Return of the Crimson Guard (117 page)

So, found him. But the rear elements? Soliel, no
–
that would be camp followers, noncombatants, families, craftsmen and women, and even
…
no, please not that.
She urged her mount on with a kick. The troop picked up its pace.

They found the camp a shambles. Wrecked wagons, torn tents, scattered equipment, and everywhere mangled dismembered bodies. Survivors wandered, blank-faced, turned to watch them pass without even challenging their presence. Banath slowed his mount. ‘Shouldn't we …’

‘No, not yet. The trail goes on, yes, Liss?’ Riding behind Hurl, the mage gave a tight bob of her head, her lank hair swinging. ‘It goes on. And … I'm afraid I know where he's headed.’

Banath could only eye her, puzzled, but he acquiesced.

To the south the green and yellow glow of battle-magics was plain. A muted roar reached them, punctuated by the eruption of munitions. Hurl felt someone close and turned to see that Rell had moved his mount up to her left. She felt infinitely better with him at her side. A field of tents and blankets spread on the ground lay ahead and Hurl made for it. Closer, fires could be seen burning among them and many tents hung twisted and canted, some torn in strips. Banath, at Hurl's rear, groaned as realization clenched him. ‘No. Oh, no.’

‘I'm sorry,’ Hurl murmured. But she was far more than sorry. What lay ahead, no matter how horrific, was all her fault, her curse.
I killed these men and women.

Finally, as they almost reached the field hospital, a soldier stood before them and raised a hand. A company cutter by his shoulder-bags. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, dazed.

‘Detachment from Heng,’ Hurl answered. ‘We ride under the sceptre.’

‘Heng?
Heng!’
He gaped up at them. Hurl saw that gore stained his uniform, his hands; none seemed to be his. A chuckle escaped the man. It grew into a deep gut-heaving laugh that he made no effort to
suppress. ‘Well,’ he said, tears now mixed with his laughter, ‘you are just too Burn-damned late, aren't you?’

‘I'm sorry …’

‘Sorry! You're
sorry!’
The officer took hold of Hurl's leg, smearing blood on her trousers and boot. ‘All our wounded. Hundreds of men and women. Wounded. Helpless. Unarmed …’

Something like jagged iron thrust at Hurl's chest. She took a shuddering breath. ‘I could not possibly tell you how—’

‘He butchered us like sheep!
Like sheep!’ He tugged at her leg as if to pull her from her mount. ‘Aren't we human? Men and women? How can this happen now? In this day and age?
Will he slay us all?’

‘Calm yourself …’

‘Calm myself?
You! You of all people, from Heng. You should know!’ He pushed her leg aside and backed away, disgusted. ‘This is your curse! You brought this upon us!’

Hurl flinched as if fatally stabbed; she stared, feeling the blood drain from her face, her heart writhing.
Yea Gods, so it was now true. Was this foreordained, or did I walk voluntarily, of my own choosing, into this nightmare?

‘Well?’ he stared up at her, demanding an answer, some kind of explanation for the horror that bruised his eyes. Hurl opened her mouth, but no sound came. She tried again, wetted her cracked lips.

‘We're going to put an end to this.’

‘Good. Do so. Or do not come back. Because after this night … this atrocity … you are no longer welcome here.’

Part of her wanted to object, to argue the injustice of that charge. But another part accepted the judgment. So be it. History's condemnation made clear. They were damned. Unless – unless they managed to end things this night. She gave a rigid curt nod to the man and pulled her reins aside, kicking her mount.

After they exited the camp, riding north across the plain lit silvery in the clear night, Hurl waved Liss to her. ‘Can you track him now?’ she demanded, her voice unrecognizable to herself.

‘Yes, now that we've found his trail.’ The Seti shamaness was uncharacteristically subdued. ‘Hurl,’ she began, ‘it's not your—’

‘Yes, it is.’

The shamaness appeared about to object or dispute further, but reconsidered. She pursed her lips, looking away, then frowned. ‘Where are the brothers?’

‘What?’

‘The three – I don't see them.’

Hurl raised a hand for a halt. The troop slowed, stopped. ‘Sergeant!’

Banath rode up. ‘Sir?’

‘Find the brothers.’

The man jerked a nod, sawed his reins around, rode off. After a brief time he returned. ‘Not with the column, sir. Left us.’

Hurl turned to look back, the leather of her saddle creaking. Flashes lit the distant battlefield like lightning, and a dark cloud hung low over it like a thunderstorm – smoke? ‘They never wanted Ryllandaras,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘They came for something else.’

‘Should we go back?’ Banath asked.

‘No – let them go. Personally, I hope never to see them again.’

‘Agreed,’ Liss added, sounding relieved.

Hurl eyed her – the shamaness had hated them from the start. Named them an abomination. She'd never asked what she'd meant by that exactly. But after having spent some time with them she knew in her gut that she'd felt it all along. ‘You still have the trail, Liss?’

‘Yes. He's had his fill for one night. Heading north.’

‘Good. We'll follow for as long as it takes.’

‘Agreed,’ Rell said. ‘He's a menace to all.’

Hurl urged her mount on.
But we didn't stop to think about that, did we – or at least we were willing to turn a blind eye to it. Well, now we're paying the price. Heng's curse, reborn. We're pariahs. No one will come within a hundred leagues of us until we can rid ourselves of him.

* * *

Shadow was damned monotonous. Such was the conclusion Kyle was drawing. They walked and walked and then walked some more. It occurred to him that he ought to be tired, or hungry, but so far nothing like that came upon him. What he felt instead was a kind of draining lassitude, a strange feeling of eternal waiting – not despair – no, not hopelessness, but rather a sensation of time suspended, of eternity. Just how long had the five of them been walking? Who was to know? Their bizarre guide would presumably let them know once they'd reached Quon. No sun rose, no day, or night, came. Eternal dusk. He felt like a ghost walking he knew not where.

All of them, Jan, the Lost brothers, seemed to have fallen beneath the same spell, as conversation stopped and all walked apart, alone with their thoughts. For a time they drew abreast of a large lake.
Figures fished it from boats, casting nets; they appeared huge, inhuman. Their guide swerved them away from the coast. The ground became rougher. Steep-sided canyons rose to their right, cutting through flat-topped hills of layered rock. The Shadow priest Hethe led them around the canyons and out on to a level desert-like landscape of broken rock and thick, sword-like clumped grasses.

Jan, it seemed, had finally had enough and he jogged ahead to take hold of their guide's frayed robes to pull him to a halt. ‘Where are we?’ he demanded.

Hethe's hood fell back revealing his wild, kinky black hair like a thin halo around his bumpy skull. His tangled brows rose. ‘Wearwy?’ he said. ‘No, my name is Hethe.’

‘No,’ Jan snarled. ‘Where … are … we … going?’

The man looked insulted. He pulled his robes from Jan's grip. ‘That's rather personal!’ and he stormed off.

‘Where are you taking us!’ Jan yelled after him.

‘Wartegenus?’ he called back. ‘I know of no such place.’

Jan pressed a hand to his brow, hung his head. Coming abreast of him, Stalker urged him on with a hand. They continued on. This desert, or what resembled a desert, extended for leagues. Ruins dotted it: no more than scattered fragments of wind-gnawed worked stone.

After a time all but their guide halted as the calls of more than one hound echoed across the bleak landscape. They exchanged uneasy glances. Some unknowable time later Jan suddenly let out a surprised gasp. His hands went to his neck. The rest of them, but for the guide, halted. The man stared ahead into the distance, amazement in his eyes. Kyle looked to Stalker and the scout shrugged, at a loss. A moment later Jan staggered, caught himself from falling and glared around at the empty landscape. ‘We're close,’ he said, and he set off at a faster pace leaving the four of them to eye one another in complete confusion. Finally, Stalker shrugged again and set off. The brothers followed.

Kyle refused to move. The thought came to him: what difference would it make? Why should they walk on and on forever like this? He sat down on the gritty, pebbled desert plain. Why return to Quon, to where the Guard was, when they'd just kill him? Unless Jan was who he thought – but could he trust his life to a chance like that?

Footsteps crunched on the wind-scoured dirt around him. He looked up to see the four of them peering down at him – their guide was nowhere to be seen. Stalker bent down on his haunches in front of him. ‘You comin’?’

‘Maybe.’

The scout glanced up to the others, puzzled. ‘Maybe?’

‘If this guy comes clean,’ and he tossed a stone to Jan's feet.

Stalker gave a long thoughtful nod, looked up at Jan. ‘Well, how about it?’

The old man pushed back his hair, long and thin enough to be blown by the feeble wind that seemed to haunt the warren. He gave a quick nod of consent, motioned Kyle up. ‘Very well, Kyle. From what I understand, you deserve better.’ Kyle stood, brushed off the dust. Jan fished out the object he carried around his neck, broke the thong, and put what was a ring on his finger. ‘As you suspect, Kyle. I am K'azz D'Avore. Jan, by the way, is part of my full name.’

‘I knew it all along!’ Badlands exclaimed, elbowing Coots. ‘Didn't I say so?’

‘You didn't say.’

‘But you're—’ began Kyle.

‘Old?’

Kyle shrugged, sheepish. ‘Yeah.’

‘I wasn't when I made the Vow, Kyle. Since then, though, I have aged. But I don't think ageing is the right word for it. I find that I am toughening up, losing flesh, so to speak. I eat little, hardly sleep. It is as if I were transforming somehow.’

‘Into what?’ Stalker asked, his gaze narrowed.

‘I don't know for certain. I suspect that something in the Vow is transforming me, perhaps all of us Avowed, preserving us. Sustaining us so long as it should hold. Until we complete it.’

The brothers shared shocked glances, Stalker scowling. ‘That's impossible.’

A shrug from K'azz invited Stalker to come up with his own explanation. The news meant nothing to Kyle. All it did was confirm that something strange was going on – as though he needed to be told that!

‘Where's the little rat?’ Coots asked.

Everyone glanced around. K'azz pointed, ‘There.’

Kyle squinted: a tiny dark dot out on the unrelentingly uniform wind-scoured waste.

‘For the love of the Infinite,’ Badlands breathed, ‘doesn't he even know we've stopped?’

K'azz set out at a jog, waving them on, ‘C'mon. We mustn't lose him.’

They all set out at a jogging run. At first they seemed to make no progress; the tiny dot seemed to get no larger. Kyle already knew
distances and proportions were strange here in Shadow. They trotted for a time, then set out at a run again; they were gaining ground. Kyle's lungs burned, his feet and thighs ached. None of the others evidenced any signs of exertion. He bit down on the pain and kept going. Quite suddenly, they caught up. The man had stopped and was waiting for them, an irked expression on his wrinkled, hairy face.