Blood of the Red

Chapter 26 - Sindri

Chapter 26 – Sindri

Sindri's spirits fell with each step that brought him down from the mountains. The peaks of the Matteracks had a bite like that of the Ice Maw ringing Greyloft. Since setting sail for the Myrdrin, Sindri had not felt so at home.

The sailcloth sack hung limp across his shoulder now. It had pained him to butcher the 'Dancer's sails when he made landfall on Conault. She was a bonny little boat. Dancer served him well when the Arkasians gave chase from the port of Glorsa, she fair skipped over the waves. Sindri shook his head, Arkasians thinking they could catch a man of the Highloft at sea!

Sindri paused at the edge of a rock-fall that gave way onto a deep valley, river-cut and steep-sided. The vantage point afforded a vista of the Matterack foothills, tumbling down to the distant ribbon of the Parsus river. He sat on an out-cropping of slate and reached into his sack. Of the food he bought in Narvil, only a chunk of hard bread and a clean-picked ham-bone remained.

A lump of frost-shattered stone proved ideal for splitting the bone. Sindri scraped out the marrow on the tip of his dagger and sucked it from the blade. I slit a man's throat with this knife. I can't even remember his name.

The unfortunate Arkasian's name might have escaped him but Sindri recalled eating the rest of the pig very well indeed. He dined mightily upon it in a Narvil tavern. The Blue Boar. I remember the names of taverns I've eaten pig at - but not the name of a man whose throat I slit like a pig's.

It had taken little effort to discover that Raymell led his men into the Matteracks. Sindri didn't even have ask, let alone bang heads together. He overheard two hunters at the 'Boar discussing the heavily-armed column of men making their way up Chem's Ridge, toward the high passes.

Unfortunately gossip lies thinner on high ground. In the peaks Sindri found comfort, but no Arkasians, and no key.

Corlothis had said the Bloods would run for the key. A creature of darkness who claimed once to have been a man and to have known Authur, the founder, had set Sindri chasing down blood guard in the hope they would lead him to the one key. And with that he might unlock a new future for his people in the north. Sindri shrugged. The Ghost Raven had set him on this path and steered him around one death after another. While the path lay before him he would follow it.

All I can do is press on and seek word of them in the villages north of the range.

Sindri reached for the bread, then let his hand fall. He stood, shading his eyes. Something in the chaos of hills and valleys below caught his eye. A tiny smudge in the air. Smoke! Smoke means trouble and trouble is where you're bound.

Fire guttered and flared below the distant smoke. What must they be burning? To flare so bright and die so swiftly?

Sack on shoulder once more, Sindri wove his way down toward the smoke. He moved swiftly. Children of the Greyloft were surefooted or dead. Another skill, even more important than balance, is to read the rock. Know loose from firm and the mountains are yours!

The sun had watched Sindri from its zenith when he lunched on bones, and now it winked at him from the horizon as he came to the slaughter. The dead lay stinking and charred on the scorched rock. The stump of a small tree still smouldered on the side of a gully.

"There's nothing uglier than a burned man." Sindri shivered despite his bold words. Standing alone among the dead - I should be used to it by now. But the horror of the corpses made his skin crawl.

Looting the charred bodies proved to be a messy business. Fire melts flesh, it welds man to leather and cloth. Several times Sindri felt his gorge rise. His search ended with dry heaves beside a man with no face. I won't be eating with this knife again and that's a promise.

Sindri regarded the handful of greasy coins he'd salvaged. He shrugged and tipped them into his pocket. In one hand he held a section of hard leather, pried from the shoulder of a corpse. Where the man's sword had lain across it, the leather retained its bright blue coating. The dead were too few to account for all the Arkasians the hunters spoke of in Narvil, but somebody had put a sizeable dent in their raiding party. Some of the dead were too burned for Sindri to say if they were Arkasian or not. He couldn't even guess if they were man or woman.

Greyheart could have tracked them, he could track a mouse over rock. But Greyheart had died when they attacked the Carthachin. Sindri looked back at the perimeter he'd walked. Nothing. Where else was there to go but Parsus City?

Sindri frowned. Greyheart kept a hoard of cured map hides. The coastlines, cities, streams, villages and forests of every country known to man had been painstakingly seared onto the hides with hot wires. A memory of the Conault skin danced before him, blurred everywhere that counted. The frown deepened and Sindri reached for his axe. Feeling ridiculous he let his hand fall. Tutor Maygar could ask me twelve twelves these days and I'd reach for my axe!

He left the dead to the ravens, heading north by north-east whilst sunset's afterglow lingered. Leaden clouds banked above the Matteracks, heavy with snow and poised to sweep down on Sindri's trail.

To the north, the hills gave rapidly onto plains. Below Sindri a wooded valley led to the lowlands. Hurrying against the threat of night, he made for the trees. Even the horror of the burned dead couldn't blunt the prospect of a fire and a warm night. In his haste, and the twilight gloom, he didn't see the men emerging from the margins of the wood, until it was too late to avoid them.

They came on in ragged order, score upon score, every man among them cloaked in black. A startled cry went up from the first of the band to see him. Even in the murk Sindri could tell these were no Arkasians. The shouter drew a short sword, those further back unslung longbows from across their backs. Conault men. Too damn many Conault men!

"Captain Yekrin! Sir!" the foremost man shouted.

"Got a prisoner, Sir!" another hollered into the woods.

Don't count your chickens, little man. Sindri's hand found the haft of his axe. I'm not your prisoner yet.

A rider came from between the boles of two great elms. Sindri couldn't make him out in the half-light.

"Ingold Stannith does not threaten seven feet in height." The rider's voice carried a shrill edge, "He is not a youth, and," he paused to gather breath for the shout, "HE IS NOT FROM SARK!"

The horseman edged closer. "We'll camp here. Shoot the Sark man."

The first arrow hit Sindri in the shoulder. It punched through his ring-mail, burying itself deep in the meat and fetching up against bone. The force half turned him and the second arrow skittered harmlessly across his mailed back.

"Bastards!" Sindri swung his axe overhead and charged.

An arrow hammered into his thigh above the knee, another transfixed his right arm, entering below the elbow and punching out through his bicep. Somehow the ground eluded his feet and Sindri found himself falling. A weight hit him from behind. The earth met him, and he tasted dirt and blood.

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