The Gathering Storm (42 page)

THEY followed the defile by the light of a full moon. The play of shadows across the rock and the daunting silence made the landscape ominous, but they had to keep going. “Not much farther now.”

Hanna had a hard time understanding their guide; the Aostan spoken in Darre seemed to have little to do with the language spoken in this God-forsaken region, although they were supposedly the same tongue.

“I recognize the path,” said Fortunatus. He held the reins of the mule on which Sister Rosvita rode.

“I do not, except as snatches of a dream,” replied Rosvita.

“You were very ill last time we came this way.”

“Journey in haste, repent in leisure,” she agreed, glancing back down the narrow track the way they had come. They were hemmed in by rock faces sculpted by God’s hands into terrible visages that glowered over them. “We seem fated to travel here with enemies at our heels.”

Hanna also looked back along the trail. It was too dark to see anything beyond their line of march: the three girls behind her, then Jerome and Jehan leading a goat, and, last, the servant woman, Aurea, with Hanna’s staff gripped in her hands. In daylight, the dust of a large troop of horsemen would give away the position of those who followed them, but at night they had to rely on other stratagems. She fingered the amulet of protection she wore around her neck. Woven by Heriburg from fennel and the withered flowers of noble white, these were all that had allowed them to come so far without being spied out by the Holy Mother and her council of sorcerers.

Jehan coughed, echoed by Ruoda, a hacking cough that rose from her chest. Sickness dogged them, too.

“Here.” The old guide halted, whistling softly. A thrown pebble snapped on the track in front of him, and in its wake a boy scrambled out of the rocks. The child had the family nose, beaked and noble if overlarge on such a small face, and the wiry build common to the countryfolk in this desolate region.

The boy babbled too swiftly for Hanna to catch more than
a few words, but Rosvita listened intently before turning to the others, who crowded up behind her.

“The child says that there are twenty horsemen an hour or more behind us, led by a lord so handsome that some in the village wonder if he might be an angel and we the demons he’s been sent by God to pursue.”

“How did they find us?” demanded Heriburg. “We should have remained hidden from them. We have the amulets, and we used every means of misdirection.”

“Yet these were evidently not enough.” Rosvita lifted a hand to silence her. “Perhaps they picked up our trail at the village. It no longer matters. We must hurry if we hope to reach the convent before they catch us.”

They kept going. They had very little left except their determination. At the last village they had traded the handcart in exchange for the old man’s services as a guide. It was the only thing of worth they had left. The mare had gone lame and they had sold the mule for food. The last of the coins brought by Fortunatus had gone days ago to buy a milking goat, grain, and wine. They had nothing now except the clothes and cloaks on their backs, the precious books, Hanna’s staff, bow, quiver, and knife, and three eating knives shared out between the rest of them. Even the blankets had been traded for quinces, porridge, and a stock of dried fish, now eaten.

The moon set behind the western highlands as dawn lit the eastern hills. In this half light, as inconstant as hope, they cut to the right along the gully and found themselves on a flat field running up to the base of a vast cone of upthrust rock that loomed like the hammer of God before them.

Stumps of trees and patches of dry scrub gave the ground a leprous appearance. No birds sang. Where the valley broadened, it snaked back around either side of the huge outcropping, but the steep hills on either side quickly closed back in. Shadows still filled the valley. There was no sign of life.

“My God,” said Hanna. She thought her legs would give out. “Are you sure someone lives up there?”

“I am sure.”

Dismounting to stand at the foot of the cliff, Rosvita shouted out. No one answered.

She shouted again. They waited. Wind teased the rock.
Above, a pale scrap fluttered where a narrow ledge stuck out from the cliff face, but Hanna could not quite make out what it was. No one answered. There was no way up that precipitous slope.

The guide glanced repeatedly toward the gully, expecting the troop of horsemen to burst free at any moment. At last he edged away from them and, with a nervous burst of speed, jogged back the way they had come.

“Let him go,” said Rosvita as Aurea started after him, brandishing the staff. “He drove a fair bargain, and gave us what we asked for.”

“And no doubt had his kinfolk betray us to the ones pursuing us, for an equal price,” said Aurea bitterly.

“I hope he got a better bargain than the one we gave him,” said Fortunatus. “The axle on that cart had already broken once and it was ready to crack for good and all.”

“One of you must have a stronger voice than I,” said Rosvita. “We must all shout together.”

They did so, but there was still no answer.

Day lightened around them, although they remained in the rock’s shadow.

“How are we supposed to climb up there?” Hanna asked.

“There were rope ladders before,” said Fortunatus, squinting at the glint of sun as it crested the eastern hills. He pointed to the fluttering scrap Hanna had noticed before. “That’s one there, you can see the corner of it, but it’s been pulled up.”

“There must be someone still up there,” said Rosvita. “If they had all left, the ladders would be down.”

“Oh, God, I’m afraid,” said Gerwita, beginning to cry. “What will they do to us if they catch us?”

“I’ll climb,” said Hanna. “If I can reach that ledge, then at least we can get up that far, out of their reach.”

“Not out of reach of their bows,” said Fortunatus.

Rosvita had a serious gaze, one that Hanna had come to trust in the last weeks. “It will be risky to climb, Eagle. We might hide farther down into the ravine and hope our pursuers turn away, thinking we have escaped them.”

“We might. But I don’t think it would work.”

“The north face can be climbed,” said Fortunatus. “Lord
John Ironhead sent soldiers that way. Don’t you recall that they were killed by the daimone?”

“Yes, poor souls. May God have mercy on them.”

“We’re trapped, aren’t we?” said Aurea. “No matter what we do. For even if we can get up there, we haven’t enough people to hold off an attack if they choose to send soldiers up after us on this north face you speak of.”

“We shall see,” said Rosvita. “One can set traps of one’s own in such precarious circumstances. They cannot besiege us forever. And there is one other chance….” She trailed off, looked at Hanna again, a searching gaze, and nodded.

“I’ll go,” said Hanna. None of the clerics were hardy enough, in truth, nor had they the strength to haul Rosvita up the cliff, and despite how much strength Sister Rosvita had gained in the last weeks of their flight, she had not the strength to climb a rugged rock face.

Fortunatus led Hanna around the base of the huge outcropping to the north face. It took a while; the outcropping was huge, and beyond the level field where olive trees had once grown, the ground became rugged enough that they had to slow down in order to pick their way through fallen rocks and shallow gullies. She was sweating by the time Fortunatus halted, out of breath, and wordlessly gestured to the rock face above them. She studied its contours and ledges as well as the message written by the way burnet and scraggly pine had taken root in crevices and ledges along the face.

“Here,” she said, stripping off her gloves and handing them over. She took rope, her knife, and a skin half full of bitter ale, leaving the rest of her gear with Fortunatus.

“I’ll wait until I see you’re safely at the top. Then I’ll return to the others.”

She picked her way over scree to the place where she had chosen to begin. The climb wasn’t as difficult as she’d feared, as long as she didn’t look down. Her fingers and hands began to hurt; that she had expected. But her shoulders ached, too, the soles of her feet, her thighs, any muscle she had to tense in order to hold on. She learned to brush dust from any handhold before surrendering her weight; she was less likely to slip if no grains slid under her fingers. At times she wedged her knees into hollows and shelves into the rock, and once or
twice was able to lean into the rock face because of a shift in its slope, giving hands and feet a rest. Yet at such moments, given a chance to reflect, she decided that an enemy lurking above could easily send her plunging to her death by rolling rocks onto her from above.

But no one did.

No horsemen came riding out of the gully. No movement stirred above as she fought her way up the cliff, resting wherever she could but never for long. Human assailants were not the only danger she faced; the scree at the base of the slope was testament to that. One of her fingers began to bleed, stinging each time she used it to grip. The day remained quiet, disturbed by only a light breeze. The sun warmed her shoulders although the air remained chill.

Sister Rosvita had a plan. They had to delay their pursuit, that was all. As long as she believed that, she had the strength to go on. As long as she did not look down.

The steep-sided face gave way to a gentler slope slippery with loose rock. After a terrifying slip that almost sent her hurtling back over the cliff, she swept clean spaces for her feet as she crept forward until the ground leveled off and she entered a forest of rock pinnacles. She stumbled across a broad path and hesitated, not sure which way to turn. At last she simply began walking in one direction and within twenty steps the pinnacles gave way to a flat summit crowned by a stone circle.

The sight stunned her. She had never seen a stone crown in such good repair, but the upright stones seemed ominous rather than magnificent, a secret key to a place better left unexplored. The wind bit through her tunic, now soaked with sweat from her exertions. Sun glittered on an oval patch of sand situated about three steps in front of the closest archway, which had been created by an imposing lintel stone bridging the gap between two of the standing stones. From this angle, she could not tell if there were eight or nine uprights. White glinted on the stony ground. She took several steps before stumbling to a stop. A sour taste rose in the back of her throat. Broken skeletons lay strewn within and around the circle of stones, the remains of a dozen people at least. One lay not two bodies’ lengths from her, picked clean, bones tumbled by
wind and rain, decaying tunic pinned by rock and ribs, a bit of fabric caught like a tongue between the gaping jaw. Trembling, she drew the Circle of Unity at her breast to ward off its restless spirit.

No living creature waited here. She retreated, backtracking past the spot where she had come across the path, and followed it down. The trail cut along the rock face with cliff to one side and open air on the other. She kept a hand on the rock to steady herself. Only once did she look out over the chasm of empty air. Were those tiny figures Rosvita and the others? Her knees buckled, and a wave of dizziness staggered her. She remained kneeling until her body stopped shaking. After that she kept her eyes on the path. The wind teased her hair. Although the sun was high, it gave no warmth.

In time the path broadened to become a terrace whose far entrance was a cave’s mouth. She hesitated at the entry. A dank smell wafted from the depths, but there was light enough to see. She entered cautiously, finding herself in a low cave lit by openings along one wall that gave way onto narrow terraces. One cave opened onto another, this also with a terrace formed beyond. Animals had been kept here; heaps of scorched and broken bones littered the cavern. It grew darker, her steps more hesitant. She climbed over a low wall, its sides stippled with small squares hewn through the barrier like arrow slits. These were not natural. Whoever built this place expected to be attacked, and to have to defend themselves.

Beyond this wall she found herself creeping down a tunnel into the heart of the massive stone outcropping. Cunning shafts cut through the stone angled sunlight onto her path, giving her enough light to see.

Even so, the next barrier almost killed her. She felt a breath of air brush her face first; then she marked the ground, murky with shadow, shrieked, and sat back, catching herself before she tumbled over the lip of a chasm.

Panting, she sat there, listening to her breath and the silence of stone. She groped for and found a pebble, dropped it down the shaft. Counted. At “eight” the barest snick echoed up from the depths.

“Oh, God,” she murmured. She found another pebble and tossed it across the chasm. Snick. It wasn’t far, but it was definitely
too far to jump. A broad plank rested on the ground on the other side, a makeshift bridge.

Sister Rosvita was right. Perhaps the holy nuns and lay sisters who had once lived here were dead now, but in any case, they hadn’t departed. Some had remained, to live or to die within the rock.

“Sisters,” she called. “I pray you, heed my call. I seek Mother Obligatia or any of the holy sisters under her care. I come on behalf of Sister Rosvita—”

There came that sharp
snick
again, a pebble smacking against rock. As her eyes adjusted she saw past the chasm and the plank: the tunnel ended in a stone wall. Even if she found a way to cross the pit, the path was a dead end.

There was no way in.

Their flight had been in vain.

Tears flowed, choking her. She had failed Rosvita and the others. They would become prisoners again, at the mercy of folk so powerful that they could ensorcell the king. Their pursuers might already have captured Rosvita and the others while she searched for a path to freedom.

It had all been for nothing.

How long she sat there, stunned and exhausted, she was not sure, only that she was too discouraged to move.

Snick
. Another pebble, although she’d not thrown anything. A bodiless voice whispered out of the darkness.