The Plains of Kallanash (40 page)

“You and the Warlord both.”

But Hurst laughed. “That’s all right. If Mia’s happy with it, I’m happy with it. The rest of it doesn’t really matter.”

“You’re a strange man, Hurst,” Gantor said crossly. “Don’t you think that there may be more important issues at stake here than your sex life?”

“No. Well, maybe, but ultimately, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be fighting for? Families, people we love. A safe place for children to grow up in. But it isn’t, is it? Within the Karnings, families can be torn apart by a single mistake, or for no reason at all. And here
—”For a moment he had to control his anger. “No families at all here. They’ve taken that away from Mia, the bastards.”

“And what
they
are we talking about, exactly?”

Hurst hesitated. He knew it in his own mind, but it was another thing altogether to voice the thought.

“The Slaves. It’s them, isn’t it? The Servants, the Voices, the Slaves. They’re the ones who’ve done this, created this never ending war with its artificial rules.”

“And still I wonder why,” Gantor said, half to himself.

~~~

They rode out early in the evening, Dethin and Hurst either side of Mia, and the others in a straggle behind them, Gantor, Walst and Trimon, then two of Dethin’s men, and Ainsley. The other two Third Section Captains, Heddizan and Gronnash, stayed behind to keep watch on the walls, having no faith in the enemy’s trustworthiness.

At this time of year it should have been dark, but the moon was just past full, and hung huge and golden in the sky, bathing the party in its ethereal glow. There were many who disliked the oddly insubstantial light of the moon, but to Hurst it felt magical, bestowing a different, airier form of life on the world than the overpowering sun. If it were true that the moon had been pulled out of alignment during the Catastrophe, and now sat much closer to the world, then surely that was a great gift, giving them so many extra hours of light and filling the sky with beauty. He couldn’t imagine what the night sky would be like with the moon never more than a tiny disk, perhaps no bigger than a thumbnail.

Hilligor had rearranged the main room in his pavilion. The heavy tables and chairs had been banished and replaced with cushions and a series of low tables set in a ring, encircled by a series of braziers. Long drapes gave the room a feeling of intimacy. Hurst was amused, for such luxuries were commonplace within the Karnings for summer picnics, and occasionally at the skirmishes, but it was certainly not normal practice along the borders. He wondered how many wagons had laboured to bring such things out here.

They seated themselves on the cushions and food and wine were brought out. They had left their weapons with the horses, and the Karningers wore no swords either, but they all had daggers for the meat, and as the servants came and went through the drapes, Hurst saw that there were armed Skirmishers just beyond them. Even the servants, he noticed, had the muscular look of swordsmen. He thought there was no danger of a fight, but he approved of Hilligor’s caution, all the same. Whatever the current status of Hurst himself and his Companions, there were four men here who were committed warriors, barbarians, to whom every Skirmisher was a natural enemy.

The food was typical Karninghold fare. It was less than three months since he had left his Karning, but Hurst was surprised how much his appetite had changed. He enjoyed the roast meats, but he found many of the complicated dishes unpalatable
– too bland, too spicy, too crisp, too limp, too hot, too cold. Nothing was right for him. And he had forgotten the numerous sauces covering everything, so that it was impossible to tell what was in there. Mia ate with relish, he saw, but, like him, Dethin picked at most of it and left his wine untouched. I’m becoming a barbarian, Hurst thought.

“Is there any ale?” he asked after a while. Hilligor signed to a servant, and before long jugs appeared.

For some time, they ate and drank and said little, but when the remains of the meal had been cleared away, and the jugs of wine and ale refilled, and the servants withdrawn, Hilligor said, “I think the time has come to address the issue of how we move forward. I don’t wish to ignore what has been done in the past—” and he hesitated, glancing between Tanist and Dethin as he spoke, as if he expected them to speak. Tanist made the smallest bow of acknowledgement, but Dethin remained impassive. “Well – what’s done is done, and can’t be altered now. For myself, I’ve learned a great deal these last couple of days. I believe we’ve all had our eyes opened to the way we’ve been manipulated, on both sides. But as to doing anything about it – whether there is anything we
can
do about it, or whether we should even try – that I don’t know.”

“As to what we can do,” Tanist said, “that remains to be seen, but for myself, I won’t tamely knuckle under to this. I have to do something. They have made me a barbarian
—” He stopped and made a little bow to Dethin. “Forgive me, you are no more barbaric than anyone else on these plains. What do you call yourselves?”

“We are warriors,” said Dethin. “Those who fight are warriors.”

“And the others? Those who don’t fight?”

“They are known by their jobs
– storesman, cook, huntsman, stableman and so on.”

“And your women?”

The smallest hesitation. “They’re known by who they belong to – the Commander’s woman, the Captains’ women, the Section House women. Although there are less formal terms used.”

Tanist shot a look at Mia, but said nothing. “Well then, it seems I am a warrior too, like most of you here. So let’s make war.”

“Isn’t that what we’re trying to stop doing?” Hurst said, smiling a little.

“Against each other, yes. But against
them
– we haven’t tried that yet, have we?”

“Against the Slaves?” Hurst said. “Are you serious? How in all Nine Vortices can we do that?”

Tanist laughed. “We’re the ones with the swords.”

Mia was shocked. Tanist had always seemed like such a pleasant, gentle sort of man, and he had always treated her with kindly good humour, yet here he was talking without any hint of irony of visiting violence on the Slaves. She could hardly bear to listen. But she was not alone in her unease.

“Before we go any further down this line,” Hilligor said, holding up a hand commandingly, “we should consider those of us who
will
be returning to the Karningplain. It’s very shocking, all this, I agree, but a few injustices may be the price we pay for stability. I don’t want to get involved in a violent uprising.”

“Nor I,” said Bernast. “Besides, I want to face my interview with a clear conscience. The less I know about any plans the better.”

“Then we’ve reached the point of decision,” said Tanist. “For myself, I’m quite ready to stay here and be a barbarian. There’s nothing keeping me in the Karnings.”

“Nothing?” said Hurst. “Your whole family is nothing?”

“What family? The wife of my heart is long dead, the interesting children are all grown and gone,” and he waved a languid hand in Hurst’s direction, “and there aren’t even any barbarians left to fight on my patch. Sorry, Warlord – I mean warriors. There’s nothing for me there. But Hurst – what about you?”

Hurst hesitated. But then he caught sight of Mia gravely watching him, and he smiled. “My place is here,” he said.

~~~

They separated not long after, Hilligor and Bernast and their Skirmishers to prepare to break their camp and depart with the sun, and the warriors riding in a slow, thoughtful line back to the compound. Amongst them were Hurst and Tanist, both committed now to a life beyond the border. Hemmond went with them, too, another who had no desire to face the Slaves again. To their surprise, Mannigor also rode with them.

“Most High Commander Hurst gave me my life,” he said, pride in his voice. “Now I give mine to him in return.”

It was an old tradition, dating back to the Petty Kings and long since abandoned, but no one tried to dissuade him. Unlike Hurst and Tanist, Mannigor had no Companions, for he was not married, but he had two Mentors, experienced Skirmishers appointed by his father to guide him, and they chose to accompany him. So it was a rather larger group returning than had left just a couple of hours before, bolstered by several pack horses laden with barrels of good quality wine. Hilligor could not conceive how they would survive their exile without a reasonable supply.

At Dethin’s suggestion, they circled away from the compound, riding north for a while until they reached a crumbling cayshorn island, eroded by weather and kishorn. Here they built a fire and set a watch and sat down to discuss their plans away from prying ears or eyes.

Tanist got straight to the point.

“We have to remove the Slaves,” he said. “They’ve kept us in meek subjection for too long. It’s time to take charge of our own destiny.”

Fine words, Mia thought them, but how could it be done except by violence? And soon enough the talk turned that way. At first, several of them argued against it. There were far too many Slaves to tackle, one said, they were spread throughout the Karningplain, there was at least one in every village and craft centre and manufacturing compound, and several in every Karninghold, not to mention the many hundreds at the Ring.

“The ones outside the Ring don’t matter,” Tanist replied. “They only follow orders anyway. We need only focus on the heart of the operation.”

“The Ring?” Gantor said. “It may be the heart of the Slaves’ domain, but it’s also home to thousands of others
– scholars, archivists, craftspeople, shopkeepers, cooks and servants. If we tear through there with swords and spears and bows, we will kill a great many innocent people, and the ones we want will scuttle away into their secret tunnels through the mountains.”

“They can scuttle all they like,” said Tanist grimly, “but we’ll be in charge.”

“How many men would it take?” asked Hurst. “And how are you going to get them all the way across the barrens and through the Ring of Bonnegar unnoticed?”

“Through the tunnels?” Gantor suggested.

“You can hardly pour an army through those tunnels,” Tanist said. “No, it has to be above ground, but it doesn’t matter about being seen. We just march in. There’s no defensive army there, no guards, no swords other than the tournament training weapons. We’ll be unopposed. Mind you, it will take a lot of men. Thousands, probably.”

“And how are you going to organise that?” Hurst said. “Where are they going to come from, these thousands of men? Are you going to sneak all the way back to the western border and tell your own Hundreds to march to the Ring and take over? And are they all going to salute you and say
– yes, of course, Most High Commander, Sir, anything you ask?”

“We have the Warlord’s warriors. How many men have you got?”

“I have close to nine hundred in my Sections, but mostly poorly trained and under-equipped, and the instant they cross the border they’ll be slaughtered, unless you can persuade the Skirmishers to let them pass. And then after that there’s another Karning and another and another, and long before they get anywhere near the Ring, someone’s going to turn on them. There’s no way they’d get anywhere close.”

“Besides, it’s some six hundred miles from here,” said Gantor. “That’s a long way to march, even without opposition.”

“The sky ships?” Tanist said, his voice doubtful, but Gantor laughed and shook his head.

“You haven’t thought this through, have you?” he said.

“No, not really,” Tanist said with a sudden grin. “I’m too mad at those bastards to think straight. But give me time, and I’ll come up with a plan to destroy them.”

Mia could keep silent no longer.

“You can’t do that!” she burst out. “You can’t kill Slaves!”

“Yes, we can,” Tanist said forcefully, “and we will. The only question now is when and how.”

“But – it’s blasphemy. It’s immediate execution, with no Life Beyond Death.”

“They have to catch us first,” Tanist said. Then, more gently, “Mia, aren’t you angry about what they’ve done to you?”

“It was the will of the Gods,” she said, but she was close to tears now.

“Was it?” Tanist said. “Whatever the Gods may or may not have said, it was men who did this. It was a man who gave you the poison that made you seem dead, it was a man who brought you through the tunnels, it was a man who killed your baby. We have absolutely no proof that the Gods knew anything about it. Come to that, we have no proof the Gods even exist.”

“It’s a matter of faith,” she cried, and now tears were spilling down her cheeks. “The Gods don’t have to prove themselves.”

“No, but don’t you see
– everything we know about the Gods, everything we’ve been taught to believe, every law passed on their behalf, it all comes from a small group of men and women. Do you really think the Gods care about the thickness of paper, or the exact length of a scarf, or the amount of ale permitted to a blacksmith each week? All these minute regulations that get handed down to us, and we’re never supposed to question them, because they come from the Gods. Many of them are sensible, no doubt, just good management of resources, but you were sent out here, your whole future destroyed, just because you asked questions about the tunnels. That’s not good management, that’s self-protection, that’s keeping secrets. It’s repression, nothing less, and isn’t that what we were supposed to be replacing?”

He reached across and took her hand. “Weren’t the Petty Kings supposed to be the repressive ones, and we
– we enlightened ones with the Word of the Gods – we were supposed to be better than them. How did we get to this point, where a man can be exiled for a childish prank? Aren’t the Gods supposed to be generous and understanding of mistakes? Aren’t we supposed to be able to acknowledge them honestly and be Blessed afterwards? Isn’t that the deal, the whole point of the interviews and the blue globes and telling the absolute truth? Because I don’t see that happening, I don’t see it at all. I just see people kept in fear of those in power, and I see people punished for minor infractions and no second chance. And I don’t think that’s right, do you?”

And although she wept and protested, deep inside she saw the logic of his argument. She saw too, all too clearly, how the Slaves would counter it. If you question even one edict, they would say, then you question everything and you cannot be a true son or daughter of the Word. Accept it all or you put yourself above the law, above the Gods, even. Obedience is everything. Yet she saw the weakness inherent in such a system
– that men, all too human, might use the unquestioning obedience of the people to impose whatever restrictions they wished, just as the Petty Kings had done. That too was a kind of slavery. Whichever side of the border she was on, she must be a slave, it seemed.

For a while she sat, head bowed, lost in her own thoughts, taking no notice of the swirl of talk around her, but then she realised they had moved on. They were talking of the tunnels, and Dethin was explaining how it worked, that there would be no warning, one day a bell would ring and there would be a guide with a new batch of people.

“Same guide each time, or different ones?” Gantor asked. “What are they like?”

“Different ones. Very ordinary looking, nothing special.”

“Just Slaves, not Voices?”

“No, no, ordinary people. Not Slaves at all.”

Mia’s mind was filled with the memory of her guide – Cristo. As if she could ever forget. Everything about him was seared into her mind as if by fire, his dark curls, the way he smiled as he talked of killing her, the gloves...

“But they are!” she said, and they all turned to her, startled. “Mine was. He was one of Those who Serve the Gods. He had the marks
– on his hands. He showed me.”

“They don’t
look
like Servants,” Dethin said doubtfully. “No robes, no shaved heads.”

“But Servants supposedly don’t shave their heads,” Gantor said. “They wear the full robes in the Ring, but they can travel elsewhere, and they look just like anyone else. So people say.”

“And they appear to those who’ve been chosen,” Mia said quietly, half to herself, for she felt she was now the only person there who still believed in the Gods and their Slaves. When they asked, she described him, every little detail that she remembered, and they listened in silence, her words punctuated only by the occasional hiss and spit from the fire.

“So young,” Tanist said, frowning.

“That can’t be right,” said Gantor. “It takes years to become a Voice, so Those who Serve the Gods must be quite elderly. Not under thirty.”

“He had the marks,” Mia said, but she had begun to wonder herself now. Surely it was more likely that he was some kind of impostor, pretending to be a Servant? Yet the Karninghold Slave had himself sent her to meet him. It was puzzling. Again she lost the thread of the conversation, drifting in her own thoughts. She came back abruptly when she heard Jonnor’s name mentioned. It was Walst talking.

“…since we’re staying now, it seems, so perhaps we should think about finding them. For whatever little scheme Tanist dreams up.”

“And you’d like to find Tenya, I imagine,” Hurst said gently. “If you want to go and look for her, I’d understand.”

Walst looked uncomfortable. “Well, it would be wonderful, of course, but the women are – complicated.” He shot a glance at Mia. “I’m not entitled to my own woman here, even if I could find her. It would only cause trouble. I’d like to know she’s all right, that’s all. But Jonnor – all four of them – they’d be useful if it comes to an insurrection.”

Hurst explained about Jonnor’s falling out with Bulraney and that he’d been flogged and sent to Supplies. “I don’t even know how I’d go about getting him back, and the others have gone who knows where.”

“Still, four more trained Skirmishers would be a great help.”

“When you have a plan,” Dethin said suddenly, his quiet voice cutting across the wandering threads of conversation, “I can round up more for you, if you need them. There are a few trained Skirmishers at every Section. We tend to spread them around, but if you want an invasion army, they can be gathered together. A hundred, maybe two from my Sections, but if you can wait a few months, I will be meeting the other Warlords over the winter and perhaps I can get them involved.”

“How many other Warlords are there?” Tanist asked.

“Six still in operation.”

“Fourteen hundred Skirmishers. Hmm…”

~~~

They returned to the compound with nothing decided. Tanist was not at all bothered. “We have forever to decide the best way forwards,” he said with a relaxed shrug. “Or the rest of our lives, anyway. And with winter coming on, there’s no rush. We’ll settle in, see how everything works, then we’ll be able to start planning.” He waved cheerfully as he was led away by Ainsley to find sleeping quarters.

“A lot of new faces to fit in,” Dethin said thoughtfully, watching the newcomers depart.

“Hemmond will find work in the stables,” Hurst said, “but the rest are all battle-hardened. Very useful.”

“True, but it unbalances things to have so many arrive at once, and not the usual way.”