by Tom Stacey
Blades can be cruel, he thought, but they are quick and a skilled killer can strike so fast that a man will be dead before his nerves fire and the pain flares.
“Is that why you use a hammer?” said a strained voice and Beccorban’s eyes snapped into focus.
He was half-walking, half being carried down a greasy slope of unkempt grass. It was dark but he was sure he could hear running water. The voice gasped in effort and Beccorban looked down and smacked his head into something hard.
“Ow! You great ox! Wake up for gods’ sake,” said Riella.
“Is that you, girl?” he said dumbly. It felt as though his tongue were a leaden slug and it was as difficult to lift as his feet.
“No, it’s the Imprissa Lelon, come from Temple to drag your sorry fat arse to safety. Of course it’s me! Now are you going to try and walk properly or will I have to drop you?” Her clothes were cold and damp, and they burned his bare skin.
Beccorban breathed in deeply and lifted himself off of Riella’s supporting shoulder. He felt like he was the giant, Melkin, lifting the Widowpeak to find the lost button he used for an eye. “I was talking out loud wasn’t I?”
Riella rubbed her shoulder and worked her arm back and forth to get the blood flowing. He was glad to see she wasn’t wearing the scarf. Even in darkness, sweaty and distressed, she was a great beauty. At least he thought she was. He hadn’t spent much time around women of late. “You collapsed and I came to get you.”
“Where is the boy?”
An expulsion of breath. “On the other side of the water. Now, we need to get you in the boat and over to them. We’re losing time. You’ve been rambling for the last ten minutes. I gave up trying to keep you quiet a long time ago.”
“No sign?” he asked, trying to sound confident.
She shook her head and dropped her voice to a whisper. “No sign.” She paused so that the only sound was the sighing water behind them and the warring noise of their breath, hers shallow and fast with the terror she held in check, his deep and slow as he fought to calm himself.
“Come and give me a hand,” snapped Riella, and Beccorban bent to the task of freeing the boat from the tangle of reeds that had caught it. He grimaced and swallowed hard as something sour tried to crawl up the back of his throat.
Beccorban was healing but he had not yet shaken off all of the effects of the poison. His stomach cramped whenever he tried to eat — not that there was much to eat — and, for the first two days, anything he took down was almost instantly forced back up in a hot rush of bitter brown bile. Now, as they sat in the small boat that they had found in the forest, Riella noted that his colour was returning to something approaching its usual healthy ruddiness. They had travelled far and fast upstream, Riella and Loster taking turns in rowing. Initially, Beccorban had tried to join in. Riella had protested but the big man insisted, heaving and sawing on the oars with a furious energy until he had turned grey and salt sweat poured from him in sheets to stain his tunic in dark patches. She had asked him to stop, then teased him, then begged him and pulled at his sleeve, but he had raged at her, and his face, often so pale of late, had gone a dark grey-red, like an after-image of the man he was before the poisoning, burnt into her retina. And then he had passed out. Riella had decided to let him rest. The boy was little use. His arms were weak and he could only pull the boat along at a lethargic pace for a short while before he huffed and puffed and had to stop.
They passed out of the forest and through the mountains and into the flat lands north of Kressel. The smoke from the city was still a smudge at their backs but Riella fuelled herself with the knowledge that every stroke took her a small distance farther away from the tall grey men. The land to either side grew boggy and dank and soon became the fens that guarded the thin neck of land between the last few hills of the Dantus Range and the cold Scoldsee. After a day of tedious labour, Riella pulled them into a shallow bay to spend the night.
When she woke it was morning and she had the feeling that they were moving. She sat up. Beccorban was there at the oars, pulling steadily. He had his back to her and she wanted to protest, but then the morning sun emerged from behind a cloud and lit his dark hair on fire, painting his skin with a healthy glow. The big warrior built up a distance-eating rhythm while the two younger ones slept and Riella marvelled at this man who was chasing the corruption from his body by some savage sense of will. He sweated heavily, as he had before, but this time there was no laboured breathing, no palsy of weakness. With every stroke he seemed to grow in strength rather than shrivelling and succumbing to the sickness as other men would.
“You’ll need to stitch that wound,” she said quietly, wondering if he’d noticed her.
Beccorban turned without speaking and lifted up his jerkin to show his crude threadwork. The wound had not gone deep, though it would leave an ugly scar. One more to add to his collection. “It was foolish of me to let my guard down like that,” he said sheepishly. “It won’t happen again.”
She frowned. “How could you have known that the bitch wanted to kill you?”
“There was a time when I would have seen it in her eyes. The Sons and Daughters of Iss are still abroad in Veria. It’s a pity she didn’t live to spread the word that she’d killed me.”
Riella dipped a hand into the cool water that sparkled in the morning light. “Will they try again?”
“They might,” he said. “They will. If one knows I’m alive then they all do.”
“What did you do?” she asked, wondering if he would tell her this time, but when she looked up he was elsewhere, his eyes lost in the far-away, and she decided that the answer did not matter anymore. Nor did anything from his past. He was a rock. Old-fashioned, maybe, unforgiving, callous, brutal, and if the stories were true, a man with a great capacity for cruelty, yet he was a constant and he was with her. She felt a warm feeling in the pit of her belly and wriggled around until it stopped.
“Can you smell that?” he said suddenly, and she jumped with shock, waking the others.
“No,” she said, sitting up. “Smell what?”
“Smoke,” he said grimly and looked behind him at where they were heading. Before them the river grew narrower until it was little more than a stream. It disappeared as it bent to the east, away from a low rise in the ground that was topped with gorse. In the middle distance was a larger, raised plateau crowned with what could have been an orchard. Riella suddenly felt very hungry. She pulled the scarf from her face but she saw the smoke before she smelt it: a wispy grey thread, curling into the air just above the bank.
Loster, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, gasped suddenly and stood, rocking the small boat and prompting a squeal from Mirril. “Beccorban, look!” He pointed to a spot no more than a few paces from the bank where a lone horse with a deep brown coat stood cropping a tuft of grass.
Beccorban cursed. “Get down, lad.”
Loster did as he was told but his movement meant that the horse noticed him this time and raised its head to stare. Its expression was oddly human, as though it had been caught doing something it shouldn’t have been. After a moment, it wandered out of sight behind a stand of bushes.
“It’s military,” said Beccorban in a tone that suggested he wasn’t talking to any of them. “Its tail has been docked and tied.”
“Does that mean there are soldiers nearby?” asked Loster.
“Hmmm. We’re not far from Blackwatch. It could be someone from the garrison.”
“So?” Riella did not like being left out of this conversation.
“So, I am no friend to the Greatseat. The Imbros’ are very loyal to Illis — always have been.”
“But they won’t know who you are. We need to go ashore and meet them.” The old warrior did not reply so she shouted, “Beccorban!”
“Keep your voice down!” he hissed. “We haven’t had luck with strangers so far.”
“Come on! We could tell them anything. You could be a fisherman, or, or a merchant fleeing nor
th, and I could be your daughter.”
“What about us?” asked Mirril.
“We can all be family,” Riella said.
Beccorban raised an eyebrow. “Do I look like a fisherman to you?”
“A merchant then.” He sighed and she scowled. “Look, we need to get to Temple and we need to tell someone what’s happening to Kressel and I’m pretty sure this,” she kicked the side of the boat, “won’t get us all the way.”
Beccorban breathed out slowly then looked over his shoulder at where the horse had been. “Let’s get out of this damned boat, at least. I feel like a fucking duck.”
XIX
The big one came first, then three smaller ones followed behind, up the slope from the little wooden boat, wary and watchful and never too far from the comforting bulk of their large companion. They can be as careful as they like, thought Callistan, I won’t be fooled again.
They had reached the ruin of the house now. It wasn’t a house any longer, just a pile of blackened stone and charred wood that jutted up into the sky like an open ribcage. One of the smaller ones pulled off its hood and Callistan blinked in surprise as the weak morning sunlight glinted off of a mass of dark golden hair that fluttered as the breeze teased stray strands into motion. The slipskin was masquerading as a girl. Why would they send a girl to catch him? Did they think he could be tricked so easily? Once maybe, but no longer.
He swept a lock of his own hair from his forehead. It too was dark gold but singed in places where the fire had made it curl and so matted with filth and sweat that it would be hard to tell its true colour. He suddenly had the disturbing image of a wigmaker with long, spidery fingers stitching tufts of hair into a skin-coloured headpiece. It made his scalp crawl with imaginary ants. Don’t be a fool, said an inner voice. If they stole their victims’ hair, how then would you still have yours? He reached up and pressed down on the crown of his head, as though holding a hat down in a high wind. His flesh was still his own, though another many miles away wore it just as well.
The distant figures made their way around the ashes of the house and it was clear from the language of their borrowed bodies that they were talking to each other. About what? Why had they stopped here?
He would not have noticed them at all were it not for the horse. Crucio had snorted and whickered, and though he was some distance away up in the overgrown orchard, Callistan had seen just enough movement at the fringes of his vision to react quickly, throwing himself to the ground near the flimsy wooden fence that protected the fallen fruit from cloven-hoofed pests. Now he waited in the long grass, peering between the pale stems at the intruders on his land. The land where his family had died.
The air in the orchard hung with the sickly, cloying stench of rotten fruit and it was attracting all manner of insects. One such buzzed by his face and he waved it away irritably. Summer was over and winter came fast in this part of the world — anything with wings should have fled south by now. Farilion’s face floated before his eyes and he tried to swat it away like another insect but it would not clear.
“Dont do it! I’ll be good! I don’t want to be like Mela, I don’t want to go to the orchard.” He felt tears threaten and brushed at them angrily.
He started with shock as he realised that the slipskins had disappeared from sight. He pushed himself up into a crouch and crawled slightly to one side so that he could get a better view. Where were they? He cursed softly. Maybe they weren’t slipskins at all but something worse. His false double had said there was something worse coming. Something infinitely more terrible.
A distant whinny of fear flew to him on the breeze and Crucio came out from behind the ruin of the house at a canter. The slipskins followed and Callistan blew his breath out between pursed lips. He felt in the grass for his falcata and hefted the reassuring weight. The horse was trotting towards the orchard, looking over his shoulder every now and again to make sure that the creatures in his wake were just far enough away.
Callistan grinned, ignoring the pain as the blisters on his face split. Good horse. Bring them to me, bring them here so I can split them open and see what they wear under their cloaks of flesh.
Then I will burn them.
“What do you think happened here?” Loster asked. “Do you think they’ve reached this far north?”
Beccorban grunted. “Hard to say. We didn’t see any in the Fens, but they could have landed further downriver.” He looked over his shoulder at him. “Doesn’t explain the horse though.”
The horse was leading them on a merry chase up to a bare orchard on a raised platform of land. There was no sign of the rider anywhere but Beccorban was wary and walked with one hand under his cloak, wrapped firmly around his famous hammer. For the moment, they were in the open. Anybody who got too close would have to expose themselves long before they could pose a threat. Soon, however, if the horse was to continue where it was headed, they would have to climb the slope and enter the clutching shade of the orchard. The orchard seemed to swell before Loster’s eyes, the thin trees bereft of their fruit looming towards him and promising dark secrets hiding in the blue-green gloom between them.
“Must we go up there? Into the trees?” he asked. Beccorban turned to look at him, and Loster hugged himself against a sudden blast of too-cool air. “I have a bad feeling.”
Beccorban looked after the retreating rump of the mahogany-coloured horse. “What about the horse?”
“We’ve done okay without it so far,” said Loster. “We can make it to Temple on foot.”
“No,” Riella cut past him, making sure to brush his shoulder. “Mirril can’t walk for much longer. We need it.”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing. We’ve taken the risk of landing here and I’ll be damned if we leave without getting something for it.”
Loster looked at Beccorban for help but the big man shrugged and carried on.
They marched on at a determined pace and seemed to close on the beast. Damn it, where was it going? Loster chewed on his lower lip and looked around, ready to see the rider running pell-mell at them, sword drawn. They crossed a small wooden bridge that would have forced them from the boat had they not already disembarked. Twice Beccorban broke into a run and twice the horse galloped away, only to reduce its pace again once it had opened the distance, turning its head to glare at them and flicking its cropped tail in irritation at the big man’s audacity. It felt all too much like they were being led and Loster wanted to shout out, to tug at Beccorban’s sleeve, but Riella strode alongside, watching with unfriendly eyes, and he knew well enough by now that she would not turn from this. Not for him.
The orchard was close now and Loster could not see where the horse would go. The hill came to meet them in a line parallel to the stream so that it formed a grassy bay. Unless the horse broke left soon, it would be trapped in between the hill and the stream which, though narrower than it had been in the south, was still too wide to cross easily. However, just when it looked like they had cornered the animal, it bunched its great muscles beneath it and bounded up the slope, pausing at the top to look down at them with equine disdain and then trotting off around the landward perimeter of the fence.
Beccorban sighed and began to work his way up the greasy incline. Riella followed on her hands and knees, helping Mirril scrabble up in front. Loster started to climb with them but faltered near the top and began to slide back down. He tried to ignore Riella’s mocking laughter as he brushed the mud from his knees and started again, slower this time.
“Come,” called Beccorban down the slope. “We might be able to trap the damned thing. I doubt he will be so sure of his way down from here.”
Loster nodded though he wasn’t sure Beccorban was speaking to him. As he reached the top of the hill, he took a moment to catch his breath. Between the rickety wooden fence that penned in the chaos of the orchard and the edge of the hill, there was a thin strip of flat ground. It was covered in springy, knee-high grass that had grown unchecked into t
hick, flat-bladed wands of faded green. Inside the fence, trees of several different kinds competed for the most space and sunlight. None held any fruit but the grass was littered with the dark husks and empty shells of apples and pears and plums. Most were rotten and fly-blown, covered in strange orange speckles. A few times Riella knelt to gather the more promising candidates but they were always soft inside or bored through with maggot-holes. At one point she found what appeared to be a healthy-looking apple but a tentative bite into the flesh left her with nothing more than a mealy mouthful of stale core. She spat it out and glared at Loster as though it was his fault then took Mirril’s hand and stalked after Beccorban.
It was quiet up here. Loster was left alone at the back of the group and soon his mind began to wander. He peered into the gloom of the orchard, wondering what foul things they had awoken deep in the green folds between trees atop the hill. The wind had dropped completely, as had had their pace, and after a while the horse came to a stop. Beccorban was walking very slowly, weighing out each step as if it were of the utmost importance, taking care to bend his knees slightly so that he might spring forward should he need to. Loster stopped alongside the others, watching him. Riella pulled her arms in against herself and fought a shiver, though there was no breeze.
Loster looked to his right and something entirely unnatural caught his eye. It was a pile of stones, arranged neatly on the ground and topped by a beam of wood that had been driven into the ground and scrawled upon in a crude hand. Yet that was not all. A child’s doll sat propped up against the beam where it met the earth but it did not look like it had endured last night’s weather. Somebody had put it there recently.