By evening they had left the watery flatlands behind and were back on drier if more hilly ground. From the summit of the nearest hillock Rothir could already see the Darkburn begin its long slow curve towards the south. Eventually it would double completely on itself, not once but twice, before surging south and east again, making for the sea.
On the far side of those vast loops of river lay the lands around Caervonn. Within the protection of the first bend, the stonemen had their hideouts, but exactly where was anybody’s guess. The river was uncrossable at most points; and the forest all but impenetrable.
However, the stonemen had a few well-defended crossing points, where the waters slowed and broadened and boats could be manoeuvred over them. Rothir knew that some were not too far from here, so he was not surprised when shortly before dusk he saw the tracks of stonemen. The only surprise was that these were the first that he had found.
The rope-soled footprints were unmistakable: about a dozen stonemen had passed this way since the last heavy rain. They were heading south towards the river, maybe after giving up the search for the Riders. He hoped so, and did not point the footprints out to Yaret, since she appeared not to have noticed them.
They halted for the night in a dip between hillocks, the best shelter that offered itself. Although the ground was dry enough, the chill thin breeze of evening warned of the approaching autumn. He wished it would hold off a little longer; but Yaret at least did not seem to feel the cold.
“I’m used to it,” she said. After her cloak had been incinerated by the darkburn, she had produced a spare one from her pack, and now she unparcelled from amongst her woollen samples a finely woven blanket to wrap around Eled. Despite its lightness it was remarkably warm to the touch.
“Made with goat hair,” Yaret said, with a wistful reverence that made Rothir think it must be her most valuable piece of goods. Eled smiled and nodded as he pulled it round his shoulders; yet he looked worn out with the slow labour of this journey.
They feasted on stale bread and Rothir’s tough dried meat. There was probably abundant game to be shot nearby – he had seen the spoor of deer and, more worryingly, wolves and moorhounds – but he felt no inclination to waste time trying to hunt any of it down.
“Tomorrow we should reach the Gyr Tarn,” he told Yaret, “which is a lake within those westward hills that you can see. There I think I shall have to leave you with Eled and go more swiftly on alone to meet my friends. But there is good shelter at the tarn: there are deep, dry caves, and streams with clean water, and it’s a long way from the forest.”
She merely nodded and went back to tending Eled’s leg. The man’s young face looked old and lined, and while she applied fresh star-moss to his leg, she began to sing to him. It was some low, soothing chant: a lullaby perhaps, and reminded Rothir unexpectedly and painfully of his own mother. She must have sung one like it, long ago, before she left.
Once Eled appeared to be asleep Yaret stood up and gave her twilight greeting to the donkeys, feeding them a meagre handful of oats. Meanwhile Rothir rubbed the horses down despite his own fatigue. He was worried about the strain the double load was putting onto Narba. It could not be good for his horse, carrying two riders day after day.
Perhaps he would have to risk mounting Eled on Poda instead… But no. The mare was still too liable to be startled, veering or stopping suddenly. The risk to Eled was too great.
Let tomorrow’s problems wait until tomorrow. He set himself to sleep.
It was a broken night, punctuated by the faint rasping shrieks of moorhounds: thankfully they were far away. Between his few hours of sleep Rothir was calculating times and distances. How long would it take to carry Eled to the Gyr Tarn on this uneven ground? He turned over restlessly.
“Could you send a signal to your friends?” asked Yaret in a whisper in the dark. “Smoke, perhaps?”
“They might think smoke meant a darkburn,” he murmured back. “And it would have to be a big fire for smoke to travel far enough.” He did not add the objection that to him was obvious: any signal that could be seen by his friends would also be visible to enemies. “We still have many miles to go,” he added. “Try to sleep now.”
Then he lay awake some more worrying about Yaret. He was grateful for her willingness to help although he did not fully understand it. For some reason she had volunteered for this journey, and had not baulked at the prospect of being left to care for Eled on her own. Until today she had shown no sign of weakness. Yet he doubted her resilience; not because she was a female, but because she was a village pedlar with no experience of fighting or of stonemen.
And those unshed tears beside the pool could signal that she had had enough. He knew that she was tired: she had her own timetable to keep to, and might well still decide to just abandon Eled if the journey became too difficult or strayed too far from her route home. Could he blame her? No. But he would.
When he woke, however, Yaret was already up and performing her usual morning ritual. When she turned to greet him she appeared eager to move on. If it was a pretence, it was a good one.
Eled, by contrast, was exhausted and could scarcely eat the biscuit that was offered him. In one way this made Rothir’s decision easier: he would definitely leave them both at the Gyr Tarn.
It was a long trudge through a drab, scrubby, bumpy land, much inhabited by tenacious flies. He expected at any time to see the tracks of stonemen – or the men themselves.
The bumps in the ground became mounds, then small hills, growing ever steeper and higher. At last, as they rounded one, the true hills south of the Gyr revealed themselves, suddenly much closer than before. Their barren slopes appeared as grey and smooth as lead, although they were actually clad with stony scree that slid treacherously beneath the feet. But he would not need to cross the hills that way.
“How far is this lake you spoke of?” asked Yaret.
“Not much further. In fact, you can see it now. That’s a corner of the tarn just edging into view.” The still water, mirroring the hills, looked like polished metal. He was impatient to reach it. All the same, they had to stop twice more for Eled to lie down on the ground and rest.
“I don’t think he can take much more of this,” said Yaret in an undertone, while Eled lay drowsing. His fingers and eyelids fluttered. “No matter how great his courage, no man can defeat his body indefinitely.”
“I know. I’m driving him too hard. But we’re almost there now.”
“Leave us here, and ride on to your friends,” she said.
“It’s not safe here. It’s too exposed.” Rothir gazed to the hills north of the tarn, greener and more rugged than those to the south. That way lay his path. They had perhaps three miles to go to reach the water and the shelter of the caves.
He knew those caves well: one made a particularly good resting-place, with its entrance hidden in a deep clough – as narrow as an alleyway – where a thin waterfall hurtled down towards the tarn. Inside, the cavern had been worked by miners long ago, hunting for copper: the blue-tinged rocks could still be found strewn around the deserted lake. In the high-roofed cave they had created, there was room enough for twenty people and even for a dozen horses, if you could only persuade them to go in.
“One last haul,” he urged. “Then you and Eled can rest, while I go on.”
“How long will it take you to find your friends?”
“A matter of hours. It is only another five miles or so, but some of the terrain is hard.” He pointed northward of the tarn. “Up there is a pass that leads between those hills and over high ground to an area of tall crags. One of those crags is called the thumb; if you saw it you would know why. At the base of the thumb is our rendezvous. It’s easy to remain hidden there, yet there are long views in all directions.”
“And you’ll bring your friends back here to find us?”
“As quickly as possible,” he promised.
“And then what?”
“And then… we have some other friends further to the north, where we might be able to take Eled,” said Rothir.
“How far?”
“A good distance.” There was no need to mention Farwithiel. The name would mean nothing to Yaret, and in any case they would send her on her way home before they reached that stage. She asked no more questions, but merely nodded and got ready to remount.
“I’ll go up behind Eled again,” said Rothir. “You take Poda.”
“All this is hard on your horse.”
“It is. But Narba will be able to rest soon; I’ll ride Poda onward once we reach the Gyr tarn.”
On these bare hillsides the cold wind nudged and tweaked them, insinuating itself into his clothes. He worried that despite his cloak and blanket Eled was growing chilled. As they made the final descent towards the water, he had to hold the young man up. Eled seemed barely conscious; he would slump, and then struggle to sit straighter for a few brief moments before beginning to collapse again.
Rothir glanced back. Yaret was not far behind, glancing back herself at the laden donkeys which plodded slowly after them at a distance. It seemed the donkeys were enjoying this journey no more than he was. Then Eled began to slump again, so that he had to concentrate on holding him upright.
It was Yaret who alerted him.
“Rothir. I think there’s something moving over there.”
He looked south, and cursed. “You’re right. It’s a group of people.”
“Yours?”
“No.” Even at this distance he could see the red of their tunics. The stonemen did not bother to disguise themselves. The group was too far away to count accurately; it might hold about a dozen. Stonemen tended to travel in squads of ten or more.
And that dark blotch in front of them… He knew without being able to see it clearly that it was a darkburn.
If we can see them, they can see us. But there was no other path that they could take down to the tarn. His only hope was that they themselves were better camouflaged both by the drabness of their gear and by the roughness of the land along their trail. They would not stand out against the hillside: but that was the best that could be said for their position.
They had just one last mile left to go. Yet it would surely be only a matter of time before they were observed. He thought they could not have been spotted yet, because the distant group was not moving quickly. The stonemen were on foot but would be marching much more speedily if they had already seen their prey.
He could not spur the horse on any faster. Even the donkeys had caught him up. His mind was moving more swiftly than his steed.
“They’re stonemen,” he told Yaret. In front of him he felt Eled stiffen. “But I don’t think that they have seen us yet.”
“What can we do?” she asked.
“From the cave it’ll be possible to hold them off: its narrow entrance means they can’t attack more than one or two at a time. Give me Poda’s right-hand saddle-bag.”
She unstrapped it and handed it over.
“Now you will ride to the rendezvous,” he told her. “Turn left at this mound and you’ll see where you need to follow the pass over the hills. Watch out for bogs in the moorland. You can’t miss the crags or the thumb. Find my troop and tell them we will be inside the Gyr cavern.”
Her eyes were wide. But after a second all she said was, “How will I know them? What are their names?”
“Tiburé is the leader. Parthenal. Arguril. Maeneb. Now go.”
Still she hesitated. “But how will they know that they can trust me?”
“Say… say the dwarf sent you.” She blinked in bafflement. “Go!”
Yaret kicked at Poda’s flanks to drive the mare ahead. She turned round only once to say, “Look after the donkeys!” and added something in her own tongue which he assumed was meant for the donkeys themselves.
“Rothir,” said Eled, his voice full of doubt.
“Yes, I know.” He watched her disappear round the bend of the track. By the time he reached it himself, Poda was already moving ahead in a swift trot towards the pass, hooves scraping and rattling on the stones. He almost shouted to Yaret to be careful. But there was no time to be careful.
There was no time for anything. He urged Narba on and his horse began to scramble downhill, struggling to find a good footing on the stony ground.
“Can you stay on if I dismount and lead him?” asked Rothir.
“Yes,” said Eled. “Stonemen?”
“They haven’t seen us yet.” But of this he could no longer be sure. When he glanced that way, he thought that they had speeded up.
At least Eled was fully awake now, so that he stayed more or less securely on Narba’s back as Rothir led the horse down to the tarn’s still shores. Only one long, slow ripple crossed the water: the legacy of some unseen fish.
He guided Narba to the narrow valley cut into the hillside with its thin tumbling stream. Up that stone crevice, two yards from the stream, was the entrance to the cavern. It was concealed until you came right up to it.
Narba seemed to recognise the place and walked up to the cave without needed to be persuaded. The two donkeys did not want to follow. They stopped by the stream, and let Rothir unload their packs, only to shy away when he tried to urge them towards the cavern. Instead they kicked and frisked their way back down the valley to the cold waters of the tarn.
He took the packs inside. Then he helped Eled descend in a controlled fall from the horse before carrying him in his arms through the narrow entrance, into the echoing shadows. It occurred to him that he might be walking into a tomb.
He shrugged the thought away and settled Eled on a dry section of the earthen floor. Narba walked sedately in behind him; but by the time Rothir went out again to look for the donkeys, they had disappeared.
Probably gone after Yaret, he thought. Well, he wasn’t going to venture into open view to hunt for them; and he couldn’t keep them safe in any case. If the stonemen saw them, they might take them for wild donkeys… provided they hadn’t already marked them earlier on, walking behind the horses.
The stonemen might know about the Gyr cave: or they might not. But he had to assume the worst. And he had to be ready. He unsheathed his sword and stood it up against the wall inside the entrance.
“Sword,” said Eled, and although Rothir knew it could be of no practical use, he fetched his friend’s sword and laid it by his side. Then he propped Eled up to give him a drink of water.
“Now what?” breathed Eled.
“Now we wait.”
He had, he thought, perhaps half an hour at most before the stonemen reached him.
At least an hour for Yaret to find the other Riders of the Vonn. Probably more like two. Another hour for them to return here.
That was assuming she got there at all. It was not an easy path through all the bogs and crags, especially for an inexperienced rider on a nervous horse. Once more he wondered if she might just decide to abandon the task; would she consider Poda a fair exchange for her two donkeys?
No. She wouldn’t leave the donkeys.
They are the only things to hold her to her word, he thought, with a sudden sinking of his heart. If they were here, she would return for them. But once the donkeys catch up with her, there is nothing to bring her back. No reason for her to find Parthenal and the others. She can go home, or go wherever she likes. I really needed to hold on to those donkeys…
Well, now it was too late.