A Solitary Journey (15 page)

M
eg’s legs ached, and she was wet and cold and tired by the end of the next day from climbing slopes and descending valleys to climb again. The Kerwyn were persistent and ruthless. Five times Meg and her companions glimpsed Kerwyn hunting parties scouring the surrounding hills and at midday they watched helplessly as a Kerwyn party chased and trapped a large refugee group in a box canyon in an adjoining valley. They didn’t stay to see the fate of the prisoners. Standing still was certain capture or death. Wombat, the only man among five children and nine women, urged them relentlessly on. ‘Hard work now will save us,’ he said when two women complained that they couldn’t continue and he directed the group’s progress from the rear, making Magpie his forward scout.

Late in the afternoon, when they crested the largest hill and reached the base of the first real mountain towering above them, its snowy peak seeming to drift through the grey clouds, Wombat called a halt. He walked to the front of the group, puffing furiously, and wheezed, ‘We go through that pass over there,’ as he pointed to a V-shaped gap between two mountains
visible to the left side of the one they stood before. ‘Magpie will lead.’

The group straggled after the boy, but Meg lingered beside Wombat as he waited for Ochre and his children to follow the others. ‘So you’ve been through here before?’ she asked.

Wombat shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Then how do you know we go through there?’

He scratched his shaggy hair and said, ‘Well, call it a smart guess. It’s the most likely place, given the only other way is to climb over the mountain,’ and he grinned cheekily. Meg, unable to argue with his simple logic, nodded and shrugged. ‘Come on, little bird,’ he said, ‘we have to find somewhere to shelter and keep warm. The air’s already turning nasty.’

‘I’ll follow,’ she said. ‘I just want one more look.’ Wombat touched her shoulder affectionately with his broad hand as Meg stared towards the west. The sky was still stained with smoke and the sun was swallowed yet again, as if the entire kingdom was on fire. Everything she knew was gone. She sighed and turned to follow the others, unaware that a small black shape emerged warily from behind a rock and scampered after her.

Heat radiated through the huddled band of refugees. ‘You
are
Lady Amber,’ a woman whispered as Meg lifted her hands from the glowing stone.

‘Stay close around it,’ Wombat warned. ‘We don’t want the Kerwyn spotting any light.’

‘How do you do that, Meg?’ Magpie asked.

She cuddled him, saying, ‘I don’t know. I just think it and it happens.’ She looked at the tired, gaunt faces over the warm glow. Everyone was already starving before the Kerwyn attack on the camp, but running from the enemy was rapidly wearing them to their bones.

For four nights she brought them warmth as they clambered through the rocky pass, and while Wombat hunted small animals and birds in the early morning and evening the women and children scavenged for leaves and berries on the strange mountain plants. The Kerwyn ceased their pursuit, but there was no returning to Western Shess for the refugees. ‘I heard the land over the mountains is called The Valley of Kings,’ the woman named Whitebird told them as conversation circled. ‘My father travelled to the east when he was younger. He said the people there used to call their land Shess like ours, but they interbred with other races and they look different.’

‘How different?’ asked Lace, the youngest woman and the one who still had energy despite the hardship. Her dark blue eyes always sparkled with life.

Whitebird squinted from under her brunette fringe. ‘They’re tall men, he said, but their skin is darker than ours, and they don’t speak like we do.’

‘And their women?’ Lace asked.

‘Like the men,’ Whitebird replied.

‘Our lives will be in their hands when we get through the mountains,’ Ochre said as she fed a morsel of bird meat to her daughter. ‘We will be their guests.’

Wombat rose, hefting his axe. ‘What is it?’ Whitebird asked.

‘Shush,’ he hissed. The group strained to listen. The night was colder, darker. Then they heard a strangled half-growl.

‘What is
that?’
Lace gasped.

Wombat took two paces away, staring into the darkness. ‘Can you make that light brighter?’ he whispered.

‘Everyone cover their eyes,’ Meg warned, before she held out her hands, imagining a bright light flowing from them. The familiar tingling rippled along her spine
as white light radiated around her, driving the shadows back fifty paces from the overhang where they sheltered. At the edge of the light a tawny creature crouched, eyes glittering. It blinked and leapt out of the light.

Covering his eyes to avoid the glare, Wombat looked back at Meg and asked, ‘Did you see that?’

‘What was it?’ she asked.

‘A cat—a giant cat.’ He lowered his axe. ‘You can turn out the light.’

Meg imagined the light gone and the night rushed in, smothering Wombat in shadow as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the golden glow of the warming stone. Questions from the others flew as Wombat squatted at the circle. ‘It was like a great big cat. It was sort of tan in colour. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Will it eat us?’ Digger asked, wide-eyed.

‘Cats don’t eat people,’ Magpie retorted.

‘That cat might,’ said Wombat.

‘Don’t tell him that,’ Ochre chided.

A howl echoed across the mountains. ‘I didn’t think dingoes would come this high,’ said Whitebird.

‘They don’t,’ said Wombat and he stood again uneasily. ‘That wasn’t a dingo howl.’

‘We’re going into strange lands,’ Whitebird whispered, as she rubbed her hands above the warming stone. ‘My father said it was full of different creatures. He said there are no kangaroos or dingoes on the other side of the mountains.’

The howl repeated and was mimicked by another. Meg stood beside Wombat. ‘Are we safe?’

He looked at her, his eyes gleaming in the magical yellow light. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly.

‘I’ll help keep watch tonight,’ she offered.

Solid rain dogged their path, turning the ground into treacherous mud and surging rivulets, and the cold turned bitter as the rain soaked through their clothes to their skin. Wombat led them up a slope to a small cave and ushered everyone in after he checked that it was uninhabited. Cramped, forced to huddle in the tiny space, they sat and shivered until Meg created light and warmth. ‘We’ll stay here until the rain stops,’ said Wombat.

‘How much further do we have to go?’ a woman asked.

Wombat shrugged. ‘At a guess, two or three days—no longer than that, Glitter.’

‘I’m hungry,’ a little girl whined in the centre of the huddle. Whitebird crooned to her and the girl was quiet.

The rain persisted all day, but by nightfall everyone in the tiny cave was cosy and asleep, and even Wombat at the entrance was snoozing, exhausted and close to starvation despite his efforts to provide. Only Meg was awake. Magpie was pressed against her so she carefully extracted herself from his hold and eased past Ochre to the cave entrance. Wombat blocked the exit and his eye opened as she shuffled beside him. ‘What are you up to, little bird?’ he asked.

‘Just not sleeping,’ she said. ‘Thought I’d give you a break from watch.’

He grinned. ‘If I was an honest man, I’d admit to quite a bit of sleeping while I was supposed to be watching.’

‘Then get some more now,’ she offered. ‘I’ll wake you when I can’t stay awake myself.’

Wombat nodded gratefully and folded his arms across his barrel of a chest. ‘I’ll see what happens,’ he said. ‘If I don’t sleep, so be it.’

Meg smiled at the big man and glanced at his wife and children nestled beside him. She wished she could
remember everything about the journey he told her they’d shared years ago, but only the pieces he described actually formed into memories. The spaces between did not return despite her efforts to recall them. He’d said that she went in search of her lover, but didn’t find him.
Who did I love
? she wondered.
Was it Button Tailor? Did I find him later, after Wombat parted from me?
She couldn’t fit the jigsaw together and his stories only complicated her memories. But she had a bigger issue to resolve. Why could she make magic? Who was Lady Amber?

A sharp snore snapped her out of her reverie. The sleeping Wombat was growling like his namesake. She smiled and carefully slipped past the big man into the cold and dark night. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.
I wish I was warmer,
she thought. Then she decided to experiment. She concentrated on feeling warmth through her body—soothing, calm warmth—and to her surprise and delight she felt warmer, as if she had a fire simmering within.
How can I do this?
she pondered.
What can I do?
On a whim she imagined herself floating above the ground. She closed her eyes and concentrated and felt the familiar tingle, and then lost the feeling of the rough earth beneath her feet. When she opened her eyes and looked down she was sure that she was a hand’s span above the ground. She broke the spell and landed softly, her heart racing.
Have I gone mad with hunger
? she wondered. She opened her palm and imagined a small ball of light sitting there and before her amazed eyes a ball of light formed. She thought of it floating above her and the ball left her hand and drifted up until it sat an arm’s length above her head. It was the colour of firelight, so she concentrated and it changed to a soft white light, and then green and then blue as she consciously altered the colour. ‘Who am I?’ she whispered.

‘Don’t move.’

Meg turned to find Wombat’s massive frame crouching three paces behind, axe ready, staring past her. She followed his gaze to the edge of her faint magical light and saw a gleaming pair of red eyes and a dull squarish feline shape.

‘Take a step back, slowly,’ Wombat instructed quietly. Fear thrilling through her, she eased her left foot back slowly, eyes fixed on the creature. Her magical light waned. ‘Don’t lose the light!’ Wombat hissed. She refocussed and the light sharpened, redefining the giant cat.

‘What’s going on?’ Ochre’s silhouette crouched in the warming stone’s light.

‘Stay there,’ Wombat ordered, without looking back. ‘One more step,’ he prompted Meg. She eased her right foot back, slowly, trying to keep calm—and the wild cat charged.

Meg dived, her light vanishing. She heard the animal snarl and Wombat grunt. In the dark she panicked.
Light!
she ordered in her mind, but nothing happened. Precious moments passed in the desperate vicious struggle near her, the cat hissing, Wombat wheezing and grunting. ‘Light!’ she screamed, but nothing changed. A heavy furry weight smacked against her shins and she jumped, and kicked blindly, her foot sinking into soft, coarse hide. The animal snarled and she was struck solidly across her shoulders and face, and sent reeling to the ground. Instinct warned her to roll and get to her feet, and clumsily she did so, only to trip in the dark and fall again. The invisible cat hissed before scrambling madly away. She got to her feet warily. ‘Wombat?’ she queried.

‘I’m here, little bird,’ the big man answered. ‘Make that light again.’

She went to say that she couldn’t, but she took a deep breath and imagined the light forming in her open
right palm and it appeared, leaving her wondering why she couldn’t conjure it when she needed it. The light revealed Wombat leaning on his axe handle, his tunic and waistcoat soaked in blood. She gasped in shock, and said, ‘You’re hurt,’ but he seemed to be staring at her strangely. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Are you—’ he began, and hesitated.

She approached, aware that Ochre and the others were emerging from the cave. ‘Am I what?’ she asked.

‘Your face,’ he said.

Sensing something wrong, she let the light sphere rise from her hand and touched her face curiously. It was sticky and wet, and when she looked at her hand as she drew it away she had blood smeared across her fingertips. She looked down and found that her tunic was shredded along her right arm and her flesh was torn in deep gashes from the cat’s claws. The revelation made her feel sick and a throbbing pain rose from her wounds. She looked at Wombat. ‘I didn’t—’ she tried to say, but couldn’t finish her sentence. Ochre reached Wombat and started crying when she saw her husband’s injuries. Other women pressed around Meg, gasping and telling her she would be all right as they tried to steer her back to the cave.
I will be all right,
she thought, confident from her experiences in her innate capacity to heal,
and so will Wombat.

W
armaster Cutter rode along the front ranks, followed by his ten guards, assessing the readiness of his men. Thirty days of preparation through the cycle of Yanah—the careful and covert shifting of troops across the Greenhills River to approach the Kerwyn army from the south while a small force put on a diversionary show to suggest the Shessian army was mobilising on the eastern outskirts of Port of Joy—was efficiently completed. The fate of the Royal kingdom and Cutter’s own family were in his hands and the hands of the men he commanded. Outnumbered three to one, the Shessian army was bolstered by the Seers’ decision to finally unite behind King Future and by the new batch of thundermakers manufactured and distributed to Cutter’s troops. A victory on Kangaroo Plains, in the teeth of the chilly Shahk cycle, would earn the Shessian capital a significant respite from the invading forces. It was a victory Cutter had to engineer.

The irony of the moment wasn’t lost on him as he reached the end of the front rank and reined in. He remembered watching Warmaster Kingsman stride along the front rank of his soldiers over a decade earlier
when Queen Sunset’s army cornered Prince Future’s Rebel forces outside the Whispering Forest. He was a Leader then, a man in charge of fifty soldiers, among whom was a red-haired girl searching for her lover. As fate decided, she was caught up in the battle and brought down the fabled hero, Marchlord Overbrook, after which she became Lady Amber, Queen Sunset’s saviour, before she perished in wild magical fire in another battle. The Battle of Whispering Forest was a legend in Shessian folklore, not just because of Lady Amber’s involvement, but because it stalled the pretensions of the Queen’s son to the Royal throne. Cutter played a small role in that outcome. Now, ten years later, he was responsible for saving the kingdom on behalf of the very man from whom he’d helped to protect it. He smiled wryly at the perverse nature of the world’s events.

The Kerwyn army sat like a shadow along a low ridge across the plain. Although he’d personally hamstrung his opposing military leader, he knew from spy reports that the crippled Warlord Bloodsword was still directing the Kerwyn army, unwilling to let go of his command. Cutter was pleased. Bloodsword’s reputation was built on successes. Victory against a less able Kerwyn Warlord would be less satisfying. Beating Bloodsword would impress on the Kerwyn that the Shessian army was immensely powerful, and Cutter needed a psychological edge if he was going to drive the enemy off Western Shess land after Shahk. A land victory would also weaken the Kerwyn stranglehold on the ocean because the Kerwyn navy wouldn’t be able to provision itself so easily. Kerwyn ships patrolled the bay into Port of Joy and their aggressive presence prevented the Shessian shipbuilders from launching new vessels. Isolating the Kerwyn from land supplies would force them to retreat north and free the Shessians to build a better navy.

Cutter knew the odds and what was at stake. If he lost this crucial battle, the defence of Port of Joy would crumble and the Kerwyn would be his people’s new masters. Countless reports of the atrocities being committed against Shessian people across the northern lands flooded into the capital through a few refugees who had found their way around the Kerwyn army, particularly through the southern hills, by avoiding the marauding Coalition of Chieftains’ war parties. They told tales of slaughter and rape and pillage, and the streams of children marched west to the ports to be sold as slaves to foreign people. The Kerwyn were not content with simply winning a war. They were bent on genocide and the annihilation of everything associated with Western Shess. There could be no quarter sought in the impending battle and no option of surrender. Defeat in any form was death. His men knew that.

Riders galloped towards him and reined in. ‘The Seers are in position, Warmaster,’ reported his second- in-command, Marchlord Chiseller. ‘They await your signal.’

‘The thundermakers are split into the ten Groups you ordered,’ Marchlord Bolt confirmed. ‘Leader Widehills has taken position with the decoy Group.’

Cutter smiled at the former Leader who’d faithfully followed him from the battles with the Coalition. ‘Tell them to hold their fire until the horns sound three times. We want the Kerwyn to think we have fewer of the thundermakers than we do to give them false confidence.’ He looked over the shoulder of his Marchlord at the thundermakers nestled in rocks a hundred paces ahead of the front ranks. Leader Widehills was a seasoned campaigner and a brave man, and after this battle Cutter would ensure he was appropriately rewarded for his courage.

A third Marchlord rode up, his horse snorting and shaking its head as he reined in. ‘Warmaster, the decoy Seers are ready. Seer Diamond has given them miniature thunderclaps to fool the enemy.’

‘Good work, Roadway,’ Cutter acknowledged, and followed the pointing Marchlord’s direction to see the five men in blue robes in a stand of gum trees. ‘Let’s hope the Kerwyn take the bait.’ He dismissed the Marchlords and eased his horse about to face the enemy line. ‘Easy, Quickfire,’ he crooned to the animal as he petted the horse’s neck. ‘It will soon be over.’ He gazed westward at the brown haze of smoke that settled like rancid water moss across the land in the past cycle. The destruction of the Whispering Forest, according to reports, was all but completed. The Kerwyn were desperate, ruthless vandals, so they could not be allowed to triumph. Jarudha would forbid that, surely.
I’m not a religious man,
he thought as his eyes returned to the Kerwyn lines,
but this is one time I hope Jarudha is real and His promises hold true.
A mournful horn bellowed on the distant ridge.

Strapped securely into his saddle, Warlord Bloodsword watched his strategy unfolding. Despite the Shessian priests’ treachery, he still had sufficient reserves of the magical black powder to give his three thousand thundermakers three charges each. He ordered a hundred wagons built, each to carry twenty thundermakers, with the intention of using them to strike directly at the enemy priests, killing them at a distance with their own magic. The wagons would be protected by a thousand cavalry as they forayed into the enemy ranks and they would follow in the immediate wake of a swift suicidal charge of five thousand infantry whose sole role was to force the Shessian defences into chaos. His spies reported the
barbarians had established a thundermaker cohort and positioned it to cover the centre of the battlefield, so he was countering with a second cavalry force whose mission was to overrun the Shessian thundermaker battery in the conflict’s opening phase. At the same time, he sent a second infantry force of three thousand men circling eastward to drive in at the enemy’s eastern flank. It was a plan that had won him battle after battle against the Shessian leaders and he was confident it would break them again.

Cold weather was looming. Above the eastern smoke pall the skies were grey, and out to the west, over the ocean, dark thunderclouds were forming. Defeating the enemy in this battle virtually ended the war. His spies confirmed that the army facing him was the last the barbarians could muster. With his strategy in place, after striking at the key barbarian defences, he would send in his main army to destroy resistance by overwhelming the enemy with numbers.

Surrounded by his bodyguards, Bloodsword watched his infantry smash against the enemy’s first ranks and the battle dissolve into confusion. As the cavalry and the wagons pushed towards the small hill and trees sheltering the blue-robed priests, a ball of flame erupted among his riders, followed by another. The priests were using their magic, but two fireballs couldn’t stop a thousand riders. The cavalry wheeled, fanning out to let the wagons come to a standstill, and that area of the battlefield was caught in a hiatus as the cavalry swarmed to drive back a rallying defensive effort from the enemy. Too late, the handful of priests burst from the trees, apparently realising the danger in the wagons. Simultaneously the wagons erupted in puffs of white smoke from the thundermakers and the priests flopped and sprawled under the hail of metal. Bloodsword smiled—one threat eliminated.

He turned his attention to the enemy thundermakers as they fired a round into the side of his infantry. The spread and number of puffs of smoke surprised him by their lack of number. He expected the barbarians to have built more with the help of the priests. Something wasn’t quite right. He searched the battlefield for the telltale smoke of thundermakers, other than his own mounted in the wagons, and stopped when he saw what was happening to his wagons. In the break between reloading the thundermakers, a barbarian force was counterattacking the wagons and overwhelming his men despite the cavalry’s efforts. Small barbarian forces were spreading across the edges of the battlefield.
A flanking move,
he noted with grim approval.
Clever ploy. But I have the numbers.
He returned to the enemy thundermakers in time to see his second cavalry force come at full gallop over a crest and descend upon them. The enemy fired their weapons haphazardly in a futile attempt to blunt the charge before they were engulfed by the horses. Again Bloodsword nodded approval at his strategy. Priests eliminated. Thundermakers eliminated. It cost him a substantial number of his own thundermakers, he critically noted as he surveyed the carnage unfolding at his wagons, but the damage to the enemy was done. He turned to a bodyguard and ordered, ‘Blow the general charge!’ The Kerwyn warrior immediately lifted a war horn to his lips and blew.

Spurred on by the war horn, the Kerwyn army marched dutifully forward, spears bobbing, banners flapping in the breeze. A spot of rain landed on Bloodsword’s face and he looked up at the weather moving in from the west. The heavily laden blue clouds were bringing a brutal rainstorm.
The land needs cleansing,
he quietly mused, and relaxed to watch the final stages of the battle unfold.

Cutter urged his horse on, leading his contingent towards the crest, determined to reach his objective before time dissipated. The Kerwyn had taken his bait, but he hadn’t anticipated Bloodsword’s improvisation of the thundermaker wagons. He was always devising new strategies. Fortunately Marchlord Roadway who was organising the Seer decoy used his initiative to attack the wagons when they were vulnerable—before the thundermakers could fire again—and his quick thinking turned the conflict in the Shessian army’s favour on that portion of the field. The main Kerwyn army was ignoring his small skirmishing groups—his disguised thundermakers—intent on joining battle with the Shessian army, exactly as he hoped, but scouts reported a Kerwyn force attacking from the east and he was riding to intercept them before they made an effective incursion.

Surging over the crest, his cavalry charged headlong into the Kerwyn. There was no time for tactics. Caught in the chaotic whirlpool of men and weapons, Cutter wrenched out his sword and hacked at the enemy who grappled his horse. Cries and screams and the clang of weapons and armour and whinnying horses resounded around him. He spun his horse to make space and spurred it deeper into the enemy ranks, his companions forming a wedge to drive forward. His horse reared as a pike plunged into its flank and kicked out, the flailing hoofs slicing a warrior’s head open. Cutter slid from his mount and struck down the pikeman, and lunged and parried as he fought furiously to keep the enemy at bay, until his men formed a cordon to protect their Warmaster, leaving him sweating at the centre of a circle of horses. He used the opportunity to check the pike wound on Quickfire, stroking the palomino gently.
It was deep and bleeding, but the horse would live. Riding him in the battle had been unwise.

‘Warmaster!’ a soldier yelled above the din. Cutter looked up at the Leader, a young man he should know, but the bloodied face escaped his memory. ‘The Kerwyn are retreating!’ the young Leader reported.

‘Chase them down!’ Cutter ordered. ‘Chase them as far as you can without getting into trouble!’ The Leader nodded, grinning, and turned his head to issue orders before he prodded his horse out of the circle.
Leader Riverrushes,
Cutter remembered. He would commend the young man after the battle.

As the protective circle expanded, Cutter emerged to see the dead and dying scattered across the hillside. His men had stopped the biggest threat—the Kerwyn side attack. He only hoped the rest of the battle was going to plan. Behind, out of sight beyond the closest ridge, he heard the dull boom of thundermakers. ‘Come on!’ he bellowed to his troops, remounted Quickfire, and led his men along the path the enemy had used to attempt their sneak attack.

Warlord Bloodsword realised that he’d been terribly misinformed about the strength of his enemy when he saw the unexpected clouds of thundermaker smoke along the shallow slopes on either side of his infantry, and his troops’ failure to attack from the east added to his mounting concerns. The only consolation was the eradication of the priest threat. The thundermaker wagons, lost to a barbarian counterattack, had at least fulfilled their mission, but the enemy thundermakers were slaughtering his warriors. ‘Wilddog!’ he yelled, and waited impatiently for a broad-shouldered warrior to rein in alongside. ‘Take five hundred horsemen and scour the eastern ridge of the thundermakers!’ Wilddog nodded and galloped down to his waiting cavalry, while
Bloodsword turned back to the battle where to his dismay the barbarians were charging his men.
Arrogant bastards,
he thought angrily.
You’ll pay for your impudence.
The two forces collided as another raindrop hit Bloodsword’s cheek and he glanced westward where a rain squall was sweeping in. Rain would work to his advantage. The thundermakers’ magic powder didn’t work if it got wet. While he would lose his own weapons, the enemy would lose the advantage they’d established by encircling his army and it would become a grinding hand-to-hand battle—and he had the numbers to crush the Shessian resistance.

He shifted his attention to Wilddog’s mounted force charging towards the thundermakers, eager to see the enemy routed. Along the ridge, behind the line of enemy thundermakers, he spotted a wagon with two figures standing on it, and despite the distance he saw that one was wearing blue robes. A barbarian priest had escaped the bloodbath of his colleagues. He felt a chill along his spine, the memory of his partially deafening experience outside a farmhouse rushing back, and he pulled nervously on his horse’s reins. The cavalry following Wilddog suddenly veered and separated as if a giant hand pushed through their centre—horses baulked and reared, while riders fought their reins and tumbled from their saddles. A ball of flame erupted in the thick of his soldiers fighting on the plain, followed by another, and then a snaking wall of flame cut off his men’s retreat from battle.