Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Tume

It was quiet in these hills to the south of the Silent Valley, and the pale morning daylight brightened only slowly beneath a layer of clouds. Snow still lingered in clumps within the shadows of yellowing grasses, which swayed and sighed in the breezes coursing through the small side valley where they had camped.

So this is Khos, Che thought to himself, as though only now, in his relative solitude away from the demands and company of Mann, he could truly appreciate the landscape of this island.

Che sat on the wet ground with his back resting against a saddlebag. He had removed the piercing in his eyebrow, and he was dressed comfortably in plain woollen trousers and a thick cotton shirt that had cowry shells sewn along its sleeves. Over it all, his cloak was keeping out the worst of the wind. During the remains of the night he’d left his ammunition belt strapped around his waist, where the pistol hung in its holster, and his knife too. He’d watched and listened for signs of pursuit, not sleeping at all.

Now, in the early light, Che was watching a hawk as it balanced with delicate twitches of its wingtips above the opposite slope of the little valley, silently hovering as it watched for prey. Before his outstretched legs, a small campfire of twigs smoked and crackled in a circle of stones. The meagre flames offered little warmth save for the mind.

The hawk suddenly dived with wings folded tight. It vanished behind a line of grasses, appeared once more with talons empty. It must be young, thought Che. Still learning to kill.

Try again.

The fire spat, and he stared at it, watching the two fresh branches he’d recently laid across the embers. Their bellies glowed red, the occasional flame struggling upwards, flickering, dying again. Che’s eyes narrowed, heavy with tiredness.

The old Roshun snored on the other side of the fire. The farlan-der was suffering from a bad chest, his breathing laboured and shallow. Indeed, he coughed just then, and stirred beneath the cloak Che had placed over him for a blanket.

Ash’s head came up, and the man opened his bleary grey eyes.

He took a long look at the young man before him. Blinked in recognition.

‘Che,’ he rasped.

‘Easy,’ replied Che, as the old man clutched his head and struggled to rise. ‘I think you’re concussed. I’ve been trying to keep you awake all night.’

Ash sat up with some care. His fingers inspected the lump on his skull and the fresh stitching there.

‘That would explain why I feel like death,’ croaked the farlander, as he gently placed a palm against his skull.

Che tossed the flask of water across to him. The old Roshun drank from it long and deep. He gasped, and his neck craned as he took in the sky and twisted as he looked at the valley slopes beneath their campsite. He took another sip of water. Smacked his lips and stared at the flask between his legs for some moments.

At last he lifted his head with some clarity in his eyes.

‘The battle,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

Che offered a weak shrug. ‘The Expeditionary Force rallied. The last I saw of the Khosians they were fleeing across a frozen lake.’

‘Sasheen. Is she dead?”

‘I hope so. She was shot through the neck. I’m curious, though, why you were there trying to kill her?’

Ash was fumbling for something in his tunic. He drew out a leather pouch, dug his fingers into it to find that nothing was there. In disgust he tossed the empty pouch into the fire. He coughed long and hard, his eyes screwed in pain. At last he coughed a gob of phlegm into the flames, where it sizzled for a moment while he hung his head between his knees.

‘The boy was yours, wasn’t he? The apprentice she burned to death in Q’os?’

‘Aye, he was mine,’ came his voice, husky.

‘But he wasn’t wearing a seal.’

‘No.’

So the old farlander was human after all, Che mused.

He studied the man in the pale daylight. Ash had aged since Che had last seen him all those years ago in Cheem. He was thinner than he recalled. The bones of his face were sharp and pronounced beneath his dark skin, which was creased with wrinkles, and papery thin. His wedge of grey beard had overgrown. His eyes were sunken in their sockets and faintly yellow.

He looked like a man nearer death than not.

‘What am I doing here?’ Ash asked him. ‘This makes no sense to me.’

‘I’ve been sitting wondering the same thing myself.’

The farlander lifted his head and studied Che for a long moment. His eyes settled on the stubs of the young man’s little fingers. He winced. ‘What are you doing here, Che?’ he said. ‘Are you one of them?’

Che turned away.

‘Che?’

As the moments dragged on, he could sense the old man’s suspicions growing.

‘You left Sato without telling us,’ ventured Ash.

Che looked to the bird once more, saw it hovering again. Part of him wished to confess it all to the old man just then, to tell him what part he had played in the destruction of the Roshun order. But he found himself unable to say it.

Still, realization gradually dawned on the old farlander. ‘You were with them all along. With the Empire. But how? The Seer would have seen it in you.’ Ash sat up straighter, though it brought him pain. ‘Che – what are you? What have you done?’

‘I’m a Diplomat,’ snapped Che, ‘who lacked any other choice but to live. And what I did, old man, was save your life.’

Che tried to calm himself as the farlander peered at him in disbelief. Emotions swelled in his body.

It is over, then, the ancient Seer had said to Che sadly as they’d sat watching the Roshun monastery burning in the Cheem night. All the people he had known over his years of living there, the ones who had befriended him, who had been a family to him, all dead or dying in the flames.

Better finish me, Che, the old Seer had told him. Do it now, for I would prefer that it was you and not some stranger.

Che swallowed. He looked at Ash across the pitiful fire, knowing that the old Roshun was one of the last of his kind now, and that he did not even know it.

The knowledge felt like a dirty secret in his mind.

‘They know the Roshun are in Cheem,’ Ash finally said, and his eyes swept up to accuse him with sudden anger.

Che would not speak of it.

The old man threw aside his cloak and made a lunge at Che, though he collapsed to the ground before he could reach him. Che remained still. He watched as the farlander tried to push himself up, but it was beyond him.

He stood and dragged Ash back to where he’d been lying. Threw the cloak over his shivering body again. Ash looked up at the clouds with his chest rising and falling fast. Che was moved enough to speak, to share with him something of his own loss, but then he paused, his mouth gaping.

The old Roshun was chuckling; a broken sound filled with bitterness.

‘All is lost,’ Ash cackled to himself.

Che tilted his head to one side, curious. He watched the smile fade from the farlander’s face, Ash growing sober once more.

Che said, ‘You wish to kill me, I suppose.’

The old farlander stared at him hard. ‘When I have the strength for it.’

He looked away, saw the young hawk lift from the far side of the valley, its great wings flapping. It clutched something in its talons, a shape struggling to be free.

He lay back and closed his eyes.

In the early glow of dawn, Bull watched imperial soldiers searching the battlefield for survivors. They were moving in pairs, and when they found one of their own still breathing they called out for a stretcher-bearer, and when they found a wounded Khosian instead they checked first that the man wasn’t an officer, then stabbed him dead with their spears.

A pair of these clean-up men had stopped not far from where Bull was lying. They looked down upon a wounded Red Guard as the soldier lifted a hand above the surface of corpses around him. One of the Imperials kicked the hand aside and stood on his arm to keep it down. His partner stabbed him twice, his eyes as blank as the grey sky over their heads.

Bull looked away, tired and beyond hope now.

All night he had lain trapped under the mountainous weight of the northern tribesman. The flow of the giant man’s blood had steamed in the freezing air, warming Bull’s torso even as his great body died, so that he wasn’t cold, only near suffocated by the pressure on his broken cuirass, which was enough to tighten it against him and make breathing a laborious command of will.

It had taken Bull the finest bladework of his life to bring this giant down in the heat of the battle. They’d fought like two pit-fighters up close and physical. Bull had taken the worst of the battering. He’d known there was only a slim chance of winning the fight – and he’d taken it, boldly, even as his own legs were giving out on him. A perfectly timed jab caught the northerner in the lower thigh, hamstringing him, and Bull had experienced the brief thrill of victory before the giant had lunged out and grappled him, and his weight had borne Bull to the ground, trapping him where they fell.

Blood caked his face where his right cheekbone seemed to be fractured. He was unable to open his right eye, nor move his left hand. With all his strength he’d been unable to move the man off him.

A fine mess, Bull had thought to himself, and had stared at the night sky overhead, listening to the ever-fading clash of arms, knowing that he had been left behind.

Around them, the dead and wounded had lain scattered and draining of heat. A man wept, broken; others sobbed from the pain and shock of missing limbs. A youth cried out for his mother, long past shame for such a thing, then howled that he was not ready to die. Voices gasped, whispered prayers; not only Khosians, but the Imperials amongst them too. Someone in a northern accent talked to their wife, telling her he would be back soon, that he loved her, that he was sorry for betraying her. Another called to comrades now gone from the field, or lying dead nearby, for no one answered him.

At one point, the great tribesman had awakened with a shudder. He spat blood and looked about as best he could, his lips trembling. He tried to move his great body without success. He sensed Bull lying breathing beneath him, still alive.

In guttural Trade, the man asked how long it might be before dawn.

For a time they had chatted.

Ersha, he offered for his name. A mercenary from a tribe called the Sengetti, all the way from the cold northern steppe.

The man had slipped once more into unconsciousness as snow had fallen again in the middle of the long night, settling over their twisted shapes like a blanket thrown upon them by the great Mother of the World.

Now, in the gathering daylight, a groan sounded from the Ersha; a gasp of air escaping his lips as though he’d been holding his breath for an endless time. They had fused during the night into one single mess of drying blood and numb muscles. Once more the tribesman shoved hard with his arms in an effort to pull free from Bull, but he failed, nearly crushing Bull as he settled back down with a sigh.

‘You Khosians make for poor beds,’ the tribesman commented in his rough Trade.

Bull grunted. ‘And you northerners make for poor quilts.’

A wheezing sound. Something like laughter.

Bull grimaced as the tremor of it ran through the weight that pressed down against his broken armour. The two men said nothing more for a while. The tribesman seemed to be having his own difficulties with breathing.

It was the discomfort in the end that caused Bull to speak again, if only to take his mind away from it. ‘Tell me,’ he asked. ‘Is it true your women pierce their parts with jewellery?’

Ersha lifted his head, and his bearded face turned to look down at him. His teeth were sharpened into points. ‘Aye. It’s true. It was our way long before the Q’osians began doing the same.’

‘Your women must make for interesting bedmates.’

‘Don’t,’ wheezed the man. ‘You’ll have me thinking of my wives. I doubt you’d want me to have a hard-on just now.’

Bull tried hard not to laugh blackly.

‘Let me tell you. You already have one.’

‘You jest.’

‘I wish that I was.’

A moment of silence followed. ‘You would think,’ came the tribesman’s hushed voice, ‘that bleeding out all night would diminish such a thing.’

‘You would.’

‘That was a nice cut to my leg, by the way.’ It was the second time the man had offered him the compliment. Bull replied with the same words as before.

‘You left it open. Your lower defence is wanting.’

‘It’s the height. You must have the same problem.’

‘Aye.’

The clouds were brightening above their heads. They moved almost imperceptibly, though the longer Bull stared at them, the more he felt that it was he that was moving, and the rest of the world beneath him.

In the distance, another voice was cut off in mid-shout.

‘You should be glad, Bull. What is better? To die like this next to your broken charta, or to rot away in a cell for the rest of your life?’

‘This is hardly a glorious end here, pinned to the ground by an erection.’

‘Don’t,’ chuckled the man again. ‘It hurts, very badly, when I laugh.’

Bull winced at the shaking weight of him.

‘You did not tell me what you did – to deserve such a punishment as that.’

Bull smacked his dry mouth. His throat was burning from thirst. ‘I killed a man,’ he said. ‘A hero of Bar-Khos.’

‘A hero? And what had he done to you, this hero?’

‘He took advantage of my younger brother. And then he broke his heart.’

‘Ah, now I see.’

For a while he listened to Ersha’s breathing as it grew ever-more shallow. The man was struggling to remain conscious.

Bull had met Adrianos once, hero of the Nomarl raid. Two years ago, when the crowds had come to watch Bull take on the champion from Al-Khos. He had liked the man and his quick wit, had even felt a measure of admiration for what he’d accomplished against the Imperials.

Bull’s younger brother had admired Adrianos too, when he’d first become a Special under his command. Last year, only twenty-four years of age, he had died in a fight in a taverna, a fight he’d started when a group of Adrianos’s friends had walked in proclaiming the man’s virtues. Bull had been shocked out of his mind by his younger brother’s death; even more so when he’d discovered the reason for the fight and for his sudden hostility towards Adrianos.

He felt his anger start to rise just in recalling it.

Bull turned his head to one side and breathed the memory out of him. Through his tears he could see nothing but bodies, a carpet of them in every direction he cared to look. He hoped that Wicks was all right. He hoped the lad wasn’t lying here somewhere amongst the fallen.

A pair of boots stepped into view. Bull blinked his eyes clear, looked up to see two soldiers leaning on their spears and gazing down at him.

‘Here’s one,’ said the shorter of the two men, and hefted his spear and aimed the bloody warhead at Bull’s neck.

Bull refused to flinch. He waited with open eyes, only wishing for it to be swift.

‘No,’ croaked Ersha, and the great man twisted his neck to look at them. ‘This one – this one is mine.’

The soldiers squinted, taking in the giant man’s condition.

‘They gave the order,’ said the shorter of the two. ‘No slaves to be taken. Kill all save for officers.’

‘I don’t give a shit for their orders,’ growled the tribesman. ‘This one is mine, do you hear me?’

‘Yours? You’ll be lucky to see the end of the day.’

The tribesman tried to reach his side. He swore, then jerked something free. A black string hung from his grip.

Ersha wheezed as he placed the necklace about Bull’s head, pulled it down onto his neck. The necklace carried a stone marker.

‘ Mine,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Che and Ash spoke little as they travelled through the lowland hills bordering the Silent Valley, trying to distance themselves from the scene of battle by skirting west along the valley’s course. Even higher ground rose to the south of them, and beyond it mountains with spindly peaks covered with ice, glimpsed through the boughs of trees as the pair traversed ravines and sage-choked valleys.

Both of them had reversed their white cloaks so the grey inconspicuous lining faced outwards. Che led the zel while Ash rode in the saddle. The farlander was still weak. Often he called for a halt so that he could be sick amidst plumes of his own breath.

They had nothing to eat between them. Che plucked berries as he they went, though Ash refused them, claiming he would not hold them down. It was a concussion all right, and Che knew that the last thing he should doing was moving the old man like this. But another night in the freezing cold might be even worse for him. Ash didn’t have the look of a man who would survive that.

By late afternoon they halted on a high ridge with their eyes narrowed against the biting wind, and looked down onto the broad floodplain known as the Reach. The fertile land was dusted white with frost and snow. Farms and villages dotted the open fields, and stands of birch and yellowpine and tiq. Amongst them, pillars of smoke rose from burning fields where immature crops still grew. Along the dirty scratches of roads, families were pulling carts and driving cattle as they left their homes behind them.

The air was startling in its clarity today. He could just make out Simmer Lake ten or so laqs to the north-west, where the city of Tume floated as a pale smudge, a sliver of black rising from the heart of it; the ancient citadel, he presumed. Directly to the north, the frozen Cinnamon snaked its way towards the lake, accompanied by the straighter line of the main road. The road itself was clogged with trudging men; the Khosian army in retreat.

‘They head for Tume,’ Che declared.

He squinted, taking in the great lake again and the island city. A black dot was moving in the air above the citadel. A skyship.

He looked up at the clouds growing ever darker, suspecting it would snow soon. Che glanced back at Ash in hope that the old Roshun might offer a suggestion. The farlander’s head, though, was nodding in exhaustion.

‘Sparus and the army will be coming through here soon enough,’ Che muttered, almost to himself. Then, louder, so that Ash might hear him: ‘No choice for it,’ and he tugged the zel along as they set off towards the city.

‘Sweet Mercy,’ declared Kris, hitching her medico pack higher on her back. ‘I think my feet are about to drop off.’

Curl looked at the older woman and found she hadn’t the energy to think of a response. Her own feet ached terribly, made only worse now that they were crossing the hard planking of the floating bridge that led into Tume.

They were surrounded by the walking wounded, battered soldiers who limped and shuffled and helped each other along as best they could. Like Curl, the men were too far gone for talk now. Their dull expressions were filthy with grime and blood save for where their helms had covered their faces. Their eyes looked blasted, as though they’d been staring hard into a furnace all night. Curl felt a fierce camaraderie with these fighting men now. Together they had come through the worst of it. Today, she found that she no longer carried herself like a civilian, but as one of them.

Against the flow of the army, a much more presentable stream of Tume citizenry were pushing and pulling their belongings along as they attempted to flee the city. They glanced nervously at the soldiers in passing, seemed to see them not as saviours but as harbingers of defeat. Curl wasn’t certain that they were wrong.

She tugged her cloak tighter about herself against the falling sleet. Her hair was pasted wet across her skull and her ears burned from the cold, making her wish dearly that she had a hood with which to cover her head. She swiped her face clear and kept her narrowed eyes focused on the back of the soldier before her. The man was shivering, his own cloak gone and his arms clutched tight around his sides. His breath rose over a bloody bandage wrapped about his skull.

Past him, along the far-reaching lines of trudging men, a fortified gatehouse stood at the end of the bridge with its gates cast open. Tume sprawled beyond it and ranged far to either side.

Only the citadel stood on firm ground, the walls and turrets built on a prominence of rock that rose high above the rooftops. The rest of the buildings of the city, all of them constructed of wood like the bridge itself, floated on great rafts of what Kris had simply called lakeweed; some form of vegetation natural to the lake, which filtered the water for minerals and nutrients and kept it clear as a mountain pool. Curl could see all the way to the muddy bottom, the algae-covered rocks and plantlife down there. Near the surface, she glimpsed shoals of fish nibbling on the loose tendrils at the edges of the floating weeds.

It was clear to her now why the lake had been given its name. It bubbled in parts, particularly along the southern shoreline, where the surface churned and boiled and released wafts of mist into the cooler air.

‘If you go down to the shoreline there,’ Kris said, noticing her interest, ‘you can dig a hole, and wait for the water to seep into it, and then cook your breakfast.’

Curl managed a nod. She wondered how anyone could even think about eating in such circumstances, when the air smelled so badly of rotten eggs.

Ahead, she noticed that some of the men were looking off to the east and the far shore there. Curl could not see what they were looking at for all the citizens passing by.

‘Listen,’ said Kris, and she did. The breeze across the water shifted, and the sounds of it came to her, dull cracks of gunfire.

‘They’re coming,’ said Kris.

The people of Tume could hear it too. A murmur passed along their column, then shouts of alarm. Some began to turn around, to return to the safety of the city. Others began to push harder, wanting to be clear of there.

The army marched onwards, thinking only of shelter and a hot meal.