As they left the Empire the woodland thickened and rain began to fall, the warm spring sunshine deserted them. The dark network of the fused boughs of ancient hinter trees seemed to provide little shelter against the weather, and where the under-storey of the woodland was thicker, every step further soaked clothes, boots and faces. Momentarily the rain would relent only for a powerful gust of wind to shake the canopy and release heavier drops than ever fell directly from the sky.
The first night spent in the eerie embrace of the Forest of Chorif was cold and wet. Rather than light a fire to watch it hiss and smoke from the tent, they just stripped off their cloaks and boots. Three of them at a time lay together for warmth whilst one watched. At least their blankets, pulled from waxed backpacks, were dry. The rain was incessant.
The morning came grey and promising only more bad weather. The travellers pulled on wet boots and wrapped themselves in damp cloaks. The forest floor gave under foot, a vast sweet smelling sponge soaked to capacity. As they made their way with Jacabo at their head the going became even harder: they came into an area of steep-sided little gullies and round knolls. There were more fallen trunks here and more saplings growing up amongst them. In the gullies water was gathering; rivulets were starting to run down bare slopes.
They became muddier and quickly tired; they had to jump over energetic little brooks, or, where they could not make the jump, just walk through the cold water. Jacabo looked worried and kept turning to hurry his companions onwards.
“I would like to get my hands on Collins” Bilteg said. Jacabo turned and held up a hand to quiet him. They were half way down a slippery slope into a narrow gully; it was unusually clear of trees and smooth at the bottom, filled with silky mud.
“Listen” ordered Jacabo and they all stopped. Harriet slipped and slid down a few paces until she was right by the woodsman’s feet. He looked down at her with annoyance but his attention was immediately fixed again on some distant sound. Suddenly he bent down and roughly pulled Harriet upwards; as she slipped again and struggled to use his arm as an anchorage, he shouted “Back up the slope, now!”
Coming down the slope without sliding or tumbling was hard enough, but to try to make headway back up it was near to impossible. As Bilteg and Caitlet unquestioningly turned to attempt the ascent, they heard what Jacabo had noticed moments earlier: a thunderous roar of water, not far off like a waterfall, but approaching, growing louder, a flood in full charge.
Their boots found no purchase; it was simply not a slope that could be hurried. Bilteg had made one long diagonal step by the time the floor of the gully was awash; Caitlet, who was above him, took his arm in her hand and tried in vain to pull him into another stride. Jacabo gave Harriet a shove upwards; then he dug his hands deep into the soft mud and tenaciously began to drag himself towards safety.
It took only moments for the first excited new rivulet to turn into a wall of foaming brown water. Caitlet saw the torrent and with all her strength backed up the gully side, digging her heels in and pulling Bilteg on as she went. Now Bilteg half fell and grabbed at the mud with one hand, scrambling for the top of the rise. Harriet too fell on all fours and scrambled upwards finally taking Caitlet’s free hand when it was offered.
As the scribe gratefully felt her friend’s grip, the flood was about her feet; it undercut the earth under her boots; stole her footing; she screamed and thought that she was going. Bilteg had meanwhile taken hold of an exposed root and, now from a relatively strong position, he used his other hand to hang on to Harriet. Although the waters threw her legs about and threatened to drag her body away down the gully, the soldiers pulled her against the current; within moments she too was at the top of the ridge. She lay face down in the mud breathing heavily with fear and exertion.
It took her two breaths to remember Jacabo. She twisted to look but she could not see the woodsman. Bilteg and Caitlet had not been able to pull him from the flood; he had not even come close enough to reach out to them. Now they were staring downstream hoping for a glimpse of their friend in the raging foam.
The initial tumbling and troubled flow quickly became a treacly and eddying stream, unnaturally high on the gully walls; its level neither rising nor falling. Harriet managed to turn herself around so that now all three of them sat, still clinging to one another and to tree roots, and still watching desperately for a sign of Jacabo. With some difficulty Bilteg got to his feet; with every step he looked likely to slide down into the debris-filled water, but he started to make his way downstream. “Come on” Bilteg said. The others unsteadily got to their feet and followed.
Very slowly the group of three, soaked to the skin and covered in thick red-brown mud, made their way along the ridge. They made even less headway than they might otherwise have done; they fixed all of their attention on the water, as if somehow, any moment, Jacabo might pop up to the surface; as if he had not been washed away, but had perhaps just jumped in for a swim.
Beneath low dark clouds a fine rain still filled the air. They searched along the banks of the flood waters until the cold and exhaustion threatened with each step to send one or another of them sprawling. First Harriet gave into the desperate need to stop; she sat down heavily feeling herself sink into the ground as her body slumped. Caitlet turned and looked down at the scribe; her arms fell weakly to her sides; she folded down to her knees and then she lay down in the mud with her face pressed into the filth on the arm that supported it. Bilteg sighed and squatted down.
The burly warrior rested unsteadily on his haunches for a moment. His face was a picture of defeat. Listlessly Harriet and Caitlet watched him and waited for the moment of release when he too would give himself up to the mud. Then, instead of falling backwards, Bilteg sprang to his feet; without saying a word he undid his sword belt and, just as Caitlet was about to ask him what he was doing, he threw himself with a clumsy dive into the flood.
The flow was thick with earth and carried a steady load of broken branches and whole tree trunks. Bilteg pulled stroke after powerful stroke through the eddying water, and as his friends watched him swim they then saw what he had seen only moments before. On the opposite bank, clinging to a tree that had itself very nearly been carried away, was a man, legs still below the surface and with a torso almost invisible in the camouflage the flood had bestowed upon him. He seemed to be aware neither of Bilteg swimming towards him nor of the women trying to stand-up on the opposite bank, not knowing whether to call his name or to plunge themselves into the water to help in his rescue.
At first Jacabo was unresponsive. He was aware of nothing more than the need to hold on to the tree that had given him his haven. Bilteg was himself so near to collapse by the time he had made his crossing that he had had to pull himself out of the water immediately for fear of drowning. He sat on the top of the tree trunk; every muscle in his body burning and his breathing fast and uncontrollable. Even in this state he cajoled and harangued Jacabo back towards full consciousness; though he thought it unlikely he would even be able to lift the weight of his own arms, he put his hands down and pulled on the woodsman’s arms. “Try ….. Jacabo” he said breathlessly, “Help me …. Help me …. Try Jacabo.”
Jacabo made no reply but he could hear the words; he could feel Bilteg’s hands on his arms. He slowly summoned his will, wondering whether he was still near enough to life to take the chance that was being offered to him. In an instant his body gave its answer: without warning he sprung from apparent catatonia to rapid movement. Bilteg lurched with surprise and not a little trepidation as this lank haired swamp creature took his arms and climbed up him with an unnatural energy. It was the last of the woodsman’s reserves; once he had pushed his way around Bilteg and found the bank by the fallen trunk, he lay down and could only be seen to be alive by the rise and fall of his back as he breathed.
* * * * * * * * * *
The rain did not finally stop until the morning after the terrible flash flood. It had been essential that they find somewhere to camp; a place to light a fire, pitch a tent and recover. Disconsolately, they had trudged eastwards until the land rose steadily and the trees grew more mature; Bilteg and Caitlet helped Jacabo from each side and Harriet walked a little way ahead clearing the path when it became necessary. Eventually Jacabo had summoned the energy to say “Here. This will do.” After he watched the soldiers put up the tent he sent them to break dead wood from the surrounding trees; then, with what seemed to the others nothing short of a miracle, a misty drizzle still coming down, he lit a fire.
There in that little clearing they camped for three nights and two days. By the third morning the sky was clear and the sunlight was casting dappled shade; a warm breeze came from the north and it felt to them all as if spring had returned. Their clothes were dry; they had slept and eaten well. Through all the long watches in the dark forest nights nothing had come to trouble their recovery.
Caitlet looked back at the clearing as they started again towards the east; it looked odd now that the tent was down and the fire-pit covered. She smiled at how quickly this little piece of woodland had become her home, turned away from it, and trotted to make up the few paces she had fallen behind.
They kept to quite a good pace that day. Jacabo took to high ground where he could; once or twice consulted Collins’s map, and led them unerringly east by south east. Towards late afternoon however, Jacabo came to a sudden halt. He looked north and south; they followed his gaze and saw clearly why he had stopped: they had come across a narrow but well used path.
Jacabo did not venture an opinion about the path but he became noticeably more cautious and even less tolerant than usual of any noisy clumsiness from his companions. The discovery of a second path and then a third only made the woodsman more anxious still. It seemed that they had come into a surprisingly busy part of the Forest of Chorif . When they found the fourth path, this time intersecting a track as it looped and ran for a little way parallel to their direction, Harriet could stay silent no longer. Momentarily confirming Bilteg’s and Caitlet’s assumptions about these thoroughfares, the scribe whispered “Do these tracks belong to Peons Jacabo?”
Although he was clearly upset by the whispered disturbance the woodsman stopped to answer. He shook his head and made sure that the other soldiers understood: “No, these are not human tracks. Keep quiet now and stay close together.”
Soon the land began to rise. It was a gradual even slope and there was little or none of the underbrush that was common elsewhere in the forest. In fact there were large areas of bare soil; it took a few moments for them all to realise that these dark patches were actually areas where myriad paths came together. The tracks met here on this strange round hill. They had stopped now, looking around wondering what they had discovered. There was orderliness to this place; even the trees were spaced quite evenly. In a circle, each of them turning slowly and scanning the area, they waited anxiously for some clear indication of the nature of this place.
Jacabo was just about to order them all back down the slope when the first sentry showed its head; it seemed to rise out of a shadow; actually a hole in the ground not more than ten paces from where they stood. For a moment or two, the beat of a heart and the drawing of breath, so familiar did the features appear, they were all sure that what they saw was a Master. Directly that the guard moved again however, the illusion was broken. This head was much smaller than a Master’s, and articulated to a torso carried horizontal to the ground; as it came out of the hole they could see that it walked on six legs. Although it resembled a host of kinds of tiny creatures that they had all seen many times before, it was more than half as long as Bilteg was tall. It came towards them slowly, apparently carefully assessing the intruders.
When he saw more movement in the hole Jacabo said quite calmly and quietly “We need to go now. Walk slowly down the hill, follow me.” The woodsman walked backwards for a few paces and the others followed his lead; they all noted the emergence of three more of the creatures from the hole, and as they turned to leave they could all see that there were perhaps another half a dozen, recently arrived on the paths that came to the edge of the clearing. Some of these carried large logs in their jaws, others, slightly larger and with more impressive looking mandibles, carried nothing but came closer to the travellers as they walked determinedly away from the hill and back into the undergrowth.
They marched away from the hill fort as quickly as the terrain allowed. Jacabo had heard rumours of such creatures being hunted by the Master clans that held hunting to be important, but he had never tracked their like or indeed ever seen them himself. He did not think to share his thoughts with the others, but reckoned that they had all had a lucky escape; even if the dwellers of the hill had proved not to be very belligerent they had looked more than capable of defending themselves and their home.
That night Jacabo made sure that they would be camped nowhere near any distinctive narrow paths, or within scouting distance of any strange dome-like hills. The sky was clear that night; deep dark blue, Harriet reflected, like ink; the bright innumerable stars like grains of sand scattered as a blotter. As she gazed upwards she listened to the others; Caitlet and Bilteg chatted about how the hill fort creatures might fight; how easily they might die. Jacabo nodded and gave a grunt of agreement as they concluded that their most powerful weapon would probably be sheer weight of numbers. The voices of the soldiers made her feel calm; she was keenly aware of the beauty of the night sky and of the forest all around her; behind it all however, there was a deeper sensation. A shiver shook her neck and shoulders. It was not the cold; it was wonder. She lay down to go to sleep and there in the darkness, with her back to the fire and to the others, a broad smile crossed Harriet’s face.
* * * * * * * * * *
For two more days they trekked eastwards through the forest. They knew that the coastline was not far to the north but Jacabo steered the group through the densely clothed landscape rather than risk discovering a Peon settlement on the sea shore. Soon enough, they knew, to find the ruin that was their destination, they would have to come very close to the Pearl Sea .
The Forest of Chorif stretched away into the south, perhaps to within sight of the Great Southern Ocean, and to the east no-one was certain how far. On its northern side however, Collins’s map showed a cleared coastal plain, and now, after days with no horizon but the furthest dark trunks, they came into more open country. Suddenly they felt exposed, vulnerable to chance discovery. From time to time one or two of them fancied that they could see columns of smoke in the north; “Peon villages”, Jacabo said grimly. He need not have; they all knew whose country they were in.
They travelled now not at one even pace; rather they were forced to alternate between near-dashes across open ground and slow progress through thicker cover. Rough pasture became predominant, although as yet they saw no livestock. They talked little as they passed through this country, each of them only too aware of how quickly they might stumble into danger. It came as a relief to them all when, towards dusk, as the shadows lengthened, they moved once again into nearly unbroken woodland.
“I do not remember this woodland on Collins’s chart” Harriet said after a while.
“No,” Jacabo said, “but we do seem to be coming into some hill country. I do not think we can be far now from the estuary or our destination.” With that he stopped. So sudden was his halt that Caitlet bumped into his back and Bilteg into hers. Harriet laughed. She surprised herself; she could not help it. The others turned and looked at her. She laughed again. Jacabo let out a grunt that might have been his sense of humour trying to escape; then he put down his pack and said “We stop here for the night. No fire.”
The morning brought a thick sea mist to the wooded hills. Even the closest trunks looked hazy, and beyond a few paces the slow moving haar could fool the eyes, making the trees themselves seem to glide across the woodland floor, or appear and suddenly disappear like someone advancing and retreating on the edge of visibility. Harriet stood watching the others kneel at their packs; Jacabo looked up at her as if he thought that she had whispered and then quickly he was on his feet and his sword was in his hand. Bilteg and Caitlet had a moment to register his action before out of the encircling opacity the Peons charged.
Jacabo took three long strides forward and met the first two Peon warriors. He hoped to give Caitlet and Bilteg time to ready themselves. The Peons were half naked and carried the distinctive swirling tattoos of their people; his senses heightened in those part moments before battle, Jacabo noted the pendants and rings they wore; crafted adornments unlike anything of the people of the Empire. His enemies made no war cries; as he swung his sword to parry a blow he could hear their breathing.
Jacabo had parried a blow from each of the first two Peon warriors before either of the soldiers behind him had so much as drawn a blade. He was forced to defend by the speed of their attacks, and as a third charged him he stepped back to make time for his manoeuvres. He could not keep them all at bay and three more surged around the knot that he had stopped.
Now Bilteg entered the battle and Caitlet at his side. Harriet stood behind the warriors, but she was angry at her impotence rather than paralysed with her fear. There were six Peons around the soldiers now: Jacabo still held three at sword’s length; Bilteg and Caitlet faced three between them. Something, the cracking of a twig in the leaf litter perhaps, made Harriet spin around. The seventh Peon was almost upon her.
Harriet looked into the Peon’s eyes; all that she could see there was hatred. He smiled and pointed his short sword at the scribe. Only two or three paces separated them; he lunged and Harriet threw herself to the left, somehow avoiding the Peon’s blade. Again he advanced on her, he shrugged and said something that Harriet could make no sense of; although the sword was still levelled at her he beckoned her towards him; she was unarmed and reasoned that perhaps he wanted her to surrender. She stood still; from behind her she heard the sounds of battle, a cry and a body slumping to the ground. Seeing her apparently transfixed her attacker came forward at the run, not this time to stab her, but trying to grab her with his empty hand.
Surprised at the clarity of her mind; wondering on some level at the absence now of the symptoms of fear, Harriet jumped back and out of the Peon’s grasp. To her right she could see Caitlet trading parries and blows with one Peon as Bilteg advanced up the slope over the fallen form of another. Jacabo she thought must be in battle just behind her. It was at that instant that she backed into someone. She was knocked forwards by their furious movement and in the blink of an eye found herself in the unyielding grip of the warrior she had hitherto managed to evade. Suddenly she was struggling for her life.
The Peon dragged her this way and that, trying with all of his strength to throw her off balance. Harriet fought ferociously to stay on her feet and watched all the time the blade in the warrior’s right hand. He held the sword back; he did not stab, and Harriet realised that he was not yet intent on killing her. She screamed in his face, a cry of rage not of terror; he had brought them both several paces away from the others and she knew that soon she would likely lose her footing and fall to the ground. The Peon was obviously surprised by the fiery defence mounted by the diminutive scribe; his hatred mixed with sudden frustration and he swung his right fist, wrapped around the pommel of his sword, Harriet’s face exploded with pain, for an instant she saw nothing but purple and black shot through with flashes of silver thread. She fell to one knee and felt the warrior’s grip loosen slightly; he thought she was beaten.
She had never felt such anger. All she could think of was digging her nails into the warrior’s face; of gauging out his eyes; of tearing the flesh off his face and leaving him dead. There he stood, over her, looking down at her bloodied face; she did not act immediately but slowly raised her head. He tightened his grip on her shoulder and raised his sword arm again. He had decided that one more blow would leave her unconscious and finish the work; with a look of some satisfaction and a little nod he tensed for the strike.
Harriet’s mind raced. Unbidden to her came the pages of the little book; in turn she imagined symbol after symbol from the illuminated margins. The warrior’s fist was coming down towards her now, but slowly. As if she was in a dream she could not even set her jaw to take the expected blow, but from within her there came a force seemingly set to meet the hand of her enemy head on. Her two arms, empty and limp by her side, flew forwards and upwards together with palms flat. Although they did strike the Peon’s body it was in the instant before the strike that the true force struck home. The Peon folded; he let out a choked cry as the air was forced from his body and he flew backwards. He did not stagger, but his feet actually left the woodland floor; he landed three paces away and lay flat on his back. Harriet was immediately on her feet and charging towards him with her hands out-stretched eager for his throat. He looked up at her with real fear in his face.
Harriet’s charge came to nothing however, before she could continue her attack Jacabo seized her in his arms. At the same moment Bilteg stepped over the Peon and thrust the tip of his sword into the warrior’s chest. With that gruesome killing the woodland fell almost silent; almost, because the dead and dying do not go in silence and all around them now bodies still shook and blood still flowed amongst the brown black litter of the woodland floor. Harriet would long remember the first sound she heard after her rage subsided and she let herself relax in Jacabo’s grip; it was the last desperate breath escaping the lungs of the fallen Peon that Bilteg slew. Suddenly she felt weak and sick; her body collapsed beneath her and Jacabo hoisted her up and held her easily as she fell into a strange and unquiet darkness.
“You are very light scribe, but I think you can walk now”, Jacabo said some indeterminate time later. They had travelled whilst Harriet had been unconscious. Jacabo had taken a couple of minor wounds on his arms; no Peon blade had come near to hitting Caitlet’s nimble form. As Bilteg had closed with his last opponent he had been startled to see a thrust pass his parry and cut through his chain shirt. He had looked down in shock as the blade disappeared, but both he and the Peon knew that the fight was not over. The blade left a long slash at the bottom of the soldier’s ribs, but did not enter his body. With his sword caught on Bilteg’s chain mail the Peon had had no chance. Such, reflected Bilteg in a thoughtful moment, are the margins of defeat or victory in battle.
They looked a battle-scarred and weary band as they went through the slowly clearing mist. The white clouds that shrouded the wooded hills were pierced from time to time by a wane sun, so pale that the eye could bear to stare at it. Harriet felt weak; now that Jacabo had put her down she struggled to keep up even though the others were also fatigued and made nowhere near the speed at which they usually marched. Her legs felt oddly numb and she had a trace of a headache that from time to time surged into a spike of agony; her steps faltered and when the others noticed they waited and gave looks of concern. Jacabo would hurry them along from time to time, beckoning them onwards with a bloodied arm and saying “Come on, come on, there may be more of the caste-less scum in these woods looking for us.”
It was midday before they rested. They stopped at the edge of the hill country through which they had passed and from the shelter of the trees they looked out across a verdant flood plain. Here and there were clumps of thin white barked trees by water-filled hollows; grazers and browsers made their homes here in great numbers.
“That was quite a blow you struck earlier Harriet” Caitlet said. Bilteg and Jacabo had just seen the Peon on the ground, but Caitlet had seen him fly back from the scribe as if he had been thrown by two men of Bilteg’s size; finally her curiosity had overwhelmed her; she watched for Harriet’s reaction as she asked about the great strike. “Where did you find that strength from?” she said, “Perhaps you should train as a warrior.”
“I was angry Caitlet. I don’t know, perhaps I was just fortunate.” Harriet could see the doubt on Caitlet’s face; she knew that the young soldier had a keen mind. By now Bilteg was paying attention to the conversation; Jacabo still watched the animals. “I just hit him where men don’t like being hit I suppose. I took him by surprise.” Bilteg laughed and smiled a broad smile at the scribe; Caitlet shook her head a little, wondering about what she alone had seen.
Harriet took her chance to change the subject and asked Jacabo about the creatures on the plain before them. Jacabo pointed out and identified the horned oromosks, about the size of a man, grazing in large groups; amongst them with their tapering heads and three times the size of the oromosks, terses in smaller groups. “Look there” he said pointing at a much larger beast, “a giant gleed.” This animal was truly massive; it stood on four hind legs whilst easily pushing over a young tree with its forelimbs. Along the forest edge, indeed at times quite close to the travellers, there were yet more creatures; they looked much like the giant gleed, but were much smaller, the size of a large man. “Don’t worry about them” Jacabo said, “they won’t hurt us.” Even Bilteg and Caitlet, who had little concern for the ways of farmers, saw that some of these creatures looked like wild kin to the more docile and smellier versions that could be seen in enclosures throughout the Empire.
The profusion of animal life held them fascinated for a while. The mist had cleared and soon the sun burnt its way through the clouds. The bright light of the midday lent the land a shining clarity; the greens became almost unbearably vivid and the crystal blue of the sky gained a mesmerising depth. From the ground all around the grazers clouds of flies arose and soon the humans came to realise the disadvantage of not having a covering of deep fur.
They could not rest once the flies began to bite and so they headed off across the flood plain. The animals generally scattered before them, although the giant gleed just stood and watched them pass.
After perhaps two or three Imperial Extents, as the afternoon wore on and became humid, they saw ahead a bank rising from the plain; it stretched both north and south as far as they could see. It was common Imperial practice to construct roads atop high banks and so as they crossed the last few hundred paces to the verdant obstacle they all thought they knew what to expect. As Bilteg and Caitlet topped the steep little rise though, they stopped rather too sharply.
The road that lay at their feet was not the ribbon of even grey stone that they were used to from the Empire’s highways. The reactions of the soldiers initially gave pause to their friends but then made them speed up; soon they stood four abreast staring at the weird cobbles at their feet. The centre of the road was a mosaic of oddly rounded stones of all different sizes; although that in itself was unusual it was the two wide kerbs that had stunned the humans. Each side of the way was marked with two lines of small bleached domes. Some were cracked; they were in fact hollow. There was no mistaking the kerb-stones; each and every one of them was a human skull.
Reluctant to use the road of skulls they kept to the side of the bank. They knew that if they were to find their destination they now had to head towards the Pearl Sea . They went along in silence past hundreds upon thousands of skulls. On some of the white bone moss grew, but it was largely bare and stark in the daylight; two clear pale trails led them into the north.
After a while they could see a wide river to the east of the road and in two places they crossed long many-arched bridges under which forks from the main flow found their own way to the sea. Occasionally they spotted herds of grazers in the distance but they saw no signs of villages or of any traffic on the road; Jacabo kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead, ready at an instant, should he see someone or something coming, to order them all to lie down on the bank. They saw no-one.
Bilteg though, saw the sea first. As the afternoon turned to dusk he saw a brilliant flash of sunlight on the water; he pointed it out to the others and then Caitlet said “And there, look, perhaps that is the place we are looking for.” As the road of skulls made straight down between two gentle hills towards the sea it passed a group of buildings made of dark stone. When first they saw them they could see little by way of detail, but as they closed the distance it was clear that the buildings were greatly ruined, indeed only one retained all four of its walls. Around the complex there was a moat; at its northern side it joined a narrow channel that followed the road to the very shore itself, and to a quayside that had once served this place whatever its ancient purpose.
The night was swiftly coming and they were none of them keen to investigate the site after dark. So it was there, by the side of the road of the skulls, that Jacabo found them a place to camp in a thick copse of thin white trees and thorn bushes. Above them the two moons of Derch shone full together and bands of cloud scudded quickly across the sky as a cold wind rose from the south.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Caitlet took the last watch of the night and as the dawn came, grey and with no great rush, she saw a column marching up the road from the sea. She glanced over her shoulder at the others, asleep and well hidden in the undergrowth, looked back at the road and decided to quietly wake them. Once she had shaken them each in turn and whispered “Rise quietly now, we are not alone”, with the daylight strengthening she went back to her vigil and saw for the first time the nature of the creatures that approached.
At the front of the column came beings of fearsome proportions, thick-set and standing as tall as a man and a half. Their hide was a dull grey; at this distance Caitlet could not be certain but it looked as if it might be scaly; the features that she took for their faces protruded from odd ovoid skulls along the top of each of which ran a series of barbed spines. The leader stood out from the others, six warriors, armed and armoured, dressed as it was in a long cloak made up of heavy ribbons adorned with shells and studs, small bones perhaps, and dark polished stones. Behind the seven creatures came a number of Peon warriors and led behind them on long leashes came a group of stumbling, shuffling captives.
“Caitlet”, Bilteg whispered as he came alongside her, “those must be Peon champions.” Jacabo and Harriet joined them now. They crouched and watched together as the procession came nearer.
For Harriet it was as if fantastic marginal illustrations from the most ancient texts had come to life and now walked before her in the light of day. She was sure she had seen representations of these awesome creatures before; they were an ancient enemy of the Masters; they were the legendary rulers of the Pearl Sea . She shuddered and, suddenly feeling dreadfully exposed, she looked down at the ground as if she was a small child believing that that which she could not see could not see her.
It was in that instant that she felt the presence of power; there was the same sensation of heat that she had experienced as she had handled some of the stranger items in Thackliss’s collection; the same tingling feeling in her head as when she had first discovered the symbol that had seemed to unlock something within her mind. Harriet knew without doubt that something, or someone very powerful, an adept of the arcane knowledge that she herself sought, was nearby. She dared not look up; she was terrified that if she did so she would find the round black eyes of the ancient enemy already fixed upon her.
Time passed so slowly for Harriet in those instants that she seemed to have a hundred clear and distinct thoughts with each breath in and each breath out. Only her heart raced ahead of the world that had almost ground to a sickening halt. When Caitlet said “Harriet? Harriet? Are you alright?” the scribe almost cried out with surprise; she was dizzy with the resumption of the normal pace of life. “They have passed by, we are safe” the warrior continued, now putting her hand gently on Harriet’s shoulder and saying again in a soft concerned tone “are you alright Harriet? You are very pale.”
They all stood up now and stretched legs that ached from the time spent crouching in the bushes. Harriet, who, although shaken, quickly felt well again, said to Bilteg “I do not think that they were champions Bilteg. Those were the creatures that rule the Pearl Sea , and all of the people who dwell on its coasts; the people who for that very reason we call the Peons.”
Bilteg nodded his head as Harriet spoke, but evidently he was considering the more practical implications of what he had seen. “They look like fearsome warriors” he said. “It would take a whole squad to kill one I shouldn’t wonder.” The other soldiers signalled their clear agreement with Bilteg’s wise assessment whilst showing precisely no concern for Harriet’s insightful comment about the role of these beings in the wider scheme of things. She looked from face to face, but even Caitlet seemed more interested in the physical power of these creatures than their probable dominance of the coastal peoples. She said no more about it and everyone’s attention turned to the ruined complex by the sea.
