low stone huts. An old fire-pit marked the centre, ringed in flat slabs of shale. Off to one side, near the far end, was a heap of animal bones and rubbish. Risp reined in beside the fire-pit. She never liked places of abandonment. They seemed redolent with failure. People were generally disinclined to move; only necessity forced them from a place, whether it was pressure from stronger neighbours or the loss of clean water or sufficient game. For these herders who were, no doubt, occasional bandits, it had been the call of wealth. Everyone took the coin road sooner or later, with haunted, hungry eyes. She eyed the pile of bones and fought a shiver.
Her sergeant pulled up alongside her. ‘Not far now, I should think,’ he said in a soft growl.
She glanced across at him. He was one of Hunn Raal’s men. He had lost most of his toes on both feet to frostbite in the wars against the Jheleck, and now wore boots inserted with wooden plugs. He walked badly but rode well. ‘When we arrive,’ she said, ‘we should wait for dawn.’
He nodded, tugging at the strap of his helm. ‘These hills don’t seem as empty as they should, lieutenant. It’s just a feeling, but I’ve learned to trust what my gut’s telling me.’
‘All right.’
‘I’d advise two scouts ahead and two trailing, sir.’
‘Do it,’ Risp said, and watched as he communicated his orders with a half-dozen terse gestures. Two women rode ahead to where the trail resumed beyond the clearing.
The sergeant nodded to Risp.
They set out once more. The sky was paling with false dawn and the air was bitterly cold. Breaths plumed. Wending between crags again, the path began a stuttered descent and she guessed that they were nearing the road. The hoofs of the two horses ahead clopped and scrabbled on loose stones; the riders’ silhouettes were hunched over, one to each side, eyes on the trail although surely it was too dark to see much. In any case, they were all making noise, loud enough to Risp’s ears to announce their presence to anyone within a thousand paces in these hills.
The track levelled and a short time later they reached the road, riding up on to it. Here the stench of foul smoke was acrid in the air. ‘East, I think,’ said the sergeant.
They reached the site of the battle where the road made a sharp bend. The two wagons had burned down, although embers still gleamed amidst the charred wreckage and ash. The beasts that had drawn them were nowhere to be seen. The bodies of the slain formed a kind of row on the road, two of them blackened by their proximity to the fired wagons, their clothes burned off to reveal swollen limbs and split torsos, the hair roasted away and the skin of their pates curled back to expose smoke-blackened skulls.
Dismounting beside the two scorched corpses, Risp could feel the heat from the embers just beyond them, and the pleasure she gained from that warm breath felt perverse. Silann was a liability, and the proof of that was all around them. Gripp might well have been one of Anomander’s spies, but to Risp’s mind the news of a troop of disbanded Legion soldiers on the road heading west was not a back-breaker — both Gripp and his lord would have little more than questions, with few answers forthcoming. Besides, if Anomander was not yet prowling with hackles raised, then he was both blind and a fool, and that man was neither.
The spilling of blood here was the real disaster to her mind. Especially if old Gripp had escaped the carnage.
‘Here, sir,’ said the sergeant, and she saw him standing a dozen or so paces away, where the road’s ditch dropped down against the out-cropping that marked the bend.
Risp joined him. The man gestured to a crack at the base of the out-crop. ‘He went down there, and I’d wager he rolled.’
‘Rather than fell? Why?’
‘There’s a rise before the edge, rubble and dirt sifting down from the cliff. You don’t slip uphill, sir. He’d have needed to work to get over that.’
She went to stand on the edge, leaning over to peer down. ‘But he couldn’t have guessed how deep, though.’
‘True enough,’ the man agreed. ‘It’s a good chance he broke his neck, if that goes down any distance. Or his legs, depending on how he landed.’
‘They couldn’t see all the way down,’ Risp muttered. ‘But they didn’t drop a rope and make sure either.’
‘Panic, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘It can take anyone, like a hand to the throat. They had wounded and fallen comrades. They needed to get off the road, out of sight.’
Risp snorted. ‘You’re too forgiving, sergeant.’
‘Just seeing how it was, sir. We ain’t none of us immune to making mistakes.’
‘I wouldn’t have made this one,’ she replied.
‘No sir, we wouldn’t have.’
Not with you at my side, you mean. I’ll earn your respect yet, old man. ‘I don’t want to wait and wonder, sergeant. Lanterns, rope, let’s get on with this.’
‘Yes sir. You want it should be me climbing down?’
‘No. I’ll do it.’
‘Lieutenant-’
‘I’ll do it, I said. Tie the rope’s end to the lantern handle — we’ll see if we can lower it straight down. Did he hit ledges on the way down? Anything to break his fall? The light will show us.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘And get a burial detail for these poor guards. It’s the least we can do.’
When Ribs finally reappeared, the dog’s burr-snagged tail was wagging. Rancept’s grunt was soft. ‘Caught the echoes,’ he then said in a low voice.
‘What?’ Sukul demanded.
‘Riders, coming down from the north. Heading for the road. And they ain’t bandits.’
‘And you know all this from a wagging tail?’
‘That and the drooping left ear.’
There was no way to tell if he was serious and in any case she was already fed up with him and this whole venture. ‘How many riders?’
He seemed to be studying her in the gloom, and he made no reply.
After a moment she sighed. ‘Can we get going again? I’m cold.’
Ribs disappeared once again as soon as they rose. A short time later they came to a clearing. She saw the dog at the mouth of a trail to their right, just beyond a jumble of goat and sheep bones. Low stone houses offered up black doorways in an uneven ring around the expanse, like open, sagging mouths; she half expected to hear sorrowful moans drifting out from them.
‘This is how bandits live?’ she asked.
Rancept glanced back at her. ‘They used it, yes. But those huts have been standing there for five thousand years at least.’
She looked at them with renewed interest. ‘How do you know that?’
‘They’re old, milady. You’ll just have to take my word for it. About a dozen horses crossed this clearing. Went down where Ribs is. We’re about two thousand paces from the road here. They’ll come out just down from the ambush, but it’s a loose descent and there’s a chance they’ll hear us. There’s a bend on the road, just east of here. We can use another trail to take us opposite it.’
Rancept swung left and made his way towards one of the stone houses. Ribs leapt up and scampered to the castellan’s side, but halted at the threshold of the doorway.
Sukul saw the animal sink down, tail dipping.
‘Back of the hut,’ said Rancept when she joined him. ‘There’s a slab on the floor, with stone bosses set in a frame.’
‘A tunnel?’
‘A passageway,’ said Rancept. ‘But it cuts through rock we can’t climb over. Took a bit of work but it’s now clear enough for us to use.’
‘Why did you do that?’
Instead of answering, he ducked and disappeared inside the hut. Ribs edged in after him.
When she followed, she found herself stepping down a sharp slope to a sunken floor of flat stones set in
