It had taken too long. Tiaan crouched down, praying that he did not see the smoke rising from the oilskin, or come in to warm himself. If he did she was undone.
The footsteps stopped opposite the gate. Tiaan prepared to defend herself, hopeless as that was. She held her breath. Silence.
The footsteps resumed, thud-clicking away. Tiaan blew on the spilled coals; the oilskin burst into flame. She dashed out, hid across the road in the shadows, then made a noise vaguely like a cat screaming.
The watchman checked, looked around, and continued his pacing. By the time he came opposite the gatehouse the oilskins were blazing as high as the ceiling. He ran inside, cried 'Bloody cat!' and raced for the well.
His curses when he could not find the bucket would have disturbed the corpses in the cemetery outside the wall. Pelting down the street, the guard hammered on the front door of the first house. 'Fire! Fire! I need a bucket, quick!'
Tiaan scuttled across to the gate, lifted the bar, rested it on its bracket and closed it behind her. She gave it a hard shake. The bar fell into place.
Outside, free at last, she ran up the track in the direction of the manufactory and did not stop until she had turned the corner, out of sight. Sitting on an ice-glazed rock she wept for joy. The moon glowed through the mist like a distant lamp through frosted glass. The trees were mere outlines, black as ink. A shooting star carved a fiery path across the sky before bursting into fragments that swiftly faded. It seemed to be pointing west. Was that an omen?
Knowing that her troubles were only beginning, she continued on. The moon had fallen behind the mountains. Dawn was some way off. The stars, when visible through the racing mist, gave off just enough light for it not to be called pitch dark. Tiaan trudged up the path, following little more than instinct. She was freezing cold, dampness having seeped through the layers of clothing long ago. The wind stuck to her skin as if she wore a single layer of gauze. One blanket boot was already wearing through.
She kept on until the black sky was touched with the faintest blush in the north-east. The blankets were soaked, her feet in danger of freezing. Turning off the path, Tiaan went up the hill, avoiding places where she would leave tracks. The crest was bare save for a broken watch-tower of crumbling green slate and the moss-covered skeleton of a mountain pony. Down the other side she found shelter among up-jutting rocks and twisted trees. There was little risk of a fire being seen here.
The sun came up as she was gathering firewood, casting long conifer shadows that, low down, blurred into the mist. It was eerily beautiful. Tiaan warmed herself by the blaze until her foot coverings were dry. She was thinking about her father, wondering about his Histories, how he had lived and died and how he came to meet her mother. Had it just been a transaction in the breeding factory? She could not think so.
That set her puzzling about the bloodline register. Why did they need such a detailed record, if the idea was simply to produce as many children as possible? The mating details were clear – never more than one man in the same month. It did not seem to agree with what she knew about the place. But what if, she thought idly, the breeding factory was a place where children were bred with particular talents? Had her father been chosen on that basis? What a horrible thought!
It was lovely putting her hot boots back on. After heaping snow on the fire, she returned to the path. Another hour went by. It was nearly midday. The blankets were wearing thin again. Brushing wet ice off a log, she sat to remake her boots. Tiaan had just finished the first when she heard raised voices. A search party? She rolled off the other side of the log, hoping that the shadows would be enough to hide her.
Something cracked. She had broken the ice on a puddle and freezing water seared her side. She crouched behind the log, cursing her ill-luck.
Shortly a group of people ran past, as if fleeing for their lives. Since they were going downhill they could not be searching for her. They must have come from the manufactory or the mine. In the fog she did not recognise any of them, though one wore a carrier's cap and another an escort guard's uniform.
Tiaan ducked her head as they passed, though she need not have. They looked neither right nor left. What could the matter be?
After a few minutes she judged it safe to come out. Her wet sheets had frozen. She cracked off the ice, re-bound her other foot and headed carefully up the track.
It wound around a buttress of crumbling granite, turned sharply into a chisel-shaped gully, crept across a shear zone where the rock had weathered to greasy clay speckled with quartz gravel, then carved out the other side again. In the gully the path was shaded by tall pines. She edged through the gloom. Whatever they had been running from, it could not be far away.
There were Hurn bears in these mountains, vast creatures ten times the weight of a man. Also wildcats of various types ranging from the panther-like carchous to the stubby-nosed and bewhiskered ghool. Wild dogs were a threat to solitary travellers, particularly the tigerish rahse and the pack-hunting mickle. However, attacks by any of those creatures were rare, especially in the autumn of a good year, when there was easier hunting than armed and vengeful humans.
On rare occasions there had been bandit raids near the coast, though never this high. On the other hand, the metal mine had been producing well lately, particularly the precious white gold, platinum, which was easily carried and easily hidden.
Tiaan had just come out of the forest into sunlight when she caught the tang of blood on the wind. It could be no further than the hairpin bend up ahead or she would not have smelt it. That area was exposed, for a recent landslip had carved most of the trees off the point. Ducking into the forest, she climbed the side of the ridge. At the crest, a good hundred spans above the path, she went right, following the ridgeline until she reached the top of the landslide.
Tiaan made sure that she was upwind. The point was concealed behind a large boulder. Tiaan crept down. On this barren rockslide even a dislodged pebble would give her away. Reaching the boulder in safety, she edged around the left-hand side until she had a clear view of the road.
None of her suppositions had been correct. It was neither bears, beasts nor bandits. Far worse! A brand-new clanker, just completed by the manufactory, lay on its back with its metal legs in the air. The back half of the machine had been crushed under a boulder that had been rolled down the hill. No doubt the people inside were dead. She hoped Ky-Ara had not been the operator. Tiaan tried to recall his face but got the young man from her dreams instead. She put both firmly out of mind.
There were at least six bodies on the road. Pawing at one of them was what could only be a lyrinx. Her heart began to pound. Tiaan was shocked at the size and brutal power of the beast. It stood well over the height of a tall man, a massively muscular creature that seemed to be all claw, tooth and long, armoured body. Its wings were folded. It had a huge crested head, the crest jade-green, indicating a mature female. It could have taken on a Hurn bear and won. And, she reminded herself, they ate people.
At the same time, something seemed not quite right about the lyrinx – there was a slight awkwardness about it, as if it was not quite at home in its powerful body.
A pair of lyrinx were methodically tearing the armoured side out of the clanker, opening it up like a lobster at a dinner party. Armed with no more than metal bars they created an opening big enough to squeeze inside. Bags and boxes were tossed out, ripped open then abandoned.
Clankers were often used to deliver precious metal to Tiksi. Clearly that wasn't what the lyrinx were looking for, since Tiaan could see a scatter of golden rods on the ground from a broken bullion box. So what were they after?
A lyrinx pulled its head out of the opening, calling in a piping whistle to the third. Leaving off her gruesome business with the corpses, she joined the other two. With much heaving they rolled the boulder off the rear of the clanker, toppling it over the edge.