The Two of Swords: Part 14 Read Free

of a way with only nine arrows,” Verjan said.
    “Which is a damn good reason for staying clear of the Ironshirts. Come on, nobody’s asking you to walk. And once we get down off these mountains it’s all grassland, right down to the sea, everybody knows that. It’s a soft, fat country, full of soft, fat people. It’ll be a stroll, you’ll see.”
    There was no road south. Instead, there was a mountain. Conselh reckoned they could probably lead the horses up it, but nobody agreed with him; the only alternative was to go round it. Conselh refused to take the road east, so they went west, the way they’d come.
    “Leave it to the horses,” Conselh said, “they can smell water.”
    Maybe there wasn’t any water to smell. Nor was there any end to the mountain; beyond what they’d seen was a second range, hidden by the first. “We’ll be back to Rasch Cuiber at this rate,” Verjan said, and nobody laughed. To the north, however, the mountains subsided into moorland. “You don’t want to go up there,” Conselh advised, “it’s bloody cold, we’ll freeze.” To Chanso, wiping sweat out of his eyes, that didn’t sound so bad.
    But it was cold at night, of course. There was nothing to burn, so they took the saddle blankets off the horses and tried to wrap up in them. Not much help.
    Folha shot a kite. “There’s not much meat on the buggers but it’s better than nothing,” he declared. A long, thirsty search found them a withered thorn bush, over which they roasted the kite. Its flesh was hard, bitter and stringy. Conselh declared that he’d had worse, and they’d grow to like it.
    “For all we know we’re practically at the end,” Conselh said, surveying the southern mountains, stretching from one horizon to the other. “If we go on just a bit further, there we’ll be. I don’t remember there being mountains all the way from Rasch Cuiber.”
    The trouble was, none of them had been paying much attention on the way from Rasch to the big battle. They all had a vague recollection of mountains away to the south, but where they’d started and whether there were gaps in them, nobody could say for sure. Conselh said he could picture it clear as anything in his mind. There was a huge great gap, rolling green downs as far as the eye could see. Verjan remembered it as a solid wall of rock. Chanso was fairly sure Conselh was right; he’d seen grasslands at some point, and he was fairly sure they’d been on the lower side of the road, but the image in his mind was uncertain; at times, it looked disconcertingly like the summer pastures back home, and at others he was sure there had been mountains on the other side. But maybe not; perhaps he was confusing the second day with the fifth, or something like that. He couldn’t actually remember how long they’d taken to get from Rasch Cuiber to the battle. He’d been riding with the wagons, in any case, and had spent most of his time chatting with the drivers.
    “Why the hell did we come this way?” Verjan said loudly to the back of Conselh’s neck. “What we should be doing is heading back to Choris Anthropou. Instead, we’re going in the opposite direction, deeper into enemy territory. Anyone want to explain that to me?”
    Nobody seemed to want to answer. Conselh had gone quiet, ever since Verjan started moaning. Whether he was just angry or whether he had no good answer, Chanso couldn’t tell; half and half, he guessed. He didn’t want to go south any more, he wasn’t sure it was even possible. It was pretty obvious that Folha and Verjan had been right all along. But Conselh couldn’t be wrong, could he? He seemed so wise and so strong, and how stupid it’d be to turn back now, if they were only a short way from the gap, which Conselh was absolutely sure he’d seen.
    They found one little spring; they had to lie on their stomachs and lap like dogs. Folha shot off all nine arrows at kites, and they only found eight of them.
    That night, while Conselh