Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (21 page)

‘I did not think the wolves would risk such a thing.’

Saying nothing, Faror went to her kit and began rummaging for the collection of bandages, scour-blades and unguents that made up their healing supplies. She joined Spinnock and knelt beside the captain. ‘The bite on her leg first,’ she said. ‘Help me remove the dressing.’

The wound revealed was severe and already the flesh around it was swollen and red. ‘Spinnock,’ she said, ‘heat up a scour-blade.’

* * *

The sun was high overhead and the captain had yet to regain consciousness. Faror Hend had told Spinnock all she knew of the night’s events, and Spinnock had grown quiet in the time since. They had used up most of the healing salves and the gut thread treating the leg wound after burning away what they could of torn, dead flesh. The scarring would be fierce and they were not yet certain they had expunged the infection. Finarra Stone remained fevered, and had not even awakened when they reinserted her dislocated shoulder and then set, splinted, and bound the broken humerus. The prospect of setting off in pursuit of the stranger seemed remote.

Finally, Spinnock turned to her. ‘Cousin, I have been thinking. It seems we are destined to spend another night here, unless we rig up a harness between our horses to carry the captain. If we are to do that, it should be now. This will give us enough time to ride to the outpost before night arrives.’

‘The captain desires that we track the stranger.’

He glanced away. ‘It is difficult to believe, I admit. From the Vitr Sea?’

‘I believe her. I saw the dead wolves.’

‘Might they not have been the ones that attacked Finarra? If fevered by infection, she might have become lost, doubling back on her own trail. Those footprints might well have been her very own.’

‘She seemed clear of mind when I found her.’

‘Then we are to wait?’

Faror Hend sighed. ‘I have another idea.’ She glanced across at the recumbent form of Finarra Stone. ‘I agree with you – the captain must be brought back to the outlier post as soon as possible. She is in no condition to lead us on to the trail of the stranger, and without a proper healer she might well die.’

‘Go on,’ Spinnock said, his eyes grave.

‘She will sit behind you on your horse – bound to you. And you will take her to the outpost. I will track the stranger.’

‘Faror—’

‘You have the stronger horse, and it’s rested. There are times when we must ride alone when on these patrols. You know that, Spinnock.’

‘If she awakens—’

‘She will be furious, yes. But the responsibility is mine. She can save her ire for me.’ She rose. ‘As you say, we must hurry.’

* * *

Faror had held to cold professionalism throughout the preparations, and had said nothing as she watched her cousin ride off, plunging into the furnace-hot path through the grasses and vanishing from sight in a bare half-dozen heartbeats. There could be no ease, no
warmth
shared between them. They were two Wardens of the Outer Reach and they had tasks before them. The Glimmer Fate was rife with dangers. Wardens died. These were simple truths. It was time he learned them.

She set out at a trot westward, back along the track she had ridden the night past. In the harsh sunlight the verge seemed even more forbidding, even more inimical. It was a conceit to imagine that they knew the world; that they knew its every detail. Forces ever worked unseen, in elusive patterns no mortal mind could comprehend. She saw life as little more than the crossing of unknown trails, one after another. What made them could only be known by following one, but this meant surrendering one’s own path: that blazing charge to the place of endings. Instead, a person pushed on, wondering, often frightened. If she glanced to her left she could see the wall of black grasses, shivering and rippling and blurry in the heat; and she knew there were countless paths through Glimmer Fate. Perhaps, if she could become winged as a bird, she might fly high overhead and see each and every trail, and perhaps even discern something of a pattern, a map of answers. Would this offer relief? Directly ahead, the verge stretched on like a beaten road.

She came at last to the first of the dead wolves. Small scaled rats had ventured out from the grasses to scavenge the carcass. They fled at her approach, slithering snake-like back into shelter among the thick stalks. She trotted her mount past and came opposite the gap in the grasses. The spilled gore was black, swarming with beetles, and in the heat Faror could smell the rot of fast-decaying flesh.

She reined in, eyed the gap for a moment, and then nudged her horse into it.

Once among the tall stalks, the heat swirled round her, cloying and fierce. Her mount snorted heavily, agitated, ears flattening. Faror murmured to calm the beast. The stench of spilled blood and ichor felt thick in her throat with every breath she took.

A short distance in, she came upon two more dead wolves, and crushed-down dents in the grasses to either side. Halting her horse and leaning forward to peer down one such side-trail, she could just make out the hind legs of a third wolf carcass. Straightening, she did a quick count of the breaks to either side.

Five. Surely there wasn’t a dead beast at the end of each of them? But the dried blood was everywhere.

Faror continued on.

Fifty heartbeats later, the path opened into a clearing, and here she found another slain pack, four creatures flung by savage blows to either side of a worn deer-trail that cut directly across the centre of the glade and vanished opposite. There was something almost dismissive about
the
way the wolves had been cut down and left dying from terrible wounds.

Shivering despite the heat, Faror Hend crossed the clearing. The resumption of the trail upon the other side narrowed markedly, and her horse was forced to push aside the thick, serrated stalks, the edges rasping against the wooden sheaths of armour protecting its legs and flanks. The heavy blades wavered and threatened to fold over both rider and mount. Faror drew her sword and used the weapon to keep the grasses from her face and neck.

Before too long she concluded that this was not a game-trail, for it ran too straight, passing near streams and springs but giving no sign of digression. The direction was south. If it remained true, it would lead to Kharkanas.

The stranger had travelled through the night; Faror saw no signs of a camp or even a place where rest had been taken. It was closing on late afternoon, the sky cloudless overhead, the light assuming a molten quality, as of fires raging beneath a thickening crust; and this light bled down through the black grasses with lurid tongues. She had never experienced such light before and the world around her seemed suddenly ethereal, uncanny.
Changes are coming to this world
. Sweat streamed beneath her silks.

Somewhere to the east, Spinnock Durav would be approaching the outlier post, but probably not arriving until well after dusk. She knew that he – and Finarra – should be safe enough while astride the horse. The wolves did not like the beasts and besides, the Warden mounts were trained for battle. And yet she feared for them none the less. If the captain’s infection had worsened—

Her horse broke through into a clearing, and at its far end stood a woman, facing them. Fair-skinned, her blonde hair dishevelled and roughly hacked at shoulder length. She was naked but for the scaled hide of a wolf draped over her shoulders. Faror could see fierce sunburn virtually everywhere else.

Reining in, Faror sheathed her sword and then raised a hand. ‘I mean you no harm,’ she called out.

Faror could see no weapons, not even a knife. Yet that made no sense – the wolves had been slain with a blade, and the woman’s golden tresses were cut with, it seemed, the same absence of subtlety.

She is very young. Slim as a boy. She is not Tiste
. ‘Do you understand me? Are you an Azathanai?’

At that word the woman’s head lifted, eyes suddenly sharp. Then she spoke. ‘I know your language. But it is not mine. Azathanai. I know that word.
Azat drevlid naratarh Azathanai
. The people who were never born.’

Faror Hend shook her head. She had never heard the language the
woman
had spoken. It was not Azathanai, nor Forulkan. ‘You have been tracked from the Vitr Sea. I am of the Tiste, a Warden of the Outer Reach. My name is Faror Hend, blood-bound to House Durav. You are approaching the borders of Kurald Galain, the home of my people.’

‘A sea?’

‘Can you tell me your name?’ Faror asked.

After a moment the woman shook her head.

‘You refuse to, or you cannot remember?’

‘I recall … nothing. A sea?’

Faror Hend sighed. ‘You travel south – why?’

Again the woman shook her head. ‘The air is so very hot.’ She then looked round and added, ‘I think I did not expect this.’

‘Then I shall give you a Tiste name. For now, until your memory returns. And I shall escort you to Kharkanas, where rules Mother Dark. Is this acceptable?’

The woman nodded.

‘I name you T’riss.’

Cocking her head, the woman smiled. ‘I am “born of the sea”.’

‘Will you walk, or ride with me?’

‘The beast you are on seems useful. I shall have one too.’ She turned then and seemed to fix her attention on the high grasses off to her left.

Sudden motion from there, and Faror made to unseat her lance as the black blades of grass buckled and twisted, drawing into vast knots. She heard roots being torn loose from the hard ground, heard thick snapping and something like the twisting of ropes. A creature was taking form before her eyes.

A horse of bound grass. It clambered upright as if pushed from the earth, shedding dust, massive as a destrier. The sockets of its eyes were gaping holes; the maw of its mouth was a mass of spiked blades. Its own weight seemed to be vast, far greater than it should have been for a conjuration of grasses.

Faror’s own horse backed away in alarm and she struggled to control it.

T’riss had now turned to creating clothing from the grasses, the style seeking to mimic Faror’s own silks. She made no gestures as the black blades snaked up around her body, revealed no hint of power beyond her own will. This was god-like sorcery and it frightened Faror to the core. Now clothed in grasses woven sleek and strangely flowing, the woman conjured into being a lance of the same material, and then a belted sword, and finally faced Faror once more. ‘I am born of the sea. I travel with Warden of the Outer Reach Faror Hend blood-bound to House Durav, and we ride to Kharkanas, where rules Mother Dark.’ She waited a moment, brows slowly lifting.

Faror nodded.

Seemingly satisfied with that, T’riss strode to her strange mount and lithely leapt astride its back. She took hold of reins that seemed to grow out from the creature’s cheeks, just behind the tuck of the mouth, and slipped her now-booted feet into twisted-rope stirrups. She looked across to Faror. ‘Shall I break the path, Warden Faror Hend?’

‘If you would, thank you.’

‘The same direction?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mother Dark.’ T’riss smiled. ‘That is a nice title.’

* * *

The sun was settling on the western horizon as if melting into a pool of fire, and Sharenas Ankhadu knew she was probably alone among her companions in not welcoming its demise. Her skin was of a quality that deepened most becomingly, rather than burned, and she could feel its glow on her face, neck and the backs of her hands where they rested on the saddle horn.

True, the heat had been savage, but Sharenas delighted in that as well. She was not inured to cold as many of her kin seemed to be, and her memories of the northern campaigns against the Jheleck were one and all unpleasant. Her cohort had on occasion mocked her with extra furs and hoarded firewood when they camped, and more than a few had offered to share her bed, out of duty, they insisted.

There were rules in the Legion, of course, prohibiting such dalliance with the enlisted soldiers, and that was but one of many such rules that Sharenas had occasion to curse – even if only to herself. She had been young to take command of a cohort, but it was hardly surprising given the renown of her two elder kin. There had been legacies to live with, not all of them reputable.

As she rode now, in the company of other officers of the Legion – including those since stripped of their rank and made inactive – she spared a thought for regret. Neither Infayen Menand nor Tathe Lorat had elected to accompany this party; and Sharenas knew that the others were left wondering what their absence signified. Should they look to Sharenas for answers – and she’d caught the occasional glance sent her way – they would be disappointed. That said, Sharenas loved and admired both her sister and her cousin, and held them in great esteem, in which faith was strong. If sides must be chosen in the days to come, Sharenas was certain that they would not hesitate in answering the summons.

For all that, she had to admit that she could not be fully confident of some of her companions on this venture, and with that thought her eyes tracked once more to the huge ex-soldier riding behind the vanguard of
Hunn
Raal and Osserc. Ilgast Rend had accepted this invitation with reluctance, or so it was purported, and without question his mood was sour, unrelieved since their departure from Neret Sorr three days past. Indeed, upon arriving on the outskirts of the settlement, his first words to Hunn Raal had been a pointed question: ‘
Does Urusander know of this?
’ Smiling, Hunn Raal had evaded the question. Ilgast would have pressed if not for Osserc’s sudden claim that his father was not only aware of the pending journey, but approved of it.