Worms' Ending: Book Eight (The Longsword Chronicles 8) (28 page)

“This course will add unwelcome time to our journey,”
Allazar sighed while walking alongside the horses hours later. “And with less
and less light in the day in the approach to the solstice, even more travelling
time is lost.”

“All true,” Gawain agreed, “Though there’s not much we can
do about it. Are you still fretful after the battle?”

“Fighting has never been agreeable to me, but I am not so
naïve as to believe it is always avoidable. In the aftermath of such battle,
brief as it may have been, there is the thrill of survival and the excitement
of being alive though others strove so hard to end you. But later comes the
sorrow and the misery and the futile wishing that it had not come to pass. At
least for me.”

“For everyone not a monster I think,” Gawain admitted.
“Though perhaps there is part monster in all of us. Some elden-creature,
lurking within us and ready to rise when war and fighting summons it. The red
mist is its realm. Sending it back into the shadows when it’s no longer needed,
that is the part some find harder than others.”

They were perhaps twenty miles southeast of the battleground
when the rise they crested revealed a small lake before them, blocking their
path. The water was shallow and fresh, tiny ripples driven by breezes breaking
the reflection of the darkening sky above.

“Dwarfspit, we’d only be halfway around before darkness
falls,” Gawain protested.

“Trees yonder, melord,” Ognorm nodded towards a copse on
higher ground to the east. “Might give us some shelter from the wind at least.”

“True enough. Ven?”

“I see nothing, miThal,” the elf ranger replied with a hint
of sorrow in his voice. “Though as we have discovered, this means little.”

“Bah,” Gawain exclaimed. “The crystal armour simply makes
them difficult to see at a distance, not invisible. Besides, you have many
other qualities which make you a valuable companion on this venture. And if
that crystal gubbins was any use at all, you wouldn’t have been able to warn us
of their intended ambush as you did. Theirs was a nice try, but as they used to
say at the Eastriding fête,
nice tries win no pork pies.
”

“Oh, I do like pork pies,” Ognorm sighed.

“Why did they say that, miThal?”

Gawain chuckled. “Ah, well, it was an old tradition there in
the town at home. Every summer they would hold a fête, and there would be many
games. From archery and arrow-throwing to toss-the-hoop and bob-the-apple, and
the prize for the winner was a golden crispy-crusted fresh-baked pork pie. They
were famous for their pork pies, there, in Eastriding, in Raheen.”

“Pork pie and a pint. What I wouldn’t give. Spose it’s too
late to go back to that place in milady’s stories, melord, Fourfields, where
they had all them pies?”

Gawain smiled. “Alas.”

They made camp in the shelter of winter-bare trees, and ate
frak, and spoke more of pies, and thus kept at bay the memories of screaming
elves and horses, and the forty-two elves and elfwizards lurking somewhere out
there in the dark and bent on their destruction.

oOo

29. Caballum

On the first of December, according to the knots in Gawain’s
string calendar, and in the morning four days after the battle of widow’s peak
hill, Venderrian spotted a Condavian. It was circling high and well away to the
northeast, and though the day was clear and face-numbingly cold, none but the
ranger could see the spy in the sky. It was too far for Venderrian to ascertain
whether it was the pitch black of Morloch’s making, or the grey-black of the
Viell’s.

Gawain’s course had taken them across Mornland towards the
principality’s coastline, and he estimated they were perhaps a day due south of
the Castletown-Princetown line and as near as made no difference to the middle
of Mornland’s narrow waist. To continue due south from their position would put
them into the sea well to the north of Arrun’s northern capitol, Nordshear.

“Leg it for them trees, melord?” Ognorm asked quietly,
nudging Gawain out of his visualising of the map he carried in his head.

“No,” he announced decisively. “We can’t hide in the trees
for the rest of our lives, and Ven has said the bird is circling north. If we
sprint now we might attract attention. We can’t see it with normal eyes, maybe
it can’t see us. Let’s just keep going as we have been, with care for the horses.
The rains last week have left the ground in the valleys soft, streams swollen,
and the hills a little harder to climb.”

“Arr. Grass is good though, there’s that for ‘em at least?”

“Yes, Oggy, there’s that. The horses won’t starve on this
journey.”

They continued on their way at a gentle trot, a pace they
could maintain comfortably if the ground remained trustworthy enough.

“Morloch’s or the Toorseneth’s, Longsword?” Allazar asked
when they were well underway.

“The Condavian? The Toorseneth’s. We’re a long way south of
the Teeth now, and even if Morloch had dark wizards and Graken to spare, I
doubt he’d bother wasting such resources simply to hurl another tantrum our
way. It’s amusing though, to think of it.”

“Amusing?”

“Yes. Morloch in his tower, surrounded by the ruins of his
twisted aspirations, suddenly thinking of the perfect insult which he should
have uttered at the time but didn’t. Then summoning his last acolyte and the
last drop of aquamire from a phial to shout through a Jardember…
and another
thing, Nothing!
”

Allazar’s lips twitched, but the smile remained elusive in
the cold. His lips were too numb.

“No,” Gawain continued. “We are too far now for his
dwindling power to reach, and his resources too few. And still I cannot shake
the feeling that we have seen our last of the far north, and Tarn. I do not
think I shall be able to fulfil my promise to Martan of Tellek, after all.”

“A promise?”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t so much a promise as a hope, after
all. But I did tell him that perhaps one day he and I would stand on the edge
of that canyon’s cliff, and look down into the mess he and eighty-two other
miners of Threlland made of the farak gorin.”

“Perhaps you shall?”

But Gawain didn’t answer. He didn’t know why, and he
couldn’t explain the feelings, but with so much strange aquamire yet humming in
his blade and lurking behind his eyes, he could not ignore them. Not until he
was back in Last Ridings, and his future held tightly in his arms, would he
allow himself the hope that one day they would return, and in peace, and he and
the old dwarf might sup a pint or two on the brink of a glorious ruin eight
miles wide.

Two hours later Venderrian announced that the Condavian had
soared closer, and begun circling again, and still ordinary eyes could not see it
in the pale and weakly winter blue above them.

Not until the early evening did they see it, when the ranger
announced it was moving towards them and following the pattern it had
maintained all day; swoop south, circle, swoop south, circle, and on and on
until now it came into view of ordinary eyes. Gawain kept them going at a
steady pace towards the tree-lined south bank of a shallow and narrow river,
splashing through it carelessly before making the cover of the trees.

Haste, he knew, would’ve been futile anyway. If they could
see the bird, it could see them, and so too the Eye slung in its wire harness
beneath those great outstretched wings.

“The colour, Ven?” Gawain asked quietly, lifting the saddle
from Gwyn’s back.

“Grey, miThal. Viell-grey.”

Gawain nodded. “Then here we’ll camp this night, and
tomorrow, we shall see what we shall see.”

While Allazar and Ognorm set about lifting the dwindling
packs from the packhorse and making camp, Gawain noticed Venderrian gazing away
to the north again.

“What is it, Ven?”

The ranger cocked his head a little. “Perhaps nothing,
miThal. My eyes are tired. I have strained them looking hard for crystal-coated
traitors of the foul tower. But,” he shrugged dismissively, “I thought I saw
another bird, far off to the north.”

Gawain clapped the ranger on the shoulder. “Get some rest,
my friend. It wouldn’t surprise me if there weren’t half a dozen birds up
there. Captain Byrne did say the Tau contingent had seven Viell in their
number, short sticks as well as long.”

“MiThal.”

Venderrian saluted, and attended his horse, and was soon in
his blankets.

“Think it saw us then, melord?” Ognorm whispered, trying not
to disturb the ranger.

Gawain shrugged. “It would be wise to believe so, Oggy.”

“Arr. Cheatin’ barstids, ain’t they?”

“Yes. Funny thing is though, they probably believe they’re
right, and we’re the barstids.”

They rose an hour before dawn on the 2
^nd
, watered
the horses and themselves, filled canteens and water skins, and given the
temperature of the air and the crystal-clear waters of the river, wisely elected
to forego bathing or washing. The Condavian soared on unseen currents of air,
inscribing a vast circle in the sky, with Gawain and his men at the centre, and
when they moved south, it did too.

When Gawain turned southwest about an hour after breaking
camp, Allazar shot him a look of great surprise.

“Smoke, a little east of south,” Gawain smiled, nodding to
the faintest of plumes rising above the hills in that direction. “I’d rather
ride into the flanks of the Tau than lead them into the middle of a gentle
Mornland hamlet, wouldn’t you?”

Allazar said nothing, and Gawain, still smiling, quickened
Gwyn’s pace. The going varied from soft to firm and the speed of their progress
varied accordingly. By late afternoon they saw ahead of them a high ridge,
which seemed to them a barrier, and an ominous one stretching as it did for
miles either side of their path. But Gawain seemed unconcerned, and had even
ignored the silent and eerie presence of the Viell’s observer and its endless
circling above them. He simply declared that he wished to be atop that rise and
camped in its trees before sunset, and so they quickened their pace
accordingly.

A broad stream, fed by many springs, carved its way east
along the foot of the ridge perhaps to join some unseen river nearer the coast,
and there the horses were watered and their own supplies checked and rechecked
before the climb up to the summit. The slope was steep and muscles were burning
by the time they reached the tree line near the top, but Gawain kept going
until they reached the southern side of the woodland and were able to gaze out
at the landscape below.

If Mornland had a centre point, they stood now upon it,
gazing down across the southern reaches, low and undulating terrain dotted here
and there by woods, criss-crossed by streams and speckled with tiny
finger-lakes where streams had swollen with winter rains and burst their
confines.

“Downhill all the way from here,” Gawain announced.

“Arr, apart from them uphill bits down there, melord.”

“Nothing as high as this ridge, though. Not until the hills
around Dun Meven. We’re halfway to Arrun. Less than three weeks to the
Hallencloister line. Actually, a little more than two weeks. Sixteen or
seventeen days, or thereabouts.”

“Don’t reckon them sparkle-elves will want us getting that
far though, melord,” Ognorm nodded up at the watchful Eye in the sky which had
been their constant companion all day.

“No. They’ll be out there, somewhere, calculating which
route we’ll take and looking for the best place to ambush us.”

Ognorm sniffed, and nodded. “Got a plan up yer sleeve
though, eh?”

Gawain watched the Condavian swinging slowly around on its
southerly arc, the bird always remaining far out of range of Venderrian’s bow.

“Got a plan up yer sleeve though, melord? I only ask again
on account of sometimes I do worry about you suddenly going deaf, what with all
the noises the wizard makes an’ all.”

“Nope,” Gawain replied cheerily.

“Nope not deaf or nope no plan up yer sleeve? If’n you don’t
mind me askin’?”

“Both, actually,” he smiled disarmingly. “Come on, let’s
make camp while there’s still light left in the day. At least we’re far enough
south now for the worst of the chill to be behind us, and the trees will take
the brunt of the northerlies in the night.”

“Glad you ain’t deaf,” Ognorm mumbled under his breath as he
moved away to unsaddle his horse, though Gawain caught the words and his face
cracked into a broad grin.

Allazar stepped closer, his shoulder almost brushing
Gawain’s, and they spoke softly.

“No plan, Longsword? Really?”

Gawain shrugged. “I’m relying on being creative, and on the
big stick you carry. Even during my lessons with dear old Captain Hass there
would be few expectations for the outcome of four against forty, and those
forty with longbows.”

“Forty-two,” Allazar reminded him.

“I know, Allazar mate, I ain’t as green as I am
cabbage-looking y’know.”

The wizard smiled, and leaned on the cloth-wrapped Dymendin.

“Oggy was right, though, they won’t let us reach the border
with Arrun. I half expected to find these woods crawling with their dim and
crystal-shrouded lights.”

“And you brought us up here anyway?”

“Ven would have seen those dim and crystal-shrouded lights.”

“Ah.”

“I’m realistic, not suicidal. And though I’m coming to
dislike the word, a little hopeful.”

“Optimism is the badge of impending fatherhood. Though, from
my observations, it alternates rapidly with despair and blind panic.”

Gawain chuckled. “Yes, sometimes I do worry what kind of
father I’ll be, and despair at how many sharp and pointy things I see people
leaving lying around the place.”

“May I know what lends this small but not insignificant
optimism to our proceedings?”

“The enemy’s qualities, and lack thereof. At widow’s peak
and three-blisters they took a tactic straight from the pages of an ancient
Callodon cavalry manual and simply scaled it down according to the numbers they
had available. Dwarfspit, they know who I am, and still they employ an old
Callodonian ploy against me? If they’ve been isolated in self-imposed exile
from the world for so long that they still think Tellemek a modern military
tactician, I wouldn’t be surprised to find them digging earthworks and tiny
redoubts across our path.”

“I suspect they have something far worse up their sleeves
than earthworks and tiny redoubts. They have deployed not one but seven of the
Viell against us. That is a significant number.”

“They probably don’t want to risk a single wizard succumbing
to personal ambition the way that bastard Oze did at Dun Meven.”

Allazar’s eyebrows arched. “I confess I hadn’t considered
that possibility. But it’s more likely that they intend to use their sticks
against us. Remember, the Ahk-Viell are able to exert their powers far from the
domain of the Viell, and with their false aquamire, even the medyen-Viell will
have power here.”

“Yes, well. Them, and the horse they rode in on.”

Allazar actually chuckled then.

“I know, it’s a bit rude and unkingly,” Gawain apologised,
grinning, “But I’ve had enough of ‘em.”

“There is a phrase in the wizard’s tongue I found myself
using recently in the Eastbinding which means precisely the same thing.
Et
caballum!
And your horse!”

Gawain chuckled then, too, remembering the venom with which
Allazar had spat the curse after blasting a rock-creature off its feet and into
the chasm in the crater floor.

“The first time you used Baramenn’s Surge!” Gawain chuckled
again. “Mumble-endum arsenrectum up and over he goes!”

Allazar began laughing too. “And then the chasm erupted,
sending mud everywhere!”

 “If that thing had had a face, its expression would have
been priceless!” Gawain laughed, the two of them caught up in the memories.

Behind them, busy preparing the night camp, Ognorm and
Venderrian gaped, and then grinned at each other. What possible chance did any
enemy have against the King of Raheen and the White Staff?

oOo