Juliet Marillier - Cybele's Secret

The pursuers must have sailed by night to catch us. It was possible they’d reached the cove in darkness and begun to climb while we were still asleep. The ascent became a race, and I gritted my teeth and got on with it, determined not to hold the men back. Mountain-bred I might be, but my legs were shorter than everyone else’s, and my hands were soon bleeding with the effort of clinging on and hauling myself up.

The men weren’t saying much, and nor was I. I tried not to think too hard about what would happen if the pursuers caught up with us. I remembered the Janissary guards at the han, big, well-armed men with purposeful faces. We were only four; who knew how many of them might be climbing after us?

To distract myself, I thought about what the crone had said to me. It seemed I had a job to do and that it was possible for me to succeed at it, provided I followed her instructions. Wits: Yes, I was not short of those. Courage: If I failed there, Stoyan had enough for two. Balance: It depended, I thought as I clambered up a rock face, stretching for an impossible grip, on what kind of balance was meant. Pero reached down from above, seized my wrists, and pulled me bodily up. I gasped a thank-you before tackling the next climb.

Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all. What could that be? My family? My home? The Other Kingdom? I hoped I would understand what the old woman had meant before it was too late. As for Learn wisdom, I was a scholar, wasn’t I? I’d been trying to make myself wiser for years. I pictured the crone stopping the people who were on our trail and giving them the same advice she had offered me. Under the sweat that now coated my body, I felt cold. Perhaps it was a game for her, like chess, black against white, and the four of us a team of king, queen, knight, rook, playing it out on the mountain as if on an inlaid board. Maybe the old woman didn’t care who won. Maybe we were just entertainment.

We paused high on the flank of the mountain, beside a field of loose scree. One false step would mean a rapid, sliding descent back to the tree line.

“I can’t see a path from this point,” Duarte said. “We’ll have to find some sort of goat track around those cliffs. But I don’t see how that could lead to the place we want; there would have to be a—” He stopped short.

“A what?” I asked, wishing we had not stopped to confer, for the moment I ceased walking, my body began to remind me that it hurt all over and needed a good rest.

“A bridge,” Duarte muttered, his eyes distant. “Mustafa mentioned a bridge. Something about taxes and trade.”

“It seems unlikely,” Stoyan said. “How could trade affect such an out-of-the-way place? There must be nothing up here but the most isolated villages. Imagine it in winter.”

“Maybe there is a back way in,” I said. “There is a bigger settlement along the coast to the east; we saw it. If that has an anchorage for trading vessels and tax is payable there before the goods are sent off with caravans inland, this could be a way to sneak things by.”

“Whether your theory is correct or not,” said Duarte, “we must try the cliffs or retreat and meet the pursuer on his way up. No choice, in my view. I hope you have a good head for heights.” He glanced at me, not altogether joking.

“Come,” said Stoyan. “If we must negotiate a cliff path, let us do so while the Mufti’s men are well behind.”

“Of course,” I felt obliged to say, “if there is a bridge, it would be more logical for it to connect with a path down to that eastern settlement, not to a village on the other side of the mountains.”

“So,” Duarte said, hands on hips, “what is your advice?”

“Logic tells me this path doesn’t go where we need it to. Instinct tells me it’s the right path. Make of that what you will.” A bird had alighted on the rocks just ahead of us as I spoke, a large black crow. Its wings had a tattered look, its eyes a bright wildness, intent, unsettling. “In fact, I’m absolutely sure this is the way,” I added. Follow the crow, I nearly said, but stopped myself. I didn’t want Duarte to think me completely mad.

There was a path around the cliffs. It was so narrow I did not dare look down. The rock surface was pitted and crumbling. My limbs shook. My mind went numb with terror. I could not imagine any goat in its right mind choosing to go this way.

Duarte went first, with me next. I kept forgetting to breathe. Stoyan came after me, once or twice reaching out an arm to steady me or offering calm, quiet instructions. Pero was at the end, dogged and silent. I did have the advantage of being smaller and lighter than any of them, but the boots I’d been lent on the Esperanca were not a good fit, and I was never more relieved than the moment I stepped off the tiny ledge onto more solid ground, to be enveloped in an embrace by Duarte before seeing the others in turn reach the safety of the broad, treed hollow where we stood.

“You’re a brave girl, Paula,” the pirate said. He still had me folded to his chest and seemed in no hurry to let go. My heart was beating fast, whether through terror, relief, or something quite different I was not sure. “I’m proud of you,” Duarte added in a murmur.

“It’s the thought of doing it all again on the way back that really bothers me,” I said with a shaky smile, and stepped away from his embrace.

“If we can find another way, we will,” he said. “Trust me on that. Now—”

There was a whir and a thump, and Pero gave a strangled gasp before collapsing to his knees by our side. My eyes went wide with horror. Something was sticking out of his calf, and he moaned as he clutched at it. Blood ran down his trouser leg and onto his boot. I had just time to identify the thing as a crossbow bolt; then Stoyan grabbed me and shoved me back under the cover of some straggly bushes. The crow, with a derisive caw, settled on a branch above me.

I stayed where I’d been put, watching Duarte and Stoyan as they moved like a team, keeping their voices low. Neither looked back along the cliff path. To lean out was to put oneself in the path of a second missile. I did not hear any sounds of pursuit, falling stones, or voices, but I knew we did not have long. Stoyan picked Pero up without apparent effort and shifted him to a more sheltered position. Duarte hunted items out of his pack. The two of them crouched beside the stricken man, busying themselves. I could see blood on Pero’s face; he had sunk his teeth into his lip to stop himself from crying out. I wasn’t prepared to stay crouching in cover while they worked, so I came out and held things for them as Stoyan set his hands to the bolt and drew it out with an unpleasant sucking noise. Duarte applied pressure to the wound. Pero endured the operation without a sound. Stoyan ripped lengths off his own shirt to improvise a dressing.

“Where are they?” I whispered as the last knot was tied. Fresh blood was already seeping through the linen. “How far behind us?”