He had the axe out now. The rider on the ground was looking straight at him, eyes pleading. There was blood. The snapper had found a way in. The other one was busy shaking and shredding Hellas, trying to get him out of his armoured skin.
Jasaan’s hands were shaking. The snapper was looking at him too. They were both were. One man pleading with him to come, one monster daring him to try.
He couldn’t do it.
The rider managed to stab the monster in its leg with his sword and then the snapper finally flipped him on his back and ripped his throat out.
Scared. The one thing no Adamantine Man could ever be. He was frozen, shaking, part in fear, more in shame. He hated himself. Skjorl would never even have thought of running.
The two snappers settled in to eat, keeping half a watchful eye on him. Jasaan began to back away. When they didn’t follow, he turned and ran. Didn’t know where he was going. Just somewhere. Away. Nezak and the other rider were long gone; they probably hadn’t seen what had happened, but he couldn’t count on that. If they had, then what? They’d hate him, that’s what. They’d think he was nothing. Less than nothing and they’d be right.
It would be like it was before. The way it had been after Scarsdale.
Eventually, when nothing gave chase, he stopped running. He caught his breath and his head started to clear. He hadn’t the first idea where he was and he didn’t dare go back and look for Nezak. If there were any more snappers, the last two riders were probably both dead like the rest.
He’d lost his shield. He didn’t remember when.
Nezak. Stupid thing to do, learn a man’s name and a little bit about him. Stupid out here, the world being what it was. He sighed and sat on his heels. Where would you go if you were a rider? Get out of this blasted forest. Yes, a man with any sense would turn right round, and sure, they’d have to cross the plains to reach the Pinnacles, and yes, there were dragons out there but there were places to hide too. A man with any sense would turn right round and go home.
They’d been five. Now they might be three if he was lucky, one if he wasn’t. But it only took one man to make a difference, if he was a man in the right place.
Bugger.
Took a while, staring up at the canopy of leaves overhead, to get a rough idea of where the sun was. Good enough to tell his north from south and his east from west. The Pinnacles were somewhere to the east. As far as he knew, the Aardish Caves were somewhere to the west and the Yamuna would be to the south.
Home. He didn’t have a home. The Guard had been his home and the dragons had taken that from him. The dragons and then Skjorl.
He turned south, towards the river. The river would take him to the caves.
52
Twelve days before the Black Mausoleum
He pushed at the door with all his strength but it didn’t move. He could see from the way the daylight came through the gaps in the planks around the edges what they’d done to him. They’d trapped him. Buried him alive.
Didn’t make any sense. Why do that? You wanted to kill man, you stuck a knife in him and watched until the light went out of his eyes. That was that, the only way.
So she didn’t want him dead. Maybe they were coming back? He should sit and wait?
No. He’d done that once before. In Scarsdale. And why would they bury him? Made no sense.
Mighty Vishmir but his head hurt! Once he’d pushed at the door enough to know it was weighed down with more than he could move, he went and sat in the middle of the cellar floor to think. Or try, at least to try. His head was screaming.
He’d been drunk. Dead drunk. He remembered that. The shit-eater had been tied well enough. Couldn’t have escaped on his own. The alchemist then. Had there been an accident? He’d banged his head?
Moving meant screwing up his face against the surge of pain. Dreamleaf, more of it, that’s what he needed. Except when he looked for it, his eyes couldn’t quite seem to focus. He moved to where one of the shafts of sunlight sneaked in through a crack in the trapdoor, but the brightness was like being stabbed in the eye with a hot needle. He lay down, rolled on his side, closed his eyes and lay still, gasping. The cellar was spinning.
The shit-eater had been in the cellar when he’d been drunk. He’d been talking to the alchemist. He remembered, in pieces. She’d looked good. That was the wine.
Scarsdale.
Had he had her? In front of the shit-eater? Had she given in at last? No, he’d remember that, wouldn’t he?
He’d taken her. In front of her man. What was his name?
No, that was Scarsdale. This was somewhere else.
Memories crashed into each other, merged, went their own way again, all muddled up.
Ancestors! The alchemist. She’d done something to him. He couldn’t remember her name. Couldn’t remember either of them. Couldn’t remember much except the pain. Someone had hit him on the head. The evidence was the lump on his skull. Start with that.
Start with the beginning.
No. Scarsdale. Start with that.
Isul Aieha! Damn place wouldn’t leave him alone. He screwed up his eyes. Looked for a memory he could hang on to, one that wouldn’t slip away. Found it and clung to it as though it was his life. Sand. He remembered Sand. Everything burning. Held on to that memory and forced out the next one. Stuck them back together piece by piece, like undoing a rope full of old knots, each one as impenetrable and held fast as the next. One by one he picked and prised them apart.
Sand. They’d walked for weeks after the tunnels under the monastery. The men he’d had with him at Outwatch had been stoical about the destruction. The others, the hundreds of refugees, the survivors, the ordinary folk who happened still to be alive, they’d wept and screamed and torn their hair. Couldn’t blame them. Even the Adamantine Men had come out with tight lips and taut faces and far-away eyes. The first time most of them had seen what dragons could really do. They were seeing the death of the realms, of everything they knew, stark and irrevocable. Some faced it and took it for what it was. Others screamed and tried to imagine something else. For the most part those were the ones who died on the way.
They were slow. Some days they only covered a few miles, following the Last River towards the mountains. Simply wasn’t any other way to go, not with so many people. He split them up into little groups, graded by their speed, divided his men between them. He took the slowest. The weak, the sick, the old, the frail, the mad. They hated him. One by one they failed or fled, but he had no choice. He drove them hard. The longer they took, the more they starved, the more they starved, the slower they went. When they fell, he killed them. Same for the ones who fled — tracked them, hunted them and put them down with neither malice nor mercy, then buried them in the sand. Left them in the open, maybe a dragon would find them. Maybe it would start to wonder, or worse, it would find them still alive and tear out their memories. He’d seen that under Outwatch. Seen it with his own eyes, that murderous hatchling snatching men and staring at them, and them screaming and begging for mercy and spilling out the places where others might hide. It never saved them. The hatchling had killed everyone. It had been admirably, remorselessly thorough.
So the ones that ran, he killed them. They were doing to die anyway and it made the others safer. When they got to Southwatch, he was proud of the ones he’d saved but they still hated him.
Southwatch had food and shelter for months, but he’d let his Adamantine Men stay for three days, no more. When they left, they left with as much as they could carry, as many weapons as they could use, whatever tools took their fancy. Too much, screamed the men and women of Sand that he left behind. There were hundreds of them
