Chapter Thirty-One Guthnyr #2
“There is another way.” These words, softly spoken, came from Torfyn. Stroking his beard, the outlaw chieftain turned a thoughtful gaze towards the southern hills. “The Green Run we called it back in my smuggling days. You remember, Deyna? Your mother spoke of it often enough.”
“That she did,” Deyna confirmed. “A region of forested hills that runs all the way to the coast, ending only a few miles from the Citadel.” Looking to her uncle, she added in a cautious tone, “Beloved by smugglers because it’s such an easy place to get lost in.
My mother spoke of friends who wandered from the path never to be seen again. ”
“I recall the trails well enough to act as guide,” Torfyn replied. “Not an easy place to march an army through, I’ll grant you. But it’s far from impassible, and there’s no stronghold or settlement to be found among those trees.”
“How long a march to reach it?” Guthnyr asked.
“Two weeks,” Torfyn said. “If we push hard, which we must. The country ’twixt here and there is all rolling fields and bare hills. Not somewhere to be caught by the Vortigurn’s menda, assuming he has one to send.”
“This seems a decent plan to me,” Aleida put in as Guthnyr fell to silent pondering.
Her judgement, at least regarding this quandary, could hardly be called sound.
She would risk any danger if it got her to Ruhlin’s side one day quicker.
Looking to Deyna, Guthnyr found her features also set in thought.
Their nightly distractions hadn’t resumed, but despite his lingering resentment, their mutual understanding persisted. Meeting his gaze, she gave a short nod.
“The Green Run it is,” Guthnyr announced. “Spread the word: we break camp with the dawn and march until dusk. Any grumblers can take it up with me, though I doubt they’ll like the outcome.”
Faced with such an arduous march, it was inevitable that the menda that reached the forested hills of the Green Run would be reduced by desertion.
By Deyna’s reckoning, they had lost over a thousand in all, mostly Travka who preferred making off with their loot rather than face the grinding fatigue of a forced march.
Guthnyr made no effort to stop them, reasoning they would be of scant use in any fighting to come.
Besides, every deserter meant one less mouth to feed.
Upon first sight of the unbroken expanse of undulating green stretching away into the distance, he fully understood Deyna’s trepidation at following this route.
If there was ever a place to get lost in, this was surely it.
To his surprise, the Morvek exhibited a similar pitch of unease at the prospect of traversing the Green Run.
Usually, when encountering woodland, they reacted with zeal at finding a fresh hunting ground.
Yet, when Guthnyr reined his mount to a halt at the forest edge, he found Tirohk and a group of his warriors scanning the trees with wary eyes.
“Looks wrong, smells wrong,” the Vehlkasa war chief stated, peering into the shadowy maze of vegetation with evident distaste.
“Wrong how?” Guthnyr enquired.
“Just… wrong. Like a place made for beast, not us. We should not walk here, Kirah-Var.”
“To beat the Rulchakin, we must.”
Tirohk grimaced, continuing to dither until a strident question from Aleida brought a flush to his skin.
She spoke in Morvek so Guthnyr could catch only a vague sense of her meaning, but he was sure it contained an allusion to cowardice.
She and the war chief matched glares for a prolonged moment.
Guthnyr recalled the many guarded or even hostile looks the Vehlkasa had directed at the Aerling’s daughter.
As a despised mixed-blood, she had been tolerated for her blessing and the fact that she was the Telchak’s woman.
Seeing the fury in Tirohk’s baleful stare, Guthnyr worried that such toleration might be about to end.
“Have we not walked far enough together to be called friends?” Guthnyr asked, addressing the question to both of them.
When this brought only a slight lessening of their ire, he stepped closer to Tirohk, voice lowered, “You have put great trust in me, I know. I ask that you continue to do so. We are so close now. The Telchak lies on the other side of this forest. As does victory. We need only grasp it.”
Snorting, the war chief turned away, snarling an instruction at his warriors who promptly disappeared into the trees. Before following, Tirohk paused to regard Guthnyr with a reproachful gaze. “Trust is never endless, Kirah-Var. Remember that.”
The army was forced to enter the forest in a column no more than two warriors abreast, the line sometimes thinned to single file by the narrowness of the trail.
Torfyn took the lead and Guthnyr soon abandoned the hopeless task of trying to gauge their direction as the outlaw chieftain’s course was often wayward.
That first day, they traversed rock-strewn slopes and mud-banked streams, narrow ravines and steep-sided gulleys.
All the while, Guthnyr scanned the forest for any sign of threat.
The fact that he saw nothing did little to assuage his concern.
Apart from the occasional flutter of birdsong, the Green Run seemed unnaturally quiet.
The first night, they made camp in what Torfyn called a clearing, although Guthnyr thought it scarcely worthy of the name.
It consisted of a few acres of relatively flat ground where the trees were more thinly spread, enabling tents and shelters to be raised.
Establishing a firm cordon of pickets on such ground was tedious and time consuming, the sky near full dark by the time Guthnyr completed a full tour of the camp’s defences.
The one boon to this gloomy sojourn was that it heralded a new quietude to his patchwork army.
Travka, Morvek, and freed slave all forsook their habitual discord for tense regard of the deepening shadows.
Usually, his nightly inspection would discover at least one picket asleep or close to it, requiring a stern rebuke to snap them to alertness.
This night, he found them all fully awake, many clutching weapons with sweaty hands.
“Mother always said the worse thing about the Green Run was the fear,” Deyna commented later.
Since the spy’s hanging she tended to keep to her own fire.
Yet tonight, when Guthnyr sat down beside his shelter, she came to join him.
“She smuggled all manner of contraband under these trees for years, but said she could never shake the twin notions of being both watched and unwelcome. There are many old tales of ghosts and such haunting these woods, but Mam never saw a single one. Didn’t stop the fear, though. ”
Guthnyr replied with only a vague nod, his attention drifting to the neighbouring fire where Lohra was teaching Ryma some form of game.
It involved weaving a string about the fingers and forming it into various shapes, all while singing a song.
The blonde girl laughed as she helped Ryma wrap the twine about her small digits, making them perhaps the least fearful souls he had encountered this night.
Lohra’s cheerfulness struck him as odd, given the horrors she had witnessed in her home city.
Lost her entire family, yet she finds room in her heart for laughter, he thought, experiencing a pang of envy.
Felnir once said I could laugh at a shit in a puddle.
How long had it been since he laughed at anything?
“Her family were cruel to her,” Deyna said as his gaze continued to linger on Lohra.
“Her father especially. I don’t think she misses them.
Apart, perhaps, her uncle. Though she appears to harbour no ill-feelings regarding his demise.
Numbers and games, the more complex the better, seem her principal interests.
You surely wouldn’t want to play her at cards.
She has an uncanny way of knowing every hand dealt. ”
When her words met only silence, Deyna paused to issue a small cough. “I should have told you,” she said. “About the slaves. I’m sorry I did not.” From the strain in her voice and the twist of her mouth, Guthnyr divined this may have been the first apology she had ever uttered.
“If you had, I might not have begun this march,” he said. “That was your reasoning, was it not?”
Deyna shifted a little. “The Vortigurn needs to fall. We both know that. Achieving such an end was always going to spill a great deal of blood, most of it innocent. I believe you are intelligent enough to have known that too.”
“I suppose I did. But it’s never been my way to dwell on the bad things. That I always left to my brother, or my sister.”
“You have a sister?”
“I do. Thera is her name. Thera Speldrenda, Vellihr of Justice to the Sister Queens. Great is the renown of the Blackspear, and well deserved it is too.”
“Vellihr?”
“A favoured servant to the queens. Most are warriors. Some are scholars.”
“Ah, so your sister is akin to a Ventra. It’s what the Vortigurn calls his special servants, though there are certainly no scholars among them.
” She paused again before speaking on, voice softer but also more serious.
“When we draw close to the Citadel, it will be the Ventra he sends against us. They are like her.” She nodded to Aleida, sitting in brooding silence at the next fire.
“Kelven, we call them. Possessed of the Altvar’s blessing.
Some are discovered as children and taken into the Vortigurn’s service.
Others are bred. Their loyalty is fierce, and their powers considerable. ”
“So,” Guthnyr sighed, “you come to warn me of a yet greater ocean of blood to be spilled.”
“I come because, if we are to succeed, there can be no more discord between us. I understand your anger, but do not allow it to cloud your judgement. We have but one chance at victory. And you know well the consequence if we fail.”