Ecko Rising (28 page)

One of them called out as they came past, “Look! Banned! They’ve come to deal with the monsters!”

“Tell the CityWarden!” called another. “There are fires in the farmlands and monsters loose in the plains! Our tithes are failing because our harvest burns!”

“Gods,” Triqueta muttered, spitting water. “It’s everywhere.”

“Yep.” Jayr slipped as her horse buffeted her again. “Will you stop that?”

Strapped in the cart, Feren called at the glowering sky. A frisson shivered through Triq’s hunched and sopping form.

Monsters.

* * *

Roviarath’s gatehouse was built of wood, once mighty but now split and cracked with age and weather. There was no archway, no rampart – the building sat snug between soil battlements that offered a sheltered walkway around their top. In better weather, you could tour the Fayre from above.

Now, though, the walkway contained only archers, dejected in the downpour.

As Triqueta and the others came closer, thumping to a stop with the rain now driving into their backs, they could see the watch-flag, hanging sodden and fluttering occasionally like a dying bird.

Triq shook her hood, wiped her face. She called into the hammering weather, “Triqueta of the Banned! I bear injured!”

“Picked your night for it!” The archers’ commander, their tan, grinned down at her. “Gate’s open, go on in. Did you find your dice?”

“Don’t yank my rope, Cohn.” Triq gave the guardsman a rude hand gesture. “If you know who took them – !”

“No, Triq, I don’t. But I do know I wouldn’t be letting you in city limits if you still had them on you.” His comment was greeted by guffaws from further back.

“Why the watch-flag?” Ress called from the cart. “You got pirate problems?”

“Nah.” The commander took a tiny block of wax from a pouch and rubbed it carefully down his bowstring. “The wild herds’re on the move – they’re much closer to the walls. And it’s not only them – Deep Patrols say bigger beasties have shifted territory, they shot a lone bweao not half a day from the waterside.” He grinned. “Don’t tell me you lot haven’t noticed?”

“Bweao?” Ress chuckled. “They kill it?”

“Fat chance!” The guard commander rolled his eyes, still grinning. “It was a young one, I think – they scared it off.”

Triq spat water. “Storyteller said something about fires?”

“Not in this weather!” The tan laughed at her.

Triq groaned, and then, quite clearly, Feren cried out, “We see all but nothing!”

She turned, but Ress was already moving the cart forwards.

“Kid needs help. Must get to the hospice!”

“No problem!” The commander drew a shaft from the quiver at his belt and notched it, though he didn’t draw the string. He nodded affably as they passed between decaying wooden jaws. “We’ll send a runner up to old man Jade. Hope your lad’s all right, there. And stay out of trouble!”

If he heard Triqueta’s answering chuckle, he made no sign.

* * *

Larred Jade, CityWarden of Roviarath, was a tall man, lean and curved and canny, eyes as blue and clear as the summer sky. In spite of the rain that beat on the windows of the rocklit hospice, his skin was tinged with sunlight. Dark hair was caught in a gleaming metal band at the nape of his neck. White strands glittered through it, like the bright edges of his awareness.

Warden Jade was as sharp as a good blade and a fireblasted hard man to fool. Standing a head taller than his frowning apothecary, he was watching the dying boy that now lay, blood black and parchment white, upon the cool haven of the pallet.

He said, “Monsters.”

Wet garments still stuck to her, dripping rainwater from her hem stitching, Triqueta turned to face him. Her hair was stuck to her like molten metal and the stones in her cheeks flashed, a warning – or a plea.

She said, “I know how it sounds –”

“It’s crazed.” He was tapping long fingers against his thigh – artisan’s fingers, fingers for weaving success. The CityWarden was a merchant, and a very successful one; his knowledge of his craft was absolute.

“I know.” She caught his eye, shrugged at him with deceptive innocence, then her expression sobered. “I saw them, Larred, we all did. I’ve never had anything like that under me. It was like riding a... riding a storm.”

The words were inadequate to the thrill that sang in her blood.

“Address me as Warden Jade.” It was reflex, his tone was both thoughtful and wary. He said, “Half human, half horse, lurking at the borders of the city.”

Watched by a fidgeting Ress, the apothecary was carefully soaking Feren’s bandaging away from the boy’s wounds.

“Too long in the open grass, Triqueta of the Banned, plays games with your sight and memory – and that’s without all the ale,” the Warden said.

“Maybe,” she told him archly, “but it’s not a game when you tear out its cursed throat, feel its blood run down your arm. When you’ve got it under you and you’re fighting for life, for control.” Her hand tensed with the memory – the adrenaline, the fury, the savage and primal release of strength. Her voice alight she said, “I don’t know what they were, Larred, but they’re
out
there. And the bweao know it – why d’you think that flag’s on your gatehouse?”

Jade’s gaze flicked from Feren’s wounds, to Triq’s closed fist, to the empty rings at her belt – she carried no weapons in his presence. Water dripped from her as though she was melting, black puddles seeped across the stone.

“They’re real, Warden.” Ress’s hands twitched, as if he ached to treat the boy himself. “Not a day’s ride from here – though it’s taken us a little longer.”

Larred Jade did not turn to look at him. “What evidence did you bring?”

“For Gods’ sakes...!” Triqueta curbed a flash of temper. Being out of the rain and the wind and the wet, she was welcoming the desert flame back to her heart, the passion of her people in her blood. “I had it between my
thighs
, Larred, a thing of muscle and fury and death. I didn’t stop for mementoes.”

“We’ve brought evidence,” Ress said calmly. “Your people will tell you – look at the boy’s wounds and tell me you know what made that hole.”

The apothecary nodded, though he was intent on his work and didn’t speak.

Rain scattered on the window. Somewhere deeper in the stone walls of the building, the wind had found a crack and now it keened like a lost thing.

The draught stole across Triq’s wet shoulders and raised the hackles on her forearms.

Know what made that hole.

Monsters.

She was still shivering.

Jade spun on his heel and faced Ress full-on, his expression as cool and dark as the stone of his walls.

“You’re known as a rational man, Ress of the Banned. You’re telling me this tale is true?”

Ress shrugged. “Didn’t believe it either – not ’til I was defending the boy.”

“So what would you have me do?”

“Name of the Gods!” Triqueta wanted to grab him, shake him, pull the images from her mind and force him to see them, rip him open, make him feel what she had felt. “Muster! Your cavalry should – !”

“My cavalry’s going nowhere, Triqueta. Your scarred friend took her injured horse down to the stables –”

“You said you wanted evidence.” Triq’s tone was tart.

“
Don’t
interrupt me again.” Jade was getting angry. “Lots of things have claws, and lots of things make
holes
. The boy’s hurt’s serious and I’ll tend it, of course, but we’re on
Watch.
”

“Why the rhez d’you
think
the herds have moved?” Triq’s exasperation rang from the stone. “There’s a new predator carving out territory, it doesn’t take a member of the Banned to tell you that. There’s also someone still being held, a Xenotian teacher, and we can’t just –”

“Harvest time is almost upon us, Triq! The autumn is coming and the grass is changing colour. In only a few halfcycles the little death will be upon us. The grass will all die and the soil will be bare until the spring. I need every spare man, woman and child I’ve got to ensure the survival of my livestock, my farmlands, my people and my city – I don’t have the forces to spare! The pirates –”

“Larred, don’t be a –”

“Enough!” The Warden’s loss of patience clanged loud and sudden, it caused Feren to mutter, his eyelids fluttering. “This is
my
city, Triq, my love and hope since Varya died. I’ve got no children – Roviarath is everything to me.” The wind keened under his tone. “I’m the heart of the Varchinde, and what you’re telling me is
crazed.
”

Something in his voice was helpless, frustrated, caught. Triq said softly, “If this is the love of your life, Larred, then defend it.”

The apothecary coughed, said softly. “The boy’s infection is critical, Warden. I’ll need to open the wound.”

His face troubled now, shadows of the rain on the window speckling his skin with doubt, Jade nodded.

Ress said, “Warden Jade, you’re facing predators and piracy with inadequate defences – I understand. But against the things we’ve fought?” He gestured at the grotesque, blackening swelling of Feren’s hip. “They’ll rip everything in their path to bloody pieces. We have no idea where they’ve come from or the size of their force – no idea what they want. They’re not just animals. You should find them, before they find you.”

Triqueta noted that Ress said nothing of the Bard’s nightmare fears – this was hard enough.

Jade shook his head as if to dismiss the idiocy of it all. “You’re suggesting these – things – have some sort of plan?”

Feren gasped and spasmed as the blade lanced the wound. Blood and pus soaked the apothecary’s fingers, the boy’s skin, the soft sheets of the pallet. A sharp, metal smell cut through the air.

Gore began to drip onto the floor.

Triq swallowed a mouthful of bile.

Jade was agitated, pacing. “Ress. I’m no warrior – and I’m no fireblasted gambler. If we don’t gather enough grass, we all die. The pirates know this too – their attacks redouble at this time of the return. And the bweao...” He tailed off, his gaze seeing through and past the troubled, sweating apothecary. “This isn’t Fhaveon. I can send a bretir for more force, but even assuming the Lord Foundersson heeds the message, it’ll be five days before I have a response and a full cycle – twenty days at least – before any help reaches me. I need the warriors I have.”

“So – what?” Triq spat at him. “You’ll do nothing? Abandon the girl and hope it all goes away?”

He smiled, mirthless. “I’ll make you a trade, Triqueta – you bring me information, and I’ll mobilise. I want numbers, forces, deployment, tactics. I want to know what they are, what they want and how they plan to get it. I want to know where they are and where they came from – exactly the threat that they’re offering.” He watched the sheets under Feren deepening to a black smear. “My forces are limited – but I can risk one strike. If I know exactly where to hit and how hard. I’m going to play a game, I need to know the rules.”

“For Gods’ sakes, Larred – !”

“In return –” Jade held up a long finger “– I’ll despatch the bretir to Fhaveon and brief my patrols to observe – but not engage. I’ll look for information on the girl, and I’ll heal the boy. If I can.”

Ress said, “Thank you, Warden.”

“Thank you, my horse’s arse.” Triqueta was barely clinging to her temper. “You want to know what Feren saw – !”

“I want to hear the account from him, yes.”

“Is that your
payment
? Information? You soulless mercantile bastard.”

Jade’s face set white – for a moment, he was lost for words.

“Warden?” In the silence, the apothecary’s tense question fell like a pebble and rolled across the water-stained floor. Ress turned.

Jade stood like a carven statue, watching Triqueta. After a moment, he said, “So in your world of reckless gambling, Triq, tell me.” His voice was as tight as a rope. “What would you do?”

“I’d send out every mounted fighter I had, find the leader of the herd and pull its fireblasted guts out.” A trickle of rainwater ran down her cheek, circling the opal stone. “Slowly. Along with some critical questions about its
mates.
The Fayre’s like a willing virgin, Larred, her thighs wide open. Grass harvest or no, you could find yourself...” She paused. “What?”

“Isn’t that just like the Banned? Act first, think afterwards?” There was a ghost of a smile on Jade’s lips, humourless and angry. “Did Roderick take any action, frothing idealist that he is? Did he ride after the missing girl himself? Perhaps Syke’s sending a war-Banned?” His grin was sharp edged; he didn’t wait for an answer. “Or did he send you here to make me do it for him?”

Her anger skidded to a halt.

A cursed hard man to fool.

The truth clamped like a hand over her mouth, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think of a thing to say. The accuracy of his shot had knocked the passion straight out of her and now she was gasping, casting about her for anything with which to hit him back. “The scouts attacked us on the way, Syke doesn’t...”

But Jade was nodding, smiling to himself.

She tried again, almost childish. “We’re twice the fighters you are!” But she realised even as she said them that the words had been a mistake.

“Yes,” he said, “you are. I make no effort to deny it.”

Feren’s thin scream made Triq shudder, she gave a half-panicked glance to see that both the city apothecary and Ress were now fighting to staunch the bloodflow from the boy’s hip. A tide of thick scarlet soaked cloths and skin, flecked faces with dots like fragments of horror.

She could smell the blood. The wind still keened and rain scattered against the window, as if it sought entry.

The boy was going to die.

One last try. “Please Larred! Don’t let them do this to anyone else!”

Jade faltered, faced by the same view, the same blood tide. He raised a hand. Upon his little finger, the wrought terhnwood-fibre ring of the City caught the rocklight and glittered. He said, “Do you really think that I’d do nothing?”

What?
“I don’t understand...”