“Yes, priest,” Joshelin told him curtly. “We’ve done scarcely eight leagues today by my pacings. Another two or three before dark, then we can lie up for the night. No fire, though. The hills are crawling with Merduks.”
Avila slumped. He rubbed a hand over his face and said nothing.
“Do you think the capital is safe yet?” Albrec asked.
“Oh, yes. These are merely part of the enemy screen. He sends out light cavalry so that we can learn nothing of his movements, while he learns all about ours. Basic tactics.”
“How ignorant we are, not to know such things,” Avila said caustically. “Can we ride now?”
“Yes. The mules have had a good rest these last three leagues.”
Avila muttered something venomous none of them could catch.
They had been four days travelling, the two monks and the two Fimbrians. During that time they had marched and ridden harder than Albrec had ever thought it possible for the human frame to bear. They had spent fireless nights shivering against the mules for warmth, and had eaten salt beef and army biscuit through which the weevils squirmed. Joshelin reckoned that another three days would see them in Torunn, if they continued to elude the Merduk patrols. Those three days loomed ahead of them like a long period of penance. Albrec found it easier to think only about putting one foot in front of the next, or getting to the next rise on the horizon. He had not even had the energy to pray. It was only the crinkling bulk of the ancient document he carried which kept him on his feet at all. When it was safe with Macrobius in Torunn, his mind as well as his body might know some peace at last.
At day’s end Albrec and Avila were numb and swaying on the backs of the two mules. Nothing in their lives had prepared them for this unbelievably swift, unencumbered travel across a wilderness. Their feet were blistered, the stumps of Avila’s lost toes weeping blood and fluid, and their rumps were rubbed almost raw by the crude pack-saddles. When the little party finally stopped for the night the two monks were too far gone to care. They had not even the energy to dismount. Their companions looked at each other wordlessly for a long moment, and then Siward began to lift the monks down off their steeds whilst Joshelin unpacked an entrenching tool and began to dig a hole.
They had halted in the eaves of a small wood, mostly spruce and pine with beech and pale-trunked birch on the outskirts. Farther in, the coniferous trees grew closer together, and their needles carpeted the ground making the travellers’ footfalls soundless as a cat’s. Night was fast setting in, and it was black in the wood already. Beyond it, the wind had picked up into a whine which roamed across the Torunnan hills like winter’s courier. Albrec thought that never had he felt himself so lost, or in such a place of desolation. During the day they had passed abandoned farms and had helped themselves to food from their larders. They had even sighted a roadside inn, as deserted as a mountaintop. The entire population of Northern Torunna, it seemed, had fled at the coming of the Merduks. Would the Torunnans ever make a stand and fight?
When Joshelin had dug his hole to the depth of his knees, he threw aside his entrenching tool and began gathering wood from under the deciduous trees at the outskirts of the forest. Siward threw the two shuddering monks a couple of greasy, damp blankets, and then unsaddled and rubbed down the mules before fitting them with bulging nosebags. The animals were so tired he did not even hobble them, but merely tied their picket ropes to a nearby tree.
An owl hooted in the ghost-dark of the wood, and something—a fox, perhaps—yipped and barked far off, the sounds adding to the emptiness rather than subtracting.
There was a flash, a jump of sparks which revealed the face of Joshelin bent and puff-cheeked as he blew on tinder. A tiny flame, smaller than that of a candle. He fed it as delicately as if he were tending a sick baby, and when it had grown a hand’s breadth, he lifted the small pile of twigs and needles into the trench he had dug and began feeding it with larger limbs. He looked as though he were peering into some crack in the earth which led to hell, Albrec thought, and then dismissed the image as unlucky.
The fire grew, and the two monks crawled over to its warmth.
“Keep it going,” Joshelin told them. “I have things to do.”
“I thought we were to have no fire,” Avila said, holding his hands out greedily to the flames. His blanket stank as it began to warm.
“You looked as though you needed it,” the Fimbrian said, and then strode off into the darkness with his sword drawn.
“Ignorant fellows,” Avila muttered. His eyes were sunken, and the firelight writhed in them like two worms of yellow light.
“Their bite may not be quite so bad as their bark, I’m thinking,” said Albrec, blessing the warmth and the gruff thoughtfulness of their companions.
Chopping sounds, breaking wood, and then the two soldiers returned to the firelight holding a rough screen-like structure they had created out of interlaced branches stuffed with sods of turf. They planted it in the ground on the side of the fire trench that faced the border of the wood, and at last sat down themselves, pulling their black military cloaks about them.
“Thank you,” Albrec said.
They did not look at him, but threw over a wineskin and the provisions bag. “You’ll eat well tonight, at any rate,” Joshelin said. “That’s dainty fare we picked out of that farm.”
They had a chicken, already plucked and gutted, bread which was several days old but which nonetheless seemed like ambrosia after Fimbrian hardtack, and some apples and onions. The chicken they spitted over the fire, the rest they wolfed down along with swallows of rough wine which in Charibon they would have turned their noses up at. Tonight it slid down their throats like the finest of Gaderian vintages.
Siward produced a short black pipe from the breast of his tunic, filled it from a pouch at his waist and he and Joshelin smoked it in turns. The pipe smoke was heavy and strong and acrid. There was some tang in it that Albrec could not quite identify.
“Might I try it?” he asked the soldiers.
Siward shrugged, his face a crannied maze of light and dark in the fire-laced blackness. “If you have a strong head. It is
“The herb the Merduks smoke? I thought it was a poison.”
“Only if you take too much of it. It helps keep you awake and sharpens the senses, so long as you do not abuse it.”
“How do you obtain it?” Albrec’s curiosity awoke, taking his mind off his exhaustion.
“It is army issue. We get it along with the bread and salt horse. When there is no food to be had, a man can keep going for weeks by smoking it.”
“And can he then stop smoking it if he has a mind to?” Avila drawled.
Joshelin stared at him. “If he has the will.”
Albrec took the pipe Siward proffered rather gingerly and sucked a draught of the bitter smoke deep into his lungs. Nothing happened. He returned the pipe to its owner, rather relieved.
But then his aches and pains dimmed to a comfortable glow. He felt a new strength seeping through his muscles and his body became as light as a child’s. He blinked in wonder. The firelight seemed a beautiful, entrancing thing of bright twisting loveliness. He put out his hand towards it, only to have his wrist grasped by the hard fist of Joshelin.
“One must be careful, priest.”
He nodded, feeling foolish and exhilarated in the same moment.
“I haven’t seen you smoke it before,” Avila said to the Fimbrians.
Siward shrugged. “We are getting tired. We are men also, Inceptine.”
“Well, bless my soul,” Avila retorted, and wrapped himself in his evil-smelling blanket.
They took the chicken off the spit and ripped it into four pieces. Albrec was no longer hungry, but he ate the scorched meat anyway, no longer able to taste it. His mind felt clear as ice. His worries had vanished. He began to chuckle, and then stopped himself as he found his three companions were watching him.
“Marvellous stuff. Marvellous,” he muttered, and fell back into the soft pine needles, snoring as soon as he was horizontal.
Avila threw a blanket over him. It had holes in it from other nights spent lying close to campfires.
“I will dress your feet in the morning,” Joshelin told him.
The young Inceptine nodded distantly and took a huge swallow of the wine. “What will you do when you have
