Chapter 65
The skull, of course, is nothing but a signifier. The locals, however, will have you believe that it sings. Under the correct starlight. With the correct libations.
—Archivist Splitwater
The morning rises blue, filled with ice. The embers are low and black. Shipwright stirs them with a stick, tin cup against her lips, the tea sharp and hot.
Shroudweaver’s still sleeping, curled close to the fire, one hand twined with red threads which fidget and twitch. She thinks about waking him, pulls her boots on instead.
Cracked from weeks of walking. She works grease into the worst of it, kneads the leather until it’s loosened enough for her to slip her feet inside.
Beyond the ruins of the squat watchtower, the hills of the Barrowlands push upwards softly, preparing themselves for something more dramatic as they near Thell.
The days stay clear, wisps of cloud torn across a sky that wakes blue, and plunges to night with a deep sudden red, flaring orange across the bright tips of the mountains.
Blackness follows after, the sky thick with the swirl of stars, sharpened by the absence of lamps. The land below cold, dark and still.
She’s grown used to Thell on the horizon. Stark, angular, massive. Close enough that she can see the distant flash of bright pennants. They’ll be there by the afternoon. The thought fills her with a fear that sits in her throat like half-melted ice.
She doesn’t notice she’s biting her lip until blood fills her mouth. She washes it down with tea. Sweeter than usual.
She’ll have to wake him, she knows it. But not yet. The sky is still blue. Shipwright scuffs her feet in the grass, and waits.
Eventually, Shroudweaver rouses warily, reluctantly. She stoops to stroke his hair, squatting next to his head. She offers him a mug of something hot and black, bitter and strong, and keeps another for herself.
‘Morning, sleepyhead. That’s the first good sleep you’ve had in weeks.’
Shroudweaver yawns, stretches. ‘I’m stiff as old sail.’
She ruffles his hair. ‘That’s because you’re decrepit. Get up, I’m bored of being awake without you.’
He smiles, and levers himself to a sitting position, feet still tucked in his bedroll.
Shipwright settles down next to him, taps his knee with finger. ‘You look like a grub.’
‘I feel like a grub,’ he says, knuckling sleep grit out of his eyes. Once he can see clearly, he takes a deep drink from the mug, and sighs appreciatively. ‘That’s better.’ He sips carefully. ‘I haven’t had this in ages. What’s it called again?’
She swirls the leaves in her cup. ‘Stillweed. Or that’s what my mother calls it. It loses something in translation.’
He drinks, eying her over the rim. ‘You’ll need to teach me a few phrases sometime.’
She laughs. ‘Why? So you can impress my parents?’
He looks away, blushes.
She elbows him. ‘Oh my. You want to impress my parents.’
He glares at her. ‘Is that so bad?’
She shakes her head, still chuckling. ‘No, but you can raise the dead. You saved the world, once. Maybe twice, soon. You’d be amazed how that lowers the bar.’
He grunts. ‘Still.’
‘Fine, fine. Once we’re done in Thell. A holiday in the soft embrace of the forests, then I’ll teach you a few choice phrases to make my mother swoon and pluck your cheeks. I promise.’
He grins. ‘Thanks. I love you.’
She tips the dregs of her cup onto the half-frozen grass. ‘I love you too, grub. Let’s get moving.’
An hour later, they’re through the outskirts of the Barrowlands, in the low fertile stretch of country that swings east towards the Burners’ forests, and west towards the coast, and the ruins of Luss. The Cut, she’d seen it called on maps, but it had other names too. The Furrows. The Lows.
Land that was sparsely populated, but richly farmed.
Small clusters of homesteads gathered like gossips around deep wells and fields that seemed bare now, but that would grow lush as the earth turned, thick with the brown and black grain that gave the region its names.
The Cut turned out bread as soft and warm as a baker’s thumb, and ale that tasted like it had slept in the hollow of a malt mill for years, until it was casked and poured.
She realises she’s hungry, takes some dried fruit from her pocket and chews unhappily.
There’s more buzz than normal in the sleepy villages of the Cut this morning.
The streets that lead from steading to steading strung with bright flags, orange and red and white.
Gaggles of young teens, jostling each other for position on the verge, some clutching baskets of petals, some clutching each other, snatching kisses on the edge of the grainfields, running fingers up thighs and necking like swans.
The older villagers gather too, their brown skin baked darker by a life tilling the earth, leaning on sticks or perched on stools. Swapping jugs that still sweated cold beads of water from their time in the root-cellars.
Shipwright nudges Shroudweaver. ‘What do you make of all this?’
He shrugs. ‘A local festival?’ He squints at the lines drawn up either side of the dusty road. ‘A race maybe?’
She watches him closely. He never could resist a gamble, but he likes to pretend he can, ‘Do you want to stay and watch?’
The smile that lights his face is all the answer she needs.
They hitch their horse outside a fenced field and shoulder their way through the growing crowd, ending up next to an elderly man who nods at them with a grin more gum than tooth.
‘Youse are new. Staying for the race?’
‘Yes,’ the Shroudweaver says, quick as a breath.
He grins wider. ‘You betting?’
Shroudweaver shoots at glance at Shipwright and she shrugs. ‘Like I could stop you. It’s your money to lose.’
Shroudweaver smiles beatifically, turns to the old man. ‘How does it work?’
The man waves a thick-nailed hand down the eastern road, past where it bends towards the south.
‘All the young ’uns goin’ to be seen on that yer road soon. Each one’s got a colour from their ’stead, fixed on their pennant. And the lead un’ll have the singing skull. Clutched in his sweaty mitts. Yis follow?’
Shroudweaver nods. ‘I think so.’
The old man grins. ‘So yis can bet on colour – who’s goin’ to be in the lead when they hit t’village line. Or’ – he winks – ‘Yis can bet on the skull. Who’s goin’ to take it over village line.’
Another minute of arcanity passes in a whirl of odds and tips and palmed coins, and Shroudweaver eventually walks away with a marked scrip and a vague sense of satisfaction. Shipwright rolls her eyes and slips some coin to a bright young girl for a crisp roll drenched in warm honey.
‘Are we going to get rich then?’ she asks.
Shroudweaver turns the scrip every which way, frowning at the illegible marks. ‘Maybe?’
Shipwright sucks sugar off her fingers. ‘Don’t lie to me. You never win. Never.’
He smiles, waves the scrip. ‘There’s always a first time.’
They hear the shouts before they see the horses, a rolling wave of cheers and applause that pours out of the south and crashes against the homestead walls like a wave. The livestock in the pens bleat in shock and fear.
And who knew the people of the Cut could make such a noise?
These dour, soft farmers suddenly fitted with lungs made of brass, raising cattle-calling voices that fill the air with looping whoops and trills.
The shrieks of the girls blend together and fall like a squall of birds as the air rains rice and petals and blossoms ahead of the horses.
Shipwright joins in, whooping and hollering.
There’s something infectious in it, a bright joy that lifts her heart and sends it questing for the first hint of the riders.
She feels them before she sees them, the thundering of hooves raising a hum on the road that makes the stones dance.
A cloud of dust boils out of the south, and within the dust, the long shapes of lances, the cut of a bright pennant, and then suddenly, the skull of a horse, clutched in the hands of the lead rider.
Shroudweaver lets out a yell at this, and the distant racers yell in response, a savage whoop that echoes back from the stones of the houses.
The leader is topless, high in the saddle, his chest and face painted with white and yellow bands, streaked like the rising sun. The skull is tucked under one arm as the other cups his horse’s jaw, steering its head straight on down the track.
About a mile out, and with the speed of them, Shipwright realises they have a couple of minutes at best. She watches Shroudweaver’s delighted face, and an idea hits her.
She grabs his wrist. ‘Come with me. Run!’
To his credit, he doesn’t bat an eyelid, just turns and follows her pell-mell over the grass. They’re both laughing like idiots, breathless, arms windmilling.
She drags him to their horse, unhitches it, and mounts up.
The riders are near now, a minute at most. She takes his arm, pulling him up behind her. ‘Come on!’
‘What are we doing?’ he shouts, his voice muddled with laughter, as their horse picks up pace.
She pulls his hand tight around her waist, gives his fingers a squeeze. A surge of elation in her heart.
‘Joining the race!’
Their horse is a little slower with two riders, its stubby coast-cliff legs no match for the horses of the Cut, these white and dappled things that seem to have fallen loose from the hills and dropped, lithe and speeding onto the homestead road.
They have a few moments on the pack though, and they peel off at an angle that brings them onto the road just as the jostling mob of hooves and dust draws level.
Perhaps twenty riders in all, daubed and painted with bright stripes in varying slashes and swirls. Lean and tough looking, some of them as young as the roadside teens, others with a steel slash of years at their temples and brow.
All of them as one glance at the pair thundering up on their squat brown horse. All of them as one let loose a yell of delight and joy at the strangeness of it.
The lead rider stands high in the saddle, beckoning them, his legs swaying with the thunder of his horse below him.
‘Come in strangers, bring your short-legged creature in! Ride your dog with us a while!’ He howls uproariously, then jukes as a pennant marked with a white vine swings at him, and hands lash out for the skull.
He hollers his horse onward and ducks away laughing.
The pack parts to let them in, the leader’s horse skull slipping to one side. He dodges a green pennant with a blue flower couched beneath its rider’s arm, as another woman draws level with him, her colours flashing orange and red.
For a moment, Shipwright and Shroudweaver hold their own.
The lead rider shouts encouragement, and the woman with the orange pennant blows a kiss to Shipwright as she sails past.
Over her shoulder, Shroudweaver chuckles. ‘I think this invalidates my bet.’
Shipwright whoops in response, her heart surging with joy. For the first time in weeks, her mind is clean, clear of worry, nothing in her body but the rush of speed and the thud of her horse’s hooves on the packed earth.
They keep pace for a few seconds more, before their little horse starts to tire, and she chucks gently on the reins to ease its wheezing lungs. The other racers thunder past, their hooves turning the rich, dark earth, the dappled bodies of their horses parting around Shipwright like river water.
As the pack pulls ahead, the dust swirls behind them in a haze of petals.
The lead rider turns his head back, eyes alight with speed.
His gaze etched into the whitened sockets of his face as he yells a farewell.
‘Dog-riders! Grey legions on the march in the south! The crow’s got legs. Better hope you’re as fast as us!’
His friend’s horse barrels into him, sending both animals staggering. For a moment, the skull wobbles, then is caught again. Raucous laughter over the plains, as they cut their necks lower to their animals, striving for every ounce of speed.
Behind them, Shipwright pulls their horse to the side of road. As they dismount, it’s mobbed by the crowd, bringing water and garlands of flowers, ruffling its hair and feeding it treats.
She bends to the knees, catches her breath. Shroudweaver rubs her back in soft, even motions. Her head is still buzzing with adrenaline
As she heaves in a lungful of fresh air, a broad-cheeked woman pats her on the shoulder.
‘A good race. A brave little horse you’ve got there. Strong little mushki.’ She twines her thick black braids. ‘I’ll buy him from you?’
Shipwright shakes her head. ‘No, we need him.’
The woman tuts, reaches into her kirtle for coins. ‘Need him for what?’
‘To get to Thell,’ Shipwright replies.
‘Thell!’ She scoffs, and makes a sign over her left eye. ‘What you want to do there?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Shipwright replies. The woman tuts again. ‘Mountain’s no place for a horse, and besides,’ she gestures over her shoulder. ‘You’re nearly there.’
Shipwright follows her hand. The mountain is closer now. The sweep of the west road must have brought them curving north. Ahead, the true Barrowlands, and beyond that, Thell.
The peaks stand stark on this clear day, the whole black stone range cutting into the sky.
It’s ten miles, perhaps, no more. The first outbuildings already visible, the painted huts, the flags on the cairns.
The familiarity of it all makes her heart sink, the brief lightness of the race draining like rain into rock.
The woman tuts again. ‘Mountain’s no place for a horse, no place for you either. How many foreigners it got to swallow in one month, I ask you?’
Shipwright’s attention is caught. ‘There were others?’
The woman flattens her eyes like a cat, picks burrs from the horse’s mane with practiced fingers.
‘Yeah, a fluff-head boy and a tree-cutter. Tall, beard.’
Shipwright glances to Shroudweaver. ‘It couldn’t be?’
Shroudweaver shrugs. ‘Maybe I have some good luck after all.’
She shakes her head in wonder. ‘Fallon’s either going to kiss us or kill us.’
Shroudweaver grins. ‘No change there then. It’ll be good to see Quickfish though.’
The dark-haired woman grunts and presses her closed fist into Shipwright’s chest. ‘Talk on your own time. Money for horse or not?’ She jingles it meaningfully.
Absently, Shipwright takes the money and hands over the reins.
‘Take good care of him.’
The woman gathers the harness and leads the horse away to a chorus of jealous complaints.
As the people of the Cut disperse to their beer and feasting, Shipwright and Shroudweaver stand together, looking at the black mountain. ‘The mountain’s no place for horses,’ Shipwright murmurs to herself.
‘No place for us either,’ Shroudweaver agrees.
‘Still,’ she says. ‘We should get this done.’
‘Shall we then?’ he says, offering a hand.
She takes it. ‘Sure thing, dog-rider.’
Hand in hand, they walk towards the black mountain, as the fields sleep quiet beneath the songs of their tillers.