Across the Face of the World (25 page)

'I wonder,' Farr added, 'if in their hatred these Windrisians can no longer distinguish between foreigners. Perhaps all coastlanders are their enemy.'

'Better to think of it as just a few malcontents,' Hal put in. 'I'm sure that most Windrisians, like most people of Mjolkbridge, don't carry grievances over the past.'

'But how did the men get to the valley before us?' Leith asked. 'We didn't see them on the road.'

'They followed us, I think,' Wira replied, 'but my guess is they continued up the Aigelstrommen instead of following the Westway into the Valley of Respite. There is probably a low pass between the Aigel valley and the two ravines they ambushed us from.'

'Will they be back?' The Haufuth shuddered. 'Perhaps bringing others with them?'

'No,' Kurr decided at length. 'I don't think so. If there were more of their ilk in Windrise, they would have attacked us with the others. Besides, I think they have learned to fear the mighty warriors of Loulea!' and he laughed. The Storrsens laughed with him.

The conversation settled into mundane talk, but Leith could not join in. He watched and listened as a detached observer, once again outside events. And time and again throughout the firelit evening he saw the gaze of Stella stray towards the shadows where the Storrsens sat.

The morning dawned grey and cold, with dry snow falling lightly. The Company quickly broke camp. On the advice of Kurr they loaded up the horses, and every spare space in their packs, with driftwood, against cold nights on the exposed moors.

'We'll be out in the open all day, and for some days to come,' Wira warned them. 'The horses will make only ten or fifteen miles in such weather. We will be able to do little more than walk them.'

'The snow looks like it's stopping,' Stella said helpfully.

Kurr muttered under his breath, wondering how far they were falling behind the Bhrudwan riders. 'Curse this Vithrain Uftan, this so-called Valley of Respite!' he shouted angrily.

'1 give it a new name,' said Farr. 'This is now Gealla Dalen — the Valley of Spite.'

The members of the Company took one last look at the valley where they had fought the Windrisians; then they set their faces to the southeast, towards the moors, where their quarry lay.

BREIDHAN MOOR

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON the Company halted in the lee of the Kilthen Stair. Here the youthful Torrelstrommen surged down a hundred feet of stony steps, framed by steep snow-striped hills. Though not a true waterfall, and though carrying perhaps half the volume of water that thundered over the Gloum Stair, the Kilthen Stair still acted as a tangible barrier between one section of the Torrelstrommen and the next. The ever-variable flow formed ephemeral shapes of foam, so to Leith's eye a face, mouth wide open, was replaced by the outline of an outstretched hand on the face of the Stair. Thickening ice clung to the banks of the river, unable as yet to squeeze the life out of the racing torrent.

While the youngsters unpacked the horses, the Haufuth and the old farmer clambered up a notched but slippery rock and stared over the upper lip of the waterfall into the maw of the desolate upper valley. To reach that valley the Company would have to brave the Westway, a thin white line winding precariously up a near-vertical cliff face between them and the top of the Stair.

'Listen!' Kurr shouted above the sound of the foaming water.

A strong wind whipped around the mountain shoulders above them, making a noise uncannily like a human cry. Now and again, as the wind died momentarily, the men could hear the boom and clatter of falling scree, sometimes near, sometimes further away. The Haufuth wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his cloak.

'Does the wind always blow like this?' he asked, cupping his hand near Kurr's ear.

'Always, so Wira told me. The people of Windrise don't come here except in great need. They have another path to the moors.'

'Can we take that path?' the Haufuth asked hopefully.

'It would take us far to the north, into the vidda proper, of which Breidhan Moor is only the southern outlier. There the deep snow would be the least of our worries; it is a land where wild men and wild beasts would see us as easy prey. Besides, if the Bhrudwans came this way, this is the way we must go.'

A strong sense of foreboding flowed towards the two men, borne on the cold wind.

'What's that noise?' Stella asked. She had clambered unnoticed up to the rock platform.

'Kilth Keening, it is called,' Kurr said, 'the Valley of the Lost Soul.' The wind, angry at the disclosure, whipped his words away.

The weak sun went down behind the hills as they watched. The air grew noticeably colder and shadows crept across the valley below them, eating away what little colour and life remained.

'Let's get down from here,' the Haufuth called. 'We'd better find a place to sleep - a place out of the cold, where we can't hear that sound!'

'We'll be fortunate to find either,' countered Kurr glumly.

The travellers spent a miserable night under the shadow of Kilth Keening. They had found an overhang of hard blue stone to shelter under, but it proved a mistake, as the cave collected water from Kilthen Stair, and no one could keep dry. One by one they gave up trying to sleep and the whole Company was assembled well before dawn.

The ascent of Kilthen Stair had to wait until sunrise, but the sunrise was slow to come. In the hour before dawn, Leith watched silver fingers of mist pour like a slow-breaking wave over the heights to his left. Gradually the valley filled with a cold fog, draping like a shroud over the travellers. Soon it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction.

Tired, wet and irritable, the Company made its ascent of the treacherously narrow Stair. The horses were nervous and had to be coaxed up by degrees. The Haufuth demonstrated a surprising gift in encouraging the horses to follow him up the path. It took more than an hour for everyone to negotiate the climb. Finally, however, they were at the top.

Here, the mist was if anything more intense, a cold cocoon muting all sound. The babbling of the Torrelstrommen receded into silence, the only noise the slow, measured plod of the horses'

hoofs on the ill-formed road. Soaked inside and out, from sweat as well as moisture, Leith shivered uncontrollably. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth against the chill.

'This is no good!' Kurr exclaimed at last. 'We have to get dry. We will stop and build a fire.'

'I have a better idea,' Wira responded. 'The fog came down from the moorland above us. Often in the Vinkullen such a thing happens, and while the valleys are filled with foul weather such as this-' he indicated the dankness around them with a sweep of a half-visible arm, '-the heights are clear, warm and sunny.'

To Leith and the others such words were like the promise of a banquet to one who was starving. Could such a thing be? Leith tried to speak, but could hardly move his jaw.

'We're two days from the Snaerfence, three if this weather continues,' Kurr argued. 'We'll be frozen into blocks of ice well before we get to the moors!'

'Then why don't we find a path that will take us above this fog now?'

'And get ourselves lost? Or fall down a hole, or off the end of some bluff?'

'You have obviously never lived in the mountains, old man,' Farr interjected. 'We might only have to climb a few hundred feet. Maybe even less.'

Hal held up his hand. 'Wait a moment! Can you feel it?'

'Feel what?' came a chorus of voices.

'The wind!' And as he spoke, the others felt the breeze on their faces. In a moment it ruffled the edges of their cloaks. And as they looked up, they saw that the fog was thinning.

Just in time, the Haufuth reflected. 1/ the argument had progressed much further it might have come to blows. Kurr and Farr would bear watching; they seemed to strike sparks off each other.

After stopping to build a fire and dry out their sodden clothes, the Company continued their trek up the Torrelstrommen valley. A bleak and forbidding landscape unfolded around them as they rode. The last wisps of mist fluttered away in the mounting wind, revealing the winter face of Kilth Keening. Soft, dry snow all but covered the hardy mountain grasses; the exposed turf looked brown and scorched, as if the snow had somehow burned it. There was no other visible vegetation. In place of trees lay boulders, the huge wacke of the northern Fells, many larger than the travellers who passed them. They were strewn about the valley floor, seemingly the result of some recent gigantic hailstorm or rockfall. When the travellers passed close to one of the great wacke they noticed moss and lichens growing on its sides. Many of the rocks were cracked open, revealing an orange rind, as though they rusted where they lay.

The Torrelstrommen, ice-rimmed and narrow, chattered in its steep-sided bed, while silent ice-locked streams lay suspended in their side valleys. On either side of the narrow defile of the Valley of the Lost Soul rose grey, snow-streaked hills, their outlines now emerging from, now receding into, the leaden sky. Into the midst of this desperate country the Westway continued without complaint, now a snow-covered path distinguished from its surroundings only by the absence of boulders and the provision of marker poles planted in the earth every few hundred yards.

The downvalley wind rose in intensity and the dreadful, high-pitched cry returned to oppress them like a mourner's threnody. The Haufuth rode with his hands clapped on the sides of his head, while Leith took a handful of down from the lining of his cloak and stuffed it in his ears.

But nothing could keep out either the sharpness or the sound of the wind. By late afternoon all exposed skin was red and raw from the abrasive blast. Leith again found his jaw clamped tightly shut, this time against the chilling wind and its equally chilling sound.

The Lost Soul of Kilth Keening tortured the Company all day. Her cries seemed to seep into their spirits in the way that a sick infant's wails tunnel their way into a mother's heart, sapping strength and wearing down resolve. Snow slanted in, rain sheeted down, a pallid sun shone amidst scruffy clouds and hail pounded them, but the travellers hardly noticed the weather.

The clean-picked bones of some large animal - probably a horse - lay just to the side of their path. No doubt it had lingered in the valley too long. The bones seemed entirely in keeping with the frightful wind. Perhaps the wind had separated the flesh from the bone unaided; it seemed capable of anything.

The travellers found talking next to impossible, as the Lost Soul raged up and down the canyon. No one felt like discussing Bhrudwan riders or Windrisians or what might be happening back in Mjolkbridge or Loulea, where things were warm and the winds were still.

Emotions were as raw as hands and faces. Even during meals no one attempted conversation.

Sleep was especially difficult. Partially sheltered from the cold and warmed by the fire, there was still no escape from the cries of Kilth Keening's tormented soul; her shrieks continued all night. At one point everyone was awake, either sitting by the fire or pacing around the rock ledge of their shelter, watching the Kleitaf Northr, the Northern Lights, in their familiar dance across the sky.

Mid-morning on the second day in Kilth Keening saw them reach the Snaerfence, the path to Breidhan Moor. Here the road turned away from the Torrelstrommen and into a small valley to their left, using the lesser slopes of this valley to scale the walls of Kilth Keening. The high moors were only a few miles away. The Company dismounted and stretched their stiff limbs.

'We have endured Kilth Keening,' Wira said wearily, 'and soon we will be out of earshot of her cursed voice. The experience was even worse than I'd been told.'

Farr agreed with his brother. 'I thought the description of this foul valley was put about to justify the fears of cowardly travellers, yet I would rather spend a week without food on the summit of Vinbrenna in the season of the Pollerne gales than another day in Kilth Keening.'

'Yet what awaits us on Breidhan Moor may make us wish for the safety of this valley,' said the Haufuth querulously. 'I had hoped we would catch the Bhrudwans before they reached the moors. Breidhan Moor has an evil reputation.'

'But we did not catch them, and so up on to the moors we must climb,' Kurr snapped. 'Now let's get on. We're wasting precious time!' Leith shook his head doubtfully, but mounted his horse and followed the old farmer towards the sheer snowgrey wall rearing in front of them.

The Westway left the valley floor and crawled upwards across the sheer southern side of the Snaerfence itself. Their eyes followed it until it disappeared into the gloom.

This is the closest yet I have been to her, Mahnum thought ruefully as he lay face down on the snow. Beside him, not three yards away, lay Indrett. Standing between them, curved sword drawn and ready, a Bhrudwan warrior ensured their silence. They lay on the edge of a ridge overlooking a wide valley of white. Snow-cloaked hillocks and ridges dominated the view in every direction. They were on the high moors, that Mahnum knew, the Westway buried under feet of snow.

In the peaceful valley below a terrible drama unfolded.

Earlier that day the Bhrudwans had found footprints in the snow. Immediately Mahnum and Indrett had been led off to a sheltered hollow to wait, while two of the Bhrudwans had gone on ahead to scout the road. In less than an hour the warriors returned and in haste led the horses forward through the treach¬erous snow. Now the captives waited on the ridge while the Bhrudwans stalked their prey.

Unaware of their peril, four men warmed themselves by a fire while a woman packed the last of the meat they had hunted into a leather bag. Mahnum could see the three Bhrudwans striding down the slope, taking little effort to conceal themselves. Their prey stood by the fire, backs to the ridge, weapons some distance away beside their packs. Mahnum wanted to cry out a warning, but knew that any cry would bring swift death to both him and Indrett. Besides, there was nothing he could do. These unfortu¬nates were dead already. They had been dead since the moment their footprints had been discovered, and now the Bhrudwans would simply turn certainty into fact.