Brian Ruckley - Exile

She slept for a few hours on a bed of moss in the lee of a rocky overhang. It gave her some shelter but little comfort. It was lucky, she supposed, that wind or snow did not come in the night. That might have been too much for her. As it was, in the watery dawn that followed she discovered what desperation looked like. She saw what was needed to make her consider gambling everything.

At first she did not know what she was hearing. A grinding, as of a distant, lazy rockslide? It went on too long and deep for that. More like an entire river of rock slowly rolling its way over the land. With that image coming to mind, she guessed what it might be.

She eased her way along a ledge from where she had slept and clambered onto the top of the ridge, wedging her staff into crevices to lever herself up. She shuffled on hands and knees over slabs of rock and patches of flat turf. The heavy rumbling note grew slowly louder.

When she came to an edge, she lay flat and stared down across a long, tumbling scree of boulders to a plain of grass below.

No hunting or scouting party this. No handful of warriors. It was the van of the Huluk Kur host. Hundreds of horsemen. Behind them, indistinct in the weak light of the morning, came the head of the main column. They must have broken their camp before dawn, she thought. Or perhaps marched through the hours of darkness.

For long minutes she lay there, lost to herself. She was too slow, too weak to race this vast, remorseless people. Her body had too little left to give. Nothing remained to her but to hide herself away somewhere in these mountains. Exile herself from whatever was happening and was going to happen. Hide and be quiet and be what – and who – Ammenor had been.

Unless she was willing to risk everything. Unless she was willing to flirt with death. Might she after all become mist or bird or…

‘Stand up.’

The sudden command set her heart skipping. She rolled and turned slowly, expecting nothing good.

Behind her, four men were standing in a loose arc, horses patient and silent at their backs. They had bows at the ready, arrows on the strings. All aiming at her. She cursed herself inwardly for becoming so lost in the maze of her own thoughts that she could not even hear four riders drawing near. Then she belatedly recognised the closest of the men.

‘Oh ho,’ Hamdan cried. ‘Put up your bows, boys. It’s the river girl! It’s the one I told you about. Dislikes the Clade so much she chose the Hervent over their company!’

He sounded genuinely pleased. Delighted, almost.

Wren rode behind Hamdan, arms about his waist, back to the Free’s camp. She had ridden a horse before, often enough that she would have said she could be trusted in the saddle. This was a different kind of riding. Fast and fearless. Every one of the archers seemed born to it, and every horse born to carry them. To Wren’s eye, their descent was wildly dangerous, barely controlled at times. Pebbles cascaded after them. Before long, Wren chose not to look ahead over Hamdan’s shoulder. She found knowing what they were plummeting towards did nothing but feed alarm. Instead, she concentrated on not falling off.

The camp, when at last they reached it, was not what Wren had expected. A thousand of the King’s levy, a hundred of the Free, Hamdan had told her so long ago on the barge. An army. A small one, but an army nonetheless. This was not that. This was three or four hundred men at most. There were not even enough tents to shelter that many. Not enough horses to bear them all. Only a handful of wagons, and those not fully laden with supplies. There were perhaps a dozen small campfires burning, sending tendrils of smoke up into the still air. Looking up at the faint tracks across the sky, Wren frowned.

‘They’ll see your smoke,’ she said over Hamdan’s shoulder. ‘You’ll bring them down on you.’

‘That’s the idea,’ Hamdan grunted. ‘Our contract says the Huluk Kur don’t cross the Hervent. If we’re to fulfil those terms, we have to face them here and now.’

The camp lay on the edge of a wide, flat mire. On two sides stood high and rocky ridges; on the others – the direction the Huluk Kur might appear from – there were only low hills, treeless and bleak. The great open expanse immediately before the camp was cut by streams and pockmarked with great pools of dark water. Rushes and reeds grew there, though none of them were tall.

They dismounted and Hamdan led Wren through the camp. Hardly anyone looked up as they passed. Many men were sleeping, stretched out on the bare ground. The mood of the place was dour and Wren felt a foreboding take hold of her. Hamdan halted her with a touch on her arm.

‘Wait a moment, if you don’t mind,’ the archer said, and without waiting for an answer he ducked inside the closest tent.

It was the same as the others. Simple, unadorned. Nothing to mark it out as of any special consequence. From within, Wren heard hushed voices. Hamdan’s and one other. She did not quite know what to do with herself as she stood there waiting. She folded her arms and set her weight on one hip. Just as she was starting to think she should sit down to protect her still-sore ankle, Hamdan abruptly emerged. A larger figure came just a pace or two behind him.

‘This is Yulan,’ the archer said. ‘Captain of the Free.’

He was a tall man, his skin the same soft brown shade as Hamdan’s. Another man of the south then. One rather more intimidating in stature and appearance. Yulan’s head was smooth-shaven, save for what must be a single long tail of hair that was folded up and pinned into a knot atop his scalp. He regarded Wren with intelligent, intense eyes.

‘Hamdan tells me the Huluk Kur are close at hand,’ he said to her. His voice was gentler than she might have expected.

‘They are,’ she said. ‘The first of them will be on you in an hour or two, I’d guess.’

‘That’s lucky,’ Yulan said, and Wren could only think that their notions of luck must not live under the same roof. He saw her surprise and gave a faint smile and the slightest shrug of one shoulder.

‘We weren’t certain of their course, and it would be hard to move again to get between them and Homneck Bridge. Everyone is tired.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Wren said, shaking her head wearily. ‘I thought I’d have to reach the Hung Gate to find you. And that there’d be more spears at your back when I did.’

‘Not even the Huluk Kur can move thousands of people over mountains without getting noticed sooner or later. Not if their enemies are wise enough to have scouts and watchers strewn across the land. Certainly not if they insist on setting fire to every village or cottage they find along the way. They’re fierce and brave, the Huluk Kur, but not exactly cunning. Not careful.’

Wren looked around her. These were tired men, Yulan had said, and she could see it clearly. They sat in small groups, some heads resting on knees. Any talk was soft.

‘Is this all?’ she asked.

Yulan nodded.

‘The rest are following, but cannot reach here in time. These are the strongest. Fifty of the Free; three hundred others. The only ones fit to do what was needed. We have walked and ridden further in the last day and night than most could manage in a week. No eating, no sleeping, no slowing.’

‘How?’

‘You’re a Clever, aren’t you?’ Yulan asked her. ‘That’s the tale running from the Clade and not drowning in the Hervent would tell.’

Wren only nodded. It seemed a lifetime ago that she might have pretended otherwise. Everything had turned on its head.

‘Then you would understand,’ Yulan said. He pointed to a flat-bedded wagon standing a short distance away. ‘It cost us one of our Clevers to do what we have done. Ena Marr.’