Return of the Crimson Guard (55 page)

He engaged the nearest, parrying the down-stroke, thrust the groin, and allowed the man to pass; he'd be faint with shock and blood loss in moments. Another attempted to ride him down but he threw himself aside, rolling. Regaining his feet he turned, expecting to be trampled, but the rider was preoccupied; he was swiping at his face bellowing his frustration. Yells that turned to pain, even terror. The sword flew from his grip, his hands pressed themselves to his face. A dark cloud of insects surrounded the man. Screaming, he fell
from the mount that raced off, unnerved. Rillish crossed to the flailing and gurgling figure in the grasses. All about the hillside the men were falling, clutching at themselves, screaming their pain and blood-chilling horror.

The figure at Rillish's feet stilled. A cloud of insects spiralled from it, dispersing. In their wake was revealed the glistening pink and white curve of fresh bone where the man's face had been. Like an explosion, a mass of chiggers, wasps and deer flies as large as roaches vomited up from between the corpse's gaping teeth like an exhalation of pestilence. Rillish flinched away and puked up the thin contents of his own stomach.

Coughing, wiping his mouth, he straightened to see new riders closing upon them. A column of Wickan cavalry. They encircled the base of the rise. Two riders launched themselves from their tall painted mounts to run up the hill. Both wore black crow-feather capes, both also youths themselves. Rillish cleaned his swords on the grasses then slowly made his way up to the travois. His thigh ached as if broken.

Atop the rise he found the two riders had thrown themselves down at the side of the travois and were both kissing the boy, squeezing his hand, holding his chin, studying his face in wonder, babbling in Wickan. Tears streamed down their faces unnoticed.

Chord came to Rillish's side. ‘Trake's Wonder, sir,’ he breathed, awed. ‘Do you know who those two
are
?’

‘Aye, Sergeant. I know.’

‘There'll be blood and Hood's own butcher's bill to pay on the frontier now, I think.’

‘Yes, Sergeant. I think you're right.’ Rillish sat, pulled off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his face. He took a mouthful of water, swished it around his mouth.

Eventually, as the evening gathered, the two – twins, a young man and a young woman – came to stand before Rillish. He roused himself to stand as well, bowed an acknowledgment that the two waved aside.

‘We owe you more than we can repay, Lieutenant,’ the boy said.

‘Just doing my duty.’

‘In truth?’ the girl said sharply, her eyes dark and glittering like a crow's own.
‘Counter
to your duty it would seem.’

‘My duty to the Empire.’

The two shared a glance, an unspoken communication. ‘Our thanks in any case,’ the boy said, and he turned to go. ‘We will escort you to the Golden Hills.’

Rillish almost spoke a reflexive,
yes sir.
He watched them go while they spoke to Mane and the others who crowded around, touching them reverently and pulling at their leathers. Grown now into gangly long-limbed adolescents but with the weathered faces and distant evaluative gaze of seasoned veterans who have come through Hood's own trials – Nil and Nether. Living legends of the Seven Cities campaign. Possibly the most dangerous mages alive on the continent, and angry, damned angry it seemed to him. And rightfully so, too.

* * *

Kyle awoke to a light kick of his heel. Keeping himself still he glanced over to see Stalker silently wave him up. Awkward, he pushed himself up by his off-hand, his right wrapped tight in a sling. The night was bright, the mottled moon low and glowing. Unaccountably, Kyle thought of ancient legends from the youth of his people when multiple moons of many sizes and hues painted the nights in multicoloured shadow. Even this one had been discoloured as of late. And the nights have been lit by far more falling stars than when he was a child. He glanced to the glittering arc of stars demarking Father's Cast where his people's Skyfather first tossed the handful of bright dirt that would be Creation. As glowing and dense as ever despite his fears.

Stalker brought his head close. ‘We have a problem.’ In answer to Kyle's querying look he motioned to Coots waiting at the dark tree-edge.

As Kyle approached, Coots adjusted his armoured hauberk of iron rings sewn to leather and checked his sheathed long-knives. His mouth was his habitual sour grimace behind his thickening moustache and beard. ‘We've spotted the boat's owner. He's a Togg-damned giant of a fellow. Bigger than any I ever heard of. Bigger'n any Thelomen.’

A shiver of dread ran through Kyle; giants, Jhogen, were creatures from the nightmares of his people. ‘A Jhogen?’

‘What's that? Jhogen?’ Comprehension dawned on Coots with a quiet humourless smile. ‘No. Not one of them.’

‘I heard talk in the Guard about giants who live in Stratem. In the East. Toblakai.’

Coots grunted. ‘No, not like them.’

‘The bigger they are, the slower,’ Stalker said, urging them on.

‘That from personal experience, there, Stalk?’ asked Coots, arching a brow. Stalker signed for silence. Making his way through the
woods, Kyle wanted to ask Coots more of this giant but the time for that had passed. They moved silent through the trees, reached tended fields cut from the forest edge that led down to a loosely scattered collection of huts and pens that in turn straggled down to a strand of black rock and the grey choppy waters of the White Sea beyond. A biting landward wind stole through Kyle's armour, quilted padding and linen shirts. He pulled his cloak tighter. The gusts seemed to carry the sharpness of the ice that had given birth to it somewhere far out past the western horizon.

Hunched, Coots jogged down between the open ground of the fields. Kyle scanned the scattered huts; not one fire or lamp showed, though white tendrils climbed from some roof smoke-holes. Stalker followed, Kyle brought up the rear. Amid the huts Badlands emerged from behind a stick-pen holding goats. The four of them jogged down to the dark strand where the boat rested slightly aslant, bright against the black water-worn gravel, its single mast tall and gracefully slim.

Badlands pressed a shoulder to the raised stern, feet scraping amid the rocks. He pushed again, gasping. ‘Lad take it! Here's a complication.’

‘Keep watch,’ Stalker told Kyle. The three bent their shoulders to the boat. They strained, breathing in sharp gasps. Their sandalled feet dug into the gravel. Keening loudly, the boat scraped forward a hand's breadth on its log bedding.

Glancing away from their efforts, Kyle was shocked to see two men already approaching. One stunned him by his size, nearly twice the height of a normal man, carrying a spear fully half again as tall as him. The man at the side of this giant of a being, Jhogen or not, was somehow not in the least diminished. Dark, muscular, he moved with an easy grace that captured Kyle's attention. ‘Here they come,’ he murmured, aside. The three cousins straightened from their efforts. The boat had moved a bare arm's span.

As the two closed, Kyle found that he did not feel fear so much as an unaccountable chagrin and embarrassment – as if he were a common thief caught in the act – which, he reflected, was pretty much the truth of it. ‘You surprise me,’ the man said in Talian, motioning to the boat. ‘I didn't think anyone but my friend here could move it.’

‘Yeah, well, we're just full of surprises,’ Stalker ground out, a hand close to his sword.

The man's bright gaze moved to Kyle. ‘Young for the Crimson Guard, aren't you?’

Kyle glanced down; he still wore his sigil. ‘We quit.’

One dark brow rose. ‘Really? I did not think that possible.’

Through this exchange the giant stood straight, arms crossed, though a smile played at his mouth. His startling golden eyes held something like wonder as his gaze roved about them.

‘We need your boat,’ Stalker said.

‘If the Guard is after you, no wonder,’ the man observed dryly.

‘How much do you want for it?’ Kyle asked, surprising himself.

‘It's not for sale.’ The man's eyes were flat though his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. ‘But it is for hire.’

Stalker grunted something that sounded like a long curse of all the meddling Gods.

‘Where are you headed?’ the giant fellow asked in flowing musical Talian. His voice was taut, expectant, almost febrile in its intensity. It was a question Kyle had been giving much thought of late. Where could he possibly head in all the open world? Back to home, Bael lands? Or off to a new land, this Genabackis of which he heard so much among the Guard? But in the end he did not need to wonder; one place, one name, haunted him since overheard accidentally while he hid in the woods. A locale, and a possible mission as well. He addressed the two, ‘Have either of you heard of the “Dolmans”?’

Their reaction startled Kyle. To the man the name clearly meant nothing; his gaze remained flat, though it shifted to his companion. The giant flinched as if gut-punched. A shiver took him like the swaying of a tree trunk and he expended a hissed breath in a long murmuring supplication. ‘Yes,’ he managed, his voice thick with emotion. ‘I know it well. The Dolmans of Tien. It is of my homeland, Jacuruku.’

‘What fee, then, to take us there?’ asked Stalker, his gaze narrow on Kyle.

The man had already half-turned away. He said over his shoulder, ‘You've just paid it. We'll get our supplies then we will leave immediately.’

Though clearly unhappy, Stalker nodded. ‘What's your name?’

‘Traveller. This is Ereko.’

Stalker gave their names. Ereko inclined his head in greetings. ‘Well met, comrades,’ he said grinning now, having regained his composure. ‘We sail shortly into the maw of the Ice Dancer. It is a sea I know well, and judging from this frigid wind, it is readying itself for us.’ The two walked back up the strand.

While Stalker eyed Kyle, Badlands let out a long thankful breath. ‘Payment might still have to be made …’

‘Don't know if I'm looking forward to that scrap,’ said Coots.

Stalker refused to release Kyle. The Dolmans … that the place Skinner mentioned?’

‘Yes.’

‘And his contact. It was in Jacuruku, wasn't it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now this Thelomen fellow, or whatever he is, says he's of Jacuruku.’

‘Yeah.’

Stalker spun away, disgusted. ‘Dark Lady, someone's meddling here. I don't like it. Too overt. There's going to be trouble. Push-back. I know it.’

‘What do you mean?’

He rubbed his hands on the planks of the boat. ‘A slapping down. A dispersal. Lad,’ he said, turning back, ‘the Gods are just scheming children. One is attempting to build a castle in the sand here. Soon the others will see this, or they have seen it. They'll come and kick it down.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they can't let the schemes of others succeed, Kyle. They each of them only want their
own
to succeed.’

‘I don't know if I agree with that.’

The tall scout shrugged. ‘Agree or not, that is how it is. In any case, seems we're still working for the Guard after all.’

‘One direction is as good as any other,’ said Coots with a dismissive wave.

‘Except home,’ said Badlands, hawking up a great throatful of phlegm and spitting on to the rocks.

Coots nodded. ‘Yeah. That
would
be the worst.’

Traveller and Ereko returned quite quickly. Kyle had to kick the cousins awake; they'd lain down on their cloaks and gone right to sleep. The two tossed their bundles in then Traveller waved everyone to the boat. One-armed, Kyle had barely touched the overlapping planks of the sides when the boat took off sliding down the logs; Ereko had merely leant his shoulder to the stern and it fairly flew down the strand. It gave a nerve-grating screech of wood-against-wood then charged prow-first into the grey water. Ereko had continued on with it and now stood in what for him was waist-deep water; Kyle, short himself, suspected it would come up near his shoulders. Traveller pointed to a row of sealed earthenware pots. ‘Those hold sweet-water. Get them aboard.’