As Brann peered through it, his hand was drawn to the material across his eyes by a memory just too distant to grasp. A name came into his head.
‘Konall.’
Hakon’s head snapped round. ‘What did you say?’
‘Konall. It entered my head.’
‘You remember him?’
Brann shook his head. ‘Only the name. I know not its owner.’
The big boy shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, I don’t believe it to be a bad sign. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’ He ran to the cover of his camel.
With the wind picking up considerably and the sand whipping into them, Brann glanced in the direction of the storm. The darkness was in essence a huge wall of swirling sand, higher than the tallest tower of the citadel in the City Above, and it seized his eyes with a dreadful fascination. Never had he seen such power. And it was almost upon them – the speed it possessed was beyond imagination. The sight was intoxicating. Never since he had left the tunnels of the City Below had he felt so alive.
‘I still live!’ he yelled into its face.
Cannick dragged him down. ‘You won’t be saying that in a moment if you stay there, you fool.’ He pushed him against his camel and scuttled to his own, his words barely audible as the wind tried to flick them away. ‘Now stay there.’
The man had commanded, so Brann would obey. He pulled his knees to his chest and snuggled into the camel’s warm body, feeling the steady thump of its heart against his back. The beast made a sound that seemed more welcoming than irritated, and at the least it didn’t reject him.
Then the storm hit.
It was impossible to say how long it lasted before passing on its way; every minute was an hour, every breath an effort as they felt the weight of the elemental power that enveloped them, every hint of respite followed by an even stronger gust. When light once more reached them and the wind had drifted off, they lay there for a while, absorbing the overwhelming silence that had fallen over them. One by one, they staggered to their feet.
‘Now you can say it,’ Cannick acceded.
Brann’s senses were too stunned to allow him to say anything.
A drift had built up beside the camels and, as the beasts climbed to their feet, a waterfall of sand cascaded from them. Brann stretched as high as he could reach and brushed the excess grains from his mount, drawing a grunt of contentment from the animal.
‘I cannot deny I was close to soiling myself,’ Hakon admitted cheerfully. ‘Never have I seen a storm of its like.’
Grakk was readying his camel. ‘That was a minor one. It is not unknown to have to dig a man and his camel from the sand.’
Hakon was impressed. ‘And if the would-be diggers are also buried? What then?’
Grakk’s voice remained even as he swung into his saddle. ‘The desert makes many graves for the living.’
Hakon let the subject lie.
The greatest effect of the storm was to create a sense of gratitude for the tedium of their ride. Brann now found the plodding of the camels welcome, and appreciated the vast silence as he lay under the startlingly bright stars that night in the scant moments before sleep settled over him.
It was two, maybe three, days later when the monotony was broken once more, albeit in a less dramatic manner, though almost as unexpected. A shape in the distance ahead resolved itself into a structure, tall and slender. On closing, Brann recognised a chimney and, a short distance away, a low stone wall in a short straight line, broken almost exactly in its centre by a space for a long-disappeared gate.
The caravan headed directly through the gateway although it could just as easily have passed around the minimal length of the wall, with each Deruul rider, Brann saw, touching his forehead as he passed through. He copied the gesture: whatever it meant, it meant something to them.
They dismounted and started settling for the night, even though several hours remained before sundown. Grakk gestured for them to come to him.
Gerens was last to arrive after tethering his camel with the rest. ‘There is a problem? There are several miles more we could cover today.’
‘Not today,’ Grakk responded. He swept his hand in an arc. ‘This is the remains of the only known settlement in the expanse of the badlands. No one knows who built it, who carried the stone so far, or who managed to live here, but Deruul logic maintains that it could only have been a god. Every traveller who reaches this spot, therefore, shows respect by resting the night in this holy place. Not one passes it by.’
The fires were laid in a precise circle around the chimney, each one lit from a small blaze started in the hearth of the chimney itself: all that remained of the ancient dwelling. Eight fires, one for each point of the compass and one between each of those.
If Brann and companions expected the silence of reverence to be held throughout the duration of their stay there, they could not have erred further from the fact. The Deruul sought to fill the desert with sound into the night, sonorous chants swapping with rousing song. Herbs were cast onto the fire that enveloped them in a thick aroma, and their heads began to swirl with thumping song and swimming vision. Shapes shifted in and from the dancing shadows, until it was a fruitless struggle to determine the real from the trickery of the imagination. Brann did not like this. Comfort lay only in knowing what there was around you, what was danger and what was safety. The world around him lied and he moved away from the fire, seeking clarity in the chill of the night air and free of the treacherous fumes.
The broken stone wall appeared in front of him, the glow from the campfires shifting on its inner surface. It reached to his chest and he leant on it briefly, feeling the cooled stone refreshing against his hands. Turning, he slid down until he sat, his back against it, watching the camp and savouring the chill of the air he drew into his chest in long slow breaths. Leaving the scale of his cell and the embracing surroundings of the tunnels and caverns below the city had not been hard, though Grakk had spoken with concern to him on a few occasions about any effects he might feel at the change. Here, even more so, he could have been overwhelmed by the never-ending terrain and the greater vastness of the sky, but he had survived below ground by accepting each second as it transpired and dealing with whatever lay in front of him, and here was no different.
No, in fact, here it was different. Here he felt a freedom coursing through him, as if he was meant to be like this, even though it was all new to him. He was like a bird he had seen at the travellers’ encampment, hooded and immobile, cruel talons gripping its handler’s gauntlet until the hood was removed and the powerful wings took it circling high into the blue of the sky above.
The man Icham was standing at the edge of the light of one fire, his face lit in flickering orange as if it were itself afire, his voice deep, strong and haunting in the desert stillness as he intoned a powerful melody. Listeners swayed in time and shadows shifted and jumped around him. Even beyond the reach of the fires, shadows cast by the moon seemed to move as well. Brann frowned. Nothing other than the chimney and the wall protruded from the desert floor to cast a shadow, and the dark from the wall extended only a few short feet while that of the chimney extended towards the far side of the camp where the camels were tethered. He shook his head and drew in a great breath of clean air, irritated that the effects of the herb-fuelled smoke still toyed with his eyes.
But the shadows still moved. And one was moving directly towards the Deruul leader, towards his unsuspecting and unprotected back. It was when the glint of the firelight betrayed a naked blade that Brann moved, rolling to gain his feet in a crouch and running, bent low and silent, his hand reaching for the dagger in his belt. He counted seven in all as he closed from behind on the nearest, then saw two further around the circle.
He was too far from the leading figure to reach him before he was able to strike at Icham, but his knife did what it could do, slicing at the back of the knee of the first man he passed, the victim spinning and dropping with a scream. As he had hoped, it turned the figure targeti
ng Icham and alerted the Deruul leader to the presence of danger, even if he and the others would be too intoxicated by the smoke to offer anything more than flimsy resistance. The other dark figures had turned also, but Brann’s momentum had taken him to another and, as he left him behind, so the man’s life left him in a spray from his gaping throat. Brann ignored all but the man closest to Icham and reached him in less than a dozen strides, ducking under a wild swipe of a curved sword as the man, his eyes not yet adjusted from looking at the light of the fire, swung in desperation at any potential danger. That danger became real as Brann rose inside his swing and stabbed his knife up through his chin and into his head.
The lifeless body relinquished its sword to the grasp of Brann’s left hand as it took the knife from his right, and he turned to see two more approaching side by side. They were too close to be an effective team and he sliced right to left with the edge of the blade across the shins of the one on the left so he fell into his companion in a tangle of limbs and screams. Finishing them was simple.
He shifted the sword to his right hand as the other two closed on him with more menacing caution, while the pair from further off had realised that the screams were from their own party rather than their intended victims and were also moving his way. One man advanced on Brann with a curious weapon, a wooden handle attached to a chain from which hung a heavy ball of metal; the other bore a more conventional sword and rectangular shield. He let the man swing the chain and stepped back, thrusting his sword to let the links whirl around it in a tangle until the weapon stuck fast. In that instant he stepped forward and spun to his left, using the momentum of the man’s swing to pull him around and stumbling towards his partner, his hand losing its grip on his weapon. With the chain still wrapped around it, Brann stabbed the point of the blade through his neck but, as he pulled the sword free, the body twisted as it fell and the wound clung at the steel, pulling the hilt from his hand. The chain slid off its length, though, and he grabbed at the strange weapon’s handle as it bounced at his feet, rolling sideways in a move that, as it had many times before, saved his life as the other man’s sword flashed down into the sand. He swung the unwieldy weapon sideways, knocking the shield wide, and continued the swing in a wild and high circle to aim it backhanded at the side of the man’s jaw. His opponent ducked, but not enough and the metal ball crushed the side of his head with a sickening crunch that would have brought hesitation to anyone but those who had fought in the depraved madness of the pits of the City Below. Brann dropped the weapon in favour of the more familiar sword.
The remaining two were now coming at a run, trying to get to him before he could ready himself. He could feel his arms slowing slightly and glanced at his travelling companions, but the Deruul and his friends alike were swaying in stupefied astonishment, spectating being their only contribution. Gathering his efforts, he settled the sword in his grip, and the pair came at a rush, seeking to overwhelm him, one with a short stabbing spear and a round metal shield small enough to double as a clubbing weapon, and the other with a sword and a long dagger.
Hesitation was an invitation to death. He batted the spear to the left and spun into the movement, inside the weapon’s range and taking the blow of the shield, which was punched at him as he suspected, on his shoulder blade rather than his face where the man had intended. His elbow smashed into the man’s face with a feeling of something, nose or teeth he did not know, giving way to it and buying him a moment to reverse the sword and drive it up under his right armpit into the body behind, more in hope of finding a crucial target than any directed skill. A grunt and then a brief gurgling gasp of desperation sounded into his ear and he whirled away to a safe distance but, for the second time in as many minutes, a sword was ripped from his grasp by a corpse. Weaponless, he lurched as the remaining man came at him, blades long and short poised to strike, and leapt aside, flying at one of the glazed-eyed Deruul. The nomad’s instinct turned him away from the hurtling boy and they struck back to back, Brann rolling against him to spin to his feet. His hand had reached as he passed, though, and when he stopped it was with the Deruul’s sword in his left hand. With one step forward, a thrashing backhand swing smashed past the knife’s scant defence and cut almost entirely through the attacker’s neck.
Leaving the blade embedded, Brann strode away, plucking the man’s own sword from his lifeless fingers. There was one left, the man he had crippled, the first of the nine he had struck.
‘Brann!’ Cannick’s voice cut through the night.
He stopped immediately and looked to the man for further instructions.
‘Wait there.’ The older man’s voice was laboured and he staggered slightly as he walked. Brann looked around. The Deruul were passing a small glass vial between them, each man in turn holding the unstoppered top briefly under his nose. Their eyes would stream and more often than not coughs and sneezes would ensue, but the effect of clearing their herb-befuddled heads was universal. Grakk and Gerens had, like Brann, been discomfited by the smoke but, unlike Brann, had not moved completely from its clutches, but only to its periphery. Still, they had been ensnared by its effects enough to render them useless during the violence, though the reduced effect they had suffered allowed them to regain full capability moments after inhaling from the vial. Icham, too, seemed unaffected, an impressive feat if it were so, as he had been in the heart of the fumes. The three reached Brann at the same time as the still-unsteady Cannick, though, once satisfied that Brann was unhurt, Gerens returned to check on Sophaya.
Icham looked at him, narrowed eyes and slim nose giving him the look of a bird of prey. He spoke in his own tongue but paused almost as soon as he had started. Haltingly, and with concentration on every word, he said, ‘Any who witnessed that, they would see there lives a demon within you. But that cannot be so. A fight on holy ground, it wakens the interest of the gods. The gods play a part in that which interests them. You were favoured by the gods in our most holy of places, and you fought like no man we have seen. An angel of death is within you. Our people will hold you in regard. Those who the gods smile upon, we smile upon.’
Brann looked into his eyes. ‘I still live.’
The desert traveller nodded. ‘As do I. And we both have you to thank for that.’ He knelt before the boy. ‘I pray one day the gods will grant me the opportunity to repay in kind.’
Brann’s voice was even. The matter was not complicated. ‘You keep us from danger in the Deadlands. I kept danger from you. I did not want you to die.’ He looked across at the remaining foe, writhing and moaning in the light of torches in the hands of a circle of Deruul, impassive and all the more menacing for it. ‘Him…’
Cannick’s voice was less slurred, though marginally. ‘It is good that he lives for now.’
Brann’s brows drew together. ‘Good?’
The man nodded. ‘It will be helpful to hear from him why they attacked, and on whose orders.’
Brann looked at the faces around him, including the still-kneeling Deruul leader. Each nodded. He reached out a hand to raise Icham to his feet. ‘We should ask him then.’
The circle of nomads, around half of their group, parted to allow them through to the wounded man. Some reached out to touch Brann as he passed. He had no idea why they did it, but their manner was not in any way threatening towards him and he relaxed.
Still clutching the back of his leg, their captive had struggled into a sitting position. Cannick placed a boot against his chest, pushing him back down.
The broad face that looked back at them was unusual in its normality. The man could quite easily have been a baker or a farmer rather than a killer sent into the desert on a mission of murder. Normality, but for his eyes. A fanaticism glared from them, a belief that was rooted deep within. The eyes alighted on the blood-streaked and gore-spattered Brann and a macabre grin stretched his mouth.
‘Your job is not yet finished, boy. Kill me now.’ He sounded eager, certainly not fearful.
Brann looked at him. ‘
We would like to talk with you.’
A snarl now. ‘You would like to kill me.’
‘I would. But my friends would like to talk to you.’
The man turned his head and spat into the sand. ‘They can talk. I will not.’
Brann frowned. ‘That would be rude.’
Cannick leant more heavily on the man’s chest. ‘Well, let’s just chat for now on how your leg feels.’ He lifted his foot and kicked where Brann’s knife had slashed. The man gasped but did not cry out. He started breathing, slow, deep and deliberate, his eyes unfocusing.
‘I will not talk to you, now or ever. You may as well let the boy kill me now.’
Cannick ignored his words. ‘Your leg, does it hurt?’ He pressed his foot against the wound and the man stiffened, but was silent. Cannick leant close. ‘If you think that is sore, just wait. There is pain waiting to be visited on every part of you. Save yourself the pain. Speak.’
The man spat in his face. ‘Save yourself the time. Kill me.’
Cannick turned his head to wipe his face and Grakk caught his eye, beckoning him with his eyes. The veteran came close and Grakk spoke low, so low that Brann, even alongside, could barely hear his words. Glancing at the pair, he noticed that Gerens had returned, and was standing close behind, his intense gaze taking in the scene.
‘I have seen his type before,’ said Grakk. ‘An obsessive about a cause, he will descend into a trance that will resist pain. This may take a while.’
Cannick grunted. ‘So what do we do?’
‘Persist.’
‘Not the most pleasant of work.’ He shrugged. ‘Still, if it keeps us alive, needs must.’
The conversation was cut short by Gerens, shouldering his way through the silent Deruul and striding towards the prone man, now lying still and peaceful as he composed himself, muttering an unintelligible phrase repeatedly. Without a pause, the rangy boy pulled out his slender dagger, leant forward and stuck it into the left eye of the man on the ground. A scream ripped from the man, the action so unexpected and extreme that it had ruptured whatever wall he was building in his mind. Gerens left the knife in place for a long moment as the man’s shrieks rent the air over and over, holding the hilt still so that the pinned man dare not move his head a fraction, though his back arched and his arms and legs thrashed and dragged at the ground, gouging long ruts in the hard sand. With a sharp twist, Gerens pulled the blade clear, wiped it on the man’s tunic, and walked away.
Hero Grown Page 27