I yelled and sprinted into the smokehouse. Where was Savory? Hanging hams swung at my touch as I felt my way between the drying racks. My wife's white dress was a spectral smudge. She lay face-down on the pressed earth floor. I knelt next to her. The back of her neck was cut across cleanly with one axe blow. There did not seem to be much blood.

I jumped up and dashed after the murderers. As I pa.s.sed the bonfire I threw in the crossbow, in a flurry of yellow sparks. Who talked me into using that thing? If I had my longbow, I could have put seven arrows through them in the thirty seconds they took to cross my field of vision.

I dashed through the gate and into the p.r.i.c.kly frustration of the forest's edge. Their fleeing footsteps crackled far in front of me, deep between the trees. The cold leather of my sword grip was damp in my hand.

I saw pale flashes heading downhill. By G.o.d, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were signalling at me! But it was only the reflection of the bonfire on their back plates and it soon vanished.

I found myself surrounded by a wall of fretted branches, hard cones, bending needles. They clutched my clothes but I pushed further and further in. Shadows and twigs looked like they could be...but they weren't, when I got closer. I could hardly judge distances, over the nettles and around snarled brambles. Where the trees grew more densely packed, the ground was clear and springy with needles. I couldn't see in the low s.p.a.ce under the branches; it was pitch-black.

I ducked down and hesitated, trying to catch my breath. All was silent. The murderers could be anywhere; without faithful Lymer I would never find them. They had gone to earth, and even if I flushed them the forest was their world and they might have picked up longbows. I was more lost than I have ever been. I listened carefully, but I only heard wolf howls muted in the far distance.

The village's bonfire backlit the trees. Numbly, I turned and stumbled to the palisade, to the clearing, and into the smokehouse, to Savory. Those craven murderers knew she could have beaten them, with her skinning knife and the desperation of self-defence, had they faced her. They had cut her down as she knelt to slice meat onto my plate.

As my dear wife fell she had upset a sack of kindling and there were pieces of bark all over her. I cleared them away and I turned her over. She was ghastly cold. I used my cloak for a pillow and closed her glazed hazel eyes gently. I kissed dear Savory.

The pointlessness of it unhinged me. I jumped up suddenly and ran out of the smokehouse, but the village was deserted. Everybody had bolted into their homes and wedged shut the boards serving as doors. 'Savory is slain!' I shouted. 'Help me find the murderers!'

From inside came small sounds that told me they were busy with other tasks. They were hinting that I should stop causing a disturbance, stop bawling and go away. I stared around the clearing: the bonfire burnt down to a red ember murmur; a clutch of boar ribs on the table; an overturned cup on the bruised gra.s.s. Nothing indicated that minutes ago this had been a lively party.

I ran from cabin to cabin banging on the blank doors. 'Help! Help me for G.o.d's sake!' But I could not speak the language properly; nor they mine. I hammered on the reeve's door. 'You know me, Asart! We must catch the murderers!' No answer from within. I clapped my hand flat over the sun brooch on my shoulder. 'In the Castle's name, I'm her husband! Tell me who the murderers are! I'll bring my fyrd! d.a.m.n you allhelp me or I'll raze this village to the ground!'

What was I doing here? Here in the back of beyond? I should never have come to this filthy, tree-dark province at all. These folk had no inkling of my power. My palace where one of their daughters would have lived was no more than a tale to them. They valued their murderous traditions more highly than the distant Castle itself. Here I was the foreigner and how could they understand? With all the time in eternity I would not get through to them! I lost my mind and I curled up, faint, beside the fire.

At first light people emerged from their houses and went about their daily ch.o.r.es as if nothing had happened. I lay on my stomach on the wet gra.s.s watching abstractedly. They spoke not a word of Savory. They shut the events away and went on with tapping sap and lathing wood. How could theywhen the world was shattered?

Years of blood feuds had bred in them a toleration like a collective sickness of the mind. They were quiet and cowed, but acted as if the random murder was fair and justified. She had been, after all, a Savory. Father Savory killed Pannage and was killed by Pannage's grandson. So it went on. So it still goes on today.

Day only truly dawned on the village when the sun rose above the trees and slanted its rays down into the little enclosure. The dew began to vanish, though it remained, grey and sparkling, in the cobwebs, the palisade's shadow and each hovel's woodpile.

Two men, their sleeves rolled back, went into the smokehouse and brought out Savory on a stretcher. She was naked. They had stripped her naked. I felt a jolt as if I had been punched. My legs went weak but I stumbled to her and tried to cover her body with the cloak. The men put their arms out and blocked me. She was a pale sculpture, she lay on her long hair like a pelt, as red as the hair on her legs and s.e.x. I had last seen her naked whenI had kissed her thighs and b.r.e.a.s.t.stheir disrespect was too much for me. 'I'll take her back to Awia! I'll place her in my tomb!'

My pleas were cut short by the high squeal of a fiddle and a flute. The door of the nearest cabin flung open and the troupe of mummers tumbled out. They started dancing! They began to dance the old, false story where the King of Morenzia steals the King of Awia's wife and Awia raises its fyrd to bring her back. The dancers whirled furiously around Savory's stretcher, stamping either side as they acted out the battle. The King of Awia was mock-stabbed by the human king, and he fell. The dancers all jumped on the fallen actor, their hands scrambling under his clothes. They brought out real human bones, all dry and painted black, and began to dance with them, clacking them together.

What did it mean? I had no idea but the dishonour was too much. I drew my sword and was about to set among them and slay every last man, when the reeve came out of his house.

He was wearing a mask. It was a human visage, of heavy white plaster, as if his own face had been smeared with thick paste, but for its blind eye sockets, in which were placed cowry sh.e.l.ls. Their pursed toothy grooves made blind black lines. In the mouth of the mask real human teeth were set. No, not set: the mask was the front of a real skull, sawn off and covered in plaster. The rest of his clothes were normal and he came towards me walking confidently, as if he could see through some hidden contrivance in the mask.

Savory had introduced me to reeve Asart, the village leader, answerable to Lord Governor Aver-Falconet. He reports to Aver-Falconet's steward twice a year. Why was he part of this abhorrent dance? Did Hacilith know? Did the Castle know? Of course they must, I wrested from myself. I am the only one ignorant of the Cathee, because nothing like this is written in the books of Awia's libraries.

The rest of the village left their work or emerged from their cabins silently, as if at an agreed signal. The women in short s.h.i.+fts and rawhide ap.r.o.ns, the men in their plaids and breeches, they formed a silent queue behind the stretcher.

I stared around the log cabins, and now I could more clearly see their ornamentation. The heads above the doors were real skulls! They were covered in plaster, sh.e.l.ls set in their eye sockets, and affixed with paste all around them to the surface of the logs. Their snaggling yellow teeth showed between carefully moulded lips.

I looked to the reeve's house. The sculptures that I had taken to be women were whole articulated skeletons re-fleshed with plaster. It had flaked off here and there; I saw brittle weathered bone underneath. Their curves and features had been shaped, but where the b.r.e.a.s.t.s swelled over some woman's ancient rib-cage, projecting instead of nipples from the plaster were the hooked and open beaks of vultures.

The reeve had by now left the gate and the rest were following. I stumbled behind, some distance from the rear of the procession. I had to see where they were taking Savory. The reeve, villagers and mummers still carrying bagpipes, flutes and bones pushed between the trees on a little-worn path, in complete silence.

We were walking uphill, but I could tell no more. All the forest looked the same to me and I could scarcely see it. My eyes were stinging, I was weeping freely, and trying to see through my tears as through an awash uneven gla.s.s. Savory was a white blur as the procession wound between the close phalanxes of dark green pines on either side. The twisting brambles at the trackside scratched me, held me back, and s.n.a.t.c.hed loops of thread out of the d.a.m.n plaid cloak.

At length we came to a clearing, and beyond the screen of trees I glimpsed a gigantic mound, gra.s.sed-over equally with the ground. It must be man-made because it was completely circular, some ten metres across and surrounded by flat black stones propped up against its circ.u.mference. Three huge undressed rocks at the front formed a portal, one resting horizontally on two uprights, from which a tunnel lined with slabs led into its lightless depths. A single stone, standing a metre in front of the entrance, obscured the pa.s.sageway from my sight. I a.s.sumed this was their crude mausoleum, like my great family tomb, in which they would lay dear Savory, but the procession did not stop.

The villagers cast glances at the knoll as they pa.s.sed by, with looks on their faces almost as if it rea.s.sured themand even the reeve's skull mask turned towards it for an instant.

The forest was now alive with birds cawing and skitterings in the undergrowth. I took the arm of the last man in the procession, who carried his toddler son on his shoulders: 'What's going on? Tell me, man!'

He shook me away with an angry sneer.

A great cloud of birds burst up out of the trees ahead, cracking through twigs and branches. They separated out; kites and buzzards began to circle but the big glossy ravens dropped back down into the tree tops further on.

A terrible stench of corruption rose with them and hit me with such strength I gagged. It was the fatty smell of putrefying human flesh, which I have often encountered on the battlefield. The villagers showed no concern. I pulled my handkerchief from my trouser pocket and pressed it over my nose.

We came up to a high log palisade, but the silence and the smell told me this was not another village. Its gate had a woman's skeleton plastered to the centre. Its eye sockets shone dully with cowry sh.e.l.ls and all its teeth were bared between open lips. Again, its b.r.e.a.s.t.s were sculpted with panting beaks instead of nipples.

The Cathee entered an enclosure where the short gra.s.s was free of saplings and in the centre a great wooden scaffold stood two metres high: a platform raised on six trunks stripped clean of bark. The top of the platform was not solid, it was a criss-cross of rough-hewn timbers. Shreds hung down between them. At first I thought the shreds were fabric but they did not move with the breeze. A large strip dangled through the grating, ta.s.selled at the endit was a human arm and hand.

They set down the stretcher next to the platform and gathered along it, standing in ragged fas.h.i.+on side by side. I remained in the shadow of the gate and watched.

The reeve stood by Savory's head. She looked so peaceful, as if she was asleep, were it not for the outrage of her nakedness. The reeve climbed a rough ladder of logs, up to the platform and appeared high above us against the sky. He crossed towards the villagers looking up, but as he did so he accidentally kicked the arm. It was mostly bone, it swung and fell off, and up stirred the rank smell of carrion. My gorge rose and I hunched over and vomited. What were they doing to my wife? I fell to my knees and heaved again and againtill it hollowed me out.

They did not hand up the whole stretcher. There were no ropes nor pulley to raise it to the top of the platform with any sort of dignity. The two bearers just picked up Savory's body, one holding her ankles, the other her upper arms. He grappled with handfuls of her hair. Stiffness had set in and they had to turn her body as they lifted her. I saw in a flash the pink line of her s.e.x between her legs. The masked reeve bent and seized her round the ribs, manhandled her onto the platform and laid her down.

And then he descended and walked underneath the scaffold, beckoning the villagers to join him. They huddled together, bent over, and began to pick bones and teeth from among the gra.s.s. The women folded their skirts and gathered them inside, the men cradled handfuls. Up and down they walked in methodical lines as if harvesting, and any man who found two bones still articulated, pulled them apart with a twist and a yank.

They piled all the bones on the stretcher, and in silent procession like before, they carried the stretcher out past me, though I was on my knees and coughing up bile. I shrank from them but I had to follow or in their stony blindness they would have barred me in with the dead. The first few heavy ravens were swooping down with guttural calls from the trees to feed.

I trailed some distance behind the procession to the mouth of the burial mound. They stopped by its portal, in a semi-circle. The reeve and stretcher-bearers slipped behind the stone screen and into the tunnel. They must have intended to deposit the bones in there.

I had seen enough. I spat and turned away, deranged. I ran back to the village, where I took a bow, a quiver-full of arrows and a spade. If any of the Cathee had tried to stop me I would have cleaved his head in two with it.

So they would take Savory, my Savory, and leave her to rot, feed her to vermin, then jumble her bones with everyone else's? So they wanted to obliterate her ident.i.ty until no one could recognise her remains? So they were content to forget her unique, intriguing life? What did that mean? What sort of people scrub out the honour of their ancestors? Their disrespect tore at my heart, cracked open and bleeding inside me. Savory is still a person, still my love. What is she to the Cathee? An empty vessel? No longer a woman, just an object that's part of their past, that they will place with the rest and tidy away so life can go on? My life could not go on. My life had stopped. I thought of what we Awians do, with our gla.s.s carriages drawn by ebony-plumed horses. I thought of the vigil I kept over Mother's lying-in-state, a drawn sword in front of me and my wings spread. How we exhibited the old bat as if she could still feel, in satin on the catafalque strewn with lilac and lavender and rue.

I could not leave Savory there to rot. I was furious with myself, my jaw clenched so hard my head was pounding, my fingers rubbing over the dirty bandage around my palm. I missed. I missed my target. I fouled a shot with a crossbow. I went over and over it in my head, unable to comprehend how that could be. When blood began to seep through my bandage I welcomed it as a punishment and a reality.

She will not be crows' food up there on that platform. I kicked my way into the enclosure and scaled the ladder. Corpses were arranged lying on their backs all over the timber grid: naked old men and women, some babies, and a dried puddle of a foetus. Some were the maimed fragments of fellow warriors that the Cathee fyrd had managed to s.h.i.+p home from Insect battles. They were in various stages of decomposition and most had lost the small bones of their fingers and toes already through the grid. Some skulls lolled back, disconnected and eye sockets staring at the sky. One was bloated, but most were pecked to no more than skeletons pasted with dark red shreds of sinew and muscle. Green algae grew on the cups of their vertebrae. The ravens had started already on Savory's hazel eyes. I quickly picked her up and, hugging her to my chest, carried her down the ladder.

I bore her in my arms to the clearing with the marriage stone. Savory, it will make s.h.i.+ft for the only monument I can give you here. But you will have a monument, my hunting lady. You don't belong with those people any more. I raised the spade and speared it into the earth with all my strength. You are not one of them. I turned over the tangled roots and soil.

I dug Savory a grave where we first made love. The cup-and-ring stone was her headstone, and I did cheat the villagers of their foul ritual. I covered her tenderly and then I lay down beside the grave and embraced my arm over the little mound of disturbed earth. I do not know how many days I lay there.

I do not remember leaving her side. I must have walked east through the forest for days to the coast. I must have lived on the game I shot, but whether or not I could still shoot I cannot recall. I was absent all that time. At Vertigo, the town built against the sheer walls of a deep chasm, someone gave me pa.s.sage on a s.h.i.+p for Awia. I returned to my house at a gallop and ordered the gates locked and chained. I wrote no letters and spent no time on the archery field. I accepted no visitors and ignored the Messenger's frantic queries. I waited for my hand and a shredded heart to heal.

CHAPTER 20.

Some time after Lightning left the meeting, it ended and the Eszai dispersed. Over the next five days I flew errands for them. Each evening I had piles of correspondence to digest and report to the Emperor; mostly badly spelled semaph.o.r.e transcripts.

I returned to my desk in the corner of the hall. I started writing but I could hardly concentrate. I kept wondering about Cyan's Challenge and Lightning's strange behaviour. I stared at the piles of letters, under the gla.s.s jam-jar of worms I was using as a paperweight. The worms didn't seem to be moving very much. I leant forward and peered at them. They were all limp and flaccid, coating the bottom of the jar. I picked it up and shook it, and they put out a pink, braided-together tentacle and tapped on the gla.s.s.

The worms arced up in the middle and raised two perpendicular strands. A sagging worm swung across from one to the other and joined halfway up. It looked like the letter H. It collapsed back into the feebly writhing ma.s.s. Weakly they sent up another string from which three comb-like projections shot out: E. A single thread with a right angle of worms at the base: L; and it summoned its energies for a thick strand that curled round on itself at the top: P.

I picked up my paperknife and poked some holes in the lid. The worms sprang to life, stretched up eagerly forcing their tiny mouths against the underside. They pushed ineffectually at it, swaying like animated hair.

They dropped down and started swirling around the jar, in one direction like water going down a plughole. They became a whirlpool of worms, riding up the inside of the gla.s.s with an indentation in the middle. I thought they were trying to push the gla.s.s apart so I gave it a shake and they slumped again. They started throwing up angry tendrils so quickly I could scarcely make one letter out before it was replaced by the next. An L, an E and a T. Let. A U, an S and an O. What? A U and a T. Us Out. Let us out. Y-O-U-B-A-S-T-A-R-D.

'There's no need for that,' I said, and placed the jar back on top of my correspondence. The Vermiform furiously started cycling letters. As it warmed to its task it threw up whole tiny words, the letters made of one or two worms apiece.

L-E-T-U-S-O-U-T.

L-E-T-U-S-O-U-T.

I signed a missive, blew on the ink, folded the paper. I dropped some sealing wax on it and embossed it with the garnet sun emblem seal which I wear as a pendant.

L-E-T-U-S-O-U-T.

LET! US! OUT!.

PLEASE.

'That's better,' I said, and was about to flip the jar's clips when I was struck by a thought. 'If I free you, promise you won't harm me?'

The worms paused.

'All right,' I said. 'You're staying in there.'

I looked up across the hall and saw Rayne approaching, carrying an envelope. I didn't want her to see that I had stolen her sample of Vermiform worms so I picked up the jar and slipped it into the big pocket of my coat folded under the table.

Rayne looked over my shoulder. 'You're transcribing code,' she observed.

'It's shorthand. What can I do for you?'

She offered me the letter in her clean, smooth palm. 'Could you take this t' Cyan?'

'Are you sure? It's nearly midnight.'

'Jant, think of wha' she mus' be going through up in t' peel tower. She knows she's made a fool of herself.'

'Well, I'm not sympathetic.'

Rayne nodded sagely. 'Neither am I, bu' I do like her. She's a smar' girl. When t' Circle broke three times, we were in t' coach between Slaugh'er bridge and Eske. Cyan consoled me. I'm grateful for tha'. We talked all nigh'. Can you take i' now? I'm up t' here with work in t' hospi'al.'

I stood up and gathered my coat. 'Of course.'

The full moon's light basted the surrounding moorland grey and smooth. Like a ball of b.u.t.ter, it rolled along the top of a platter of thick, opaque cloud and lit up the margins from behind with a creamy glow. Silver noctilucent clouds hung in the western sky over the foothills; the last light ebbing from their thin streaks gave enough illumination for me to see Insects hunting by scent in the valley.

Small bats were fluttering in circuits around the top of the peel tower. I could hear their squeaks as they pa.s.sed me.

I have had planks nailed out from the window ledges of each peel tower's uppermost room. I swept up to this one and touched down on the end. The plank bent like a diving board. I shuffled up to the shutters of the bow windows in the h.o.a.rding. The shutters, as large as gates, were closed. I splayed both hands on the splintered and weathered wood, bent down and put my eye to the crack.

Cyan stomped past the slit, lit by a lantern outside my field of vision. She disappeared and then stamped back again. She was muttering to herself and biting the end of a pen.

I knocked on the shutters and she looked up. She rushed over and pushed them wide. They flew open and hit me in the face. A brief whirl of the sky; I flapped my wings powerfully, cart-wheeling my arms. I toppled off the plank, caught its edge with both hands, and dangled there for an instant before I kicked my legs, flexed my arms and drew myself up again.

'Careful!' I hissed. 'You nearly broke my nose!'

'Good!' said Cyan, and drew the shutters to. I pulled them wide and stepped down into the room.

The tower-top room was big, ten metres square. A single bed and side table by the fireplace were the only furnis.h.i.+ngs apart from empty crossbow bolt racks on the walls. It was ill-lit, no fire burning in the huge stone grate, but lamplight shone up through holes in the floor, through which arrow sheaves could be hoisted. Cyan's lantern gave a pool of colour on the table next to her silver plate and fork and a chessboard that seemed to have stalled halfway through a game.

Lightning's dog rushed up from the bed, barking, then recognised me and sat down by my feet. I closed my wings, the primaries sliding over each other like fans. 'I only have an hour.' I said. 'I shouldn't be here.'

'Well, I've been trying to write to you for hours,' Cyan retorted. 'Where have you been? What's going on? No one's visited me. I haven't spoken to anyone except the guards for five days!' She retreated to sit on the plain bed, leaning on a blanket roll against the wall, and gave me a baleful look. 'Will you let me out?'

'I'm sorry, Cyan; no. The least the Castle can do is save your life.'

'You could rescind Daddy's orders if you wanted, and the guards would release me. Why are you so afraid of him?'

'I'm not.'

Her forehead furrowed. 'After the guards dragged me out, what happened? What did Daddy say?...No, don't tell me. I hate him. Old t.i.twart. I can't believe he's done this to me!'

I stalked across the room, pushed my ice axe hanger behind me and sat down on the fireplace surround. I ached all over and I felt sick. The constant undercurrent of panic and sleep deprivation we were all living with was taking its toll. I said, 'I brought a letter from Rayne.'

'One letter in five days!'

'You don't know how hard-pressed we are' I gestured at the window in the direction of the town. 'Everyone's terrified and San is driving us like pack horses. I've been sending dispatches to position battalions for the advance in two days. I spent the last hour fending off journalists and checking Lord Governor Purlin Brandoch's cavalry slinking in on second-rate nags. In an hour's time I have to collect letters for your father'

'Huh!' she cried.

'Hand-deliver the important ones and collect replies. I think I'll report that you're still furious.'

'I'm fine,' she said, not looking it.

'Do you have a message for him?'

She glared at me defiantly. 'If the b.a.s.t.a.r.d is in a good mood, tell him I'm dying of melancholy. If he's feeling miserable, tell him I'm singing like a lark.'

'I can't fathom what mood he's in. He's bottled everything up, and he seems very detached, as if he isn't allowing himself to think about it.'

I pulled a sheaf of letters from my coat pocket and leafed through until I found Rayne's envelope. Cyan accepted it and scratched the seal off with her fingernails.

'Is Rayne the only person who's thought of me?' she asked.

'Don't be ridiculous. No. Hasn't Lightning given you his dog for company? He's been sending you the best food, otherwise you'd be eating biscuit and salt beef, like the rest of the Zascai.'