TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (67 page)

XIII. Teirs
's'F
falenn

T
o
the five wary clan scouts who kept watch from the remote Mathorn outpost, and who found themselves playing startled host to unexpected s'Ffalenn royalty, Arithon made his firm disposition. 'There is no other choice to be made. I must move on, and at once.'

The biting, harsh cold attended a brief silence. Across the windblown rags of the blaze kindled to brew water for remedies, Braggen slept like the dead. His
sword cuts had been bathed and b
ound by his liege's own hands, with his slack, weary body finally settled amid the folds of Jieret's bear mantle. In predawn
d
arkness, huddled in leathers and furs against the cruel chill whose grip lingered on for the season, the three scouts holding parley exchanged unsettled glances.

The fox-haired woman slapped the stick just used to score maps in the snow against an impatient, gloved palm. 'That would cause disappointment.' Her remonstrance snapped through consonants as brisk. 'Braggen will want to go with you.'

Arithon regarded her, features cut to sharp angles by the harried, low fire, and his green eyes hard-set against sentiment, he would pose a liability.'

No need to belabor the core of that argument. Braggen had gone three nights with scant sleep, then exerted himself to a standstill. The man the scouts had dragged out of the saddle had verged upon total collapse. If Jieret's Companion suffered no lasting harm, sheer exhaustion must take its due toll. He was not going to awaken refreshed, but raging stiff, bruised, and sore in every taxed joint.

While the woman scout matched her liege lord's level stare throughout a prolonged, tensioned quiet, Arithon saluted her point with the barest, flexed smile. 'Braggen would suffer the punishment gladly, I know. But I must heed my heart on the matter. The news from Daon Ramon is already devastating. With Earl Jieret dead, this Companion's feal duty is now to survive. When he disagrees, and he will, tell him plainly: he is needed. My decision is made for young Jeynsa s'Valerient. For the good of the realm, I urge that Braggen go south and report forthwith to Sidir.'

'You could stand on royal prerogative and make him,' suggested the white-haired scout who supported the cold with remarkable immunity. His bare fingers stayed supple at their task, cleaning and sorting the best arrows from the outpost's scant stock of armament.

'No.' Arithon looked away, perhaps abashed, or else too grief
-
struck to master his sorrow for the blood just spilled in Daon Ramon. 'Let Braggen choose. He's earned the right. If fortune is kindly, I should be a day's ride to the north by the hour he wakens.'

'Well, you won't go alone, liege.' The woman who held rank tossed her stick down, determined. The clamped set to her features would brook no more argument. She tipped the grounds from the tin mug just used to brew willowbark tea, wiped the residue clean, then tucked the implement away in the rock niche that sheltered them. 'I'm off to fetch remounts.' Arisen, lithe-limbed, she hooked the clasps on her hide jacket. 'The fittest horses we have will be ready before dawn. Machlin, attend the provisions.'

As Arithon bristled for blazing rebuttal, the elder again intervened. 'She's right, you know, liege. These mountains are a maze for those who don't know them. You need to make time against hot pursuit? Then necessity demands that we guide you.'

'You're asking for suicide!' Ar
ithon snapped, goaded to vicious
brevity. 'Do you have progeny safe somewhere else? Let that determine the sacrifice.'

In fact, two scouts foisted
their presence upon him when the
time came to mount in cold darkness. Arithon had paused only to dress his mauled hand, reopened by the pull of the bowstring, He could eat jerky, moving, and his rest was caught up, a surplul benefit of the days just spent in extended spiritwalk.

'Lysaer's Etarrans will be
moving by daybreak,' he warned. W
ell aware the woman who proffered the reins of a restless gray gelding was about to exhort with entreaty. 'Fear that. I dare not allow the Mistwraith's curse to overset my last grip on sanity. Distance will save that.
I have to ride now!
Take my blessing in thanks, knowing your generosity has saved Braggen, and quite likely myself as well.'

A flurry of farewells, exchanged in clan dialect as the oldest scout gave his filled quivers to the younger pair chosen to ride. The woman relinquished her best horse, approving, as her prince gave the saddle his expert, fast check. A sharp man made certain her hurried work had not left cloth or girth strap ill set, to chafe the animal sore down the trail. His Grace cared for dumb beasts above human pride; and that ingrained kindness won her over.

'Guard your mauled hand,' she cautioned. 'Promise you'll strap it the moment you reach safety, and rest until it heals properly.'

'Ah, lady,' said Arithon, suddenly beset. For a moment, uncertainty and stark need frayed the firm weave of his voice. 'Trust me, I made that same bond to myself, months ago in the Skyshiels. As soon as may be, I'll bow to good sense.' He sorted the gray's reins, then clasped her gloved fingers and touched her palm to his cheek in rushed salute. Then he mounted. 'I hear your caring most clearly. Take my earnest word that it matters.'

Despite driven haste, regardless of trials that burdened his shoulders with worry, Arithon's handling was silk on the bit, and his heels, a light pressure asking the gelding's compliance.

'Ath speed your Grace,' called the white-headed scout as the three riders wheeled in the darkness. Beside him, the clan woman had nothing to say, beyond the heart's gift of her tears.

Unseen, the fifth scout standing sentry in the forest signaled a clear trail with an owl's call. Then the horses surged away. Night swallowed their forms. The snow-muffled thud of their hooves laded swiftly, leaving Braggen in safe and oblivious sleep before the birch-spiced warmth of the embers.

Given fresh mounts and the scouts' expert guidance, Arithon made rapid progress. The last hours of night wrapped the land in charcoal gloom, splotched by snow-clad ravines, with shadows and trees rendered in shapes of punch-cut black velvet. The burn of cold wind on nose and cheek interspersed with the slap of iced boughs in the thickets. Beneath slab-sided ridges, over winding, sparse game trails, the clansmen pressed for speed and silence. They were well practiced at secretive cunning. Wild-born predators, they knew how to trust the horses' keen sight in rough territory, with moon and thin starlight their sole guidance. Once, they flushed the spotted khetienn stalking for ermine. Another time, set against the silver voile of a snowfield, they spotted an eagle in gliding flight.

'No canny bird, that
.'
observed one of the scouts through the plaid tied over his chin as a muffler. 'Such don't fly at night, nor in these ranges at all, come to that. Not at this time or season.'

'Sorcerer's shapechange, or a fetch, very likely.' The other scout quelled the uneasy instinct that prompted a reach for his bow. 'If it's spying for Koriathain, won't die of an arrow. Only make trouble if we try.' He shrugged, fatalistic, then used the brief pause to open his saddle pack and dole out a ration of jerky.

But Arithon shook his head. 'No fetch, in this case.' He accepted the dried venison, and the scouts' side wise glances with pragmatic equilibrium. 'You don't need to believe me. Eagles don't fly by night, I agree. But my bard's ear will discern flesh and blood from worked magecraft. If that creature's a construct, I can't detect any whisper of resonance from the spell seals.'

'Blasted winter's not natural itself, you ask me,' the elder scout carped through a mouthful. 'Cold as the Fatemaster's bollocks, still, and no sign of melt on the south side of Jaire Peak.'

'Fretting won't help such,' the other said, long-faced. He shared out his dried stores, then bowed to his liege's overriding impatience and shouldered his horse to the fore.

Already the stars overhead glimmered paler. The eastern sky showed the first pall of gray. Straight in the saddle, and until now, stark steady, Arithon suddenly gasped. Doubled over his clasped hands, he curled in on himself, racked by a shuddering spasm.

'Your Grace?' The nearer scout sidestepped his horse and steadied his liege's bowed shoulder. 'What's wrong?'

A fleet, wringing shiver passed under his hand. Then Arithon pressed back upright. Disheveled black hair masked clear sight of his eyes. His face in the half-light wore a distressed pallor, and his hands shook, though his stressed equilibrium appeared to be fully restored.

'What's wrong?' the scout pressed.

But the other first broached the dread subject outright. 'Do you fight Desh-thiere's curse?'

'Not that. Not yet.' Arithon raked back fallen hair, puzzled himself as a dwindling frisson stormed through his braced up frame. 'I'm not sure what touched me.' Words could scarcely describe the split-second event, as though a fragmentary chord had been plucked, ringing echoes through the land underfoot.

He tipped a frowning glance overhead. The oncoming dawn brightened second by second over the saw-toothed crests of the peaks. 'Whatever's amiss, the Etarrans won't wait. We had better ride on.'

Upon mounts displeased to be facing the wind, over ridges of stone mottled piebald where clinging snow chalked the cracks, the small party picked their way steadily north. The terrain all the while grew steeper, rougher. Toothed summits scraped a black-violet sky, with the deep vales below shattered by time into fissures of crazed marked granite.

As his gray slithered down a stony embankment, Arithon gave on the reins to let the beast regain its balance. His worry was less easily managed. 'Will horses be able to finish this crossing?'

The scout in the lead glanced over his shoulder, his sharp
-
boned youth pronounced in the growing light. 'In thaws, they could. Given the cold, the high passes would be mired. The way over the divide must often be finished on foot.'

A steep, zigzagged course through a corrie of stunt fir, where a gaunt herd of deer flushed. The scouts paused. Still stewards of the land, despite centuries of persecution, they allowed the animals to settle and move on without wasting themselves in blind panic.

'Aye, on now,' the clansman crooned to his horse. Red-faced in the wind, he turned back to his prince and resumed the dropped thread of his discourse. 'Won't blister your heels, though. Tomorrow eve, we're going to swing west. There's a narrow track that leads to the coast. On that we'll make time. By then, we think Lysaer and his Etarrans should be well into the mountains. They don't know the country. Zeal should drive them west also, trying to track as the crow flies. Do that, and they'll be in the spurs, sheer ramparts of rock with no crevice for passage. Men would need to swing north to get through, and by then, we should have you a wee boat. You'll be safely away to Atainia, forbye, with your enemies left as lively prey for our raiders.'

The other scout pressed forward, a fair-skinned, middle-aged man whose hawk nose jutted from the shadow of a jaunty wolverine cap. 'Be sure Kesweth will harry them. He'll cheer their retreat with some spring traps, maybe pink a few laggards with arrows.'

Yet his effort at humor raised no grim smile from his prince. 'Not if my half brother hammers these mountains to slag with the frustrated force of his gift.'

'Kesweth's frustrated, too,' the younger scout demurred. 'Damned scalpers got his wife, last autumn.'

They scaled another ridge. Around them, light and sky changed moment to moment, from deep cobalt to the lucent blue of an armorer's burnished steel. Eastward, day would already have broken over the Eltair coast. The high peaks of the Skyshiels would be gilt dipped, their gaunt shadows spiked across Daon Ramon.

For some reason acutely aware of that passage, as night made way for the sunrise, Arithon was raked by a sense of uncanny expectancy. He tipped his head to one side, strained and listening.
Something
grazed his senses. A high note, beyond sound, like the prelude to a chord wrought from a band of wild energy. Touched by a leaping shiver of bliss, he said, startled, 'What's the date?'

'Equinox,' came the answer from under the wolverine. 'There's a centaur's mark, not far distant. Do you sense it? Some say the stone sings at the turn of the season.'

Forced to snatch back his poise as the gray sidled under him, Arithon glanced about, interested. 'We've straddled the lane, then?'

'The fourth, near enough.' At the crest, the wind's blasting shear raked their faces. The horses' flagged tails snapped like streamers. Still speaking, the scout snatched at black-and-white fur, as his heavy cap threatened to whisk off. 'The line runs from the ruin at Penstair through Strakewood, then down the rock ledges with Tal Quorin. From there, she crosses the old dance site at Caith-al-Caen.'

In fact, the ancient marker stone did sing aloud, as herald of the true dawn. Its tuned cry pierced the whining hiss of the wind and raised the hair at the nape. For Arithon, sensitized by a masterbard's talent, the sorrowful overtones bespoke violent death, and fresh blood spilled on Daon Ramon Barrens. Through the hour that followed, he rode, beyond speech, while around him, the high mountain silence became stitched with chirping birdsong. Firs braided the lonely voice of wind with their secretive whispering. The gusts smelled of spruce and scrub pine and scoured ice, and slacking, wore the tang of sweat damp leathers and horse.