Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (48 page)

His stance was perfect, as if he were shooting for range or perhaps demonstrating how to fire over a foe’s front line. An arrow was full-drawn, broadhead just touching the rest and he made his shot.

The shaft flew true and buried itself in one of the demon’s eyes. It screamed once more and the rocks around us shook with its pain and anger and then it stumbled forward, staggered and fell, rolling, tumbling down the slope, still struggling for its feet.

Then it was up, trying to stop its momentum, blinded, the horrid fluid that must have been its blood spraying into the middle of Cligus’ men.

Blind with agony, it cared not who it slew and slashed about. Warders and Orissan soldiers howled and fell and now they had no time for us as the monster savaged their ranks.

Perhaps the awful magic that had been worked by the demon’s transformation freed Janela’s spell or perhaps that presence was taken by surprise, because suddenly a mist rose around us and from behind us, a thick summer mist that could take a mountain traveler by surprise and make him lose his way, no matter how familiar a path he might be on and fall to his death into a hidden crevasse.

But we had no such worries. Quatervals and I shouted orders — move, move, move, damn your eyes! Uphill! You can’t get lost, you can’t go wrong and we were stumbling away, the sounds of battle behind us, the demon’s shrieks louder than ever as it did our slaughter for us.

Fear and the blood-rush of battle transferred to our feet and we waded on and on, each of us alone in a private world of white and gray and then we broke free of the mist.

Two dozen yards in front of us waited Janela and the others. They were in battle formation but Janela was some feet in front, crouched in the snow.

“I saw,” she said, without lifting her eyes from her work. “The bastards set a spy on us and I never sensed a thing. Amalric, tell me when you think everybody’s safe and I’ll see if my second trick works.”

I did, counting as they passed and blessed the gods for that tally-sheet that was always a part of my merchant’s brain. There’d been twenty six people who’d chosen to stand with the rear guard and I wondered how it had time to make such a reckoning and now came eighteen... nineteen, which was Otavi, who’d managed to recover his ax, one more... and then Quatervals.

“I’m the last,” he croaked, finally showing some signs of human exhaustion.

I still waited for another half-minute, hoping there’d be some others come out of the roiling mist. But no one appeared. We’d lost five friends down there and my heart whispered pain to me, even though my head told me true that we were unbelievably lucky to have suffered that few deaths.

Below, Mithraik’s demon howls were growing fainter. Even a monster like it would eventually be taken down by that many men.

“That’s all,” Janela said, a bit of impatience in her tone. “Get behind me, Amalric. This one might be a bit spectacular.”

She’d rolled half a dozen small balls of snow and held them in her palm together with some pebbles she’d picked up on the rocks. I don’t know whether she’d already said words over them or doused them with some potion but she began snapping them away down the road as she simply chanted:

Move away

Roll on

You have brothers

You are great

Now grow

Now roll

Gather as you go.

Most of us have made snowballs as children and rolled them down steep slopes in the hopes of creating an avalanche. It never worked for me but I never lost hope of one day creating a truly monstrous slide that would wipe an entire slope clean.

Janela’s spell fulfilled my finest dreams as the tiny snowballs rolled, gathering snow as if they were lodestones, rolling even faster than the road’s steep slope would warrant. From the high slopes above the road came other rumblings as snow banks high above us let go.

None of us could see what happened but the road was swept clean and we heard the roar as the avalanche crashed down on Cligus and his men.

Janela rose, her expression startled.

“I didn’t plan for
that
,” she said. “The best I’d hoped for was to pitch the snow in front of us down on the bastards. I wonder if...” she looked around thoughtfully. “No. I’ve got to be wrong. I wondered if somehow that presence was helping us, which makes no sense at all.

“I guess somehow my measurement was off and I managed to create a thousand-fold snowball instead of tens or hundreds. Or perhaps Cligus and that pox-ridden Modin are finally getting a share of bad luck.”

“We can theorize later,” I said. “You, or the gods or the demons or whoever have given us more time than I could dream of. Call it luck if you want. We’ll make the correct sacrifices at a better time.”

She slung her bag and we moved out.

Perhaps it was luck or maybe the degree of the slope did lessen, but it seemed easier to travel now and in half an hour we rounded the bend of the knuckle.

It was growing dark but we could not stop. I put men out front with firebeads and pushed on. We stopped once at midnight; melted snow and ate jerked meat, dried fish and boiled sweets we’d carried with us. Then we went on. If there was an ambush or an enemy ahead we’d rather chance the unknown than what was coming hard behind us — I knew better than to dream Mithraik could have destroyed the entire pursuing army.

Just at dawn we reached the summit and a great, drear plateau spread out below us with a fog-shrouded mountain range in the dim distance.

We took a break and now, feeling no sign of pursuit, had time to feel the fatigue that was sucking the marrow from our souls and bones.

“Why is’t,” Quatervals wondered, staring out over the steppes we would be crossing, “th’ romances never tell you beyond th’ great hill’s most likely going to be another damned great hill, vaster’n the one before?”

There wasn’t any answer so we pressed on.

We stopped after another hour and I ordered two hours sleep. Only four of us stood guard, Quatervals not among them. My entire body moaned for sleep, cried out to lie down just for one minute on that welcoming ground but dared not even lean against a rock.

I finally found a shortspear and propped its point just under the skin of my chin. Twice I awoke with blood trickling down my neck but at least I stayed conscious.

We marched on for another six hours then chanced two hours rest. This time I slept, letting Quatervals have the watch.

We went on like that for two full days and nights, never daring to stop for more than two hours, not until we would reach some sort of safety.

On this side of the Fist of the Gods the road was in better repair — cutting almost straight toward the sere flatlands below.

By the end of the second day we had reached the last of the snow but the barren foothills offered no sign of shelter.

We could hold my torturous schedule no longer. We were now so groggy the most minor danger we might stumble into could allow the party to be wiped out. We sheltered just off the road and allowed a full six hours for sleep. Then up and on. After this longer break I felt worse than I had before, with every bone creaking, every muscle begging for relief.

I pushed my company harder than I’d ever pushed any expedition. They glared at me hating me but not having the strength to swear. Not even Pip complained and I knew we were close to the end of our powers.

A day and a half later we were on the flatlands. It remained cold and some of the men found energy to curse but I was grateful. Men travel better in cold than heat. The road still shot ahead, never turning, never rising, regularly marked by the two-faced woman/demon head toward its unseen end against the further mountains that must be Tyrenia.

We could go no further without rest. We turned aside and marched for three hours at a sharp angle away from the road. Quatervals and his Scouts were at the rear, calling on every bit of their cunning to mask our trail, and Janela was with them, using her sorcery to keep anyone from being able to follow our path.

We found a cleft in the seemingly featureless plain that was nearly a valley, almost a hundred feet deep with two springs, a pool and trees.

Someone, Quatervals most likely, lifted my pack off and laid out my bedroll. I fell across it not bothering to take off my boots or crawl in and slept for a full day with no memory of having come to the end of this march.

I awoke to a truly monstrous noise.

“Back an’ side go bare, go bare

Both foot an’ hand go cold

I’ll see no more ale in my life

This road goes on so bold

It stretches far

It stretches long

Antero drives us hard

I far I’ll be naught but bones

Before I reach th’...”

The voice — Pip’s — broke out of what he imagined to be song and asked, plaintively, “An’ what’s rhymin’ wi’ hard?”

Janela’s voice came: “Go back three lines and try, instead of ‘Antero drives us hard,’

“I’ll stumble like a bum

I fear I’ll be naught but bones

Still whining, never dumb.”

“Better stay wi’ magic, me Lady,” Pip came back. “Yer don’t ’ave t’ make th’ words stick so tight.”

At this point I sat up and opened my eyes.

Pip, a few feet away, reluctantly splashed water on his face from a basin and pretended he’d just noticed me.

“Lord Antero, sir, an’ how did yer Lordship sleep. We all recked yer throat’d been seized by a demon, f’r th’ rattlin’ an’ groanin’ comin’ out.”

I pulled myself out of my bedroll to my feet, trying to ignore each and every muscle’s scream.

“Quatervals, doesn’t this troubadour have some duties?”

“I’m thinking of them right now,” he said. “Dark, dangerous an’ deadly.”

“An’ what else is new,” Pip said, undiscouraged. “Bad enow yer makes me wash. Almost rather get m’self kilt.”

“How long have I slept,” I asked Quatervals.

“A full day, sir.”

I cursed. “You should’ve woken me!”

“Why? I sent scouts back to watch the road and they’ve seen no trace of Cligus and his toady. P’raps Mithraik put paid to ’em all.”

I doubted that but said nothing. I looked around our encampment. All appeared in order — my people were busy with the maintenance tasks of travel, sharpening weapons, mending torn garments, cleaning and eating. There were sentries posted at the top of the cleft and I knew, even from the fog I’d been in when we stumbled into this haven, no one could approach us by surprise — at least not in earthly form. I also knew Janela would have her own wards out so we were as secure as we could be in the magical sector as well.

Ideally we should have remained in this quiet place for three or four days to recover, but we had to keep moving.

There were two matters that had to be dealt with before we could travel, though.

The first was with Janela. I took her aside and asked what she thought about Mithraik. Did she have any ideas about who his master was? Who was he working for? What was his mission? How much did he know about us? Why had he chosen that moment to expose himself?

Janela considered her answer carefully. “As to whose employ he was in, I can’t answer that. I’d suspect, though, someone ahead of us. Our yet-unknown enemy. If we assume the demon that took on the role of Lord Senac was in this enemy’s hire, wouldn’t it be logical for Mithraik to be the same? He was shielded with powerful magic of his own or I would have sensed him.

“I’m willing to say with a great deal of certainty he was not in the thrall of Modin or one of his familiars — they’ve spent too much time wandering aimlessly in pursuit to have had a lodestone in the heart of what they seek.

“As for what his task was, I’d suspect as you said — a spy, someone who could keep track of exactly where we were at any time. Maybe once we reached the mountains his master didn’t need him any more.

“Maybe that was why he started behaving as a mortal and a coward — perhaps he sensed this and felt his master no longer cared if he lived or died, if that phrase even applies to those beings from his realms.

“As for what he’d learned about us, if we assume he had no mind-reading abilities then we must think he learned everything any of the men know, no more and no less. How much that weakens us I cannot say.

“Why he chose to unmask himself when he did, again, this I can’t answer. It could be his master decided he wanted you to die in the pass. Or since there are twists within twists in this matter, perhaps this presence who sometimes almost seems to be aiding us might have caused him to behave as he did.

“I don’t know, Amalric.” She smiled. “You see what the study of magic gives you? It can and frequently does make the adept more confused than the person who sees no more than what is around him.”

She considered. “A wonderment that just came to me about the study of magic. Do you suppose that if we
do
find this single binding secret of sorcery that ordinary people will be able to quietly attend lycees to learn how to become Evocators? And no one will have to hunt spider-haunted ruins for demoniac secrets or bind themselves to evil masters to learn their secrets?”