Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (53 page)

“You’re older,” she said. “And your song is stronger.”

“You said I should learn its music well.”

“Did I? It was so long ago. There have been so many visions since.” Her hand reached down to the stack of firewood at her feet, tossing some branches into the flames. “Still serving your Faith?” she asked.

“My Faith was a lie. Though I think you knew that.”

“Is a lie really a lie if it is honestly believed? Your people sought to make sense of the world’s many mysteries with their Faith. Misguided perhaps, but based on a truth not fully revealed.”

The thing that lived in Barkus, the cruelty of its laugh.
“A soul can be trapped in the Beyond.”

“Not all souls, only those with a gift. This power, this fire that burns in you and I, doesn’t cease burning when our life fades.”

“And when it slips into the void. What then?”

Her aged lips formed a smile. “I suspect I’ll discover that myself before long.”

“Something lives there, in the void. Something that takes these souls and twists them, making them serve its purpose, sending them back to take the bodies of other gifted.”

Her eyebrows rose in faint surprise. “So, it grew after all.”

“What grew? What is it that lives there?”

She turned her blank eyes to him, face heavy with regret. “I do not know. All I know is that it
needs
. It hungers.”

“What for?”

She voiced her answer with a flat certainty making doubts redundant, “Death.”

“Can you tell me how to defeat it?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “But I can tell you it has to be fought, if you care about this world and its people.”

He looked up at the small patch of night sky visible through the branches above, seeing the seven stars of the sword. This high in the sky meant it was early autumn here, though how many years before his time was an unfathomable mystery. “Has it happened yet?” he asked. “Have my people come to take this land?”

“I’ll be many years dead before that happens. Though I’ve had enough visions from that time to make me thankful for it.”

“And the future? The future of this land?”

She stared into the fire for some time and he suspected she wouldn’t answer, but eventually she said, “You are as far into the future as I’ve seen, Beral Shak Ur. After you, there is no future. None that I can see.”

“And yet you would have me fight?”

“My gift is not absolute. Many things remain hidden. And in any case, what else would you do? Give up your hope and sit waiting for the end?”

“Your people require persuasion to grant passage through the forest. What do I tell them?”

Her brow creased into an amused frown. “Tell them I said they should. That might help.”

“And that will be enough?”

Her frown turned into a laugh, bitter and short. “I haven’t the faintest notion. The people you find in this forest may speak my language and share my blood, but they are not my people. Those who come to touch the stone are shadows of former greatness and beauty. They gather in tribes and pursue their endless feuds with the Lonak, myth and legend has replaced knowledge and wisdom. They have forgotten who they were, allowed themselves to be diminished.”

“If they don’t join with me, then even that shadow of your greatness will be gone, along with any chance that it might one day be rebuilt.”

“What is broken remains so. It is the way of things.” She turned to the stone. “We did not craft these vessels of memory and time, they were here long before us. We merely divined their use, and even then they prove fickle, taking the minds of those they deem unworthy. Once a people far greater than the Seordah crafted wonders and built cities the length and breadth of this land. Now, even their name is lost forever.”

She turned back to the fire and fell silent, features sagging with fatigue. “I had hoped our final meeting might be joyous, that when you came it would be with tales of a wife and family, a long life lived in peace.”

He reached for her hand, knowing it would feel nothing, but let it hover there for a moment. “It grieves me to disappoint you so.”

She said nothing and he sensed that her vision was fading. He returned to the stone, extending his hand then hesitating. “Good-bye, Nersus Sil Nin.”

She didn’t turn around. “Good-bye, Beral Shak Ur. If you win your war, return to the stone. Perhaps you’ll find someone new to talk to.”

“Perhaps.” He pressed his palm to the stone, daylight returning in an instant, banishing the night’s chill. He drew a breath, forcing authority into his voice as he turned to address the Seordah. “The blind woman has spoken . . .”

He trailed off when he saw their gaze was elsewhere, all twelve Seordah chiefs now on their feet staring at something to the side of him. Dahrena stood nearby, eyes wide in wonder. He turned and the song surged.

The wolf sat on its haunches, green eyes regarding him with the scrutiny he remembered so well. He couldn’t recall its being so large before, standing at least as tall as he. After a moment it licked its lips and raised its snout, a great howl rising to the sky, loud enough to banish all other sound, filling the ears of all present to the point of pain.

The wolf lowered its snout, the howl fading and for a heartbeat silence ruled the forest, then it came, rising from the trees for miles around, the answering howl of every wolf in the Great Northern Forest. On and on it went as the wolf rose to trot forward, its great head level with his chest, nostrils twitching as it sniffed him. He could hear its song, the alien tune he remembered from the day Dentos died, the music so strange as to be baffling, but one note was clear and unmistakable.
Trust. It has trust in me.

The wolf nuzzled his hand, its tongue lapping once, then turned and bounded away, a blur of silver in the trees, soon vanished from sight. The great howling faded with it.

Hera Drakil and the other Seordah came forward, forming a circle around him, the shadowy warriors emerging from the trees to surround him, men and women of fighting age all holding their war clubs out before them as one. Hera Drakil raised his own club, holding it flat and level. “Tomorrow,” the Seordah chief said, “I will sing my war song to the rising sun, and guide you through this forest.”

◆ ◆ ◆

“No fires are to be lit, no wood cut, no game taken. All men will remain in their companies and not wander away from the line of march. We walk only where the Seordah tell us.”

He saw some of his captains exchange wary glances, Adal’s face betraying the most unease. “And punishment for transgression, my lord?” he asked.

“Punishment won’t be needed,” Vaelin said. “The Seordah will enforce these rules, of that they have left me in little doubt.”

“I would be remiss, my lord, if I did not report the temper of the men,” Adal went on. “Open dissent is quickly quelled, as per your order, but we cannot still every tongue.”

“What is it now?” Vaelin ran a weary hand through his hair. The meeting with Nersus Sil Nin had left him troubled, the scarcity of knowledge she could impart leaving an irksome uncertainty. Also, he was coming to realise why he had never relished command.
They’re always so endlessly malcontent.
“Boots too hard? Training too tough?”

“They’re scared of the forest,” Nortah said. “Not that I blame them. Scares the life out of me and I’ve yet to set foot in it.”

“I see,” Vaelin said. “Well, any man too craven to walk through some trees has my permission to leave. Once they’ve surrendered their arms, boots, supplies and any pay they’ve received to date, they can make their way home and wait for a Volarian fleet to appear and enjoy the ensuing spectacle of slaughter. Perhaps then they’ll consider the true price of cowardice.” He rested balled fists on the map table, sighing through gritted teeth. “Or you could just give me a list of the most vocal grumblers and I’ll have them flogged.”

“I’ll speak to them,” Dahrena said as the captains fidgeted in uncomfortable silence. “Allay some fears.”

Vaelin gave a wordless nod and gestured for Brother Hollun to give his daily report on the state of the supplies.

“What did she tell you?” Dahrena asked when the captains had been dismissed. From outside the tent came the noise of the camp breaking up as the army prepared to march into the forest. “To have befouled your mood so.”

“It’s more what she didn’t tell me,” he replied. “She had no answers, my lady. No great wisdom to guide our path. Just a tired old woman suffering her final vision of a future she hates.”

Dahrena said nothing for a moment, but her gaze lingered on his face. He noticed it had done so since they returned from the forest. “The wolf,” she said. “You’ve seen it before.”

He nodded.

“So have I. When I was very little, the night father found me, it blessed me with its tongue . . .” Her gaze was distant, almost trance like. She blinked, shaking her head and rising. “I should go and make some speeches.”

◆ ◆ ◆

In the end there were none who refused to enter the forest, Dahrena’s words once again carrying sufficient weight to ensure loyalty.
They love her,
Vaelin decided, seeing the ease with which she moved amongst the men, the laughter she exchanged, seemingly able to recall every face and name without effort. He knew it was not a gift he held, most men who had followed him had done so out of duty or fear. He could only hope their love for her and fear of him would be enough when they finally met the Volarians.

The North Guard were first to enter the forest, dismounted and leading their horses through the trees, dozens of Seordah warriors on all sides looking on in stern silence. Vaelin led the First Regiment of Foot next. He had divided the army into ten regiments of about a thousand men each, numbered accordingly, though he had allowed them to decide on their own banners. The First were mostly miners and had adopted a banner showing crossed pickaxes on a blue background. They were led, albeit with much assistance from a North Guard sergeant, by Foreman Ultin from Reaver’s Gulch.

“Me, walking the great forest,” he said in wonder, eyes wide as he stared about. “Commanding a regiment at y’lordship’s side, too. And my old dad said I’d never climb no higher than emptying the foreman’s piss-bucket.”

“How long since you left Renfael, Captain?” Vaelin asked him.

“Just Ultin, if you please, m’lord. Even the lads can’t keep a straight face when they call me captain.” He glanced back at his men. “Ain’t that right, you disrespectful dogs?”

“Kiss my hole, Ultin,” one of the men in the front rank said. He blanched a little at Vaelin’s stare and quickly looked down. Vaelin stilled the rebuke on his tongue, seeing the sweat on the man’s forehead and the fear on his comrades’ faces, their eyes constantly roaming the trees.

“More’n fifteen years, m’lord,” Ultin said. “Since I left the old stinkhole I called home. Can’t say as I miss it much. Just another mean mining village, full of mean people paid mean wages by a mean lord. One day I heard about the Reaches from a tinker, said a miner could earn four times as much there, if he didn’t mind the cold and the savages. Got meself on a ship soon as I had enough for a berth. Never gave no thought to goin’ back, till now.”

If there’s anything to go back to,
Vaelin thought.

Each regiment was given a Seordah guide, Hera Drakil leading the First, his communication confined mostly to pointing or holding up a hand to signal a halt. He seemed even more reluctant to engage with Vaelin than he had at their first meeting, avoiding his gaze and keeping to his own language, forcing Dahrena to continue as translator.
The wolf,
Vaelin surmised.
They don’t appreciate being made to feel fear in their own forest.

The Seordah chief led them to a clearing around a shallow creek where they would camp for the night. In accordance with Vaelin’s orders no fires were started and the men were obliged to huddle in their cloaks, eating cold hard-tack with some cured meat. There was little talk and no singing, men often starting at the sounds of the forest.

“What’s that?” Ultin asked in a whisper as a faint wailing came to them from the surrounding blackness.

“Wild cat,” Dahrena said. “Looking for some female company.”

Vaelin found Hera Drakil perched on a large boulder in the middle of the creek. The water was shallow but the splashes gave ample signal of any visitors, the Seordah’s eyes narrowing at Vaelin’s approach. He offered no greeting and went back to unstringing his bow, a flat-staved weapon with a thick leather-wrapped centre. Vaelin noticed his arrows were headed with some kind of dark shiny material rather than iron. “Can you pierce armour with those?” he asked.

Hera Drakil took one of the arrows and held it up, the edge of the head catching the moonlight and Vaelin saw it was glass rather than flint. “From the hill country,” the Seordah said. “Have to fight the Lonak to get it. Cuts through anything if you get close enough.”

“And that?” Vaelin nodded at the war club placed within reach. It was about a yard long, double curved like an axe handle with a notched grip and a blunt head resembling the misshapen head of a shovel. A wicked ten-inch spike protruded from the wood an inch short of the head. “Will it hold against a blow from a sword?”

“Why not try?” The Seordah looked him up and down. “Except you have no sword.” He laid his bow aside and picked up the club, holding it out to Vaelin. He took it and tried a few swings, finding it light, the grip comfortable. The wood it was fashioned from was unfamiliar, dark and smooth, the grain hardly perceptible under his fingers.

“Black-heart tree,” Hera Drakil explained. “Wood is soft when it’s cut and shaped, grows hard like rock when placed in fire. It won’t break, Beral Shak Ur.”

Vaelin inclined his head and handed the club back. “You haven’t asked what the blind woman told me.”

“She said we should join with you. Her visions are well-known to the Seordah.”

“But you were going to deny her words.”

“Your people have no gods, neither do mine. The blind woman lived many years ago and had visions of the future. Most came true, some did not. We are guided by her, we do not worship her.”