Snare (25 page)

‘They recognize this wand, you see,’ he said, and his tone was peculiarly off-hand. ‘It holds an ancestral spirit, and it means I have magic.’

Soutan called out another incomprehensible word. Golden light spewed like a fountain from the tube and flooded the camp. The horses tossed their heads and danced, but fear kept them silent and their double tethers kept them in place. Trapped in the light stood six mottled red and purple ChaMeech, crouched with their weight thrown back on their hind pair of legs, their mid-pair propping them tense and leaving the front pair, the pseudo-arms that ended in a single finger and opposed thumb, free to handle their long spears, edged at the point with obsidian flakes. At the end of the long graceful necks the bulbous heads turned this way and that, while their doubled pairs of eyes blinked against the glare.

‘Their heads!’ Arkazo was shaking where he stood. ‘They’re so big.’

‘They’re big all over,’ Warkannan muttered. ‘And remember: you can only pierce their hide along their necks and stomachs.’

Holding his lightwand up high, Soutan began to chant in a language Warkannan didn’t recognize. Slowly, a few at a time, the ChaMeech fell back until they hovered at the edge of the pool of light. Only the biggest remained, an individual about ten feet from his flat, fleshy snout to his stub of rudimentary tail. Around his loins hung a red tattered kilt made out of captured cavalry tunics,
and at his throat hung a foot-long tangle of charms, beads, and coloured strips of cloth. When Soutan stepped forward, the ChaMeech lowered his head slowly and submissively. The purple sac of skin on his throat filled and deflated, over and over, in a steady silent pulse. Soutan’s lips moved, but Warkannan could hear nothing.

For a long time the pose held: the sorcerer with his shaft of light held high, the monstrous warrior crouched before him. Suddenly, with a long hooting cry the ChaMeech flung up his head and spun round, shockingly graceful, and bounded off into the night. Shrieking and mewling, his men followed. Warkannan let out his breath in a sharp grunt and Arkazo frankly whimpered. Golden in the unnatural light, Soutan looked them over in cold contempt.

‘Well, Captain, do you see now what magic can do?’

‘Oh yes.’

Soutan smiled, a cold twitch of his mouth. ‘Let me make something clear right now. Once we put Jezro on the throne, I shall expect to be treated as I deserve.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry about that.’

With a laugh Soutan snapped out another peculiar syllable. The light in the tube went out, leaving them all blinking as badly as the ChaMeech. Only later did it strike Warkannan just how easily Soutan had won his battle of wills, as if in some silent way he’d been communing with the ChaMeech instead of fighting with it.

Ammadin woke long before the rest of the comnee. In the pale, reddish light of dawn she took her crystals and walked out into the grass, though she stayed well within sight of the camp. A soft wind blew from the east, bringing a faint scent. She tossed her head back and breathed deeply, catching the all-too-familiar smell of male ChaMeech, acrid with rancid musk. If any females travelled with them, the male stink would cover their softer scent. Still, she opened Long Voice and tried calling for Water Woman. When she received no answer, she opened Spirit Eyes and began to scan.

Eventually she saw the ChaMeech in the shelter of a ring of spear trees, six warriors, lying asleep in their usual fashion, huddled and heaped half on top of one another, with their spears, body decorations, and sacks of food strewn around them on the
ground. The sorcerer and the two Kazraks she found camped only a few miles away. Either they’d been lucky, or the sorcerer carried magic powerful enough to scare off the warparty. When she went back to camp, she told Apanador that the trading party needed to stay in camp for the day.

‘They’re probably hoping to drive off a few horses,’ Ammadin said. ‘If the herd’s hobbled, they can’t.’

Apanador nodded his agreement. ‘Six ChaMeech?’ he said. ‘That’s a good-sized warband, but it’s not big enough to attack the camp in daylight. At night – well, we’ll post guards.’

‘Good idea. I’d better prepare a few surprises of my own, just in case.’

At last!
Warkannan thought, and in a way, the sight was worth waiting for. He stood at the edge of the Rift with Arkazo and stared, simply stared for a long time. At their feet lay dusty bare ground, which sloped down some hundreds of yards to a straight drop. In turn the cliff plunged down so far that he could only guess at the distance – a mile, perhaps. On the far side mist rose and hung across the cliff face like smoke. He could make not even an educated guess about the width of the canyon, though he could see that it yawned here at the top and narrowed at the bottom. From his viewpoint the floor looked like a carpet woven out of orange and purplish-brown foliage, brushy and tattered, perhaps fern trees, perhaps not. Water gleamed through the occasional breaks in the cover.

‘Uncle?’ Arkazo turned first north-east, then south-west. ‘How far does it run? From here it looks like it goes on forever.’

‘Not quite.’ Warkannan smiled at him. ‘But far enough. Over a thousand miles, if those maps Soutan had are correct, all the way from the southern ocean to the northern one.’

Arkazo whistled under his breath and shook his head. Warkannan returned to studying their route down. The Cantons would have been cut off from the west irretrievably had someone not carved a road out of the cliffside at this spot. In switchbacks wide enough for three riders abreast it snaked down, each slab laid into a cut at a gentle angle like big steps made of tan rock. Down the middle of each slab ran ruts, ground out of the rock by generations of comnees and their horses.

‘Ah, there you are.’ Soutan came strolling up. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’

‘It lives up to its reputation,’ Warkannan said.

Arkazo smothered a laugh. Soutan, surprisingly enough, smiled as well, then turned back to Warkannan. ‘We’d best get on our way,’ the sorcerer said. ‘We need to get out of the Rift before nightfall. The ChaMeech present no problem, but every now and then you run across a longtooth hunting in those trees.’

‘If we end up having to run for our lives,’ Warkannan said, ‘I’d just as soon do it in daylight. I take it there’s another road on the other side?’

‘Just like this one, yes. This is the Riftgate I told you about. The Ancients made it.’

‘I’ve got to hand it to them. They were pretty damn good at building roads.’

‘They were good at building a great many things, Captain.’ Soutan paused, staring across the Rift, and for a moment he looked close to tears. ‘Ah well, time to get moving!’

‘Good. Now, we can’t ride down. We need to be on the ground and leading the stock in case one of them panics. Each man will lead his riding horse. We’ve got four pack horses, and Tareev’s horse, too, so that makes eight horses for three men. We’ll rope them up like this: three for me to lead, three for Arkazo, and Soutan, two for you.’

Soutan nodded, then began scratching under his headband again. A drop of blood trickled down his forehead.

‘Take that thing off,’ Warkannan said, ‘and let me treat that sore under it. We’ve got a first-aid kit in the packs.’

‘I never take this off.’ Soutan’s voice snapped with rage. ‘Don’t you ever try to lay one filthy finger on it, do you understand me?’

‘Shaitan! I try to help you and all you do is bite like a wounded animal.’

Soutan snarled like one, too, and marched off, heading for the horses, which they’d left tethered nearby.

‘God give me strength,’ Warkannan muttered. ‘God, don’t let me throw him off the cliff on the way down.’ He took a deep breath, then turned to Arkazo. ‘Let’s get going. The climb up won’t be easy on the horses, and I agree with our sorcerer on one thing: we don’t want to be in the Rift when night falls.’

The horses proved nervous when it came to stepping down onto the first switchback. They snorted, rolled their eyes, and danced back from the edge. Like most cavalrymen, Warkannan had more
patience for horses than he did for H’mai. With soft words and the touch of his hand he finally managed to coax his own grey gelding down. Seeing one of their own start the descent gave the others some courage. They followed – reluctantly, tossing their heads, pulling at the lead ropes, but they followed. The first turn in the road gave the horses more trouble, but in the end they swung themselves around and kept on walking. From then on, herd mentality took over, and in a line the horses marched calmly down the switchbacks with the men at their bridles.

After the first few turns Warkannan had the leisure to look around him. Alternating stripes of dark dirt and pale stone streaked the Rift walls; little plants grew in the occasional crevice. At each turn he looked out at the vast stretch of the Rift, fading into mist far beyond the reach of his sight. By about half-way down he could see the canyon bottom clearly. The orange mass proved to be fern trees, a veritable forest of them, growing out of murky water. After a few more turns of the road, the noise rose to meet them: the chirr and whine of insects, the croaking of frogs, the sharp calls of lizards. Farther down still, the air turned moist and heavy with decay. Warkannan realized that they were descending into a swamp like the sea-coast marshes far to the south.

‘Soutan?’ Warkannan called out. ‘Is there a road through this swamp?’

‘Of course!’ Soutan called back. ‘How else would the Tribes get their horses across? Think, for God’s sake!’

At the bottom of the switchbacks the road levelled out onto rocky ground, bare except for a reddish-brown moss, gently furred with spore stalks. Only the middle of the canyon would get enough sunlight for trees, Warkannan supposed. The forest cover overhead threw shadows over the oozing water and the dark red horsetails that grew along its edge. Crusted with pale orange algae, water lapped onto stone. Now and again a russet fish leapt from the murk and caught one of the iridescent needlebuhs hovering over the surface.

They had just got the last horse to level ground when Warkannan heard the sound – a thrumming or boom, so deep in pitch that he felt it as much as heard it. The frogs and lizards fell silent, as if in fear.

‘Do you hear that?’ Warkannan said to Soutan. ‘What is it?’

‘Just the wind blowing up in the high canyon,’ Soutan said. ‘There are some peculiar rock formations a few miles in.’

‘They must be pretty odd, all right. It almost sounds like drums.’

‘Are you sure it’s wind?’ Arkazo put in. ‘I don’t see how rocks could make that sound.’

Soutan smiled vacantly and looked away. In a few seconds the thrum stopped, and the frogs picked up their chorus again.

Warkannan gathered his men and horses on the edge of the brimming swamp and let the horses rest. The horses pulled on their reins and lead ropes, reaching towards the water, then snorted and tossed their heads in disgust.

‘It’s brackish,’ Soutan said. ‘There’s sweet water on the other side. Some underground springs surface there.’

‘Good.’ Warkannan could see, among the scaly stalks of the fern trees, some flat grey thing running along the ground. He pointed. ‘What is –’

‘The approach to the bridge,’ Soutan said. ‘It rises some three feet above the swamp in most places, a little higher in others.’

‘All right. Let’s get moving. The horses need water more than they need rest.’

Soutan led the way onto the grey surfacing of the road, which was wide enough for at least four horsemen to ride abreast. Underfoot the road felt slightly spongy but solid enough that the horses stepped right onto it. Through the trees Warkannan could see that after some hundred yards the roadbed rose free of the ground on dark grey pylons, driven into the water. Thick clots of brownish river weed grew around them and spread lazily on the slow current.

Warkannan had just led his men onto the rise of the bridge when stinging rebbuhs swarmed to the attack. The horses stamped and swished their tails, tossed their manes and stamped some more, a strategy that seemed to convince the rebbuhs to attack the men instead. Warkannan slapped at the swarm, killed a few, and slapped and swore at the rest. Arkazo was frantically trying to wave them away with his riding hat.

‘That won’t work,’ Soutan drawled. ‘Wait a moment.’ He tossed his horse’s reins to Warkannan, then went round to rummage through the saddlebags. ‘Here we are.’

Soutan drew out a cylinder about eight inches long and an inch in diameter, then intoned one of his nonsense words. Immediately
the rebbuhs began to fly away, rushing off in clumps as thick as mist. Warkannan could see the big drones zig-zagging through the air as if they were drunk.

‘What is that?’ Warkannan said. ‘Some kind of poison vapour?’

‘No.’ Soutan bared his teeth in a smile. ‘It’s magic, of course.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Arkazo said. ‘It’s vibrating, isn’t it? What’s it doing, making some kind of high-pitched noise?’

‘Exactly right.’ Soutan handed him the cylinder. ‘You have better eyes than your uncle.’

Arkazo examined the cylinder, found some sort of button, and pressed it a couple of times with one finger.

‘That turns it on and off,’ Soutan said.

‘Yes, I could feel it stop vibrating, then start again. You don’t need to say one of those commands?’

‘No.’ Soutan glanced Warkannan’s way and seemed to be suppressing a smile. ‘That’s only for magical objects.’

Warkannan snorted like one of the horses and tossed Soutan’s reins back to him.

‘Let’s go,’ Warkannan said. ‘I don’t want to breathe this filthy air for a minute longer than I have to.’

Towards sunset Ammadin scanned and found that the male ChaMeech had seemingly disappeared – worrisome, since they might be hiding deep in the Rift, lying in ambush for the trading party and its tasty horses. The Kazraks she found easily; they’d crossed the Rift and were making camp some miles east. There remained Water Woman. Ammadin had given up hope of hearing from her again, but out of habit she opened Long Voice and sent out its call note. A familiar voice answered immediately.

Ammadin. You have-power-now to hear me? Ammadin. You speak-soon to me?