by Greg James
“Only her life, Khale. Only her life.”
He would never leave these benighted mountain woods if he could not find Cacea.
If only I had turned south, he thought, I could have drowned out the memories of Neprokhodymh with wine and sex.
Instead, dark thoughts had led him to this dark place, and he did not much like how things were going. On the path to the Autarch’s palace, he had not feared his own death. Tonight, he felt something else, something older than the memory of the first tears he ever shed. Was it fear?
Murtagh had come close to killing him. The wound in Khale’s arm was healing, but the memory of its bleeding was still sharp in his mind. He had felt some thrill in the moment, but now there was doubt. The curse of his long life had been unbroken for many years.
He had not thought to face death unless pitted against a foe of incredible ferocity and supernatural strength. But Murtagh had shaken that surety loose from the fetters of his soul.
The witch’s words had been that he would live to see the world come to nothing. Did she mean the world that had gone before this one? Now that its cities, roads, and weapons were buried, was he to die? Was this corner of the world where life had endured to be the place where his own end would come to pass?
He did not know, but he did wonder as he gazed around the mundane confines of the castle kitchens.
Is this the place where it will all end?
Murtagh called to him, “Here, Khale. Over here.”
Crossing the distance between them, he came to the edge of a barred grate set into the floor.
“Perhaps she has fled the castle through here,” said Murtagh.
Khale ran his fingers around it until he found the hinges. He braced himself and heaved at the bars. The hinges creaked and groaned loudly as he lifted the grate up and away. He leaned over the side of the pit it had covered and saw the rungs of a ladder set into the side—no doubt for some poor bastard servant to go below every so often and clean out the worst of the shit down there. The smell told him this was the refuse pit. Murtagh was reaching for the first rung when Khale reached out himself and took hold of the Captain’s shoulder. “Wait there.”
Khale strode back through the kitchens.
“What are you doing?”
“I think not everyone in the castle has been well fed this night.”
He held up a rack of half-eaten boar ribs. They were cold and coated in a layer of mottled grease.
“What do you mean?”
“Listen.”
Khale flung the ribs down into the pit. They landed with a wet thump. Growls and snarls echoed upwards. The tearing of flesh and the crunching of bones followed. He saw the look on Murtagh’s face.
“Dogs.”
“Dogs,” Khale said. “Barneth knew someone would try to flee this way.”
“Dead by dawn,” Murtagh whispered, the words catching in his throat. “It said we would be dead by dawn.”
“Come with me if you want to live, old man.”
Chapter Twelve
Milius Barneth left the dungeon, wiping his fingers on a scrap of coarse cloth. He tossed the rag into a dark corner, leaving it for the rats to feast on Cacea’s blood. A little pleasure had been just what he needed.
Practicing the age-old traditions of his family made him feel a part of the bloodline, as if they were there in the dungeon with him. Watching, as enraptured by the throes of torment as he was. Barneth hoped that their shades had been satiated by the night’s revels so far. For the night was young and there was much to show them yet.
He passed through doors known only to him, made his way along passageways and took stairs that led him to a secret place. Once there, he began to prepare for what else was to come.
Timoth had been of much assistance in the beginning, but the mage had forgotten his courtesy until a few rides on the Wheel made him more amenable. He was never quite the same afterwards though. A third ride on the Wheel broke him entirely. The Lord had been impressed by the mage’s strength; not many men survived their first ride on the Wheel, let alone a third.
There was not much left of him now, and his mind had fled.
It was of no matter. Timoth had given Barneth enough knowledge to open the way to the Thoughtless Dark. He had shown him how to speak with the Thoughtless Ones, and other things besides. They were coming through. He had heard the first cries and screams. These were only the first of many death-rattles.
And he meant for the last one to be Khale’s.
It had been many years ago, when he was a mere boy, that it happened. Khale had been a guest of his father’s in the Great Hall above. At the time, Milius had been a gentler child than the man he grew into. He remembered Khale’s scorn.
“Is this a boy you bring before me? Looks more like a little pig to me.”
The Wanderer’s words were bitter thorns, and they still stung at his mind.
There had been a squire to one of his father’s knights. A lean and beautiful creature with auburn hair and solemn, grey eyes. Milius remembered watching him fence against the other squires in the courtyard. How he had enjoyed those days; watching the sweat bead and run over pale, slender muscles. The balmy sight of skin which was, as yet, unscarred by battle.
Such sweet memories. The squire had been a noble youth.
Milius admired him from afar. It was all he could do. His father would stand for nothing else. If he had not been watching, he might not have seen what happened that day. The rest of his life might have had an entirely different cast and meaning to it.
Khale rode out through the courtyard one morning and the squire was crossing the way. The boy waved. He shouted. He cried out.
Khale rode on and over him.
The squire fell under the hooves of Khale’s mount; trampled into the dirt, with the livid mark of one hoof branding his broken face in death.
Milius remembered his own screams, and felt them still.
Others came and bore the body away. His father would not let him see the squire afterwards. The old man was not stupid. He knew what pleasures his son yearned for. And his son never forgave him for the slight.
His father died eventually, but Milius’ hatred for Khale never did. He nurtured it and let it grow in his breast like a canker around his heart.
He inherited everything. He became Lord Barneth.
How things changed. How power shifted. The man who turned Death’s blade aside now wandered lost in the corrupted labyrinth of Castle Barneth, whereas once he had been an honoured and feted guest here.
Milius wondered how long it would take the Wanderer to find the heart of the labyrinth. Legends spake of great beasts and ancient daemons who guarded the ornate mazes of the old world. This one was no different.
For the Thoughtless Dark was as the night, without limit, without end. Shadows begat shadows, no matter how much light was cast upon them. There had been so many grotesques for Barneth to choose from, but only one which truly sufficed for the task of slaying Khale.
It slept for now, but would awaken when the time was right.
Oh, thought Milius, to hear him scream, to see him weep and beg at my feet. I have longed for this. So many times I have spilt the blood of others in his name. Tonight, my will shall be done.
The dance of the dim lights upon the walls disturbed his reverie. For there was a shadow other than Khale troubling Barneth. He had noticed it, at first, earlier in the evening.
At the time he dismissed it as nothing.
But he saw it now upon the wall, close to his own. It wavered as the other shadows wavered. There seemed to be nothing untoward about it, but he could not see what was casting it. He examined all of the ornaments and devices around him thoroughly. None of them appeared to be the source of the shadow which hung behind his own, as one man might stand behind another.
There was no-one behind him.
He was sure of it.
The Lord of Castle Barneth looked.
The air was clear – except for some
light, scented smoke flowing from the censers he had lit. He watched the frail shadows of smoke flow across the wall and disappear into the strange shade. If it had been a shadow cast by a man, Barneth would have said it had just taken a step closer to his own shadow. Light now fell in a thin line between the two. The second shadow would be near enough to touch his own if it moved again.
But it could not be moving, it could not be there.
It was a shadow cast by nothing.
An unfounded fear.
Barneth stroked sweat from his brow and cursed under his breath. The son of Arturio Barneth and grandson to Thadeus Barneth, creator of the Red Wheel, should not be musing on shadows cast by lamp-light.
Absurd.
Barneth turned from the shadow and bent his head to his studies. There was much to do before the dawn came up. He did not look though the light shifted as the torches burned. He did not look though he was tempted by the slow dance of shadows that illustrated the passing of time. He did not look and see that the thin line of light separating his shadow and the other was growing thinner.
Much, much thinner.
Chapter Thirteen
Khale and Murtagh returned to the Great Hall.
“Do you think she died trying to escape through the refuse pit?” Murtagh asked.
Khale ran his fingers through his beard, pulling at it as he thought. “No, I do not think so. I believe she is still here, alive.”
“How can you know that?”
“I just do,” Khale said.
Murtagh regarded him with narrowed eyes. “You are not telling me all that is to be known.”
“No,” said Khale. “Nor will I, unless I deem it necessary.”
“I am not your lackey, Khale. Those hired dogs of yours back in the marshes might have followed you out of fear and cowardice, but I will not.”
“Did you not say you would not trust the girl’s life to me alone?”
“I did.”
“Then you will follow me.”
“I will, but only as I choose.”
“Choose,” Khale laughed. “Choose, choose, choose—that is what men always say when they are doing something they do not wish to. I choose. I decide. It is my will. But is it, Murtagh Alen? Is it your will that makes these choices for you? Are you so much in control of yourself and the world around you?”
Murtagh frowned. “You are speaking in riddles, brigand.”
Khale shook his head. “I am not, and I am not a brigand. Can you not see the clothes I wear? These good, stout boots? This shirt of fine silk and breeches of laced leather? Am I not made lordly and noble by the cut of this cloth? I have even washed and combed my hair this night.”
“They are but clothes. You wear them as a disguise, a mask that obscures your true nature.”
Khale snorted. “Does not every man do the same as I?”
“Aye, but,” Murtagh said, “no man can wash away his sins. They cling closer to us than our masks and clothes.”
Khale’s humour faded, and his face became a mask—the eyes deep, dark holes; the jaw-line hard; and the scars lacing his brow and cheekbones turned to pale ridges of candlewax.
“Wash away,” he whispered in his throat. “Aye, you speak true. Here’s the smell of blood, and there’s the taste of death on my tongue. The light has gone out in so many eyes because of these hands before me.”
He turned his gnarled hands over before his eyes, speaking in a hollow tone.
“They have not their lives, for I took them, but still I see them in my dreams, in every shadow astir. A million of the mouthless dead, or maybe more, ever marching in my wake. They are the dead, and I would join them but for the last breath I am doomed never to take.” He looked to Murtagh, and in that look was loss.
Murtagh tasted dryness in his mouth. “The weight of the dead rests on both our shoulders, Khale. Perhaps with a life saved, rather than spent, we can ease the burden somewhat.”
“Cacea.”
“Is that her name?”
“It is. Cacea Selwen.”
“I mark it. We shall find her and leave this benighted place together.”
Khale turned to the doors that led out of the Great Hall into the courtyard. They were barred with two great timbers. “Do you think we can move them, Murtagh?”
“I think so, but why? We need to search for this Cacea.”
“We do, but there is something else I must do first. Help me with this.”
With a great deal of grunting and straining, they unbarred the doors.
“There will be guards on the other side,” Murtagh cautioned.
“Then draw your sword.” Khale unsheathed his own. “I hope they are not abed.”
Khale heaved the doors open. Outside, all was still across the courtyard to the outer gates. Murtagh took a step forward.
“Wait.” Khale set a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“What is it?”
“Can’t you feel it?”
“I feel nothing but the cold and a wish to be gone,” Murtagh muttered.
“Tell me what you see?”
Murtagh frowned at him. “I see nothing.”
“I see death in the shadows.”
It was very dark; the clouds had come across the moon in the small hours.
“I see only the night’s darkness,” Murtagh retorted, shaking Khale’s hand from his shoulder.
Suddenly, there was movement. Shapes ran towards them: fast and fluid. The light of the Great Hall fell on them long enough for Murtagh to see they were the squires, stable boys and guards from the gates. Each was black-eyed and shrieking, hands glistening darkly with spilt blood.
Khale stepped in front of Murtagh, his thick shoulders heaving under the fine shirt he wore. The sound of his breathing was as feral as that of the approaching attackers. Recognition flickered in the fetid pits of their eyes as their mouths opened to reveal barbed fangs where teeth once were.
“We shall ... feast on you ... Khale ...O master-puppet, yes ... come to us ... we will ... bleed you dry ...”
Khale weighed his two-handed sword in one hand, balancing the blade, easing the aches and pains from his muscles. “Come for me then, creatures,” he said, “and see how easy it will be for you.”
The first came on, reaching out with clawing hands and he struck them off at the wrist. Khale’s great sword swung, cleaved and hacked at the creatures with a speed and ferocity that made the colossal blade seem to flow like an unbroken ribbon of tempered steel. The more sweat that shone on Khale’s skin, and the more the blood soaked his fine clothes, the more they came for him, and the greater grew the rage and hatred that darkened Khale’s face.
Each blow Khale struck was sure and true, until he stood alone and unmolested amid scattered pieces of the dead. He strode towards Murtagh, who could not stop himself from gagging at the stench of death that clung to Khale. The noxious taint of Khale’s eyes was heavy and thick, a poisonous haze that did nothing to settle Murtagh’s stomach.
Khale spoke distantly, as if Murtagh was not even there, now that the lust for the kill was spent. “A long time ago, a wise man taught me a few simple truths about the world. If you put enough gold in a man’s hand, he will love it more than his own mother’s blood, and he will kill you for touching it. If you place the right woman before a man, he will commit acts of torture and murder to keep her by his side. Thus, he who places trust in the hearts of men is as much a fool as they are. For the heart is a soft and fragile thing, a token of blood and flesh. But the man who places trust in cold steel, such as this, he will outlive the foolish men and those that trust in them.”
“Are you well, Khale? You speak as though you were not.”
Khale paused, blinked, and the sickly hue cleared somewhat from his eyes. “Yes, I am well and I am here.”
“You truly live for this,” said Murtagh.
“It is who I am. I told you before, I could be nothing else.”
“You remember what we are to do this night?”
Khale scratched at his chin. “Cacea. Aye, we must find her.”
Murtagh sighed, relieved. “Indeed, now help me close the doors so no more creatures of the night find their way in.”
Khale shrugged, “It will do little good, Murtagh. They are here. Listen.”
They did, and heard the sounds of far-off screams.
*
Murtagh swore as his ageing muscles ached and burned from the effort of closing the doors and replacing the timbers that had been set across them. A fresh sheen of sweat glistened on Khale’s brow, and he drew in a few rough breaths.
He is human after all, thought Murtagh, or at least in part.
“Where to now?” Murtagh asked, turning to Khale.
The Wanderer did not answer. His eyes were fixed on something to Murtagh’s back. Murtagh turned and saw what was arresting the attention of his brute companion.
The guests of Barneth were arising from where they had fallen across and under the tables; yet more were descending stairs and stumbling out through archways. All were white with death, all came on black-eyed. Murtagh could hear the low hissing they made.
They spoke as one.
“Come ... Master-Puppet ... surrender your sword ... and your flesh ...”
“No,” Khale replied. “My blade’s thirst is not quite slaked. It needs to taste more blood before it will rest easy in its scabbard.”
The hissing became fiercer as the creatures closed in on them.
Murtagh held his sword ready. “You have magic, don’t you?”
Khale ran callused fingers over his brows, frowning. “Not at this moment.”
“Why not, man?”
He looked at Murtagh. “The wine, I’ll wager. Barneth knew. He laced it with something. I can feel the words, but they will not be spoken.”