Chapter 39
Dreary days and miserable nights blended into one long, slow, ugly ordeal, and Amara grew heartily sick of swamps and everything to do with them.
The days were all the same. They started at first light, with a cold breakfast. Then they would slog forward through endless mud and shallow water. They would stop for rests, but increasingly, as the days went on, the stops seemed to do less and less to allow them to recuperate. Bernard sometimes managed to find dry wood that would burn without giving off too much smoke, but there was never much of it, and he was willing to chance only tiny fires.
They would cook whatever meat Bernard managed to shoot-the garim provided most of their foraged fare, though the meat was tasteless and oily. They could never chance a fire at night, as Bernard said they could be seen from miles away, and without a fire, the nights became something utterly miserable.
They would stop on dry ground to rest-but "dry" was a relative term in the swamps. Moisture seeped in through blankets and clothes regardless of what they tried to prevent it, until Bernard collected enough of the smaller garim hides to provide a single sleeping mat. One of them had to remain awake at all times, so they couldn't huddle together for warmth, and as a result what little sleep Amara did get was attenuated by her constant shivering.
And, of course, absolutely every part of the day was accompanied by thousands and thousands of insects that crawled, insects that flew, insects that swam, and Amara found herself constantly brushing them from her eyes and nose and ears and mouth, like walking through some endless living curtain.
When first light came, they would rise and set forth again.
And so endless days passed.
Though Bernard claimed to feel better, he did not offer to lead them again, and Amara saw him rubbing at his eyes or temples when he thought she wasn't looking. The First Lord, for his part, continued to drift in and out of sleep, and if he did not recover from the steady fever, at least he did not further deteriorate, either.
They had stopped for a meal an hour before, and Amara still hadn't gotten the taste of the oily garim meat out of her mouth, when she saw movement in the swamps ahead. She stopped, holding up a hand, and glanced over her shoulder at Bernard.
They were standing in waist-deep water, and Bernard immediately laid his bow and quiver across Gaius's floating stretcher and crouched until only his head was showing. Amara followed his example. He moved soundlessly through the water to stand next to her, squinting ahead.
Amara lifted her hands and called to Cirrus, willing the fury to bend light in the space between her palms. The air there blurred for a moment, and then came into sharper focus, magnifying her view of the area ahead of them.
There were three men moving through the swamps. They were dressed in garim-hide cloaks, trousers, and boots, and the mottled hides of the swamp lizards blended in perfectly with all the green and grey and brown around them. In fact, Amara never would have seen them at all except for-
She willed Cirrus to draw her view even closer to the three men, and she focused on the one in the lead. Around his throat was the gleam of a polished, metallic collar. With her fury's help, she was even able to make out the word engraved on the steel: Immortalis.
"Immortals," she whispered. "They're Immortals, Bernard."
He said nothing, but she saw his eyes flicker with concern. The enslaved warriors had been driven beyond madness by the furycrafted collars that controlled them. Kalarus's Immortals had been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Citizens on the Night of the Red Stars. They were virtual juggernauts, entirely insensible to pain, completely focused upon serving their master, Kalarus. Amara had seen Immortals simply ignore swords thrust through their throats, limbs severed from their bodies, accepting hideous wounds more than willingly in order to strike down the targets their master had sent them to eliminate.
"Crows," Bernard murmured.
A moment later, Amara saw something else, through the haze of humidity, beyond the patrolling Immortals.
"Bernard," she whispered. "I can see the mountains."
He took a deep breath. She felt his hand move to her and rest for a moment on the small of her back. "How far?"
"Ten miles?" she guessed. "Twelve?"
He nodded. "Close."
"The patrol is passing us," she said. "We can push through today if we hurry."
She had already begun to move forward when Bernard's hand slid around to press against her stomach and hold her back. "Wait," he said quietly.
"For what?" she asked.
"If Kalarus has his Immortals here," he said, "then they're looking for us, specifically. He wouldn't send them out unless he thought it was that important."
"Agreed," Amara said.
"Those three are the sentinels we do see," Bernard said. "But I'm more worried about the ones we don't."
Amara frowned. "What do we do, then?"
"We watch them," he said. "We wait. We'll see how regular their patrols are and look for a way to slip through between them."
"Wait?" Amara said. She looked at the vague, vast forms of the mountains in the distance. "We're so close."
"We can't get sloppy now," Bernard said, his voice solid, certain. "We wait."
"I thought you were worried about someone catching up to us from behind."
"I am," he said, nodding. "But the men coming behind us have to search miles and miles of swamp, sweeping along in one big, slow line. The Immortals have a much smaller area to watch."
"What happens if they catch up to us while we're waiting?"
"Pretty much the same thing that happens if we rush out there and bump into a gang of Immortals standing sentry in a hidden blind," Bernard said.
"That's not terribly encouraging," Amara said.
"I can't take you anywhere." He gestured around them, pausing to brush a swimming serpent, nudging it gently aside. "No matter how nice it is, you always seem to think it could be just a little bit better."
Amara's stomach twitched in tiny jerks, and her quiet breaths of laughter stirred the water beneath her nose and mouth.
"Plenty of trees," Bernard said. "A beautiful view." He slapped at himself as one of the stinging flies that filled the swamp struck at his ear. "Friendly neighbors."
"You know me, Bernard. I'm just one of those women who needs someone to do everything for her."
His eyes wrinkled at the corners, and he started snorting quiet laughter, too. "Crows, yes. That's you."
"I have a suggestion," murmured Gaius. "If you're both quite finished amusing one another."
Bernard gave Amara a sidelong look and his hand moved under the surface of the muddy water.
She clutched at his wrist and tried to glare at him as her cheeks turned scarlet. "Pardon, sire, of course."
Bernard grinned and turned his attention forward once more.
Gaius coughed a few times. "I would suggest that you wait until near sunset, Countess, and then fly an aerial reconnaissance. It's generally easier to spot hidden sentry posts from above."
"What if they have Knights Aeris about?" Bernard asked.
"We've not heard any windstreams of late," Gaius replied. "Besides. Even if there are enemy Knights Aeris, the Countess is more than capable of handling herself. And in the meanwhile, we can observe enemy movements before drawing any closer."
Amara glanced at Bernard, who frowned pensively for a moment, then nodded. "They already know we're about. It might be worth the risk to know more about what's immediately ahead." He grimaced down at the water. "Going to be a little damp while we wait, though."
"We'll take turns on the stretcher," Gaius said. "I won't need both legs to support my weight in the water."
"No," Amara said. "That isn't going to happen, sire."
Gaius blinked. "Excuse me? Countess, I believe that I am perfect-" He broke off, coughing again, struggling to smother the sound with his hands. The sound became ugly for just a moment, and then he got himself under control again. "You may," he breathed, "have a point."
They settled in to wait.
During the course of the day, patrols swept by every two to three hours, on varying paths. The last patrol passed to within twenty yards of them, but Bernard had raised a woodcrafting around them, and once more, they remained unseen.
Finally, the shadows began to stretch, and Amara murmured, "I'd best draw back a little way. I don't want to chance them hearing my takeoff."
Bernard nodded once and kissed her cheek. "Be careful. Good luck."
Amara paced silently back through the swamps and found a point of higher ground which she could use to become airborne. She grimaced at all the mud on her and did her best to get the heaviest bits off before she called out to Cirrus. It was a bit of an effort, given the way the mud hampered her ability to will her fury to action, but she took off on the quietest windstream she could manage and ascended several thousand feet, to the edge of her ability to see what was below her in detail.
For a single glorious moment she paused to take a deep breath, her face turned up to the sun, and gently urged Cirrus to dry her clothing. She'd been wearing wet things for so long, she'd almost forgotten what anything else felt like. The air smelled fresh and clean, this high up, and more importantly, it was entirely free of the constant stench of rotting vegetable matter. For that matter, she couldn't remember the last time she had gone so long without flying, and it felt glorious to be in the air again.
She let out a guilty little sigh and turned her mind back to business. Bernard and the First Lord were still down in the muck. It hardly seemed fair for her to waste time reveling in being away from it when they were waiting for her to help them get out themselves. She willed Cirrus to magnify her vision and approached the swamp's edge out of the concealment offered by the setting sun.
At first, she worried that the haze might lower visibility too much to make the overflight practical, but she soon proved able to see the swamp below clearly enough. It did not take her long to spot the three outposts in the general vicinity of their approach.
Two were built up into trees at the very edge of the swamp, and a third was dug out of a mound at the base of a dead tree, overlooking the swamp's edges, shrouded by brush and grown over with vines. That last looked large enough to shelter perhaps a dozen men-and all three posts had dogs tethered nearby.
Amara sailed to several other vantage points to double-check what she had learned, though she didn't dare fly directly over the enemy strong points- without the glare of the sun to keep casual glances away from her position, it would be entirely too easy for a sentry to spot her by accident.
With the sun setting in earnest, Amara descended back into the swamps and hurriedly returned to Bernard and Gaius. She couldn't find them, even knowing the general area in which they'd been, until Bernard lowered his wood-crafted veil and beckoned. She waded back to them and quietly reported what she'd seen. "We can't get through without going by at least one of their watch positions," she concluded. "Which, I suppose, is why they put them there."
"Dogs," Bernard said. "That makes it more complicated."
"Why?" Amara asked.
Bernard shrugged. "I could use Brutus to keep them calm as we went by them-but I can't hold up a veil around us at the same time. And dogs track by scent. Veils won't do much to hide us from them."
"And if you don't hold a veil around us," Amara mused, "we won't make it through unseen."
Bernard nodded. "Likely."
"That isn't a problem," Gaius murmured. "Countess, you can veil us from sight, while the good Count Calderon prevents the hounds from raising the alarm-and it would leave him with enough attention to shoot if we need to silence anyone quickly."
Bernard lifted an eyebrow, thinking it through, and nodded. "True. I didn't know you could do a veil, Countess."
"Uh," Amara said. "I... I can't." She flushed. "Not a very good one, anyway. I passed the qualifications in my windcrafting courses at the Academy, but not by much. I've never held one large enough for all three of us, and never for more than a few moments."
"Mmmm," Gaius said. "Have we other options?"
Bernard grimaced. "Not unless you'd like to begin taking action here and now, sire."
Gaius turned his gaze to the east for a time. Then he shook his head, and said, "It's still too soon. We'll need to get through the first pass in the mountains." He studied Amara. "You say your classroom veils were barely passing marks, eh?"
"Yes, sire. I was always so much better at flying. Perhaps I didn't put as much effort into the rest as I could have."
The feverish old man smiled and closed his eyes. "Or," he murmured, "perhaps you needed the proper tutor. Attend."
Chapter 40
Tavi lost track of several days. Not completely, but there was a definite blurring in his memory. He had to get the details from Kitai later, but the long and short of it was that they slipped quietly out of Alera Imperia two days after they took Varg from the Grey Tower.
Demos had delayed their departure until he had secured a cargo to freight down the river to Parcia-since it would look more than mildly suspicious for a ship to arrive and depart without loading or unloading anything. Tavi was only intermittently aware of what was going on, thanks to the extensive watercrafting he'd required after the rescue. He had a fairly clear recollection of the conversation with his mother while hiding in the river, and something about grabbing one of Varg's ears as if he'd been a sheep being stubborn about shearing-but he mostly remembered being ravenously hungry, eating as much as he could fit in his stomach, then stumbling back to his bunk to sleep.