Brother red, p.29
Brother Red, page 29
I bow in thanks to the chief and we sit at the table. His crew are paying us little mind; they’ve got the linen bag of blocks open and are shaving off slivers to shred into their pipes.
“We will not stay long here and do not need to fuck. We go north with the slaves but don’t know the way. My first time.” My meaning is completed with gestures.
“You go to big camp,” says Ifmot. “Biggest camp. Two day, up, up. Maf take you.”
One of the men, must be Maf, on the table opposite the firepit from us, speaks in their lingo.
“What does he say?” I ask, for it is more than a simple “yes” to the command. I’m glad at least we’ll have a guide and glad that we’ll get to kill at least one of these fuckers out of sight.
“He will tell me of the army,” says Ifmot. “We smash the Flintre. We grow stronger.”
I share a look with Curic and Ensma sitting across from me.
“It is your army, in the mountains?” I ask. I immediately curse myself, for I ought to know what the vans are for.
“You don’t know about the camp?”
“I know the camp. I ask if it’s your army to command, to fight Flintre. It is not Marghoster’s army?” In for a copper, in for a gold.
“No, no.” He speaks nervously. “Marghoster promise land for us. Allies. Brothers.”
“Kings of the Spine!” shouts one of his crew from the same group as Maf. The others in the room shout it back. They say it awkwardly, like words they’ve heard but not understood.
The children bring over our plates, cuts of tuika on them. One returns moments later with two hard loaves. She’s hobbling, makes a show of placing the bread on the table, trembling as she does so.
“Thank you,” says Curic, who cannot look up at her for more than a moment. The anger’s rising in all of us, I can feel it. “We cannot fuck this up,” I hiss in Post lingo, for only Curic will know it. “We must make it to the camp, find those responsible.”
Ifmot leaves his chair. There’s a scream from a room behind us, which pleases him. He sits next to me, gestures for the boy who served us to come over. He does so quickly, stands next to Ifmot. He squeezes the boy’s buttocks. “Krsa. Go!
“We drink to Marghoster. Drink to army.” He begins packing his pipe, his fingers and reflexes slow with the drink and betony. It’s as though he forgets we are there, picking at the hot, greasy cuts of tuika while he shaves betony off one of the four-point blocks we’d given him and packs it into the bacca in the bowl. His attention returns to us after lighting his pipe with a candle from the table. He puts his hand on my thigh, then looks up and watches the thick smoke he’s exhaled rise lazily up. He squeezes.
“Strong, eh! Strong woman.” This was meant for the hall, and there’s some banging of cups as they watch us with a little more interest. I look over at Ensma, worried she’ll react, the disgust at these fellow Sathanti barely contained. Curic puts his arm around her, a gentle hand on her shoulder, signal enough that she should restrain herself.
Slowly, Ifmot moves his hand up my leg, watching my face as he does it. I look back at him; he’s hot with lust. Perhaps he knows that there’s nothing we can do to retaliate.
I put my hand on his, curl my fingers around it and lift his hand onto the table.
“Not today, Chief Ifmot. I will bring the van back.” I lean gently into him. “Then I will smoke your pipe, King of the Spine.”
This he takes the intended meaning of, his eyes widening with approval and pleasure. I put my hand on his, squeeze it gently. It works.
We endure the cup of krsa, a honeyed ale that we are duty bound to drink. He settles for putting his arm around my shoulder as he tells us of his plans for the kurches about his, but especially the Flintre, who will be wiped from the land and their kurchpoles burned. He tells us nothing will withstand this army. We encourage him along before refusing the offer of one of the rooms in his hall, telling him we need to keep watch on the slaves, for it is dusk. We return to the wagons in silence, Curic with his arm around Ensma who has suffered with what she saw there. We all suffered with it, but she has not seen the world, not seen what those who call themselves civilised are capable of, how seductive their wealth and vices are to such poor Sathanti as these.
The Master has made those pretending to be our slaves comfortable, for we are far enough from the Cargamun huts and in sufficient darkness that they could not raise a concern.
“Do you have the way?” he asks. Ufra is with him; she can sense we’re upset.
“We do. One of Ifmot’s crew will lead us. Two days north to a camp, they must be training an army, using the slaves for it.”
“For what purpose? This is a Farlsgrad army being trained in the Sathanti mountains?”
“Ifmot spoke of being an ally, that the Flintre would be overrun, and he made master over them. This must be Hildmir, seeking conquest, and he’s gone about it cleverly, stirring up trouble with the kurches in the mountains and the plains, stopping a Council being formed. He’s learned.”
“All his life King Hildmir’s shown no sign of desiring conquest. He’s dragging his people to war with the Sathanti. It’ll be bloody,” says Curic.
“I agree,” I say. “I can’t fathom it, but if he has the mountains, if the kurches up here are like this one, already in his service, then he might well sweep all resistance aside. The mountains resisted his forefathers, in part because Marghoster did not join them and so cost us Bridche our homeland.”
“You are Post. You are Brother Red,” says Ensma.
“The Post cannot get involved in this, the Post does not want it; it goes against our creed.”
“There’s plenty of profit in war, Fieldsman,” says Curic.
“For a while. But unlike some in the Post, I don’t see what we do as being about how many bags we can fill with coin for a few seasons. Fuck it, Curic, I don’t want this. I am Sathanti, for all I bear the name Marghoster about Farlsgrad. I want to stop this and I know Yblas would want that too.”
“What do we do about Ifmot?” Ensma this is, packing a pipe with some kannab. “He shames all us Sathanti.”
“Nothing yet.”
“This is wrong, Driwna. We should lay waste to this fucking place, throw every one of them off of those cliffs.”
“I would. But if one of them escapes to raise the alarm ahead, we’re too few to stop a barracks of soldiers if that’s what’s up there. We need surprise, we need to know what we’re up against or we’re all dead. Scar is up there and he’s fearsome enough. There are slaves here and ten times more there I’ll warrant. We must keep to the greater good, break them at their heart.”
“We leave allies of theirs behind us if we don’t kill them, Fieldsman,” says Curic.
“They are droopers,” says Ufra. “They are nothing. We will come back and kill them all.”
“Let’s get some rest, we’ve a long day ahead and I want to get out of this shithole as dawn comes. Curic, come with me.”
We walk a little way from the wagons, out of earshot.
“Everything all right, Fieldsman?”
“Yes and no. Yes, because I think this is the right thing to do for these people, and no, because we’re Post, and this no longer seems to have much to do with the Creed or the Post’s profit. You agreed to come with me to investigate what’s behind these vans, guard me and support me in that, but follow us tomorrow and you’re signing up for trouble – a proper fight I fear, unless Sillindar favours us greatly. This isn’t a crossroads purse.”
“I know, Fieldsman, but I’m with you. You and these Ososi, and that Oskoro. It’s all I can do not to get on my knees and thank you for the gift of meeting them. I never thought I’d live to see such a wonder as the Master, and your Ufra. My greatpa would sing me songs of them, yet in his they were not monsters, they were shepherds of the world, healers.” He remembers the words with a smile, holds up a hand to conduct the tune that’s in his head. “‘As I was dying, on a forgotten path lying, a flowergirl came to me. Your bones I’ll bind, if you’ll help me find, this forest’s Heartknot Tree.’” The memory brings tears to his eyes and to mine on seeing them, for I’d not heard this song in many years and I have said before how prone us soldiers are to the feelings and memories of home and family.
“You’re right, Fieldsman, Yblas is right, with this creed I’ve signed up to. This is what the Post must be for, if the Creed is to mean anything. I would give my life to see these Ososi live and prosper again, for they’ve shown me kindness and taught me recipes for which they’ve asked nothing in return.” I hug him. I’m glad he’s here when Cal cannot be, and I fear I’ll not see Cal again.
We walk back to the wagons and I look across at the Cargamun lodge. A kind of grief overcomes me, that such love and suffering can be close enough one could throw a blanket over both, whether it’s in this cold valley or the halls of kings.
Chapter 15
Driwna
The Cargamun, Maf, leads us north, past the waterfall that brings their river to them. As we walk the wagons up through the narrow pass, the Master puts his hands to the face of the rocks around us. He looks back at me, Ufra, the other Ososi and Oskoro, begins hugging himself, as though he’s grieving. The rock has been worked through here, but worked finely; the sides of the track are almost smooth. Who would or could take such care over the widening of a trail such as this? The stone beneath our feet, in the middle of the path, is a different colour to that at the sides, a dusky blue unlike the pale grey of the main path, polished by the years of boots and hooves.
I feel something too, a queasiness throughout me. Something isn’t right on this path and the whole crew are silent as we shepherd the wagons along. These hours are a chance to be with Ufra. She fears for her pa, fears too for her people when she has not yet got the Flower. I’m as helpless with her fears as she is with mine for my mun. She’s wiser than me, coaxing out our stories, mine and Curic’s. She asks question after question, lets us talk, the words a kind of river that she can stand in, making others feel better as well as herself.
At dawn on the second day, Ufra and I bring Maf some of the brin and lentil broth we’d been given by the Cargamun. We ask about the path ahead and he tells us of the old iron mines and quarry that the camp is set in. Once, the Cargamun moved iron from this quarry, south to the Flintre and along the Tongue. Bitterly, he tells us of their losing trade to cheaper iron, the betrayals of the confederacies about them, how it robbed them of their lives. The belly cramps start hurting him an hour later, the poison is deliberately slower than it need be and I fill his mouth with cotton and bind it to stop him screaming in his final hour.
The firs and spruce thicken and cover the bluffs about us, finding an uncanny purchase in the steep rock faces. There’s a stillness to these trees as we pass through, just crows scritching across the canopy, a lone thrush calling out. The Master halts the wagons before we pass out onto a glade of shale and rhododendron bushes, pink and red buds beginning to flower, lifting our mood in the mist surrounding us.
“We’ll scout ahead,” he says.
“Is it near?” I ask.
“I hear the camp, it is beyond the ridge at the far side of these raxmor.” This must be his lingo for the rhododendrons. “I need some Ososi, we climb more quickly, we will circle the quarry.” I look to our left and see a sharp drop, a cliff face that curls away from us. If the gates to the camp are straight ahead they’ll be able to bypass it and come to the lip of the quarry without being seen.
The rest of us that’s not chained to the wagons watch as they move like spiders across the rocks, signing to each other the handholds they find. I watch Ufra, who’s gone with them, thrilled by her strength, the fearlessness with which she makes her choices on the face of the cliff. The Master is every bit the wonder that so moves Curic, leaping to the handholds he sees till he finds the cliff’s edge some two hundred feet along from where we stand. Once he’s listened for anyone in the trees beyond, he uses rope to pull the others up that are still making their way across. They vanish into the trees.
It’s understandable that we’re all restless as we wait. There’s plenty of kannab on the van and it’s carefully portioned out. Curic and I pack our pipes and settle into its sweet and pungent smoke. We wait in silence and once I’ve knocked out my pipe I go through everybody’s packs, Ilkashun included, demanding they run through the pouches, vials, bags, pockets and scabbards, inspecting everything. Two there are who could not instantly put their finger on the plugweed they carried, one who needed to gum the lip of a sporebag that was getting dry. Many are nervous, and as I inspect their fieldbelts I ask them if they have family in the camp beyond, or if they know someone taken, or who it is they have at home, girding their will to the killing, to the necessary ruthlessness that will help them stone the Oskoro blood, thankfully far easier and more potent than the mulch we use in the Post, “the Amo”.
An hour or so later, against faint cries and an occasional note from a horn that rise from the quarry, the Master and Ufra scale the rocks back towards our position. As they arrive and stand before us, they look at each other and the Master tilts his head back, a surprise to us, for it seems he’s holding back tears.
“Driwna.” Ufra this is. She also struggles with how to begin. “Arrows. The others, the Oskoro and Ososi we’ve left on the other side of the quarry, they’ll need arrows. The quarry is in a kind of crescent, and over the ridge there is a high wall with the gates. There are no guards on the far side where we’ve left our kin, for the land there is either impassable or else cliffs. They’ll not expect attacks from that side. There are caves in the quarry, iron bars over their mouths, pens about the foot of the quarry where the bloomeries would have been. Near the gates are the tents and huts of the drudhas, captains, merchants. It’s big, Driwna. Hundreds of slaves are there, soldiers.” Her breath catches as she recounts what she’s seen.
“I am no soldier, Driwna Bridche,” says the Master, filling the moment that Ufra’s needed to compose herself. “But if the wagons would be led down to the foot of the quarry and you begin a fight there, with the bowmanship of my Oskoro and an attack on the gate to follow, we confuse and disorientate any attempt at a defence. We may stand a chance.”
“It is good reasoning,” says Curic.
“How do we know our prisoners will need to be led with the wagons down to the foot of the quarry and not held up near the gate where many of the guards would be?”
“The rock has been hewn wide enough for wagons, as would have been necessary for the iron they once mined,” says Ufra. “It may be that the guards can be persuaded to let you lead them down because of the dangerous nature of the Ososi we have in the wagons. The drudhas are down there. I saw tents against the bloomeries that survived; they’re being used for whatever they’re doing to the slaves. They’ll want my Ososi there.”
For a moment I wanted to ask why she implied she would not be with me at the head of the wagon, but she’s too obviously an Ososi for that to work.
“There were sounds from the caves there, howls of pain. I do not know what lies in them that has to be caged so,” says the Master. “You should do what you can to observe, and sign as such if you can do it without being observed.”
“I will. I think we should go now, for they might not take us down to the drudhas if the drudhas are back near the gate at night for whatever food and entertainment is made in such a place for those who work it.”
“I’ll gather up arrows,” says Ensma.
“Driwna,” says Ufra, “tell them to stay calm. What we saw in there, it’s not easy to see.”
“I will, love.” I hold her for a few moments, breathe her in, kiss her. “Stay alive, Driwna-wen.”
“Our song thrives, the Oskoro say. We will live.”
“We will. Sillindar follow you.”
I go to the wagons and speak with the soldiers there. We’ll begin the killing on my signal, the Oskoro archers will wait for it, and one will shoot a fire arrow into the sky to signal the Master, Ufra, her three Ososi not in the wagons and four of the Ilkashun to attack the gate. The rest will be with me.
We leave the Oskoro chief to distribute the arrows to his crew, one of whom goes back to the cliff face to take quivers to the other Ososi and Oskoro hidden above and behind the quarry. Then we start moving the wagons through the glade and up the slope. The noise grows as we approach; screaming, shouting. As we crest the ridge a horn blows from the wall. Ahead of us are giant gates, a portcullis is down. The wall is made of the stone of the quarry, smooth and strong as a castle wall, another strange and unnerving sight in such a barren place. My breath quickens. If the baby Oskoro girl has been brought into the mountains, then it’s here I’ll find her, it’s here she waits to be held again.
About the gate are tents, twenty or so, and there’s no cover between here and there. I fear for Ufra’s crew making this ground up and getting over that wall. I have to hope our distraction is enough to draw the lookouts down inside. One of the tents outside the gates is a pavilion, though the others are all smaller, and all are weather-worn. There are some fires about and we pass some shit pits. This is a long-established camp.
I look over to our left where the wall ends at the edge of the cliff; I see one of our Oskoro move through the trees, but there are no guards at that end of the battlement.
“Why the fuck is such a wall needed here?” asks Curic. It’s a question we can’t answer. It makes no sense.
Then the smell joins the noise. Disease, shit, rotting meat. It’s a stench as heavy as the deck of a whaler at work on one of those giant beasts. The horn rouses those in the tents. Two soldiers appear from the pavilion, no fieldbelts, putting on woollen shirts. A curt whistle brings out a mountain of a woman who leans on a thick staff, hand on hip. She whistles, shrill and clear as a bird, and her whores step out from the tent and line up. It’s sad to watch them summon the strength to raise their chins and look us straight on. Some glance nervously at their master, who is rapping the staff on the ground. The soldiers walk forward with her. The other tents spawn men, women and children in a frantic rush to fill empty tables with their dried plant, cooker’s potions, kegs they weren’t expecting to need until the evening, along with all manner of worn-out robes and leggings and boots, most likely from those enslaved.
