Swordmistress of Chaos (14 page)

There were islands dotting the surface of Worldheart, and though most were uninhabited, there were a few that bore small settlements on their lonely flanks. The bird, however, steered them between such temptations, drawing them ever westwards, and Spellbinder’s persuasive tongue convinced the rievers against a landing.

On the thirty-seventh day they sighted a low, rolling coastline.

Gondar climbed the wolf-headed prow, peering out through the haze at the dark line breasting the horizon. After a while he climbed down, announcing the place as Ishkar. He would have gone in then had the bird not turned due south, taking them down the coast past tiny settlements where watch-fires sparkled to carry warning of their passage. Instead, they continued for two days longer, following the line of tempting, green-girded sea-meadows. Then, opposite a wide river mouth, the bird turned inland, beating up the centre of the channel to a place where the green-grey of the ocean became the clear blue of pure water. There was a wide sward of verdant grass running clear to the river’s edge, girded on either side by low hills, from whence ran a crystal stream to feed the river. Here the bird settled, strutting over the turf with bright eyes and darting beak plucking a feast of grubs and grasshoppers from the ground.

Gondar beached
Storm-runner
and Toril followed suit, both captains splashing through the shallows at the head of twenty-strong scouting parties. The wolf-boats carried forty men apiece, and those left on board set to securing the vessels, putting out a ring of guards while the others cut inland.

Toril was sent sea-wards to scout the hills to their right, and Gondar, with Raven and Spellbinder close behind, set out to the left-hand range. His plan was simple: to reach the hills and move north towards the pass they could see in the far distance. There, the two groups would join and return to their ships. Unless danger showed.

Raven, although born of Ishkarian parents, knew little of the country. Her mother had told her stories of the little coastal village from which she had been taken by the Lyand slavers and frightening tales of the Beastmen of Ishkar, though Raven had never seen one of those fabled creatures. The land around them appeared too peaceful to contain anything so savage, the gentle roll of the hills shimmering green beneath a warm sun, the air filled with the chirruping of insects, the sonorous hum of flying things. That sense of peace was increased by the soft murmuring of the brook crossing the meadow and the tiny birds that fluttered above them, uttering high, fluting cries as they ate on the wing.

That idyllic scene was disrupted somewhat by the twin columns of armoured men tramping over the grass, swords and axes at the ready, narrowed eyes in constant motion to scan the horizons for danger signs.

There was no interruption to their march except from disturbed cicadas, and they covered the twenty klis to the hills at a fast pace. Gondar knew that they were in Ishkar without being sure of their exact location. Spellbinder suggested that the river was the boundary line with Sly, Beastmen and cannibals preferring the heartland of their respective domains and thus leaving the river basin empty. He appeared to be correct, for they reached the hills and turned north without sight of life. The hills, though gentle, continued for many klis, so that it was impossible to glimpse the interior of the country until they reached the pass. There the stream bubbled from between two mossy rocks, affording them a welcome source of fresh water. They slaked their thirst in pairs as the sun sank down across the sky, waiting for Toril to join them. Through the pass they could see a rolling savannah that seemed to stretch away into infinity, its tall-grassed flatness of a yellow uniformity that tricked judgement of distance to such an extent that it was impossible to tell whether the plain was thirty klis or three hundred wide. The sea-wolves accepted it as they accepted the ocean, but Raven felt a disturbing unease when she stared over the unbroken vastness. There was nothing to break the view; no villages showed, no smoke, no buds. There was only that great sun-bleached emptiness.

She was glad when Toril came up to report a similarly uneventful march and they turned back to the coast.

The sun was down before they reached the two wolf-boats, mouths watering at the smell of baking fish that drifted in the night breeze. The guard-crews had been busy, for the ships were drawn up beyond the waterline, rollers set to allow a swift launching, and awnings spread to provide shelter should it be needed. Cooking-fires glowed and the last of their wine was passed around the groups of resting men as a pale moon rose like a waxen beacon above the now-silent meadow. It was a tranquil scene, but for all that, Gondar kept men posted to guard the land and water approaches, and the black bird perched, aloof, atop
Storm-runner’s
masthead, as though confident of their safety.

In the morning, after they had breakfasted of more of the succulent river fish, they prepared to leave. Thirty men were left behind to guard the wolf-boats while Gondar, Toril, Spellbinder, and Raven headed a triple column of the remaining fifty towards the pass. The bird took to the air as the columns formed, flapping low overhead with a raucous cry that seemed to urge haste upon them. Gondar answered the avian command by breaking into a loping run that was the customary pace of the Kragg rievers. They ran for three klis, then walked one before running again, and in that way reached deep into the savannah before sunset.

Hunters were sent out, returning with small animals that bore tiny horns on their mouse-like skulls and proved to be excellent eating. They were spit-roasted over fires of the thick grass in a clearing Gondar had ordered stamped down. The grass reached high as a man’s waist, and while it was suppliant enough to offer no obstruction, it was sufficiently tall to hide approaching enemies should they choose to crawl through the animal tunnels that warrened the plain.

The night, however, passed peacefully enough, though sentries complained of insect bites and one riever, fairer than most, wore a red-rimmed explosion of swelling punctures come morning.

By noon three more men bore the same angry aspect, and when they made camp that night two were delirious. Their ravings disturbed the others, and at dawn it was obvious they could go on no longer. Gondar selected a party of five sea-wolves, all suffering from the insects, to escort the stricken men back to the river. It was a minimal depletion of his force that would speed up the rate of march for the others who mostly appeared unaffected by the stings and bites.

They continued unhampered for two more days before seven rievers went down into delirium. It was obvious that they could not go on, nor were they fit to make the return journey. Gondar chose two protesting men to remain with them, giving instructions that they should nurse the stricken rievers until they recovered—or died! Then the others, following the bird, marched north. They marched through the long day, camped, and marched again. Morning brought the same routine, and always the black bird beat the air ahead of them. They saw nothing save the small animals that seemed the sole inhabitants of the savannah, and as the sun grew warmer, brighter, the grasslands appeared to float away forever. It was as though they traversed some limbo designed by a malevolent god as a trap for men, drawing them ever onwards through a landscape that was the same each evening as it had been that morning, a treadmill of sameness that rolled eternally above and around them. Until it ended with an abruptness that lost two of the rievers.

Gondar had put scouts ahead of their path since entering the grass country. Whether bored by the routine or tricked by the deceptive landscape, it was impossible to tell. At one moment, two heads showed above the grass, at the next they were gone. The column halted on Gondar’s command and he moved slowly forwards, backed by four of his men, with Raven and Spellbinder. They clustered together, expecting attack. Instead, they found the end of the savannah.

The tall grass went on to the edge of a sheer cliff, twin trails of crushed stems marking the passage of the scouts. The trails ended in nothingness, the savannah chopped away as though some cosmic shovel had ploughed a gigantic trench deep through the heart of Ishkar. For many klis, a sheer grey wall fell like a curtain of stone before them, and far below they could see two dark shapes, twisted and broken, to mark the scouts’ fall.

The farther edge of the basin was undiscernible, but across its visible width stretched a luxuriant tangle of jungle. Plumes of smoke rose from amongst the dense foliage and here and there showed the dark holes of clearings. The reason for the savannah’s emptiness was obvious: whatever form of life occupied this part of Ishkar was concentrated within the massive canyon, cut off from the high grasslands by the plummetting walls of naked rock. Raven gasped as she peered out over the edge, for just as the savannah had seemed like a smooth, unending sea, so this great rift was like a green and storm-tossed ocean.

‘How can we find the skull down there?’ she asked. ‘Even if there were a way down, we should lose ourselves.’

‘Remember the bird.’ Spellbinder touched her shoulder, pointing along the cliff face. ‘We have a guide still.’

A half kli from them, the bird hovered, riding the updraught on lazy wings. Its beak opened as Raven looked towards it, an imperative call summoning them in its direction. When they reached the place they found a cleft in the rock that, on further investigation, revealed a narrow path leading down. Precipitous was that walkway, scarce wide enough for one man to traverse with ease so that the heavy-built sea-wolves perforced moved cautiously, faces to the cliff, in a shuffling sideways gait.

The path—though to call it that was to grant a goat trail a title grander than it deserved—went steeply down the sides of the chasm to a slightly broader span. There, two men could stand side-by-side, which was just as well for the next part of their journey consisted of a vertical descent down a series of hand and foot-holds covering five spear-lengths to a second ledge. From there the path continued in the opposite direction, running ever downwards towards a third ledge and a second ladder-like descent. It went on in that fashion all the way down the cliff, as though whoever had carved it out had sought to render entry as difficult as possible. Certainly, the zig-zag nature of the trail allied to the vertical sections would enable a single defender to hold the path against any climbers. Equally, a descent would provide bowmen or spear-throwers stationed below with an easy target. Such thoughts were in all their minds as they moved warily downwards though none would say whether the inhabitants of the jungle below had built the path to reach the savannah, or whether some long-disappeared cliff-dwellers had carved a way down.

It took them until sunset before they felt earth beneath their feet, and had an attack started, they would have fallen easy prey. Raven’s legs were strained by the shuffling descent, her arms ached from clutching at the rock, her shoulders and spine protested the burden of armour and weapons. Their camp was quiet, tired men collapsing gratefully into sleep at the foot of the cliff, trusting in the sentries to give warning of any danger.

At dawn they found the late-watch guards with their throats ripped out.

There had been no sound, and when Raven looked around for the bird she found it gone. Spellbinder could offer no explanation, nor could Gondar understand how a jungle beast might kill three men without a whisper. The massed ranks of thick-stemmed trees, girded with heavy trailers of vines and exotic flowers, took on a more sinister aspect as they peered into the shadowy darkness. It was as though the jungle itself waited, brooding, to drag them to its bosom, there to render them down into mould that would feed its roots. Raven shuddered as she watched it.

Gondar cursed, aiding his remaining men in the construction of a shared cairn, vowing horrible revenge on whatever had killed his sentries.

They moved carefully that day, following the first trail they saw leading to the interior. That it was used was obvious from the way the spongy loam of rotting vegetation was crushed flat, winding amongst the lowering trees in a serpentine path that befuddled their sense of direction. The sea-wolves carried their shields high and their weapons drawn, staying close together, as though the undergrowth pressed upon them with tangible force. And, surely, it seemed possessed of a strange, near-sentient life. Where the savannah had been silent save for the stirring of the wind, so that men started at a sudden noise, the jungle was clamorous with inexplicable sound. Tiny rustlings filled the air, as though a myriad unseen creatures scurried through the brush and the branches; high-pitched shrieks echoed above them, the screamers hidden behind a ceiling of interwoven creepers and low-spreading branches that dripped long streamers of greasy moss, suppurous growths of varying hues, all leprous and vile to the eye; great coughing roars accompanied the sound of running feet, of branches and bushes hurled aside in reckless flight that ended with a dying scream and the ominous sound of tearing jaws.

Raven found it difficult to tell when the sun went down, for the jungle itself wore a phosphorescence that belied the absence of natural light, outlining vines and stems with a shimmering, deceptive glow of gangrenous corpse-colour. They halted when they were too tired to go any farther, gathering at the centre of the narrow path behind a wall of shields.

No fire could be lit, because the jungle offered no fuel that was dry enough to burn. It seemed that everything dripped moisture, or collapsed into soggy fragments at the merest touch, so they ate their stored meat raw or went hungry, according to their tastes.

In the morning, there were two more corpses.

One man stretched out on the loam a short way from his fellows as though he had sought a separate sleeping place. His rest, however, was eternal, for his ribs gaped wide and bloody, the flesh rent even through his mail shirt. The other stood propped against the trunk he had sought to protect his back. His face was pallid, bloodless, the vines holding him upright covered with the spillings of his veins. Like the sentries who had died at the cliff, his throat was a gaping wound, thick with flies and crawling things.