Imperial Fire (20 page)

Mochila’s expression turned malevolent. ‘Then what are you prepared to offer?’

‘Salt.’

‘Salt!’ Mochila’s mouth formed a tube. ‘What makes you think we want salt?’

‘I understand it’s a scarce commodity in these mountains. I’ve seen for myself how your curs follow us and lick our piss. Of course, we have other goods you might find more to your liking – cloth, oil, grain…’

Wayland registered Mochila making complicated calculations. ‘How much salt?’

Vallon consulted with Otia before answering. ‘Enough to furnish your needs for half a year.’

Mochila smacked one hand on his knee. ‘You ask me to provide human labour and in return you offer to reward cattle. No, my honoured guest. Let us go back to the beginning.’

But the deadlock was broken. Wayland dozed through the rest of the haggling. So far as he could tell, when the bargaining was over the Svans were better off to the tune of salt, cloth and cowrie shells – the last a condition imposed by an old woman who’d been lurking by a door throughout the negotiations.

Starlight glazed the summits when Wayland stepped into the night, the grass underfoot crisp with frost. He swallowed breath after breath of pure cold air. A hand gripped his elbow.

‘What did you make of that?’ Vallon said. ‘I know from old experience how sensitive you are to treachery. If Mochila makes you itch, we’d all better get scratching.’

Wayland looked back at the turreted settlement. ‘He wants our gold but doesn’t command enough men to take it by force.’

‘I found a moment to tell him that I’d line his purse as well as giving him the pick of two of the duke’s horses.’

‘It will only sharpen his appetite. I think he intends to exact more than a few bags of salt and a fistful of gold.’

‘I’ve put the squadron on maximum alert.’ Vallon said.

‘Even if we get through Svaneti, we still have to deal with the leeches in the next valley – and the one after that. If Mochila’s the measure of the highlanders, they could bleed us dry before we reach the Caspian.’

Vallon squeezed Wayland’s arm. ‘With God’s grace, we’ll find a way through.’

With that he was gone, issuing orders to his lieutenants. Wayland tilted his face towards the firmament, struck by the thought that the same stars he was viewing shone down on his family.

A husky cough brought him back to earth. He laid a hand on Atam’s shoulder.

‘You did well,’ said Wayland. His dog stood at Atam’s side with ears pricked and eyes bright. ‘You really have no family left?’

Atam scuffed a foot across the ground. ‘None.’

‘We have a long way to go, and all of us will find the going easier if we have friends we can depend on. I’m too young to be your father, but not too old to be your brother.’

Atam’s eyes grew round and the dog wagged its tail.

Wayland cupped a hand around the orphan’s shoulder. ‘It’s late. The sun will soon peep over the mountains, and I suspect a hard day will follow. Stay close to me at all times.’

It took the squadron all the next day and most of the night to dismantle the carts and portion out the loads among the Svan porters. Mochila had mobilised most of Ushguli’s population, including women and children. The first rays of the sun were splaying through the mountain gaps when the column set off. Mochila and his entourage accompanied it to the end of the last home pasture and showered blessings on the travellers with every sign of sincerity. He looked too pleased by half, Wayland decided.

A bend and dip in the valley hid the farewell party and Wayland turned his attention to the route. Abram their guide was a stringy mountain man – sixty if he was a day – wearing two fleece jackets and with eyes so fogged by exposure to wind and ice glare that he appeared half-blind. He led the way on foot, a staff yoked behind his shoulders and his head bowed like a mendicant deep in contemplation.

They followed a brawling torrent of meltwater flowing from the glacial tongue under the mountain wall. The ice-hung massif loomed overhead and Abram appeared to be leading them into a dead end until he struck off east up a tributary. A little further on, the trail divided, one well-trodden path making an easy ascent to a broad col, the other little more than a goat track that kept to the stream, climbing in steps towards a valley hemmed in by precipices.

Wayland and Atam caught up with the guide and asked him why he’d chosen the harder route.

‘He says the Zagar Pass will be blocked by snow,’ Atam told Wayland. ‘This way is steeper, but the snow will be less deep.’

Wayland studied the wizened pathfinder, but Abram’s clouded gaze was unfathomable. It was true that storms had blacked out the mountains since they’d left the coast, depositing a good six feet of snow on the upper slopes. Wayland glanced back down the column, the tail already a mile adrift, then took another look at the ascent. He couldn’t believe that the Svans would lay an ambush in such difficult terrain against a force so widely dispersed.

Even so, he kept close to the guide and a wary eye on the crags. The stream leaped and jostled over rust-red boulders and he lost count of the times they crossed the current, sometimes on log bridges, sometimes on spans of ice, sometimes by fording the icy water. In places the track rose a hundred feet above the stream and in others it dipped below levees of boulders piled up by floods.

The valley narrowed into a gorge, huge scarps of naked rock reducing the sky to a ragged slit. They rode through a pine forest rooted among house-sized boulders carpeted with moss. Azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed in the shadows.

The trail climbed above the stream and steepened, slanting along a cliff. It wasn’t an ascent for the faint of heart or head. Landslips had swept away sections of the trail, leaving steep scree slopes that had to be crossed on a rut only a few inches wide. The Svans set their horses at these places in a rattle of shale, while the more cautious tip-toed after with a lot of balletic arm movements. Wayland stayed in the saddle, glancing down at the stream muttering hundreds of feet below.

The Svans pointed out shrines to travellers who’d lost their lives on the route, Atam translating with unseemly relish. This wayfarer had met a bear on the track and the beast had asserted its right of way. That poor fellow had fallen three hundred feet, yet when his brother had recovered the corpse, he’d found the body completely unmarked, its bones so pulverised that it could be bundled up into a saddle bag.

Wayland wiped his brow and shed his cloak. The Svans had boasted that their settlement was the highest in Georgia, and he estimated that they must have climbed at least two thousand feet, yet the atmosphere was oppressively warm. Meltwater splattered from the heights, and stones released from a melting lobe of ice whistled past. He saw tattered black clouds streaming across the dulling sky. Abram shouted a warning and Wayland pulled Atam into the lee of the cliff.

The sky went dark and hailstones as big as grapes rattled down, bouncing knee-high off the ground and laying two inches of ice before the clouds shredded and daylight returned. Sunlight dazzled on the mantle of hail and a bird sang. The guide set off again as if committed to some eternal task.

On they climbed, turning this way and that up a rock staircase until Wayland hardly knew whether he was coming or going. Choughs spiralled in the void, their witchy cries echoing between the cliffs.

At one spot the track made a tight turn around a knife-edged outcrop, the trail no more than three feet wide and a stomach-swooping drop below. Wayland led Atam’s horse around it and waited, the Svan horsemen negotiating the danger point with swaggering indifference. A squad of Turkmen followed. Not to be outfaced, they stayed mounted, allowing their horses to negotiate the hazard unsupervised.

‘Take care,’ Wayland said. The Turkmen were superb horsemen, but for most of them, this was their first experience of mountains.

A Seljuk trooper came round the corner, chatting over his shoulder to a companion. Wayland anticipated the accident a moment before it happened and lunged forward.

Too late. The tip of the Seljuk’s bow nudged the cliff – the glancing touch enough to unbalance the horse. Pushed sideways, it put its hind legs over the drop and flailed for purchase, its rider throwing his weight forward.

‘Jump!’ Wayland shouted.

The horse made a last frantic lunge to regain its footing, then slid with a terrified whinny over the edge. Wayland grabbed the rider’s arm as he toppled and was nearly dragged into the depths himself. He smacked face first against the ledge, cheek sawing against its edge, his arm half-wrenched out of its socket by the Seljuk’s weight. From this ghastly perspective, he saw the horse cartwheel into the abyss, strike a ledge with a sickening smack, spin down and burst in a bloom of gore on the bottom of the gorge.

He would have followed if the Seljuk’s companions hadn’t pinned his legs and relieved the strain on his arm. They hauled him and the Seljuk to safe ground. He sagged against the cliff, gulping air and massaging his wrenched shoulder. The man he’d rescued sat with his arms clasped around his knees, grinning like a lunatic. Wayland converted a slap into a gentle touch. He held thumb and forefinger a whisker apart.

‘We were that close.’

The Seljuk seized his hand and kissed it. The Turkmen touched hands to lips and bestowed thanks on Wayland before leading their companion away.

‘You nearly died because of that silly man,’ Atam said.

Wayland rotated his arm to check that he hadn’t torn ligaments. He dabbed at his flayed cheek. ‘Come on. We can’t be far from the top.’

They crossed a shallow basin, the horses ploughing through mushy snow, and emerged onto a col flanked by frost-shattered spires sheathed with lichens. Reaching the other side, Wayland looked out over frozen chaos, the Great Caucasus range stretching east and west for as far as the eye could see. At this height most of the peaks appeared level with his eye, but a few distant mountains were so lofty that only their summits showed, floating in the ether. Below, the route descended to a frozen tarn like a glaucous eye before spilling down into canted planes of forest and alpine meadow.

Otia drew alongside and surveyed the scene, hands crossed on his pommel. ‘Now we come to the country of the Ratchuelians.’

‘What are they like?’

Otia laughed without mirth. ‘I’ll tell you. A stranger travelling to Oni, the main town, fell in with a native of Ratcha. “Are we far from Oni?” the stranger asked. “No, not far,” the native replied. They walked for another two hours and again the stranger asked, “Are we far from Oni?” “Now we are,” said the Ratchuelian.’

Otia clicked his tongue and began his descent. Wayland and Atam found a resting place against a sun-soaked boulder and Wayland divided a small truckle of smoked cheese and a loaf. They ate while the column trudged past. A clump of dwarf daffodils growing on a rocky seep reminded Wayland of Northumberland. A vulture scribing a lonely circle in the sky made him aware that he’d probably never see home again.

All the while the soldiers and porters kept filing past. The train must have been strung out over three miles. It had been mid-afternoon when Wayland reached the col, and now the sun stood balanced on the western peaks and shadows were filling the valleys. It would be dark before the last of the column reached camp.

Lucas strode by, leading his horse and driving three mules with staccato cries. Wayland nodded at him and the Frank took this as an invitation to come over.

‘Master Wayland, can I ask a favour of you?’

Wayland cocked a suspicious eye.

Lucas dropped to his haunches. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘Say what you have to say.’

‘You and Vallon are old companions.’

‘You’re not, so call him “General”.’

Lucas scratched his nose. ‘You heard he put me in the baggage train.’

‘You got off lightly. Most commanders would have had you flogged or hanged for abusing their son.’

‘Adopted son, and he deserved it. Anyway, I don’t want to spend the rest of this journey staring up a mule’s arse. I was thinking —’

‘No, you’re not, or you wouldn’t waste your breath. I’m not going to plead your case with General Vallon.’

‘Yes, but —’

‘Didn’t you hear me? The general sentenced you to a month in the baggage train. Stay out of trouble and you’ll be back with your squad before we reach the Caspian.’

‘Everyone expects the highlanders to ambush us before then. I don’t want to be stuck with shit-shovelling muleteers if there’s a fight. That’s another thing. The captain of the baggage train is a thief. Him and his pals have been selling off our supplies on the sly. I can give Vallon proof.’

Wayland closed his eyes in disbelief. When he opened them, they were cold with anger. ‘You don’t understand a thing, do you? All baggage captains are thieves. I know it, you know it, the general knows it. Report the thieving and he’ll be forced to take action. The result? One baggage captain with a stretched neck and deep resentment among his men.’

Lucas pushed up and looked down on Wayland. ‘It seems to me that Vallon punishes the innocent and turns a blind eye to the guilty.’

Wayland kept his temper – just. ‘You have a strange way of showing gratitude to a man who took you into his home.’ He jerked his chin in dismissal. ‘Look to your beast.’

Lucas stood and whistled. Aster whinnied, trotted towards him and shoved his muzzle into his master’s hands. Lucas laid his face against Aster’s head and the horse whickered with pleasure. Lucas squinted at Wayland. ‘Admit it. I’m clever with horses.’

‘I meant that mule,’ said Wayland.

The beast, burdened with a cartwheel on each flank, was dangerously unbalanced, trying to reach a clump of herbage in a steep gulley. Lucas stooped, picked up a stone and from a range of thirty yards sent it whirring on a flat trajectory to hit the mule in the crupper. With a triumphant glance at Wayland, he gathered his charges and disappeared down the other side of the col, singing a Pyrenean shepherd song. He held a tune pretty well.

Wayland shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to make of that lad.’

Atam groped for a response. ‘He’s a very naughty fellow.’

Wayland threw back his head and laughed. ‘Yes, he is.’

Cold clamped the summit by the time the tailenders came plodding past, a squad of disgruntled Outlanders shepherding a group of puffing porters and snorting mules burdened with the dismantled trebuchet. The siege engine’s arm was slung between two pairs of mules and it was beyond Wayland’s comprehension how they had manoeuvred it around the steep hairpins. He stood and dusted off the seat of his breeches.

‘Are you the last?’

‘We are.’

‘Make haste, then.’

When the sound of chinking hooves and sliding shale had faded, Wayland mounted and prepared to follow. He was on the brink when he glanced back.

‘Did you see the duke come past?’

Atam shook his head.

Wayland spurred his horse down the slope, shouting at the troopers to stop.

‘The duke,’ he panted. ‘Where’s the duke?’

They eyed each other and shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ one said.

Wayland’s gaze shimmied. Had the duke and his guards passed while he was talking to Lucas? No. Wayland registered things even if they didn’t lodge at the forefront of his consciousness. He kept his voice calm. ‘The duke and his escort rode not far in front of you. When did you last see them?’

The troopers knew something was amiss and tried to distance themselves from any consequences. ‘We haven’t seen the duke since we left Ushguli,’ one of them muttered. ‘We’ve been too busy herding these sluggards.’

‘Think hard,’ Wayland insisted. ‘No blame attaches to you.’

A Thracian trooper spoke up. ‘The last time I saw the duke’s party was before the hailstorm.’

That must have been around midday. Pointless to backtrack. The first stars already shone and it would be impossible to follow the trail by night. If the duke had escaped during the storm, he could be back in Ushguli by now.

‘Look after Atam,’ Wayland said, and rowelled his horse, riding helter-skelter down the trail, demanding of every soldier he passed if they’d seen the duke. No one had, and what little hope he had was all but gone when he galloped into camp.

‘Duke Skleros,’ he shouted. ‘Is he here?’

Vallon stepped out of his tent. ‘He’s in the rear.’

‘No, he’s not. I counted the whole column past. He’s gone.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m telling you.’

Vallon clawed aside the entrance to his tent and crooked a finger for his officers to follow. Wulfstan inveigled himself into the company.

Vallon stood with his back to them. ‘How?’ he demanded.

‘Simple,’ said Wayland. ‘The column was scattered, each man concentrating on the next step. There were dozens of places where the duke could have slipped out of sight. He probably did it under cover of the storm, and then all he had to do was wait until everybody had passed.’

Vallon’s hand tapped his thigh with ominous slowness. ‘I know how he did it. I want to know who allowed him to disappear.’