Chapter 1: Down the Mountain

Darkness fell, but the Ultor did not stop. He’d eaten the last of the horse meat four—or was it five?—days ago, drunk the last of the water two days before that. His clothes by now hung loose on his frame, but his body felt heavy as stone. He picked his way down the mountainside on trembling legs, sometimes dropping to his hands and knees to crawl down the perilous declines. His head felt light and buzzy from the heights—no, he remembered, the eldest, most terrible peaks were behind him; his head was light now from hunger and fatigue. He knew he should lay down and sleep. His heart pounded with the insanity of pressing on down these slopes in the dark, and he felt death’s fingers scrabbling at his throat every moment. But if he closed his eyes, he died. And he couldn’t die yet: he was the Ultor.

Great One, guide my feet, he prayed. Guide my feet. Guide my feet. Bring me to streams of water, clear water, fresh and clear, sheep beneath my sword, fire and grease and juicy blood, clear water and meat and blood and fire and rest, rest, rest, on a soft feather bed under wooden arches and a fire at the hearth, sleep warm, soft bed –

He stumbled; his ankle bent wrong and sent his legs skidding out from under him. He managed to grab one of the thorny bushes that dotted the mountainside and hang on through the sharp pain. He heard the rocks he’d loosed clatter off into the darkness.

No more soft beds, he reminded himself, pulling himself upright and wiping a little blood from his palm. Just one foot in front of the other, for the rest of time, until I find HIM.

He started walking again. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword to reassure himself it was still at his side. He fought to keep his eyes open. Keep my mind as sharp as I keep my sword, oh Great One, for Your name’s sake. If I perish, no one will call You just. If You let me falter, all men will know You are evil. If you let me fall --

He fell. The ground beneath his feet gave way and it was as if the whole earth had disappeared; he was falling through the sky.

Then he hit the ground, and everything went black.

*   *   *   *   *

“Hey! You dead, or what?”

The Ultor felt a boot connect with his ribs and opened his eyes. The sun was already halfway up the sky. An enormous man leaned over him, his sword pointed at the Ultor’s throat. “Alive, I guess,” the man said, disappointed. “Well, better move on.”

“Where am I?” the Ultor croaked.

“Don’t matter, you’re not staying,” the man said. “Go ahead and take off that sword.”

The Ultor unbuckled his sword belt, sat up with great effort, and handed over the sword, belt and all. The man kept his own sword at the Ultor’s neck all the while.

“Water.”

“Ho, ho, no, not on your life,” the man chuckled. “You’re lucky I’m letting you go at all; I should have slit your throat first and checked if you were alive second. Come on, get a move on. Go back and tell your soldier buddies there ain’t nothing in Govan worth dying for.”

The Ultor looked the man over. He wore a set of wooly grey goat skins that made him look like a lump, but he carried himself like a muscular man. His expression looked mean and not particularly bright. The Ultor particularly noticed the canteen on his belt. “Is that the name of your village, Govan?”

“Oh, you know it is! Don’t think you’re fooling anybody. Now why won’t you go? I told you, if it weren’t bad luck to do violence before a wedding I’d have killed you already,” he whined.

“Your Ugasic is very good,” the Ultor replied.

“Course it is, I ain’t a savage. I fought for Sagash three years myself, all through the Hagannahs. The standing army, too, not them Fancies. You think they take you standing if you can’t speak Ugasic?”

“No, of course not,” the Ultor murmured.

“Hey, you fight for Sagash or Suvash?”

“Neither.”

“Suvash, huh? Well, don’t worry. I almost fought for Suvash before I decided for Sagash. I’ll still let you go.”

“I’m happy to go, friend, but I need water, and food—and a horse, if you have one.”

“I’m telling you, I can’t give you anything.” The man looked around. “It’s worth my hide if I do. I ought to be killing you, can’t you just be grateful I’m not?”

“I am, very grateful. But I still need water.”

“Well that ain’t my problem. And I’m getting kind of tired of telling you so,” the man said, his eyes narrowing.

The Ultor eyed him up and down again, checking his stance and balance on the rocks. Not a professional fighter, whatever he claimed about his time in this standing army—but a killer all the same. A happy killer. He looked down the mountain. Miles of rock and scrub in front of him. Days more walking.

“May I stand up?”

“Prefer you did. Just do it slow.”

The Ultor tried hard not to tremble as he leveraged himself against a rock and gained his feet. He swayed a little, but stayed upright. “What will you take for that flask of water?”

“I don’t know how many ways I can tell you—”

“But you’ll get in trouble for letting me go anyway, won’t you? If you’re risking your neck anyway, you might as well make a little coin off it.”

That stopped him short. He cocked his head back and considered the Ultor. “What you got?”

“I’ll give you three gold dragos for whatever’s in that canteen.”

He laughed. “Better make is something besides gold, friend.”

“Silver?” the Ultor offered, and the big man didn’t protest. “Twelve sigits?”

“What’s a sigit?”

The Ultor fished one of the grape-sized silver disks out of the pouch under his shirt and showed it to him.

“Twenty.”

“I only have twelve.”

The man pursed his lips. “I could just kill you and take all of them.”

“If it weren’t for the wedding, you mean.”

“Right. Yeah.” He sighed. “All right. Toss ’em over.”

“On the count of four,” the Ultor agreed, nodding to the canteen.

The big man unstrapped the canteen. The Ultor poured the coins from his pouch and separated out the gold, tucking it into his boot.

“One, two, three … four.”

They threw at the same time. The Ultor caught the canteen, but the pouch of silver dropped short, making the big man lurch forward down the slope to try to catch it.

The Ultor swept his knee up into the man’s face, knocking him back, then smashed the canteen down over his head. The man fell, and the Ultor fell on top of him, grabbing a fistful of his hair and dashing his head against the rocks again and again with all that remained of his strength. Finally he couldn’t lift his arm anymore and he lay still and listened to the chest underneath him. Nothing. Only silence.

The Ultor lay there trembling for several minutes. Then he remembered the canteen and crawled over to where he’d dropped it, uncorking it and taking a huge swig. He immediately gagged it back up; it wasn’t water but some kind of milk that tasted like someone had drunk it already, chased it with sour wine, thrown everything up and then bottled it. It was revolting, but the Ultor put it back to his mouth and drank several large gulps.

He located his sword and strapped it back on. Then he set about searching the dead man. He found a small packet of dried meat, which he ate immediately, as well as a drawing of a naked woman and little pouch with a couple of tiny gold nuggets in the bottom. His sword was a surprisingly good one, though it looked like something, probably a jewel, had been pried out of the pommel, subtly throwing off the balance. He lay the sword on the dead man, wrapping his hands around the grip, and closed the man’s eyes. The picture he tucked into the man’s shirt over his heart. The gold he pocketed.

Finally he stood up and looked around. The dead man had no travel gear, no provisions to speak of; he couldn’t have come from far away. But everywhere he looked he saw only mountains, mountains like flint daggers stabbing into the clouds. They looked too large for man, like the heartland of giants. A breeze ruffled his shirt and he shivered.

He looked around and found the cliff he’d fallen off of, and remembered how the dead man had been standing over him, had looked around to make sure no one saw them, had looked … north, across the mountain. North it was. North he walked.

Half an hour later he crested a ridge and found Govan. 

NEXT CHAPTER: GOVAN