‘He’ll be back,’ he said, his words strangely distant and echoing.
Mara felt a warm wetness at her face and wiped at it to find a smear of blood across her sleeve. ‘What …?’
Then they were running, she half stumbling. They pushed through a bamboo grove. The stalks seemed to multiply and waver in Mara’s blurred vision. Things moved among them, inhuman eyes bright with intelligence and menace. After this, Leuthan half carrying her, the ground rose up to almost meet her.
In fact, the ground was rising. Leuthan was labouring up a steep slope, pulling her along by her waist, scrambling on all fours.
Large hands took her and she found herself squinting up at the tall wide figure of Petal. ‘I am spent,’ she gasped, blinking to clear her vision.
‘You look it,’ he murmured.
‘We’re gathered?’
‘Most of us, yes.’ He directed her attention to the left. Halfway down the dirt slope of the butte-like rise they occupied stood Skinner. He alone still wore his armour: the ankle-length coat of mail still glittered night-black. He carried his helm under one arm. His long blond hair hung loose, blown in the weak wind. He faced the jungle verge.
Mara’s gaze followed his out to the league beyond league of verdant green that was Himatan. Here and there treetops shook and shuddered as more of these creatures converged upon them. So many — who would have guessed the jungle would support such numbers? They must be gathering from all over the region. Everyone knew that a few haunted the groves of Himatan here and there, but she had thought them isolated D’ivers or Soletaken. Individual monstrosities. What she’d glimpsed here put her in mind of an actual race.
A people.
Ardata’s children. How different, then, from the title given to the Andii: the Children of the Night?
A great din of rising shrieks and calls and roars now rose all about and the tops of the bamboo stalks shook like blades of grass. Skinner raised his arms for silence while the ranks of the Disavowed assembled behind. What could these half-beasts want? Mara wished they’d just go away. She peered behind her to where stone blocks topped the rise, time-gnawed, heaved and awry. A structure of some sort. Perhaps a fort, or cyclopean statue. Towering emergents now topped it. Their fist-like roots gripped the ruins as if feeding upon the tumbled blocks. From the overarching branches a great forest of hanging lianas draped down among them. Their thick woody lengths supported fat blossoms in pink, blood red, orange and creamy white.
‘We do not want to spill any more of your blood,’ Skinner called down to the jungle.
Challenges and hooted mocking laughter answered him.
He raised his arms once more. ‘Let us talk. Know you that for a time I ruled as Ardata’s chosen mate. You bowed before me then. Do so again or retreat into your haunts and bother us no more. This is your choice. I give you until sundown.’
Fury answered the ultimatum. Trees shuddered. Torn branches flew to crash upon the rise. Yells and shrieks sent a burst of multicoloured birds to darken the sky. The cloud gyred about the top of the rise before moving on in a weaving dance of flashing iridescence.
Shijel edged down the slope to Skinner and the two conferred. Mara looked to Petal, who was rubbing his wide jowls. ‘What do you think?’ she whispered.
‘I do not know. I believe that we and they know they have us trapped. Skinner probably wishes to goad them into a rush.’
‘And if not?’
He frowned, his cheeks and many chins bulging. ‘Then I do not know how we shall escape from here.’
The jungle verge was quiet for a time. The sun continued its descent to the west. Clouds gathered in the north. She glimpsed dark shapes moving through the trees. She brushed dried blood from her nose and cheeks, adjusted the knot of her robes at her shoulder.
‘What are they doing?’ she whispered once more.
‘Talking things over, I presume,’ he answered, quite seriously. ‘I believe we have some time. Perhaps you should sit …’
She drew a shuddering breath. ‘Thank you. Yes.’ She meant to ease herself down but fell quite heavily. She drew her knees up close to her chest and rested her chin upon them.
The wind brushing through the dense leaf cover brought wave after wave of shimmering reflections. The rich shades of jade were almost seductive. It was a shame, really. The land was beautiful after its own fashion; desirable. Were it not for its backward recalcitrant inhabitants. Still, correctly handled campaigns of neglect, discouragement and stifling might get rid of most of them after a generation or two. It would be very much easier to do something with the land after that.
As the afternoon waned she became aware of a tingling pulling at her and she clambered to her feet. Petal, she noted, was headed in this direction. He lumbered heavily in his swinging gait as he worked his way round to her along the line of guardsmen.
‘You sense it as well?’ he said as he drew near.
She nodded.
He scanned the forest. ‘Some sort of manipulation.’
‘What kind? I do not recognize it.’
‘Elder. Animistic. Yet there is power there.’ He stroked his jowls. ‘They are preparing something.’
‘An attack?’ She scanned the edge of the trees; no shapes moved that she could see.
‘I do not think so.’
Skinner climbed the slope to join them. ‘What is it?’ he asked. He still had his helm tucked under one arm. Only now did she notice that he carried no sword. ‘You sense something as well?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Aye.’
She couldn’t understand how he, a plain swordsman, could have developed such sensitivity, but she set that aside for later consideration.
Petal was tapping a finger to his thick lips. ‘It may be a ritual,’ he offered. ‘Has that feel.’
‘What sort?’ Skinner asked.
‘There’s no-’ He cut himself off, his gaze snapping to Mara as they both felt the tearing that the opening of a portal sends rippling through the surrounding mundane matter and all Warrens. Skinner spun as well.
‘A gate!’ Petal warned. ‘Someone or something has come through.’
Mara threw up her Warren. The loose detritus of the slope vibrated beneath her feet as pulses of D’riss leaked from her in waves. Petal and Skinner were both physically pushed away from her; Skinner retreated down the slope.
They waited. Mara noted the warm wet air smelled particularly strongly of the flower blossoms here; a cloying sweet stink that hardly disguised how they hung rotting on the creepers. The day threatened to slip into the twilight of evening that she found came so startlingly suddenly in this land.
Two figures emerged from the shadows of the darkening jungle verge. Skinner turned and waved to Mara. She took a moment to ease her Warren and compose herself, then she carefully edged down the uneven dirt slope.
She knew them both. One by description and reputation, his lean muscular build leading up to a head of loose tawny hair, a feline black nose, bright golden eyes, and the fangs of a hunting-cat: Citravaghra. The other she’d met more than once: Rutana, favoured of Ardata, greatest of her aberrant menagerie of followers and adherents. And an enemy from the very first days of their arrival in this land decades ago.
‘What is it you wish?’ Skinner asked, grasping the initiative as always.
‘Your death,’ Rutana answered, readily enough.
Skinner shrugged, indifferent. ‘If you wish death, we will happily accommodate all of you.’
Rutana just laughed her harsh cawing hack. ‘It is your bones that will add to this pile, Betrayer. All of you. We need only wait.’