The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (50 page)

‘A javelard is like a catapult for throwing heavy spears,’
said Nish.

The javelard snapped and the black beast was propelled
hundreds of spans into the air, looping up then down like a cannonball, and
flying directly at them.

‘Look out!’ cried Gi.

Nish scrambled to his feet and threw himself backwards as
the ball-beast approached at frightening speed. When it was just a few spans
away its wings unfurled and swung back like an arrowhead. A jet of brown vapour
exploded from its posterior, propelling it at them like a rocket.

It had a feline head with long, vampiric teeth, and it went
straight for Nish. He tried to weave out of the way, stumbled, and it would
have got him had not Gi, after a momentary hesitation, cracked it over the side
of the head with her staff.

It made a high-pitched chittering sound, rotated in its own
length, and red bulb-like eyes extended an ell out of its head. Both eyes were
fixed on Nish, who had the unnerving feeling that it knew who he was, or was
remembering his image, to be shown to the nearest wisp-watcher as soon as it
returned to the ship. That could not be allowed. His father must not learn that
Nish was hiding here – he would definitely make war on Gendrigore then.

‘Kill it, quick!’

He had left Vivimord’s sabre back in his tent. Nish snatched
a knife from his hip sheath and slashed at the creature, which blasted again
and shot up out of reach. Gi ran underneath and tried to whack it out of the
air. It spat a green gob at her, just missing her face and making the grass
sizzle where it landed.

Hoshi hurled his spear at it, but it slipped sideways; the
spear shot past its shoulder, out over the cliff, and was lost. The creature
rose higher, rocking on its spans-long batwings. Nish scanned the ground for
something to throw at it.

There were no rocks – the cliff edge was solid stone.
The creature gave him a knowing look, then its rear parts began to swell; once
they went off, it would jet beyond reach. Gi was staring at the sizzling patch
on the blackened grass, shuddering. She hadn’t seen combat before, and had no
idea what to do.

Nish had seen more than he cared to remember. Running three
steps, he snatched the staff out of her hand and sent it spinning up towards
the beast’s leathery right wing, too large a target to miss. The brass cap
punched straight through the soft leather of its wing membrane and the spinning
staff shattered the gracile bones. The creature dropped sharply and couldn’t
recover. It spun down, just missing the cliff and the fisherwomen’s basket
directly below it, and smacked into the water beside the defunct whirlpool.

It floated there on its spread wings, struggling to move,
until a dark shape came up underneath it and, without ever breaking the
surface, pulled it down. The ship unfurled its red sails and turned away.

‘Well done, Deliverer,’ said Gi, retrieving her staff and
wiping it on the grass. ‘Sorry. I should have thought of that.’

‘Nish,’ he said absently. ‘Call me Nish.’ No one said ‘Surr’
in Gendrigore. His eyes followed the ship until it disappeared in the haze, and
he could not help thinking that the beast had already reported his presence
here.

The runners returned, along with local volunteers and
promises of more, a total of fifteen hundred men from the three provinces of
Gendrigore. From what Nish knew of The Spine, and the crude mud-maps he had
seen, he was cautiously optimistic that fifteen hundred would be enough, even
if not all of them could reach Blisterbone Pass. If he could get most there in
time, and hold it for a week or two, the really wet season would isolate Gendrigore
for half a year, and in that time, anything could happen.

The local militia, as yet barely three hundred strong, was
poorly armed and virtually untrained, but he had run out of time. They were to
rendezvous in the foothills leading up to The Spine with two other small
militia sent from the southern and eastern provinces, Gendri and Rigore, in six
days.

The weather was perfect for marching, overcast and
relatively mild, but they made slow progress, for Nish’s troops took neither
the threat, the march nor his training seriously. Every village broached
barrels of beer, mead or fruit wine in their honour, and the revelry went on
until late in the night. It proved impossible to rouse them early each morning,
and even old Tulitine, who set out not long after dawn, was waiting in the next
camp before the limping, sore-headed militia reached it. His only consolation
was that the numbers swelled daily and he would have his full complement of
five hundred by the time they reached the rendezvous point, Wily’s Clearing.

On the fifth afternoon of their march Nish had just given
orders for the setting up of the camp when a young man burst from the forest
above them, looking around wildly. His breath came in ragged gasps and he was
so thickly coated in mud that he might have been dragged through a buffalo
wallow.

He looked frantically back and forth, gasping and trying to
speak, until someone pointed him in Nish’s direction. Nish started to run to
him but stopped and, holding himself upright like the experienced and
unflappable captain he must appear to be, strode across.

‘I’m Cryl-Nish Hlar, called Nish,’ he said. ‘Captain of the
militia. Do you have a message for me, lad?’

‘Name’s Ekko. Been on watch – lookout –
Blisterbone. Barquine –’ Ekko folded over, so exhausted that he was
slurring his words.

Gi crouched beside him, listening to the gibberish. ‘He
says, er … Barquine sent a carrier dove to his village, Nilvi, two weeks ago,
ordering the watch, since Nilvi is closest of all to the pass.’

So Barquine had taken Nish’s warnings seriously after all;
at least, seriously enough to keep a lookout for the enemy. ‘What did you see?’
said Nish, as more people ran across, until they were surrounded by most of the
militia.

‘Watch-fire on Titan’s Peak, three days ago,’ gasped Ekko,
‘then on Currency Crag. The alarm. War –’ He bent double again and
brought up a dribble of green vomit. ‘War is coming to Gendrigore.’

Ekko shuddered and stood up; he was extremely thin, covered
in bruises, and his skin was loose, as if he’d lost a lot of weight in a short
time. His eyes were deeply sunken, his nostrils crusted, and every bit of skin
was lumpy with insect bites.

Nish had been expecting such news, but the desperation in
the young man’s eyes shook him. ‘We thought as much lad. We’re prepared.’

Ekko looked around at the staring youths, then brought up
more muck. ‘The God-Emperor’s troops are as numberless as the leaves of the
forest. Where is our army?’

Chills radiated out from the middle of Nish’s back. ‘This is
it; well, a third of it.’

Ekko looked at the motley woodcutters and peasants armed
with home-made bows, spears, axes and a few rusty swords, then collapsed. ‘All
lost,’ he whispered. ‘All – lost.’

Tulitine bent over the lad, then shook her head and called
for a stretcher. ‘By the look of him, he was a well-built fellow when he left
home. Now he’ll be lucky to last the night.’

‘What’s happened to him?’

‘He’s run all the way from the lookout at Blisterbone, the
best part of twenty leagues, and he can’t have stopped for four days, up
mountain and down, over some of the roughest country in the world. Hadn’t you
better get this rabble into shape?’

‘I will,’ Nish said grimly. ‘There’ll be no drinking or
wenching tonight.’

‘See you set a good example, then.’

The militia were quiet now; too quiet. ‘They need something
to do,’ Nish said to Gi and Hoshi after Ekko had been carried to the healers
tent. ‘We’ll have target practice with bows and spears, but first I’m going to
round up all the grog and tip it in the river, and send the camp followers
packing.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, Nish,’ said Hoshi. ‘Collect their grog,
yes, and put a trusted guard on it, but if you throw it out …’

‘They’ll mutiny?’ said Nish, a dangerous glint in his eye.
‘During the war against the lyrinx, the penalty for mutiny was death.’

‘They won’t mutiny,’ said Gi, carefully cutting half an ell
from her black hair with a long knife. ‘They’ll just go home.’

‘Desertion in the face of the enemy is as bad as mutiny, and
the penalty –’

‘Is death,’ said Gi. ‘That’s your answer for every problem,
Nish –’

‘It’s not my answer,’ he snapped. ‘It’s the way war has to
be, to defeat the enemy.’

‘It’s not
our
way,’ said Hoshi. ‘We don’t glory in war the way you do – Gendrigore has
always taken care of our enemies.’

Nish gritted his teeth and reminded himself that he was a
guest in this land, and the self-appointed captain of an army they’d never
wanted to form. ‘Not even Gendrigore can take care of my father. The whole
world answers to his command, and whatever he wants, he gets.’

‘And he wants you most of all,’ said Gi quietly. ‘Perhaps
you should give yourself up to your father, Nish, and we can all go home
again.’

‘I did not order Vivimord put to death; Gendrigore did.’
Nish knew it was a weak thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth. If he
hadn’t come to Gendrigore, it wouldn’t be threatened now. ‘Gendrigore has shown
itself to be rebellious and Father will be out to crush it whether he gets me
or not.’

‘What good will crushing us do him?’ said Gi, puzzled.

‘To exercise power over the lives and deaths of others is
Father’s greatest pleasure.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s the way some powerful men are. Believe me, I’ve seen
it too many times.’

‘I do believe you, and it still doesn’t make any sense.
Besides, Vivimord is dead. Your father can’t know what happened to him.’

‘We never saw the body.’

‘He was eaten.’

‘With great wizards, you always have to see the body,’ said
Nish, repeating Tulitine’s words. They made plenty of sense now. ‘And the
Maelstrom of Justice and Retribution disappeared, which seems a very bad omen
to me.’

‘You don’t know Gendrigore, Nish,’ she said softly. ‘That’s
not how we read omens here.’

‘How would you read them?’

‘The whirlpool is gone, but there is another whirlpool. Life
goes on. Justice has been done and your father cannot know what happened to his
friend.’

‘Of course he can. The whole of Gendrigore was talking about
the execution weeks ago, and father has secret spies and watching devices
everywhere on Lauralin;
even here
. He
will know.’

‘Now you’re frightening me,’ Gi said. ‘I will gather up all
the drink and guard it myself.’ She turned away, young, afraid and out of her
depth, but determined to do her best. That’s what Gendrigoreans were like and
he loved them for it.

‘Let’s get the targets set up,’ said Nish to Hoshi. ‘We’ve
still got an hour of daylight.’

Hoshi carved man-sized blazes into half a dozen trees on the
edge of the clearing, then organised the men into lines to fire at them. The
archers fired, and mostly hit their targets, which was to be expected, since
many of them lived by hunting. The men and women using slings came forwards,
took aim and swung.

‘Only one hit out of eighteen,’ said Hoshi, inspecting the
targets. ‘Still, early days yet, Nish.’

‘They’ve got a full week to learn how to throw, so there’s
nothing
to worry about.’

‘Very good,’ Hoshi said with a flash of white teeth. He’d
missed the sarcasm. ‘First rank of spearmen, come forwards.’

Thirty men, and a few women, ambled up. One was picking his
teeth, another his nose, while a third was whistling so loudly that he could
have been heard a hundred paces into the forest. Another group were chattering
among themselves as if they were going to a party.

Nish felt like banging their heads on the targets. In the
days of the war, the men under him had followed his orders without question,
for everyone in Lauralin, from the smallest child up, had been used to the
unrelenting discipline of the scrutators. How was he supposed to impose his
authority on a people unused to discipline, when he had no authority in this
land? There had to be a way to get through to them, but he couldn’t think of
one.

‘Spearmen, throw your spears,’ said Hoshi.

Only five spears hit their targets, and two spearheads
shattered on impact. Nish frowned. ‘I wouldn’t have thought the trees were that
hard. Just as well the others missed, eh?’

‘Er, yes,’ said Hoshi, giving him a puzzled glance. He did
not know what was wrong.

The second row of spearmen advanced to the line. Nish was
heading for the targets to check the spears when Hoshi roared, ‘Stop, you
fools!’

Nish dropped flat as a flight of spears whistled overhead,
all but three spraying to either side of the targets. Another spearhead
shattered. He remained on the ground until a red-faced and abashed Hoshi had
routed the spearmen, then Nish directed them a furious glare and went to the
targets. Hoshi came trotting after him, along with Forzel, a tall, handsome
joker who was always immaculate. Everyone else wore homespun, but Forzel was clad
in fine cottons and wore a silk kerchief around his neck.

‘Who made this rubbish?’ Nish said furiously, holding up one
of the broken spears. The long, leaf-shaped blade had shattered halfway down.
‘The steel isn’t tempered properly.’ The broken metal tip had a rough,
crystalline inner surface. ‘It’s not steel at all … it looks like cast iron.
You can’t make spear heads out of cast iron.’

‘It won’t shatter on a man’s flesh, Nish,’ said Hoshi
defensively. ‘It’ll kill him dead and all.’

‘Unless he’s wearing armour,’ said Nish, grinding his teeth,
‘and Father’s men will wear chest plates at the pass, where it’s cool. Hoshi,
this won’t do. The spearmen need a lot of practice, but at this rate they’ll
have broken all their spears before we set eyes on the enemy.’