A Time of War. Katharine Kerr

Without Meer to lift the pack saddles, he couldn’t load the stock. Snivelling and crying in sheer frustration, he led the horse and mule onward. Fortunately, Meer was quite close, standing at the edge of a small clearing. Jahdo urged the horses into this sliver of open ground and dropped their halter ropes to make them stand.

      ‘Meer?’ He hesitated, wanting to ask the bard how he fared, realizing that the question was stupid. ‘Meer, it be Jahdo.’

      Meer nodded, turning his sightless eyes the boy’s way.

      ‘Meer, we can’t just stay here. Forgive me, but we’ve got to do something. If that mazrak –’

      ‘True.’ The bard’s voice sounded thick, all swollen with grief. ‘No need to beg forgiveness. You’re right enough.’

      ‘Are we going to go back west now?’

      ‘Can’t. I’ve got to make sure he’s dead. In my heart, I know, but how can I tell my mother that I learned of his death without bothering to find out how or why or where he lies buried?’

      ‘Well, truly, that would be kind of cowardly. She’ll want to know.’

      Meer nodded his agreement. Jahdo chewed his lower lip, trying to find the right words. There were none, he supposed.

      ‘Meer, I be so sorry.’

      Meer nodded again.

      ‘Uh, I’m going to go get the food and what I can carry.’

      The bard said nothing, sinking to his knees, his face turned to the earth.

      Jahdo went back and forth, carrying armloads of sacks and bags, dragging the heavy pack saddles, staggering under their bedrolls, back and forth until at last he was exhausted but their gear safe in the tiny clearing with the horses. During all of this the bard never moved nor spoke. Jahdo went back to the river one last time for a long drink. He splashed water over his head and arms, as well, then knelt for a moment, looking up at the sky. A few stripes of mare’s tail clouds arched out from the west, but nothing moved below them, not even a normal bird. Shuddering he hurried back to the forest.

      This time the bard looked up at the sound of his footsteps.

      ‘Do you want to stay here for a while?’ Jahdo said.

      ‘I need to collect myself.’ Meer’s voice was thin and dry, the sound of reeds scraping together. ‘My apologies, Jahdo. My apologies.’

      ‘It be well. I do be real tired, myself. I just wish there was somewhat I could do.’

      Meer shrugged and sighed.

      ‘I guess you wouldn’t know where your brother is? I mean, well, you know.’

      ‘I don’t, I’m afraid, no more than I knew where he was when he was alive.’ His voice choked on the last word. ‘But we don’t need scrying crystals to guess what’s happened. His false goddess has deserted him, and in the end no doubt she’ll do the same to all who believe in her! A curse upon her and her evil prophets both!’

      ‘I guess all we can do is keep going east and hope and pray and stuff. I be so scared.’

      But wrapped in his grief the bard never heard him. Meer clenched one enormous fist and laid rather than pounded it against a tree trunk. Under his breath he keened, a low rumble rather than a wail, yet it rose and fell with agony. All at once Jahdo realized a small horror – without eyes Meer couldn’t even weep. At last the Gel da’Thae fell quiet. For a moment he stood silently, then turned and spoke in an unnaturally flat voice.

      ‘Best be on our way. Whatever that may be.’

      All that day they headed more south than east, following the river and luck as well, to make a grim camp at sunset. Meer spoke only to the horse and mule, and in his own language at that, leaving Jahdo to bad dreams of seeing some member of his own family killed beyond his reach to stop it. For Meer’s sake he kept hoping that the bard was wrong and his brother still lived, but some days later they found that Meer’s inborn magic had revealed the truth.

      It was getting on late in the afternoon when the river, which had turned due east, grew suddenly wider, suddenly shallow. They might be drawing near to the ford Evandar had told them about, Jahdo supposed. He was beginning to think of finding them a campsite, when the boy saw black specks wheeling against the sky at some distance and, as far as he could tell, anyway, on the other side of the river. Meer stopped walking.

      ‘What’s that?’ he snapped. ‘Do you see birds? I hear them calling a long way off.’

      ‘I can see them, sure enough. There be a lot of them. I don’t know what kind they are. They fly too far off, but they look really little, not like mazrakir.’

      ‘Good. Well, let’s see what they’re up to. Lead on.’

      Some yards on they came indeed to the ford, and on their side tall white stones marked its spread, just as Evandar had told them. Although the water ran shallow enough for Meer and the horses, Jahdo had to pick his way across the rocky bottom in water up to his waist, but he didn’t dare ride one of the pack animals and leave Meer to guide them. Since the river fed off the mountain snowpack, he was chilled deep by the time they scrambled onto the grassy bank at the far side. Meer felt his damp tunic, then laid the back of one furry palm against the boy’s cheek.

      ‘We’d best keep walking. Warm you up a little.’

      ‘Well and good, then. Do you still want to see what those birds are?’

      ‘I do. I have dread round my heart, but I must know the truth.’

      Meer’s fear turned out to be more than justified. As they travelled on, heading more south than east, the distant bird cries resolved themselves into the harsh cawing of ravens, wheeling and dipping over some unknown thing.

      ‘It might just be a dead deer,’ Jahdo said.

      Meer only grunted for an answer and strode onward, swinging his stick back and forth before him like an angry scythe. After some hundred yards the horse and mule suddenly tossed up their heads and snorted. Their ears went back and they danced, pulling on their lead-ropes.

      ‘Oh by the blessed name of every god,’ Meer whispered. ‘Do you smell that?’

      ‘I can’t. What?’

      ‘Count your human weakness a blessing, then. It’s the smell of death, much death, death under a hot sun.’

      Jahdo felt his stomach clench.

      ‘Let’s go back a-ways and leave the horse and mule behind. Jahdo, forgive me. If I could go on alone and spare you what’s sure to lie ahead, I would, because you’re not a Gel da’Thae colt, raised to this sort of thing, but without you, how can I tell if my brother lies there or not?’

      ‘Well, true spoken. I’ll try to help.’

      They retraced their steps a-ways and found a good campsite near the river, then unloaded and tethered the animals. Meer had Jahdo find pieces of old rag, soak them in water, and tie them round their noses and mouths before they set out again. As they walked, Meer prayed, a low rise and fall of despair.

      First the sound of the birds, and all too soon the stupefyingly foul smell of rotting flesh, led them down the grassy bank, then east of the river for some hundred feet. The land there rolled back rising from the river to a high wooded knoll that climbed like a grave-mound behind the carnage. For a long time Jahdo could only stare at what he saw; every time he tried to speak he gagged from the smell. The air bludgeoned him, even through his pitiful mask; it shoved a dirty fist down his throat; it wrenched at his stomach with filthy fingers. Yet he was too horrified to vomit, which was perhaps the worst thing of all. I have to go through with this, he told himself over and over. What if it were Kiel lying dead there? How would I feel then? I’ve got to be Meer’s eyes. At last he convinced himself into courage, and he could speak.

      ‘Meer, there’s a flat space, like, and it’s all covered with dead men. They’re not buried or