The Pilgrims

48

There was no point chastising Loup for taking another scale vision; they had four days’ march ahead, less if they really laid boot to road, and having the folk mage storm off, disgruntled, was very likely a death sentence. There were elementals between them and their city, perhaps even Lesser Spirits, and Loup would make sure they avoided them.

‘We had a visitor,’ Anfen said to Siel and Sharfy as morning set in and they set out in the woods. He’d debated whether or not to tell them about Stranger, and decided he’d better, lest Siel put an arrow through their new ally, or lest he be killed and news of ‘new mages’ never reach the Mayors. They listened to his account of last night without interruption.

‘So she’s our friend,’ said Sharfy, clearly not convinced.

‘I deem her such. I do make mistakes. But she had ample time to kill me. And she may have wanted to. She did not enjoy my actions in the cavern. Yet she led me through guarded tunnels safely, and back. If she is in league with the enemy, she passed up a chance to deliver them their most hated defector.’

‘You need more sleep than you got,’ said Siel.

‘Welcome to the road,’ he said, a stock reply to complaints among soldiers about rations, foot sores, tiredness. But she was right. This campaign was draining him, this life was draining him, and no pleasant idle retirement waited at its end. Only this war, sure to last more than his lifetime, unless the castle won it sooner. Then oblivion.

Welcome to the road. When they came to a village, Sharfy’s scales bought horses and the villagers’ promise of silence, should they be questioned. Though Lalie had never ridden before and had to share a steed with Siel, they made good speed for Elvury, only the Elemental Plains between them and baths, beds and proper meals, the mountains already rising in the distance.

They spotted an elemental in the far distance on their second morning on the plains, just a ripple of disturbed air like a tiny cyclone moving in fast lurches, but it didn’t come closer and their luck held. Stranger? Anfen wondered. Loup claimed she no longer followed, but he didn’t believe it. Their crossing the plains was filled with peace that seemed miraculous.

They prodded Sharfy for war stories, of which he had no shortage, nor a shortage of delight in telling them. Anfen allowed himself to be lost in their fiction, and noted the numbers of dead left in a trail behind Sharfy’s heroics had increased from the previous telling. Sharfy was unaware that humour was the appeal; he felt the stories were swallowed whole and that his listeners’ admiration for his great deeds was genuine, even as they jested. They didn’t know his newest story had borrowed pieces of its plot from a Batman comic, but for that matter, nor did he …

The plains became foothills. They encountered no one but saw in the distance a few tribal nomads, the rare dark-skinned kind who conversed with elementals and took great pains to avoid other human company. The mountains soon loomed over them like an enormous frozen wave, slabs of blue high on the horizon’s white sky. They paused to bathe, then fished for an hour in the River Misery, catching only two small things not even worth filleting, until it occurred to Loup to bless their lines and bait. Minutes later, Sharfy pulled a fat black dirtfish from the water, flopping sluggishly on his hand-held line. Anfen caught a bigger one moments later (Sharfy needed many measures to be sure of it), but they’d wasted too much time here, and headed onwards again, muttering under their breaths in exasperation. ‘Good eating, dirtfish are,’ said Loup, oblivious. ‘Oh aye, if you cook em right.’

At last the land began to climb, building to the ranges that acted as Elvury’s shield from assault. If a war brewed there, or if it had begun, they would begin to see signs of it soon. By now, it was almost certain that the looming hillsides were thick with Elvury’s hidden lookouts, who watched them approach with arrows fixed. To the group’s chagrin, Anfen led them by a path that lengthened the trip by several hours, but also gave them a good look at the road leading to the city. And soon the mystery of the south-marching armies was partly revealed when they rounded a bend on the high shoulder of the sheer cliffs, looking down at where the road led into the mountain pass.

Masses of troops were gathered in the fields and plains just beyond the road, the only way to the city from the north. With good reason, they had not ventured through it; a few hundred well-positioned defenders could make deathly hell for even a large passing army like this; a man-made avalanche to trap them in the pass could be the opening hand played. From there, target practice.

From this high up, the soldiers seemed to swarm like insects over the fields, wearing the colours of many Aligned cities, and some the castle’s own uniform of course. It was nowhere near what they could send, if they dug deep for numbers, but it was a big enough force to be gathered in one place — a little scooped from each pool of soldiers, so as not to leave any single Aligned city’s defences weak. Supply trains could be seen even now making their way from the road to the encamped masses.

Anfen knew what kind of effort such a gathering would take in organisation alone. This would not have been done without strong purpose. Though if it was a siege unfolding … ‘No catapults,’ said Sharfy. ‘No siege towers. No machinery at all.’

‘Yet they have this bunch sitting here, who must be fed and kept disciplined, who must forgo bathing unless it rains, who must shit in the fields and grumble about being away from their wives. All while anticipating a charge to their own deaths. And they surely don’t have forces at the southern gates. So what is the point?’

As they went through the hidden paths carved high above that lethal stretch of road to the city, there were indeed defenders in place and, by their bustling activity and the tension in the air, they expected something to happen soon. Many knew Anfen’s face, and he knew the words to grant his group passage. ‘How long have the forces been there?’ Anfen asked a passing commander.

‘First group, a week ago. Building since.’ The commander rushed away, a trail of nervous teenage archers behind him.

‘A week!’ Anfen said in disbelief. ‘They could not have set this up better for a complete massacre of their own men. They gave the city a week to prepare?’

‘Vous is mad,’ said Sharfy simply.

It was true, but … ‘His Generals and Strategists are not. The worst we could do is assume all this happens on a lunatic’s whim, however it looks. Something foul rides on the wind here.’

At last, there were the walls of the city: high turrets pocked with silhouettes of archers, and gaps in the wall and gate likewise occupied all the way down, sometimes up to twenty men on a ledge, all with a great view of the road below. Any invaders who did survive a march between the mountains would be welcomed with a terrible storm of arrows, spears, weighted nets, boulders and more. If they meant to go through with this, maybe it really was lunacy, simple lunacy.

There were secret upper tunnels into the city for those coming from business in Aligned country. The group were inspected by border troops, strip-searched, quizzed, threatened. All expected and endured without complaint, but there was a tense hysterical tone to it all and, inside the city, that same charged atmosphere filled the air. Armed men in big numbers milled about the gates inside, the air rife with the clash of swords as they sparred, the burble of their talk like a noisy sea.

The secret way opened out to a high ledge which ran around the entire rim of the city like the top edge of a giant bowl. Many of the important buildings were up on this shelf, safely away from the charge of potential angry mobs, a lesson history had taught past city rulers the hard way. The streets below teemed with what looked like business as usual: the normal massive swarm of people through the trading Bazaar, itself the size of a small city. This was the rich city’s economic hub, the home of its tradesmen and guild halls.

Anfen knew, as did the Council of Free Cities, that in those bustling crowds were spies in the castle’s employ. He gazed down there as they marched the last few steps of their journey, wondering just how many there were, feigning the life of ordinary citizens, quietly working their way up the city’s political ladder, eyes keen for Elvury’s weak spots, sending reports off in secret. How many were assassins waiting for their assigned targets and orders? Anfen knew he would now be at the top of their hit lists.

The young guard guiding them to their inn sent someone to alert the Mayors of Anfen’s arrival. ‘The Mayors were making ready to depart,’ the guard explained. ‘Gave you up for dead, methinks.’

‘They weren’t far from being right,’ said Anfen.

‘That’s the road, eh? Much trouble?’ The gleam in the young guard’s eye said he longed for such missions too. It was the same eagerness for war and spilled guts many young soldiers felt, tavern stories ringing loud in their ears, until their first real sight of it up close.

Anfen saw part of the young man’s face slip off and spill down his shirt with a trail of dark blood. ‘Much trouble,’ he sighed, too weary to impart any kind of wisdom. It would all find him, soon enough.

At the plush inn reserved for high officialdom, Lalie was taken aback at all the luxury on offer — the food, hot baths, musicians, steam rooms and massages. ‘This is your reward,’ he told her, ‘for your loyalty. You have been a good companion to us. More of this awaits you, if you help us further.’ It was a lie — she had been a surly companion, adding greatly to their tension, needing to be tied and constantly watched, lagging further behind in pace at times than Loup, who at least had the excuse of age. But he needed her to tell her tale to the Mayors. For that matter, he had to tell his own, and he had too little time to prepare it before another messenger came to summon him to them.