chest, in a way that brooked no argument.
‘He didn’t,’ Galerinos said. ‘He led us right into it. I tried to warn him, truly I did, but Rhoddo just spurred his horse forward, and everyone followed him.’
Adorix grunted once, then shook his head. ‘Let them rot, then.’ He held out his hand to Bercanos, who laid his own palm against it.
‘Forgive me,’ the Boar said. ‘My foul temper –’
‘Mine’s no better,’ Adorix said. ‘We’ve got more to worry about at the moment than my stupid son. If he was coward enough to live when his men died, then he can freeze in the hells for all I care. I have other get to take his place.’
‘But –’ Gallo began, then swallowed his words. Arguing with Adorix was a good way to die young. ‘As you wish, honoured one.’
‘Well and good, then.’ Brennos took command. ‘We can’t stand here jawing like a pack of old women. If there’s a river ahead, let’s get on the move. We can’t risk losing our horses.’
‘Let us hope that Belinos and Evandar lend us their aid,’ Caswallinos said and folded his hands with a pious expression on his face, one that Galerinos had seen before, whenever his teacher was hiding something.
Shouting orders, the warleader strode away with the other warriors trotting after. Galerinos turned to Caswallinos. ‘I thought you said Evandar wasn’t a god.’
‘He’s not,’ the old man said, grinning. ‘But they don’t need to know that, do they now? Keep silence, lad, whenever you can, and your life will be a fair bit easier. Now let’s find you a new horse and move out with the wagons. Tonight, however, I want to hear more about this curse of yours.’
The sun crept down the western sky and shone full-strength onto the hillside. Gerontos’s face had turned a dangerous shade of red. ‘If only we had some water,’ he whispered.
‘True spoken,’ Rhodorix said. ‘This cursed stretch of country is all dust and thorns.’
‘I wish we’d stayed by that harbour. We could have built a city there.’
‘The omens weren’t right.’
Gerro nodded, then closed his eyes.
‘It’ll be cooler when the sun goes down,’ Rhodorix said.
Gerro never answered. It’ll be too cold, most likely, Rhodorix thought, and us with not one cloak between us.
As if in answer to his thoughts, a shadow passed across the sun. He looked up to see a lavender cloud, a small smear of colour at first against the blue. The cloud grew larger, sank lower, and formed a perfect sphere of mist. Out of the mist swooped a hawk, an enormous red hawk, shrieking as it glided down toward them. For the briefest of moments it hovered a few feet from the ground, then with a shimmer of silver light Evandar dropped down lightly and stood, back in his more or less human form. The lavender sphere vanished.
‘I’ll take you somewhere safe,’ Evandar said. ‘Can you get your brother onto his feet?’
‘He can’t stand up,’ Rhodorix said. ‘Maybe I can carry him over my back.’
The god frowned, considering Gerontos, who had slumped down against the boulder. Rhodorix had a panicked moment of thinking him dead, but he opened his eyes with a groan.
‘I’ll bring help.’ Evandar snapped his fingers and disappeared.
And how long will that take? Rhodorix wondered if Gerro would live long enough for this promised help to arrive. He scrambled up and stood between his brother and the sun to cast a little shade. He heard Gerontos mutter something and glanced back to see him trying to swat away the flies that were crawling on the blood-soaked bandage.
‘Leave them be,’ Rhoddo said. ‘Save your strength.’
When he returned his gaze to the hillside he saw the lavender mist forming in mid-air. A vast cloud of it hovered in the form of an enormous ship under full if ragged sail, which first settled to the ground, then began to thin out, revealing Evandar and a tall man wearing what seemed to be a woman’s dress, a long tunic, at any rate, with gold embroidery at the collar and hem. Around his waist he wore a belt from which hung a good many pouches. This fellow had the same peculiar ears as Evandar, and his hair was just as yellow, but his cat-slit eyes were a simple grey. He started to speak, saw Gerontos, and trotted forward, brushing past Rhodorix to kneel at the injured man’s side.
The last of the mist-ship blew away. Four stout young men appeared, carrying a cloth litter slung from long poles. They wore plain tunics, belted with leather at the waist. From each belt dangled a long knife in a leather sheath.
‘A healer,’ Evandar said, ‘and his guards.’
‘You have my humble thanks, Holy One,’ Rhodorix felt himself stammering on the edge of tears. ‘My humble undying thanks! I’ll worship you always for this. If I swear a vow, I’ll seal it with your name.’
Evandar smiled in the arrogant way gods were supposed to smile, judging from their statues, and waved one hand in the air in blessing.
The healer pulled a glass vial filled with a golden liquid from one of the pouches at his belt. He slipped one arm under Gerontos’s shoulders and helped him drink, one small sip at a time. Gerontos’s mouth twitched as if he were trying to smile. The healer got to his feet and began barking orders in a language that Rhodorix had never heard before. With a surprising gentleness the guards lifted Gerontos onto the litter. The healer put the vial away, then from another pouch took out a peculiar piece of white stone – a crystal of some sort, Rhodorix realized, shaped into a pyramid. For a long moment the healer stared into it, then nodded as if pleased by something and put the pyramid away.
No time for a question – the lavender mist was forming around them with a blessed coolness. Everyone followed Evandar as he led them uphill, only a few yards, or so it seemed, but when the mist lifted, they were standing on a different mountain, and the sun was setting over its peak. Rhodorix felt as giddy and sick as if he were drunk.
He tipped his head back and stared uphill at a massive fortress above them, huge, far grander than anything the Rhwmanes had built in the homeland. To his exhausted eyes it seemed almost as big as an entire Rhwmani walled town. Over the stone walls he could see towers rising and the slate-covered roof of some long structure in their midst. Beyond, at the peak of the mountain, three huge slabs of stone loomed over the fortress, dwarfing it. The sun had just lowered itself between two of the slabs, so that a long sliver of light flared and gleamed like a knife-blade on the mountainside.
‘Garangbeltangim,’ Evandar said. ‘And safety, at least for now.’ He tipped back his head and laughed in a ringing peal. ‘Indeed, at least for now.’
His laughter lingered, but the god had gone.
As they walked the last few yards, massive wooden gates bound with bronze bars swung open with barely a squeak or puff of dust. Rhodorix looked around him, gaping at everything, as he followed the healer inside. Big slabs of grey and reddish slate covered the courtyard in a pattern of triangles that led to a long central building. Its outer walls gleamed with tiny tiles of blue, white, and green, set in a pattern of half-circles so that the enormous rectangular structure seemed to be rising out of sea-foam. To either end stood towers, built square like Rhwmani structures,
