What choice has a river in running down to the sea?
Eastwards, beneath a glowering sky, Carnelian could see nothing moving but Ranegale and the other raiders until he noticed, obscured by distant rainfall, a mass of riders scudding towards them.
Fern and Ravan's aquar fell back to ride alongside Blur. Fern squinted round his brother. 'You lead the undirected aquar deep in among the others, we'll stay behind to make sure none stray.'
Krow jerked a nod and Carnelian rocked his feet to make Blur pick up pace. Krow shifted his weight as he looked behind them.
They're following.'
Soon Blur was moving up among the other raiders whose aquar were maintaining a steady pace.
'We must go deeper in,' said Krow.
Carnelian urged Blur forward until they had almost caught up with Ranegale and Loskai. They scowled when they saw Carnelian, but it was when they saw the dead tied into their chairs that their eyes widened with disbelief. Ranegale began haranguing Krow, speaking too fast for Carnelian to follow. He squinted into the faces of the riders around him to see if he could read in them what was being said. Brittle with fear, the youths were gazing past Ranegale oblivious to the quarrel. Carnelian saw that the auxiliaries were still pouring towards them, but the focus of the youths' gaze was on something beyond that. A shape was interrupting the regular pattern of kraal towers. Carnelian turned to stone as he realized he was seeing a dragon.
Ranegale fell silent as he became aware of the fear stiffening every face. More dragon silhouettes were appearing among the kraal towers, dwarfing them. Squadrons of riders welled over the ground before them. The auxiliaries they had seen before were beginning to veer away, northwards. The gap between them and the scouring line was occupied by a single dragon.
'His pipes are lit,' cried Cloud in Vulgate and Carnelian looked for and found, rising from the dragon, a tiny scratch of smoke that reminded him of plague sign.
'We can swing round to the left of him,' said Ranegale, pointing his mutilated hand north-east. 'You see where the auxiliaries have left a gap?'
'He must see us,' said Cloud, his voice tight.
'Let's make a dash for it,' cried Loskai.
'No,' roared Ranegale, 'we mustn't commit our aquar until we're sure the gap is real.'
Tension grew as more and more of the scouring line came into sight. The dragon from which smoke was rising was well ahead of the others. Behind it, the line stretched north and south as far as Carnelian could see. He kept glancing off to his left, expecting to see the auxiliaries there charging towards them.
That lot won't catch us,' muttered Krow, as if he were trying to convince himself. Carnelian could see that, to get that far in front of the line, the auxiliaries must have been running their aquar for some time.
Cloud was craning over the back of his saddle-chair speaking to the youths. The tone of his voice was reassuring but his eyes were starting from his head. 'Let's go now,' shrilled Loskai.
Carnelian tried to ignore the trembling in Krow's body as he watched the squadrons of aquar positioned between the dragons becoming more distinct.
'Soon it'll be too late,' pleaded Loskai.
Ranegale gave out a wailing cry and the raiders sent their aquar into a run. Carnelian saw Osidian's creature slipping after them and the dead jiggling in their chairs.
Krow's voice exploded. 'Come on. Come on!'
Through his toes Carnelian could feel Blur's heart racing. He rocked his feet and she leapt forward. The clamp of his knees over the crossbeam kept his legs safe from Blur's thighs as they pistoned higher and higher with her lengthening strides. Krow pushed back into him as if he feared he might be thrown onto the ground. Carnelian blinked away the tears the wind put in his eyes. They were heading straight for the smoking dragon. He could make no sense of its size except that it rose mountainous above the riders running before it. Its four curving horns seemed even larger than his uncle Crail had claimed, so too the pyramid tower upon its back from which smoke was rising in two threads.
Krow gave a start. Cries broke from the raider youths. Carnelian saw a mass of riders had appeared from nowhere to block their path.
'A trap!' The word blown past him in the wind.
Overcome by panic, Carnelian let his feet leave Blur's back. As her running faltered, he quickly pressed them back. Ranegale was wheeling them southwards. Carnelian felt Blur's desire to follow and let her go by putting pressure on his right foot.
'High Father,' moaned Krow.
Carnelian shared his dismay as more squadrons of auxiliaries sprang into view. The dragon was looming in the corner of his eye. Blur straightened up and increased speed.
Krow groaned: 'Where's he taking us?'
Ranegale was not fleeing back the way they had come but, instead, running them along the front of the dragon line from whose towers more smoke was beginning to rise.
'How far can they breathe their fire?' Carnelian cried.
Unable to take his eyes off the advancing monsters, Krow answered him with a vague shaking of his head, over which Carnelian saw the watch-tower Ranegale was heading for. Squinting, Carnelian could make out the road into which it was embedded. The Ringwall, a fortification that enclosed the Guarded Land. Ranegale must be trying to take them through one of its gates. Carnelian prayed the barbarian knew what he was doing.
Following Krow, Carnelian craned round and saw auxiliaries racing to hit them in the flank. Even though he could already feel the first muscle tremors of Blur's fatigue, he rocked his feet to try and coax more speed. Krow sang encouragements, but still they were slowing and the watch-tower seemed no nearer. They clung to each other, willing the tower closer, despairing that they would make it in time. A glance showed the auxiliaries resolving into single riders. Their swelling battle-cries seemed separate from their gaping mouths. It became an agony anticipating their crashing impact.
Krow pushed back into Carnelian who, gazing up, saw watch-tower ribs stark against the grey sky. Relief turned to despair. These towers rarely slept. For its lookouts suspended high on the ribs in their deadman's chairs, to sleep was to lose hold; losing hold, the mechanisms would drop them to their deaths. The tower would have had plenty of time to bar the gate it guarded in the wall.
Then Blur was striding up the ramp onto the road. Carnelian saw the wall and tower caught in a net of scaffolding awrithe with sartlar. A few strides more carried them across the width of the road. Astoundingly the gate beside the tower was open. Through its gape red mud stretched off as far as he could see. Then they were through and, fighting fatigue, Blur sped them away from the Ringwall and their pursuers.
'Great Father above! Why have you brought us here?' Leaning past Ravan, Fern was glaring at Ranegale.
'You've the gall to challenge me,' bellowed Ranegale. He pointed at the corpses in the saddle-chairs. 'Did you learn nothing from the last time?'
The raiders were staring at the corpse riders. Cloud grimaced as he looked from them to Fern.
'You really oughtn't to have done it again. And as for you…' Cloud looked straight at Krow and Carnelian felt the youth flinch then attempt a shrug.
Ravan sat up, his face fierce. 'We couldn't just leave them there.'
Ranegale turned on him. 'Why are you and your kin so determined to bring a curse down on us? Wasn't the death of your father warning enough?'
'Don't you dare say that,' bellowed Fern, and his aquar lurched forward carrying the brothers towards Ranegale, whose beast raised its plumes in alarm. Ranegale brought it under control with his feet and fixed Fern with his single eye.
'I can understand the boy might be too stupid to know better, but you?' he said. 'And why did you bring the Standing Dead?' He shook his shrouded head. 'If the auxiliaries didn't see them, the tower lookouts certainly did. What do you imagine will happen now?'
Cloud forced his aquar between Fern and Ranegale. 'We're alive and free, that's a lot more than any of us had a right to expect.'
They'll hunt us down,' cried Ranegale.
'You know as well as I do that when the Ringwall gates are open, the laws of the Standing Dead forbid the legions to pass through.'
'Perhaps that would be so,' growled Ranegale, 'if we didn't have two of them here captive.'
Fern glanced at Carnelian. 'We had to bring them. They know we are Ochre.'
Loskai and Cloud gaped at him in horror.
'Which one of you told them?' Ranegale said in a dangerous voice.
Fern splayed his four-fingered hand and touched the palm. That one,' he indicated Carnelian with a nod of his head, 'saw it in my father's recruitment tattoo.'
Carnelian watched as the men looked at their hands as if for the first time. Ranegale squeezed his into a fist.
'Even if that's true, it's all the more reason why we should kill them now.'
Carnelian withstood the menace of Loskai's stare. Even Cloud was nodding as he looked at him. Carnelian considered whether he would be able to eject Krow without hurting him. He felt bitter that his decision had so quickly brought him and Osidian death. He had abandoned his father for nothing.
Fern moved his aquar to shield Carnelian. 'I'll not let you harm them.'
'You'll not let us?' cried Ranegale, widening his shoulders.
Carnelian saw Loskai's hand straying to the spear hitched to his saddle-chair.
'Look, we can argue this out later,' cried Cloud. 'For now what's done is done and arguing here in sight of the Ringwall is just asking for trouble. What we must decide now is where we go from here.'
Ranegale allowed his head to fall. He pointed eastwards. 'Out of sight of the Ringwall, we'll ride all the way to Makar.'
'How will we get into the city?' demanded Ravan.
Ranegale gave the youth a withering look but, when Ravan withstood it, he answered him: 'Since we're postponing decisions, we might as well leave that for later too.'
Ranegale raked them with a baleful eye and then, turning his aquar, he walked her off across the red mud.
They rode away from the Ringwall down muddy gullies. When they had lost sight of the wall, they turned east only to find their route slashed across by more gullies. Over and over again the aquar were forced to clamber down, then scrabble out the other side. Carrying two riders, Blur often needed more than one attempt. Sometimes they would climb onto a bony escarpment scored into slabs as if by some god's knife. There, the aquar had to pick their way carefully for fear of breaking their legs. To add to the misery, the sky opened and released a deluge. Soon the gullies were filling with water the colour of blood. One pool came up almost to the saddle-chairs. Fearing some might be even deeper, Ranegale began to go around them.
Every diversion took them further south. The gullies deepened, the ridges between them slicing up as sharp as shoulder blades. Soon they were being forced to follow the streams for long periods before they would find a gap through which to climb over into the next gully. When Blur was perched on one of these, Carnelian glimpsed the land stretching away to the north as far as he could see, all bony runnels thinly skinned with soil.
They sank into the land, her rock rising around them in leprous walls. Among the towers and pinnacles, Carnelian could almost believe he had returned to the Valley of the Gate that opened into Osrakum except here the pillars were pale and faceless. The gully they were following was swollen by others into a valley along one edge of which they filed, trying to avoid its torrent.
Suddenly, with a foaming roar, this tumbled in cascades into a ravine which, far below, framed in its narrow jaws a misty infinite world roofed by a stormy sky.
Ranegale held up the reckoning cord dripping in the rain. All could see it now only had two knots.
'If we return,' he said, indicating the way they had come, 'we're not likely to find a way to Makar. At least, not in the two days we have before our people give up waiting for us.'
In their saddle-chairs, the raiders sagged as miserably as did the corpses.
'So what do we do?' asked Loskai.
The cloth clinging to Ranegale's face was so drenched Carnelian saw with horrid fascination that the barbarian had a hole where he should have had a nose.
'We camp here,' said Cloud.
Storm clouds were conspiring with the approaching night to blacken the sky. Everyone peered through the gloom at the bare rocky valley.
This'll have to do,' said Cloud.
There were a few unhappy nods. One of the youths found some shelter under a shelf of rock that projected out from the valley wall. Carnelian urged Blur to follow the other aquar towards it. It was a relief when he and Krow were able to climb free of her saddle-chair. They were stretching their limbs when Cloud approached. He stood over Krow.
'Why did you involve yourself in sacrilege?'
Hanging his head, the youth indicated Carnelian. 'My father, this one claimed he had read the name of our kin tribe in Father Stormrane's hand.'
Cloud regarded Carnelian for a while before offering him his hand. Carnelian bent over the palm. He used the method that had worked before to decipher the recruitment tattoos. Having teased out the appropriate sounds, he converted them in his head into the barbarian tongue.
Twostone,' he said.
Cloud went pale. He placed his hand on Krow's head. 'You were right to help him.'
'My father,' the youth said with a nod and managed to slip Carnelian a smile of thanks as the Elder led him away.
Carnelian saw Fern and Ravan had untied the corpses and went to help lift them out of their saddle-chairs. Struggling with the noisome burdens, they laid them against the rock at some distance from the camp.
As Fern stood over his father's body, Carnelian could not tell if there were tears mixing with the rain running down his face. He took hold of Fern's shoulder.
'You have my gratitude for defending us back there.'
Fern looked into Carnelian's eyes. 'You know our speech, don't you?' he said using the barbarian tongue.
Carnelian's first instinct was to pretend not to understand, but he saw no threat in Fern's eyes. 'How did you find out?'
'At the kraal, you answered Ranegale when he threatened you in our tongue,' said Fern, shifting to Vulgate.
Carnelian thought back, then nodded, remembering it.
'Is this something all Masters can do?'
'No.' Carnelian saw Fern was waiting for more. 'Many in my household were chosen from the flesh tithe your people give… are forced to send to the Mountain.'
Fern frowned. 'How many Plainsman tongues do you know?'
'Plainsman?' said Carnelian, echoing the unfamiliar word.
Fern touched his chest then indicated the other raiders. 'It is what we all are.' He spread his hands as if smoothing a cloth over a table. 'Our tribes cover the Earthsky. How many of our tongues do you know?'
Carnelian shrugged. The one you speak. What others are there?'
Fern regarded him with frowning disbelief. 'Our tongue is peculiar to our tribe.'
'Surely the languages spoken by other tribes will be similar to your own.'
Fern frowned. 'We have such difficulty understanding one another we often resort to the Vulgate which the veterans bring back with them from the legions.'
Carnelian stared at him. Could Ebeny have come from the Ochre tribe?
'It's a strange coincidence,' he said.
'Very strange,' said Fern, clearly troubled.
Carnelian ran his hand down the blanket covering his leg. It was hard to believe it was not Ebeny's work.
That is a woman's weave,' said Fern.
Carnelian looked up. The colour?'
Fern nodded. 'Women wear the earth's hues: men, the colour of the angry sky.'
'Still, I will wear it. It reminds me of my… Plainsman mother.'
'Why have you been pretending not to understand our tongue?'
'It is a weapon I might have need of.' They stood for some moments regarding each other. It was Carnelian who spoke first. 'Will you tell the others?'
Fern chewed his lip. 'I don't know yet.'
Carnelian could see he would just have to trust him. 'If you'll help me, we can move my brother away from the others. I'll stay with him and not bother you.'
Fern shook his head. 'I want you to sit with us. The decisions we'll be making will concern you.' He must have sensed Carnelian's reluctance. 'If Cloud and Ranegale decide you are to die, I’ll stand with you against them.'
Carrielian stared in disbelief, but the fierce determination in the Plainsman's face did not invite discussion and so he nodded his assent.
They carried Osidian between them. Carnelian was certain he had been much heavier. Ranegale and Loskai made angry protests as Fern urged the youths away from the rock to allow Osidian to be laid out in what shelter the overhang provided. Ignoring the stares, Carnelian took a sodden blanket, crouched and smoothed it over him. He looked for life in the discoloured face but it might as well have been wax. Sick at heart, he rose and turned to face the Plainsmen. Though only the men looked directly at him, he could feel the general resentment Carnelian could not imagine what had possessed him. Even if Osidian were to live, would he thank him for having brought them into the wilderness among barbarians?
Fern indicated a place beside him. Carnelian hesitated, but then sat beside the Plainsman, hunching to alleviate the ache in his back. A nudge made him lift his head to find Fern offering him what appeared to be a bale of rope and a flint knife. Carnelian took one in each hand. The rope was heavier than he had expected. He brought it closer and curled his nose up at its odour.
'Djada,' Fern whispered into his ear.
Carnelian saw the youth beside him waiting expectantly. He pulled a length of the slimy rope through his fingers and cut off a piece then offered the rope and knife. The youth showed him he had his own blade, but took the rope. Carnelian turned to hand the flint to Fern, but the Plainsman was staring at the ground, chewing. Carnelian put the knife down in front of him and, overcoming his disgust, he bit off a chunk from his djada. As he began to chew, he found it was, as he expected, the same dried meat he had been eating for days. It did not taste as bad as it smelled.
Continuing to soften the meat in his mouth, he watched the coil being handed round. Ranegale, his eye fixed balefully on Fern, lifted his finger in accusation but Cloud, looking at Carnelian, spoke first.
This one here read the name of my tribe from my hand.'
Ranegale turned his anger on Cloud. The hands of the corpses could've been cut off.' Fern glowered. They're my kin.' Ranegale flung his head back in exasperation. There was no time to cut anything,' said Cloud. 'But the sacrilege -'
'Whatever harm might come to us from that, perhaps we've suffered it already.' The Elder glanced sadly in the direction where he knew the three corpses lay.
'And the Standing Dead?' asked Ranegale, forming ears with his hands.
'Remember it was this one,' Fern indicated Carnelian with his chin, 'who warned me of the tattoos.'
Ranegale began a protest, but Fern waved him down, speaking quickly. 'Do none of you see any significance in the way they came to us?'
Carnelian shared the general incomprehension.
Fern looked each of the men in the eyes. 'We've never asked how it came about that we should find two of the Standing Dead as slaves among sartlar and painted black.'
'I don't follow you,' said Cloud. 'When are men's bodies made wholly black, my father?'
Cloud shrugged. 'When they are dead.' Fern's eyes caught a reflection of faraway lightning. 'Exactly.'
'But they weren't dead,' said Ravan. 'What are you trying to tell us, Fern?' Cloud asked softly.
Fern ran his hand down over his curls plastered flat by the rain. His eyebrows rose. 'I'm not really sure.'
Ranegale let his hands fall and gave a snort ‘I think he's trying to tell us he believes it was the Skyfather who sent the Standing Dead to us.'
A shiver ran up Carnelian's spine. Though the Masters used red for mourning and green for resurrection, their Black God in his many aspects was lord of the sky, but also, death.
'Is that what you mean?' Cloud asked Fern.
Fern seemed an uncertain child as he looked at Cloud. 'I suppose so, my father.'
'Because of the bitumen on their bodies?'
'And one of them bears a mark.' Fern stood up and walked through the youths to where Osidian was lying. As Cloud and then Ranegale and Loskai followed him, Carnelian resisted the temptation to join them. Instead, he craned round to watch them leaning over Osidian. Ravan had taken a few steps towards them.
'Look at his forehead,' Fern was saying.
Cloud straightened and looked at Fern. The mark is in his skin?'
'However hard I rubbed, it wouldn't come off.' 'It looks like an eye,' said Loskai. 'More like the mark that might have been left by lips,' said Fern.
'So you're claiming he was kissed by a black man?' sneered Ranegale. 'Did you kiss him yourself, Fern?' His voice seemed very thin in Carnelian's ears as they recovered from a thunderclap. He was remembering that Osidian had once told him the Wise believed his birthmark a sign put there by the Black God.
Fern's stiff posture betrayed his anger. 'If I had kissed him, do you think it likely my lips would've left a permanent mark?'
Cloud spoke gazing down at Osidian. 'You think he's been chosen by the Skyfather?'
'Chosen for what?' exploded Ranegale. 'Has the rain soaked into everyone's head? Can't you tell this is his grief talking? He's desperate to find a reason why his kin's all dead and so he fixes on this business: this possessed notion that the Skyfather descended from on high to plant a kiss on the forehead of this one.'
'What about the bitumen?' offered Loskai.
Ranegale turned on him. 'High Father, not you too!'
Loskai retreated behind a blank expression.
Carnelian noticed how the youths huddled together; how they trembled with each thunderclap. Ravan returned, deep in thought. Carnelian gave him a smile and was pleased when it was returned. He looked down at the knife. Was the Black God behind the disaster that had befallen them both? It seemed inconceivable the God should have delivered Osidian into the hands of barbarians and yet, there were the signs. It gave Carnelian hope he had made the right decision in seeking refuge among the Ochre but he could not rid himself of foreboding. The Black God was also the Lord of Strife and War.
As the men filed back, lightning flashed the valley into jagged relief. Ranegale, as he sat down, looked round him gauging the general mood.
'A great blessing this gift from the Skyfather's been so far.'
'I believe the decision whether or not to kill them should be left to the Elders,' said Fern.
Ranegale looked at Cloud. 'Even though you're no longer Ochre, you are an Elder, my father. If you chose to make the decision now we could rid ourselves of the burden of these Standing Dead.'
Ravan, Krow and many of the others were clearly anxious to see what Cloud would decide.
The Elder shook his head apologetically. 'I won't make this decision on behalf of your tribe. Besides, should we be considering anything that might turn the Skyfather even more against us?'
The sky rumbled as if in agreement and Carnelian saw everyone but Ranegale nodding. He gave a snort. 'Well, everyone here will stand witness to my counsel. Let's hope, Father Cloud, we don't have cause to regret your inability to make a decision.'
Lightning flared revealing stark shadows in the raiders' faces. The thunder that followed shook the very rocks upon which they sat and the rain redoubled its downpour.
'How are we going to get home?' Ravan asked over the hiss.
Only the storm answered him, but in the next flash, all could clearly see Ranegale was peering in the direction where the ravine cut down out of sight.
'Down there?' cried Ravan.
The swamps?' said Loskai, aghast.
Carnelian listened to the stream gurgling into the throat of the ravine.
'If we go down there,' said Ravan, 'we might as well give up any hope of seeing our hearths again.'
The fear in his voice spread to Carnelian, who sensed a general unease.
'How do we know there's even a way down?' asked Loskai.
The gate in the Ringwall proves there must be,' said Ranegale. 'Besides, the gradient of the ravine and the distance we seem to be from the land edge makes me certain it'll take us all the way down.'
'If you're right we've got to wonder what kind of people use it,' said Cloud.
'Manila?' Ravan asked, his shadow head turning as he tried to make out faces.
Carnelian felt Fern readjusting his position. Peering at his face, Carnelian saw the resemblance he had not placed before. Though paler than they, though not as tall, Carnelian saw Fern bore a decided resemblance to the black men who had escorted him and his father on the road to Osrakum. He should have seen it at once in his tightly curling hair.
Their lands lie somewhere south of the Earthsky,' said Cloud.
The swamp's a haunt of nightmares,' moaned Ravan. 'Demons,' muttered Krow.
'Hush,' said Fern. Those are just stories used to scare children.'
There must be another way, Ranegale,' said Loskai.
'Makar will be hard to enter unseen. I've been worrying about that all day. Even if that weren't so ' He made a sound of disgust. 'We're burdened with the corpses and, thanks to Father Cloud, the Standing Dead. Besides there's no way we're going to make the meeting and that's the only reason we're heading for the city.'
'Except to spend our bronze,' said Loskai.
'However thick the swamp is below, we'll make better progress through it than we will up here. We can skirt its edge on higher ground until we reach the Leper Valleys. Who knows, we might even get there in time to meet up with our people.'
Night was robbing them of sight. They scattered to find what shelter they could but there was no escaping fear. Bent almost double, Carnelian fumbled his way to Osidian's side. He waited until lightning lit his face. When it did, Carnelian's heart faltered, certain he had glimpsed Osidian awake. He reached out. His fingers almost recoiled when they found Osidian's face smoother than marble but just as cold. His touch found the corner of a lidded eye. Turning, he settled back against Osidian's shivering body to give him what warmth he could.
The movements of the Plainsmen woke him. Blearily, through the rain, Carnelian watched them getting ready. No one spoke nor looked each other in the eye. He noticed Ravan steal a look down into the ravine. The gleam of Osidian's body caught in the corner of Carnelian's vision. His head, his back, his neck ached as he turned round. It was as if he had grown aged overnight. He burrowed under Osidian's blankets to reach the damp, cold flesh and pressed his lips against it until he could feel the tremor of a heartbeat.
'So slow,' he muttered. He covered him up. Looking at him, Carnelian reviewed again the decision he had made for them both. In the daylight, it was harder to believe the Black God was guiding him.
Sensing someone approaching, he looked up and saw it was Fern.
'Today we leave the Land of the Standing Dead,' Fern said, using Ochre in a low voice and trying a smile. 'Why do you call us that?'
Fern crouched down beside him. 'My mother told me it was because of the giants who stand around the place in the Mountain where we give our children to you.'
Carnelian knew he spoke of the colossi of the Plain of Thrones who stood astride the entrances to the tombs in which the Masters were laid to await their resurrection. He recalled how he had felt when he had walked beneath their gaze. It was not an unfitting name.
'We must move my kin,' said Fern, rising.
Carnelian looked to where the corpses lay grey in the morning light. After they had taken only a few steps towards them, the stench of their decay caught at his throat; beside them, it was overpowering. Fern crouched and dug his arms under one. Carnelian could see the creases in the Plainsman's forehead; the horror blanking his face. He waited for him to hoist the saggy mess that had been his father and then watched him stagger away with it to the aquar Ravan was holding ready. Averting his face, Carnelian squatted and worked his hand under the back of another corpse. He took the strain and lifted. The corpse's weight forced him to carry it clasped to his chest.
Carnelian was taking care with each step. They had tried riding, but the foaming water and scree made the ground treacherous. He paced beside Blur in whose chair Osidian lay. The creature's huge taloned feet gouged a grip on the slope, but sometimes he would watch with horror as one slipped. All startled plumes, the aquar would flail and scrabble to maintain her footing while Carnelian danced around her trying to be in a position to catch Osidian should he be flung out. Several times he jumped back sure Blur was about to topple over onto him like a hammer. He would tense up, anticipating her body punching the ground, smashing the saddle-chair, breaking Osidian across the boulders. Each time Blur righted herself and, panting, he would rush in to stroke her neck, or her clutching hands, clucking to reassure her and when her plume fans had closed, urge her a little further down the slope.
As the sky darkened, Osidian began babbling. Carnelian greeted this sign of life with joy. Wary of the movement of her knee and thigh, he clung to the crossbeam of Blur's chair and watched Osidian's rain-glazed face contorting, but it was impossible to pick out words from the rush and chew of sound.
A cry from up ahead made Carnelian release the crossbeam and stand away from Blur to look down the slope. The Plainsmen were dotted here and there below him, but a group had gathered on a promontory that pushed out into a gulf of air. Carnelian made sure there was no peril in Blur's path then scrambled down to join them.
He did not have to reach them before he saw that the floor of the ravine fell away from wall to towering wall. He pushed in among the youths and came to stand beside Ranegale and Fern, who were gazing into the depths of an abyss. Carnelian let his eyes follow the cliff down through the veiling rainfall, down and further down to where, remotely, a black river ran.
They retreated from that precipitous fall and found a cave mouth in the side of the ravine between two cascades. While the others coaxed the aquar into the darkness, Carnelian helped Fern and Ravan lean the corpses against the rock.
Ravan looked morose. 'Do we have to leave them out here?'
Fern put his arm around his brother then led him away. Carnelian followed them, his hand on Blur's neck, the dead men's aquar plodding heavily behind.
The walls of the cave were varnished with running water. As Carnelian crept deeper in, Osidian's ravings seemed to grow louder. Carnelian's eyes adjusted to the gloom allowing him to see a floor strewn with the boulders of crouching aquar, their glassy eyes catching the light.
'Here will do,' Fern said, at last.
They asked Blur to kneel and then carefully lifted Osidian from her chair and laid him out. Carnelian turned Osidian's head so his face might catch what little light there was. His eyes were closed and twitching; sounds were dribbling from his lips.
'What's he saying?' Fern asked.
Carnelian shrugged. 'It's his fever speaking.'
'Or the Skyfather through him,' said Ravan.
Carnelian became uneasy when he saw with what awe the youth was gazing upon Osidian. Frowning, Fern saw it too. He turned away and saw some of the other youths filing back to the entrance looking slight and vulnerable.
"They're the ones I pity,' said Fern.
Carnelian looked at him. 'Why did you bring them then?'
Fern grimaced. To let them see the world. They'd come of age and the Tribe's tributaries had need of an escort on their way to the Mountain.'
Carnelian turned back to look at the youths. 'I would've thought you could come up with a better escort than a posse of children.'
Ravan glared at Carnelian. 'We are men.'
Fern smiled and looked at his brother approvingly. 'It is a venerable tradition of our people.'
Carnelian sensed in them both a nobility that did not sit well with what he knew of their mission. 'Is it also a venerable tradition of your people to prey upon travellers?'
Fern's face became wooden. 'As much as it is a tradition of your people to take our children from us.'
Carnelian despised himself for having assumed so easily the haughty judging stance of his kind. Still he was enough the Master to be stung by the disapproval on the brothers' faces.
'The people on the road are innocent of the policies of the Masters.'
'How else can we strike at you?' said Fern.
Carnelian saw with his mind's eye Osrakum's soaring mountain wall, her gates, her turreted dragons. The vision melted. Fern's intense dark eyes were piercing through his defences and he regretted his insensitivity.
'We're here now and in your power.'
'But now we have you, you seem to me only men and not the angels we hate.'
Carnelian thought of Jaspar, Ykoriana and the other Masters he knew and felt he was misleading Fern. 'I'm untypical of my kind.'
Fern frowned and then glanced towards the mouth of the cave. Carnelian had more questions but could see Fern's impatience to join his people. 'You needn't wait for me.'
Fern gave him a curt nod and walked off, but to Carnelian's surprise, Ravan insisted on helping him make Osidian comfortable. This done, they threw damp blankets round their shoulders and walked to the entrance together. A couple of the youths shuffled aside to let Carnelian through. He found a place to sit between Fern and Cloud. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them with the blanket as he saw they had done and then he joined them gazing out at the cascades and the slanting rain.
'What do we do now?' asked Fern.
'Let's decide in the morning,' said Ranegale.
So near the cave mouth, Carnelian could feel the rain's spitting dance as cold pinpricks on his feet.
'What I wouldn't give for a fire,' said Loskai.
There were grunts of agreement as everyone huddled closer. The youths whispered to each other but the men were silent as they watched the world outside grow dark. Looking sidelong at their faces, Carnelian could not avoid seeing how much they resembled his brothers now far away in Osrakum. He was barely aware of the knot in his stomach beginning to work loose as he settled back into the warmth of their bodies.