It seemed that the beans that Cameron Gray had spilled under Gunn’s knife had been swallowed and digested overnight by the surviving members of Fia’s motley crew. Chewed over, discussed, the facts were shat out anew in the form of questions and theories.
As the company cantered their horses along the jagged banks of a frothing mountain-fed river, which leapt, churned and chewed its way down through the faded plains, the talk turned to what the fuck Redmond Marr was thinking inviting the Vansgrimans unchecked into Fallaros.
“You’d just never pick it, would you?” Darach Lees said.
“Pick what, mate?” Lenix Allaway asked.
“Never pick Viscount Marr as one to sell his countrymen to one of the other Isles.”
“Right, because you know the man so well,” Lenix snorted.
“I’m not saying that I know the man, that I’ve ever met or seen the man,” Lees replied acidly. “But from everything you hear about him, he sounds like your typical noble, doesn’t he?”
Fergus’ booming laugh came right up from his belly and rolled back along the shallow ravine through which the mountain torrent cut its way. Up ahead in the distance there was a notch in the hills which looked to open out into more grasslands.
“You point me at a noble and tell me what’s typical about the bastard, and I’ll tell you if Redmond Marr’s got any of them characteristics,” the big man said, swaying in his saddle as his sturdy grey mount negotiated the rough trail.
“What I mean,” Lees tried again, “is that his reputation’s always been so… so neat. Free from all the other muck that most of them rich folk manage to rake up around ‘emselves, you know?”
“Oh, sure, you look at him quick and the man’s a fuckin’ gem––shiny, clean-cut,” Hunter said. “But, I bet he’s just like all the rest of ‘em.”
Darach Lees gave his horse a touch of the heels and loosened his rein so he could ride up the short column a little and hail Hunter.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, woman,” he said. “You’ve never served in the armed forces by the look of you. Not all those above your station––though I’d imagine there aren’t too many that don’t look down on you––are worthy of your scorn, you know.”
Hunter gave Lees a look from over her shoulder. Worked her mouth as if she was thinking of sending some of that spit of hers his way. Then she turned back to the rugged path ahead, seemingly considering him a waste of good saliva.
Lees sneered after her, looking like a man who’d just come out on top in some scholarly debate.
“While I don’t agree with, or know, the fine lady there,” Gunn said casually, nodding at Hunter’s skinny back from where he now rode abreast of Darach Lees, “I’d be inclined to agree with her on one aspect about the Counts, Countesses, and their nobles, Lees.”
Fia, who’d been busy watching a flock of silver and black baker’s birds and idly wondering what it was that compelled them to always form groups of thirteen, kept the corner of one eye on Lees and the outlaw he rode next to. Lees looked defiant but worried at suddenly finding himself so near to Torsten Gunn.
“And what would that be, Gunn?” the former infantryman asked.
“Well, you can bet your arse that they don’t give a flying fuck about you, not one little bit. Nor me. Nor any one of our kind. All they care about is that we behave ourselves, stay in our places, and come to heel when they whistle for us to fight and die for ‘em.”
“That ain’t how they do things in civilised society, Gunn,” Lees replied.
Gunn smiled. All teeth, no humour. “Civilised society? I’ve heard o’ that. Ain’t never laid eyes on it though.”
“I imagine that there’s a fair bit that you’ve never laid eyes on,” Lees continued doggedly. His voice had turned brash, which Fia assumed was as close as the man got to bravery. “I’d wager you’ve never seen hide nor hair of an honest day’s work in your worthless life neither.”
Fia’s hand slid casually to her pistol.
“My father worked,” Gunn replied, tipping his head back and staring at the sun through the bare branches of the trees that lined the river. “Broke horses. Sold them to the Aldinfang agents, who travelled down from Eljengrund, for a pittance. I watched him––helped him––as a boy. Watched as he filled up with aches and resentment instead of silver, all in the name of an honest day’s graft. Watched as his toil far outweighed his profits and sent him marchin’ off to the tavern most nights, to sit at the counter with the demons he’d collected carryin’ a spear for the Count whenever he called.”
Fia watched Darach Lees tug nervously at his moustache and shift slightly in his saddle, as Gunn turned from the sun and regarded him with eyes in which a storm had set in. A man shouldn’t have been able to gurgle with the guts dropped out of him, but somehow Lees managed it.
“You know what the most fucked up thing about that little fable is, Lees?” Gunn asked.
Lees tugged furiously at his moustache and shook his head mutely.
“I followed in my old man’s footsteps all the same. Took his path, even seein’ what walkin’ it had done to him. All the while thinkin’ that I’d do things different. And, I ‘spose, in a way, I did. I ended up here instead. All thanks to some noble arsehole.”
The ground became harder and stonier; chunks of fallen and broken rock, jagged stones that could lame a horse if a rider was impatient. Fia and the rest of the crew were obliged to slow their pace to a brisk walk.
Gunn leaned across so that his face was a few inches from Lees, even as they rode.
“Might be worth rememberin’ a few things, friend,” he said softly. “Might be worth rememberin’ that it pays sometimes to keep your mouth shut and look stupid than open it and prove it. Might be worth rememberin’ what I did with a rock, and with my hands chained, to that bitch back in Arifold. Might be worth rememberin’, Lees, that my hands ain’t chained no more and that I’m ridin’ with you out of convenience more than anythin’.”
Lees mumbled something inaudible and dropped his horse back so that he rode, once more, by the side of Cleric Vass’ roan mare.
“Which begs the question, Gunn,” the holyman said, “why’re you still riding with us at all? Why not wait for those heathens who presumably still follow behind? Why not try and kill us all, like the animal you’re made out to be?”
Fia’s ears pricked up a little at this, though she kept her face turned studiously to the trail ahead, making a show of checking where her horse was placing its feet. It was an exercise in pointlessness, as the brumby was approaching the lands of its siring and only seemed to become more sure footed the further north it walked.
“Hell, gods-talker, maybe it's just because I want to get as far north as I can and find a quiet spot before those big, bad Vansgrimans come with their magic weapons to kill us all,” Gunn mocked. “Or maybe because I know how cold it’s going to get soon and I want to bully the big man back there out of some of the red-eye he’s got stashed away.”
“Shit, Gunn, I knew you was a longrider and a killer, but I didn’t think you were that cruel!” Fergus replied with an uneasy laugh. “The cleric’s a point, though. Ain’t not one of us here got a reason to stop you going wherever you please. Don’t you fancy clearin’ out while you got the chance and startin’ some boring life where you end up dyin’ in your bed an old man?”
Gunn chuckled drily. “Men like us don’t die in bed, big man,” he said. “We die under the sky.”
Fia knew that Gunn’s light talk about the cold wasn’t just talk. It would get colder and drier the further north they rode.
Fia had suffered from the Frekifold cold before; a long time ago, when she had fled south after the accident that had claimed the life of her brother. Had almost died at its hands in the high, lonely passes more than once. She could recall how she’d felt the cold killing her in brittle increments. Breaking pieces off her. When he’d been alive, her father had warned her and Arlen about the weather, how he’d seen men lose fingers, hands and feet. Lose their minds. Had their breath snatched out of their lungs by winter's frigid fingers. She’d remembered, before the Painted Kyn had come across her, how listless the cold had made her, how she wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and see her will to live pooling about her feet like blood.
“Why is it so much damn drier and frostier up these ways anyway?” Gil asked, sniffing. “We ain’t that far from the Foldwood, but I reckon I can feel the change already.”
“It’s the forest they reckon,” Fia said.
“Who reckon?” asked Lenix.
“The Kynnish,” Fia said over her shoulder. “They told me once that the warm sea breezes from the south get stopped by the trees, caught in their branches, scooped in and held by their leaves. That’s why it's harsher up here. It’s why there’s more wildfires, especially in the winter.”
“Gods-damn, but it keeps slippin’ my mind that you’re from here!” Lenix Allaway said from near the back of the line. “Can’t get my nut around the notion that we’re ridin’ with a very - a veront––shit, Gil, what word am I lookin’ for?”
“Veritable,” said his twin.
“Right,” Lenix continued. “I just can’t get my nut around the fact that we’re ridin’ with a veritable Viscountess. That shit makes me think I must’ve lost my vertical hold! You sure you can’t give us some idea as to what the fuck that half-brother of yours is thinking, sellin’ us out to this Imperator fellow, honey?”
“I haven’t seen Redmond for a long time,” Fia said, answering because she knew that if she didn’t the questions would more likely keep coming. “But, he was always a careful child. Always quiet. Always watching and thinking, whereas Arlen and I were a little more rash. He was ambitious too, as I recall. As the youngest he wouldn’t think twice about working a little underhand trick to get what he wanted. Thought it only fair, I guess, what with being a half-brother, and me and Arlen never being particularly ingratiating to him.”
“Yeah, that’s sweet family history and all,” Hunter chipped in, “but why’s he want to bring this fuckin’ army to our shores. Why does he want to indulge this crazy-sounding son of a bitch who’s hell-bent on taking all the Five Isles for his own, huh?”
“If I had to speculate, I’d guess that Redmond’s greed and ambition covers Fallaros like a cloak, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a hole in it anywhere. Seems pretty clear that this bit of bad news, this Imperator, is the quickest way for Redmond to get what he wants.”
There was a space of silence as all the riders thought about what that meant. A silence filled with the sound of rushing water, birdsong and the wind. The sounds of the wilderness. The sounds of a place that was home to every man and woman, if only they knew it. That place had always made humans feel like small, insignificant, fundamental creatures, be they witches or warriors, herdsmen or highwaymen, and always would so long as it stayed wild.
Then, Hunter drawled, “You decided what you’re goin’ to do, Marr?”
“Call me by that name again and I’ll have Gunn here cut your tongue out of your head and throw it in this creek,” Fia said calmly over her shoulder.
Gil snickered happily at Hunter’s rebuke, then grimaced as his injured arm tugged at him under its dressings.
“The wench has a point, Miss McCrae,” Fergus rumbled, ducking under the bare branch of a giant willow that straddled the river.
“If she’s a point it’s passed me by,” Fia replied.
“No it ain’t,” Fergus retorted amiably. “You’re as sharp a lass as I ever saw wield a flintie or blade. You know right well what I’m talkin’ about. We’ve no obligation to that bastard Gunn cut apart back in the forest. We’ve no obligation to getting him to Castle Dreymark, so where the fuck’re you leadin’ us, girl?”
It was a good question. A good question that Fia didn’t have a good answer to. Truth of it was, since Gray had double-crossed them and reneged on the deal she’d struck with him, she had no reason to try and keep a hold of Gunn. There was no reason for keeping this rag-tag group of sellswords together now either. No reason for anything that had happened over the last week or so. No reason for any of those who’d lost their lives to have died.
She could try and vanish back into the mists of obscurity once more. Lose herself in the rolling country, amid the normal people and the normal things. But she knew that wouldn’t last. Not now that these riders knew her name, knew who she was. If three people knew a thing then it was no longer a secret, and there was a sight more than three of them there.
“Word will get out, as it always does,” Gunn said, abruptly breaking into her thoughts. “Bounties’ll be offered. You ain’t never goin’ to know peace again.”
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Fia looked at the longrider who had moved up so that he rode just behind her. The rugged man with his sad grey eyes held her gaze.
“Trust me,” he said. “You've got to know when a verse of your life comes to a close.”
Fia caught herself watching the man’s face. Turned her eyes away. Said in a low voice so that only Gunn could hear, “You say those things and I don’t hear the man that cut Cameron Gray to ribbons, the man that everyone fears. I hear the man who scribbles his words and leaves them for the grass and the stones and the beasts.”
“Yeah, well, what people think we are and what we really are seldom marry up do they, Fia McCrae?” Gunn said with a ghost of a smile. “Fact is I enjoy talkin’ to people. Listenin’ to them mostly. People say some of the most beautiful, profound, cruel, wonderful things if you just give ‘em their head.”
“You make it sound like people talk and poetry comes out.”
“The world is full of poetry if you’ve the ear. Only, the thing about this life is that the things you like ain’t the things that keep you alive.”
Fia turned her eyes back to the road. Let her senses quest out. In particular, that sense she seemed to have in such abundance that no one else did. That faculty that guided her to the things she was looking for, that she needed to find.
Ever since Gray had divulged who her half-brother, Redmond, was in league with, and what he and the Imperator were plotting, that sense had been dragging more persistently on her mind. It was tugging at her now, tugging hard. Harder than it had ever pulled at her before in her life. Twisting at her guts and pointing her chin north and east. Sharpening her eyes, ears and nose whenever she faced the direction of the distant mountains.
Thing was though, she didn’t have a clue what the fuck it was that she was looking for, or what she needed. At least, she didn’t know precisely what it was that she wanted or needed––though if someone had pressed a flintlock to her head she would’ve been able to hazard a guess. She only knew in which direction to head. Only knew she’d have precious little peace if she tried to ignore the summons.
She sighed.
Sometimes it was about what you had to do, not what you wanted to do.
“I’m riding north-east,” she said loudly, so that the seven other riders could hear her. “I’m going to see Redmond Marr, to see if I can’t talk some sense into him. I’m going to face the music, come what may. Any of you who want to come with me are welcome, but there’s no obligation on any of you. Do as you wish. I’ll face him alone if I have to. No doubt that’s the future that’s always been coming for me down the race.”
The crunch and clatter of hooves on rock was her only answer.
“You’re free to go, Gunn,” Fia said. “You helped us survive back in the Foldwood and I thank you for it. You could’ve run and left us to die. I’ve no quarrel with you any more. Never did as a matter of fact.”
“I’ve nothing to fear from Redmond Marr,” Cleric Vass said. His deep voice was hoarse with exhaustion still, but as sanguine as it ever had been. “I will ride on.”
“As will I,” Darach Lees said. “I’ve an obligation to the cleric to fulfil.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go,” said Hunter, as she lit up one of her foul cigars.
Gil and Lenix were squabbling in lowered voices with their heads down.
“How about the Allaway brothers?” Fia asked. “What’ll it be, boys?”
“A mad dog, who’s made a mad deal with some foreign devil from the south, up ahead,” Fergus rumbled jovially. “Or turning back and tryin’ to explain to that Boni Woe bitch why we thought spiritin’ her boss away was a good idea? You surely know how to spoil a man with choices, don’t you Miss McCrae?”
“I’ll say though, honey, that meeting with that Viscount half-brother of yours sounds like a shitty plan,” Lenix said. “The bastard’s already tried to have you killed. I pity you if you end up standin’ before him.”
Fia smiled drily and clicked her tongue at her brumby. “Save your pity, Allaway,” she said. “The way things have been going, you’ll probably need it for yourself.”
* * *
They rode on steadily through the evening, as the dusk faded, turning the swathes of heather and grass to monochrome tapestries, and the dark drew down. The hurrying river they had been following became less boisterous the further they rode up it, the aggressive ravine it had cut mellowing into a shallow trough of softer ground, where the hooves of their horses cut into clay instead of stumbling on rocks. The clouds moved north across the sky, hurrying home to the mountains maybe, turning the grass into a rippling sea of dark green shadows.
That was Fia’s favourite time; the time that many of the more superstitious inhabitants of the tribelands of Fallaros called the witching hour––the changing time. It was the time she felt most at peace with the world and all the things that walked it. When she felt that, if she only had the ear to understand it, the grasslands themselves would whisper secrets to her. Ancient tales of fire and rain and blood and time passing. She always wondered whether, if this was the case and the land did murmur its stories to any and all who rode under the open sky at that time, whether the tundra grew frustrated that there were none that understood it. Whether it was sad that it was populated by these mean, ignorant things that spent most of their time running about and killing one another, and couldn’t even speak the oldest of tongues.
Or maybe the plains knew, and just waited for the folk who would come and understand them and would learn from their timeless wisdom.
Maybe that’s what these Vansgrimans are, Fia thought, as the distant mountains were swallowed in the shade. Maybe they’re who the meadowlands have been waiting for. Maybe this Imperator is more concerned with the secrets of the land than the land itself.
Fia led the party well into the night, her peculiar sense of knowing pulling her onwards through the dark, her sable brumby little more than shadow made solid between her thighs. She led them on and on with as few rests as possible, hoping to come close to a Frekifold settlement before they camped for the night.
Frekifold was fairly heavily populated as Fallaros tribelands went, but most of the towns and trading posts were nearer the eastern coast. Fia and her crew were passing through one of the more desolate stretches, where only occasional drovers might tail their herds through, the cattle moving through the grass and rock outcroppings like minnows through an empty lake.
Eventually, the river turned off east and Fia and her gang parted ways with it. Without its constant chatter the dark seemed to close in a little tighter. Out on the moors, under the light of the frigid and aloof stars, the cry of a lone, lost cow echoed like the lament of some wild and sad thing out of a tale.
“If only that animal would wander across our path,” Fergus said in a heartfelt voice from the rear of the company. “I’d do some bad things for a fresh-cut steak when we stop tonight.”
As if in answer to the call, little flickering blue lights started fluttering into being far out on the plains. Ghostly, beckoning things.
No one bothered passing comment. There was no question of stopping to go hunting for a cow. Not with those lights.
“What the fuck are they?” Hunter asked, her voice creaking a little from lack of use.
“Whatever they are, let us leave them be,” Cleric Vass said.
The late sky was clear of cloud, high and cold, with stars spread like broken glass through the heavens, when a call from Darach Lees, who was riding point, snapped Fia from a waking dream involving her half-brother and some faceless figure standing over his shoulder.
“There’s a dry ford up ahead.”
“Hold!” Fia shouted.
“What? Why?” Lees asked. He sounded contemptuous, but he reined in nonetheless.
Fia trotted her horse forward and dismounted. A depression ran across their path, running from as far as they could see to either side of them in the dark. Leafless trees lined it, showing up like cracks in the deep purple of the night sky behind them. There was a small copse not too far westward of them, the saplings growing so close together they looked like an overgrown tumbleweed.
Fia walked a few paces closer and cocked her head, listening. Faintly, she could hear a rustling.
“Certainly looks like a dried up river bed,” Cleric Vass said, as the others pulled up.
“Are we crossin’?” Lenix asked.
“Course we are, numbnuts,” his twin said.
“We ain’t crossing now,” Fia said.
“Why not?” Gil asked.
“Light me a torch,” Fia said, “and I’ll show you.”
Everyone dismounted. Fergus sparked up a torch and handed it to Fia. Walking cautiously, Fia approached the bank of the waterless river. She knelt down, motioning for the others to do the same, and held the torch out so that its light fell across the dry bed of the creek.
“That’s why we ain’t crossing,” she said.
Spiders.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of spiders.
Darach Lees recoiled, stumbling backwards, as the torch sparkled across ten-million tiny eyes.
“Fuck me, how many of them are there?” Lenix said in an awestruck voice.
“More than there are numbers, I reckon,” Gil said.
“Can’t see them until you get right down to their level,” Fia said. “Not at a casual glance. Their eyes don’t reflect the light when you hold it over them from horseback, even when you’re standing. That rustling that you can hear is the only clue.”
“Gods-damn, but they make me nervous as a cat in a fuckin’ room full of rocking chairs,” Hunter said, shivering. “They ain’t goin’ to fuckin’ scamper out and make our acquaintance are they?”
Fia shook her head. “Only come out at night. Never stray from their abandoned or dried out watercourses. Only the gods know why.”
“They poisonous?” Gunn asked, his voice completely empty of emotion.
Fia stood up and raised the torch as high as she could. It illuminated the pristinely picked, phantasmic skeletons of a deer, a cow, and a few smaller creatures that had clearly wandered across the ford and not wandered out again.
“Not on their own they ain’t, not really,” she said, “but together… They swarm a thing, paralyse it, and then eat it alive.”
“And they’ve a lot of mouths to feed,” Lenix said with a nervous little titter.
The torch flame flickered as Fia turned and walked back to her horse.
“We camp here tonight,” she said.
* * *
Gunn took the flask proffered him by Fergus, who managed to get it into his hand on the second attempt, and looked over at Fia. They had made camp amidst the broken remains of a fallen alder, eating from their dwindling stores and passing around the few flasks of strong ale––stingo––and red-eye that they had found in the luggage of Gray’s riders.
“You thought what you’re going to have to do when you confront that traitorous sack of horseshite half-brother of yours, McCrae?”
Fia pulled heavily at her own skin of red-eye. She’d been making a deal of effort at getting snot-slinging drunk and was happy with the progress she was making thus far.
“Honestly, I haven’t thought too much about it,” she said, wiping her lips on the back of her hand and passing the skin across to Cleric Vass.
“No, thank you,” Cleric Vass said politely and passed it onto Hunter.
“Why is it that sin-busters don’t drink, cleric?” Fia asked the man, taking off her hat, putting it on her knee and tying up her hair.
“Men of my order can imbibe liquor,” Cleric Vass replied patiently. “But as a… After what I did back in the forest, it will be sometime before it is prudent for me to consume spirits of any kind.”
“Hm, thaumaturgy, worse than any hangover, eh?” Fia said quietly, tapping her nose.
Cleric Vass sat back, folding his hands without saying anything.
Gil Allaway, who had been drinking heartily from the large demijohn that Fergus had secreted in his bedroll, leaned forward and pointed the dirk he had been flipping idly through his fingers at Fia.
“C’mon now, Marr, or McCrae, or whatever the fuck it is we’re meant to call you, what are you gonna do, huh?” he demanded loudly.
“I told you, I ain’t thought about it,” Fia repeated.
“Ain’t thought about it?” Gunn said, the faintest trace of dubiety lacing his words. “How in the world can’t you have thought about it?”
“Come now, Gunn,” Darach Lees jested with forced bravado, “we can’t all be as straight a shooter as you now, can we? If our fearless lady leader wants to keep her secrets then let her.”
“Straight shooter?” Gil slurred, his head lolling drunkenly on his long neck, his knife picking gently at a knot in the fallen trunk he leaned upon. “Old Torsten Gunn’s so crooked folk say he’s got to unscrew his fuckin’ breeches at night, ain’t you heard?”
There was some nervous laughter around the fire, eyes flicking from Gunn’s face and away. Lenix muttered something about taking a piss and staggered off beyond the firelight.
“Are you insinuating,” Fia said, her tongue stumbling over the word, “that a man like you, a man who’s done the things that you’ve done, always thinks things through before going through with ‘em, Gunn?”
“Just because a man’s actions might be considered despicable, or offend your sensibilities, doesn’t mean he ain’t thought ‘em through,” Gunn said contemptuously.
“You make that sound like it’s a good thing,” Fia replied mildly, one of her shapely eyebrows raising a fraction.
“I had my reasons for doin’ what I’ve done, for livin’ how I’ve lived,” Gunn said. “I never said they were good ones. But I’ve always weighed the likely outcomes of my actions, ‘specially when I knew the lives of those that followed me hung on my choices.”
“I didn’t ask for anyone here to follow me,” Fia said calmly. “I don’t want anyone to confuse choice with chance.”
“So, you’re just gonna to sit here and drink, girl, is that it?” Gunn said with a soft snort.
“That’s about it, yeah.”
“For how long?”
“Until I can’t hear the darkness calling any more.”
Gunn tossed the skin in his hand to Gil. The man was nodding, one hand clutched loosely to his injured arm, and started awake as the flask hit him in the chest.
“You’re more fool than I thought if you don’t think this shit’s a whole lot bigger than you, me, or any one man or woman sittin’ around this fire,” he growled.
Before Fia’s fuddled mind could even muster a reply, the longrider had gotten to his feet and stalked off.
Bemused drunken stares were exchanged around the fire.
“Didn’t think a man of his reputation’d be so sensitive,” Lenix sniggered, before Fergus jabbed him with a meaty elbow.
Fia tried not to let her discomposure show on her face. It was harder when she was more than halfway to being shot in the neck.
The man’s an outlaw and a slayer of tribeland soldiers, she thought.
And he’s had just cause, if he told you the truth about his family.
Just cause in killing Gray.
Just cause in killing Redmond.
Just cause in killing you, if he fancied carrying his grudge that far.
“Fuck,” Fia said, and got to her feet.