Authors: Miles Cameron
The rustling was close.
He smelled that sharp odour again – and another. It burned the back of his throat; metallic and yet organic, like a strong musk.
And then it began to rain. It was a gentle rain, and in his fear and his desperate effort to find them some hiding place in this open meadow Nita Qwan had missed the change in temperature and the colour of the sky. The rain fell in big drops, heralded by a gust of wind that flattened the grass to the west, and for a moment Nita Qwan could clearly see a long line of boggles walking, heads down, across the open grass, headed north and west across the ford.
And then the rain line struck harder, and he couldn’t see so much as fifty feet. The rushing rain filled the stream and the swamp in moments, and banished the acrid boggle smell.
Nita Qwan didn’t know if they were still there, or not. He hung from the roots, waiting, watching the river fill under his belly, feeling the boy’s terror. He thought of his wife’s arse when she hoed corn, and that helped him for a bit. But in the end his muscles were screaming like a man being eaten alive, and he gave a gasp and they both fell into the icy water.
It was still only a few inches deep. And if there were any boglins about, they either didn’t see the two soaked men, or didn’t care. Faster and faster, the two humans worked their way upstream, across a long beaver dam built by beavers of the normal size, and then they were at the northern edge of the meadow.
The dam that stood there defied belief. Even with his gut muscles protesting, freezing cold, and lashed by the rain, Nita Qwan had to stare at the beaver dam he had mistaken for the edge of the woods. It stood as tall as an Alban town wall, forty feet or more. Whole trees – big trees – studded it. Water seeped through it and under it, coming from a body of water somewhere above. It was extraordinary.
‘Come on,’ Nita Qwan said. Visibility was cut to a short bowshot or less, and the rain was torrential. Climbing the dam had everything to recommend it – it would be hard for the boglins to follow them, and would give them better visibility. And Nita Qwan imagined that the top of the dam would be easier walking.
Nor was he disappointed. It took them long minutes to get up the dam – all brought on by the boy’s injured foot – but the top was as wide as a cart, and in some places covered in grass. And on the far side of the damn was a body of water that continued into the middle distance, covered in dead, standing trees, each one of which had a great nest in the top – and it was studded with more beaver castles.
They moved as quickly as the boy could over the top of the dam, and came down only a mile or so north of their camp. They passed two open pools of Wild honey, and Nita Qwan tried to mark them in his mind. The boy still had his buckets, so they filled them in the rain and moved on.
Twice they heard the mechanical buzzing sound of the great bees, but they didn’t see one. They walked on and on, and eventually Nita Qwan lost his little remaining faith in his sense of direction and stopped. He made his way to the light that he could see on his right hand, fearing that it would not be the great meadow, but it was, and he made his way back to the boy. The boy’s trust in him was total, and almost as frightening as the boggles had been. Then the light began to fade, the rain came harder, and Nita Qwan began to know real fear.
Finally, an hour or so before dark, he smelled smoke – and became conscious that he’d smelled smoke for some time. He saw a glow through the trees, and then a hard-edged flash of red-orange light, and he knew he was close. The two of them went faster and faster, and gathered more petty injuries and briar scratches in the last short distance than they had in all the rest of their long walk. At last, they came to the camp. Young Gon had his back slapped a dozen times, and he bore the teasing with dignity. Nita Qwan was amazed to see that the young man said nothing of their adventures.
Ota Qwan looked at the two full buckets of honey and nodded. ‘I knew you were the right man to send,’ he said, somewhat smugly.
‘You know there’s a dam the size of a city about a league north of here?’ Nita Qwan said, when they were alone and smoking. Everyone else was asleep, which Nita Qwan had found was a good time to talk to his brother. The other man didn’t bridle and resent his words so much when he didn’t have an audience. Ota Qwan had doubled the guard, though, because tonight, they had more to protect. The whole camp smelled of Wild honey – twenty-four buckets of it. The buckets were so full that insects clustered on them – Gas-a-ho’s buckets had already leaked a little and the smooth white birch bark was covered in needles stuck to the honey.
Ota Qwan took his pipe back. ‘No. I didn’t know. It’s like last year – when the honey is mature, the Wild fills up with things coming to take it. Not much time to explore.’
‘There’s a body of water there so large you can’t even see the far shore. Heron nests, and some sort of bigger bird. And huge beaver castles.’ He took the pipe, put it between his teeth, and blew a smoke ring into the darkness. ‘Want to check it out tomorrow?’
Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘We’ve already seen boggles and golden bears. I saw a pair of them moving towards the honey, and there’s never just two.’
In the morning they rose while it was still dark – ate a little honey on the remnants of their cornbread, picked up the buckets and the weapons, and started back. It took them a whole day to cross the low ground and the rocky wastes at the foot of the Beaver Kingdom, as Ota Qwan called it, and late the evening, while the scouts were looking for a place to camp and everyone else was searching for a good crossing over yet another small river, they found the dead boglins – six of them had been killed and eaten. They were all lying on the rocks of the stream.
Ta-se-ho, the oldest, crouched by the most intact corpse and rolled it over on the rocks with his spear. A cloud of bluebottles rose from the corpse and the older hunter wrinkled his nose. He was tall, with a long horsetail of dark brown hair and a scar that ran all the way up his right leg from the knee to the groin. He wore an amulet, a piece of weathered leather embroidered in quills. At some point, Peter had realised that it was a human ear.
‘Golden bears?’ asked Ota Qwan. Despite the fact that anyone who knew death could see the corpses were some days old, every warrior was crouched, looking at the trees.
Ta-se-ho shook his head. He walked over to a rock, and compared it to something only he saw.
Nita Qwan was picking his way across the ford. The boglins had died during their crossing. It had been two days ago, but still—
He stepped up out of the gully cut by the stream, and got one leather-clad foot on a rock. His thighs were still tired. All of him was tired. He put some will into his legs and powered up onto the rock, and gasped.
He pointed his spear at the boglins he had found, but they were all dead too. Strewn across a small clearing.
One had been cut in half.
He grunted, and Ta-se-ho climbed out of the stream bed and joined him.
‘Ah,’ he said. He grew pale. ‘Ah.’
Ota Qwan jumped up beside him. ‘What happened?’
Ta-se-ho moaned. ‘Crannock,’ he said. ‘Crannock people. Giants.’
Ota Qwan looked south. ‘The Crannock are allies of the Southern Huran.’
Ta-se-ho spat. ‘Thorn, too,’ he said.
North-West of the Endless Lakes – Thorn
Thorn hurried forward, excited by what he sensed, the great black egg borne on his immense trunk, secure in a web of power.
He was walking along a bay, the whole stretch of water lit in golden sunlight with pale beaches lining the deep, clear water. As he walked, the bay narrowed.
Across the bay – across a straight as wide as a river and far deeper – lay a great island. Something about that island reeked of power.
Thorn reached among the ropes and tangles of his palace of power and summoned a wind, and he spread mighty gossamer wings and flew out over the water, reckless and heedless of mere men, if any happened to see him. He rose into the setting sun, and turned south.
The island was redolent of power. And empty of other Powers.
It was not Thorn’s way to ask why.
The island was the size of a great lordship in the land of men – from the air he could see that it stretched ten leagues to the south, into the Inner Sea, and as far to the west. And at the northern edge of the island, a great mountain rose more than a thousand feet above the rolling hills and shaded dells of the island.
And set into the very top of the mountain was a lake. A river rushed from it over a steep lip and down a magnificent fall, into a deep pool at its base, and then down a further short series of falls, like steps, into the Inner Sea itself.
In the midst of the mountain lake was an island, and from the island grew a single tree. He folded his vast wings and let himself fall, and then stooped towards the island – spread his wings again in the joy of flying, and coasted to a stall just a few feet above the stony surface of the island. The tree’s canopy seemed to stretch high, but it was deceptive – the tree itself was only twice the height of the sorcerer. He banished his wings, and went to touch the tree with some trepidation. It was a thorn, and he put his great stony head back and croaked, the closest he could manage to a laugh.
He felt the power of the earth through his toes. Lines of power ran strong here – three crossed, and another passed deep under the lake and bubbled up like a spring. Like a well. Like Lissen Carrak.
The power boiled up from the ground and swirled around a basin carved by the raw power. Thorn dropped his staff and knelt, his heavy legs creaking with the effort – and thrust his long, skeletal hands deep into the green-gold swirl. He raised them and raw
ops
rolled down his arms.
If he had possessed the facility, he might have wept.
Instead, he forced himself to his feet, raised his dripping arms, and willed the heavens to obey him.
High in the infinite
aether
, his power fastened on something that was between a star and a stone, and he dragged it from the heavens. It fell, hurtling, burning brighter than Venus against the falling dark as it rushed through the air at an impossible speed and struck far out in the Inner Sea.
He stretched his hands to the heavens and roared at his enemies.
Petty revenge? Try this!
Deep in the Adnacrags, an old bear raised his muzzle against the night sky. He watched the star fall, and he didn’t like what he saw. His mate growled, and he put a great paw on her back, but she felt the tremor in his paw.
Far, far to the west, Mogon saw the new star kindle and fall, and she raised her crested head and spat.
Deep in the forest, the old irk was disturbed as he plotted, and he raised his long nose and saw, amid the trees, a new star kindle, and then plunge to earth. Tapio Haltija licked his teeth and grinned at the sight, but the movement of his mouth looked more predatory than pleasant.
East and south, Aeskepiles woke suddenly from an unsound sleep full of evil dreams. He lay on the floor of a monastic church at the edge of the Field of Ares, surrounded by the Duke of Thrake’s retainers. They snored, and farted, and grumbled – none of those things had wakened him.
High above him, stars twinkled in the heavens and their light seeped through the clerestory windows in the base of the dome. He watched as one grew and grew in light until it burned like a little sun, casting its radiance so brightly that it lit some of the stained glass of the chapel and cast barely perceptible and flickering shadows over the floor and his sleeping companions. And then it began to fall to earth.
‘Vade retro!’ spat the magister. His side ached from the wound he’d taken.
A sorcerer, somewhere, had just pulled a star down from the vault of the heavens. It was a challenge, as clearly as if he had smacked every other man of power in the world with a glove. Across the face.
Aeskepiles lay in his blankets and tried to imagine how powerful and puissant a magister had to be to pull a star from the heavens.
Then a messenger came into the chapel, calling for the Duke.
‘The Vardariotes!’ he whispered urgently. ‘They’re moving!’
The Duke grumbled like any fifty-year-old man wakened untimely. He pulled on his beard and thought for as long as a man might say a prayer.
‘Order Ser Demetrios to bring his troops back to me,’ he said.
Strategos Demetrios was the border-bred Morean who commanded most of their strength of men-at-arms. He had been sent with a little less than half their force to watch the Vardariot Gate, ten miles distant around the walls.
The Duke rose. ‘Arm me,’ he told his squires.
Their most recent defector, the Grand Chamberlain, sat up. ‘Surely they will simply come over to Your Excellency,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been paid in a year.’
The Duke shook his head as if to clear it. ‘I can’t take that chance. They are superb troops – no threat to us unless we’re surprised, but we’d best be ready. They can make a feint and then cut through the city, while we have to ride around the outside. I fairly dread the thought of them loose beyone the gate – five hundred disciplined Easterners with horse bows!’ He grunted. ‘Christ Pantokrator.’
‘We can take them,’ said his son, now awake.
‘We can,’ said his father grimly. ‘But I’d rather we didn’t have to. If we show them serried ranks and a ready army—’
Aeskepiles nodded at the dark. ‘But—’ He raised his head. ‘My lord, what of the Alban mercenary? Isn’t he in the hills?’
‘Too distant to have any effect today or tomorrow,’ the Duke said. ‘And no real force of men. My source in the palace says he’s camped and haggles for more money.’
The Despot laughed. ‘Coward,’ he said.
The Duke warmed his hands on a cup of hot wine brought by a servant. ‘Let’s deal with these threats one at a time, and force the girl to make terms,’ he said.
The Grand Chamberlain managed to sound obsequious even when exhausted. ‘Ah. Well thought, my Emperor.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ spat the Duke.
South of Harndon, the Grand Prior of the Order of Saint Thomas sipped wine on his balcony, five hundred feet above the plains of Jarsay. He looked at the middle-aged priest sitting across from him. The man’s face wore the complex mask of a man both defiant and repentant – angry at himself, and angry at the world.