Imperial Fire (24 page)

Wayland waved Otia over and they began questioning the boy. The sun was low over the mountains when Wayland reported to Vallon.

He pointed north. ‘The highlanders will spring their next trap from up there. A score of them are waiting to roll rocks down on us.’

A few miles up the valley, the eastern side fell in three gigantic steps, the lowest falling almost plumb to the road, above it two bands of cliffs separating scree slopes angled at the limits of stability. The road cut into the mountain and there was no way to avoid the ambush.

‘I’ll send a squad of mountain men to take the position,’ Vallon said.

‘I’ll lead them,’ Wayland said.

‘I thought…’ said Vallon, and left it at that. He managed a short bow. ‘Arrange the attack as you see fit.’

Mellow evening sunshine bathed the mountains as the convoy approached the ambush site. They had climbed above the treeline and long shadows threw the valley into wild relief. Vallon halted his force well short of the site and Wayland used what remained of daylight to plot a route. A direct ascent was impossible. Even if they climbed the cliff by a more devious line, the scree slope above the crag was so bald that the ambushers would spot the squad long before they could engage. To command the enemy position without being seen would involve a lengthy detour that would bring them above the second step before traversing left to take up position behind the ambushers. Then they would have to descend the cliff before falling on the enemy. Judging by the great apron of scree beneath it, the strata were rotten. Not a descent to be undertaken by night.

He’d chosen his squad – all men who’d grown up in mountains. That included Gorka and Lucas. The youth might be a windmill to emotion, but any man who could outstrip Wayland in an uphill dash was fit for the task.

He was eating supper with Atam when a hideous braying raised the hairs on his neck. The dog lifted its head and bayed at the moon.

Wayland heard Vallon laugh. ‘We know how to answer that.’

Troopers rose and bellowed into the hollows of their shields, the amplified cries and countercries merging and echoing between the valley walls. When the noise stopped, two distant wolf packs continued howling in melancholy counterpoint.

Wayland retired to his tent and woke around midnight. Stars burned in the windless sky. His ten-man squad stood ready. He shouldered his war bow, eyed the crag where the enemy waited and sighted on the moon.

‘Careful with your feet. On a night as still as this, the enemy will hear a stumble half a mile off.’

They set off, plugging up the tortuous route. Most of the night had passed before they reached the second band of cliffs. Wayland looked for a route up, his brow sheened with sweat.

‘This way,’ he said, leading up a gulley lined with rock that came away in his hands.

Behind him a trooper dislodged a hundredweight of rotten stone that went clattering down the mountain.

Wayland hissed. ‘The enemy may put that down to chance. Make a second clumsy move and they’ll know we’re up here.’

Dawn still stood below the peaks when the squad reached the cliff top above the ambush site. All around the sky was awash with stars. A shower of meteorites glided overhead in a shallow arc. The troopers dozed or talked quietly among themselves.

‘I’ve got a question for you,’ Wayland said to Lucas.

‘Ask away.’

‘If Vallon had ordered you to kill that boy, would you have?’

‘I was wondering that myself. I don’t know. If I had, it would have poisoned my dreams.’

‘Good. That means you have a conscience.’

‘Are you saying that Vallon doesn’t?’

‘Far from it. His conscience is more troubled than most because of the decisions he’s forced to make.’ Wayland lay down and wrapped himself in his cloak. ‘Wake me between dawn and dark.’

The stars were dimming when Wayland prepared to make the descent. He leaned out from the cliff top as far as he dared. It was higher and steeper than he’d expected.

‘Search for a way down,’ he told the troopers.

Light outlined the eastern ranges when the pathfinders returned. ‘Only a cat could find safe footing on that debris,’ said one. Another panted in agreement. ‘I got halfway down and reached a sheer drop.’

‘We’ll have to use ropes,’ Gorka said.

Lucas trotted up. ‘I think I’ve found a way. It’s a bit of a scramble.’

‘Show us.’

Lucas led him to a fissure and lowered himself down it, bracing hands and feet against the sides. Wayland followed, cramping himself against the narrow walls. Even moving carefully, he couldn’t avoid dislodging rocks.

‘Careful,’ said Lucas from below. ‘You nearly brained me.’

Dawn was in full flush when they reached a ledge hanging out more than twenty feet above the base of the cliff.

Wayland peered over. ‘Too steep to descend unaided.’

The men began to uncoil the ropes. There was enough light now for Wayland to make out the shapes of the ambushers crouched beside cairns of rocks. Not much imagination was required to envisage the devastation the boulders would wreak on a slow-moving column hundreds of feet below.

‘Look out!’ one of the troopers cried.

A rock he’d dislodged whirred past Wayland’s head, struck the ledge a sharp crack and flew into space. It hit the scree slope and bounded away towards the ambushers.

‘That’s torn it,’ Gorka said.

The ambushers turned and stared up at the cliffs.

‘We’re in shadow,’ a trooper said. ‘They might not spot us.’

Even as he spoke, a group of highlanders began struggling up the slope. Gorka threw his rope over the drop.

‘Not enough time,’ Wayland said. ‘They’ll reach us before everyone gets down.’

Lucas stepped to the tip of the drop. ‘We don’t need ropes. Just jump.’

‘Are you fucking mad?’ Gorka said.

‘The scree’s so steep and loose it will cushion our fall. I used to jump off cliffs like this in the Pyrenees. Look.’ With that, Lucas launched off. He hit the slope and skidded twenty yards before flailing to a halt. He grinned. ‘The trick is to land at the same angle as the slope.’

Gorka wiped a finger under his nose. ‘Fuck.’

By now the highlanders had gained more than a hundred feet, advancing at an indefatigable trudge.

‘I’ll go next,’ Wayland said.

He shut his eyes in brief prayer and jumped. A long rush of weightlessness before he struck the scree and careered down. Lucas managed to arrest his descent. Wayland looked back at the remaining troopers. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

Seven of them summoned up the courage to jump, all landing without injury. The last held back and spoke in a wheedling tone. ‘I can’t. I twisted an ankle on the way up.’

‘Then find your own way down,’ Wayland said.

The highlanders were already a third of the way up the slope. ‘Do we meet them or wait for them?’ Gorka said.

‘We can tear straight through them,’ Lucas said.

‘He’s right,’ Wayland said. ‘Spread out in a line. Ready? Go!’

The squad set off down the slope, running with staccato steps and leaning back for balance and traction. The scree began to move beneath them, forcing them to take longer and longer strides, the surface sliding faster and faster until it threatened to overtake their whirling legs.

‘Ride it,’ Lucas cried, bending his knees and spreading his arms.

Wayland balanced on the wave of rocky surf and accelerated at an alarming rate, his hair blowing straight back and tears whipping from his eyes. The squad glissaded past the band of highlanders as if they were stumps. The hiss of scree behind the human toboggans harshened into an ominous rattle. They’d set off a landslide, a lobe of debris that grew coarser the further they descended. Stones as big as a fist bounded past Wayland. The ambush site rushed up and he saw that he had no more than fifty feet of runout before he went over the precipice.

‘How do we stop?’ he shouted.

‘Like this,’ Lucas yelled, slaloming to the right.

Wayland skidded to the left and just made it off the hurtling shale, tearing the skin of one palm in the process. Somehow the other troopers also found safe ground. Six of the ambushers scattered before the landslide engulfed them. The other four left it too late and the mass of scree crashed into them and swept them over the cliff like woodlice carried down a drain.

The hellish rattling died to a dribble. A single stone trickled and fell. Troopers groaned and laughed. ‘That was better than sex,’ Gorka said.

Wayland sucked shards from his lacerated palm and saw Lucas giving futile chase to the fleeing ambushers.

‘Get back here,’ he shouted.

Lucas gave up, flailing back at a pace that suggested he had enough energy to do it all again. He dumped himself down beside Wayland.

‘What do you think? Four men dead and an ambush foiled. Does that count towards my armour?’

‘No. It wasn’t proper combat.’

Lucas appealed to Gorka. ‘What say you, boss?’

With a beckoning gesture that boded ill, Gorka enticed Lucas into range and grasped him in a head lock. ‘You came close to wiping all of us out,’ he said. He hurled Lucas away and chuckled. ‘Mad idiot.’

Wayland smiled. He stood and touched Lucas in passing. ‘You did well.’

He went to the edge of the cliff, pulled out an Outlanders pennant and waved it to signal that the way was clear. The column strained into motion. From his vantage, Wayland could see what they couldn’t – the road strangled by a yawning chasm, precipices shooting up to white peaks on every side.

Nobody molested them on the journey though the pass. Beyond it the road descended in wild zigzags and Wayland spotted Ossetian settlements on the other side of the valley, some of the houses no more than heaps of stones, recognisable as habitation only by wisps of smoke escaping from their roofs.

The road began climbing again and the twin summits of Mount Kazbeg appeared above the lesser peaks like a bishop’s mitre. A quilt of grey clouds settled, obliterating the summits. This was the gloomiest and most savage section of the route, immense iron-grey walls squeezing in on both sides, the river smoking a thousand feet below and wicked gleams of ice directly above. Banks of snow lay heaped in the shadows, some of them blocking the track. At one place the convoy had to dig through a landslide before the carts could pass.

Afternoon found them stretched out single file on a section of road hacked out of the cliffs. A headwind smelling like cold iron funnelled through the pass. Vallon rode up alongside Wayland.

‘Snow’s coming. A double march should see us clear.’

Wayland eyed the precipices louring under the cloud mantle. ‘Wait until dark.’

‘If we delay, the snow could block the road.’

‘The highlanders haven’t finished with us.’

Vallon looked up the cloud-draped cliffs. ‘Even if they’re waiting, they won’t be able to see us.’

‘They’ve probably posted spotters. Let’s wait until night.’

‘A storm could delay us for days.’ Vallon swung his arm at the column. ‘Keep moving. Don’t stop until we’re through.’

Twilight and overcast created a ghastly netherworld. Wayland advanced with his nerves strung tight. The column lit torches to show the road and had gone perhaps another mile when a horn blew from somewhere close by. Wayland looked up into the dark clouds. He heard a groaning sound and then the grating of stone. Moments later an infernal crack shattered the silence.

He wrenched his horse towards the cliff. ‘Take cover!’

A boulder boomed down the precipice and exploded on the road in a shower of sparks, sending splinters flying in all directions. An acrid stink drifted downwind. The second missile crashed to earth, shattering into pieces with enough force to breach a city wall.

‘Back!’ someone shouted. ‘Forward!’ cried another.

It didn’t matter which way they turned. The enemy had judged their attack perfectly, catching the Outlanders at the point between no advance and no retreat. They’d had days to prepare and they levered over boulders as big as huts that burst on impact, shooting out fragments with enough force to reduce a body to mush. One rock scored a direct hit on a horse and rider, squashing them like bugs. A sliver of stone no bigger than a nail paring slit Wayland’s cheek. He clung on to his terrified horse.

‘Atam!’

Someone screamed and went on screaming, the sound horrible enough to tear gristle.

Wayland gripped his dog’s nape. ‘Find Atam.’

It didn’t hesitate, running uphill through the deluge of boulders. Wayland abandoned his horse and followed.

‘Atam! Where are you?’

The boy drifted out of the mayhem, his face freckled with blood.

‘Oh my God,’ Wayland said, skidding to his knees.

A fearful impact had torn Atam’s left arm off below the shoulder. He clutched the stump. ‘I’ve lost my arm,’ he said in the tone of a child who’d mislaid something important and feared punishment.

Wayland dragged him under an overhang. The boy’s eyes were sinking into his face. The dog whimpered. ‘Good boy,’ Atam whispered.

Wayland choked back his horror and examined the wound. The force of the impact had effectively cauterised the blood vessels. ‘Hero,’ he shouted. ‘Hero, I need you.’

‘He’s down there,’ said a trooper hunched over a few yards away.

‘Stay with the boy,’ Wayland said. He sprang up. ‘Hero!’

Wayland found the physician treating a soldier with a smashed jaw. ‘Atam’s dreadfully hurt. Hurry!’

Hero’s glance was measured. ‘I’ll come as soon as I’ve finished treating this patient.’

Wayland wrenched him away. ‘He’s not going to die soon, but Atam won’t live unless you attend to him straight away.’

The trooper tending Atam looked up as they approached and sniffed away a tear. ‘Poor little bastard.’

Hero crouched and touched Atam’s cheek. ‘The shock alone would have killed him. I don’t think he felt any pain.’

‘He can’t be dead,’ Wayland shouted. ‘Only two days ago I swore to bring him home to my family.’

Hero took Wayland’s hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Horrid cries carried through the dark. ‘I must attend to the living.’

The dog had couched its head on Atam’s lap. Wayland brushed back his hair and clutched the back of his skull. ‘Did he speak? Did he say anything?’