'Mother,' said Haveros.
He sat down in the water with his back against hers. She was his mother. She had been missing for so long: he was glad to have found her. He closed his eyes. For some reason, he felt very tired.
Yen Olass Ampadara watched Haveros and the Princess Quenerain. Why were they sitting in the water like that, back to back? Why was Haveros nodding off? Why was Quenerain drawing pictures in the water? Because they were human, of course, and human beings were notoriously unstable and unreasonable creatures.
Everywhere Yen Olass looked, there was proof of this. As far as she could see, the ground was swarming with human creatures, some eating mud, some eating their own fingers, some humping each other in the muck, some grasping at invisible insects, some trying to fly.
Looking further afield, to Castle Vaunting, Yen Olass saw what appeared to be human beings jumping from the battlements into the flames of the moat. Or were they being thrown? It did not matter: it did not concern her. Why not? Because she was an otter. That was why.
Yes.
For a moment she had suspected that she might be human herself, so it was with a feeling of immense relief that she realized she was really an otter. She walked deeper into the water, lay down in the cool of the river, and let the water take her. Floating downstream on her back, she smiled at the sky, and kicked her feet, but not very hard, because her legs hurt if she kicked hard.
Some distance downstream, Yen Olass pulled herself ashore and started looking for an otter-hole. When she found something suitable – a concavity under some tree-roots – she crawled into this shelter and huddled there in her fur.
For a while, Yen Olass lay in her otter-hole imagining the fish-smooth otter-king who would romance her by the riverbank, and the little little baby otters they would have together, and the excavations they would make to perfect their safe and secret otter-hole where nobody would find them not now and not ever, where nobody would ever find them or catch them or stone them to death.
Dreaming of the love her otter-king would teach her, Yen Olass fell asleep, and slept soundly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Yen Olass Ampadara woke in the early hours of night. She was cold, but the cold was not intolerable; wool, even when wet, tends to give warmth. She extracted herself from the hole she had been sleeping in, and scooped cold water from the river to appease the protest in her belly.
When she faced the river, the flow of the current was from left to right, meaning she was on the northern bank. Castle Vaunting, the ruins of Lorford and the Collosnon army were on the southern bank, somewhere upstream.
Yen Olass took off her boots and washed her feet and her foot bindings. Then she massaged her feet, wrung out the foot bindings, replaced them, then put on her boots again. Yen Olass had been around soldiers long enough to know that care of the feet is vital. When crutch and armpits are left unattended for a couple of weeks, and grow interesting growths of green fungus, that is unpleasant but not lethal; when feet go rotten, which can happen in a lot less than two weeks, an otherwise healthy person becomes a helpless casualty.
Low down in her gut, there was the beginning of a familiar and unwelcome cramping sensation. Mentally, she counted her calendar. Yes, her menses were due to begin. Swearing softly, Yen Olass hunted through the inner pockets of her weather jacket. Finding her box of volsh, she opened it, dipped her finger in the niddin-grease, and tasted it. Disgusting. She would have to starve for a little longer. In another pocket, she found her string of amber beads. Good for a bribe? No, there was no way for her to buy her way out of this mess. At last she found one of the pads she was looking for. It was soaking wet. She wrung it out: it would have to do.
Before padding herself, Yen Olass took off all her clothing, which meant taking off her boots again – if she had been under less strain, she would have organized herself better. She wrung out all her woollen clothing, knelt on her fur coat and did her best to force out any residual water, did the best she could with her weather jacket, then dressed again and put her boots back on. Already she felt warmer.
Now she considered the state of her body. The women of Monogail did not allow themselves to be disabled by their monthly flux; Yen Olass was more concerned with her bumps and bruises. She had been generously damaged, but all joints were in working order. Everything hurt, but she could still rely on her body to serve her faithfully. It was durable as a mule, strong, powerful, and well-fleshed to ward off starvation.
What now?
Madness had disabled the whole army. Yen Olass, knowing that she was not a dralkosh, knew the wizards in Castle Vaunting were to blame. Their power must be limited, because the spell no longer had effect – Yen Olass no longer believed herself to be an otter.
Remembering what had happened to the soldiers, Yen Olass knew they would now be ashamed and demoralized. They would be sleeping or drinking, or planning desertion. Now was the best time to attack the camp.
Yen Olass thought attack was her best option. She knew exactly what she needed: Hor-hor-hurulg-murg. The Melski male would be her salvation. By now, she knew colonies of Melski lived to the north, in the Penvash Peninsula. Surely they would take her in and shelter her. If not, she would take the mountain pass leading west from Lake Armansis to Larbster Bay on the shores of the Penvash Channel. There was said to be a small community of humans at Larbster Bay, and ships put in there to land travellers, to seek shelter from bad weather or to take on water.
Yen Olass followed the riverbank till she saw the army's campfires. Only a few fires: most people must be asleep. Or dead. The sullen hellfire glow from the moat of Castle Vaunting suggested that a senile sun was about to rise in the south. Yen Olass was cautious now, facing danger. Yet she felt no fear: instead, she felt strong, bold and alert. Concentrating on shadow and sound, she no longer felt her injuries except when she bumped against a tree- stump or scraped against a bough.
She approached the bridge spanning the Hollern River. She halted, and waited. Watching. Listening. Looking for sentries. Listening for a cough, a snore, a whisper. The bridge appeared to be unguarded. Yen Olass remembered the voyage across the Pale, and how one of the soldiers (a scar-faced man with red whiskers, who had proclaimed that 'you have to kill a man to be a man') had lectured his squad on nightfighting, saying that, with even a trace of light, a silhouette against a skyline can betray movement at night to the skilled observer. ('So watch the curve of the hill and the tit at the top, and look for lice scuttling, boys.')
Crouching low, Yen Olass crawled to the bridge and began to slither across. Then a plank creaked. Under her? Behind her? She startled to her feet and sprinted, her boots hammering across the bridge. As she reached the other side, a man shouted at her from somewhere in the ruins of Lorford.
Yen Olass sprinted for a ruined wall, dropped down beside it, crawled along on hands and knees in its absolute shadow, then went to ground. And waited. The man shouted again. She heard the swift squiff-squiff-squiff of blood as her heart pumped a pulse near her ear.
Nobody came hunting for her. But, now that she was in occupied territory, she felt smaller and less certain.
Picking herself up from the ground, she advanced on the unsuspecting army, moving in fits and starts, staying low and pausing often to look around. And listen. Soon she was passing tents, woodpiles, empty carts. She smelt latrines, woodsmoke, damp ashes – and food. Food! She drooled.
Yen Olass tried to estimate where the security section was. Sighting a camp fire which seemed to lie in the right direction, she set off toward it. When she drew near, she heard the men round the fire talking, but could not understand what they were saying. They were not talking in Ordhar, nor were they using Eparget. They had reverted to their own language, whatever that might be: this army had contingents from many regions of the empire.
All the guards from the security section seemed to have gathered round that fire. Doubtless they were talking murder or mutiny. Or desertion. Their voices were low, but angry. Going slowly so as not to make too much noise squelching through the mud, Yen Olass worked her way round to the back of the tents of the security section. Here, all was shadows and darkness.
