The Crow

by Alison Croggon

  Hem almost turned and ran: but before he could move even a step, the other snouts attacked the giant, who was swinging his club with lethal effect. The snouts flung themselves at him, snarling, biting, kicking, and hacking, and the giant was dragged down by their weight, sinking to the ground. Once he was down, the snouts made short work of him.

  Hem suddenly found that he was slashing wildly at the body with the rest of the snouts. Shocked, he stepped back, wiping away the blood that had spattered his face, spitting the taste of it from his mouth. He suddenly felt deeply soiled. For a moment, in the heat of battle, he had lost control: he had become one of them. Even in the Glandugir Hills, in the nastiest battles, he had fought only to survive, and had quietly stepped away from any extra savagery. How long before he was boast­ing about his collection of severed ears, like Reaver? The thought made him go cold with disgust.

  He would have to escape the snouts soon, or he would end up as braintwisted as they were.

  The snouts were released from sorcery and milled about in excitement, boasting about their hits and how many they had killed. Hem listened with more than his usual contempt. A score or so of snouts had been killed, and another score injured, including Reaver, who had caught the edge of a blow on his arm. It had ripped the muscle, but Hem saw that the wound was not disabling; after it had been pressed shut by a Hull, Reaver went around the snouts, showing his wound to anyone who would look. To hear him talk, thought Hem, you would think he had killed the giant on his own.

  All the same, whatever he felt about it, Hem was glad the snouts had won; if they had lost, he would be dead. As a fight­ing force the snouts were fearsome. He thought he understood why the Nameless One was so interested in them.

  The survivors were ordered to gather the corpses off the road and cast them into a ditch. Hem saw a pile of dry bones that he knew must have been a Hull, and he counted fifty of the giant men. There had been none like them at Turbansk – at least, not where he could see them.

  He was helping three others drag one of the giants to a pit when he saw the Spider not far away, talking intently to another Hull. He decided that an attempt at eavesdropping was worth the risk, as there was a lot of noise and confusion to cover him, and cautiously he opened his listening.

  To his amazement the Hulls used the Speech, but it was altered in ways he did not understand. Hem did not realize until that moment how deeply the Speech was part of him; to hear it in a Hull's mouth was monstrous, as if his own inner soul was somehow Hullish. He repressed a strong desire to retch.

  "...can't be true," the Spider was saying.

  "Imank is here, I tell you," said the other. "Jagfra tells me that his presence hovers over Dagra. And these are part of his Iguk bloodguard: they are unmistakable. You know that."

  The Spider paused, as if it were thinking.

  "Why set them here?" it said at last. "Why challenge us?"

  "Imank does not wish the Master to have anymore strength in his hand at present," said the other Hull. "Sixteen ranks of curs is not a small consideration; you saw how they defeated the Iguk. I think not all is well in Dagra."

  Hem could feel the Spider's doubt. "We should have heard, if the Master were truly threatened," it said at last. "Surely Imank is not strong enough to return without being summoned?"

  "Of course he was summoned," hissed the other Hull impa­tiently. "The Master seeks to rein him in. And Imank seizes his chance. The time is now."

  The Spider suddenly looked up suspiciously, sniffing, and Hem at once stopped listening and turned his face away.

  The conversation he had overheard had only whetted his curiosity. Now he thought he understood the sense of threat that filled the air as they neared Dagra: the Nameless One had called Imank, the Black Captain, back to his side, and if the Hull was right, Imank planned to overthrow him.

  The snouts were marching straight into the eye of the storm.

  That night, he spoke to Ire. The crow had some observations of his own.

  They fight everywhere, he said. I fly here and I fly there, and all I see is people fighting. Dogmen and others. Many like those you fought today. Others too: I have been listening to the Hull-talk. I think that the Light has a hand in this, as much as the other Dark Master.

  Do you? Hem couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. Ire had changed much in his recent time on his own; he wouldn't have thought like this a few weeks ago.

  Yes, yes. There are other things moving, but it is all very messy. I cannot tell what might happen. We should be well out of here.

  Hem said nothing.

  All these fights make it easier for us, I think. They will not be look­ing out for a missing boy; you will slip through the cracks. But it is getting worse. It is like the quake, you can feel that something is going to happen.

  Hem knew that Ire was right, and his heart sank. But I haven't found Zelika, he said.

  If you can't find her tomorrow, said Ire, you will have to leave her behind.

  The next day Hem volunteered for any task going. Some snouts were sent up and down the lines all day, carrying notes from one Hull captain to another, and so were not corralled in their particular blocks. To his chagrin, Hem was considered too stu­pid to trust with messages. Slasher's simpleness had been a useful cover, but now he cursed his luck. But there were other, dirtier jobs that captains were happy to give him, which allowed him at least a little freedom of movement.

  He had decided to risk feeling for Zelika as they marched; this way he might be able to identify at least which block she marched with. It was very difficult: he had to make a very strong shield, and Hulls walked close by, especially watchful now. And every day he was more tired. Doggedly and patiently he made as strong a shield as he was able, and after recovering from the fatigue this induced in him, began to feel delicately about him.

  At first there was nothing: no trace at all of the Zelika-glow he had felt twice before. Could she have been killed in the past few days? But he had checked every corpse he could, to make sure it wasn't Zelika. With a clutch of panic, he ran over in his mind the pitiful bodies he had seen. Some had been so badly hurt it was very difficult to tell who they had been. Always some detail – a hand, the shape of a foot – had reassured him it wasn't his friend. Perhaps he had missed something: he hadn't been able to keep track of every death.

  He tried again, and this time, with a wash of relief, caught a tiny flicker he recognized. It was, he thought with a stab of excitement, very close: much closer than he had sensed before. He peered cautiously through the identical heads that bobbed in front of him.

  That morning there had been some confusion as they began their march, and the Sjug'hakar Im snouts weren't marching in their usual order. The Blood Block was behind the Tusks, snouts who scarred their forearms with a crude cross. The Tusks usu­ally marched six blocks behind, and were one of the blocks that Hem had thought might contain Zelika. In front of the Tusks was the Knife Block, a group he had crossed off his list. Farther ahead were the snouts who had joined them on the road.

  Hem contained his agitation, fearful of betraying himself. Then he tried again. This time he was able to focus his searching a little better, and the trace was stronger. He had finally found her. Zelika was one of the Tusks. He narrowed his searching still more, trying to locate exactly where she was, feeling among the other snouts. At last, with triumph, he managed it. She was three rows ahead, four from the left. So close.

  Hem was trembling by now, and exhausted. He relaxed his magery, and looked dazedly about him, conscious of his surroundings for the first time in what seemed like hours. The hairs bristled on his neck: they were at last approaching the walls of Dagra.

  They had stopped climbing and now marched along a broad road flagged with red stone that drove straight through a vast, rocky plateau. Hardly anything grew there but a few stunted trees and bushes, and the entire plateau was studded with encampments of soldiers. To his left was a wide lake of black water, fed by a sluggish river, and black reeds
rattled in the cold winter winds.

  The city walls loomed high in the dull sunlight, built of the hard, red stone of the mountains. Hem studied them uneasily as they drew closer: he could see only one gate, and that was well guarded. The walls themselves were impassable, dropping thirty spans sheer to the plains below. Even at this distance he could feel their power: the entire barrier was also a vigilance, each stone of it sensate and aware. As they drew closer, Hem saw Dagra clearly for the first time. He stared, his heart plum­meting to his feet, and his courage shriveled.

  The city was shrouded in fumes and ragged mists that twisted idly in the icy winds, obscuring its battlements. The vapors briefly tore open to reveal a snaggled roofline or a tower as sharp as a gimlet, before hiding them again in veils that distorted perception so they seemed even more ghastly – impossible pinnacles or bridges arcing over abysses of shadow. The stench of sorcery was thick and bitter, drying out Hem's mouth so that he could barely swallow.

  He longed to turn away, to crawl into a hole and hide from the monstrous awareness that stood before him, but he couldn't tear his eyes from it. It drew his gaze as a snake did its prey, and he was helpless to resist. For the first time Hem fully realized the folly of his hopes: such might as he saw before him would suffer no defeat. The city saw everything, and knew everything, and brooked no rebellion. Not even a mouse could escape its thrall.

  As he stared, the vapors swirled and revealed the spike of the Iron Tower thrusting arrogantly above the battlements of the citadel. He quailed at the sight of it, of this stronghold within a stronghold: it seemed to him like a cruel, massive blade whose very existence wounded the sky. The tower's lower levels were buttressed with massively ridged shoulders of iron that bled long trails of rust, and its innumerable wards and keeps and parapets and towers drew up above them, one inside the other, black rows of fanged rock.

  Unwillingly, drawn by a fascinated loathing, Hem's gaze traveled up its jagged heights to the tower's bitter pinnacle, where a long white blade pierced the clouds. A stray sunbeam caught the steel and it flashed, stabbing Hem's eyes with a malignant brilliance. He blinked, breaking the bewitchment, and almost fell over. He was so stupefied he scarcely noticed the kick and curse his stumble earned him from the snout marching next to him.

  Numbly he marched with the snouts toward the vast iron gate. As they reached it, it drew up with a dreadful groaning of metal, slowly opening like a huge maw. Some of the snouts began to cheer, but their voices fell raggedly on the heavy air and were quickly swallowed in silence. Hem shut his eyes as he passed under the keystone, feeling its shadow crush him like a blow. He was so dizzy he could barely see. With a dull, massive clang, the gate fell shut behind him.

  XXIII

  THE IRON TOWER

  Hem stumbled along, trying to keep up with the snouts, his legs shaking. He looked dumbly from side to side, all thought of action quenched in horror. They marched along a broad avenue of somber grandeur. It was one of the major thoroughfares that radiated from the Iron Tower, and down its center and along each side ran rows of unadorned columns of polished stone or metal, so high their tops were lost in the noxious mists that choked the air of the citadel. The buildings on either side were tall and windowless, sheer faces of polished rock that stared blindly over them, with doors of bronze or copper or brass.

  Before long they turned aside into much smaller and meaner streets, from which ran narrow, dark, evil-smelling alleyways and lanes. A metallic clamor rose to meet them and soon was so loud that Hem covered his ears, half-deafened. They were in the Street of the Weaponsmiths. Sulphurous blasts of fire seared his face as they passed huge forges, where hundreds of hammers clanged on hundreds of anvils, and huge bellows worked by teams of half-naked men blew the furnaces white­hot, sending spirals of sparks whirling up into the cavernous darkness. Tiny figures, shining with sweat in the heat, beat and tempered to bitter edges the weapons for the Dark's rapacious armories. Hem saw swords and shortswords, spears, halberds, pikes, and javelins, maces and warhammers and axes, hauberks and cuirasses, helms and greaves and vambraces, armors of chain mail and scale and plate, stacked in their hundreds against the walls.

  This was the heart of the Nameless One's war machine. His slaves toiled in the mines far to the south, digging out bright ore from its secret places, and dragging it on heavy wagons to the metalsmiths of Dagra. Hem was momentarily staggered by the scale of the industry. He thought of the weapon forges he had seen in Turbansk: they too had been places of flame and iron, a labor bent on creating instruments of death. They had not filled him with horror. Why not? he thought now, staring appalled through the doors of Dagra's forges. Why not?

  They left the foundries behind and wound through other districts: streets filled with leather makers and weavers and cobblers, bakeries and potteries, wagoneries and wheelwright shops, knife grinders and laundries, stables that housed oxen and horses and the metal-armored irzuk. For the Nameless One required all these things as well, and their preparation kept busy his thousands of slaves.

  These streets were crowded with soldiers of all kinds, and men and women in rich clothes, flanked by slaves or carried in sedans, for whom everyone else had to stand aside. Hem also passed hawkers crying their wares and people haggling, hod carriers and soilmen, drunkards spilling out of mean, foul­smelling hostelries, barefoot slaves scurrying on errands, and ragged beggars. Many of these bore the marks of terrible injuries, and Hem guessed they had once been soldiers.

  After an hour, Hem was totally lost: Dagra was as bewilder­ing as Turbansk. But here no one stopped to gossip, no one fingered bright silks or lingered by the jasmine stalls of the flower sellers, or gathered to clap the antics of jugglers and street minstrels. He suddenly saw what Turbansk might become, now that Imank had taken it, and was swept by a terrible sadness.

  The Hulls hurried the snouts along, keeping them under the leash of sorcery so they would not be scattered in the chaotic streets. Hem noticed that most people got quickly out of the way when they saw the snouts. He struggled to keep up; each step was a torment. The foul air was hard to breathe, and the sky was throbbing with strange currents and lights, as if a storm were about to burst over their heads. At last they reached a grim barracks, story upon story of windowless stone, where they were to be housed.

  They were each given some hard biscuit and dried meat, and directed into low, dark dormitories lit by smoking oil lamps, the floors covered with filthy straw, on which were placed rows of bug-ridden pallets where they were to sleep. The snouts were released from the Hulls' control. Shaking their heads, too tired even to make their usual boasts and jokes or to inspect their new quarters, they sank down on their beds and stretched out their aching legs, grateful at last to stop and to have a place to lie down that was softer than the bare ground.

  Hem sat for a long time with his head bowed, sunk in hope­lessness. The other snouts ignored him, as they usually did. When he had recovered from the worst of his exhaustion, he pleasurelessly chewed the dried strips of meat, shoving the morralin-laced biscuit under his pallet.

  Whatever the risk of escaping, he could not remain in Dagra. To stay here was certain death: in this place, it could only be a matter of time before he was exposed as a spy. He would rather die trying to escape than die a snout. The thought stiffened his resolve, and he began to run over his grim prospects, forcing aside his nausea.

  Somehow, tonight, he had to find Zelika and escape Dagra. It was impossible. How could he identify which snout was Zelika, overpower her, and force her to come with him, without any of the other snouts or Hulls noticing what he was doing? And then, most impossible of all, how could he conceal both of them, and escape unseen over the impregnable city walls? He had not known a vigilance could be so powerful; he doubted that he could make a shield that would be strong enough to hide himself, let alone Zelika, from its awareness.

  And where was Ire? Miserably, Hem thought that his friend could not have followed him here. The wards on the walls were so
strong it was impossible to imagine how even a small and crafty bird could pass them unseen. And even if, by some unimaginable cunning, Ire had gotten over the walls, how could he trace him through the chaos of Dagra? He dared not send out a summoning. He was alone in the middle of this dark city; there was no one to help him. His head hurt, as if an iron band were slowly tightening around his forehead. And he was so tired.

  Well, thought Hem, with an attempt at briskness: first things first.

  He had found out that Zelika was a Tusk. The initial shock of entering Dagra had driven the thought of Zelika out of his head, and so he had lost track of her whereabouts; but fortu­nately they had been hurried into their barracks in the order in which they had marched, and the Tusks were in the same room as the Blood Block.

  Warily he searched for any sense of Hulls. Even opening this narrow chink in his awareness made him flinch. The tension in Dagra was nigh on unbearable: the very air seemed to tremble. He suddenly remembered the Hulls' conversation the previous day, and Ire's prediction. Imank was here, in Dagra, seeking the overthrow of the Nameless One: and even the Nameless feared his most powerful captain. No wonder the Hulls had been mak­ing them run – they were afraid.

  Perhaps this was why there were no Hulls close by. He could be luckier than he thought: there just might be a chance. Slightly heartened, he brought his awareness back into the bar­racks. All the snouts were very tired and the morralin dose they had been given added to their exhaustion; and all of them were yawning, although it was still early. He glanced furtively up and down the long room: maybe two hundred snouts. It shouldn't be too difficult to track down Zelika. He curled up, his eyes shut, and waited for all the snouts to go to sleep.