Doon was part of the reason Anfen had apparently considered chancing their arm against thirty armed and armoured castle soldiers, before the Invia had cleaned up that mess for them. ‘Swords and arrows won’t bother Doon,’ Sharfy told Eric. ‘Not unless he gets caught in a whirlwind of em. I seen Doon take eight spears in the back before he even slowed down. Trampled down the men who threw em and their horses, all wearing heavy plate mail. A week later, was like it never happened.’
Kiown sidled up to him and whispered: ‘You will soon be fluent in Sharfy. Translation: three spears, three men, wearing maybe hard leather or light chain mail. The horses got away just fine. I was there. Still, pretty impressive.’
Eric had tried walking with Siel, and talking with her, but she’d been too busy scouting the group’s right flank, with her bow at the ready, and he got the sense she was faintly annoyed by him being around. It was as though he’d said or done something to give away his lie: he was no prince, and perhaps now she knew …
He’d walked behind her, watching her hips sway beneath the tanned leather, but quickly felt like a stalker and made an effort to stay away. Always, though, he found his eyes returning to her, no matter what else was going on around them. He longed for another chance alone with her, to do more gently what he’d already done, to get up and put his clothes back on without a sense of guilt and shame.
As night approached the group went off road and split into two camps. Loup, Sharfy, Anfen, Eric and Case sat around a small fire. Outraged at his exclusion, Kiown sulked amongst the others some way further into the scrub, but Eric had seen the way Anfen tensed at the mere sound of Kiown’s voice, and was not surprised. Some of that group were already dozing on their unrolled mats, barely an hour after nightfall. Birds, silent in daylight, now cooed gently as though singing lullabies. Eric saw Kiown and Siel get under the same blanket, and it felt like the ground beneath him had opened up, swallowed him, and sent him plunging through some abyss with howling winds. He lay down on his unrolled mat and tried desperately to think of anything else, anything at all.
The rest of Eric and Case’s group relished their campfire as the night grew cold, using wood Loup had spent some time blessing. From a distance it had looked like he was simply talking to the wood and slapping it gently. The resulting fire’s light and smell would carry no more than a dozen metres, allowing them to camp close enough to the road to hear the boots of passing patrols. Anfen had not actually expected them to range this way, but one came not long after they’d camped, marching fast and in formation. ‘Half an hour longer on the roads and we’d have run right into them,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Eric’s luck is catching.’
‘They’ve heard what happened to their mates,’ said Sharfy.
Anfen nodded. ‘Question is whether they’re looking for us or the Invia. Who do they blame for that little party?’
‘Who would you rather they blamed?’ Eric asked.
Anfen’s smile was grim. ‘Not us. I don’t want to be feared by them. Doon’s people were feared by them. There aren’t many half-giants left. They’ll get us all in the end. Those low on the list have a chance to fit in a full lifetime, perhaps.’ He lay back by the fire and closed his eyes. ‘Though I somehow doubt they’re sending foot-soldiers after a creature that lives in the sky.’
They ate gathered herbs and stewed mule, which Loup blessed, making it taste like shreds of the finest juicy rump steak in a dozen subtle spices. When it was swallowed however the belly was not so easily fooled, and Eric felt queasy as soon as his plate was finished.
‘If they haven’t sent mages our way, they can’t be too worried about us,’ said Sharfy, whose face in the campfire light looked like a Hallowe’en mask.
‘Did you notice it took some while for their mages to come and guard the door?’ Anfen replied. ‘They’re probably busy trying to find whatever it is that wiped out an entire company of the castle’s soldiers and left no trace of itself but holes in the ground.’
‘What did that? And when?’
‘The same thing that’s been attacking travellers and wagon trains in the far south. A small patrol of our own was wiped out too, out in the middle of nowhere. We thought it was the castle’s doing. Then last month an entire mining station was slain near World’s End. And those were the castle’s assets. Probably the very cart you three robbed underground came from there.’
‘Ah, enough of that talk,’ Loup suddenly interjected. He rattled the charm’s dull silver beads and grinned, the firelight casting ghastly shadows on his face, making him look like he regularly dined on human flesh. ‘I figured her out a little, just a little, now that you stopped pestering me to make your dinner taste better, and the firewood blessed and all.’
‘Stop whining and tell us what you know, you old poser,’ said Sharfy.
‘Poser nothing! I saw you gobble that soup. And that mule we just ate was prettier than you, alive or dead or digested!’ They both laughed, but Sharfy’s rang a touch false, as though a nerve had been struck. ‘This kind of charm,’ said Loup, ‘oh aye, ten charms in one. All pretty handy on their own, mind! She’s a nice old girl.’ He lovingly stroked the necklace and grinned his toothless grin. It made him look none too wise at all. The others patiently waited. ‘Been alive longer than most of the cities. She’s an old darling, she is.’
‘We’ve established that she’s a nice old girl,’ said Anfen sleepily. ‘What else can you tell us?’
Loup flashed his gums, clearly enjoying centre stage. ‘See these little beads? Each one’s a charm by itself. Some of em are active, some aren’t. You can switch em on or off, if you know how. I don’t. Could learn, maybe … problem is, we don’t know what we’d switch on! Maybe some aren’t friendly at all! Best to leave her rest a little, she may want her sleep. Right now there’s three of em working. This one …’ he picked out a bead no visibly different from the others ‘… keeps the wearer from being seen. Just like that! Handy trick? Oh, aye. Powerful, too! Wager it’ll keep you hidden in bright light, in a room full of people. I can’t ever do that, nor most mages I knew. Hiding out in the wild, see that’s different. Half that spell’s done by the trees and scrub.’ Loup gave a friendly wink to no one in particular, then picked out another bead.
‘This one here, see, this does something else. There’s power flowing into it, not out from it or around it like a whirlpool. Can’t be sure, and I’m nervous to toy with it, but I’d guess something from the wearer goes into the charm. What does? Well, hey now, that’s your guess much as mine. Right now it’s almost full. Real weak stream going in, just a trickle. Maybe I can get out again whatever’s inside. Maybe it’s something to do with this third switched-on bead, right here.’ He pointed at the dull silver knob. ‘This one I can’t seem to figure out at all. Strange old patterns she makes in the air about it. So let’s hear a little from the lucky gent who got to court this old darling.’
Case had to be woken, and was not pleased about it, but he cleared his throat and told everything he could remember, in as good an order as he could, not even sure what he was leaving out nor what his memory had distorted. He didn’t recall much of the conversation between Vous and the Arch Mage. Sharfy and Loup were most intrigued by descriptions of Vous’s chambers, and by the story of his daughter. ‘Don’t know, I think my head was playing tricks,’ said Case. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time in my life I saw things that weren’t really there.’