Chrys leaned on the rail of the ferry as it crossed Dtlag harbour. In a few minutes it would dock and the walking would begin. She grimaced. Her steppe heritage had not equipped her for long marches, and she would have trouble keeping up with the strides of the two Saka. She had asked Venalse about riding, and been advised that horses rarely lasted long in the Wilds. Either something ate them, or they spooked and ran off, or the trails became too steep and they must be left behind. Chrys sighed. Rakt, leaning easily beside her, turned his head.
“I grew up on a horse, and it seems to me that’s the best way to get around. But Venalse assures me it won’t do to take one, so I’m condemned to stump along behind Doryid and Kosohona.”
“Me too. I was a marine. When we wanted to go places, we had ships. I’ll stump along with you.” Chrys appreciated the sympathy, but doubted long-legged Rakt would find it hard to keep up. The ferry bumped into the wharf, she shouldered her pack, settled the straps of her bow-case and quiver and prepared to walk.
By the time they reached the small town of Iszameh that evening, Chrys felt like the victim of a determined beating. Her legs, back and shoulders ached, her feet felt tender and her neck sore. The countryside had been lovely, the weather fine and mild, the road even and smooth. Her companions had not set a hard pace, and the party had stopped at regular intervals for rest and refreshments. If this was the easy part, how would she cope with the hard, she thought to herself. Practice was the only answer, she replied to herself and she thought of the old joke about army training: if you hang a recruit and they die, you just keep hanging them until they get used to it. I’ll get used to it, she thought, and at least I’m not wearing armour.
She ate a hearty dinner of the local speciality, a spicy bean stew thick with sausage, then retired as soon as possible to her room. For the first time, one of her mother’s presents would be more practical than decorative. She dug out one of the grey balls of Liquid Massage, stripped off her clothes, lay down and reached over to slap it onto her back. The next hour was bliss. The ball delivered a vigorous massage, complete with cleansing tonic, muscle toner, scent, shampoo and manicure. She fell asleep before it had quite finished and woke feeling able to face another day’s walk.
Both Aitonala and Grymwer were noticeably stiff the next morning, and did not take kindly to Kosohona’s advice that ‘the first few days are the worst’. However, breakfast was lavish and the day again fine, even if the road was a little steeper in parts. As before, the party set a moderate pace and arrived at the village Tach an hour before sunset. Chrys’ muscles had settled into the rhythm and she kept her remaining Liquid Massage for later use.
The day after brought them into hill country, the verges of the Saka uplands. Chrys leaned into the slopes and was glad to arrive at the hamlet of Skive, perched above a deep gorge. The party sat on the long verandah of the one inn, glad to have their boot-laces loose and tiny glasses of the local spirit in hand. Chrys was surprised to find how high they had climbed.
Kosohona pointed out features of the landscape. “That way,” she pointed south-west “is my country, and beyond and east is Doryid’s. Over there, Mount Toón and beyond it, her sister-mountain Zroón. My lodge-uncle says he once saw dragons sky-dancing over Zroón. The border post is over there, on the ridge above the far side of the gorge. We will be there tomorrow noon.”
Chrys looked along and down into the gorge. Far down, a stream shimmered in the fading light and a crow zig-zagged along well below.
“There is a bridge, right?” she asked Kosohona.
“Certainly. A very good one, re-built just last year. Of course, it’s at the bottom of the gorge, so we take the trail down and then climb up. Don’t worry – there are steps.”
“I think I’ll have another glass of this. It numbs the mind nicely.”
Two glasses later she asked aloud something that had been puzzling her.
“What’s so special about this Ancestor Book that Ferdino is prepared to spend so much for a chance to get it back? It’s not some great Item that will blow Dtlag apart, I hope.”
“As it happens, I can answer that,” Venalse said. “An Ancestor Book records honours and entitlements, and is the main source of proof for any claims to privileges, immunities and the like. Recovery would greatly add to Ferdino’s prestige. It would also allow him to enter for the office of Senior Syndic, and claim exemption from the house-tax. These are things worth chancing some money to gain.”“How do you know all this?” asked Aitonala curiously.
“My house has an Ancestor Book too. One of comparable age to Ferdino’s. One my father will bring forward when he enters for the Syndicate. He won’t be happy if Ferdino recovers his.”
“Why make your father unhappy?”
“Because he’s never made me happy,” said Venalse shortly. He drained his glass and went to bed.
* * * *
The border post was a solid two-story stone tower, sited above where the trail crossed the ridge. The apparatus topping a pole on the roof top was, Chrys presumed, some sort of signalling device. An open-sided hut next to the trail held a table, a chair, a samovar on a stand and a soldier in the uniform of the League. She swept her boots off the table, put down her glass of tea and opened a large ledger.
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“As you are leaving League territory for the Wild, we require you to record your names and declare the total of any gold or silver you carry. Any precious metals in excess of the value declared are subject to a two per cent tax on re-entering the League. You are advised that the penalties for evasion of these regulations are severe. Please form an orderly queue.” One by one they entered their names, an amount of currency and a signature. The soldier stamped each entry, wished them good fortune and resumed her tea-drinking.
“Well, we are now in the Wild” declared Venalse after they had gone a dozen steps beyond the hut. “Does it feel different?”
“I think it does.” answered Aitonala. “When I was doing my exercises this morning in Skive, the currents felt different. Only a little stronger, but more turbulent. They challenged my control.”
Chrys, intrigued, essayed the petty spell Twinkle, a matter of three words and a single gesture. As Aitonala had said, the etheric currents were both stronger and more lively than in Dtlag, and she had to add a modulating flutter to keep the trail of bright sparkles from dissipating as they left the hand.
“I think,” she said carefully “that I’m going to have to do a lot more practice.”
Practice she did, as they moved down the trail. Venalse stopped from time to time to consult the directions provided by Ferdino, checking with Kosohona and Doryid on the lay of the land. Chrys and Grymwer cast petty spells as they walked, while Rakt brought up the rear. Aitonala watched the unfolding landscape closely, asking questions from time to time.
“This trail is not so obviously maintained as the one up to the watch post,” she remarked after a while, “yet it is still very much a trail. Who keeps it up?”
Venalse replied. “Well, apart from people like us, there are hunters, herb-gatherers, and undermen of course. Some dwarf clans have small mines up in the mountains. Then there are small communities of the odder sort of were, and I’ve heard that the dark knight orders have secret places out here, so the white ones come chasing through. And don’t forget the mad magicians like Great-aunt Maudil, who come out here to escape their relatives. That pile of rubble over on the hill there may once have been a magician’s tower and, before you ask, exploring ruins like that is almost always a bad idea.”
They kept on, the trail working its way down the ridge until it dipped into a valley below. Venalse was cautious as they approached the stream at the bottom, sending Doryid ahead and motioning the others to silence. The woods were thick here, and the light low as the afternoon faded away. The only noise apart from the stream was the high-pitched hum of harp-spider webs. Doryid returned to signal all was clear, and they crossed on a bridge of two logs to follow the water northwards down the valley.
It was an hour before Venalse found a suitable place to camp, a hollow a little way up the hillside. Chrys looked around with a sigh. Dinner last night at Skive had included a chicken pie seasoned with thyme, a green salad, a dish of curds with honey and nuts and a mug of good beer; tonight’s dinner was to be dried meats and vegetables boiled up with grain in a small kettle, together with fresh spring water. The beds the last three nights had been perfectly acceptable and the roofs sound; tonight’s bed was a thin mat on more or less level grass, a blanket and the sky. She looked again and brightened. The grassy slope on the east side of the dell showed several holes along a bank only a little way up.
Chrys detached the Camp Cooker from her pack, adjusted the settings after consulting the instruction sheet, dug out a bowl and approached the bank. A hole near the middle was not only about the right size but showed a scatter of droppings. She placed the pipe carefully and listened. There shortly came the sound of desperate scrabbling, followed by a brief squeak, some gurgles and hisses and the plunk of meat falling into the bowl.
“Spiced rabbit kebabs for entrée, anyone?”
* * * *
Chrys and Aitoni stood the last watch of the night, quietly chatting as black gave way to grey, and then to daylight. There was a discussion over the breakfast porridge and tea about moving from here on with some caution. It was agreed that Doryid, Aitonala and Kosohona would take turns as advance scout, with Venalse in support and Rakt in the rear. Chrysanthemum strung her nomad bow before returning it to its case, and there was a general checking of scabbards, quivers, spells and armour straps. When they moved on, the mood was less carefree.
That day was spent beside the stream. Near evening, it met a small river and they turned upstream and found a place to camp. They had seen nothing immediately threatening, but the day had been enlivened by the oddities of the Wild. Kosohona had pointed to a grove of feathertops whose branches waved in the wind contrary to the neighbouring trees. It marked, she said, the domain of a land-spirit. In another place they halted at the sound of singing ahead. It turned out, on cautious investigation, to be a small shrub warbling off-key in competition with an adjacent, equally untuneful, patch of dandelions. Aitonala delighted in a tiny rill flowing uphill, an inverted waterfall an arms-length high.
Over the evening meal the talk turned to the changes all felt in their sense of the ether.
“It’s not actually harder to perform a spell or focus a talent,” Chrys observed, “but you have to pay more attention to the circumstances and the shifts. It feels like performing in front of a very critical audience – it stretches you. Does it feel like that to you, Grymwer?”
“Something like. I don’t know about body-magic, such as you three have.” He nodded at Aitonala, Doryid and Kosohona. “Or about how it feels to warriors,” with a nod to Venalse and Rakt “but spellwork to me has always felt like briefly joining an orchestra. You feel the tune, insert your grace-notes, and things change. In settled lands, the orchestra is playing something sedate – a pavane, perhaps. Out here, it’s playing dance tunes at carnival.”
Venalse agreed. “For us, though, it’s less conscious. You have to let go and let it flow through to your arm. This is the deepest I’ve been into the Wild, and I can feel it much more here than on the edges. Chrys put it right – it stretches you.”
“For me,” Aitonala put in “it’s a bit of both. But when I do my forms in the morning, my dagger cuts the patterns more sharply.”
They fell silent for a time, all knowing that words expressed very partially what they each experienced.
Venalse finally shrugged. “We stay on this, the North Trail, another day. Then we head off into the forest, and we’ll likely be in the undermen’s hunting range, so could run into them at any time. For now, let’s get some rest.”