The Pilgrims

about that Kiown too. You’ll see about him with time, mark me now.’

This nonsense again … ‘Kiown made mistakes,’ said Anfen. ‘But have you forgotten? There were times when he made the difference between life and death for us.’

‘Pff! All show. And it was his own hide he was saving, not yours. You didn’t see what I saw! Even if you don’t think the vision’s real, his mistakes’ve got us in a nice mess, all these patrols on the loose. You all still trust him, but find arrows for a mage.’

‘Loup, hush,’ said Anfen quietly.

The folk magician stormed off, rankled and muttering to himself.

‘We’re wasting sleeping time,’ murmured Sharfy. ‘Talk in the morning.’

Anfen closed his eyes, hoping his mind would stumble on the best course while it rested, as it often did. Yes, he’d had his doubts about Kiown too, had done for some time. What he’d said had been true: Kiown had shown nearly suicidal bravery defending the band, three times in particular standing out. Not always wise, but if a mission was dangerous, he was the first Anfen would choose. A ‘vision’ alone wasn’t going to change that.

Getting to the Council, that was what mattered now. Damn them for taking that charm, he thought, trying not to give in to an inviting surge of despair. Without that charm in my hand, will the Mayors believe my account of its message?

Its impossible message: the Wall at World’s End must be torn down. By all the Spirits, how?

44

They were already days behind their expected arrival in Elvury. Anfen led them south-west at a harder pace than they’d managed before, through shrouds of wood and plain fields. It was nice country, that way, picturesque, good soil and farm land, though the farms there were now the castle’s. They passed them every so often, covered in huge glass-like domes, azure blue shells reflecting the world around them and hiding what went on inside. People of the cities never saw that, only ever (if they were lucky) the corn and maize and bread that were run underground on wagon trains like the one Kiown and Sharfy had robbed.

Sharfy had done a year-long spell on the slave farms, and never even found out what his original crime had been. Right under those impenetrable glassy domes people were being worked to death that very second. Not many escaped.

Sharfy remained silent until the domes passed behind the horizon. Every minute of his time there, the whole year of it, was imprinted on him like a tattoo. His own slave farm had been further east, its food bound for Ankin, the very place Vous’s ascent had begun. But the farms were all much the same.

Like Anfen, Sharfy had been a proud servant of the castle’s army. Like Anfen, he was still proud he’d chosen that honourable path, even if for the wrong lord. It wouldn’t be honourable for long. Already signs showed these things had begun to change as the new generations were told to ignore Valour, that Vous was their Spirit of courage and honour now, that his values were of a superior kind. The battlefield wounded were no longer slain quickly, with respect and regret.

He remembered the endless raking, digging, hauling under that glassy blue dome, eighteen daily hours of it, sticks and whips randomly lashing down around the slaves as they went. He remembered hauling out the dead who’d dropped, starved and exhausted, and searching their pockets for handkerchiefs, forks, anything that could be traded for morsels of food. He remembered soup in the mess hall, funny stories traded in the barracks, untreated sickness, and hunger. Real hunger. The way starvation made a man entirely willing to kill his friend for literally a mouthful of gruel. He remembered bored overseers throwing two random slaves a kitchen knife each, ordering a fight to the death, whooping and yelling as they watched. Sharfy was sometimes picked for this, the ex-army slaves known for a good entertaining scrap. He never lost those duels.

He remembered the day’s work done early and the commanders assigning pointless tasks to fill the time rather than allowing the slaves to rest in their shit-stinking, overstuffed cells. He recalled spotting his chance in the underground while loading a wagon with grain bound for one of the cities. He’d had to be quick. Was he good at hand-to-hand? Two overseers who’d made the mistake of relaxing on the job might have said so, if not for the pieces of nose bone lodged in their brains.

Such were Sharfy’s thoughts as he stayed quiet on the way past the farms. He did not turn to look at them, and hoped never to see them again, but someone would, whether or not it was him, so what was the difference?

45

After days and nights of travel, Anfen had accepted he had the helplessness of a falling body.

He’d led castle armies through these very parts, subduing villages and militias, herding them back into Aligned cities where they’d be unable to leave, nor live so freely. He knew these lands well, had camped and hunted game in these lush green fields and scenic woods. Not far, there were places where, a few shovel-scoops deep, lay clusters of bodies just a few years dead, killed on Anfen’s own orders.

Their orders, spoken through his mouth just as he began to doubt them. But he’d spoken them anyway, while at night he’d slept badly and pondered his course, the conclusion stalking him fast, however he ducked and hid from it in fear. Oh how he had feared that truth finding him, and had run from it, for he had already done so much in their name.

Danger wasn’t the worst part of the road these days, Anfen realised; it was this, the long stretches of uneventful travel when he had no choice but to delve into himself, the last ten years eclipsing all of childhood before it so that he barely remembered more innocent and happy times. How he hated these thoughts, yet they were everywhere.

They pushed on as the countryside rolled by, crossing the road only once, sticking to the hillsides where shells of homesteads, newly burned or abandoned though they were, sat like ancient ruins. Troops still moved south in worrying numbers, as recent tracks and the not too distant thud of many passing boots sometimes reminded them. What for? Why now? Elvury was about to Align, Faul had guessed that first night as they spoke privately. She’d ‘seen signs’, she said.

They had claimed before that Elvury would fall and been wrong. The city was high up, easy to defend, and would be a terrible fight for an invasion or siege. Many had learned this the hard way, many good men sacrificed so some vain general could attempt to go down in history as one of the greats, to have taken the impossible city. It could be that such a general had convinced Vous, the Arch Mage, or some other ruler lurking in the castle’s high halls, that it was time to try again.

Three days’ march had gone uneventfully when they came to a bandits’ cave, tucked nicely away in woods noblemen had used in the past as a venue for sport hunting, with corridors through the widely spaced trees to allow horses. These woods had been given over to Inferno cultists for a time, part of the castle’s plan to discourage life outside the protection of Aligned cities. Anfen wanted to push on, but this hideout was the last good shelter for many miles, as safe as anywhere they were going to find before they reached the city.

Siel brought back two small pigs by the feet, arrows still in their backs. She’d been gone a long time. ‘Hard hunting,’ she said, dropping the pigs down. She began cutting off the meat but they were scrawny ones. They cooked and ate, not asking Loup to bless the food, for his mood had been volatile. Lalie’s too: she didn’t like being tied like a dog and didn’t like bathroom breaks while a minder watched, which Anfen thought was reasonable enough. Just as reasonably, he didn’t like Inferno cultists on the loose with swords and knives around. Call it even.

He decided they would take an extra hour’s rest tonight, given a possible war lay ahead of them. There were secret ways inside Elvury, even if it was under siege. Siel took the first watch, sitting at the cavern’s mouth. Anfen dropped to sleep with as much ease as blowing out a candle.

Behind him, Loup had been perfectly secretive when stirring a tiny amount of black scale powder he’d filched from Eric’s supply into a cup, with an inch or two of water, mixing it with his gnarled old finger, and swallowing it