Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“I fucking hear the hounds, kid. What you think we’re running for?”

Gerin shook his lowered head, still breathing harshly. “No, listen . We’ve got to find—” He spat, gestured. “—water, a stream or something. Got to lose the scent.”

The blacksmith shook his head. “What is this? Now you’re an expert on being chased by dogs as well?”

“Yeah.” Gerin got shakily back upright. “I am. Been losing the Trelayne Watch and their mutts out on the marsh most of my life. I’m telling you. We have got to find some water.”

The blacksmith snorted, muttered something inaudible. But when Gerin cast about, picked a direction, and started forcing his way through the tangled foliage again, the man followed him, wordless. Perhaps it was credit given for the way the foam-and-fit trick had worked, perhaps just a more general faith. There was a wealth of lore talked about marsh dwellers in the city: That they could scent water on the breeze and lead you to it was a common enough conceit. Gerin took a fresh grip on his fear and tried to believe the myth as much as his city-bred companion seemed to.

Surreptitiously, he squeezed blood from a small cut on his face, mingled it with spit on the ball of his thumb, and blew softly on the resulting mix. Under his breath, he muttered the swift prayer to Dakovash he had learned at his mother’s knee:

… salt lord, master of shadow and shifting winds, out of the wind’s cold quarter and the west, hear me now and put forth your crooked hand for me…

And maybe it was simply the custom of childhood, the simpler sense of self it brought around, or the fleeting memory of a mother’s warmth, but now the undergrowth seemed to give a little more easily before him, the branches and brambles to scrape his abraded skin a little less, and the ground underfoot to firm up and guide his steps.

The forest opened and breathed them in.

THEY STUMBLED ON THE STREAM ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, FAINT CHORTLE of running water and a ribbon of broken, bandlit gleam in the base of a shallow valley. The sounds of pursuit seemed to have ebbed away to the north, and they paused on the saddle of land overlooking the little river. Time to peer and grin at each other before they went loping down between the trees, breathing more easily now for the more considered paths they’d taken. It was a little like waking from a nightmare. Heads less stuffed with fear, room for thoughts other than just staying ahead of the hounds, room enough that Gerin was starting to feel the raw weals the march in manacles had left on his ankles and wrists. The feverish tremor in his limbs, the parched rasp in his throat as he breathed.

They hit the water’s edge, dropped to their knees, and drank in sucking gulps.

“You knew this was going to be here?” the blacksmith asked him when he finally came up for air. “You could really smell it like you said?”

Gerin shook his head, because in all honesty he wasn’t sure anymore. Something had been driving him, that was all he knew. He dragged muddied hands through his sopping hair and over his face. Winced as the water stung his manacle sores.

“We need to get off the bank,” he said. “Stay in the center and head downstream or up. Dogs can’t follow that.”

“How long for? This water’s fucking freezing.”

“A while.” Gerin already wading in, up to his calves. “They’ll run the dogs along both banks looking for scent, but it takes time to do that. And they have to pick a direction. That gives us a coin-spin chance either way. And I know some other tricks when we get farther along. Now come on.”

The blacksmith grumbled to his feet. He joined Gerin in the middle of the stream, picking his way awkwardly over the stones on the bottom.

“All right, marsh boy,” he said. “You’ve done pretty well by us so far, I guess. Can’t hurt to see what else you—”

He choked to a halt. His expression splintered in shards of disbelief and pain. He made a helpless noise, lifted one hand toward Gerin, then back to his own chest where the iron head of a crossbow bolt stood an impossible six inches clear of his suddenly bloodied jerkin.

“Stand where you are!”

The cry came from the downstream bend of the river. Gerin’s head jerked to the sound. Bandlight showed him three march-masters floundering upstream in thigh-deep water near the far bank, a pair of dogs held slavering at the short end of chain leashes. Black and silver, the bulk of the men and the dogs, the splash of water around them. The man with the crossbow stood apart, had his discharged weapon down, braced on a flattish boulder at the bank, cranking up awkwardly for another shot.

Blood bubbled out of the blacksmith’s mouth. His eyes locked on Gerin’s.

“Better run,” he said throatily, and fell facedown in the water.

“Stand, slave, or we shoot you down!”

Gerin saw the blood smoke muddily out from under the blacksmith’s floating body, the soaked folds of the man’s jerkin and the crossbow bolt sprouting stiffly from his back. He saw, down at the river bend, the crossbowman still struggling with his weapon. He felt the moment tilt under him like a skiff’s deck in choppy water. He whirled and fled.

Upstream, six frantic, plunging steps and out, onto boulders at the bank, wet print slap across stone on hands and slipping feet, scrabbling up to the yielding earthen forest slope above and into the trees. Behind and below, he heard the dogs let slip, the sound of the men cursing and splashing. He tore off time for one final panic-eyed look over his shoulder, saw the blacksmith’s spread-eagled floating form cradled in the river’s arms, the dogs surfing about in the water near the boulders, barking furiously up at him, but seemingly unable to climb out.

He fell back into the grip of the nightmare.

The slope was steep; he kept having to drop to hands and knees to stop himself from tumbling back down. The resin scent of the pines clogged in his throat as he scrambled upward. The march-masters were big, burly men for the most part; it came with the territory of what they did for a living. Amid the trees, he could probably stay ahead of them. But the dogs…

Only a matter of minutes before they found a way up.

The climb began to shallow out, the trees thinned. The slope became a broad, saddle-backed ridge, edged with eroded stone bluffs on the river side. A cool wind hooted off over the rocks, cut through his soaked clothing, chilled him to the bone. Gerin got properly to his feet, sagged into a staggering run along the top.

Something dark stood waiting in his path.

Gerin’s heart was already thundering in his chest, but it seemed to ice over as he saw the gathered black form ahead. For a single second it seemed he was looking at something blown together out of twisted remnants of bark and trees limbs charred to death. The figure was a sharp aberration in the smooth, bandlit open ground on the ridgetop. He slammed to an involuntary halt at the sight, and it was only then he understood he was looking at a man, a tall, cloak-wrapped warrior with the jagged rise of a broadsword pommel over his left shoulder, the stab of the scabbard out from his right-hand flank, the arms folded.

Overseer!

But it was not, and somehow, somewhere in his panicking brain, he knew that much already. He stared up into a gaunt face that might have been handsome once but was now clamp-mouthed and hollow-eyed and scrawled along one side of the jaw with a thin, snaking scar like the ones they gave to disobedient whores in the city. He met a gaze that offered no more passion than a fisherman watching his motionless line.

“Dakovash?” he husked. “Is it you?”

The figure stirred, gave him a curious, sidelong look.