As Suzy clattered onto the walkway, the sentry suddenly stopped, stamped his feet, and did an about-turn. He took another two or three paces, staring right at Suzy, before the sight of her percolated into his brain. He stopped and fumbled with his musket, eventually bringing it to bear as he stuttered out, ‘Halt! Who goes there! Call the guard! Alarm! Guard! Corporal!’
Twenty
THE NEW NITHLING patrol was easily evaded, the Not-Horses stretching their legs to gallop without the burden of the double-ride sack. Arthur, experiencing this for the first time, was at first terrified and then, after it became clear he wouldn’t just fall off, exhilarated.
The Not-Horses had much greater stamina than earthly horses, but even they could not sustain a gallop for long. After the Nithling force was nothing but a distant speck on the horizon, beyond the low hills of the current tile, Troop Lieutenant Jarrow raised his hand. His Not-Horse slowed down to a canter, then to a brief trot, and finally a walk, with Arthur’s and Fred’s mounts following their leader.
They continued at a walk for the rest of the day, with half an hour’s rest at noon, amid the ruined city of the last tile they needed to cross. It wasn’t much of a ruined city. There were only outlines of old buildings, one or two bricks high, and grassy barrows that might or might not contain interesting remnants. Troop Lieutenant Jarrow explained that there had never actually been a city there. It was built as a ruin, when the Architect had made the Great Maze to be a training ground for the Army.
The officer also showed them how to recognise a tile border – an important thing to know, because anyone within a few yards of a border at sundown ran the risk of having different portions of their body simultaneously transported to different places.
Not all tile borders were marked in the same way, Jarrow explained, but most borders were obvious from a change in the colour of the vegetation or the soil, showing up as a continuous line. The border from the jungle to the ruined city, for example, was very clear, as every vine-hugged tree on the southern edge was almost yellow instead of a healthy green.
The border from the ruined city tile to the marsh was not as evident, since there was no clear line of colour change or difference in vegetation. But Jarrow pointed to a low cairn of white stones in the middle of an area where the ground slowly changed from a short green grass to low shrubs that were almost blue. Significantly, the cairn was a semicircle, round on the northern side and sheer on the south. It had been built to show the southern border of that tile.
The marsh proper began soon after. Jarrow let the reins slack, and his Not-Horse picked a way through the spongy sedge and the tea-coloured pools of water, the others following in single file.
In the middle of the tile, or near enough by Jarrow’s estimation, they found an island of slightly drier, somewhat higher ground, and here they set up camp. Jarrow again kept watch as Arthur and Fred removed the Not-Horses’ harnesses, wire-brushed and oiled them, and polished their ruby eyes. Then they rubbed down their lightning-charged tulwars, sharpened them, and rubbed grease on their boots and their mail hauberks. All in all, this took till dusk.
Deep in the marsh, with the sun dipped below the horizon, they could only see one of the changed tiles around them. Looking to the east, where there had been nothing to see, there was now an imposing mountain, a dark silhouette against the starry sky.
‘We ride to the Citadel in the morning,’ said Jarrow. He’d used the last of the sun to consult his almanac, choosing not to show a light after dark. ‘I’d like to ride now, and if we had different tiles we might have done it. But there’s a mountain pass to go through now, and a forest, and the Eastern Water Defence.’
‘The what water defence?’ asked Arthur.
‘It’s part of the Citadel and doesn’t move. A dry lake that can be flooded by opening sluice gates from the subterranean springs below the Citadel hill. It should still be dry, but …’ Jarrow’s voice trailed off. The three of them sat in the starlit darkness, listening to the sounds of the swamp. Their Not-Horses stood quietly nearby, also occasionally talking to one another in their soft, dry language that perhaps only the oldest of Troop Sergeants might understand.
‘Should be dry, sir, but perhaps won’t be?’ asked Fred after a while, greatly daring.
‘Yes, it may have been filled,’ said Jarrow. ‘While tectonic strategy has proved masterful as always, there are so many New Nithlings around that some were bound to end up near the Citadel, and the different groups have been joining up on the plain below the hill … a nuisance really. Not a siege, not by any means.’