Farlander (4 page)

‘But you are not
real
. I lost this same tent two days ago . . . and you were not journeying with me when I did. You are a dream. An echo. Your bargain means nothing.’

‘And yet still I speak the truth. Do you doubt it?’

Ash gazed into the empty mug. The heat had faded from its metal curvature, leaching the warmth from his hands.

Ash, long ago, had accepted his illness and its eventual, inevitable outcome. He had done so in much the same way as he accepted the taking of those lives he took in pursuit of his work; with a kind of fatalism. Perhaps a touch of melancholy was the result of such a vantage, that the essence of life was bittersweet, without meaning save for whatever you ascribed it: violence or peace, right or wrong, all the choices one made, though nothing more – certainly nothing fundamental to a universe itself purely neutral, seeking only equilibrium as it unfolded for ever and endlessly from the potentials of Dao. He was dying, and that was all there was to it.

Still, he did not wish to end it here on this desolate plain. He would see the sun again if he could, with eyes and mouth open to savour its heat; he would inhale the pungent scents of life, feel the cool shoots of grass against his soles, listen to the flow of water over rocks, before that. And here, in his dream fantasy, Osh
was a creation of that same desire: in that moment, Ash dared not hope that he could be anything more.

He looked up, speaking the words as he did so. ‘Of course I doubt it,’ he replied to his master’s question.

But Osh
was gone.

*

It was a slow, nauseous pain that now came upon him, sickness washing his vision. The headache tightened its vice-like grip against the sides of his skull.

It drew him out of his delirium.

Ash squinted through the darkness of the ice hut. His naked body shook, convulsed. Minute icicles hung from his eyelashes. He had almost fallen asleep.

No sounds intruded through the hole in the roof. The storm had ceased at last. Ash cocked his head to one side, listening. A dog barked, followed by others.

He blew the breath from his lungs.

‘One last effort,’ he said.

The old R
shun struggled to his feet. His muscles ached, and his head contracted with pain. He could do nothing about that, for now, since his pouch of dulce leaves had been taken from him, along with everything else. No matter, it was hardly a serious bout yet; not like the attacks he had experienced on the long voyage south, confining him in agony to his bunk for days on end.

Ash stamped his feet and slapped his body until sensation returned. He breathed hard and fast, gathering strength with every inrush of breath, purging exhaustion and doubt as he exhaled.

He panted into each palm, clapped twice, then leapt upwards. He slipped a hand through the ventilation hole so that he hung there with his legs dangling below him. With his other hand he began to stab at the ice around the hole, each strike delivered with a low ‘
Hu!
’ that was more a gasp than a word. Each impact sent a sickening shock along the bones of his arm.

Nothing happened at first. Again he was reminded of futilely striking stone.

No, he would get nowhere like this. Instead he thought of melting ice covering a pond, its crust thin enough to break through. As air whined through his nostrils, he became light-headed, making him focus that much harder.

A sliver of ice at last broke free. He allowed this moment of triumph to wash over him, without pausing in his efforts. More chips of ice loosened, until shards of it were raining down against his face. He squeezed his eyes shut to clear them of sweat. But it was more than sweat: his hand was darkly bloody from the work. Drops of blood splashed on to his forehead, or fell to the ground, to freeze there before they could soak in.

Ash was wheezing heavily by the time he had cleared a hole large enough to see a portion of night sky. For a moment he stopped and simply dangled there, to catch his breath.

As the moment lengthened, it took another effort of will to rouse himself. With a grunt of exertion, he hauled himself through the opening, scraping naked flesh as he went.

All seemed quiet throughout the settlement. The sky was a black field scattered with stars as small and lifeless as diamonds. Ash slid to the ground and crouched knee-deep in the snow, not looking back at the line of blood that now streaked the domed roof of the ice hut.

Ash shook his head to clear it, then took his bearings. Ice houses lay all around him half buried in snowdrifts. Small mounds shifted where dogs lay sleeping for the night. In the distance, a group of men prepared a sled team for the morning hunt, unaware of the figure watching them calmly through the dimness.

Keeping low, Ash took off towards the ice fortress, his bare soles crunching through a fresh crust of snow.

The structure loomed against the stars as he approached.

He did not slow his pace, kept running to the tunnel entrance, snapped his way through the hangings into the passage within. He startled the two tribesmen standing guard there beside a burning brazier. The space was small, no room to move easily. Ash drove his forehead straight into one guard’s face, cracking the man’s nose and knocking him, stunned, to the floor. Pain flashed through his own head, at which point the other guard almost caught him with a lunge of his spear. Ash ducked in time, felt the carved bone tip slide across his shoulder. Muted grunts, then the slap of flesh against flesh, as he sent a knee into his opponent’s groin, his pointed knuckles slamming into the man’s throat.

Ash stepped over the two prone bodies, narrowing his eyes as he ventured within.

He stood in a constricted passageway. Ahead lay the main hall, its entrance covered in skins. Behind the hangings all seemed quiet. But, no, not entirely quiet. He could hear snoring beyond.

My blade
, Ash thought.

He darted left through a different archway. It lead into a small space thick with smoke, lit only by a small brazier standing in one corner, a red glow emanating from the fatty embers it contained illuminating the room for a few feet of air all around, and then darkness.

A pallet bed lay next to the brazier, where a man and a woman lay asleep, pressed against each other. Ash remained a dark shadow as he padded over to the far wall, where his equipment had been piled. It was all still there.

He fumbled through his furs until his hands came upon the small leather pouch of dulce leaves. He took one out, then thought better of it and took out two more, stuffing the brown leaves into the side of his mouth, between teeth and cheek.

For a moment he sagged against the wall, chewing and swallowing their bitter flavour. The pain in his head lightened.

He ignored his furs. Steel glinted as he drew his blade from its sheath. The couple slept on regardless as he padded back towards the entrance to the main hall.

Light spilled across his bare toes from the gap beneath the hangings. Ash sucked in a bellyful of air. Exhaling through his nostrils, he stepped through, still as naked as the blade held low in his grip.

The king sat asleep on his throne at the far end of the hall. His men, some partnered with women, lay in heaps on the floor before him. To one side of the entrance a tribesman leaned on his spear, half dozing where he stood.

Ash no longer trembled. He was in his element now, and the cold became something he wore like a cloak. He was not afraid, fear was a distant memory to him, as old as his sword. His senses heightened in that moment just before he struck. He noticed an icicle, high on the ceiling above a brazier, a soft hiss each time it loosed a drip into the flames below it; he scented the sharp odour of fish, sweat, burning fat, and something else, almost sweet, that made his stomach rumble. He felt his muscles sing in rising expectation.

Movement had caught the guard’s eye, stirring him to wakefulness where he stood. The tribesman looked up in time to see Ash sweeping down on him with bloodied face and bared teeth. The blade swung towards him. It cut an arc through the smoky air and met the brief resistance of the man’s chest. He choked out a cry even as he fell.

It was enough to wake the others.

The tribesmen reached for their spears as they struggled to their feet. Without order, they rushed at Ash from all sides.

He scattered them as though they were children. With single strokes of his blade, he butchered each tribesman who came across his path, no sense of self in what he did. He was silence in the midst of confusion, his motions propelled by their own trained instincts to advance, and only to advance, his slashes and thrusts and swerves timed in a natural rhythm with his steps.

Before the last tribesman had fallen Ash was in front of the throne, a mist rising behind him from the floor of leaking corpses.

The king sat there trembling with rage, his hands straining against the bone arms of his chair as though he was trying to stand. He was drunk, the stench of alcohol thick on his breath. His lungs heaved as though he needed more air, and a thin drool ran from his parted lips as he watched, with half-lidded eyes, the R
shun now standing before him.

He looks like an angry child
, thought Ash, before casting the notion aside.

Ash flicked blood from his blade, settled its point beneath the chin of the king. The king’s breathing grew visibly faster.

‘Hut!’ snapped Ash, pressing the blade until it broke the skin, forcing the king to raise his head so that their gazes met more clearly.

The king glanced down at the blade held to his throat. A rivulet of his own blood coursed down the groove in the steel without resistance, like water trickling over oiled canvas. He looked up at Ash and, beneath his left eye, a muscle twitched.