Wolfeater

by Anthony Mitchell

  The Ashan Daru rose to his feet at the head of the fire, raising his hands for attention. His guests fell to silence and gazed up at him, like a family waiting for their father's words. 'Tomorrow, you face the Käda - the Last Rock.' He spoke calmly, but his voice resonated with power, booming around the confined space of the cave. 'Yet there are rules for those who wish to lay hands on the Blackstone; rules that both the Seven and the Eighth must obey.'

  'What rules?' asked Radok, his voice tired and weak. Kneeling beside him, perhaps even holding him upright, Nyana cocked her head to listen.

  'You will respect the sanctity of this holy place. What happens at the Blackstone is for the children of the Wind alone. The Wolves can play no part.' He fixed his eyes on Mikilov and Senya in turn. 'Bear witness, Valor, but you must not interfere.'

  'That is madness,' said Jian, sitting opposite Senya, the flames between them. 'You don't know what he can do! If Talak is here, waiting for us, we'll need every sword we can get.'

  'He is here,' said the Ashan Daru, 'waiting for you. But he knows the rules also, and I have his word no harm will come to the Valor.'

  'Well,' Jian breathed in exasperation, 'if you have his word!'

  It was Nyana who spoke next, her soft voice cutting through the hot air like calming music. 'What else?'

  The Ashan Daru fixed his gaze on the girl, a strange half-smile on his face. 'Too many have died already,' he said. 'Balance is needed now. Whatever reasons you had for starting this journey, it has led you here, to the Seven and the Eighth, to the All Song. It will be ended the old way: Ashan Tay against Ashan Tay.'

  'We have no Ashan Tay,' put in Talgar. 'We had Talak, but you've seen how that turned out.'

  The Ashan Daru tutted and shook his head. 'The young think they have all the answers.' He thrust a finger out in Nyana's direction. 'The girl has everything an Ashan Tay needs. She can hear the Will, even now, even before the Blackstone. They took her eyes, yet still she sees far more than any of you. She is wise beyond her years, and she knew she was coming here to be reborn… or to die. Did you not, Little Sparrow?'

  'You would name her Ashan Tay?' asked Radok, his voice little more than a rasping whisper. 'This blind girl who has never swung a sword in her life? You would have her fight Talak of the Grey Crow?'

  'It is not my place to name anyone,' said the Ashan Daru. 'Only the Will can decide such a fate… and that requires a touch of the Blackstone. The girl has the chance to become the first female Ashan Tay, with the potential to become the greatest who ever lived. If she can only touch the stone.

  'Yet such a servant to the Seven does not sit well with the Eighth, and he sends Talak to put an end to her. She represents everything he despises. A child - a blind girl, no less - with a greater understanding of the Will than he will ever know? That cuts Talak deep, and he will stop at nothing to see her dead.'

  'And you seek to help him?' asked Jian.

  'I seek the balance,' said the Ashan Daru. 'One against one. Him, against a champion of her choosing.'

  'Agreed,' said Nyana, speaking in a voice that broached no argument.

  All the other Grey Crow chirped in with their objections, but it was the near-death rattle of the Wolfeater that cut through the noise. 'You understand what it means?' he asked the girl. 'Your life would be forfeit.'

  The girl took his cheeks in her hands and kissed his forehead. 'It started with me and you,' she said. 'That's how it should end.'

  'And you?' The Ashan Daru was gazing at Senya and Mikilov again, an eyebrow cocked.

  'If that's what the girl wants,' said Mikilov, 'we won't interfere.'

  The Ashan Daru focused on Senya. 'And you?'

  Senya shrugged. 'Stand in the way of Basillians killing each other? Why would I want to do a thing like that?'

  The Ashan Daru clapped his hands together. 'Excellent! It is decided then. It will be champion of the Seven against champion of the Eighth. You should sleep now, all of you. You'll need to start out early. The blizzards are coming, and you'll want to be up and down again before they strike. Please, sleep. All is balanced.'

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Käda

  'Your gods could have sent a little sunshine to help us on our way.' Senya squinted out from the shadows of her fur fringed hood, the howling wind battering against her, swirling snow gusting into her eyes. 'You sure they want you?'

  Radok cast a gaze in her direction. The hatred was gone, he saw. Replaced by… what?… pity? He groaned. Hatred was good. He could use hatred - had used it, whether to fire his spirit or drive his enemies to their own mistakes. But what could he do with pity? Pity was no good to anyone.

  'Some of them, at least,' said Nyana. 'But they're all here, wild and uncontrolled. That's what makes the climb so hard.'

  'Then let's get started,' said Talgar, who dropped to a knee and waited patiently as the girl clambered on to his back. That pained Radok, as it had pained him throughout the last leg of their journey across the Whitelands. He had even confessed as much to Talgar himself a few days earlier.

  'It should be me carrying the girl,' he told the man one evening, while Nyana slept between them. 'I'm responsible for her.'

  Talgar had only smiled. 'You've been carrying her all her life, Radok,' he said. 'Let me take the burden a while longer, eh? You save your strength for what lies ahead.'

  'I'm not sure I'm ready to let her go.'

  'Perhaps not. But she's ready to let you go, and that's the best we can hope for when the time comes. I pray my two girls have the strength you've given this one, once the Black Wind decides my time is done.'

  Back at the Käda, Radok offered Talgar a nod of the head, and the warrior pushed himself to his feet with Nyana clinging to his back. He set off along a narrow path winding up and around the mountain, the two Valor falling in behind him, Tess the next in line. Jian remained a while longer, watching him.

  Radok looked back towards the cave where they had spent the night before, and where the Ashan Daru still stood watching them, half-dressed even now. The priest raised a hand in farewell.

  'Do you believe him?' asked Jian.

  'The Ashan Daru do not lie,' said Radok. 'But the Eighth does. There's no reason to believe Talak won't kill us all given half a chance.'

  'Then what do we do?'

  Radok turned back to face the mountain, his eyes scaling the icy rock up to the heady heights of its snow-capped peak, lost to sight among the low-lying clouds. 'We climb,' he said. 'We climb, and we see what Talak's words are worth.'

  Radok found the early going easier than expected. His lungs burned with fire at every snatched breath and his arms and legs were heavy as stone by the time he managed to battle his way through some of the higher snowdrifts, but, for all the pain, there was no denying the progress they made.

  They had scaled nearly a third of the mountain before the path gave way to more difficult terrain. By then it was midday, though it was difficult to tell one hour from the next, given the swirling maelstrom of snow and hail still lingering from yesterday's storm.

  'Rest here,' said Jian, raising her voice so as to be heard over the wind. 'Tess and I will scout the path ahead.'

  'No need,' put in Talgar, who, along with Radok, was the only member of the company to have ever visited the Käda.

  Twenty years and he still remembers, thought Radok. Hell, it's been thirty years for me. Some things a man cannot forget…

  Raising a single finger, Talgar pointed at the wall of frozen rock where the trail ended and gestured upwards. Here, that gesture said. We climb. Six pairs of eyes followed that finger, including Radok's, climbing the rock face from its jagged footings up to the shrouded heights far above.

  'There must be another way,' said Jian, a hand shielding her eyes from the falling snow as she gazed upwards.

  'Not for those wanting to touch the Blackstone,' said Talgar, and Radok nodded his head in agreement.

  Though the younger man's first visit to the Blackstone had taken pla
ce some years after Radok's own, no doubt guided by some other Ashan Tay, the experience had told them both the same thing.

  'There's nothing else for it,' Radok told the others. 'We have no choice but to climb.'

  Jian looked up again, shaking her head in disbelief. 'You think the girl can make that climb? You think you can?'

  'I made it once before, as a boy.' Radok could still remember every inch of that climb. From the agony in his fingers, where jagged rock tore at his frozen flesh, to the power of the wind battering against his frail body, trying its damnedest to tear him from the mountainside. He said now the same thing the Ashan Tay had told him back then. 'Even the blade must first be tempered by fire, before it knows its true purpose. There is only one path up to the Blackstone, and this is it. Best we ready ourselves for the flames.'

  ✽✽✽

  The climb was made free handed, as was always the way on the pilgrimage to the Blackstone. It was, after all, a trial by the gods. There was no place for guides or markers, ropes or climbing spikes, in the final test of manhood. All a man should need, the Ashan Daru had droned out, is the wits and wiles given to him by the Seven.

  'Then we should take our clothes off too,' Jian had argued. 'Then we'd truly be as the Seven intended.'

  'Don't be a fool,' Talgar had barked back, missing the point entirely. 'It's never been the Will for us to freeze to death!'

  Bloody men! Jian rolled her eyes again. In the safety of the Fallow she had almost forgotten how small a man's world could be. At least this journey had gone some way to opening her eyes to it once again, enough to have the Long Eye’s words echoing in her mind.

  Forget the gods, the old woman would often say. This is a man's world. They are the ones who make the rules, not the Seven, nor even the Eighth. Men. Stupid, foolish, weak minded men. And we all must live with the consequences.

  That was the great truth Jian was beginning to understand, and the longer she spent with men the more abundantly clear it became. Men were fools to the last, and in the world of the Grey Crow the weaker sex held all the power.

  Shaking her head, Jian pushed up with her right foot and grabbed a jutting rock with her left hand. Her fingers stung as they found their grip, even through the gloves, but they felt better than they would have before the visit to the Ashan Daru's spring. She pulled herself up slowly, inch by inch.

  The climb itself was not so difficult. There were plenty of ledges protruding from the rock, plenty of cracks and crevices that made for ideal footholds and hand grips, and Jian powered herself up easily enough. It was the elements that made it so dangerous.

  Almost every inch of the black rock glistened with ice, unbearably cold to touch and treacherously slippy. Snow continued to fall, big flakes whipped around by the wild winds seemingly circling the mountain. Not to mention the wind itself, grabbing at the climbers' clothes and trying to yank them from the wall.

  As had been the case for days now, Jian could smell nothing. She blamed the cold for the most part, which had bunged up her nose and stifled all her senses. But in truth, there was nothing to smell anyway. Snow had buried most of the world out here, and the small patches of bare rock that resisted offered no home to life.

  She could smell Talgar and the girl well enough, especially when the wind shifted and crashed down the mountain towards them like a waterfall. That wave would hit Talgar first, leading the way as he was, Nyana clinging to his back. Then it would wash over Jian and Tess behind him, Radok a few feet below, and the two wolves bringing up the rear, rocking them all where they clung. It brought with it the musty, stale smell of the well-travelled. Yet there was at least a scent of lavender and honey mixed in, offering a fading memory of Aldur's spring.

  Jian glanced to her right, to where Tess was matching her rise up the mountainside foothold for foothold. The younger woman met Jian's gaze and smiled. She looked the most comfortable out of all of them. Her long, slender frame was made for climbing, while a lifetime with a bow in her hands had given her the upper body strength needed to hold herself to the mountain and pull herself up with ease. Jian gave a shake of her head, but she found herself smiling back. This was Tess in her element. And, by the Will, if it wasn't the most beautiful thing Jian had ever seen.

  Time moved slowly as they made the climb. They'd made a swift start, mounting the wall in pairs and leaving enough space between them so that anyone who fell would only take themselves out. Yet the higher they climbed, the more dangerous it became, until it was clear one slip could kill them. They pressed themselves in firmly against the rock face, taking their time to choose every hand grip and foothold with great care.

  Their spacing became ragged as confidence waned, and Radok especially began to struggle. The air was thin up here, and the Wolfeater's breathing grew shallower and shallower. Jian looked down at him, labouring away, then beyond to the base of the climb. Mist had rolled in from somewhere, shrouding the lower part of the mountain, but they had climbed close to a hundred feet by now, with half again still to come.

  Jian bit her tongue, not sure of the best advice to give. If Radok climbed on, the risk of falling would only increase. On the other hand, if he turned back, he would face the same risk of falling, but at least the fall would diminish.

  'I'll make it,' he said suddenly, as though reading her thoughts. 'I've not come this far for them to stop me now.'

  'Heads up!'

  The barked command took Jian by surprise, and, glancing up sharply, she was just in time to see a huge chunk of ice flying towards her face. She swerved aside at the last possible moment, even felt the ice catch the edge of her hood as it plunged past her, bouncing off the rocks below with a dull, wet thud.

  She looked up to find Talgar grinning down at her. 'Close one, eh girl?'

  Beyond him, where the wind thundered out over the edge of the cliff top, leaving a swirling cloud of dust and snow in its wake, Jian glimpsed a dark shape disappearing from sight towards the summit. Her gaze lingered there for a moment longer… and then she saw something new, hurtling through the air towards them. This was more a boulder than a chunk of ice, nearly twice the size of the piece that almost killed her, and it came spinning through the air at a frightening pace.

  Jian cried out in horror. 'Talgar!'

  But it was too late. The boulder struck Talgar on the head and exploded into a thousand pieces. Knocked unconscious by the blow, perhaps even killed, Talgar dropped from the wall like a stone, plunging lifelessly towards the rocks far below. Nyana fell too, slipping from Talgar's back and setting off on her own course to earth. She gave a startled cry at first, but she never screamed. There was something eerily calm about her.

  Jian flailed at them with her free hand as the pair swept by, but they were moving too fast and too far away to reach them. Tess was just as useless. All they could do was watch, as Talgar and Nyana plummeted between them.

  In the end, it was Radok who reacted first. It was always Radok. The Wolfeater was nothing, if not predictable. Even weak as he was, even half wasted away by the Black Wind, he sprang to life the moment his Little Sparrow took flight. It seemed to happen in slow motion, every detail of the moment burning itself into Jian's mind as she watched it unfold.

  Radok balled himself up against the rock face, the muscles in his arms and legs bunching up and straining through the flesh until every inch of his body was riddled with tension, waiting at the edge of explosion…

  And then it happened. Radok thrust his legs out beneath him and launched himself from the wall. He flew through the air with his arms outstretched, fingers rigid like claws. For just a moment, wind whipping through his fur coat, he looked like one of those giant cats found in the mountains of the west, pouncing with lethal intent upon some unwitting prey.

  They seemed to hang in the air like that for the longest moment; Radok straining with every sinew of his body to reach the girl, and Nyana, though falling through the air and lost in the agonising darkness of those broken eyes, somehow serenely calm…
<
br />   She knows he's coming, thought Jian, who could only marvel at the complete faith such belief required. The girl showed no fear as she plunged towards her death, just as Radok showed no fear when he leapt out to meet her. No fear, no hesitation, just the certainty of knowing what had to be done. This is what love looks like…

  It moved Jian in a way she had not felt since the Black Wind took her child, when the love of her life turned on her so viciously. Had she ever known love like this? Even back then?

  Before she could answer those questions, the moment passed and time resumed its flow. Radok grunted as his body collided with the girl. He managed to wrap himself around her and turned through the air so that he'd land first, perhaps saving her from the worst of the fall.

  There was a chance, Jian guessed, that he might save her, but he had almost certainly doomed himself.

  They plunged as one, Jian's heart in her mouth as they fell away from her. They were doomed, the pair of them. Until the miracle happened…

  ✽✽✽

  Mikilov watched them fall.

  Talgar went first, his head caved in by whatever debris came raining down on him from the summit, his body limp as a child's doll.

  He was followed by the girl, Nyana, who had been holding fast to Talgar's back when the rubble struck his head. As the big man's body fell away beneath her, all Nyana could do was throw herself at the cliff face and pray the gods were kind…

  …and kind they were, if only for a short time.

  Nyana slammed hard against the wall and a great whoosh of air exploded from her lungs. With Mikilov watching on with bated breath, the girl began to slide down the rock face at once, her feet scrabbling about for purchase, her hands hunting desperately for any nook or cranny she might use for grip.

  It was an impossible task. With no eyes to guide her or strength to hold herself up, Nyana was unable to stop herself slipping from the rock face and plummeting after Talgar. She stopped trying, but there was no fear in her face as she fell, just a calm acceptance. There was barely a second between her and Talgar as the pair fell towards their death.