A Solitary Journey (30 page)

‘Yes?’ Cutter growled, his frustration bubbling over.

‘Shipmaster Dockman sent me to report that the ships are ready to take on people, Warmaster.’

Cutter looked up at the young sailor in the lanternlight. Over the sailor’s shoulder, beyond the fires of the burning city, the sky was lightening as patches of grey
spread along the distant peaks. ‘Are the thundermaker ships in position?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Warmaster.’

‘Then tell Dockman that I will send people down to the boats immediately—women and children. Each boatload of women and children will have three men for protection.’

‘Yes, Warmaster,’ the sailor acknowledged.

‘There are a lot of people,’ said Cutter, tiredness tainting his voice. ‘Ask the Shipmaster to send me a message when the ships are full.’

‘Yes, Warmaster,’ the sailor repeated.

Cutter dismissed the young man, thanked the surgeon for his work and asked his bodyguards to give him a few moments of peace before he rose and left the building commandeered that night as his temporary command post. It was a shoemaker’s shop and the shoemaker, his wife and his four children were still in the back room, hiding in vain from a war that was inexorably descending upon them.

Exhausted from the night’s fighting, his injuries and the constant pressure of decision-making, Cutter wanted a brief opportunity to assess the situation quietly before he decided on his next strategy, so he avoided the soldiers who acknowledged him as he passed, listening attentively instead to the sounds of battle as he headed for the King’s palace and the watchtowers from where he could see the city in its entirety. The streets were crowded with people who’d fled over the river to escape the Kerwyn. Some called to him, recognising the man meant to be their saviour—others stared silently, especially children, their faces illuminated by torches and small fires lit by people wanting warmth and security. Groups huddled against buildings and in alleys, most people sleeping, and Cutter was surprised at the number and variety of dogs wandering through the
crowd. The Royal Elite Guards stood aside to let him through the palace gates before closing them again to stop the common people entering, and he waved aside attempts to greet him or accompany him as he headed for the south-western watchtower that had the best view.

He emerged on the upper parapet, where he was greeted by the three Elite Guards on duty, and stood at the wall, gazing east. The dawn was steadily creeping across the mountains separating Western Shess from The Valley of Kings, the peaks beginning to grow yellow and the thin line of grey turning blue. A shadowy pelican circled above the bay at the height of the watchtower and Cutter watched the big black-and-white bird slowly descend towards the water. Directly south, across the bay, flames lit the buildings to the east of the Bogpit and the Bogpit itself was on fire. Cooper and the men were trapped and in trouble.
Has he released the prisoners?
Cutter wondered.
And who would the prisoners fight for if they were given that choice?
The factories, workshops and houses of the Foundry Quarter were ablaze and the dark waves of the bay where the Shessian ships rocked in the swell were glowing with gold reflections of the burning city.

To the west the ocean was shrouded beneath a thick fog bank and in that fog Cutter knew there was a vast Kerwyn fleet waiting for the Shessian ships to make a break for freedom. A flotilla of Shessian ships sat at anchor just outside the bay, forming a defensive line against the Kerwyn, their hulls lined with the large thundermakers that had successfully routed the first Kerwyn blockade before the season of Shahk. The Seers’ magic was the only certainty standing between safety and disaster for the people of the city. As prepared as Cutter was to defy the Kerwyn army’s efforts to conquer Port of Joy, he was a realist.
Eventually the Kerwyn would prevail so his best hope was to hold out long enough to get as many people out of the city as possible.

He shifted his gaze back towards the Northern Quarter where the Port of Joy refugees clustered for protection. He needed the King to rally the people. He needed the Seers to use their magic. He needed a miracle from Jarudha.

M
eg crouched in the mallee, surrounded by the smell of eucalypts, Whisper at her feet, A Ahmud Ki three paces away on his stomach. Approaching along the bush track were eleven Kerwyn warriors, most wearing ochre-red leather breastplates and carrying spears. Two carried thundermakers. At the rear a Kerwyn warrior led two bullocks pulling a wagon of goods and behind the wagon walked two more warriors. She hated this moment before the attack, the tension, the adrenaline bursting to be released. She hated knowing that in a moment men might die if they acted stupidly. She saw the flicker of leaves across the track and into the open walked Wombat, Dark and four more Shessian men, armed. Meg stood. So did A Ahmud Ki. As the startled Kerwyn reacted by taking defensive stances, more Shessian men appeared along the side of the track and behind the Kerwyn. ‘Put down your weapons!’ Meg ordered in the Kerwyn tongue. A man with a thundermaker lowered it to take aim, but before he bent his eye to the sight a bolt of fiery energy tore through his shoulder. He screamed, dropped the thundermaker and collapsed, clutching his wound. ‘I won’t ask again,’ Meg warned as the Kerwyn shuffled
fearfully. Outnumbered, surrounded and facing the mad witch they’d heard about around the campfires, the Kerwyn dropped their weapons. Meg sighed with relief.

Distribution of the sacks of food finished, Saltsack Carter crossed the campsite to join Meg, Talemaker and A Ahmud Ki. ‘Enough for six days this time,’ he announced.

‘And the Kerwyn?’ Meg asked.

‘Dark’s leading them away as usual,’ Carter replied and winked at Talemaker. He saw A Ahmud Ki shaking his head. ‘What’s your friend’s problem?’ he asked Meg.

‘He still thinks we’re stupid for releasing our enemies,’ Meg explained.

Carter shrugged. ‘Maybe we are.’

‘I won’t have people killed unnecessarily,’ said Meg. ‘There’s enough of that.’

‘Which is Dark’s point,’ Carter reminded her. ‘The Kerwyn are killing our people. It’s just paying them back for what they do.’

‘And it makes us like them if we do,’ said Meg. ‘That’s not how I want it done.’

‘A tired argument,’ Talemaker complained. ‘Let’s eat.’

‘After we’ve practised,’ Meg said, looking at A Ahmud Ki. A Ahmud Ki met her gaze and nodded. Together they walked towards a tall gum tree.

‘I think those two are—how can I say it?’ Carter said.

‘It’s called walking out together in most villages,’ Talemaker reminded him. ‘I’ve seen it growing. She keeps teaching him our language and he seems to know a lot about her magic.’

‘I don’t trust him,’ Carter noted.

Talemaker nodded. ‘Neither do I.’

Under the gum, the daylight waning, Meg listened to A Ahmud Ki’s explanation of how the spell could let him assume a bird shape. ‘Seralinna took days to teach me the right word combination. And when I first took a bird shape I flew into a wall.’

His candid confession made her laugh, but when he looked hurt, she said, ‘But that’s what puzzles me when I listen to you. I don’t need the words. If I believe I can make something happen, it happens. The limitations are more to do with place and time and the people to be affected.’

A Ahmud Ki picked up a small grey pebble and held it towards her. ‘Turn this into a diamond—no, a ruby.’

Meg took the stone, rolled it in her palm, closed her hand around it and concentrated. When she opened her hand the pebble was a red gem. ‘No words,’ she said, anticipating what he had intended with the test. Kookaburras chuckled in the branches overhead and A Ahmud Ki peered up at the birds before he looked at Meg and raised an eyebrow. ‘I have no idea how to become a bird,’ she said.

‘I’ll teach you the words and you can try it,’ he coaxed. ‘Everything else you’ve tried has worked.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m listening.’

A Ahmud Ki repeated the spell phrases and made her practise the pronunciation until it was a perfect match to his tone. ‘Now, imagine yourself in the shape of one of those birds,’ he said, pointing up. ‘What do you call them?’

‘Kookaburras,’ she answered. She also looked up at the brown-and-white flecked birds with their thick dark beaks. As a little girl she remembered wanting to be a bird. Was it really possible to become one? She closed her eyes and imagined changing into a kookaburra. ‘Ironim ornyth,’ she murmured, reciting A Ahmud Ki’s
Targan phrase. She opened her eyes but nothing had changed. A Ahmud Ki was grinning. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘It brings back memories,’ he said, ‘and I remembered what happened to me when I did this, that’s all.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, you have to do it to find that out,’ he said mischievously.

His change in mood, his sudden cheeky humour, surprised her, and she was wary. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she ordered. ‘I’m not doing something stupid.’

‘No,’ he reassured her, trying to stop smiling. ‘It’s just—well, you have to remember that when you change shape you will
be
a bird. It’s different.’ He stooped to lift Whisper who had wandered out of the undergrowth to join them.

Meg was horrified. ‘You mean I’ll
think
like a bird?’

‘No,’ he said, stroking the rat’s sleek black fur. ‘Not like that. But you will see the world differently and your skills will be different.’

‘I’m not eating worms!’ she declared. ‘Insects, yes, but not worms.’

Unable to stifle his laughter, A Ahmud Ki clutched his stomach, lowered Whisper and sank to the ground in hysterics, while Meg watched the stranger genuinely laughing for the first time.

‘Meg!’ Talemaker called from the campsite. He was gesticulating anxiously, and Wombat and Dark and several men were standing with him. ‘Hurry!’ he yelled. She jogged over to them, followed by A Ahmud Ki.

‘We’ve got trouble,’ Dark said as she reached them. ‘Come and see.’

As they walked up the rocky path to the lookout above the campsite, Wombat gave her more detail. ‘Seems we’ve got a reputation big enough to worry the
Kerwyn, little bird. There’s an army after us now. We spotted them when we got rid of our friends from earlier on.’

At the lookout, Meg emerged on the granite ledge where the dusky vista to the west opened across the southern reaches of the Greenhills. The men were pointing due north, directly in line with their camp, where less than a day’s walk in the distance the southern fringe of the purple Whispering Forest was already alight with hundreds of yellow campfires. ‘My estimate is at least a thousand, maybe more,’ said Dark.

‘How can you be sure they’re looking for us?’ Meg asked. ‘We could just shift camp and avoid them.’

‘I’ve been watching their progress for five days,’ Dark told her. ‘They’ve come straight for us.’

‘It might be coincidence,’ Talemaker suggested. ‘They could be heading for somewhere else.’

‘Where?’ Dark asked. ‘This is an unpopulated area—no villages or towns. There’re no passes through the mountains into The Valley of Kings from here. This isn’t coincidence.’

‘We can’t fight an army,’ said Wombat. ‘We’d better get moving tonight.’

‘South or north?’ asked Talemaker.

‘We go any further south we’ll be in hostile country,’ Carter remarked. ‘It’s tribal land.’

Dark snorted. ‘Can’t be any more hostile than this.’

‘North,’ Meg suggested. ‘We can skirt around them. At least we know the land. We’ve been through it.’

‘They’ll chase us north,’ said Wombat. ‘South, we might at least get rid of the Kerwyn.’

‘And pick up tribal shaman and warriors instead,’ said Carter. ‘Out of harm’s way into trouble. We should go east again.’

‘South,’ said Dark. ‘Who else?’

‘South,’ Talemaker agreed, and Carter echoed him. Voices voted in the evening as Meg gazed at the Kerwyn campfires.

They walked single file through the moonlit bush, winding up and down the steep hills, passing through the shadows, crossing the creeks, heading south. Sixty-seven people made up their party, a force large enough to have become an annoying menace to the Kerwyn war bands roaming the Whispering Forest. Since banding together with other refugees, they’d effectively broken up fourteen Kerwyn war bands by capturing and disarming a host of warriors and sending them running back west. ‘Lady Amber lives!’ was her people’s war cry, bent on avenging the Kerwyn atrocities, but Meg was determined from the first encounter that they maintain a policy of release of their captives, taking only their weapons and goods. ‘The Kerwyn keep blood on their hands. Our hands stay clean,’ she told the others. ‘If anything else, I will not be a part of this.’

The men argued with her. ‘If we let them go they’ll bring more after us,’ argued Dark angrily.

‘Men let go in battle come back and fight again,’ Wombat reminded her, but she would not be swayed. There were inevitable deaths because the Kerwyn did not always surrender without a fight. Shessian and Kerwyn deaths saddened her. The injured she could heal, but the dead were dead and the loss made her feel impotent.

She walked behind A Ahmud Ki in the moonlight, with Whisper nestled in a Kerwyn vest she’d taken from a man they had captured. A Ahmud Ki was emerging from his sullen shell more every day, proving extremely adept at learning her language, and more than willing to teach her what he knew of magic. His knowledge seemed limitless and she was learning concepts and
skills that exceeded any idea she had of her original Blessing. Yet he remained mystified by how she could do the spells without reciting words or making arcane patterns with her hands. ‘In Andrakis, only a Dragonlord has such fluency with the Ki,’ he told her many times. She was disappointed that he remained aloof from the conversations of the other men, although he listened intently. Because he was unwilling to become involved she was very conscious of the men’s wary attitude towards him.

‘Is your friend dumb or insolent?’ Dark asked her at a campfire.

‘He’s lost,’ she told him. ‘Everything he knew is gone. He’s trying to adjust so give him time,’ but she knew her excuses weren’t helping.

The twenty-three women in the party also watched A Ahmud Ki with fascination and suspicion, but they flocked around Meg as if she was a princess, calling her Lady Amber no matter how much she protested that she was not the legendary character. ‘Lies won’t change the truth,’ Possum Fullbright, the most outspoken member of the women, told her from the outset of the parties meeting and working together. ‘You
are
Lady Amber. I was in Port of Joy when you were there and I saw you riding by one afternoon. I have a good memory.’ Meg couldn’t argue and her magic in the ambushes of the Kerwyn confirmed what the women knew.

‘Tell us about the strange one,’ said Ladle Cooksdaughter, a vivacious, dark-haired girl whose reputation for sleeping with the men was a regular topic of conversation at night. ‘Is he your lover?’

The women giggled and scolded Ladle, but their eyes were fixed on Meg for an answer. ‘He’s not my lover,’ she said. ‘He’s from the east. I don’t know much about him.’

‘He looks strange, but he’s definitely handsome,’ Ladle said.

‘You can’t sleep with that one,’ Possum told her.

‘That’s his choice,’ Ladle retorted and poked her tongue out at Possum.

‘I think Lady Amber is his choice,’ another woman remarked, grinning.

‘Oh, Littleleaf, that’s not news!’ Ladle said and laughed. ‘He’s so madly in love with her he follows her like a lamb following his mother.’

The women’s talk of A Ahmud Ki embarrassed Meg so she excused herself from the circle and withdrew, leaving the women to speculate even further about her relationship with the stranger. Meg pondered it thereafter, watching A Ahmud Ki for any signs to confirm what the women believed.
It’s natural that he spends time with me,
she told herself.
I’m the one who rescued him. I’m the only one who speaks his language. I’m the only one who tries to make him welcome.
Whenever she met his grey eyes from that night on she looked away in case he saw what she was thinking and she stayed out of his reach in case he tried to touch her. She was wary of him seeking contact with her to generate his own magic, but she couldn’t explain why—only that he was something more than he admitted, of that she was sure. He never tried, however, which made her wonder whether he trusted her any more than he trusted the others with whom he did not mix.

He was handsome, in his strange fashion—beautiful was a better word for his features. In a woman his high cheekbones and cat-like eyes would be stunning. His silver hair was unique and he kept it in braids that she’d never seen him unravel—not that opportunities to wash or bathe thoroughly were available with them always being on the run—but she wondered. He was slim, tall—wiry by the standards of Shessian men. She
couldn’t deny, when she stared at him while he was looking elsewhere, that he was an attractive man. When she saw the other women, especially Ladle, studying him with eyes that were exploring possibilities, it gave her a pang of jealousy for which she immediately scolded herself. When they stood apart from the group while he taught her what he knew and she made him practise the Shessian language, she felt anxiety welling like she remembered feeling a long time ago for a young man in Summerbrook. That anxiety was always replaced with sorrow for her lost past that she restrained while she tried to remain calm in A Ahmud Ki’s presence.
They are to blame,
she angrily considered, glancing over her shoulder at the women following her through the moonlight.
I never thought like that about him before they brought it up.
But she knew she was lying to herself.

By the middle of the night they covered a lot of ground and Meg felt exhaustion creeping into her body from long days of travelling light, and fighting the enemy on scattered rations of bush food and stolen Kerwyn supplies. Scouts returned after climbing trees and hills to check on whether the Kerwyn army had advanced and reported that the campfires, now in the distance, were in the same place. When Wombat and Dark discovered a box gully with a narrow entrance that would be very defensible and difficult to find, the party moved into it to settle to sleep for the night. ‘No fires,’ Wombat told them, ‘and we’re up and moving just before dawn’s light.’ He patted Meg’s shoulder as he passed, intent on taking watch at the entrance to the gully, saying, ‘Sleep well, little bird.’