Three scrawny horses, one neglected ox and a wagon with a bent axle and a cracked brake: the amassed inherited wealth of the village of Morsko comprised only these. Bodies left to rot on the tavern floor — they should have set fire to the place, Nimander realized. Too late now, too hard the shove away from that horrid scene. And what of the victims on their crosses, wrapped and leaking black ichors into the muddy earth? They had left them as well.
Motionless beneath a blanket in the bed of the wagon, Clip stared sightlessly at the sideboards. Flecks of the porridge they had forced down his throat that morning studded his chin. Flies crawled and buzzed round his mouth. Every now and then, faint trembling rippled through his body.
Noon, the third day now on this well-made cobbled, guttered road. They had just passed south of the town of Heath, which had once been a larger settlement, perhaps a city, and might well return to such past glory, this time on the riches of kelyk, a dilute form of saemankelyk, the Blood of the Dying God. These details and more they had learned from the merchant trains rolling up and down this road, scores of wagons setting out virtually empty to villages and towns east of Bastion — to Outlook itself — then returning loaded with amphorae of the foul drink, wagons groaning beneath the weight, back to some form of central distri shy;bution hub in Bastion.
The road itself ran south of these settlements — all of which nested above the shoreline of Pilgrim Lake. When it came opposite a village there would be a junction, with a track or wend leading north. A more substantial crossroads marked the intersection of levelled roads to the reviving cities of Heath, Kel Tor and, somewhere still ahead, Sarn.
Nimander and his group did not travel disguised, did not pretend to be other than what they were, and it was clear that the priests, fleeing ahead of them, had delivered word to all their kin on the road and, from there, presumably into the towns and villages. At the junctions, in the ramshackle waystations and storage sheds, food and water and forage for the animals awaited them.
The Dying God — or his priests — had blessed them, apparently, and now awaited their pleasure in Bastion. The one who had sacrificed his soul to the Dying God was doubly blessed, and some final consummation was anticipated, prob shy;ably leading to Clip’s soul’s being thoroughly devoured by an entity who was cursed to suffer for eternity. Thus accursed, it was little wonder the creature welcomed company.
All things considered, it was well that their journey had been one of ease and accommodation. Nimander suspected that his troupe would have been rather more pleased to carve their way through hordes of frenzied fanatics, assuming they could manage such a thing.
Having confirmed that Clip’s comatose condition was unchanged, he climbed down from the wagon and returned to the scruffy mare he had been riding since Morsko. The poor beast’s ribs had been like the bars of a cage under tattered vellum, its eyes listless and the tan coat patchy and dull. In the three days since, despite the steady riding, the animal had recovered somewhat under Nimander’s ministrations. He was not particularly enamoured of horses in general, but no creature deserved to suffer.
As he climbed into the worn saddle he saw Skintick standing, stepping up on to the wagon’s bench where Nenanda sat holding the reins, and shading his eyes to look southward across the empty plain.
‘See something?’
A moment, then, ‘Yes. Someone. . walking.’
Up from the south? ‘But there’s nothing out there.’
Kedeviss and Aranatha rose in their stirrups.
‘Let’s get going,’ Desra said from the wagon bed. ‘It’s too hot to be just sitting here.’
Nimander could see the figure now, tall for a human. Unkempt straggly grey hair fanned out round his head like an aura. He seemed to be wearing a long coat of chain, down to halfway between his knees and ankles, slitted in front. The hand-and-a-half grip of a greatsword rose above his left shoulder.
‘An old bastard,’ muttered Skintick, ‘to be walking like that.’
‘Could be he lost his horse,’ said Nenanda disinterestedly. ‘Desra is right — we should be going.’
Striding like one fevered under the sun, the stranger came ever closer. Something about him compelled Nimander’s attention, a kind of dark fascination — for what, he couldn’t quite name. A cascade of images tumbled through his mind. As if he was watching an apparition bludgeoning its way out from some hoary legend, from a time when gods struggled, hands about each other’s throats, when blood fell as rain and the sky itself rolled and crashed against the shores of the Abyss. All this, riding across the dusty air between them as the old man came up to the road. All this, written in the deep lines of his gaunt visage, in the bleak wastelands of his grey eyes.
‘
Yes, and something. . colder.
