Scarred Man (22 page)

 

He jerked awake as someone touched his shoulder.

‘Move,' a voice whispered in his ear.

Keshik silently rose. The animal stench had faded while he slept. His eyes could make out shapes: black against black in the dim light from the torches that lit the vast slab of rock so far behind them. Ahead, the grunting of the animals continued, but he was still unable to identify what
manner of beast they might be. The troop was moving at a jog towards the animals. No doubt he would find out what they were soon enough.

He gnawed on some of the dried travel rations the troop had given him as he jogged. It was good, better than the normal rations, but still dry and tasting like sweat. He swallowed and took a swig of water. It, too, tasted of sweat.

They ran over level, flat ground, stone carved by ancient means to serve ancient purposes. Ahead, light started to glow, the flickering light of torches. It grew rapidly as they ran, soon casting shadows that danced behind them on the stone ground. Every sense seemed to be acute, flooding him with information. He took in the mixture of light and shadow, black on black and dancing flames ahead. He heard the pounding of his feet, his breathing, the creak and rattle of equipment and armour overlaying the grunting and snorting of the animals ahead. His skin tingled as his sweat dried in the breeze created by his own movement. The scents, the smells, the stench of those around him mingled yet he could still identify each different one.

When the flicker of silver flashed for less than a heartbeat, away to the right, he saw it and on some level understood it, but on no conscious level did he register its presence or its meaning. He kept running.

They slowed to a walk as the animals ahead started to take shape. The chains of the great stone slab appeared again and angled down towards the ground where they ended in massive harnesses strapped to the backs of the animals, of which there
were hundreds upon hundreds, attended to by as many men and women. Keshik was puzzled as to what this small troop could hope to achieve here, unless of course, their aim was to cripple or destroy the great Wall itself. In which case these monstrous animals that were attached to the unimaginably vast block of stone that was the heart of the Wall would be the target. It was the sheer strength of these beasts, shackled to the mighty chains that controlled the gate that operated the Great Wall, allowing the water to flow or not. If they were harmed or killed, the Wall would cease to function.

Could that be the aim of these strange people?

One of the huge beasts suddenly bellowed as if in rage. Keshik stared at it, finally close enough to make out some details. It was unlike anything he had ever seen: six-legged, with a small head on a long sinuous neck; a tail, thick and stubby, sported two large spikes, and a double row of spines extended the length of its back and neck. In the flickering torchlight it looked to be brown in colour with odd splotches of yellow.

As if the bellow were some sort of signal, dozens more of the beasts reared and roared, sending the attendants scurrying about in a frenzy. They came from everywhere, wielding long poles with which they prodded and struck their charges with great thwacks that cut across the noise of the animals. Guaman reacted as though he was expecting this. He gestured to the left and the troop changed direction, running towards an area where there were no handlers. In the dim flickering light, the intention was obvious: to get through the line
without being seen. They moved like ghosts. Guaman showed skill in leading them, keeping to the dancing shadows, staying in the darkness even as they approached the light.

Up close, the animals were intimidating. They loomed huge overhead. A tall man could easily run beneath their bodies, between their tree trunk-sized legs. Their long necks curved and swayed as the troop darted past them, their heads dipping to regard the little people. Small, red-rimmed eyes stared dumbly, reflecting occasional flashes of firelight that gave them an otherworldly, surreal appearance. Warm breath, redolent with rotting vegetation, washed over Keshik as one lowered its head close to him. It opened its mouth to reveal rows of heavy, blocky teeth designed for grinding grass. Each tooth was as large as Keshik's fist. He looked away and concentrated on running.

They were through. The noise and smell faded quickly as they fled beyond the monstrous beasts. Just before the light disappeared completely, Guaman held up his hand to signal them to head to the left. The troop wheeled smoothly around and continued running until a wall appeared, black and forbidding, before them. They stopped and the man who had met them earlier stepped forward to the single wooden door in the wall. Keshik could not make out what he was doing, but presumably he had pulled out a key and unlocked the door for, after a brief pause, the door was swung open.

‘Now we earn our money,' Guaman said. A low chuckle ran through the troop. It sounded odd to Keshik, as though it was a joke he did not get, but
he was used to that so he followed as the rest of them filed silently through the door. Beyond lay utter dark.

A faint light sputtered before blossoming into a gentle green glow that someone held aloft. The troop moved on.

They passed quickly through a tortuous maze of narrow tunnels. Keshik frequently lost track of the light as its bearer turned a corner or rounded a bend but the sounds and smells of those around him kept him following, and held panic at bay.

The scent of fear had assailed him soon after passing through the door. At first it was just a niggling sense of something watching him which he dismissed as simply an awareness of those around him, but the feeling kept growing until it filled his mind. He could not see any walls or a ceiling, but still he felt they were closing in, soon to crush him. He started to pant as if exhausted, then the sweats began. He started to mutter his dofain, but the man behind him jabbed him sharply with what felt like the hilt of a sword, shaming him into silence. The dofain helped little as he ran over it mentally; it did not quieten his mind and take him to the still place he needed for battle readiness. And that he would need battle readiness was unquestioned. This was not going to be an unhindered passage, of that he was sure.

The
Queen's Quest
was a graceful vessel. She stood at anchor in Usterust, her clean lines setting her apart from the other, more prosaic, sturdy coastal ships clustered around her like supplicants. Her crew, clad in similar uniforms to the Agents, were disciplined and sombre. As Huitzilin led his xuauhtli aboard, he held Maida's arm tightly. She was chained hand and foot, walking quickly with shortened steps. Gone was the dress she had chosen while locked up, replaced with canvas trousers and a coarse-weave tunic. Her feet were bare and her face was dark with anger, not all of it directed at the man forcing her along. After they had boarded, Itxtli followed with his xuauhtli and Onaven. She walked unencumbered, and was dressed in finery, underneath which she hid her dagger, her pouch of herbs and a large rodent.

Tatya rested peacefully, her sharp little claws gripping the wide sash wrapped around Onaven's waist. It had taken a lot of work to ensure she was concealed fully, but the light and flowing dress had helped. Once aboard, Onaven was shown to a
cabin — small, but with a porthole and not shared — while Maida was taken below, still shackled.

‘You had better be worth all this trouble,' Huitzilin hissed as he shoved Maida into the hold. ‘If I get you back to the Queen and find you truly are nothing but a little slag …' He did not finish the sentence. He did not need to: they both knew what he wanted to say, but could not.
I will hunt you down and kill you.

Maida spat and lunged towards him, her hands extended into claws. ‘You had better stay away from me,' she snarled, ‘or I will strike you down as I did Patecoatl.'

‘You Midacean witches don't frighten me,' Huitzilin blustered, but the sudden paling of his face and the hurried step backwards gave lie to his words.

The story of the Midacean witch was the best she and Onaven could come up with at such short notice. Tatya's savaging of Patecoatl's body was such that no one would believe for a moment that Maida had done it with just a dagger, and if Tatya had stayed in her primary form, she would have been killed. Onaven had shown herself to be a quick thinker, but weak. It was all Maida had been able to do to get her to conceal the shapeshifter's minor form under that silly pretty dress she insisted on wearing. And she simply would not hand over her dagger.

Now she was down here in this stinking damp hold with the true rats while that precious bitch was swanning about above decks with the Agents in her pretty dress and with that hatefully exquisite
hair blowing in the wind. Down here, Maida could not possibly escape — and Onaven had ruined her only chance.

Why couldn't she have stopped screaming? The man was dead; there was nothing to do about it. But no, the ludicrous, precious princess had to keep on screaming and screaming, bringing every Agent in Usterust running. Had she just stopped …

Maida still had the key she had taken from Patecoatl's clothes. She pushed it out of her mouth and dropped it into her hand.

Keshik, where are you?

She tried the key again in the locks on her manacles but, again, it did not fit. In rage, Maida flicked the wretched key as far away from her as her manacled wrists would allow. What a waste of effort. She had given herself to that idiot Patecoatl for this! His softness and clumsy fumbling had reminded her so sharply of Keshik's strength and passionate loving, his selfless adoration, his near worship of her. Too often other men, desiring her for themselves, had asked her why she stayed with such a cold and bloodied monster.

If only you knew what a great heart beat beneath that hard chest. If only you could possibly understand the power of that love.

It was only the memory of his love that gave her the strength to go on, to keep fighting, to keep pretending to be a
tough little slag
.

The tears came unbidden as she knelt on the wet deck. Already, though still in the harbour, the ship was bobbing around like a snowflake on a breeze, sending little rivulets of salt water across the
wooden planks. She bowed her head into her hands and wept. Her hot tears trickled down onto her wrists where they pooled by the manacles that chafed. It would only be a matter of days before the skin was worn raw, and then infection would set in. She had seen slaves who'd lost both hands and both feet from such infections, slaves left to die in screaming agony.

She had seen too many similar things whenever she came close to people. It was another reason she loved the wild lands, the great Wastes — where a woman could ride for days and see nothing but the man she loved riding beside her and a clear horizon all around. She wept for both: the man she loved and the Wastes she had been snatched from.

Steel clashed on steel, sending sparks flying. The grunt of injury was followed by the dull thud of a falling body. Keshik turned to face his next attacker, a pale-skinned, dark-haired man with a heavy beard who grinned maniacally as he swung an axe of heroic proportions. The whole troop was similarly engaged, and almost half of them were already down, either in this battle or one of the several that had preceded it. Keshik himself was carrying a few nasty little wounds that were starting to slow him a bit, but nowhere near enough to be a problem against this sort of opponent. He avoided the enthusiastic swing of the axe and neatly opened the axe man up with his sorcerous blade.

The man was still falling when Keshik shifted his attention to the next keen, but amateurish, guardsman. He went down before he had the chance to swing.

Silence fell with the last defender and the remnants of the invading troop looked at each other. They were all breathing heavily and covered in blood, but they had gained sanctuary. This last
group of defenders had chased them for a day — or as much as Keshik could judge it to be a day — finally catching them here in this dead-end passage. Guaman proved himself to be a passable commander by using the enclosed space to his advantage by turning quickly and unexpectedly on their pursuers. The fight had been vicious and bloody, but the intruders had been victorious.

Keshik still had no idea why these people were here, or why they had brought him along. Certainly they had needed his blades, but they had never even hinted to him what their overriding purpose might be. The only thing he had been able to glean was that they hunted down and killed anyone they saw wearing a guardsman's uniform, but kept their silence, hiding in the shadows whenever any civilians passed them. There were less of the latter than Keshik had imagined. They passed many empty rooms that gave the appearance of having been living quarters, but were now deserted. It was as if the population of this great Wall was slowly dying out. And if that were the case, would the ancient magic that sustained it — that kept the mighty Wall operating — die also?

Keshik had heard tales of the vast floods that surged down from the mountains so far away to the east when, every few Crossings, the snow caps melted. This would send unimaginably huge amounts of water thundering through the Great River of Kings to crash onto this Wall. Were it to no longer control those floods, the fertile, heavily populated lands to the west would be washed into the Silvered Sea.

‘We rest here,' Guaman said. ‘Keshik, Ozcollo, get rid of these bodies.'

Keshik grunted and sheathed his blades before attending to the grisly task of removing the dead and dying. He and Ozcollo dragged bodies out of the room to another of the abandoned living quarters a little way along the corridor, where they tossed them inside to form an untidy heap. Before long there were defenders and invaders piled up, with none of the distinction in death that had been so important in life. As he heaved the body of a guardsman onto the pile, holding it by the arms while Ozcollo held its legs, he felt an answering pressure on his arm as the hand gripped him. He looked down and saw the man's eyes flicker open. He was clearly about to speak, but Keshik shook his head quickly before tossing him onto the pile of bodies.

Ozcollo went to leave the room but paused, as Keshik was not moving. Seeing Keshik start to unbutton his codpiece, he gave a quick nod and left the room. When he was gone, Keshik knelt beside the wounded man.

‘Can you hear me?' he whispered.

The man groaned softly and gave a small movement of his head.

‘I will come back later with food and water,' Keshik said. ‘Stay alive until then.'

 

The spark of life had almost left by the time he returned, but Keshik managed to get some water into the guardsman and then some of the rations, softened with more water.

‘Why?' the man croaked.

‘I am only here because they were going to kill me. I have no quarrel with you,' Keshik explained. ‘Do you know why they are here?'

The man gave a slow nod. ‘Rebels,' he said. ‘I know Guaman. His people call him the Rogue.'

‘His people?'

‘The Rogue Troop.'

‘How many are there?'

‘Thousands. They are in open revolt in the higher levels.' His voice was coming in short, harsh gasps. He stopped to cough. Blood spat out of his mouth and it was clear he had but moments to live.

‘Why are they in revolt?'

‘The usual reasons of the young: reparation for ancient, long-forgotten wrongs; freedom from oppression; imagined slights; they are all the same.' He was panting now, forcing every word out by sheer will alone. ‘Promise me you will help him.'

‘Help him?'

He gasped in great pain and gripped Keshik's hand with the last strength of death as he forced his lips to utter his final words. ‘The Wall is dying.'

Keshik wanted to cry out with frustration, shake the man, scream into his face:
Your fight is not mine. I am foresworn. Your problems are nothing to me.
But of course he did no such thing. He closed the dead man's eyes and stood up. ‘I will help this Rogue Troop, but only until I can leave and seek out Maida.' He bowed to the body at his feet. He spun around, thinking he heard a sound, not unlike a sigh, behind him. His blades leapt into his hands as if alive, but he saw no one, only the empty
passage. Muttering to himself, he resheathed his swords and made his way back to the dark room where the Rogue Troop rested in preparation for whatever the next phase of their mission might hold.

 

The Rogue Troop sought out stairs that took them higher, avoiding any further encounters with guards, even though they now saw many more patrols. Somehow, the man who had first met them, bringing them light, had survived the fighting and still guided them through the labyrinthine lower levels of the Wall. He ushered them into the levels where light occasionally filtered through from outside, casting an unexpected shadow, or highlighting a portion of floor. After so long in the dark, these bright reminders of the world outside were mixed blessings — painful to eyes grown accustomed to the unending night and dangerous to those whose lives depended on stealth and concealment.

They climbed higher and higher and as they did so, the sound of others started to intrude on their silent progress. At first, it was little more than a low murmur of conversation, but it quickly grew into a background hum of a population. Keshik heard the distant sounds of people going about their lives; he even heard, at one stage, a child laughing. For a moment he was shocked to hear it here in the dim maze of passages where he had brought so much death. The light grew with the noises and he felt like he was skulking along a normal — if narrow — city street at around sunset. Until he looked up and saw the black stone ceiling hanging above him.

The troop kept to the shadows as they followed Guaman and the Wall dweller. On either side of the passage were rooms like they had passed deeper in the Wall, but most of these were occupied, making it almost impossible to be undetected. Every time they passed a doorway that led into a home, eyes peered out at them: some of them mistrustful; some angry; some welcoming; but all curious. Certainly, some of those watching them were reporting to someone as soon as the troop passed them.

The dying man's words hovered in the back of Keshik's mind —
the Wall is dying.
What did that mean? And how would helping Guaman save the Wall? And why was he even bothering with this? He had to get out and keep heading south where Maida was waiting for him.

The thought made him almost laugh and cry simultaneously. He had no idea whatsoever where he was, nor how to get out of this place. Even if he simply slipped away from the Rogue Troop, he would be lost in heartbeats. No, he was trapped with these people until they released him.

They reached a set of guarded stairs leading up to the next level. Too many more fights and there would not be enough left in the troop to do anything when they got wherever they were going. This one, however, was different. When the armed men saw the approaching troop, they threw down their helmets and tore off their guards' tunics to reveal a different uniform before shouting in excitement, ‘Rogue!' They surged forward as if to embrace Guaman who opened his arms wide to accept them. In moments, he was surrounded by a
swirling throng of happy, exuberant men, all trying to slap him on the back or wrap their arms around him. Keshik had seen similar displays from men greeting a commander who had led them through a tough battle. Guaman accepted the adulation with a broad smile and a happy expression as though it was his due. Keshik had also seen these expressions on the faces of commanders he had served under — and it made him go cold to see it here. Guaman had a personal goal, and these soldiers who offered him their adulation and loyalty would be used and discarded as it served his purpose. The man might bring something to the Wall, but it would not be what these men hoped.