The Pilgrims

executed with my own hands wise people who owned forbidden books, who practised folk magic. Some of whom did do foul things, rituals of sacrifice and perversion. But mostly others, whose crime was to cure their children of fucking colds.’

Easy. Easy. Detach. Breathe.

A swirl of dizzying thoughts spun through him and his knees felt weak. Funny — no, plain incomprehensible — that all the while Anfen and his men had done it all believing, honestly believing, that these pitiful clinging remnants of the old world did present a threat to the castle’s great strength. Small-time folk mages like Loup, farmers, refugees from Aligned cities who’d banded up for one last stand. Their tenacity, their bravery … he’d thought himself charitable, as an opposing commander, to recognise it and grant them mercy where he could, a swift kill, ordering his men against rape and plunder. Drip drip went the phantom echo between their scuffing footsteps.

‘I know the history better than you may think. Keep your voice low,’ Stranger replied.

It was indeed the last thing either of them said for a while, as muttering voices could soon be heard in passages beside theirs. In silence she led him back the way they’d come, illuminating the way with her green light when the dark grey walls were free of lightstones.

The walk it seemed would never end, but Anfen watched that too from a distance, while his tired legs propelled him along, mouth and throat dry as sand, body sick with what he’d done, his consciousness hidden in a small quiet corner of his own mind.

‘Maybe you were right, back there,’ Stranger said as they neared the surface at long last. ‘Maybe it was necessary. I know it was hard for you. I take back what I said.’

He barely heard her. He was exhausted, as though he’d just marched for days straight, not two or three hours. He found his way back through the woods, not even noticing at what point Stranger parted from him, nor caring. It was still night, well past someone else’s turn to take watch. Anfen woke Sharfy and murmured, ‘Another hour, then wake me and we leave.’

‘Where you been?’ said Sharfy, smelling the sweat of Anfen’s exertions and watching the speed with which he emptied a full skin of water. Anfen waved the question away and dropped onto the mat Sharfy had vacated.

48

There was no point chastising Loup for taking another scale vision; they had four days’ march ahead, less if they really laid boot to road, and having the folk mage storm off, disgruntled, was very likely a death sentence. There were elementals between them and their city, perhaps even Lesser Spirits, and Loup would make sure they avoided them.

‘We had a visitor,’ Anfen said to Siel and Sharfy as morning set in and they set out in the woods. He’d debated whether or not to tell them about Stranger, and decided he’d better, lest Siel put an arrow through their new ally, or lest he be killed and news of ‘new mages’ never reach the Mayors. They listened to his account of last night without interruption.

‘So she’s our friend,’ said Sharfy, clearly not convinced.

‘I deem her such. I do make mistakes. But she had ample time to kill me. And she may have wanted to. She did not enjoy my actions in the cavern. Yet she led me through guarded tunnels safely, and back. If she is in league with the enemy, she passed up a chance to deliver them their most hated defector.’

‘You need more sleep than you got,’ said Siel.

‘Welcome to the road,’ he said, a stock reply to complaints among soldiers about rations, foot sores, tiredness. But she was right. This campaign was draining him, this life was draining him, and no pleasant idle retirement waited at its end. Only this war, sure to last more than his lifetime, unless the castle won it sooner. Then oblivion.

Welcome to the road. When they came to a village, Sharfy’s scales bought horses and the villagers’ promise of silence, should they be questioned. Though Lalie had never ridden before and had to share a steed with Siel, they made good speed for Elvury, only the Elemental Plains between them and baths, beds and proper meals, the mountains already rising in the distance.

They spotted an elemental in the far distance on their second morning on the plains, just a ripple of disturbed air like a tiny cyclone moving in fast lurches, but it didn’t come closer and their luck held. Stranger? Anfen wondered. Loup claimed she no longer followed, but he didn’t believe it. Their crossing the plains was filled with peace that seemed miraculous.

They prodded Sharfy for war stories, of which he had no shortage, nor a shortage of delight in telling them. Anfen allowed himself to be lost in their fiction, and noted the numbers of dead left in a trail behind Sharfy’s heroics had increased from the previous telling. Sharfy was unaware that humour was the appeal; he felt the stories were swallowed whole and that his listeners’ admiration for his great deeds was genuine, even as they jested. They didn’t know his newest story had borrowed pieces of its plot from a Batman comic, but for that matter, nor did he …

The plains became foothills. They encountered no one but saw in the distance a few tribal nomads, the rare dark-skinned kind who conversed with elementals and took great pains to avoid other human company. The mountains soon loomed over them like an enormous frozen wave, slabs of blue high on the horizon’s white sky. They paused to bathe, then fished for an hour in the River Misery, catching only two small things not even worth filleting, until it occurred to Loup to bless their lines and bait. Minutes later, Sharfy pulled a fat black dirtfish from the water, flopping sluggishly on his hand-held line. Anfen caught a bigger one moments later (Sharfy needed many measures to be sure of it), but they’d wasted too much time here, and headed onwards again, muttering under their breaths in exasperation. ‘Good eating, dirtfish are,’ said Loup, oblivious. ‘Oh aye, if you cook em right.’

At last the land began to climb, building to the ranges that acted as Elvury’s shield from assault. If a war brewed there, or if it had begun, they would begin to see signs of it soon. By now, it was almost certain that the looming hillsides were thick with Elvury’s hidden lookouts, who watched them approach with arrows fixed. To the group’s chagrin, Anfen led them by a path that lengthened the trip by several hours, but also gave them a good look at the road leading to the city. And soon the mystery of the south-marching armies was partly revealed when they rounded a bend on the high shoulder of the sheer cliffs, looking down at where the road led into the mountain pass.

Masses of troops were gathered in the fields and plains just beyond the road, the only way to the city from the north. With good reason, they had not ventured through it; a few hundred well-positioned defenders could make deathly hell for even a large passing army like this; a man-made avalanche to trap them in the pass could be the opening hand played. From there, target practice.

From this high up, the soldiers seemed to swarm like insects over the fields, wearing the colours of many Aligned cities, and some the castle’s own uniform of course. It was nowhere near what they could send, if they dug deep for numbers, but it was a big enough force to be gathered in one place — a little scooped from each pool of soldiers, so as not to leave any single Aligned city’s defences weak. Supply trains could be seen even now making their way from the road to the encamped masses.

Anfen knew what kind of effort such a gathering would take in organisation alone. This would not have been done without strong purpose. Though if it was a siege unfolding … ‘No catapults,’ said Sharfy. ‘No siege towers. No machinery at all.’

‘Yet they have this bunch sitting here, who must be fed and kept disciplined, who must forgo bathing unless it rains, who must shit in the fields and grumble about being away from their wives. All while anticipating a charge to their own deaths. And they surely don’t have forces at the southern gates. So what is the point?’

As they went through the hidden paths carved high above that lethal stretch of road to the city, there were indeed defenders in place and, by their bustling activity and the tension in the air, they expected something to happen soon. Many knew Anfen’s face, and he knew the words to grant his group passage. ‘How long have the forces been there?’ Anfen asked a passing commander.

‘First group, a week ago. Building since.’ The commander rushed away, a trail of nervous teenage archers behind him.

‘A week!’ Anfen said in disbelief. ‘They could not have set this up better for a complete massacre of their own