Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (63 page)

‘What is it?’ she asked, getting to her feet. Her leathers felt uncomfortably damp and clung to her in a way that said her skin was patterned head to foot with crease-marks. She rubbed at a particularly sore spot on her hip and found a hard lump in her pocket that dug into her. The acorn. She turned it over in her hand, then tucked it away again.

‘I heard something. Shouting. The clash of swords.’

‘Was it not just a dream? I woke up convinced someone was about to slit my throat.’ She stretched. ‘Where’s Owyn?’

Ailric shrugged. ‘He has not returned.’ He leaned a little further between the stones. ‘I hear it again. There is a battle somewhere near here.’

‘In Bregorin? They have no enemies. Half the world believes they don’t exist.’

‘I tell you, I hear fighting.’

Tanith walked to stand next to him and listened. The clearing remained preternaturally still, without so much as the
whirr
of a bird’s wings to shatter the silence. Even her own pulse sounded loud in her ears. Faintly, she heard men shouting. Screaming horses. Swords on shields.

‘Do you hear it, too?’ he asked.

She nodded, straining to hear more. Something
splinked
off the stone next to her face and left a stinging line across her cheek. Her hand flew to touch it and came away smeared with blood. ‘I’m cut,’ she exclaimed.

At once Ailric laid his hand over her cheek. A simple Healing rushed through her, shivering her body into gooseflesh. In the space of a few seconds the cut tightened with a scab and even the soreness at her hip was washed away.

‘Thank you,’ she said, then flinched as he reached into the neck of her shirt. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Hold still a moment.’

He fished around inside her collar, his touch conjuring up more memories. She wanted to pull away, but another treacherous part of her revelled in the sudden intimacy.

‘There.’ He held out his hand. A stone chip lay in his palm, no bigger than her thumbnail and sharp as a blade.

‘I heard it, but I saw nothing.’ Tanith fingered the new scab. ‘Where did it come from?’

Ailric began casting about for what might have struck the chip. More shouting voices, closer now and louder than the other battle sounds, made him turn.

A man crashed through the undergrowth on the far side of the glade and ran towards the stone pillars. One hand gripped a naked sword, the other pressed against his ribs, where blood seeped through his fingers to stain his plaid shirt. His rasping breaths and desperate eyes said he was close to his limits. Bowstrings sang and he staggered. The sword fell to the ground, then the man pitched onto the dirt with a white-fletched arrow sprouting from his back.

‘It must have been an arrow, look.’ Pointing at something on the ground, Ailric stepped between the stones and vanished from sight.

‘
Ailric!
’ Tanith lunged for the stones.

A hand on her arm dragged her back. ‘Don’t go through,’ said Owyn.

‘But he’s gone!’

‘I know, I saw. But you cannot go through the stones or you will be lost, too.’

Tanith wrestled her arm out of his grasp, fighting sudden tears with anger. ‘You said the acorns would keep us from being lost!’

The forestal sighed. ‘They should. Does Ailric have his?’

‘I don’t know. I think so.’ She scrubbed her hands across her face and remembered. Last night, Ailric taking off his jacket. Standing at the stones that morning with his fine shirt crumpled and flecked with dirt from the forest floor. ‘No.’

Owyn’s face grew grim. ‘Can you find it?’

She ran to the discarded jacket and hunted through the pockets until her hand closed on the cool, distinctive shape and pulled out the acorn.

‘You still have yours?’ She touched her pocket, nodded. ‘Good. Bring his – and a weapon, if you have one.’

Quickly Tanith snatched up her belt with its long knife and buckled it around her waist. Then, with the Song already rising to her will, she hurried back to the stones where Owyn was tying running loops into either end of a length of rope he’d taken from his satchel. He slipped one loop around the wrist of his non-dominant hand and the other around hers. There was perhaps three yards of slack, enough for freedom of movement and to defend herself, if need be.

‘Whatever you do, keep hold of this rope. I can find you if we become separated, but it won’t be easy. Are you ready?’

‘Where has he gone, Owyn?’

‘Explanations must wait. We go now or not at all.’

With that, he stepped through the stones.

38

FIRE

The sisters were waiting when Gair arrived at the lepers’ gate, an arched opening in the thick outer wall behind the chapel only a little taller than Shahe’s shoulders. One nun held the wooden door barely ajar and kept a careful watch on the alley outside. The others clustered around the Superior, occasionally casting anxious glances in the direction of the porter’s lodge, out of sight beyond the chapel’s buttresses but not out of earshot.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked, dismounting. The Superior nodded. ‘Then let’s go.’

Shahe baulked at being led through the low gate, as uncomfortable with the nuns crowding behind her as with the archway ahead. In the end Gair had to throw a fold of his
barouk
over her head to blind her and coax her through the arch into the alleyway beyond. The nuns followed, their few valuables bundled into burlap sacks. In plain desert robes with sand-veils across their faces, they were scarcely recognisable as women to a casual eye.

‘We need to keep off the main thoroughfares,’ Gair said, shrugging his own robe back into place. ‘If that mob catches sight of us there might not be much I can do.’

The Superior nodded her understanding. ‘We can keep to side streets and alleys for most of the way.’

‘Then lead on – you know the city better than I do. Take the horse.’ He held out Shahe’s reins.

‘Thank you, my son, but no. I fear you may have a more pressing need of her than I.’ She pointed along the alley. ‘This way to the second corner, then we must turn right.’

Right would take them away from the route Gair and Alderan had taken from the Lion Gate when they arrived in the city, but he assumed the Superior was choosing the way that had the greatest chance of them staying unnoticed. Mounted once more, he led the way through the alley. The dry earth underfoot muffled Shahe’s hoofbeats; nonetheless he strained his ears to catch any sound that might draw attention to them.

Once out of the lee of the preceptory buildings, the rumbling chant from the Daughterhouse gate became louder, punctuated by the sound of steel on wood. Flames leapt high above the wall, one of the outbuildings now well ablaze.

At Shahe’s shoulder, the Superior made the sign of blessing over her breast. ‘Vandals,’ she muttered.

‘What are they chanting?’ Gair asked.

‘I wouldn’t soil my mouth with the words,’ she replied tensely. ‘All kinds of vileness.’

He dared a glance along a narrow side street. Some of the mob appeared to be women. As he watched, one threw back her head and gave an eerie ululating cry, instantly taken up by several others. Men howled their approval and fire roared into the sky.

If he’d never come south, this might never have happened.

He forced himself to look ahead again. Self-flagellation wouldn’t change anything– all he could do was use his guilt as a spur and keep moving. Nudging Shahe on, he left the Daughterhouse behind.

The alleys of El Maqqam were often only wide enough for the nuns to pass two abreast – and sometimes barely wide enough at all for Shahe, or so hampered with laundry-lines Gair had to dismount and lead her through the piles of junk and refuse, haunted by dead-eyed, scrawny cats that skittered around and away from the mare’s hooves. The smell told him he didn’t want to know what he was stepping over or, occasionally, when he had no other choice, in.

Turn after turn took them further away from the route he vaguely remembered. Without a clear sight of a moon at this hour he soon lost his bearings, but the Superior never faltered, directing him with gestures or a quiet word, as familiar with the city in the dark as if the sun had been high. She was tireless in her care for her anxious flock, too, reassuring them with a smile or a touch on the arm and never once betraying her own concern, even when a rat broke from a pile of nameless waste almost under her feet.

At the corner of an open square she stopped, her hand on Shahe’s shoulder. The buildings opposite stood silhouetted against a paling sky and birds chattered amongst the dead skirts of the palm trees ringing the public well in the centre. Already people were visible around the square: three women with water-jars gossiping at the well, shopkeepers opening shutters and folding out awnings as they readied their stores for the day’s trade. On the far side, one fellow yawned in a doorway, watching the women with their water-jars. Someone shouted something to him and he laughed, scratching his ample belly, then shouted back.

‘We have to cross the square,’ the Superior whispered.

Gair eyed the fellow watching the women, then scanned the square for a way across that wouldn’t pass through the man’s eyeline. He didn’t find one. ‘We’ll be seen,’ he said. ‘How far to the Gate from here?’

‘Not far, but it won’t open until dawn.’

Crossing the square would have been easy if they’d had a wagon or two: the sisters could have hidden in the bed, undercover. Gair chewed at his lip, then stopped himself. No point fretting over what they lacked. They must make do with what they had.

‘Is there another alley that leads onto this square? One you can reach from here without being seen?’

‘Almost certainly.’ The Superior looked round at the nuns. ‘Sisters?’ Several of them nodded.

‘Split up,’ he said. It was the best they could do. ‘Small groups, no more than three or four of you at once, and don’t cross too close together. If you can find water-jars or something to carry to help you blend in, so much the better.’

The Superior pointed at a shadowy passage between two shops. ‘That alley there, beside the oil-merchant’s, stays gloomy until almost noon. We will meet there, then press on for the Lion Gate.’

‘But for the love of the saints don’t hurry,’ Gair added. ‘It’ll only attract attention.’

Reluctantly, with hugs and blessings, the nuns separated into smaller groups, most of whom retreated down the narrow street they were on before peeling off into various alleys and cuts between backyards. Gair watched them go and groaned inside at their tensed shoulders and scuttling birdlike movements.

Following his gaze, the Superior guessed his thoughts. ‘They’ll be fine,’ she said, patting his arm. Then she turned to the three sisters who remained, one of whom, Sister Martha, had her arms wrapped tightly around a sack. ‘Off you go, Daughters.’

The nuns stepped out into the square. Almost at once the corpulent merchant’s head swung around to watch them. Gair searched for a sun-sign over his door but the shop’s awning hung too low for him to see. He swore, under his breath but still too loud not to have been heard by the Superior standing beside him.

‘Forgive me,’ he apologised. ‘I forgot I have company.’

To his surprise, her eyes crinkled up with a smile.

‘My father was a quartermaster for the Tenth Legion. Believe me, I’ve heard far worse – although I have to say, for a young man raised in the Church you have a remarkably colourful vocabulary.’ She nodded towards the nuns. ‘Look.’

Sister Martha had opened the top of the sack and all three women had their heads together over it as they walked, as if it contained something extraordinary. The merchant looked away, his attention attracted now by the women coming from the well, swaying gracefully with their water-jars balanced atop their heads. His eyes followed them all the way back across the square and he grinned. Just a lecher, then, enjoying the morning view.

Relieved, Gair blew out a long breath.

‘Our turn,’ he said. He offered his arm and kicked his foot out of the stirrup so the Superior could use it to mount.

‘I haven’t ridden astride since I was a little girl, behind my da,’ she said. She began kilting up her habit with her girdle, then paused. ‘I’d take it as a kindness if you didn’t look.’

Dutifully, Gair kept his eyes fixed on Shahe’s ears until with a breathless prayer for forgiveness, the Superior had heaved herself up behind him. She arranged the voluminous
barouk
to ensure her legs were decently covered.

‘Ready,’ she said.

‘You might want to hold on to me, in case we have to move smartly.’ He nudged the horse into a walk and out of the alley.

Sister Martha’s group had made it across the square and were disappearing into the shadowed side street, still apparently intent on the contents of the sack. Another group set off from further around the plaza, having cut through the alleys to the next street over. Five of them. Too many, and moving a little too fast.

‘They should have waited,’ Gair muttered. Instinctively he eased the
qatan
in its sheath. ‘They should have waited!’

‘Goddess in heaven.’ The Superior’s hands knotted in the folds of his robe. ‘Behind us.’