that you would run to the Terrarchs and tell them the whole tale.”
“Better that than madmen loose in the mountains, raising ghosts and demons and god knows what else. It's one thing to preach war with the Terrarchs. It's another to start summoning the spawn of the Old Gods to help you. You lowlanders might not remember the old days but we hill-men have long memories…”
“Long memories of the time when you worshipped the scuttling hell-spawned soul-eating bastards,” muttered the Barbarian.
Weasel kept talking. “And the Exalted have promised you sanctuary because among the clans, no matter what the reason, a man who sells out is an enemy. It’s a good way to end up with your own severed dick in your mouth.”
The stranger looked ashamed and defiant. “You would have done the same,” he said.
“Aye, most likely. These wizards have names?”
“Alzibar. He’s a big friend of Zarahel…”
“Zarahel? The Prophet who has been stirring up the tribes?” said Rik.
Vosh nodded. “Thinks he’s the Liberator. Claims the Old Gods are coming back. Claims the old days will return. That the Terrarchs will fall.”
Rik shivered. No one present wanted to think about that. It was one thing to resent the Terrarchs but to have the Demon Gods rise from their graves, to have the old powers of darkness unbound and stalking the land, those were bad thoughts. Even if only a tenth of the things they had been taught about them were true, those were very bad thoughts.
He felt suddenly sure he had stumbled across the secret of their mission. They had been spun a story about the bandits, in case of spies in the camp. He knew what they were really after.
“And we are just kind of heading towards the exact valley where the Prophet and his brother wizard have their camp,” Rik said. Weasel nodded understanding, so did Leon and the Sergeant and a few others. “I wonder why that would be.”
As he spoke Rik noticed a strange silence had fallen over the group. He felt a cold presence over his shoulder and turned to find himself looking up at the silver mask of Master Severin. Its surface reflected the flames of the fire so that it looked like the whole top of the Terrarch’s head was ablaze. It gave him an even more demonic look than usual. His cold eyes gazed down, and Rik felt a momentary dizziness, and the oddest sensation that the wizard was looking deep into his soul. It was not a pleasant feeling.
Severin’s presence cast a pall over everybody. They said nothing, merely sat there like birds hypnotised by a snake. Rik thought the wizard was going to say something but he did not. He merely stared coldly, letting his wintery gaze fall on them, then he beckoned to the hill-man with one gauntleted finger and then strode silently back into the shadows from which he had emerged. The hill-man followed meek as a lamb to the slaughter.
Rik finished sewing the button on his tunic. There was no more conversation that evening.
Chapter Three
The wind blew chill from the moment the Foragers broke camp. The fir trees grew more stunted as the bridgebacks carried them higher. Clouds scudded swiftly across the sky, sometimes obscuring the peaks, sometimes rewarding Rik with glimpses of the sun breaking through a gap.
The soldiers dug out scarves, mufflers and old fingerless gloves and those who had them donned extra waistcoats and shirts. The Terrarchs showed no sign of feeling the cold. Rik wondered if this was some proof of the theory that they did not feel pain in the same way as men do.
As he huddled down in the howdah miserably watching the small icicles of snot forming on the end of Weasel’s nose, Rik brooded on the events of the previous night. Had it simply been his imagination or had the mage showed a particular interest in him? It was forbidden for any human to study the art of sorcery, and Rik had done a little of that, snatching the few crumbs of lore the Old Witch had let fall. Maybe the Terrarch had some way of telling.
If that was the case why not just drag him off and interrogate him? The Terrarchs had been known to do such things despite all the laws that the House Inferior had passed against it. Rik suspected that they only paid attention to the human part of the legislature when it suited their purposes. Everybody knew that the House Superior and the Amber Throne were where real power lay, and that their hand-picked human representatives were there merely to rubber stamp their decisions.
Wizards had even less respect than the rest of the Terrarchs for the rights of men. Most of them behaved as if the Small Revolution had never happened, and it was still the bad old days when humans had no rights at all. Rik took it for granted that most Terrarch wizards would have happily gone over to the Dark Empire but were just too proud to change sides.
Still, things were changing. Having any representatives at all was a step forward. The new human mercantile class was feeling its strength. A century ago General Koth had shown that a human army with guns could cause the Terrarchs problems, even with their dragons and their sorcerous powers. Everybody knew that was the real reason the Queen and her Council of Lords had to grant humans those concessions.
A chill passed through him; things might easily swing the other way. They had in Sardea. That was not something any man wanted to consider. It galled him to admit that there might be worse things in this world than Sardec and his ilk, but there were. At least the Scarlet nations acknowledged that humans were entitled to some rights. The Purples would have them all as slaves again, indentured forever on their vast estates and palaces, subject completely to the whims of their masters. In Sardea, if a Terrarch wanted to kill one of his humans, put him to death by torture even, he could and with no other reason than he felt like doing so. His humans were his property, to do with as he would.
Rik pushed those thoughts aside and returned to the things the hill-man, Vosh, had said. All the talk about a haunted mine, and murderous sorcerers and the presence of the Prophet was disconcerting to say the least. It was clear now why Master Severin had come along, when usually the mages never left camp for anything less than a war or a long holiday. This was magician’s business. He was there to shield them from sorcery and doubtless plunder the lore-books of the wizard when they found him.
The rest of the squad looked no happier than Rik felt. The men on watch needed to keep their heads poking over the side of the howdah and into the cutting wind. The chill was like a sword-cut as Rik discovered when his turn came and Weasel slumped down gratefully and took a swig from his hidden brandy flask. Much to Rik’s surprise, for Weasel was not known for his generosity, the poacher offered it to him.
“You’ll need it,” Weasel said and grinned. For some reason he had always been good to Rik and Leon. It was he who pulled strings with the Sergeant Major to get the pair transferred from the line infantry to the Foragers. Rik guessed it was because he liked having a couple of Sorrow-trained thieves within easy reach. He and Leon had done some housebreaking and pocket-picking at Weasel’s instigation. It had been profitable for all three, but, Rik suspected, for Weasel most of all.
Rik let the burning liquid slide down his throat. It was surprisingly good, smooth and rich, and he immediately had a suspicion where it came from. Weasel had been raiding the colonel’s private stock again, and he had just involved him in his crime. A subtle bastard Weasel was, for all his country poacher’s manners.
He was right though. Rik did need it. The wind was bitter and that was not the worst of it. They were high up on the side of the mountains, moving along a narrow path between the trees, the rock-strewn slope descending steeply to their right. No wagon could have negotiated that narrow way, but the bridgebacks, larger and heavier by far, picked their way along with steps of surprising delicacy. Rik supposed the huge beasts were not any keener than he was to go tumbling down the mountainside, which was reassuring in its way. If they did, those in the howdahs would have been swiftly crushed beneath their weight.
The wind brought tears to his eyes till he was crying like a drunken whore at a low melodrama. Snow drifted down, forcing him to squint, burning on his cheeks, melting on his tongue when he left his mouth open for a second. The path was shadowed and wound around the hills so that part of the line of wyrms was always out of sight.
There was plenty of heather at this height and plenty of big boulders to hide behind. The hill-men were famed for their ambushes. Had the Foragers been afoot they would have matched them, for skirmishing and
