Beyond the Wall of Time Read online

  He would not choose.

  “Put them down, please,” came a voice from behind him.

  The killing strength went out of Noetos. He turned to face the warrior leader.

  “What’s to stop me dropping these young ones over the edge of the platform?” Noetos asked, breathing heavily. The youngsters squirmed in his grasp. He thought perhaps he might have broken one of the lads’ ribs.

  The man took a pace onto the platform. “We both know you will not,” he said. “It is your grace and failing, this foolish tender heart you have. Otherwise you would be an effective killer.” The man assumed a stance and quoted: “When the killing starts, all sentiment must be thrust aside.”

  “I presume you left these two boys in charge of the armoury,” Noetos said. “That is not the action of a war leader. You quote from Cyclamere as though you have read his books, yet your own tactics fall some way short of the great man.”

  To his astonishment, the war leader sheathed his sword, put his hands on his hips and laughed raucously.

  “Put the children down,” said the man, still spluttering. “I will not strike at you, I give you my word, this time for the compliment. Again, life for life. Let the boys go, and I will let you leave this platform.”

  Noetos released the boys. One of them had indeed been hurt: the younger boy crabbed across the platform to the war leader holding his chest, his eyes filled with tears. The other stood beside the man and spoke rapidly, head downcast, no doubt apologising. The incessant “Khlamir” was the only word Noetos recognised.

  “Why do they call you that?” he asked, edging his way towards the low entrance to the armoury.

  “If you enter that building, I will ensure you do not come out,” said the man, and drew his sword. “They call me Khlamir, friend, because that is what I am. Their swordmaster. The one who is training them to supplement their bow-skill with the power of steel.”

  And then it hit him. A hundred small clues rearranged themselves in his head.

  No.

  Yes.

  Siy the Khlamir. A swordmaster who had served successive generations of the Roudhos, including his own father. A man who might fondly remember tutoring a young boy, or decide to avenge the deaths of his fellow warriors.

  Oh, the danger.

  “You will let me leave the platform?” Noetos said carefully.

  “I will also allow you a weapon,” the man decided, “not that it will avail you much. You have earned this, at least, for your compassion. You will find your people’s weapons in a sack just inside the armoury.”

  Noetos hesitated, though he now had good reason to trust the man’s word.

  “Go on! I will wait here, on the far side of the platform. But be quick. The battle is no doubt drawing to a close. I wish you well, but fear you will try to rescue your companions. You will lose your life if you make the attempt, but perhaps it is the most honourable course open to you. I am sorry for this, but you ought not to have entered the lands of the Padouki.”

  Noetos walked to the opening, bent down and scrabbled in the darkness until he felt the coarse weave of the sack. It clanked with the sound of steel. He found a blade, Duon’s by the feel of it, fastened the scabbard around his waist, then stood and faced the war leader.

  The man’s dark eyes narrowed, switching their gaze from the sword on the fisherman’s hip to his face, but he stood aside to allow Noetos access to the ladder.

  “Troubled by memories, old man?” Noetos asked as he descended the ladder. “So am I, if it is any consolation. My thanks for my life.”

  Sliding the last few rungs, he saluted the downturned face, turned on his heel and ran, the sweat turning cold on his back.

  The voice released Arathé with a sudden snap of withdrawal. She searched her mind for any sign of him, then—oh so reluctantly—looked around her. Hoping it had been a nightmare.

  Flesh, not her own, hanging from her fingers. A bloodied stick on the ground beside her. Her only weapon, save tooth and claw. The red-white shapes of bodies on all sides, smeared viscera, shattered bones, blood and pulp. The taste—she spat, then bent over and vomited. The smell.

  The memories. Crystal clear.

  The wail that came from her throat felt as if it had been ripped from the depths of her heart.

  She raised her eyes from the bodies of her enemies. On the platform beside her stood her friends and acquaintances—and her brother—staring at her with wide eyes and white faces.

  “Kill me,” she begged them, signing shakily. As her hands moved, flesh flicked from her fingers and fell to the ground. “Please. Kill me now.”

  No one moved.

  She took a step backwards at the expressions of horror on their faces. Her foot caught on something and she stumbled, her heel grinding, then sliding, in wetness. Another step, then another.

  “Arathé, don’t.” This from her brother.

  Another step. Her heel balanced on the edge of the platform.

  “I must,” she signalled, then closed her eyes and took another step.

  He saw them standing together, his children vulnerable, exposed and unmoving. Three bridges away, and for once he could trace a route that would take him there. Drawing Duon’s well-balanced sword he strode forward, then broke into a run as he saw what was unfolding.

  He pounded over the first bridge as she took a step back. Arathé! Across the second, heedless of how he set it swaying. Anomer, do something! He punched a hole in a slat with his foot as he leaped onto the third bridge, but barely noticed. Her heel hovered over a hundred vertical paces of nothingness.

  This bridge was longer, with a small platform in the centre. He was not going to make it.

  He flung himself onwards. A few more paces. She moved her hands and stepped backwards off the platform.

  He reached out, too late, as she—

  —as she hovered there for a perceptible moment, before his and Anomer’s hands closed over hers, pulling her back to the platform.

  Did you think I would let you go so easily? said the voice. You and I, Arathé, have only just begun.

  A shout. Here came the war leader, followed by a dozen or more warriors armed with bows. As the man stepped onto the bridge, Noetos released his daughter’s hand, and turned and faced him.

  “I thought you were a man of honour,” he said.

  “I thought you would run faster,” the man replied. “Besides, I have questions for you. I am sorry about your friends, but our orders are specific.”

  His men lifted their bows.

  Noetos gestured around him at the gruesome remains. “And I am sorry about yours. I will stay to answer your questions.”

  He watched the swordmaster’s face carefully and saw the exact moment when the carnage registered with the man. The tanned face paled, his thin lips parted, his eyes widened.

  “They attacked my daughter,” Noetos said.

  How could he not have recognised the man before now? Yes, he was garbed as a savage, not as the urbane tutor and faithful retainer Noetos remembered, but surely something about the voice, the man’s bearing, his perfect Tocharan accent, ought to have alerted him. What would the war leader do now he was confronted by the violent deaths of his countrymen and women?

  “Your daughter did this?”

  “Aye. We were travelling with a mad god, friend. How could we have survived in such company without skills of our own?”

  He raised the tip of his sword. To the others he said, “Find a way down to the ground. I will ensure you are not followed.” Then he dismissed them from his mind, preparing for the conflict ahead.

  “We have brought serpents into our house,” said the war leader.

  The bowmen were at least fifty paces distant, with leaf and bough between, but at a signal from the swordmaster they nocked arrows and loosed in one fluid action. Noetos had not thought they were in range. Despite having seen the power of the Falthan magicians, the fisherman flinched as the flight whistled past. The air in front of the captives s
himmered, then turned opaque, like tree sap or glue. None of the missiles reached their targets.

  “I am tired of being shot at with arrows,” Heredrew said. Beside him, Stella grinned.

  “Go!” Noetos growled at them, and gave his attention to his adversary.

  The bowmen retreated at another signal from the war leader. He came a few steps across the bridge. “Questions, then,” he said, his level voice masking his anger. “Here is my first question. You look familiar with a sword on your hip. Why is that?”

  Noetos strode to meet him, putting as much confidence in his stride as he could, and took a stance on the small central platform. “Recognise me, do you?”

  “No, but I recognise the stance. I taught it to my more able pupils.” The man drew a sword, a full two hands, and settled into his all-too-familiar stance. “Where did you learn to stand like that?”

  An assertion of his identity would not be enough: Noetos would have to prove himself. “Guess!” he said, and made his attack.

  A downward blow, turned mid-strike into an upward thrust. A standard Cyclamere sequence. I know nothing this man has not taught me, he conceded, but he did not allow the knowledge to consume him.

  The blow was parried, of course; the man opposite him had, after all, taught it to him. Supremely confident, the Khlamir did not assay a response, though he could have. Noetos had been counting on that. His given word holds him.

  “Are they teaching the Khlamir method at Tochar now?” the war leader asked. Noetos essayed a couple of stabbing flicks, leaning in with his upper body. His opponent danced away, untroubled.

  “I have no idea,” Noetos answered. “I learned to fight like this in the grounds of the Summer Palace at Raceme, under the tutelage of a remarkable old man.” Another downward cut, begun slowly but with a disconcerting acceleration: a Cyclamere specialty, and hard to master. The war leader defended the blow, though with a little difficulty. “I wasn’t much of a pupil though.”

  “I tutored a few noblemen in Raceme,” said the Khlamir. “They were all as old then as you are now, and none had your skill. Who are you? I will have answers!”

  “You’ll kill me for them?”

  A feint to the left, then a short downward cut from the shoulder. His blade rang on the swordmaster’s, skittering across the steel with a rasping sound.

  “No. But I have no doubt I will wound you. You are surprisingly proficient, too skilled to be disarmed unhurt. Better to hand over your sword.”

  Another blow from Noetos, another block from his opponent.

  “A further question occurs to me,” the man said. “You are large, if a little slow, and have obviously been well trained. Why are you not trying to use your weight against me?”

  “Because,” Noetos replied, shaping a two-handed blow from his left shoulder, “my swordmaster taught me better.”

  A blow from the right, then another, both parried with ease. Time to speed things. Time to gamble.

  Arathé! See my need!

  The effect was much as it had been that day in Raceme’s Summer Palace. All motion around him slowed as though time had been carved into discrete moments and then spread apart. He could act in and between the moments, while the swordmaster was confined to normal time.

  A third blow from the right, taking the man’s blade near the hilt as he drew it back. Then a smart slap to his exposed right shoulder with the flat of Duon’s blade. A step back and pause, allowing the man to catch up.

  “Not possible,” the war leader hissed, his eyes wide.

  “No, it is not,” Noetos agreed, and readied himself.

  “I will not be toyed with,” the man said, and launched a furious attack. Blows from high, then low, one continuous movement; a spin, then two further strikes from left and right, one from the shoulder, the other from the hip. All delivered with main strength, designed to drive Noetos back from the platform and onto the unstable bridge.

  Even in this strange magical state, Noetos had some difficulty meeting the swordmaster’s attack. The man disguised the direction of each stroke, giving Noetos no time to respond. Fortunately the fisherman had something other than normal time in which to frame his response. Taking each blow on his sword, he allowed himself to smile, catching and holding his opponent’s gaze.

  “You are too slow, friend,” he said. “Past your best.”

  “I have been past my best for a century,” the man said, panting heavily. “Still there has been no one in Old Roudhos to match me.”

  “And still there is not,” Noetos said, lowering his sword. “I have a secret, Cyclamere.” The man blinked at his use of the name. “You once told me I’d never make a swords-man, but I practised after you left our service. I even took your advice about leading with my left shoulder.”

  Cyclamere brought the point of his sword up, then lowered it as his eyes narrowed. “Noetos?” he said, his voice rough, as though he had just woken from a deep sleep. “But you died along with your family.”

  “So everyone was told.”

  The man licked ashen lips. “You have been in hiding ever since?”

  “Aye,” Noetos said.

  “I looked for you,” Cyclamere told him after a pause. The man’s eyes had begun to water. “A year I searched, and found no evidence you were alive.”

  “I hid well.”

  His old arms tutor puffed out his cheeks. “As I live, it is you. You have Noetos’s lip as well as his build. Or the build he would likely have grown into.”

  “I learned to like vegetables,” Noetos said.

  “Aye, I can see. I am… glad you live. And angry that your family died.”

  “I am pleased to hear you searched for me,” Noetos offered in exchange.

  An awkward silence fell between two men unused to unmasking their emotions.

  “I will tell you this, Cyclamere,” Noetos said eventually. “I am travelling north to make the Lord of Bhrudwo account for his crimes.” He was aware of how vainglorious this must sound. “I have been joined by others. We are opposed by the gods themselves, or, at least, two of the three. We have been drawn into the conflict of the age, and it seems the Neherian destruction of Old Roudhos is only a part of it.”

  “Do you intend to make the Neherians answer for what they did to your family?”

  Just as Noetos had hoped, the venerable swordmaster had been drawn in despite himself.

  “I already have,” he said. “I long to tell you how the nobles of Neherius were struck down. How this sword avenged the cruel deaths of my family. Come with me and I will explain everything.”

  Cyclamere sighed, a sound of genuine regret. “Unfortunately, young Noetos, I cannot. As much as I loved your family, my loyalty is to the Canopy of Patina Padouk. I do not blame you for what has happened here today,” he swept his hand across the grisly scene, “but I can hardly leave Patina Padouk in this condition.”

  “And my loyalty is to my companions, who have chosen to stand in the path of gods determined to break the world.”

  “I will not stand against the gods.”

  “Against Keppia, you mean.”

  “That is exactly what I mean. And would you sacrifice a life hundreds, if not thousands, of years long, leaving your friends and family behind, to serve a man you believed dead?”

  “If it would lead to saving Roudhos, then yes, I would,” Noetos answered fiercely. “And who said anything about serving? Or sacrificing? You’d lend your sword arm and your knowledge when and where you chose, and I doubt there would be anyone who could seriously threaten your life.”

  “You’re forgetting magicians. A good sword is no proof against a magician.”

  “If a good sword is no use, why are you so revered among the Padouki?”

  “Because our magicians are not strong,” Cyclamere answered, rather frankly in Noetos’s opinion. “The little power at our disposal comes from the gift that Keppia gave us. We think of it as a small side-stream, only a fraction of the raging flood Keppia used to keep us alive.�
��

  “You’re afraid to offend him.” Noetos did not ask this as a question.

  “For myself, no. He is ignorant, rude and without honour or depth of spirit. Why would I bow to the likes of him? However, I am fearful of what would happen to my people if he withdraws his patronage.”

  “They would die?”

  “Aye. I am ready to die, though I would miss this world. Who would not want to wake up for one more morning and breathe in the forest scent? Or listen to his grandchildren at play? But my children and grandchildren are not ready for death. You fight for your family and your country, Lord of Roudhos. Would you not give me leave to fight for mine?”

  Another explosion shook the trees, sending leaves quaking and branches rattling. Over Cyclamere’s shoulder black smoke began to billow. The warrior did not turn his head at the sound, not even a fraction.

  “We can’t stay here,” Noetos said. “We must fight each other, or combine to rescue those in trouble, or agree to separate. If we fight, you will die, as I have a source of magic you cannot counter. If we separate, I believe the best we can hope for is that one of us will successfully protect his family. One, or probably both, of us will lose everything. But if we combine our efforts against the gods, we can prevent them breaking the world.”

  The warrior frowned. “To prevent the world breaking, Padouk must pass away?”

  “Perhaps not,” Noetos said, but inwardly he acknowledged the truth of Cyclamere’s words.

  “Then let the world break. My people and I will watch it together.”

  After Cyclamere had left him, gone to search for those who needed his help, Noetos struggled along depressingly familiar bridges and platforms towards the smoke. As he drew closer, flames became visible, their hungry tips rising above the foliage. Not even the beginnings of a light drizzle could quench them.

  He had never been any good at puzzles. Didn’t have the patience for them. His father had insisted problem-solving be part of his education, and had imported all sorts of intricate devices to test his son’s abilities. He solved them, all right, with the aid of hammers and saws. He’d always been fond of the direct route. Trouble was, there was no direct route to solving this puzzle. The harder he tried to approach the fire, the further he seemed to get from it. No hammer or saw was going to realign the bridges to allow him direct passage, and he found himself doubling back time and again.