Path of Revenge (68 page)

‘Well, that’s no good,’ Noetos said patiently.

Omiy interrupted. ‘Pril, take us to the closest part of the river where I can cross, would you, yes?’

Pril’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, beggin’ my master’s pardon, I see what y’ want now. Sure, I c’n have yiz all at Chandlers Ferry afore sundown, if we hurry.’

‘A ferry? We won’t have to ford the river after all?’

‘Ah, nah, there use’ta be a ferry there, all broken now. While back the river changed, dumpin’ stone ’n’ silt where the ferry use’ta cross. Put the ferryman—the chandler did it hisself—outa business. So the chandler, he did marry Sausin of Saar and moved t’ town nigh six years ago. Nuthin’ left but a coupl’a broken-down buildin’s ’n’ an orchard goin’ wild. Nice oranges, if ya get ‘em afore th’ wasps do.’

‘Yes, fine, enough about the wasps. No ferry, but a place to cross. It will get us to the Tochar road by tomorrow?’

‘If we hurry,’ the man said, then pulled a floppy felt hat out of a pocket in his breeches and set it on his head. ‘Best we rattle our dags, eh?’

‘Best we what?’ Noetos asked Omiy when the man had made his way to the head of the procession.

‘Oh my, Pril’s family used to run sheep up on top of Saros Rake, yes. Best you don’t ask him to give you a literal explanation.’ The alchemist thinned his lips in a rather prim fashion.

Alerted to the need for haste, the procession made good time northwards, stopping only briefly to purchase bread, fruit, cheese and a little dried meat from a local farmer. ‘Not much in the way of coins left,’ Papunas reported, waving a flat purse for all to judge.

‘It’s all right, I have plenty,’ Seren said. ‘We won’t starve as long as we don’t make this army any larger’n it already is.’

The Recruiters can’t be far behind us. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be lucky if the army isn’t substantially smaller than it is now.
Noetos tried not to feel guilt at the thought, and kept it to himself.

They forded the Saar River just before dark. Noetos argued for the crossing to be left until early the next morning, when they would be fresh, but Gawl pointed out that the water would be far colder in the morning. ‘Cold’ll kill you more quickly than anything,’ he said.

‘Not quicker’n a rock to the head,’ Noetos heard Dagla mutter. Gawl likely heard it, too, but if he did he kept his own counsel.
Be careful, boy. Gawl’s looking for a fight; don’t you give it to him. You’re the best of them, and I don’t want to lose you.

The mules did not like the cold water one bit. Truth to be told, they hadn’t liked much of the last week, pining for their southern hay and the quiet drudgery of the Palestran Line. The lead mule stamped her feet and refused to move, those behind her following suit. The men were forced to unbuckle their bags and sleeping rolls and attempt the crossing thus encumbered. Perhaps that, or general tiredness after many days on their feet—or a combination of both—explained what happened.

The Saar River was at this point a tangle of shoals and islands, interweaved by a braided flow of water slightly higher than normal due to recent rain. This meant that Noetos’s army had to make crossings of six separate streams. The first three were achieved without incident, but at the commencement of the fourth ford the second man in the line, an older man from Makyra Bay, twisted his ankle on a stone. He immediately went down in the water with a splash, occasioning a few churlish barks of laughter. He must have hit his head on a hidden rock, because he did not resurface for some time; and when he did, he was already fifty paces downstream, face down in the rippling water, his pack beside him.

‘Just one of you!’ Noetos called, but his advice went unheard. Every man from Makyra Bay and most of the miners surged in the direction of their drowning comrade. It would have served as comedy had the results not been so catastrophic. Men fell over each other, cursing as they and their baggage found the cold, swift waters.

‘Get to the banks!’ Noetos shouted to the remainder. ‘Drop your gear, get downstream of them and fish them out when they come past!’

They found the body wedged between a rock and a tree stump about three hundred paces downstream. No one else was killed, but one of the miners suffered a broken wrist, and six bags were lost, including most of the bread, cheese and dried meat. A chastened and soaked group assembled around the fisherman, heads down.

‘This is not good enough!’ Noetos roared, and this time his anger was such that none dared speak. ‘In jest you have referred to yourselves as my army. I’ve seen you taking pride in what we did at Makyra Bay, how we beat off the Neherians and warned the coastal villages of the danger they faced. Where is that pride now? You
are a rabble, not an army! From now on you are on a ship, and I am your captain. You do as I say or you are thrown overboard. You do not do what you think is right. You wait for orders. Orders that will come from me, or from Seren, Papunas or the Seal here. See the man lying there on the stones? You killed him by not listening to your commander. You are murderers. But this poor man is the last of your friends you will murder. Have I spoken clearly?’

All the while he spoke, Noetos felt himself drenched in shame, its coldness making him shiver. Their victory at Makyra Bay had been achieved by the initiative and heroism of people like Bregor and Dagla. He, Noetos, had been the one to rush off in disobedience to orders, even though they had been his own.
The speech of a hypocrite sounds bitter in one’s ears,
he reflected.

The sun had set behind Saros Rake by the time he and his sorry army returned to the safety of the eastern shore, from where they had ventured less than half an hour earlier. The mules awaited them there, along with the wrangler and the alchemist who had been detailed to care for them. They made camp that night in the mouse-ridden ruins of the chandlery. Very little was said, and sleep—or at least the pretence of sleep—came swiftly.

Only one person spoke to Noetos that night. The Hegeoman made his bed next to the fisherman and, just before settling down to sleep, whispered: ‘You have not failed.’

Noetos wished he could find a way to tell Bregor just how much those words meant to him.

As a gentle rosy dawn tinctured the plains, Noetos detailed two of the Makyra Bay men to take their dead townsman home, using one of the mules. The miner with the broken wrist had a bad night, but elected to stay with the army. No one spoke of the previous
evening’s events, presumably, Noetos suspected, in order not to invoke bad luck.

The remaining mules, of course, trotted happily across the Saar River just after dawn. This angered Noetos unreasonably, and it took him an hour to calm himself. He forced his mind to focus on the coming clash with the Recruiters.

An ambush is a chancy tactic,
said Noetos’s memory of Cyclamere.
It works best with numerical and technical superiority, and can be turned by a clever opponent.

Technical superiority—the phrase gnawed away at the fisherman as they came to the Tochar road, a well-used gravel track running, as most Old Roudhos roads did, in a straight line, uncaring of mere topography. Technical superiority. Now he knew what the huanu stone could do he intended to exploit it, and hoped it might neutralise much of the Recruiters’ sorcery. But there was something else…

They had reached the base of Saros Rake when it came to him. The steep slope looming above them reminded him of the walls of Eisarn Pit, in and under which the miners toiled day and night, using a combination of hard labour and alchemical explosions to free the ore from the grip of its enclosing strata…

‘Omiy!’ Noetos cried, startling those around him. ‘Alchemist!’ He
tched
in annoyance. ‘Where is that man?’

‘He stopped a while ago to help the wrangler with a loose pannier on one of the mules,’ Papunas said.

‘Send someone to get him, would you?’
I am addle-headed. How could I not have thought of Omiy?

‘Yes, friend Noetos, you wished to speak to me, did you not?’ Alone of them all, the alchemist seemed unaffected by yesterday’s events. Noetos doubted anything would change his manner of address.

‘I do. To be blunt, have you brought any of your alchemical devices and powders with you?’

The man frowned, as though witnessing some base indiscretion. ‘I am here, am I not? How could I be here without my equipment? Not all of it has survived the rigours of the journey, oh my no, I have lost a glass vial and water has dampened one of my packets of sulphur. Nevertheless, I present myself to you as an alchemist, with the tools of my trade at your service, yes indeed, such as they are. But, oh my, I thought we were intending to fight Recruiters, not play with chemicals. What do you want me to do—bring down this wall of rock?’

To his credit, the man had worked it out even before Noetos raised an eyebrow in the direction of Saros Rake.

‘I was going to send a detachment of men up to the summit with instructions to find large boulders and ready them to be rolled down ahead of and behind our enemy,’ Noetos said. ‘I don’t want to harm them, for fear of hurting their hostages. I intend to sow confusion among them, which we can rush in and take advantage of. But with you here, Omiy, that is not necessary, is it?’

Noetos sent the man with the broken wrist northwards on a mule, to look for any sign that the Recruiters had already passed this place. It seemed unlikely, given the rate the men had travelled northwards thus far, but not impossible. He’d tried to allow a margin for error in his own estimates, and for a quickening in the Recruiters’ pace, but he hoped—depended upon, really—that they were still travelling slowly, trying to lure him north. Besides, sending the injured man north kept him out of trouble, and Noetos wanted to be responsible for as few deaths as possible.

Seren he sent southwards, saddling him with the more dangerous task of ascertaining how far behind them the Recruiters were, or if indeed they had chosen
this road to travel northwards. It seemed the likeliest choice, especially if they sought to draw the huanu stone to them, but again there were no guarantees. Certainly Noetos wanted some word of their location before he went to the trouble of setting his trap.

Seren returned first. ‘They approach us at a leisurely pace,’ he said. ‘They will make camp tonight p’raps a league or two south of here. Can’t imagine they’ll make it this far. And no, b’fore you ask, they didn’t see me.’

The overseer’s words set Noetos’s stomach churning. Part of him wanted to abandon his elaborate plan and instead go charging down the road, his sword in his hand. He wiped sweat from his brow.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Help yourself to what remains of our supplies. There’s not much. Leave some for Mika, he might return this evening, though I doubt it. Meanwhile, Omiy and I have work to do. I will tell everyone else the plan tomorrow morning.’

Noetos stood in the road, a solitary figure, as the Recruiters crested a gentle rise and came into view. Every muscle in his body tightened.
Doubt is the real enemy,
Cyclamere said, but the didactic memory did not continue. The fisherman knew the lesson, and so fixed on an image to stir his anger. Anger to smother the doubt.

Arathé on the floor, a knife in her back.

He had chosen his position with care, having identified a section of road that curved eastwards. The sun would be in their eyes, placing an element of uncertainty in their minds. They would know who he was, but not for sure. Not for a few moments yet.

He schooled himself to stillness. The first words would not be his. He tried not to strain his eyes, but he couldn’t help counting. Nine.
Nine?
They had left Fossa as seven.

‘Fisherman!’ one of the men called to him. He held Anomer by the arm. ‘Isn’t it a splendid morning to be out?’

They would be expecting him to respond, so he did not. All the old lessons were proving themselves. He’d mocked his tutors, doubted their wisdom. He blessed them now.

‘It is a cool morning, but your tongue will not freeze if you use it,’ the Recruiter continued. ‘Why not use it to greet your son?’ He thrust Anomer in front of him.

Noetos forbore checking his son for injuries, resisted looking at his face. He kept his eyes on the Recruiter who had spoken.

‘Or perhaps your wife?’ said a second man. ‘She would answer you; she’s very friendly.’

‘Very,’ the first Recruiter agreed.

The Recruiters and their captives—and what looked like two young recruits, a boy and a girl—halted twenty paces from where Noetos stood.

‘This conversation is lacking something, have you noticed?’ said the man holding Anomer. ‘Our friend does not seem happy to see us. Which is strange, given how far he has come, how assiduously he has sought our company.’

‘We appear to be his only friends,’ the second Recruiter commented. ‘No wonder he has forgotten how to speak. Without his family, he has no one to speak to.’

‘We’ve been talking to your wife and son, fisherman,’ said a third Recruiter, his cowl down. This man’s voice exhibited none of the hearty playfulness employed by his two fellows. ‘They have told us a great deal about you, about your past. From the scraps you allowed them to know, we have pieced together the shameful tapestry of your life. Scion of Roudhos, heir to the Fisher Coast. Coward. Your family is disappointed in you for keeping secrets. As you can
imagine, they did not talk to us willingly at first. We had to do a little damage. Why not talk to us now and save us having to damage them further?’

Noetos did nothing more than shift his head slightly, so he could look directly at the speaker. Then he nodded.

‘You are skilled with swords, you have magic by all accounts, and you outnumber Noetos. Why do you hesitate to attack him?’

The four Recruiters spun as one to face the speaker, Bregor, who stood at the head of Noetos’s sworn men and half the Makyra Bay villagers, some fifty paces behind them. All had their swords drawn. Silence settled on the scene as the Recruiters considered this development.

‘Good question, unless o’ course they are afraid of the huanu stone.’