Viriconium

3

That night, haunted by three women and a grim future, Cromis of the nameless sword, who thought himself a better poet than fighter, left the Pastel City by one of its northern gates, his horse’s hooves quiet on the ancient paving. No one hindered him.

Though he went prepared, he wore no armour save a mail shirt, lacquered black as his short cloak and leather breeches. It was the way of many of the Methven, who had found armour an encumbrance and no protection against energy blades. He had no helmet, and his black hair streamed in the wind. The baan was at his belt and his curious Eastern instrument across his back.

In a day, he came to the bleak hills of Monar that lay between Viriconium and Duirinish, where the wind lamented considerably some gigantic sorrow it was unable to put into words. He trembled the high paths that wound over slopes of shale and between cold still lochans in empty corries. No birds lived there. Once he saw a crystal launch drift overhead, a dark smoke seeping from its hull. He thought a good deal of the strange actions of Norvin Trinor, but achieved no conclusions.

He went in this fashion for three days, and one thing happened to him while he traversed the summit of the Cruachan Ridge.

He had reached the third cairn on the ridge when a mist descended. Aware of the insecurity of the path in various places ahead, and noting that his beast was already prone to stumble on the loose, lichen-stained rock, he halted. The wind had dropped, and the silence made a peculiar ringing noise in his ears. It was comfortless and alien up there, impassable when the snow came, as were the lower valleys. He understood the Moidart’s haste.

He found the cairn to be the tumbled ruins of an old four-faced tower constructed of a grey rock quite different from that beneath his feet. Three walls remained, and part of a ceiling. It had no windows. He could not guess its intended purpose, or why it was not built of native stone. It stood enigmatically among its own rubble, an eroded stub, and he wondered at the effort needed to transport its stones to such a height.

Inside, there were signs that other travellers of the Cruachan had been overtaken by the mist: several long-dead fires, the bare bones of small animals.

He tethered his horse, which had begun to shiver, fed it, and threw a light blanket over its hindquarters against the chill. He kindled a small fire and prepared a meal, then sat down to wait out the mist, taking up the Eastern gourd and composing to its eery metallic tones a chanted lament. The mist coiled around him, sent cold, probing fingers into his meagre shelter. His words fell into the silence like stones into the absolute abyss:

“Strong visions: I have strong visions of this place in the empty times… Far below there are wavering pines… I left the rowan elphin woods to fulminate on ancient headlands, dipping slowly into the glasen seas of evening… On the devastated peaks of hills we ease the barrenness into our thin bones like a foot into a tight shoe… The narrative of this place: other than the smashed arris of the ridge there are only sad winds and silences… I lay on the cairn one more rock… I am possessed by Time…”

He put the instrument away from him, disturbed by the echoes of his own voice. His horse shifted its feet uneasily. The mist wove subtle shapes, caught by a sudden faint breath of wind.

“tegeus-Cromis, tegeus-Cromis,” said a reedy voice close at hand.

He leapt to his feet, the baan spitting and flickering in his left hand, the nameless sword greasing out of its dull sheath, his stance canny and murderous.

“There is a message for you.”

He could see nothing. There was nothing but the mist. The horse skittered and plunged, snorting. The forceblade fizzed in the damp atmosphere.

“Come out!” he shouted, and the Cruachan echoed, out! out! out!

“There is a message,” repeated the voice.

He put his back against a worn wall and moved his head in a careful semicircle, on the hunt. His breath came harsh. The fire blazed up red in the grey, unquiet vapours.

Perched on the rubble before him, its wicked head and bent neck underlit by the flames, was a bearded vulture-one of the huge, predatory lammergeyers of the lower slopes. In that gloom, it resembled a hunch-backed and spiteful old man. It spread and cupped a broad wing, fanning the fire, to preen its underfeathers. There was a strange sheen to its plumage; it caught the light in a way feathers do not.

It turned a small crimson eye on him. “The message is as follows,” it said. Unlimbering both wings, it flapped noisily across the ruined room in its own wind, to perch on the wall by his head. His horse sidestepped nervously, tried to pull free from its tether, eyes white and rolling at the dark, powerful wings.

Cromis stood back warily, raised his sword. The lammergeyers were strong, and said by the herders of Monar to prefer children to lambs.

“If you will allow me:

“ tegeus-Cromis of Viriconium, which I take to be yourself, since you tally broadly with the description given, should go at once to the tower of Cellur. ” Here, it flexed its cruel claws on the cold grey stone, cocked its head, ruffled its feathers. “Which he will find on the Girvan Bay in the South, a little east of Lendalfoot. Further-”

Cromis felt unreal: the mist curled, the lammergeyer spoke, and he was fascinated. On Cruachan Ridge he might have been out of Time, lost, but was much concerned with the essential nature of things, and he kept his sword raised. He would have queried the bird, but it went on:

“-Further, he is advised to let nothing hinder that journey, however pressingit may seem: for things hang in a fine balance, and more is at stake than the fate of a minor empire.

“ This comes from Cellur of Girvan. That is the message.”

Who Cellur of Girvan might be, or what intelligence he might have that overshadowed the fall of Viriconium (or, indeed, how he had taught a vulture to recognise a man he never could have met), Cromis did not know. He waited his time, and touched the neck of his horse to calm it.

“Should you feel you must follow another course, I am instructed to emphasise the urgency of the matter, and to stay with you until such time as you decide to make the journey to Lendalfoot and Girvan. At intervals, I shall repeat the message, in case it should become obscured by circumstance.

“Meanwhile, there may be questions you wish to ask. I have been provided with an excellent vocabulary.”

With a taloned foot, it scratched the feathers behind its head, and seemed to pay no more attention to him. He sheathed his sword, seeing no threat. His beast had quietened, so he walked back to the fire. The lammergeyer followed. He looked into its glittering eyes.

“What are you?” he asked.

“I am a Messenger of Cellur.”

“Who is he?”

“I have not been instructed in the description of him.”

“What is his purpose?”

“I have not been instructed in the description of that.”

“What is the exact nature of the threat perceived by him?”

“He fears the geteit chemosit.”

The mist did not lift that day or that night. Though Cromis spent much of this time questioning the bird, he learned little; its answers were evasive and he could get nothing more from it than that unpleasant name.

The morning came grey and overcast, windy and sodden and damp. The sister ridges of the Cruachan stretched away east and west like the ribs of a gigantic animal. They left the third cairn together, the bird wheeling and gyring high above him on the termagant air currents of the mountains, or coming to perch on the arch of his saddle. He was forced to warn it against the latter, for it upset the horse.

When the sun broke through, he saw that it was a bird of metal: every feather, from the long, tapering pinions of the great wide wings to the down on its hunched shoulders, had been stamped or beaten from wafer-thin iridium. It gleamed, and a very faint humming came from it. He grew used to it, and found that it could talk on many diverse subjects.

On his fifth day out of the Pastel City, he came in sight of Duirinish and the Rust Desert.

He came down the steep Lagach Fell to the source of the River Minfolin in High Leedale, a loamy valley two thousand feet up in the hills. He drank from the small, stone-ringed spring, listening to the whisper of the wind in the tall reed grasses, then sought the crooked track from the valley down the slopes of Mam Sodhail to the city. The Minfolin chattered beside him as he went, growing stronger as it rushed over falls and rapids.

Low Leedale spread before him as he descended the last few hundred feet of Sodhail: a sweep of purple and brown and green quartered by grey stone walls and dotted with herders’ crofts in which yellow lights were beginning to show. Through it ran the matured Minfolin, dark and slow; like a river of lead it flowed past the city at the north end of the valley, to lose and diffuse itself among the Metal-Salt Marshes on the verge of the Rust Desert: from there, it drained westward into the sea.

Sombre Duirinish, set between the stark hills and the Great Brown Waste, had something of the nature of both: a bleakness.

A walled city of flint and black granite, built twenty generations before against the threat of the Northern clans, it stood in a meander of the river, its cobbled roads inclining steeply among squat buildings to the central fastness, the castle within the city, Alves. Those walls that faced the Rust Desert rose vertically for two hundred feet, then sloped outwards. No welcome in Duirinish for Northern men. As Cromis reached the Low Leedale, the great Evening Bell was tolling the seventh change of guard on the north wall. A pale mist clung to the surface of the river fingering the walls as it flowed past.

Camped about a mile south of the city, by the stone bridge over the Minfolin, were Birkin Grif’s smugglers.

Their fires flared in the twilight, winking as the men moved between them. There was laughter and the unmusical clank of cooking utensils. They had set a watch at the centre of the bridge. Before attempting to cross, Cromis called the lammergeyer to him. Flapping out of the evening, it was a black cruciform silhouette on grey.

“Perch here,” he told it, extending his forearm in the manner of a falconer, “and make no sudden movement.”

His horse clattered over the bridge, steel striking sparks from flint. The bird was heavy on his arm, and its metal plumage glinted in the eastern afterglow. The guard gazed at it with wide eyes, but brought him without question to Grif, who was lounging in the firelight, chuckling to himself over some internal joke and eating raw calf’s liver, a delicacy of his.

“That sort of bird makes poor eating,” he said. “There must be more to this than meets the eye.”

Cromis dismounted and gave his horse into the care of the guard. His limbs were stiff from the fell journey, and the cooking smells of the encampment had made him aware of his hunger.

“Much more,” he said. He hefted the lammergeyer, as if to fly it from his arm. “Repeat your message,” he commanded it. Birkin Grif raised his eyebrows.

“tegeus-Cromis of Viriconium,” began the bird reedily, “should go at once to the tower of Cellur, which he will find-”

“Enough,” said Cromis. “Well, Grif?”

“A flock of these things has shadowed us for two days, flying high and circling. We brought one down, and it seemed to be made of metal, so we threw it in a river. A strange thing, that you might be good enough to tell me about while you eat.”

Cromis nodded. “They are unlikely to trouble you again,” he said. “Their purpose, apparently, has been fulfilled.”

He allowed the lammergeyer to flap from his arm, and, massaging the place where its talons had clung to him, sat down next to Grif. He accepted a cup of distilled wine, and let it heat his throat. The camp had become quieter, and he could hear the mournful soughing of the wind about the ridges and peaks of Monar. The Minfolin murmured around the piers of the bridge. He began to feel comfortable as the warmth of fire and wine seeped through him.

“However,” he said, “I should advise your men to shoot no more of them, should any appear. This Cellur may have odd means of redress.”

From a place beside the fire, the lammergeyer cocked its head, presenting to them a blank red eye.

“You did not find Trinor, then?” said Grif. “Can I tempt you with some of this?”

“Grif, I had forgot how revolting you are. Not unless you cook it first.”

Later, he showed Grif the Ring of Neap, and related how Methvet Nian had given it to him; told him of the events in Bread Street, and of the curious desertion of Carron Ban; and narrated his encounter with the lammergeyer in the Cruachan mist.

“And you have no desire to follow this bird?” asked Grif.

“Whatever Cellur of Lendalfoot may think, if Viricon goes down, everything else follows it. The defeat of the Moidart is my priority.”

“Things have grown dark and fragmented,” mused Grif. “We do not have all the pieces of the puzzle. I worry that we shall solve it too late for the answer to be of any use.”

“Still: we must go up against the Moidart, however unprepared, and even though that would seem not to be the whole of it.”

“Unquestionably,” said Grif. “But think, Cromis: if the fall of Viriconium is but a part, then what is the shape or dimension of the whole? I have had dreams of immense ancient forces moving in darkness, and I am beginning to feel afraid.”

The lammergeyer waddled forward from the fire, its wings opened a little way, and stared at the two men.

“Fear the geteit chemosit,” it said. “tegeus-Cromis of Viriconium should go at once to the tower of Cellur, which-”

“Go away and peck your feathers, bird,” said Grif. “Maybe you’ll find steel lice there.” To Cromis, he suggested: “If you have eaten enough, we’ll go into the town. A search of the taverns may yet bring Trinor to light.”

They walked the short distance to Duirinish by the banks of the Minfolin, each occupied by his own thoughts. A low white mist, hardly chest high, covered the Leedale, but the sky was clear and hard. The Name Stars burned with a chilly emerald fire: for millennia they had hung there, spelling two words in a forgotten language; now, only night-herders puzzled over their meaning.

At the steel gates, their way was barred by guards in mail shirts and low, conical helmets, who looked suspiciously at Grif’s gaudy clothes and the huge bird that perched on Cromis’s arm. Their officer stepped forward and said:

“No one enters the city after dark.” His face was lined with responsibility, his voice curt. “We are bothered constantly by Northmen and spies. You had best wait until the morning.” He studied Grif. “ If you have legitimate business.”

Birkin Grif stared unkindly at him, and then slowly up at the great black sweep of the walls. From far above came the faint ring of footsteps on stone.

“So,” he said. “It’s either climb that lot, or break your pompous face. The latter seems to me the easier.” He flexed his hands suggestively. “Let us in, stupid.”

“Hold off, Grif,” said Cromis, restraining him. “It’s a wise precaution. They are merely doing their job.” He held his hands well away from the hilt of the nameless sword and advanced. He slid the Ring of Neap from his finger and held it out for the officer’s inspection. “That is my authority. I will take responsibility for your opening the gate, should any question arise. I am on the Queen’s business.”

He took back the ring, returned the officer’s short bow, and they passed into the Stone City.

Inside, the roads were narrow, to facilitate defence, should the gate be taken or the outer walls breached. The gloomy granite buildings-for the main part barracks and weaponaries and storehouses-huddled together, their second storeys hanging out over the streets so that fire could be poured into an invader from above. Their windows were morose slits. Even in the commercial centre, where the houses of the metal and fur trade stood, the buildings had an air of dour watchfulness. Duirinish had never been a gay city.

“The army passed through here some days ago,” said Grif. “They must have had a fairly glum time of it.”

“More important,” Cromis told him, “is that they must be well on their way to Ruined Glenluce by now, even travelling by the old coastal road.”

“We’ll catch them by going directly north. Straight through the marshes, fast and light across the Rust Desert. Not a pleasant trip, but speedy.”

“If the Moidart catches them on that road before Glenluce, the fight will be over before we find it,” Cromis muttered, brooding on that thought.

They spent an hour travelling the narrow ways that spiralled up toward Alves, stopping at two inns. There, they found no sign of Norvin Trinor, and fellow customers tended to avoid Cromis and his bird. But in the Blue Metal Discovery, a place in the commercial quarter, they came upon another Methven.

A three-storey inn built for the convenience of the fatter merchant classes, the Blue Metal Discovery took up one entire side of Replica Square, less than a mile from Alves itself. Its facade was lit by soft and expensive blue lights salvaged many years before from the Rust Desert, and its windows were less forbidding than the majority in the town, having white ornamental iron shutters reminiscent of those found on dwellings in the warmer parts of the South.

By the time they came to Replica Square, Birkin Grif seemed to be having some trouble in placing his feet squarely on the cobbles. He walked very carefully, singing loudly and continuously a verse of some maudlin Cladich lament. Even to Cromis things looked a little less sombre. No change of mood was discernible in the bird.

The doors of the inn were wide open, spilling yellow light into the blue and a great racket into the quiet square. One or two customers emerged hurriedly from the place and walked off looking furtively behind them. Shouts mingled with the sound of moving furniture. Birkin Grif stopped singing and swaying and became quite still. A little introspective smile crossed his jowly features.

“That,” he said, “is a fight.” And he hurried off, his stride abruptly sure and steady.

He was halfway across the square before Cromis came up with him. They stood in the wash of light from the open door and gazed into a long room.

At its near end, behind a cluster of overturned trestle tables, huddled two potboys and some wan-looking customers, shifting their feet nervously in a mess of sawdust and spilt food. The innkeeper, plump, red-faced, and perspiring, had poked his head into the room through a serving hatch; he was banging a heavy metal mug repeatedly on its sill and shouting abuse at a group of figures in the centre of the room by the massive stone fireplace.

There were seven of them: five heavily built men with wiry black hair and beards, dressed in the brown leather leggings and coats of metal-scavengers; a serving girl in the blue shift of the house (she was crushed into the chimneybreast, her hand to her mouth, and her grimy face was fearful); and an old man in a ribbed and padded doublet of russet velvet.

All six men had drawn swords, and the greybeard, his whiskers wine-stained about the mouth, held also the wicked stump of a broken bottle. He was snarling, and they were advancing on him.

“Theomeris Glyn!” bellowed Grif. The metal-scavengers halted their confident advance and turned to stare warily at him. The landlord ceased his swearing, and his eyes bulged.

“You silly old goat! You should be passing your remaining years in decent contemplation, not bickering over dirty girls-”

Theomeris Glyn looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, hello,” he said. His grey eyes glittered shiftily above his hooked, red-veined nose. He peered at Grif. “I’m trying to catch up with the army,” he muttered defensively. “They left me behind.” His face brightened, thick white eyebrows shooting up into his tangled hair. “Heh, heh. Come and stamp some lice, eh, Grif? Now you’re here?”

He cackled, and feinted suddenly toward his nearest opponent with the broken bottle. Breath hissed and feet shuffled in the sawdust. Old he may have been, but he was still viperishly quick: bright blood showed where his sword had made the true stroke, and the man danced back, cursing.

His companions closed in.

Grif hurled himself ungracefully across the floor to forestall them, dragging at his sword. But Cromis held back, wondering what to do with the lammergeyer. It gazed beadily at him.

“To ensure your safety,” it said, “I suggest you leave here immediately. It is unwise to risk yourself in a minor combat. Cellur has need of you.”

Whereupon it launched itself from his arm, screaming and beating its great grey wings like a visitation from Hell. Astonished, he watched it tear with three-inch talons at a white and shouting face (this was too much for the fat innkeeper; wailing with horror as the bird tore at its victim, he slammed the serving hatch shut and fled). Cromis drew his sword, marked his man. He saw Grif wade in, cutting out right and left, but had no time to watch: a dull blade with a notched edge slashed in high at his skull.

He ducked, crouched, and thrust his sword up with both hands into his assailant’s groin. With a terrible cry, the man dropped his weapon and fell over backwards, clutching at himself.

Cromis jumped over his writhing body as a second scavenger came howling at him from behind. He landed in an acrobatic crouch, rolled away. The room became a tumbling blur full of screams and the beating of giant wings.

(In the fireplace, Theomeris Glyn was shoving his enemy’s head into the flames. He was a nasty old man. The fifth scavenger had backed up against the serving hatch, blood pouring down his face, and was pushing ineffectually at the screeching lammergeyer: Grif, who had already felled his first man, seemed to be trying to haul the bird off its prey so he could get in a clear swing.)

Cromis moved easily behind a wild stroke. “Stop now, and you go unharmed,” he panted. But his opponent spat, and engaged the nameless sword.

“I’ll stick yer!” he hissed.

Cromis slid his steel down the man’s blade, so that they locked hilts. His free hand went unseen beneath his cloak; then, deliberately releasing his pressure on the locked swords, he fell forward. For a moment, their bodies touched. He slid the baan into the scavenger’s heart, and let the body fall.

His knuckles had been cut and bruised as the swords disengaged; he licked them absently, staring at the corpse. A steel medallion showed at its throat. He felt a touch on his shoulder.

“That last was a pretty filthy trick,” said Grif, smiling a queer, strained smile. “You must teach me sometime.”

“You’re too heavy on your feet. And I’d rather teach you to sing. Look at this-”

He poked with the tip of his sword at the scavenger’s medallion. It glinted in the bright light. It was a coin, but not of Viriconium; in high relief, it bore the arms of Canna Moidart: wolf’s head beneath three towers.

“Already she prepares to rule,” said Cromis. “These were Northerners. We must leave at first light. I fear we shall arrive too late.”

As he spoke, shouting and commotion broke out again behind them.

In the fireplace, Theomeris Glyn of Soubridge, the old campaigner, was struggling with the serving girl. Her blue bodice had come awry, but she had placed four neat welts on his left cheek. Her small grubby fists hammered at him.

“A man who may not survive his queen’s wars needs a little affection!” he cried petulantly. “Oh, drat!”

Behind him stood the landlord, wringing greasy hands over the wreckage and demanding payment of his bony, oblivious shoulders.

Birkin Grif wheezed and chuckled. Cromis could raise only a thin, weary smile: he had been much disturbed by his discovery.

“Go and pull the old fool off her, Grif, and we’ll take him with us. At least he’ll see action again, for what it’s worth.”

Later, as they passed the gates of Duirinish, old Glyn dawdling drunkenly behind them, Grif said:

“She prepares her way to rule, as you say. Her confidence is immense. What can half a hundred brigands, a poet, and an ancient lecher do to flex a will such as that?”