Her heart was beating hard in her chest. A girl. Just a girl of eighteen, nineteen, if her history was correct. Princess Leila Nemati had perished toward the end of the last war, so she could not have been any older. Had the child been kept in secret since then? Protected by her grandmother, and Lord Hasham, and others of influence and power, a secret cabal of oathkeepers? She was driven by a great curiosity now, wondering how deep this all went. There were other rumours too. Of Lady Safina’s friendship with King Godrin of Rasalan. Of the King’s Wall, Sir Ralston Whaleheart, fleeing south with a young companion in tow. It’s all connected, she thought. How long has this been in the making?
Hasham was staring down at her with those hard, searching eyes. “It is said the thralls of the Fire Father bear a red mist in their gaze. An echo of the light that burns in his own. A light of Agarath.” He stepped closer and reached out with a tough, callused hand to cup her chin. “Your eyes always had a red quality to them, my lady, but of a natural, burnished brown. I see no mist, no flicker of thralldom within them. I am going to trust you, Talasha, as I trust my instincts. Now tell me…was there anything else in this vision?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Burn them, she thought. She told Lord Hasham the rest of it, the words that had not made sense to her. The rift. The plains. The silver scar. Shadows and death. Creatures in the night.
He listened intently, and his eyes moved east.
Then he spoke of a girl called Saska.
24
Their party had swelled by four.
Two more horses rode along with them, one-half mad, one half-blind, with a half-starved dog and half-dead knight by name of Sir Lenard Borrington.
The young knight was slumped in the saddle of Jonik’s piebald palfrey, a fresh bandage about his chest, cloak of thick wool heaped over his scrawny shoulders to shield him from this unseasonable chill. He shivered all the same, swaying, mumbling to himself as he drifted in and out of consciousness, a state he’d been in for days. Jonik walked beside him, watchful, to make sure he did not fall, leading the horse along by its rope. Gerrin went a few paces ahead, Harden behind on the spirited stallion, leading the other horses. The big mastiff plodded along at Jonik’s side.
“We’ll find you a new home, boy,” Jonik said to him, scratching him by the ear. He had marks on his neck, the skin rubbed raw from his time tied up outside the outhouse. “When we reach the border, they’ll find a place for you. No one’s going to treat you badly anymore.”
“You sure about that, lad?” Harden grunted from behind him. “Might be best if we just keep him ourselves. He’s taken to you, don’t you think?”
The dog did seem to like him, that was true, and more than he did the others. When Jonik slept at night, the dog would lay beside him. When he took his watch he would sit on watch with him. And when Jonik walked, the big mastiff rarely left his side. He sees me as his saviour, Jonik thought. If he was to live up to that mantle, he would have to let him go. “I like him as well, Harden,” he said. “But it won’t be safe for him with us. You know that.”
“Aye,” the man admitted. “Nice having him around, though. Had a dog like him once before. Well, was my second wife’s dog, really, but he was mine for the time I was with her. Good dog, he was.”
“Did he have a name?” Jonik asked. He was always learning something new about Harden. It was only recently that he found out he’d been married before, let alone to four separate women.
The sellsword scratched the tight-packed bristles of his chin, stiff and grey as he was. “You know, I forget. Something dog-like. Wolfy or Patches or Mr Barks, something like that.”
“All those names are completely different,” Jonik pointed out.
“Aye. Was a long time ago. Wasn’t with her long, the second wife.”
“I knew a dog called Toby once,” Gerrin put in, slowing to join them. “Maybe we should call him that?”
Jonik shook his head. He had not named the hound because he knew they wouldn’t keep him. Annoyingly, Gerrin had forgotten what Burt and Betty had called him, and the dog bowl they found inside the inn, which had once been inscribed with his name, had become so worn that the letters were unintelligible.
“Come to think of it,” the old knight went on. “Maybe that was his name before?” He turned, looking at the dog. “Toby. Here boy.” When he patted his leg, the mastiff gave a growl. “Huh. Maybe not, then…”
“We’re not naming him,” Jonik said, with a tone of finality. “We’re giving him away when we reach the border, and that’s that.” He looked down the track they’d been following for some hours, an old dirt road that weaved between small woods and over swollen rivers, past open fields where great puddles had formed, creating bogs and muddy marshes. The rains had fallen on and off for days, often cold, sometimes spitting with hail, and there had even been some sleet one cold misty morning as well. Gerrin knew these parts best, though Harden was a few years older. They both agreed this weather was not normal. “How far are we?”
“Close,” Gerrin said. “We’ll be there in an hour or so.” He pointed ahead. “When we pass those trees we ought to see the statues again.”
Jonik nodded. They’d seen the twin statues many times over the last few days, growing closer with each glimpse. The last had been only a few hours ago, when they’d summited a shallow rise among some grassy hills and seen them standing sentry at the border, towering a thousand feet tall, guarding the way to south and north as the sun rose in the east. Vandar faced north, glaring down at the denizens of Tukor. Tukor faced south, warily watching the men of Vandar. Both wore hard, fearsome expressions on their giant faces, as though warning any man entering their kingdom to behave, else there’d be trouble. Yet when a man returned, it was different, people said. A Vandarian who had travelled to Tukor, and was passing back south across the border, would see a different expression on the Steel God’s visage. Hard, yes, but somehow more inviting. Welcome home, that face would say. We have missed you. Come on through.
And what face will I get? Jonik wondered now. He was both Vandarian and Tukoran by blood, born of the royal houses Lukar and Daecar. Will I be welcomed by each of the gods for that, or looked upon with suspicion? He imagined it would be the latter. Suspicion was familiar to Jonik, a shadow that had trailed him all his life.
The dirt track led into the trees, moving through an open thicket of oak and elm. When they came out on the other side, the twin statues came into view, closer than ever, only a couple of miles away. Jonik took a grip of his godsteel dagger, enhancing his sight to get a better look. The clouds were low, the fogs thick, yet all the same he could see some damage to the twins. One of Vandar’s shoulders was blackened, and it seemed to him that the fingers on Tukor’s right hand - the hand that held the hammer - were chipped away, scorch marks staining the stone.
“The dragons have attacked them,” Jonik observed.
“They always do,” Harden said. “Every time there’s war, some dragon comes and has a nibble. You’d think they’d learn by now. Those statues aren’t coming down, no matter what they do. Would take a hundred of them breathing at the base to topple them, and even that would take a while. There’s magic in that rock.”
Ilith’s magic, Jonik thought. It still felt so strange to think that he had met the demigod…stranger still that he was serving him.
They followed the road until it turned westward, leading toward the broad, stone-paved thoroughfare that passed between the statues. The twin gods were spaced two hundred metres apart, forming a valley of sorts between them in which the border town had sprung up, popularly known as the Valley of the Gods. Here were stables, taverns, blacksmiths, farriers, tailors, armourers and weaponsmiths, even a pillowhouse or two. Market stalls lined the route, selling foods, ales, wines and rums, clothes and jewellery, spices, medicines, ointments, shoes, weapons and armour and a whole lot more. People had always gathered here in their droves, taking advantage of the lack of duties applied to the goods they bought. Some came only to trade, others to meet friends old and new, while the rest passed south and north, moving between the kingdoms.
Today, the town was teeming. From the south, a great river of people, rich and poor alike, were pouring up the thoroughfare.
“Refugees,” Gerrin said, as soon as they saw them. “From East Vandar, I’d guess, escaping the war. Must be thousands of them.”
“Thousands of mouths to feed,” grunted Harden. “That Ilith better be stocking his halls and larders. Might have a few people begging at his door soon enough.”
Jonik had left that in Lord Morwood’s care, seeing as his royal cousin had washed her hands of it. She would help, in time, Ilith had claimed, though that might have been more in hope than expectation. Maybe when she sees the teeming masses gathering at the city gates, she’ll decide to lift a finger to help. He wasn’t going to hold his breath.
The noise the refugees made was a doleful thing. A din of rattling wagons and weeping women, whimpering children and bawling babes. Grim-faced men tried to hold it all together, staring out with hollow eyes as they wandered up the road. Many looked starved and helpless, and the injured were in great abundance. Animals moved among them. Dogs walking forlornly, cats hissing in cages, goats bleating, chickens clucking, the occasional malnourished cow being led along on a rope.
Gerrin led them on in the opposite direction, heading south toward the border crossing. A few heads lifted and looked at them as they passed by, perhaps wondering what madness would compel them to go that way, but not many. Most were too lost in their horrors to notice.
Ahead, the great soaring statue of Tukor, the Forge God, loomed. From here Jonik could see little more than the great kite-shaped shield that he wore on his back, the hint of his right hand, bearing the hammer, a little outstretched to one side, with those tips of fingers missing. Below, great chunks of stone had fallen down onto the road, dwarfing the wagons as they wended around them, and high above birds swirled about the head and shoulders, tiny as fruit flies, giving scale to its staggering size.
Beneath the great shadow, the border guards were doing their searches, checking the carts and wagons as they passed north. There were two gates built into the walls here at the base of the statue; one for those passing into Tukor, and another for those seeking to go south, through the Valley of the Gods, and into Vandar. Despite the great flow of traffic seeking to take the former route, the guards were only using the assigned gate, rather than opening both of them to those making for Tukor. It seemed senseless to Jonik but he wasn’t going to complain. The soldiers there were standing by the walls, leaning against the stone, chatting with one another, looking bored.
One moved away from the others to intercept them as they approached, dressed in a cloak of Tukoran brown and green, stitched with the royal coat of arms in fine silver thread. “Your business here?” he asked them, planting the butt of his spear on the ground.
“Passing south,” said Gerrin. That was obvious, given the direction of travel they were going.
