Exile

XIV

It was like nothing she had ever seen before. A fragmented, disjointed river of humanity creeping its way across the rugged landscape. Not an army, but an entire people. Thousand after thousand. The closest of them were barely a mile from where she stood. The rest stretched out beyond sight.

There were bands of men mounted on rugged little horses, riding at the head of the march. They were spread out. Behind them came everyone and everything else. Men, women and children; some riding but most walking. Trains of horses and mules carried great mounds of baggage. Simple two-wheeled wagons trundled along. Lines of captives, ropes yoking their necks together, walked in the midst of the column. Most of them were bent low by the weight of the supplies they carried.

Wren stared at this spectacle with something approaching awe. They were too far from her for any clear sound to carry but she could imagine it. The rumble and the grinding and the clatter and clank. She had thought she understood what it meant when people spoke of the Huluk Kur being on the move. She had not. It was the kind of thing that could only be truly understood by seeing it. A black and grey and brown host laid out over hill after hill, trudging snow to mud so that it left a dark stain across the whole landscape as if some sky giant had reached down and gouged a furrow across the earth with a single massive finger.

Her eyes tracked back along the length of the vast column. Beyond it, rising from behind the distant peaks its tail was still crossing, there were indistinct pillars of smoke. They left corpses behind them, Ammenor had said. Fires too. This was havoc on the march.

And it was all wrong, Wren thought grimly. It must be. Everything Ammenor had said, everything she had assumed meant that the Huluk Kur should be far away. There was no pass for them to cross here, only high cruel ground and snow and wind. The Free and the King’s army were waiting for them at the Hung Gate. That was not here.

The sound of stone on stone might be unremarkable in a place such as this, where the bones of the earth were exposed to the air. There was something in the single grating rasp, though, that made Wren shrink down before she was even sure where it came from. She made herself small.

A band of Huluk Kur were coming out from a stand of lean pine trees. They emerged cautiously onto a field of loose rocks and scree. Stones moved beneath their feet. Wren was above them, barely two hundred paces distant. Hidden, she hoped, by the undulations of the rough ground. She glanced over her shoulder. Instinct again. Marking the position of sun and skyline, to be sure she would not silhouette herself.

They must be scavengers or scouts, ranging ahead and away from the main host. They were on foot, for which she gave small thanks. Nothing else about them was remotely encouraging or comforting. They were heavy with muscle and thick-furred jackets and weaponry. They moved across the hillside with all the ease and alert confidence of wolves.

Wren pressed herself down, entirely out of sight. Her last glimpse of them stayed with her though. The closest of the brawny men had wrapped around his belt a roll of blue cloth. Another had a blue tunic tied about his neck like a short cape. She knew what that meant; she did not need to concern herself about the Clade any more. The cruel men who hunted her had met something much worse than themselves in this bleak land.

She crept away. She retraced her steps not on her feet but on hands and knees, even crawling on her belly sometimes. Her every movement was measured and considered. Her mind rattled with fear and uncertainty, but she quelled it and forced herself to think only of silence and concealment. There was nothing of consequence now save surviving the next few minutes, the next few yards of ground. Her life was measured in reaches, shifts of weight, the smallest of increments.

Back to the stream and then up its tiny channel, pretending it to be a gorge so deep it would hide her from any eye. Around boulders and among the low juniper scrub. To the decapitated tree, where she paused for the first time and ventured a careful look back. She could not see the Huluk Kur, and they could not see her. She went more quickly after that.