Jaril dropped and shifted, held out his hand. When Brann took it, he said, *Don’t know. I finagled a version of the stunner, haven’t done this before so it’s anybody’s guess. They could wake up in two minutes or two hours.*
*I hear. Useful. *
*More useful if nobody knows exactly what happened.*
*Nobody being Maksim umm and Danny Blue?*
*You got it. Or that Yaro can do it too, now.*
*Anything else? No? Good. We’ll tie our baby assassins up to keep them out of mischief, fix some breakfast and get an early start. From now on I suppose we can expect anything to happen. * She freed her hand. “Yaro, flit back to camp and fetch us some rope hmm?”
Yaril dropped and shifted. “Sure. Need a knife?”
“Got a knife.”
The Plain emptied before them. Boatmen brought their flatboats upriver and down into the throat of the Gap, mooring them to rocks and trees and to each other, a barrier as wide as the river and six boats deep. Land-folk poured into the hills between Silagamatys and the Plain, the greater part of them gathering about the Gap where the river ran, interposing their bodies between the threatening and the theatened. Some stayed behind. When Brann and Danny Blue came to the marshes, hidden bowmen shot at them. The changers ashed the arrows before they reached their targets. Spears tumbled end for end into the sedges when Danny Blue snapped his fingers, slingstones whipped about and flew at the slingers who plunged hastily into mucky murky swamp water.
Aware that Amortis was not going to march to war for them, that weapons would not stop the hellcat, her sorceror and her demons, the landfolk left their homes and their harvests and in an endless stream walked and rode into the hills, a stubborn angry horde determined to protect their land and their leader. It was a thing the Parastes never understood or acknowledged, the lifetie between the small brown landfolk and the land they worked, land that held layer on layer on layer of their dead, land they watered with their sweat and their blood. These grubbers, these strongbacked beasts, these self-replicating digging machines, they owned that land as those elegant educated parasites the Parastes never would, no matter how viciously and vociferously they claimed it. Much of what Settsimaksimin did after he took Cheonea linked him in the landfolk mind to the land itself and its dark primitive power. When he gave them visible tangible evidence of their ancient ownership, when he gave them deeds written in strong black ink on strong white parchment, it struck deep into their two souls. The idea of the land wound inextricably about the idea of Settsimaksimin and he became one for them with that black and fecund earth, himself huge, dark and powerful.
The land itself fought them. A miasma oozed from the earth and coiled round them when they slept; breeding nightmares in them, humming in their ears go away turn back go away turn back. Coiled round them when they rode, burning their eyes, cocooning them in stench, whispering go away turn back go away turn back. The hangfire storm was oppressive, it was hard to breathe, crooked blue lightning snapped from fingertips to just about anything they brushed against. The mules balked, balked again, exasperating. Brann because she had to jolt each one every time they did it. The ambushes kept on happening, a futile idiotic pecking that accomplished nothing except to exhaust Danny Blue who had to keep his shield ready, his senses alert. Amortis had laid a smother across the Plain, more oppressive for him than the storm; each time he had to flex his magic muscle he was working against an immense resistance. By the end of the day he was so depleted he could barely hold himself in the saddle.
The third morning on the Plain. Left in pastures unmilked, cows bawled their discomfort. Farmyard dogs barked and whined and finally sated their hunger on fowl let out to feed themselves while their owners were gone. Aside from those small noises and the sounds they made themselves, there was an eerie silence around them. The harvest waited half-gathered in the fields, the stock grazed or stood around, twitching nervously, the houses were empty, unwelcoming, no children’s laughter and shouts, no gossiping over bread ovens or laundry tubs, no voices anywhere. No more ambushes either.
Danny Blue sighed with relief when the morning passed without a stone flung at them, but the smother was still there, pressing down on him, forcing him to push back because it would have crushed him if he didn’t.
Night came finally. They stopped at a deserted farmhouse, caught two of the farmer’s chickens, cooked them in a pot on the farmer’s stove with assorted vegetables, tubers and some rice. It was a small neat house, shining copper pots hanging from black iron hooks, richly colored earthenware on handrubbed shelves, the furniture in every room was crafted with love and skill, bright blankets hung on the walls, huge oval braided rugs were spread on every floor, and it was a new house, evidence of the farmer’s prosperity. After supper three of them stretched out on leather cushions around the farmer’s hearth while the fire danced and crackled and they drank hot mulled cider from the farmer’s cellar. Jaril was flying watch overhead.
Yaril sighed with a mixture of pleasure and regret; she set her mug on her thigh, ran her free hand through her pale blond hair. “We’ll reach the hills sometime late tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “There’s a problem.”
Brann was stretched out half on a braided rug, half on Danny Blue who was leaning against an ancient chest, a pillow tucked between him and the wood. He opened heavy eyes, looked at Yaril, let his lids drop again. “How big?” he murmured.
“Oh, somewhere around ten thousand folk sitting on those hills waiting for us.”
His eyes snapped open. “What?”
“Miles of them on both sides of the river. One shout and we’ve got hundreds pressed around us, maybe thousands.”
Brann sat up, her elbow slamming into Dan’s stomach. She patted him, muttered an offhand apology, turned a thoughtful gaze on Yaril. She said nothing.
Dan crossed his ankles, rubbed the sore spot. “The river?”
“Boatmen. Flatboats. Roped together bank to bank, six rows of them, more arriving both sides. Nets strung under them. Bramble, you and Danny Blue are going to have to be very very clever unless you plan on killing lots of landfolk.”
Brann got to her feet. “Us? What about the two of yon?-She strolled to the fireplace and stood leaning against the stone mantel.
Yaril set the mug down, scratched at her thigh. “We already tried, Bramble. You know how there started to be nobody anywhere? Not long after that Jay and I saw lines and lines of landfolk moving across the Plain. Jay flew ahead to see what was happening and came back worried. We tossed ideas around all afternoon. You know what we came up with? Nothing, that’s what. It’s up to you. We quit.”
Danny Blue went downcellar and fetched another demijohn of cider. He poured it into the pot swung out from the fire, tossed in pinches of the mulling spices, stirred the mix with a longhandled wooden spoon. Brann and Yaril watched in silence until he came back to the chest that he was using as a backrest, then, while the cider heated, the three of them went round and round over the difficulties that faced them.
BRANN: We could try outflanking them.
YARIL: Plan on walking then, the terrain by those hills is full of ravines and tangles of brush and unstable landslips. Mules can’t possibly handle it.
DANNY (yawning): Don’t forget Amortis; with Maksim to point her, she can snap up a few hundred bodies and drop them in front of us and do it faster than we can shift direction.
BRANN: You said she’s afraid of the changers and me.
DANNY: Sure, but she wouldn’t, have to get anywhere near you, she could do all that from Malcsim’s tower in the city.
BRANN: Shuh! There’s a thought there, though. What about you, Dan? If she can snap a couple hundred over a distance of miles, surely you can do the same with two over say a dozen yards. Enough to take you and me past them.