The Wanderer's Tale (18 page)

Methuselech followed, gleaming in red, white and gold, and matched in splendour only by Whitehorse, the superb beast upon which he rode, the golden bells on its reins jingling merrily.

Behind these two leaders came Paulus, looking like a grey-and-black shadow upon the brown mare he had purchased three days earlier; Bolldhe was, as ever, on his faithful slough-horse, the broadaxe slung at its side, while Finwald rode his black steed Quintessa, whose trailing mane strikingly resembled the long black hair flying out from beneath its rider’s priestly hat.

And finally, not even trying to keep up, came Gapp on Bogey and Appa on a pony his temple had managed to scratch up for him.

Wodeman, surprisingly or not, was nowhere to be seen.

Onward the company rode, surrounded by cheering. There was a brief anticlimactic pause near the main gates as a young woman of arresting comeliness, yet with marked firmness of jaw, stepped out right in front of the Peladane’s horse and brought him to an ignominious halt. Nibulus cussed, rummaging about in his saddlebags, and brought forth a small clutch of zibelines which he hastily shoved into her outstretched hand. With a final, slightly embarrassed nod to her, he recommenced his heroic progress towards the town gates.

Through the gap in the stockade wall they galloped, kicking up great sods of mud into the faces of the last of the crowd of well-wishers. Up the road beyond, winding its way through hedged enclosures, they thundered on and on until they resembled mere motes moving slowly towards the distant hills. Then, with the Peladane’s last cry of uncontrollable elation drifting back upon the breeze to the smiling crowd, the magnificent seven dwindled into the distance, and were at last swallowed up by the North.

G
APP SHIVERED AND PULLED
his cloak tightly around him, shielding himself against the elements. Though soaked heavy with rain, and caked with mud around the hem, at least the garment did something to keep the weather off him as he huddled beneath the partial shelter of an overhanging rock. Freezing droplets dripped from the matted strands of hair clinging to his forehead, trickling through eyebrows and his stinging eyes behind his steamed-up spectacles. Elsewhere they trickled down his neck and into the diminishing warmth beneath his shirt, like an army of frigid insects seeking drier places to hide in. He was wet and miserable, and even his clothes smelled of damp.

He was not the only sufferer – even his master’s proud, green Ulleanh clung dejectedly around his armour; and all seven of them now crouched under the overhang beside the mountain path, equally smelly, silent and miserable.

As he gazed down at the foggy valley below, beyond the line of horses that waited gloomily but patiently in the rain, Gapp wondered how many miles now lay between them and Nordwas. They had been travelling for two weeks solidly, and in all that time had passed through only half a dozen hamlets. In each one they had traded for food, using copper and silver coins, or small amounts of scrap iron, medicines, spices and other luxuries that so rarely passed that way.

In between these settlements they would sometimes spend the night in abandoned post-houses. In the old days, when Nordwas boasted an important caravanserai on a great trade route, such makeshift post-houses had been set up at regular intervals between the villages to accommodate the king’s messengers and passing merchants. Since then they had fallen into dereliction, but their musty and forlorn shells still offered partial shelter for the weary travellers.

‘Welcome to the Darklands, young man,’ Nibulus had remarked to his esquire after leaving the first of such primitive villages. ‘Feeling more at home,
ha-ha
?’

‘Not all that dark, really,’ Gapp had replied, not sure what his master was going on about.

Nibulus chortled. ‘We’re now beyond the borders of Pel-Adan’s own realm and these people here are all of
your
own stock, Aescals every one of them. As I said, welcome home to the Darklands.’

To be honest, most of the group were so far feeling fairly good about the whole enterprise. As visitors, they were accorded great respect and treated with friendliness, hospitality and much curiosity. At each village they would be invited in to share large earthenware bowls of heady fermented gortleberry, and offered baskets of sweet black bread for their journey.

In all that time Wodeman had not yet been seen. It appeared he would not be joining them on the quest after all – and nobody was in any hurry to go and look for him. Till, on approaching the latest hamlet, down a rutted path wending tiredly through the woods, the sorcerer had suddenly dropped from a tree to land in front of them. He had said not a word, just regarded them in turn, then gestured for them to follow him.

Nibulus had already guessed the reason for this unexpected appearance. The settlement they were about to enter was too northerly even for the Aescals. A tiny cluster of miserable dwellings right on the very edge of civilization, it was inhabited entirely by Wodeman’s own race.

‘Be on your guard,’ Paulus warned them, uncaring that Wodeman walked right by him. ‘These people are huldre – fey – and not to be trusted.’

‘Fey?’ Nibulus snorted.

‘Fey,’ the Nahovian affirmed. ‘But they will not come near if we bear iron, for it is anathema to them.’

The company glanced at Wodeman. ‘It’s true,’ the Torca confirmed. ‘If you attack us with iron weapons, we can die.’

Nibulus laughed along with the others.‘Whose idea was it to bring him along anyway?’

That’s the trouble with the Torca
, Nibulus considered.
No respect for their betters.
Like all Peladanes, he was half amused and half irritated by the Torca’s complete inability to kowtow respectfully.

As they rode into the village, their first sight of the inhabitants they came across caused more than a stir amongst the riders from the South.

‘Is that
green
skin they have?’ Nibulus inquired, making no effort to disguise his distaste.

The men who were gathered in a small group in the road to watch the arrival of the strangers were attired only in ragged kilts and a kind of fleece wrapped about their shoulders. The jewellery hanging round their necks was heavy, crude and wrought exclusively of bronze, in strangely disturbing designs, while numerous strings of brightly coloured seashells were suspended garishly from their kilts. But it was the sickly green pallor of their skin that drew the eye so arrestingly, and it was only when the company got closer that they realized these men were actually covered in runes tattooed in long spirals encircling both torso and limbs.

As Nibulus rode past, he leant over to inspect one more closely, peering as un-self-consciously as the old man who stared back.

The Peladane marvelled. ‘Are those the names of all his girlfriends? The degenerate old goat!’

‘I’d have a care how you speak,’ the shaman warned. ‘Those are the names of enemies he’s slain.’

Nibulus’s unvoiced admiration was doubled.

This was a time of great activity for the Torca, for they were reaping the first
orrnba
-seed harvest of the year. They wailed crack-voiced incantations as they slashed with bronze sickles, accompanied by their shamans, who flicked sacred water from their ring-elongated fingers onto the crop as it was cut. And at night the village really came alive, for it was then that the threshing took place. The Torca believed that seed which was threshed under the silver light of the waning moon would be blessed by the spirits.

This village actually had a hostelry, of sorts: the Grey Dog Inn. Here the company stayed the night, and made the most of the occasion by draining an ancient firkin of Rynsaka, the only cask of ale found in the place. On the urging of Wodeman, they stayed locked in their loft during the darkest hours of the night, while he himself joined his people in celebrating their secret pagan rites.

As the travellers lay abed in their stalls they listened fearfully to the otherworldly sounds of the final stage of the harvest, the winnowing, being performed outside. This was left to the care of Erce; the crop was laid out upon reed mats on the village green and, while hedgehogs screamed like Mandragora and danced like Trows in the woods nearby, a twisting wind swept through the village and whisked the husks away. Candles were immediately afterwards placed in wooden shrine-huts beneath the deodars, by way of thanks, and then the
real
celebrations commenced.

Wodeman had explained to them that they were particularly fortunate to pass through at that time of year for, during the harvest, violence and ill manners were forbidden, wishing to appease the spirits. The only hints of excess were the frenetic dancing of the villagers, the savage carousing of the hedgehogs nearby, and of course the ritual sacrifice of a couple of enemy marauders, who were strung up on tree-boles and pierced through all over with long thin rods of sharpened hazel. These last were inserted so as to avoid rupturing any vital organ, and to come out intact the other side.

‘A skilled priest might manage to implant as many as fifty hazel-rods one by one into a victim ere he dies,’ Wodeman had assured them, ‘or just one long rod running from bottom to top, like a spitting roast. In fact, in times past, in the Seter Heights where my people originated, they would even eat them alive off the sacrificial pole! Anyway, enjoy your rest.’

The night had continued heavy with blood, savagery and all sorts of weirdness, and to the wayfarers who lay curled in their bedrolls in the Grey Dog it seemed as though they had strayed into another time and another world.

But that had been a week ago. Four days later they had begun to climb the Blue Mountains, and the change of terrain had been complete as field and pasture gave way to wild upland, across which only a single ancient and ill-kept track snaked its way.

Since their departure from the hamlet they had seen no evidence of humankind at all save for the rough and rocky path upon which they travelled. Gapp could not imagine who had constructed it, or why; there seemed to be no people in these mountains. Were they really, as Nibulus claimed, using the same road Gwyllch’s Peladanes had taken all those years past? If so, it looked as if no one else had used it in all the intervening years. The only creatures that dwelt here were elusive mountain-goats that could be heard clattering amongst the stony slopes above, or occasionally seen peering down at them from inaccessible rocky heights.

He had never known anywhere as lonely and remote as this, and it was certainly not what he had imagined before they set off. Gapp had always pictured the Blue Mountains as a wild region of lofty crags and snow-capped peaks, where adventurers stood atop high ridges with their swords raised to salute the dawn; where sorcerers practised their arts in stony castles perched at crazy angles on the tops of crags; and where gryphons leapt out of the inky blackness of their caves to attack and devour fair maidens.

Well, it was wild, that was for sure, but now, sitting here in the wet with no hope of dry shelter for weeks ahead, the magic of the wild had wholly lost its allure for Gapp Radnar. The young traveller was saddle-sore, aching all over, soaked through and had begun to shiver violently. He was sick of the blandness of their rations every day, sick of the rain that drove straight into his face no matter what direction they took, and sick of the way the meagre pauses they took never seemed to provide him with any comfort or relaxation until the very minute just before they had to resume their journey.

He was beginning to realize just how much he loved his humble home, his parents, even his brothers; he yearned for warm, dry clothes, soft blankets and hot food. Before setting out, he had imagined himself gloriously as a brave adventurer, but now all he felt like was pathetically human.

Many a time he was tempted to complain, but the silent grimness of his companions always quelled this impulse. Bolldhe and Wodeman were clearly not men to appear weak in front of, and even his master and Finwald, with whom he was better acquainted, seemed to have changed. Gapp was beginning to see how hardship robbed men of their usual warmth and turned them into sullen, quick-tempered bullies.

This was becoming the most depressing thing about this whole enterprise. All his life Gapp had been treated as just his name suggested: a gap. If standing in a crowd or a queue, and someone wished to get through, it would always be
him
they chose to push past. Even when there were other smaller, younger kids nearby. Almost as though he had a large sign on his head saying ‘This Space Vacant’. That seemed to be his role in life: a gap in the ranks of humanity. But now he was embarking upon this Quest, naturally all that should change. Surely?

Alas, this lot were now treating him with about as much respect as a stray dog. Less, in fact, for at least they would have avoided stepping on one of those.

Paulus, that grim mercenary, still never smiled, never whistled, only ever spoke when necessary, always walked alone. Continually he was stretching, flexing, clenching and unclenching his muscles, his fingers; like a machine, a killing machine, constantly priming itself.