the opposite direction. Ahead, beyond the ridge line, lay the tough, wild country out of which the Illimani had marched – a landscape filled with hummocks and deep hollows but tending ever upwards, criss-crossed by streams and dotted with small forests, the terrain growing steeper and more savage mile after mile. In the far distance it merged into the foothills of a range of jagged snow-capped mountains.

The only sure thing was that there would be more Illimani in there somewhere.

Leoni was already darting forward to search them out for Ria when
a tunnel of light, unexpected and unwelcome, swirling and pulsing, blinked open in the sky beside her. An enormous force was already drawing her in. She struggled against it but couldn’t fight it and her last glimpse, looking back and down at the vanishing landscape of the past, was of Ria walking resolute and unafraid into danger.