Before They Are Hanged (18 page)

“Nah! He’d never have kneeled to Bethod or anyone else. That mad bastard’ll still be up there in the mountains somewhere, calling to the moon and all the rest.”

“Less Bethod done for him,” grunted Dow.

Threetrees shook his head. “Doubt it. Canny bastard, that Crummock. Been holding Bethod off for years, up in the High Places. He knows all the ways, they say.”

“Whose signs are they then?” asked Dogman.

“Don’t know, could be some boys from out east, past the Crinna. There’s some strange folk out that way. You know any o’ them banners, Grim?”

“Aye,” said Grim, but that was all he said.

“Don’t hardly matter whose signs they are,” muttered Dow, “just look at the numbers of ’em. There’s half the fucking North down there.”

“And the worst half,” said Dogman. He was looking at Bethod’s sign, set up in the middle of the host. A red circle daubed on black hides, an acre of ’em, it looked like, big as a field, mounted on a tall pine trunk, flapping evil in the wind. Huge great thing. “Wouldn’t fancy carrying it,” he muttered.

Dow slithered over and leaned in close. “Might be that we could sneak in there in the dark,” he whispered. “Might be we could sneak in and put a blade in Bethod.”

They all looked at each other. It was a terrible risk, but Dogman had no doubts it was worth the trying. Wasn’t a one of them hadn’t dreamed of sending Bethod back to the mud.

“Put a blade in him, the bastard,” muttered Tul, and he had a smile right across his face.

“Uh,” grunted Grim.

“That’s a task worth doing,” hissed Dow. “That’s real work!”

Dogman nodded, looking down at all them fires. “No doubt.” Noble work. Work for Named Men like them, or like they used to be, maybe. There’d be some songs about that, alright. Dogman’s blood was rushing at the thought, skin prickling on his hands, but Threetrees was having none of it.

“No. We can’t risk it. We got to go back and tell the Union. Tell ’em they got guests coming. Bad guests, and in numbers.” He tugged at his beard, and Dogman could tell he didn’t like it, backing off. None of ’em did, but they knew he was right, even Dow. Chances were they’d never get to Bethod, and if they did they’d never get out.

“We got to go back,” said Dogman.

“Fair enough,” said Dow. “We go back. Shame though.”

“Aye,” said Threetrees. “Shame.”

Long Shadows

“By the dead.”

Ferro said nothing, but for the first time since Logen met her, the scowl had slipped off. Her face was slack, mouth hanging slightly open. Luthar, on the other hand, was grinning like a fool.

“You ever see anything like that?” he shouted over the noise, pointing out at it with a trembling hand.

“There is nothing else like that,” said Bayaz.

Logen had to admit that he’d been wondering what all the fuss was about when it came to crossing a river. Some of the bigger ones in the North could be a problem, especially in the wrong season and with a lot of gear to carry. But if there was no bridge, you found a good ford, held your weapons over your head, and sloshed across. Might take a while for your boots to dry out, and you had to keep your eyes well opened for an ambush, but otherwise there was nothing much to fear from a river. Good place to fill your water-skin.

Filling your skin at the Aos would have been a dangerous business, at least without a hundred strides of rope.

Logen had once stood on the cliffs near Uffrith, and watched the waves crash against the rocks far below, the sea stretching away, grey and foaming out of sight. A dizzy, and a humbling, and a worrying place to stand. The feeling at the brink of the great river’s canyon was much the same, except that a quarter mile away or so another cliff rose up from the water. The far bank, if you could use the word about a towering rock face.

He shuffled up gingerly to the very edge, prodding at the soft ground with the toes of his boots, and peered over the brink. Not a good idea. The red earth overhung slightly, bound up with white grass roots, and then the jagged rocks dropped away, almost sheer. Where the frothing water slapped against them, far below, it sent great plumes of bright spray into the air, clouds of damp mist that Logen could almost feel on his face. Tufts of long grass clung to the cracks and the ledges, and birds flitted between them, hundreds of small white birds. Logen could just make out their twittering calls over the mighty rumble of the river.

He thought on being dropped into that thundering weight of dark water—sucked, and whirled, and ripped around like a leaf in the storm. He swallowed, and shuffled cautiously back from the edge, looking around for something to cling on to. He felt tiny, and weightless, as if a strong gust of wind might snatch him away. He could almost feel the water moving through his boots, the surging, rolling, unstoppable power of it, making the very earth tremble.

“So you can see why a bridge might be such a good idea!” shouted Bayaz in his ear.

“How can you even build a bridge across that?”

“At Aostum the river splits in three, and the canyon is much less deep. The Emperor’s architects built islands, and made their bridges of many small arches. Even so, it took them twelve years to build. The bridge at Darmium is the work of Kanedias himself, a gift to his brother Juvens when they were yet on good terms. It crosses the river in a single span. How he did it, none now can say.” Bayaz turned for the horses. “Get the others, we should keep moving!”

Ferro was already walking back from the brink. “So much rain.” She looked over her shoulder, frowned and shook her head.

“Don’t get rivers like that where you come from, eh?”

“Out in the Badlands, water is the most precious thing you can have. Men kill over a bottle of it.”

“That’s where you were born? The Badlands?” A strange name for a place, but it sounded about right for her.

“There are no births in the Badlands, pink. Only deaths.”

“Harsh land, eh? Where were you born, then?”

She scowled. “What do you care?”

“Just trying to be friendly.”

“Friends!” she sneered, brushing past him towards the horses.

“Why? You got so many out here you couldn’t use another?”

She stopped, half turned, and looked at him through narrowed eyes. “My friends don’t last, pink.”

“Nor do mine, but I reckon I’ll take the risk if you will.”

“Alright,” she said, but there was nothing friendly in her face. “The Gurkish conquered my home when I was a child, and they took me for a slave. They took all the children.”

“A slave?”

“Yes, fool, a slave! Bought and sold like meat by the butcher! Owned by someone else, and they do as they please with you, like they would with a goat, or a dog, or the dirt in their gardens! That what you want to know, friend?”

Logen frowned. “We don’t have that custom in the North.”

“Ssss,” she hissed, lip curling with scorn. “Good for fucking you!”

The ruin loomed over them. A forest of shattered pillars, a maze of broken walls, the ground around it strewn with fallen blocks as long as a man was tall. Crumbling windows and empty doorways yawned like wounds. A ragged black outline, chopped out from the flying clouds like a giant row of broken teeth.

“What city was this?” asked Luthar.

“No city,” said Bayaz. “At the height of the Old Time, at the greatest extent of the Emperor’s power, this was his winter palace.”

“All this?” Logen squinted at the sprawling wreck. “One man’s house?”

“And not even the whole year round. Most of the time, the court would stay in Aulcus. In winter, when the cold snows swept down off the mountains, the Emperor would bring his retinue here. An army of guardsmen, of servants, of cooks, of officials, of princes, and children, and wives, making their way across the plain ahead of the cold winds, taking up residence here for three short months in the echoing halls, the beautiful gardens, the gilded chambers.” Bayaz shook his bald head. “In times long past, before the war, this place glittered like the sea beneath the rising sun.”

Luthar sniffed. “So Glustrod tore it down, I suppose?”

“No. It was not in that war, but another that it fell, many years later. A war fought by my order, after the death of Juvens, against his eldest brother.”

“Kanedias,” muttered Quai, “the Master Maker.”

“A war just as bitter, just as brutal, just as merciless as the one before. And even more was lost. Juvens and Kanedias both, in the end.”

“Not a happy family,” muttered Logen.

“No.” Bayaz frowned up at the mighty wreckage. “With the death of the Maker, the last of the four sons of Euz, the Old Time ended. We are left only with the ruins, and the tombs, and the myths. Little men, kneeling in the long shadows of the past.”

Ferro stood up in her stirrups. “There are riders,” she barked, staring off at the horizon. “Forty or more.”

“Where?” snapped Bayaz, shading his eyes. “I don’t see anything.” Nor could Logen. Only the waving grass and the towering clouds.

Longfoot frowned. “I see no riders, and I am blessed with perfect vision. Why, I have often been told that—”

“You want to wait until you see them,” hissed Ferro, “or get off the road before they see us?”

“We’ll head into the ruins,” snapped Bayaz over his shoulder. “And wait for them to pass. Malacus! Turn the cart!”

The wreck of the winter palace was full of shadows, and stillness, and decay. The outsize ruins towered around them, all covered with old ivy and wet moss, streaked and crusted with the droppings of bird and bat. The animals had made the place their palace now. Birds sang from a thousand nests, high in the ancient masonry. Spiders had spun great glistening webs in leaning doorways, heavy with sparkling beads of dew. Tiny lizards sunned themselves in patches of light on the fallen blocks, swarming away as they came near. The rattling of the cart over the broken ground, the footfalls and the hoof beats echoed back from the slimy stones. Everywhere, water dripped, and ran, and plopped in hidden pools.

“Take this, pink.” Ferro slapped her sword into Logen’s hands.

“Where are you going?”

“You wait down here, and stay out of sight.” She jerked her head upwards. “I’ll watch them from up there.”

As a boy, Logen had never been out of the trees round the village. As a young man he’d spent days in the High Places, testing himself against the mountains. At Heonan in the winter, the hillmen had held the high pass. Even Bethod had thought that there was no way round, but Logen had found a way up the frozen cliff and settled that score. He could see no way up here, though. Not without an hour or two to spare. Cliffs of leaning blocks heavy with dead creeper, crags of tottering stonework slick with moss, seeming to lean and tip as the clouds moved fast above.

“How the hell you planning to get up…”

She was already halfway up one of the pillars. She didn’t so much climb as swarm like an insect, hand over hand. She paused at the top for a moment, found a footing she liked, then sprang through the air, right over Logen’s head, landed on the wall behind and scrambled up onto it, sending a shower of broken mortar down into his face. She squatted on the top and frowned down at him. “Just try not to make too much noise!” she hissed, then was gone.

“Did you see…” muttered Logen, but the others had already moved further into the damp shadows, and he hurried after them, not wanting to be left alone in this overgrown graveyard. Quai had pulled his cart up further on, and was leaning against it beside the restless horses. The First of the Magi was kneeling near him in the weeds, rubbing at the lichen-crusted wall with his palms.

“Look at this,” snapped Bayaz as Logen tried to edge past. “These carvings here. Masterpieces of the ancient world! Stories, and lessons, and warnings from history.” His thick fingers brushed gently at the scarred stone. “We might be the first men to look upon these in centuries!”

“Mmm,” muttered Logen, puffing out his cheeks.

“Look here!” Bayaz gestured at the wall. “Euz gives his gifts to his three oldest sons, while Glustrod looks on from the shadows. The birth of the three pure disciplines of magic. Some craftsmanship, eh?”

“Right.”

“And here,” grunted Bayaz, knocking some weeds away and shuffling along to the next mossy panel, “Glustrod plans to destroy his brother’s work.” He had to tear at a tangle of dead ivy to get at the one beyond. “He breaks the First Law. He hears voices from the world below, you see? He summons devils and sends them against his enemies. And in this one,” he muttered, tugging at the weight of brown creeper, “let me see now…”

“Glustrod digs,” muttered Quai. “Who knows? In the next one he might even have found what he’s looking for.”

“Hmm,” grumbled the First of the Magi, letting the ivy fall back across the wall. He glowered at his apprentice as he stood up, frowning. “Perhaps, sometimes, the past is better left covered.”

Logen cleared his throat and edged away, ducked quickly under a leaning archway. The wide space beyond was filled with small, knotty trees, planted in rows, but long overgrown. Great weeds and nettles, brown and sagging rotten from the rain, stood almost waist high around the mossy walls.

“Perhaps I should not say it myself,” came Longfoot’s cheerful voice, “but it must be said! My talent for navigation stands alone! It rises above the skills of every other Navigator as the mountain rises over the deep valley!” Logen winced, but it was Bayaz’ anger or Longfoot’s bragging, and that was no choice at all.

“I have led us across the great plain to the river Aos, without a deviation of even a mile!” The Navigator beamed at Logen and Luthar, as though expecting an avalanche of praise. “And without a single dangerous encounter, in a land reckoned among the most dangerous under the sun!” He frowned. “Perhaps a quarter of our epic journey is now safely behind us. I am not sure that you appreciate the difficulty involved. Across the featureless plain, as autumn turns to winter, and without even the stars to reckon by!” He shook his head. “Huh. Truly, the pinnacle of achievement is a lonely place.”

He turned away and wandered over to one of the trees. “The lodgings are a little past their best, but at least the fruit trees are still in working order.” Longfoot plucked a green apple from a low hanging branch and began to shine it on his sleeve. “Nothing like a fine apple, and from the Emperor’s orchard, no less.” He grinned to himself. “Strange, eh? How the plants outlast the greatest works of men.”

Luthar sat down on a fallen statue nearby, slid the longer of his two swords from its sheath and laid it across his knees. Steel glinted mirror-bright as he turned it over in his lap, frowned at it, licked a finger and scrubbed at some invisible blemish. He pulled out his whetstone, spat on it, and carefully set to work on the long, thin blade. The metal rang gently as the stone moved back and forward. It was soothing, somehow, that sound, that ritual, familiar from a thousand campfires of Logen’s past.

“Must you?” asked Brother Longfoot. “Sharpening, polishing, sharpening, polishing, morning and night, it makes my head hurt. It’s not as if you’ve even made any use of them yet. Probably find when you need them that you’ve sharpened them away to nothing, eh?” He chuckled at his own joke. “Where will you be then?”

Luthar didn’t even bother to look up. “Why don’t you keep your mind on getting us across this damn plain, and leave the swords to those who know the difference?” Logen grinned to himself. An argument between the two most arrogant men he had ever met was well worth watching, in his opinion.

“Huh,” snorted Longfoot, “show me someone who knows the difference and I’ll happily never mention blades again.” He lifted the apple to his mouth, but before he could bite into it, his hand was empty. Luthar had moved almost too fast to follow, and speared it on the glinting point of his sword. “Give me that back!”