Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [138]
Tackle clinking, they set off at a leisurely clop, down the shady side of the ridge. Here Port Awl’s houses overlooked the farmland to the north and the shining mountain peaks. The streets were cooler and rang with the sound of blacksmiths and gunsmiths at work. Ianthe peered through doorways to see coal-blackened muscles and forges and anvils, racks of carbine rifles and hand-cannons.
Late morning found the carriage clattering across a stone bridge over the River Irya, which Briana explained was merely an ancient word for water. Farmsteads dotted the landscape on either side of the waters. Sparrows darted among hedgerows of rosehip and stowberries. Sheep and cattle grazed in green pastures, raising their heads to watch the travellers pass.
‘What breed are those?’ Ianthe asked, pointing to a herd of black cows.
Briana snorted. ‘How should I know? I’m not a farmer.’
Ianthe asked nothing more about her surroundings, but she continued to drink it all in: the fields of barley and whittle-grass, the furrowed black earth bursting with every type of produce, the quince, plum and apple orchards, the clumps of gnarled old oak and elm. In one field men and women in wide-brimmed straw hats loaded golden hayricks onto a cart. Fishermen sat on the banks of the Irya. Bees buzzed across meadow-flowers. This land was a hundred times richer than Evensraum. She wanted to get out of the carriage and take off her boots and splash through the rushing river, but that would not have been seemly.
They stopped to water the horses at a roadside tavern. Ianthe stretched her legs in the field behind the stables, returning to the carriage to find that Briana had bought a basket of bread, cheese, apples and a bottle of honey-coloured wine. They ate their lunch and drank wine from clay cups by the side of the road with the sun on their faces and the sound of birdsong in the surrounding hedgerows.
‘Do you have other girls from Evensraum?’ she asked the witch.
‘We had a girl from Whiterock Bay,’ Briana replied. ‘A frightful peasant. That would have been back in thirty-nine.’
‘Is she a Guild psychic now?’
‘Didn’t complete the training.’
‘Why not?’
Briana shook her head. ‘I don’t recall.’
‘So where is she now?’
Briana stuffed the remains of their lunch into the basket. ‘Why do you ask so many pointless questions?’ she said. ‘Come on, I want to get there before dark. There are wolves in those hills, you know.’
‘We had wolves in—’
‘In Evensraum, yes. Really, Ianthe, you have to stop wittering on about that muddy little island.’
Ianthe hung her head. ‘I’m sorry.’
Briana laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault, dear. As the Haurstaf like to say: It takes time for the dirt to fall from one’s boots.’ She smiled. ‘I only have to look back four or five generations to find parts of my family that came from relatively humble stock.’
‘They were farmers, too?’
‘Tax collectors.’
Late in the afternoon the road began to climb into the Irillian foothills. It wound its way up through forests of thousand-year-old oaks, their great boughs forming cathedral-like spaces in the green gloom and their roots smothered by leafy hummocks. Mossy stones marked the trail, and here and there shafts of light picked out the tumbledown remains of cottages set back from the trail. Birds whistled and insects buzzed, and once Ianthe thought she heard the rustle of a larger animal moving through the undergrowth. A deer perhaps? She noticed that the carriage driver had a pistol on his lap, but the horses seemed calm enough, so she didn’t mention it.
Shortly afterwards, they encountered their first checkpoint. Two soldiers in blue uniforms manned a barrier beside the road. A section of forest had been cut back, leaving a wide perimeter around a central concrete bunker. Spirals of razor-wire encircled the encampment. Smoke rose from one corner where six more men sat around an open fire. Each of them carried a carbine rifle slung over his shoulder. One of the two barrier