The Ragged Man

by Tom Lloyd

  Mihn had made it to Ghenna, and here he was, all alone in the Dark Place. Not even the Gods could help him now.

  CHAPTER 3

  As he woke, Major Amber twitched his head, which was enough to send a spasm of pain racing down his neck. He whimpered, but a moment later panic overshadowed everything and wakefulness hit him like a deluge.

  Cold fear enveloped his mind; all he could feel was searing agony, a rod of iron where his spine should be. Every other sense was numb. He tried to lift his arm and felt nothing, nothing at all. When he tried to open his eyes all he managed was a facial twitch, and another wrenching spasm. At last he edged them open, only to immediately close them against the searing light.

  ‘Hush now,’ said a woman’s voice beside him as Amber began to hyperventilate in terror, wincing at every gasp. ‘Hey, settle down - you’re injured, but you will recover.’

  He felt a weight on his chest, a palm pressing down to hold him still, and he moaned in relief. For a while all he could remember was stars bursting in his head, the crunch of bones breaking and the death-cry of the man he’d killed. The details eluded him for the moment as his thoughts floundered, lost in a world of hurt.

  ‘That’s better,’ the woman continued, her voice soothing. Her fingers found his, and this he could feel, a comforting sensation. ‘You’re bound to the bed,’ she told him, ‘you broke a few bones and the surgeons wanted to keep you still.’

  He tried to respond, but all that came out was a wheeze.

  ‘Don’t speak; you’re too weak. I’ll fetch a healer. We’ll talk later.’

  Her hand moved away and Amber felt himself slide back into the cool arms of sleep. When he awoke a second time it was better; as he opened his eyes he felt the return of some part of him that before had been trapped in the darkness. He still hurt all over, but now he was aware enough to feel the bed underneath him, and he could tally the individual injuries. His neck was now a dull throb, and he found he could lift his left arm, although moving his right caused him to hiss in pain.

  ‘Ah, awake at last,’ came the same woman’s voice. ‘I was beginning to worry they’d given you too much there.’

  He turned his head gingerly to the left and took a moment as Horsemistress Kirl came into focus. She smiled down at him from a campaign chair and leaned forward. Behind her he saw a white plastered wall and a shuttered window, the only light in the room provided by a small fire and two large pillar candles standing iron lamp-stands.

  ‘Don’t try to move. Our best healers have been working on you, but there’s only so much a mage can do.’

  ‘How long?’ Amber croaked.

  ‘Since the battle?’ She thought for a moment. ‘You woke the first time two weeks back. Another day and a half since then.’

  Amber opened his mouth to say something else, but this time the effort defeated him. Instead he bathed in the warmth of the Horsemistress’ lopsided smile. She’d cut her dark hair shorter since he’d last seen her and it hung loose to the raised collar of her unbuttoned tunic.

  Amber started: that wasn’t her uniform - he didn’t recognise it at all. Kirl was an auxiliary attached to Amber’s legion, the Cheme Third - so why was she wearing a fitted cavalryman’s tunic? The scarlet adorned with blue and white slashes and gold buttons was more along the lines of Amber’s formal Menin officer’s uniform than Kirl’s usual plain grey outfit.

  ‘You like it?’ Kirl asked with a coquettish smile. ‘I found it in the Farlan baggage. The Penitent Army left everything and ran; Hain reckons it was made for an officer of the Cardinal Paladins.’

  Amber didn’t respond immediately, then he realised he was staring, his mouth open, and he looked away.

  ‘That good, eh?’ Kirl laughed, ‘I’m glad to hear it!’

  He coughed. ‘Aye, not bad,’ he said hoarsely.

  His throat was dry and sore, but he ignored the pain. Kirl’s lovely crooked smile was enough to make his breath catch when she wore drab riding leathers; dressed in a fine, narrow-waisted tunic . . . As she bent over him to help him lie back he breathed in her scent and prayed she wouldn’t notice any stirrings under the blanket.

  ‘You tending to me?’ he rasped. ‘What’s happened since the battle?’

  She scowled. ‘Not much that needs my attention. I’ve got all my horses pastured for the moment and I’m just trying to keep my head low. It’s all . . . tense out there right now, but you’re a fucking hero and you’ve got a nice warm room, so I might possibly have stretched the truth a little so I could hide out in here till everyone calms down.’

  She gestured around her and Amber realised for the first time that he was in a bedroom large and luxurious enough for a duke, even though it was mostly empty. A wooden partition was drawn up to one side of him to keep the fire’s heat close. He could see nothing around him to tell him who the room normally belonged to, but someone had dragged his kit in - and even managed to retrieve his scimitars from the battlefield! The career soldier in him prayed to Karkarn that same someone would have seen fit to clean the swords and hammer out the nicks before they got rusty.

  ‘Colonel Uresh knows where I am if he needs me, so do my men. I’m doing as much good tending to you as anywhere else - more, probably.’

  ‘“Stretched the truth”?’

  The lovely smile returned. ‘You don’t need to worry about that right now,’ she said with a soft laugh, ‘but I think Hain’s reached a whole new level of admiration for you now.’

  Amber couldn’t help but cough at the thought. He knew full-well what was pretty much always on Captain Hain’s mind when he wasn’t fighting. The sight of Kirl in that tunic really wouldn’t have helped.

  ‘Well, look at that,’ Kirl said with a purr of interest. ‘That thought’s put some colour in your cheeks! For now, Major Amber, you might want to hear what’s been happening since you fainted on the battlefield.’

  ‘Fainted!’ Amber gasped as the memory of the battle finally appeared in his mind: Lord Chalat, Chosen of the Fire God Tsatach, wading through the Menin ranks wreathed in flame; Amber fighting his way through the ranks to slam a spiked axe into Chalat’s chest —

  ‘So one witness, who’ll remain nameless, is telling everyone he can,’ Kirl continued, ‘and by the way, Captain Hain’s treating that axe like it’s a holy relic now.’ She paused and cocked her head, then added, ‘Which I s’pose it might be. Anyway, Lord Isak’s dead, but not before he killed Scion Styrax - and for that our lord sent him straight to the Dark Place!’

  She shivered at the thought and fell silent, all traces of her smile gone.

  Amber felt the strength drain from his body. He’d not been close to Kohrad Styrax, but he had known the hot-tempered youth for years, and had fought beside him more than once. The idea of Kohrad dead was too much for him to grasp immediately. It felt unreal, even to a man used to the loss of comrades.

  ‘You can tell where it happened too,’ Kirl said in a hushed voice. ‘There’s a point out on the field where the ground’s as hot as new-fired clay, so folk’ve been saying. We routed the Farlan, killed a large part of the Penitent Army and chased the rest most o’ the way to Helrect. Lord Styrax’s overcome with grief so General Gaur’s been giving the orders - you can image how close he is to disembowelling anyone who comes near.’

  Amber nodded, wincing, all too easily able to imagine General Gaur’s current state of mind. The beastman’s overriding sense of duty would not allow him to withdraw into grief when there was an army to manage, but Gaur had been as much of a father to Kohrad as Styrax himself.

  ‘And then there’s the small matter of the dragon,’ Kirl said after a pause.

  ‘Dragon?’ Amber coughed.

  ‘Aye, our lord woke it up about the time you fainted and broke half-a-dozen bones on your way to the ground. The beast is just a bit fucking angry at the situation. No one knows what’s left of the Library of Seasons, but a large part of Ismess has been levelled and the Fortinn quarter has taken quite a battering too. So’s Byo
ra, but some folk are saying that’s because some Raylin mercenary went mad during the battle.’

  ‘And Lord Styrax isn’t doing anything about it?’

  She reached for a waterskin and helped him to drink. ‘Ah, well now, Lord Styrax ain’t doing much of anything at the moment, and as long as that continues, the chaos outside is just going to go on getting worse.’

  Amber took a minute or two to drink, then announced, ‘I need to be out of this room.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody stupid, you can’t even stand up.’ Kirl enumerated his injuries: ‘Three bones in your foot are broken, and your shin snapped when a horse trod on you. On top of that you’ve managed to break your wrist, your arm in two places, your collarbone and three ribs - for pity’s sake, Amber, you even managed to break your nose when you smacked yourself into that mad white-eye! You’re staying here until the priests o’ Shotir tell me you’re healed enough to move and that’s that.’ She gave him a small pat on the head. ‘Don’t worry. I reckon the Menin Army will manage to survive a few more days without their newest hero.’

  Mihn worked his way further into Ghenna, moving quietly, hand over hand along the roof until he found a ledge where he could rest. Once there he took stock, listening to the sounds of the Dark Place. The main tunnel to Jaishen, the lowest domain of Ghenna - so far as such things could be placed - fell away sharply at a right-hand bend, after which were dozens of smaller tunnels branching off in all directions.

  Now he was inside, the old myths weren’t going to be much help to him; those poor troubled mortals who had been afforded visions of the Dark Place had never learned much of use. Malich Cordein had been told more than most by the daemons he bargained with, thanks to the fact that he was an unusually powerful necromancer. Those who sold their souls for power were received with all ceremony into whichever of the chaotic domains their master dwelled, but the three greater domains were made up of many hundreds of others that were in a constant state of shifting allegiances. All Malich had confirmed was that Coroshen was the most ordered, Gheshen the most prone to open war, and Jaishen - Jaishen hung over an endless void from which even Gods would never return.

  And it was here that Mihn intended to go, to the very depths of Jaishen, where the fissures in the rock opened onto nothingness. Lord Isak had left him a letter detailing his dreams since Scree. It was written in a shaky hand, and described being bound to the rock above an endless emptiness. It was not something he had ever managed to tell anyone out loud, but for an unlettered young man brought up in a world far from books or school learning, the disjointed sentences had conveyed a sense of horror that had made Mihn’s skin prickle.

  The clamour surrounding the soul’s arrival had long died down, and away from the preternatural blackness that shrouded the gates, Ghenna was only as dark as a moonless night - if the stars had been tinted with blood. Not far down the tunnel Mihn came to a crossroads of sorts, where another, flatter, tunnel crossed the main one before splitting into two. The crossroads was marked by a blazing wheel hanging from the rocky roof. Mihn approached cautiously, but though he saw movement there, he thought the scampering daemons had vanished long before he got near —

  — until a drawn-out scream pierced the air. It took Mihn a moment to realise the sound had come from the wheel itself, from a figure bound to it, writhing in the flames. He picked his way carefully down the tunnel wall, moving as quickly as he could, but still he could hear the figure wailing, until at last it fell into silence. He turned to look back - just as a dark shape shook free of the shadows and leapt towards the wheel, a long fan-like tail thrashing. The daemon’s jaw latched onto the figure’s leg and dangled there for a second before its weight caused the flesh to tear and it fell away. As the daemon fell, the figure’s screams were renewed.

  Mihn turned his back on the terrible sight. The rune burned into his chest was hot to the touch now; concentrating, he thought he could feel it drawing him, so he followed it to the smallest downward-leading tunnel he could see. He moved as quickly as he dared, listening all the while for footsteps, or any other movement. There were plenty of shadows to keep him concealed while the faint red light of Ghenna shone from the rock walls.

  To his relief Mihn didn’t find himself tiring as much as he’d feared as he made his way from handhold to foothold. Up and down seemed to have less meaning here; despite the clear path on the ground, he found he could keep to the walls with ease. There was a light from somewhere down the tunnel, and though he kept turning corners and discovered nothing, nonetheless the light illuminating the path continued, remaining steadfastly sourceless.

  It took him a while to realise the light was not natural - as if anything could be, in a place such as this. The side tunnels he passed were almost pitch-black, and while the light ahead was barely enough to see by, without it he would have been lost. A cold finger of horror ran down Mihn’s spine as he imagined trying to find his way through Ghenna without it.

  It had to be the witch of Llehden’s contribution. Thank you, Ehla, Mihn thought. Ehla meant Light in the Elvish language, and a light in dark places was what she had called herself. Maybe, in giving Isak that name by which to address her, she had helped shape the role she would play in Isak’s future.

  After what felt like hours of slow, cautious progress Mihn’s path levelled. He had had to hide once or twice as daemons dragged their heavy, slug-like bodies past, but other than that he’d seen little - until he caught a glimpse of something, a flickering light, emanating from a circular tunnel some three feet wide. He slipped inside, curious to see what lay on the other side of the rock. He needed a sign that he was heading in the right direction; maybe this would be it.

  Mihn edged his way down the tunnel’s slight slope until he reached the end, where he found a fissure in the rock wall. He peered through - and had to stop himself screaming as he caught sight of a torture chamber out of his worst nightmares. The flickering light came from a great lake of flame in the centre of an enormous cavern. Surrounding the fire lake were daemons, hundreds, even thousands of them, and to Mihn it looked as if they were engaged in the most cruel punishments daemonkind could devise. Others stood around tables heaped high with food, gorging themselves, while their fellows operated complicated machines of torture.

  All around the cavern Mihn could see bodies impaled on the spiky branches of gnarled old trees. Great iron chains were hammered into the rock, forming a criss-crossed network from which more of the damned hung, some limp, some flailing madly. In the fire he saw thrashing limbs, with darting black shapes moving between them.

  He looked up: the roof of the great cave was a sagging dome, rising to a peak in the centre, far beyond his sight —

  — and his heart stopped for a moment as a noise came from near his feet, a questing snuffle, sounding as if it was moving towards him. It stopped, and without hesitating, Mihn dived towards the thing, and managed to use his body to drive the daemon into the side of the tunnel. He reached down, and when he felt something thin whip against his hands he instinctively grabbed it, catching the daemon by a forelimb and pulling it close.

  In the fiery light he tried to make sense of what he had caught. He yanked it towards him, and discovered something a little smaller than he, with a flattened head like a monkfish, a bulbous throat and the body of a salamander. The snarling daemon began to buck wildly, until Mihn caught the other forelimb and pulled both arms back, stopping the thing from twisting and biting him.

  The daemon tried to roll, but Mihn was ready for it and let go of one arm before it slammed him face-first into the rock. It wrenched around, but succeeded only in trapping its free limb underneath it. Mihn ended up astride the daemon. He put one knee on the demon’s throat and heaved with all his might on the other forelimb.

  For a moment he feared he wasn’t strong enough, but finally he was rewarded with a crunching sound, then a snap!, the one from beneath the daemon’s body, the other from the socket of the limb he was pulling on.

  The daemon ga
ve a muted wail, all it could manage with Mihn’s knee in its throat. Mihn turned and grabbed its tail, pulling it as hard as he could, effectively rolling the daemon up, until the daemon’s spine snapped under the strain and it went still, dead at last.

  At first Mihn didn’t dare let go. After twenty heartbeats listening out for anything that might have been attracted by the scuffle he breathed again, and dropped the tail, letting the corpse uncurl on the ground.

  Gods, that was lucky, Mihn thought, anything larger and I’d have not stood a chance.

  He inspected his hands. They didn’t appear damaged. The tattoos remained intact, but there was daemon blood on them now. There were several scratches on his arms and fingers, but as he watched they healed up, leaving only the faintest of marks.

  So that’s another true story: the torments of Ghenna really are unending. Wounds heal at an unnatural pace - so they can be inflicted again. He shook his head. But now is really not the time for me to start cataloguing the truths in the old myths. I need to move fast, get away from this corpse before something smells it or stumbles over it.

  He scrabbled back to the main tunnel and looked about cautiously. There was nothing there that he could see, only the same dull glow somewhere down the end that picked out the jagged lines of the rock walls. He didn’t dare to breathe a sigh of relief, but he pulled himself out of the side tunnel, lowered himself to the floor and set off towards the very depths of Jaishen.

  It was impossible to tell how long he travelled. He passed huge dark chambers resonating with the sound of great hammers crashing down, and small alcoves where forgotten souls were chained or nailed to the bare rock. When the tunnel opened up again he scaled the wall, keeping near to the roof and freezing whenever sounds of movement came from below. Several times he found himself watching ragged processions of daemons pass by underneath: some marched to war, others bore trappings of state rich enough to put any mortal king to shame, and all were surrounded by crowds of nightmarish minions.