‘Aye,’ said Garric gruffly, pulling his kerchief back over his mouth. ‘We’ll say our farewells on the morrow, then.’
Keel waited, perhaps expecting something else, perhaps wanting to say more. In the end, he walked away without a word, heading unsteadily for the door of the darkened barn.
Garric watched him go, his anger fading as quickly as it came. He didn’t want to deal with his friend tonight, but he couldn’t let him leave on such a sour note. Before Keel reached the door, he called his name again.
‘I’ve no craft with words,’ Garric said. ‘Never had. I lied to you, and I’m sorry for it. I’m sorry for Fluke and your family. I’m sorry for it all.’
Keel lowered his head. ‘I’m sorry, too.’
Garric waited till he heard the barn door close, then he put Keel from his mind and returned to his task. There was much yet to do before he could rest.
75
In the deeps of the night, the temperature plummeted and the first breath of winter brought a thin ground mist to the moon-reddened tangle of the ghetto.
The wall built around the Sard quarter was more symbolic than secure, being only twice the height of a man and not even thick enough to merit ramparts. Aren and Garric were over it in moments. They dropped down to a roughly cobbled street, and at once it was as if they’d fallen from the bright living city into a silent, empty world abandoned by human life.
Aren stared at the dilapidated buildings surrounding him. Sewage, sodden and reeking, choked the open gutters. The wet, curled corpse of a dog lay nearby, rats busy about it. He’d never seen such dank and dismal squalor. Hard to imagine people had lived here, a little over a week ago. It looked like it had been left to rot for years.
‘Stop gawking,’ Garric snapped, and led him across the street into an alleyway. Behind the main thoroughfare was a warren of flaking brick tunnels that wound between piled hovels where Sards had once been packed, whole families to a room. Aren saw strange graffiti in an alphabet he didn’t know, which reminded him of the mark on his wrist.
It was cold, but the chill in the air was nothing to the chill of treachery in his bones. His stomach ached hollowly; he’d been unable to eat at dinner. Since he’d sent his message to Klyssen, his thoughts had stampeded in an endless circle. He was terrified by what he was doing. He dreaded the look in Garric’s eyes when the Krodans fell on him, the shock and disbelief as he found himself betrayed.
But the alternative was worse. He remembered the torture chamber in the Iron Hand’s headquarters. The thought of Cade’s screams gave him strength to carry on.
The passageway opened into another maudlin street, cramped and mean and dripping. Garric stopped at the end, looked out and then waved Aren back into hiding. From the street ahead they heard footsteps and a lantern brightened the mouth of the passageway.
‘Want one?’ a voice asked in Krodan.
‘Have I ever wanted one?’ came the reply.
‘Thought I’d ask, nonetheless. My mother raised me polite.’
‘She wasn’t so diligent in teaching you to follow regulations, though, eh?’
‘Ah, who’s to see? A small reward for a miserable duty.’
A low chuckle was his response. ‘Go on, then. Give me one.’
‘Really?’
‘Cold as coffins out here tonight. Anything that’ll warm me will do.’
Two soldiers, taking a rest from patrol. The aromatic whiff of cheroot smoke reached them.
Aren stared at Garric’s back. Cadrac of Darkwater, he thought. Garric’s true name; Klyssen had told him that. It was what he’d been waiting for all this time, the key he could use to unlock the secrets he craved.
‘Saw you got a package today,’ said the first voice. ‘Your wife again?’
‘Yes,’ said the other man. ‘Five pairs of good socks. She knitted them herself. My toes sing her praises.’
‘Wish I had a woman who’d send me socks.’
‘Socks are a poor substitute for seeing the woman I love. I haven’t been back to Kroda since the spring. At least you have no one to miss.’
‘Ha! That’s cold comfort if ever I heard it. What fortune, to have no one who cares about me.’
Aren barely heard them. He was gathering his courage, ready to do what had to be done, what he’d told himself he must do tonight. This would be his last chance to know the whole story, to hear it from Garric’s lips before they reached Yarin’s house, where the ambush waited.
‘You’ll find someone. You’re not a bad-looking fellow. Women love a uniform.’
‘Why do you think I became a soldier?’ joked the first man. ‘Come on, we can smoke on the hoof. Standing still’s not keeping me warm, and I don’t have socks like yours.’
Aren and Garric stayed hidden until the soldiers were long gone. Finally, Garric relaxed and made ready to move again. If there was any moment to force the issue, it was now, but when it came to it, Aren feared the answers he might get. Would he be better keeping his illusions, leaving his father’s memory undisturbed? And yet he couldn’t let this opportunity pass. He couldn’t.
‘Cadrac of Darkwater!’ he blurted, in that dark tunnel in the ghetto.
There was something in Garric’s stillness that was terrifying. ‘Where did you hear that name?’ he said, his low voice carrying the words like a threat.
‘Keel told me,’ Aren lied. ‘He thought I deserved to know.’
‘Did he now?’ Garric’s tone was deadly. Then, suddenly, he changed the subject. ‘The patrol is gone. We’ve got business yet.’
He slipped up the alleyway and into the street. Aren hurried after him. Rats scurried towards the gutters, lit red by the maddened eye of Tantera. As they reached the far side of the street, Aren caught Garric up and grabbed him by the arm.
‘You owe me, Garric,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘My father died because of you. I loved him, and he’s gone, and however it happened, some of that falls on you. Keel told me who you are, but he wouldn’t speak of my father. I would hear that tale from you.’
Garric’s eyes blazed. He looked up and down the street. The patrol was gone, but they were still dangerously exposed. ‘Godspit, boy, you pick your times! We’ll talk after!’
‘It’s Aren. Not boy.’
Garric held his gaze. Something in the way Aren said it impressed him, apparently, for there was a decision made in his eyes. ‘Aye. Perhaps it is a tale you ought to hear, before it’s too late to tell it. You know my shame, then; no reason to keep the rest from you. But you’ll hear nothing if we’re caught, so get moving.’
Garric led him along the street until they found a way into the back alleys and passageways on the other side. Aren was excited and afraid all at once. His bluff had worked; Garric assumed that if Aren knew his name, he knew the whole tale. But what was this shame he spoke of? And what story would he tell of his father? After so long wondering, he was suddenly aware he might have best left this stone unturned.
‘Your father’s name was Eckard when I met him,’ Garric told him quietly as they hurried through the narrow ways. ‘Eckard the Quick. I’d never seen anyone so fast with a blade, and never since till I saw that dreadknight at the gates of Skavengard.’
Aren felt a hole opening up inside him. Eckard the Quick. His father’s true name, given him at last. The syllables landed on him like stones. His whole life, he’d never even known his father’s name.
‘When he came to us, he was young and full of fire,’ Garric went on. ‘Drunk on his own skill, getting into fights he shouldn’t. He needed a direction; he’d have destroyed himself elsewise. But Kesia found him, recognised his qualities, brought him into the fold. Would that she had not. The world might be a very different place.’
Aren brimmed with questions: who was us? Who was Kesia? He forced himself to keep silent. Interrupting would display his ignorance.
‘I was new then, too, and of similar age,’ Garric said. They reached a junction where broken pipes dripped foulness and rags hung from a windowsill.
After a moment of indecision, he picked a direction. ‘We became friends first, then close as brothers. Perhaps I should have been the first to see the signs, but I loved him too well. He was a man who changed his skin to suit his surroundings. When he joined us, he threw off his old life, forgetting everyone he knew, and he never looked back. I took that for devotion, but I was wrong. He adopted the role and became it. It never crossed my mind that he might change again as fast, and as completely.’
It was strange to hear his father spoken of that way. Aren had never conceived of him as a person with wants and needs, only as a parent, a myth of a man. He didn’t recognise the chameleonic figure that Garric described.
‘We all swore an oath to fight until death for the Ember Blade,’ Garric said. ‘But to Eckard, they were just words.’
Aren came to a halt as he realised what Garric had just said, braked by the shock of it. Garric, noticing that he was no longer following, turned and frowned at him down the shadowed brick tunnel. ‘Keep moving! We don’t have much—’
‘My father was a Dawnwarden?’ Aren blurted.
Garric was puzzled. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Surely you had guessed that, since you knew that I was also a …?’ He trailed off, and a grudging respect crept onto his face. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well played, Aren.’
Aren could hardly believe his ears. ‘You were both …? But I thought … There have been no Dawnwardens in Ossia for centuries!’
‘Not since the days of King Garam Hawkeye. But it takes more than the word of a king to break a Dawnwarden’s oath. They were outlawed and forgotten by the people, which was how they liked it. They operated as a secret society after that, working behind the scenes for the good of Ossia. Rooting out conspiracies, spying on other lands, doing the things our kings and queens couldn’t. When they did it best, our rulers didn’t even know they were being helped. That’s how it was when I joined them.’
He looked around a corner and went on. Aren followed, reeling from this new information. Garric is a Dawnwarden. It was impossible to square that thought with the brutal, bitter man who’d once beaten him to a pulp on a mountainside. The Dawnwardens were the stuff of legends.
Were the Dawnwardens great heroes, then? Sora had asked him once, on the night of the ghost tide when he was a boy flush with love.
Yes, he’d replied. They were great heroes. Back when we had any.
And here one was before him. A man Aren could never decide whether to despise or admire, a sour and grim-faced warrior with ready fists and a scornful tongue. A man who’d saved them from soldiers and dreadknights, who’d seen them through cursed Skavengard and faced down a servant of the Outsiders. A man who’d kept them one step ahead of the Iron Hand while devising a daring plan to infiltrate a heavily guarded fortress, so he could single-handedly retrieve the Ember Blade.
‘We saw the invasion coming,’ said Garric, his voice so low that Aren was forced to keep close to hear him, ‘but Queen Alissandra was too fond of making peace to rush to war, and the lords and ladies were too concerned with their own squabbles to listen to our warnings. Still, the speed of it came as a surprise. We barely got the Ember Blade away in time.’
‘I thought the Ember Blade was lost when Queen Alissandra was taken?’
‘Aye, that’s the story. Truth is we stole it away before the Krodans could lay hands on it. We took it to a secret keep in the forest, planning to use it to rally the country. We’d lost Morgenholme, but the Krodans didn’t have the west, and the Rainlands were still free. The nobles were slow to react, but they were mustering. Losing the queen had rocked them, but we always were a country fond of changing our royalty; for some it was the best chance at the crown they’d ever have. Whoever took up the Ember Blade would have united the country, I know it. They’d have fought back. They might even have won.’
Aren could hear his voice darkening, filling with hatred.
‘Your father had other ideas.’ Aren saw his hand flexing on the pommel of his sword as he went on.
If you ever see the Hollow Man, you run. You run and you don’t stop. For he’s come to kill you.
‘The Krodans promised we would be well treated if we surrendered. The nobility would keep their lands and wealth. If they resisted, they’d be executed, and the common folk would be enslaved. We all knew what Brunland was like when the Krodans were finished with it.
‘Your father argued for surrender. He said the Krodan armies were too strong, too well organised, and we were unprepared. He was shouted down, humiliated by the others. We had taken an oath to keep the Ember Blade in Ossian hands. Surrendering it was out of the question. He left angry; he was convinced surrender was the right thing for Ossia. If we fought back, he believed it would be a …’ He trailed off as they rounded a corner and his gaze fell on what lay beyond. ‘Bloodbath.’
Three dozen corpses lay there in the red moonlight, maybe four. It was hard to make numbers from that multitude of limbs and torsos. The mannequin faces of the dead stared out from the slumped pile of greying flesh. Those whose lips and eyes hadn’t been eaten by rats were puffy and swollen, cheeks bloated with blood that had pooled there after their hearts stopped pushing it. They’d been slain and left naked in a heap at the corner of this tiny tumbledown square criss-crossed with washing lines. Merciful shadow hid the worst of it, but Aren could still see pinpricks of green shining amid the horror: the dead eyes of the Sards, still gleaming unnaturally bright even in death.
‘Reckon they didn’t go as quietly as the Krodans hoped,’ Garric rumbled. ‘Or they tried to hide, and failed.’
‘But …’ Aren couldn’t find the words. ‘They just left them out here … like animals …’
‘Aye. Our beloved overlords behave less admirably when there’s no one else to see. But you knew that already.’
Aren had no response to that. The inhumanity of such slaughter, the indignity of it, took away his breath. The flies were at rest now, but no doubt the maggots were at work, and the rats scampered and gnawed restlessly. The stench made him sick.
Then his eyes narrowed and his heart jumped. He leaned forward to see. There, in the shadow, among the dead. That face! He knew that face!
Eifann.
Panic bloomed in his breast. How could the boy be here? Had the Krodans found him? Had he been dragged to Morgenholme and killed?
He ran to the bodies, rats scattering at his feet, his arm across his mouth. Where he thought he’d seen Eifann was an elderly man instead. Had it been over there, then? Hard to tell in the tangle of corpses.
He cast about desperately. He’d seen him! He knew it. That wild hair, that dirty face.
‘What’s got into you?’ Garric said, dragging him back. ‘There’s no time for this!’
‘I saw someone! A boy I knew!’
‘You saw nobody,’ Garric said. ‘And better not to find them if you did. You’ve already proved more trouble than you’re worth tonight. Keep your mind on the job!’
Aren, still unable to find anyone who looked even vaguely like Eifann among the hellish mass, let himself be drawn away. As he went, he looked down at his wrist and the curling symbol there. Sardfriend. He’d been marked by that boy, claimed by him. Perhaps his mind had merely conjured him from the frightful dark.
Sardfriend. He was anything but. There was only one man he knew who could hurt the people that committed this atrocity, and Aren meant to betray him.
‘What did he do?’ Aren said, pulling free of Garric’s grip. ‘Tell me now, before we go further. What did my father do?’
Garric cursed, torn between the desire to spit up the rest of his tale and the desire to keep moving. But Aren wouldn’t let him go now. He’d hear the end of it, in this dripping, blood-fouled yard behind the squalid ghetto tenements, witnessed by the dead.
‘Very well,’ Garric said at last. ‘For both our sakes, you’ll know it all. One night your father came to me, in my rooms in the keep. He was fevered with nerves and wanted me to go hunting with him right then, in
the dark. I refused. It was a ruse to get me away, and I knew it. Then he told me what he’d done. The others couldn’t see past their oath, he said. They’d damn Ossia to slavery. So he’d taken matters into his own hands, made contact with a young Krodan captain named Dakken and told him where the Ember Blade was. They’d be upon us at any moment. As my friend, he wanted to spare me.’
Aren had sensed it was coming, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. ‘My father? My father gave up the Ember Blade?’
Garric didn’t seem to hear him. His eyes were far away, his jaw tight as he spoke. ‘He thought I’d see it his way. I didn’t. I should have run him through on the spot, but my first thought … my first thought was to warn the others, to save the Ember Blade. I cursed his name, shoved him aside and made for the door, but … well, there was a reason they called him Eckard the Quick.’
He lifted his chin, showing Aren the horrific scar running across his bearded throat.
‘This is your father’s mark,’ he said, his phlegmy voice low with loathing. ‘He drew his blade across my throat from behind.’
Aren shrank from the sight. Now at last it made sense, why Garric hated him so. And gods, Aren didn’t blame him. Didn’t blame him at all.
‘He did that?’ Aren asked weakly.
‘Aye, he did. Left me bleeding out on the cellar floor. But your father was a swordsman, not a footpad. Didn’t know how to do it right. Lot of muscle in the neck; you need to really saw to get through it. He cut my throat, but not deep enough. I tied a cloth round my neck to staunch the blood as best I could, then went to warn the others, or to get help … I don’t know. I blacked out, I reckon, maybe more than once. Doesn’t matter. By the time I got downstairs, the Krodans were already there.’
He glared into the middle distance as he spoke, struggling to keep the pain of the memory in check.
‘I heard the others being slaughtered. Dawnwardens are worth five Krodan soldiers, but we’re no dreadknights. They had numbers far beyond ours and surprise on their side. I couldn’t fight, could barely stand. All that was left was escape. So I staggered out into the woods, and when I could go no further, I fell. That’s where I thought it would end.’
The Ember Blade Page 64