Dark Heart (31 page)

Yet I’ve had the stone in my hand while much of the healing has taken place. How exhausted must the others feel?

And what gives them the right to take without asking? Even to do good?

‘Aye, we did a good job, though not good enough,’ Seren said, surprising him. ‘More time to plan, mebbe enough to do some reconnaissance, and we might’ve been able to hold the Neherians out.’

‘Four hundred and fifty-one bodies, as best as we c’n tell,’ said Tumar in his raspy voice. ‘All hacked up, some scattered, like. Nothin’ the magickers could do about them.’

‘How many Neherians?’ Noetos asked angrily.

Bregor answered. ‘A hundred or more, most scalded by the water. Some still alive, though we changed that.’ The man drew a deep breath. ‘Well, the Racemen did. Beat them to death with sticks, mostly, or used their own weapons against them.’

Bregor spoke with hardly a hint of the damage Noetos had done to the man’s throat during their flight from Fossa. A throat he now cleared in obvious nervousness.

‘What is it?’ Noetos asked, trying but failing to keep the impatience out of his voice.

‘I’m taking the refugees back to Raceme,’ the man said, speaking quickly as if staving off an expected interruption. ‘I’ll be careful to avoid the Neherians, but I don’t think they’ll stop in Raceme after what’s happened to them. I’m thinking I’ll put out a call along the coast. Perhaps there are some who will come north and make their homes here.’

‘You mean to become the Lord of the Coast?’ Noetos said, not sure whether to laugh or be angry. ‘You and a few thousand women and children? Don’t you think you ought to ask permission of the Heir of Roudhos?’

‘I certainly wouldn’t expect you to condescend to help us, consumed as you are with ideas of revenge,’ Bregor huffed. ‘Go north and take your toy army with you and bash your heads against the walls of Andratan. Get yourself killed. Meanwhile these people have to live somewhere; I don’t see why it shouldn’t be in Raceme. I’ve decided, and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Noetos smiled. ‘It’s a relief, actually. I had no idea what to do with all these people save leaving them in Cohamma’s lap. Now the charlatan has likely sold himself to the losing side, you’re the best option. He’ll be your main problem, of course. The Neherians might come at you again, but now they have lost their court…Ah, no time for this now. I’ll talk to you before you go.’

‘That’s it? We escape from Fossa together and you let me go without an argument?’

‘What do you want? You want me to oppose a good idea? Beg you to continue north with us?’ He glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘Bregor, you admitted sleeping with my wife. If I understand it right, you
both
slept with her. No judge in the land would deny my right to redress, no matter who you are or how you phrase your defence of what you did. I hardly think a week or two together, you as my captive, with no apology for what you did, makes for an everlasting friendship in the face of
that
, does it, my friend?’ He spat the last two words as though they were a curse.

‘Redress? Of course. You’d seek redress for Opuntia in the same way as you’d look for compensation for any lost possession. Do you have even a glimmer of an idea how to live with real people, Fisher? You never understood just how you turned a wonderful girl into a frightened woman with your boorishness and self-centredness. And you are well on the way to doing the same with her children. Yes, I know now you had a reason, a terrible secret, and I pity you for it, but a reason is not of itself an excuse. I might step wary of you, Fisher, but I’ll never respect you.’

The Fossan Hegeoman stepped back as though expecting a furious reply. Even to evade a fist perhaps.

Her
children?

Dumbfounded, Noetos did nothing but stare slack-jawed at the man. Arathé and Anomer looked on, along with his sworn men and a few of the newcomers.
Her
children? A question begged, which if answered in the negative would rip out his heart by the roots.

He would not ask it.

But he had to give response.

‘You respect my sword arm, Bregor, and the stone I carry. Both of which you might one day need to defend Raceme from those who see it as an easy mark.’

‘Are you saying you will join me?’ Incredulity and real hope in the man’s voice.

‘What I’m saying is
you
should join
me
. Come north and get the answers you want from the throne of Andratan. Then return south with me and together we’ll put Raceme to rights. The Heir sword would be respected there.’

‘And in the meantime thousands of people are left without a protector,’ Bregor said.

‘You? You call yourself a protector? Who will protect you? And when the next Neherian fleet comes by, what will you set fire to in order to signal your betrayal?’

‘Enough!’ Anomer cried. ‘More than enough! You two will destroy each other. People depend upon both of you, don’t you understand?’

Arathé signalled something, and Anomer translated. ‘Have this discussion in private, my sister says. She’s right.’

‘In the meantime we need to find a safe place for these people,’ said Sautea. ‘Get them hid and fed and you can argue all night, if that’s your wish. Though nothing but bitterness will come of it, of a certainty.’

Noetos sighed, then nodded. They all criticised him, but everyone looked to him for leadership. At the least they smelled something of his grandfather on him; he ought to be proud of that. But the old Duke of Roudhos would have ordered heads struck off for such talk, he was sure of it.

Ignoring the whispering, he took time to organise the camp. The Neherians had begun to move, filing out through the same notch in the hills they had come through. There were so many fewer standing now than earlier in the day, and Noetos no longer feared them. There was therefore no need—and little time—to relocate the refugees to somewhere more defendable. They would spend the night here, in the open. He assigned Bregor to supervise foraging parties, and sent Tumar to organise a firewood detail. Water they could fetch from the cleanest of the streams: at least one was relatively unpolluted. Good enough for one night, at least.

He had put an end to the Neherian threat. He was identified as the Heir of Roudhos, and had taken his revenge upon those who had slain his family. His son and his daughter lived, and remained by his side. Why then, he wondered as he issued orders to people who didn’t need them, did he feel so…so lorn?

He’d heard the talk. Hundreds of Racemen had participated in his rescue by allowing Arathé and Anomer to draw strength from them, spreading his injuries amongst themselves. Vicariously they had sampled the violence directed at him, and had then been part of the much greater violence he had brought to bear on the Neherians. According to Anomer, very few of them had abandoned the venture even during the killing at the banquet; but afterwards the talk had started.

Excessive, many called it. Even among those who said it had to be done, there were some who felt the killings had been little more than executions. The Summer Palace Massacre, it was being called. Someone, probably Bregor, had told the refugees the story of his family, and while some said they understood, most felt they had been duped into supporting a personal vendetta.

And now four hundred and fifty-one deaths that everyone said was retribution for the Summer Palace killings. White-faced relatives of the dead stared at him, their eyes glittering with anger or dull with grief. His fault. No matter that the Neherians had done the actual killing; no matter that he and his children had risked their lives for them. That his plan had saved them.

Even were he to abandon his plan to travel north, he could not remain with Bregor and the Racemen. He’d end up with a knife in his back before the week was out.

So be it. He would stay one more night with the refugees, then leave them in Bregor’s care. He’d take his children north, and anyone else who cared to go with them. He would not give up his quest.

A young boy approached with a basket containing bread and strips of dried meat. As Noetos reached for a crust the boy leaned away from him, as though fearful of contact.

‘Oh, for Alkuon’s sake!’ Noetos snapped.

The boy dropped the basket and burst into tears.

This has gone far enough.
‘Take me to your parents,’ he said to the boy as gently as he could, knowing his voice still had rough edges enough to frighten the lad further.

‘I…my father, my father…’ He could say no more.

Who had pressed this poor little fellow into bringing around the food? Was no one else willing to serve? He took the shaking boy by the hand and went in search of Bregor.

What he found was a collection of serious-looking men standing around in a stony clearing surrounded by gorse and bramble, a worked-over prospecting site. While he had been taking his ease, it seemed Bregor had gathered what passed for the leaders of the Racemen, and now addressed them, outlining his plans. They had taken themselves off some distance from the others, though what needed to be said in private was beyond the fisherman.

The boy snatched his hand away from Noetos and ran to one of the men, burying his head against the man’s hip. Trying to relax what he knew would be an angry scowl on his face, Noetos approached the man.

‘Excuse me,’ he said quietly, ‘is this your lad?’

In the distance Bregor prattled on about rebuilding Raceme; the rest of the crowd remained intent on him.

‘Uh-huh,’ the man answered without turning around. ‘Been in trouble, has he?’

‘Quite the opposite. Someone sent him to take food to Noetos of Fossa, and the little fellow is frightened—’

‘I’m not surprised! Noetos Fellhand? And this after he’s lost his mother?’ The man turned his tear-streaked face to Noetos. ‘I sent him off to find…’ His voice petered out.

‘Don’t you think you ought to have provided the boy with an escort?’ Noetos said blandly. ‘Perhaps a hundred of your best men? It was Noetos Fellhand, after all, to whom he was bringing food. You know, the man who slays innocent children.’ It was no use: he could not control his voice. ‘I’m surprised the boy returned alive.’

The man tried to answer, but Noetos was not interested.

‘Why bother bringing food to the embodiment of evil anyway?’ he went on. ‘What’s Fellhand done for you in the last hour? Yes, he stopped the whirlwind, he wiped out the Neherian leadership come north to enslave you, and he helped defeat the Neherian army, but that’s all in the past!’

Bregor had stopped talking, and people were turning, seeking the source of the shouting, but Noetos could not stop.

‘Wouldn’t you all be better off without me? Well, you’ll get your wish, friends. Go and grumble at someone else. That man there’—he pointed at Bregor—‘will do as well as anyone.’

For a moment the little boy’s sobbing was the only sound in the clearing.

‘You can’t stop this, Fisher,’ Bregor said, walking over to him.

‘Oh, yes I can.’ Noetos lowered his voice. ‘You don’t know how easily I could stop this, with a few words about what happened at Fossa, if I thought it would do any good. But it won’t.’ He sighed, and raised his voice to a little less than a shout. ‘You’re all fools. Raceme ought to be left for years at a minimum; generations at best. The Neherian force is broken now, but do you think Neherius is cowed? That there is no one left willing to seize on these events as an opportunity to establish themselves in the absence of the old court? The first thing an ambitious man will do is raise a punitive army. Such a thing will cement his popularity with the public and his leadership with whatever remains of their army. Thought of that, Bregor? Or was this the subject of this meeting?’ He well knew it wasn’t.

The Hegeoman made to reply, but Noetos found he really wasn’t concerned, and told them so.

‘You’ll ignore my advice anyway,’ he said. ‘You’ll have this man rule over you, despite the fact he cannot protect you and your children. Ask him how well he protected his own village! And one day—one day soon—the Neherians, or some other force, will appear and you won’t be able to run fast enough.’

This is ridiculous,
he told himself as he harangued them with his frightening words. No, not his words; his father the strategist’s. Words Noetos thought he’d paid no attention to; indeed, had been punished for not learning. Evidently he had learned them.

But what he had not learned was to know when to keep those words to himself. These people were determined to rebuild; and, really, could he blame them? Could he do anything but admire their courage? Was what they intended any more dangerous than his stated goal of marching north to beard the Undying Man in his lair?

Anomer was right. He needed to control his tongue.

‘Let us hope that day never comes,’ he said by way of apology. ‘Or, if it does, you have a plan prepared to deal with it. In the meantime, go with my blessing.’

Lame, insincere, and Bregor would know it.

Rather than thanking Noetos for his kind words, and with no recognition of what they had cost him, the Hegeoman glowered at him. ‘I don’t know what has possessed you of late,’ he said, ‘but you have even less tolerance than you once had. Rather than wishing a broken people well, you harangue them, frightening those who need assurance. Did you care that some of the men standing here have lost their wives or children today? Fisher, you are a poison. Take that mouth of yours away and use it on the Undying Man. Maybe after you’ve had your say to him you’ll be of some use to someone.’

A dozen retorts filled his mouth. He hesitated a moment, purely through a desire to select the most incisive one.

‘My, your family has loud voices.’

Noetos jumped: who was this? He had not heard the stranger come alongside him; the tall man who had emerged first from Lake Woe. With his white robe billowing in the rising afternoon breeze the man ought to have been visible from some distance away, but such had been Bregor’s and Noetos’s preoccupation, the tall figure had been able to drift, cloud-like, up to them.