Songs of the Earth (28 page)

A revenant hung in the air in front of him, close enough to touch. Long hair waved in a cloud around her head. Her skin was translucent, as if her high-cheekboned, smooth-cheeked face had been carved from moonstone. Every line of her was perfect. From smooth, milk-white shoulders to dainty feet she was lovely as the dawn.

Will you not stay?
She smiled and held out her arms to him, welcoming as a woman to her lover.
Stay with me my dearest love. It is so cold without you, so cold in the night. Stay with me. We shall have nothing but time
.

Though the words were seductive, her eyes remained empty. The pale fingers that reached for him ended in the black claws of a raven and the white teeth were wolverine-sharp. Masen swung the
torches together hard. A cough of flame made the revenant flinch; her smile become a snarl. He thrust the torches forward, piercing the ghost between her pale breasts. She threw back her head and howled. From the sandstone spires either side of the road, a thousand voices answered.

With a yell, Masen clapped his heels to Brea’s sides. The mare reared and leapt into a gallop. Ghostly warriors rose out of the road, bows drawn, and let fly volley after volley of arrows. Had the missiles been real, his corpse would have bristled like a porcupine; instead the phantom shafts streaked through him, leaving only a chilly trail across his soul. One could not kill, but a dozen or more would leave him greatly weakened, and the bitter night would do the rest. Ducked low over Brea’s neck, flames streaming back from his torches, he charged the line of revenant archers at a dead run. As arrow after arrow whipped through him, Brea grunted and stumbled once, twice. Her breathing became laboured, and foam flew from her mouth, but still she kept galloping on into the swirling snow and the hail of arrows.

Behind them the howl rose in pitch, becoming first a scream, then a shriek, thin and sharp as a filleting knife across his nerves. Then abruptly the air was silent. Though he could see no difference in the snow or the night around him, Masen could sense the pass widen, the slopes of the mountains to either side falling back, gentling, as at last he left the whistlers behind.

Alternating between a trot and a walk, Masen coaxed Brea into the shadow of the fortress walls just as his torches burned out. He would have to find shelter quickly; once the snow stopped, there would be a killing cold, and the pair of them were too exhausted to make it down the Stair now. The chill of the were-arrows felt like a breastplate of ice, making it hard to breathe, difficult to maintain any sort of warmth at his core, despite his layers of clothing. Brea’s head was down, her ears limp, and she stumbled
as she walked. She was a bigger target for the archers; doubtless she had taken far more arrows than him.

He slid off her back to make it easier for her. ‘Come along, lass,’ he urged, ‘just a little further, eh?’

Goddess, it was so much effort to speak. Each word had to be dragged up out of his throat as if it weighed a hundredweight. He dropped the smouldering stubs of his torches into a drift; they were no longer any use. Even his feet were too heavy, but somehow he kept lifting them out of the snow, pushing them forward in another step, then another, moving slowly under the arch of Endirion’s Gate, towards the path up the looming flank of the Fall to the postern gate. Brea stumbled at his side, but she matched him step for step, yard for yard.

They would be able to enter the fortress by the postern, where the defenders had once received their supply wagons from the Greenway below. If the inner walls had not fallen in, destroyed by the storms, he should find some shelter inside, out of the snow at least, where he could build a fire, heat food. They just had to reach the entrance.

Brea whinnied and crashed to her knees. It took two attempts for her to haul herself back to her feet, and she stood shivering as snow whitened her rump. She had little strength left. Masen patted her neck. ‘We’ve been together too long for you to think about leaving me now,’ he told her, looping her reins round his hand again. ‘Up, Brea, not far now.’

He wiped snow from his face and started up the slope again, only to stop when a shadow detached itself from one of the fortress’ massive buttresses and stepped into the middle of the path. Masen could make out nothing of the man’s appearance other than the drawn shortbow in his hands. That shape was more than distinctive.

‘You should take better care of your mount, my friend.’ The man spoke with the rolling accent of the Arennorian plains.

‘I’ll see to her needs before my own, and always have done.’

‘Just as it should be.’ The clansman eased the tension on his bowstring, but he kept the arrow nocked. ‘We saw your torches in the pass. What brings you this way?’

‘I’ll be happy to tell you, clansman, as soon as I can get out of this damned blizzard.’

The clansman considered his words, then jerked his head towards the path. ‘Up to the stable yard, then to your left. There is space for you at our fire.’

Not a welcome at their fire, but still better than an arrow in the gut. ‘For that alone, may the Windlord favour you.’

Masen saw a flash of white teeth that might have been a smile, then the man put his fingers to his lips and blew two short, piercing whistles. A single longer whistle answered him.

‘Up you go. I’ll follow.’

Leading the faltering mare, Masen climbed the last dozen yards to the postern and led Brea through the black arch. Across the stable yard, yellow light spilled from a doorway and illuminated another rangy clansman standing on the threshold. He too held a shortbow in his hand, but as Masen approached, he stood to one side and held up the blanket that had been nailed up across the opening in place of a door.

Inside the low, vaulted undercroft the air was blessedly warm and smelled of woodsmoke and horses. Another clansman appeared to take Brea’s reins and lead her to the far side, where five horses were hobbled. At the near end, four saddles were lying on the floor beside a fire that had been lit in what had once been a forge. Packs piled against the wall had heavy cloaks draped over them; they showed signs of hard travelling. Javelins and bows were stacked where they could be easily reached.

‘Expecting trouble?’ Masen asked.

The sentry returned in a gust of snow and icy air. He knocked his boots clean, then pulled the blanket tight across the door frame and secured it with a heavy stone. Like the others he was dressed in well-worn buckskins, with a quiver at his shoulder and a
sheathed dagger on either hip. He had the same periwinkle-blue eyes and even features as the younger bowman, though experience had hardened the lines of his face and left threads of silver in his mane of brown hair.

‘You never know what you might find in Whistler’s Pass,’ he said. ‘Fortune favours the prepared. Now perhaps you tell us what brings you here?’

Masen eyed the two half-drawn shortbows. Either one could skewer him like a jack-rabbit at that range. He sighed. ‘I’m heading for Fleet,’ he said. ‘The Pass is the quickest way south from the high Brindling.’

‘A lonely road,’ the sentry said, not relaxing his grip on his bow. ‘And a cold one, at this time of year.’

Masen pulled his cloak open. The undercroft was warm; inside his thick clothes he was already sweating. ‘I go where the winds blow me. What are clansmen doing so far west?’

The man who had taken Brea returned to the fire with Masen’s saddle on one hip and the packs in his other hand. ‘Hunting,’ he said. The lightness of the voice revealed that he was in fact a she.

Masen looked more closely, and realised that her shapeless jerkin and buckskin pants concealed slender but very womanly curves.

‘Your mare’s in a poor way. I’ve fed and watered her but you’d better give her some rest if you expect her to reach Fleet.’

She leaned his packs against the others and set his saddle down, then she sat herself down and leaned back against her own saddle. Her other hand rested casually close to the dagger on her hip.

‘I’m grateful, and I’m sure Brea is too. We’ve travelled many miles together and it grieves me to see her hurt.’ Masen unclasped his cloak and folded it over his saddle. ‘May I ask what it is you’re hunting that brings you near on a thousand miles from Fleet?’

The sentry favoured him with a long look. Silence grew in the undercroft. Masen wondered whether he had perhaps asked the wrong question.

‘You can tell him, Sor. He’s
gaeden
.’ The fourth clansman sat at the far side of the fire, almost lost in the shadows. Where the three others were brown of skin and hair, he was black-haired and sallow. His mouth turned down at the corners, one side from a fresh scar seaming his face from nose to chin, the other side simply of a mind to keep it company. He did not look up from the whetstone in his hands and the long-bladed dagger he was drawing across it. Steel flashed in his sloe-dark eyes as he turned the gleaming blade back and forth.

‘You’re sure, Kael?’ Sor asked, frowning.

‘Sure as I’m sitting here.’
Whisk, whisk
went the whetstone. ‘I felt it as soon as he walked in. Ask him.’

Sor grunted. ‘Is this true?’

Masen nodded, unbuttoning his coat.

‘Duncan, is there any soup left? It’s cold as the Nameless’ heart out there.’

At that, Sor unstrung his bow and propped it against the wall with the others. Duncan did likewise, and set about fetching bowls and spoons as Sor took a seat by the fire.

‘So,’ he said when he was settled, ‘you know my name. That’s Duncan, my brother, Kael, Cara.’ He gestured round the group as he named them.

‘Masen.’

‘I’m guessing from the torches, you’ve travelled the Pass before.’

‘A few times – more times than enough, truth be told.’ Masen accepted the bowl of broth and the hunk of coarse damper that Duncan handed him. ‘Thank you. Those were-arrows bite deep.’

‘Just as well you found us,’ Cara said whilst Duncan handed round more bowls. ‘They might have been the end of you if you’d been caught without shelter.’

‘A wise man would avoid the Pass altogether in winter.’ Sor stirred his soup.

‘Well, chance makes fools of us all sometime.’ The broth was
thick with barley and one spoonful was enough to start thawing the chill from Masen’s bones. ‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t be here either, had you the choice.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Duncan asked.

‘Clan hunters this far from home, pursuing a quarry through Whistler’s Pass that they’re reluctant to discuss with ordinary folk?’ Masen made himself more comfortable on his folded cloak. ‘Clan hunters with a seeker, at that: there’s a hook to hang a bloody story from if ever I heard one.’

Sor exchanged a look with his brother. ‘It’s bloody, all right.’ He ate some more soup, mechanically, as if it were a job of work to be completed, but gave him no pleasure.

‘There’s a flask of good brandy in my pack over there, if you’ve some cups,’ said Masen. ‘I’ve a feeling we might be glad of a drop of spirit before the end of the night.’

Duncan fetched cups and flask, then returned to his supper. Masen poured everyone a generous measure and passed one to Sor, who nodded his appreciation.

‘We were patrolling the Westermarch when we met a ranger, riding fast and travelling light, even for the Eldannar. They’d had an attack on their herd a day or two previously – eight mares lost, a dozen colts, half a dozen more that they’d had to put to the Goddess’ mercy. They didn’t know what the beast was, but it tore through the herd in the night, and it was something that killed for sport, not for food. We rode out to help, if we could, but when we caught up with the band …’ Sor threw the last of the brandy down his throat, then set the cup on the floor. ‘Don’t ask me to describe what we saw in that place.’

Without a word, Masen leaned forward and refilled Sor’s cup to the brim.

‘They lose a few to wolves, or when the crag-cats come down to the plains in a hard winter,’ said Duncan quietly. ‘But nothing like this. The Eldannar said this herd was not the first to be savaged. Another was attacked, further south, and a farmer on the edge of
the Southmarch said he lost twenty head of kine in one night, butchered, but none eaten.’

To Masen’s right, Cara shuddered and sketched the sign of blessing over her heart.

He took a thoughtful sip of his brandy. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that there was an open Gate somewhere on the Arennorian plains, but really, the chances of that were slim. The clans lived with the Song as close as their shadows; their Speakers would have sensed a gate anywhere within twenty miles of their clan ranges and sent for a Gatekeeper. So, a rent in the Veil? That was the most likely. If it was weakening up in the high Brindling, it could easily have begun to fail here on the plains. All that was left was the question of what had come through. Merciful Mother, that could be almost anything.