Deverry - A Time Of War Part 31

Rhodry found that a heavy pack sits lighter on a man who's used to walking. Although his back burned by the end of the first day's march, bit by bit he grew accustomed to the weight until he could almost keep up with the dwarves, not that he would ever match their stamina fully. Even once he hit his stride, they were still forced to stop for rests they didn't need and to make camp a little earlier than they would have chosen on their own.

The terrain was hard travelling, anyway - steep, rocky hills, thickly forested valleys, some narrow enough to be called ravines and little more - treacherous enough to make them decide to march during the day. Although Garin seemed sure of the route, Rhodry never was aware of their following anything that could be called a path, merely places where the scrub and brambles grew less thickly. At times, only some hard work with a dwarven axe got them clear of underbrush without doubling back. The travelling might have been easier, of course, if it weren't for Otho's constant grumbling, whether he was snarling in rage or merely muttering under his breath. At least once a day Garin would threaten to drown the old man and leave his bones for the ravens.

Every night they camped as high as possible and preferably among rocks, not trees, where they could take turns standing watches and keep an eye out, as Garin said, just in case something was following them. Yet they never saw an enemy, not in the night or even during the day. For the first time all summer, Rhodry slept without dreams of watching eyes. From these high camps he could see for miles, looking back down toward Lin Sen and Deverry itself, lost beyond the horizon, as if it had fallen away from this vertical world of rock and ravine. When he turned north he would see the white peaks, so close in the morning air that it seemed he could jump, stretch and touch them.

After some six days in wild country, when they were beginning to run low on supplies, the weather began to change. Toward sunset cirrus clouds wisped across the sky from the west, and by the time the moon rose, about halfway between its first quarter and its full, a mackerel sky webbed its silver light.

Morning brought a grey roil of cloud. In a whipping wind they broke camp and headed north in silence, looking up as often as they looked forward.

'How far to Haen Marn?' Mic asked.

'I don't know,' Garin said, chewing on his lower lip. 'But we should find the first road stone today.'

'What do you mean you don't know?' Otho snapped. 'You've been there thrice.'

'And each time it appeared at a different twist in the road.'

Otho goggled.

'It did, and there's naught more I can say about it.' Garin shrugged mightily. 'Disbelieve me all you want, but I know what I saw. And the third time no one let me in, either.'

'What is this place?' Rhodry said. 'A dun? And what kind of people would turn a stranger from their gates, anyway?'

'People who live by different laws than yours, but they made sure I had the food to get myself home again. I'm not saying a thing more, because you won't be believing me, anyway. You'll all see for yourselves, you will, and with luck it'll be soon now.'

Round midday they panted up a particularly steep hill, crested a lifeless rise of black basalt, and looked down into a thickly forested valley, some two hundred yards across at the widest point and about five hundred long. Down this length a stream ran, crossing the middle of a clearing about fifty yards wide and too precisely circular to be a natural formation.

'Oho!' Garin said. 'Now that looks promising, lads.'

They fought their way downhill through grasping brambles and thick shrubs to the valley floor, hit the stream, and followed it back and forth along what seemed to be its entire length. They never found the clearing.

'Ye G.o.ds,' Garin whispered. 'It's starting already. Well, we might as well get out of this cursed gulch.'

'Now wait,' Rhodry said. 'I for one need a meal, and a clearing like that just doesn't up and take itself away.'

'It doesn't, eh? Well and good, then. You lead and we'll look for it.'

'Done, then. Even a wretched elf like me can follow a running stream.'

Back they went, and this time they'd gone not more than twenty yards when the trees began thinning ahead of them. Grinning in triumph Rhodry led them straight out into open ground.

'There we are! I knew it -' All at once he felt his grin disappearing. 'But where was it before?'

'just so,' Garin said. 'Just so.'

Mic and Otho were looking round open-mouthed.

'What's that over there?' Mic pointed. 'Looks like stone.'

Stone it turned out to be, a huge pointed slab of black basalt, tipped on end and graved with writing in the dwarven language. Garin ran one finger down it, as if to a.s.sure himself of its reality.

'This is the first marker on the road,' he said. The one I was talking about. I doubt me if I would have found it, but Rhodry did, and that tells us somewhat, lads.'

Everyone looked at him expectantly.

'Ye G.o.ds, think!' Garin snapped. 'It means he's been foreseen or foretold or suchlike. From now on, Rhodry lad, you lead.'

'What?' Rhodry said. 'I've never been here before, and you've been thrice.'

'So? I'll act as guide, like. You're the leader.'

Otho moaned and rolled his eyes heavenward.

'To think a cousin of mine and him an envoy at that would have gone daft! And us in mortal danger, too!'

'We're not in any danger at all.' Garin sighed. 'And I know what I'm doing.'

'Well and good, then,' Rhodry said. 'Far be it from me to argue with dweomer, and this place stinks of it. Here, O Guide.' He paused for a grin. 'What sayeth this most ancient stone?'

'If you're going to talk like an apprentice bard,' Garin said with some asperity, 'I'm going to tip you over the next cliff. It says, and in good plain language, too, "This is the first writing-stone on the road to Haen Marn." As I remember, the first two times I came this way, I found two more, and the last time I found four.'

'And I'll wager that they were always in different places, too,' Otho put in.

'Just that.' Garin glanced up at the threatening sky. 'At the moment, lads, I'd say we need to find shelter more than another trail marker.'

As if in agreement a few fat drops fell, splashing on the black stone. Distant thunder cracked.

'I knew our luck with the weather wasn't going to hold, not this time of year.' Garin went on. 'Over there, O leader, your guide see-eth a clump of trees that look a fair bit lower than the rest. I say we get under them and let the tall trees draw the lightning.'

In a patter of drops on branches above them they finished their ';; meal, but as soon as they took to the trail again, the rain began in earnest. Although the greased canvas lashed over their packs kept the food dry, the men were soaked in minutes. They sloshed on, keeping to the lower ground and letting the lightning seek the high. Even though he was wet, chafed and tired, Rhodry found himself singing whenever he had the breath, just odd s.n.a.t.c.hes of elvcn songs that he'd learned from his natural father. He found himself laughing at every crack of lightning. Above them the white peaks hung invisible, shrouded in cloud.

They camped wet that night and travelled the next day in weather that alternately threatened and made good its threat of rain, until finally, at mid-afternoon, on a race of wind the storm blew over. By sunset, the sky was clearing to the north and east. When they began looking for a campsite, Rhodry was expecting that he'd find another marker-stone as well, just because it seemed fitting and no reason more.

They clambered out of one last valley and climbed to the top of a hill, where boulders among high gra.s.s offered some kind of shelter. While the dwarves squabbled about it, Rhodry stood on the crest and looked back to the south, down the long slope up which they'd climbed, where dark clouds lingered over the forests, wreathed with mist as blue as smoke in the far distance. His old world lay under that mist, and he wondered why he was so sure he'd come into a new one.

'Oy, Rhodry!' Garin called. 'Are we camping here or not?'

'We're not. I don't know why, but we're not.'

The answer lay not a half-mile beyond. They scrambled down the hill on the north face, made a little turn between two slopes, and came out facing west to see ahead and some hundred yards down into a long valley, bisected by a deep river, flowing north to south. To the south, their left, gra.s.sland scattered with oak trees lay between steep hills all brushy and forested. To the north rose a high wall of cliff, blocking a view of hills beyond - they could just see peaks, black with trees, over the rise of sheer rock.

'Oh ye G.o.ds!' Garin whispered. 'Haen Marn.'

Rhodry laughed, one of his berserk peals as wild as a thunderclap.

'This is it?' Otho snapped. 'I don't see a cursed thing but trees, neither dun nor hovel, naught. Wait!

Those trees! Oaks don't grow this high up.'

'Worms and slimes!' Mic sputtered. 'What's wrong with this view? Is it my eyes?'

As long as they looked down into the valley, 'this view' made perfect sense, but when Rhodry looked round, he couldn't see how the crest where he stood, on the east slope above the valley, connected up to the cliffs at the valley's north end. They saw no dweomer-induced cloud or magical blackness swimming in the air; it was simply impossible to look at the place where the geographies must have sorted themselves out. The crest trotted right along, and the cliffs picked up - except they couldn't have, but they did. The valley lay self-contained in one landscape; they all stood in another. The other dwarves were fuming, looking down, looking up again, staring all round them, but Garin merely sighed.

'Haen Marn,' he said again, as if that explained everything. He pointed north, where the river flowed out through a crack in the cliff face. That's the entrance. Haen Marn itself lies beyond the cliffs.'

'And what do we do, swim?' Otho snapped. 'It's a cold dark day for that.'

Garin ignored him. Automatically Rhodry looked at the sky. The sun was already sinking off to the west, turning the scudding clouds deceptively bright.

'Well, at least we won't camp wet,' Rhodry said. 'Better get on down, lads. Night's falling.'

Otho snorted profoundly. Settling their packs, they headed downhill, picking their way through the underbrush and boulders to come out into a valley br.i.m.m.i.n.g with shadows. When Garin turned north and began marching purposefully toward the cliff, the rest trailed after, looking up and around them. While the valley itself matched the view they were remembering from the crest, some other thing fit wrong, so subtly skewed that none of them could specify it. Off to the north, above the rise of cliff, Rhodry could still see the white peaks, about where they should have been and as high, too.

'It's the wind!' Rhodry said abruptly. 'It was quiet up above, but it's blowing here. Should be the other way round.'

'Just so,' Otho snarled. 'It's eerie and dweomer-soaked and uncanny, and I hate it.'

Mic nodded; there was not much more to add, truly.

Eventually they caught up with Garin, who was rooting about 'between a trio of enormous grey boulders that lay at the foot of the cliff. Just as they reached him he grinned in triumph and pulled free a silver horn, all nicked and tarnished, at the end of a long chain.

'There,' he said. 'I'll call, and let's hope someone answers.'

'Before we grow much older,' Otho muttered.

'Don't get your hopes up about that.'

Even though the horn looked as if someone had been kicking it back and forth on the rocky ground, when Garin blew, the sound rang piercingly sweet, three long notes that brought tears to Rhodry's eyes, although he could never say why, not then nor later. When he glanced at the dwarves, he caught Mic wiping his eyes on the back of his hand, and even Otho seemed moved. Garin blew the three notes three times, then returned the horn to its hiding place in a hollow among the rocks.

'Now we wait. Naught else for it.'

In the event they waited till the next afternoon. Some hundred yards from the river they found a sheltered spot among rocks where they could peg and weight their canvas lean-to. In between their watches the dwarves drowsed, sitting upright, heads on knees, and Rhodry slept, wedged tight between the packs and a boulder. He woke once in the middle of the night to hear rain drumming overhead, and a second time, some hours before dawn, when Mic shook him awake to go stand a watch.

Stretching and yawning Rhodry eased himself free of the shelter. Outside the rain had stopped and the wind risen. When he looked up he could see the clouds rolling and scudding before the nearly-full moon.

The stars winked through the drifting grey, then disappeared again, only to return in sheets of sky. He paced back and forth, cold and aching from one night too many spent sleeping on hard ground. He yawned, rubbing his face with both hands, frowning a little at the growth of beard. All his life, Rhodry had hated being bearded. When he thought back to some of the trouble he'd gone through to keep himself clean-shaven on the long road or out in the Westlands, he had to laugh at himself, in fact, but he was definitely hoping that this mysterious Haen Marn would offer a traveller soap and hot water.

Still smiling he glanced at the river, swore and rose to his feet. Walking on the river as if it were a silver road came a procession of tall, slender women, all dressed in white, with silver kirtles at their waists and silver tores round their necks. They walked in pairs except for their leader, who carried a spear with a silver point. As they walked, they wept, tossing their heads and whipping their dishevelled hair round, sobbing and covering their faces with slender hands. Without thinking Rhodry ran to the bank and called out.

'My ladies, what's so wrong? Can I be of help to you?'

At the sound of his voice, the woman with the spear turned her head and smiled at him, just briefly, before they vanished, leaving only a faint mist blowing over the silver ripples of the river. Rhodry tried to tell himself that he'd been asleep and dreaming, but no man spends his dreams thinking about shaving. He turned cold, shuddering. He stayed on his feet, walking by the river, until the dawn brightened grey with the first sun.

As he was debating whether or not to wake the others, Rhodry heard a sound so distant that at first he thought it might only be some echo of water over rock. He paused, listening hard, heard it again - a definite ring or clang of metal on metal. He trotted back to their improvised camp just as Garin hauled himself out from under the lean-to.

'Did you hear that?' the dwarf said.

'I did. Like a sword striking a metal boss, in a way.'

They stood together and listened, straining into the wind. Around them the sunlight brightened, and Otho joined them, muttering to himself until Garin cursed him silent. They heard nothing.

'Well, worms and slimes,' Garin said at last. 'We were probably just imagining things. The high mountains do that, sometimes, to a man. Go wake your nephew, will you? I'll start taking down the shelter and suchlike.'

For a few moments more Rhodry stayed by the riverbank and watched the river swirling out of the crack in the cliffs. In the morning light he could see the break more clearly. At the surface it gaped some twenty feet wide, fringed with white water though the river ran reasonably steady in the middle. As it rose it narrowed, closing completely just before the top of the cliff.

All day they waited, while the wind sighed through the valley and sniffed round their camp. The dwarves mostly slept or diced with each other while Rhodry paced back and forth, unable to sit and rest no matter how tired he'd been the day before. Although Garin invited Rhodry to join the game, he preferred to watch rather than get into one of the heated squabbles that seemed part of the amus.e.m.e.nt. Toward evening, when the sun was sending long shadows through a blue haze, Rhodry walked down to the river and stood studying the white water. Directly inside the tunnel mouth, it seemed, he could see some huge thing clinging to the wall, but because of the boulders piled on the bank at that point, he couldn't get close enough to see it clearly. Since it never moved, he could a.s.sume that it wasn't dangerous. Just as he gave it up and turned to go, he heard the clang again.

This time he could identify the sound as one of the bra.s.s gongs he'd heard in Lin Serr. Echoing and bouncing it seemed to come from deep within the cliff, as if someone were striking in an interrupted attempt at rhythm. Before he could hail the others, a boat shot out of the crack, riding high on the current.

All painted green and carved it was, long and narrow, with a tall prow in the shape of a dragon, or so he a.s.sumed, a long neck with a small snake-like head, the mouth open to reveal gilded teeth. As it glided past he could pick out a helmsman at the stern, two oarsmen amidships, and in the prow a man holding a rope with a huge flower of iron hooks at one end. Near this anchorman hung a bra.s.s gong on a wooden frame, bolted right into the boat.

'Oy!' Garin yelled, waving madly. 'Here!'

AH the dwarves ran toward the bank, but the ship had pa.s.sed in an instant, gliding on downstream toward the bend in the river. The dwarves barely had time to start swearing, though, before it began to turn about, oars flailing, the helmsman leaning and hauling madly to use the shifts in the current to his advantage. Since he'd been raised round boats and water, Rhodry took off running downstream. The prow came round, and the oarsmen began rowing for the bank.

'Hila!' the anchorman called, then threw.

The iron hook gleamed and spun through the air. Rhodry grabbed the rope just behind it, whipped it round, and sank it hard into the damp turf. The anchorman leapt ash.o.r.e to jump with his full weight on the hook cl.u.s.ter's flat head, sinking it deep and tethering the boat to the earth. The oarsmen followed, and with Rhodry's help they ran her up into the shallows. When the anchorman panted out a few Dwarvish words and smiled, Rhodry smiled in return, knowing a thanks when he heard it no matter what the language. The other dwarves came running up, or rather, Mic and Garin ran, with Otho stalking behind.

'Very impressive, silver dagger,' Garin said, then turned to the anchorman and spoke rapidly in Dwarvish.

The anchorman said nothing, merely pointed at the helmsman, who was just leaping ash.o.r.e. The helmsman was tall for a dwarf, and slender, too, though at just over five feet he was short for a human being and decidedly stocky. Although the boat crew were all dressed more or less alike, in rough brown trousers and floppy brown shirts that gave their arms plenty of room to move, the helmsman sported a silver brooch pinned to one shoulder, a free form dragon-shape, neck and tail all twined and knotted round each other. With a nod Rhodry's way, Garin switched to Deverrian of a sort, laden with Dwarvish words.

Rhodry had a good deal of trouble understanding the conversation.

It seemed that Garin was trying to get them all pa.s.sage into Haen Marn, while the helmsman suffered from grave doubts about the wisdom of such a thing. Finally the helmsman turned to him and spoke a few words that Rhodry could pick out.

'What be your name?'

'Rhodry from Aberwyn.'

Shrewd dark eyes considered him for a long moment.

'And it be needful that you talk with Enj? Why?'

Rhodry saw no reason to waste time in courtesy or fencing.

'I need his help to hunt a dragon.'

The helmsman blinked rapidly several times.

'Ah,' he said at last. 'I think me you be expected. Get your accoutrements into the boat.'

Rhodry exchanged a startled look with Garin. The dwarf shrugged, then trotted off back to the camp.

Once they had their packs and suchlike stowed, the oarsmen helped each in turn clamber aboard, but Rhodry swung himself up with a laugh. The anchorman pulled the hooks free, then ran, leaping aboard just as the boat floated clear, nosing round into the current.

Rowing upstream was hard work, and the closer they came to the crack in the cliff face the harder and slower it became, because the river narrowed. Rhodry began to wonder how they could possibly get through, even if every pa.s.senger found oars and set to. The anchorman, hooks in hand, stood at the prow, peering forward, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth in concentration. When the prow inched its way under the shadow of the cliff, Rhodry saw a riband of braided ropes, a sort of flat strip of web work, hung along one side of the tunnel and threaded through a huge iron wheel.