Across the Face of the World (23 page)

'I didn't want the man to think we were wealthy,' Wira replied. 'I don't trust him. He and his friends might think that wealthy travellers could be easily parted from their money.'

The three men went outside again and gave the man his four pending. After another exaggerated show of counting, he handed them the parcel as reluctantly as a man bidding farewell to his beloved. He made to walk away.

'Wait!' Wira barked. 'You don't leave until we are sure we have our money's worth!'

Inside the greasy cloth was a bloodsoaked woollen tunic, shredded by swords, but unremarkable in colour or style. 'Could be anyone's! Certainly not one of the horsemen,' the Haufuth said with disappointment.

'Somebody died violently, at any rate,' said Wira thoughtfully. 'Do you think we should get Leith and Hal to look at the body? It could be their father.'

'Not in that tunic,' the Haufuth responded. 'I'd be willing to swear Mahnum doesn't own anything like that. Of course,' he continued in a less certain voice, 'he might have picked up all manner of clothing in the course of his journeys.'

'Look!' Kurr turned the tunic over and emblazoned on the left breast was a white star. The uncouth man leaned close, his beady eyes full of inquisitiveness.

'What is it?' the Haufuth and Wira asked together.

The old farmer rolled the tunic up, then wrapped it in the cloth and turned to the gravedigger.

'Thank you,' he said dismissively. That will be all.'

The ruffian scurried away into the night, muttering as he went, and the sound of hawking and spitting came to them on the cold mountain wind.

'Inside!' Kurr commanded. The others followed him into the Grange, and the three of them huddled around the glowing embers of the fire. The old farmer unwrapped the tunic again and held it up for the others to see. The star was sewn to the tunic with a silver filament.

'This is Kroptur's sign, the token of the Firanese Watchers,' Kurr said quietly. 'Remember, Kroptur sent a messenger up the Westway to gather news of the Bhrudwans.'

'It looks like he got too close to them.' Wira pursed his lips.

'How do we know that this messenger was killed by the Bhrudwan horsemen?' the Haufuth asked. 'Perhaps some robber did him in! Maybe even that repulsive fellow did it himself!'

Wira shook his head. 'No, it was the riders all right.' The others turned to face him, surprised at the hatred in his voice. 'That's how they killed my father, hacking at him with swords until he could no longer resist, then stabbing him in the back as he lay on the ground. The cowards!

He didn't stand a chance.' He turned the tunic around, and they could all see the jagged, red-stained tear in the middle. 'Look here! See the mark of a fair fight!'

No one said anything. For a moment each was left to his own thoughts. Somehow the find had made their quest all the more real. The Haufuth could almost feel the swords at his own flesh, biting, biting.

'That ruffian said that the body was found up beyond the village. It must have been where the Westway winds through the Torrelstrommen valley.' Kurr looked thoughtful. 'The messenger of Kroptur left Watch Hill five days ago, three days behind the Bhrudwan killers. So how did this messenger catch the riders so easily?'

The Haufuth spoke with excitement. 'Perhaps the riders have met with some misfortune, something that slowed them down!'

Perhaps they stopped to dispose of their prisoners, the old farmer thought, but he said nothing aloud.

'Whatever the reason, they are within reach,' said Wira with a smile on his face, but locked behind that smile was intense pain. The Haufuth could see it.

'So the messenger's body was found yesterday. But who knows how long he has been dead?

And the Bhrudwans may have taken their horses up on to Breidhan Moor, which will increase the distance between them and us - in the short term at least.' Kurr considered for a moment. 'I do not yet know whether we ought to take horses up there. If it fell to snowing, the horses would never make it through the drifts. Even if the weather stays fine, it will be rough going.

We may have to walk.'

The Haufuth sighed and looked down in the direction of his feet, which were hidden by his huge girth. 'I'm not sure which I look forward to less: another day in the saddle, or taking to my feet! Either way, let us get a good night's rest,' he said. 'From what people say about the moors, we'll need it.'

Kurr roused the Company early the next morning. After a hearty breakfast, they assembled in the Great Hall of the Lodge - surely named in jest, though judging by the Windrisians they had met, perhaps not. The Haufuth then sent Wira and Kurr on errands: the old farmer to gather provisions for the days ahead, and Wira to hire a guide.

'I've made up my mind,' he declared, over the protests of the Storrsens. 'We can do with as much help as we can get. The last thing we want is to get lost on the moors - and, no matter how well you think you know Breidhan Moor, a local is bound to know it better.

'I have made another decision,' he continued. 'We are prob' ably only two days behind these riders now, and we stand a good chance of catching them before we even reach the moors.

However, if we leave our horses here, they will outdistance us up the Torrelstrommen valley.

So we will take the horses as far up the valley as possible, and if the weather is fine, we ride across the moors. Should the weather turn against us, we will find a shel-tered spot for them, and leave them there until we come back. That way we will save another day, and we will be able to carry Mahnum and Indrett out more easily - especially if they have sustained any sort of injury.'

Kurr returned first from his errand, laden with biscuits, dried meat and cooking fat. These extra provisions entailed a complete repacking of the Company's supplies, which took nearly an hour. Even so, the travellers were packed and ready to leave when Wira returned with a thin-looking man in tow.

'I'm sorry about the delay,' he apologised to the Haufuth. 'I had great difficulty in persuading anyone to guide us over the moors at this time of year. A few agreed, but wanted such an exorbitant sum of money that I turned them down. This man, on the other hand, has agreed to take us as far as a mountain range called The Brethren, on the far side of Breidhan Moor, for twenty pending. He can ride our packhorse—'

'Twenty pending?' The Haufuth choked. 'That's a month's wages!'

'Nothing to the seventy or eighty pending some of the other men wanted. You can make do with what I have secured for you, or you can take our advice and let the Storrsens guide you over the moors.'

The thin man sneered. 'You wouldn't get a mile past the Snowfence without getting lost, coastlanders!'

The Haufuth turned aside to the farmer. 'I had heard the Windrisians were a proud people, but I would not have believed this! No wonder few people come to see the wonder of the Torrelstrommen valley, even in summer!'

'All right,' Kurr replied. 'I don't like it either, but don't forget why we're doing this. Bad manners will be forgotten once we have rescued Mahnum and Indrett, and taken one of these Bhrudwan riders captive.'

'What is your name?' the Haufuth asked the thin man.

'Kaupa,' he replied.

'Are you ready to start?'

At the minute. But are you?'

'Insolence!' Kurr hissed.

The thin man cocked his head at the old farmer. 'Sounds like he doesn't want a guide!' He made to walk off.

Farr stepped in front of him. As a matter of fact, it was his idea. Some of us are not so sure that it was good one. Now, we're leaving. If it's not too much trouble, get on this horse and at least look like a guide!'

Kaupa sneered again, less convincingly this time. He ran a nervous eye over the Storrsen brothers: broad shoulders, mean eyes, swords hanging loosely around their waists as though they knew how to use them, and heavy staves strapped to their packs. No one would carry such an array of weapons unless they were proficient with them. Mjolkbridge men, if he did not miss his guess, and such as they would not hesitate to do harm to such as he. Kaupa mounted the horse proffered him.

The eight travellers finally left Windrise an hour after dawn. 'Good riddance!' Farr shouted as they left the last hut behind. His voice echoed back from the hills in the distance. Kaupa glowered at him, but passed no comment.

'There's a lot of ill feeling in the Mjolkelva valley,' said Kurr to the Haufuth. 'For hundreds of years the people of Mjolkbridge and Windrise feuded, and many battles were fought. In fact, Wira tells me that for a time Mjolkbridge was quite a powerful town, as far as things go here in the valley, and Windrise was forced to pay tribute. But about a hundred years ago the coastlanders - as all foreigners are called - were driven out. Now there is an uneasy peace.'

Leith looked around him. They were a mile or so out of Windrise, and the straggling, stony fields were already petering out. To their right the forest loomed, behind which rose the ramparts of the Fells. To their left was the river, and up ahead the flatlands ended abruptly in a sheer drop, from the bottom of which came the sound of rushing water. The far cliff was visible in the clear morning air, fluted and scoured by many rains, and seem¬ingly just beyond this cliff rose the Capstone, now much taller than it had appeared in the Hall of the Disappearing Mountain. There was sign neither of human nor of animal.

'Not much to fight about, if you ask me,' Leith observed.

After a short while they met the woods again, and spent the morning with their heads down, following the Westway as it wound through the trees. Here the forest was not as tall as that nearer Mjolkbridge, whether because of the chill wind or through some past natural calamity, Leith could not tell. Clouds gathered over¬head, grey and numinous with edges smeared on the sky, the unfriendly snow-bearing clouds of winter. Leith found himself squinting to see the road ahead.

A melancholy mood settled over the travellers. Even the Storrsens seemed affected.

Whenever anyone spoke, it was in hushed whispers. The realisation settled on Leith that he was an alien in a land that did not seem to care for his presence. The morning's ride had taken him over some invisible line dividing the land of humans from the land of - well, of gods perhaps, of monsters, of raw, untamed nature, a wilderness which could not be controlled, in which people needed skill, strength and luck to survive.

Finally he could stand it no longer. 'What is wrong with this place?' he asked, directing his question to no one in particular. Seven heads turned to face him.

The Haufuth laughed somewhat nervously, breaking the tension that had been building throughout the morning. The shadows seemed to draw back a little.

'It does feel a little uncomfortable, doesn't it! I've been telling myself that above these trees the sun is still shining, but it doesn't seem to be working. Still, the trees don't go on forever.'

'This is Vithrain Gloum, the Valley of Gloom, the lowest of the three Torrelstrommen valleys,' Farr informed them solemnly. 'A few miles further on from here we come to the place where the Aigelstrommen joins the Torrelstrommen, and just above are the rapids of the Gloum Stair. Then comes the Valley of Respite, where the going is a lot easier. We'll be riding in the sunlight again today, mark my words.' There, his words were saying. 1 told you we didn't need a guide.

'Of course, you haven't told them everything you know about this place, have you, Mjolkbridge boy?'

Farr spun around to face the thin Windrisian.

Kaupa spread his arms wide. 'What my friend conveniently forgot to tell you is that Vithrain Gloum was once open farmland. Then the men from Mjolkbridge, not satisfied with their own lands, came to raid ours. It was here in this valley - the valley we once named Tilthan Vale, the Valley of Plenty - that the courageous men of Mjolkbridge rode in without warning and cut down our defenceless men, women and children as they harvested the crops.' The thin man spat in the general direction of the Storrsen brothers. 'And now they want peace. Peace!

There are bones buried here that once belonged to people who begged for peace, and who received only death. And these coastland heroes want us to forget!' He sawed at the reins, spinning his mount around to face the men from Vinkullen.

Immediately, the Haufuth rode in between them. 'That's enough,' he said, with all the authority he could muster. 'Perhaps tonight we can have a retelling of the old stories, but not now, not here. Our task is to write another story, one which may be every whit as bitter as the Valley of Gloom.'

Kaupa pulled away, visibly upset. For a while he rode a little distance ahead of the others.

Wira shook his head. 'I've never heard it told like that before,' he said quietly.

THE VALLEY OF RESPITE

EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON the travellers reached the Aigelstrommen. A narrower, swifter river, it leapt capriciously from bank to bank, finally plunging over a cataract and into its bigger brother, the Torrelstrommen. There was no place to cross the foaming Aigel near the meeting of the two streams, so the Westway edged back up the side of the hills until it found a fording place.

The road had risen barely a hundred feet, yet the difference in temperature was noticeable. Ice clung to the banks of the Aigelstrommen, which was much reduced in size from its spring torrent if the bare, boulder-strewn slopes between the road and the river were any guide. Here and there snow patches lay, hard¬ened to ice by the continual freeze and melt of cloudless days and nights. Again Leith noted the absence of animals and birds. Some of the birds he had seen flying over Loulea on their way south, he realised, could have been from this forest. The springtime would undoubtedly see them overhead again, in small wedges or in huge black croaking clouds. He shivered. Spring seemed a distant memory in the midst of this cold.

The road continued to wind up a narrow shelf. From some¬where ahead came a muted roaring, like autumn thunder playing on the Fells as heard from Swill Down. The sound grew louder as they climbed. The travellers were now some three hundred feet above the Valley of Gloom, and at intervals Leith caught glimpses of the lower Torrelstrommen valley. The wide, saucer-shaped vale was carpeted in a sombre green - the trees they had ridden under - split by a cliff-lined river winding off into the murky distance, back towards Windrise. Above them mists swirled about the tree tops; the weather, which had threatened all morning, seemed to be closing in around them. They were climbing a north-facing slope, and ice covered the rocky path under their feet. Soon they had to dismount and were slowed to less than a walk, watching their step all the way. It began to rain, a fine, soaking drizzle.