The party found it as uncomfortable to take their eyes off them as to stare. Clauman was the first to snap out of the trance and urge the horses on.
They chose a course to the right and hurried around the outside edge of the plain. Nobody spoke as they rattled past, though their eyes turned constantly to the left.
From the shadows in the high windows, Aedan found it easy to imagine the much-rumoured darkness looking down at them. Amid all the speculation, the one thing unanimously agreed on was that those who attempted to explore Kultûhm never returned. It was clear that none in the party wanted to know why.
“Probably a hive for bandits,” Borr said. “Foolish to linger.”
That was about as many words as Aedan had heard from the man in a week. It was also complete nonsense – there would be no bandits in such a forgotten corner of the world. But nobody argued. Not even Harriet raised her opinions on “those empty stories”. Aedan looked back at the hollow eyes of statues and the dark slits in the turrets. There was something watchful about the emptiness of Kultûhm, and he was very happy to be travelling away from it.
They had covered about a mile when a high keening howl floated over the air and turned it to ice.
It was Harriet who shrieked the word that leapt into everyone’s minds. “Wolves!”
Both wagons stopped and all eyes scanned the hills.
“There!” said Clauman.
They looked in time to see the grey shapes surging down the distant slope, racing towards them. It was a big pack, very big. The fold of the land soon hid them, but everyone knew what was coming.
Aedan looked around. There were no trees nearby, no refuge, except …
“The fortress,” Clauman shouted. He turned the horses and lashed them to a gallop, causing the wagon to leap over the ground. The other wagon, drawn by the ponderous carthorse, fell behind.
“Take the reins Aedan,” his father shouted, handing them over and reaching back for a bow that he tried to string.
The fortress grew larger and they turned off the track and bounced over the plain. They headed for the stone road that cut a long, twisting way up a steep slope, edged on the left side by a sheer drop into a rocky chasm, and leading eventually to the giant gate.
“Don’t slow down,” Clauman yelled over the clattering wheels, as Aedan allowed the horses to ease the pace through the first corner.
“But the wagon might tip.”
“Don’t you question me!” Clauman found the whip and applied it to the animals.
Aedan braced himself for the next corner. The wheels skidded and kicked up a shower of chips from the cobbled surface. He felt the inside wheel lift slightly, and caught a glimpse of the drop beyond the outer wall. The next corner was worse.
Clauman looked behind him and spun round, his face pale. He lashed the horses furiously and did not hold himself back as they approached the last corner.
“We’re going too fast,” Aedan screamed, pulling on the reins. His father wrenched the reins away.
The corner was on them. The horses had veered off their line in the confusion and now made a jagged turn. The wagon lurched, its inside wheels lifted and struck the inner wall, thrusting the wagon over onto its side. It slid over the road with a grinding of stone and rending of beams until it crashed into the outer wall which collapsed and fell into the chasm. The three people had been thrown to the ground, but the horses were dragged after the wagon. It looked as if they would be pulled over the edge until the strain became too much and the leather snapped. The animals surged up from the ground, stamping and rearing, while the wagon, with all the family’s worldly belongings, hurtled downward to be smashed and lost among the rocks far below.
Aedan pushed himself off the ground. A heavy rattling drew his attention and he turned to see the other wagon taking the first corner at the bottom of the hill. More than a dozen wolves were closing in, coats rippling, ears flattened, long legs reaching for more ground with each stride.
“Run!” Clauman yelled, grabbing his wife’s elbow and heading for the gate. Aedan was half a stride behind.
It was perhaps fifty paces. Before he reached the gates, Aedan saw what looked like a drawbridge lowered to the ground. As he approached it, he understood its purpose. The final sixty feet of road was simply missing. With the drawbridge raised, there would be a barrier of air over two hundred feet deep. Aedan tried not to look to the side as he ran after his parents onto the bridge, their feet causing the ancient beams to shudder beneath them. They had to bend their course around two large holes where rotten timbers had fallen into the chasm.
The walls, imposing from a distance, were mountainous now – ancient buttresses that reared overhead and blotted out half the sky. A hideous turret-like figurehead stood over them, directly above the gate, leering down through hollows that Aedan half expected to disgorge burning oil.
They reached the end of the drawbridge and sprinted between the colossal wood-and-iron gates, at least three feet thick, into a long stone passage with an elevated ceiling. A gridwork of heavy iron bars loomed ahead. It was a portcullis that could have held back any army, but fortunately it was half-raised and probably rusted into position for good. They sprinted underneath the iron spikes and burst out into daylight. Aedan staggered to a halt, casting his eyes around him. Horror locked his feet in place.
It was not the height of the walls, or the weight of the iron and stone, or the vastness of the courtyard in which he now stood that froze him.
Kultûhm was not empty, not as Aedan had understood the word.
Skeletons were strewn everywhere. Some were the bones of animals, but many were not. The eye sockets of countless skulls fixed him with dark, haunting stares.
Beyond the acres of dead remains, the courtyard was enclosed by heavy walls of stone. Against them, standing as if on ceaseless guard, were lines of twenty-foot statues – soldiers with the heads of snarling tigers, bears, wolves and lions. Lips drawn, they glared at the intruders from green jewelled eyes set in black stone.
Clauman seemed less affected than his son by the deathly spectacle. He only hesitated for an instant before turning to the side and rushing them all into a guard room. Once within, he put his shoulder against the door of iron bars, and with feet skidding on the dusty floor, heaved it closed, drawing screams from the neglected hinges. He kicked the bolt until it broke free of its rust and scraped home.
As had become his habit, his hand went to the velvet pouch on his belt, but it was not there. He had left it with the baggage.
Aedan began to tremble as he saw his father staring into the courtyard, fists and jaw clenching. He knew those signs. He knew what was coming. The fragile closeness they had built over the past weeks, no more than twigs and thread, was about to be met with steel.
Clauman turned around, his whole body rigid.
Nessa was standing between them. “Please Clauman, don’t.” She may as well have spoken Orunean. There would be no more reasoning with him until the rage had been given its way.
He thrust her aside and strode at Aedan.
“That was everything, you wretched, disobedient fool of a boy!” he roared, his face twisted and contorted by the violent emotions, almost unrecognisable. “Everything we own!” He lunged forward and struck Aedan on the head, threw him to the floor and proceeded to kick him while shouting profanities, setting his fury loose to take its accustomed course.
When Clauman turned away, gripping Nessa by the arm to keep her from comforting her son, Aedan crept into the corner and scowled. Gradually the paralysing fear drained away and what took its place was a cold, whispery anger. He glared at his father’s back. His fists shook as he imagined driving forward, hitting, screaming and settling the debt.
Yet for all the flames of retaliation that grew inside him and swirled around until his vision was seared, this was his prison. He knew from hard experience that the anger would not liberate him. It would only torment him with images of snarling revenge that tasted so sweet and wou
ld later turn to a dead weight of depression and guilt. But he did not care, and gritted his teeth all the more until his head shook with the violence of his thoughts. These feelings were his secret, his to guard. It was his right to nurture them and to indulge the glowing hate, shivering before its cold fire, drawing it into his bones.
Clauman was staring out through the bars at something, or nothing. For some men it was drink that moved them to this kind of utter destructiveness. Clauman needed no such aid. When it flared, his anger carried him past all restraints of reason. It carried him to a place where the treasured bonds with his wife and son – even if they were treasured in secret – were forgotten, where all he could see was the inferno of his passion. And every time it was getting worse. Aedan knew his father’s eyes would be hooded with shame for many weeks, but it would be a bristling, angry shame, as though the fault lay with the one carrying the bruises.
The two horses galloped out from the passage into the courtyard and did not stop. One threaded its way between the heaps of bones until it found itself in a far corner. The other disappeared beneath a colossal arch at the far end of the courtyard, and the echoes of its hooves were lost within the unstirring city.
The second wagon boomed through the passage and clattered under the portcullis into the open, surrounded by the leaping, snarling pack of grey wolves. The big carthorse screamed and snorted, kicking and stamping as the wolves darted in and out. The goats were gone. Harriet was bleeding from a cut on her face and Borr from gashes on both arms. It looked as if they were about to be torn apart and devoured only a few yards from safety.
But then something strange happened. A few of the wolves raised their noses to the air and their tails dropped as they began to whine and glance around them. Unease spread quickly. The pack lost interest in their prey; their heads spun in all directions.
Borr took the opportunity to crack his whip on their backs. Several yelped and fled, opening a path to the guard room where Clauman stood and called.
Wolves began to shrink from the courtyard and slip out the gates. Borr said something to Harriet. They jumped from the wagon and ran to the door that was held open for them. Two wolves moved forward, more out of habit than intention, but they quickly turned away, looking around with wide eyes and twitching heads.
A sound like a heavy pouring of course sand grew and filled the courtyard. All looked in vain to find its source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, but there was no movement on the ground or on the walls. Aedan was on his feet now, tears brushed away, the experience pushed back into a festering vault. Something was happening.
He looked at the wolves and tried to determine where their ears pointed. Some were as bewildered as the people, but a few on the opposite end seemed to have agreed on a direction. He followed the angle of their heads. Not far from the wagon, there was a wide ramp that descended into the ground. A thick wooden trapdoor had once covered it, but this was now splintered and crumbled. It was completely dark beneath the fragments of wood, but Aedan was sure this was the source of the rough pouring sound.
He had heard of sand being used as a timer – shifting ballast for large traps. He also knew that Kultûhm had been home to the most advanced engineers of many ages. Tales of castle explorations rushed through his thoughts – arrows whistling out through cracks in the walls, floors collapsing over spear-filled pits, falling rocks, channelled floods … He had never thought he would actually face any of these. But what happened next was unlike any of the stories he had read.
The trapdoor snapped open and a sound rent the air, like the explosion of steam from a cauldron overturned on a bed of coals. Aedan covered his ears and fell to the ground as a cloud of black vapour burst over the wagon. From within the cloud something enormous moved. Everyone fell back from the door. There was a deep fleshy thud that Aedan felt in his chest and a violent clatter of wagon wheels.
Wolves yelped and cried, scattering in all directions, some even vanishing into the city. Those that remained in the courtyard shrank into corners with their tails tucked and every hair raised.
The sandy sound returned, just audible under the squealing and whining, but this time it died away quickly. The air cleared, revealing nothing but a wagon dripping with sooty slime, and a scattering of frightened wolves.
The carthorse was gone.
Tattered ends of the harness lay on the ground.
“Did anyone see what it was?” asked Clauman, his voice thin.
Nobody spoke. Nessa whimpered. They waited for a long time, but nothing else happened.
“We need to get out of here!” Harriet gasped.
“Yes,” said Clauman, “but if we run without the wagon we will not last. I’ll fetch my horses. Borr, try to make something of the broken harness. The rest of you, stay in here.”
The wolves paid scant attention as the men left their refuge, but Clauman and Borr each took a heavy bush knife from the wagon. Nessa continued to whimper as she saw her husband striding through the mounds of bones to the far corner where one of the horses turned and pranced about, held in place by its fear. It reared several times when Clauman tried to take its bridle, hooves whistling through the air at head height, but eventually the forester was able to snatch a broken rein and gain control.
It was an even slower process coaxing the animal back through the maze of skeletons towards the wagon. Clauman held it in place while Borr repeatedly fumbled the harness straps. At last, the knots were secure. They drove the wagon around to the entrance of the guard room, away from the trapdoor.
“One will not be enough,” Clauman said, looking at how the horse strained before the huge wagon. He left them again and weaved his way towards the distant arch – one of three entrances to the city – where the second horse had disappeared. A dark forest of towers and spires and hulking buildings rose up beyond the walls of the courtyard, daring, challenging. As Clauman walked on he grew smaller and smaller against the backdrop. It almost seemed that Kultûhm was swelling over him.
Aedan watched him walk away and tried to get a hold on his emotions. He wanted to lash out – his anger still lingered. But as he thought of his father meeting his end, something began to wail inside, growing louder with each breath.
“I’m going with,” he said, and slipped out the gate before anyone could stop him.
He was half way down the courtyard when the buttresses and towers rang with a horse’s scream, a wild scream of fear that was suddenly cut short. Three wolves dashed out through the archway ahead and bolted past, paying him no heed. Then Clauman emerged, running hard.
“Everyone in the wagon now!” he yelled.
Aedan’s face flushed with relief that his father lived. His father’s flushed with anger.
“I told you to stay inside!” he shouted. “Do you need another lesson?”
Aedan turned and ran.
He followed the women, climbing up on top of the luggage as the wagon began to move. Clauman took the reins. He gave the trapdoor a wide berth as the wheels turned and rolled out the courtyard, through the passage and over the drawbridge.
“String it,” Clauman said, picking up Borr’s very crooked bow and handing it to Aedan. It was not easily done – the ridges were poorly carved and the string was as weathered and dried as the lizard he once put in a box and forgot about. It would not suffer many shots. Once it was strung he handed it back. He hoped his father would tell him to put it to use, but instead he handed it to Borr who made it immediately clear, by the clumsy way he attempted to nock an arrow, that he had little skill with the weapon.
They moved down the stone road as fast as they dared – all knew what had happened to the other wagon – but when they reached the plain beneath, Clauman drove the horse to its limit which was little more than a fast trot. They passed the five goat carcasses that were leaping and jerking between tugging jaws as if still alive. Not until they had covered several miles did Clauman slow the pace.
Borr’s arrows never landed within ten yards of a wolf
– he would have done better to throw his tools – but the pack always withdrew after smelling the black coating that clung to the wagon. Though it looked and reeked like the slippery gunge from some untended drain, the foul substance seemed to be ensuring their safe passage. The wolves did not come near them. Aedan had no illusions about what would have happened otherwise. Those carcasses continued to jump around in his mind.
At the first rise, Clauman’s horse showed itself no match for the lost carthorse, so several heavy bags and crates had to be discarded. While they were unloading, Harriet asked in a shaky voice what Clauman had seen.
“Streets were very dark,” he said. “Saw no more than old bones, but I heard enough to know that my horse was gone. That is one place I will never set foot in again.”
Little more was said about their experience as the travellers put ground between themselves and the fortress. Nessa remained traumatised for several days and even Harriet lost her tongue for a while.
The adults stood guard every night, but there was little sleep to be found within the turmoil of their dreams. When Aedan offered to take a shift, his father refused without offering a reason. So Aedan took a shift every night in secret from his bed, coaxing his ears out into the night. Sometimes he fell asleep, but he quickly learned to keep himself uncomfortable with roots and branches. It only failed once and he awoke with a neck as gnarled as one of his roots. He found it best to double Harriet’s watch, and it was well that he did, for DinEilan was not yet finished with them.
It was the ninth day from Kultûhm. Harriet was going through her routine. She started by sighing and pacing, proceeded to sitting, then leaning, then leaning a little deeper, collapsing, and finally snoring.
Aedan got up and tossed a few branches into the dimming fire. He took the bow and a quiver of arrows, climbed onto the wagon, and wrapped himself in his blanket. He found a comfortable position, settling into a nook between bags of luggage. The gentle growling of the fire lulled him. His thoughts drifted, slowed, deepened.
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 14