CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In full daylight the figures ran across the gleaming snow, leaving a trail of footprints in their wake, remaining only barely ahead of their pursuers – a pack of wolfhounds with their tails held straight behind them; a loose wedge of renegade Contrarè; and at the very rear a line of Purdahs, last survivors of the imperial scouts.
It was Shard down there running for her life through clouds of her own exhalations, she and the rest of the party, the Volunteers at the front and rear and Marsh the bodyguard jogging along by her side, carrying a jostling Coya on his back.
‘They’re gaining on us,’ noted Coya with a quick appraisal over his shoulder.
‘They’ve been gaining on us for the last hour, you fool,’ snarled the sweating, panting Marsh beneath him.
All morning they had maintained this same relentless pace along a trail following the Moth river, ever since setting off from the trading post at daybreak; a pace that was threatening to drop Shard in exhaustion.
Aware that tonight would be the time of the full moons, night of the Longalla council, they had risen as early as the imperial delegation, who had slept in a different room from their own, and had watched the Mannians and their few Contrarè guides gather their zels from the corral before setting off for Council Grove at a fast clip, quickly outdistancing their own march on foot.
No sooner was the delegation out of sight before them, and the Contrarè settlement far behind, than a howl sounded through the trees of the forest, and the enemy rangers who had been waiting all night for them launched their latest attack.
Since then it had been a contest of endurance, firing the odd wild shot backwards as they ran.
Only once had they slowed in their flight, when they had come upon the zels of Alarum and the others of the Mannian delegation on the trail. Some of the animals were lying down in slumber while others circled about in confusion. Doped up with something, she realized. Dosed sometime during the night. Shard recalled the older medico coming in from last night’s blizzard after the others, and sharing a few words with Coya.
Coya had grinned mightily when he saw the bewildered animals on the trail. No doubt imagining the spymaster’s pinched expression as their mounts had become useless beneath them.
Now, with the winter sunlight slanting sideways more than downwards, the party was scrambling up a snowy slope in ragged desperation, following the bank of the river as it rose into rocky bluffs and cliffs. If Shard had possessed the energy to project her mind just then, to soar like a hawk, she could have seen over the next hill beyond the party, where the bulky form of Alarum and his companions hurried along the trail that would take them to Council Grove, ragged too now that they had lost their zels.
Into the west the sun was falling fast. Rich iron tones struck the trees of the Windrush, casting lengthening shadows across the virgin snow.
They were running above a deep ravine, she saw. Ahead, a face on the rocky trail turned to glance backwards. It was Curl, with the sweat pouring off her as she ran. The young medico caught Shard’s eye and then she looked ahead again, where the foremost rangers had thinned into single file as their path became a ledge in a sandstone cliff, falling straight down into the river. Their pace slowed as a consequence, needing more care with their footfalls. For a time it looked as though their pursuers would catch up with them, but then the enemy reached the ledge and slowed down too.
‘I think they’re flanking us,’ rasped Sergeant Sansun.
Sure enough, a short time later a screaming renegade Contrarè leapt down onto the ledge right in the path of the foremost rangers – the captain and the sergeant.
Steel dazzled in the sunlight as more renegades jumped down to join the fight. The party was trapped. Marsh dropped Coya onto the snowy track and turned to face their pursuers behind with his two pistols in hand. Xeno did the same with a wicked-looking blade.
The wolfhounds came in snarling. Marsh shot two of them. Xeno took out the remaining one with his blade. Over the fallen dogs leapt the Purdahs, hacking with their swords.
Reaching for her boneknife, Shard tried to summon a glyph, any glyph, but found her mind too shattered to focus. The action pressed all around her now. Someone bustled against her back. She heard a yell and turned in time to see the medico Curl staggering on the edge of the ravine, her hands grasping out for something to stop her.
Shard tried to reach her in time, but could only watch as the girl fell over the edge with a scream.
She scrambled to the edge and looked over the rocky lip.
Curl was hanging there from a sharp knob of rock, her feet scrambling over the rushing white water of the river far below.
‘Take my hand!’ Shard shouted down at her, but the girl was clearly terrified, and would not release her precious grip.
‘You’re going to fall into that river if you don’t take my hand!’
Curl gasped and shared a frightened glance with her. The girl’s hands were sliding on the smooth rock, her feet kicking for purchase below. With a curse, Shard tore free her heavy coat then carefully climbed down to join the young medico. She had always been a confident climber in her youth, brave too, and it came back to her now with ease. She gripped the same knob of rock so that she hung there facing the frightened medico.
‘Hey,’ she tried for lack of anything better to say.
Curl blinked the sweat from her eyes.
‘Hey,’ she gasped back.
‘I would help you up – but I seem to have squandered the last of my strength getting down here.’
‘Can’t you – click your fingers – or something – and make us fly?’
Shard adjusted her grip and glanced up at the action above.
‘No need. Look!’
Above them the renegade Contrarè were suddenly retreating along the ledge. War yells were rising from further along the trail, and Shard saw the retreating renegades toppling off the edge one by one, blood smearing their buckskins as they fell.
A great bear of a man stepped into view swinging a shortsword before him like a veteran, dressed as a Contrarè and with his skin striped red like the painted warriors who followed behind. Shard thought she glimpsed the tattoos of horns on either side of the huge fighter’s head.
Like a man possessed, the giant was tearing into the enemy Purdahs now, hacking with his blade and fist until the few survivors broke and fled in disarray.
Grit rained on Shard’s head. Blinking her eyes clear, she looked up once more to see a handsome Contrarè man looking down at them over the edge, studying her with a pair of brilliantly blue eyes.
‘Hey-ho!’ he greeted them both warmly. ‘Can I help you up?’
*
‘You’re Bull, the pitfighter from Bar-Khos!’ declared the medico Kris in obvious surprise, addressing the big man who had just saved them all, dressed as a native yet bearing the tattoos of a Khosian soldier. A deserter perhaps.
His face was certainly mashed and scarred like that of a professional fighter. His receding hair was growing long at the back, and he indeed had the horns of a bull tattooed on his temples.
‘I was,’ he answered. ‘Now I’m Strutting Bull of the Longalla.’
‘I’d heard you had fallen at Chey-Wes,’ said Kris.
‘I fell, aye. But then I got up again.’
The big man Bull sounded tired. Dark rings circled his eyes as though he had not slept in some time.
‘You’re Red Path warriors,’ the captain realized, addressing the group of red-striped Contrarè. The captain was still shaking like the rest of them, still trying to find her bearings now that the fight was over, the blood cooling. To Coya, she said, ‘They protect the tribe and the Windrush from hostiles.’
The blue-eyed Contrarè man nodded, glancing again at Shard. ‘We have been tracking those renegades and scouts ever since they entered the forest.’ And he glanced back at the group of Contrarè behind him, dispatching those of the enemy still alive, then gazed down at the stooped form of Coya. ‘And you must be Coya Zeziké. Here to speak with the elders of the council.’
Coya was using a sword as a crutch now. His face was streaked with dirt and blood, his blond hair sprouting up like the nest of a bird – yet he grinned wildly.
‘Ah, you’ve heard then.’
‘Hard not to,’ replied the big man Bull. ‘They’re beating bark all across the forest with the news of it.’ He finished wiping the blade of his shortsword clean with a rag of enemy clothing, and he shoved the weapon back into its sheath.
‘Come,’ he declared, and slapped Coya’s shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. ‘We’ll take you to Council Grove ourselves. We’re almost there.’