The warrior took hold of the rope and swung himself over the edge, descending swiftly. Then another man followed him, and another. Soon the ledge began to clear, allowing the climbers above to descend. Kaelin returned to the chimney, climbed swiftly down it, then lowered himself to the forest where Rayster and several others were waiting.
The bodies of the two clansmen had been covered by cloaks.
‘Were they friends of yours?’ asked Kaelin.
‘All Rigante are my friends,’ said Rayster. ‘One of them was my cousin. A good man. Four sons, two daughters. The other I could not recognize. He must have struck the ground head first. There are bits of skull and brain everywhere.’
Three hours later one hundred and forty clansmen were gathered close to the foot of the cliffs. Many were sleeping, wrapped in their cloaks, others sat watching their comrades slowly descending the great cliff.
Arik Ironlatch joined Kaelin. The old man looked weary. He patted Kaelin on the shoulder, then walked away, and swung his sword and scabbard from between his shoulders. Lying down on the ground, he rested his head on his arm, and fell asleep.
All the men were tired, and Kaelin wondered how much strength they would have come the dawn.
Banarin Ranaud’s dreams were never happy ones. For as long as he could remember he had dreamed about being trapped underground, the walls around him writhing and swelling, and thick with slime. Unable to stand on the shifting ground he would crawl on hands and knees, repeating over and over again: ‘I will be good, Mama. I will be good. I promise.’
Upon waking he would, at first, be relieved, but then there would always follow a fierce and terrible anger. It had never mattered how good he was as a child; how much effort he made to please her. Invariably she would drag him to the cellar, shouting and screaming at him. Then she would lock him in the old, discarded closet and leave him in the dark, listening to the sound of rats scampering across the dusty floor outside.
But this dream was different. The writhing walls contracted, the slime covering him. Pressure on his body propelled it through the narrowing confines of his prison until he tumbled against something hard and unyielding. He heard a door close, a lock being fastened. ‘I will be good, Mama!’ he yelled.
There was no light at first, but then he saw a faint glow begin, close to his face. He tried to back away from it, but the closet was small. The glow became a twisted face. There was a bloody, gaping hole where the right eye should have been.
‘Such a bad, bad boy,’ said Colonel Linax. As he spoke several bloated maggots fell from his blue lips.
Banarin Ranaud screamed – and sat bolt upright. His breathing was fast and ragged, and he stared panic-stricken at the canvas walls of his small tent. Rolling from his blankets he scrambled out into the predawn light. The ground was wet beneath his feet, soaking the thick socks he wore. Gazing around, he saw the sentries patrolling near the picket lines, the cannoneers sleeping by the small fires set behind every cannon. Already some of the men were emerging from their tents, and there were breakfast fires burning.
Colonel Ranaud ducked back into his tent and removed the wet socks. He sat on his blankets, still shaken by the dream. Truth was he regretted the murder of Colonel Linax. The man had been kind to him, and kindness was something Ranaud had little experience of. At first he had been content to wait for Linax to die of the lung disease that was rotting his body from within. Yet the man had clung to life for month after weary month. And all the while – as Ranaud saw it – the Black Rigante were growing stronger and more confident. Sooner or later there had to be a reckoning. Wullis Swainham’s reports claimed that Call Jace had ordered the construction of a new forge, capable of producing bigger cannons. Ranaud had begged Linax to write to the Moidart for more men, in order to lead an assault on Jace’s stronghold. Linax had refused. ‘We would need thousands of soldiers, Banarin. Even if we breach their gates they will fall back to the mountains within. There will be no major battles, but a long war of attrition. The cost of maintaining an army in the north would empty the Moidart’s treasury within two months. Only the king could supply a standing army in this area, and he has troubles of his own in the south. And even had he not, Call Jace has done nothing yet that would convince the king he needed to be exterminated.’