Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“There.” Ryshad pointed as a wide, triangular net suddenly swept up and around just beyond a shallow knoll crowned with yellow flower spikes.

“What’s he after?” wondered Shiv.

“Those.” I pointed at a squat, short-winged bird all black but for a white belly and a comical tuft of scarlet and yellow feathers behind each eye. “Look, he’s got one.”

The hunter had indeed netted one from a small flock coming in to land. The rest hit the ground with less of a bump than I expected from such clumsy-looking fowl and vanished down burrows. I laughed. “That’s what made those noises.”

’Gren studied the hunter’s lair. ”What are we going to do about him?”

“We cross there and we leave him alone,” said Ryshad firmly, pointing at the stepping-stones.

“Do we?”

’Gren demanded of me and his brother.

“We’ve no need to kill him unless he comes after us,” I told Sorgrad.

He shrugged. “Fair enough.”

That was enough to send ’Gren heading for the stepping-stones. They were slick with slimy green growth and Shiv hurried past me. “Wait a moment, ’Gren.”

The weed began to steam, drying from shining emerald to a muted green that crisped into a dull brown, the unceasing wind carrying the lightest wisps away. Sorgrad watched, intent, while ’Gren looked downstream, still keeping watch on the hunter.

“He’d kill him in a moment, wouldn’t he?” There was concern beneath Ryshad’s distaste. “And never give it a second thought.”

“It gives him an edge over the rest of us.” I shrugged.

“That’s kept him and me alive more than once. Believe me, I’d rather be with him than without him on a trip like this.”

“I know he’s your friend but I wouldn’t have him under my command,” said Ryshad slowly.

“I’m not asking you to like him and, anyway, he wouldn’t serve under your command,” I pointed out to my well-drilled beloved. “He’s a mercenary, though, and he understands discipline in a fight. Halice wouldn’t stand for anything less.”

“Just as long as he realises I won’t,” muttered Ryshad as we made our way down to the river and over without incident. As soon as we were across, all ’Gren’s attention turned to the way ahead, the bird hunter forgotten, as I’d known he would be.

Hills rose on either side as we followed the road inland. We all stayed alert for any other travellers but as the day lengthened into a long evening, no one came from either direction. I even began to relax until that realisation made me frown.

“Where is everyone?” I turned to Ryshad and Shiv who were bringing up the rear again.

“How many times did we have to hide last time?” Shiv nodded at the tangled bushes lining the route, their vicious thorns currently hidden by flourishes of leaves and the rosettes of pink-tinted blossom.

“Not even goat shit to tread in, is there?” frowned Ryshad.

I realised something else was wrong. “Weren’t there pillars marking this road?”

“What is it?” Sorgrad and ’Gren came back towards us.

’Gren slapped at something buzzing around his face as I explained. ”Cursed midges.”

Shiv looked at a stretch of flatter land where the pass the road was following widened out a little. “They’re coming from over there.” As if he’d given some signal, a cloud of little black bloodsuckers came roving towards us.

“Must be the time of year for them,” I grimaced.

“Hurry up and we’ll leave them behind,” urged Ryshad.

Shiv was still studying the peaty stretch beside the road. “These people are willing to kill to get off these rocks, because there’s so little decent land, isn’t that right?” He pointed to deep chevrons cut into the bog. “So why let those ditches clog up? This is usable land, if it’s drained.” It didn’t look halfway usable land to me but I’d take Shiv’s word for it. He’d grown up in the Kevil fens of Caladhria and there aren’t many bigger swamps.

“Livak, I found your pillars,” Sorgrad called out. “And here.”

’Gren was a little way beyond his brother, looking in the gully that edged the road.

We joined them to see dark stones broken and stained with the muck pooled around them.

“What’s this?” Sorgrad jumped down for a closer look and ran a finger down deep chisel marks obscuring overlapping lines set in an incised square.

“It was clan insignia of some sort.” Ryshad was studying ’Gren’s pillar. “This one’s defaced as well.”

Shiv hissed with frustration. “Usara might know how to read something from the stone.”

“We brought the wrong wizard.”

’Gren was ready to make a joke of it but no one else was inclined to laugh.

I looked up and down the road whose emptiness was taking on a sinister aspect. “Let’s get on.” I told myself not to be fanciful but kept a hand on my dagger hilt just in case.

“Here.” Ryshad handed me a few long, oily-looking leaves. “Rub those on yourself. It’ll keep off the midges.”

Sorgrad immediately began searching the side of the road until he came up with some smaller, hairier plant. “These are better.”

I smiled at them both and rubbed Sorgrad’s on my wrists and Ryshad’s on my neck. The sooner they both got the message I wasn’t about to choose between them and no one could make me, the better we’d all get along. More importantly, the midges didn’t bother me after that, be it thanks to one plant, the other or both. That was relief because I wouldn’t have put it past ’Gren to count my bites and make a score out of them, just to see who’d be more put out, my lover or his brother.

Ryshad and Shiv forced the pace with their longer legs until we shorter ones were half walking, half jogging. No one complained and we made good speed until we reached the jutting rise of stark grey rock that hid our destination.

Sorgrad recognised it too; he only ever needs one look at a map. “Who’s going first?”

’Gren took a pace forward, eyes bright with expectation.

Ryshad looked at me and Shiv and then nodded to Sorgrad. “Just a quick look and come straight back here.”

“Sit tight, my girl.” Sorgrad winked at me and the pair disappeared around the outcrop.

“I can’t hear anything.” Ryshad cocked his head.

I listened. “Birds, breeze.” But no voices, no sound of tools or the bustle we’d seen here last time.

Shiv rubbed his hands together. “Shall I—”

Sorgrad’s whistle interrupted him and we hurried round the curve in the road, my dagger ready, Ryshad’s sword half drawn.

“What in Saedrin’s name happened here?” I exclaimed.

“Dast’s teeth!” Ryshad’s sword hissed all the way out of its sheath.

“I don’t think we’re going to find any allies hereabouts.” Shiv surveyed the scene in the hollow of the flower-speckled hills.

The road was lined with small houses, a scatter of others on the grass beyond. Even allowing the Elietimm were generally short folk, I’d thought before these people risked bumping their heads on their rafters. Now I realised the floors of the low-roofed houses were actually dug a good half span below the ground outside. I could see that because every roof had been ripped off, walls left defenceless before the harshness of wind and weather. Every house looked to be built to the same pattern; a windowless, stone-paved room at one end, something that looked like a quern stone set in the wall that separated it from a wider room beyond. That had windows and a flagged floor, open hearth backed by an upright slab of stone to foil the draught of doors to the front and to rooms beyond. Earthen floors and tethering rings in those suggested byres or stables, finally more storage ending in a circular arrangement of tumbled stones above a stoke hole. That could have been a corn kiln, a brew house, a laundry vat or some other domestic necessity but no tools or utensils remained to give any clue.