Shadow (18 page)

‘None know me.'

‘I heard what I heard.'

‘They won't find me,' Anfen said. ‘I'll lose them in the quiet.'

Mad? Sharfy thought. Always has been, a little at least. Something's different though.

‘Why do you sleep in the rain?' said Anfen.

‘Beaten,' said Sharfy. ‘Five of em. Waited till I was drunk.'

‘Where is your weapon?' said Anfen.

‘My room.'

‘Fetch it. And all else you need. We march, now.'

Sharfy squinted up through the drizzle at his former leader.
Former
seemed especially relevant just now. After his initial impulse to laugh there came a flare of anger quite foreign to him, and it had nothing to do with the preposterous idea of ‘marching' anywhere at this hour, in the rain. ‘Where'd you go?' he said. ‘They're looking for you. The Mayors. I heard talk of it. They don't know if you did it or not. But they think you had a hand in it. Traitor, they think. Spy all along, they think. Double dealer. Had em swindled.'

‘Did what?'

Sharfy's anger grew sharper. ‘You know what. Why'd you do it? Why? Look what you did. It was nothing good. The world's a mess now. Why didn't you see it would be like that?'

‘Do what?'

‘Destroy the Wall. Don't lie, I know you did it. I rode south with you, remember? What help did you think it would be to do that? How'd you do it anyhow? Don't tell me the catapults was enough. No catapult did
that.
Wall was too strong. It was something else. You used a charm or something.'

There was an almost imperceptible bowing of Anfen's hooded head. His silence seemed pained.

Sharfy got to his feet. The world spun around just once then righted itself. ‘Bastard. I should turn you in. Should kill you. There'll be rewards for your head.'

‘Go get your weapon and whatever else you need,' Anfen said. ‘Hurry.' Sharfy was taken aback by the new note of quiet command in his voice. Not sure what else to do, he headed back to the inn, around to its rear after-hours door. There he was allowed in grudgingly by a night man, jittery from the war mage cries.

Sharfy was marching nowhere but to bed. Then he found his room was locked. His belongings had not been left out in the hall. The night man checked his book, explained the room had been found empty and thus rented again – no shortage of people sleeping in cellars and cupboards who'd pay good coin for a room. After much argument Sharfy got his upcoming week's rent refunded, minus an obscene amount for the broken door lock, kicked in by whoever had robbed him. ‘Give me a closet then,' Sharfy said. ‘Inn's supposed to be a home on the road. Supposed to look after you. Hard times or not.'

The night man said a closet would cost him what he had just refunded. Sharfy knocked him flat and wrestled with the locked box his coin had just been dropped into. At the sound of its coins rattling footsteps rushed across the floor above, descended the staircase. There was a metal hiss of an unsheathed blade. Sharfy grabbed the cheap little sword from an ornamental coat of arms on his way out the door.

Back outside in the drizzle Anfen had not moved at all from his stance by the roadside. ‘Robbed,' Sharfy muttered, more hurt by this betrayal than he'd ever admit.

‘Get your steed.'

‘None. Sold it. Got nothing.'

‘Come, then.'

‘Where to?'

No answer. He trudged after Anfen in the squelching grass and mud until the township was well behind them. They were soon on the Great Dividing Road, so wide its eastern edge could not be seen in the gloom. A wagon went
clip-clopping
by on the ancient unbreakable pavement, completely unseen to them. Anfen stood silent for some time in the misty rain, his head bowed. ‘Do you feel that?' he said.

‘Wet?' said Sharfy.

‘Watch.' Anfen unsheathed his sword. Sharfy noticed it was not the sword he'd had when they parted company. A glint like white gold in firelight flashed down its face. He stuck it, point first, into the turf at the Road's very edge. A second passed and the blade slowly leaned south until it fell.

Sharfy said, ‘What about it?'

Anfen stuffed it back into the ground with the handle leaning far to their left – the north. In seconds it had turned like the hand of a clock until it collapsed again in the opposite direction.

‘Huh!' said Sharfy.

‘The push,' said Anfen. He plucked a handful of pebbles and let them slip from his hand to the Road's pavement, watching the slight southward curve of their fall. They rolled along the Road as though blown by strong wind, though no wind could be felt. ‘I know things I did not know before,' said Anfen. ‘We must walk into the push for a while. There is work to be done. Sharfy. If I told you the Pendulum swings again. What say you to that?'

Sharfy rubbed the rain from his face and wished the night were several hours younger again. ‘I'm too drunk to know what you mean. Or maybe you're too drunk to know what you mean.'

‘It means time is short. And the Pendulum must be stopped, though it is probably too late. There's much to do. Come.'

To his dismay, Anfen began the journey Sharfy already knew he was bound to, though he did not know why he
should
be.

The war's done,
he wanted to yell in protest.
Leave me to rest! I done enough fighting! The war's done!

3

For long days they walked, days that blended into one dreamlike stretch, where the world went a strangely purple twilight Sharfy had never seen before. Had he the words to express it, he'd have said it seemed he looked back on old memories even as the minutes and hours passed, all sights taken in through sleep-blurred eyes, all thoughts subdued.

Sleeping, eating, and other routine things were the least of Anfen's concerns. Each brief stop for rest had to be argued for against abstract responses Sharfy didn't understand in the slightest. The land about them was eerily empty of people for most of these dreamy stretches; entire days went by without running into a single traveller in lands that should have been swarming. For that matter, on some days he'd have sworn there was hardly a bird call or the buzz of a fly, and the country seemed unfamiliar to him, missing its various landmarks. Anfen marched tall and proud in those quiet times, his strides full of purpose.

Then this dreaminess would at times fall away, reality would rear up in all its grim clarity. Anfen again looked starved, his back bowed by unseen weight, looking just as tired as Sharfy felt. On such days people passed them on the road in heavy numbers: refugees in wandering bands going south from Elvury and (soon enough) from Faifen, often as not missing hands, arms, parts of their faces. They said war had come to their cities. War, and even worse things.

The strangest of it was that news revealed large numbers of castle troops had headed south along this very road, led not by a general but by a first captain. Anfen and he
should
have walked right into this group, and through others, on one of those days when they had instead come across no one at all.

Anfen answered few questions and did not say a word about the huge purple scar that ran around his neck. Now and then he said things which Sharfy could not understand and did not wish to hear: ‘There's a dragon I wish to kill,' he muttered once. ‘
I
wish to kill it. Ah, I feel him, foul thing. I sense he is a spy. I do not know if my redeemer wishes him slain. It is a mistake to assume all the brood are of the same purpose.'

Redeemer. That word again, spoken like someone would speak of their commander, or father, or lover. ‘A dragon, Anfen? Don't talk like that.'

‘I must. It breaks the natural laws, to be out among us at all, Sharfy. But then, we ourselves break the laws. The Wall was not supposed to be broken. We are not meant to be here, in the quiet. And I am not meant to live.'

Why can't we exchange the usual stories? Sharfy wondered. He was itching to tell one. ‘Then why'd the Wall break?' he said. ‘If it wasn't meant to.'

‘The natural laws are changing, Sharfy. Do you know what this process is called?'

‘Nope.'

‘You do. It's called war.'

‘War, eh? Yeah, I heard of that.'

‘War. The gods, the dragons. War.'

A long silence, filled by their feet beating the road. As happened from time to time, a drop of blood slid from the thick purple scar on Anfen's neck. He looked directly at Sharfy for the first time in a long while, an excited gleam in his eye that Sharfy decided was worse than the grim silent mask he'd got used to. ‘It isn't a new war,' Anfen said. ‘Like our wars it has times of hot and cold, forces arranging themselves before blades are drawn. We are lucky to be alive now, Sharfy. Blades are now drawn. I have come to understand that
I
am one such blade.'

What am I, your scabbard?
Sharfy almost said, but Anfen did not seem, lately, to appreciate a joke. Yet again, he seemed to expect a response. ‘What about the Pilgrims?' Sharfy ventured.

‘The
keenest
blade. Though too many hands reach to wield him. He would be better destroyed.'

‘Which one you mean? Eric or Case?'

‘Shadow.'

4

Another full day's marching had passed when with no explanation Anfen veered from the Great Road, cutting across a plain of loose stone and bare grey pillars, lands once blasted by fire from dragons' throats so that nothing now grew here. It gave way to more liveable country, though it was overgrown and abandoned, replete with ruins both recent and ancient. Their feet scattering pebbles or crunching the bitter, brittle ground were so loud they may as well have shouted out
here we are
with each step.

They were now some way north of Elvury if Sharfy judged right, and had to be nearing Invia country. Anfen had never told the Mayors' Command he was Marked; the rest of them wouldn't have known either but for his constantly checking the sky for the creatures. But he wasn't doing that now. ‘Invia, Anfen?' said Sharfy. ‘You worried? Forgot about em? Huh? You're Marked, don't forget. Marked! That sword's pretty good, but you can't beat em just with that, can you?'
And don't look to me for help,
he didn't say. ‘What if a few of em come, like at Faul's place?'

He was answered by the sound of trudging boots.

Sharfy squinted at motion on the horizon. ‘People coming,' he said. ‘Look! Ahead there. There's a lot of em. Hard to tell but I think some got weapons. We should hide.'

Crunch, crunch
went Anfen's boots.

‘Look. You can walk headlong into em. But I'm gonna hide.'

He fancied a faint puff of heat came from the armour beneath Anfen's shirt. Then they were in the twilight place again, with no past or present sign of humanity at all. In the quiet, they were the only ones who'd ever lived, there were no roads but the Great Dividing Road, no enemies or friends, no homes or houses but the grass, trees, hills and distant mountains.

And the pretty diamond-like clusters suspended in the air. It was not the first time Sharfy had seen them, though never so many as now. He had less than no idea what they were, only that he wanted to pocket them. In the distance was a huge one, big as a house, way high up.

‘What are those?' he asked, pointing. Anfen didn't respond. ‘Someone would pay big for those shiny things. Bet you they would. Look like they're full of magic. Scales, gold we'd get.' It was a hint but apparently missed. ‘Fuck it, Anfen. I'm not getting
paid
to follow you. I should get some loot. Look yonder. That outcrop there. If we climb it we can get hold of those small ones. Reckon I'd reach em with a long stick. Knock em out of the air.'

Anfen paused, turned to face him full of majesty and grace, spoke quietly: ‘If you try to touch them. If you dare go near them. I will slay you.' He turned away and trudged on.

Sharfy wished he were angry. It was the first time Anfen had ever threatened him. Ever. But such was the command in his voice Sharfy could not but feel it had for some reason been entirely fair: a simple statement of the law. And like an obedient dog he followed his master, grappling with his pride until the sound of a bird call broke the dreamy silence and the quiet's mask fell away.

The village Anfen had led them to was a few years abandoned, Sharfy judged, for the buildings – though neglected – were not in such bad shape, and some could probably be mended in a week fit for living again. In the southern distance Elvury's ranges stood like a row of huge teeth. They were further north than Sharfy had guessed, well and truly in Aligned country. Anfen unstrapped the sword from his belt, let it drop to the ground, and walked away from it.

Sharfy quickly picked it up, surprised at how light it felt. Since his glimpse of it that night with the light flashing down its face, he'd been eager for a close look but afraid to ask. Now he pulled the handle free of its scabbard and was surprised to see there was no blade there at all, just the finely wrought handle. He set the handle back atop the scabbard and put it carefully down.

Anfen staggered past a small vegetable field overrun with weeds. He looked for something in the tall grass, then fell to his knees. ‘These are mine, Sharfy,' he said hoarsely.

Sharfy went to him and waited.

Anfen began pulling grass out with his fists, clawing at the dirt. He moved with feverish speed. Sharfy got down to help but Anfen snarled, ‘Back!' with such ferocity he thought he was about to be bitten. So he stood away and watched. Half an hour later Anfen's hands were caked in dirt, his fingernails cracked and split. He panted like a dog. And like a dog he had dug up buried bones. All were clearly human. ‘These are mine,' he repeated. ‘My bones. I made them.' Slowly, tenderly his hands wiped every speck of dirt from them.