The Deed of Paksenarrion (112 page)

Paks shook her head. “I had not heard of Luap until I came here, sir.”

“There’s been a legend for a long time that Luap left the Honnorgat Valley and traveled west, to take Gird’s Code to distant lands. For a time, it was believed, he had established a stronghold, a fortress, in the far mountains, and some reports had Girdsmen traveling back and forth. But no one has come from the west with any reports of him for hundreds of years, so most scholars now think it was just a legend. But in one of these scrolls, sent back, he says, at the request of the Marshal-General of that day, he gives the location of that stronghold. If someone were to go there, and see it, that would prove that these are, indeed, the scrolls of Luap.”

Paks thought of it, suddenly excited. “What are the western lands like?”

“All we have are caravan reports. Dry grassland for some days travel, then rock and sand, then deep gouges in the rocks, with swift-running rivers in the depths. Then mountains—but they don’t go that way, skirting them on the south, to come to a crossways. North along that route is a kingdom called Kaelifet; I know nothing about it. Southward is more desert, and finally a sea.”

Paks tried to imagine those strange lands, and failed. “Will you go, then, Marshal Kory?”

“Me!” He laughed. “No, I’m the Archivist—I can’t go. Perhaps no one will. Some think it is an idle fancy, and the trip too long and dangerous to risk with evil nearer to hand. But I hope the Marshal-General sends someone. I’d like to know what happened to Luap—and his followers—and why they left Fintha. Perhaps there are more scrolls there—who knows?” He looked at her. “Would you go, if you could, or does this seem a scholar’s question to you?”

“I would go,” said Paks. “A long journey—unknown lands—mountain fortress—what could be more exciting?”

Early spring flowers were just fading when Paks rode west up the first long slopes above Fin Panir. She still thought nothing could be more exciting. With the caravan, the year’s first, rode Amberion, High Marshals Connaught and Fallis, and four knights: Joris, Adan, and Pir, from the Order of the Cudgel, and Marek from the Order of Gird. A troop of men-at-arms marched with them, and a number of yeomen had signed on as drovers and camp workers. Most of the caravan was commercial, headed for Kaelifet, but Ardhiel and Balkon rode with the Girdish contingent as ambassadors and witnesses for their people.

Paks continued her training under the direction of the paladin and High Marshals. If she had thought the trip would provide a respite from study, she quickly learned otherwise. By the time they reached the Rim, a rough outcrop of stone that loomed across their path, visible a day’s journey away, Paks had passed their examinations on the Code of Gird and grange organization. She began learning the grange history of the oldest granges, the reasons for locating granges and bartons in certain places, the way that the Code of Gird was administered in grange courts and market courts in Fintha. Now she knew how the judicar was appointed in Rocky Ford, and why the required number of witnesses to a contract varied with the kind of contract.

Their encounter with the horse nomads was a welcome break. She had been marching along muttering to herself the names of the Marshal-Generals who had made changes in the Code when one of the Wagonmaster’s sons came pelting along the line, crying a warning. As he neared the Girdsmen, he yelled “Sir paladin! Sir paladin! Raiders!”

“Where, lad?” Amberion was already swinging onto his golden chestnut warhorse.

“North, sir! The scouts say it’s a big party.”

Paks felt her stomach clench as she hurried to untie Socks from the wagon. Socks was tossing his head, and she scrambled up, uncomfortably aware of her awkwardness. At least she had her own armor and sword for the journey. She swung Socks away from the wagons, and unhooked her helmet from its straps. Amberion was already helmeted, shield on arm.

“Paksenarrion!” he called. “Bring spears.” Paks unfastened her shield from the saddle and slid it on her arm. At the supply wagon, she called for two spears, and a young yeoman slid them out the rear. Paks locked them under her elbow, whirled Socks, and rode off to find Amberion. To the north she could see a smudge of dust. The caravan itself suddenly swarmed with armed troops. Their score of men-at-arms marched as a rear guard; the regular caravan guards rode atop each wagon, crossbows loaded and cocked. High Marshal Connaught carried a bow; he, Sir Marek, and Ardhiel rode toward the head of the caravan. The other three knights waited on High Marshal Fallis, whose bald-faced horse was throwing its usual tantrum. Paks grinned to herself. She’d had to ride that horse a few times herself; she could imagine the struggle to get helm and shield in place while staying aboard.

Then a bellow from the Wagonmaster brought Amberion back. He shrugged at Paks, and she followed him to the cluster of mounted fighters. High Marshal Connaught was glaring, but the Wagonmaster never looked up.

“You can’t do it, I say, and you agreed when I took you on that you’d be bound by my orders.”

“Thieves and outlaws—” began Connaught. The Wagonmaster interrupted.

“Horse nomads. Horse nomads I’ve met before, and will every year, whether you ride with me or not. Maybe you could hold them off—if it’s one of the half-decent clans like Stormwind or Wintersun. But what about next year? We skirmish a little for honor’s sake, pay our toll, same as a caravan would on the long route through Tsaia, and that’s it. None of your Girdish sermonizing here, Marshal: it’ll get me killed.”

“And if they attack?” said Amberion. Paks noticed that the Wagonmaster’s fixed glare softened a little.

“We fight, of course: that’s why I have guards. But they won’t, with you in sight. I’m glad enough to have the extra blades and bows, and that’s truth, but for the rest of it, I’ll pay toll.” Connaught started to speak, but Amberion caught his eye, and he closed his mouth. Amberion smiled at the Wagonmaster. “Sir, we agreed to follow your command while we traveled with you; forgive us for our eagerness to defend you.”

Soon they could see the advancing warriors clearly: a mass of riders on shaggy small horses, armed with lances. Paks watched the war party ride closer—and closer. Now she could see the shaggy manes, the glitter of bridle ornaments, the colors of the riders’ cloaks. On tall poles long streamers of cloth fluttered in the wind: blue, gray, and white. She could hear the drumming of those many hooves.

The Wagonmaster had insisted that all but the parley group he led stay near the wagons, but he had invited Amberion to ride out with him. Paks followed, at his nod. As they moved toward the nomads, the Wagonmaster gave them his instructions. Finally they faced their enemy only a bowshot away. Amberion waved his spear slowly, left to right. The nomads halted. Several of their horses whickered.

A single figure in the front of the group waved one of the streamered poles and yelled something in a language Paks didn’t know.

“Parley in Common!” yelled Amberion.

The figure rode forward ten yards or so. “Why we halt?” he called. “Yer on our pasture, city folk. On the sea of grass, only the strong survive. Can ye stop us taking all you have, and feeding ye to the grass?” His speech was thickly accented, a mixture of several dialects.

“Aye, easily enough.” The Wagonmaster sounded confident.

“Ha! Five against fifty? Are ye demons, then, like that black one that walks north?”

“We are servants of Gird and the High Lord,” said Amberion. The Wagonmaster shot him a glance, but said nothing.

“Well met here,
servant
of whoever. Go tell yer master that those who travel our lands must pay our tolls—unless ye’d rather fight.”

Amberion turned to the Wagonmaster, brows raised. The Wagon-master nodded. “Oh, these aren’t bad. These are Stormwinds—that’s old Carga out there; he don’t torture prisoners at all. Keeps slaves, of course, they all do, but if there’s a good horse nomad, it’s Carga. He’ll take our tribute and leave us alone. You notice he changed his demand, that second time?”

The Wagonmaster had assembled a bale of striped cloth, a small keg of Marrakai red wine, several skeins of red and blue yarn, a sack of river-clam shells, and a bundle of mixed wooden staves of a length for arrowshafts. Now he waved, and some of the drovers carried the goods toward them.

The nomad leader rode forward slowly, alone, close enough that Paks could see the curl of hoof on its thong around his neck, the spirals tattooed on his cheeks, the clear gray eyes under dark brows. He rode without stirrups, in knee-high boots whose embroidered soles had surely never been used for walking, clear as the colors were.

“Ye ride with strange powers, cityborn trader,” he said. “Yer men I know, but him—” He pointed at Amberion. “Wizard, is it?”

“A paladin of Gird,” said Amberion. The nomad shrugged and spat.

“Never heerd of him, nor paladins neither. But ye stink of power.” He watched closely as the goods were displayed before him, and finally nodded. “Go yer way, scarfeet riders—” It took Paks awhile to understand this reference to their stirrups, and the marks those left on boots.

She hardly had time to enjoy the memory of the nomads before High Marshal Connaught had her hard at work again. Spring passed quickly into summer, the hot windy summer of the grasslands. At times it seemed they rode in the center of a bowl of grass, and Paks wondered if the world might be turning under them, so that they would never be free. Then the green turned grayer; the grass hardly reached their horses’ knees. The dry air rasped in her nose, chapped her lips. Paks could see the ground’s color showing through, as if the grass were a threadbare rug over the land, and then the grass failed. The trail went on, a deep-bitten groove of dust and stone.

They moved from water to water. Paks learned to ride with a cloth over her face, and keep her mouth closed against the dryness. The horses lost flesh, despite their care. The caravaners showed the Girdsmen how to turn over every rock before sitting down: Paks loathed the many-legged creatures that lurked in that cool shade, and carried poison in their tails.

It took days to cross the first deep canyon: first to ease the wagons down that steep trail without losing control of any of them, then to warp them across the roaring river, red with ground rock, then to drag them back up, foot by foot. And when they came out on top again, Paks could see little of where they had been. After another such canyon, the caravaners pointed out a line of purple against the northern sky. Mountains, they said. Elves, they said also, with sidelong looks at Ardhiel.

Paks asked him, and Ardhiel answered that those mountains were home to elves, but not of his family. He seemed troubled by something, but Paks knew better than to ask. Balkon, looking north, muttered eagerly about stone. He had confided to Paks that his family, the Goldenaxe clan, was looking for more daskgeft, more stonemass for the increase of the family. He hoped to find some; the descriptions Luap had written of the land made him think the stone there might be “dross,” or suitable. Paks wondered again how dross could have so many meanings in dwarvish: courage, wit, strength—almost anything good, it seemed to her, was dross.

Day by day the mountains seemed to march nearer their flank. Ahead was only the rolling level of the desert, broken by watercourses. Paks began to feel a pressure from those mountains; she understood why the caravaners would go around rather than through them, for that alone. Then one morning an edge of red rock showed ahead. As they marched toward it, it rose higher and higher. By the next afternoon, they could see the lighter rock below, great sweeping curves of white and yellow—the same color, Paks thought, as the walls of Cortes Andres. And two days later, marching under those great stone ramparts, the Girdsmen turned aside.

Here a river emptied itself from those stone walls into the sand and rubble outside. The caravaners muttered and made gestures, but finally moved on, while High Marshal Connaught examined the map again. When the caravan was gone, he mounted his bay horse and led them up the watercourse, the horses lunging through the dry sand. Ahead, Paks could see towering white walls closing in. She wondered how they could ride in such a narrow space if the water came up.

“Bad place for an ambush,” said Amberion beside her.

“Yes, sir.”

“By the map, we’ll be leaving this soon, and climbing into another stream’s valley. I hope the route can be climbed by horses.”

Paks had not thought of that, but looking at the sheer walls of stone, she realized what they might face. “If they can’t—”

“Then we’ll leave them. Build a stout camp, leave the novice yeomen and most of the men-at-arms.”

Before the canyon walls closed completely, High Marshal Connaught turned left away from the river, leading them onto a rough slope of broken rock. He seemed to find a trail; Paks, far back in the group, could not see anything ahead to guide them. Socks heaved upward, stride by stride. They stopped often to rest the animals; the warhorses were curded with sweat. Amberion’s horse, alone of all the animals, never showed the marks of hard riding, always slick-coated and fresh. Paks had noticed that about all the paladin’s mounts in Fin Panir. Far back she could see the mules, head down, picking their way delicately and almost without effort over the rocks. Below, the canyon they had come from disappeared into a jumble of shadow and light. Now she could see far to the right, more swooping curves of stone, patterned by dark cracks. Far up on the heights, she thought she saw trees.

By late afternoon, she could see a strange shape against the sky: a dark cone with a scoop out of the point. Amberion pointed to it.

“That’s marked on the map. Blackash cone, it said: we must bear left of it.” As they came nearer, always climbing, the rock changed abruptly from white to red. The trail led through a break in that vertical red wall. Suddenly the black cone was close; it looked like a loose pile of dark rock sitting on the red stone around it. Paks stared. Had someone—some giant, surely—built a cairn? Long shadows streaked the land, making weird shapes of the wind-blown rocks around them. Now they could see that the canyon they had climbed from was only a small section of something much larger that extended far to the east, ending at last in a higher rampart of white topped with forest. South, the land dropped abruptly into that hole. It was hard to believe they had climbed anything so sudden. Westward the land dipped to a rumpled plain of sand, and that again dropped sharply: Paks could just see against the setting sun distant mountains beyond that drop. Northward, their view was blocked by the black cone and the higher land behind it. Red cliffs, these, with fortress-size blocks lying at their feet. Paks wondered if the others felt as small as she did.