Take the body and give me the rest
Page 14
In his pocket were the stones, pieces of carved metal and skulls that had formed the circle the very first time he’d been imprisoned. He’d never need to use them for himself before, but Elizebetha had told him to be careful, and he’d protect himself as best he could, though he felt this would be a lot less dangerous than a night with the Wolvern.
He crept through the darkness away from the camp; when he was a good distance past it and bathed in the moonlight, he stopped. In a large circle, he placed the little stones, metal bits, carved bone and the tiny animal skulls. He stepped out of the circle and thought about the words from the book. He couldn’t read in the moonlight anyway, so he had memorized what he needed to know.
Seth began the chant, the words forming clumsily in his mouth, first spoken in a hesitant way. None of Seth’s passengers had ever used this, not even Minsetta, who had thought it was beneath her. The words grew stronger and faster as he got used to them, concentrating on the form of what he wanted to pull through. Seth felt the air start to thicken, the dark night grew darker still, and a sliver of a rift started to appear in the air. He spoke the words more quickly and with more confidence. He pulled with everything inside of him and felt an exertion like he’d never before.
Sudden the rift tore like a sail in a heavy storm. Into the circle poured a swirling, shrieking, dark mass. It swirled and swirled in the circle like a howling whirlwind. He realised he’d made a mistake as the hundreds of small dead bat creatures flew into his world and pushed hard against the barrier.
He could see the leathery wings with holes and bones jutting from their bodies. It was a dead but moving mass. The barrier was pushing against his mind and he felt it losing strength as they pushed their small bodies against it. Fighting a sense of panic and gathering himself in cold purpose, Seth directed them back into the rift and like a black sheet or flow of water, the howling shrieking mass was gone as quickly as it had come.
Seth stood panting in the silence, sweat pouring from his face as if he had just been running in full armour. Focusing his attention on one creature alone, he called it through. It came and he closed the rift shut behind it.
It flew in circles inside of the ring. The creature was entirely like the bats from the North except black instead of brown and it was clearly dead. Seth could see where parts of its wings and body were rotten and white bone claws jutted from wingtips. Seth reached out to it with his thoughts and tried to get a feel for it. There were no words, but he felt he could gain a sense of it.
He stepped into the circle with the creature. He was going just on intuition now, as the book was incredibly vague about this part. Seth reached down and drew out his dagger, holding his arm up he bared the back of his forearm and ran the steel blade along it. It scored his arm and brought forth fresh blood. The creature smelled the blood and landed, clinging to the arm, sinking its teeth into the wound and drinking from him. Seth tried not to flinch as the cold, dead, creature drank from him. He pushed a single thought into its mind as it drank from him, that he was one of them, that he was kin with the creature, that he would feed and protect it.
Once it had stopped drinking, it stayed clinging to the back of his arm. Seth watched in the moonlight as the holes of its wings closed, bones were healed over and the creature even began to breathe slowly and steady as it came back to life from the power of his mortal blood. Seth knew the way it lived in the dead world. It was blind but could sense the ill will of others. It could sense hate and harmful intentions. Seth pushed the idea of his enemies to the Batling’s mind, of people following him, wishing to hurt him. Seth stepped out of the circle breaking the magic and thrusting his arm up into the air, the Batling let go and flew on now strong leathery wings into the night to locate the people wishing him ill.
Seth spent the next hour creeping slowly back towards the caravan through the cold night. He was waiting for some kind of signal from the Batling but wasn’t sure what it would be. All he’d had felt in the past hour was a vague sense of searching. Then if flashed in his mind, a vision of red. The creature could see, actually see the colours of those wishing Seth harm.
He didn’t know where it was perched or if was still flying overhead, but he could see his enemies as large red glowing shapes of colour. They weren’t uniform at all. Two of them blazed bright red like a bolts of freshly died fabric, some others in the low orange of a burning down fire. He gathered the red ones were the woman Seraphina and her main companion. Others hated him only through purpose, not emotion.
Seth crept through the woods, towards the source of the hateful energy and the Batling who was guiding him along. He was amused to feel that the creature was actually angry; he could feel the rage in its tiny body, that people would wish its kindred harm. Still, he knew about them and was coming to find them, which was good. These things hated secrets, it seemed.
Voices and the flickering light of a large fire found its ways through the trees to him. Slowly and carefully he picked his way through trees and around fallen branches to the edge of the road on which they were directly camped. As Seth stood, he felt and heard the flutter of leathery wings as the Batling flew in to cling to his right arm and shoulder, small claws finding purchase in the fabric of his clothes. He whispered a few words of thanks it wouldn’t understand and found a position he could watch from without being in the glare of the firelight.
The scene that greeted him at the fire was a disappointment. Around the fire sitting, drinking from cups and eating were the six dark-skinned desert slaves and their keepers. Goldie had questioned them already, and they certainly weren’t what he was looking for. Maybe they hated the whole world.
As Seth looked on, he was suddenly struck by the oddness of the scene and then realised he was watching a deception, but one that he couldn’t see through. The slaves sat around the fire, talking and laughing as anyone else would. The slave keeper was actually acting as a server to one female slave who held court. She was regal and beautiful even with her matted hair and few sparse leather clothes. The ratty Cravosi slaver handed her a small silver plate with a steaming cut of meat on it, with a fork and small knife. Then he bowed slightly as he turned back to cut another slice. Clearly, he was seeing something different to Seth. This lady slave was being treated like the leader of the group and he had no idea why.
As he watched he began hearing more words and realised they were also speaking in the desert language. He knew he could understand it if he could get closer. Seth concentrated, but from his position, he couldn’t hear the conversation from the distance he was. He dared not leave the cover but wanted to hear them badly.
Within a short moment, the Batling clinging to his left shoulder had taken flight. Seth watched it with his eye line as it flew the short gap from his side of the roadway to a dark spot on top of one of the covered wagons. If the slaves had seen the creature, they paid it no mind; bats were common in Pelloss as well. Seth began to hear their words more clearly. They were louder and with much deeper and richer tones than he would have expected, but he knew he was now hearing what the Batling heard, it was sharing its senses with him, it was an incredible feeling. He had no idea if anyone in the Guild had ever achieved this.
A dark-skinned slave man, with incredible posture and a stern face, spoke to the female one. ‘I don’t understand why we just don’t ride up the line and kill him. There is Anton, me and more than four good guardsmen,’ he said.
‘And he has four Northmen and him more dangerous than the other four together. You saw what they did in the library,’ she spat back.
‘No one fights well when they are asleep. A simple knife across the throat we can go home and stop living like travelling tramps,’ he said.
‘We need him alive anyway, when we get to Pellota. His idiot Northern guards will run loose in the city like sailors fresh from the sea, and we’ll take him when he’s alone in his boarding house.’
‘Sounds too easy Seraphina’
‘It will be. Trust me, he won’t see us coming�
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Seth now sat with Elizebetha around her fire. Her attendant had quietly retired, while his Northmen went to stand a discreet distance away from them and spoke in low tones amongst themselves.
He’d crept back to her camp after it was clear. He’d heard all he would of use that night. The Batling had returned to cling to his shoulder, and he’d almost forgotten it was there as he strode into the camp. Pulling up a small wooden box with a cushion on top, he sat beside her. She looked at him with an impatient glare.
‘You have a passenger’ she said.
He looked at the small black Batling clinging to his shoulder. It was still breathing slowly but didn’t move. Seth was still partially connected to it and could feel his warm blood swirling inside of it, keeping it sustained. He had the strong thought that if it didn’t feed soon it would either turn fierce or start to decompose.
‘This little fellow was quite handy tonight, he’d make a good pet, but I suppose I should send him back.’ Without a word more, Seth gently took the creature from his shoulder and with a, ‘Thanks again,’ reached his hand through a small rift he’d created in space. He simply let go of the creature and pulled his hand back through the nearly invisible rift, closing it.
Elizebetha’s impatient look had become one of horror and shock. Seth drew his hand back and it was bright red with cold.
‘It’s so cold through there, just like being back in the North,’ he said with a smile.
‘Seth, you can’t do things like that. Why did you put your hand through? You’re getting so reckless’
‘Why not? It was fine. I pulled it back’ he said.
‘We’re not allowed to cross back the other way, because we can’t come back, Seth. It’s a door that only opens in one direction. You could have been stuck in that cold dead world forever.’ She took his hand in hers and felt how cold it was.
‘My hand’s fine, Elizebetha, never fear. Besides, I have something I need to tell you. I found Seraphina and her men. They have been with the caravan for the last few days in the guise of the slave train from the south,’ he said.
‘They are in disguise?’
‘No, not a costume, I mean they look like slaves, they even speak the language. It’s some power she has. Once I saw the guise and heard her true name, I got all of the General’s memories of her talent. She can bend the way things look.’ he said.
Again, she had a reason to be shocked tonight. ‘I had no idea that Seraphina or indeed anyone alive could do that. It’s such an old, old power. It is said to have come from the goddess Sumner who had the power to make all things beautiful. It seems she can turn it to make things appear as she likes.’
‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.
‘Did you find out what they plan?’ she asked.
‘They plan to wait until I’m alone in the city without my men and ambush me in the boarding house. They are still keen on taking me alive, and they don’t seem to know about hearts blood.’
Duchess Elizebetha called out to the men and so began a very unlikely war council; Grimm, Goldie, Stone and Flint with Seth and Elizebetha. Seth relayed to them about the group at the end of the train.
‘That can’t be; I questioned them directly. It wasn’t some theatre troupe in wigs, I know that,’ said Goldie.
‘It’s not, it’s something else, but I assure you it’s them all right or let’s say people working for them if that’s easier to understand. They are waiting for us to reach the city tomorrow and, when you boys go off to enjoy some of the city’s distractions, they’ll be coming for me alone,’ Seth said.
‘Boss, this is going to be too easy. We just wait at the side of the roadway tomorrow and as they pass, we fill every one of them with a handful of arrows. The only good enemy is a dead one,’ said Grimm.
Flint and Stone gave dual grunts of agreement. Seth was actually thinking that was a fairly good, if cold-hearted, plan.
‘No, I want her alive,’ Elizebetha said. She had a look of greed in her eyes that Seth had never seen in another person, but he knew the feeling well enough. To this point, Elizebetha had never spoken of the creature or its gifts. She was old; no one in the Guild looked old, which meant she never summoned. That she had never given in to the hunger or greed, before now.
She laid out the plan for them. ‘We’ll get to the city. You four make a big noise about drinking and chasing women in true Northern fashion. We’ll go to a rooming house I know of with a nice big room and we’ll wait for them to come to us. You boys double back and—sober, mind—you aid us.’
‘Sounds much more dangerous than the initial plan. ‘Let’s do it!’ Seth said.
If Seth had kept the Batling by his side, it would have sensed a flare of red hateful energy crouched near their camp, listening to their words. The guardsman, who was still in the guise of the ratty slaver, crept back to his own camp with all they had said.
Chapter 22
The sun was halfway through its daily journey when the caravan drew in sight of the city of Pellota or Little Pelloss. It was indeed a mirror city of the much bigger Pelloss. Its harbour was less accessible than its big sister’s, and so the city was home only to a few hundred thousand, as they would say in the west. It was the same beautiful construction: large sandstone buildings, a blazing sun and thriving markets. This city seemed to have even more slaves than the capital. Every corner contained some dark-skinned slaves from the desert and beyond. Looking forlorn and miserable or resigned to hopelessness.
As the caravan pulled in, Seth and his troop rode beside Rosen in his open wagon. Rosen was a happy man to have arrived at his first stop alive and profitable. His white teeth gleamed in his overweight face as he was helped down from the wagon and shook each of their hands’.
‘Now, we head out tomorrow morning. I still have to pay you the rest, so make sure you come back,’ Rosen said. ‘I’ll be more than glad to have the men of the Brave North along with me,’ he said.
They laughed at that. ‘Who are the Brave North?’ asked Seth.
‘Why, that’s you and your men here. That’s what the caravan people are calling you,’ he said.
‘More like that’s what you’re calling us. When you tell the story Rosen are you up there with us, by any chance?’ Seth teased.
Rosen blushed red. ‘Of course not, of course not. Just come back tomorrow morning when we head out for our next stop.’ With that, he turned his back on the men.
Grimm turned to them. ‘No doubt said he was directing us from afar, much like an overweight General.’
‘Well, boys, I think it’s time for you to start your production. I’ll see you on the other side,’ Seth said, turning away and walking to find Lady Elizebetha. Grimm, Goldie, Flint and Stone now began to perform one of the most shameless displays the North could be proud of. Literally waving some of their gold around, they went down the line of the caravan gathering single men and some single women to head with them for a drink, their shout of course. They asked after taverns, whorehouses and more than once shouted to Seth they would see him tomorrow and hopefully not be spending the night in the gaol house of the city watch.
During the noise and excitement being caused by the boys, Seth and Lady Elizebetha slipped quietly into the city. She guided them through the busy midday streets, past traders, markets and food stalls. In the middle of the city, off one of the main roads, was a luxurious boarding house. She walked in through the entrance, where stood two servants simply bowed as they passed.
The place was a large, four-tiered sandstone building that looked like it could weather a storm. Elizebetha spoke to the man behind the wooden bench top and, after passing over what seemed like a good few too many silver coins, they were led by the bowing servants up the stairs to their lodgings.
She had taken the entire of the top floor. At the very top of the stairs was a solid wooden door. Through the door was a very large room comprising couches, tables, chairs and one very large bed curtained in thin fabric in the far corner.
‘Glad I can use this thing now,’ he said to her.
Elizebetha was distracted like he’d never seen her before. She was barely present in the moment with him. He’d also never seen her look so much like an old lady as tonight. He just hoped that Grimm, Goldie, Flint and Stone wouldn’t let him down. He didn’t like his chances of taking all of his enemies on by himself. He also had no way of knowing what other kind of help they could, or would, summon.
Seth walked to the very end of the room and opened the door wide. He then moved all the small tables, chairs and couches in the way between them and the door, leaving a free space in the middle. It was a fine furniture version of trenches and spikes, the General was happy to have some obstacles for any charging men; Yend was thinking of the cost of replacing it all.
Seth had his bow strung but resting on the edge of the upturned couch, within easy reach. They had been standing waiting for more than two hours of near darkness when he heard the sound of quiet feet coming up the stairway. Finally they were there at the end of the room, the three people who had been chasing him since the beginning. The Cold blonde girl and her two cousins who looked much like richer, more dangerous versions of the Officers of The Opulent
Then without a single word spoken all three pointed their blades at him and rushed towards him a mix of male and female cries of hatred ringing out though the air as they charged as one.