The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (55 page)

Flydd felt sick. They hadn’t asked for this, and there was
little they could do to protect themselves. He clutched the green-ice flask in
his right hand, feeling its chill eating into him, and tried to remember the
way he’d drawn upon chthonic fire next to the obelisk on Mistmurk Mountain to
open the first portal. Could he find that kind of power again and force it to
work for him?

He thought himself into the heart of the flame, attempting
to recover the mental state that had given him power previously, but instead
the outer wall of the chamber appeared to thin and what he saw was not Noom’s
bleak landscape of rock and ice beyond the moat, but a roiling nothingness with
mists and whirlpools of light scattered across it, separated from him by a
transparent membrane. Could he be seeing into the void? It seemed impossible,
but what other explanation was there?

Then he saw the woman in red again. Her ghostly form drifted
towards him until she came up against the barrier that separated them. Her
hands scratched at it, as if she were trying to get through, just as she had on
his way to the Nightland. Flydd couldn’t see her face, just the curves of cheek
and jaw.

Someone screamed and pointed, and the crowd surged away from
the spectral figure. Flydd clung desperately to the fire-eaten ice, afraid he’d
be carried off the side of the stair. Behind him there were more screams and a
series of unpleasant thuds as people fell to the floor below.

He shook his head, concentrated on driving the chthonic fire
deeper into the ice, and the woman in red faded away.

‘Every single thing you do makes it worse, Flydd,’ said
Yggur, forcing his way through the crowd, which parted before him like soil
carved by a plough. ‘Who was that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Flydd said uneasily, ‘though it’s not the
first time I’ve seen her. I first saw her during renewal, though I dare say
that was a trauma-induced hallucination.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure. You know of the great mancer,
Mendark, I assume?’

‘Of course. He was one of the greatest in all the
Histories.’

‘He took renewal as many as twelve times, by some accounts;
far more than any other mancer ever managed. He didn’t believe that renewal
hallucinations were hallucinations at all – he said they were aspects of
reality.’

Flydd froze, searching the elusive memories of his own
renewal for something disturbing. ‘That can’t be so,’ he said slowly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I hallucinated that she was a part of me –
and not just mentally.’

 
FORTY

‘If there’s an ell of flat land in Gendrigore, I’m yet
to see it,’ Nish grumbled as they scrambled up a steep and extremely wet slope
through dense forest. ‘How far is it to The Spine?’

They hadn’t made up any time, and he was painfully aware
that his father’s mighty army would be climbing the range by now. If they
reached Blisterbone first, as was increasingly likely, there would be nothing
to stop them. Imagining what it would be like to defend against a vastly
superior enemy with the advantage of height, he shuddered. It would be a
massacre, and an entirely pointless one. They simply had to get to the top of
The Spine first.

‘We’ll reach the foothills tomorrow mornin’,’ said Curr,
their guide.

A dirty, wiry little man, bald of head, leathery of skin and
blank of expression, he was constantly chewing string-tied wads of leaf which
stained his lips, teeth, chin and fingers blue. Curr had turned up not long
after Ekko, and announced that he’d been across The Spine a dozen times and had
been sent to be their guide.

‘Foothills!’ cried Nish. ‘I’ve seen mountains smaller than
the hill we’re climbing now, and it doesn’t even have a name.’

‘Very rugged country, The Spine,’ said Curr. The string of
his latest wad hung from his lower lip, and beads of blue saliva dribbled down
his chin with every word. His shirt and thick orange chest hair were stained
with it. ‘Kept us safe for more’n a thousand years, it has.’ And it’ll turn
back the God-Emperor’s army too, you young whippersnapper, he seemed to be
saying.

Nish averted his eyes. ‘And the other two provincial
militias will rendezvous with us at Wily’s Clearing before the climb?’

‘Don’t know nothin’ about arrangements. Just a guide, I am.’

‘But there is a good spot for all our forces to come
together there?’ Nish asked anxiously.

‘There’s a clearing big enough for all the troops you’ll
have.’ He hawked and spat blue phlegm into the grass.

The wet season had been unseasonably mild for the past
week, with only a torrential downpour every second day, but as soon as they
reached Wily’s Clearing, a precipitous opening in the forest not much bigger
than a horse blanket, it began to rain in earnest. Nish closed his eyes and
pointed his face to the sky, savouring the cool drops on his sweat-drenched,
insect-savaged skin.

‘About time!’ he said, rubbing it over his face and looking
around. ‘Where are the detachments from the east and south?’

‘That’ll be the men from Rigore province,’ grunted Curr,
pointing into the trees.

Nish made out a handful of troops sitting on a log, passing
a wine skin about. The Rigore pennant, featuring a laughing dolphin bursting
through a wave, hung from the branch of a tree. No guards had been set out, no
defences prepared. Nish, as an old soldier, was disgusted.

‘There don’t seem to be very many. I was promised four or
five hundred from Rigore province, and slightly more from Gendri.’

‘Expect they’re down at the river. There’s a fine bathin’
pool there, for those what like that sort of thing. Don’t hold with bathin’,
myself.’

Nish exchanged glances with Gi, whose snub nose was turned
up. Curr’s assertion was redundant – he could be smelt a hundred paces
away, against the wind.

‘What about Gendri province?’ said Nish.

Curr shrugged. ‘Shoulda been here days ago. ’Course …’

‘What?’ said Nish.

‘Mostly sod-turners over east. Wouldn’t know one end of a
spear from the other. Better off without them.’ Curr walked off, hawking to
left and right.

Gloom settled over Nish and he could not shake it off. His
quest had been cursed from the beginning. ‘Hoshi, make camp, then put up the
targets and get everyone practising. Gi, come with me.’

He went across to the men on the log. They were a rough lot,
almost as dirty as Curr, unshaven and dressed in mud-stained rags. The roughest
of them all, a big, burly man with a green feather in his broad-brimmed hat,
was swigging from the wine skin and belching loudly.

As Nish approached he lowered the skin, wiped his mouth and
said, ‘What do you want, shrimp?’

Nish felt an instant and urgent dislike of the fellow, so
strong that it took an effort to conceal it, but he began politely, ‘I’m
Cryl-Nish Hlar, and I –’

‘I know who you are, you white-faced runt. I said, what do
you want?’

Nish restrained himself. ‘I’m the commander of Gendrigore’s
combined militia.’

‘Be damned! I’m not serving under no poxy turd of a
foreigner.’

‘That has already been decided by your betters,’ said Nish
between his teeth. ‘Where’s your commander, soldier?’

The burly man lurched to his feet, swaying wildly, but
recovered. ‘I’m the commander here, you slimy little poop. I’m Captain Boobelar
and I’m not serving under you.’

Nish knew that he would have to break Boobelar; he also knew
that now was not the time. Boobelar would have to be taken by surprise, and
crushed, for he knew nothing else. Once it was done, Nish knew, the men of
Rigore would bow to his authority, but they would forever hold a grudge against
him for taking down one of their own, and if they caught him on a dark night
he’d get a beating, if not worse. Just what he needed on the eve of battle.

‘My apologies, Captain Boobelar,’ said Nish, stiffly
sketching a salute. ‘I did not recognise you out of uniform.’

Boobelar did not know what to make of that. He nodded curtly
but did not return the salute.

‘Where are the rest of your men, Captain?’ said Nish. ‘I was
promised five hundred from Rigore.’

‘Rigore can’t afford to waste five hundred on a wild goose
chase. It’s harvest time. I’ve brought eighty, and even that’s too many.’

‘Eighty is no good to me!’ cried Nish.

‘Then we’ll go home again,’ said Boobelar, taking another
swig and tossing the skin over his shoulder at a soldier lying on his back at
the other end of the log.

It struck him in the face and he started up with a shocked
cry, ‘Is it the enemy already?’

The other men laughed, and Boobelar loudest of all.

‘Let’s not be hasty,’ said Nish, red-raw inside at having to
mollify this brute. ‘The enemy is already on the march from Taranta with a
mighty army. They may already be climbing The Spine.’

‘How do you know?’ said Boobelar.

‘The watch fires have been lit, and a runner has come from
the lookout above the pass.’

Boobelar swallowed, his triangular larynx bobbing up and
down.

‘It’s true then,’ said a soldier with a red birthmark in the
shape of a horseshoe on his right cheek.

Boobelar glanced at him. ‘What if it is, Lucky? They’ll
break on The Spine, like every other army has, and we’ll grow fat on the loot
we plunder from their rotting bodies.’

The man called Lucky licked his lips. He had three teeth,
one on the top and two on the bottom.

Nish desperately hoped that it was true, and that he could
hold Blisterbone Pass with as few as a thousand men. He would have that number
when the Gendri militia arrived. ‘Is there any sign of the army from Gendri?’

Boobelar grinned, displaying a full set of fractured yellow
teeth. ‘The best news of all.’

‘What?’ Nish’s spirits rose fractionally. ‘More than five
hundred? A thousand?’ With a thousand more, he would feel relatively confident,
if only they got to Blisterbone first.

‘They’re not coming,’ snorted Boobelar. ‘We won’t have to
share the loot with them.’

‘Not coming?’ Nish couldn’t keep the dismay out of his
voice. This campaign was a nightmare; no, a farce.

With a wolfish laugh, Boobelar reached backwards for another
wine skin. Someone put one into his hand. He turned his back to Nish, farted,
then lay on the log and expertly directed a stream of purple wine into his
mouth.

Nish dropped his hand onto the hilt of Vivimord’s sabre, but
withdrew it. Boobelar’s gestures were an insult and a challenge, and he wasn’t
going to fall into the trap. He would challenge Boobelar at a time of his own
choosing. Until he crushed him, though, he would look weak in the eyes of his
men. Assuming I
can
crush him, Nish
thought. Boobelar was a head taller and half as heavy again, with muscles honed
from years of labour. Nish was fit from months of walking, but he was not
strong enough to take this man down in unarmed combat.

And if the troops from Gendri were not coming, could he
afford to crush Boobelar and lose one more man? Indeed, was there any point
going on with so few? Yes, even leaving Gendrigore’s fate out of the equation,
he had to go on. If this was to be the first real battle of the war against his
father, he had to fight it,
and he had to
win
, even if he only had five hundred. He had to find a way.

He desperately needed advice, but the one person he could
turn to was never around when he needed her. Tulitine hadn’t been seen for days
and no one knew where she had gone.

After dinner, Nish sat by the embers of his cooking
fire where the smoke provided some relief from the incessant mosquitoes, mud
flies and blue-eyed gnats, and from Curr’s squalid reek. Nish was trying to get
a picture of the track that wound over The Spine, but the guide was not being
helpful.

‘So how long is it to the pass now, Curr?’

Curr took out his blue-stained chaw, studied the soggy mess
in the firelight, and put it back. ‘For me, five days. Your useless lot might
do it in seven, if they walk hard and nothin’ goes wrong.’

‘Is there any chance the supply wagons can come partway up
the track? It would be a big help if they could, otherwise we’ll be awfully
burdened with supplies.’

Assuming the supply wagons ever got here. The bulk of their
supplies were coming from Gendri, which was closest to The Spine, but since
Gendri’s troops had failed him, maybe the supplies weren’t coming either. How
long could he afford to wait? No more than another day, and if they hadn’t
turned up by then Nish didn’t know what he was going to do.

Curr snorted, spraying blue saliva out in a poisonous cloud.
‘Forget everythin’ you know, captain.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Nish snarled, for it had
been a rotten day of a lousy week and he could not imagine tomorrow being any
better.

‘You keep calling it a
track
.
Ain’t no road, no track, no path. It’s the worst country you ever saw for
walkin’. One minute yer up to yer neck in snake-infested swamp, the next yer
inchin’ sideways along a ledge with a hunderd-span drop below yer and rotten
rock crumblin’ underfoot. Ridge goes straight up for five hunderd spans, then
down the other side, then up another ridge, and another, and another. By the
time you get to Blisterbone, with all the ups and downs, yer’ve walked halfway
to the moon. You couldn’t lead a horse over The Spine, and yer talking about
wagons
!’

Curr got up, scratched his scrawny haunches and walked off.

Nish felt like getting so drunk he couldn’t stand up. They
would have to carry all their supplies on their backs, but they could only
carry enough food to last them a fortnight up such precipitous paths. If all
went well they would have just enough to get to the pass, fight a quick battle
and come down again. If they had to wait, or defend, for days, they would run
out of supplies, and once these were gone they would have to live off the land
or starve. But living off the land was very time-consuming; no army could do so
and fight at the same time; not up there.