Lindholf’s face almost melted into her soft touch. Her hand drifted up, caressing the top of his scarred and mangled ear. “It’s all real enough, my dear Lindholf, all of it.”
* * *
Think not of those who are slain in the name of Laijon as dead, but rather raised up to live among the loftiest and brightest of stars. For every soldier shall have a taste of death, and only in that day of Fiery Absolution be fully saved.
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
NAIL
1ST DAY OF THE FIRE MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
WEST OF TEVLYDOG, GUL KANA
They’ll be skinnin’ you next,” rasped the flayed man in the cage hanging next to Nail. The man’s stark white eyes stared back at him from a raw-skinned face, unblinking, two unnerving lidless orbs continuously agape.
Human rot filled the air as Nail’s mind crawled out of a most uncomfortable half sleep. A harsh thirst clawed at his throat. His eyes creaked open to the cold light of dawn, squinting into the thin air. Dread settled over him like a heavy blanket.
The sun had barely crested the tree line. Tendrils of pearly mist flowed amidst the pine and aspen two hundred feet below. From his precarious perch, the scatter of grim cabins and abandoned stone huts at the bottom of the valley seemed naught but a cruel deception. Bloody rotted angels! He cursed inwardly. His own cage hung near the top of the cliff, some twenty feet under the precipice of the ridge. The gray stone wall behind him was speckled with lichen and streaked with green moss adrip with water he could not reach.
A mournful wind kicked up and moaned over the fog-shrouded foliage below. Nail’s cage rattled and swayed. He clutched the bars tight. Dust trickled down. His shirt was naught but tatters, right arm bare to the elements, flaring in pain. The tattoo and mermaid scars stood out like beacons, as did the cross-shaped scar on the back of his hand and slave brand on the underside of his wrist.
Some ten feet to his left, Val-Draekin hung in a similar cage, alive and alert. The Vallè seemed to suffer no ill effects from yesterday’s blow to the head. To Nail’s right were three other cages, crows perched atop each, bony arms and legs of men long dead drooping like crooked sticks from between the bars of the farthest two. The flayed man in the clattering cage closest to Nail was still alive, blackened legs a-dangle, curled and blackened hands clutching the bars of the swinging enclosure.
“They’re comin’ for you.” The man’s tortured voice choked forth, scouring Nail’s nerves like the rasp of a dull saw blade. “Hragna’Ar oghuls on that cliff, skin you alive they will. You and the Vallè both.”
From somewhere above, guttural oghul shouts shattered forth, echoing over the valley. Nail recalled the Sky Loch mines and the blood-filled cauldron, the helpless trapper atop the altar. Hragna’Ar! His eyes shot up the rock wall behind him. Rough clefts and crags gleamed orange and red from the first bright rays of dawn.
With a rattle of chains, Val-Draekin’s cage was suddenly rising up the cliff in uneven, jerky motions. Nail glanced up. Several oghuls were pulling from above. Val-Draekin struggled within the confines of his pen, fingers frantically tearing at the leather thongs holding the cage together. Nail had tried to free himself last night, only to discover the web of ropes, leather, and chains holding his iron cage together had been coated with some form of resin, a substance that looked to have hardened over time. The thick iron lock securing the door was solid, unmovable. Still, the Vallè strained against his cage, a long shard of pale bone now in his hand. A human bone he had likely found in his cage and sharpened to a razor point.
“They’re taking him up for Hragna’Ar,” the flayed man cackled.
Nail uncurled his fingers from the bars of his cage. They were stuck to the rotted flesh caked to the iron’s cold surface. Bile rose up in his throat knowing he had been sitting in the torn and decayed remains of previously flayed men all night.
Suddenly Val-Draekin busted the door of his cage open. He swiftly clambered atop the round pen, grasping the heavy chain.
A thick-hafted arrow hissed over his head and down into the misty trees below.
Wary now, the Vallè slid from the roof, clinging to the swinging door of the cage, feet propped against the bottom of the enclosure. Two more arrows rained down in rapid succession, one clipping Val-Draekin’s tattered leather armor. The cage continued to rise, clattering as it jostled against solid rock.
The top of the pen was level with the edge of the cliff now, the burly hands of several oghuls grasping hold, their broad visages grim and flinty eyes resolute as they hauled the cage up.
Val-Draekin launched himself into the air toward Nail. There was a fluency of ease within the Vallè’s every move. Arms outstretched, he plummeted, deft hands catching the bottom rungs of Nail’s cage. The force of the Vallè’s landing was a jolt to Nail’s pen, tilting and spinning it severely on its chain. Nail again clung tight to the iron bars.
Val-Draekin scrambled up the cage to eye -level. “Let’s get you out of here.” Congealed blood was still matted in the Vallè’s hair from yesterday’s skirmish.
Wincing in pain, his previous injury from falling into the glacier slowing him, Val-Draekin wedged his feet on the floor of the pen between Nail’s dangling legs. He gripped one of the iron bars with one hand, the other producing the sharpened bone from the folds of his leather tunic.
Another oghul arrow clattered off the roof of Nail’s pen with a thump, spinning away into the air. He watched it plummet the two hundred feet to the trees below. With a rattle of chains, he felt his own cage begin to rise.
Val-Draekin slipped the shard of bone into the heavy iron lock. There was a loud click and the locking mechanism was open. The Vallè moved aside and the door swung wide. Another oghul arrow zoomed by. Nail struggled forward, the seat of his breeches momentarily sticking to the rotted flesh under him. Fear took hold as he stared straight down at the mist-laced forest far below.
“We mustn’t tarry.” Val-Draekin braced his feet against two of the iron bars, one hand clutching the open door of the pen. He leaned out as far as he could over the abyss. “I’ll swing the cage around.” He nodded to the pen holding the flayed man. “There’s a ledge just under that overhang right above that other cage. We can take safety there.”
Nail spied the ledge the Vallè was talking about, a cleft in the rock above the flayed man’s cage, maybe a foot wide and three feet long at most.
“I’ll jump first!” Val-Draekin, pain etched on his ashen face, shoved against the mossy stone wall with one hand, causing the cage to stop spinning. Another arrow clanked off the iron bar just above his straining grip.
Val-Draekin leaped toward the flayed man. He sailed through the air, landing lightly against the bars of the other pen. The skinned man cackled and immediately began clawing at the Vallè.
Nail’s confines rattled and scraped against the cliff, still rising in jerks and starts as the oghuls pulled on the chain from above. His heart thudded heavy in his chest as he shoved his way through the tiny door, his entire body now suspended over nothing but air.
Another arrow whizzed by and down into the tree-studded gorge far below.
Nail jumped.
His body felt leaden as he dropped. I won’t make it!
Val-Draekin, crouching low, one hand holding fast to one iron bar of the flayed man’s pen, feet braced against the floor, stretching his other hand toward Nail, catching him by the left wrist. With his right hand, Nail frantically grasped for the bottom of the cage, stiff fingers clinging to the iron. Gaining purchase, he scrambled up the side of the cage until he was level with Val-Draekin and the skinned man.
Up close, the man was a horror; no eyelids, no brows, no hair, no lips, no skin, naught but ragged pale sinew and blackened muscle, gnats crawling in the crevasses, raw body stuck to the floor of his prison. Nail gagged on the stink. Aeros Raijael had destroyed Gallows Haven and murdered villagers. But what had been done to this man w
as a savagery that existed separately from war. This was a type of butchery that should have been stamped out by the armies of Amadon long ago. It made Nail angry.
“Keep climbing,” Val-Draekin urged.
Nail pulled himself atop the pen, both hands grasping the heavy chain. Another arrow clipped his shoulder and bounced away, drawing blood. He lurched to his knees, clinging to the chain with all his might, wincing in pain.
The Vallè climbed up beside him. “When they pull us level with the cleft, we just slip over onto it.”
But the cage had stopped rising.
Several blunt-faced oghuls gazed down at them from above. The one with the bow leaned precariously out over the ledge, readying an arrow. Another was hammering at the chain holding their cage with a huge rusted cudgel, trying to smash the heavy links trailing over the ledge. Nail felt the terror consume him; a few more blows with that hammer and the links would snap, sending the entire cage complete with Nail, Val-Draekin, and the flayed man down into the gorge.
The oghul with the cudgel suddenly dropped to his knees and slid off the ledge, rusted cudgel tumbling with him. The beast’s heavy-armored body plummeted past Nail’s perch, a black arrow with black fletching jutting from his burly gray neck.
Someone above shot the oghul! Nail’s surprised gaze met Val-Draekin’s. The crash of iron on iron could be heard above, the clamora nd shouts of fighting.
Val-Draekin wasted no time in climbing up the chain, reaching the cliff top above with a swiftness of ease, disappearing over the rim.
With a loud clap, the chain snapped, and the cage dropped.
Nail flung himself toward the cliff, catching the rim of the hidden cleft with both hands, dangling, the panic-stricken squeal of the flayed man plunging to his death sounding from behind. A moment later came the distant crash of the cage as it struck the rocks two hundred feet below.
Nail tried to pull himself to safety, but his strength was quickly giving way. Another oghul dropped from the cliff above, heavily armored body spinning past, its terrified cry pealed through the air.
“Nail!” Val-Draekin shouted.
“I can’t hang on!” Nail called out, frightened eyes gaping up into a cool breeze, blond strands of hair kicking across his vision, the wind almost wanting to pluck him from the surface of the rock. The Vallè’s pale face was suddenly visible, steady eyes staring down at him.
“We’ll throw down a rope!” Val-Draekin shouted, face vanishing. Suddenly a length of chain clattered sharply against the gray stone nearby. “Grab it!” the Vallè hollered. “We’ll pull you up.”
We’ll? Eager to be free of the barren expanse of air pulling at him from behind, Nail grasped the rusted links and clung tight with both hands, not even daring to breathe. Slowly he rose, feet braced against the mossy cliff as he ascended.
Once on level ground, Nail scrambled on hands and knees straight away from the cliff and toward the two dead musk oxen lying in heaps in the distance.
Once he felt safe, he let himself take three huge gasps for air.
“Gather yourself,” a strange voice said, a female voice. “You’re safe now.”
Still on hands and knees, Nail cast fearful eyes on the stranger standing next to Val-Draekin, the savior who had helped the Vallè lift him to safety.
It was a copper-haired girl about his own age. A fleece-lined cloak of lush forest green billowed out behind her as she stalked toward him. Hood tossed back, the dull hilt of a plain shortsword just visible at her belt, the girl wore black breeches and dark leather boots with black leather thongs wrapped around each boot clear to the knee. A black quiver full of black-shafted arrows with black fletching was strapped to her back. She gripped a longbow in one hand, a bow similar in shape to the ash-wood Dayknight longbows both Godwyn and Stefan had carried, yet hers was painted black as midnight.
But most noticeably, the girl’s blue eyes were cold pricks of light underneath the two dark smudges of black ash smeared over her face. The black greasy smears stretched from underneath each brow, down over her eyelids and over her cheekbones, coming to a point almost at the base of her jaw on either side of her sharp face. Two long white feathers were tied into her hair just below her left ear, fluttering bright in the sun that had just crested the rise.
The girl’s gaze was harsh as it met Nail’s. “You’re one sorry sack of useless-looking sod. Hardly worth saving in my opinion.” She turned in the direction of the two musk oxen and yelled, “Cromm, looks like he survived.”
A gray-faced oghul in dark leathers rose up from behind one of the dead musk oxen. A savage-looking brute with a low forehead and blunt nose, larger than any oghul Nail had ever seen, thicker and taller in every way, broad sheets of heavily used iron plate armor buckled to chest, thighs, and forearms. A brace of knives was hooked to a buckler at the grim fellow’s hip and a huge war hammer with a square head strapped to the baldric over his shoulder. Four long teeth protruded from both the top and bottom of the monster’s thick lips like daggers.
Nail stood, wary, legs still shaking from the ordeal on the cliff.
The oghul seemed to be sucking on something as he stared at Nail with black eyes, steady and calm, eyes that drifted to the back of Nail’s hand and the cross-shaped scar there. “Cromm is glad the marked one did not fall,” the beast grunted, the timbre of his voice deep but clear.
Nail slid his hand behind the back of his pant leg, glancing at Val-Draekin.
“The marked one is shy.” The oghul looked at the girl. But the girl seemed not to care as she began picking through the belongings of the dead oghuls at her feet.
“We killed them all to save the marked one.” The oghul bowed to him slightly. Marked one? Nail glanced down at his own hand and the scars that now seemed to burn. The oghul continued, “This mark’s very interesting to Cromm.”
Nail was surprised at how coherent the oghul’s speech was, despite the fact that the beast seemed to be sucking on something like tobacco as he spoke. Nail had only ever known oghuls to grunt and growl.
He took the measure of their surroundings. They had killed them all! Two oghuls lay dead at his feet, one with an iron-spiked mace in his grip, the other with a broad double-bitted battle-ax, both with black-hafted arrows jutting from their gnarled faces. Another two oghuls lay in crumpled heaps near the girl, their skulls crushed, resting in dirty pools of blood. A fifth oghul was sprawled out on his back dead, not ten paces in front of Nail, two more ink-black arrows jutting from its neck.
The two musk oxen were sprawled in the dirt in pools of blood, ivory tusks caked in dirt, both their woolly brown backs still laden with unwieldy-looking saddles and thick canvas bundles, contents a-scatter. The musk oxen were in roughly the same spot as yesterday, directly in front of the five wooden posts pounded deep into the ground, heavy iron chains trailing from the posts over the rim of the cliff.
Two dun-colored stallions cropped the grass just beyond the dead musk oxen, saddles and bedrolls strapped to their backs for long riding. Both horses appeared at ease amidst all the carnage.
“Cromm, stop staring at the boy. Let’s gather our stuff.” The copper-haired girl wrestled the remaining two arrows from the neck of one of the corpses lying in front of her. The oghul’s body jerked as the arrows tore free, accompanied by half of the creature’s throat. The girl flipped gore from the two arrows, pulled a dark rag from the folds of her cloak, and began wiping them down, cold gaze again on Nail. He nervously flipped a lock of stray hair from his eyes, suddenly self-conscious.
She looked away from him just as casually as she had studied him, as if he mattered not at all. “Gather what supplies we need from the dead,” she ordered no one in particular, or all of them, then stuffed the black arrows into her quiver. “I’ll cut a few hanks of meat off these musk oxen. We mustn’t tarry. There’s bound to be more of these Hragna’Ar savages about. More than Cromm and I dare fight anyway.” She tossed the bloody rag to the ground and pulled a long carving knife from her belt.
/> “Who are you?” Nail asked.
“Not even so much as a thanks before this one starts demanding answers?” The girl cast her dark gaze at the Vallè.
“My pardon,” Val-Draekin bowed to her. “Nail is clearly a bit shaken up still. I’m Val-Draekin.” He bowed at the waist slightly.
“Val-Draygin?” the oghul named Cromm grunted questioningly, grim eyes tightly focused on the Vallè.
“Not Val-Draygin,” the Vallè corrected. “Val-Draekin.”
“I don’t recall asking for your names,” the girl said sharply, gripping her curved knife. “I merely wanted a thank-you now that you are safe. And that is that. It was Cromm’s idea, after seeing your friend hanging in that cage. For my part, by the Blessed Mother Mia, I’d sooner slice both your faces off as look at you, considering you’re both clearly the destitute sort, unable to offer any payment for services rendered. Now help loot these brutes like I asked, if you’re to earn your keep as we take you back to Amadon.”
“Amadon?” Val-Draekin exchanged a quick glance with Nail. “What makes you think we are going to Amadon?”
“Where else would you be going?” she asked with a somewhat roguish air. “We could stuff you back in the cages if you’d like.”
Val-Draekin circled around the oghul named Cromm with caution, limping again as he searched the nearest oghul corpse. “You needn’t worry about us earning our keep. I shall gladly pay you both handsomely upon our safe passage to Amadon. I’ve friends there with much coin.”
“Now you’re speaking the language a pirate might understand.” The girl again looked up at her oghul companion, smiling now. Cromm’s bushy brows raised as he sucked more vigorously at whatever was in his lip.
“Yes, you shall be paid handsomely,” Val-Draekin repeated.
“As you say.” The girl’s face was again emotionless. “But you’ll be walking behind us. We do not share our horses. And if we don’t get paid as you say . . .” She held the curved knife up between them. Val-Draekin nodded.
The Blackest Heart Page 76