The Night of the Swarm

By the next morning, her forces from the mountains had doubled in size, and there were more volunteers ready to join the rebel fleet than boats to carry them.

21

Out of the High Country

12 Halar 942

The soil of Mount Urakan was frozen hard as oak; the travellers could not bury their dead. They took the bodies to a level place south of the Water Bridge, and there built rock cairns over Cayer Vispek, Thaulinin and the other three fallen selk.

Before she covered her master’s face, Neda set her finger in the blood that still oozed from his forehead, then dabbed the finger with her tongue. Pazel stood near her, helpless to ease her pain. If Vispek had died at home, there would have been a cup of milk in which to mix that drop of blood, and any Mzithrini present would have tasted it.

A hand on his arm: Hercol. The swordsman beckoned, then crouched beside Neda, who looked up astonished. Hercol pressed his thumb to the bleeding spot on Vispek’s forehead, then licked his thumb clean. He glanced at Pazel expectantly.

Pazel made himself do it. He was disgusted, but then it came to him that he was honouring the man who had given him back his sister, and gratitude welled up in him anew. For this the Arqualis called them savages, he thought. For this the Arqualis said they should be killed. Pazel looked up to find that Thasha and Neeps had joined them. Without hesitation they tasted Vispek’s blood, and Neda said calmly that she would die for any of them, and then they rose and finished building the cairn.

At the cliffside, Bolutu knelt and said a prayer to Lord Rin for the safe keeping of his friend Big Skip Sunderling, and the selk sang for the comrade that the maukslar had slain. Pazel looked down into the gorge a last time. Ramachni, what’s happened to you? It had been hours since he took owl-form and went in pursuit of the maukslar. Had he slain the demon, or been slain? Had he prevented the creature from sounding the alarm?

Thasha and Hercol were looking at the body of the ogress, still lying in the aqueduct’s flowing water.

‘She was a miserable creature,’ Thasha said. ‘You could see it in her eyes.’

‘Nothing but pain has ever issued from the Thrandaal,’ said one of the selk. ‘But the ogres had a hand in their own misery. I have heard it said that their leaders found fear and murder so useful in conquest that they came to think of little else, and at last fell into a strange worship of pain, even inflicting it on themselves. In time this practise dulled their senses and their minds, until they were left with nothing but an impulse to do harm, and a few grey memories of elder times.’

‘Let us try to move the body,’ said Prince Olik. ‘It is too foul a thing to leave rotting in the aqueduct.’

Working together, the six humans, three dlomu and four selk just managed to heave the vast corpse onto the rim of the bridge, where it balanced for a moment before toppling into the gorge. As it fell, the cruel iron crown slipped from the creature’s head and caught upon a jagged spire thirty feet below, where it hung like a sinister wreath.

‘There’s a message for the sorceress, when next she sends her creatures here,’ said Lunja.

‘Yes,’ said Hercol, ‘but we must be far away before she does. If Ramachni prevailed against the maukslar we may yet be undetected, but other enemies will be waiting for these dead ones to report, and sooner or later their silence will be noticed.’

He turned to the four selk. ‘Which of you will guide us now? For to my eyes the mountains are still a labyrinth, and the sea is still far off.’

One of the selk, darker-haired than his comrades, shook his head. ‘It is not so far off now. But Thaulinin knew the roads best, and Tomid, whom the ogress killed, was second to him in that lore. I myself have been as far as the Weeping Glen, but that was centuries ago in my youth. All the same we may set out: there is but one trail that leads away from the Parsua.’

They rose and pulled their equipment together; Pazel and Bolutu armed themselves with the swords of the fallen. Then they turned their backs on the Water Bridge and started west, following the narrow path among the trees.

The sun blazed fiercely on the white mass of Urakan, rising above them like a great blunt horn. The cold was retreating; drops of meltwater glistened on the pine needles.

‘I hate to mention this,’ said Neeps, ‘but we’ve lost our tent. Big Skip was carrying it.’

The dark-haired selk turned and looked at Neeps with concern. ‘In that case we should make for the Urakan Caverns,’ he said. ‘There are supplies hidden in their depths, and we need only turn aside for a few miles to reach them.’

‘Any detour worries me now,’ said Bolutu. ‘Hercol is right: we dare not linger in this place. Is there no shelter along the downward trek?’

‘I have never heard of any,’ said the selk, ‘but I can tell you this much: if you hope to escape the high country today, you must move faster than you have done since we left the Secret Vale. Urakan is the last of the Nine, but even the lesser peaks beyond her are severe. We have no tent, and no fire beetles — and bad weather is coming; don’t you feel it?’ Hercol shook his head. ‘At home in the Tsordons I might be able to read clues in the wind, but not here. Lead on; the rest of us will try to match your speed. But remember that we must aim for stealth also. The foe that sees us is a foe that must be killed.’

They set off through the twisted pines, jogging along the narrow westward trail where Valgrif had pursued the athymar. The snow was deeper here, but it had clearly melted and refrozen many times, so that now it bound the land in a smooth crust that snapped like eggshell underfoot. Their slain enemies had broken a path, but their footprints were hard and icy. For several hours they struggled west, rounding Urakan, and in all that time they descended no more than a hundred yards. Pazel grew frustrated: the day was passing, and they were still almost as high in the mountains as they had been on waking that morning. But whenever there was a break in the trees he saw the reason for this roundabout course: the vast gorge was still beneath them, and until it diverged they could not dream of descending.

The divergence came in late afternoon, when from a rock outcropping they saw the gorge twisting away to the south. ‘This is good news and bad,’ said the dark-haired selk. ‘The trail will soon start its descent into the valley, but we have not been fast enough. Tonight we must dig a snow-shelter, unless we chance upon some ruin or cave.’

They carried on another hour, with the lowering sun in their eyes. Then, a short distance ahead, they saw that the pine forest ended, and that the snow was mounded high.

‘That’s a funny sort of drift,’ said Neeps.

‘There speaks a son of the tropics,’ said Hercol. ‘That is no drift, Undrabust. It is the remains of an avalanche.’

They approached, and Pazel gasped at the spectacle. Across the trail, and stretching up and down the mountain for as far as he could see, lay a huge battlement of snow. It had obliterated the trees, and was indeed several yards taller than their highest tips. Looking up at the peak, he could see the vast hollow cavity from which the snow had collapsed.

‘Our enemies scampered right up,’ said Corporal Mandric, pointing out a line of footprints on the slope. ‘I guess we’ll be doin’ the same then, won’t we?’

‘No trees to hide behind, up there,’ said Ensyl.

‘And no other path,’ said Hercol. ‘We must cross quickly and hope for the best. Keep your hoods up, and your blades out of the sun.’

They donned their white hoods and climbed the rugged snowbank. At the top they could see that the avalanche was at least a mile wide, and ran straight down the mountain for many miles. It was like the line a finger leaves when dragged across a dusty chalkboard. Nothing stood in its path.