Farlander (59 page)

Ash wrapped up the rest of the cake and turned away, fumbling to stow it back in his pack.

‘
Do
you wish to leave?’ came the old man’s words, absently, his back still to Nico.

Nico gazed down at the farlander. The old man seemed almost frail tonight in his weariness. The way he stood, slightly slumped over the pack, not moving, not even breathing it seemed, as he waited for a reply.

Ash’s question hung in the air gathering in volume, creating a distance between them; they were strangers to each other in that moment, separated by diverging paths.

It came to Nico in a flash.
You’re dying.

He blinked at the old man, reflecting on the headaches, the constant use of the dulce leaves, the urge to take on an apprentice. Ash was ill, and knew it was only going to get worse for him.

It was suddenly too much for Nico. He thought:
I will never be able
to live with myself, not for a second, if I leave this sick old farlander here, in this awful place, alone.

‘No master,’ he heard himself say. ‘I think this city is just getting to me, that’s all.’

Ash remained a moment with his back turned to him, his shoulders swelling as he took a fresh breath.

When he turned around, the distance between them vanished; once again they were returned to their familiar roles of master and apprentice.

‘You should get some sleep,’ suggested Ash. ‘It will be a long day tomorrow. We can speak more in the morning, if you wish.’

Nico lay down, his head propped on one arm. Ash assumed his meditation position on the floor. There he breathed silently, his eyes fixed on a particular spot on the door.

Nico gazed at the ceiling, not more than two feet above his head. He studied the cracks in the plaster, the warm light flickering against them, the dark patches where damp had taken hold. He listened to the occasional clatter of coins as they tumbled within the walls, deposited in the floors above, and finding their long way down the collection chutes to some secure vault in the hostalio basement far below.

He wondered how long the old man had left to him. It must be a disease of some kind, something terminal.

Nico would stay with him, despite his own doubts. Even though he knew this was really, a decision based on loyalty and compassion, rather than any real desire to remain.

When he fell asleep a short time later, he dreamed of burying the old man next to the grave he had made for Boon. Serèse was there, too. She spoke some words over the grave. Nico himself was silent: in place of a speech he lay the old man’s sword against the packed earth. When they turned and walked away from the site, he felt a mixture of sadness and relief. It was as though with every step the heaviness in his stomach lightened.

He and Serèse carried packs on their backs. For an eternal time after that, Nico dreamed that they were travelling together, carefree and in love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The sun sank fast in these mountains. By late afternoon the shadows they cast were already pooling into a bleak onset of twilight.

The column of Commandos made camp by a clear stream. They had been travelling hard for a full day now, on foot mostly, since they had left their zels in the coastal foothills along with a few of their men. Mules carried the heaviest of their baggage, more footsure in these mountains than the heavy thoroughbreds they had left behind. Purchased in Cheem Port with their imperial coin, men were unloading them now, mostly items of food and small disassembled pieces of artillery. Orders, when necessary, were given by silent hand gestures from the officers, who were distinguished only by the insignia of rank tattooed on their temples.

One by one the last of the purdas returned. These were the elite scouts of the imperial army, named after the hooded cloaks they wore, which were camouflaged with breaks of colour and featherings of grass and foliage. Each was accompanied by a large wolfhound, bred for this work. The purdas reported the surrounding area to be clear.

Regardless, a double ring of sentries was posted around the camp, squatting hidden from sight in their improvised hides. No fires were lit. The men’s shelters were sheets of speckled canvas propped on sticks, each a lean-to just large enough for a man to crawl underneath and stay dry from any rainfall.

The Commandos worked smoothly and with little supervision. Their colonel, chewing on a plug of tarweed as he watched from the centre of the camp, gave a satisfied grunt before he left his men to it.

He headed away from the periphery of the camp towards the kneeling form of the Diplomat.

‘This is it, then?’ he asked gruffly, as he knelt beside the berry bush the young man was scrutinizing so closely.

Ché continued to stare down at the bush. He was dressed in simple leather armour beneath a heavy cloak of dyed grey wool. He wrapped it tighter about himself, and replied, ‘It is.’

Cassus, the colonel, drew one of the black berries towards him, still on its branch. ‘It looks remarkably like a skull,’ he observed of the white markings upon it. ‘I wouldn’t wish to put such a thing in my mouth.’

‘I don’t eat it. I prepare it correctly, and smear some of the juice on my forehead. It is lethal to use it any other way.’

The colonel held the berry for a moment longer then released it, causing the small bush to quiver. Cassus stood and considered the man by his side. Ché did not look up.

‘When will you take it?’

Some faint expression flickered across Ché’s face, and was gone before it could be read. Again Cassus wondered what was troubling him.

The colonel liked to think of himself as a perceptive man. He knew this guide of theirs was struggling with something, some concern that was only worsening as they grew nearer to their goal.
He does not wish to be doing this,
Cassus often found himself thinking.

‘In the morning,’ announced Ché. ‘The men will meanwhile need their rest. There’s no telling how fast I may travel, or over what kind of terrain.’

‘And you will be truly delirious the entire time?’

Ché’s lips parted, showing teeth. ‘Entirely out of my skull.’

The colonel did not like that, and he said as much. But he had complained before about this aspect of their mission, and the Diplomat had no further reassurances for him now. The man offered nothing but silence: it was not his concern.

Cassus turned and surveyed the camp, where the men had almost finished their preparations. Already, some were hunkering down beside their lean-tos to chew on their dried rations or talk quietly amongst themselves. Others had stripped off to bathe in the stream.

They had numbered eighty-two when they had first set out from Q’os: the colonel and eight squads of ten men each, a full company in all; plus one more to their number, this strange Diplomat sent to them from High Command. Two of the men had fallen ill during the voyage and therefore had remained on the ship; two more had been left behind to look after the zels; another had wrenched his ankle on the hike up into the mountains. Such losses were less than the colonel might have expected. That left him with seventy-seven men in all: not quite four platoons.

The colonel was worried, though. He had been worried even before they had set off on this hastily prepared mission. They faced upwards of fifty R
shun, according to their Diplomat guide. Fifty R
shun, on their own territory, defending their lives and their home. His Commandos might be the finest fighters in the imperial army, but he still disliked such odds.

Cassus had wondered why the Matriarch had not committed a full battalion of army regulars to back them up. A mission like this was surely best undertaken slowly, with large and overwhelming numbers. But he supposed the Beggar Kings of Cheem Port would have balked at such a force wishing to land at their docks, no matter how much gold was offered to them.

Besides, perhaps the rumours back home were true. Something was astir in the capital. Companies were being reformed out of the remnants of others; men from the quieter outposts of the Empire were being recalled to Q’os. The rumour-mongers had talked of only one thing, and Cassus judged them to be right. He had taken part in more than one invasion himself.

Ché rose from his study of the bush and met the colonel’s eyes at last. Once more, Cassus felt himself stiffen under the young man’s cold and empty gaze.

‘The morning, then,’ agreed the colonel, speaking around his lump of tarweed.

Ché nodded and walked away.

Cassus watched as the young man staked out a lean-to well away from the others, and threw his pack beneath it. The man sat in front of his crude shelter with his legs folded, facing the last of the light, his hands clasped together, his eyes closed.

He looked like one of those fool-crazy monks of the Dao.

A few of the men took notice of what he was doing, as they had back on the ship. They nudged each other, leering quietly.

He’s a dangerous one,
Cassus mused.
I wouldn’t like to cross him.
The colonel turned away, spitting upon the grass as he did so.
Well, soon
we will face fifty of his like.

He filled his lungs with mountain air, scanning the snow-capped ranges around their camp. He knew they were out there somewhere, hidden in some high valley behind their monastery walls.

Surprise
, he thought as he contemplated this mission once more.
It will all come down to surprise
.

*

Nico awoke with a start.

The room flickered with gaslight. Ash sat on the floor, still deep in meditation, his hooded eyes fixed to the same spot on the door. Nico rubbed his tired eyes. He had no way of telling how long he had been asleep. An hour perhaps?

Someone shouted outside in the hallway, complaining with the loud senseless words of a drunk.

It was the only warning they had.

The door burst inwards with a crash against the wall, sending out a puff of chalky plaster. Nico’s body clenched with the sudden shock of it. He opened his mouth, perhaps to shout something, perhaps simply to gasp. Instead he found the strangest of things occurring: time slowed for him, hovering on the edge of that first instant.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Ash’s hand reach for the blade by his side. But Nico knew that it would encounter only emptiness. The sword was stowed in a canvas roll beneath the bed, where he had replaced it earlier after his return. In the doorway, he saw the white press of Acolytes as they rushed through it one at a time. Their robes seemed caught in mid-motion, like a painting, the folds in them given depth with shadows and highlights, the curious silk patterns in the cloth shimmering in the light. He saw the naked length of steel in the grip of the foremost man, brandished like an extension of his arm. An oily sheen ran along the blade, sea blue, corn yellow, moist-earth brown; while a reflection of the gaslight shone close to the hilt, like a miniature sun. He saw the man’s mask, and how its many apertures were in deep blackness save for the whites of his eyes – fixed now on the old farlander squatting on the floor, caught unarmed and unawares.

And then time whiplashed back to normal, and all was chaos and a great roar was filling Nico’s ears, shocking the senses from him further, and he realized that Ash was the source of it, still squatting there and doing the only thing possible as the lead Acolyte lunged at him with his blade.