The Imass remained motionless, his gaze seeming fixed on the stone marker.
Lorn went about preparing her camp. Among the scrub oaks she found wood for a small cooking fire. It was dry, weathered and likely to yield little smoke. Though she did not anticipate company, caution had become her habit. Before dusk arrived she found a nearby hill higher than those around it, and ascended to its summit. From this position she commanded a view that encompassed leagues on all sides. The hills continued their roll southward, sinking to steppes to the south-east.
Due east of them stretched Catlin Plain, empty of life as far as she could see.
Lorn turned to the north. The forest they had travelled round a few days ago was still visible, a dark line thickening as it swept westward to the Tahlyn Mountains. She sat down and waited for night to fall. It was then that she'd be able to spot any campfires.
Even as night fell, the heat remained oppressive. Lorn walked around the hill's summit to stretch her legs. She found evidence of past excavations, scars that dug into the shale. And evidence of the Gadrobi herders remained, from as far back as when they fashioned stone tools.
Against the south side of the hill the ground had been carved out, not in search of a barrow but as a stone quarry. It appeared that beneath the shale was flint, chocolate brown, sharp-edged and crusted in white chalk.
Curious, Lorn investigated further, scrambling down into the cavity.
Stone flakes carpeted the pit's base. She crouched and picked up a piece of flint. It was the tip of a spear point, expertly shaped.
The echo of this technology was found in Tool's chalcedony sword. She needed no further proof of the Imass's assertions. Humans had indeed come from them, had indeed inherited a world.
Empire was a part of them, a legacy flowing like blood through human muscle, bone and brain. But such a thing could easily be seen as a curse.
Were they destined one day to become human versions of the T'lan Imass? Was war all there was? Would they bow to it in immortal Lorn sat down in the quarry and leaned against the chiselled weathered stone. The Imass had conducted a war of extermination lasting hundreds of thousands of years. Who or what had the Jaghut been?
According to Tool, they'd abandoned the concept of government, and turned their backs on empires, on armies, on the cycles of rise and fall fire and rebirth. They'd walked alone disdainful of their own kind, dismissive of community, of purposes greater than themselves. They would not, she realized, have started a war.
«Oh, Laseen,» she murmured, tears welling in her eyes, «I know why we fear this Jaghut Tyrant. Because he became human, he became like us he enslaved, he destroyed, and he did it better than we could.» She lowered She fell silent then, letting the tears roll down her cheeks, seep betweer her fingers, trickle along her wrists. Who wept from her eyes? she wondered. Was it Lorn, or Laseen? Or was it for our kind? What did it matter? Such tears had been shed before, and would be again-by other like her and yet unlike her. And the winds would dry them all.
Captain Paran glanced at his companion. «You've got a theory about al» Toc the Younger scratched his scar. «Damned if I know, Captain.» He stared down at the black, burned, crusted raven lying on the ground in front of them. «I've been counting, though. That's the eleventh roasted bird in the last three hours. And, unless they're covering the Rhivi plain like some bloody carpet, it seems we're on somebody's trail.» Paran grunted, then kicked his horse forward.
Toc followed. «And it's a nasty somebody,» he continued «Those ravens look like they was blasted from the inside out. Hell, even the flies avoid» Toc squinted at the hills south of them. They'd found a woodcutter's trail through the Tahlyn Forest, shaving days off their journey. As soon as they'd returned to the Rhivi traders» track, however, they'd found the ravens, and also the signs of two horses and one moccasined man on foot. This latter group of tracks was only a few days old.
«Can't understand why the Adjunct and that Imass are moving so slowly,» Toc muttered, repeating words he'd uttered a dozen times since the day's beginning. «You think she doesn't know something's trailing her?»
«She's an arrogant woman,» Paran said, his free hand gripping his sword. «And with that Imass with her, why should she worry?
«Power draws power,» Toc said, scratching again at his scar. The motion triggered yet another flash of light in his head, but it was changing. At times he thought he could almost see images, scenes within the light. «Damn Seven Cities» superstitions, anyway,» he growled, under his breath.
Paran looked at him oddly. «You say something?»
«No.» Toc hunched down in his saddle. The captain had been pushing them hard. His obsession was running them down; even with the extra mount, the horses were near finished. And a thought nagged Toc. What would happen when they caught up with the Adjunct? Obviously, Paran intended to catch Lorn and the Imass, spurred by vengeance that overwhelmed his previous intentions. With Lorn dead or her plans awry, Paran's command would be safe. He could join Whiskeyjack and the squad at leisure. Assuming they still lived, of course.
Toc could think of a thousand flaws in the Captain's plans. First and foremost was the T'lan Imass. Was Paran's sword its match? In the past, sorcery had been flung at the Imass warriors with a frenzy born of desperation. Nothing had worked. The only way to destroy an Imass was to chop it to pieces. Toc didn't think the captain's weapon, god-touched as it was, could do the job, but there was no convincing Paran of anything these days.
They came upon another raven, its feathers fluttering in the wind, its entrails swollen by the sun and bright red like cherries. Toc rubbed his scar again, and almost fell from the saddle as an image, clear and precise, burgeoned in his head. He saw a small shape, moving so fast as to be but a blur. Horses screamed, and a massive tear opened up in the air. He jolted, as if something large and heavy had struck him, and the tear yawned, swirling darkness beyond. Toc heard his own horse scream. Then it was gone, and he found himself gripping the hinged horn of his saddle with all his strength.
Paran rode ahead, apparently noticing nothing, his back straight and his gaze fixed southward. One hand played lightly on the sword's pommel.
Toc shook himself, leaned to one side and spat. What had he just seen?
That tear-how could the air itself be torn like that? The answer came to him. A Warren, an opening Warren could do that. He spurred his horse alongside Paran's.
«Captain, we're heading into an ambush.»
Paran's head snapped around. His eyes glittered. «Then prepare yourself.» Toc opened his mouth to protest, but he shut it without speaking.
What was the use? He strung his bow and loosened the scimitar in its scabbard, then set an arrow against the bowstring. He glanced over at Paran, who had unsheathed his sword and laid it across his thighs. «It'll come by Warren, Captain.»
Paran found no need to question Toc's certitude. He almost looked eager.
Toc studied the sword, Chance. The dull, hazy light played along the polished blade like water. Somehow it, too, looked eager to Toc's eye.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
«Tis bloody stirrups when the Jaghut ride their souls, a thund'rous charge without surcease, the hard knots within thud drumming fierce the flow of ice a certain promise:
«tis the Jaghut warring the dusk on a field of broken stones:
Jaghut Fisher (b.?)
Quick ben sat in the hut, his back to the ancient stone the Wall before him rose the five sticks that linked him with Hairlock. The string connecting the sticks was taut. Across fron the wizard, near the hide-covered entrance, sat Trotts.
Kalam had still not recovered enough to accompany Quick Ben or to guard him as Trotts now did. The wizard had known the Barghast warrior for years, he'd fought alongside him in more battles than he cared to recall, and more than once one of them had saved the other's skin. And yet Quick Ben realized he really knew very little about Trotts. The one thing he did know, however, comforted him. The Barghast was a savage, brutal fighter, as capable with his throwing axes as he was with the longsword he now cradled in his lap. And he was fearless in the face of sorcery, secure in the fetishes tied into his braids and in the woad tattoos inscribed by the hand of his clan's shaman.