The Bloodstained God (Book 2)

by Tim Stead

  The evenings were social. It was required of the lords and senior officers that they gather in Hestia’s tent at sunset and join her in an evening meal. It was a Telan custom, he was told, but it was not so different from the Avilian way, except that as a commander he would have not insisted on his officers’ presence every night. They had better things to do.

  He arrived in good time and stood about making light conversation with some of the younger Telans. Emmar sought out his company as usual, and Skal reflected that it was odd behaviour for a man who had wanted to kill him a few weeks ago. He wasn’t paying attention to Emmar, though. He was watching Hestia and Passerina talking. It was an animated exchange, though both women kept their voices low so that others could not hear. It was clear from Hestia’s gestures that the queen was a little agitated. He could not guess their topic, but he hoped it was not himself.

  It was because he was watching that he saw a sudden change in the sparrow. She was normally graceful, fluid in her movements. It was one of the things Skal had noted about her. She would have made a fine fencer. As he watcher her, he saw the grace suddenly vanish. She stiffened as though suddenly in pain, the glass of wine in her hand tipped and spilt over her fingers. He started forwards involuntarily, but in a moment she had recovered her poise, but her face, normally pale, was white as chalk.

  She turned away from Hestia, who was in mid sentence as far as Skal could tell, and walked out of the tent.

  Skal followed.

  Once out of the tent she ran, and she ran faster than Skal could follow, but she was going in the direction of her own tent, and Skal headed that way, running as quickly as he could. When he arrived she was stepping out again, bow over her shoulder, sword strapped to her side. She wore a breastplate and carried a shield.

  “Deus?”

  She looked at him, and he knew at once that he was in her way. He was between her and something that she was bound to do.

  “No time, Lord Skal,” she said, fastening a last buckle.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help…”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. They have attacked Wolfguard.”

  And she was gone, exploding into a mass of feathered wings, sparrows that flew out and up into the trees. Skal stood alone before her tent, shocked, caught in a still moment of alarm and running feet as others came, too late.

  62. Wolfguard

  Narak was in lamplight. He was in the inner part of Wolfguard, within the moat. More exactly he was in what had once been a throne room, and now seemed to have been transformed in his absence into a day room with tables and chairs scattered around. There were people here, too. They were huddled, afraid. He smelt blood in the air and saw that a few of them bore wounds.

  “Deus, you have come.”

  The speaker was a young woman. He recognised her as one of the kitchen staff. Others were standing and coming towards him. He saw hope and fear in their eyes, and relief that he was there.

  “Minette, Where are they?” he asked.

  She knew at once who he meant. There were fifteen people in the room, but there was no sign of Caster, or of Jidian and Sithmaree.

  “They are fighting,” Minette said. “They held the Seth Yarra back and allowed us to escape, to flood the moat. Deus, the steward is dead. He and nine others.”

  Poor. Poor was dead and the moat was flooded and his friends were on the other side.

  “You flooded the moat?”

  “Jidian told us that we must. He said they could not hold so many for ever, Deus.” She was apologetic, afraid of what he might say. She knew that he was close to Caster and Jidian.

  Narak nodded. That sounded like Jidian, noble to the last, and stupid with it. The point of Wolfguard was to protect Narak, and whoever it principally housed, and today that was Jidian and Sithmaree. They were on the wrong side of the moat.

  “You did no wrong,” he reassured her. “Do you know where they are?”

  “The passage from the night gate,” Minette said.

  He knew it well enough, and he knew where they would be. It was a long, straight passage, but at the end it bent into one of the corridors that circled down into Wolfguard, and at that bend they could stand and be protected to some degree from arrows. It was a fair position to take, and he had no doubt that Seth Yarra would be paying a heavy price.

  “How long have they been there?”

  “No more than ten minutes, Deus.”

  He left the room and walked to the moat. It was a clever thing of his own making, Wolfguard’s moat, set deep beneath the ground. It was a corridor that circled the central, deepest parts of Narak’s home and could be flooded by releasing water from cisterns higher up, filling the corridor to the roof. On the inside there were three access points, three stairs that came up from the moat into the inner sanctum, and each of these could be defended further by lowering a stone slab over the top of the stair.

  The slab here was lowered.

  Narak seized the rope, braced his foot against the wall and pulled, raising a slab that seven normal men could not lift. He looked at the dark water it revealed.

  “You will go through?” Minette asked. She had trailed after him from the other room, and he saw that others had also come after her.

  “I will,” he said. He shrugged. “I must.” He had no idea what he might find on the other side, but he could not leave them alone, and even if they were dead, all three of them, he had to go. There was a remedy for his ignorance, though. He closed his eyes and reached out, finding Jidian almost at once, and Sithmaree a moment later. He sent them both the briefest of messages.

  I come.

  He took a deep breath and plunged into the water. It was cold. Another advantage of being a god was that he could hold his breath for a very long time. He had not tested it, but he knew he could go minutes without discomfort. His eyes, too, picked detail from the least amount of light now that he had dropped the veil, and was fully in his aspect as a god. He saw things that would have been dark and hidden to normal men. He swam through the shadow, seeing the stonework, crossing the corridor to where light showed him the opposite exit, the one that led to the night gate.

  He erupted from the water with his swords ready, but there was nobody in sight. Lamps burned undisturbed in their alcoves. The sounds of fighting came to him faintly from around the corner. He shook himself like a wolf, water streaming from him, and ran that way.

  Beyond the corner he almost tripped over the bodies. There had been fighting here, and it had been fierce. There were dozens of corpses scattered across the width of the passage, and it was clear that Jidian and Caster had pushed the Seth Yarra back around the next corner. The sound of fighting was closer now. He stepped forwards again.

  “Deus.”

  Narak stopped. The voice had come from the side of the passage, among the bodies. It was weak, but he recognised it.

  “Caster?”

  “About time,” Caster said. Narak knelt beside him. The swordmaster lay on his back, propped against one wall. There were three arrows protruding from his chest and side. Narak could see at once that the wounds were mortal.

  “They thought I was you,” Caster said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You should have seen them,” Caster said. He smiled, though he was clearly in pain. “You should have seen me: the defender of Wolfguard. I must have killed fifty of them.”

  “You’re not wearing armour,” Narak said.

  “No time.” He coughed. “It was so quick. I was asleep.”

  “I’m sorry.” Narak could think of nothing else to say. His best friend, the one man in the world that he could call a friend was dying in front of him.

  “Why? Don’t be. I’ve lived a long life.” He put a hand on Narak’s arm. “A good life. This was something I had to do. You know that song.”

  “I’ll stay with you…”

  “No. Go. They need you more. I’ll still be here when you come back.”

  “Caster…”
/>   “Haven’t we said everything a hundred times? Go. Kill Seth Yarra for me.”

  Narak put his hand on Caster’s shoulder and squeezed. He could feel tears in his eyes, and he didn’t want that. He would turn them into rage. That was his particular magic, transmuting grief into rage. He stood.

  “I’ll come back,” he said. He turned and trotted up the corridor towards the fight, turned a corner, and he was in the midst of it.

  It looked like a scene from a nightmare. Jidian and Sithmaree had their backs to him, and they faced a hoard or Seth Yarra, pressed into a mass of frightened, desperate men, stumbling over the bodies of their fallen comrades that clogged the passage side to side, pushed forwards by the mass of eager, terrified men behind them, all lit by the flickering yellow light of a few lamps. What he saw was what he had seen at Afael, what still haunted his dreams. These men threw themselves into death with a sort of obscene eagerness that he had never seen in the Kingdoms.

  His arrival changed things. Not that Jidian and Sithmaree were not holding their own. The eagle was fighting with sword and round shield, the latter already bristling with broken arrows, cutting down men with every stroke of his heavy blade, battering them with his shield and stabbing them with the broken stubs of arrows that protruded from it. He had never seen Sithmaree fight before, and she was a revelation. She fought with a whip. It was ten feet long, and the tip appeared to be jointed steel, for though it was quite reddened with Seth Yarra blood it cut through flesh and bone as effectively as any blade, and reached a good three yards into the enemy ranks to do its work. She bore a shield as well, long and narrow, just as decorated with arrows as Jidian’s, and they were both wounded many times in small ways, though neither seemed to favour any of their injuries.

  When Narak stepped up beside Jidian he saw the Seth Yarra pull back in fear, just for a moment. They had thought that he was dead, perhaps, when Caster had fallen, and now saw him again, clad in red plate armour, risen from the grave.

  “Rest yourselves a moment,” he said. “I will do this work for a while.”

  He jumped ahead of them, blades flashing and biting. Men fell. He heard bowstrings, and raised his arm to protect his head. The arrows failed the test of his armour, shattering or glancing away. He fought on, drawing on his grief, thinking of Caster. This killing was a gift for his old friend, an honouring of their thousand years of companionship. He stabbed, cut, kicked and bludgeoned them aside, but he did not advance. The position was good. The corner ahead protected them from archers for the most part, and those that came around it risked stumbling within the reach of Sithmaree’s whip. She had not taken his suggestion that she should rest, and continued to pick men off with unerring accuracy.

  The flow of blood seemed interminable, but Narak worked tirelessly, killing Seth Yarra as fast as they could come within reach. He had never been more deadly. His swords sang and his enemies danced unwillingly to their tune. As he fought he thought how senseless it was. These men were dying for a god who probably did not exist, and if he ever had, was most likely a man like Pelion, his teachings twisted into shapes he would no longer have recognised . They were fighting because someone had tricked them into doing so. They had no real cause to hate him at all, yet here they were.

  He cut, stabbed and cut again and three more men died. Sithmaree’s whip cracked from behind his shoulder and another man died. Pointless.

  Yet Narak himself considered that he fought for the three oldest reasons, the only three reasons that anyone should fight. He fought to defend himself and his friends. He fought to protect the places he loved, and he fought because he had been attacked. There was a little matter of revenge as well, but that was not a noble cause. Yet it was the furnace of revenge that leant strength to his arm.

  It went on and on. He had no idea how many men Seth Yarra had sent to Wolfguard, and no time to ask those that might know. So he fought as though their numbers were infinite, and gradually his mind slipped into a dull, unthinking state. He no longer saw men before him, but unruly wheat trying to avoid the scythe. He cut them down remorselessly.

  Almost without warning it ended. He was standing almost waist deep in men he had killed, and it seemed to him that Seth Yarra had dragged his victims away to take their turn at the blades because the corridor was lined with dead. He stepped forwards and peered around the corner, looking up towards the night gate, and it was the same there. Hundreds if not thousands of dead men filled the passageway.

  He glanced back at Jidian and Sithmaree.

  “There were more of them than this,” Jidian said.

  “Are they hiding?” Narak asked. “There is nobody in the passage.”

  “I will go and see,” the eagle said, and strode off up towards the night gate.

  “Have a care,” Narak called after him. “You wear no armour.” It would be like the big man to forget. Narak did not mind that Jidian went, though he was the better dressed for the task. He wanted to get back to Caster.

  Sithmaree was still standing there, her whip hanging loosely from her fingers. She looked tired, though Narak knew it could not be so.

  “Is it always like this?” she asked.

  “It is always different,” Narak replied, “but in some ways it is always the same. You did well.”

  She nodded, seeming surprised at the compliment. It struck Narak as extraordinary that Sithmaree had never fought in a battle before. She had opted out of the Great War, and had never been a friend of Wolfguard until now. He had never heard tales of her fighting, and certainly not of that deadly whip.

  “Your reputation with the blades is well deserved,” she said.

  “I practice a lot,” he said, and walked past her, around the next bend in the passage and knelt again beside Caster. The swordmaster was still alive, but he had faded, and lay unconscious among his fallen foes, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Narak eased him out from the wall and tried to make him more comfortable, piling borrowed clothing beneath his back and head so that he rested at an angle and yet his body was not bent. It was all that he could do.

  “I’ll miss you, old friend,” he said. He wondered where Poor lay: somewhere among these perhaps, or further back where he had emerged from the moat. He had not looked for the steward, believing reports of his death. He would have known if Poor was still alive.

  They were all gone, then, all his old friends: Perlaine and Narala, Caster and Poor, Remard and Beloff. All that was left of those old times, the good times in Wolfguard when it had been a happy, busy place, were Pascha and he.

  Caster would be thirsty. He had lost a lot of blood, but through there was water to hand he could think of no way of slaking his friend’s thirst. He tore a piece of cloth from one of the dead men and went to the moat, soaked it briefly and brought it back. He used it to dampen Caster’s lips and allowed a few drops to trickle into his mouth. It was all that he could do, and it was not enough.

  “You do love them, don’t you?” It was Sithmaree. She had followed him around the corner and was watching.

  “Caster has been with me a thousand years,” he said. “He is a good man.”

  Sithmaree said nothing, but still watched.

  “Narak! Narak!”

  It was Jidian bellowing down the corridor from the night gate. Thinking it meant Seth Yarra advanced again he seized his blades and ran once more round the corner. Instead of the enemy he saw Jidian striding alone down the passageway with someone in his arms. The red hair and slight frame told him at once that it was Pascha. He sheathed his swords and ran forwards.

  “Is she alive?” he asked, hardly wanting to hear the answer.

  “Yes, but there is something amiss. She can hardly walk.” Jidian laid her down carefully on the ground, and Narak saw that she was awake, though barely aware of where she was. He examined her quickly but could find no wounds, nor any sign of blood other than what had transferred to her from Jidian.

  “Pascha?” He leaned over her and tried to catch her gaze. She seemed deliriou
s, and he took hold of her chin and turned her face towards his.

  “Narak? You are here,” she said.

  “What happened?” he asked. “How are you wounded?” But her attention had wandered again. She was in pain, he could see that clearly enough, and she seemed confused. He looked up at Jidian. “Seth Yarra?”

  “They are all dead, Narak,” the eagle said, and there was a worried look on his face. “All dead.”

  “All?”

  “Five hundred. More than that. All dead and no blood to be seen. It is as though they were struck down by lightning, only they are not burned.”

  Narak turned back to Pascha. “What happened?” he asked her, turning her head again to face his. “Pascha, what happened?”