CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

THE ROUTE TO the river was mostly a matter of taking the road, then a tiny fork that led East once you reached Pauper’s Bridge, but even that was too much for Celestaine’s nerve after she saw the second rider make them from a point near the horizon, then ride off quickly back the way they had come. They may not be wanted for themselves in particular but the centaur plus the Yorughan might be too much of a talking point somewhere, and her general unease about minding the non-combatants started to take an ugly turn towards dread. Riding with warriors with only their skins to worry about was easy compared to this, and it could only get worse as they came to more populated areas.

Once they had paused for a rest beyond noon she took them away from the obvious route and on a line that ought to bring them to the riverbank by nightfall, south of the Islets Dock. The lands between them and their goal were hunting country, sparsely wooded with many thickets, rocky slopes and broad rolling hills. There were few settlements and nothing notable. As soon as they were out of sight of the road she felt better. But they had only been going a half hour when Heno whistled from the front of the line.

She moved up and fell into step with him.

“Look,” he pointed at the ground. There were many prints of people and animals, the ruts of some wheels that had passed across their way, moving in the same general direction.

She studied them for a moment. “These are only a day or two old. They’ve gone, anyway. Looks like two carts.”

“Going quick,” he said and she found she had to agree. The gaps between strides, the depth and angle of the divots all said the same. She kept their course and was glad when it deviated from the fleeing trackway, but as they crested a hill and began to descend between two scrubby strips of woodland she felt the hair on her neck prickle and then smelled something burnt as the wind came their way from the north. The woods looked suddenly like a canyon but to alter course would only take them miles out of the way and it was getting late. The river was down one more and one more again small valley by her reckoning. They could easily make it in an hour. If they made it at all.

“Go look,” she said to Heno. “I will keep on this way. Rejoin as soon as you can.”

He nodded and swung off to their left, his stride lengthening out into the true Yorughan fast march that was almost the running speed of an average human. Within a few moments he had vanished into the shadows beneath the trees.

“Where is he going?” asked Horse.

“Scouting,” Celestaine replied, trying to sound light about it so she didn’t scare the little one. “We’ll go on to the river.”

The centaur, a creature of few words, said nothing. On her back Kula yawned. Bukham, the trader, asked, “What’s he looking for? Do you think there’s trouble?”

“I don’t like to be surprised,” Celestaine said. “But no trouble.”

“If he’s not here won’t we struggle if someone, you know, if they come like this morning?”

“No,” Celestaine said. “We’ve got Nedlam. And I haven’t lost the use of my arms yet.”

“What happened to that man, though, that wasn’t either of you,” he continued, not taking any hint to let it drop so that she fizzed with annoyance, and the urge to hit him ran suddenly through her in a way that meant she had to wait before she spoke again.

“He had a change of heart, that’s all that matters. If he hadn’t then they’d all be dead by now. Is that a better outcome for you?”

“But how do you know they’d be dead and not us? You don’t know that. I mean, to start with it wasn’t like we were all winning straight out. It looked quite outnumbered. In a way.”

“Quiet,” Nedlam growled from the back of the line, though her voice had a carry to it that suggested large bears had been in mind when she was made. “You talk too much.”

Celestaine was grateful when he did stop, though she heard him muttering to Murti afterwards. She didn’t want to explain that it was actually harder not to kill them. She and her friends were a warband, when you came down to it. If they hadn’t got a job to do, they’d be a lot of trouble themselves. The itch that had made her take to the road in the first place was gone now, but it would be back after a week on her arse in a chair. Now, on the other hand, she was full of herself and alive in a way that she knew would never come without some danger and some difficulty. Her only problem was that she wasn’t sure any more whether she was to protect Lysandra and Kula from others or the rest of the world from them. She had a strange feeling it was the latter and that Wanderer had known this from the start; why else would he put a flea in Deffo’s ear? And why would Deffo, most keen of all not to see battle, be so delighted to recruit her? Not that she’d seen much of him since the bush incident… not that…

She became aware of a figure walking on a parallel course to them which trotted forwards as soon as she noticed it, huffing and bent over like an old man on his last legs—the sickly twin to Murti’s able vigor.

“Hullo, Deffo.”

“Avast. Doing well. Came to tell you I’ve got a boat but you’re too far south. It can’t come to the banks down here, they’re too shallow and reedy. You’ll have a time getting bogged down. Need to make it a bit north and then it’s all good.”

“I’ll turn once we reach Lampwold Chase. We can stay on the hillside.”

“Good. Good good good. Just, close to the treeline.”

“The chase is open land, easy to cross. What’s wrong with it?” She had a sinking sensation that almost instantly became anger. “Deffo, what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Probably nothing. Let’s keep a good jog up. Doing nicely.” He kept up with them at the back, last but Nedlam.

Celestaine sighed and her hands automatically checked her sword and daggers. The afternoon was pleasant, but it had become grey and misty and visibility was shortening all the time. They reached the end of the woodland on the right and beyond it she saw only grassy and rocky hillocks rising slowly into the murk. The sun was a flat disc in a flat sky. As she glanced at it there was a flicker, as though a large leaf had blown past it high in the air and blotted it out for a moment. She looked again. Nothing.

They walked on. After a few more minutes Heno returned at a jog. He gave Deffo a scornful glance and then said.

“I found the carts. Broken, burned. Couple of dead men, all burned, no weapons. Oxen and those long-leg goat things, lunnoxes—nothing left, only blood. Lots of scorching. Looks like about ten people including at least one child escaped. Headed to the road and up that way. Dropped a few things.”

“Deffo?” She turned accusingly, but there was nobody there. Of course there wasn’t. “Dammit.” She thought for a moment. “Burned like your magic?”

Heno shook his heavy head. “Burned like fire.”

She felt a draught of air against her cheek, cool and light with mist.

“Analysis?” Because she had to ask. Even though she knew of only one thing that flew and used fire and ate large ground animals she was fairly sure that the five dragons the Kinslayer had concocted were dead. Vermarod the Invincible had died by her hand at Bladno and was now a wayside tavern called the Skull Cup. Another had joined a Kelicerati colony and was out of the dragon business for all intents and purposes. She remembered the parasitic grubs that had replaced its eye with a shudder of revulsion. Other monsters had roamed the world before and after, of course, but it was rare to see one near the Middle Kingdoms, of any kind. Bounty hunting had taken them all to adorn the walls of wealthy patrons.

Heno shrugged. “Better take cover.”

“I don’t think there is any,” she replied. The woods were a death trap, even when damp; the open land doubly so. They were miles short of the river and even if they did reach it, bogs notwithstanding, there was nothing about a riverboat that was easier to defend. The mist made it impossible to see—but that went both ways, she thought, wondering. She turned back to walk beside Horse and ask her advice only to find her scanning the skies, tulip ears wobbling all around at the sides of her head, spear already hefted for casting in her hand. Lysandra and Kula were on foot, walking behind her with Murti and Bukham, Nedlam walking backwards to be a set of eyes facing the way they came but keeping the pace even as they went downslope into the scrubland of the valley.

“What is it?” Celestaine called up to the centaur.

“Some kind of Ur-beast,” she said, using the word for the first creations that had come into the world, when it was new. “It is not hungry, just curious.”

A little of the tension went out of Celestaine’s shoulders. “We need to get away from it.”

“Big hunting territory,” Horse said. “You will not avoid it any time soon.”

“Is it going to attack us?”

“Depends if we go close to the nest.”

Suddenly Celest found herself with a small girl attached to one leg. She looked down at Kula, halted in place by the light weight, the tight grip and the intent look in the child’s face, eyes like dark saucers beaming up at her with excitement and more animation than she’d ever shown. “Not now,” Celestaine began to say, realising it was useless, wondering how to deal with a deaf child, when Lysandra came forward and took Kula’s hand. Kula abandoned Celestaine promptly and gazed trustingly up at Lysandra. Lysandra looked Celestaine in the eye and said in faultless Traveller, “She can see it. She wants to lead the way.”

A whoosh of air interrupted them. Splatters of water struck Celestaine’s cheek and forehead. The tip of a leathery, part-feathered wing, black and brown, sliced down from the cloud bank and cut a short swathe through the mist overhead before it slid upwards into the grey. Two slow whirls of fog spiralled in its wake. Celestaine wiped her face off with her fingers. A faint scent of charred meat came in on the breeze and her stomach growled. You’ll lead it here in a minute, Ralas would have said, but he wasn’t here.

That thing had to be huge, as far as she counted sizes anyway. She looked down at Kula, dancing with eagerness in a way that seemed completely at odds with the circumstances but it was that which convinced her. “Lead on.”

“Can you eat ’em?” Nedlam wondered aloud, obviously following Celestaine’s gut thoughts.

“The meat of the Utbeast is poisonous to man,” Horse said. “And most things, except other Utbeast.”

Nedlam snorted in disappointment. “Are you one?”

“I suppose I am,” Horse said.

Nedlam shook her head. “Lot of steak on there,” and she gave Horse’s rump a friendly open-handed whack.

“The hide must be valuable though,” Bukham said, tentatively, fear causing him to stammer slightly. “And the er… teeth and bones and whatnot. For souvenirs and medicine and that.”

“I used to hunt men for sport,” Horse said in a pointed note of protest and a mild warning. “I can start again anytime.”

“We are not hunting it,” Celestaine said although now that they had started the subject she wondered if that wasn’t exactly what they should do. She was watching Kula skipping along at the front of the line, performing a strange leaping jig that at first she’d thought was part of the tracking but later realised was simply playful. Lysandra strode behind her with the free and easy gait of someone in blithe ignorance of just about everything.

We might have to hunt it, she thought, considering that was the only thing left to do if it was already eating livestock and burning people.

They saw the fin-like wingtip again many times over the next hour. It circled them in a way that Celestaine could have sworn was teasing. The whirlpools of mist were greeted by leaps from Kula, her hands outstretched, arms like wings, dipping and curling, Lysandra swooping around her in a perfect mirror. Their faces were gleeful. Sometimes they snarled in passing, pretending to be wild dogs, but only as a joke. The entire thing took place in silence. The thunka thunka of Horse’s triple-hooves, the patter of their feet and the clink of metal bits of gear were the only muffled sounds.

“Am I the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on?” Bukham said from behind her after about ten minutes had passed and the game had subsided into ordinary walking again.

“Nope,” Celestaine replied.

“Is that some kind of—creature?”

“Yep.”

“Is it a dr—”

“Don’t say it,” Celestaine said, interrupting before he could get the word out.

“We should kill it,” Nedlam said, closer than expected, trying to whisper ineffectively. “It will bring a bounty or at least goodwill. I can do it.”

They did need it. People couldn’t eat diamonds but they would like anyone who saved them from becoming monster food.

“I’m leaving it for now,” she said and gestured at the woman and girl. “They seem to like it.” She wanted to know what Kula was doing before she made any rash decisions.

“They like it now,” Bukham said. “But later, when it’s hungry. Then what?”

Celestaine turned sharply and he almost walked into her, as she’d planned. “You talk too much.”

“Yes but it’s a dragon and it’ll eat us sooner or later. Ned’s right. It’s got to go.”

Celestaine unclipped the scabbard and took out her sword, held it to him hilt first. “Go on, then. Have at it.”

“No, no, I can’t, I…” Bukham looked about, pleadingly, but only Murti’s chuckle answered. “If this mist lifts we’ve had it though,” he said, more plaintively. “Haven’t we?”

“Maybe,” Celestaine said. She let the sword slide back into place with some reluctance but she had no plans other than a vague notion that the Draeyad might be able to spell her spear into taking it out of the air. On the ground they had some kind of chance, although nothing that could pierce a dragon’s skin with the possible exception of Horse’s spear. She was hoping that better land would turn up, but at that point a consistent squelching that had been getting steadily more present underfoot became the outskirts of a bog, limed in green and with mud thick enough to sink over the ankle. They had reached the river. She took a bearing and decided they must head further north, and was just about to announce it when she found Kula standing before her, hands on her hips, glaring up at her. Lysandra paced up behind her, silently, her hems dragging in the mud.

“Yes?”

Kula was fidgeting again, making gestures that Celestaine suddenly realised weren’t the jabbings of an angry child but the jabbings of an angry child who was using a very fast and clever way of talking—to Lysandra, in silence. Because she was deaf. And apparently Celestaine was slow off the mark but now she glanced up at Lysandra for a translation and saw a look of tender, maternal care on the young face as it inclined to Kula. One which quickly became cool and business-like as it moved to her.

“She says it heard you. Because you want to hunt it, it will go away.”

“It talked to you?”

Some more fast handwork.

“No talking. Understanding. Heard you on the inside.”

“But—if you can talk to it then, ask it where it came from?”

The girl’s stare became a little contemptuous.

“She already did. It said it came from the hole in the world.”

“And where’s that?”

A shrug. Like, who cares about that kind of thing? As if it mattered.

“I think it might matter.” Murti had come up behind her while they were talking. She felt startled and angry.

“Are you reading minds now too? Is everyone suddenly able to do it but me?”

He looked up at her for a moment from his stooped position. The mist had made strange dew on his rough beard and the straggly ends of his hair. Behind him the bulky figure of Bukham looked like a clay golem made of two muds, louring in the gloom. “I wander. But you’re right. It matters a lot. If there is such a thing we might avoid the necessity of a long journey.”

“Just—” Celestaine paused to look about the skies in which nothing figured but the gloaming fog. “Just what is going on here? First you say we’re off to find the gods and we have to go far to reach some place but you’re short on detail and suddenly this dragon business and fires and Draeyads is making me very keen on the details. I’m not going a step further until you tell me what’s on your mind. Wherever it’s been. Is going. You know what I mean.”

“It’s not far to this boat…”

Celestaine turned neatly on her heel and punched Deffo firmly on the jaw, mid-sentence. “Stop sneaking around.”

Nedlam guffawed with a sound like a bear coughing. Deffo went over like a felled tree and lay looking up at the barren clouds.

Celestaine straightened, eased her fist. “No more godly fannying around. Now you’re here. Now you’re not. It’s as far to this boat as it is to the moon until I get some answers.”

Murti sighed. “I feared that it would come to this but I never thought it would happen so soon.”

“What would happen?” Celestaine felt that her head would soon burst from the inside if she had to restrain herself much more. She’d run with the Guardians a few times, that was true, and it had all flowed nicely in the simple necessity of stopping the Kinslayer, but now that was done with all of their goals seemed far muddier and less noble in comparison and she wasn’t about to get tangled in bad business. There had been a lot of that. She rubbed her forehead, thinking of the Aethani as Deffo said quietly from his spot on the ground,

“What he did to the gods has made the structure of the world a bit leaky. Stuff seeps through. S’why we need to go see what he did and undo it, or fix it, or fill it in, or whatever it is. Find the gods, find the problem, fix it.”

“That sounds… like a good thing?” Celestaine asked, looking to the two of them, rubbing the knuckles of her punching hand gently with her fingertips.

“It’s more a case of a necessary thing. Mending.” Wanderer said. “Otherwise there’ll be a lot more wandering going on and not of a kind that is going to help anyone. Things out of their places, stranded, causing havoc. You’ve seen it. Need I go on?”

She thought of the Vathesk. Immortal beings from another world, ever-eating, never sated, insane. He need not go on. “I want the world to go back to being stable and a place where people can live in peace. Somehow.” She said it aloud, centering herself on that. It had always been her goal, one which she realised as time went on that was possibly only ever to be a dream. A twinge of an emptiness she had been staving off for years pulled at her. She turned to look for Heno and found him standing patiently, watching the whole group of them very closely with his keen eye for the turn of a head or a heart. He glanced at her and nodded.

“We have much to make up for. It’s all right to spend a lifetime trying to fix broken things. The world can be remade better than before.” He nodded to her and she knew that he was referring to his own past, a butcher, a breaker of beautiful things. No longer.

Her sense of purpose abruptly returned.

She looked down at Kula who was watching her with an expression remarkably akin to Heno’s. “What do you recommend, if we want to find this hole?”

The girl turned and pointed north north-west. She flickered her rapid hand signs to Lysandra.

“It is too hard to tell you how to get there because she has not seen the land, but she can see the hole. North, beyond this land’s edge.”

Celestaine went to Deffo and offered him her hand. She didn’t feel like reconciliation but she didn’t need it, she realised. “Let’s find this boat, then.”

“You will say this time how I was helpful, won’t you? This time you will say I got it right. They will make a song about this most heroic journey.”

“Boat,” Celestaine said. “Before something from another world makes us its dinner.”