In the Ruins (68 page)

“Done at the urging of the council!” cried Cat Mask, out of turn. “Not out of lust for power!”

“Do not throw sharp words at me, young one!” said White Feather. She was old enough to be his aunt, and he frowned, head twitching sideways just once, as he suppressed his annoyance. “We must not ignore how powerful Feather Cloak’s magic is, that she retained her fertility when the rest of us ran dry. There is wisdom in choosing as leaders those who seek life, not death.” She stepped one pace back. “I am done speaking.”

Kansi-a-lari smiled.

Feather Cloak felt a cold current in her blood as at ice released into a summer stream. That was a predator’s smile, having seen that its prey is now cornered.

“I have no argument against White Feather. Feather Cloak’s magic and power served us well in exile. But we do not stand in exile any longer. I say what I have to say: I have walked in both worlds. Humankind is a threat. They outnumber us. We must move swiftly or be overrun. Our sorcery is stronger than theirs. I battled their strongest warrior, and I defeated him because I possess magic and he had only brute force. Our scouts suggest there is great destruction in their land. If they are in disorder, leaderless, and struggling to rebuild, even to survive, then now is our best chance. We may not get another.”

Feather Cloak stood. The heavy feather cloak fastened over her shoulders spilled around her body, whispering in the tones of conspirators. She had regained her physical strength since the birth of her daughters, but as she faced her rival she knew that The Impatient One had chosen the right time to attack. Her resolve still suffered. She had not yet adjusted to what it meant to be home, on Earth, a place she knew only in story.

She raised both palms. The assembly stilled, not even a foot shifting on dirt, not even a hand scratching an arm. She still had that power.

“Let it be put to the vote,” she said coolly. “Let each household delegate a speaker to cast their stone into the black basket or the white, as the gods decreed at the beginning
of time. The assembly will meet on an auspicious day as chosen by the blood knives, at the Heart-of-the-World’s-Beginning. I have spoken.”

ANNA tasted dry grass as they rode through an archway of light into dawn. Chaff coated her moist lips. A smear of red lit hills and she stared, wondering what that light might signify.

“The sun!” murmured scarred John, who rode ahead of her. As her ears cleared, popping, she heard the other soldiers exclaiming at their first glimpse of the sun in months. Above, clouds obscured the night sky, but the eastern dawn rose with a startling glow as though the far hills were on fire.

Blessing snorted and, kicking, came awake. “Put me down!”

Anna twisted. “Your Highness! I pray you! Keep still, Your Highness! I am with you.”

“Don’t fight,” said the one called Frigo, getting hold of the girl’s ear and pinching.

She shrieked, a sound that ought to have woken the dead and certainly made every man there clap a hand over an ear as she sucked in air to shriek again. Without the slightest expression of anger or pleasure, Frigo tweaked her ear a little farther and she subsided into coughing and mewling. He let go, and she stayed quiet.

The archway of light sprayed fountains of sparks as Lord Hugh strode out of the circle of stones. Twilight shrouded him, but it was lightening quickly. He counted his party, nine soldiers and two prisoners, before turning to survey the crown. It had ten stones standing in eerily perfect order, as if recently raised.

“Where are we, my lord?” asked Frigo as Blessing sucked on her little finger and stared at Hugh with a look meant to slay.

“According to my map, we are many days east and somewhat north of Darre, but south of the latitude of Novomo.” He consulted his memory; Anna could tell by the way his gaze went vacant as though he were looking at something inside himself. “‘Four leagues beyond Siliga, eleven stones.”’

He marked each stone and gestured toward a vast tangle of bramble that lay a stone’s toss east of the circle just where the hillside had collapsed. Beyond, the land sloped down into a coastal plain. Anna thought she could see water to the south beyond a desiccated landscape of pale grass and stands of paler bush, which were almost white, like stalks of slender finger bones.

“There must be a stone there,” Hugh said.

Scarred John dismounted to investigate. The presbyter lifted the golden disk. He fussed with it, moving one circle on top of another, turned a crooked bar on the back, sighted toward the eastern horizon, read—lips moving—from the back, then shook his head. After this, he fished in the pack he wore, withdrew a square of waxed canvas, wrapped the disk up inside, and returned it to the pouch.

“Are we lost, my lord?” asked Frigo.

“I hope so,” muttered Blessing.

“My lord! There is a stone under these brambles!” shouted John, withdrawing his spear from the mass of vines and thorns.

“We are not lost,” said Hugh. “We are exactly where I hoped to be. I only wish to know what day. According to my earlier calculations we should have lost three days in the passage. Yet I can’t be sure. So be it. From here we ride east.”

They nodded.

“Where are we going?” Blessing demanded.

Hugh looked at her, nothing more. Anna shivered, not liking the weight of his gaze. He was capable of anything. Blessing hadn’t seen Elene murdered. Better, for now, not to mention it to the girl. It was hard to know how Blessing would react.

“Let me be precise,” Hugh continued, catching each
man’s gaze to make sure he had their attention. “We will be pursued.”

“My lord,” said John, “if we’ve come so far as you say, how can any catch up to us?”

“I do not fear human pursuit.” Hugh smiled patiently, as though he had heard this question a hundred times and would happily answer it a hundred more times without losing his temper. His amiable demeanor was what scared Anna most about him. “When the alarm is raised, you must retreat immediately within the circle. I cannot protect those who remain outside.” He nodded to one of the other men, a sturdy fellow with broad shoulders and spatulate hands. “It is then that we rely on you, Theodore. We have but one arrow for each man in the party.”

Theodore nodded. “Eleven in all, like the stones, my lord.”

“But there are twelve of us!” said Anna.

Hugh’s gaze was like ice, yet his smile remained. “You are expendable, Anna. If you are marked, then you will be killed. You must hope that Antonia does not think of you at all when she sends her pursuers.” His gaze moved away from her. She was not, she saw, important enough to linger on. The red dazzle of dawn faded as the sun moved up into the sky, not visible as a disk but seen as a bluish glow behind a blanketing haze.

“Theodore? Do you understand your part?”

“I do, my lord,” said the man stoutly. “I will not fail you.”

“No,” he said, with a nod that made the archer sit up straighten “I believe you shall not.”

Beyond the standing stones lay a village, a substantial settlement with a score of roofs surrounded by a livestock palisade and a ditch. No guard manned the watchtower now. They rode across the earthen bridge that spanned the ditch and pulled up before closed gates.

Theodore shouted a few times, but there was no answer. The silence made Anna nervous. The horses flattened ears and shifted anxiously. She did not hear anything except the wind, not even a dog’s bark. Finally, scarred John volunteered to get inside. He dismounted and offered his reins
to Liudbold, then tested the gate. It was, indeed, barred from inside. He tested the palisade, moved off around until he found a listing post that offered a place to fix rope. Soon he clambered up the side with bare feet braced against wood and hands advancing up the joined rope. They watched him keenly. His soft grunts were audible because it was so deathly quiet. Once, a few oddly shaped fields had been tended by farmers. There was a vineyard and a stand of twoscore olive trees scattered along a nearby slope. The road east cut up into a defile, quickly lost to view. From here they could not see the coastal plain.

John reached the top and balanced himself there on his belly as he scanned the village. His mouth opened. He jerked, as at a blow, and slipped backward. Anna shrieked, thinking he would fall, but he caught himself awkwardly and hand over hand rappelled down, hitched the rope off with a flip and a yank, and ran back. He didn’t reach them before he bent to one knee and retched, although he hadn’t much in his stomach to cough up.

“Move the men back, Captain,” said Hugh to Frigo. He took the reins from Liudbold and waited while the rest turned their horses and moved off.

“Plague,” said John when he came over with Lord Hugh. “Got the dogs, too, them that had eaten the dead folk left lying in the street. Good thing that gate is closed.”

“We must be cautious,” said Hugh. “Let’s leave this blighted place. Frigo, set your scouts. We can’t be sure we won’t stumble across bandits. We’ve few enough in our party that a smaller group taking us unaware could do great damage.”

“Yes, my lord.”

They rode east through a land so dry that the vegetation snapped under the hooves of their horses. There was little grass for grazing. The grain went faster, obviously, than Lord Hugh had planned, so he adjusted the rations. Where they passed the remains of juniper or olive groves all the trees had been felled in the same direction, shattered by wind. Of spring greens she saw only thistle and creeping vine.

This was rugged country, the kind of scrub-infested land
that in Wendar would have been left to the shepherds as summer pasture. Along their path they passed three more silent villages before midday. Once, folk had lived and traded here. Anna wondered if they had all died or if some had escaped. She imagined children herding goats and sheep along those slopes. She imagined women walking to market with babies bundled on their backs and wheelbarrows heaped with onions and parsnips, or whatever strange food folk ate in these parts. Nothing tasty, she supposed.

It was so quiet, as though death had eaten the world and moved on, leaving only the stones and the empty buildings and the whitened grass. Now and again as they rode along a narrow passage with ridges rising steep on both sides, she imagined that refugees peered at her from the rocks above, but in truth she felt nothing. She felt that even the animals had fled, that nothing lived here anymore and that the clouds would never part and only dust would be her companion evermore. Certainly, her tongue was sticky with dirt, but she didn’t dare ask for more water. Therefore it was a surprise to her when scarred John came riding back from forward scout with the news that he had sighted a column of armed riders.

“Fourscore at least, my lord,” he reported. “Not Aostan, by the look of them.”

“Are these the ones you’ve been expecting to meet?” asked Captain Frigo. Blessing sat behind him, wrists tied, fingers gripping the back of his saddle. She tried to get a look around him, as if hoping to see a saint come to rescue her.

“It’s hard to say without a look at them,” said Hugh. He nodded at John.

“There’s an abandoned village ahead, my lord. If we hide there, we might see them pass by without being seen ourselves.”

“Is there no other cover?” Hugh asked. “I’d rather not ride in haste into a village that might be harboring the plague.”

“Forest up along the hills,” said Theodore, who had been riding inland for part of the morning and only recently returned,
“but the trees are downed, just as we’ve seen everywhere else.”

“Some rocks,” said John, “this side of the village. Very rugged. As like to cut your hands as give you shelter. But enough to hide our party and give a little defensive protection. They’re within view of the road.”

“We’ll go there. Hasten.”

“They’ll see our tracks,” said Frigo.

“Drag sticks behind us, if you must, but we’ve little choice as we’re badly outnumbered. We’ve ridden single file thus far. We must hope they believe us only a pair or three of riders.”

Soon they saw the thread of dust rising far to the east that marked the passage of many mounted men. From her position in the middle of their group, it was difficult for Anna to tell how much of a flag they themselves raised. She had her own horse now, a stolid creature that moved along with the herd sniffing bottoms now and again but otherwise lacking curiosity and initiative. Not the kind of horse to escape on, even if she had anywhere to go and food and drink to run with. Even if she might hope for shelter from an unknown band of soldiers.

The rock formation erupted out of the ground in the midst of dry plain. The sloping ground hid the village from sight, but scarred John assured them it was right over the crest, situated to have a commanding view of the road, which was the main east-west thoroughfare in this region. The red-brown rock spilled down the slope in a series of ragged ribbons, pooling into hummocks high enough to hide horses and men. Once they crossed into the formation, they had to move carefully on the rock. Two men cut their hands. One of the horses got a gash on his right foreleg. The rock was striated and quite rugged, oddly warm to the touch despite the lack of direct sunlight. It seemed freshly deposited, but naturally that was impossible.

Theodore trotted out to the road to survey the rocks and after a few minutes jogged back to say that they were well hidden. Two men had gone out on foot with sticks to brush away their tracks. The rest drank sips of warm, sour ale as they waited. No one spoke.

“Gag the girl,” said Lord Hugh suddenly. Blessing did not struggle as Frigo tied a linen cloth over her mouth and hobbled her ankles as a secondary precaution. Hugh examined Anna as well, then nodded, and the captain got another cloth and another rope. Blessing watched, gaze burning, as Anna was gagged. The cloth bit into the corners of Anna’s mouth and she choked, then steadied her breathing. He hooked her hands up into the small of her back and made a knot, something easy for him to get her out of should they have to move quickly. After that, he ignored her.

She sat down, but the rock cut into her buttocks, so she stood up again, wishing for sturdier shoes. The captain fingered his sword’s hilt. Certain of the soldiers soothed the more restive horses. Hugh climbed up beside scarred John to a ledge that allowed them a view over the landscape. He bent his head as if praying.