The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (64 page)

She sucked the potion from there as well until red blood
reappeared, then did the same at Maelys’s wrist and the back of her hand,
before casting the stiletto aside. It shattered on the floor, making a small
puddle of icy blood there.

The Numinator wiped blood off her lips, smiled and extended
her hand to Maelys. ‘Come. We are going home now.’

‘I have no home,’ Maelys managed to gasp.

‘My home is your home. We have nine months to get to know
each other.’

 
FORTY-SIX

The next two days were a nightmare of mud, mosquitoes,
rain, exhaustion and diarrhoea so bad that Nish felt his bowels were
dissolving, then more mud, and food which grew steadily worse with every meal. A
third of his men had dysentery and he’d had to leave another thirty-five at the
previous camp, for they were too ill to walk. The militia numbered just over
five hundred now, counting Boobelar’s drunken and abusive eighty, but at the
current rate Nish would be lucky to have two hundred and fifty capable of
fighting by the time they reached the pass. If they ever did.

They waded through mud, ate in mud, even slept in it. The
remaining bags of flour and nut meal were threaded with black and green mould
like smelly old cheeses; the haunches of meat were covered in a layer of grey
slime and smelled worse each day; the onions and garlic were sprouting from
their centres yet rotting on the outsides, and what was left of their other
food was also on the turn.

Though they’d been on short rations since the seventh day,
three-quarters of their supplies were gone. Nish now faced the terrifying
prospect of engaging the enemy with only two or three days’ food left, and
still they hadn’t reached Blisterbone. He felt that they were crawling up a
monstrous quagmire-coated treadmill, to nowhere. In his worst moments, he
doubted that their guide had ever crossed The Spine.

It was the most inhospitable place in the world, and he now
understood why it had protected Gendrigore for so long. His only consolation
was that his father’s army would be struggling too, for the southern climb was
even steeper and more rugged and, churned by the hard boots of thousands of
soldiers, their track would become an even deeper wallow.

The only man untroubled by the conditions was Curr, whose
wiry legs drove him ever upward, even after everyone else had collapsed.
Despite his earlier words he was often well ahead, scouting, and sometimes Nish
did not see him for a day, though he always returned as the cooks were dishing
up the evening’s ghastly meal. With his light weight and flat feet Curr skated
over the mud wallows into which everyone else plunged to their thighs, and his
leathery skin, which was always plastered with mud, resisted the attacks of all
but the most aggressive mosquitoes.

But finally they were only a league from their destination;
when the clouds cleared Nish could see the snow-capped peaks of The Spine, and
made out a dip between them that was the pass. On its left flank stood an
ominous white peak, shaped like an over-curving thorn.

‘Time to camp,’ said Nish, for his bowels were bubbling and
he was desperate for relief, however temporary. ‘If we start before dawn
tomorrow and go hard in the moonlight we can reach the pass just after
sunrise.’

Curr came sliding down the slope, so covered with mud lumps
that he looked like a skinny, warty toad. More bad news, Nish felt sure.

‘Where have you been?’ he snapped, for Curr had disappeared
before they had broken camp that morning and, as usual, hadn’t bothered to tell
him.

The guide skidded to a stop, his chest heaving. The column
came to a halt behind Nish and he heard them flopping to the ground. No soldier
wasted a moment in standing where he could sit, or sitting when he could lie
flat on his back in the mire. There was no sound save for mud plopping to the
ground all around Curr. His eyes were red and his reek was worse than ever.

He took a deep breath, met Nish’s eyes, and said, ‘The enemy
is at the pass. We’ll have to turn back.’

‘You saw them?’ Nish said stupidly. Curr was an experienced
scout. Of course he’d seen them.

Pain jagged through his bowels. Nish ran awkwardly behind a
tree and got there just in time. No one took any notice; most of the militia
were suffering just as badly. He hobbled out again. ‘Where are they, Curr?’

Curr grinned. No matter how bad the food, he ate it with
gusto and never suffered for it. ‘Must’ve just topped the pass. Saw three of
them among the rocks, climbin’ up to the lookout where they can see down. Two
more standin’ guard.’

‘But they didn’t see you?’

‘Made sure of that.’ Curr scratched his backside, dislodging
a mud lump the size of a flounder. ‘Crawled up along the lee side of a fallen
log.’

‘Leaving a trail they can’t possibly miss as soon as they
search the area.’

‘Covered it with fallen leaves. Not a fool, Nish.’

‘So we can’t attack the pass. We’ll have to go back and find
a place we can defend.’

Nish knew it was hopeless. The enemy’s scouts would soon
find them and, with so many men, quickly overwhelm them. He was leading the
militia to certain death, and he would die with them.

Unless Father turns up at the very end, he thought bitterly,
striding over their corpses to take me back, just as he did last time. And the
time before, when beautiful Irisis – No! He wasn’t going down that path
again. Father never gives up, and this time I’ve walked right into his trap, as
he knew I would from the moment he discovered I was in Gendrigore. He allowed
his armies and fleets to be seen so I would rush off like the precipitate fool
I am, right into the trap.

Once more he saw himself, arse-up over the rock with
Boobelar whaling the life out of him with the flat of his sword. Fool! Failure!
But this time Nish wasn’t going to give way to his nagging self-doubt. He had
been a great leader once and he could be again, as soon as he exorcised this
particular demon.

‘Or … you could go up the back way,’ said Curr with a
cunning sideways glance at Nish, but then shook his head. ‘No, forget it; can’t
be done.’

Nish believed him. A thousand years of history could hardly
be wrong, and if retreating meant a slow death, attacking the pass was the
quick and brutal version.

‘What are you suggesting, Curr?’

The guide began shaping mud with his fingers, mounding it into
a peak-studded, precipice-bounded mountain chain to represent this section of
The Spine. He sharpened its cliffs and ridges with a filthy fingernail, pared
them even steeper with the point of his knife, and finally made a notch in The
Spine to represent Blisterbone Pass.

‘Just here,’ said Curr, pointing to a tiny bowl high on the
left, or eastern, side of the white-thorn mountain looming high above the pass.
The bowl was encircled by knife-edged ridges running up to The Spine. ‘Told you
at the beginnin’, didn’t I? There’s a second pass – Liver-Leech.’ He made
an insignificant nick in The Chain above the bowl. ‘It’s never used; too steep
and dangerous, but desperate men might cross there and circle round the
mountain to take Blisterbone from the south. Enemy won’t be expecting that.’

‘How do you know?’ said Nish.

‘No one knows about the other pass.’

‘You know about it. And Barquine also mentioned it, as I
recall, so Father’s scouts will, too.’

Curr shrugged. ‘No one has used it in hundreds of years.’

‘Father thinks of everything. He’ll make sure it’s guarded.’

‘Don’t matter to me. Just thought I’d mention it, seein’ as
how yer desperate to get there first. Men I saw are just an advance guard. Move
quick and you can take Blisterbone before the army arrives.’

‘How long will this path take?’ said Nish.

‘Leave at dawn, you can attack at dawn day after termorrer.’

Nish bent over the mud map, but it was too small to tell him
anything.

‘It’s the only way. If you retreat, they’ll soon come after
you, and you’ll die.’

Nish did not like it. From the mud map, they would have to
make a forced march up an exposed ridge to cross at Liver-Leech Pass, and if
they were seen they would be cruelly exposed, trapped between the advance guard
and Jal-Nish’s army. But if they retreated now, their situation was nearly as
bad. At least this way they had a tiny, desperate chance – assuming they
were led by a military genius, rather than a man who’d had his arse whaled by a
subordinate and hadn’t found the courage to do anything about it.

The next morning, Nish’s tiny hope was fading as he led the
militia around the white-thorn mountain, walking in single file below the crest
of the curving ridge so they would not be seen. Logic told him that the attack
was doomed. If his little militia could have held Blisterbone Pass against an
army of thousands, his father’s advance guard could hold it against the
militia, and then the main army would attack them from the rear.

What if he divided the militia and attacked the pass from
both sides at once? Unfortunately, there was no way to coordinate two forces
separated by the width of a mountain.

He stopped for a breather, perching on a rock and studying
the black sky. It had stopped raining a while back but the respite was only
temporary. And what if Curr was wrong about Liver-Leech Pass?

‘Is something the matter, Nish?’ said Hoshi, coming up and
laying an arm across his shoulder.

‘No,’ he lied. ‘Why?’

‘You seem very downcast today.’

‘And you keep tearing at your hair,’ said Gi, who had come
with him. ‘Like you are now.’

Nish, who hadn’t realised he’d been doing it, lowered his
hand onto the hilt of Vivimord’s sabre. ‘Curr said it was seven days’ march
from Wily’s Clearing to Blisterbone Pass, and we’ve taken ten already. I’m
beginning to wonder if he’s ever been across The Spine; and if it takes a lot
longer to cross by the higher pass …’

Hoshi looked at Gi, she nodded, and he said, ‘There’s
another explanation.’

‘What’s that?’ said Nish.

‘That Curr deliberately led us astray.’

‘He was sent by Barquine, and I trust him.’

‘How do you know Barquine sent him?’ said Gi.

Nish cursed inwardly. No one carried papers in Gendrigore,
and there had been no way to check Curr’s word without sending a messenger all
the way back to Barquine, which would have taken a week at least. There hadn’t
been time. ‘I – I don’t suppose I do, though he did say he would send a
guide.’

‘Maybe Curr killed the guide. And he’s always off on his
own.’

‘Scouts usually are,’ said Nish. ‘I’m in unknown country,
Gi; I’ve got to trust my guide. I don’t know this land, and neither do you.’

‘Boobelar does,’ said Hoshi. ‘I heard Huwld, the cook’s boy
with the red hair, saying so.’

Worse and worse. Lately Boobelar had spent his nights
drinking the hallucinogenic sap tapped from the scarlet-leaved nif trees, until
he raved like a madman and had to be tied up for his own safety. Every night
Nish hoped the soldier would fall over a cliff. He would be useless in a fight
and was affecting everyone’s morale, save for the eighty he’d brought with him,
whose greed for plunder outweighed reason.

Nish knew there was going to be a confrontation the moment
he spoke to the fellow, but he couldn’t put it off any longer. Boobelar was
bigger and stronger and, even in his cups, faster, and Nish was afraid of him.
That wasn’t the real problem, though. Nish felt sure that he was the better
swords-man; he’d certainly taken down bigger opponents in the past, but
Boobelar’s humiliation of him lay in the back of Nish’s mind all the time,
undermining him the way his father always had. Well, he would just have to
overcome it; and if he could not, his troubles would soon be over.

‘How does Huwld know?’ said Nish.

‘Boobelar is his uncle,’ said Hoshi, ‘and he went over The
Spine years ago, looking for gold.’

‘Did he find any?’

‘He came back months later with nothing, starving and in a
fever.’

‘No wonder he’s so bitter. Well, I’d better talk to him.
Fall out for ten minutes.’

The word was passed back and the exhausted troops dropped in
their tracks. ‘Fall out, I said,’ Nish muttered. ‘Not
down
, or over the bloody cliff.’

Gi grinned, winked at Hoshi and they began to follow him
down.

‘Have a break,’ Nish said, easing the sabre in its sheath.
‘I don’t need looking after.’

‘Of course not,’ said Gi. ‘But we’re coming anyway.’

He was glad to have their support when he reached Boobelar’s
squad, which was lying down forty or fifty paces from the rest of the militia.

‘Wadder you wan’,’ slurred the captain, squatting bolt
upright on a jutting rock like a man impaled on a spike. His eyes were like
rivers of blood issuing from muddy ferret holes; his nose was running and his
lips were red from nif sap.

He pushed himself up, staggered, and the wine skin swung
around in a loop on the thong which held it to his wrist, striking him in the
chest. He looked down at it stupidly, tried to take a swig, discovered it was
empty, hurled it away and lurched towards Nish. To the left, one of Boobelar’s
men had his pants down and was waggling his backside at Nish. Everyone roared
with laughter. Nish flushed.

‘Whadder ya want, purple-arse?’ said Boobelar.

Nish’s bruises had faded to greeny-yellow, but he felt the
insult nonetheless. ‘I heard you’ve been over The Spine before.’

‘So what?’ Boobelar grinned.

‘I thought you might know the way.’

‘Not as well as Curr –’ He broke off and the bleeding
eyes fixed on Nish. ‘Whadder ya sayin’?’

His men were on their feet, staring at each other. Nish
hadn’t wanted to arouse their fears, which could only make morale worse, but it
might be too late for that.