Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“Look for some clue as to what happened here,” Ryshad ordered. “Keep someone else in view all the time.”

“Let’s not disturb too much,” I added. “We don’t want it too obvious we’ve been here.”

Ryshad nodded, sword at the ready as he strode down the road, Shiv at his side. Sorgrad cut off to one side, blade in hand. I reckoned me staying with ’Gren would be safest all round.

“Nothing.” He was poking his dagger in a soggy mess of part-burned thatch. “Whoever did this stripped the place.”

“Not quite.” I looked down into a house some way down the track. The central room was black with soot and charcoal where timbers had been stacked and burned. “How many trees have you seen big enough to make roof trusses? This is like melting down a stack of coin hereabouts.”

“So someone was making a point.”

’Gren shied a stone at something scurrying through the mire of the deep ditch separating the houses from the road. ”There’s nothing here to say what or who, though.”

I looked at the devastated houses. Birds much the size and hue of hooded crows were building nests on the ragged walls, plundering the scattered straw and turf that had once covered the roofs. Their chucks and caws emphasised the empty silence.

“Let’s see what the others have found.” We ran down the track to join Ryshad in front of what had been this settlement’s central stronghold. He held out his hand to me. “Think you can get in there again?”

“If you give me a boost.” That was a joke. When we’d come looking for Geris, the wall around this formidable house of stern grey stone had risen well above my head. Now I could step across the blocks marking the foundation.

“Not one course left upon another,” murmured Shiv in a portentous voice.

“Like something out of a bad ballad,” I agreed. But this was no comfortable tale to while away a winter’s evening.

“Let’s see if there’s anyone still in residence.” I took a cautious step up and over the broken wall, dagger in hand. Ryshad began a slow circuit from what had been the guardhouse while Shiv headed for the opposite corner. Sorgrad and ’Gren spread out to reconnoitre the far side of the compound.

“Didn’t we think this was a forge?” Shiv stopped to look at tumbled stones blackened with fire. There had been a whole range of buildings along the inner face of the wall when we’d sat and spied on the place before.

“And this would be the mill.” I kicked at the last charred heartwood of a tangle of roof timbers.

“Someone had wanted this house razed beyond hope of repair.” Ryshad was walking cautiously through the rubble where the whole front face of the house had been pulled down, side walls and back reduced to broken outlines barely waist high.

“This is where I got in last time, where the window was.”

I stepped through the empty air above the chipped stones. Broken wooden frames and splinters of horn were strewn across a floor hacked and cracked by malicious axes. The stubby remains of the internal walls sheltered sodden drifts of grey ash bleeding black stains across the pale flagstones. I shoved a piece of timber with a boot to reveal a stark white outline where it had lain. I’d say no one’s been here since this disaster struck.”

“But what was the disaster?” wondered Shiv.

“Or who,” said Ryshad grimly. I could make a guess.

There had been rugs on these floors, carefully woven hangings, polished stone tables. A family had lived here and many more besides within the compound and in the village beyond, making what passed for a decent life on these rocks. Now there was no one, beyond vermin lurking in the drains and the nesting birds rearing their chicks in a quiet corner. Where had the people flown? Or had they been netted like the fat little fowls on the riverbank?

Ryshad’s thoughts were following the same scent. “I can’t find any bodies, nor yet any bones,” he said as he joined me.

“Is that good or bad?” Shiv was unsure and I had no answers.

Ryshad looked up. “Where’s Sorgrad? Or ’Gren, come to that.” He looked annoyed.

“You just said keep someone in view,” I reminded him. “I’ll bet they can see each other.” I used my fingers for the whistle the three of us had used for more years than I cared to recall.

Blond heads appeared above a ridge behind the derelict stronghold and Sorgrad beckoned to us. “Come see.”

“What were you looking for up here?” To my relief Ryshad kept his tone mild.

“Goat shit,”

’Gren answered brightly. ”Catch a goat, it squeals, brings someone running. We want answers—”

I waved him to silence.

“What do you make of this?” Sorgrad invited as we scrambled to the top of the rise.

We hadn’t come this way on our previous circumspect visit so we hadn’t seen the stone circle the brothers had found. That was a shame because it must have been quite a sight before the sarsens had been toppled.

“Wrecking this wasn’t a quick or easy job,” said Ryshad.

I didn’t need a mason’s skills to tell me that. Each stone must have been twice my height, massive blue-grey rocks roughly shaped and raised with some trick I couldn’t begin to guess at. The colossal fingers of stone had been the innermost circle within numinous rings of ditch and banked mound. Once we left the rise behind us, this was the highest point on a wide expanse of tussocky grass running away into mossy hollows and a few scrubby thickets. I couldn’t see anything else before the plain blurred into the muted colours of distant hills.

“What was this place for?”

’Gren had a foot up on one of the prone megaliths like a hunter celebrating his kill. Splintered scraps of timber and a snapped-off length of braided hide rope were discarded close by. Perhaps that’s how the wreckers had brought the giants down.

“We found one before. That was a grave circle.” Ryshad wrinkled his nose with unconscious distaste.

Sorgren squatted and casually pulled a finger bone from spoil dug from the pit where a stone had stood. “Sheltya lore links the bones of a people to their land and I don’t suppose these Alyatimm are any different.” He used the ancient Mountain name for the exiles. “You lowlanders are all for burning your dead but taking bones, breaking them, that’s a desecration in the Mountains, an act of war to the death.”

Ryshad nodded. “Break a rival’s house to rubble and dig up his ancestors, no one’s going to gainsay your victory.”

“If this is what passes for a shrine hereabouts, wouldn’t it be a pretty effective way of scuppering your enemy’s magic?” I couldn’t see anyone having a lot of confidence in the leader of the brown-liveried men now, even assuming he wasn’t already dead.

Sorgrad was scowling. “We’re not going to find an ally here.”

I’d been thinking the same thing. Still, I reminded myself firmly, we had Shiv and that meant magic to call on, as long as he could summon it without getting himself attacked. No matter, we’d got out of here without magic last time, thanks to Ryshad’s fortitude. Come to that, I’d been in tight corners when I’d worked some risky deceptions with Sorgrad and ’Gren. This was no different. We had our plan, we’d do what we’d come for and then we’d leave. Why did we need anyone else?

“No chance of supper,” grumbled ’Gren.

“Or a bolthole.” Ryshad’s face was grim.

“Someone’s still coming here.” Shiv was skirting around the edge of the circle, stopping here and there to poke a stick into the ditch that divided the sacred enclosure from the profane land around it. He pointed at a square stone set to one side within the circle.

’Gren, keep an eye out.” I followed Ryshad for a closer look and the brothers came too.