Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

Nothing could be further from the truth just as no race could be closer to us. The turfed forts of Dalasor may be remote and eerie but the prosaic ploughs of Caladhria and Ensaimin turn up copper rings and brooches with every spring sowing. We live among the ancient dwellings of the Plains People; we cannot see them only because our barns and houses, streets and shrines are raised upon their remnants. We cannot see descendants of this ancient race as we do of Forest and Mountain because those born of the Plains are our very selves. As we have lived for untold generations on these wide and fertile lands, so we have passed from primitive lives and beliefs to wed with the civilisation that the Tormalin Emperors brought from the east. As warp and weft in one cloth, so we wove together the superiority we enjoy today, as the growing child sets aside his toys and takes up the tools of manhood. The Mountain Men have followed our lead and in time the Forest Folk will turn from their amiable idleness and heed their lessons in turn.

Be careful, there’s ice melt coming down there.” Shiv looked back over his shoulder. He was sitting in the prow of the wooden-framed, hide-covered boat we’d stolen. He shook seawater from his white, wrinkled hand. “Curse it, that’s cold!”

Behind me, Ryshad was steering, long tiller tucked under his arm, both hands gripping it firmly. He narrowed his eyes at the milky flow running across the dark grey beach to bleach the greenish water of the sound. “Put your backs into it.”

Sorgrad and ’Gren exchanged a mutinous look but both renewed their grip on their oars. I smiled encouragement at them and did my best to keep my feet out of the water puddled in the bottom of the boat. My back ached from sitting on the hard thwart and the non-stop wind was cutting through my jerkin. I shivered and began rubbing my arms to try and get a little warmer. “Sit still,” Sorgrad told me curtly.

“I’m freezing,” I retorted.

“There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. You’ll only get more chilled fidgeting,” he said sternly. “Who’s spent more time in the mountains, you or me?”

“Just make sure you keep your hands and feet moving,” Ryshad advised. “You don’t want frost nip in your fingers and toes.”

I could see Sorgrad scowling at that but it seemed he couldn’t deny that was fair advice, much as he might want to.

“You could always cursed well row,” ’Gren said as he pulled hard. “That would soon warm you up.” He certainly boasted a rosy glow.

“I don’t want to risk grounding,” said Shiv with some alarm.

“It’s all sandbanks round here,” scoffed ’Gren. “We’d be all right.” There were certainly none of the vicious skerries that had threatened us like vicious claws as we’d negotiated the uncomfortably exposed shore of Shernasekke.

“Let’s not take the risk,” suggested Ryshad.

Sorgrad said nothing, just shooting ’Gren a warning look.

“So you stay sitting like a noblewoman on a pleasure jaunt,” ’Gren grumbled. If he wasn’t having a good time, no one else was going to.

I refused to feel guilty for having neither the heft nor the weight to match anyone else’s stroke. I’d tried spelling both brothers and no one could dispute Ryshad’s decision that I stop, after we found ourselves veering so unexpectedly off course.

“Pull, now!” Ryshad leant all his weight into the tiller and the brothers bent over their oars, hauling them back with breath hissing through their teeth. From the concentration on Shiv’s face, he was doing his part with magic. All I could do was hold tight as the light boat bucked and swerved. Ashore, a surging stream laden with fine white sand cascaded down a mountainside thick with ash. It drew a stark line across a black sand bar, which itself cut abruptly across the paler grey of the beach where huge boulders, raw edges unweathered, lay scattered like a haphazard throw of knucklebones. Pale fingers reached through the dark waters towards us but everyone’s efforts took us safely past.

“ ’Sar would dearly love to see a fire mountain burning,” Shiv remarked, gazing at the mountain rising high above the shallow swell of the island we were passing. Yellow-tinted grey, the jagged peak had faint wisps of cloud clinging to the topmost pinnacles. No, not cloud but smoke or steam, ever renewed to defy the constant winds. I wondered if Misaen would heed a mongrel lass like me asking him politely to keep his fires banked until we’d quit this unnerving place.

“See, that’s all rock spewed up recently.” Shiv pointed to a formless mass of black stone sprawling across the beach and dusted with white. “It was so hot, it boiled a barrel full of salt out of the sea before it was quenched.” He smiled, intrigued at the notion.

I decided I preferred land that had the decency to stay as it had been made.

“Livak, put your hood up.” Ryshad spared me a blown kiss when I turned to see him covering his own head. I would have responded but this third day of harsh wind and such sun as burned through the recurrent mists had cracked my lips painfully. We’d taken a laboriously circuitous route in order to keep a long low, grass-covered island between us and the forbidding bulk of Ilkehan’s mountain-spined domain.

Our little boat crawled with aching slowness past a rocky islet in the midst of a treacherous sprawl of dunes and grass. A squat watchtower stood on the scant solid footing, the walls around it were stained and broken in several places. Small figures were making repairs with new, paler stone and several paused to look in our direction.

Sorgrad winked at me. “We leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.”

But the builders on the fort weren’t the only people to see us coming in from the shallow seas between the outer Elietimm islands and the deeper ocean. To reach this mysterious Olret’s fiefdom, we had to navigate the inner channels winding between dour grey islands fringed with saltings claiming equal kinship with sea and land. We saw men, women and children up to their knees in mud, digging for whatever the grudging sand might yield. Wading birds, black and white and trimmed with flashes of yellow or red hopped around in eager anticipation.

“Why couldn’t we steal a boat with a god-cursed sail?” grunted Sorgrad as some unseen current slowed us.

“Why don’t you take an oar, if you Tormalin know all about boats?” Puffs punctuated ’Gren’s words as he favoured Ryshad with a disgruntled glare. “I’ll bet even I could steer with a wizard smoothing the water under this thing’s arse.”

“That’s called the hull, ’Gren.” I grinned.

“Your man been making you an expert?” he began.

“We need to make landfall soon,” Shiv interrupted, turning to hide his map from the inquisitive wind.

“That’s going to be easier said than done,” grimaced Ryshad.

I studied the coast of Rettasekke curving ahead of us. Black pillars of rock piled in steps and stacks offering no foothold to anything bigger than a seabird. Screaming hordes of them clustered on every ledge and spilled whiteness neither salt nor snow down the cliffs. The sun suddenly appeared to strike rainbow glints from the wet rocks. The colours vanished and I looked up to see dappled cloud spreading across the sky.

“We’ll want to be under cover before long,” Ryshad observed.

“Before nightfall, I aim to be an honoured guest at this Olret’s fireside, drink in one hand, meat in the other,” said Sorgrad with determination.

“Drink and a willing lass will suit me.” ’Gren chuckled.

“You keep your hands to yourself,” I chided my irrepressible friend. “Touch the wrong stocking tops and you could find yourself flogged or worse.”