Raskin had done her duty; she had stood her post a Moon longer than most soldiers alone in the northern mountains, and she felt a sense of pride in having held out that long. With the sun on her shoulders, she could feel the memory of them all fading into the bright yellow glow, even Mox. She turned once to see if they were following, those ghostly apparitions that had kept her company in the dark avens, but they were gone, Garec Haile too.
Raskin crested a short rise and saw the miners moving towards her. She had no option but to ride through them. There was no one coming behind her, no serendipitous band of occupation infantry closing the gap.
‘Well, rutting horsecocks,’ she sighed. ‘I made it this far, and now I’m ruined.’
The rising sun was in their eyes, and several of the men pulled hat brims down in an effort to see more clearly. A few pointed, gesturing in her direction, and in a moment Raskin knew that despite the shovels, picks and coils of rope, these were not miners. ‘Demonshit!’ she cried, turning her horse into the sun, ‘what are they doing out here, anyway? Someone serving breakfast?’
They were Resistance fighters. All her worst nightmares had come true: the southern forces had been overrun. Raskin was on her own.
‘Look at that,’ Stalwick said, ‘who’s that? Who’s that, Sharr? That’s a soldier. What’s he doing out here? Oh no, oh no; we’re in trouble, we’re in trouble, Sharr. He saw us, he knows, he does; I’m sure of it. Look! Oh no, look, Sharr, look, he’s turning towards Capehill. He knows!’
‘Would you shut up for one godswhoring moment, please, Stalwick?’ Sharr fought the urge to slap the man. ‘Can anyone see him? Is it a soldier?’ He squinted into the sun.
They all tried to make out the mounted silhouette against the dawn.
‘That’s a soldier, Sharr, I know, I saw a whole column of them one time outside Cape-’
‘Shut up, Stalwick!’ Sharr pointed at a farmer from the plains. ‘Give me your bow, Sal, quickly.’
He sighted along the arrow. It was hard to see; the sun was blinding, its rays refracting through a hundred million glints of overnight frost. On any other morning, he would have found it beautiful, but right now it was a deadly nuisance. He fought to get a clear shot at the fleeing occupation soldier. ‘He’s alone,’ he muttered, ‘and if we can drop him, no one will be any wiser.’ He closed his eyes but could still see red behind his lids, his own blood, lit from across the heavens. He’s just like one of those sharks, just a fat old dogfish, fighting for his life, trying to drag the whole trawler out to sea.
Sharr aimed, blinked and released the arrow with a muted thunk. The others strained to follow as the shaft arced into the brilliance.
Raskin rode directly into the morning sun, chanting, Blind them; blind the bastards! like a mantra. She spurred her mount into a gallop; there was no sense masquerading as anything other than terrified. It was a long shot, but a skilled bowman could make it. She held her breath and counted the horse’s steps. A few more, maybe ten more, and I’ll be out of the fire, at least for now. She didn’t know what she might discover on the road to Capehill, but from the look of the miners walking southeast – marching, Raskin; they’re marching – away from the mountains, Traver’s Notch was no longer safe for her.
Sharr’s arrow took the Malakasian soldier in the leg. Sharr couldn’t see if it hit the thigh or the calf, but from its angle of descent, he knew he had missed anything vital.
When the rider screamed, Stalwick winced, visibly taken aback by the unnerving cry. ‘It was a woman, Sharr,’ he whispered. ‘You shot a woman. That was a woman, not a soldier.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Sharr’s hands shook. It was just a shark, a big, slow, stupid fish. That’s all. ‘It was a soldier; I don’t care whether it was a man or a woman. If he… or she… gets away, we’ll have a long and unpleasant walk into Capehill.’ Sharr had already nocked another arrow and was taking aim at the disappearing rider, a hazy shadow now. It was an impossible shot, a wasted arrow, but Sharr released it anyway.
It was almost half an aven later before they came upon Raskin’s body. She had ridden surprisingly far with an arrow in her leg and another in her right lung. Sharr couldn’t tell if her tumble from the saddle had pushed the arrowhead into an artery, or if the woman had bled out before falling.
Standing over the body, Sharr realised that were he to survive the coming Twinmoon and get to sea again, he had roped and drowned his last shark.
THE MEDERA
Gilmour watched from above as the folded wrinkles of the Twinmoon Foothills gradually smoothed, trowel-flat, into the frozen Falkan Plain. This far north the arable midsection of the Eastlands, a tapestry of green, gold and earthen brown during warmer Twinmoons, was now a vast carpet of white. Free from the cold he knew he would find were he truly suspended several thousand paces over Falkan, Gilmour nestled deeper into his blankets, deeper into his spell, and turned his gaze west towards the Ravenian Sea and the busy streets of Pellia. He enjoyed the journey.
Finding Stalwick Rees had not been difficult; Gilmour had searched in the hills above Traver’s Notch until he felt a dim flicker of rippling energy slogging through a curtain of freezing rain. He had been as gentle as he could from this distance, but Stalwick still went down as if he had been clubbed.
Realising that he might kill the boy, Gilmour had remained inside his mind for only a moment; his message was brief: March on Capehill now. The Malakasians know of the attack. Brand is coming soon.
Finding Kantu would be more challenging; Gilmour hoped he would succeed before growing too weary and needing to sleep. While Stalwick was a faint but distinct beacon in the forested hills north of Traver’s Notch, Kantu would be a bright light, a veritable signal-fire amongst the crowds in the Malakasian capital – if Kantu was still in Pellia, and if he was still alive.
Gilmour felt himself soar over the Ravenian Sea. Moving quickly now, outdistancing even the trade breezes along the narrow waterway, he honed in on a great throbbing rift in the ambient energy above the waves, a pulsing rhythm he could feel against his flesh, even this imagined flesh. It had to be Kantu; Gilmour grinned. With Nerak lost inside the Fold, there was no one but Mark Jenkins who would radiate such power, but Mark was still close by. Gilmour felt lucky that he had stumbled upon Kantu while the magician was working a bit of sorcery; finding his old friend mid-spell made the evening’s work a bit easier.
He’s on a ship. I’ll catch him there. We’ll meet in Orindale.
But when Gilmour closed in on the schooner, he realised that he had been wrong – it was easy to locate; its power resonated out and up in concentric waves of energy that nearly sent Gilmour spiralling into the water – but it wasn’t Kantu. And it wasn’t heading south to Orindale; the schooner and whoever or whatever it carried was sailing north towards the archipelago, and the few navigable passages to Pellia.
What is that? Gilmour considered breaching the ship’s hull and finding out what was secreted inside, but he pressed on; Kantu might already know what was being shipped. If his old colleague had heeded Gilmour’s advice and avoided Welstar Palace – avoided killing himself – he might still be in Pellia, or one of the towns or villages lining the river between the palace and the capital city. Gilmour noted the schooner’s position and heading, then shifted the locus of his tired consciousness towards Pellia.
Above the city, he felt certain again that he had located Kantu. A steady mystical force, surprisingly strong, drew him towards a comfortable-looking inn, a cosy place a few streets off the east bank of the Welstar River.