North Star Guide Me Home (8 page)

By the time they reached the gorges, Sierra was clinging to the saddle, the power taken from the soldiers the only thing keeping her going. They’d found a little food, but she was so exhausted that the thought of eating turned her stomach. She was so weary that she ached all over, no matter how she shifted in the saddle. Cam cast worried glances her way as they rode, but he did the same to Delphine, who seemed unusually quiet, at least compared to how Sierra remembered her.

As they descended into the gorge, Sierra saw Cam’s shoulders stiffen, and he reached for the hilt of his sword. ‘Sirri, there are people down there, do you see them?’

She shook herself, but exhaustion was wrapped around her bones with a grip like hypothermia — with every effort to lift herself out she immediately sank back in. ‘Where?’ she said.

‘That patch of scrub off to the east, three of them. Don’t be obvious about looking, if they’re setting up an ambush we don’t want them to know they’ve been seen. Do you have a shield ready?’

She could cast a shield in her sleep, but any working she made now would be loud and messy. She was long past the point of being able to keep it contained. ‘I’m ready.’ Her eyes searched the patchy scrub, but she couldn’t see them.

‘What was it Rasten found?’ Cam muttered. ‘Some slave-hunters and their prey? Maybe he missed a few.’ He guided his horse on, but aside from a perfunctory scan of the rocks around them, he kept looking straight ahead.

Then, as they drew level, a man stepped out of the rough cover. ‘Prince Cammarian, sir!’

Cam snatched at his sword and had it half drawn before the words registered, along with the language the man spoke. He’d called out in Ricalani.

Reining in, Cam glanced across at Sierra. Delphine nudged her horse closer as well, scanning the opposite slope.

As the fellow came towards them, two more men emerged from the scrub. They were filthy, with ragged clothes and uncut hair, wearing rags on their feet for want of shoes. The leader drew closer, but when he saw Delphine’s dark skin he hesitated and hung back. ‘Are you the prince, sir?’

Cam slowly lifted his hand from the sword. ‘Just Cam will do. You’re a long way from home, brother.’

The man broke into a wide grin, and saluted him with a fist over his heart. ‘You’re a welcome sight, sir! Madric of Karsen’s Hill at your service. I was a captain for the Bear Clan before the Slavers came. The … the Apprentice said that you’re in command.’

Cam choked, hastily turning the sound into a cough. ‘Rasten said that?’

‘Yessir, he said we ought to come and meet you. Do you have any orders, my lord? We’ve scrounged some weapons from the guards, but there wasn’t much. Some folk heard there’d be legions coming our way, sir. If that’s true, I’m not sure we stand much chance. We’ve taken control of the supplies, but they won’t keep us going long.’

‘I see,’ Cam said. ‘How many of you are there?’

‘Near a thousand, sir.’

Cam sat for a moment, frowning down at the man, until at last he kicked his feet out of the stirrups and dismounted. ‘Alright, Madric, come walk with me. I don’t truly know what’s going on either, so why don’t you start from the beginning, and tell me exactly what happened?’

It took most of the walk to explain. The Slavers, Madric said, had their own route across the empire’s desert interior, a path laid out between springs and bores. They were headed for the mines arrayed across the empire’s west, a market profitable enough to risk losing a proportion of their slave stock on the taxing march.

‘I’m surprised the legions let them go,’ Cam said. ‘They knew Sirri and the others would be around here somewhere …’

‘They did try to turn us back, sir,’ Madric said. ‘The slave-master made like he was following his orders, but as soon as the soldiers moved on he turned us west again.’

As they moved deeper into the canyons, more people appeared; ragged, filthy souls who lined the dry riverbeds or scratched and dug for water in the sand. Some seemed oblivious to their passing, staring hollow-eyed at the men and horses trudging past. Others called out Cam’s name with hope that turned to joy and relief when he returned their greeting and confirmed that the woman riding at his side was Sierra, the Stormblade. The sight of Delphine with her dark Akharian skin brought mutters of anger until she dismounted, walking amid the knot of beasts and bodies to shield herself from sight.

Many of those they passed fell in behind them, but as they drew near the group’s campsite, the scattered folk grew to a choking crowd. Fires had been lit on the sand, and crude shelters had been built out of fallen trees and salvaged cloth. Somewhere, Sierra smelled roasting meat, and her mouth began to water with a fierce hunger.

Men and women crowded around, shouting out questions and calling Cam’s name, and pressing close to Sierra to peer at her face and touch her legs and feet as she rode by. In the end, Cam and Madric had to shout at the clustered folk to let them pass.

‘Sirri, where are they?’ Cam said.

‘Keep going this way,’ Sierra said. ‘It’s not much further.’

As they passed through the knot of former slaves, a woman had come out of the crowd to join the conversation. She was of middle years, with deep lines etching her face. ‘I’ve been trying to keep people calm, my lord, but they’re scared — frightened the Slavers will be back and the legions will come after Lord Rasten and Lady Sierra.’

‘Does everyone know who he is — who they are?’ Cam said.

‘Oh, Gods yes, my lord. Back in Ricalan we heard the tales, and the girls who went off with the soldiers tried to find out anything they could. Besides, sir, who else in Ricalan could do what he did? Please, my lord, tell me, is it true? Is Kell truly dead, and the old king and queen too?’

‘It’s true,’ Sierra said. ‘I saw Kell die myself, and I spoke to men who saw King Severian’s body, back in the spring. The queen was alive last I heard, though.’

‘You see?’ the woman said. ‘People are scared, my lord, but they’re hopeful, too. If anyone can take us home again, it’ll be the Children of the Black Sun and you.’

The edge of the rough camp was still several hundred yards from where Sierra had left Isidro. As they moved beyond its border, the woman faltered. ‘My lord, it’s not safe to go any further.’

Cam stopped to look at her. ‘Not safe?’

‘There was … there was something going on back there, sir. A lot of light and ungodly noise, and we heard screaming. A few folk tried to investigate, but they were sent back. He never said anything, my lord, but he made it quite clear we were to leave him alone.’

‘Leave who alone? Rasten?’

The woman nodded, her face pale and fearful.

‘Oh, by the Fires Below, Sirri —’

Sierra closed her eyes and reached for Rasten. He was closed off to her completely, as though a vast wall of ice had sealed off the connection. She felt a sudden chill around her heart. ‘I have to find him —’

‘No, wait. We’ll go in together.’ Cam turned to Madric and handed him the reins of his horse. ‘Alright, here’s what I need you to do. I want everyone with military experience to report to me in an hour. Find any priests, or anyone with experience tending wounded. Seek out any wounded, or any folk too weak to find their own water and see that they’re cared for. I also want any maps the Slavers had. Find someone to see to these horses, but don’t let anyone go through our packs — there are mage-crafted devices in there which can be damaged if they’re not handled correctly. Now …’ He reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a map case. ‘Once you find some with military experience, I have a mission for them,’ he said, unfurling the map. ‘There’s a rocky tor here, off to the northwest. Around it are a hundred and fifty or so dead soldiers, all armed and armoured, and a lot of loose horses. Detail some men to head out there and strip the dead of anything we can use. But tell them to be careful — if they see any live soldiers, they’ll have mages with them, so abandon the mission and retreat. We’ll have plenty more chances to arm ourselves in the coming days, but no way to replace lost men. Any questions?’

Madric saluted him again. ‘No, sir. I’ll report back in one hour, my lord.’

Sierra only half listened as Cam rattled off orders. She ached with a bone-deep weariness, and it seemed that every fibre of her body throbbed like a burn. She wanted a drink of fresh water and a patch of soft sand to lie upon.
Soon,
she promised herself as she slipped down from the saddle and turned towards the camp. Behind her, Delphine said, ‘Perhaps we should let her go first, Cam —’

‘No, I’m not letting us get separated again, and by all the Gods, Isidro’s up there with that … creature. I need to see him, Delphi. Just stay close.’

The first thing Sierra noticed was that the horses were gone. Their tether-line had snapped, as though they’d broken it in panic.

There was no sign of Rasten, but since she’d left he’d constructed a small shelter over Isidro’s bed. She went to him at once, with Delphine at her heels.

His face was smooth, untroubled, though his hair was still stringy with old, dried sweat. She laid a hand on his brow, and then reached under the blanket to feel the skin of his chest. He was neither feverishly hot nor clammy and chill. She peeled back the blanket to check the bandaged stump of his arm. Delphine gasped at the sight of it — there was more blood than Sierra remembered, but it was dark and dry.

She backed out of the shelter as Cam and Delphine huddled around him. Outside, she turned on her heels, listening carefully although she could hear nothing over Cam’s low murmuring and Delphine’s quiet sobs of dismay. There was no sign of Rasten.

‘Rasten!’ she called, echoing it with her mental voice. Her heart had quickened its pace, and she remembered calling for him like this back in the deep winter, the first time she’d voluntarily called to him for help. She scarcely felt any less nervous now — something had gone wrong. Since Kell died, he had been as brittle as spun glass … but he should have been fine. All he had to do was hole up here with Isidro and keep the both of them safe.

Black Sun, please let him be alright. I should never have left him alone …
But what choice had she had?

After a moment, Cam murmured something to Delphine and came to join Sierra. ‘Where else could he be?’ Cam said.

Not back towards the other camp. Rasten hated crowds, he hated the way they stared at him, thinking of all the things he’d done, all the things that were rumoured to have been done to him. ‘This way,’ she said, and set out in the other direction.

They’d gone only a hundred or so strides when Sierra saw an odd shape lying on the stones. It took her a long moment to recognise it as a human figure, naked and curled into a lax ball under the drawn-out shadows of the afternoon. Their skin was streaked with blood, thick rivulets that left their hide striped like a tiger’s pelt.

Sierra broke into a run, pebbles rolling and sliding under her feet.

It was a woman, clothed in nothing but matted black hair and drying blood. Sierra threw herself down beside the girl as a swift, hot stream of power rushed through her, making her gasp and shiver. It had been so long since she’d laid hands on anyone but Rasten or Isidro, she’d forgotten to be mindful of her touch. As the power flowed, the deep, burning throb that had spread throughout her body began to abate.
By the Black Sun herself,
Sierra thought.
I must be exhausted if I couldn’t tell it was coming from someone else, instead of my own flesh.
The girl’s skin was cool, and a pulse thrummed steadily beneath her fingertips. ‘She’s alive,’ she said to Cam as he crouched by her side.

‘What in the Fires Below has he done? Where’s she hurt? I can’t see any wounds …’

‘She’s not,’ Sierra said. The girl’s skin was unbroken.

‘But there’s blood everywhere! Where has it come from?’

‘I’m not sure … but she hasn’t been cut, Cam. She doesn’t seem to be injured at all.’ There were no signs of beating or rape, nothing but that deep, scorched feeling that Sierra’s touch had banished. ‘Let’s get her back to the shelter.’

Delphine bit her lip as she watched the pair go, but then she turned to Isidro, blinking back tears.

He was shockingly pale, his lips tinged blue and circles dark as bruises beneath his eyes. Hesitantly, she lifted the blankets again to peer at the bandages wrapped across his chest, afraid to imagine what had caused wounds that ran from his collarbone to the opposite hip.

Beneath the blanket, she caught another glimpse of the bandaged stump, and the vacant space where his forearm should have been. Delphine’s stomach lurched, and she laid the blanket down again and reached for his good hand, cradling it to her. ‘Oh, Issey,’ she murmured. ‘I was so afraid I’d never see you again …’ His fingernails were blue too.

‘He’s lost a lot of blood.’

The voice came from behind her, and Delphine froze. Her muscles turned to ice, and it took an effort to force herself to turn.

He stood a few feet away, gazing down at her with his hands restlessly clenching and unclenching.

It had to be Rasten. She’d spoken to him a few times, but she’d never laid eyes on the man who had tormented and tortured the man she loved. He was so young! Little more than a boy. He was handsome, too, with dark eyes and gently curling hair. Something in his eyes reminded her of Isidro, back when she had first seen him chained like a wild beast in the Battle-Mages’ tent. She’d read the pain in his eyes, the desperation, and to her shame she recalled how she’d shoved it aside, refusing to acknowledge the suffering of a fellow human being.

Delphine saw that same pain and desperation in Rasten’s eyes, but there was something else there besides … fear and anger and the fury of a forest fire raged within him, restrained beneath his skin.

‘You saved his life,’ Delphine said. ‘I … I wish there was some way to repay you.’

‘That debt was mine to pay, not yours,’ he said.

Delphine drew a ragged breath. She’d never been so close to a Blood-Mage before, and she could feel his power brushing against hers, like ants crawling over her skin. It made her feel like she had when she’d worked with Sierra in Demon’s Spire — she felt torn between wanting to run away, and the urge to take him under her wing like a lost child.