The Shield of Daqan

by David Guymer

  Sibhard raised his knife again and brought it to the Greyfox’s throat. The elf turned her head aside and closed her eyes, but the knife stayed still. With the last fractional inch left to cut, the boy hesitated. As most people who were not wholly lost to evil always did. The knife point wavered for a long moment, as if looking for a way around whatever invisible block was stopping it, until with a curse he pulled it back.

  He spun around and kicked the tree with a yell.

  “You… you knew he wouldn’t be able do it,” the Greyfox breathed in relief. “Didn’t you?”

  “No,” said Andira. “I honestly harbor no further interest in you.”

  The elf’s smirk faded. “I am not entirely without power of my own you know.”

  “You have abilities that, to those unfamiliar with elfkind, might appear magical. But you have no real power. I,” Andira said flatly, “am a power.” She spoke without exaggeration or pride, the way one might express the greater height of the Broken Crags relative to the Shadow Peaks, or that Tamalir was objectively the larger city than Frostgate. She turned to Sibhard who had fetched up against the neighboring bole with the hard, determined breathing of one who expects at any moment to be violently sick. “Think nothing more of her. Her power, such as it was, is broken, and this part of our quest is over. Yorin promised to lead me north to Kellar in exchange for that, but he is gone. I need you now, Sibhard. Can you guide me to the capital?”

  “No,” Sibhard answered, at length. “I don’t think Yorin could’ve either. At least… not from here.”

  Andira frowned in thought. She was not entirely surprised, which was why she had asked the question. She had felt the power of the wood grow as she intruded deeper, sensed its attempts to mislead them.

  “What if we turned back? Could you retrace our steps and find another route that would take us north?”

  “You have no idea at all what is happening, do you?” said the Greyfox. “You could have left a trail of corpses arranged behind you head to toe and still not found your way back to my camp. The forest talks. It whispers. You can overhear it, a little, if you had a wealdcaller train your ears to it, and you know something of the language of the trees. The Uthuk Y’llan have crossed the river, you fools. There is no back any more. They will be everywhere soon enough. Perhaps even here, in the old places. But I was making the crossing in the hope that they might not.”

  The pilgrim-soldiers began muttering.

  Sibhard stared at her dumbly.

  “The Uthuk have crossed the river?” said Andira.

  The Greyfox nodded. “It is all the trees can talk about.”

  “Baelziffar makes his move,” Andira whispered to herself.

  “What was that?” said the Greyfox.

  “Can you guide me north?” Andira replied.

  “Not from this tree,” the Greyfox answered, leaning forwards until the ropes binding her to the tree creaked.

  Andira considered a moment, and then nodded.

  At once her pilgrims began to cut her free.

  “But–” Sibhard began, before another sharp gesture silenced him. The boy turned instead to the pilgrims currently lifting the Greyfox from the ground. “Keep her hands bound,” he said. Andira said nothing to contradict him, and so the pilgrims obeyed. As they had obeyed Hamma Brodun before him. He turned and pointed a finger at Andira. “If she sees us faithfully to Castle Kellar then we’ll hand her over to Baron Fredric and his justice. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Andira.

  “Now wait a m–” began the Greyfox.

  “But if she leads us false then I will kill her.”

  “I would expect nothing less, Sibhard.”

  The boy grunted and sheathed his dagger. “I think you should start calling me Sarb.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kurt

  North of Gwellan, South East Kell

  “Where are we going?” Elben had asked.

  Two hours later, Kurt still didn’t know.

  Gwellan was too obvious. It’d be the first place to be smothered under the Locust Swarm after the fording at Hernfar. If he rode there now he’d probably get there in time to find the Uthuk Y’llan still sharpening the last sacrificial stakes.

  North then? To Kellar?

  South to Aerendor?

  Or west, to Dhernas?

  Castles and borders weren’t going to slow the Uthuk Y’llan.

  In the night behind him something demonic howled. Kurt rode on. West is best, as the old rhyme went, with good reason.

  The land to the west was an unruly estate of jumbled stone overgrown with cornel and broom, hemmed in by forest and hills as though they had something to hide. Hundreds of tiny rivulets and streams trickled between the rocks, draining off rainwater that might otherwise have made a tract boggy or swept off good soil to the River of Sleep and to Frestan farmers downriver who could live well enough without Kell’s charity. Kurt could even remember there being cattle there. In more prosperous times. When he’d been as young, or thereabouts, as Sarb was now, and Katrin had lived with her parents and sister in the house on the rocks. It was just his sister-in-law there now.

  He drew in as the ground beneath them became a proper path, and the homestead came into view on the hillside.

  He tried not to let himself feel anything as premature as relief.

  The place had been built up over as many generations as there’d been men living in Kell, a drystone pile sprawling across a dozen rooms and ringed by waist-high wall except for where the ground became too craggy to allow or need it. Kurt could still remember where there’d been a smokehouse and a cheesery, a barn and a covered latrine. But the Greyfox had been this way, to Kurt’s shame, and little of them was left now but bones. Kurt hoped that that’d be enough. That the Uthuk would think it derelict and pass it by.

  Kurt could see no light spilling from its windows. No smoke curling from its chimneys. There were no animals left to disturb.

  No sound at all emerged from the property.

  Or from the land.

  Where at first the silence had been a reassurance, now it left him troubled. He wiped his sweating palm on the horse’s rear and rested it on the grip of his sword.

  There ought to have been some sign of life.

  “We shouldn’t be bothering Aunt Larion so late,” Elben murmured, swaying with the motions of the horse. “There’ll be milking to be done first thing.”

  Kurt held his son close. With the other hand he held on to the horse’s rump. Elben was becoming increasingly delirious and wasn’t doing anything to hold on for himself any more. The cut to his shoulder had stopped bleeding. Almost straightaway. But it had gone black, and gooey to the touch, rather than crusty like a scab, and with a foul smell. Kurt had seen wounds go like that, but only after several days untreated

  This had been bare hours.

  In spite of the heat coming off him, Elben shivered. “It hurts, Da.”

  “It’s all right, son,” Kurt said, hugging him closer. “It’s just a little nick.”

  “Sarb hit me with his sword again.”

  Kurt gave a pained smile and shushed him. Elben gave a clammy sigh and lapsed again into a shivering half-sleep. “It’ll work out all right,” Kurt said again. He could feel his body beginning to panic. His heart was racing, his thoughts whirling. He couldn’t think further than the next hill, just as he needed it most. “Look, we’re here now. A bed for the night and a fire, and you’ll be all right. Larion will look after you. Just like she did after your mother… after she and I went away.”

  He peered ahead, and tentatively raised his hand.

  A figure stood out by the front door, under a silvery wedge of shadow cast by the gable of the house. A long dress fluttered in the night wind. Gray hair frayed about it, loose.

  And still, there was no sound.
/>   No sign of life.

  Kurt could almost physically feel his heart in his chest.

  It hurt.

  “Damn it.”

  His sister-in-law stared out over the path with glassy eyes. Her toes dangled an inch above the ground, and that ground was stained dark in a circle about her with blood. As his eyes improved to the darkness he noticed that her long dress had been cut with evil runes, her body mounted there on a spike.

  His lips trembled. He could say nothing more.

  “What is it?” Elben murmured. “Is she angry?”

  “No,” Kurt managed to say. “No, she’s sleeping still.”

  Elben yawned. “I’m sleepy too.”

  “Not yet,” said Kurt, shaking him gently awake. “Not here.”

  He looked around quickly. He could see a certain sense to waiting out the night someplace the Uthuk had already attacked and left, but even he didn’t think he could be so cold as to sleep a night in this house. Nor did he think it would trick any flesh ripper, or worse, that crossed their scent on the downs.

  He needed somewhere the Uthuk wouldn’t follow.

  Somewhere Elben could get help.

  “Where’s Sarb going to sleep?” said Elben. “This bunk’s too small for two. And he fights in his sleep.”

  “Sarb…” said Kurt.

  He lifted his gaze north.

  A permanent veil lay across that horizon, a dark and whispering band that was as evil-looking by night as it was by day. But while the rough and essentially imagined lines that carved the Barony of Kell from those of Dhernas and Frest meant as much to the Uthuk Y’llan as they would to the farmers who followed their herds back and forth over it everyday, they might just be wary enough of crossing that border.

  And that was where she had gone.

  The hero who had mended Sarb’s broken face with a touch of her hand.

  “Where are we going, Da? It’s late. I want to sleep.”

  “Soon,” he said, hugging his son close and praying fervently to gods that had not heard from Kurt Stavener in many a long year. “Very soon. I promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Trenloe the Strong

  “Donit’hrava, ek a aj’aava.”

  Trenloe was alive. Every breath he took felt like a mockery of that small blessing, and no one was more surprised than him. He groaned, the movement of his face hammering pain into his head like a doctor with a trepanning drill. His body felt fat and heavy. His arms wouldn’t move. Or his legs. The attempt sent pain stabbing through them. His eyes wouldn’t open. But he could smell smoke and blood, hear the mad cackling of dancing flames.

  “Esken’kenr ar vatnr ek rekaar.”

  And that chant.

  He wasn’t hearing it the way he heard the flames. It was inside his head. Ignoring the pain that the movement caused he shook his head to get it out.

  “M’lala ‘n kek nat’yra.”

  The language was incomprehensible. It was not even made up of words as Trenloe thought he understood them. Rather, it was a string of clicks and grunts. More alike to the sound of someone’s windpipe being crushed than any spoken tongue.

  For some reason that thought excited him He felt his heart beat faster.

  “Mekek’kree sala ak Prutorn.”

  At that final word, that name, Trenloe groaned. The words and their meaning reached out from their source like the clammy hands of the condemned. Claws made of uncanny syllables reached into his ears and rooted around inside his mind. He scrunched his face and whimpered at the feeling of their digging through his head, pulling violently on his arms, but they still couldn’t be moved.

  They were bound behind his back. Around some kind of wooden rod.

  Or a stake.

  “Prutorn! Akek an’aat Prutorn!”

  As though bidden by something irresistible and immense, Trenloe opened his eyes. Heavy lids peeled back from stone-dry orbs.

  He recoiled from what he saw, banging the back of his head against the pole to which he had been bound.

  “Trenloe the Strong,” said Dame Ragthorn. “You really are alive.”

  “What?” Trenloe stammered. “How? I don’t understand.”

  He looked sharply away.

  Everything apart from the woman in front of him was grainy and raw. He saw rubble. Fires burning. He could not place it. It looked like a ruin, and Terrinoth had hundreds of them, even this far east where fewer structures of stone had ever stood but where the foundations of civilization went deep. Bethan’s last song played round and round the rubble like someone torturing an out of tune violin and from somewhere in the shadows of his head he heard laughter.

  Dame Ragthorn sighed. She was sitting on a rock with her arms around one knee. The golden pieces of her armor glittered under the light of many fires. “I’m really not surprised. You never were that bright. I knew that as soon as I met you. It is always the stupid ones, isn’t it? That survive. You would think that it would be the other way around, but no, look at any event in your…” She caught herself and smiled, a hard thing full of dangerous teeth. “…our history and you will see the same: heroes perishing while lesser peoples return to their farms and rebuild. The torch of civilization gutters a little dimmer against the outstretched hand of the dark that would snuff it out.” Without moving she appeared to have become closer as she spoke, or else in some similar manner grown larger.

  Trenloe jerked back but there was nowhere to go. “You died,” he rasped. “An Uthuk spear to the throat. I saw you fall.”

  She leant forward until her breath was on Trenloe’s face. It was like nothing from a human mouth, rancid and hot, like meat roasted over brimstone. “Why would the Uthuk Y’llan wish harm on their ally?”

  Trenloe shook his head. “No.”

  “Yes! I have been in the pocket of the Darklands from the very start.”

  “No,” Trenloe said, more firmly.

  “Yes,” Ragthorn laughed. “My only regret is that I could not somehow sell my cousin out to Waiqar as well as Llovar. That would have served the swine right for consigning me to that godsforsaken swamp.”

  Trenloe shut his eyes. “You’re a good person. Brave. And true. Listen to your heart, Trenloe, my father used to say. It always knows what’s true.”

  He reopened his eyes and started doubly.

  Dame Ragthorn was gone.

  In her place, Dremmin scowled. “If I hear another of that old man’s sayings, I swear it’ll be my end.” She grinned evilly. “Or someone’s end.” The dwarf looked much as Trenloe had last seen her, helmed and armored, with her war hammer resting head down on the ground beside him. Her dreadlocks appeared a little singed and her armor carried a few scorches, but nothing more.

  Trenloe opened his mouth, but there were no words. His head was spinning, fire bright in his eyes wherever he tried to turn them.

  Suddenly, Dremmin was in his face.

  “So, maybe she was true. Aye, and maybe she was brave as well. But she’s still just as dead, isn’t she, and you couldn’t save her. Throat cut by an Uthuk spear, you say?” She spat on the ground. “Nasty. But still, at least it was quick. Not like poor Bethan. Did you see that? Eaten alive by a flesh ripper.”

  Trenloe shook his head. “You don’t know that. You weren’t there.”

  “You should have heard her screaming. But of course, you did. I heard them all the way away in Hernfar.” She grinned and her entire face appeared to distort to accommodate it, fire reflecting off her brown teeth. Her hair was starting to smoke, the smell of it filling Trenloe’s nostrils and making him gag. “Did you hear her scream, Trenloe?” she said, her voice cracking and breaking. “I did.” Trenloe heaved on the thick ropes binding his wrists behind his back. He felt them give, just a little, and roared like a penned animal as the Dremmin-thing laughed. Her hair was now fully aflame, her skin tu
rning black and peeling. “You were never anything more than a figurehead, a useful prop for shaking coin out of tight pockets, a neat front to the old business of killing people for money. Be my figurehead again, Trenloe,” she said, her voice like an open door on a furnace. “We will kill so many, and never demand a single coin as our due.”

  “Never!”

  The Dremmin-thing opened its mouth, but it was no longer human, words were tumbling out of it. “Urun’kairn ja leke’mair eken lak uryn’mkex.” It was the speech of the ancient and the vile, of fire and shadow, a thing of such infinitely pure hate that it had kindled its enmity of the mortal world before there had been a mortal world made for it to covet.

  “Prutorn,” it said.

  Trenloe closed his eyes and roared.

  The ropes keeping his hands tied snapped.

  He stumbled from what appeared to be some kind of stone plinth. Two lengths of frayed rope swung from his upraised fists. Tendons stood proud of his naked muscles like steel bands riveted across armor. He hurt everywhere, but it would take more than a few tainted arrows and a blow to the head for Trenloe the Strong to surrender his will to a demon lord.

  He looked around as though newly sighted.

  The appearance of a great and smoldering ruin remained, but the space immediately around him was clear. Braziers stood atop bronze pedestals, burning a sweet-smelling fat, while censers carved from human skulls, their eye sockets glowing from the herbs smoldering within, hung from chains bolted onto broken walls.

  Dremmin was gone.

  As was Ragthorn.

  In their place was a crooked figure with papery gray skin, long red hair worn in a topknot, and a staff threaded with the mummified remains of a menagerie of beasts, birds and fish.

  The unholy chanting had stopped.

  The rubber-faced Uthuk warlock produced a snarl and jabbed an accusing finger. “Y’kann etak Prutorn etak k’taan.” He did not seem at all alarmed by Trenloe’s freedom.

  Trenloe put his fist through the Uthuk warlock’s chest as though it was a bird’s nest.