“Let’s take a seat over there for a while.” Sorgrad pointed to a scatter of angular gray boulders, the sun striking rainbow fragments from faint white lines of crystal. We’d see any interest turning to us before it could arrive and by splashing through the shallow river we could lose ourselves in the throng on the far bank.
“So where next?” demanded ’Gren. “We came here to get ourselves an enchanter.”
“So we need to know where he is.” Sorgrad’s eyes fixed on the gate to the fess. The broad sweep of the wall was enclosing a larger area than Hachalfess and the rekin within was both broader and taller. For all that, the whole still managed to look insignificant against the great heaps of broken stone on either side. The pitted face of the cliff behind was scarred with rock-cut stairs. Smeared across the yellow-streaked face of the gray mountain, inky stains glistened damply despite the heat as green-tainted water oozed from the pierced heart of the darkness.
But there was no sign of clean water channeled in beneath the walls of the fess from the stream or of foul drainage coming out to any kind of channel, so we wouldn’t be going in that way. I looked at the main gate. The massive lattice of beams was faced with jointed planks and studded through with iron bolts, proof against determined assault once closed. But it was standing heedlessly ajar, people going in and out, sentry sitting idly on a stool, sword at his waist and armor discarded in the baking heat.
Sorgrad’s gaze followed mine. “They’re not expecting trouble in the heart of the soke.”
My spirits rose. “He’ll be in there, surely?”
“I think we can spare the time to be certain,” Sorgrad said judiciously.
We sat and waited, idly kicking our legs, doing nothing that might attract notice, all our attention fixed on the fess. The sun slid slowly down from its scorching zenith and I waited in vain for the day to cool a little. In the meantime I studied the roof of the rekin, counting silently as the sentry made his regular circuit, trying to assess if I’d have time to climb from the top-most rank of windowsill’s to the parapet while he was still behind the massive bulk of the chimneystack. As long as this little adventure went according to plan, there was no reason why I should have to, but it never hurts to keep every alternative in mind.
“They definitely have Sheltya in there, look.” ’Gren pointed to a gray-clad figure walking briskly out of the gate.
The anonymous hooded figure went to an organized group of tents, two equal ranks drawn up in precise parallel. Men were watching a lad wedging a pole in the dusty turf with shards of broken stone. A man at his elbow swung a goat’s head idly by one curved horn. The rest of the beast was jointed and spitted some way beyond, a scarlet-faced woman sweating over a fire colorless in the bright sunlight.
“You said the Sheltya were healers?” I nodded toward the figure, now revealed as a woman with silvering hair and a thin, parched face, her hood pushed back as she bent to a young girl proffering a hand swathed in bloodstained rags.
“They are staying true to some part of their vows then.” Sorgrad’s eyes were cold in the heat of the day.
The men began throwing knives at the goat’s head, cheers and groans raised for every strike or overthrow. Newcomers drifted over to take their place in an ever lengthening line. A particularly inept throw sparked rowdy joking, but the voices soon turned sour and two men had to be pulled apart by their respective friends. ’Gren watched with interest.
“Is it worth waiting to see if our man comes out?” murmured Sorgrad, leaning forward, elbows on thighs.
“I can’t see him patching up a sliced finger, can you?” I shifted my seat on the unyielding rock, rough gray surface hot beneath my palms. “In any case, snatching him in plain view of half an army would be a fool’s notion. We have to get him on his own.” I resolutely ignored the fluttering of unease in the pit of my belly. We’d be three to one and we knew what we were going up against. If we played this right, he wouldn’t know what had hit him.
“So when do we go in?” demanded ’Gren.
“Once the sun’s going down?” Sorgrad squinted up, the heat and glare still merciless.
I nodded my agreement. “Before they eat or change the guard, so we catch that sentry tired and not paying attention.”
“My arse is going numb.” ’Gren was surveying the bustling campground. “Let’s get a feel for what’s going on down here.”
Sorgrad and I exchanged a look; best to keep ’Gren amused. We began a leisurely circuit of the crowded valley. I kept behind the brothers, head down and shambling along.
“This is no time to play the village idiot,” Sorgrad warned me as we passed rough huts newly lashed up from green wood and untanned skins.
“Who’s going to take an interest if they think I’m simple-minded?” I objected.
I caught a sardonic sapphire glance. “They’ll be curious to know what happened when you were driven into the soke at midwinter of your ninth year, to face Maewelin’s judgment on whether you should live or die.”
I pulled myself a little straighter.
In the upper reach around the fess, the women were busy baking on griddles over their fires, making the hard, pale biscuits you take on journeys, either to guarantee you food to eat, or better yet to smash and use in a sling to fell anything more tasty. Their men must have slaughtered every animal with meat on its bones within a day’s travel. A gang of reluctant youths were spreading dust and gravel on a blood-soaked stretch of land to baffle iridescent flies and racks of meat were drying in the fierce sun.
A woman standing at the alert with her spray of green leaves offered us each a strip of dark, slightly sticky flesh. I tucked it in the broad pocket across the front of my smock. I could always use it to resole my boots if I wore this pair out.
’Gren chewed with appreciative noises. “There’ll be plenty of rations on the march, then.”
“Have you heard something?” The woman swatted at a few hopeful flies, the nails on her hand broken and chipped, dried blood stubbornly staining their edges. “Is there to be a real strike into the lowlands at last?”
“We don’t know,” Sorgrad shrugged apologetically. “We’ve only just arrived.”
“My husband could always use more swords at his side.” The woman’s shale-gray eyes turned calculating. “Why don’t you join up with us?”
“Shouldn’t we get our orders from the rekin?” queried Sorgrad.
“What rights have they over you? Just tell them you’re tying up with Yannal’s men,” she urged. “You’re Middle Rangers, aren’t you? We’ve not been at outs with any soke over the Gap since my foremother’s time.”
I could sympathize with her eagerness to put more swords between her husband and the enemy. That way she stood a better chance of not going back home a widow.
Sorgrad smiled at her. “I’ll go and suggest it to the others.”
We moved on down the valley. “This army’s holding together about as well as a madwoman’s knitting,” I commented to Sorgrad.
“Let’s hope yanking the enchanter out sets the whole thing unraveling.”
We continued our apparently aimless circuit of the valley, pausing here and there to admire the new arrivals showing off their spoils. Wooden trinkets and some gold and silver jewelry suggested they’d cleared Folk out of a stretch of woodland but the bulk of the loot was barrels of flour, bales of blankets, household goods of little value. A whiff of smoke suggested fire as well as blades had been used to good effect. These returning heroes had just gone on a rampage through defenseless upland villages.
No, the brave warriors had been driving off armed intruders, greedy interlopers, according to the fragments of gossip the three of us picked up along with bits of bread, meat and fruit kindly offered. Their appetite for fighting was undimmed and all the talk was of carrying the battle down into the lowlands proper, even of reclaiming the entire Ferring Gap, reuniting Easterlings and Westerlings. What they couldn’t understand was the reason for delay.