The Warden, page 20
“Two running steps, followed by a walking pace, yes.”
“Ah.” Tun smiled again behind the small sound of surprise he’d made. “You did learn something, somewhere.”
“I’ve learned a lot of things. That’s probably among the most recent.”
Tun grunted and set off again. That stride of his ate up ground in a way that Aelis imagined would, in a span of hours, make for a good deal more distance than many men trying to run. Maddeningly, it seemed effortless.
Keeping up with him certainly wasn’t. Conversation died as Aelis kept adjusting her pace to suit Tun’s. She was reasonably certain they were heading mostly to the north, and as the sun began to sink on her left-hand side, she grew sure of it. Just keeping up occupied too much of her attention to pay much mind to scenery, or note landmarks. An hour, at least, passed in silence. Then two. She began to long for the Illusionists’ trick of laying a spell over their mirrors that kept track of the hours.
“Any idea where he might be headed?” she finally asked as they trudged on into the gloaming, more to break the monotony than out of genuine need.
“North.”
“I mean, are there geographical features, landmarks, ruins he might be headed for?”
“No use wondering that. You think he could be headed for an old smuggler’s cave in the lee of Broken Tusk, say, and your mind will take that as a goal, start bending all the sign toward it. You don’t track by thinking you know where you’re headed when you set out. You find the sign and follow it.”
“Broken Tusk? That a mountain?”
“A little curl of mountains and foothills that spurs out beyond the pass.”
“And are there smuggler’s caves there?”
“I hardly think I need lecture you on the history of Old Ystain, and how the Durndill Pass was the portal through which amber, furs, walrus ivory, and other goods flowed. And that as long as goods have moved over lines on a map, crowned heads and their finger-men have sought to take a share, and the bearers of such goods have sought to evade them.”
“That was a very long way to go to say yes,” Aelis said.
Tun walked silently for several more steps. She thought, perhaps, that the muscles in his back had tightened, that she’d said something wrong.
“I am not used to speaking so much,” he finally said. “If I am poor at it, I shall cease.”
“No, no, not at all,” Aelis said, desperate not to have the only diversion on this walk taken away. “It is, well … just, ah … playing against type, I suppose.”
“You expect one with orc blood to speak in what, grunts? Whistles? The noises of a pig?”
Aelis winced, despite the fact that Tun’s tone hadn’t changed a bit. It was still the same calm, steady, surprisingly quiet rumble.
“I didn’t mean that at all, Tun,” Aelis said, straining to sound as earnest as she was. “I mean the mountain man type. The fringed coat, trading meat and furs, being self-sufficient. One doesn’t generally expect that kind of fellow to be so … loquacious.”
“And now you test my vocabulary?” Tun’s shoulders moved again inside his giant fringed coat, but Aelis thought this time it was in a kind of laughter.
“Not a test,” Aelis said. “Just saying exactly what I mean in the words that come to hand. I don’t think you’ll struggle with them.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
“There is something else you should know, before we go much further.”
“Whatever it is, I’m not going to like it, am I?”
Tun shrugged. “It may not mean anything. But Elmo is not the only man to have passed this way. Recently.”
“Adventurers? Pioneers?”
“I do not think so. In the past few weeks, months, I have noted a passage of men … singly, mostly, heading this way. They are not prepared like adventurers or pioneers would be; no animals, little baggage. I do not like to make hasty guesses…” Tun trailed off here and looked to Aelis.
“But if you were going to?”
“I’d say it seemed like desperate men making impulsive decisions.”
“To head into Old Ystain by themselves, with minimal equipment, before the onset of winter.”
“It is, as I said, a hasty guess.”
The conversation died into silence, which coincided with a reasonably steep incline up a hill that took most of Aelis’s concentration.
By the time they reached the summit, Onoma’s moon had risen far enough that the confusion of twilight had fled and there was light enough for her to see.
Tun stopped and turned to look at her. She could make out his features more clearly now in the strange light the moon of the Silent Lady offered to her eyes, as it gave him no shadow to hide in. He looked young, she thought, given how lightly stubble lay on his cheeks. His features were an odd mix, to be sure; the human in him handsome, noble even, with an aquiline nose and high cheeks. But the overhanging brow, the larger jaw, the protruding teeth were doubly strange against that backdrop. From a distance, he could—and likely did—pass as simply an overlarge human. Up close, there was no hiding what he was.
“The darkness does not impede your vision,” Tun said. “In fact, I think it improves it. How is that?”
“It has to do with the magic I studied.”
He grinned. She could see it now, a crinkling in the corners of his mouth, though his tusks made it harder to read. “I could have guessed that.”
“I’m a Necromancer,” she said, seeing no point in dancing about it as she had when this conversation had played out with Maurenia. “I’ve always had an affinity for Onoma’s moon. It gives me light to see. I don’t know why or how.”
“Convenient, then, that our chase begins with Her moon waxing,” Tun said. “We should continue.”
* * *
And they did continue, through most of that night. They paused near dawn, with Aelis stumbling forward but refusing to ask for a break till Tun finally announced that they’d take shelter inside a small stand of pines and nap for roughly two hours. Aelis had been too tired to ask how he was going to keep track of the time or what sleep he was going to get. She’d shrugged off her pack, and had reserved only just enough willpower not to immediately collapse.
Before she knew it, Tun’s hand was shaking her shoulder. The light was gray, blurring through the trees.
“That can’t have been more than a quarter of an hour,” she mumbled.
“It was two,” Tun said quietly. “And if we are to catch your man today we must not tarry.” He reached into one of his bulging pockets and picked out a small biscuit, mottled yellow and white, and nibbled on it almost delicately, before offering a second to Aelis.
She took it and sniffed, then tested her teeth against it. What had looked like delicacy now seemed more like caution, as the thing was harder than any bread she’d ever known. Instead of biting through it, she tore a hunk off by holding it still with her teeth and pulling. She settled it into a corner of her mouth to let saliva soak into it.
“The flavor’s not much,” Tun admitted as he broke off another piece. “But it will keep us on our feet.”
Aelis could only grunt around the hunk of biscuit in her mouth, shoulder her pack, and pick up her staff to begin trudging after him. When the hunk of bread had softened so that she could break it down without fear of injury to her teeth, she managed to swallow some. In truth, it didn’t taste bad; like salty cheese over toasted two-day-old bread. But eating it took some work.
“You think we can catch him today?”
Tun shrugged. “Depends on the time we make. We are fifteen, twenty miles behind him, judging from signs I found in his campsite.”
“His campsite?”
“Where we slept. He slept there the prior night. He did a good job of hiding it.”
“Damn straight he did,” Aelis agreed, before cautiously drawing forth another bite of biscuit. “I didn’t notice.”
“Sign is my job. What to do when we find him is yours.”
They trudged on. Bit by bit, their biscuits disappeared, the sun rose, and Aelis’s thoughts settled over a cloudy haze of little sleep. It was a familiar feeling from the university. How often had she and Miralla stayed up till dawn drinking, sharing theories, then gone about their classes and labors of the day simply to prove that they could?
She was dwelling on pleasant nostalgia when she thought Tun’s step suddenly faltered. He moved on, as if his foot had almost tripped him, and she threw him an odd glance but he did not look back. They were caught in an open strand of grasses between two lengths of pine woods. As it was, Lone Pine was situated in a part of Ystain where the evergreens outnumbered their seasonally dressed cousins a great deal, but this far north, pine forests positively dominated.
Hills rose before them, hills that, had she seen them a day ago, she would’ve thought were mountains. Now they seemed to her like mere crowd warmers for the curtain-raising mountains that rose behind them.
By the time they passed into the second length of woods, Aelis was sure that Tun’s small hesitation had been something she’d imagined. But in the cover and shade of the trees, he threw an arm out and went stock-still.
“Our passage is noted.”
“Noted? By whom?”
Tun turned toward her, his face once again an unreadable mask. “Orcs.”
Aelis felt her spine chill, but controlled herself. She thought carefully through her next words, and finally settled on, “Is that good or bad?”
“That depends,” Tun said slowly.
“On?”
“Many things. The age and composition of the band. Their affiliation. Why they are here. How they feel about breeds.”
“Breeds?” Aelis echoed, hesitantly. “Do you mean…” She gestured vaguely in his direction.
“What else would I mean?” He took a small, quiet breath, his eyes closing for a moment. “Know this. If it comes to violence, be swift and forceful. Hold nothing back. They will not.”
“Sounds like a teacher of mine. Two of them, in fact,” Aelis muttered. She thought back on lessons from Lavanalla to a class of second-year Abjuration students.
“When your Abjurer’s blade leaves its sheath, it should not be for show. It should not be to intimidate. It should not be merely to use the hilt or the crosspiece or the quillons or the basket as a focus for a ward; all of that can be done with a sheathed weapon. No,” she went on, from her position on the floor, sitting with her legs crossed beneath her as she always did when lecturing. “It should be because you intend to blood it. The more often you draw forth a weapon without using it, the more of its potency as a threat it loses.”
And Bardun Jacques, to the Warden Cadets in their third year—a much less crowded hall than he’d addressed two years prior—still moving as stiffly and as stubbornly as ever.
“Way the world is today, any one of you who is going to be a Warden, time’s going to come where you need to take a life. If you doubt me, if you think you aren’t capable of it, if you think that your power and your skills are meant to be turned to the ennobling of all living creatures, then go on and get out. World is filled with savagery, and I don’t mean orcs. Oh, they’ll kill you, don’t get me wrong. A half-trained orc bowman’d kill half this room before one of you stopped playing with their nethers long enough to do a gods-damned thing about it—but they wouldn’t do it without a reason, not that that’s any comfort to the dead. But there are people right here in this fabled university city of ours who’d stab any one of you for the ring on your finger, the coin in your purse, or because they felt like seeing how it’d feel. Then there’s the ‘pioneers’ and ‘adventurers’ going up into Old Ystain, sifting through what war left behind, and they’re a sorry lot of greedy blackguards who’ll kill you to avoid paying a few tri-crowns of custom duties. And that doesn’t even get me started on all the reasons they’ll kill the people you’re meant to protect.” There the old Warden had paused for breath before launching into a longer tirade about the decline of morals generally, on the questionable lineage of both his assembled students and most of the people in the Triumvirate realms, the lamentable fact that a Warden could spend his life up to his ass in blood and warm viscera and still not make a dent in the numbers of the people who wanted quick killing.
Aelis was so lost in her thoughts that Tun had to throw a hand out to grab her shoulder and shake her into the present. He loomed over her, lifting two fingers to his eyes, and then pointed them at hers. Though unspoken, the message was clear. Open your eyes.
She shook away her thoughts and paid attention to the moment. They’d passed through the trees and were faced once more with a hill.
“We go up. Quickly now. If they’ve bows we don’t want to give them high ground.”
Tun sprang forward, and she saw now that his long, hip-swung strides had been him trying to make a pace she could keep easily. He was halfway up to the crown of the hill in a blur. She scrambled after him, taking four steps to his one now, she imagined. Maybe six, she thought as she saw him plant the edge of his walking stick in the ground and turn back to look at her. She half expected him to swing an arm out to help her up past the last scrabble of loose rock and scrub—which she would’ve ignored—but instead he simply stood like a statue, hands resting atop his stick.
She joined him, heaving for breath, and followed the line of his gaze to see a half dozen forms coming toward them from their right, spread out in a ragged line across ten yards or so, dust and loose rock flung out in their wake. They’d been forced to scramble down the side of a neighboring hill and then back up this one.
They were not dressed like Tun, but neither did they fit the image she’d had of wild orcs in untanned hides and wearing armor made of ivory and rough hides. Mostly they did wear hides—tough hide armor that was tanned and cured as surely as anything in the markets in Antraval, if less supple by design—that draped down over their thighs. As they drew closer she realized the hides were banded with strips of bronze and iron. Three of them carried spears, clutching a brace in their large fists and more in cases on their backs. The other three carried axes loosely in their hands, the poles nearly as long as she was tall, the wide round blades and balancing spikes sharp and deadly. Their skin was darker than Tun’s, starting in shades of deep green and running darker, though the largest, one of the axemen, had deep charcoal-gray skin. They wore heavy beads of amber or carved walrus tusk at the ends of braids or on thongs around their necks. The carvings looked runic to her, but not of any language she could read. They certainly did not wear elaborately carved ivory breastplates as the stories she’d read as a child had said.
She wasn’t entirely sure what the protocol would be, but Tun stood stock-still and waited for them to approach. She mirrored him, trying not to lean on her stick, keeping her free hand at her side and away from any visible weapons.
The wand in her sleeve was a comfortable weight, though, ready to slide to her left hand with a flick of the wrist. An instinct told her to call an enchantment—a call to disarm, the fatigue she’d played on Luth, or a general charm—but she also thought she’d need to focus on the coming conversation, and she could not do both at the same time, so she let the most powerful enchantments she knew float in the back of her head.
The big gray orc—he was every bit as tall as Tun, if not as broad—stopped but two feet away, and they stared hard at each other.
They began to speak. Aelis had never heard Orcish spoken by orcs themselves, and was taken aback. When she’d heard snippets of it spoken by other races, it had always taken on a distinctly guttural quality. But between Tun and the gray orc, it was positively musical. A deep, rumbling music, but it wasn’t the harsh and grating tongue she’d imagined. The other five orcs studied her while their leader or spokesman conferred. The leader gestured toward her, speaking several long words. Tun responded.
She cleared her throat. “Am I going to be let in on this conversation?”
Tun raised a hand to her. Speaking had drawn the dark eyes of the leader, who gave her a frank stare.
“Am I supposed to melt away in the face of your stare, then? Quake in fear and knock my fucking knees together? You can keep staring from now until the Worldsoul turns in five hundred years or so. It won’t happen.”
The orc looked to Tun, who spoke, translating, she presumed. The gray orc laughed, then so did the rest of the party.
Tun turned toward her, offered a quick grin. “He liked that.”
“Who are they? What are they doing here?”
“Hunting,” Tun said.
“Hunters don’t carry axes,” she hissed, but by then her guide had turned back to his conversation.
The leader of the orc party then gestured to some of the ornaments he wore; first one in his hair, then a stick of amber clasped in iron stuck through his brow, then something worn around his neck, Aelis couldn’t see what.
She also could not see what it was Tun showed in response; something he, too, wore around his neck, that he lifted clear from the inside of his fringed coat and shielded with his hand. When the party of orcs saw it, something in their attitude, their posture, changed. She couldn’t have said what it was, exactly. To that point, their attitude had been respectful. Even she could tell no threats had been made. But they had been on edge, perhaps even afraid.
After Tun showed them his amulet, fear gave way to some kind of relief. One of the axemen sagged against his weapon. A spear-carrier changed her grip on her weapons, grounding the butts at her feet. Their leader talked faster now, gesturing with his hands, pointing to the north and west. Tun had raised one hand, gesturing to her. The leader spoke more rapidly, gesturing with his hands more openly. Finally, Tun seemed to acquiesce to something, both of his hands up, palms out, his staff leaning against his shoulder.
“What happened, Tun? What did we just agree to?”
He held one of his hands toward her, taking his staff back up with the other. Then he extended his free hand to the orc leader, who clasped it. The band of hunters began gathering their weapons, turning to leave, when the gray-skinned orc turned back toward her.
