A Solitary Journey (14 page)

‘Yes, Hordemaster.’

‘To whom do I send my reply?’

‘Warlord Bloodsword, Hordemaster.’

Broadback smiled grimly. Bloodsword’s crippling injuries hadn’t stopped him from retaining command. He was a tough bastard. ‘Tell the Warlord that I am burning the forests and roasting barbarians alive every day. Tell him the plains are already cleansed and now
only the ones that hide in the deepest parts of the forest are left, and soon they will be eradicated.’

‘I will, Hordemaster,’ the messenger promised. He bowed and departed.

Cleaver Broadback eased forward in his saddle and studied the smoke. The wind today was blowing from the west, conveniently driving the fires into the forest as if it served the Kerwyn army in its quest. There were barbarians still in there, a lot of them, because many had escaped from their towns, farms and villages before the Kerwyn army destroyed them. Burning the forest was a waste of wood supply and game, but Broadback knew that it was the most efficient method of achieving his goal. He expected many Shessian refugees would already be on the forest’s eastern edge, trapped at the foot of the mountains, and he knew there would be a final necessary massacre when his men reached the limit of the forest. The barbarians had outlived their time. It was the time of the Kerwyn.
What lands lie beyond the mountains?
he wondered.

M
eg washed her fingers in the shallow water bowl guiltily, knowing how precious water was. The parties sent to fetch fresh water from deeper in the foothills on the mountain slopes were growing weaker daily with the dramatic reduction in food supplies created by the exploding numbers of refugees who came to escape the Kerwyn. The more enterprising and adventurous had already left the camp, heading east through the mountain passes into the lands beyond. ‘Will he be all right?’ asked the woman who was cradling the boy that Meg was tending.

Meg smiled at the dark-eyed mother. ‘He will sleep for a day, Crystalwater. When he wakes, the poison should be gone from his leg and he will be well again.’ She hated her promise. The boy would recover from his septic injury because of Meg’s healing touch, only to continue starving and dying of thirst like everyone else. She straightened and glanced over the area set aside for people seeking help. Tired and gaunt faces smiled at her—people grateful for her healing touch. Work finished for the day, she wiped her damp fingers against her patched and torn trousers and started for her tent site.

The sky was endless grey—a gloomy mixture of cloud and smoke mirroring her emotion. The forest fires were burning closer daily as the Kerwyn hunted their Shessian quarry and although the camp overflowed with people fewer came from the forest now. Stories of murder and rape and the stolen children filled her heart with an anger that burned like the forest fires. She couldn’t understand why the Kerwyn hated her people—what insanity drove them to kill helpless elderly folk and ravage women callously before murdering their husbands and taking away their children? She waved to the big man, Wombat, who was repairing a hole in his family’s thin canvas shelter, but she kept walking, leaving the campsite to climb the eastern slope, weaving between the pines, clambering over the rocks and slipping on the loose shale. When she was higher than the forest canopy, she climbed onto a bowed mountain ash trunk and stared westwards.

The entire horizon was a wall of smoke and the late afternoon sun a red ball buried in its heart. She rubbed her tired eyes and blinked. The fires were closer than ever. Her heart quickened.
How long before the Kerwyn arrive?
she wondered. She looked down at the people in the camp and saw Wombat playing with his children. He had changed her world overnight with his arrival and his revelations about her identity. ‘Meg Farmer,’ he told her as she sat with his wife and children at his tent. ‘I wondered what happened to you after we parted. I heard that the Queen sent for you.’ He winked and started to hum a tune that he rolled into lyrics.

‘A tale to tell, a song to sing, come listen one and all,

For I will sing of a lady fair and of wonders wild and bold,

For there was a lady hair o’ flame whose power had no peer

And in this song now I will see her wondrous tale is told.’

He paused and nodded to his wife. ‘Ochre, this is the girl I told you about who saved my life. She has the power of healing and magic. This is Lady Amber.’

The name stirred memories and as the night deepened and Wombat unfolded what he knew of her past—that she was from Summerbrook, that she had travelled with Wombat in search of her lover only to end up slaying the most powerful warrior in the Rebel ranks, that she had been taken to Port of Joy to meet the Queen and there somehow metamorphosed into Lady Amber, that her companions were a dingo and an unusual bush rat—images flashed through her mind that seemed unrelated to Wombat’s stories and yet felt rooted in her forgotten life. She listened to Wombat sing another ballad version of Lady Amber’s fate, dying with friend and foe at the mercy of the Demon Horsemen in a cataclysmic battle from which there were no survivors, and when he’d finished she said, ‘If this Lady Amber is dead, then it’s not me, is it?’

Wombat stared at her, as if he was searching for something in her face. ‘Where have you been since then?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She wanted to tell him about her dreams, especially the ones in which she had a family—a husband and children—but she didn’t. How did she know what was real and what wasn’t? Only one thing was certain—she had the power to heal others. She already knew that before Wombat’s revelation, but his recognition and confirmation of her name as Meg gave her the courage to do what she could for the others in the camp. She
worked her healing skill on the worst injured the morning following Wombat’s arrival and, as news of her magical touch spread through the camp, the whispers became stares as people dared to believe the mystical Lady Amber had come back to life to save them.

She balanced precariously on the trunk and studied the smoke, imagining the Kerwyn massed behind the white-and-grey wall, milling in the ashes, rabid barbarians waiting impatiently to rush with bloodthirsty hunger onto the innocent and starving survivors. The stories from the latest refugees to enter the campsite contained images of horror and blood, and she couldn’t imagine that men could commit the atrocities they described—only barbaric demons could murder and destroy without reason.

Wombat’s reminders rekindled her nagging sense of emptiness and loss—knowing without remembering clearly that she had been a wife, a mother, a child, and that the people who loved her and she loved were buried in the earth and ashes of Summerbrook. Her dreams were clearer than ever the last few nights. She dreamed of a handsome man with part of a leg missing—her husband, she knew that now. Button Tailor. And she dreamed of a woman who held her as a child, and three brothers—Daryn, Mykel, Peter—and three children who were her children. And she knew she had buried the eldest boy. Her nights were broken between dreams and tears and her days immersed in healing the people who came to her. She dreamed of a woman with blonde hair surrounded by men in blue robes. She dreamed of an old man who warned her to be wary of the men in blue robes wherever she went. There were stranger dreams—dreams of a barren landscape of endless grey dust and the naked, pale contorted figure bound cruelly to the black dragon. And she dreamed
again of walking east into the rising sun, searching for books.
Where do such dreams come from?
she wondered.

Whenever she spread her hands across an injury her spine tingled as she focussed on healing. It tingled when she conjured light and fire, although she was careful not to show anyone else that her skill—some were calling it a Blessing—was more varied and potent than they knew. She knew people believed that she was really Lady Amber, the woman in Wombat’s ballads raised from the dead, but she knew otherwise. She was Meg Tailor. She once was Meg Farmer, too, but that was a long time ago.

Distant screams and dogs barking snapped her attention to the southern end of the camp. The forest was moving, coming apart, and her heart quickened as the tiny figure of a woman was cut down by a scything poleaxe wielded by a brutally large man. The Kerwyn were among her people.

Men charged through the camp, torches ablaze in the spreading shadows. She slid from the trunk and scrambled down the slope, falling as stones skidded from under her feet, but she didn’t feel the pain of the cuts and bruising along her hands or knees. Yelling and screaming grew louder as she pushed through a screen of bushes and met a ragged line of women and children desperately seeking refuge higher up the hill among the trees. She ran to the edge of the camp, searching frantically for Magpie in the chaos, and saw a man die as he made a futile gesture of resistance. A Kerwyn warrior burst from between the shelters to her right. A broad smile split his dark knotted beard and he twisted his sword menacingly in his right hand as he strode towards her. Meg back-pedalled, fear making her trembling legs threaten to melt beneath her. The Kerwyn said something and a brown-haired warrior
emerged from among the shelters, dragging a girl by her hair. The warrior released his captive’s hair, letting the sobbing girl collapse at his feet, and licked his lips at Meg, before speaking to his companion. They laughed.

Around them, Meg saw screaming people running from the camp and smoke billowing from the burning shelters. She felt detached suddenly, as if she was seeing the terrifying events from another place. The men approached, but their attention was diverted as a boy leapt from behind Meg and crashed into the dark-bearded man. The warrior met the boy’s charge with his forearm and smashed the lad to the ground, but the boy scrambled to his feet, ready to make a second attack. ‘No, Magpie!’ Meg screamed. ‘Run! Get out of here!’

‘I’ll kill them first!’ Magpie yelled defiantly.

‘They’ll kill you!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of here!’

The Kerwyn warriors seemed amused by the argument and two more ambled out of the smoke to join the group. They assessed the situation and one threw a sword to land at Magpie’s feet. His words were unintelligible, but his motioning hand invited Magpie to pick up the weapon. ‘Don’t touch it!’ Meg hissed, glaring at the boy. Magpie met the steady gaze of the Kerwyn who’d thrown the sword and he began to bend. ‘No!’ Meg yelled angrily. She was startled by the reaction of the warriors because all four were instantly alert and wary.

‘Now, little bird,’ said a gruff voice behind Meg, and she turned to discover Wombat holding an axe, ‘I suggest you and the boy start climbing into the hills.’

Confronted by Wombat’s imposing mass, the Kerwyn warriors crouched in readiness. ‘You heard Wombat,’ Meg said to Magpie.

Seeing the Kerwyn distracted from him, Magpie snatched up the sword. ‘I’m staying,’ he said earnestly, eyeing the enemy, his sword point trembling like Meg’s legs.

Wombat strode past Meg and lurched into the melee, putting his bulk between the Kerwyn and the boy as his axe circled and struck down his first opponent. The three standing Kerwyn eagerly entered the challenge as Meg crept back several paces, horrified and fascinated by Wombat’s audacity and strength. A second Kerwyn dropped silently, the brown-haired man, his face full of shock as he understood that the Shessian giant had cut him fatally.

Wombat bellowed, ‘Run!’ at Magpie, adding, ‘Look after Meg, lad!’ Seizing a chance to strike, a Kerwyn stabbed at Wombat, but the big man nimbly sidestepped and his fist smashed the unlucky warrior’s jaw. Groggy and clutching his face, the man stumbled sideways and Magpie swung his sword into the man’s leg. The warrior yelped and jumped before falling. Wombat blocked the dark-bearded man’s sharp blows, before his sweeping axe knocked the Kerwyn’s sword away and sent the warrior bolting for safety. ‘Come on!’ Wombat ordered, searching the smoke and fire quickly engulfing the camp for immediate danger. He wrenched Magpie forward, pulling him roughly in the direction of the hills, and beckoned for Meg to follow.

As the trio ran between burning shelters Meg tripped on the body of a woman and stared into her dead, wide terror-stricken eyes, rooted to the earth by the vision until Wombat grabbed her arm and pulled her away. ‘No time for that, little bird,’ he said. Then he pushed her aside and engaged a Kerwyn warrior. A swift exchange of blows ended when Wombat smashed the butt of his axe into the warrior’s stomach and brought the head down across the falling man’s neck. Meg wanted to vomit, but Wombat pushed her along the shallow slope, heading north instead of up the hillside. Twice more he intercepted and brought down attackers
before he directed Meg and Magpie into the bush on a diagonal ascent of the hills.

Fifteen refugees squatted under a jutting ledge, huddled against the night cold, staring at the orange glow along the western horizon. ‘It’s as if the whole forest is burning,’ said Magpie.

‘It is,’ Meg murmured, and she drew the boy closer.

‘Why do the Kerwyn want to kill us?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

‘Greed,’ Wombat said bluntly.

‘They hate us,’ said Wombat’s wife, Ochre.

‘How can people we don’t know hate us?’ Magpie asked.

Silence answered his question. Meg couldn’t understand the reasoning, although in her memories she felt the presence of hatred that she had experienced a long time ago—the feeling that people hated her for what she was.

‘I’m hungry,’ Wombat’s son, Digger, complained.

‘Me too,’ chimed in his sister, Petal.

‘Hush,’ Ochre hissed softly. ‘We can’t eat tonight. There’ll be something tomorrow.’

‘I’m thirsty,’ Petal pleaded.

A woman’s screams raced across the face of the hills, coming from the south, and Meg squeezed Magpie closer as the screams intensified and faded like whispers in the darkness. ‘They’re hunting everywhere,’ a woman at the edge of the huddled group noted angrily. ‘What will we do?’

‘They’re chasing down people who went straight up the mountain,’ Wombat explained. ‘Get some sleep if you can. We’ll go deeper and higher before sunrise. By the time the Kerwyn start spreading wider we’ll be gone.’

‘What if they come before we leave?’ the woman persisted.

‘I’ll keep watch while you rest,’ Wombat promised. ‘If they come, they come.’

Whispers and muffled shuffling of people searching for warmth and comfort broke the silence. Meg let Magpie snuggle against her and smiled at the growing boy’s inner childlike needs. She felt Ochre pressing against her back. Wombat’s wife was someone she wanted to get to know. Behind the young woman’s dark eyes sparkled a bright intelligence that attracted Meg, though circumstances in the past few days had not allowed them much chance to speak. She sighed and gazed up at the sliver of moon on its back. She was living in a violent, ever-changing world and all she wanted was the opportunity to rest.

You know how to come here, the commanding voice of the dream told her. You came before. I need you. You’re the only one left who can save me. I need you.

But I don’t know how, she whispered desperately.

Make a portal, the voice ordered. Make a portal.