Brian Ruckley - Exile

She crept away. She retraced her steps not on her feet but on hands and knees, even crawling on her belly sometimes. Her every movement was measured and considered. Her mind rattled with fear and uncertainty, but she quelled it and forced herself to think only of silence and concealment. There was nothing of consequence now save surviving the next few minutes, the next few yards of ground. Her life was measured in reaches, shifts of weight, the smallest of increments.

Back to the stream and then up its tiny channel, pretending it to be a gorge so deep it would hide her from any eye. Around boulders and among the low juniper scrub. To the decapitated tree, where she paused for the first time and ventured a careful look back. She could not see the Huluk Kur, and they could not see her. She went more quickly after that.

To Wren’s surprise, Ammenor roared when she told him. A great bellow of frustration that echoed from the stone forms of the Cold Men. He hung his head and stamped his wooden lump of a foot.

‘And you walked back up here from there, did you? In a nice straight line, I suppose?’

Wren did not say anything. There was already a glimmer of guilty doubt in her mind before Ammenor went on.

‘The Huluk Kur can track a deer for days. One of their babes, fresh off the teat, could follow whatever trail you’ve left.’

‘That might be true,’ Wren acknowledged. ‘I thought you needed to know. It’s not safe here any more.’

He flicked her half-apology away with a loose hand. He was frowning, turning things over inside his head.

‘You’re sure it was the whole tribe?’

Wren nodded.

‘They’re mad to try crossing the hills with their entire people at this time of year,’ Ammenor said, as much to himself as to Wren. ‘But perhaps not. If they make it, they’ll come out on the plains by Homneck Bridge. They’ll miss the Hung Gate entirely. That’ll spoke the wheels of the Free and the King’s army.’

He stared at Wren.

‘And by spoke the wheels,’ he said, ‘I mean kill them all, most likely. The Huluk Kur’ll be behind them, between them and the river. Nice open ground for them to play in.’

‘We should go,’ Wren said flatly.

Ammenor frowned.

‘I’ve skinned that squirrel,’ he said. ‘Spitted it already.’

She stared at him in disbelief.

‘They could be here any moment. Now, today, tomorrow.’

‘Or never,’ he muttered. Almost petulant, almost like a stubborn child.

‘Fool,’ she snapped. Her anger, her grief, all her roiling emotions balled themselves up into a knot and made Ammenor their target. ‘What have you got here that you’d sooner die than leave? If they never come this way, you can return in a day or two and go back to pretending this is the life you want. But if they do come and you’re still here – we’re here – then it’s done. Dead and burned.’

He hung his head and stared at the snow.

‘Me, I’m making for the Hung Gate and for the Free,’ Wren went on, deciding it for herself almost in the same instant she spoke it.

‘You know where to go, do you?’ Ammenor asked pointedly.

‘Show me. The Free are the only thing that might stop the Huluk Kur now, as best I understand. And you said yourself they’re undone if they stay where they are.’

‘It’s too late to save the Free,’ Ammenor stated.

‘You can’t be certain of that. I might not be able to live in the Kingdom now, but that doesn’t mean I want to see the Huluk Kur hacking their way across it. It’s still my home, my root. I still have family there. And I’m not afraid to try, even if you are.’

Ammenor glared at her, as fierce as she had ever seen him. She thought perhaps she had gone too far, set the barb a little too deeply into his flesh. But he looked away.

‘It would take days to reach the Hung Gate,’ he said faintly.

‘I don’t care!’ Wren cried, flinging her arms wide. ‘What else is there? I’ve come into this wasteland and found nothing but rock and snow and defeat. And savages covering everything in blood and ashes. What would you have me do, old man? I have nothing left!’

She breathed in deeply and mastered herself.

‘I’m going to reach the Free before the Huluk Kur reach the river,’ she told him. ‘You don’t think a Clever can change anything? You’re wrong. You hear me? Wrong!’

And finally, sluggishly, he nodded.

Wren’s impatience mounted as she waited for Ammenor to ready himself. The man moved as if weighed down by a terrible burden. He laid furs on the ground and brought out from his hut those few things he could carry with him. To and fro he went, emptying out the home he had made for himself. Piece by piece, he assembled as much of his life as he could on the furs. There was not a lot of it.

‘We have to go,’ Wren said. She kept her voice level and calm.

‘You go then, woman,’ he growled. ‘I’m not so old and frail I can’t catch you up.’

She went, but only as far as the edge of the clearing. Where the forest began she stopped and stood there, beneath the first of the trees, to wait for him. Watching him gathering nuts and berries from those bushes he must have planted years ago, she began to feel his weary sorrow as if it were her own.

There had never been anything splendid about his exile, for all the tales the hedge-witches told of him. There was only an embittered man, living a life he had no more than half chosen for himself and hoping to be left alone. Now he was exiled even from that life and hope.

Ammenor folded away his meagre harvest in a square of canvas and tucked it into his belt. He rolled up the furs and bound them with cords. He hooked the bundle under one arm and stood there among the Cold Men, looking around. Saying a silent farewell, Wren supposed.

‘We should go,’ she called softly again from the trees.

Ammenor cocked his head, like a dog catching a sound or scent no human could detect. He glanced sideways and then looked straight at Wren.

‘Get down,’ he hissed. ‘Stay there and don’t move.’

She opened her mouth to question his abrupt commands but already he was turning away from her. He dropped his roll of furs to the ground. Wren saw figures emerging from the trees on the far side of the clearing beyond him. She clamped her lips tight and sank down onto her stomach, burying herself in the undergrowth at the forest’s edge.

They were big men, made bigger by the bulky furs and animal hides that clothed them. Their faces were as pale as any Wren had ever seen, their hair blond, thick and unruly. Claws and teeth hung from their jackets. Feathers were sewn into the seams of their sleeves. Some had small animal skulls – fox, hare, hawk – pinned to their breasts like brooches. They carried spears, bows and cudgels. Some held clubs studded with points and flakes of sea-ivory and dark stone. Some wore tunics that had once belonged to the Clade.

‘Take what you want,’ Ammenor said without any hint of anger or resistance. He waved an almost casual arm towards his shack. ‘There’s food and furs and tools. I’ll not keep you from it.’

The Huluk Kur advanced, spread out. The nearest of them regarded the Clever’s shabby home with unreadable eyes. He seemed entirely uninterested in the strange stone figures arrayed around the clearing. It was almost as if he could not see the Cold Men. They held no meaning for him.

He spoke in a jagged, barking tongue Wren did not remotely understand. Nor did Ammenor evidently, for he shrugged.

Another of the northerners strode to the Clever’s side and kicked at his baggage roll on the ground, testing its weight and worth.

‘Take what you want,’ Ammenor repeated.

The Huluk Kur warrior struck him without even looking at him. A single fast backward sweep of his arm caught the old man on the side of his face and knocked him to the ground. Some of the others laughed. Some began moving towards the hut. One began pulling berries from a nearby bush and crushing them into his mouth.