Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (46 page)

We found a small grassy vale with a spring and a pool and set that for our camp.

I heard the rattle of stones and turned in time to see half a dozen antelope clatter over a rise.

“And there goes dinner,” Maha muttered.

Since I’d done nothing but watch all day I found a bow and quiver and determined to put a little work in. Janela asked if she could go along and borrowed a light bow from one of the men. Quatervals said something about coming along and I flatly ordered him not to. My spider-man had done enough. He muttered, but indicated to Chons he should accompany us, not as assistant poacher, but bodyguard. The Cyralian brothers, even though they’d labored mightily helping build the X-bridge, protested about not being allowed to go — huntsmen to the end.

Whether in mountains or plains there are only two ways to stalk antelope. The first is to come on them while they’re unawares and the second is to play to their only weakness — besides tasting so wonderful when grilled with butter and served with a butter sauce of salt, pepper, parsley, lemon juice and a splash of sweet wine, I mean.

Antelope are insatiably curious, as much or more so than cats. I proposed to use this against them, borrowing a red handkerchief from Otavi for my chief weapon. We slipped out of the vale and within moments the world of the hunt took me and all else fell away.

I’ve always enjoyed stalking. It was one of the few legitimate excuses a rich old merchant such as myself could use to get out into the country away from the stress of business. However, like my sister Rali, I have no particular liking for killing the poor creatures I stalk. Although as one who likes meat as much the next man I feel mildly hypocritical about such squeamishness.

Antelope are among the most skittish of creatures so we crept along as silently as we could, using every scrap of cover that presented itself. Rather than peer over rocks, which is guaranteed to stampede the wary beasts into the next county, we peered around them. Unsurprisingly, since this was country man had penetrated but little, we saw three of them; small longhaired beasts, grazing in a small meadow not five minutes walk away. We were downwind so all was well.

I cut a stick from a bush and tied Otavi’s handkerchief to it. We waited until the antelope had their backs turned and were intent on their dinner and Chons moved into the open, stuck the long twig into a crack in the rocks and returned.

We didn’t have to wait for more than a few seconds, peering through a crack in the rocks, when one of the animals looked up and spotted the handkerchief moving in the breeze.

All three were instantly alert, about to flee. But nothing threatened and that handkerchief’s waving became hypnotic, irresistibly attractive. They walked toward it, stopping often when a wisp of wind made the cloth flutter a bit more strongly. They came closer... closer... we nocked the arrows we held ready on our bowstrings... closer... and they were but a dozen paces from the handkerchief when I nodded and all three of us rose from the sheltering rocks and fired.

The antelope sprang for escape but it was too late. Two leapt high and fell, Janela’s and Chon’s arrows buried in their chests. My own arrow struck the third victim as I’d intended, in the lungs. The animal shrilled, turned and bounded away. But I’d struck it fair and knew it would only go a few dozen yards before falling. We waited a few minutes, then went in pursuit.

There was blood trail to follow and we came around a rock and found, as I’d expected, my antelope, stretched dead on the rocks.

What we hadn’t expected was the enormous tiger standing over the buck’s body. We froze. The tawny beast stood equally motionless, staring at us. Then a low growl came from its throat as it announced its intentions.

Although arrows had somehow, reflexively, found their ways to our bow strings, none of us were so foolish as to lift them. The tiger was a female and I noted from her sagging belly she had born cubs this season.

The tiger’s growl grew louder and she stepped toward us. I saw she was limping badly and noted a barely-healed wound streaking one rear leg.

I signaled a retreat and we slithered away, our eyes never leaving the huge cat. We kept backing until we’d reached open ground. We exchanged glances.

“I wasn’t going to say anything but your buck looked old,” Janela opined. “Certainly would’ve been no tastier than the soles of my boots. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have hesitated to run that tiger off.”

“No doubt about it,” Chons said. “Certs, none of
us
fear tigers, eh? Sides, wi’ two th’ men’d be gettin’ full fat, an’ we need to be slim to travel at speed, right, Lord Antero?”

I grinned. “I can tell,” I said, dry, “that both of you are more experienced at the hunt than I, since your lies came faster than mine.

“My reasoning was simple — I’ve always been a
great
fancier of pussycats, and—”

Janela made a rude noise and we gutted our trophies and started back for the vale, leaving the field and the other, largest antelope for our friend.

* * * *

The next day we saw our first snow beside the road in a sheltered nook. The Fist of the Gods reached above us now and the road climbed for that gap between the thumb and forefinger, curving back and forth and back again past gigantic boulders that could almost be called hillocks in their own right.

It grew colder and we were shivering in our light clothing. It was time to shift into winter kit. Again, I was grateful for the benefits of sorcery that had kept us from having to carry an impossibly great burden.

Before we’d left Orissa I’d had all of the men outfitted for the coldest conditions, with silk undergarments, two-piece suits knitted of wool with wide gaps between each strand to trap and hold the warm air and the finest tailor-fitted furs for outerwear, the jackets hanging to mid-thigh and hooded, the pants equipped with suspenders so they’d stay up and boots reaching almost to the knee. Naturally these suits were bulky and would completely fill a man’s pack so he could carry no more than that. But our cleverness went on from there — I’d hired seamstresses who specialized in making very expensive dolls for rich children.

Each garment had some fur or cloth cut from it, and the doll-weavers set to work, using that cloth to make a minuscule duplicate of the full-size piece of apparel. These doll-size copies were sealed in a pouch and the pouch given to its owner with orders that the direst penalties would be wreaked for losing it.

Since I was under no illusions about travelers being able to misplace anything not immediately needed so as to lighten their loads, Janela also cast a conjunction spell on the men’s packs so that anything tossed aside or honestly forgotten would send worry cascading through the owner’s mind for a long enough time to be annoying.

All that was needed now was to open the pouch, lay out the new garments and Janela said the few words necessary to activate the preparatory spell she’d cast in Orissa. The doll clothes grew and I felt I was in the midst of an expeditionary tailor shop.

Some of the men protested about having to put on clothes as fine as these when they were so filthy and so we went on until we reached an icy mountain stream. I forced myself to strip bare and sluice the dirt of the road from my body, although the soap would barely lather.

Others felt differently, such as Quatervals. “By the gods,” he said, pulling on his trousers a few feet away, but keeping his face decently turned away, “you’d never have made a good Scout, my Lord, insistin’ on being clean and all. Here you’ve got a fine shelterin’ coat of oil the gods have given you as we’ve been walking, nearly as warm a coat as this fur, and you’re casting it away. Tsk.”

“I prefer not to be able to smell myself,” I said.

“More proof you’d never make a Scout, my Lord,” he said. “You only smell yourself three days without bathin’ and your mates but three or four beyond that. Then the nose quits, out of pure self-respect as aught else.”

I saw Pip nodding full agreement and chuckled — it was hard enough to get
him
to bathe in the heart of the city without offering a few silver coins.

Janela had suggested I have half a dozen extra sets made in varying sizes, since we might hire a guide or guides from local tribesmen. Mithraik was hardly anyone’s idea of a guide, but he too was outfitted warmly before we climbed on.

The journey wasn’t that wearisome, more like walking up an endless ramp that zigged back and forth up the mountains. But it was tiring for the mind, especially when we would reach a peak, look down past the monstrous boulders and possibly glimpse a section of the road below we’d been on two days earlier and feel drained from all that effort that seemed to have accomplished so little. Then we’d crest the hill, move down a slight valley and start up the next one.

At last the enormous fingers of the Fist loomed high and became more ominous with each step we took. It looked as if the range was one big rock or a single polished casting. Snow covered the road and even though we were still shy of winter was almost thigh deep.

We were just about to round the Fist’s thumb and enter the pass when the tiger repaid her debt and saved our lives.

We were approaching the pass entrance at a slight angle since the road had been torn by a landslide some time in the past, and the open country, even though deep in snow, was easier going, which also helped to save us.

The tiger was crouched not more than thirty feet above us, where the rocky formation that was the Fist’s “thumb” was born from the mountain’s base. It paid us no mind, its attention fixed on something on the other side of the rocky formation just inside the pass’s entrance. The tip of her tail was flickering back and forth, stalking prey on the other side.

My archers had arrows nocked and their bows lifted but I waved them down. As yet the creature was no threat. I thought it best to wait until she finished whatever business she had in the pass before going onward and was about to shout for a rest when the tiger sprang.

It roared as it jumped, a scream intended to freeze its victims’ bones to the marrow and as it leaped I heard an answering scream — the scream of a terrified man. I heard shouts from the pass just on the other side of the rocky outcropping and then the tiger came back into view.

In her jaws was clenched the limp body of a man. I thought the tiger had torn through his jugular when it killed him but then realized the deep red I saw was the man’s tunic.

He was a Warden from Vacaan.

Somehow Cligus and Modin had slipped ahead of us and laid the perfect ambush, an ambush spoiled only by the tiger.

It stood triumphant for just an instant then bounded away, on up the thumb’s crest and out of sight.

Despite the shock, my mind was very clear and examining the options. We could not... would not retreat. Nor could we conceivably walk into the pass. The only option was...

Quatervals was pointing. We must go on, on up,
outside
the pass’s entrance. We forced ourselves upward, always upward. Quatervals used the Scout hand-signaling to put half his mountain-experienced men, all five of them, in front to break a trail and five to the rear, both as a guard and hopefully to help anyone who fell. As the slope steepened a fall could mean more than a faceful of snow and a cascade of soaking powder down your furs. It would be a long tumble down the slope to the road behind us — a rolling fall that would maim or kill.

In Orissa when my party was first training we’d had lectures, demonstrations from Quatervals’ men on how to move and what to do when we entered the mountains and even two afternoons practice on the snow-barren Mount Aephens. However, a speech is hardly the equivalent of years or, in Quatervals’ case, a lifetime of mountaineering.

We should have taken rope-bits from our packs, said the words over them and tied ourselves together. But there was no time and so we pressed on.

The sky was clear and the sun scorching. I was sweating as badly as I had in the swamps and pulled my jacket open. This could be deadly — when we stopped sweat would freeze. Not that I concerned myself about living
that
long — before then Cligus would send out a reconnoitering patrol and see our tracks and the people who made them laboring on above.

The mountain rose yet again and now we were climbing on our hands and knees. The snow was less deep but frequently it had turned to ice. I used my dagger as a pick to dig in and make a hold.

We could not continue much longer. I had to stop, my lungs were screaming for air. Not far ahead the slope rose again into a sheer rock face. We were blocked.

Quatervals, who never seemed to tire, moved cautiously to the side, to the rock wall of the thumb. He’d seen what I now spotted — a tiny cleft rose toward the ridgecrest, a crevice that we might... we must... force ourselves into and up.

I heard moans of despair as others saw the cliff ahead and chanced low orders — follow Quatervals. We clambered and crawled after him. Now we forced the time to find rope-bits and have Janela cast the spells. Quatervals tied himself into a line and started up, hands and feet on either side of the crack, stair-stepping steadily upward, carrying a second rope with him. He tied off to a rock outcropping and motioned Levu to come up. The rest of us roped up and followed, creeping our way upward. I looked down, saw Janela’s white face looking at me and nothing but air below her, gulped and looked in that direction no more.