SEVENTEEN

WILD

Noah stirred awake in the back of a trundling cart stuffed with fragrant chaff, a bizarre mix of dried meadowgrass and dill from what he could tell, like the herbal teas his mother would sometimes give him back in Dumea when he felt feverish, which explained the familiarly warm and bitter pinch in his nostrils that made him want to sneeze. He coughed, pushing up onto his elbows to shake the stuff out of his hair and clothes. It was noon, or maybe later. It was hard to tell. The sun had hidden behind a pearlescent wall of cloud overhead. Beyond the back of the cart, a long dusty road twisted through a dry hilly terrain of grit and shrubs, receding in their wake as they continued to roll south. Noah looked around, glancing at the wall of rock on his right as it rolled by, stone-coloured lizards the size of his hand scurrying over and through the cracks; and then on the road’s other side, a steep verge edging the road, dropping away onto a rubbly slope before swooping up again to join the wide treeless savannah where a small pack of jackals trotted along in the distance, tiny against the backdrop of the vast mountain behind them. The only sounds were the breeze, the crunch of the cartwheels and the rattle of the tracestrap against the cart’s sidewall.

Noah turned to find Daneel at the reins, sitting on the driver’s bench as a horse lumbered forward ahead of him, pulling the cart along. “Where are we?”

Daneel glanced lazily over his shoulder and slid Noah a tired look; apparently they’d been riding for a while. “So, you’re awake. Long sleep that one, even for you.”

“How long?”

“About a day.”

“A day?”

“Thereabouts.”

Noah blinked in confusion, rubbing his head. There was a dull ache gathering around his temples.

Daneel twisted in his seat again to look at him. “You don’t remember?”

Noah shook his head.

“Huh…” Daneel returned his attention to the road ahead. “Well, I’d suppose the simplest way to say it is you somehow tossed a grown man into the air like he was little more than an oversized pebble. Broke his arm while you were at it.”

“What?”

Daneel nodded. “I know. I’ll be honest, when I saw it happen I was of a mind to half believe I’d imagined it. But then there’s the others, all seeing the same thing – the man’s daughter, screaming her little head off; then you’ve got villagers who’d been watching the whole thing through their windows, coming out from their houses to gawp and say their piece… Which was why I thought it best to be on our way at that point. On account of how they were all calling you witch and mystic and wanting to stone you and all. You’re welcome, by the way. Me saving your life and so forth. It does need explaining though; what you did, how you did it… Needs explaining.”

Noah leaned up against the cart’s sidewall, trying to piece Daneel’s words together with the jumble in his head – the grizzlejawed drunkard screaming at him by the well, the sudden shocked silence of the whimpering girl, watching on as the stunned man shot up into the air, dashed skywards like a flung stone as Noah’s hand had reached out across the short space as though to touch him. Somehow did touch him, or at least felt as though he did.

“I don’t know how,” Noah murmured. “It just happened.”

Daneel grunted. “Had a feeling you might say that. Thing is, what you did, I don’t think it’s the first time.”

“What do you mean?”

“The night I first taught you to meditate, when I tried to get you to break off from your memory but you wouldn’t. Because you were pulling too hard. You remember?”

Noah rubbed his neck, remembering.

“I think it happened then too. I felt it, some kind of tug on things. A tremor, in the air, in the ground. I don’t know. Something… Point I’m making is, I’m thinking maybe the meditations, you learning to feel and use your sha, maybe its triggered something, you know?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just something. Released something maybe. We’ll have to make sense of it, see if you can learn a way to control it. Last thing I need is you tossing people into the sky because you’ve gotten a little overexcited or eaten something that didn’t quite agree with your bowels. We’ll need to lay low where we’re going as it is, not draw attention.”

“Where are we going?”

Daneel peeled another sidelong glance over his shoulder. “I told you already…” then turned back to the road. “We’re going south.”

“But to where?”

Daneel shrugged. “Sippar maybe. Or maybe further, as far as Hikramesh or Qalqaliman if we can, somewhere like that.”

“You said we would leave the Sovereignty, go north, then across the West Sea.”

“We tried. You saw those… creatures, in Çyriath. North is no longer safe. We’ve been over this.”

“You’d keep us safe. That’s what you said.”

“I said I’d keep you safe from the Brotherhood, those who were sent after you. I don’t recall saying a thing about giant winged beasts that drop from the night like… Well… Like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of… What we saw in Çyriath… I don’t know a thing about how to keep you, me, or anyone else safe from that. We go north, maybe we find more of those creatures. Maybe they’ve a nest of them up there for all we know… Geled. The foothills where we found Salidor. Now Çyriath. Those things, whatever they are, they began up there and have been making their way south ever since. Could be if we’d carried on toward the Reach we’d be dead already. The further south we go, the further away from them we get. Maybe we settle in a city down there, place with fortified walls and a large cityguard. Somewhere like that.”

“I won’t go.”

“Listen to me, Noah–”

“No.”

Daneel flinched, his shoulders tensing as he jerked away just a little. From him, Noah realised. Daneel was wary of him. The thought seemed so absurd Noah almost wanted to laugh, and for a moment he thought he might, could feel the giddy hint of it tipping to the surface of him like an overfull vessel about to lean – but instead only a gasp came out, as if the air in his chest was too heavy to heave. Because suddenly it was. Everything was. And now, suddenly, he could feel it, the weight of it all, his fatigue, Çyriath, Mother, Father, Salidor, blood, dead, gone. Because they were all gone, weren’t they. Everything was gone. His family was gone. And home was gone. And everything would always go. Take from him. The world would. The world was.

“Noah? You good?”

And for a moment it was as though he couldn’t breathe from all the loss, as if it had all accrued into some invisible and silent tangled mass, pressing down on him, suffocating him from inside out. He gripped the sidewall as the cold thick weight of it expanded inside, welling up into his throat and chest and eyes, pushing out into a sob and hot stinging tears until he finally broke, whimpering and wheezing as he hugged his knees to himself in the back of the cart, trying to breathe.

Daneel had stopped the cart now, was clambering into the wagon with him, clutching his shoulders as the chaff and cart began to shudder beneath them, the trace strap rattling against the sidewall as the ground trembled and quaked. “Noah? Noah. Look at me. Look at me.”

And so Noah did, staring out at those dark eyes through the air he was drowning in as Daneel held him by the arms and told him he was there, he was there, he’d always be there. That it was alright. That he just needed to breathe. Just breathe. Nice and slow. That’s it. It would be alright.

Slowly, Noah felt the weight yield, allowing his chest to fill with air. He let go of the cart’s sidewall and watched the chaff resettle to the planked floor. He blinked in confusion. Looked to Daneel.

“Hey, now… Hey.” He patted the boy’s head awkwardly, and then shifted, climbing back onto the driver’s bench. “Come sit up here. We need to get going where we’re going.”

Noah pulled himself up and climbed over to sit next to Daneel on the bench as he tugged gently on the reins to move them on again. Overhead the clouds were parting, the sun’s light winking through in radiant shafts that dappled the savannah to the west where the jackals continued their stroll.

“I didn’t mean to be all… I don’t know…” Daneel groped for the words, sighed, and started again. “I will keep you safe. I just… need to work out the best way how is all. Truth is I’d rather not stay in the Five Lands either. But we do need to move south.”

Noah sniffed loudly and wiped his nose on his sleeve, his voice jolting softly out like a stammer. “I’m… I’m scared.”

“Well, that’s alright, boy. It’s alright to be scared. It’s a sensible thing. Sometimes it can even be useful. And besides, I’m scared myself, but I’ll keep you safe. Like I promised. Alright? I’ll keep you safe. Me and you. Who else have we got now after all?” He patted the boy again on the shoulder and then rubbed his back. “It’ll be alright.”

After a while a strong breeze picked up, kicking dust from the road so Daneel and Noah had to cover their eyes, or turn away and look instead toward the savannah and the small balls of tumbleweed rolling across the endless plain in the wind. A common thing in these outlands, even during summer. All that open space, it was as if the wind would just pass through sometimes for the fun of there being so few things to interrupt it. The brief gust died almost as quick as it came, whittling away to a gentle calm breeze and then, a few moments later, to nothing at all, the air still and warm beneath the beclouded sun and wide sky. The road ahead began to lean west, working around the clutch of monolithic columns that flanked along its eastern side. Noah found himself looking up at the giant pillars of rock, fascinated by the way the ridges ribbed across in layers, the stone piled slice by slice into monumental heaps. He could just make out the faraway movement of animals along some of their heights: mountain cats or goats probably; or maybe more jackals like the ones in the plain; or those great-eared mountain hares his father had told him of once, darting from ridge to ridge amid the dry sprouts of grass cropping up in the creases between the rocks.

“Can I ask you something?” Noah said as he watched it all, his thoughts drifting as he observed the way the columns’ broad blunt peaks cut across the sky.

“Sure.”

“How many people have you killed?”

Daneel turned to look at him on the bench, and then back to the road. “Not as many as you’d think. The Brotherhood I was part of, I was new to it in a way; when we met, I mean… I mean… I’d spent almost my whole life with them, but only training, preparing. But when you and I met, I’d only been sworn a matter of weeks.”

“Do you kill when you are training?”

Daneel nodded soberly. “We do… We did. It’s how they prepare you, how they make you ready to be sworn.”

“Were you scared, when you killed the first time?”

“I was. Very. My first witnessing – that’s what they call it – I was sent to a city called Calpas. A port town well north of here, to the far west of Calapaar by the Summer Sea. Nice place. Pretty. Nice food. Nice fish. They had me and my brother shadow a man who was already sworn. You help him. Clean his weapons, fetch his food, that sort of thing. And then you watch him do what he does. You watch him kill. That first time watching, it was strange. Didn’t really feel real, you know? It was as if it was happening to someone else, just a story you were hearing, like when they tell tales over the campfire at night and you imagine it all in your head.”

“They never did that in Dumea,” Noah said. “My father would tell me stories sometimes, but they were boring mostly, about histories, things our forefathers had done, or other people’s, and never over campfire.”

“That’s a shame. One of the villagers in the place we grew up, he had the best tales,” Daneel said, “scary ones mostly, and he was good at telling them. Jaleem his name was. We’d beg him to tell us a new one every night but he never would. Only at new moon. We’d all crowd around him, waiting to hear. We’d look forward to it, but be scared out of our minds too; and that’s what this felt like, that first witnessing in Calpas. Some cleric or other, or it might have been a prince’s aide. I forget…

“We sat in a shed in the corner of the market square for nearly half a day. Full summer. Nearly baked alive in that shed waiting for that cleric. When he finally showed up we woke the man we were shadowing. He put an arrow through that cleric from about a hundred feet away, right through his heart, and that was that. All that waiting and then it’s over in a blink. Makes you feel strange afterwards, like there was something you’d failed to notice or understand. But before it happens – waiting in that shed, and then spotting him and waking up the one who was to do the deed – those few moments before it happens, it’s like your heart’s about to explode from your chest. You feel so scared you think, in the moment, that maybe you could die from it, die just from the fear, the nerves.” Daneel laughed a little. “Sounds silly doesn’t it.”

“No. It doesn’t sound silly.”

“Sounds strange at the very least. Like some kind of… Wait… Do you hear that?”

Noah listened. A low-level rumble, humming through the ground and broad rockface beside them, but not like before, not a quake. This was something subtler, quieter. Daneel hopped up onto the driver’s bench and twisted, looking back at the crest in the road behind. He waited, continuing to stare at the incline, and then saw the galloping troop of horses and riders come driving hard over the crest, sprinting down the road’s steady slope toward them. He let go of the reins and put a hand to the pommel of the shortsword at his waist, could feel Noah move toward him, his hand reaching out to grasp the flank of his smock.

“Who are they?” Noah asked. But Daneel didn’t answer, putting out an arm to ward him back and shift the boy behind him, away from the empty side of the road as he returned to his seat and snapped the reins to speed the horse into a gallop, before proffering the leather straps to Noah.

“Here. Take these.”

Noah glared dubiously at Daneel before reluctantly taking the reins, and then watched as Daneel climbed from the bench into the cartbed, holding the sidewall for balance as the cart gathered momentum.

Behind them, the riders were gaining. Five? Six? Noah couldn’t be sure, watching the road between panicked glances over his shoulder.

“I think they’re here for us,” Daneel shouted, lifting his voice above the noise of the wheels as the cart began to bounce across the road’s cracks and rocks.

The men were close now; hooded, dressed mostly in black; flat, wide turbans and scarves to cover their faces.

Noah snapped the reins hopefully, the horse’s pace bridled by the weight of the wagon, the riders already nearly upon them, standing on their stirrups as the hooves of their black sleek steeds hammered angrily over the dust.

Noah heard Daneel shout something behind him, then heard the thud as the first of the riders leapt onto the cartbed. He flicked a panicked glance back, saw Daneel and the rider wrestling, swordhands gripped at the wrists as they staggered with the bump and sway of the carriage.

Noah almost missed a bend in the road, distracted by the scuffle; pulled hard on the reins and leant into the turn. Dull thump of flesh on dirt as someone toppled from the wagon, the riders swerving aside as the body tumbled in the dust.

Noah glanced back to find Daneel still there, leaning on the cartwall shouting instructions. Noah squinted, trying to hear through the chaos; the bone-jarring shudder of the wagon, air whipping across their faces like a storm.

Daneel was still trying to be understood when another man leapt onto the cartbed; a third drawing alongside the carriage on horseback and angling toward Noah at the reins.

Noah swerved; pure panic, bumping the rider’s horse with the cartwall, almost shoving him down the verge.

The road was curving to the east ahead of them, swinging around a shallow bend edged by a vertiginous drop where the lane narrowed, the whole thing shivering in Noah’s vision as the bench shook with the rampant pace of the wheels.

He snatched another glance to the rear. More riders, galloping madly through the riled dust in the cart’s wake; some levelling crossbows, trying to the steady their aim.

Noah turned to warn Daneel but still couldn’t be heard above the din, the assassin straddling an attacker in the cartbed, thrusting mercilessly with his blade into the squirming man’s ribs.

A rider fired as the wagon bucked, the arrow whizzing past Daneel’s ear. He shoved the attacker’s body from the cart to lessen their weight, and then, seeing another man take aim, dove onto the cartbed, gesturing for Noah to do the same.

Arrows thudded against the sidewall like heavy hail as Noah ducked to hide by the footrest, clutching the reins as Daneel scrambled across the cartbed to avoid the next volley.

The road ahead was beginning to straighten, the slope levelling out. Rows of cacti fencing the narrowed lane on one side, the blur of the rockface racing by on the other.

Noah battened down a surge of anxiety as he felt the horse start to tire. Likely they were miles from the nearest city, scrubland and outcrops for days in every direction. No cover. Nowhere to hide.

Daneel was shouting to him again, probably yelling for him to stay down; but Noah could feel the scrape and thud of his movements in the cartbed; could feel Daneel, against all sense, rising to stand up.

Noah clasped the footrest, grimacing against the wild rattle of the bench and wheels beneath him before eventually peeping above the cartwall. Daneel was upright, tossing daggers at the riders behind. Noah watched as a blade hammered into one of the men’s chests, knocking him from his horse.

By the time Noah had pushed himself up the other man was gone too. Daneel was leaning over the sidewall, trying to snatch at the throatlatches of the riderless horses sprinting beside the wagon.

There were more pursuers on the road behind: a band of three in the distance, dressed in similar hoods and scarves to the others, but then out ahead of them what looked like a girl. Slight, hoodless, riding hard toward the next bend to catch them with a riderless horse in tow.

Noah shouted to Daneel and pointed as the girl drew alongside, galloping along the narrow gap between the wagon and the road’s edge. He adjusted his grip on the reins, readying to steer the cart toward her, to push her from the road or force her in behind – until she looked directly at him.

“You need to come with me,” she shouted. “Both of you.”

Noah blinked at her, looked to Daneel, then glanced back to the riders behind, who were quickly gaining.

“You don’t know what you are involved in,” the girl shouted. “You have no idea. You must come with me now.”

Daneel, no time to think, reached out an arm to Noah, who left the reins to grab it, nearly toppling as he rose to his feet. The girl was leading the empty horse in close to them, trailing it behind her as the road began to bend south.

Daneel leant Noah out beyond the sidewall, holding him as he reached for the reins of the trailing horse; Noah’s fingers flexing, almost there, inches away, just a little closer. Just a little–

The wagon rocked as another rider leapt into the cartbed, swinging at Daneel as he tried to hold Noah steady. The man’s blade smashed down into the timber as Daneel swayed out of the way, jolting Noah over the side, down toward the rush of dirt and rock racing beneath the wheels to–

Someone grabbed his arm.

The girl, leaning back on her horse to grip his wrist whilst his foot, hooked atop the ledge of the sidewall, held him up.

“Hurry! I can’t hold you.”

The rush of rocks and dirt beneath was a blur, hurtling by like a speeding river to the thunderous roar of the wheels and hooves.

Noah took hold of the girl with his other arm, levered himself up, then pushed off with his foot, jumping across the short gap to climb onto the back of her saddle. She glanced back as he took hold of her waist to right himself; short dark windswept hair, half veiling the sunlit flash of her eyes, looking beyond him to the chaos still ensuing in their wake. Noah turned, following her gaze as Daneel kicked the other man from the wagon before turning to leap out across the rushing void and onto the remaining horse. He landed on his stomach, clawing for purchase as he clung on, then heaved himself upright and grabbed the reins.

“Your name is Noah,” the girl shouted.

Noah turned from Daneel to face her. “You know my name?”

“I saw you,” she said, tapping her head, then looked away before Noah could ask what she meant.

She let the horse slow a little, allowing Daneel to come alongside before pulling a sort of shorthanded spear from a sleeve by her right leg – flintheaded tip, the shaft thick but no longer than her arm. She gestured for Daneel to move ahead, out of her way. Daneel glanced at her, confused, but then saw the spear and obeyed, speeding further up the road. She lifted the spear, cocking it at her shoulder as she aimed, and then tossed down hard at the wheel where it dug into the ground, shunting the spokes with its shaft and bucking the cart. She snapped at the reins and raced ahead as the cart jumped violently and tipped onto its side, yanking at the mare that had been driving it as it turned over to bar the road.

“It’ll do for now at least,” the girl said, looking behind as the riders came to an abrupt halt at the upended wagon. The sun had come out again, washing the men in light as their horses stepped and jostled restlessly behind the improvised barrier, receding behind Daneel, Noah and the girl as they continued to race ahead. “My name is Tamar,” the girl said once they’d moved clear. “I’ll get you both safe now,” she added. “There are things you must see, and someone you will need to meet.”