Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 23

  Perhaps that was what made him so pale and unhealthy-looking?

  And evil tempered.

  It didn’t affect his speed or skill, though.

  Aulus shrugged into the cloak and turned at the sound of a broken twig, loud enough to sound even over the rain. The taller maid was walking across towards him from the tent – the one with the missing eye, who’d been quite pretty until Halfdan started to work on her. Still she was quite a looker if you tried to ignore the eye. Aulus felt stirrings and wondered if he would be allowed to have her when they got back and the maids were no longer important. That would go a little way to making up for this onerous duty.

  The maid – Nisha, he remembered – was smiling at him, which was slightly disconcerting with that empty orb. The smile only reached one eye. He shivered, but the sensation was not entirely unpleasant.

  ‘The mistress sent me to speak to you,’ the maid murmured quietly in her sultry Pelasian accent. Aulus felt suddenly quite warm, despite being soaked with cold rain. He smiled warily and opened his mouth to reply when something sank through his soggy, spongy, sleep-deprived brain and forced his brow to crease.

  How did she get here when she was supposed to be manacled and chained to a piton with her mistress? Brow still furrowed in tired confusion, his eyes lifted to her shoulder and then widened. The empress was visible only as a rapidly-retreating figure in dirty purple and white, sprinting from the tent in the opposite direction, making for the river.

  Aulus felt panic enfold him. The empress was escaping and it would be his fault!

  He knew what Halfdan did to punish failure…

  The first two times he shouted the alarm, his throat was too scratchy and hoarse to be heard above the rain, but he put two fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill whistle that drew the attention of the whole camp.

  ‘The empress!’ he bellowed. ‘The empress is escaping!’ He looked back and forth in worry between the maid and her mistress. He should run after the empress, but would he then suffer for leaving the maid free?

  He almost shat himself as Halfdan appeared seemingly out of nowhere, right next to his shoulder, his face thunderous. ‘Where?’

  Shaking uncontrollably, Aulus lifted his spear and pointed to the distant figure even now descending the river bank. The white-haired monster fixed Aulus with a look of angry disgust. ‘Stay here. Watch her!’ Then he waved an arm to the general company who were now all up and grabbing weapons. ‘After her. Ten gold coins and a night with the maid to the man who recaptures her!’

  Aulus felt the last shreds of hope dying away. Now he would not get extra money, he would not get the girl, and he would probably be beaten for letting the damn Pelasian bitch get away. He still couldn’t figure out how she’d got the chain off.

  As the entire camp pounded off after the empress, Aulus, utterly despondent, turned to the one-eyed maid. ‘Show me your hands.’

  She did as she was bidden, raising them, and he was both horrified and fascinated. The maid had broken her thumb and all her fingers more than once so that her mangled paw would fit through the manacle. That took some guts. How had she not screamed enough to wake the entire camp? He opened his mouth to speak to her, but then everything went wrong.

  Jala padded lightly across the wet grass, feeling the odd restriction of Zari’s dress, for the traitorous maid was thinner than her and the clothes were just a little restrictive. A quick glance towards the river and she could just see the guards racing away into the darkness. Ahead, the man left to watch them was close to Nisha, examining her hands.

  As Jala closed on the man, her movement masked by the constant hiss of rain, she raised her manacled hand, the long chain wrapped around her forearm to prevent it dragging and clanking, and brought down the heavy iron piton – the spike that had anchored them to the grass until Zari managed to dig and lever it out with the piece of timber she had stolen – hard across the guard’s skull. As he fell to his knees, gurgling and swiftly passing from consciousness, she contemplated wrapping the chain around the man’s neck and throttling the rest of the life from him, or driving the point of the piton into his brain, but she instantly dismissed the idea.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed, grabbing Nisha and making a beeline for the trees nearby.

  ‘Kill him,’ replied Nisha, a vicious edge to her voice.

  ‘No time. Come on.’

  Ignoring the maid’s protestations, Jala yanked her on to the relative safety of the woods. The oppressive, gloomy edge of the forest loomed and the canopy was visible rising up the side of the wide valley. It was their best opportunity to lose the guards, for Halfdan and his men would soon learn their folly. As if on cue to remind her of what Zari had sacrificed, a blood-curdling scream rent the night from the direction of the river. The treacherous maid had paid the final price for her deceit. As she ran, Jala cast up the briefest of prayers to the goddess Astara that Zari be redeemed in the afterworld. Nisha’s face showed less compassion as her feet pounded across the sodden grass, her jaw set angrily, her one eye burning with vengeful ire.

  It was with a great sigh of relief that Jala passed the gnarled trunk of the first old oak tree and entered the almost pitch-dark gloom of the woodland.

  ‘Where do we go?’ Nisha asked. ‘Where will we be safe?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ Jala replied darkly. ‘Halfdan is too clever by half, and both he and several of his men seem to be trackers and hunters. They’ll be familiar with following trails through all sorts of terrain. Our only bonus is that they will not be able to enter the forest on horseback, so we have a little head start. We try and confuse our trail and then find the most secret place to stay until it gets light, since it’s treacherous moving in this place in the dark.’

  Nisha nodded her agreement. Woodlands were anathema to her, as they were to the empress, having been born and raised in the scrub and desert lands west of Akkad. There a forest was any place with more than four trees, and green was an almost magical colour, it was so rare in nature. They may all have been in the empire for years now, but still they tended to avoid forests. Plus, these superstitious old northerners were always telling legends of monsters and half-gods in their woods, and neither woman had the desire to meet a half-goat, half-man creature and be beguiled into living their life as part of a tree.

  ‘How do we confuse the tracks?’ the maid enquired as they carefully picked their way over roots and through scrub.

  Jala wasn’t entirely sure. She had little enough experience in this terrain. Peering down and back, she noted with dismay the obvious trail they had left through the leaf mould, tangled plants, sticks and mud. It would not require a hunter to follow that. A confused donkey could follow that.

  ‘Water,’ she said with certainty. ‘If we can find water, we cannot leave a trail through it. It will wash away signs of our passing.’ Another thought struck her. ‘And rock. If we can find rock, we’ll pass across it with just footprints that the rain will clear for us. So keep your eye out for water and rock.’

  The two women ran on up the gentle slope in almost darkness, regularly pausing to extricate themselves from tangles, floundering against trees or slipping and falling, each helping the other back up so they could run on blindly. Where they were going was a moot point. For now they just had to get safely away from their captors. Still, Jala had selected the woods for more than just protection. They lay to the east and, far beyond them and the Nymphaean Sea, so did Velutio and her husband. It would be easy to get turned around in the forest, but as long as they kept climbing they were going in the right direction. When they reached the top of the great hill, they would try to get their bearings.

  Suddenly, Nisha disappeared with a cry and Jala teetered to a halt. The maid had crested a rise in the darkness and found herself suddenly stepping into space. Below, a long scree slope descended to a stream which fell in short cataracts from high up before meandering off through the trees, presumably to feed the river where Zari would now be lying, dead. Nisha managed to arrest h
er fall a third of the way down the slope and carefully rose, using her good hand, now badly scraped. She tottered for a moment and almost fell again, but steadied herself.

  ‘Good,’ called Jala. ‘This should help. Try and make it along to the third fall. Can you see it?’

  Nisha peered off at the stream and focused in the shadows. The scree slope meant that here there were no trees and the gloom was less oppressive, though the constant driving rain made it almost as difficult to make out details. Finally, the maid nodded and began to carefully pick her way around the gentle curve, stones skittering away constantly from under her feet. The noise on a good day would carry far enough to make them easy to track, but the blessed rain would help cover such sounds.

  With great care, Jala began to descend the slope until she was perhaps 15 feet below the lip where Nisha had fallen. Happy that she was far enough down, she began to slowly pick her way along, wincing at every slide of scree that clattered down to the stream below. Several times she lost her footing and almost fell, recovering her balance at the last moment with bellows-breath and wide eyes.

  It felt like the work of a lifetime, slowly – so slowly – making their way around the scree slope. Nisha had something of a head start from her fall and was ahead, though every time she slipped and almost fell it took her long to rise and move on, and each time the shriek of pain cut through Jala like a knife. Because every fall she had to put one or both hands to the scree to prevent tumbling away down the slope. One of her hands she had ruined to free them from their chains, and the other would now have been shredded by the scree in her tumble. Jala would owe Nisha for the rest of her life for all she had done.

  Abruptly, galvanizing her into further speed, she heard noises back across the woodland. A momentary lull in the rain – just 20 heartbeats – revealed the distant sound of shouted discussion. She could identify the rough direction and with sinking spirits realized they were directly behind. Clearly Halfdan had good trackers, for she was sure they were already on her trail.

  She slid suddenly, dropping another ten feet down the slope before regaining her balance. The sound of pebbles and dirt tumbling on down the steep slope to the stream below was to her almost deafening. Fortunately the rain had picked up in pace once more and she could only hope that it had been loud enough to cover the sound of her slip.

  Gritting her teeth, she moved on carefully, but as fast as she dared. It felt as though she had been stepping across scree the entire night by the time she finally felt solid stone beneath her feet. Even then, the stone was wet and treacherous, and a single slip could send her tumbling on down the waterfalls. Nisha was waiting a few paces away, leaning back against a wet rock, breathing heavily and with relief.

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ Jala said, not unkindly, and gestured up the slope. The maid’s eye widened.

  ‘You can’t be thinking that, mistress?’

  ‘They will assume us to have crossed the stream or descended the valley.’

  ‘Because only a madwoman would attempt to climb it.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Though Nisha was shaking her head, Jala felt sure it was the only way. They needed to keep ascending the hill, and a logical pursuer would follow the stream down, looking for where the tracks started again. Clenching her teeth, the empress began to clamber up the slimy rocks, moving to the centre where the water fell and battered her as she struggled, her limbs heavy with cold, her fingers numb to the point of insensibility as she felt for edges to cling onto, hauling herself ever upward, her tracks non-existent as the torrent of water all around her cleared them. Behind, Nisha was now pulling herself up the steep cataract.

  Like the scree slope, the ascent was interminable. The tumbling stream was louder even than the endless rain, and Jala could hear nothing but the roar of water and the rhythmic, all-too-fast pounding of her heart. Even shouted conversation between the two of them would be impossible, which unfortunately also meant she could no longer hear their pursuers, which added a nerve-wracking uncertainty to the whole thing.

  They passed the first fall and paused to get their breath before even attempting the next two. The empress glanced across the slope to the lip where they had both first appeared. From this position, there were tracks in the scree that seemed horribly obvious, but she could only hope that they would be less visible from above, given the angle.

  ‘Let’s move,’ she said, half expecting Nisha to argue, but the maid simply nodded. How she was managing with her mangled hand, Jala couldn’t imagine, but sure enough, as they climbed the second-highest waterfall, the maid gave a cry of pain and slipped. As she fell back, Jala reached down and caught her good hand. The jerk as the maid’s fall was arrested almost pulled the empress from the rock too, and her fingers, cold though they were, felt as though they were on fire as they clung onto a lip in the stone and her other hand gripped Nisha’s bloodied palm, embedded with grit from her fall. How she had managed thus far was astounding. Jala felt proud of her Pelasian friend, but also worried for her.

  Slowly, she helped Nisha upright once more and when the maid gave her a nod of confirmation, she finally let go and paused to let strength return in small measure to her arms. Perhaps it had been foolish to climb the falls? Still, they were almost halfway there, now.

  Jala flattened herself to the rock at a shout that cut through the hiss and roar. Her roving eye caught a figure at the top of the slope, exactly where they had crossed. Beneath her, Nisha stilled, recognizing that something was wrong. The empress could see the figure only as a vague shape in the gloom, visible between the spray and fall of water that hopefully hid her from view. It hovered there for a moment, then shouted and gestured down the slope with a waving arm before retreating back into the gloom.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Nisha hissed from below.

  ‘I think he’s seen our tracks. We have to go. Now. Fast.’

  Ignoring the numb cold in her limbs, Jala threw herself into the climb, scrambling upward, passing the spout of the next waterfall and scurrying up to the final ascent. Nisha somehow managed to keep up with her, struggling along behind, and the empress began to count her heartbeats as she rose, 137 signalled the top of the torrent. She pulled herself over the last rock and reached down to help Nisha up, the two of them falling to the wet stone and huddling together in relief, shaking in unison with cold and nerves.

  Another call, and suddenly there were three figures at the far side of the scree slope. There was no doubt that they were on the trail, then. Jala pressed herself back against the rock, hoping that the combination of distance, falling water and shadow would keep them from view. More figures appeared at the lip, and the familiar shining white hair of Halfdan was among them. The leader gestured several times with his hand and two men began to descend the scree with difficulty, another two edging around the top and the rest descending the hill the other way, around the upper edge of the scree. Halfdan was taking no chances, clearly. Fortunately, most of them were concentrating on the bottom end of the cataract vale, and only two were moving upward, but they might well end up cutting off the two women if they didn’t move.

  ‘We have to go.’

  ‘What if they see us move?’ Nisha hissed.

  ‘If we don’t, those two will get ahead of us.’

  Nodding, the maid rose unsteadily, and the two Pelasians began to hurry up the wet stones and scurry, keeping as low as they could, into the treeline. Once more, after another 20 heartbeats, they were in the relative safety of the trees.

  ‘What now?’

  Jala looked around her. In truth, she wasn’t sure. Now they would start to leave a trail again, and with two men closing on them, that was a dangerous thing to do. She was so dispirited and uncertain that she missed it the first time, and it was only on her second circle that she spotted the cave.

  ‘There!’

  Nisha turned to where the empress’s finger pointed. It wasn’t much. A dark hollow beneath the gnarled roots of an old tree, high enough and wid
e enough to accommodate two people hunched over or kneeling, and deep enough, hopefully, to conceal them from casual view. Better still, it was close enough to the rocks of the stream that there was hardly space to leave a trail. The maid nodded and the two women crossed to the place and peered inside. Her initial fears that the cave was home to wolves or a bear, or even some dreadful legendary forest monster, proved to be unfounded. The cave was only a dozen feet deep and showed no signs of habitation and, most relieving of all, no hint of gnawed bones. Carefully and quietly the two women squatted and edged back into the darkness.

  Over the din of water falling both from the sky onto the leaves of the trees and down the sequence of falls into the vale below, Jala caught the sound of shouts. Motioning to Nisha she shrank back into the black of the cave as best she could. Sure enough, the two men who’d gone round the top of the slope emerged from the trees some distance away, deep in discussion. Jala held her breath, shivering like the maid beside her.

  ‘…says we’re to head back to camp,’ muttered one of the figures.

  ‘Now?’ asked the other in surprise.

  ‘We might have missed their trail in the dark and the wet. When it gets light we’ll pick up their tracks. They’ll not lose us for long. Come on. We don’t want to piss off Halfdan.’

  ‘I’ve no wish to be face to face with the boss so soon,’ shouted the second man, and Jala realized with a start that this was the guard she’d hit over the head with the piton. Clearly Nisha had been correct and she should have finished the man off after all.