Chapter 6 #3
“She told me about it. I took her word for it.”
“So you were in the habit of having intimate conversations with her about what she keeps in her nether garments.”
“No.” I turned my head and glared at her. “I thought we had a deal.”
“So we do. I forgot. Sorry.”
Is an all-knowing creature of pure spirit capable of forgetting? I finished the second document and put it carefully on a ledge to dry. “So tomorrow,” I said, “we press on to Schlechthaben, then two miles out of town on the south road, we take the old drovers’ track due west as far as Rabensey—”
“No dice. The bridge is down.”
“You might have told me before.”
“Only just found out. How’d it be if we followed the riverbank to Craech? There’s a ford around there somewhere, and we can cut across country and pick up the road again the other side of Shelm.”
Not a bad idea, at that. “Fine,” I said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been out that way, but presumably you know every tree and blade of grass, so that’s all right.
Naturally you’ve taken into account the army base at Shelm, where they send out patrols to catch the sheep rustlers on the downs, which means we’re almost certain to be stopped and hassled. ”
“Not a problem, thanks to you.”
I sighed. “Probably not.” I pinched out the rushlight. “I’m going to get some sleep now,” I said.
“Fine.”
She – it – didn’t sleep. Svangerd’s body did, but she didn’t.
I found that rather disturbing, but at least it meant I didn’t have to stand my share of night watches.
But it meant I had no end of trouble getting to sleep.
Just when I was about to drop off, I could feel her watching me, out of Svangerd’s closed eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she snapped at me, some time later. “I can’t help it.”
“You could go outside.”
“It’s raining.”
“I could go outside,” I said, and did. The salt merchant whose body I’d looted had spent a lot of money on a fine oilskin coat, and his hat was impregnated with wool grease, so the rain didn’t bother me particularly.
It pooled in the upcurve of the brim of the hat and dripped onto my knee, a constant pulse, like the tick of a Mezentine mechanical clock.
I’d seen one in Choris, though it hadn’t worked for a century; I know about ticking because I’ve read about it.
The things I’ve read about in books, things from the empire, before the Fall, are incredibly vivid to me – I can close my eyes and they’re real, tangible, just outside the reach of my outstretched fingers; arguably more real than what I see with my eyes open.
By the same token, the people I invent for myself to be are every bit as real – to me – as the body I was born with and its designated cargo.
If I’d been alive a thousand years ago, I think I’d have tried being an actor.
I think I could have done well at it, though of course we know so very little about how the theatre worked in practice, only the hints we can glean from reading the plays themselves, of which only a tiny proportion survive.
I like to think I could have done well at it.
I like to think a lot of things, to soften the pain of being who and when I am.
Something was wrong. I opened my eyes and lifted my head, which discharged a cupful of rainwater from my hat into my lap. I identified the wrong thing. It was a spear, pointing straight at me. It was so close I couldn’t focus on the tip.
Behind the spear was a man, wrapped up in soaking wet clothes. “On your feet,” he whispered.
Useful lesson for you. If you want to sneak up on someone, driving rain is your friend.
It masks sound and obscures vision, and the sentry is so miserable about being wet through that he loses concentration.
I stood up. The spearhead followed me. Your spear is a fast weapon.
If you’ve got good reactions, you can outreact a knife or a sword, two times out of five.
A spear will get you nine times out of ten, even if you’re like Svangerd, slippery as an eel.
“Move away from the door,” the spearman whispered. I could barely make out what he was saying over the heavy patter of the rain. I moved. Three men appeared from behind him and burst through the door. I heard a crash, a shout, scuffling noises. Then nothing.
The spearman looked at me. Doubt is corrosive.
I watched it eat him. Then I dropped to one knee, grabbed the spearshaft six inches behind the end of the socket, gave it a big twist and wrenched it through forty-five degrees, which was the biggest arc I could muster under the circumstances.
It came away in my hand, and I let it drop.
The spearman tried to punch me, but I sidestepped, tripped him and jumped clear.
I let him get halfway to his feet and kicked him on the jaw.
He slumped in a heap, like a shirt dropped on the floor, and ceased to be relevant.
“Hello,” I called out. “Are you all right?”
She came to the door. “Get inside,” she said. I went in. There was blood on her face and hands. Not hers.
She’d killed all three of them. One broken neck, one slashed throat, and I couldn’t see what had happened to the third. You don’t get much light from a bulrush.
“One outside,” I heard myself report. “Out cold.”
She pushed past me, went outside, came back.
She didn’t tell me what she’d done. She grabbed the rushlight and knelt down beside the man with the broken neck.
Then she searched the other two. “Nothing,” she said.
“But I’m pretty sure they’re local goons.
Their clothes look lived in and their boots are well used.
If they were the Order, it’d all be newer and wouldn’t fit so well. Even so. Sod it.”
You can’t feel sorry for goons, or the bad guys, or the enemy. Well, you can, but only if you’re chickenshit, like me. “We need to go,” I said.
“In a minute.” She was still rifling through pockets and sleeves. “No money,” she said. “Proves it. The Order would be carrying money, for expenses. Locals would get paid when the job’s done. I told you they’d be following us.”
I picked up the credentials I’d been forging. The ink was more or less dry. I folded them carefully and stowed them away in my sleeve. Then we left. I didn’t stop to check on the man I’d knocked out.
The horses were still where we’d left them, in a fallen-down linhay with half a roof.
“It’s still the best plan we’ve got,” she said, as I hauled myself into the saddle.
“If this is the calibre of the resources available to them, we can handle it, no problem.” Svangerd wouldn’t have phrased it like that, though she’d have shared the sentiment.
“We press on. Are you all right with that?”
I didn’t answer. But she could read my thoughts, so why bother?
Svangerd would have done exactly the same, I told myself. She’d have killed the three – no, four – goons without a second thought. You can’t feel sorry for the enemy. You can’t sympathise with them in any way.
When the sun rose, I had no idea where we were. Clearly this was an area of the back of my hand usually covered by my cuff. “The road,” I said, “has to be back there somewhere.”
“We can’t use the road.”
“No, but we need to know where it is. We ought to be able to see the river. I’m guessing it’s behind those hills over there.”
She nodded. “Steerpoint Ridge.”
“No,” I said, “Steerpoint Ridge should be due north; we’d be able to see it if it wasn’t for the low cloud.
Those hills—” I hesitated. I had no idea what those hills were.
They must have grown in the night, like mushrooms. “I vote we head south,” I said.
“That way, sooner or later, we’ll hit the Eichebach, and then we can follow it due west.”
It was a dismal place to be lost in. Underfoot was mostly couch grass, razor-sharp and inedible for horses, and I’d seen patches of bog cotton, which scared the life out of me. “We ought to get off and walk,” I said.
“With goons after us? No way.”
Svangerd knew better than that. If you tread in one of the soft spots on a couch grass moor, you can be up to your neck before you realise what’s happening.
If you’re walking, you can see where you’re putting your feet.
Up on a horse, you’ve got no chance. “Anyone on that high ground back there can see us for miles,” she said.
“We need to get across this flat stuff quickly, and into those woods over there.”
Where no woods should be. The only woods I could think of in this neighbourhood were the trailing edge of the archduke’s deer forest, except that they were a good eight miles from the road in the wrong direction. “You know everything,” I said, rather ungraciously. “Where the hell are we?”
“In the open,” she replied, “which is stupid. We need to get under cover. Now.”
These days, in the northern part of the duchy, trees only grow on steep hillsides.
It’s something to do with drainage, or the slope sheltering them from the prevailing wind.
The archduke’s deer park is actually all that’s left of the ancient forest, which covered what are now the moors back before the duchy was part of the empire.
Imperial settlers and landowners cleared most of the forest, to make pasture and for charcoal for the ironworks on the coast. When the Aram Chantat came, they found a carefully regulated landscape of mixed arable and sheep farms, divided into squares with geometrical precision by regularly maintained rines and drains.
When they left, they bequeathed it to the heather, the gorse and the couch grass, which shared their views on the desirability of settled agriculture.
The point being, we eventually made it to the woods, and then it was uphill all the way – too steep to ride, so we had to dismount and lead the horses.
I don’t like going uphill. It hurts my legs.