Chasers of the Wind (12 page)

“All right, we’ll do it your way.”

He crept along the wall to the window and then to the stove. Then he had to pass through an area that was in the line of fire. Luk, realizing what was about to happen, moved over. Ga-Nor took a leap and again he anticipated the arrow that struck the floor by a fraction of a second.

“Persistent brute,” said the Son of the Snow Leopard through clenched teeth.

“Screw a toad, at least he missed you.”

The northerner snorted in agreement and, without further delay, slid down into the hole. The storage pit was not very deep; it came up to about waist-high.

“Wait here. In case I call out for you.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Pray for me if you have nothing else to do,” suggested Ga-Nor, and then he disappeared under the floor.

Twilight reigned here, and it smelled strongly of mold, dampness, and earth. He quickly oriented himself and chose a path to the wall that stood opposite the door. The Burnt Soul was unlikely to be keeping watch there. Why would he, when he assumed that the only exits were through the door or the windows?

With all the will in the world he couldn’t straighten up here, so he had to crawl on all fours. Fortunately, he didn’t have far to crawl. The Son of the Snow Leopard stopped at the boards that were fastened to the stilts. They extended down from the walls of the cabin and covered the gap between the ground and the floor. Just as Luk had suggested, parts of the boards were rotten and other parts were nailed haphazardly so that they fit loosely against each other.

Ga-Nor listened closely and didn’t hear anything suspicious. Birds were chirping, insects were buzzing, wind was sweeping through the crowns of the lofty sycamores. The tracker put his eye to a chink between the boards and carefully checked the area. Most of his view was obscured by the blackberry bushes that had grown into a living hedge weighed down by large, dark purple berries. All he could do was hope that his enemy was on the opposite side of the cabin.

Ga-Nor took out his knife, wedged the blade in between the boards, and, using the weapon like a lever, began to clear a path for himself. As he worked, the northerner tried not to put too much force into it; he moved smoothly so that, Ug grant it so, the lumber would not creak. He was successful. The wood gave way easily and after a few minutes of patient effort, the Son of the Snow Leopard climbed out from under the cabin.

Without raising his head, he crawled like a snake on his stomach toward the blackberry bushes. Ignoring the thorns, he struggled through the hedge and crawled through the moss to the nearest sycamore. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to cover a paltry ten yards. But Ga-Nor could rival even the Highborn when it came to the art of merging with a tree to make a single whole. Not a single twig snapped, not even the most fragile bush swayed at his passing, and the birds remained undisturbed.

Once he’d hidden himself in a hollow between the massive roots of the tree, the northerner breathed a sigh of relief. The hardest part was behind him. What came next should be easier. He had the advantage—his enemy did not know that someone had escaped from the cabin. He just had to use it.

True, his crawl through the blackberry bushes had taken its toll. His entire body, including his face, was covered in shallow, bleeding scratches. But he could deal with this aggravating trifle later. A Burnt Soul was not a Mort; its sense of smell was not as strong and so it wouldn’t catch the scent of his blood.

Keeping low to the ground, Ga-Nor ran from the bushes in brief dashes from tree to tree. He didn’t turn back until he’d run about eight hundred yards into the forest.

If not for Luk, he would have kept going. It would be quite a while before his disappearance was discovered. He could cover his tracks so well that not even one of the Damned could find him. But he had to return. Ug would not approve of a Son of the Snow Leopard abandoning his comrade. The reckoning after death would be terrible. Wallowing in the icy abyss of Oblivion was far more terrifying than any Burnt Soul.

Changing direction from the north to the east, he ran for another four hundred yards or so. To an outside observer it would seem that the northerner was meandering throughout the forest without rhyme or reason. But in reality, Ga-Nor was outflanking the ensconced archer in a steep arc, planning to come upon him from behind. It took over an hour of these meanderings for him to quietly draw near the front of the cabin unobserved by his adversary.

The cabin was no more than fifteen yards away. He could already see the closed door with the arrow sticking out of it. But the Burnt Soul was absent, even though all his suppositions led him to believe that it was somewhere nearby, judging by where the shot had come from.

Had it changed position?

This was bad. The creature was sitting under cover and there were many trees and bushes around the cabin. Where could it be hiding? The northerner had hoped to calculate the places from which the Burnt Soul could have taken an easy shot through the window. The first spot was the very place where the Son of the Snow Leopard was lying; the second was thirty paces from him behind a sycamore. But it seemed that there was no one there. Obviously he couldn’t be hiding in the first spot either, or else Ga-Nor would already have departed for Ug’s judgment.

“Where have you gotten to, you filthy little toad?” he whispered through clenched teeth.

Time passed but he still couldn’t find his adversary. There was every indication that for some reason he’d up and left. Ga-Nor did not even begin to pay attention to that idiotic thought. He was far too cautious for that. He was going to wait for as long as he needed to.

A large spotted woodpecker flew over the bushes and caught his attention. The bird alighted on the trunk of a nearby sycamore and then instantly took wing, as if something had frightened it. The tracker peered avidly into the thick brush growing beneath the tree. He’d examined it earlier but he hadn’t noticed any signs of danger and had been content to ignore it in his search for other hiding places where the Burnt Soul could have secreted itself.

There was nothing suspicious. Just the bushes. Very little to frighten a bird.

Again, endless minutes of waiting passed by. Ga-Nor did not take his eyes off the bushes. Then the wind changed. His nose was immediately assaulted by the scent of almonds.

The northerner nearly cursed. The beast was hiding all of twenty paces from him. He was so blind that if it were not for the bird, he would never have noticed his enemy. Thank Ug that when his eyes betrayed him, he still had his nose.

He began to crawl backward and to the side. When the distance was shortened to ten paces he saw the Burnt Soul. A head, an upper body, and two arms. Instead of hips and legs these creatures had a short, scaly serpent’s tail. It wasn’t clear what purpose it served, since the brutes moved through the air as if by magic, hovering over the ground. But not very high. It was rumored that they could rise up to the height of a grown man.

The creature’s skull seemed misshapen. A too high and heavy brow, a sunken face, delicate cheekbones. Sparse hair, into which the red-and-purple feathers of some unknown bird were braided. Yellow, shriveled skin, a small lower jaw; the face of an old man. It had no nose or ears. In their place were black holes. Its long arms, as thin as a skeleton’s, looked deceptively weak but they could easily bend a horseshoe. A dirty gray-green tunic was thrown over the desiccated, angular body. A quiver with a bundle of arrows was on its back. Another three arrows were planted in the ground. The bow grasped in the creature’s hands was so large that Ga-Nor began to have some misgivings. You’d use a bow like that to hunt Snow Trolls, not humans.

The archer was completely focused on the cabin. The Burnt Soul didn’t bother to look around and had no clue that a human had been hiding near it all this time. Ga-Nor unsheathed his sword. He took a step toward his enemy. He froze. Another step. He froze again. Now more than ever he resembled a large, redheaded snow leopard. A cat stalking its unwitting prey.

The Burnt Soul shifted and the northerner stopped stalking him and rushed forward. The beast heard him, yelped, turned, and raised its bow. It was far more nimble than he had thought it would be.

At the last moment, Ga-Nor leaped aside and the arrow flew past his ear with an aggravated buzz. He brandished his sword and swept downward, driving it into the creature’s face. The sword sheared through skin, flesh, bone, and brain, destroying the head of his opponent. Its back arched and it flew upward a good two yards; then it fell back to the ground, crashing into the bushes. Ga-Nor did not stop at this and struck the already dead Burnt Soul with three more tremendous blows. In the tracker’s opinion, the creature deserved it.

The Son of the Snow Leopard returned to the cabin and drummed on the door.

“Luk, get out here!”

The door creaked open and the soldier gingerly stepped out of the cabin.

“Screw a toad! I was thinking he’d done you.”

“It was I who ‘did’ him.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s from the blackberry bushes. The beast almost shot me.”

“Was it alone?”

“Yes. Let’s get out of here.”

“I want to see it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve never seen a Burnt Soul.”

Ga-Nor shrugged his shoulders indifferently and indicated the spot where the body lay. He went into the cabin and quickly packed his things into his bag. When he got outside, he could see Luk circling the carcass. The redhead walked over to the guard and also looked at the corpse. The tracker couldn’t really see why it was so interesting.

“You got to kill several of ours, you viper,” spat Luk, pointing to three human scalps attached to the Burnt Soul’s quiver.

“Good riddance,” Ga-Nor responded gloomily.

The soldier pulled a red-and-purple feather from the hair of the slain creature. The feather had miraculously escaped being covered in blood.

“I’ll take this to remember. Do you know the legend of how the Burnt Souls came to be?”

“No,” said the northerner as he tried to draw the captured bow. It was useless. You needed to be a real leviathan to do that. The northerner wistfully dropped the useless weapon to the ground.

“In ancient times, the race of the Burnt Souls was exactly the same as the Je’arre. They lived together in the south, beyond the Great Waste. It was only afterward that the winged
(one of the names given to the Je’arre in the Empire)
flew to the north. According to the legends of our feathered friends, the tribe of the Burnt Souls, which was called something else before, violated the covenants of their god and he punished the heretics. He took their wings away, cast them from the sky, and burned their souls. The beasts grow up, live, die, and then nothing awaits them. They have no chance at all of finding themselves in either the Blessed Gardens or in the Abyss. Only the void and oblivion. And that’s who these Burnt Souls are.”

“Even without wings they fly perfectly well. Get yourself together, storyteller. We need to leave.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Where you wanted to go. To Dog Green. And then we’ll see.”

Without responding, Luk smoothed out the feather and tucked it into the inside pocket of his old jacket.

6

The Nabatorians entered the village early in the morning.

The first riders appeared on the road that led to the Gates. Sixty cavalry galloped down the central street and gathered next to the inn, which they quickly turned into something resembling an army headquarters. They threw the four lodgers out on their ears, but the foursome acted intelligently and did not rebel or offer resistance of any kind. The innkeeper, pale from terror, shoved the gold coins into his pockets with trembling hands and, faltering, mumbled about how happy he was to have such welcome guests. The remaining soldiers were quickly quartered in the nearby houses. They did not cause any harm to the villagers and they were remarkably civil. They didn’t murder, they didn’t rob, they didn’t rape the women, and they paid for all services without fail. It was obvious that they would be there for a long time, and there was no sense in plundering and filching that which had become their own anyway.

Toward dinnertime, a squadron of infantry appeared on the road. Eighty men, maybe a hundred—the villagers didn’t count. They too conducted themselves well, obeying the commander of the cavalry in everything and quickly dispersing among the cottages. Half of the warriors were armed with axes and they began to cut down trees. The commander was planning to build a small outpost and barracks along the road.

The loggers were conscripted to help the soldiers, but they proved to be too proud and foolish to work for outsiders. They brandished their axes instead. On the officer’s orders, three of the ringleaders of the riot were hung and a further two were drowned in the river as a warning. These executions had a sobering effect on the remaining loggers, and no further problems arose with the wood-fellers—they industriously felled timber for the future stronghold. The logs were transported to the standing stone with the help of horses. It was there that the commander of the Nabatorians intended to raise a fort that would seal off the road to the Gates of Six Towers.

One day a soldier found a bottle of moonshine hidden by the locals. He got plastered and began hassling the thatcher’s wife. The thatcher would not stand for it and punched the attacker right in the face. The soldier grabbed his sword, and the peasant, his pitchfork. The patrol arrived and disarmed the men, and the commander passed out a heavy sentence on them—they would both be hanged. The soldier, for not carrying out his orders; the thatcher, for daring to raise a hand against a soldier of Nabator.

Almost all the inhabitants of the village were rounded up for the execution. The men frowned and clenched their fists but they didn’t do anything stupid; their women restrained them. Many of the women cried, fearing that soon retribution would befall all the villagers. However, their fear was not justified. None of those assembled were harmed. Standing by the gallows, the captain read off a declaration written by the Nabatorian King to his new subjects, which stated that the villages and cities occupied by the glorious army of the allied forces of Nabator and Sdis would rest under the auspices of His Majesty until the end of time. All who lent support to the army and took the oath of fealty to His Majesty would be granted permission to live in peace, to work and not pay taxes over the course of the next ten years. It also promised that the punishment for offering resistance to the valiant army of the Nabatorian King, for aiding the enemy soldiers of the Empire, or for any other transgressions against the crown would be death.