Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (56 page)

He had been deeply pleased with the plan and with himself, and correspondingly furious when Karel rejected it. No point in getting ahead, Karel had said; why add their little strength to the Surayonnaise and so be overwhelmed beside them, fighting with outcasts and heretics? Better to sneak up behind, though it took days to do; the Sharai knew they had left a desolation behind them, so wouldn't be watching their backs too closely. That was the chance for a small force to do significant damage, in the dark and by surprise. Besides, it was stupid to take a chance on unmapped country. How did he know there would be a bridge downstream, to bring them back to the north bank and the enemy?

Of course there would be a bridge, Imber had snarled, this was farming country and the river was unfordable. He would stake his life and honour on there being a bridge; and Karel might be older and more experienced but Imber was the Baron-heir and would be obeyed in this, the men would follow him
...

And so they did, and Karel too, wary and unhappy. Even the peasants they led were troubled, though at least they weren't tested by any more scenes of slaughter. They were better armed than they had been, as the Sharai hadn't stopped to scavenge weapons from the fallen, but their eyes were wide with this first taint of war, and Imber had been glad to offer them at least a
little
relief from it.

He had led them across the ridge that had forced the river aside, and so down to meet it returning - and, of course, there had not been a bridge.

From there to here there had still not been a bridge. He had been disbelieving at first, sure that they must find something, bridge or ford around the next bend, or the next after that; how could people live, with their land so impassably divided?

'Carefully,' Karel had answered, with a light touch to his voice that only emphasised his abiding anger. 'If you lived in Surayon, would you not be careful? The people may have their own secret ways to cros
s - tunnels, perhaps, or sorcer
ous devices — but they have ensured that an army does not.'

Certainly, they had done that. The Sharai army was on the other bank, and he had no way to come at it; only a handful of bowmen, as
little
use as a thorn-twig against an armoured knight, and Karel had told them to save their arrows. The Sharai had arrows to spare, it seemed, and sent a flight over at intervals, with mocking calls for seasoning. Karel kept the march out of range and sent men running to glean those shafts, against a future need; he told Imber to be grateful for his enemies' generosity.

That was when they had the time to be generous, when they weren't concerned with real fighting, rather than teasing his mockery of an army They were facing true resistance now, as the Surayonnaise organised; watching from his distance, Imber saw squads of mounted men meet and part and meet again, leaving some of their number fallen at every meeting. He saw men afoot ambush camel-riders, and die largely. He also saw what was no honourable warfare, what had to be the sorcery he'd heard of all his life: gouts of fire flung from the hand to sear and burn whatever flesh it touched, man or camel. Instinctively he made the sign of the God to ward off evil, though none had been flung towards him or his men. They had been ignored, indeed, apart from the Sharai mockery; they had met no one on this side of the river, finding only homesteads recently abandoned, barns and stables deserted, flocks of sheep and goats wandering untended.

Above all, though, what Imber saw on the other side of the river was the steady advance of the Sharai. Opposition delayed them, magic disturbed them but nothing lasted, nothing was for long. They slew or drove off whoever confronted them; they burned whatever crops or buildings they discovered; they rode on.

All Imber could do was to match them, to keep pace. Through all that was left of the day he had done that, and now as the sun set he could still only shadow, only watch from across the water and copy what they did. They made camp in the last of the light, not to venture into unknown territory in darkness; so did he. They scavenged food and firewood from an abandoned farm but camped on open ground, not to be surprised in the night and trapped within walls that could burn; so did he. It was the Sharai way in any case to scorn buildings and sleep beneath the stars, but here there was good sense to it; Imber understood that, after Karel explained it to him.

In truth, it was Karel who chose the site, set the perimeter guard, made all the decisions for his own men and the ragtag brigade that followed them. Publicly he deferred to Imber, and that was salt
on the wound, making it oh-so-cl
ear whose fault it was that they were so divided from the enemy, so useless and alone; privately he made suggestions, and Imber was far too sick with himself to argue. Besides, Karel was doubdess right, right again. They'd lost their chance at the Sharai, he had squandered it with his naivety and pride. The most they could hope for would be to do the God's work, bring the Gods justice on the heretic Surayonnaise. He supposed he should be ordering the fields and the buildings burned as they passed through, but he refused to imitate the Sharai that far. He wouldn't even have the livestock slaughtered, beyond the men's need to eat Fire and death lay heavy on this land already, the air was thick with it; he was here in pursuit of Julianne and to fight the Kingdom's enemies, not to pillage and despoil. This was good fertile farmland, a jewel to the eye after the dust and drought of the road he'd ridden to come here. Nor had any sorcery made it so: only water and work, he knew enough to see that. So let it lie, leave it be. He thought new hands would glean this season
’
s crop, what survived of it; Surayon could not live through this. No need to harm it further.

He hoped, prayed that Julianne could live through this, but didn't know how to help her. There had been no sign of her on the trail, no hint even that they were right to seek her in Surayon. Ever since they'd crossed
the border he'd looked constantl
y for the djinni to come again and tell him where she'd gone, where she'd been taken to; all he'd seen was the devastation that marked where the Sharai had come before him.

Even the sunset was a vivid desolation, fierce reds and oranges, colours of burning. He was glad to see the last of its light leave the sky, though the stars that followed could offer him small comfort, glimmering through a murky haze.

There was a fire at hand, the men's company, and roasting meat; there was another fire, strangers' faces, the peasant army he had enlisted at Revanchard. He could sit among them and learn their stories, as a good commander should. There was a tent where he could be alone, to sulk or scowl or sleep; there was always Karel, who would always talk or listen as he chose.

But there were also fires like distant flecks of gold, and that was the Sharai beyond the river, and he thought their lights were mocking him,
here we are
,
there were other, duller glares behind, which were the blazes the Sharai had set in corn and cabin, barn and barley-field. Those accused him,
they are here, and this is what they did, and where were you?

He could settle neither at one cookfire, nor at the other; he couldn't play either the popular young lord or the determined captain, not tonight. No more could he retire to his tent and lock himself away behind canvas walls. They were too restrictive and too thin, both at once; they would keep him in but not keep the world at bay.

Restl
ess and angry
with himself even for being restl
ess, for giving so much away, he paced away from the firelight with a muttered word to Karel about making a round of the pickets.

They'd been set at all points of the compass on this hostile ground, two experienced men to each and no lights permitted; but it was easy enough to find them when he knew where to look, when he'd had a voice in placing them. He had no trouble in slipping by.

He wante
d only to walk, to calm his restl
ess spirit and confront his fairings away from the silence and the stares of other men. If he walked on the open grassland, though, the pickets were sure to spot him. A figure moving in the night, when all their own men were known to be within the circle of their camp - he'd be lucky to live long enough to reveal his stupidity. All the archers in the troop practised night-shooting. The Sharai might have scouted ahead and found a bridge at last, which Karel had refused to look for, the Surayonnaise might appear at last on this side of the river, to fight any and all invaders; one thing must be certain in the pickets' minds, that no one beyond their perimeter could be a friend.

Still, he needn't make a target of himself. Forced by Sharai arrows to ride at the southern margin of this meadowland, he'd seen how the cultivated ground beyond had been divided by dry stone walls into a myriad of small fields. In the last few miles, those walls had risen higher and higher, so that now they would stand even above the head of a mounted man.

He didn't understand the walls — what sense was it, to build so high and make more shade for crops that loved the sun? — but he could use them now. Karel had distrusted them deeply, seeing their rare entranceways as snares or sallyports. Imber didn't believe in hidden hordes. If Surayon had an army, they must surely have met it by now; it wouldn't be lurking while its country burned.

He walked westerly along the wall with his left hand brushing the rough dry stonework, his eyes growing sharper as he left the lights of the camp ever further behind him. He could still see the glimmer of Sharai fires in the corner of his eye and the smouldering glow they'd left in the countryside behind them, but didn't turn his head to look that way, to dwell upon his failure. Nor to look the other in some hapless search for redemption, for justification, for a bridge.

He gazed due north all the way to a dense ragged rising curtain, the mountain wall that ought to be a guard to this valley principality and was not. It made a flat and sharp-edged shadow against the dull glitter of the sky, like a piece of parchment ripped across; its near flanks were lit well enough to give it shape, and Imber could see dim lights in the deeps, high in the vales. Signs of habitation they must be, some kind of defensive fastnesses; the land was not so empty as it appeared, though he still thought he was right not to look for an army. At least the people had had somewhere to run to. There must be others too on this side of the river
...

Below the first low spurs of the mountains he could see terraced farmland that descended into an irregular patchwork, a pattern of darkness that was clearly the mirror of what he had here, small fields separated by high walls. And then the meadows running down to the river, mirror again.

The river itself ran too deep or was banked too high, he couldn't see the rush of the water, only hear it distantly like a constant whisper against his thoughts, as the smoke in the air was a constant whisper in his throat to say that war was here and he was a part of it.

Not far ahead now was the next opening in the wall, giving access to the fields beyond. It would be darker in there, with no view of the valley, but the darker the better to suit his mood; he wasn't going in for his eyes' sake. He wanted to pace, and the constriction of walls was preferable to this endless run of grass; out here there was nothing to make him turn, he might walk all the way to the far marshes and be thought to have abandoned his men.

Distress always had him on his feet and moving, or yearning to move. His wedding-night had been a torment to him, lying cramped in a cot in the preceptor's study, awake all the night and painfully, brutally aware of Julianne being equally wakeful in the next room, afraid even to shift his weight for fear of the bed's creak alerting her to his own discomfort. Worse than the ache in his muscles had been the ache in his heart, and both had been urging him up onto his feet to outpace the dark, the one thing that he would not do, could not do to her.

He couldn't have done it tonight either, anywhere in camp. Bad enough to make a fine fool of himself; worse far to underscore it with a display of petulant weakness. Out here and unobserved, he could pace till dawn if he was driven to it.

He paused in the entranceway for one last look across the wide empty pastureland, and saw that it was no longer empty.

Saw something moving, something so dark and low that any distant sentry might easily mistake it for a drift of smoke, a flock of ground-running birds, even an eddy in the wind stirring the grasses in some mockery of pattern or intent.

Standing closer as he was, alert as he was to every nuance of light and shade, he could name it for what it was, which was unnameable: a creature but nothing natural, nothing he had ever seen or heard about. Something come out of the river, he thought; something heading certainly, directly for him.

It w
as black as an insect, as a beetl
e is black; its body shimmered in the starlight. It was swift, too, as an insect is swift to scurry. He couldn't see how many legs it had, but many, he thought. Too many, he was sure.

He gripped the hilt of his sword where it was hanging at his belt and gave thanks for that much good sense, at least. Only a fool would have slipped away from his company on hostile ground without a weapon; but then, only a fool would have slipped away at all. Surely only a fool would not now shout to draw friends to him, rather than face something unknown and sinister in this confusing light
...