Over their shoulders lay Simmer Lake and the island of Tume, the city brilliantly lit tonight. The camp sprawled around the shore not far from where the bridge ran onto the land. Bahn could see earthworks over there, near the bridge. They had heard fighting over recent days, gunshots and men riding past in haste. At first they’d hoped and prayed for it to be a rescue mission, but no one had come for them.
From the overhead mutters of their captors it had sounded as though the Mannians were fighting amongst themselves. Still, it offered the prisoners a respite from their torments. The beatings had stopped, and the regular interrogations and the drugs. It was as though they’d been forgotten.
For Bahn, it had been a time for brooding, of coming to terms with the knowledge that he was dead now in this nightmare of a pit, and was simply waiting to be buried. He’d found a measure of peace amongst the despair of their situation. Had found that you could face your own impending death and come to terms with it, almost welcome it, for the end of all your earthly petty troubles that it would bring.
And now this; this dream of stumbling along at the rear of the chain of men, with the sheets of rain blinding him and his shackles biting into the open sores of his skin.
They walked and walked with the reek of their foulness preceding them, passing through the camp unchallenged, shuffling clinking past the gleaming eyes of soldiers as they watched Bull leading them, the soldiers looking miserable and spent and uncaring.
In front of Bahn, the man called Gadeon uttered a strange mewling noise from his throat and began to stagger away on a different course. Bahn grabbed him, slipping in the mud in his bare feet as he pulled him back in line.
‘Stay with us, brother,’ he whispered. ‘Stay with us now.’
‘We should go back,’ said the man frantically. ‘They’ll punish us for this when they find us gone. They’ll call us traitors again or worse.’
Bahn felt ashamed to see the man so broken; then ashamed that he should feel that way at all.
What have they done to us? he thought, listening to the man gabble in fright. What have they done to our minds?
Gadeon stopped all of a sudden, and he turned on Bahn and seized him with his clawed hands. ‘Are they letting us go?’ he asked loudly, almost shouting. ‘Is that it?’
Someone shushed for him to be quiet. ‘Tell me, Bahn!’ he shouted. ‘I can’t go on if they-’ Bahn clamped a hand over his mouth and nose. The man struggled, suffocating.
For a moment Bahn held on grimly, wanting him only to shut up and die.
A hand seized his arm and pulled it free. It was Chilanos. He pushed Gadeon ahead of him and back into line, following the man with an arm across his shoulder.
Bahn stumbled after them.
Yes, he thought to himself. They’re playing with our heads. They’re making us dream this night, and when I wake I’ll be back in that hole, waiting to die.
He looked about him, and realized they had left the camp behind them, that they were stumbling out onto the open plain. The darkness there like an embrace.
Bahn bumped into the back of Chilanos, for the man had stopped dead in his tracks. He peered ahead through the rain and saw that Gadeon had stopped too, and the man before him. Bahn staggered forwards around them, not wanting to stop now. He saw the dark form of Bull with his hand held up for silence. The big warrior’s head was scanning slowly left to right.
‘Halt!’ came a voice through the darkness ahead of them, and then sound of footsteps squelching through mud. ‘Declare yourselves!’
Steel rasped against leather. Bull vanished into the night.
Two blades struck each other. Another shout sounded from their left. ‘Sound a report!’
Footsteps running towards them. ‘Report, I say!’
This is real, Bahn thought. This is no fantasy.
‘ Go,’ urged Bahn to his comrades in a sudden rush of panic. He grabbed a man and shoved him forwards into the darkness. ‘ Go,’ he said again, trying to get them all moving. They started to run for it, the whole huffing shambling group of them.
They passed Bull in the darkness. The man whirled away from something and waved them on.
‘Sound the alarm!’ a man was hollering. ‘Sound the alarm there!’
The men gasped as they splashed through the gully of a stream. They helped each other to their feet and up the other side of it. Bahn fell and swallowed a mouthful of muddy water. Rain splashed off the flowing stream. Retching, he got to his feet and clawed his way up the other side.
He turned back for Bull. The man stood on the bank of the gully silhouetted by the campfires. His back was to them, a naked sword in his hand.
Someone was trying to tug Bahn along. He turned and followed in a hopping skipping run. They ran until their hearts were fit to burst and kept on running, scattering into the night like phantoms.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
A Mother
Smoke tumbled from the chimney of the cottage and from the roof of a rundown shack at the back. Against the side of the cottage rested a lean-to of rotten planks, its floor strewn with hay that had spilled out into the muddy yard where chickens pecked at scattered corn. At the edge of a fenced enclosure, an old zel ambled lazily, chewing contentedly and swatting its tail at the late autumn flies. Beyond, in the far distance, the southern mountains rose with silver falls of water shining on their flanks, catching sunlight.
Nico’s mother bustled from the kitchen doorway. She selected a few small logs from a pile that leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, then made her way quickly to the smoky shack with the dirty hems of her skirts dragging across the ground. Her red hair was tied back this morning; it shone with a deep lustre.
Ash saw her as walked up the dirt track, and stopped as though he had walked into a wall. His heart started hammering inside him.
He came up to her as she left the smoking shack, wiping her empty hands.
‘ Oh!’ Reese exclaimed and clutched her chest in fright. She relaxed as recognition came to her. She glanced behind him for Nico, and her face tightened when she failed to see him.
‘Mister Ash,’ she managed.
‘Mistress Calvone.’
He could see her taking in his ragged, unkempt condition. A tension was slowly settling upon her pretty features. ‘My son. Where is he?’
Ash’s eyes closed of their own accord, wanting to spare him from her distress. He lowered his head in shame.
‘No,’ she whispered in realization.
How could he say what needed to be said? Ash forced himself at least to meet her stare.
‘The boy…’ he began, and it took all the force of his will to continue. ‘Miss Calvone. I am sorry. He is gone.’
‘No.’ She was shaking her head, a hand clutching at her throat; her skin had flushed a vivid crimson.
Ash fumbled with the small clay vial of ashes about his neck until he held it outstretched in his hands. He saw how pitiful it looked. More pitiful even than the urn of ashes he had given to Baracha for safe keeping. But it was all he could offer her, and he had a need just then to give something of her son back to her.
‘I… I am… deeply sorry.’
Reese glared in horror at the tiny vial as though he held a stillborn foetus in his hands. In that moment, it was true self-loathing that possessed him.
She slapped the jar from his hands and it went spinning across the yard, where it struck the wall of the cottage and shattered into pieces. Reese launched herself at him, swinging her fist across his face. It was a solid blow and he swayed from it, and then her rage fully unleashed in a torrent of punches and kicks.
‘You promised!’ she screamed over and over again. ‘You promised you’d protect him!’
