Gods of Nabban (62 page)

They had horse, yes, he said, in answer to Ivah, but only one company, the lord general's escort. Numiya was not a province of pastures, Yeh-Lin observed, but of ploughlands. It did not breed riders.

Yeh-Lin asked what little more needed asking—what the scout could guess of the manner of their patrols, if there were wizards of the imperial corps among the Lai lord's officers, what other vessels they might have access to besides the ferry. Patrols were mostly on foot, with a few mounted, he thought, and there was at least one blue robe that he had seen in attendance on the Lai lord, before he himself was seen and hunted and lost them in the night and the riverside scrub. There were canoes and a few fishing boats in the ferry village, a few skin boats, nothing of any size. They could still have carried more men over to the west, yes. Many more, but the area they had been enclosing there was small.

“They won't abandon the east,” Yuro said. “They'd risk cutting themselves off from Numiya. They only want to secure the western landing. Probably the idea is take southern Alwu for the empress, annex it for the Kho'anzi of Numiya, force any movement out of Choa to go down the highway and over the Shihpan, through Vanai and Jina.”

He might be illiterate, but Ahjvar had seen him with Daro Korat and Daro Raku, and a table spread with the sort of maps Yeh-Lin claimed were forbidden to leave the imperial library but in the possession of a wizard assigned to an imperial general—not an artist's story but the land as a bird or visionary with a mirror might see and measure it.

“We have the numbers,” Dan said.

“On the wrong shore,” said Lord Zhung Ario.

Ghu, who had been silent, only nodding now and then and making some encouraging noise to the weary Gar Oro, looked down to the river.

“My river,” he said. “There is no wrong shore. Someone find Gar Oro a place to eat and sleep, if Lady Lin has done all that's needed for his wounds. Lin—ask your pages to round up the raft-captains. Yuro, Ti-So'aro, Ario, Dan—we'll want the captains of the companies. The cavalry and the archers. Ivah—horse-archers?”

“We have some. Most were with Dwei Ontari, though. Men and women of Alwu.”

“Two days' march yet to the ferry, Yuro thinks.”

“If we go on as we have, holy one,” Yuro said. “But we could move faster.”

And show up with weary soldiers who would still, once they had dealt with whatever enemy forces were on the western shore, need to be ferried over the river, and could they use rafts for that, there where the current strengthened above the reportedly unnavigable gorge? The enemy could pick them off as they landed.

“Wait,” Ghu said. “Wait for the captains.”

And when the captains came to sit around the fire with those who thought themselves the great folk, he laid out what they would do. Ahjvar stood behind, watching them all, the faces attentive, solemn—delighted, a few. Doubting, some.

“You can't,” Yeh-Lin said, and switched to Praitannec. “You're not thinking of the weight of the water, the push of it, Nabban. You don't understand the strength of the river. Even iron bends under the force of water . . .”

Her voice trailed to silence.

“My river,” Ghu said quietly. “Don't tell me its strength. Ivah will look to the ropes.”

Ivah's eyebrows went up, but she only nodded.

“Tomorrow,” Ghu said. “Eat, rest. Tell the people. Tomorrow's will be a long march, and then we'll begin.”

The stone steps are high, and she climbs them alone to the summit. Red pillars support a soaring roof high above, and the eaves are gilded, bright in the sun. She turns, slow in her heavy robes, brocade of crimson and gold over layers of silk that trail a train. Her golden headdress is rayed like the moon, like the crown of Mother Nabban, and set with pearls rose and white and gold. She rests her hands on the hilt of the sabre in her sash and watches them all so far below, the lords and the ladies, the nobles of the land assembled in the great plaza. The priests, too, in their robes white and brown, the priests of the empress, the warlord and wizard who has brought peace to the wounded land.

They go to their knees, the folk, and bow their faces to the stone.

A cold wind stings tears from her eyes. She shuts them. Cold wind, chill heart.

Don't leave yourself hollow, a devil says in memory.

Wind rises. She opens her eyes, raises her chin, grips the sabre's hilt. The wind strengthens, blowing like a storm off the mountains. Robes become banners, rags, streams of snow snaking over the paving stones below, around, over the hunched bodies, which are no more than the undulations of the land, and the waves of the grass, lying near-flat in the wind, and she stands on a hill, one of the old mounds, grave of a forgotten hero. The roof is gone to churning grey cloud, the pillars are leaning stone, minimally shaped; faint lines still trace broad-antlered deer, aurochsen, bear. She staggers against the wind, bare-headed, flings her arms wide, flourishing her sabre, her sheepskin coat flaring like wings, as if she would turn to a hawk and fly.

No! she shouts, and she stumbles to the grey rock, the low one, not old hero-stone but a heart and warm and she crouches, sets her back to it, watching, seeking her enemy.

Show yourself! she calls. Let me see you, and I'll deny you to your face. Stay out of my dreams.

Empress, he says. Your own dreams, not mine. You know what you are. Daughter. Chosen. Worthy to be mine.

Ivah muttered in her sleep, in the tent she shared with the banner-lady Ti-So'aro and four warriors of her retinue, and rolled over, half-waking. It was the uncertainty of what might come disturbed her unremembered dreams. She did not sleep well, these nights on the river road. Who could?

Ahjvar had grown used to sleeping while Ghu sat wakeful by the water, used to hard ground under him, dew and the river's fogs dampening his clothes and curling his hair, a chill that once would have set old broken bones to aching but never seemed to bother him anymore. He wished Ghu wouldn't sit up, because it left him vague and distant, less human, for too long the next day, but maybe it was something he needed, as a snake needed to bask in the sun. He never seemed tired as a man should be after such a vigil. He sat, and Ahjvar slept, and he might wake with Ghu lying open-eyed alongside him, or sitting where he had been like some outcropping of the stone, misted pale like a spider's web. It wasn't yet dawn when a touch on his face woke him that night. The moon was past its height, hazed with fog that rose and wavered, filling all the broad valley like a tide.

“We need a boat,” Ghu said, crouching over him.

Ahjvar groaned, tried to bury his head in his arm. He hadn't been dreaming. Sweet dark depths of dreamless sleep, and he wanted to crawl back there.

“Hey.”

He lipped the hand that burrowed in between face and elbow, then bit it, not terribly hard.

“Idiot.” Ghu rolled him over. “Boat?”

“Don't have one. Go steal a raft. A change from horses.”

“Wake up, you.”

He considered trying to pull Ghu down on top of him, decided against it and pulled himself up instead, hands on his shoulders. Sat wrapped around him. That proved distracting to Ghu, at least for a few moments. Mouth on his neck, his ear, mouth lingering on mouth. But this was hardly any private place.

“Why a boat?” he asked, and disentangled himself to walk the two steps to the shore, wake himself properly with cold water.

“I want to look at the river.”

He didn't have to speak his sarcasm, crouched and splashing river water on his face.

“The other shore. Have you ever handled a skin boat?”

“No.”

“Like a canoe, but crankier.”

“Nor a canoe. I can row, you know.”

“Not a boat for rowing. Probably you should just sit still.”

“That, I can do. But are we leaving the dogs behind?” The dogs were there, ears alert, the roots of their curled tails wagging in that gentle, questioning way that meant,
us too?

“The dogs will wait over here.” Ghu rubbed both wolfish heads, light and dark. “I don't quite trust you two not to go off looking for excitement.”

Two tails slowly uncoiled to the straight and then drooped.

“Go find Ivah,” he said, which seemed to cheer them. “I'll want her, and the horses.” Tails rose and they trotted off. Ivah, wherever she slept, was about to get a cold nose in the ear. Or two.

Ahjvar swept up sword and crossbow, trailed after Ghu upriver, to where the fogs smelt of smoke and horse and humanity and the rafts were grounded in the shallows or moored to those that were. A few of them carried lighter vessels, property of the rafters, double-ended bark-skinned things that rode the water like gulls, but it was the boat the scout had brought over that Ghu sought, and found as if he had, like the dogs, nosed it out, hauled up on one of the rafts. A watchman came walking down across the decks, swaying gently with the river's motion.

“Holy one.” He acknowledged them without question and gave Ghu a hand unlashing the boat and sliding it into the water, but seemed to consider Ahjvar doubtfully, as an awkward piece of baggage better left ashore.

Not so doubtfully as Ahjvar studied the boat, though. It sat far too lightly on the water for his liking, a framework of woven bamboo covered in hide, wider than the bark canoes, but not so long.

“Up towards the bow,” Ghu said helpfully. “Stay low.”

No thwarts, only a couple of bracing crosspieces, and short paddles shoved in beneath those. He didn't plummet through the bottom, which he half expected. It was lined with split bamboo and doubtless tanned bullhide fit to cover a shield in. The boat shifted and bobbled as Ghu stepped in behind him, kneeling up on one knee, not sitting to row like the coastal boats of Gold Harbour. The thing spun and shot away, caught in the current in a few quick strokes. Ghu chuckled with what sounded like delight. Ahjvar just kept still. Balance, no different from a horse. Very different from a horse, and like no boat he'd ever used before. Not that he did so except in desperation.

“Want me to take a hand?”

“Just keep an eye out ahead.”

There was a greyness to the east, and the half-moon towards the west making the fog pearly. On the water, they moved in a muffling cloud of night. By the time he saw anything, they'd be on top of it. They seemed to scud like bubbles kicked along by the wind. As if the river breathed and they rode the flutter of its pulse.

Ghu was taking them downriver, not across, and keeping in the strongest flow of the current, too, he judged. They passed the village on the east; smell of pigs and cattle and lingering smokiness. Ahjvar settled back, warily, and the boat did not tip or dive. Relaxed, a little. Oddly, he wasn't feeling the motion as much as he did on the rafts. The night faded and the fog turned to white banners around them, glowing with captive dawn.

Daylight. He found it hard to judge their speed, but they passed a point where Ghu said, “That's where we would have camped, but they'll have to march on.” Their marches so far had been short, though. No great hardship.

He began to wonder if Ghu planned to take them all the way to the ferry. If they got into the current sweeping to the gorge, there would be no turning back. And it was broad daylight; eluding the sight of a distant and possibly dreaming devil would not be to elude keen-eyed watchers on the shore, or their arrows.

An island divided the river ahead, low and marshy, overgrown with tall willow, thick beneath with tangled scrub and some pink-flowering weed clambering through everything. The scent carried on the wind, sweet and harsh in one. The broad, twiggy nests of herons filled some half-dead trees at the gravelly point that faced them like the prow of a ship.

The skin boat swirled sideways and held place, suddenly out of the current. Turned to face the western shore. Tangled, marshy woodland there, too. Ghu turned the boat again. The east, though, was flat water-meadow and more of the steep, forested little hills beyond. No herds grazed, no village smoke rose, but still, at some point in the year it must see use, or it would be gone to scrub as well. Perhaps the interval-land was pasture of the ferry village.

“Here,” he said.

“The swamp will be a problem.”

“Might not be so wet as it looks.”

“Is that the river knowing, or just hope?”

“Where are we without hope?”

“In a swamp with our feet wet.”

“Yeh-Lin is right about the strength of the river. The island will help.”

“Did you know it was here?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Ghu . . .”

“Well, I'm not. Sometimes I know, sometimes I don't. Sometimes . . . I don't know if I know, Ahj. I see things . . . Let's look.”

The woodland continued the length of the island, and half a mile back upriver. Impossible to see from the surface of the water how far inland it ran. Ahjvar caught an overhanging bough as Ghu brought the boat nosing in under the trees. No stony ledges here, but mud and roots and winter-broken boles of some tall bush rising from the water like spears, but they managed not to hole the boat as they snugged it in deep under the branches, probably impossible to see even from the island, and tied it there. Getting out involved crawling like a squirrel through a random jumble of branches and boles and discovering the ground to be fern-hummocks with water between. Ahjvar hoisted himself up onto a branch of the big willow that brooded over all the snarl like a hen on her chickens. Ghu came up after him, more gracefully, less encumbered with weapons. Also shorter and thinner, which made a difference when it came to weaving oneself through branches.

“We can't march them through this, unless you want to take the time to lay a log-road.”

“Wouldn't take long if this wetland's narrow.”