“Not even goat shit to tread in, is there?” frowned Ryshad.
I realised something else was wrong. “Weren’t there pillars marking this road?”
“What is it?” Sorgrad and ’Gren came back towards us.
’Gren slapped at something buzzing around his face as I explained. ”Cursed midges.”
Shiv looked at a stretch of flatter land where the pass the road was following widened out a little. “They’re coming from over there.” As if he’d given some signal, a cloud of little black bloodsuckers came roving towards us.
“Must be the time of year for them,” I grimaced.
“Hurry up and we’ll leave them behind,” urged Ryshad.
Shiv was still studying the peaty stretch beside the road. “These people are willing to kill to get off these rocks, because there’s so little decent land, isn’t that right?” He pointed to deep chevrons cut into the bog. “So why let those ditches clog up? This is usable land, if it’s drained.” It didn’t look halfway usable land to me but I’d take Shiv’s word for it. He’d grown up in the Kevil fens of Caladhria and there aren’t many bigger swamps.
“Livak, I found your pillars,” Sorgrad called out. “And here.”
’Gren was a little way beyond his brother, looking in the gully that edged the road.
We joined them to see dark stones broken and stained with the muck pooled around them.
“What’s this?” Sorgrad jumped down for a closer look and ran a finger down deep chisel marks obscuring overlapping lines set in an incised square.
“It was clan insignia of some sort.” Ryshad was studying ’Gren’s pillar. “This one’s defaced as well.”
Shiv hissed with frustration. “Usara might know how to read something from the stone.”
“We brought the wrong wizard.”
’Gren was ready to make a joke of it but no one else was inclined to laugh.
I looked up and down the road whose emptiness was taking on a sinister aspect. “Let’s get on.” I told myself not to be fanciful but kept a hand on my dagger hilt just in case.
“Here.” Ryshad handed me a few long, oily-looking leaves. “Rub those on yourself. It’ll keep off the midges.”
Sorgrad immediately began searching the side of the road until he came up with some smaller, hairier plant. “These are better.”
I smiled at them both and rubbed Sorgrad’s on my wrists and Ryshad’s on my neck. The sooner they both got the message I wasn’t about to choose between them and no one could make me, the better we’d all get along. More importantly, the midges didn’t bother me after that, be it thanks to one plant, the other or both. That was relief because I wouldn’t have put it past ’Gren to count my bites and make a score out of them, just to see who’d be more put out, my lover or his brother.
Ryshad and Shiv forced the pace with their longer legs until we shorter ones were half walking, half jogging. No one complained and we made good speed until we reached the jutting rise of stark grey rock that hid our destination.
Sorgrad recognised it too; he only ever needs one look at a map. “Who’s going first?”
’Gren took a pace forward, eyes bright with expectation.
Ryshad looked at me and Shiv and then nodded to Sorgrad. “Just a quick look and come straight back here.”
“Sit tight, my girl.” Sorgrad winked at me and the pair disappeared around the outcrop.
“I can’t hear anything.” Ryshad cocked his head.
I listened. “Birds, breeze.” But no voices, no sound of tools or the bustle we’d seen here last time.
Shiv rubbed his hands together. “Shall I—”
Sorgrad’s whistle interrupted him and we hurried round the curve in the road, my dagger ready, Ryshad’s sword half drawn.
“What in Saedrin’s name happened here?” I exclaimed.
“Dast’s teeth!” Ryshad’s sword hissed all the way out of its sheath.
“I don’t think we’re going to find any allies hereabouts.” Shiv surveyed the scene in the hollow of the flower-speckled hills.
The road was lined with small houses, a scatter of others on the grass beyond. Even allowing the Elietimm were generally short folk, I’d thought before these people risked bumping their heads on their rafters. Now I realised the floors of the low-roofed houses were actually dug a good half span below the ground outside. I could see that because every roof had been ripped off, walls left defenceless before the harshness of wind and weather. Every house looked to be built to the same pattern; a windowless, stone-paved room at one end, something that looked like a quern stone set in the wall that separated it from a wider room beyond. That had windows and a flagged floor, open hearth backed by an upright slab of stone to foil the draught of doors to the front and to rooms beyond. Earthen floors and tethering rings in those suggested byres or stables, finally more storage ending in a circular arrangement of tumbled stones above a stoke hole. That could have been a corn kiln, a brew house, a laundry vat or some other domestic necessity but no tools or utensils remained to give any clue.
“Look for some clue as to what happened here,” Ryshad ordered. “Keep someone else in view all the time.”
“Let’s not disturb too much,” I added. “We don’t want it too obvious we’ve been here.”
Ryshad nodded, sword at the ready as he strode down the road, Shiv at his side. Sorgrad cut off to one side, blade in hand. I reckoned me staying with ’Gren would be safest all round.
“Nothing.” He was poking his dagger in a soggy mess of part-burned thatch. “Whoever did this stripped the place.”
“Not quite.” I looked down into a house some way down the track. The central room was black with soot and charcoal where timbers had been stacked and burned. “How many trees have you seen big enough to make roof trusses? This is like melting down a stack of coin hereabouts.”
“So someone was making a point.”
’Gren shied a stone at something scurrying through the mire of the deep ditch separating the houses from the road. ”There’s nothing here to say what or who, though.”
I looked at the devastated houses. Birds much the size and hue of hooded crows were building nests on the ragged walls, plundering the scattered straw and turf that had once covered the roofs. Their chucks and caws emphasised the empty silence.
“Let’s see what the others have found.” We ran down the track to join Ryshad in front of what had been this settlement’s central stronghold. He held out his hand to me. “Think you can get in there again?”
“If you give me a boost.” That was a joke. When we’d come looking for Geris, the wall around this formidable house of stern grey stone had risen well above my head. Now I could step across the blocks marking the foundation.
“Not one course left upon another,” murmured Shiv in a portentous voice.
“Like something out of a bad ballad,” I agreed. But this was no comfortable tale to while away a winter’s evening.
“Let’s see if there’s anyone still in residence.” I took a cautious step up and over the broken wall, dagger in hand. Ryshad began a slow circuit from what had been the guardhouse while Shiv headed for the opposite corner. Sorgrad and ’Gren spread out to reconnoitre the far side of the compound.
“Didn’t we think this was a forge?” Shiv stopped to look at tumbled stones blackened with fire. There had been a whole range of buildings along the inner face of the wall when we’d sat and spied on the place before.
“And this would be the mill.” I kicked at the last charred heartwood of a tangle of roof timbers.
“Someone had wanted this house razed beyond hope of repair.” Ryshad was walking cautiously through the rubble where the whole front face of the house had been pulled down, side walls and back reduced to broken outlines barely waist high.
“This is where I got in last time, where the window was.”
I stepped through the empty air above the chipped stones. Broken wooden frames and splinters of horn were strewn across a floor hacked and cracked by malicious axes. The stubby remains of the internal walls sheltered sodden drifts of grey ash bleeding black stains across the pale flagstones. I shoved a piece of timber with a boot to reveal a stark white outline where it had lain. I’d say no one’s been here since this disaster struck.”