Scouts. Any wounded will have to be left here. The stonemason will be at the head of the column from now until we find them.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Sho Tsai ordered the company to proceed north in battle formation. Outriders scouted the flanks and the rear whilst the main body rode in a broad column four abreast. At Ahm Lin’s instruction they followed a loose gravel track along the eastern bank of the Black Vein. The river was rich in boats crowded with people in much the same beggared and dishevelled state as those they had encountered on the road to Keshin-Kho. Despite their evident hunger they worked their long-bladed oars with a determined energy, gazes fixed on the promise of refuge that lay over the southern horizon. Vaelin saw many wounded amongst them nursing bandaged heads and limbs, some with raw and recent burns. Whatever the delusions of the late Governor Hushan, Vaelin doubted the Stahlhast’s newly risen god had come to the borderlands as a liberator.
They rode until dusk and camped for the night within a tight perimeter with the Red Scouts standing double watch in two-hour relays. The soldiers slept fully clothed with their weapons close at hand and horses remained saddled. Vaelin found sleep beyond him and lay for a time on his bedroll, listening to Erlin’s snores, which soon found a muted accompaniment in youthful voices engaged in muted conversation.
“Never seen a sky so big,” he heard Sehmon say. “Stars are much the same, though.”
“‘We walk beneath a shared sky on a shared earth,’” Ellese murmured in response. “‘And so, should share our hearts as we share this world.’” A quote Vaelin recognised from the Tenth Book of the Cumbraelin god, the Book of Wisdom, her mother’s favourite.
“What’s that?” Sehmon asked.
“Never mind,” she told him in a half-irritated mutter, grunting as she turned on her side. “Best sleep. There’ll probably be fighting tomorrow.”
There was a short pause and a sigh before Sehmon said, “So, you’re doing this again.”
“Doing what?”
“Pretending this, us, doesn’t matter.”
“I’m not pretending. It doesn’t matter.” A brief but potent silence followed before she spoke again, voice softer. “I know you want something from me, something I can’t give. It’s just not in me . . .”
Beset by a sudden sense of intrusion, Vaelin rose, gathering up his sword and walking away until their voices faded. He wandered the outskirts of the camp for a time, eventually coming to the riverbank, where he found Alum crouched, using the butt of his spear to scrape symbols in the dry earth.
“A message for the Protectors?” Vaelin asked him.
“For the children,” the Moreska replied. “When a hunter’s trek takes him far from the tribe, he will mark the earth with his True Name to let them know he still lives. The Lord of Sand and Sky will carry the message home so his kin will not worry.”
“True Name?” Vaelin crouched at Alum’s side to survey the symbols he had drawn. They were more complex than the marks he had seen him make in the ash back at the outlaws’ mine, three swirling pictograms bisected by various lines, some straight, others curved.
“The name by which the Protectors know me,” the hunter explained. “The name I craft with every step on the journey of life. This”—he pointed to the leftmost symbol—“the stars under which I was born. This”—his finger tracked to the next symbol—“the lives I have taken in the hunt or in war, and this,” he continued, his voice growing softer as he turned to the third, “what I hope to leave behind when the Protectors speak my True Name.”
“A story,” Vaelin realised with a smile. “Your True Name is a story.” He looked closer at the third symbol, the most complex yet, formed of interwoven spirals interspersed with small circles. “Your children,” he said.
“The children of the tribe.” Alum’s gaze dropped and his voice grew soft. “The children I made with my wives were very young when we set out for your Realm, and the journey was long. Hunger always takes the young first.”
“I’m sorry.”
Alum grunted, forcing a tight smile. “All children of the Moreska call each man Father and each woman Mother. Those that remain, somewhere in the world . . .” He splayed the long fingers of his hand over the third symbol. “They will call me Father when we find them.”
“Every step we take on this journey takes us further away from where they’re most likely to be. And I have a sense