32
From a ridge, Marit looked over a substantial valley, green with the season. Far below, a lake and river sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. The Orator and her Three Daughters formed a bulwark to the southeast, snow dusting their heights and clouds threatening behind. To the east rose a sheer line of cliffs running almost due north and south, ends lost in haze. The uneven patch of lifeless brown scarring the lake's shore near the confluence with the river marked the town of Walshow.
Here on the northern frontier of the Hundred, where many weather systems met and mingled, the wind blew in changeable eddies. Vultures drifted along currents of air right where the foot of the long ridge met the valley floor. Far above, a speck circled, almost certainly an eagle, although it glided too high up for her to be sure.
She led Warning along the ridge trail to the road, a graded avenue that, having cut through the hills that separated the valley from upper Haldia, now switch-backed down the grueling slope into the depression. This late jn the day, she had the road to herself, no traders, no casual traffic moving up or down. She might have flown it, but now that she had traveled all this way through the wild lands of Heaven's Ridge, keeping out of sight, she found herself reluctant to hasten into the belly of the beast.
And no wonder.
Where the road bottomed out on the valley floor, poles had been
erected at intervals as trees are planted to shade a thoroughfare. Corpses in every stage of decay dangled from the posts, hoisted up by their arms and left to rot. Where the soft tissue had pulled free, remains had fallen into heaps on the dirt. Some of these bones had been weathering here for years, when they ought to have been offered release at a Sorrowing Tower. The impiety — the sheer scale of executions — was meant to intimidate anyone approaching Walshow. Where had all these dead people come from? She remembered Sediya's chant: 'The weak die, the strong kill.'
She rode on through the drowsy afternoon.
Most of the trees in the valley had been cut down. Sheep and goats grazed among stumps. After about two mey, the scrub and pastureland spilled into fields being worked by men and women who kept their heads down, glancing at her swiftly and getting straight back to work. Threads of smoke rose from the town. It was too quiet. Chains rattled when the wind caught them just right. Skulls leered at her from the ground, tilted back to make their unhinged jaws open in a wide grin.
The poles with their corpses were, evidently, the first line of defense. The second was a stockade ringing the outermost neighborhoods of the city; beyond that rose an actual city wall with gates and battlements. Strangely, the stockade gate lay open and unguarded.
Beyond the gate, the outer town had the look of a place ransacked and left to recover. Ramshackle hovels sprouted beside sturdier row houses with shops in front and living quarters in back. Children ran away into shacks. A man trundling a barrow took a sudden detour, and a trio of women carrying washing in bundles atop their heads turned right around and hurried back the way they had come. She dismounted by the first relatively clean inn, chickens scattering from Warning's hooves as she walked the mare into the unswept yard.
A woman appeared on the porch, tying her black hair up into a bright linen kerchief in the northern style. Her eyes were darkly lined with cosmetics, and she smelled of sour milk. Within the inn, soup boiled, a thin broth flavored with smoky sesame oil. Her gaze flashed away from Mark, a tangle of startled wonder at seeing the sacred winged horse so close that she could distinguish each silver
feather, and anticipatory fear because after all how could anything good come of one of them walking into her humble yard and maybe after all now she would get the news of his death because she knew it was coming eventually however much she dreaded it. A child cried in one of the back rooms. She bowed her head and hid her face behind her hands.
'Shardit, are you coming?' called a man impatiently from the interior.
'Shardit,' said Mark, recalling the name. 'Is your man with the army? Is that him in there?'
'Just a customer,' she said into the space between her face and her hands. 'I haven't seen my man for months, have I? What else am I to do?'
'Do what you must,' said Mark hastily, thinking of Joss. 'You have to go on with life. I'm not here to judge you.'
The awkward silence dragged out. Inside, the child's crying faded to a grating whimper. A weight was shoved over a floor, like furniture being moved. Beyond the yard, a dog yelped; the steady stroke of someone chopping wood rang.
'Where can I find the commander's hall?' Marit asked.
'In town, in the old Assizes Court.'
'In the Assizes Court? Where is the actual Assizes Court held, then?'
Marit heard Shardit's tone alter, because really even a child ought to know this. 'Lord Radas runs the Assizes Court, him and his underlings.'
'So that's where I'll find him?'
'Him?' The woman was surprised enough that she dropped her hands and looked: a shuddering memory of a man cloaked in sun riding a dazzling winged horse in the vanguard of a mass of armed men. 'Neh. You're come too late. They've already left.'
'Left?'
The hands came up to shield the face, like an act of obeisance. They marched weeks ago. They're gone.'
Gone.
'Where did they go?'
Shardit shrugged. 'High Haldia first, then Toskala, and after that Nessumara. Not that we were told anything, not folk like me, but
the soldiers have a song about it. 'The cloaks rule all, even death.' The Star of Life will rule the Hundred. That's what they say.'
'And then what? Will the soldiers who lived here come back?
She hunched a shoulder, seemed about to turn away in shame but did not. 'I have to hope they do. If there's no one to sup from my kettle, then how will I feed my children?'
'Did you live in Walshow before, or were you brought here?'
'Oh,' she said, and then, 'oh.' She began to cry, not sobs but simply tears trickling down her face, the taste of their salt like sorrow.
'Can you go home?' Mark asked more gently.
The man called from inside. 'Shardit! How long do I have to wait?'
'Why do you torment us?' Shardit whispered. 'Teach them to kill, who were peaceful before? Isn't it enough to rule us?'
The hells!
'Don't give up hope,' said Marit, and knew it for a stupid thing to say the instant the words left her mouth. She tugged on Warning's reins and rode out of the inn yard without looking back. There's only so much a reeve can do. But she swore under her breath the entire walk back to the outer gate, as if her words were knives to cut away the bonds that confined people like Shardit.
Guards had meanwhile shown up at the gate, two elderly men who raised hands nervously to shield their faces as she approached. Their rustic spears, little more than sharpened tips, leaned against their frail bodies to leave their hands free for the obeisance: the hiding of their eyes.
'Where's the army gone?' she asked them.
In stumbling words, clearly frightened, they told her the same story Shardit had. By the look of these broken-down men, Lord Radas had sucked the town clean of all able-bodied men and left the leavings to fend for themselves.
'Is Walshow abandoned?'
'The commanders pulled everyone out, Lady. By your leave, Lady. Is there aught we can do to serve you, Lady?' They cringed away from an expected blow.
'Nothing,' she said furiously, which only made them cringe more.
Outside the gate she mounted, and gave Warning her head. Near
