Brann woke slowly but realised quickly that he would not find sleep again easily. His mind filled with thoughts, one racing on to find another waiting, and he tossed from one side to another before deciding a change of scene might help.
He rose and moved to the river bank, dangling his feet in the welcome cool of the water. The eddies swirling before him were lit by the full moon, and his mind whirled in tandem. Images of the pit of corpses merged into the degenerate fighting pits below Sagia where Loku had sent him to die and where the horror had forced him from his own mind to let his body survive. Dead bodies beneath his feet faded into dying bodies at his feet. And all the time, blood ran down his face, smeared his body, dripped from his hands.
Gerens sat beside him, his arrival causing Brann to jerk in surprise. ‘Have you all been practising creeping up on people?’
The other boy’s expression was as implacable as ever. ‘I don’t need to practise that.’
Brann’s irritation had already dissolved. He smiled softly. ‘I’m certain you don’t.’ He sighed. ‘Every time I go to do something since I got to the camp, someone seems to appear beside me.’
‘You wonder why?’ The tone was matter-of-fact, not challenging. ‘You were not in a good state when we found you.’
‘I was in a better state than when Grakk pulled me from the pits of the City Below after Loku had sent me down there to die.’
‘Better is not necessarily good, chief.’
‘I did learn a lot in those pits, right enough. Not so much in the pit of corpses this time.’
‘I suppose you learnt this time that you weren’t a corpse, which is a fairly good discovery to make.’
Brann almost smiled. ‘I was lost to myself in the City Below, Gerens. I will never be able to repay you all for what you did to bring me back.’
He sensed more than saw Gerens’s shrug. ‘You did what you had to do to survive. We did what we had to do to help you live.’
Brann paused to push aside the reluctance to say the next words. ‘There was a change in me, left by the pits. You know that, don’t you? There is a killer inside me.’
Gerens snorted. ‘There is a killer inside us all for when we need it. Some indulge it, some use it. The difference in you, chief, is that you are very good at it.’
‘And that is actually a good thing?’
‘In the world we live; on the road we travel?’ Gerens jerked and there was the sound of a soft plop as a small stone was cast into the water. ‘Without doubt.’
They sat in silence for a while. That Gerens was a more familiar companion than Marlo was reflected in the fact that quiet lay more easily over this pair.
Silence, until Gerens cleared his throat. ‘Warm weather.’ Brann looked at him. ‘Heavy air, hard to breathe sometimes, don’t you think?’
Brann nodded, looking back at the water. ‘It is. Need a storm to clear the air. Rain would help it.’
‘It would. Just enough to clear it. It has been pleasant to be free of quite as much rain as we have in our land.’
‘Indeed. These lands do have that advantage.’ Brann yawned. ‘It’s late, I suppose. Probably best to go back to sleep.’
‘Indeed.’
They walked back to the group of sleeping figures beside the fire. Konall’s space was empty – he would be somewhere in the darkness, keeping watch. Brann lay down once more on his blanket.
‘Gerens?’
‘Yes, chief?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Any time, chief. Every time.’
Dawn was starting to fade the darkness when he woke again. The camp was stirring as Grakk, Sophaya and Mongoose rode into their midst.
Mongoose stopped her horse close to the rising group around the fire. ‘So you found him then.’
Konall grunted. ‘Be glad it was us and not you who found him.’
The girl raised her eyebrows in question, but Hakon cut in. ‘Please do not start Konall on this subject again. He has been badly affected by the experience. He may never be the same again.’
Konall grunted. ‘Will never.’
Mongoose slid wearily to the ground. The other two also, Brann noticed, looked bowed by fatigue as they dismounted. She led the three horses to the river, while Grakk glanced at Brann, then looked pointedly at Cannick. The grey-haired old warrior nodded back briefly, enough to satisfy the wiry tribesman for now. Grakk nodded in return, the soft light enough to make visible the intricate tattoos on his shining scalp that marked him as from the people of the deserts beyond Sagia – people who allowed, and indeed fostered, the misconception of them as simple uncivilised nomads, to maintain the secret that they harboured the accumulated knowledge of the known world.
Gerens’s query was more audible, though barely in more words. ‘You took a while. Trouble?’
Sophaya shrugged. ‘Avoiding trouble, more like. We were on the far side of the field of dead, and had to lay low to avoid a patrol. We also took a trip into the main camp to see if Brann was among the prisoners, which by necessity was not the fastest of visits.’
‘You went into their camp?’ Gerens was aghast. ‘Do you realise how dangerous that was?’
Breta’s laugh boomed across the fire pit. ‘You say that as if we have a safe and dull life as it is.’
Gerens was not to be deterred. ‘But still…’
Sophaya smiled sweetly. ‘Oh, darling dearest, are you worried about me?’ She patted his arm softly. ‘Fear not, the three who were there were the three best suited to slipping through shadows. And I am the best of the three.’
Grakk winked at Gerens. ‘She is undoubtedly correct in that. She is like a shadow herself.’
Gerens nodded in acceptance. ‘She is magnificent,’ he conceded.
‘So,’ Cannick cut in. ‘We know you didn’t find him among the prisoners.’
Grakk’s stare was bleak. ‘We did not find any prisoners.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ They all looked at Konall. He shrugged. ‘What do you expect? This is the remains of an army, in retreat. Thanks to you,’ he looked at Brann, ‘they no longer have their leader, since you cut his head off in the battle that lifted the siege of the town, and they are no better than a rabble, looting to take what they can to, in their eyes, redeem a bad situation on their way, heading home. That does not include keeping prisoners to feed.’
Hakon frowned. ‘That doesn’t need to include slaughtering simple villagers. That was a whole settlement wiped out. Farmers and their families are hardly a deadly enemy to leave at your back.’
Cannick spat. ‘Some people just enjoy the killing. Doesn’t make it right, but it’s a fact.’
Brann nodded. He had seen enough of that in his time to know the truth in it. He frowned, however, frustrated at the fog in his memory that was obscuring something with as much magnitude as the slaughter of innocents, but leaving his questions for now.
Mongoose had tended to the horses and accepted a hunk of dry bread from Hakon. ‘Anyway, they’ll get what’s coming to them. If they had bothered to scout ahead, as we did after we needed to leave their camp on the far side, they’d know they are heading directly towards a proper army coming to teach them why they shouldn’t have come here in the first place.’
‘Good,’ Brann said quietly. They had their own business to concern them, but he was glad to think of the fate that awaited