The Two of Swords: Part 14 (2 page)

After a very long time, the pace slowed and eventually he came to a halt. He looked up, realised his face was wet with tears. The strong man threw him back his reins; he muffed the catch and had to gather them handspan by handspan.

“I think they’ve given us up,” someone said. “Conselh, what do you reckon? Are they still following?”

The strong man took another long look before answering. “I believe so,” he said. “Looks like they’ve found some other poor buggers to play with.” He swung one leg over his pommel and dropped lightly to the ground, then flopped in a heap, sliding his back down against a bank. “Don’t know about you boys but I’m about done. If you want to keep going, I’ll catch you up.”

“The hell with that,” someone else said. Then he nodded at Chanso. The strong man sighed, nodded back. “Right,” he said. “What’s your name, son?”

“Chanso. Chantat, Bright Water.”

The strong man shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve heard of you. I’m Conselh, this is Trahidour, Folha, Verjan and Clar, we’re all Celquel, Glorious Destiny. Did you see us?”

“What?”

Folha, a skinny young man with a small chin and a huge Adam’s apple, grinned. “Guess he didn’t.”

“Fine,” Conselh said. “Anyway, we were hiding, hoping those Ironshirts wouldn’t see us, and you led the fuckers straight at us. We used our last eight arrows fixing them; also, your horse, sorry about that, I never was much of a shot. Still, you can have that one, Dolor won’t be needing it any more, poor bugger.” He stopped. Something about Chanso’s face was confusing him. “You do know we lost the battle, don’t you?”

“I—” He was all choked up and could barely speak. “No, I didn’t. I got drawn off, and—”

A slight frown told him that Conselh didn’t want to know. “Well, we did. Buggered if I know how. One minute we were shooting Ironshirts like a pig hunt, next thing we knew there were Dragons’ Teeth right up us. They smeared us all over the hillside like cheese on bread. We’d used up all our arrows, so we were empty-handed, and those monster horses of theirs can outrun us easy. It’s like someone set it up like that, but it makes no sense. I mean, we killed thousands of them before the lancers showed.” He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned forward, as if he had stomach cramps.

“Get a grip,” advised one of the others. “Time for all that later. Let’s get moving.”

“No,” Conselh said. “We’re out of sight here, we stay put till those bastard Teeth have pulled back and then we move on. I don’t know what it takes to get it into your thick skull, but they’re faster than us.” He grinned. “My kid brother,” he said. “You’ll get used to him.” The man who’d been speaking shot Conselh a foul look, but he didn’t see it. “Now then,” Conselh went on, “time we started thinking. We need to get back to the wagons, that’s if the Teeth haven’t got there first—”

“For crying out loud, Conselh,” Folha said. Conselh ignored him.

“Now if the boys back at the wagons have got any sense,” he went on, “they won’t be where we left them, that’s for sure. You got any arrows?”

Chanso reached round to his quiver and pulled them out. All of them were broken.

“Figures,” Conselh said, after a long silence. “The way our luck’s going. Five bows, no arrows. Probably a good thing, saves us from thinking we could make a fight of it, which I don’t suppose we could, with those Teeth. Better off without.”

“I don’t think they’re taking prisoners,” Verjan said; he was the short one, broad-chested, with a beard and no moustache.

“Why should they?” Conselh shook his head. “Our best chance lies in being more bother than we’re worth. Same goes for the wagons, I guess. What’ve we got that the Ironshirts could possibly want?”

“Lives. And horses,” Folha replied. “And carts.”

“Well, yes, there’s that. No use us trying to figure it out, anyhow, we haven’t got the brainpower.” He got up and peered cautiously over the bank. “Looking good at the moment,” he said. “Let’s make a move. Don’t know about you boys, but I’m sick of this place.”

Conselh and Folha were both wrong about the wagons. They were still there, and the Ironshirts hadn’t wanted them, or the horses, or any of the gear; not even the arrows, which they’d used as kindling. Another thing they’d got wrong was the assumption that Ironshirts didn’t know anything about the no Vei. Apparently they knew that if a no Vei’s body is burned, his soul finds no peace, because they’d filled the carts with dead bodies before setting light to them.

It was a long time before anybody spoke. Then Folha said, “Do you reckon we’re all that’s left?”

Conselh didn’t answer. Verjan said, “There must be more than just us. But I’d have thought they’d have headed back this way and we’d have seen them.”

Trahidour, the tall, slim young one, was rootling about among the ashes. “Leave that,” Conselh snapped at him; he turned round and held out eight arrows, intact and undamaged. “I take that back,” Conselh said. “Any more?”

Just one more, which they found after a long, disgusting search, making a total of nine between the six of them. “Makes no sense having one each,” Conselh said. “You. Any kind of a shot?”

Chanso remembered his last effort. “No.”

“Folha, you’re elected Minister of Defence. Sorry, make that Secretary of State for Supply, I don’t want you shooting at any Ironshirts, that’ll just piss them off. Deer only, and for crying out loud make sure you don’t miss. Got that?”

Folha nodded and dropped the arrows into his quiver. Eight of them were red and black, the ninth was white and red. Chanso hadn’t seen any yellow and white, not even among the ashes. “Now where?” he said.

Nobody wanted to answer that. Then quite suddenly Conselh grinned. “Home, of course. Where else?”

“Talk sense,” Verjan snapped. “We’re on the wrong side of the sea, for one thing. Or had you forgotten?”

“So we get a boat. Don’t look at me like that, we get to the sea, we’ll find a boat.”

“Fine. Which direction is the sea in?” Conselh opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You don’t know, do you? You haven’t got a clue.”

“It’s that way,” Folha said quietly, pointing. “Look at the sun,” he explained. “But Verjan’s got a point, hasn’t he? We don’t know this country, and we’re going to stick out a mile. What we want to do is get back to Choris Anthropou. We know where that is, follow the road, you can’t miss it.”

“If that’s what you want,” Conselh said. “If you really think you can just stroll past the Ironshirts, go ahead. Suit yourselves. I’m going home.”

“What do you think?” Trahidour said, and Chanso realised he was looking at him. “Well? You want to head south or make for Choris?”

Chanso knew what his answer would be without having to think. “South,” he said. “I’ll stick with Conselh. If that’s all right,” he added quickly.

Conselh laughed. “You can if you want,” he said. “Any more?”

There was an awkward silence. Then Folha said, “I think it’s a stupid idea, but splitting up’s even worse. You do realise, we haven’t got any food, or water. Do you know how far it is to the sea? Three days? Three weeks? Months?”

“You shoot it, I’ll eat it,” Conselh replied. “And, no, I don’t know how far it is, but it can’t be that far.”

“It’s a hell of a way with only nine arrows,” Verjan said.

“Which is a damn good reason for staying clear of the Ironshirts. Come on, nobody’s asking you to walk. And once we get down off these mountains it’s all grassland, right down to the sea, everybody knows that. It’s a soft, fat country, full of soft, fat people. It’ll be a stroll, you’ll see.”

There was no road south. Instead, there was a mountain. Conselh reckoned they could probably lead the horses up it, but nobody agreed with him; the only alternative was to go round it. Conselh refused to take the road east, so they went west, the way they’d come.

“Leave it to the horses,” Conselh said, “they can smell water.”

Maybe there wasn’t any water to smell. Nor was there any end to the mountain; beyond what they’d seen was a second range, hidden by the first. “We’ll be back to Rasch Cuiber at this rate,” Verjan said, and nobody laughed. To the north, however, the mountains subsided into moorland. “You don’t want to go up there,” Conselh advised, “it’s bloody cold, we’ll freeze.” To Chanso, wiping sweat out of his eyes, that didn’t sound so bad.

But it was cold at night, of course. There was nothing to burn, so they took the saddle blankets off the horses and tried to wrap up in them. Not much help.

Folha shot a kite. “There’s not much meat on the buggers but it’s better than nothing,” he declared. A long, thirsty search found them a withered thorn bush, over which they roasted the kite. Its flesh was hard, bitter and stringy. Conselh declared that he’d had worse, and they’d grow to like it.

“For all we know we’re practically at the end,” Conselh said, surveying the southern mountains, stretching from one horizon to the other. “If we go on just a bit further, there we’ll be. I don’t remember there being mountains all the way from Rasch Cuiber.”

The trouble was, none of them had been paying much attention on the way from Rasch to the big battle. They all had a vague recollection of mountains away to the south, but where they’d started and whether there were gaps in them, nobody could say for sure. Conselh said he could picture it clear as anything in his mind. There was a huge great gap, rolling green downs as far as the eye could see. Verjan remembered it as a solid wall of rock. Chanso was fairly sure Conselh was right; he’d seen grasslands at some point, and he was fairly sure they’d been on the lower side of the road, but the image in his mind was uncertain; at times, it looked disconcertingly like the summer pastures back home, and at others he was sure there had been mountains on the other side. But maybe not; perhaps he was confusing the second day with the fifth, or something like that. He couldn’t actually remember how long they’d taken to get from Rasch Cuiber to the battle. He’d been riding with the wagons, in any case, and had spent most of his time chatting with the drivers.

“Why the hell did we come this way?” Verjan said loudly to the back of Conselh’s neck. “What we should be doing is heading back to Choris Anthropou. Instead, we’re going in the opposite direction, deeper into enemy territory. Anyone want to explain that to me?”

Nobody seemed to want to answer. Conselh had gone quiet, ever since Verjan started moaning. Whether he was just angry or whether he had no good answer, Chanso couldn’t tell; half and half, he guessed. He didn’t want to go south any more, he wasn’t sure it was even possible. It was pretty obvious that Folha and Verjan had been right all along. But Conselh couldn’t be wrong, could he? He seemed so wise and so strong, and how stupid it’d be to turn back now, if they were only a short way from the gap, which Conselh was absolutely sure he’d seen.

They found one little spring; they had to lie on their stomachs and lap like dogs. Folha shot off all nine arrows at kites, and they only found eight of them.

That night, while Conselh was on watch, the others huddled round a tiny fire they’d built out of tussocks of dry grass. When Chanso came over to join them, they went quiet.

“You’re going to leave him,” Chanso said.

They scowled at him; then Verjan said, “He’s lost his grip. He knows he’s wrong but he can’t bear to say so. He’ll keep going till we die of thirst or starve, or we run into Ironshirts. Fine. I don’t want to do that. I’ll survive this, if it kills me.”

“Verjan doesn’t like him much,” Folha explained with a grin. “But he’s right. Soon as his watch is over and he’s asleep, we’re off. He can follow us or he can do what he wants, up to him. It’s stupid going any further.”

Chanso hesitated for a moment, then said, “Can I come with you?”

Awkward pause; then Folha said, “I don’t see why not. So long as you don’t make trouble.”

“Sure.”

“All right, then. Go and lie down, pretend to be asleep. We’ll tell you when we’re ready to go.”

Chanso lay down on his side, his eyes closed. Conselh would do the sensible thing, he was sure; as soon as he realised what had happened, he’d turn round and follow. Folha seemed a sensible sort of man; he’d taken charge now, and everything would be fine. All they had to do was retrace their steps, follow the road. It had been two days since the battle, so the Ironshirts would be long gone by now; who’d hang about in this horrible place if they didn’t have to? Going south had been a terrible idea, but wasting the two days had served some purpose. It was all going to be fine.

Unless they left without him—

He sat up and looked round. The others were all there, lying quite still, and beyond them he could just make out Conselh’s back. He lay down again, facing the others, eyes open. They weren’t moving at all. Maybe they’d frozen to death.

Conselh came back and crouched down beside him. “You awake?”

He considered not answering, but said, “Yes.”

“Take the next watch.” Chanso stood up. Conselh went on a yard or so, then lay down on his back, hands folded on his chest, looking straight up at the stars. He didn’t seem sleepy. Too much on his mind, probably.

It would be broad daylight at this rate. Conselh didn’t move, but from time to time Chanso caught the glitter of his open eyes in the dying glow of the fire. He was supposed to be keeping watch; what if Ironshirts crept up on them while he was looking the other way? He turned round, but there was nothing to see. The pale moonlight made him think of mist, early morning on the summer pastures at home. His fingers and toes were aching from the cold and he was thirsty again.

Some time later Folha got up. Conselh raised his head to look at him. “My watch,” Folha murmured; Conselh nodded. “You should get some sleep,” Folha said.

“Fat chance.”

Folha relieved him at watch; then it was Verjan’s turn. What if Verjan got tired of waiting and tried to stab Conselh with an arrow? Stupid idea? Couldn’t happen? Chanso wasn’t so sure. They were all so wound up, so quiet; and Verjan struck him as just the sort of man who’d do stuff like that, though Chanso had never actually met a murderer. But people act different when they’re at the end of their rope. Conselh could handle Verjan, no question, but would the others feel obliged to pitch in? What if they all ended up bashed up and cut about? That would really make things bad.