by Ben Galley
Farden and Aspala seemed used to it. They paid no heed to the conversations now brewing, and simply climbed to the second floor as assuredly as if the Rest was their own home.
The innkeeper was not wrong: the room was small and sparse, yet it was comfortable enough. The thatch sat high above their heads. Tallow lamps burned in glass bowls, mutton-fat by the strangely enticing smell. The mud bricks drowned out much of the incessant baaing of the flocks and the conversation from down below.
‘Does your kind take ale and stew?’
Farden bowed politely. ‘We do. We are famished from our travels.’
‘I will bring some horns and bowls of mutton.’
The minotaur emitted a snarl. ‘We take a barrel. No stew for Warbringer. Meat. Raw. Any beast will do.’
The innkeeper searched his mouth for spit and came up dry. ‘A barrel…?
Nobody said a word. Those of weak constitution will always seek to fill a silence, rather than let it grow deafening and crushing. The man crumbled, adjusting his woollen jerkin as he scurried from the room. ‘Bless me, a barrel it is!’ he called back to them.
Warbringer shut the door. ‘Think little man might have shit his trews.’
Mithrid took the bed by the thin window and collapsed into it with a dry laugh. Her muscles sang with relief. Exhaustion sank its claws into her.
Farden saw to Durnus, who Warbringer had lain on another wool-stuffed bed. The vampyre remained utterly comatose.
The healer they had found in Lilerosk’s market didn’t speak the Commontongue, never mind understand what was wrong with the unconscious Durnus. A few tinctures had been offered. Blessed sheep’s blood, of course. The word curse was muttered a few times. Rather than risk suspicion over a vampyre in their midst, the strangers had moved on. Otherwise, all the healer had given them was an idea. One that Farden explored without wasting any time.
‘It’s time you woke up, old friend,’ Farden was muttering. ‘Aspala, your sword?’
Mithrid was curious. ‘What are you doing?’
‘The only thing I can think of. Durnus is a vampyre, after all. Perhaps he needs blood.’
With the golden blade in one hand, Farden positioned his other over Durnus’ lips. The broken sword cut a neat line across the mage’s palm. Clenching his fist, he dripped the blood into Durnus’ mouth until the cut ran dry.
They waited, listening to the screech of a fiddle that somebody in the tavern thought fit to play. Durnus did not stir.
Mithrid watched Farden’s shoulders slump. The rest of the room seemed to follow, with Warbringer settling into a lump in the corner and Aspala hanging her head.
Farden stalked to the window, standing at the foot of her bed while he gazed at the strange little town of Lilerosk. ‘Dusk and dawn gods. High Cathaks. Flocklords. Vassal of Daz-something. I feel more lost than I did in the woods.’
‘At least we know the others are alive.’
Farden flinched as if stung. He shifted to the heavy satchel Aspala had been lugging around. It took him considerable effort to drag the thick black tome out onto the blanket. Warbringer snuffled in judgement and busied herself picking burrs from her hooves.
The ancient pages were painted yellow in the glow of the tallow lamps. Amber sparks appeared once more, twirling in a dance about each other until Farden spoke the name, ‘Elessi’ to them.
The sparks stuttered. They drew faint lines that crumbled instantly. As before, nothing appeared, and Farden seemed to relax.
Mithrid watched the meandering lights. ‘What does it do when somebody is dead?’
Farden took a while to answer. ‘It shows you their soul—’
A loud knock on the door interrupted. Farden threw a blanket over the Grimsayer before it swung open. Two wide-eyed lads, full-grown but with fluff on their chins came in bearing a pot of stew and a barrel. The innkeeper followed them up, ushering them out of the room before they could dawdle and gawp. He held a tray of ale-horns and cutlery, and waited politely while the mage and minotaur made some space for a table by upending a bed.
‘I trust lamb will be all right, for you, er, fine guests.’
Warbringer tore into a raw steak of sheep and the blood drained from the innkeeper’s face. He hovered between the strangers, tray rattling in hand.
‘And wh—what brings you past Lilerosk? Don’t get many Emaneskans in these parts after the Skölgard left. You lot keep to yourselves and your own borders. Heading onto Dathazh and Golikar for the Tourney, I expect?’
Farden had propped the barrel up on the bed and was staring expectantly at the innkeeper. ‘No. South, back to Emaneska.’
‘Back home, is it? I see. Well, word is you saved Yurit’s boy from the Dusk God’s clutches. Bless me, glad you were around.’
‘The idiots in fur coats? They didn’t like us trespassing in their wood.’
‘Cow-riding heathens who have tormented us for decades,’ said the innkeeper with sudden vigour. ‘They disguise themselves in our colours, kidnap us, feed us to their cursed trees or sacrifice us in the name of their foul Dusk God. Took my darling Skisvel a decade ago now. We’ve got no warriors like you. No soldiers, see? We are but humble shepherds and craftspeople. And innkeepers, of course.’
Farden and Mithrid both nodded politely. That had been painfully evident in the lack of any weapons in the Lilerosk market. Beyond a pitchfork or shears, at least.
Warbringer chewed noisily until the innkeeper became too uncomfortable to linger further.
‘Bless me,’ he breathed. ‘I shall bid you a good eve—’
The tray was a hairsbreadth from the table when Durnus chose to awake.
The vampyre sat bolt upright, roaring hoarsely. He did both with such speed and volume that the innkeeper almost embedded himself in the thatch ceiling before falling on his backside. The horns of ale and cutlery fell like rain while the tray clattered over the man’s head. His two lads were at the door in an instant, braced for a fight, fists raised and quivering.
Panting and eyes near popping out of his head, the innkeeper shuffled from the room on his arse. Mithrid didn’t blame him. She had quite nearly soiled herself in surprise, too.
‘D—do let us know if you need anything else. Anything at all!’ he yelled.
The door had barely slammed by the time Farden wrapped Durnus in a blanket. The vampyre’s eyes bulged, red raw as if still burned by smoke. His momentary outburst over, he collapsed back to the bed.
‘Durnus! Can you hear me?’ Farden shook him lightly.
Durnus’ blood-stained lips moved in small increments. ‘Got to stop him. Before he kills us all,’ he whispered, over and over.
Farden made him take some water between his mumblings. The mage even cut another line in his palm to give the vampyre more of his blood. Durnus’ consciousness was short-lived no matter what they tried, and before long, he was once again a limp bundle of blanket and grey skin.
The others ate in silence, too focused on filling mouths and desolate stomachs to talk. Now that the sun had dipped below the strange western hills, tiredness and the allure of sleep had Aspala and Warbringer snoring within the hour.
Mithrid wasn’t immune, and after she choked down some of the thick, sour ale Lilerosk brewed, she clutched her swollen stomach and found her eyelids inescapably drooping. The last she saw was Farden standing at the window, watching the fading light.
It was a faint orange shine that awoke her. Not the tallow lamps of the town, now fallen still and asleep, but that of two firefly lights over the Grimsayer. Mithrid shifted surreptitiously beneath her blankets so she could watch the mage.
Farden was hunched over the Grimsayer like a child devouring stolen sugar. Hooded by a blanket, his face was ghoulish in the glow, eyes fixed on the figure that the lights had weaved. His armour was stacked beside him. All he wore were his scaled vambraces. They had little gleam to them.
The figure was Modren, barely the height of her thumb, his scarred head held high as he marched across the
page without ever travelling. He still wore most of his armour. His eyes shone white between the orange threads that weaved him.
He looked so real that Mithrid couldn’t help but sit up and reach out to touch him.
‘Just a reflection of a soul, nothing more, Mithrid,’ Farden whispered, voice cracking. ‘He died saving Scalussen. Without him, we would be all that’s left.’
Mithrid looked up to find the mage had been watching her instead. She sat up, feeling her back click and crunch. She felt as though she had seen seventy winters, not seventeen. She nodded solemnly. The loss of Modren was a raw wound for her also. Modren was there, behind her eyes, falling out of sight over and over, a daemon prince arched over him.
‘I always wonder what and where I’d be if Modren and Kinsprite hadn’t arrived that day. Hadn’t killed the Arka mages and taken us north. I would be dead, most likely. That feels like years ago now. It’s been barely months.’
‘That’s what Modren did: saved people. Over and over.’ Farden sighed. ‘He’s in my uncle’s care now. And that of the gods.’
‘Your uncle?’
‘His name is Tyrfing. He practically raised me.’
No sooner had Farden spoken the name did the Grimsayer’s lights begin to draw another man. An older version of the mage, standing with arms crossed and with a defiant glare that proved him of Farden’s blood.
‘He was a mage like Modren and I. Now he serves the goddess Hel in her domain, deep beneath the world in endless caverns full of journeying souls, where the edge of the void lies. A bridge used to carry souls to the other side, but it was broken not long ago. Since then, the souls gather in their multitudes, both below and above us in the stars. Hel and Haven.’ Farden pointed beyond the grubby window, now fogged with their breath. His voice had become guttural. ‘Souls stored like grain, feeding the gods with their belief, just like mortals’ prayer.’
‘You speak as if you’ve seen such a place,’ Mithrid whispered.
Farden stared at her from beneath the hoods of his brows, as if balanced on the edge of a story.
When he spoke no more, Mithrid worked her tongue around the sharp edges of her teeth. ‘Could I use it? Your Grimsayer?’
Farden considered for a moment, more unwilling to leave his uncle behind than give up the book, she supposed.
‘It’s heavy,’ he said. ‘And it’s grown heavier and thicker since the battle of Scalussen. Since…’
Mithrid knew very well what he meant. Since the obliteration of hundreds of thousands. War, they called it. Mithrid heard its other name in her mind, over and over. Murder. With Malvus still alive, it all felt increasingly senseless, even though she had agreed wholeheartedly to the plan. Having lit the fuse of Irminsul, Mithrid felt a guilt groping at her. It was perhaps why she had found herself glaring at Farden in the passing moments. That, and the blame he had laid at her feet for losing his magick.
‘Wait,’ she replied. ‘Grown, you say?’
Farden’s face was painted dark as the tome was passed into Mithrid’s hands. She underestimated the weight and almost dropped it immediately. She swore she heard a whisper from Aspala or Warbringer as she picked it up.
‘A page for every soul who’s passed into the death, and gone to Hel or Haven.’
Mithrid shook her head, confused. ‘I don’t know these things. All I was ever taught was stories of Njord the sea god. Hurricane was who we worshipped and burned our dead to. Quietly, of course, seeing as belief in anyone but Malvus was banned by the empire. My father worshipped the memory of my mother rather than any god.’
The pages of the Grimsayer were much thinner than expected. They turned with what sounded like breath. Voices, perhaps. She shook her head, blaming the mutterers of passersby outside the window instead. She let its weight sink into the blanket before speaking the name.
‘Gammer Fenn.’
The orange lights went about their art and spun a man standing with shoulders hunched yet head proud. His arms were raised as if grappling. There was a cut above his brow, but otherwise his teeth were bared in the half-smile, half-growl of a man in the middle of winning a fight.
Mithrid choked. She leaned closer to study her father’s glowing features, shocked and shamed at the details she had already forgotten.
‘I haven’t let myself dwell on him since I stepped aboard the Winter’s Revenge,’ she admitted in a whisper. ‘Too painful.’
Farden nodded. Only the street lamps of the slumbering town showed his features. ‘I never told you at the time in Scalussen, but my father was also a woodsman. He died along with my mother in an avalanche when I was six winters old. She was a wind mage. You and I are not so different in our beginnings, it seems.’
‘Similar, but the man that killed my parents still lives,’ Mithrid answered him, gaze fixed on her father. She felt a dagger of emotion between her ribs. It was a different kind of guilt. One that reminded her she had failed her promise of revenge.
Farden took some time to answer. ‘Too many have died because of Malvus Barkhart. Now Loki. I won’t let Durnus join them,’ Farden muttered before chuckling drily. It dragged Mithrid’s attention away. ‘You know, it’s a shame that it’s Durnus that’s injured. Out of all of us, he’s the healer. He’d know what to do. Even if it’s wielding that necromancy he insists on using.’
Mithrid shuddered as she recalled the fallen rising to seize the living, wreathed in blue light and foul magick like she had not yet felt. Before she could reply, a familiar voice croaked from the bed next to Farden.
‘It is not necromancy, godsdamn it. And it has saved our backsides more than once now.’
Both of them snapped around to see Durnus’ eyes glinting from between the blankets, open at last.
Farden was kneeling beside him in a blink. ‘By Evernia, you’re awake!’ he hissed, rousing Aspala from her slumbers. Warbringer continued to snore.
‘And speaking of necromancy, I feel like death,’ the vampyre rasped. He angled his head to the Weight still clutched in his hands, and with a faint moan, broke his fingers from its warped surface. Bones clicked. Skin tore. Durnus clutched his hands to his chest and shivered. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.
‘I could ask you the same bloody thing. Don’t try to get up.’
But Durnus ignored him and shakily pushed himself upright anyway. Farden helped him until he was slumped against the brick wall. He looked fit to faint again at any moment.
‘I…’ The vampyre moved his tongue across wrinkled lips. ‘I had to get us on the path, Farden.’
‘What path, old friend?’
‘Is everyone alive? What is this place?’
‘Elessi and the rest are alive for now. As for us, we’re cooped up in an arsehole of a town called Lilerosk. Past the Hammer Hills in a place called Rivenplains.’
‘Then it worked.’ The vampyre’s head lolled for a moment before Farden lifted his chin. ‘We’ve begun.’
‘What?’
‘I had to get us—’
Durnus blinked as a brief glow lit his face. Mithrid noticed it too, in her left eye, beyond the window pane. It was gone as quickly as it appeared but it roused distant shouts from the town walls. She and Farden rushed to the window. The snow was still falling in faint specks, lit only by the sparse lanterns. As torches blossomed across the walls, they saw it again: a lance of fire illuminating half the grassland valley. And there, in the flurries of snow, they glimpsed the unmistakable shadow of a dragon. The night’s silence was filled with the baying of sheep and their apoplectic shepherds.
‘That blasted reptile!’ Farden cursed. He was already gathering up his armour. ‘I told her to stay unseen, far beyond the town!’
Lamps lit across the town like sparks scattered by a boot. The streets were quickly filling with figures rushing to see what calamity was befalling them. Shouts of, ‘Daemon!’ and ‘Dragon!’ filled the air. Half the folk were prostrate on the ground, praying for their Dawn God to bring an early light.
Farden shut
his eyes, mouthing silent words for the dragon to stop terrorising Lilerosk’s flocks. He murmured darkly as he shoved on his gauntlets. ‘She says they have far too many sheep, and she’s doing them a service,’ said the mage. He seized Durnus by the forearm. ‘You should’ve known better than to trust the Mad Dragon, old friend.’
‘There is no faster beast in Emaneska. And I had not expected to bring so many of us.’
Farden wagged a finger in his face. ‘You have a shitload of explaining to do come morning, Durnus. For now, let’s get out of here.’
Warbringer hoisted Durnus aloft and followed Farden, Aspala, and a bewildered Mithrid still trying to affix her cloak around her shoulders. Half her armour was stuffed into her haversack.
‘Why the haste, Farden?’ she hissed.
‘A bunch of strangers arrive the same night a dragon roasts half their flocks? You tell me whose necks they’ll be keen to put a noose around.’
Mithrid shrugged. The mage had a fair point. Her feet hurried down the worn steps of the tavern. The drunks who had fallen asleep at their tables were staggering about in confusion. The innkeeper and his lads crowded the doorway, staring at the distant fire. There appeared to be some kind of group gathering on the doorstep. Voices were raised. As the clatter of the strangers on the stairs turned everybody’s heads, there was a pregnant pause in which everyone froze, eyes locked in accusing stares.
‘It’s their doing!’ came a shout. It was the spark the mob needed.
For all his injuries and weariness, Farden pounced terrifyingly quickly. He seized the innkeeper by the throat, dragging him away from the door while Aspala played along: menacing the man’s neck with her golden blade. His lads raised stools and clubs as the other townsfolk fought to squeeze into the door.
Mithrid was pushed along in the chaos, deeper into the tavern. Warbringer scattered tables and wool-clad chairs before them.
Durnus’ voice was shrill from upside down over the minotaur’s shoulder. ‘It would be a fine time for some magick, Farden!’
But Farden ignored the vampyre. ‘Got a back door, innkeeper?’