The Gathering Storm

by Kate Elliott

  The throbbing swallowed everything. He couldn’t remember how long he had been walking or where he had come from or what he had been doing before being coffled together with the other prisoners.

  He wasn’t cold—that was good—but his left foot still hurt. A few days ago the pack mule had trodden on it, and it pained him as he stumbled along grasping the rope that bound him to the prisoner in front of him. Besides the merchant and his two hired guards, there were six prisoners roped together and bound for the quarries—or at least, he had learned to recognize nine voices over the days of their journey, and more than once had felt the prod of the guards’ staves. He would have fallen a hundred times if not for the mercy of the two men roped before and behind him, a Salian criminal named Willehm and a captured brigand who called himself “Walker.”

  “Careful, Silent,” sang out Will, addressing him by the name the rest called him. A good enough name, since he had no memory of a name, only a hazy recollection of hot tears and shouted fury. “There’s a drop right ahead of you. Take a big step and brace yourself.”

  From behind the rope pulled taut as Walker leaned back to brace him.

  He swung his foot out and felt it fall, and fall, trusting to Will’s directions. The foot struck loose earth, crushed leaves, and the slick remains of charcoal, and he slipped sideways, flailing. The rope snapped tight on either side of him, and he righted himself and dug his toes into the dirt for purchase. There was a reek about this place that tickled his nostrils and made his head spin and his blind eyes ache. His lungs burned each time he took in a breath.

  “Get on!” The master’s whip cracked so close that air snapped against his cheek, but he’d taken too many hurts and bruises to flinch.

  Walker muttered a curse under his breath as Will tugged on the rope to guide him onward.

  “We’re walking through leavings scattered from two old charcoal pits,” said Will, who often described the scenery for him. “They’ve burned down to the ground and been cleared off. There’s a pit—no, two—burning off to the west. I see smoke through the trees.”

  “It’s a powerful bad stink,” said Walker. “The air is nigh black with the smoke. Some kind of demons live here, I’ve heard tell. They burn iron out of the earth and smelt it with the blood of humankind.”

  “Nay, that’s not so. It’s men I see, cutting wood. What are we for, then, if not to labor in the ironworks?”

  “They’ll kill us and pour our blood into molten spears and swords.”

  “Work us to death, more like,” objected Will. “Hauling ore. Digging pits.”

  “Cutting wood, like them? That’s work that makes a man strong enough to break his bonds and escape.”

  “You think they’ll give us axes, to cut our ropes?” Will laughed curtly. “No, we’re for the quarries and the shafts. I do so hate the dark.”

  “I hear there’s goblins who live in the ground around here. They eat the flesh of humankind when they can get it. When a prisoner’s too weak to work, the masters lower him down into the deepest shafts and leave him for the goblins, and they pile silver and lead in buckets in exchange. They do love human flesh! They’ll eat a man, bones and all! While he’s still alive!”

  “Where do you hear these tales?” demanded Will. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You’re a fool not to believe me. Haven’t you seen those demons shadowing us? They look like great black dogs, a pair of them, but they have red eyes and fangs, and they feast on dead flesh! I saw the guards shoot arrows at them one evening. Haven’t you heard them barking at night?”

  “Many a starving dog roams the woods. Those who don’t know the woodlands may see any kind of creature in its shadows, but that doesn’t mean they’re really there.”

  “Believe what you will. I’ve lived five winters in the forests. I’ve seen dark shades prowling. I’ve seen elfshot shivering in the wind. I’ve fought off wolves. I’ve kissed forest nymphs, but their breath stank of rotting waterweed. If you’d seen what I’d seen, you’d not doubt.”

  “The wolves I believe,” said Will. “My aunt’s cousin’s son got et by wolves. Torn to pieces, and him walking home from mass, he was, at Dearc.”

  “Wintertide,” agreed Walker. “That’s when wolves’re hungriest. They’ll eat anything. They like fat babies best, though.”

  “Hush, you chattering crows!” snarled the man roped in back of Walker. He had a hard, nasty voice, one that stung when its sound hit you, and a particularly bad smell to him, all rotting sweet.

  “Hush,” murmured Will, for the others were scared of that voice; their own voices betrayed them when they whispered among themselves at night or responded to the man’s retorts or gibes.

  To understand the world around him, he had to listen. He had heard their whispered confessions; they often spoke around him as if he weren’t there. Will had stolen bread from a biscop’s table for his crippled parents; Walker had been caught with a band of starving brigands stealing a lady’s milk cow; the rest were no better, and no worse—many were hungry and the last two harvests had failed. But the one they called Robert never confessed his crime to the other prisoners, and it seemed likely to them that he was a foul murderer.

  Nearby, axes cut into wood, a man shouted a warning, and a tree splintered, groaned, and fell with a resounding crash that shuddered along the ground, vibrating up through the soles of his feet. The breeze turned, taking the worst of the scorched smell with it. No birds sang.

  Fear crept along his shoulders. In some other place the birds had fled, too. All gone. A horrible pain filled his belly as he wept, remembering only that his hands had been slick with blood. Where had he been? What was he doing?

  Who am I?

  Flashes of memory sparked.

  Ships slide noiselessly onto the strand, a shining sand beach touched by the light of the morning sun rising over low hills. Because they come from the west, the ships lie somewhat in shadow—or perhaps that is only a miasma of death and destruction that hovers over them. What pours forth from them cannot be called human, yet neither are these creatures beasts. They are fashioned much like humankind, with their strange, sharp faces and the shape of their limbs and torsos, but under the sun’s light their skin gleams as if scaled with metal—bronze, or copper, or iron—and the body of each one bears a pattern of white scars or of garish yellow, white, or red paint formed into bright sigils. Fearsome dogs yammer beside them, leaping into the fray, biting and tearing. The defenders of this quiet estate fight fiercely and with great courage, led by a handsome young lord carrying shield and sword, but the invaders outnumber them.

  It is only a matter of time.

  The lord’s hall catches on fire, flame racing’ along the thatched roof.

  “Hey, there! Hey! You can stop now, Silent. We’re here.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it, how sometimes he seems to be hearing us, and other times it’s as if he’s gone right out of his head. Maybe he’s one of them whose soul got eaten by wights, just sucked clean out of him.”

  “I pity him, poor man.”

  “Well, friend, I pity us, for look and see what manner of a pit we’ve come to. A great gaping hole in the earth. Look at those pools of filthy water! Gah, it stinks! I don’t mean to spend the rest of my life here, I tell you that.”

  “Hush, Walker. We’ll speak of that later when none can overhear. Here, now, Silent, sit you down. The master is talking with the foreman. God help us, this is a sour and ugly place.”

  A hand pressured him downward, and he sat, numb, bewildered. Only when he dreamed could he see, and then he suffered visions of such a fearful host that it was almost a relief when darkness ate those dreams, as it always did.

  Wind played across his face. Around him, the other prisoners murmured nervously. The dust of stones clotted the air, and everywhere around rang the sound of picks and shovels and the scrape of wheels along rock.

  “There goes the master,” said Walker. “Bound for home, a soft bed, good ale, and the n
ext lot of sorry men like us. He must be glad to be free of this hellhole.”

  “I hate you,” said Robert.

  All the prisoners shifted as the words chafed them. He could feel the placement of their bodies, three to his left and five clustered to his right, with as much space as any of them could manage between them and Robert.

  “I don’t think he’s talking to you,” whispered Will.

  “The wights sucked out his soul, too,” murmured Walker.

  “I hate you. No. No, you’ll look! Look at the blood! Is that her bonny face?”

  The anger and despair in that voice poisoned the air as surely as did the dust and the drifting ash and the stink of distant forges.

  He reached, groping, and found a hairy arm, well muscled, that belonged to Robert, but a hand slapped his away, and that voice cursed him while weeping, tears and fury together. He withdrew his hand, now wet with the other man’s tears.

  “Up! Up! You don’t get food for sitting on your backsides! Listen here, you men. My name is Foucher, and I’m foreman of these workings. You’ll be hauling stone from the quarry. Work hard, and you’ll get fed and in two years’ time your freedom.”

  “Two years.”

  Will’s breath chased along his skin, carrying the murmured words.

  “I’ll not wait that long,” whispered Walker.

  Willehm and Walker sat so close on either side that he felt protected, enclosed.

  “Which is the blind mute? And the madman? Those two? Take them to the wheels.”

  His comrades muttered oaths as footfalls approached.

  “How can a blind man turn a wheel?” asked Will boldly.

  “He’ll be helpless if the mad one attacks him,” protested Walker.

  “Move off, you two! What’s it to you, anyway? Who better than a blind man to walk the treadmill, eh? It’s all the same to him!” Foucher snickered. “And we can’t trust the madman with any tools, so he’ll walk, too. Else he’ll earn his keep by being thrown down into the deep shafts! As will the rest of you, any what cause me trouble!”

  They muttered but moved aside. A hand pinched his elbow, dragging him up, while the ropes binding him twisted and pinched his skin as they were untied, then fell loose. The others remained silent as he was led roughly away. Each step jarred up his spine to rattle his head. Pain cut so hard up behind his eyes, beside his swollen ear, that he stumbled and tripped, hitting his knees against shards of sharp rock. Agony swallowed him. All the noises faded in a blur of sound like waves crashing over rocks.

  Water surges through a narrow channel cut into the rock, then hisses along the hidden strand, a crescent shoreline composed of little more than rock and pebbles that will soon be covered by the rising storm. Here, among the isles that make up the Cackling Skerries, he and his retinue wait in a place between sea and land where neither he nor his allies hold the advantage. A pale back cuts the foaming waters, followed by a second. Rain spatters over the beach and drums against the rock columns that make up the chief portion of this islet, bones that cannot be worn down even by the endless tidal wash of the sea. Now and again through the misting rain he sees Cracknose Rock, the fist from which he launched his invasion of Alba.

  Clouds and rain hide the coast, but he does not need to see what now belongs to him.

  “There! Do you see that?”

  “What is it, Lord Erling?”

  “There!” cries young Erling, who takes a step back and at once realizes that he has thereby betrayed fear in front of the others, each one of whom is ready to notice any weakness displayed by his compatriots.

  But the others, even his own kind, recoil as well. He alone does not fear what emerges from the sea.

  Four of them drag themselves out of the water until only their tails remain in the surf. Waves sigh up to engulf them, then retreat with a murmur down through the rocks. Those flat red eyes betray no obvious gleam of intelligence, but this very strangeness is deceiving. They grin to display sharp teeth. Their hair twitches and churns, alive in its own way, because each thick strand boasts a snapping mouth that seeks air, or prey, or water, or some trace of his thoughts—who can tell?

  The largest heaves itself up all the way onto the shore. Its huge tail makes it clumsy but nevertheless none of the land-bound venture close. The claws and teeth of the merfolk can shred a man’s flesh to rags in moments; not even the skin of the RockChildren is proof against their claws.

  Its slit nose opens and closes as if sniffing. It speaks in a voice almost too low to hear, and the words sound oddly formed, too round and too flat, because its mouth and throat are not meant to voice human sounds. Yet they are able to speak the language of RockChildren.

  “We have come in answer to your summons.”

  “So you have, and I thank you.”

  “What do you want, Stronghand? We give to you aid. Food, you give to us. What do you want from us now?”

  “I have heard a rumor that your people can swim upriver into fresh water. That you are not confined to the sea.”

  It made no reply.

  “If I had known that, I could have asked your people to be scouts. If I had a more efficient way to summon you, we could work together in this.”

  “What more can you give us?” it asks.

  “What do you want?”

  Their reply comes in a hum so low that at first no words can be distinguished, but the pebbles all along the shoreline vibrate and actually begin to roll, grinding one against the other, slipping and shifting. Rocks tumble down from the high rock columns all around them and crash into the waters. Wind screams through the rocky inlet as the storm shoulders in. Rain falls in sheets, so cold and sharp that it opens a tiny cut on Erling’s cheek as he hunkers down, drawing his cloak over his face for shelter.

  “Revenge.”

  “He’s blind and mute, Captain.”

  “Is he deaf, too?” Laughter followed. Men might laugh at drowning animals in such a way, not caring for their suffering but amused by their struggles.

  He became aware of smells and noises and a cold draft rising up from below, the breath of the pit.

  Where was he? How had he come here?

  Distantly a hound barked, but the laughing man’s voice drowned it out.

  “All the better, Foucher. We’ll put him on the deepest wheel where it will make no difference if he can see or no. No need for chains. Rope will do for him. How’s he to escape if he’s blind?”

  “Are you sure he can work? He looks soft in the head.”

  “He looks strong enough to me.”

  “If he’s too stupid to know what to do?”

  The laughter sounded again, this time mixed with the smell of onions that flavored the man’s breath. “Prod him like a beast. He’ll figure it out. Walk and he’s let be. Stop and he’s whipped.”

  “I hate you.”

  The comment caused a stir. He heard men whisper all around him. They were too many to keep voices straight, but their fear had a prickling scent that needled his skin.

  “God Above, we’ll need chains for that one,” said the one called Captain. “They call him Robert. He’s got an ugly look in his eye. We’ll put him down with the blind mute. What the one can’t see and hear, the other can’t make trouble with.”

  “You think the blind lad will last a week with that madman, Captain? He’ll get shoved off the treadmill. He’ll get et alive.”

  “They’re all dead men anyway, Foucher. What are you worrying for?”

  “The duke is displeased we didn’t meet our quota last year.”

  “Due to the flooding. These wheels should fix that.”

  “With all the troubles in the border country and the civil war in Salia, the duke wants more this year. More iron. More weapons.”

  “Then get them down there and to work! What else did you bring me?”

  “Criminals. The usual ruffians and wandering good-for-nothings. Thieves, mostly. I’ve sent them to the quarry master.”

  “We may need more i
n the shafts to clear out those two rockfalls.”

  “Better them than us. I fear that whispering, I don’t mind telling you, Captain.”

  “I won’t send you down into the deep shafts, Foucher. You’ve served me well. Your bones won’t be gnawed by the goblins!” He laughed again, so hearty a sound that were it not for the comment that had preceded it one might be tempted to join in.

  Such cues gave him, the one called Silent, little enough to go on. The haft of a spear or staff prodded him in the buttocks, and he stumbled forward as the men around him roared to see his confusion. He was pushed to the brink of an open hole out of which air poured with a sharp, dry scent that he had smelled before.

  What memory teased him?

  Creatures scuffling in the dark.

  He brushed his fingers over the bronze armband, his only possession, and images flared like lamplight illuminating a black cavern:

  He drags Kel and Beor back from the brink of a gaping fissure while a searing wind rushing up from the abyss stings his eyes. His beloved Adica lives, and they have rescued her from the Ashioi, who stand cursing them on the other side of the fissure. In the shadows beyond the shifting light, skrolin chatter in whispering voices as they vanish into the rock. The bronze armband throbs against the skin of his upper arm; when darkness falls, it lights with the uncanny gleam of magic.

  “Get on!”

  A hand cuffed him on the ear—out of nowhere—right where it was swollen. The pain shattered inside his skull and broke his memory into a thousand shards.

  “Go on! Set your foot on the rung. There. There! What a fool!”

  “Go easy on the man, Foucher. He can’t help he’s blind.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe not.”

  “What’s that armband he’s wearing? It looks valuable.”

  “Master Richard warned me of that. He said it burns any man who touches it.”

  “Does it?”

  “If you’d seen the look on his greedy face, you’d have believed him, too. I say we can wait and take it off him when he dies.”

  “I wonder …” mused the Captain, but their voices faded as he descended into a clamor of rumbling and cracking and echoes.