Miles Cameron - The Red Knight

He blinked his eyes and looked again.

Look in the Aether, said Harmodius.

The captain raised his sight and staggered in renewed awe. If Thorn had been a pillar of green, the Wyrm was – was the sun.

The captain shook his head.

Gawin threw his head back and whooped.

Bad Tom laughed aloud.

‘Now that, my friends,’ he said, ‘Is a Power of the Wild, and no mistake.’

They rode down into the next valley as the rain clouds came on, building to the north over the loch. A series of lochs fell away for leagues – larger and larger, until they merged into a sheet of water twenty leagues or more away. It was a superb view. In front of them, just short of the first loch, was a ford over a burn. They got cloaks off their saddles as they came to the stream. No one spoke much.

The rain came down like a curtain, sweeping from the north end of the valley, cutting off the view of the lochs.

Beyond was only rain, and black cloud.

‘It’s like the end of the world,’ Mag said.

The captain nodded. Ser Alcaeus crossed himself.

They crossed the stream quickly at a cairn. The captain rode off to the side, and then rejoined them. ‘Let’s move,’ he said. ‘The water here rises very quickly and very high.’

Gawin watched the water. ‘Salmon in that loch,’ he said wistfully.

On the far side was a narrow track that rose on the hillside. It was just wide enough for a horse, and they picked their way in single file, with the Keeper at the head and Bad Tom last.

It took them an hour to climb the ridge, and the rain caught them in the open again. It was cold, and they were soaked through despite heavy cloaks and hoods.

Up, and up they went.

At the top of the ridge was a seat of stone facing west.

The captain looked at it. So did Mag. It held the residue of power.

The Keeper didn’t stop. He rode down the far side.

From the very top, just beyond the High Seat, the captain could see the ghostly impression of crags to the north – far away, and gleaming white. Almost everything else was lost in the rain, although they were above it for a few hundred paces, and then they rode back into it.

Down and down, and trusting his horse. His light saddle was soaked, and he worried for his clothes. For summer, this was cold rain.

His brain was running wild.

‘We’re going to visit that?’ he asked, sounding more like Michael than he would have liked.

Ranald turned and looked back. ‘Aye.’

It was afternoon by the time they came out of the bottom of the clouds and could see, through gaps in the rain curtain, another valley of lochs. It was oriented differently – in this one the lochs grew smaller as the valley rose to the east and north, into high crags.

The Keeper reached the first ford, marked again with a cairn of stones that leaped to the eye in the naked, empty landscape of green grass and rock and water.

‘Water’s high,’ he shouted.

The captain leaned out and watched it for a long minute. They could hear rocks being rolled under the water.

The stream rushed down a narrow gorge above them, gathered power between two enormous rocks, and shot into the loch on their right – a sheet of water perhaps three hundred paces long and very deep.

Bad Tom laughed. He roared, ‘Follow me,’ and turned his horse’s head south. He seemed to ride straight out into the loch, yet his horse was virtually dry-shod as he rode a half circle a few paces out from the shoreline.

The captain followed, as did Ranald. Looking down into the water, he could see a bank of rocks and pebbles just under the water.

‘In the spring run-off,’ Ranald said, ‘the force of water pushes all the rock out of the mouth of the stream. Makes a bank – like yon.’ He laughed. ‘Any hillman knows.’

Tom looked back at the Keeper. ‘Aye. Any true hillman.’

The Keeper shot him a look, but Tom was immune to looks.

They started up the valley, wet and feeling surly.

The trail followed the stream past a magnificent waterfall, and then they climbed the cliff – the trail was just wide enough for an experienced rider to stay mounted, and it cut back and back – nine switchbacks to climb a few hundred feet. Ser Alcaeus’s war horse balked, and would not climb until Ser Alcaeus dismounted, walked back, and fetched him.

Mag dismounted at a switchback and looked at the captain.

He understood. She was not going to ask for help. He took her horse by the reins.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

She began to walk up the track.

He led her horse.

At the top of the cliff there was another loch. It was smaller, deeper, trapped in narrow cleft and dammed off by the ridge of rock that made the cliff. Above the loch was a long, grassy ridge that rose and rose. Above it all towered a mighty crag, covered in snow – but the snow line was still as far above them as they had come in two days.

The trail ran along the banks of the loch, in deep grass.

There were sheep high on the hillsides.

The only sound was the muted roar of the waterfall coming off the loch behind them, and the distant babble of the stream off the glaciers running into the top of the loch.

There was a gravel beach at the top of the loch. The captain caught the Keeper and pointed to it. ‘Camp?’ he said.

The Keeper shook his head. ‘He’s telling us to go away. This weather’s unnatural.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re in for a bad night.’

The captain was looking through the rain at the distant beach. ‘I see wood there.’

Mag nodded. ‘I saw rowans up in the highest valleys,’ she said.

‘Rowan, alder, and older things,’ agreed the Keeper. ‘We can’t have a fire, this close to the Wyrm.’

‘Why not?’ the captain asked.

‘The Wyrm has rules.’ The Keeper shrugged.

The captain shook his head. ‘Taking living wood might incur the wrath of a Power,’ he said. ‘Dead wood on a beach, however-’ He managed a smile and shrugged off the rain. ‘There’s an overhang there. Gather all the horses against it to break the wind.’

The Keeper shrugged. ‘On your head be it. If we turn back now, we can have better weather before sunset.’

Gawin rubbed water out of his moustache. ‘Tell me why we didn’t camp by a loch with fish?’ he asked.

The captain looked out over the rain-swept sheet of water. ‘I’d bet a golden leopard to a copper there’s salmon in this water,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t be the man to catch one.’

Gawin smiled. ‘You don’t know much about salmon, brother, if you think they can climb a hundred foot of falls.’

‘My bet stands,’ the captain said. ‘But to catch one would be a deadly insult to our host, and as the Keeper has noted, he’s not in love with us at the moment.’

Mag cackled. ‘So worried about a bit of wet. I’m twice the age of most of you, and I can roll up in a wet cloak and sleep. My joints will cry in the morning, but what of it? I saw a dragon fly in the dawn.’ She looked at them. ‘I’m not turning back, gentles.’

They constructed a shelter from spear poles and heavy wool blankets, pinned down with the biggest rocks on the beach. The wind tested it for a while, but didn’t seem interested in a real contest.

The captain rode off with Ser Alcaeus, and together they roamed the long beach and picked up every stick on it – it made a respectable woodpile.

‘And where’d it come from, I’d like to know?’ asked the Keeper.

The captain shrugged. ‘Our host put it out for us to find, I expect.’

Gawin, a practised hunter, took a fire kit from his pack and looked at his brother across the fire pit. ‘Like being boys again,’ he said.

‘We never tried to light a fire in a storm like this,’ the captain said.