The Bitterbynde Trilogy (162 page)

Eastwards, the horizon was stained with a long crawl of brown smoke, underlit with a dull glare. At their backs the tall barricade of foliage marched north and south—the last ramparts of Firzenholt the Amazing. Before them the east wind, lifting the girl's hair, tossing the horse's mane and tail, came rushing up off the plain.

Far away, armies were encamped on those wastelands: the Legions of Erith.

Oh, how I should like to go down and enter that camp, to discover who bides there! If my love is among them, I might fall into his arms and die content … Yet I may not visit, for speed is of the essence
…

Questions tormented Tahquil:
Is the Prince with them, dear Edward of the sad gaze, who was like a brother to me? Did he survive the destruction of Tamhania, or is Erith bereft of royal leadership? Who is the leader of those armies? If a King-Emperor reigns, who might it be—James XVI or Edward IV?

Yet it makes no difference. Should Prince Morragan's unseelie myrmidons have failed to destroy their most strategically significant target, should Thorn in fact live, I dare not approach him for fear of bringing danger upon him. Should he not, I have no reason for life other than to see my friends safe. And should they also have perished, then Morragan and his unseelie followers may do their worst to me. I shall care no longer. Ah, may cruel Morragan and all his race depart from this my home, my Erith, and never return.

She lingered long over the scene spread out at her feet.

Down on the plain, a cock crowed. Dawn blazed over the horizon, the sun rising from behind Namarre and striking its rays across the Nenian Landbridge, across the wastelands, casting long shadows from the thousands of tents and pavilions, the makeshift Mooring Masts, the Windships riding at anchor—finally touching their golden tips to the face of the girl with blowing hair who now stood alone on the brow of the escarpment.

But is he there? Is he down there?

It was a hot Summer's day, fortunately for wanderers who would never have endured a life out of doors at another season. In the shelter of the easternmost hedge, couched in a niche at its roots, Tahquil slept, lulled by the burble and murmur of the canal as it coursed down its channel to fling itself out over the cliff into miles of air. Hawks hovered in the thermals. She did not see them. A bruised flower petal sashayed down from its vine to alight on her arm. She did not feel it. Wrens chirped from their inner bowers of cypress and privet. She heeded them not. The sun blazed on Firzenholt and Cinnarine, then submerged itself, sizzling, in the western ocean, engendering coloured steams which streamed out sideways like scarves of shot silk. Tahquil woke and filled her pockets with perfumed flowers, as camouflage against the sensitive noses of wights.

A waxing moon saw her picking her way down the face of the escarpment, led by a goatlike creature who discovered paths and footholds where at first glance there appeared to be none. By midnight they had reached the ground below. There, thistles grew rank and weeds crawled over rubble. Patches lay bare of growth; shale or dust or hard-packed dirt. Stubby torsos of burned trees poked up like grim monuments. The wind came galloping, unchecked, from the direction of the sea. A waterhorse came galloping from the direction of the thin river. It shook itself as a dog will, drenching the urisk and girl, before rolling enthusiastically in a dust patch.

‘Ye'll be bringing the Legions of Erith clamouring around our ears,' grumbled the urisk. ‘Their patrols are sair vigilant.'

A damsel formed of shadows and reflections came walking from a clump of mortified trees whose fingers had woven darkness between them like a cat's cradle.

‘Whither?' she questioned, laconically.

‘Onward as before,' replied Tahquil. ‘If your friends the swallows have the truth of it, Viviana and Caitri have probably been taken to Namarre.'

‘Such happenstance is certainty. Swallows say Wild Hunt steers from fell habitation without variation—from formidable fortress on starry heights.'

‘Huon and his chase use a castle in Namarre as their base?'

‘Faithfully.'

‘I'll warrant that another bides in that same stronghold,' muttered Tahquil, ‘and he greater by far than they—as a thunderstorm outranks a spark. How does the land lie between here and there? How shall I cross the Nenian Landbridge?'

‘Hundreds of soldiers stay here in wastelands,' said the swanmaiden, ‘vigilant fellows fending sallies of harassment. Savage wights violently hold slender strip separating seas.'

‘If the wastelands are held by the Legions of Erith and the Landbridge by forces of Unseelie, my only option is to skirt the bivouacs of the Legions and cross the Gulf Perilous to Namarre by boat.'

‘Seas of strait shelter fell wights,' insisted Whithiue. ‘Vessels founder. Ships sink. Humans submerge and finish as fodder for ferocious sea-monsters.'

‘If land and sea are dismissed, what remains? Is there a tunnel under the gulf, similar to the under-mine?'

‘Tunnels,' said the urisk, whose speech forms were nightly adapting to Tahquil's, ‘are iverywhere. They run aboot like lost worms, 'neath ivery land. Ye'll likely be standing above one as ye speak. The underground is riddled with roads—the Fridean make them, maistly, and keep them clear. But the passageway beneath the gulf is not for ye. It delves deep, sair deep, and there's no air in't—naught fa' mortal bellows tae suck in.'

‘Air! By air, then—I'll go by air. I shall stow away on a Windship—'

‘No craft of Eldaraigne will be crossing the Nenian Landbridge while Namarre holds that span.'

Tahquil clapped her hand to her forehead. ‘Of course—you have the right of it. Methinks this diet of juniper is pickling my brain. Oh, to have wings to fly—' She paused and turned a hard stare on Whithiue, who was preening her long hair.

‘Prithee, Whithiue, lend me your feather-cloak.'

The swanmaiden's eyes narrowed to two darts. She hissed threateningly, thrusting her long neck forward. Taking a step backwards she raised her arms from her sides, appearing to swell in size.

‘Am I to take it that you refuse?' inquired Tahquil.

‘Vehemently!'

‘A swan's cloak to her is as dear as life,' hooted the urisk. ‘Without it she would be forever trapped in humanlike form, never to take to the skies again.'

‘Ah yes, that I know. I would guard it, I would return it—but no, I understand such a ban.'

And yet, how delicious it would be, to soar unaided, untrammelled, as a bird soars—to feel the lift of invisible currents under my own vanes.

‘But if you will not do me that favour, perhaps you will do me another.' Tahquil tried to conceal the catch in her voice. ‘When next you fly out across the land, will you try to discover whether he still lives, the King-Emperor of Erith? Nay—I shall be more precise to avoid confusion—'tis James XVI of whom I crave tidings, not his successor. Will the swallows know, or perhaps the other swans?'

‘Swan will furnish favour. Swan will find word of sovereign.'

Emotion surged through Tahquil like a tempest.

‘Swan is valiant,' she said sincerely.

All four of the nygel's hooves left the ground simultaneously, their owner's nose having been pricked by a thistle that thrust its spiny leaves and erect stem between two stones, its green head bristling with purple hair.

‘Have ye heard a word o' our counsel?' asked the urisk.

The nygel sneezed.

‘I'll bear the mistress past the fighters and acrass the bridge,' he said, blinking as ingenuously as a newborn foal.

‘How so?' demanded Tahquil.

‘The night I cannat outrun a
larraly
habby-harrse av land arr sky is the night I pat an a harrness and start palling a plough. And an the landbridge what's wan mair waterharrse with a dinner av flesh glued tae its back?'

Stroking his goatee contemplatively, the urisk looked a portrait of sagacity. The swanmaiden subsided. Borne on the balmy wind, men's voices drifted, inarticulate, from the distant encampments.

‘Well said, Sir Nygel,' complimented Tahquil, ‘I commend you. I believe your plan will work.'

Crickets drilled small holes into the dark metal of night. A thousand fires glittered, a scatter of fireflies across the plain. White moonlight and orange flamelight arced off steel: razor spearheads, thorny spurs, graven helms, shiny aiguillettes adorning uniforms. The wind brought the smack of smoke and snatches of sound—the clink and clash of weapons, the whinnying of horses, the jarring keen of a blade being sharpened on a whetstone, the bark of orders being rapped out, the crystal chime of a different wind on its way.

Two mailed sentries of the Third Luindorn Drusilliers, patrolling the outskirts of their bivouac, crossed paths and hailed one another. Both identified themselves as regulations demanded, to cancel wightish trickery:

‘I am mortal, and loyal to the Empire.'

Thus greeted, they exchanged a few words to keep the vast, echoing voice of night from sending whispers of apprehension down their spines.

‘What news, Fordward?'

‘All is quiet in Slegorn Sector. And you?'

‘The same.'

They leaned on their lances, the wind plucking at the corners of their chequered tabards. A darker darkness began to overcome the night, but the stars bristled more brightly, like fistfuls of pins; bronze, electrum, copper, silver-gilt.

‘The Wild Hunt has been busy scouring the skies this half-month,' said Fordward.

‘Methinks it ever heads northwest in its excursions,' said his comrade.

‘Aye, yet 'tis glad I am of the wizard's weavings about our borders,' said Fordward. ‘Feulath, and that new wizard who has arrived to replace the outlawed Sargoth.'

‘The newcomer has performed with more gumption than I had hoped, considering he is but a backwoods conjurer from a Stormrider Tower.'

‘The young Prince personally chose him, so I heard.'

‘Is that so? Edward shows discernment, amongst many good qualities. The men love him well, and are keen to prove their loyalty. Thank the Powers he survived the tragedy of the Royal Isle.'

‘Aye, thank the Powers,' Fordward agreed sombrely, nodding for emphasis.

A tinkling as of tiny bells lapped at the extreme limits of audibility. Neither man commented on the approach of the unstorm—it was an occurrence too common to be remarkable.

‘I would fain see an end to this lull,' said Fordward softly. ‘The sooner we ride against Namarre, the better.'

‘'Twill be soon, they say,' replied his companion. ‘We are all eager to see action. Waiting overlong drives men to restlessness.'

They conversed a little more, in the same vein. Rarely was their exchange slanderous or vulgar. All the soldiery held the Dainnan in the greatest esteem and the majority therefore perceived the code of the Brotherhood as the measure of their own conduct. The Dainnan Vow—to right wrong, to punish the guilty, to feed the hungry, help the feeble and obey the King-Emperor's law—those vows of courage, truth, charity, fidelity and uprightness had made their mark on many of the warriors of Erith, as a shining cup casts reflected light on the beholder.

Hand-picked, these camp sentries were alert and watchful. Even when they met like this, for but a moment, their tongues might wag and their eyes rove but never did their attention lapse. There was no dozing off at the post, especially during the wighting hours. Unseelie incarnations of untold varieties had been straggling through these wastelands for more than a year, coming from the forests in the south or the peaks in the north, making for the Landbridge. Yet the leaguers were forced to position themselves here, camped in an unbroken semicircle around the old fort by the entrance to the bridge, because strategically, it was the best location from which to defend Eldaraigne from Namarran raids. On the naked plain they had found themselves liable to be assailed from any quarter. Along the western line they fenced themselves in with magicians' sorceries. To the north and south they had thrown up earthworks and spiked palisades.

To the eastern front the armies bent their gaze. To the east they soon would be ready to advance, challenging the wights holding the Landbridge in an effort to clear the way and march through into Namarre to put an end to the uprising. Meanwhile, scouts searched for signs of a possible early Namarran attack on the Legions. Due to the inability of Windships and Skyhorses to cross water, little was known of what doings fermented in Namarre. Only sketchy information had been gleaned from spies who had managed to sail around and land on its opposite shores—those few who had returned to tell of it.

The Wastelands altered illusorily as the unstorm swept down. Emerald faces of thistles bristled with amethyst spines. Ruby-eyed sand-mice with opalescent hides skittered amongst broken jewels pulsing with an ethereal diaphanousness. Numinous forces breathed a mockery of life into tableaux—untaltried men had done battle here long ago. Their graves had grown green these hundred years but still their simulacra fought on, long after their original molds had moldered. A Stormrider in haste crossed the airs of the plain. An aeronaut fell, windmilling, from a flying ship. A company of travellers was pursued by wights and bolted, screaming, their mouths round O's of silence under the white knobs of their popping eyes.

‘Look there!' A sentry snapped to attention. Auburn light slithered along the murderous spike of the cavalryman's lance he hefted in his right hand. A distant fire winked out, winked into incandescence again. Further on, another winked off, winked on. Something was passing silently between the watchers and the fires.

‘I don't recall seeing that 'un before.'

‘It blocks the light. Therefore 'tis real.'

Shouldering their weapons they ran forward to investigate.

The untamed winds of gramarye raked through Tahquil's hair, sizzling in her blood like red-hot pokers plunged into mulling ale. She couched along the horse's spine, her brown-dyed locks escaping from her taltry to mingle into his grey. With eldritch life springing vital beneath her thighs and gramarye streaming hectically all around, she no longer knew who she was; whether a mote scudding through a void, a half-spelled urge winging its way to calumny, an illusion, a drollery, a flung burst of dust.