Gabriella felt a little better. "Nor do those who serve with us." She nodded at Kannis.
"Thank you, Gabriella."
The trail of goblin detritus was easy to follow south, even without the map Gabriella carried. It had been re-copied many times since she had brought it to Solnos and the force that followed Travis Crowe and Gabriella DeZantez had many of them.
Finally, they came within sight of the smallest outskirts of the great World's Ridge mountains. The sight was one that Gabriella knew would have been worth drawing, or painting, if she had the inclination.
On the horizon and blending in with the sky, the white peaks were capped with snow. Thin columns of smoke and steam rose from a couple of the peaks, while far to the south a pall of smoke sat like a blanket over the heart of the World's Ridge.
"Over there, they say even the life blood of the earth tries to cross over to Kerberos." Crowe sounded unusually sombre.
To their left, the horizon shaded with green as the south-western end of the great Sardenne forest encroached on the World's Ridge. Directly ahead, the smaller peaks at the end of the World's Ridge were arid stony teeth, snarling at the heavens. Most weren't high enough to have a snow-line, but a few of the larger ones, set back into the range and blurring in with the clouds, were topped with a permanent frost.
"I thought the World's Ridge was supposed to be impassable," Gabriella said looking through the telescope.
"It is, love. Don't you worry about that."
"But that valley… It seems to cut straight through and that peak, it seems to shimmer like glass."
"Seems is one thing, Dez, but, trust me on this, what seems and what is are two different things here."
"It's still our best opportunity," she insisted. "It's our duty to check it."
She nudged her mount in the direction of the wide open valley. Crowe shook his head, and then followed reluctantly.
Two days later. Gabriella was both stunned and dismayed to find herself emerging from the open valley, right on to the same spot from which she had first set off into it. She recognised all the landmarks around and was both angry and frustrated. "What are we doing here?"
"Told you." Crowe said with a yawn.
"We didn't circle round…" That would have been impossible, as the valley was a straight line. "We can't be back here."
"I agree with you, pet. But we are back here all the same. I told you the World's Ridge is impassable."
"Is the Stormwall like that?"
Crowe gave her a dark look. "Worse. A lot worse."
After a few more hours, they entered another valley of rock and scrub grass that looked to Gabriella as if it was a crack in the rocky face of the World's Ridge. There were old, stained goblin nests all over the near-vertical slopes on either side. Strange cries of unseen birds and animals echoed confusingly from the flat surfaces and both Gabriella and Crowe looked around anxiously at each sound.
They picked their way slowly through a narrow defile. The sheer rock walls were becoming more and more discoloured by streaks of yellow that stank of bad eggs. Both of them had tied scarves around their faces to help keep out some of the smell, and to try to avoid searing their throats and lungs with the hot dust in the air.
And these were just the foothills of the World's Ridge.
Crowe nudged his horse over a small rise and Gabriella followed him right into an old goblin settlement. Thankfully it had been long-since destroyed. Tent poles had collapsed, the skins and cloth rotted away. The only occupants of the settlement were skeletons, some of them were distressingly small.
Crowe kicked a skull aside. "This happened months ago. I hate to say anything positive about a gobbo, but this fits right in with what that goblin prisoner said."
"About them being driven out of the mountains? All right, someone eradicated this village, but isn't it as likely to have been a rival tribe as humans? Even other goblins don't much like the goblin tribes."
"Some bugger came this way," he said. "Humans; the length and width of stride is wrong for an animal. Single file to hide their numbers."
Gabriella nodded. "Not many of them, though. Three or four people at the most."
Later, they camped under an overhanging cliff. They took turns to sleep, which was wise, as at one point a lizard as tall at the shoulder as a wolf tried to attack their horses. Thankfully Gabriella was able to impale it through the head before it even knew she was there.
When they rose, they cut steaks from it for their next meal and left a marker showing the location of the carcass. They had been leaving markers all along their journey, for the mercenaries and Knights who would be following.
The narrow valley zigzagged back and forth several times, before dropping away into a vertical well. "That's another dead end," Crowe said. "We'll have to go back — "
"No," Gabriella said, squinting down into the depths. "There's light down there.
"What?" Crowe looked to where she pointed. The well was a hundred yards wide, and, on the far side, light was cast across the bottom, a couple of hundred feet down. It was definitely sunlight. As his eyes adjusted, he could spot the edges of wide steps cut into the edge of the well. It spiralled down, a staircase with steps just the right size for horses to walk.
Preceptor DeBarres had seen his fiftieth summer a few years ago, but none of his muscle had turned to fat as far as anyone in the Order could tell. He may not have been as fast a runner as the younger Knights, but when he stood his ground he stayed fixed and couldn't be moved. His weapon of choice when fighting on foot had always been the axe, and he made it flow as effortlessly as a dancer from Fayence made her silken scarves flow.
His preferred method of travel was not the forced route march, but he settled for the knowledge that Eminence Kesar, being a bean-counter and not a soldier, had enjoyed it even less.
They had followed the goblins' path out to the west coast, led by Crowe and Gabriella, and down the edge of Pontaine towards the foothills of the World's Ridge. They made sure to keep well away from Fayence and Eminence Kesar made sure that Kannis' liaisons kept Aristide just well-enough informed to keep him quiet.
The mountains, when they reached them, were as large as anything in the Drakengrat range, and yet both Kesar and DeBarres knew that there were far greater peaks beyond. They had picked their way through twisting canyons and riverbeds, until they emerged at one end of a deep and jagged valley.
It narrowed as they travelled along it and, at one point, they found the carcass of a huge lizard. Eventually they came to a point where they had to travel almost single file. This area led them to a deep, wide well, with steps clearly marked out. Gabriella and Crowe had marked the beginning of the great spiral staircase that had been cut out of the living rock.
The Knights and mercenaries had to restructure their whole column, in order to descend.
At the bottom of the enormous well or sinkhole was a wide natural archway, festooned with moss-covered stalactites hanging down. A valley was visible through this wide grey maw and, at the far end of the valley, a gleaming mountain rose up magnificently.
It took a whole day to get the entire force down the staircase and into this other new valley, and DeBarres had almost begun to fear that the job would never be finished.
Eventually, though, he rode under the stalactites himself and looked along the valley at the distant peak. Between there and the column, he could see Gabriella and Crowe riding back towards them.
The mercenary force had made camp on a rise to one side of the approach to the natural archway. Tents were put up and stakes set around the lower slopes of the rise. The valley curved around this rise before opening up into a field. On the far side of that expanse of arid dust and scrub grass, jagged peaks formed a curtain between the valley and the glinting peak behind.
There were other, larger, peaks around and beyond the one that all eyes fell upon, but they were merely mountain peaks. The other, the special one, gleamed and shone with myriad colours, like a diamond or carved crystal.
Preceptor DeBarres, Gabriella and Crowe all brushed into Eminence Kesar's tent without preamble. Kesar merely raised an eyebrow as DeBarres' lips barely passed over his signet ring.
"Am I to take it that your urgency signifies important news, Preceptor?"
DeBarres nodded. "That's one way of putting it. Gabriella?"
"The valley ahead leads to the location we have for Kell's Freedom city. We scouted it out with a telescope and there is a manned gatehouse set into the defile that cuts through that ridge of peaks at the end of the valley."
"A gatehouse?" Kesar looked at the maps that were unfurled across the table in front of him. "So, there is a Freedom, after all."
"If there's a town that the Faith doesn't know about," DeBarres commented, "it's a town with no Faith."
"So what does it have instead, I wonder?" Kesar said.
"People who need faith, mate," Crowe suggested with a cheeky grin. "Unless, of course, you know something more than the rest of us?"
"If you want me to go into that wretched excuse for a city and clean it out," DeBarres said, "I can. But you'll have to be prepared for how long it'll take."
"A siege? You don't think that a good idea?"
DeBarres shook his head. "Not really. There are going to be enough paths in and out of there that stopping them up will be damned hard for us or for them, but…"
"But? If there's no problem with getting in — "
"There's also no problem for them to get out, individually if not in bulk. And that isn't good horse country, which means no cavalry charges. It's going to be our foot patrols versus theirs. Guerrilla warfare."
"Somewhere in there is a force that kicked the goblins out of their homes. That's the threat that immediately concerns me." Kesar said.
"Eminence," Gabriella interrupted. "Might I suggest that Crowe and I continue our scouting mission by going into Freedom."
"Into the city?"
"There are two reasons, Eminence. Firstly, we need to know how many heretics, mercenaries and sinners are populating the area, and especially how serious a military force they are."
"And secondly?"
"Goran Kell. I've been through a lot to get him. He has, by proxy assassins, attempted to kill an Eminence, attempted to kill me and succeeded in killing Erak Brand. You yourself tasked me with finding him."
"So I did. So be it, but, Sister DeZantez?"
"Yes, Eminence?"
"Make sure you are back here, at this camp, by midmorning of the day after tomorrow. This is my will, and the Anointed Lord's will and God's will."
"As the Lord wills, so shall it be, Eminence."
At Crowe's suggestion, Gabriella left her Faith surplice behind and took a plain, nondescript cloak. "You ready for a bit of Freedom, pet?"
"Are you?"
"I'm used to it. You never know, you might get to like it."
She didn't answer, but simply rode towards the ridge of peaks that cut off the valley from Freedom. She and Crowe found themselves in a deep gash in the rock, which then widened again after a couple of miles' journey.
At the end, a gatehouse was set up on the side nearest to Crowe and Gabriella.
"Hello, they have some soldiers here." Crowe said.
"Not as many as you'd expect. They're mercenaries, so perhaps whoever hired them couldn't afford more." Gabriella squinted at the tabards worn by the nearest soldiers. "Three different companies. Do you recognise any of their colours?"
"One of them is from Mandrian's Hands…" He broke off. "Yeah, well. Mandrian was always a third-rate ponce."
"So his company wasn't an elite unit?"
Crowe barked a laugh. "Mandrian's bunch of losers, a couple of wannabe companies I've never heard of, and what's left of the Free Company. You can probably imagine how much of a force they make up."
"The Free Company, as in the ninety per cent slaughtered by the Anointed Lord in the last war Free Company?" Gabriella couldn't believe her ears. A few defeated old men were hardly the sort of force she would have expected to be commissioned to protect such a large city as this.
"That's the one."
"And the Hands fought on the Faith's side… along with Joachim Foll."
"The assassin who replaced Kell's assassin?"
"Interesting, isn't it?
"Welcome, friends," one of the guards called out. "Pass through, and welcome to Freedom!"
Gabriella and Crowe exchanged a disbelieving glance and did as they were bid.
"Why the midmorning after tomorrow?" DeBarres asked suddenly. He was still in Kesar's tent, listening to the bustle of activity outside. The troops were fortifying their camp.
"I'm sorry?"
"You gave a very specific time limit for Gabriella to return. I wondered why?"
Kesar took a deep breath. "What I am about to tell you is known only to Eminences and above, but you will have to know because you will witness it. Beyond the valley and the gatehouse, there is a citadel constructed — " He stopped himself and pursed his lips, considering. "No, constructed is not entirely the right word. Carved into the mountainside might be more accurate. It may be Dwarven or Elven, but no-one is really certain. Our Inquisitors have followed several small groups of Brotherhood factions to that valley."
"You knew about this before?"
Kesar didn't react to the question. "It's quite clear that this is where the sinners who have vanished from the western cities of Pontaine have gone. They can only be building a power base."
"The Brotherhood never had enough manpower for an army," DeBarres said dismissively.
"But with other whoremongers, gamblers, out-of-work mercenaries… Imagine if they could indoctrinate so many people. Convert them. How effectively can we block the valley?" Kesar asked.
"Block it?" DeBarres was baffled. If there was to be a fight, he needed to be able to put forces into it. "It's our only access to — "
"It is also their only exit."
DeBarres thought he saw where Kesar was going. "It's their only mass exit, but you can bet your Eminent ring that there are animal and goblin trails all around and through smaller cuttings. If you're thinking of laying siege, I already told you it'd be a dubious idea, for that very reason."
"You're questioning my authority, Raul?" Kesar's voice was mild, but DeBarres wasn't fooled.
"I'm questioning your tactical and strategic experience," DeBarres corrected him. "A siege would necessitate making sure they can't get food in, or send messages for reinforcements. Magical communications aside, they wouldn't have much problem getting runners or small groups out, carrying supplies in small quantities." DeBarres sighed. "If that's what you want I'll do it, but you'll be committing the whole of the Swords to a siege that might last longer than the last war between Pontaine and Vos."
Kesar smiled. "What if I were to tell you that the siege will last no more than two days?"
"I'd wonder what the point of it would be. We wouldn't even be fully emplaced that quickly."
"We do not need to be," Kesar reassured him. "It is not my intention to begin a long siege in the area. The Swords need only block any attempt the Brotherhood forces make to escape the area."
"If we can have an elemental mage pull an embankment up at the narrowest point of the valley, it'll slow any crowds right down and hem them in. Then we can use the plain at this end as a killing ground, using our people as cavalry to ride down anyone who comes over."
"Good enough."