The Order of the Scales Deas - The Order of the Scales

‘No one comes this way much, do they.’ He looked at the woman, but she’d withdrawn again. ‘Bring everything up by dragon? But where are the farms? Where’s the food for the dragons themselves?’ He walked off a little way to peer down the slope. There wasn’t much sign of life down in the bottom of the valley. Not civilised life, anyway. Trees and trees and more trees. Probably a lot of rocks and little rivers too. For a moment he wondered if they should go back, but when he looked that way, he could see that they had in fact come down, and quite a way, and the thought of trying to climb back up again made him want to sink to his knees and cry.

On then. Like it or not. He’d lived half his life in valleys like these, survived and prospered in them. Could even carry the weight of a useless woman if he had to. But not with a broken arm. Dragging what he’d saved from the handcart down was wearing him out, but if he left it, they’d have no food, no firewood, no shelter and no means to get any.

The path was still a path, even if no one used it any more. It had to go somewhere.

‘Want to go back?’ he muttered, glancing at the woman, as much to see what she’d say as anything. Go back to what? To wait for another dragon to come and hope it was one with a rider on its back? They’d kill him anyway. Certainly if they knew who he was.

‘No!’

Speech. That was good. ‘What?’

She was staring at him. ‘No! Not back!’

He nodded slowly, wondering. ‘I don’t want to die down there. If there’s no shelter and no help, that’s what’s going to happen.’ He looked meaningfully at his arm.

‘Give me your knife!’

‘What?’

‘Give me your knife!’ She thrust out her hand as though punching someone. Slowly and carefully, Kemir gave her his knife. He watched as she mixed herbs and mushrooms and bits of what looked like dried black flesh in boiling water. The last thing she did was cut her hand and bleed into the infusion. She put the bowl on the ground and pushed it towards him.

Kemir wrinkled his nose. ‘What is it?’

‘Drink!’

‘I’ve seen your sort do blood-magic before, to make a dead man talk. Well, I’m not dead and I can already talk, so what is it, alchemist?’

‘I’m not an alchemist,’ she hissed.

Kemir looked at the bowl. ‘Could have fooled me.’

‘For your arm. It will heal much quicker with this.’ She looked ready to run away. When Kemir still didn’t move, she took another step away from him. ‘There are people. In the woods. There is shelter along this path. Old places. You mustn’t tell them we come from the mountain. Say nothing.’

In a flash Kemir understood. Her fear gave her away. Her fear of him. ‘Outsiders, are they?’

Her face was answer enough. Yes. ‘Your dragons feed on them. You hunt them.’

She held the knife out, pointing it at him. Even with a broken arm, it was hard to be scared of someone who was shaking so much. For a second or two he thought about killing her again, but he needed her to sell to the Taiytakei. Which wasn’t really even the start of why he couldn’t kill her, but it would do for now.

In the end, he reached out, took the bowl and drank the potion that she’d made for him. It tasted foul. He sat down and regarded her.

‘If that was poison, how long do I have to wait?’

She watched him, torn between staying and running away. Eventually he’d had enough.

‘If you’re not staying with me, I’d like my knife back, please. If you are, then we need to keep going. This cold will suck the life out of you if you stay still. So let’s try this again. My name’s Kemir.’ He gave her a close look. Her eyes were bleary and fogged with fatigue. But she wasn’t slack-jawed and empty. When she still didn’t move, he shrugged and got up and started down the mountain on his own. It wasn’t long before he heard her behind him.

‘Kataros,’ she said. ‘My name is Kataros.’

Kataros. Carefully making sure he was looking ahead so she couldn’t see, Kemir smiled. Kataros. Pleased to meet you, Kataros.

‘Kataros. Isn’t that an alchemist name?’

They stopped one more time, late in the afternoon and still a long way from the bottom. They were among the trees now but still above the snow line. There was an old ruin. Not much, just a few walls about as high as a man and a place where the path widened into a carefully laid circle of stones. Kemir watched this almost-alchemist search around, almost frantic, looking for something. Caves, probably. Shelter.

‘There aren’t any,’ he said. Every ruin in the realms had caves. Except in the mountains and the buildings put up before there were dragons. That’s what the old folk in the mountain villages said. Made before there were dragons, so there weren’t any caves. No need, you see. He said that to the woman. She looked at him for a moment as though he was mad and went back to searching. When you thought about it, probably he was mad. Before there were dragons? There had always been dragons.

Night was coming, came quickly down in the valleys. The deep cold would come with it. Kemir made a fire. Kataros brewed another potion and then they walked on. The potion and outsider bloody-mindedness kept him on his feet. Those and the certain knowledge that if he fell, even once, he’d never get up again, and the cold would kill him.

He had no memory of the night. Afterwards, all he could remember was the sunlight seeping lower into the valley again, down where a wide and shallow river ran through the trees. The snow was gone, the air almost warm and the path was still there, barely visible, overgrown and almost buried in grass and ferns and moss and vines. He remembered the sunlight because that was when his legs finally gave out. He collapsed by the river, dead on his feet, too tired to even light a fire. The burning from his arm was pushing through the woman’s potions. Steps. There had been steps too. Endless steps, steps, steps coming down the mountain, big and uneven and steep and filled with a malice that wanted to pitch him over and into the void below. Steps.

‘Make a fire,’ he groaned, but Kataros only stood and looked helpless. What does an alchemist know about starting a fire in the wilds? He just about managed to get one going, almost weeping with fatigue; that done, he wrapped himself up in a heap of furs and fell asleep. Warm.

He woke up again in the afternoon feeling almost as bad as when he’d fallen asleep, but they walked on anyway, through the evening, and gave up again when the sun set and darkness came. The moon and the stars were up, but the trees were thick now and little light reached through the leaves and branches. The path was too rough to follow blind, the stones too uneven, lifted up by tree roots, washed loose by water or simply gone. A broken arm was one thing; a turned ankle could be the death of them. Down here they had enough furs to keep warm. As long as it didn’t rain, which, this being the Worldspine it usually did.

As long as they kept going.

When he woke up again, he was shivering. Kataros was huddled next to him for warmth. She still wouldn’t speak, still seemed terrified of him, but at least she seemed to understand that he wasn’t about to rape and murder her. That day they passed a place where a slurry of mud had washed down from the mountain. The sluice and the lake? he wondered later. Or maybe something else. Were they anywhere near the eyrie still? He was having trouble thinking. Fatigue, that was it. He was simply too exhausted. They had food from the eyrie for a week or two. Water from the river. Shelter and furs enough that the cold wouldn’t kill them down here. Maybe they should rest. Build a shelter to keep the rain off and just rest.