Through clenched teeth Golan ground out, ‘That is more than enough, I am sure.’
Thorn shrugged indifferently. ‘We are all at your mercy, Master. What are your orders?’
That you throw yourself into the river. But no, that is unfair. The fault is mine. The responsibility mine and mine alone
. He drew another steadying breath, peered down at the blackwood rod with its silver chasing. He tapped it into one palm. ‘Record this, Scribe – Master Golan orders that what surplus stores and gear the bearers
cannot
manage be divided up among the troopers and that the army advance onward into the jungle of Himatan. So it is ordered, so it shall be.’
Thorn’s shaggy brows rose while he wrote. He finished with a firm tap to end the entry, and bowed. ‘So it shall be, Master.’
CHAPTER XIII
It was almost impossible to compel the locals to enter any ruins or abandoned villages. ‘Do you not fear the ghosts?’ they would ask. ‘There are no ghosts,’ I told them. But they disagreed. ‘Ghosts live in all dark places in Jacuruku,’ they all assured me. ‘They are under bridges, in corners, under fallen trees, in all the old villages. They are afoot and very much alive.’
Infantryman Bakar
Testimony to the Circle of Masters
MARA HEAVED HERSELF
up a muddy shore to lie panting, pressed into the muck, searching the surrounding dense fronds and hanging creepers. At her feet lay the carcass of a bizarre hybrid creature. A fine dusting of metallic blue and green feathers covered its naked torso down to scaled legs ending in feet bearing claws as large as daggers. Instead of hair, long brown feathers covered its head and back like a mane while its eyes, rolled dead white now, had shone green speckled with gold. The mouth held needle teeth still red with Mara’s own blood.
Shuddering, she kicked it further away. A bird-woman! Who would have thought the legends of Jakal Viharn true! Unlike the subjects of all those fantastic stories, however, this one had no wings and could not fly. She could run like a fiend, though. Probably chase down a hound.
The jungle rang all round with the cries and screams of a running battle that had continued through the night and into the day. Feet kicked the ground nearby and Mara spun, her Warren crackling about her, sending the litter of leaves and detritus flying. A guardsman appeared, hands raised. Leuthan.
‘Are you wounded?’
She waved him away. ‘No.’
He slid down to her. ‘You can stand?’
‘I am fine!’
‘Don’t get separated like that.’
She lurched to her feet, shook out her sodden dirt-smeared robes. ‘Do not lecture me. Everyone is separated, if you haven’t noticed.’
He laughed. ‘Well – we’re gathering at a rise to the southeast. No more running from these sports.’
‘Very good. Take me there.’
He gestured. ‘This way.’
Mara followed the Bloorian swordsman. Like everyone she’d met out of Bloor or Gris, he claimed to be the offspring of some noble family. Gods, how they’d fought each other in those petty kingdoms! Family against family, village versus village. Each valley an armed stronghold held against its neighbours. A war of all against all. She shook her head: sometimes she was convinced that the old emperor had done them all a favour when he’d swept them into his pocket one by one.
Shapes darted through the dense underbrush. Shouts sounded: Crimson Guard battle codes. Yet no grating clash of steel against steel rang out; these monstrosities used only tooth and claw. They passed the sprawled gutted corpse of a half … something or other. Half-lizard, perhaps. Grey-backed with a white belly. Mara didn’t really care. It was enough that it was dead. They were strong and fierce, these things, but no match for armed Disavowed – even if most of everyone’s armour had rotted off.
Next they came to the body of Hesta, an Untan swordswoman. One of the tiniest of all the Guard. Her neck had been broken and crushed as if she’d been taken by a predatory cat. Her face was upturned to the sky, pale now, with a look of complete surprise in her dead staring eyes. Mara exchanged a wary look with Leuthan.
So,
he
was here. One of Ardata’s favourites. Citravaghra.
Leuthan urged Mara onward. ‘This way.’ A moment later he stiffened, cursing. Something huge was crashing directly towards them through the underbrush. A humped grey shape emerged, wide arms brushing aside thickets of saplings. At the sight of them it bellowed a bull-like war call and charged. Though utterly wrung, Mara summoned what remaining energy she possessed. She tapped into her own vitality and felt it almost flicker out. She channelled the force outwards before her. The ground erupted, soil and earth peeling. The thicket curled up and amid the storm of dirt and flung trees the beast fell backwards, roaring his rage, and was sent
tumbling
, hammered and pummelled by the wreckage. Mara’s vision blackened and she felt Leuthan supporting her at the waist.
‘He’ll be back,’ he said, his words strangely distant and echoing.
Mara felt a warm wetness at her face and wiped at it to find a smear of blood across her sleeve. ‘What …?’
Then they were running, she half stumbling. They pushed through a bamboo grove. The stalks seemed to multiply and waver in Mara’s blurred vision.
Things
moved among them, inhuman eyes bright with intelligence and menace. After this, Leuthan half carrying her, the ground rose up to almost meet her.
In fact, the ground
was
rising. Leuthan was labouring up a steep slope, pulling her along by her waist, scrambling on all fours.
Large hands took her and she found herself squinting up at the tall wide figure of Petal. ‘I am spent,’ she gasped, blinking to clear her vision.
‘You look it,’ he murmured.
‘We’re gathered?’
‘Most of us, yes.’ He directed her attention to the left. Halfway down the dirt slope of the butte-like rise they occupied stood Skinner. He alone still wore his armour: the ankle-length coat of mail still glittered night-black. He carried his helm under one arm. His long blond hair hung loose, blown in the weak wind. He faced the jungle verge.
Mara’s gaze followed his out to the league beyond league of verdant green that was Himatan. Here and there treetops shook and shuddered as more of these creatures converged upon them. So many – who would have guessed the jungle would support such numbers? They must be gathering from all over the region. Everyone knew that a few haunted the groves of Himatan here and there, but she had thought them isolated D’ivers or Soletaken. Individual monstrosities. What she’d glimpsed here put her in mind of an actual
race
.
A people.
Ardata’s children. How different, then, from the title given to the Andii: the Children of the Night?
A great din of rising shrieks and calls and roars now rose all about and the tops of the bamboo stalks shook like blades of grass. Skinner raised his arms for silence while the ranks of the Disavowed assembled behind. What could these half-beasts want? Mara wished they’d just go away. She peered behind her to where stone blocks topped the rise, time-gnawed, heaved and awry. A structure of some sort. Perhaps a fort, or cyclopean statue. Towering emergents now topped it. Their fist-like roots gripped the ruins as if feeding upon
the
tumbled blocks. From the overarching branches a great forest of hanging lianas draped down among them. Their thick woody lengths supported fat blossoms in pink, blood red, orange and creamy white.
‘We do not want to spill any more of your blood,’ Skinner called down to the jungle.
Challenges and hooted mocking laughter answered him.
He raised his arms once more. ‘Let us talk. Know you that for a time I ruled as Ardata’s chosen mate. You bowed before me then. Do so again or retreat into your haunts and bother us no more. This is your choice. I give you until sundown.’
Fury answered the ultimatum. Trees shuddered. Torn branches flew to crash upon the rise. Yells and shrieks sent a burst of multicoloured birds to darken the sky. The cloud gyred about the top of the rise before moving on in a weaving dance of flashing iridescence.
Shijel edged down the slope to Skinner and the two conferred. Mara looked to Petal, who was rubbing his wide jowls. ‘What do you think?’ she whispered.
‘I do not know. I believe that we and they know they have us trapped. Skinner probably wishes to goad them into a rush.’
‘And if not?’
He frowned, his cheeks and many chins bulging. ‘Then I do not know how we shall escape from here.’
The jungle verge was quiet for a time. The sun continued its descent to the west. Clouds gathered in the north. She glimpsed dark shapes moving through the trees. She brushed dried blood from her nose and cheeks, adjusted the knot of her robes at her shoulder.
‘What are they doing?’ she whispered once more.
‘Talking things over, I presume,’ he answered, quite seriously. ‘I believe we have some time. Perhaps you should sit …’
She drew a shuddering breath. ‘Thank you. Yes.’ She meant to ease herself down but fell quite heavily. She drew her knees up close to her chest and rested her chin upon them.
The wind brushing through the dense leaf cover brought wave after wave of shimmering reflections. The rich shades of jade were almost seductive. It was a shame, really. The land was beautiful after its own fashion; desirable. Were it not for its backward recalcitrant inhabitants. Still, correctly handled campaigns of neglect, discouragement and stifling might get rid of most of them after a generation or two. It would be very much easier to do something with the land after that.
As the afternoon waned she became aware of a tingling pulling at
her
and she clambered to her feet. Petal, she noted, was headed in this direction. He lumbered heavily in his swinging gait as he worked his way round to her along the line of guardsmen.
‘You sense it as well?’ he said as he drew near.
She nodded.
He scanned the forest. ‘Some sort of manipulation.’
‘What kind? I do not recognize it.’
‘Elder. Animistic. Yet there is power there.’ He stroked his jowls. ‘They are preparing something.’
‘An attack?’ She scanned the edge of the trees; no shapes moved that she could see.
‘I do not think so.’
Skinner climbed the slope to join them. ‘What is it?’ he asked. He still had his helm tucked under one arm. Only now did she notice that he carried no sword. ‘You sense something as well?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Aye.’
She couldn’t understand how he, a plain swordsman, could have developed such sensitivity, but she set that aside for later consideration.
Petal was tapping a finger to his thick lips. ‘It may be a ritual,’ he offered. ‘Has that feel.’
‘What sort?’ Skinner asked.
‘There’s no—’ He cut himself off, his gaze snapping to Mara as they both felt the tearing that the opening of a portal sends rippling through the surrounding mundane matter and all Warrens. Skinner spun as well.
‘A gate!’ Petal warned. ‘Someone or something has come through.’
Mara threw up her Warren. The loose detritus of the slope vibrated beneath her feet as pulses of D’riss leaked from her in waves. Petal and Skinner were both physically pushed away from her; Skinner retreated down the slope.
They waited. Mara noted the warm wet air smelled particularly strongly of the flower blossoms here; a cloying sweet stink that hardly disguised how they hung rotting on the creepers. The day threatened to slip into the twilight of evening that she found came so startlingly suddenly in this land.
Two figures emerged from the shadows of the darkening jungle verge. Skinner turned and waved to Mara. She took a moment to ease her Warren and compose herself, then she carefully edged down the uneven dirt slope.
She knew them both. One by description and reputation, his lean
muscular
build leading up to a head of loose tawny hair, a feline black nose, bright golden eyes, and the fangs of a hunting-cat: Citravaghra. The other she’d met more than once: Rutana, favoured of Ardata, greatest of her aberrant menagerie of followers and adherents. And an enemy from the very first days of their arrival in this land decades ago.
‘What is it you wish?’ Skinner asked, grasping the initiative as always.
‘Your death,’ Rutana answered, readily enough.
Skinner shrugged, indifferent. ‘If you wish death, we will happily accommodate all of you.’
Rutana just laughed her harsh cawing hack. ‘It is your bones that will add to this pile, Betrayer. All of you. We need only wait.’
Mara studied her more closely. There was something different about her. She was perhaps even more dried and wiry than before – if it were possible for a human being to be nothing more than sinew and stretched ligament – but that was not it. There was an emotion playing about her slit mouth and narrow eyes while she stood grasping and kneading the many amulets hanging about her neck. It took Mara some time to identify it, for she had never seen it on the woman before: an almost bubbling humour. She actually appeared to be working hard to suppress a smile that kept her mouth quirking and twitching.