The Water Road (16 page)

“Strefer, look at me,” he said,
grasping her by the shoulders to ensure that she did. “Are you serious? What
did you find in there?”

She smiled and waved a finger at
him. “Now
that
, I could tell you, but I’m not going to. The last person
I told all that to took my story and burned it up right in front of me, the
bastard.”

“Who was that?”

“Olrey,” Strefer said, annoyed at
the question. “Publisher of the
Daily Register
. Who else would I go to
if I was going over Tevis’s head, huh?”

Rurek thought for a moment,
processing this new information. “You went all the way to Sermont just to talk
to your publisher?”

“Yup,” Strefer said, nodding for
emphasis. “I knew that Tevis didn’t have the guts to publish it. I thought
Olrey would, but I was wrong. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t give a damn
about the truth,” she said, wrenching free from Rurek’s grip. “He’s too worried
about what that king of theirs might do. Too worried about keeping the paper
open. Too worried about making money. It’s all about money, Rurek.”

Rurek stood up. “Look, Strefer, I
need you to tell me what you know. Let’s go down to the barracks and…”

“And what?” Strefer said. She was
angry now, well and truly worked up. “You’ll hush it up, too? You’ll tell me
that there are more important things to worry about than the truth? Sorry, no
deal.” She hopped off her stool and stood for a moment as the room spun around
her. “You can’t make me talk. And if you try, I’ll forget everything I know.”
She clutched the pouch she wore out of instinct. She now kept it with her at
all times, afraid of what might happen should she leave it somewhere. Then she
turned and walked towards the door.

“Strefer, wait,” Rurek said as she
walked away.

“No deal, old friend!” she called
out as she opened the door and walked out into the night. “No deal!”

As it happened, making it across
the Water Road proved to be the least of Antrey’s worries. Once on the southern
shore, she made slow progress, walking across the ragged plains, then into the
rugged and deserted mountains. Even though it was spring, Antrey was
increasingly aware of the constant cold. Clear ground had given way to snow as
she made her way up the northern face of a mountain. Evergreens crowded on
small patches of flat land. Paths that had been made through the trees and
rocks were still slick with ice.

So long as she kept moving, Antrey
could ignore the cold. But at nights, when she stopped and made camp, the damp
chill of the dying winter sunk deep into her weary bones. The cold became more
acute if she could not find anything to eat. After this time on the road, the
food she had taken from Alban’s home was long gone. The bottle had proven to be
a brilliant idea, however. Every morning she stuffed it full of snow, which
melted through the day as she walked. At least she had enough clean water to
drink.

Food itself was more difficult to
come by. Edible plants, given the season and the elevation on the mountain,
were few and far between. Occasionally, she would find a spot where the ground
was soft enough that she could dig for something underground. If she was lucky,
a small rodent or other animal would find its way into a quickly assembled
trap. Antrey would kill and clean the animal with the dagger, then cook it over
an open flame. If there was no game to be found, she simply curled up next to
the fire and tried to sleep.

It had been two days since Antrey
had trapped something. As the light of the setting sun made itself more and
more scarce, she came to a flat spot of land on the mountainside. It was
covered with evergreens, with a stream winding its way between them on its way
down the mountain. The location was good for a camp and the stream might
provide something to eat. She stopped and went through her regular routine of
clearing a spot to sleep and gathering dry kindling for a fire. Once she was
settled, she began a fruitless attempt to fish something in the stream.

The fire provided some light
nearby, but not enough to actually see anything in the stream. Hoping that some
kind of instinct might do the trick, Antrey randomly thrust her hands into the
frigid water, hoping they would find something. All she had to do was wrap her
hands around a fish, fling it up onto solid ground, and wait for it to stop
flopping. She didn’t really need to catch anything or control it. She had
convinced herself it was not that hard, but she plunged her hands into the
stream over and over so often that she lost count.

Frustration grew inside her with
every fruitless effort. Without realizing it, Antrey slipped from thrusting her
hands into the stream to simply beating on the surface of the water with
tightly clenched fists. With the fists came screams as she shouted out at the
stream, the mountain, and the entire world. Even at herself.

The reality of her situation hit
her like a boulder. It had been weeks since she slept indoors or she had seen
another person. Days since her last meal, many more than that since the last
one that had been prepared with true care and skill. She did not know where she
was and had no real idea where she was going. Eventually, the screaming
stopped, so did the pounding. Antrey sat on the stream bank, drew her legs up
tight to her body, and wrapped her freezing arms around them. She put her head
in her lap and wept.

“Why so sad, child?” said a slight,
shaking voice from behind her.

The sound of another voice startled
Antrey out of her reflection. She leapt up and spun around towards the voice,
facing the fire, but did not see anything. While scanning the trees for any
evidence that she was not losing her mind, Antrey’s foot slid out from under
her and she went tumbling backwards into the icy water. Cursing, she dragged
herself back to her feet and climbed out of the water. Then she saw him.

Standing perhaps thirty yards away
from her, along the tree line behind the fire, was an old man. An old Altrerian
man, stooped and hunched over, leaning on a long, curved stick he used as a
cane. He wore layers of animal skins, a thick fur-lined hood pulled around his
pale green face. Questions raced through Antrey’s head, but she was too stunned
to speak. Foremost in her mind was the question of whether she was in danger.
From him? This tiny old thing? At the very least, she knew she could handle
herself in a fight with him.

“I am sorry, child,” the old man
said. “I did not mean to startle you. I was nearby and heard your screams. Are
you hurt? Are you injured?”

“No, thank you,” Antrey said,
trying to not let surprise get the better of her. “Just a little wet, that’s
all.” She walked over to the fire slowly, keeping her eyes on the old man. She
crouched down in front of it, warming and drying herself. “You startled me.”

“I was afraid of that,” he said.
“That is one of the perils of traveling alone, is it not? You are always
surprised by the presence of another.” His tone was light and friendly, his
voice thin and high, as if exposure to the cold had caused something to
shrivel. “Is that not true, child?”

“Will you stop calling me that?”
Antrey said.

“Calling you what?”

“Child,” she said with emphasis.
“I’m not a child, much less yours.”

He smiled and chuckled for a
moment. “Then I must apologize again. From the sounds of your wails and
weeping, I assumed you were a lost child, separated from her clan.”

Antrey wasn’t sure he meant to
insult her, but he had. “Before you open your mouth maybe you should take a
good look next time, eh?”

“I am afraid that would be quite
impossible,” the old man said. Without Antrey noticing, he had shuffled slowly
in her direction and now stood directly on the other side of the fire from her.
He reached up and slipped the hood back, revealing all of his face. In the
dancing light of the flames, it was plain to see he was blind. “I do not see
much of anything these days.”

Antrey flushed as a wave of
embarrassment swept over her. “I’m sorry. It was an unkind remark. Perhaps I
should heed my own advice.”

“There is wisdom in that. Now that
we have established that you are no longer a child and I no longer have the
gift of sight, perhaps we should begin again, eh?” A wry smile crept across his
face.

“Agreed,” Antrey said, standing and
pulling on her cloak now that she was mostly dry. “You are welcome to share my
fire, if you wish. Do you need…”

The old man quickly cut her off.
“Thank you, that is most gracious.” He sat down in the snow gently, as if his
slight weight did not displace any of it. He laid down his cane beside him and
began to rub his hands together near the hot flames. “This is quite lovely,” he
said. “My name is Emkar. And who is so gracious to be sharing her fire on this
cold evening?”

“My name is Antrey,” she said,
hesitating for a moment. “Antrey Ranbren,” she said, saying her full name for
the first time in years. She sat down across from him.

“Oh,” he said with a knowing lilt
in his voice. “So I was not so wrong after all, was I? In a sense, you have
lost your clan and your family, have you not?”

“Not lost,” Antrey said at first,
before correcting herself. “My family, yes, I suppose you could say has been
lost. But I never really had a clan. I suppose that’s why I’m here in the
middle of nowhere, sitting in the snow.”

“From the sound of your voice, the
chill is something you have not dealt with very much,” the old man said.

“No, far from it,” Antrey said
before she stopped herself. Why was she on the verge of opening up to a
complete stranger? She decided to shift the focus. “What about you? Surely a…a…”

“Surely a blind old man must have
had something in his life before this?” Emkar said with a chuckle. “That is
what you wanted to ask, yes?”

“Yes,” Antrey said. “I was trying
to be a bit more polite about it.”

“My dear, nothing you say will make
me any more blind. Or any older, for that matter. In my vast experience,
honesty is far more important than being polite. Do you want to know how I came
to be this way?”

Antrey shrugged. “If we’re being
honest, yes. I’m curious about why you are out wandering in these mountains
alone.”

“Oh, I am not alone, Antrey,” he
said with a shake of his head. “I am by myself, yes, but I am far from alone.”

Antrey didn’t know what to say to
that. She sat and said nothing, wondering if the old man had lost his mind.

“Are you a student of history?” he
asked, breaking the silence.

“A little bit,” she said.

“If I was a teacher and you were my
pupil and I asked you when hostilities between the Triumvirate and the Neldathi
tribes ended, what would your answer be?”

Thanks to her reading, Antrey had
the answer right at hand. “The generally accepted date is 8.9.11 AU, the ninth
day of the eighth month of the eleventh year after unification. The day of the
Battle of Hogarth Pass.”

“Correct!” Emkar said, in what
could have been mockery or genuine praise. “That is a fine answer and would
help you pass your test. It is also completely wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Wrong in every way that matters.
You know that the Triumvirate has all those forts set up along the Water Road,
correct?”

By instinct Antrey nodded her head,
before realizing that was a pointless gesture. “Right.”

“How many of them are there? Do you
know?”

“About twenty, if I remember
correctly,” Antrey said. She felt as if she was being interrogated.

“Twenty-one, to be exact,” Emkar
said, “each spaced approximately one hundred miles apart along the river. Every
one of those is home to how many soldiers, do you think?”

She thought for a moment.
“Somewhere between 1,500 and 4,000, from what I have read.”

“Close enough,” he said. “Let us
use an average of 2,500. How many is that in total? Do the math, if you were
ever taught how.”

“I can do math,” she said, shooting
him a stern look that was completely wasted. She figured for a moment and then
said, “That would be 52,500 troops. Not including auxiliaries and the
Sentinels, of course.”

“Yes, that sounds correct. And
those numbers have been the same for the past 130 years, yes? Since the
Triumvirate was founded.”

“So far as I know,” Antrey said.
She had never come across the historical numbers, but it made sense to her.

“So would you agree with me that
for the past century, plus a few decades, there have been more than fifty
thousand Triumvirate troops stationed in Neldathi territory?” Emkar asked. It
was like he had gone through this script more than once before.

“I never thought of it, but yes,
since you put it that way,” Antrey said.

“Well, then,” he said, then paused
to collect his thoughts for a moment. “You seem like a bright young woman,
Antrey. What do you think all those soldiers stationed all those years in
hostile territory are going to do?”

Antrey shrugged, for her benefit if
not his. “I don’t know.”

“They are going to wage war!” he
said, with the precision timing of a trained orator. “That is what they are
trained to do. That is the only thing they can do. They are going to go out and
find someone to kill, whether they are supposed to be doing so or not.”

“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t
actually follow,” Antrey said. “Why are a bunch of foot soldiers with a fairly
easy deployment going to go out looking for a fight? Aren’t most of them
conscripts? Don’t they just want to go home and get on with their lives? How do
you know what they were thinking?”

“I know,” he said, “because that is
what we did.” He did not seem eager to provide details.

“What? You were a soldier at one of
the forts?”

“Yes, I was,” he said. He took a
deep breath. “I was part of a company that was conscripted from Vertidala and
sent to a fort near Innisport, just across from the Vander Range. Those
mountains were just over a day away on foot. An easy march, compared to some
others. Every month, my company would deploy into those mountains. Technically,
it was a scouting mission. An intelligence-gathering operation. Truthfully? We
were just looking for Neldathi to kill. There is nothing more to it. I wish I
could honestly say we were better than that, but it would be a lie. Honesty,
remember? We went out looking for slaughter, pure and simple. Other companies
did the same thing.”

Antrey sat silent for a moment,
processing the old man’s tale. “What did the commanders do about this?” she
asked. “Were you acting on orders?”

Emkar laughed. “Which commanders?
The Sentinels who actually ran the fort got nothing from our expeditions and
cared little about what we did. They were far more interested in the reports
from their mind walkers further south. The military commanders, our superior
officers, knew what went on but pretended they did not. As long as nothing was
done to bring about some reprisal from the Neldathi, they were happy to let the
men run wild.”