by Tom Stacey
Loster looked down at his feet. He knew he should say something, say that he had seen the tall knights before, tell them what he had found in the Widowpeak, but he could not.
“Hold your tongue, little Loster,” said Barde.
“What do they want?” he asked instead. It was hot in the cabin and he could feel the sweat beading down his back.
“That is an even harder question to answer.”
Beccorban grunted. “What does anyone want? Land? Slaves?”
Droswain nodded. “That would make sense, especially since they captured Loster rather than killed him. However, I don’t think this is about slaves. Not in the sense we understand.”
“Speak plain, priest.”
“I do, I speak as plain as I can.” The small man winced as if in pain and then turned as the door opened behind him. Callistan stepped into the room and stood with his hands behind his back, leaning against the wooden bulkhead. The horseman caught Loster’s eye and gave him a wink. Loster tried to manage a smile in return but knew it would look more like a grimace. He could not help but feel uncomfortable around Callistan. The man was a predator.
Droswain spread his hands. “There are stories. Stories that speak of an ancient race. A race of blood drinkers.” He paused, as if he was waiting to be interrupted. When he was not, he quickly masked his surprise and went on. “They were servants of the Black God, practitioners of blood sacrifice. In his last work, Yulethon speaks of great altars called bloodforges dotted around Daegermund. These were the centres of their power. With these, somehow, they ruled absolutely.”
Loster felt a heavy thud deep in his belly. An image flitted into his mind of the great dished block of stone in the bowels of the Widowpeak. Is that what he and Barde had stumbled upon? A bloodforge?
“What did we start, little brother? Was it truly us who unleashed the Echoes?” Loster could hear laughter deep in his mind and it made his skull vibrate.
“What happened to them?” asked Beccorban.
Droswain shrugged. “They were overthrown. From what little I have read it seems that men — led by those we know as the ancient Dalvossi — found a leader and rebelled. They threw off their chains, seized the bloodforges, and drove their overlords from Daegermund. The rest is a mystery.”
“And you think the Echoes are this elder race?” said Beccorban.
“They could be.” Droswain sighed. “In truth, I have not had time or the resources to investigate fully, but the stories…the stories speak a truth that none here can deny.”
Beccorban, standing with his arms folded in the centre of the cabin, grunted. “One spoke to me,” said the hammerman, “back in the Dantus.”
“Truly?” The priest was surprised. “He spoke Verian?”
“At first, then something else, a tongue I couldn’t decipher. He told me that something terrible was coming, that we had been careless. He called them something like ‘those that have been forgotten.’”
“Echoes,” said Droswain softly. “It is all happening as I feared. They are afraid of you, Beccorban, and your spawn. They sent men to kill you. It fits the poem.”
“I have a hard time believing that a children’s rhyme is a prophecy, priest.”
“But you said yourself that the tall one… what do you call him?”
“Antler Helm.”
“Yes, Antler Helm. He pointed at you, Beccorban. He knows as well as I do that there is more truth to those words than any of us had ever imagined. It is the same with all the songs we sing to our children, in a manner of speaking. True, some serve no other purpose than to delight or teach, but others are warnings. We speak the words as our parents passed them down to us but we do not understand the meaning.”
Nobody spoke and there was a creak as the door opened again and Riella crept in. She walked across to stand by Beccorban, refusing to look up at any of them.
Loster cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you think you’ve read,” the youth looked up at Droswain, “but I am no hero. I can’t even wield a sword.”
“That’s it,” said that dark voice in his mind, “lead them away from the scent. They’re getting too close to us.”
Beccorban grunted. “That’s the easy part, lad.”
“Yes, you see? Beccorban will teach you. What greater teacher in the ways of war than the Helhammer himself?”
“But my vows…” Loster began.
“Your vows swear that you will protect the harmony of the land, Loster. I know, I too have spoken the words.” The priest suddenly approached him and squatted down so that he could stare him in the eye. Though they were crammed together in a small space, it seemed as if they were the only two in the room and Loster suddenly felt very unwell. “I know you think it is just a rhyme but believe me when I say that these words have power. They are hacked into a piece of stone older than the Empire and Veria itself and that means something. It has to, Loster, for without you we are lost. I don’t know everything about the Echoes but I know that they are stronger than us and are aided by dark, terrible powers. Some of us have even gone over to their side, it seems. I have been searching for a long time and I truly did not know what it was I was looking for but now I have it. I have found you Loster, and you have already saved everyone aboard this ship. All I ask is that you trust me.” He stood. “You too, Beccorban. I would ask your help.”
Beccorban gripped his own jaw in one huge hand and tugged it from side to side, as if working it back into place. He seemed to hesitate for too long, and Loster thought that he would say no, but then the big bearskin-clad warrior nodded once and it was settled.
“What about the slipskins?” said a low voice, and Callistan stepped forward into the light.
“What did you say?” said Droswain, suddenly serious.
“Slipskins, skin-changers.”
“You’ve seen them?” spluttered the priest.
“Yes. One of them tried to have me executed.”
Droswain blinked in surprise.
“I have also killed them,” he pointed at Loster. “The boy has killed one too.”
“Me?” Loster gasped.
“Our traitor was a skin-changer?” asked Droswain.
“Yes. The boy saved us from his betrayal. You heard the prisoners. It’s how they caught the Fallow Deer.”
“Just one slipskin? Oh, but we both know you’ve killed more than that, Los. You’ve brought death to an entire nation. What did you unleash? Maybe you are the Helhammer’s son.” Loster screwed his eyes shut, hoping none of them could see inside his head.
“Yulethon does not say anything about skin-changers,” Droswain began.
Callistan shook his head as though trying to clear water from his ears. “No, they are not the same. They’re not big like the…”
“Echoes,” Droswain prompted.
“…like the Echoes and they don’t wear armour. They’re not soldiers. They look like us, on the outside at least, but the inside…” he fell silent.
“Could things like that exist?” asked Riella.
Droswain pursed his lips. “There’s no official mention of them in any of the texts I have seen but there were always rumours, stories about a race who could change their appearance at whim. Too many differing accounts from unconnected sources: poems, children’s stories, oral histories. I fear it is entirely feasible that such creatures could exist.”
“Children’s stories,” breathed Loster. “Just like the prophecy.”
“And they’re working with the Echoes?” asked Riella.
Callistan shook his head again. “I don’t think so. I think they’re working for them.”
“If there are skin-changers abroad in Veria, then we have been truly outplayed,” said Droswain grimly.
Beccorban’s great black brows met in a downwards angle. “Some things are just stories. Let’s not get carried away, else we start wondering agape at everything we heard as children. Slipskins can’t be real. It’s ridiculous.”
Callistan wheeled on him.
“And pointy-eared demon knights are not? Why are you so eager to believe the priest, greybeard?”
“Because he is not drunk.”
Callistan paused and looked down at the bottle in his hand. He laughed once in a short bark and threw it to the ground. Loster flinched as it smashed into a thousand pieces of smoky glass that sparkled like gems in the dim light. “They are killing Imperial Councillors, did you know that? I watched them hang two old men, old but powerful, perhaps two men who could have spoken sense to the Empron. Temple is peopled by a mob but even they would not allow such casual murder. No, whoever is behind this has convinced the world that the men within reach of the Imperial throne are capable of treason and sorcery and they are doing it by stealing their faces. They are planting seeds of doubt so that we turn on each other, forcing us to look inward so that the big ones, the Echoes, their masters, can come in and sweep us all into the pot.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Riella, still refusing to look up.
“Because I was in Temple,” said Callistan sharply. “I got out before the noose tightened but they had already purged most of the council, and all in the absence of the Empron.” He fixed Beccorban with a hard stare. “This is more than a simple invasion. They must have been planning it for years, perhaps longer.” He turned his gaze on everyone in the room. When those green eyes rested, however briefly, on Loster, he felt as though he was being impaled by a boar spear. “Any here could be one of them, a spy or an assassin in our midst, and we wouldn’t know.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, horseman,” scoffed Beccorban.
“I’m not. I’m the only one who knows the truth of it, what they look like underneath. Any one of you could be a slipskin.”
Loster stood quickly. “That’s why you checked my teeth, back by the farmhouse.”
Callistan nodded. “They have a second set behind their false ones. Sharp, wicked things.”
“Well, I can assure you I am a man,” said Droswain and he bared his teeth like a dog, hooking a finger behind the upper row and tugging. “See, only my own.”
Someone shouted in the distance and the cry was taken up until even below decks they could clearly hear the toll of, “Land ahead!” Their conversation forgotten, they all ran up into the open air. Loster followed behind. Droswain was nattering excitedly, but the young acolyte could not make out the words past a constant buzzing in his ears. As he leaned on the gunwale, he could see the dark hump of the coast on the horizon. Standing off from the shore was a gathering of other ships. Some were small and tubby and wallowed in the wash of the sea, others were long and sleek like the Lussido and painted a dark crimson colour. One ship, however, was larger than all the rest. It was a vast, triple-decked leviathan constructed of pale, unpainted wood, and its masts were great columns fully as broad as ten men bunched together, with fields of white sail hanging from them, flapping lazily in the breeze. It was rounded at the back and pointed as sharp as a blade at the prow, where a great carved figure of a man leaning on a sword stood staring at their approach.
“It’s the imperial flagship,” said Beccorban at his shoulder. “I don’t think it has a name yet. Look,” he pointed. “It hasn’t even been painted.”
“They launched before it was complete,” said Droswain. “Bad luck.”
“Yes,” Beccorban nodded. “It must have been one of the first ships to escape Kressel.”
“Our mighty Empron,” sneered Callistan.
“Do you think he’s there?” asked Loster. For some reason he imagined that if they could find the Empron then everything would be alright. He knew it did not make any sense but it did not have to. It was a comfort.
Beccorban looked down at him and there was a flicker of something painful in his eyes. “I don’t know, but we are carrying the saviour of Veria,” he said with a wry grin. “I suppose we shall have to find out.”
XXVI
The land ahead of them was Dalvoss and Riella knew that the ancient nation was a hard, uncompromising place, a place of legend. The company said their goodbyes and clambered into the small wooden punts that had carried them to the Lussido days before. Callistan went with Crucio, on a raft guided by a team of sailors. It seemed like they had been at sea for months and now all that lay before them was the country that had once been the seat of the greatest empire on record, greater even than Illis’ Verian rule.
The Overmarches of Dalvoss had forced civilisation on the untamed landmass of Daegermund, reigning from the Headlands of Pleippo and Rindell, all the way down to the Edge Islands off the coast of Carpathin. But the last Overmarch had been entombed half a thousand years ago and now Dalvoss was a sparsely populated country of little distinction. The coast loomed before them. It was a land of remembered greatness, and all the bitterness that comes with that clutching emotion; a land of hills and slate, as grey and miserable as the memories of its faded glory. The few people that still lived here were likely not even true Dalvossi, instead merely the inheritors of a muted majesty that was imprisoned forever in the ruins of great castles and tumbledown cities that dotted the land. Maybe that’s what will become of Veria, thought Riella. She could not say it made her sad.
They were heading for a narrow beach of mottled pebbles that stuck out like a shelf from high cliffs of jet rock. The land hung over them in their small boat, so that Riella could almost imagine that it was reaching out to tip them into the iron sea. This was a jealous country and they were trespassing.
They landed with a rasping bump and Riella stepped out into the ankle-deep surf. She scanned the curved skyline of the cliff above her, half expecting to see tall watchers lining the edge. The beach stretched on for miles in either direction: dun browns and pale greys, broken here and there by the shiny black of protruding rock. Other boats were disembarking all along the coast. To the north she could just make out a camp, centred around a great tent of faded and stained crimson, from which flew a golden flag with a figure in black leaning on a sword, curling and warping in the wind. Illis’ flag. The Empron was here, then.
Callistan landed with Crucio nearby. Riella was still embarrassed — the horseman had barely spoken a word to her since their meeting in the hold. She wanted to say something to him, driven by a need she could not explain. She wandered over to where Callistan was brushing down the horse. “He’ll be glad to be back on dry land,” she said.
Callistan looked up at her and the surprise in his eyes quickly fell away. “Yes. He’s a bit wobbly at the moment but once I give him a run he’ll be fine.” Crucio snorted in agreement and Callistan patted his mighty flank, stirring dust from his coat. “We’ve a long way to go.”
Riella frowned. “You know where we’re going?”
“We? No, but I know where I am going.”
“You’re leaving us.” She had meant it as a question but it came out flat, as though the knowledge weighed down her tongue. “Where?”
Callistan ran a hand down Crucio’s foreleg and the beast dutifully raised the limb so that it could be brushed down. “Temple,” he spoke without turning around. “I have business there.”
Riella licked her lips. Her mouth had suddenly gone dry and she was not sure why. “But Temple is occupied. The Echoes will be there.”
“The Echoes will be everywhere soon and there has been no news from the Heartlands. The city may still stand.”
“What if you’re wrong?” she asked quietly.
Callistan shrugged, his hands fiddling with the straps of Crucio’s saddle. “It changes nothing.” His voice was low.
“Come, horseman, lady, it seems the Empron is our neighbour.” Riella had not heard Droswain approach but there he was, his hand on the shoulder of Loster. Behind them hovered Beccorban. The big man had raised the hood of his bearskin cloak and stood with his shoulders hunched. She held out her hand, but there was no sign of rain and the sky was still clear.
A martial shout sounded close by and a party of soldiers in painted crimson armour marched past. Riella supposed the thought
of a military presence should have made her feel confident but then she had seen the opposition. These boys were no match for them. As they passed, Beccorban turned his back on them. Of course — he had known Illis. He was still a hunted man.
When the soldiers were gone, Beccorban spoke up. “I do not think this is wise, priest.” He pulled the cap of his hood dow low so that it seemed as if only his beard was moving. “Illis is not a welcoming man.”
“I heard that he’s mad,” offered Mirril helpfully, looking up at Beccorban.
Droswain frowned. “Calm, Helhammer.” Beccorban flinched. “I will not speak your hidden name, though I wonder how long you can maintain that…disguise.” He smiled a sickly smile. “I can’t recall if it is against protocol to meet your Empron with a covered head.”
“Don’t be a fool, man,” growled Beccorban. “If you spout your tales of prophecy, he will kill you for a liar and the boy as your accomplice.”
“I am not lying.”
“It doesn’t matter. Illis does not share power. Not with anyone.”
“And you would know, of course,” mocked Droswain, then he seemed to remember himself. “We are here for a reason, greybeard.”
“Aye,” Callistan cut in, “because we were chased north of Farstar.”
“As is the will of the gods!” Droswain wheeled on the horseman. “Perhaps you would rather have us wander around until we’ve convinced enough stragglers to join our cause? No!” He spun away. “We need the imperial throne behind us or we are doomed. Illis is a pious man. Come, Loster.” The priest marched away, towards the distant crimson tent. Loster looked at Beccorban apologetically and then followed with Mirril in tow.
Beccorban spat in the dust. “This will end badly,” he said to no one in particular and went with them.
“Go, girl,” said Callistan. “I’ll be along shortly to say my goodbyes.”