Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts

       III. Fissure

      The hidden approach to Ettinmere Settlement devolved to a terraced footpath, ancient and weathered. Arithon followed Vivet’s lead with care, often required to leap crumbled gaps or surmount wheeling vertigo where the way narrowed. The precarious track notched a near-vertical slope, edged by sun-beaten rock crocheted in the cracks with the roots of crabbed firs. The dizzying view opened up over air, the milky haze of midday filmed over the gashed chasm below. Hawks soared like flecks of nicked gold, with the indigo sky overhead a stretched drum between snow-capped peaks.

      In an open vista that extended for miles, the trail behind snaked like unreeled cord through the contorted vales. Any unfriendly movement could not be concealed. Yet Arithon could not shake the persistent impression of watching eyes.

      “We’re not far.” Paused to sip from one of the spring-fed falls that splashed over the brink and frayed into mist, Vivet tipped her chin skywards. Her flushed, freckled skin was no longer yellowed by fading bruises. Two patient fortnights at the cabin, and more time on the trail had settled her nerves. Or else the familiar ground eased the tension that rode her like a whipped horse.

      Arithon looked up at her prompt. A vulture spiralled on the thermals, distanced to a taut pen-stroke. Common enough in the Storlains, where wolves and mountain cats hunted, carrion birds circled in tireless search of gnawed carcasses: except that something shiny winked through the feathers on the raptor’s breast. “Yon creature is tame?”

      “Not exactly. Our shamans link with them as observers.” Vivet qualified without artifice, “That one’s tracking our presence.”

      “And Ettinmere doesn’t like trespassers.” Annoyance gouged Arithon back to his feet. “I hope you’ll be more forthcoming about how your folk receive strangers.”

      “My people kill suspected rapists on sight,” Vivet answered, wilted. “That’s why we waited to leave. I dared not risk misplaced blame for my shameful condition.”

      Arithon measured her belated sincerity, flicked to guarded distrust. “I have gone far enough. As one of their own, such arcane protection should see you the rest of the way without harm.”

      Vivet exclaimed, “Please! You can’t go.” Alarmed, she expounded, “We have rigid customs concerning outsiders. If you turn away without proper leave, you’ll forfeit your place as my guest. My people must know who you are, first. If you don’t face them honestly, they will shoot you down. I can make things right!” she hastened to amend. “I promise you’ll be welcomed warmly once the formalities are satisfied.”

      Arithon weighed his choices, pinned in discomfort as noonday sun smote the clear air and baked the rocks like a furnace. His sword was no use against concealed archers. Conjured shadow turned upon folk without any cause for hostility risked a notoriety that might draw his enemies. Better, he judged, to earn amity and let Ettinmere’s vigilant suspicion of strangers guard his back as a windfall advantage.

      “Lead on,” he told Vivet.

      “I cannot,” she added with chagrined regret. “By our ways, I must take you in, blindfolded.”

      That protocol nettled him. Nonetheless, he endured with iron forbearance while she tore the dusty hem from her chemise. His bent head concealed his distaste as she bound his eyes and knotted the cloth at his nape. Her seductive scent and her touch offended his person. Yet indignity scarcely merited a fight, not when he was tired at heart and disinclined to provoke cultural friction.

      “They will come for us,” Vivet said at a rushed whisper. “Do as they say and stay quiet.”

      The sentries arrived fast, two on foot from behind, their step almost soundless, while two more unreeled from above, the creak of stressed rope occluded by the bounce and crack of dislodged pebbles. They asked no questions of Vivet but took brusque hold of Arithon. Because they did not attempt to disarm him, he allowed them the blistering liberty.

      They bound his wrists. Roughly, as though they handled a criminal, he was noosed by the neck with a slip knot. Then he found himself prodded ahead, the man in front and the one at his heels his sole guidance on the narrow path.

      Their intention was plain: if he resisted, a shove off the rim would hang him outright. Arithon broke into a sweat. On the whim of a woman he had no grounds to trust, his life lay at the mercy of eccentric strangers. Whether the Ettinfolk tested his courage, or tried his mettle to measure his earnesty, he had no recourse except to rise to the uncivil challenge.

      Unrelenting, the Ettinmen were, but not cruel. They paused for rest when the ascent left him winded, and quenched his thirst from their unstoppered waterskins.

      Yet the imposed conditions upon him overspent kindness or courtesy. Chilled after dusk, while the glacial gusts buffeted through his thin shirt, Arithon checked his temper, fed up by the relentless silence. Yet before he rejected Vivet’s advice, the footing beneath his nose-led step opened up in descent. The rock ledge broadened to packed gravel and mud, grooved by the passage of cart-wheels. Then the rutted track gave way to pasture, fragrant with alpine flowers. Through muffling cloth, Arithon scented the redolence of penned livestock. Breeze moaned through a nearby wind-break, embellished with the tinkle of goat bells and fragmented chatter: a woman’s chirped laugh, and the treble excitement of children, underscored by male voices and downhill, barking dogs, perhaps kept for herding.

      Yet Arithon’s keepers did not turn towards the settlement in the valley. Blindfolded still, tugged by their rope, he was shepherded into a timber enclosure. The tight space cramped even his slight build, and soaked up sound without echo. Head ducked beneath the low, raftered ceiling, he sucked in the rancid aroma of a smoke-house recently used to cure butchered meat.

      The door creaked shut, followed by a rasp and thunk as someone outside shot a timber bar stout enough to thwart bears.

      Then urgent hands pushed and shoved till he sat on the packed-earth floor. The stale strip of rag was yanked from his face. Mage-sense plumbed a darkness frowsty as cut felt, with two of his escort huddled beside him.

      Then one sparked a tallow dip. Painted by the yellow ripple of flame, Arithon studied the Ettinmen.

      Each wore a peaked felt cap, with rolled brims and wool bands stuck with feathers or knot-woven oat straw. Fair-skinned and sunburned, they had cropped, sandy hair, and eyes pale as coin silver. Narrow, refined features bespoke insular blood and inimical lack of expression. Long-boned, with slender hands, they were as alike as fledged hawks with their thin, high-bridged noses and feral attentiveness.

      Among their kind, Arithon was the crow tossed into a harrier’s nest.

      The extravagant detail of their dress began with embroidered shirts, chamois vests, and elk-hide leggings stippled with indigo ink. Belts and boots were adorned with braided furs, or stitched quills, or the flayed bones of small birds. Each man wore a curved dagger, the handles inlaid with lapis and gold and topped with varnished knots at the pommels.

      No move was made to free Arithon’s wrists or remove the looped rope from his neck. If he was a prisoner, no one yet asked him to forfeit his weapons. When loaded stares failed to pressure him to speak first, the fellow with eyes like steel grommets and the hatband with a cock pheasant’s crest snapped off a statement in his native dialect.