The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (57 page)

Gi came running up with Forzel and Clech, a huge, gentle
fisherman with a perpetual squint from staring out to sea.

‘Are you all right, Nish?’ she cried. ‘Clech, get after
Boobelar.’

Clech’s boots pounded away. Gi took Nish’s shoulder but he
slid bonelessly off the rock onto the ground. He couldn’t move; couldn’t speak;
and definitely could not meet Forzel’s eyes, for he was a perennial joker and
Nish could only imagine what he’d make of this scene.

Gi ran back for balms and bandages. A grimly silent Forzel
helped Nish up, and when his many cuts and abrasions had been treated, dressed
him and assisted him back. Nish crawled into his tent, too sore and sick to
eat. By nightfall Boobelar’s men would have spread the story through the camp,
and Nish would be a laughing stock, his reputation ruined. The militia would
never follow him now.

He huddled in his wet bedroll, knowing he should go out and
address them at once, to try and save himself, but unable to face the ordeal.
It would not have surprised him if they all deserted in the night.

When he rose the following morning, after what felt like the
most painful and miserable night of his life, the militia was still there. His
backside was a swollen mess of purple bruises that were spreading up his back
and down his thighs, and he could barely stand up. But he had to; the
mortifying moment could not be put off any longer and, whatever came from it,
he would face it with the few shreds of dignity he had left.

Hoshi was just outside. Nish beckoned him over. ‘Would you
–?’ His voice went hoarse. ‘Would you call everyone together? I have to
tell them what happened and give them the opportunity –’

‘No!’ said Hoshi, more firmly than he had spoken to Nish
before.

It was starting already. ‘I’m your captain!’ gritted Nish.
‘It’s an order –’

‘You don’t know Gendrigore, Nish. We don’t make heroes of
men like Boobelar, who kill for a living. Our heroes are ordinary folk who have
fought against the odds, even if they’ve failed.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Nish.

‘We don’t think the less of you because a swine like
Boobelar beat you black and blue. We admire you all the more because you had
the courage to take him on unarmed, when you knew you couldn’t win.’

Nish found this difficult to understand, for he had grown up
in the old school, where everyone knew their place and it had been ruthlessly
enforced. ‘But how can I maintain discipline when –’

‘We don’t obey you because you give us orders, Nish. We
follow you because you care about us, and for our beautiful Gendrigore. We
follow you because we believe in you.’

‘But –’

‘We have looked out for our captain,’ said Hoshi. ‘The
matter will never be mentioned again.’

‘But –’

Hoshi held up his hand and Nish broke off, humbled and
overcome. The matter was not mentioned again, on that day’s march or
afterwards, and Nish did not see a single smirk or secret smile on the faces of
his militia.

In the early afternoon he was having a leak behind a tree
when Boobelar’s company hobbled past, every man of them sporting black eyes and
battered faces. Nish’s own troops had swollen hands and bleeding knuckles, even
gentle Gi. He could have wept for their simple, stubborn loyalty, and their
refusal to allow him any shame for what he had been through. He loved them,
every single one.

But it could not erase his humiliation; it burned him night
and day, lessening him in his own eyes. After making such an elementary blunder
and leaving himself exposed to his enemy, how could he rely on his own judgment
in the battles to come, when lives would be lost at every miscalculation or
failed strategy? How could he believe in himself when at every critical choice
he would see his naked body splayed over a rock, having his arse whaled by an
addled thug?

Maybe the militia would follow him as confidently as ever,
but Nish felt eaten up from the inside. He was no longer sure he had the
self-belief to lead them in the battle of their lives.

That day was a nightmare; for the first hour Nish could
barely stagger. But he forced himself to, enduring the pain and making every
step into another blow against Boobelar. How he was going to pay.

Nish would not accept the frequent offers of a helping hand;
he could not, for in his mind that would only reveal another weakness. He had
to do it alone, no matter how it hurt. And the next hour hurt even more.

Each succeeding day felt worse than the one before, yet Nish
drove himself harder, for they did not seem to be getting anywhere. When he
finally clawed his way to the top of each ridge he could only see more ridges,
looming ever higher until they blurred into the rain, and there was never any
way to get to the next ridge without climbing down a precipitous slope and up
the other side. Every day his terror grew that they would get to Blisterbone
and find it held against them by thousands of jeering Imperial Militia.

The business between him and Boobelar wasn’t finished,
either. It could not be until he crushed the man, or Boobelar killed him. He
could see it in the captain’s eyes every time they met. Boobelar said not a
word, and neither did his troops, but the sore continued to fester.

‘I’m sure we’ve climbed this ridge before,’ Nish panted on
the afternoon of the sixth day. ‘It looks really familiar.’

‘In that case, you’d see our tracks,’ said Curr.

‘The rain would have washed them away.’

‘Land all looks the same up here,’ said Curr. ‘It even fools
me sometimes.’

‘We must be getting close now,’ Nish said on the seventh day
of the climb. He had stopped with Gi, Hoshi and Curr for a few minute’s rest.
They slumped to the ground but Nish stayed on his feet; if he once sat down, he
did not think he would ever get up again.

It was still raining as heavily as before, but it was milder
at this altitude, and occasionally, when they emerged from forest onto an open
ridge and the wind was blowing hard, he felt pleasantly cool.

‘Couple of days to Blisterbone,’ Curr grunted.

‘You said it would only us take seven days.’

‘It would have if you’d put your backs into it.’ Curr spat
onto the ground between Nish’s feet.

He became ruder and more disrespectful by the hour, and in
the olden days Nish would have had him flogged for insolence, but without Curr
he would never find the pass. Besides, he had too many other problems to worry
about – like their rapidly dwindling food supplies.

The militia had consumed far more than he had expected, and
so had he, for the forced march in these conditions had been utterly exhausting
and everyone had lost weight. Had they eaten any less, they would have been burning
the flesh of their own bodies and growing weaker every day. As it was, he’d
already left twenty-two people behind suffering various fevers and ailments,
and another twelve with broken limbs and sprains. They would be helped down on
the way back – if the militia came back – and if it did not, most
of them would die. He had to keep up the strength and morale of the
able-bodied; they had to reach Blisterbone Pass first, and then they would have
to fight for their lives, so Nish ordered the cooks to keep doling out the
food. If they ran short on the way home, at least they’d be walking more
downhill than up. Well, slightly more downhill.

Nish’s other problem, which grew more pressing as they
approached their destination, was his ignorance of the enemy’s progress. There
was no point labouring up to Blisterbone if the enemy already held the pass.

‘You’d better go ahead and find out where they are,’ he said
to Curr.

‘Won’t do you no good,’ said Curr.

‘Why not?’

‘They’ll have a hundred scouts out, and fifty scout hunters.
You’ll just be telling them we’re on the way.’

‘Father has spies and watchers everywhere. He must know
we’re coming.’

‘But not where we are. If you send up a scout, it’ll just be
telling his men that you’re close.’

‘If they’ve taken the pass and are on their way down, I’ve
got to know where they are so I can make a battle plan.’

Curr sighed ostentatiously and hawked another gob at the
fire. ‘Look, Nish, yer a decent fellow, for a white-skin and a foreigner, but
you can’t fight the way you’re used to, up here.’

‘I’ve got to make plans.’

‘Battle plans are no good on The Spine, son – the land
is too rough, the jungle too thick. This ain’t like a clear battlefield, where
you can see everyone. You can’t see yer own men, and you never know where the
enemy is. They can attack from any direction, and you won’t know it until their
spears take your throat out. Send out a detachment, you lose sight of them and
there’s no way to give them new orders. When the fightin’ starts, it’s every
man for himself until they’re dead, or you are.’

‘So the biggest army always wins,’ Nish said bitterly.

‘The one that uses the land best wins.’

‘How can I do that when I can’t see the enemy’s formations?’

‘You don’t fight in formation. You fight them in secret,
with pits and traps and snares. Poison the water, roll boulders down on their
camps, attack at night with spears and arrows, then scatter and hide. Never
show yerself if you can avoid it, for someone stronger and faster will always
catch you. Never fight hand-to-hand unless yer’ve no choice. Fire, run, hide,
then fire again.’ He got up and walked off.

‘That’s not a very noble form of warfare,’ Hoshi said
quietly.

‘There
is
no noble
form of warfare,’ said Nish. ‘War is maimed men left to die in agony, towns
full of women and children put to the sword, lands razed, stock butchered,
forests burned …’ He put his head in his hands.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Gi.

‘Curr is right. It’s the only way, though I don’t like
shooting men in cold blood either.’

After a long pause, Gi said, ‘I heard you were a javelard
operator during the war, firing from the top of one of those metal
caterpillars.’

Most javelards had been mounted on the top of clankers,
which were eight-, ten- or even twelve-legged armoured mechanical monsters
driven by a force, now gone, called the field. Unfortunately, or perhaps
fortunately, clankers had failed when the nodes were destroyed, taking the
fields which empowered the Art with them.

‘I’ve used javelards,’ said Nish. ‘In open battle.’

‘Did you always warn the enemy before you shot him?’

‘You don’t warn your enemy in war. You just shoot.’

‘In the back?’

‘Sometimes,’ Nish said uneasily, not wanting to be reminded
of those times.

‘Even if he doesn’t know you’re there?’

‘You kill or be killed until the battle is won, or lost.’

‘If the God-Emperor’s troops see one of us within range,’ Gi
said quietly, ‘will they shout a warning, or just shoot?’

‘They’ll shoot, of course. They’ll slaughter the lot of us
and sweep down into Gendrigore, and hiding in the forests won’t serve your
people this time. The God-Emperor’s armies will starve them out, Gendrigore
will fall, your people will be carried off into slavery and that will be the
end of resistance on Santhenar. Gendrigore will become a symbol – that
there is no country, no matter how small, that Father won’t take the trouble to
crush, to ensure his realm is unchallenged.’

‘Gendrigore did not challenge him.’

‘The moment Gendrigore put Vivimord to trial, it spat in the
God-Emperor’s face, and he could not ignore it. That was my fault.’

‘Gendrigore brought Vivimord to justice and executed him,
not you,’ said Gi.

‘Your people thought they were executing a murderer, and
that would be the end of it, but I knew differently. I put the responsibility
in their hands, not because I thought it was the right thing to do, but because
I could not bear to act like my father. That cowardly choice is going to cost
Gendrigore dearly.

‘I see the answer now. There’s only one way to win this
battle, if our tiny militia
can
win
it, and that is to fight Curr’s way. I will do whatever it takes to turn
Father’s army back, and pay the price, even if it costs me my soul. I will
never give in until the war is won – or lost beyond recovery.’

‘Finally you’re talking like the Deliverer,’ said Hoshi.

 
FORTY-TWO

Yggur looked at Flydd quizzically. ‘What if the woman
in red didn’t just influence you during renewal? What if she actually entered
you?’

‘I haven’t got time for such nonsense,’ Flydd snapped. ‘The
prisoners are being slaughtered as we speak.’

‘You can’t avoid the question forever. I saw it in your eyes
the moment you appeared here.’

‘Saw
what
?’

‘You were changed, Flydd. Changed more than any mancer
should be after ten years, even one who has gone through the trauma of
renewal.’

‘How the hell would you know? You’ve never been renewed.’

‘I knew you well, once, and over the uncounted centuries
since my birth I’ve known a number of mancers who survived renewal. You’re not
the same man you were when we last met.’

Flydd turned away, desperately trying not to think about
what Yggur was saying. He didn’t want to consider the ugly possibility;
couldn’t bear to face it.

Yggur caught him by the arm. ‘Ask yourself this, Flydd.
Where did your ability to make portals come from, and how did it come so easily
to you in a world stripped of most of its Arts?’

‘
She
taught me how
to make the portal,’ Flydd gritted.

‘You know as well as I do that one mancer can’t just
tell
another how to work a spell. You
have to know it from the inside out.’

‘All right! She got in my mind at a moment of weakness; she
must have put everything there that I needed.’