He was a Skarl, from the frozen lands to the north-east of Embria, across the Baric Sea. He was also a bully and a brute, and he’d been Aren’s enemy from the day he arrived.
‘I see man from cookhouse smoking cheroots,’ said Grub in clunking Ossian. ‘Grub likes cheroots. Cookhouse man say they come from you. Where you get cheroots, little Mudslug?’
Suddenly Tag’s unexpected generosity made sense. It had been an apology. Much good it did Aren, with his breakfast drooling away into the dirt. ‘I found them,’ he said, raising himself up on his elbows.
‘You found them. Where they now?’
‘I traded them.’ Aren began to get up, but Grub put a boot on his chest and shoved him back down. Furiously, Aren tried to surge to his feet, but Grub kicked away his supporting hand and he crashed back to the mud. Aren glared at him, red-faced, breathing hard, enraged but unable to do anything about it.
Grub pulled up his sleeve, pointed to his tattooed forearm with one thick finger. ‘See this? It say Grub killed fifteen men in one battle. Saved his wounded companion.’ His finger moved to another cluster of pictograms. ‘See this? This say Grub was attacked by ice bear on glacier. Ice bear end up pretty sorry when Grub turn him into tasty steaks.’
Aren seethed with frustration. He wanted to get up, to throw a punch, but Grub would just knock him down again. He was heavy with brawn where Aren was scrawny. Grub worked on the graves, so he always had dead men’s clothes to trade for food. He laboured little and ate well.
‘You not keep things from Grub, eh? Grub great warrior. Grub wiped better than you off his arse.’
Aren felt a sneer of defiance spread across his face. ‘Picking on someone half your weight for some tired old cheroots? You must be a great warri—’
Grub kicked him across the face. Aren turned away at the last moment, so it was a glancing blow, but it still near broke his cheekbone and set stars exploding behind his eyes.
‘Your mouth smarter than your head,’ Grub told him darkly.
Aren spat blood into the dirt. ‘I don’t have any cheroots,’ he mumbled.
‘That true,’ said Grub, holding up a handful of them. ‘You don’t.’
Aren stared. His hand went to his coat pocket. The cheroots were gone.
The Skarl showed him a mouthful of crooked teeth and brandished his prizes. ‘See these?’ he said. ‘They say Grub damned good pickpocket.’ He booted Aren hard in the gut, knocking the wind from him. ‘That for holding out on me, Mudslug. I see you soon.’
Aren was still wretched and gasping in the dirt when a distant bell called him to another day of pointless, gruelling toil. Aching, battered, he picked himself up, inch by painful inch, until he was back on his feet again. The side of his face felt enormous, his head was light, one eye was swelling shut and his back was cold and soaked with mud. He clutched his ribs and shuffled off towards the yard.
Survive today. That was all he had to do. Survive.
15
‘Strike harder! Strike harder!’
Aren attacked the tunnel wall with his pickaxe. His sore ribs stabbed him with every swing, his arms and back ached, his skin shone with sweat in the lantern light. The left side of his face had swollen up and was patched with ugly blues and purples, painful in parts, thick and numbed in others.
The guard had noticed his bruises and was looking for signs that he was slacking. Aren gave him nothing. He swung at the rock like it was Grub before him, as if he was burying the point of the pickaxe in the tattooed Skarl’s forehead. Finally, the guard grunted, finding no fault to punish, and moved on down the line, his wooden club dangling loosely in his hand.
Cade was somewhere near the other end. They were working apart for the first time since they’d arrived. It was impossible to avoid each other entirely since Aren’s bunk was above his, but they hadn’t spoken since last night. Cade had seen Aren’s injuries when he reached the yard for shackling, but he’d made no comment. Aren, for his part, was determined not to break the silence. Cade had wronged him, not the other way around; it was up to Cade to offer the hand of reconciliation.
The guard had gone by now, but Aren didn’t let up. He swung again and again, putting all his frustration and anger into each blow.
‘Ease up,’ whispered the prisoner next to him in line. His name was Hendry, a gaunt, malnourished man with unshaven cheeks, much like a hundred others here. ‘You’ll not last the day.’
Aren ignored him. He knew overexertion was foolish. He hadn’t eaten any breakfast, and if he fainted he’d be beaten or killed. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop. All the grief and rage and pain had to go somewhere. It was too much to contain.
Strike harder. So he struck, teeth gritted and eyes afire. Again, again, again!
With a crunch and a jolt, the stone split beneath his pick. A sliver of black rock the length of his forearm fell away and thudded to the ground. Aren stopped swinging, chest heaving, and stared at what he’d done. Elarite hid inside the hardest rock; they’d battered this wall for a season, making progress in chips and pebbles. The chunk Aren had knocked free would have taken weeks to dig out.
The men to either side gathered in and gazed at the wound Aren had made in a wall that had previously seemed invulnerable. Dusted across the black rock, faintly lustrous in the lantern light, were fat grey flecks of elarite. More than they’d ever seen in their lives.
Aren’s detail were moved out of the tunnel while the engineers were called in to investigate. If a new seam of elarite had been found, plans had to be drawn up to exploit it, and they needed to assess the danger of elarite oil seeping out and flammable vapours building up. Aren and the others were dumped in a side-tunnel pending reassignment, with nothing to do but sit and rest for the remainder of the day under the watch of a bored guard. For the prisoners, it was as good as a holiday, and spirits were high.
Some of the prisoners clapped Aren on the shoulder, praising him for their good fortune. Hendry told everyone how Aren had attacked the wall like a demon, how he was stronger than he looked. Cade stayed sullen and avoided his eye. He seemed even angrier than before, as if Aren had purposely made himself the hero of the hour just to spite him.
Aren accepted the thanks of his grinning workmates and forced himself to be merry and join in with their talk. A grim face would win him no friends, no matter what he felt inside. But in those moments when he found himself alone, his thoughts turned to darker things, and his fingers strayed to his bruised face as he began to plot his revenge.
An autumn fog had settled by the time their shift ended, and they were led back to the camp through a dank, grey haze, a line of shadows filing through the murk. There were mutterings about making a break for the forest – the weather was perfect for it – but Aren heard no cry of alarm, and when they were counted and unshackled in the yard, nobody was missing.
It was Chainday, and that meant the bathhouse. They were sent there by detail, then made to strip and climb into a communal bath of freezing water piped from the river. Aren’s detail was early so the water was still relatively clear; later, it would be brown and scummed with filth. He scrubbed himself and shivered, the caustic soap burning his eyes and stinging in every cut and scrape, his injuries throbbing in the cold. All around him were pale, naked men made pitiful by starvation and overwork. Three months and more had taken some of the meat from Aren and Cade, but those who’d been here longer seemed only held together by their skin.
They could feed us properly, if they wanted, said a treacherous voice in his mind. But they know there will be more coming. Cheaper to use us up. We are called prisoners, but this is no sentence. This is a long, slow execution.
Even that morning such thoughts would have made him afraid, as if the Primus or the Iron Hand might hear and visit greater punishment upon him. Normally he’d have argued with that voice, fought back with the wisdom of his tutors or his father, quoted from the Acts of Tomas and Toven. But anger had made him sullen and defiant, and he dared to listen to it now
.
After the bath, they collected their clothes and hurried back to their longhouse to wrap themselves in blankets and warm up. Aren didn’t go with them. He took station round the corner, within sight of the entrance, and waited with his arms about himself and his teeth chattering.
The fog helped to hide him as the other details came and went, cursing and beating themselves against the chill. From beyond the fence he could hear the muted barks of the skulldogs that patrolled the border of the prisoner’s compound. They were silenced by an eerie wail from the peaks, the cry of something forlorn that made Aren’s skin creep. He was reminded of Cade’s stories, of things that haunted forgotten places where the Divide was not so wide and the Shadowlands drew near. But he had no faith in stories today. It was probably just a wild animal.
Three details passed through the bathhouse door before Aren saw the man he was looking for. He’d grown skilled at spotting Grub after so long attempting to avoid him, and knew him in the fog by his bald head, squat body and lumbering gait. Once he’d seen Grub go in, he drew back and waited for him to emerge again, teeth clenched to still his juddering jaw. He knew he risked catching a chill, and a chill could kill you in this place, but it was a risk he’d take. Cold as he was, he was warmed by the fires of fury.
He meant to reclaim what was his, and more besides.
Grub worked on the graves. Aren knew that much about him. It was someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps: Skarls were a people obsessed with death, who lived among the towering tombs of their ancestors in frosty necropolises and worshipped a deity they called the Bone God. Grave-work was highly sought after in the camp, for whenever there was burying to be done the gravediggers were excused the mine, and they had the pick of whatever the dead were carrying. Boots and clothes wore out fast and corpses had no use for them, so gravediggers always had something to trade.
With Deggan’s execution that morning, the gravediggers had stayed in the camp to work while the others went to the mine. Grub would have had plenty of time to stash the cheroots he took from Aren, but little opportunity to smoke them; not unless he wanted to share them or risk the attention of the guards. No, a smart man would keep them safe until the hour before lights-out and then sneak away to enjoy them alone, somewhere deserted where nobody would be drawn by the smell of tobacco.
Grub’s coat was thick enough that he’d have no need to scurry back to his bunk to warm up after his bath – besides, he’d boasted that Ossian cold was a summer’s day to a Skarl – so unless Aren missed his guess, Grub would head straight for his stash. Every prisoner had a secret place where they kept everything they didn’t want stolen, and Aren was betting Grub’s was bulging with goods he’d taken from the dead.
Aren would follow him right to it and rob him of everything he had.
Grub was one of the first out of the bathhouse. Aren detached himself from his hiding place and slipped in among the others, keeping his eyes on his quarry. If anyone in the group noticed an unfamiliar face in the fog, they were too keen on getting back to their longhouse to care. Aren stayed with them as they hustled through muddy alleys, the fog turning the camp into a dreamlike netherworld of smeared lights and flurrying shades. The men around him clapped their hands and hugged themselves, huffing clouds of steamy breath.
After a time, Grub stepped away from the group, so quickly and smoothly that Aren almost missed him leaving. Aren felt a small triumph at predicting his opponent. ‘You must think three moves ahead,’ he heard Master Fassen say. ‘Know your intention before you act.’ He gave Grub a moment’s head start, then followed him through the clutter of longhouses where lanterns glowed dim and blurred from square windows. They passed furtive prisoners taking advantage of the weather to carry out secret business, but Aren paid them no mind. The Skarl was a barely visible silhouette ahead of him, fading in and out of his vision. It was hard to keep him in sight, but Aren dared not get too close in case he was spotted. If Grub caught him, he’d put him in the infirmary, or worse.
They reached the northern end of the longhouses, where a strip of bare, stony ground and a drifting wall of grey awaited them. Grub headed into it without hesitation and Aren went after him.
It was only a few dozen paces from the edge of the longhouses to the graveyard, but once out of sight of the buildings the distance seemed to expand, and Aren suddenly became afraid. With no walls to define his position, the emptiness became oppressive and endless. He felt vulnerable, exposed and adrift. It was only a matter of moments, but it was enough to set Aren’s heart racing, for panic to tighten his chest. Then, to his relief, crooked lines darkened ahead of him and he saw a low, rickety fence: the border of the graveyard.
He reached the fence, clutched it with both hands as if anchoring himself, and took a few deep breaths. What was that? he thought. What just happened? The nameless fear had taken him by surprise. Was it exhaustion? Lack of food? Or something deeper?
He realised with a jolt that Grub was nowhere in sight. He could see nothing beyond the fence but the leaning shadows of grave markers.
I’ve lost him!
He forced himself to be calm. Shivering, heart drumming against his ribs, he listened. A soft rustle came from somewhere ahead, so quiet that it could have been his imagination. He climbed the low fence and went in search of the sound. Any direction was better than none.
Small, knotty shrubs and twisted trees grew in the hollows, giant hags’ claws reaching from the gloom. He knew the graveyard was little more than an enclosure at the foot of the cliffs, but it was large, and the ground was bumpy and treacherous, swollen with the remains of the dead. Grave markers surrounded him. Some were simple planks jammed in the earth with a name carved into them; others were crude cairns of piled stones. The dead who got markers were the lucky ones, those with friends who cared enough to leave something. Most went unremembered.
Something flew at his face. Instinctively he threw up his hands, and he tripped backwards and crashed to the earth as a thrashing, flurrying shape burst through the air above him. Then it was gone into the fog, flapping and croaking, and he knew it for what it was: a startled crow, nothing more.
He picked himself up, muttering in anger and clutching his ribs which hurt anew from the fall. He wiped a hand across his swollen lip – it had been dribbling all day – and looked about. He wasn’t sure which direction the crow had come from, or which direction he was now facing. A glimpse of the cliff and he could have orientated himself, but the clutching fog thwarted him.
Grub was long gone. If he found his quarry now it would be pure luck, and it was just as likely the Skarl would find Aren instead, and that wouldn’t end well. He was freezing and injured, and all sense told him to give up. But Aren wasn’t easily dissuaded, no matter how sensible the argument, so he struck out blindly across the graveyard. If luck was all he had, then he might as well trust himself to it.
He jogged as fast as he dared between the grave markers, wary of turning an ankle on the uneven ground. The fog muffled sound and foiled echoes but he heard the rustle of crows nearby, the tap of stone on stone as a cairn settled, the hissing of the breeze off the river. A bell tolled: the last before lights-out. Aren fixed the direction in his mind as best he could. That way lay the longhouses, and he could navigate from that. He turned to head for the graveyard’s centre, but suddenly his foot went from under him and he skidded down to one knee as the earth gave way and almost sent him toppling into an empty grave.
He pulled his leg out, shuffled a few yards on his arse and leaned against a pile of displaced earth. Think, he told himself sternly as he caught his breath. Don’t just run about. Think.
As he was racking his brain, he saw a quick movement in the fog. A crow had hopped up onto a nearby grave marker. It strutted along the top of the plank, head jerking this way and that, one beady eye on Aren as it searched for worms.
Plenty of worms here, Aren thought bitterly.
And then it came to him. The cheroot! If Grub was coming here to smoke, the
n Aren would be able to smell it. It was just a matter of finding his scent. Inspired, he was about to get to his feet when there was a muted thump, and the crow disappeared.
Aren froze. A few feathers see-sawed to the ground in the spot where the bird had stood.
He rose slowly into a crouch. The fog felt heavy with threat as he crept towards a tall cairn and peered around it. The crow lay motionless on the ground in a tangle of wings.
He was about to move closer when he heard something that filled him with dread. Out in the fog, he could hear singing.
The voice was high and thin and quiet, and the words were in no language he knew, a sibilant, trilling tongue that drifted half-whispered from the white void. It sounded like a lullaby or a children’s rhyme, but here among the dead it became the sinister lure of some catcher-spirit, a shade that had crossed the Divide to hunt the living. Cade’s stories flooded into his head, of will-o’-the-wisps and trickster phantoms that drew lonely travellers to a dire fate. He dared not run for fear of attracting it, so he stayed where he was, hunkered behind the cairn, and prayed the owner of that voice wouldn’t find him.
Something scurried between the graves. A jumble of limbs, partly seen, a creature like a spider but almost as big as he was. An instant later, it was lost in the fog again, but still the song went on, a haunting melody at the limit of his hearing, now hummed, now keened, now hissed on a breath.
Primus keep me, he begged silently, helpless before the terror of the supernatural. Primus protect me.
It scuttled from the fog, running low, and it was no longer a spider but something that wore the shape of a boy, a puny, tattered boy of twelve or thirteen. He had long, shaggy hair and wore a motley of ragged coats that disguised his shape. He carried a leather thong in one hand, trailing on the ground behind him: a sling. He’d taken down the crow with a stone.
The Ember Blade Page 11