by Matthew Ward
“Who are you?”
He stroked his goatee. “A friend. I saw you fall. I’d like to help.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe that.”
“Will I?” He shrugged. “Why not? But I am your friend. I’m a friend to everyone, in time.”
Calenne felt her eyelids droop. The stranger’s soft, rational manner begged for agreement. For accession. She struck her shattered wrist against the wall. The pain snapped her eyes wide open. She choked back a sob.
“There’s no need for that,” said the stranger. “I’ve come to show you a way out.”
“A way out?” It took all she had not to beg. The stranger would have been discomfiting even back at Branghall. Here? In the gloom, he was a hair short of terrifying. It wasn’t just a matter of him being out of place. He filled the chamber, and more besides. As if what Calenne perceived was but the tiniest part of his being. “I’ll find my own exit.”
He drew closer with soundless footfall. “I think not. You don’t know where you are.”
“I’m in Skazit Maze. Wolf’s-heads get in and out all the time. So will I.”
“No. Konor Belenzo sealed this catacomb precisely so that nothing would get out. He was terrified of something getting out.” His words didn’t invite belief. They demanded it. “Neither of us wants you to stumble onto her, believe me. But you can escape, if you accept my help.”
He held out his hand.
“Tell me,” he asked, his voice soft as smoke. “Do you dance? I confess it’s become something of an obsession of late. We all have our vices.”
Calenne felt her eyelids drooping. This time she did nothing to halt it. Even as a small inner voice screamed at her to back away – to run! – she raised her good hand to his.
The stranger’s gloved fingers brushed her wrist. Something cold and sharp pressed to her skin. Warmth swept it away. Muscles tightened in Calenne’s shattered wrist, grinding the bones together. She yelped in pain and glanced down.
She saw no sign of the stranger’s hands, just her own. Her left, somehow free of its sling, held her dagger-blade against her right wrist. The steel was slick with blood from a nicked vein. A hair’s breadth more . . .
“And now you’ve spoilt everything.” The stranger’s voice echoed about her, the syllables thick with disappointment and . . . fear? “I wish you hadn’t. Now there’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
Invisible wings buffeted Calenne’s head and arms. Harsh voices rose in croaking chorus about her. Heart pounding in terror, she hurled the dagger away and fled.
Forty-Two
Arrows hissed through the air. Leather-clad outriders scattered away from the volley, leaving dead behind. A ragged cheer went up from the southwealders’ mismatched ranks. In a day of sparse victories, even the smallest counted.
“Form up!” Josiri shouted. “Lock shields!”
The cry rippled up and down the line. Shields scavenged from the dead formed a wall of mismatched heraldry. Here a phoenix. There a swan. The hounds and serpents of vanquished Hadari clansmen. Josiri pictured Makrov’s disapproving expression on seeing the serpent-shield he himself carried. The image provoked a burst of cheer in an otherwise grim moment.
[[A pity no one else wants to play.]]
Anastacia gestured at the nearest redoubt. Soldiers stood silent on its ramshackle battlements. Not one had marched out to join them.
“You shouldn’t be here,” said Josiri.
[[None of us should be here,]] she replied. [[I want to try out my new toy.]]
She hefted a war hammer claimed from a dead Immortal. She looked ridiculously frail – as if one good swing would send her spinning off into the distance.
Josiri shot a glance at Masnar, but the captain was either not listening, or at least giving a good pretence. The same couldn’t be said of the nearby wolf-cloaks who paid unabashed interest. Or possibly it was fear. Word of Vorn’s death – and the manner of it – had spread.
He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to lose you.”
[[You won’t. I’m hard to miss.]] A bitter note crept into her voice. [[Especially now.]]
Josiri stifled a scowl. Even now, she delighted in missing the point. “That’s not what I meant.”
[[I know what you meant. Whatever I have become, I used to be a serathi. A herald of dawn and bringer of hope.]] She raised her voice. The hollow words danced. [[And I’m certain I’ve killed more men than you.]]
Laughter rippled around him – all of it at Josiri’s expense.
“Here they come!” bellowed Masnar.
Mirth dissolved into jeers as the Hadari line came about. Disciplined, overlapped shields put Josiri’s formation to shame. The glittering emeralds of Kai Saran’s armour exuded regal destiny. Not for the first time, Josiri gave silent thanks that battle had so severely thinned the cataphracts’ ranks. As for the pale-witches – the lunassera, Anastacia had called them – and their chandirin? Or the tales he’d heard of a woman wielding white flame . . . ? The grunda?
The grunda alone was enough to break their line.
“Steady!” He shouted, as much for his own benefit as for those around him. “Didn’t you hear? We’ve a serathi with us! She brought the sunlight! Don’t let her down!”
Laughter returned, this time at Anastacia’s expense more than his. She kicked his shin. [[Just what I needed to hear.]]
“You started it. Do you want to be a bringer of hope, or not?”
[[Yes.]] She stared out across the field. [[Yes I do.]]
The Hadari line quickened. The cataphracts and chandirin kept pace with the marching infantry. White flame blazed beneath the owl-banner. The grunda outstripped them all. Josiri felt the tremor beneath his feet.
“Merrik!” he shouted. “Don’t let that thing reach us!”
[[No! Save your arrows for the lunassera!]]
Masnar shot a hurried glance up and down the line. “This formation’s held together by good intentions and spittle. If that thing reaches us . . .”
Anastacia dropped her shield. [[It won’t.]]
“Ana!”
Josiri grabbed for her too late. She strode purposefully across the field, the hammer’s head raking the dust as it dragged behind. Josiri moved to follow.
Masnar seized his shoulder. “You want to kill us all? Hold the line!”
Josiri shrugged Masnar’s hand away. Throat thick with worry, he gripped his shield until his fingers ached. Do you want to be a bringer of hope, or not? How he hated those words now.
He hoped Anastacia knew what she was doing. The chances of that seemed slender as her doll’s body before the charging grunda. She didn’t run – of course she didn’t – but strode with purpose, shoulders bowed. The charioteer’s whip cracked. The grunda picked up speed. Anastacia halted and planted the hammer’s butt in the ground. In the moment before impact, she shied away, hands flung up to ward off the inevitable.
A thunderous, hollow thud shook the sky. Anastacia and grunda vanished in a cloud of dust.
“Ana!” A scraping, grinding sound drowned out Josiri’s cry. It rose in brief crescendo and fell away to nothing. The dust cloud blossomed, stinging his eyes. Then the wind gusted, bringing revelation.
Anastacia’s boots sat planted deep in twin furrows stretching back towards the Hadari lines. Her outspread hands – the war hammer’s handle still grasped between them – were braced against the beast’s massive snout. Churned soil and wheat-stalks matted her dress.
Even as Josiri wondered at the strength it had taken to bring the grunda to a halt, the beast reared up. Leathery feet flailed at Anastacia’s head.
She stepped back. Her grip shifted on the hammer’s haft and she swung it in a full, dizzying circle. Metal cracked against the grunda’s upraised head. The beast gave a final, empty bellow. Wrenching free of the chariot’s spars, it toppled sideways in a spray of dust.
Disbelieving cheers rang out from the Tressian line. They grew in volume and stridency as voices caught up wi
th evidence of eyes. Josiri joined them, his throat thick with relief.
Anastacia strode up the grunda’s armoured flank. She seized the charioteer by the throat and hoisted him high above the ground. Then she cast him aside and raised the war hammer in triumph.
The cheer redoubled in volume. For the very briefest of moments, Josiri glimpsed a ghostly echo of black-feathered wings at Anastacia’s back. He blinked, and they were gone.
Careless of the oncoming Hadari, Anastacia dropped from the grunda’s back and rejoined the line.
[[Told you I’d a lot of repressed anger.]]
“And now?” he asked, almost laughing with relief.
[[I’ve barely scratched the surface.]]
Horns urged the Hadari to the charge.
Calenne ran until her legs were jelly and her lungs burned. She gave no thought to what lay ahead, only the horror behind. Doubled over and panting for breath, she strove to make sense of what she’d seen.
The Raven! The Raven was real. The thought set her trembling again. She spun around and stared back into the gloom.
Nothing. No sound. No movement.
Dizziness returned. With it the doubt she’d seen anything at all. Had the “Raven” been anything more than fevered imagination? She glanced at her bloodied wrist.
“He was there,” she breathed. “He was . . . Wasn’t he?”
Calenne pinched her eyes shut and tried to ignore the buzzing in her head. Water. She needed water. She opened her eyes as her breathing steadied, and noted something new.
Light.
It wasn’t much. A soft, yellowish tinge where the passage forked. Warm, even inviting. A hint of sunlight. And the Raven had said there’d been no way out . . . More than ever, Calenne grew convinced that she’d experienced a hallucination. Despair did strange things to the mind.
But not now. Not with the possibility of salvation. Even a glimpse of the sun would help . . . even if the opening was too high for her to reach. Even if a cohort of Hadari blocked her way.
There were no Hadari around the next turning. Nor was there a glimpse of the sky. There was only the light, which grew brighter with every step. A spill of rubble blocked her way, the end of a snapped lintel protruding from the mound of discoloured rock. Calenne scrambled over the stones and pressed on in search of freedom.
Beyond, the character of the walls changed. No longer smooth, they bore bas-reliefs of half-height figures. Calenne ran her fingertips across the stone, tracing faces and the outlines of shields.
No two were the same. Some wore the short tunics and banded armour of early Tressia. Others the precursor to the robes and scales she’d seen too often that day. Then there were thicker-set figures, decked in furs and plaited beards. And through it all, the same stylised motifs. The sun and the moon. A blazing fire and a foam-flecked wave. A thorned rose and . . . and a raven.
Calenne suppressed a shudder. Still she caught no sign of the light’s source, only the reflections it scattered across the polished black stone. She gave no thought to turning back. Better the perils of the light than the uncertainty of the dark.
The passageway opened into a high-vaulted chamber, twice the size of her room at Branghall. At the very centre, a ring of iron-caged torches blazed – not with fire, but with golden light. Within the ring, there was only darkness. A darkness that was somehow more welcoming than the light.
The darkness swirled like windblown smoke as Calenne drew closer. Though it never broached the threshold of torches, the turbulence revealed a little of what lay within. A soot-blackened plinth, and atop it a twisted, scorched skeleton whose mouth gaped wide in a silent scream. Ash lay thick about the plinth’s base, shot through with gobbets of silvered metal. Bindings rendered molten by flame.
Instinct screamed at Calenne to flee. Her legs didn’t respond. She felt a sense of belonging she couldn’t place, much less explain.
The darkness guttered, then billowed. A womanly shape coalesced. Black vapour trailed behind in a windswept mane. She hammered at the torch-lit boundary, her thin, sharp features contorting in a voiceless scream. The air rippled like water beneath her fists. Shards of golden light flashed with each impact.
Her face flickered and reformed, likeness bleeding into likeness. Dozens Calenne didn’t recognise, and others she did, faces from her childhood. Then her own. It was gone as soon as glimpsed, replaced by the sharp-featured face first worn. Then the woman swirled away, her body collapsing into formless darkness again.
At last, Calenne’s legs responded. She staggered away, a hand thrust to her mouth to stifle a scream. A name echoed through her thoughts. A name from legend.
Malatriant.
The icularis attacked in a whirl more dance than war-craft. The folds of his cloak disguised his dirk’s lunge until it was too late to parry.
At least, that was the intent. But Revekah had seen every trick under the sun. This one, she’d seen many times in preceding minutes. She’d bled for the first, but only the first. The cloak’s edge slipped away. She stepped back, her shoulder blades pressing against Kurkas’. Her sword teased the dirk’s point aside, and her riposte slit the icularis’ forearm to the bone. Her backswing cut off his scream almost before it began.
A wet thud sounded behind. Kurkas grunted in pain and sank against her shoulders.
“Don’t embarrass me in front of the shadowthorns,” she said.
“Just getting my . . .” Another thud. A scream. “. . . second wind.”
Revekah worried at the breathiness of Kurkas’ protest, then wondered why she cared. Of the two icularis still facing her, one mistook concern for lack of focus. He died with her sword in his throat.
Kurkas groaned. His weight slipped from Revekah’s shoulders.
“Kurkas?”
Revekah spun on her heel. He lay at her feet, eye closed and tunic marred by fresh, bloody rents. Another corpse to join the half-dozen icularis they’d dispatched.
Three remained. Two of Kurkas’. One of hers. Manageable odds, fighting back to back. Now?
Revekah threw herself at the nearest and bore him to the ground before he’d a chance to scream. Her sword sliced up under his breastbone. She rolled away, gaping in pain as the motion jarred her injured shoulder.
Another icularis stabbed down. Revekah struck the blade aside and staggered to her feet. A swirl of robes and the wicked dirk came again. A second parry, a third, a fourth – the timing of each cut finer than the last as her strength failed.
The icularis thrust at her heart. Revekah twisted aside, burning the last of her reserves in the process. She slammed her head forward. Cartilage crunched. The icularis yelped and reeled away, blood streaming from his nose.
Revekah plunged her sword into his back. It had taken too long. The third would finish her.
She spun around at the high-pitched scream.
The last icularis stood motionless above the prone Kurkas, his mouth agape. The hearthguard’s sword was buried almost to the hilt in his groin.
Dry, wheezing laughter crackled up from Kurkas’ bloodied lips. The icularis slid sideways, taking Kurkas’ sword with him.
Chest shuddering with exertion, Revekah fell to her knees. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not . . . Not yet,” he croaked. “Now bugger off and save your precious duke.”
Revekah stared out through the trees towards the distant battle. Did Josiri still live? Could she even reach him in time to make a difference?
Josiri’s life or death wasn’t in her gift. But Kurkas . . .
She swore softly, tore a strip of cloth from an icularis’ cloak and pressed the bundle against the wound in Kurkas’ chest. “Here. Hold this tight while I take a look at the rest.” She set to work unbuttoning his tunic.
Kurkas flinched as her bare flesh touched his bloody skin.
“Madam, I must protest,” he gasped weakly. “You’re not even my type.”
“Oh shut up.”
She threw herself into the task of saving a life s
he’d twice tried to take.
Viktor awoke in a suffocating, sweltering world. One swamped in darkness, stinking of sweat, blood and ordure. He tried to move. The oppressive weight on his chest shifted with a scrape of metal. It slipped a hair’s breadth closer to his nose, feeding sudden fear that whatever lay atop him would crush him entirely.
He twisted his head. Dead eyes stared back from an Immortal’s helm. Without the Hadari’s corpse to bear some of the weight, he’d have been crushed.
Scattered memories reformed. Saran. The white flame, and his shadow’s scream. The falling kraikon. Trapped beneath a kraikon? It was only dumb luck that he wasn’t dead.
Sights and sound trudged into shape. The distant sounds of sword on sword. The screams.
He was needed.
Slowly, carefully so as to not invite further collapse, Viktor braced hands against the kraikon. It barely shifted. He tried again, arching his back and kicking his heels against the ground.
The kraikon moved. Viktor roared as it gave. The kraikon slipped to his left, tilting as it did so. Daylight streamed in above Viktor’s head, giving shape to the mangled bronze torso.
Another muscle-wrenching heave and his right arm came free. From there, an undignified wriggle freed his right leg. His chest followed, though at the cost of a torn surcoat. Viktor didn’t care. He was free.
He lurched upright on rubbery legs and drank in sunlight and clean air. Or nearly so, for the stench of death lay thick on the wind. The Raven had feasted well that day. There, barely four hundred yards north, a new banquet awaited. A mishmash of wolf’s-heads, militia and Lumestra alone knew what else buckling beneath the remorseless Hadari advance.
“Em’shal rae, Ashanal!”
The pale-witch came for him at a dead run, healer’s tools spilling from an abandoned haversack. A shard-spear flashed to life, the blade under her hand, and the shaft running parallel to a back-flung arm.
She leapt, slashing at his face from mid-air. Viktor caught her by wrist and throat. A wrench. A snap. The woman went limp. The man the pale-witch had sought to treat crawled desperately away across the dead on his elbows. Viktor let him go and stared northwards once more.