The Cuckoo, page 48
“Welcome back, my lord,” said Gray softly.
Myrklettur undulated before them in shades of steel, the planets blazing above the horizon and the Winter Road gouging the sky in two.
Ormur dared a glance at Roper, who wore a grimace as he clutched onto Gray.
“How long was I down there?”
“It’s been seven years, my lord.”
“Seven years,” Roper repeated dully. “Just seven years.”
“They told you it was more?”
“They said it was less. One year. I knew it was a lie.”
In the darkness, Ormur blushed.
“What’s happened? Does any of Albion remains to us? Does Jokul still rule?”
“Keturah rules, lord. Jokul has been dead for years. Albion is much as you left her. We control Suthdal up to the Wylie Lines, but the Sutherners are on the march.”
Roper was silent for a long while. He looked exhausted, staring out at the night. “Keturah,” he said at last. “She lives? You’re sure?”
“She was well four weeks ago, lord, when we bade her farewell as she marched south. I’ve heard nothing since.”
Roper was silent still.
“They told you she was dead,” Gray said gently.
Roper nodded curtly.
“And that Jokul took the throne, and Albion was nearly lost?”
Silence. When he did speak, the word came like the rustle of mice through leaflitter. “Yes.”
“Well it isn’t yet, my lord. Though we are not the strength we were. It is as you feared would happen; we have been eroded. We have allies from Erebos, but so do the Sutherners. They are marching against Keturah and the situation is bleak.”
“So the job is still to be done,” said Roper, flat as ice.
Gray shrugged helplessly. “Ultimately,” he said. “But you’re back from the Underworld, lord. Breathe the free air again. Do not be too fast to burden yourself.”
“No, Gray,” said Roper. “Dying in that cause is more than I ever thought to have again. It is all I want.”
Nobody said anything for a long while. Presently Ormur became aware that Roper was trembling. “Here, lord,” he said, reaching for his arm and helping him down to sit on the grass. There the Black Lord sat, lips pursed, his form as rigid as if he were made from brick.
“We thought you were dead, my lord,” said Gray, uncomprehendingly. “What happened to you?”
And Roper began to cry.
48
Roper’s Tale
Roper wept a long time in harsh, desperate sobs. He leaned forward, face pressed to the earth, fingers wrapped in the grass, beating the ground with a fist as he howled into it. Ormur could see the bones of his shoulders and spine through the thin tunic over his back. They were helpless to comfort him, held back by the magnitude of what he had endured over seven years.
When he finally stopped he was gasping. He sat back and leaned on his hands like a man who has found the shore after days clutching at driftwood. There was something other than weariness in his face at last, and he cast about the sky with shining eyes, as though it burned to see it after all this time.
“They captured me, Gray,” he said at last. “They staged my death and I have been a prisoner in the dark since that day.”
Gray took a seat next to Roper. He let out a long breath. “But I saw you fall. How did you survive?”
“I didn’t. It wasn’t me. They had found a man weeks before who they said would look like me from afar. They threw him off the cliff so nobody could inspect the body.”
Gray thought back to that day, to the figure he had seen tumble over the edge and the Kryptean agent he had dragged with him.
“He did not go willingly. Why not just kill you? They’ve done it often enough before.”
“To kill a Black Lord requires Almighty blessing. They have a token they cast—a silver coin. They are permitted to cast it after each infraction, as they see it, committed by a Black Lord. If they fail to gain approval three times, then they accept the Almighty is against the death and settle for life imprisonment.”
“And they told you all this?”
Roper nodded. “The goal was to destroy me. If I kill myself, they are blameless for my death. They wanted me to know how hopeless my situation was: that I was trapped forever. That you were certain I was dead, and wouldn’t even look for me.”
Gray shifted onto one knee and bowed his head to Roper. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said quietly. “If I’d known, I swear I’d have… I was certain it was you… And they told you Jokul had taken over?”
“They said he had the Stone Throne. That the Sacred Guard had been destroyed, Keturah and Tekoa put to death. That my son…” he glanced at Gray, hardly daring to speak. “They said I’d had a son, and he had died with Keturah.”
Gray shook his head. “You have a son, my lord, and he lives. A strong lad named Numa, now in the haskoli.”
Roper fell to renewed weeping. Ormur heard him mutter: “A son,” a few times beneath his breath, and it was some while before he sat up once more.
“What else did they tell you?” asked Gray.
“They said you had abandoned your loyalty to me and now served Jokul—”
“I killed Jokul,” blurted Gray. “You are my lord, and the greatest regret of my life is that I failed to preserve you.”
Roper glanced sidelong at the captain. “It was inevitable. They only needed one chance. I couldn’t hide from them forever, not without inhabiting a prison of my own construction.” He let out a long breath and wiped his eyes, looking steadier, though he still squinted as if the moon was too bright. “It is done,” he said softly. “Onwards.”
Ormur saw Gray shiver to hear that word, spoken again in that voice. “Do not give yourself so little sympathy, my lord. You have spent seven years in hell.”
“It was agony,” said Roper, flat once more. “They would stand outside my cell and enact the scene of your betrayal, or Keturah begging for her life. In the dark, without any stimulus… You forget what reality looks like. You cannot tell what is memory, what is fantasy, what is reality. They controlled my thoughts. I forgot what things looked like. I forgot how they sounded and smelt. I have lived in a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up.”
“They beat you, lord?” asked Ormur, quietly.
“At first. But that stopped a long time ago. There was always the threat of it, but they wanted my body intact. They have a room they took me to exercise, where I could smell the world outside and stand in a shaft of sunlight leading up to the surface.”
“What for?”
“Because it was the greatest agony of all, to have those free moments to compare against my imprisonment. Spend too long in the cell and you forget what you’re missing. What you used to be. The smell of the outside brings it back.”
“And you didn’t kill yourself, lord?” asked Ormur, before he could stop himself.
Roper looked at Ormur as if he had been impudent. Eventually he seemed to decide he would allow the question. “I tried to. At first.”
“You stopped trying? What kept you going?”
Roper hesitated. “The knowledge that the Almighty had preserved me. There must’ve been a reason. I have some purpose yet to fulfil. It is not for the Kryptea to decide how I spend myself. They controlled everything else, but I had that.” He eyed Ormur and then looked at Gray. “How did you find me?” He sounded almost suspicious, as though guarding against the possibility that this might still be a Kryptean trick.
Gray began to explain why they had come. He reached the part where Ormur went missing and looked expectantly at his protégé.
“They captured me,” said Ormur. “They knew we were watching them. They sent out a hunting party, and then followed it with another one in case we tried to track them. The second group caught me, knocked me unconscious and took me below.”
Gray nodded. “I’d not seen anything and thought it was time to have a look inside Myrklettur, which is when I saw Ormur being carried into the tunnel. I was shocked, and I must admit, caught in indecision. I’d just decided to hide and try to creep in after Ormur, when they spotted me. They came after me, and blocked the exits to the fortress to trap me inside. They hunted me until nightfall gave me some advantage. I knew if I stayed in the fortress they’d get me eventually, so chanced climbing down one of the outer walls.”
Ormur knew how frightening his master, who had never liked heights and had only one hand, would have found that. He met Gray’s eyes, who shrugged as if to say, I had no choice.
“I wondered about going back to the Hindrunn for help, but thought it would take too long. And besides, if I tried to take you back by force, they might hold you hostage. Stealth was my only option. I’d seen where they took you, but when I finally had a clear route in, after two days of waiting, the Krypteans seemed to have gone and I couldn’t find any way into their lair. I had to wait deep in the tunnel until they next emerged so I could see where they came out of. It took three days before they chanced leaving once more. But once I’d seen it, I knew where the entrance was. I waited until they were all inside and went in after them. Then of course I found myself in the dark and had to grope around looking for you. I was lost, and not a little frightened. I cannot imagine how it would’ve been to be trapped there, at their mercy.
“But after feeling my way through the dark for a long while, I found a prison, and someone alone inside, talking to himself. You, my lord.” Gray broke off but Roper did not seem embarrassed. “At first I thought it was my young protégé here—who else could they be keeping? But after a while I realised the voice was different. I wanted to keep surprise on my side, and went back up the stairs. That was when I spotted the man with the lamp, heading for your cell.” He nodded to Ormur. “You know the rest.”
“Of all the people who should find me,” murmured Roper. “This is no coincidence. And you say we still hold most of Suthdal?”
Gray nodded cautiously. “Most of it, but it has become a wasteland, lord, churned over by marching feet and ravaged by feral animals. And our numbers are much reduced. The reliability of our allies is doubtful. We are under assault.”
“So that is why I have been set free,” said Roper. “We must go south immediately. We need horses.”
“Can you walk, lord?”
“We shall ride.”
“What about this thirteenth man?” asked Ormur. “The Kryptean agent?”
“Forget him,” said Roper.
“He is an assassin,” said Gray dubiously. “He could make life extremely difficult for us.”
“He will,” said Roper shortly. “The Kryptea have been working with Bellamus. That agent will have gone south to tell him I am now free, and when Bellamus finds out, he will try to stop us linking up with Keturah. The die is cast. We cannot stop that now. We must just try and join the army before Bellamus can find us.”
“You’ll be fit for nothing without food, lord,” said Gray firmly. “There was a lot of dried venison in the mess, I’ll go and get it.” He squeezed Ormur’s shoulder. “You can light the fire?”
He turned back to the kungargrav, leaving Roper and Ormur alone together. Ormur busied himself with the fire and soon had the flames roaring.
“What else can I do, lord?” asked Ormur.
Roper did not immediately reply. He was staring at the fire: his first, Ormur supposed, for seven years. The look on his face was one of such pleasure that it seemed to hurt. Then he looked at Ormur properly for the first time. It was deeply uncomfortable; an utterly dispassionate assessment such as one might receive from a goshawk.
“Sit down. You look tired.”
Ormur was grateful and sat beside Roper, who continued to observe him. “You are a very young guardsman.”
“I am, lord.”
“You are… eighteen?”
“Nineteen, lord.”
“Nineteen,” said Roper, looking back at the fire. “So you shouldn’t even be a full legionary and yet you are in the Sacred Guard.”
“We were called early out of our training, my lord. There are fewer legionaries than there were.”
Roper’s face twitched a little at that. “At what age were you summoned to the battle-line?”
“Seventeen, lord. But I’ve not seen a full battle yet. Safinim avoids them. It’s been skirmishes for years.”
“My father always said the legions were our greatest treasure. Without them we have neither standing nor influence. We must be weak indeed if we are promoting seventeen-year-olds to full peers.”
Ormur did not know what to say and was spared by the arrival of Gray. At his side hung Ormur’s sword, Warspite, and he had slung a cloak over one shoulder, knotted into a bundle which he had filled with venison. Ormur fell upon the venison, but found he could hardly bite it because of his missing teeth, and had to chew it carefully with his molars. Roper ate like a termite; pacing himself with small bites, as though he intended to consume their entire supply.
Ormur stopped eating abruptly. Then he climbed unsteadily to his feet and hurried behind a crumbling wall to be sick.
“Overreached himself,” he heard Gray say, amused.
“That guardsman is a little overfamiliar,” Roper replied.
Ormur tried not to listen and retched once more.
“Don’t you recognise him, lord?” There was a pause. “He is your brother.”
49
Burn the Boats
They needed horses.
Walking was sore for Ormur at the start, but he loosened after an hour or so. For Roper it seemed agony. He tottered like an old man, baring his teeth and accepting a staff to prop himself on when Gray offered it. There was no hope of catching the Kryptean agent, and try as they might to stay at Roper’s pace, Ormur and Gray often found themselves forty or fifty yards ahead before realising they had left him behind.
“What was Lord Roper saying when you found him?” asked Ormur as they waited for him to catch up. It was the day after their escape from the kungargrav, and they were descending the path from Myrklettur, thin autumn sunlight rinsing the treetops ahead and making the low mist glow. “In the cell, you said you heard the prisoner talking to himself. What was he saying?”
Gray hesitated. “That he was going to kill someone. He didn’t say a name. Just called them you. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ over and over again.” Ormur frowned. “I think it might’ve been Jokul,” Gray added.
“Or maybe Cold Voice. You haven’t asked?”
“It wasn’t meant to be heard,” said Gray. “And I shouldn’t have repeated it. Forget it.”
Ormur was frightened of Roper. He had been desperate for years to find his brother alive and dreamed of discovering him. But in none of those dreams had Roper not recognised him. In none of them had he endured seven years of the fate which had broken Ormur after two weeks. Ormur had woken that morning to find Roper sitting on a ruined wall above him, watching the sun rise. His face glowed orange, and he was completely silent and still but for the tears, running down his cheeks like tiny jewels. Ormur was frightened of the Black Lord and what he had seen.
“This is foolish,” said Roper, catching up with them. “We can’t keep on at this pace. Gray: go on ahead and find us some horses. Ormur and I will keep on this road towards the Hindrunn. That is where you will find us.”
“Neither of you is fit enough to defend yourselves, lord,” Gray demurred. “And as we have discovered, these woods are not safe. I cannot leave you to travel alone.”
“If you don’t, we will be too late. Bellamus will hear of my survival and will undoubtedly stop us.”
“But the battle will likely already have happened, lord,” said Gray, gently. “It was four weeks ago that Keturah marched. There is no sense risking our lives for the opportunity to arrive a few days earlier.”
Roper was adamant. “You surely cannot believe all this is luck? That it was you two who found me, that it happened just as the Sutherners are resurgent? This has the ring of fate. We will make it south, Gray, fortune smiles on the bold. But we must do it in time.” Gray did not move. “You delay,” Roper added impatiently.
“I lost you once, my lord. I let you fall into a place worse than death. Please do not ask me to leave you again so soon, so weakened, on a road so dangerous.”
“I do ask you, Gray,” said Roper remorselessly. “Ormur is here, and from your account he is hardly defenceless. Find us horses. Get me back to my legions.”
It took four days for Gray to return with the horses.
Abandoning his pack, he ran to the Hindrunn in two days. Without telling a soul why, he took the three best horses remaining and half-rode, half-dragged them back to his companions.
He found Roper rejuvenated. He was still painfully frail, but after days of full rations and leaf-filtered sunlight, he could now stand straight once again. His skin had lost its deathly pallor and walking no longer seemed such agony. He nodded as Gray returned with the horses, and then froze as he saw what else Gray had brought.
A suit of Unthank-silver armour.
“It’s the set Tekoa had made for you, lord,” Gray explained. “I thought you might need it, where we’re going.”
Roper helped steady the nearest horse and hauled himself into the saddle immediately. “Onwards,” was the first and last word he said that morning.
They charged south.
Even for Gray, the pace was gruelling, and he wondered that Roper could not merely sustain it, but drive it. After the second day in the saddle, he noted blood trickling down the inside of Roper’s legs.
“Saddleworn, lord?” he asked.
Roper followed his gaze and seemed surprised at the blood running down his legs. “I suppose so.”
This new Roper seemed to react to nothing, pain least of all. He had not acknowledged his failure to recognise Ormur, said nothing of his tiredness, and strangest of all, neither displayed nor responded to affection. He was unreachable.
That is, until they were below the Abus.
They crossed the dark river, horses and all, on a barge owned by a river-dwelling family. That night, making six leagues before dark, they set up camp beside a lake. It was perfectly still, the sun’s last influence draining from the west, and the water beside them looking-glass smooth. Roper, hobbling the horses with his usual speed, paused briefly to look up. He dropped the hobbles and took a few paces to the water’s edge.
