undying legion 01 - unbound man (55 page)

It was, she thought, about time.

The trail left the road on the other side of the river, striking westward along the northern bank. Eilwen crouched beside the departure point, frowning at the trampled weeds. A group had plainly passed this way recently, their path so obvious as to give Eilwen pause.
Have they joined some others? Or did a separate group come this way as well?
She squinted along the broken trail, then up at the dirt road.
Or did the Oculus not take this turn at all?

Eilwen hesitated. The dirt road wound away northward, likely visiting dozens of nameless, insignificant hamlets before eventually disappearing somewhere near the mountains. The fresh trail to the west, however, led… where? Wherever it was, it seemed nobody had had any need to go there until recently. If the Oculus had just happened to come through right after some other group, well, that would be a damned strange coincidence.

She turned, examining the dirt road. A sapling with a freshly broken branch stood a few paces before the fork. Beside it, a flattened shoot lay trampled into the road. Beyond the divergence, however, the road seemed undisturbed. Eilwen straightened, her decision made. Something had drawn the Oculus out here, and it wasn’t a sleepy hamlet in the middle of nowhere.

Hoisting her bag over her shoulder, Eilwen set off into the forest. The trail was wide, unmissable. Surely more than seven people had come this way. Now that she thought about it, that stable back in the village had been peculiarly full. She wished she’d asked the innkeeper about his sudden influx of horses.
What on the gods’ earth could attract such a crowd all the way out here?

There was something wrong about the whole situation. She could almost sense it, like a shapeless smudge hovering just past the edge of her vision.
Something is going on.

She wondered what Havilah would make of it.

The smell of nearby water drifted in and out beneath the fresh scent of eucalypt. From time to time Eilwen caught the sound of the river echoing from the gorge, but the winding trail never quite brought her close enough for another glimpse. A lush variety of shrubs, bushes, and ferns filled the spaces between the larger trees, forming a thick layer of undergrowth. Eilwen picked her way between them, following the path of torn fronds, bent branches, and broken scrub as it wound inexorably westward.

As the morning wore on, she found herself reaching back to her old training to calculate the value of the timber around her. The largest trees here were massive, their boles wide enough at the base for three or four people to wrap their arms around and still not complete the circle. Deadfall was sparse, suggesting a relative absence of rot and decay.
Any one of these would be worth ten or twelve times a regular tree by timber volume alone. And if we could get a woodbinder in to help fell them in fewer pieces…

But there was no “we”. Not any more.
You’re alone now, Eilwen. Best get used to it.

She was halfway down a gentle slope when the egg stirred to life.

Eilwen froze mid-step, grasping a branch to steady herself, and scanned the trees around her. All seemed still. Birds chirped softly above the faint rustle of leaves, but that was all.
Nothing moving at ground level. Is that normal?
She grimaced, uncertain.

The sense of someone approaching grew stronger. She dropped to a crouch behind a leafy acacia, ignoring the protests of her knee, and peered through the branches. A round-shouldered Plainsman stepped into view on the trail ahead, and she loosed a soft hiss.
An Oculus.
He moved silently across the forest floor, knees bent, one hand on the hilt of his sword, swivelling his head like a tribal dancer. The egg pulsed against her flesh, but faintly, as though impeded by some invisible barrier.
Not a sorcerer, then. Just a token-bearer.

A good start.

The thought came from some other place within her: the beast, its eyes slitted open, contemplating the man in the same way that she had contemplated the trees. Its casual hunger filled her, and she abandoned herself to it, allowing it to carry her along as it assessed his strengths, his vulnerabilities.
Agile. Quiet. No armour. Short reach. Leads with his left side.
It stretched lazily, considering its verdict.
Surprise. A knife from behind. Throat or heart.

She nodded as though it had spoken, easing her dagger from its sheath. Following was all well and good, but she was here for a reason.

I’m a soldier on a mission. Here comes my enemy.

The man stopped, straightening, and took a final glance around the forest. Then he shrugged and turned, disappearing back the way he had come.

What? No! Come back!
She almost called out as he passed from view, gasping as her anticipation shifted in an instant to aching hollowness. Inside, the beast howled its disappointment. The egg’s stirring quieted, then stilled completely, and she stood, rubbing her leg as she stared at the now vacant trail.

Branches rustled high overhead. Somewhere away to her left, water rushed over stone. She was alone.

But they were close. Closer than she’d realised.
And that man will be back.
He’d looked like he sensed he was being followed. Somehow or other she’d managed to divulge her presence.

She hugged her arms to her chest, looking anew at the trees and scrub around her. She’d spent her first few years with the Guild thinking about nothing but wood and forests, but in some ways she didn’t know them at all.
I can identify the most profitable trees, work out how best to fell them. And I can follow a trail, at least when it’s as obvious as this. But when it comes to moving through the forest unnoticed, I’ve got no idea.

But then, she didn’t want to go completely unnoticed. She wanted to be just perceptible enough to have that man come looking for her again.

I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing. Sooner or later, my chance will come.

•

“We’re here,” Narvi said, peering down at the map in his hand and then up again. “I think.”

Arandras pulled a skin from his bag and took a long swallow. The forest came to an abrupt end at the edge of a cliff, below which lay a wide, rocky shore. The placid surface of Tienette Lake stretched out before them, its waters glittering in the mid-morning sun. The air smelt like stone after rain.

“I don’t see a gorge,” he said.

“No,” Narvi said. “But do you notice the line of the cliff? That bend looks like this bit on the map. Which means the gorge should be just past that ridge…”

“Could be something here,” Mara called from the lip of the ridge. “But it’s choked with rocks. We’ll have to go around and down.”

Great.
Arandras peered over the cliff edge at the rough shoreline.
That’s a damn long way to fall.
“How are we going to do that?”

“Over here.” Ienn beckoned to them from a dozen paces further along. “Looks like there might have been a path once.”

It was the kind of remark which was both strictly true and entirely misleading. Whatever path had once existed, only a series of irregular ledges now remained, most clogged with pebbles or coated in moss, some separated from their neighbours by gaps that made Arandras’s stomach churn.
There must be another way.

“Splendid,” Fas said, nodding approvingly at the broken path. “Who’s first?”

Narvi looked down the first segment of track, his broad face unusually wan. “Um. Perhaps we should send someone down to, uh, make sure it goes all the way to the bottom.”

“I’ll go,” Ienn said, slinging his bag to the ground. “Don’t all run off while I’m gone, now.”

The group spread out along the clifftop, taking advantage of the chance to rest and enjoy the view. Arandras found himself a patch of grass half a dozen paces from the edge — far enough to relax, at least a little — and sat with his arms about his knees, gazing out at the expanse of water. A few moments later Fas settled beside him with a grunt, his jaw working vigorously on a strip of dried meat.

“Close now, don’t you think?” Fas said around his mouthful of food.

Arandras shrugged. “If you say so.” The bend on the map was slight enough to match a hundred different spots along the shore; or it might be nothing more than a slip of the pen, made by any of the cartographers responsible for each copy of a copy since the original.
I’ll believe we’re there when I’m staring the golems in whatever they have for eyes.

“You still want one for yourself, do you?”

“Of course. That was the deal.”

“So it was.” Fas chewed slowly, gazing out at the horizon. “Tell you what. When we get there, you pick out the one you want. All right?”

Arandras blinked. “All right.”

Fas grunted, nodded, and reached for another strip of meat.

What in the hells was that?
Arandras shot the other man a sidelong glance.
A gesture of conciliation?
The disquiet that had been with him since the village intensified.

I’m not a traitor.
A traitor would be leading Clade here to thwart the Quill. Arandras was bringing him here to destroy him. And in any case, the Oculus weren’t the real issue, whatever Bannard’s misgivings.
I can’t let Fas take the golems. Not after Isaias’s shop.
And there was no reason why he should. Fas had never asked for the golems. He’d just assumed they were his for the taking.

Arandras was simply assuming them back.

The sun was approaching its zenith when Ienn returned from his climb. “It’s passable,” he said, a faint sheen on his brow. “Narrow in places, though. Some of you will need help.”

On Ienn’s advice, a rope was tied around a thick tree above the back-and-forth path. Mara volunteered to go first, stepping lightly onto the trail and out of sight. Ienn followed her progress along the cliff edge, pulling the rope across the low scrub as she descended. Arandras watched it slither from side to side, stripping the leaves from the slender shoots in its path, until at last it went still.

“Clear,” came the call from the bottom of the cliff.

Ienn tugged the rope back to the beginning of the track. “Who’s next?”

Arandras allowed several Quill to take their turn before he stepped up to the path. Wrapping his hands around the thick, scratchy rope, he edged out onto the first shelf. Patterns of sunlight danced over the pale stone of the cliff, reflected from ripples and wavelets on the lake’s surface far below. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on the ledge and the placement of each step as the gentle breeze nudged him against the cliff.

At the first gap he halted, frowning appraisingly. A section of path had fallen away, the resulting space just wide enough to be uncomfortable. On the far side lay a slanting ledge less than half the width of the one he now stood on.
Wonderful. Miss it by a finger and I’ll be taking the short way down.

Grasping the rope in both hands, Arandras shuffled forward. He crouched, feeling the stone’s edge beneath the toes of his boots. Then, eyes fixed on the ledge before him, he leapt.

He landed awkwardly, feet scrabbling for purchase on the pebble-strewn shelf. Heart thudding, he hauled on the rope, pulling himself tight against the cliff wall.
Still here. I’m still here.
He edged further along, breathing a sigh of relief as the shelf began to widen beneath his feet.
There. That wasn’t so bad.
Swallowing, he loosened his grip on the rope ever so slightly, eyes darting ahead to the next break in the path.
Piece of cake.

But the first gap was the worst. Thereafter he was able to step across the holes, aided by the downward slope, using the rope only to steady himself when the ledge became too narrow to trust his footing. By the time he reached the bottom he was almost relaxed, stepping from one shelf to the next with such settled concentration that he was surprised to find the cliff end and the shore begin.

“Clear,” Mara called as he released the rope. He stepped back, taking in the cliff and the path he’d just traversed.
Yeah. Piece of cake.

The next Quill began to pick his way down. Arandras glanced westward, his gaze drawn by a hole in the craggy stone about halfway up the escarpment.
How deep does that go, I wonder?
He moved closer, squinting at the dark hollow, boots crunching on the pebbled shore. The cavity was wider at the bottom than the top, but too regular to be natural.
A window, maybe?

Someone drew up alongside. “Looks almost like the lower half of a triangle, doesn’t it?” Narvi said. “I keep thinking it looks familiar, but I can’t work out why.”

Arandras scratched his beard. Now that Narvi mentioned it, it did look familiar. He peered up, trying to place the nagging sense of having seen it before.

Narvi pointed further along the cliff face. “Is that another one over there?”

The second window was higher and smaller, and seemed to point in a slightly different direction. The rock around it was mottled, rough with crags and creases. Viewed from the lake, it was probably indistinguishable from the rest of the cliff.

The third overlooked a cleft in the rocky wall. Fallen rocks choked the fissure after several dozen paces, a few spilling to the base of a great boulder that looked to have been pressed into the cliff. Narvi grasped Arandras’s arm in excitement. “That’s it. Get out the urn.”

Of course.
Arandras dug the pewter vessel out of its pouch, pushed aside its wrapping. There it was, in the band of images etched into its curved belly: a cliff split by a gorge, a man and a golem standing at its mouth; and high in the cliff wall, almost too small to see, a window shaped like the lower half of a triangle.

“This is the place,” Narvi said, his eyes dancing; and despite himself, Arandras found himself smiling in return.

The golems. They’re here.

Chapter 22

Your life is a song in the ears of the All-God, and every past day a voice in your choir. They sing without surcease: harsh or soft, treacherous or beautiful, the forgotten days no less than those remembered.