Ian Irvine - Tetrarch

Six months ago he might have taken advantage of her, had the opportunity come, but he was a wiser and a less selfish man now. Nish was no saint, but he could see her yearning. Not for him, particularly, and certainly not for the kinds of fleshy grapplings he dreamed about. Ketila was becoming a woman and wanted to be seen as one, and to be taken seriously.

‘This land is so different from where I come from,’ he said.

‘Where do you come from, Cryl-Nish?’ Her back was pressed against the wall but Ketila inclined her head towards him. Her mother noted it and smiled.

Nish looked different from the other people in the camp; there was a mystery about him. He had flown into the camp hanging from a huge balloon, and he came from the other side of the world. He had an important father and a powerful master and Ketila knew, because Colm had told them, about his great deeds and heroic struggle with the nylatl. She had seen the tooth and claw marks in his leg, when Tinketil dressed the wounds. To her, he was not short, plain and lacking in a beard. He was fascinating, exotic, bold and brave. And he spoke to her as if she was important.

‘I was born in Fassafarn,’ said Nish, ‘which is almost as far as you can go east from here. It is the chief city of the province of Einunar, at the furthest end of the Great Mountains.’

‘What is it like there?’ she asked softly.

‘There are enormous mountains covered in snow all year round, and valleys so deep you can hardly see the bottom …’

‘I was born in Bannador,’ she said. ‘We also have big mountains.’

‘These ones are so big that when the wind blows they write their names in the sky, and the glaciers …’

‘What are glaciers, Cryl-Nish?’

‘Rivers of ice that flow down from ice caps half a thousand spans thick, grinding out the bottoms of mighty valleys and not stopping until they reach the sea. Sometimes they break into chunks of ice as big as islands and float across the ocean. Many a sailor has seen an iceberg loom up out of the foggy night and knows that his little ship was going straight to the bottom and he with it, never to see his wife and his darling daughters again.’

Nish was enjoying his rhetoric, though at the last the girl bit her lip and he turned to safer waters. ‘We have great snow bears in the mountains, white beasts so big that they could not get through the door of a house. I saw one once and it was almost two spans high. It could have eaten a lyrinx for breakfast.’

Ketila brightened at that. ‘Are they not dangerous?’

‘Very dangerous, though they seldom attack people unless they get between a mother and her cubs.’ Nish’s eye met Tinketil’s for a second.

‘Have you ever killed a snow bear?’ asked Ketila.

Nish felt the urge to make up a heroic story, but suppressed it. He was not sure why. ‘No, Ketila, I haven’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t like killing things much, and snow bears are magnificent creatures.’

‘You killed the nylatl.’ They had all heard that tale.

‘I had to, or it would never have stopped trying to kill me. It was mad, the poor creature. The lyrinx flesh-formed it out of nothing. Did I tell you that?’

‘No,’ she breathed.

The whole family was listening as he told the tale of the lyrinx attack, the flesh-formed little monstrosities he had found in the ice houses on the plateau, and all that he had learned about the depraved Art since. It was a long tale, and both girls’ eyelids were drooping by the time he finished it.

‘Thank you,’ said Ketila. ‘That was a wonderful tale. You are so brave. Good night, Nish.’

‘Good night.’

When they were asleep he said quietly to Oinan, who had been out earlier in the evening, ‘Have you had any luck so far?’

‘No. It’s a delicate matter, Cryl-Nish. I have to be sure we won’t be informed on before I ask my favour.’

Since there was no more he could do, Nish settled down to sleep. It was not a good start.

The weary days went by. One night, something roused Nish in the early hours of the morning. It had been a noise, far off. He looked out through the opening of the hovel. It was still pitch dark. Crawling outside, he stood up and stretched. The night was mild compared to what he was used to. The stars glittered in a clear sky. He wandered around the huts, relieved himself, yawned and headed back. Again came that noise, a faint, distant roar like an angry mob.

Fleeting across to the palisade he peered through a knothole. It was dark outside, which was strange. Normally the guards patrolled with blazing torches, calling to one another. He went further along, to a gap between two poles, and heard that faint roar again.

Nish pulled himself up the palisade. There was not a guard in sight. He slipped his leg over and sat atop the fence as if it was a saddle. The roar was louder from here and he made out a glow in the north, from the direction of Nilkerrand.

A not-so-faint glow when he stood up, one foot on the outside rail, the other in the valley he had been sitting on. It looked like a fire. He knew there was no forest up that way, and it was too early in the season for the fields to be burning. It must be in the city.

The sound came on the wind, louder now, a terrified mob. Flames shot up. Nilkerrand was burning, its hundred thousand inhabitants running for their lives, and the guards of the refugee camp had fled. The battlefront must have moved faster than anyone expected. It was almost on them.

Racing back to the hovel, Nish shook Oinan and Tinketil awake. ‘Get up!’ he hissed. ‘Nilkerrand is burning and the guards have run away. The enemy is upon us.’

They must have been used to fleeing in the night for they woke instantly and pulled their boots on. Nish felt for his own. Tinketil woke the children, who were just as silent and grimly efficient. In a reed-light Nish saw Ketila’s eyes on him again.

‘I’ll wake the camp,’ Nish said, crawling out.

Oinan caught his leg. ‘There’ll be a stampede. We’ll never get out.’

‘I can’t let everyone be slaughtered in their beds. How will I find you?’

‘Which way, Colm?’ cried Oinan.

‘Down the gully where the waste runs,’ said the boy without hesitation. ‘We can get through the fence at the far end, if there are no guards at all.’

‘I’ll meet you there,’ said Nish, ‘but if I don’t come, go without me.’

He ran down the row to where the great gong hung by the workhouse. Snatching up the mallet, he thumped the gong, one, two, three.

There were cries all over the camp. ‘Wake!’ he roared. ‘Nilkerrand is burning and the enemy is upon us. Wake!’ Giving it one last thump, he dropped the mallet. Then, thinking that it was a better weapon than his bare hands, Nish tucked it under his arm.

People were running everywhere, shouting, screaming and crashing into each other. Down the row, one of the hovels was ablaze. As he turned the corner, Nish was swept off his feet by a stampede. Holding his arms over his head, he scrunched up and waited for them to go by.

Once they passed, he crept along the walls of the buildings. A flame leapt up to his left: someone had set fire to a shanty and in its light a mob was attacking the gate. A dark figure went over the top and hurled the bar off. The gate burst open.

Nish kept going. Most of the camp was behind him now. Stumbling along in the dark, he fell off the edge of an embankment, skidded in greasy clay and slid all the way to the bottom. Judging by the putrid smell, he was in the gully. The drain must be just to his right. Well, that saved him looking for it.

He picked his way down. Several others must have had the same idea, for he could see figures further along. Perhaps it was the family. Nish did not call out in case it was not. A vibrating shriek of terror came from behind, then screams from hundreds of massed throats. Was it the enemy? He had to know. Scrambling up the side of the gully, Nish climbed a mound, stood on tiptoes and stared towards the gate, clearly visible in the flames.