The Mark of Ran (28 page)

“We are north of Golgos, which is good, because there is a Bionese garrison there,” Gallico said. “I’d wager those two cruisers are going to put in there also to refit; our stern chasers mauled them somewhat before they ran us on the rocks. This plain ahead is named the Gorthor Flats; fourteen leagues across, and there will be no water there, but it must be faced. Beyond it is the Firth of Ringill. We must follow its shores northwest, toward the mountains. Across the firth is Ganesh, the ancient land which legend holds was once a fief of the Goliad, but which is now a wilderness. We have a journey of some two weeks before us at least, for Ganesh Ka is much farther to the north.”

Rol looked at the desolation of the blasted land about them, a shimmering ochre waste where the only movement was that of wind-reared dust-clouds. “How in the world do armies fight in a place like this?”

“By losing as many men to the heat as to the enemy,” Gallico said. “The Goliad is the only real place to land an armament between Ordos and Urbonetto; everywhere else is too mountainous for a baggage or siege train. Plus, if one heads inland there are passes through the Myconians that lead to Myconn itself. Battles have been fought for possession of those passes for time out of mind, with armies of Oronthir and Cavaillon and Armidon and the Mamertine League all seeking to come at Bionar through its underbelly. All have failed. Even a century ago, the Goliad was not the place you see now; it was a rolling savannah, with herds of deer and bison and wild asses. But the grazing of countless army horses and the feet of passing soldiers have stripped the grass from the earth and the wind does the rest. In this part of the world rain comes fast and hard in the autumn of the year, and the rest of the seasons are dry. With no vegetation to protect it, the rain washed the good soil away, and now the wet season brings no life to the place because the life is not there to germinate.”

Rol eyed his companion with some wonder. “You seem tolerably well-informed for a pirate.”

Gallico grinned. “I like to read.”

They walked on in silence after that, their pace steady but slow. Gallico told them to breathe with their mouths closed to keep their tongues from drying out and when they drank he made sure it was a few gulps at a time, no more.

The land fell and then rose again, a long, hard slog in the rippling heat. At the height of the slope Rol looked down on the blinding glare of the Gorthor Flats and thought he saw black figures moving in the heat-shimmer. He pointed them out to Gallico, who nodded.

“Ur-men. They prowl the Flats in packs.”

The name brought forth a prickle of memory in Rol’s mind and no more. “What are they?”

“Creatures of the wastes, manlike in some respects, but not remotely human. Experiments gone awry, some contend. They are dangerous to one alone, or a small party unarmed, but so long as we keep a good watch out we should hold them at bay.”

The Flats began like a white sea lapping round the shores of the rockier hills. They glittered with salt in wide pans, and reflected the heat and light of the sun with pitiless ferocity.

“Rub the hollows of your eyes with dirt. It’ll help with the light,” Gallico told them, and they used some of their precious water to create a muddy paste which all save the halftroll smeared over their faces.

“There are ruins a few leagues out on the Flats,” he went on. “We will march to them and then lie up until dark. Only the Ur-men walk far upon the Flats in daylight; any man who tries will go blind in a few days.”

“Is there no way to go round them?” Creed asked.

“We could, but it would take us up into the foothills, fifty or sixty leagues out of our way. I’m hoping we can reach the firth in two marches. The land is kinder after that; we’ll have left the Goliad behind us, and there are woods and rivers; we may even be able to take down some game.”

The heat slammed into them like a wave as they ventured down onto the Flats. They screwed up their eyes against the harsh light and the mud in their faces cracked and flaked despite the sweat that was soaking into it. When Rol’s palm brushed against the lock of his pistol it burned like the handle of a skillet left over the flame.

The earth was fractured in a million angular cracks, as if the Flats were a shattered, burnt-out mirror the ages had covered in dust. “This was a lake, once,” Rol said, “or a lake-bed rather.”

“If it was, it was in a time before men were here to see it,” Gallico said. He was moving somewhat stiffly, and Rol could see the shine of new blood oozing out of his dressings. He wondered at the endurance of the halftroll.

“Are there many like you walking about in the world?” he asked.

“Not many. Small communities here and there who share similar deformities. I am not part of a different species—I am a man, but one whose frame has been skewed by the potency of the Blood. My parents were not like me, though they would not have been considered human either.” He glanced at Rol and seeing his eyes said: “I come from a village in the Myconians, on the Perilar side.”

“Hence your knowledge of the Goliad’s history.”

“It is said that one day the Goliad will be a garden again, and when that happens the Creator will come back to the forsaken earth and give every man a life beyond death. A pretty story, but stories are cheap. I like to find out the truth of things. I have spent days in the Turmian Library in Myconn itself, back in the days when my kind was welcome there. But they say that all the learning in the world is as nothing compared to the archives of Kull, the isle of the Mage-King.”

“Who is the Mage-King?”

“You might as well ask the Name of God, or how He made the world. For myself, I think he is a Were, the last of the Ancients. The last angel on earth, you might say.”

“Is he evil?”

“I don’t know, Rol—no one knows what it is he wants from the world. His agents come and go unseen amongst us. He has no armies, he fights no wars, and yet nations tremble at the mention of his name. I have heard an old man in the Myconians insist that he is merely waiting for some change to come upon the world, after which he will leave his island and walk amongst men again, but the old man was half crazed and half drunk. As I said, stories are cheap.”

“Why did you leave your village in the Myconians?”

“The Bionari burned it in one of their habitual forays into Perilar, slew everyone in it. They paid a dear price for their temerity, though; we Folk of the Blood know how to go down fighting, if nothing else. I think the Perilari were glad to see the back of us. As our numbers grow fewer, so men grow more afraid of us.” Gallico paused and looked over his shoulder at the remainder of the party. The low hum of aimless talk had ceased, and the Cormorants were eavesdropping without shame.

“The Bionari take a lot upon themselves,” Rol said darkly, oblivious.

“They have always been a quarrelsome lot, it’s true. But they’re in a fix of their own making now.”

“How so?”

“This civil war they’ve started. Arbion and Phidon have declared for the rebel queen, and huge battles are being waged across the Vale of Myconn itself. Last I heard, Bar Asfal had fled the capital to raise more troops in the north.”

Rol walked along mutely, his mind jarred into startled silence.

“She has a chamberlain who is also one of her generals, and he speaks Bionese with the accent of Gascar. He calls himself Canker, and they say he is an assassin. At any rate, several of Bar Asfal’s most talented commanders have been killed in odd circumstances.”

“What do you know of this rebel queen?”

“Rowen Bar Hethrun she is called, a great beauty, but cold as frost, and a wicked hand with a blade. She’s won over many of the nobles through a combination of fear and lust—rumor has it half of Bionar’s aristocracy has sampled her charms at one time or another in the past five years. It’s how she built up her support to begin with: in the bedchamber. But the strangest thing is that she has the Blood in her, or so it is rumored. Imagine—Bionar ruled by a monarch with Weren blood. God knows, it might be an improvement.”

“It might. It might not.” Rol felt sick at heart.

“There’s something ahead,” Creed said, the dust clicking in his throat. “Something out on the Flats.”

Gallico shaded his eyes and nodded. “The ruins, and not before time.”

Rearing up out of the haze were the crumbling remains of a large building. As they drew closer they could see that it had once been a high tower of some sort. Closer still, and Rol realized with a shock that it was familiar—the shape, or what remained of it, was a direct duplicate of Psellos’s Tower in Ascari. Here it had been built upon a plain, not set into the flank of a hill, and he could see the huge unmortared joints of the perfectly sculpted stone at its base. They seemed inviolate, unworn, but as the eye traveled upward their massive courses were disrupted and broken so that the tower looked as if it had been broken off halfway up by the hand of a giant, and all about it the tumbled blocks lay scattered and piled in mounds half buried in blowing dust and sand.

“This was a Weren place,” he said.

“Yes,” Gallico agreed. “
Turrin Ra,
I have heard it named, which is merely an old way of saying the High Tower.”

They drew closer step by weary step, the men eyeing the ruins with a mixture of curiosity and distrust. The sweat had dried into white salted rings upon their clothing, and the light boots and shoes they wore were already flapping upon their feet; they had been made for the timber of a ship’s deck, not the raw grind of a trek across a desert.

As they entered the naked gateway of the tower the sun was cut off and they sighed with relief at the blessed shade. The stone of the ruin was cool to the touch despite the heat of the day, and they laid their hands upon it, forgetting their qualms. Gallico led them up a surviving stairway and they found that half of one upper floor had survived more or less intact. Here he bade them stretch out and rest. The company collapsed like a puppet show whose strings have been cut, too tired even to bicker amongst themselves. There were five or six hours until dark, and they fell asleep almost at once, sprawled on the stone, but Rol sat looking out of the perfect archway of one huge empty window, his gaze traveling across the sunblasted Flats to the blue heights of the mountains beyond, pale against an empty sky. Gallico sat with him, blotting the fresh blood from his wounds and studying his face.

“You should sleep. We’ll walk all night.”

“I’m all right.”

They shared a few swallows of tepid water from one of the skins and Rol helped the halftroll bind up his dressings again. The scraped skin was already closing beneath them, and the deep gashes made by the coastal rocks had closed like brown-lipped mouths.

“You heal quickly.”

“You and I both, and all who partake of the Blood.”

Irritated without knowing why, Rol slumped back down again. “
The Blood.
I wish I had never heard of it. I was a fisherman once, living a small life on a small island.”

“Dennifrey. I hear a touch of it in your voice. But you were never going to be a fisherman, Rol; I sense that in you at least. You are here for a reason. It is why I suggested Ganesh Ka. Do you think I would lead these others to it, were it not for you?”

“It’s such a special place, then?”

“It is a haven, one of the last for folk such as you and I. My village was another such place, and they burned it. They will not be happy until we are consigned to legend, and the Lesser Men have the world to themselves. Man has always feared what he cannot understand. You can try to bury yourself among them, but you will never succeed.”

“I succeeded well enough, these last seven years.”

“Is it so long since we drank beer together in Ascari?”

Firelit good fellowship in a smoke-filled tavern. The laughter of men. “Yes. It seems like a whole lifetime.”

“You have seen something of the world since then.”

“I am—I was—a mariner, nothing more. That is all I wanted out of life.”

“But no longer? Well, who knows—you may find something else to occupy you in Ganesh Ka. It, too, is old, and there are folk there who know much of the world past and present.”

“A city of pirates and scholars, no less.”

“If you like. Now I’m for sleep if you are not. Wake me if you begin to nod—someone must stay alert.” And with that Gallico’s massive head sank forward on his breast. Within moments he was snoring gently.

The sound of the sleepers’ breathing was the only thing Rol could hear. The Flats were concave, though over miles it was hard to realize. The wind might be blowing somewhere up in the washed-out sky but here it was dead and still as the air in a cellar.

Rol wiped sweat from his face, fought the urge to drink more water, and cursed himself for not letting Gallico take the watch. He was exhausted—more than that, he was
worn,
so that the very workings of his mind seemed dulled and leaden. He occupied himself with cleaning the grit and dust out of Riparian’s pistol. Retrieving a coil of match from his pocket, he found that it was almost dry despite its submersion that morning. He loaded the weapon—he had but four lead rounds to his name—and, finding his tinder wet, spread the filaments of wool and bark out on the stone to dry. Then he drew Fleam and checked the lustrous blade. It was, had he known it, the exact same storm-shade as his eyes, and there was no speck of rust upon it. He ran his finger down the hollow of the blood channel with something like affection, and then leaned forward slightly and kissed the metal. It was refreshingly cold, and he felt that shiver in his loins as it met his lips, the sort a boy might feel upon glimpsing the nakedness of a beautiful woman for the first time.

“What are you?”
he murmured, but the sword was silent, cold. He slid her back in her sheath and felt the hungry disappointment through the hilt.

Something in his brain left off working, however, and when he opened his eyes again it was fully dark. The air was chill and blue about him but the stone of the tower had retained the warmth it had absorbed during the day and was pleasant to the touch. Everyone else was still asleep. But something else was moving, somewhere.