Janu couldn’t stand travelling upriver. Except for the rare occasions when the wind blew their way, it always felt like ten times the effort than it was worth. Yes, in principle it was faster than walking, but the shore crept past at a snail’s pace when he stared out at it. The river from Chorus to their destination in the Zentilum mountains was better than most – wide, deep, and with a prevailing inland breeze – but for the past two days that friendly wind had blown against them.
He hadn’t planned to spend so long on the river, only a quick crossing. Or quick relative to the surrounding road network, anyway, in this especially swampy part of the country. Their boat route cut a diagonal across this wide, lazy stretch of water. Their horses couldn’t help by pulling from a nearby bank. Even if they had stuck close to the sides, there was no true bank, only walls of half-submerged reeds.
So instead, they rowed.
I’m too old for this. His back ached in a thousand different ways. He had worn off the blisters on his hands and blistered them anew.
‘Are you grumbling back there?’ Galnai called over her shoulder from ahead on the other side of the barge. She had never broken rhythm – or a sweat.
Janu heaved back on his oar. ‘That’s my bones you can hear,’ he said. ‘Grinding together.’
She chuckled, as did the wizened old bargeman sat at the tiller in front of them. He took his clay pipe from his mouth and pointed through the air with it.
‘It’ll be yer bones singing in relief, son,’ the old man said. ‘Not far from shore now. That’s it right there. Shore and solid ground, and a good walk for yer horses.’
Janu span around so fast, he almost dropped his oar. True to the bargeman’s word, there lay the sandy bank of the river. Jutting from the vast swathe of flat land beyond it stood the Kurentim mountains and their foothills, blue and hazed in the distance.
He fancied he could hear his bones sing.
The pulled up alongside a run-down jetty, unloaded their horses and parted ways with the bargeman, who went in search of the cargo he planned to pick up. For their own part, they continued towards the mountains, walking the horses to begin with so they acclimatised to having their legs on solid ground again.
A week later when they reached the foothills, they stopped by a village Janu had frequented before and paid a visit to the blind old herbalist who lived there. She made the most potent sleeping powders Janu had ever used, and he had a feeling he would need as much as he could get his hands on, so he filled her purse and they rode away with a small pouch each.
That was the predictable part of the plan done with.
For the rest of their journey they followed the main road towards Kurentim, hard to mistake for others thanks to the extra care the empire lavished upon it. With three days until their destination, they turned aside, not wanting to be seen. They wove around the backs of scrubby hills and along the bottom of wooded gorges.
On the fourth day, they emerged onto a broad, sloped plain above the lowest of the clouds. The road and the ravine Ilarion had mentioned formed a dark slash across the landscape to their right.
Janu rode up to it with Galnai while Fraidun pitched their tents in the cover of a wind-carved rock.
‘What do you think the best approach is going to be?’ Janu asked.
Galnai jumped from her horse and moved closer to the edge, crouching to assess it. They hadn’t located the goat path yet, but they had plenty of time. If Ilarion’s information had been accurate, they now had about two weeks to go until the ceremony, and they could expect the princess to return this way in the following week.
‘There are a lot of loose rocks up here,’ said Galnai, turning to look at the plain behind them. ‘I’d say we pile them up, wedge them in a way we can set them moving when we see them coming. Like we did in Medicia a few years back. Close enough that no one else gets to it first, far enough that they don’t hear or see it fall.’
Janu nodded. For all the road’s quality, they hadn’t seen many using it past the last town, besides on market days when the Kurentim villagers ventured out with goods and cattle. Their preparations would likely go unnoticed. Even if villagers encountered the rockfall first, they wouldn’t clear it in time. And if they saw the theft, well, how much did the average citizen really care to help the empire?
‘Let’s get started,’ he said.
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Over the next two weeks they made quite a pile of rocks and boulders by the thinnest section of the ravine, partially hidden by a thick shrub that clung to the side of the cliff at a desperate angle. As they lay in wait, cooking only in the daylight on smokeless fires, the sky above grew grey and angry. Janu watched it churn above them, thickening by the day, carrying with it a cruel wind that cut through his clothes and into the skin beneath. The horses grew restless. Birds shot through the sky as if hurled by the hands of giants.
On the second day after the supposed ceremony, the storm broke. Rain lashed almost horizontally across the sky. It cut into them like daggers when they dared to venture out and forced its way into every gap of their shelter. Lightning rolled through in great blinding sheets, the bellow of thunder never far behind. The horses screamed and bucked against the ropes that held them. They had to hobble them before they could tear themselves free.
‘Do you think they’ll wait this out?’ Fraidun shouted to Janu above the din that lunchtime, with the sky still black as night outside the tent.
Janu just shrugged. They couldn’t know. Maybe the princess didn’t want to stay in a miserable fort in Kurentim for another moment. Maybe storms scared her. Maybe they had a strict schedule to keep to. All they could do was keeping waiting, with one on soaking watch for their target, one on watch for their signal and the other trying to sleep.
In the end, though, their watch was pointless. That night, Janu woke to a roar louder than thunder that reverberated through the very ground beneath him. Galnai ducked back into the tent, her hair dripping water all over Janu’s feet.
‘The rockfall’s gone,’ she said, teeth chattering. ‘Storm washed it over.’
Janu closed his eyes. If the princess didn’t come through here soon, someone else might clear the way and they would have to start all over, if they even had time. At least with the storm still raging, few villagers were braving the road.
‘How well did it fall?’ he asked.
‘Go look for yourself. It’s your watch. I’m off to replace Fraidun.’
When he had left the scant comfort of the tent and crawled up to the edge of the cliff, reassurance washed into the small part of Janu’s brained that wasn’t numb from cold. The rocks had piled high, about the height of three men, and completely blocked the ravine. It would take a lot of work to move, or the storm would have already moved it for them.
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Get a move on, Princess, Janu thought, and tucked his already cold hands beneath his armpits as he turned to watch for Galnai’s signal.
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Another two days passed. The storm lessened, only an odd rumble of distant thunder returning to remind them of its presence. Rain had turned their campsite into a slippery patch of ankle-deep mud and heavy drops of it still swept in every few minutes on loud squalls. Janu had sent Fraidun out earlier to fetch gravel or branches to cover the goat path – anything that might make them less likely to slip carrying their burdens. He was just finishing up at the bottom of the ravine now. No doubt he would be swearing when he returned to the top.
Janu glanced right. The handful of villagers he had been keeping an eye on for the past few hours had just disappeared around a bend. He estimated another four or five hours until they reached the ravine and the rockfall.
He shifted his attention back left and caught a momentary flash from Galnai’s position. Had he imagined it? He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
There: Two short flashes, a long flash, and another short one. Janu rummaged inside his belt pouch for his flint and iron, then used them to light the covered lantern he had been keeping beside him. It caught on the second attempt and he let it grow for a moment before returning the signal. For a while afterwards, nothing happened. Then two flashes came from Galnai’s position. She was on her way back.
Janu picked up a small stone and threw it down the slope towards Fraidun. He started at the impact and stared up at Janu, eyes narrowed to slits. In response Janu raised the lantern, pointed at it, and gestured for Fraidun to hurry back up. He got a rude gesture back, but he had expected no less.
Heartbeat rising, Janu rushed back to the tents to start packing them up. It’s really happening. Depending on how far out Galnai had spotted them, the princess, her guards – and, most importantly, her dragon – could be on them in a few short hours. They had to be ready. They had to be quick.
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A light drizzle veiled the ravine as the three of them waited in a bush halfway up the goat path, watching the first of the imperial guards ride into view. At once, the two foremost guards broke into a canter towards the rockfall to examine it. Janu thanked the gods for the storm – enough trees and rocked had tumbled over the edge of the ravine elsewhere that their manmade addition shouldn’t seem too suspicious. The rest of the convoy kept moving, either unconcerned or keen to get the carriage somewhere where all the guards could see it.
Janu counted them all as they came to a halt a hundred yards from the rockfall, not far ahead of the bottom of the goat path. Twenty guards and one carriage with its driver, as Ilarion had said. But riding alongside them was another, freakishly tall on a horse as grey as granite, his brown travel cloak not entirely covering his finery, nor the golden staff he carried. Another noble, that was all. Ilarion’s spies must have missed him. He bore no weapons beyond the staff and, like as not, that was only ceremonial.
It was time. Janu tapped Galnai on the wrist, and together they took out the small pouches of snuff that had come with the sleeping powder, then closed one nostril and snorted it. A sharp scent raced through his sinuses and stung the back of his throat. He held back a sneeze, tapped Galnai’s arm again.
They crept down the goat path.
At the front of the convoy, the noble was examining the rockfall with several off the guards. The others were standing by the carriage awaiting instructions, and one exchanged words with the passengers inside.
Janu weighed the strength of the wind that whistled through the ravine towards the rockfall, judging how close he would have to be before letting the sleeping powder fly might be effective. Closer than this, for sure, and they had to stop behind another patch of scrub when the noble at the rockfall turned back.
The noble gestured to the guards by the carriage and ten of them dismounted to walk over to the rockfall, leaving five to guard the princess. As they did, the noble began taking strange items from his horse’s saddlebags and distributing them amongst the guards with terse instructions that the wind snatched away from them. An uneasy feeling fluttered in Janu’s belly, but he couldn’t let caution take too great a hold of him. As long as the bulk of the guards were up by the rockfall, they were distracted.
One eye still on the guards, Janu stepped down the next stretch of the goat path. It brought him within twenty yards of the carriage. Not quite close enough to use the powder and guarantee getting all six.
There was a bright flash ahead, and muted thunder crashed on the other side of the rockfall. When the guards turned to look, Janu scurried the next ten yards, then loosened the pouch of sleeping powder and threw its contents into the wind. It danced away, shimmering faintly, and made a solid grouping of the guards. One of them looked about, confused, and the next second they all slumped in their saddles. Their horses and those of their dismounted companions dozed, not quite asleep but not alert enough to cause any problems.
Galnai rushed ahead of him, readied her own pouch, pulled the carriage door open a crack and blew the powder inside. Someone squawked in alarm, but the whistling wind and the body of the carriage both must have blocked the sound reaching the rockfall, for none of the guards turned. They were all laying out the components the noble had given them while the noble himself stood before the rockfall, supporting himself on his staff.
Janu picked his way around the snoozing horses and slipped up to the other door of the carriage. He opened it as quietly as he could, although Galnai was making more banging on the other side than he could have hoped to match. He looked in and just caught the sight of skirts and slippered feet disappearing through the opposite door as Galnai made off with the princess.
Three other women sat in the carriage, their heads slumped to their chests or on top of their neighbour’s. One was far too old to be the princess. The other two, he would have easily mistaken for one, but neither wore any tight jewellery around their neck, and that was the mark of a dragon’s bonded. Galnai had the right one.
He almost missed the dragon itself. It was curled up at the bottom of the carriage, partly hidden by the women’s skirts, only its horned white snout and tail poking out from underneath. It snored like a contented cat.
Knowing his back would hate him for this later, Janu took hold of the dragon and dragged it towards him, straining against its weight. As soon as he could, he bundled the creature up in his arms, draped its head and tail over each shoulder, pushed the door closed again and hurried back to the goat path. Galnai was far ahead of him, already crouching at the first patch of scrub and keeping a watchful gaze over the rockfall.
Janu wanted to look back, but pushed ahead. The dragon’s downy hide tickled his cheeks.
When he reached the scrub, Galnai had already forged ahead. He paused for a quick breather and looked back at the rockfall, frowning. The noble had his staff raised high, and fragments of sharp words whipped back on Janu on the gusting wind.
Gods below, the rocks were floating.
Each one peeled off from the top of the rockfall and floated down into the waiting hands of the soldiers, who passed them along the chain to be piled to one side. Another flash of lightning lit the sky, glittering all along the shaft of the noble’s staff. Except he was no mere noble. Ilarion hadn’t mentioned a blasted sorcerer would be here.
Janu rushed up the goat path, the branches and gravel Fraidun had laid crunching slightly with each footfall. Galnai was still waiting for him at the last patch of scrub, distracted by the sight of the floating rocks. The sorcerer’s voice had risen in volume, amplified somehow by the magic he worked, and echoed around them.
‘Go!’ Janu hissed. ‘Move!’
A haze still hung in the air by the carriage, sleeping powder whipping this way and that in little vortices of wind, fanning out over a wider area. Just as Janu was about to move on, the chanting stopped. The sorcerer turned his head, sniffed the air.
Shit. Janu leapt into motion just as he whirled around and shouted for the guards. The gravel skittered beneath his feet and bounced down the side of the ravine. The air tingled around him. Instinctively he ducked, and something skimmed the top of his head at high speed. A rock sailed off in his peripheral.
Swearing, Janu pushed as hard as he could. Galnai had gone. He could hear their horses snorting and whinnying at the top of the cliff, and he willed Fraidun to move them out of the way before one of them caught a flying rock, even if that would leave him with further to run.
Another rock smashed into the ground ahead of him. He slipped in the patch of mud it left but kept running.
He emerged gasping at the top of the cliff a moment later. Galnai grabbed the dragon from him before he could say anything and shoved it into the cage on the back of their cart. The princess was already bound and gagged beside it. Gods, she looked so young. What was she? Ten? Twelve?
Galnai sat in the cart and began binding the dragon’s snout. To shouts below them, Janu ran up to the front of the cart and jumped on, shouting at the horse to go. It bounded forwards, the cart jerking behind it. Fraidun galloped alongside with the reins to Galnai’s horse in his hands. He kept glancing back at the cart, at the princess bound within it, a look of disgust plastered across his face.
They had done it. They had kidnapped the princess. Now they just had to survive.