Yet he would fight on.
These plains he and his three young followers moved through had once belonged to the Awl. Until the Letherii expanded their notion of self-interest to include stealing land and driving away its original inhabitants. Cairn markers and totem stones had all been removed, the boulders left in heaps; even the ring-stones that had once anchored huts were gone. The grasses were overgrazed, and here and there long rectangular sections had seen the earth broken in anticipation of planting crops, fence posts stacked nearby. But Redmask knew that this soil was poor, quickly exhausted except in the old river valleys. The Letherii might manage a generation or two before the top-soil blew away. He had seen the results east of the wastelands, in far Kolanse-an entire civilization totterin on the edge of starvation as desert spread like plague.
The blurred moon had lifted high in the star-spattered night sky as they drew closer to the mass of rodara. There was little point in going after the myrid-the beasts were not swift runners over any reasonable distance-but as they edged closer, Redmask could see the full extent of this rodara herd. Twenty thousand head, perhaps even more.
A large drover camp, lit by campfires, commanded a hill’ top to the north. Two permanent buildings of cut-log walls and sod-capped roofs overlooked the shallow valley and the herds-these would, Redmask knew, belong to the Factor’s foreman, forming the focus for the beginning of a true settlement.
Crouched in the grasses at the edge of a drainage gully cutting through the valley side, the three young warriors on his left, Redmask studied the Letherii for another twenty heartbeats; then he gestured Masarch and the others back into the gully itself.
‘This is madness,’ the warrior named Theven whispered. There must be a hundred Letherii in that camp-and what of the shepherds and their dogs? If the wind shifts…’
‘Quiet,’ said Redmask. ‘Leave the dogs and the shepherds to me. As for the camp, well, they will soon be busy enough. Return to the horses, mount up, and be ready to flank and drive the herd when it arrives.’
In the moon’s pale light, Masarch’s expression was nerve-twisted, a wild look in his eyes-he had not done well on his death night, but thus far he appeared more or less sane. Both Theven and Kraysos had, Redmask suspected, made use of bledden herb smuggled with them into their coffins, which they chewed to make themselves insensate, beyond such things as panic and convulsions. Perhaps that was just as well. But Masarch had possessed no bledden herb. And, as was common to people of open lands, confinement was worse than death, worse than anything one could imagine.
Yet there was value in searing that transition into adulthood, rebirth that began with facing oneself, one’s own demonic haunts that came clambering into view in grisly succession, immune to every denial. With the scars born of that transition, a warrior would come to understand the truth of imagination: that it was a weapon the mind drew at every turn, yet as deadly to its wielder as to its conjured foes. Wisdom arrived as one’s skill with that weapon grew-we fight every battle with our imaginations: the battles within, the battles in the world beyond. This is the truth of command, and a warrior must learn command, of oneself and of others. It was possible that soldiers, such as the Letherii, experienced something similar in attaining rank, but Redmask was not sure of that.
Glancing back, he saw that his followers had vanished into the darkness. Probably, he judged, now at their horses. Waiting with fast, shallow breaths drawn into suddenly tight lungs. Starting at soft noises, gripping their reins and weapons in sweat-layered hands.
Redmask made a soft grunting sound and the dray, lying on its belly, edged closer. He settled a hand on its thick-furred neck, briefly, then drew it away. Together, the two set out, side by side, both low to the ground, towards the rodara herd.
Abasard walked slowly along the edge of the sleeping herd to keep himself alert. His two favoured dogs trotted in his wake. Born and raised as an Indebted in Drene, the sixteen-year-old had not imagined a world such as this-the vast sky, sprawling darkness and countless stars at night, enormous and depthless at day; the way the land itself reached out impossible distances, until at times he could swear he saw a curvature to the world, as if it existed like an island in the sea of the Abyss. And so much life, in the grasses, in the sky. In the spring tiny flowers erupted from every hillside, with berries ripening in the valleys. All his life, until his family had accompanied the Factor’s foreman, he had lived with his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, with his grandmother and two aunts-all crowded into a house little more than a shack, facing onto a rubbish-filled alley that stank of urine. The menagerie of his youth was made up of rats, blue-eyed mice, meers, cockroaches, scorpions and silverworms.
But here, in this extraordinary place, he had discovered a new life. Winds that did not stink with rot and waste. And there was room, so much room. He had witnessed with his own eyes a return to health among the members of his family-his frail little sister now wiry and sun-darkened, ever grinning; his grandmother, whose cough had virtually vanished; his father, who stood taller now, no longer hunched beneath low-ceilinged shacks and worksheds. Only yesterday, Abasard had heard him laugh, for the very first time.
Perhaps, the youth dared believe, once the land was broken and crops were planted, there would be the chance to work their way free of debt. Suddenly, all things seemed possible.
His two dogs loped past him, vanished in the gloom ahead. A not unusual occurrence. They liked to chase jackrabbits, or low-flying rhinazan. He heard a brief commotion in the grasses just beyond a slight rise. Abasard adjusted his grip on the staff he carried, increased his pace-if the dogs had trapped and killed a jackrabbit, there would be extra meat in the stew tomorrow.
Reaching the rise, he paused, searched the darkness below for his dogs. They were nowhere to be seen. Abasard downed, then let out a low whistle, expecting at any moment to hear them trot back to him. Yet only silence answered his summons. Confused, he slowly dropped into a crouch.
Ahead and to his right, a few hundred rodara shifted-awake and restless now.
Something was wrong. Wolves? The Bluerose cavalry the foreman kept under contract had hunted the local ones down long ago. Even the coyotes had been driven away, as had the bears.
Abasard crept forward, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart pounding hard in his chest.
His free hand, reaching out before him, came into contact with soft, warm fur. One of his dogs, lying motionless, still under his probing touch. Near its neck, the fur was wet. He reached down along it until his fingers sank into torn flesh where its throat should have been. The wound was ragged. Wolf. Or one of those striped cats. But of the latter he had only ever seen skins, and those came from the far south, near Bolkando Kingdom.
Truly frightened now, he continued on, and moments later found his other dog. This one had a broken neck. The two attacks, he realized, had to have been made simultaneously, else one or the other of the beasts would have barked.
A broken neck… but no other wounds, no slather of saliva on the fur.
The rodara heaved a half-dozen paces to one side again, and he could make out, at the very edge of his vision, their heads lifted on their long necks, their ears upright. Yet no fear-sounds came from them. So, no dangerous scent, no panic-someone has their attention. Someone they’re used to obeying.
There was no mistaking this-the herd was being stolen. Abasard could not believe it. He turned about, retracing his route. Twenty paces of silent footfalls later, he set out into a run-back to the camp.