The cliff was perilous and it was becoming clear to Authun that they would not reach the top. The woman had finally yielded her children and they were strapped wriggling and squalling to the king, the mother checking their bindings with irritating regularity.
Authun still shivered to look at her but he could not yet cast her aside. He shivered still more when he thought of the ordeal that faced him in meeting the witch queen.
‘Do you know where you are going, child?’ he asked the boy.
The boy just kept on climbing.
It had been a still day at the bottom, but here, an inexorable ten days up, along winding paths, down others, braving terrible scrambles and awful jumps, the wind almost flattened the climbers to the rock. Authun had thought the slave girl would never make it. There was a path, not that you would see it from the bottom, but it was so narrow in places that even Authun, who had stared down death so many times without blinking, felt a tightness in his stomach as he trusted his life to a root or a fingerhold. He did not look down.
They slept tied on to the cliff with ropes and pegs the boy had with him, and surrounded by charms. The child seemed not to sleep but spent the night chanting a strange song to a broken tune in a language Authun did not understand. The only thing that troubled the king’s dreams was the anticipation of what was to come.
And then the overhang became serious. Impassable. How had he reached the witches before? Authun couldn’t remember. He remembered only the prophecy, the witch queen’s presence and the dark.
Inside the clouds, visibility down to a few paces, the path finally gave out. The child guide seemed to have missed the entrance to the caves. Authun felt the fear drying his mouth. He was weak, the girl was weaker. They wouldn’t survive the climb down, even if the boy agreed to guide them. The boy clambered back around Authun, back around Saitada and then, just visible in the clinging mist, he beckoned them. There in the rock was a gap, no more than a crack. It was only a shoulder’s width and scarcely as tall as a man. Authun would not be able to pass through it with the children, and even without them would have to turn sideways and wriggle his way in. He peered into the blackness and smelled the deep earth. He could see nothing at all but he had to go on. He untied the infants and gave them to their mother. Then he slid inside after the boy. There was only the weak light from outside to see by. He could see an arm’s length, maybe a little more, in front of his face but after that nothing. The mother passed her wailing children in. She was committed to Authun now, whether she liked it or not, and had no other option than to follow.
Authun tied the infants to him and watched the girl climb through. He had come to admire her and had certainly known men with less resolve. She needed no coaxing, morale building or bullying. She just followed.
The child guide stood very close to them and unwound a long cord from his waist. He passed it to the king, and gestured for him to tie it to himself and allow Saitada to take it too. She did. Then they went down into the dark.
Thoughts came and went in the blackness, as Authun fought to keep his footing and protect the children. The entrance on the Wall, he thought, must be how the witches admitted their few guests. It was too impractical as an everyday access. How did they eat? How did they come forth to visit in the night, to sit at the end of a stunned farmer’s bed and barter magic for children? There must be other ways in and out, thought Authun, unless they could fly — as was the rumour.
In the dark he became acutely aware of his breathing, of that of the children and the woman behind him, and of his footfalls, heavy and uncertain. He lost purchase on time. At one point he heard water and felt the boy take his hand and thrust it into a stream. He drank and helped Saitada do the same.
They rested a while and he passed the babies to the girl to be fed. He was aware of how young and fragile they felt as he gave them over. How had the girl endured this journey so soon after giving birth? He admired her. Then the descent continued, sightless. His hands scraped on rock; he stumbled; he felt the boy push him back as they slowed to clamber over a rock fall or squeeze through a bone-crushing passageway. Authun felt terribly vulnerable and hated it. The dark was an enemy he couldn’t fight; there a child could maroon him and he would be doomed. On they went, down and down, first cold then hot. They rested again, and then again. Had they been inside a day? Authun thought so. Down, down, down through galleries blind and cold, crawling into tiny fissures that scraped his face and arms as he wriggled through them. Standing room could have been just out of reach to his left or right and he wouldn’t have known. And still down, the children’s wails echoing through vast chambers or deadened by long coffins of rock.
How long now? Two days? Perhaps. Breathing became difficult; balance had to be fought for. The air itself seemed weak and lifeless. And then Authun felt the rope go slack to his front and heard childish footsteps going away. He pulled the taught end towards him and held Saitada to him with a tenderness that had never come as naturally before. He heard his own voice shaking.
‘We will overcome. Do not let go of the rope.’ He felt to see that she had tied it to her wrist. She had. ‘Sleep,’ he said. He didn’t expect her to understand but she did — not just his words but his feelings of concern and tenderness. She sat down. What else was there to do? Moisture clung to Authun’s skin; he was sweating and then he was shivering. He felt around where he was sitting, aware that he could be a step away from a terrible drop. He pulled the girl to him, presenting her children to her. The terrible danger of their situation made them seem even more precious to him. The girl fed the babies and Authun struggled with the fixings of his scabbard, releasing the cords. When the mother passed the children back he tied their feet to his belt, stowing his sword under the boots he used for a pillow. For the first time in his life he valued something more than his weapon in a time of danger.
It seemed to Authun that sleep came — but what is waking and what is sleeping in such darkness? The body has its rhythms of hunger and excretion, but when hunger is constant and water scarce these cease to mark time. The woman’s milk failed and the children’s wailing became constant. Then, after a while, it ceased.
‘Who?’
A voice was close in the dark, the word like a note on a flute.
‘Lady?’
‘Who?’ Again, like the hoot of an owl, its breath near to him, foul and hot.
Authun imagined some giant bird next to him in the dark, picking him over in its claws.
‘I am Authun, king of the Horda. I bring tribute of gold and slaves to the palace of the witch queen.’
‘Who?’
Authun felt something climb over him. It was a human form, frail and light but still the king had to restrain himself from reaching for the sword. No. Whatever it was, they were at its mercy.
‘Who?’
Authun breathed in. Would the Valkyries find him down here, he wondered, to take him to Valhalla to feast for ever? Or would it be just that damp dark, always. He reached to his side. Then he realised the cords on his belt were loose and the children were gone.
A guttering flame burned the king’s eyes and he moved to shield them. In a glimpse he saw, leaning over Saitada and the babies, a tiny old woman in a white shift. Above her, in a flicker of gold, almost like a flame herself in that light, stood the witch queen, that grim child, pale and beautiful, crowned in an impossible tangle of golden cables, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and sapphires, like a dragon’s hoard in miniature.
At her throat was a rich necklace whose jewels burned with a light familiar to Authun. It was the light he’d seen as he sacked the five towns, the light of the burning village from which he’d taken the child, the light of destruction. Then it was gone, and he could see nothing.
A baby was thrust into Authun’s hands. Then some sort of object. It was a small leather bottle, half full with liquid, he could feel. No one spoke, though he understood what it was — medicine to give his wife, to complete the deception.
‘The mother will come with me?’ said the king.
‘Who?’ The older woman’s idiot hoot again.
Authun must have been dreaming because all around him tiny lights came on and went out, the faces of the strange sisters appearing for an instant and then vanishing again. Wherever they were, it seemed, was wreathed in gold — arms and armour, cups and plates, fine arm rings and gilded chests of coins. The king used the light to locate his sword. His hand closed on it and he had to will the tension from his fingers. If he was going to fight he would need to be relaxed: too tight a grip would rob him of speed.
‘The mother?’
