Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  I looked for the body of the Darling, but it was missing. Bastard sorcerers. They always have a way out.

  Ezabeth Tanza had collapsed alongside the charcoal-brittle bones of Station Twelve’s commander. A few of the skeleton’s finger bones fell away to rattle on the floor. Nenn was slumped against a wall too. She hadn’t recovered, but with a lurch worse than when I’d fallen I realised that it wasn’t the flare of light that had brought her down.

  I was by her side in a moment, trying to grab the hand that she clutched over the line of her belt. She looked up at me, deep brown eyes either side of the hole in her face where she should have had a nose. Her teeth were gritted against pain, her expression lost between determination and fear, unsure which way to go. Eventually she settled on anger.

  ‘Fucking bastard got me just before she cooked them,’ Nenn said, each word pressed from pain like oil from an olive. ‘I hit him in the face but he just ignored it, came in low. Fuck. Bastard gracked me, Ryhalt.’

  ‘You aren’t gracked,’ I said. ‘Not yet. We’ll get you help.’

  ‘Nah,’ Nenn said, pressing her eyes closed and letting her head fall back. ‘Reckon I’m bloody done. Fuck me, it hurts.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  She did, and I wished she hadn’t. Low enough in the body to miss the organs that would see her die quickly. A thrust. I looked for the sword that had made it, saw the bloody end. At least five red inches had gone into her. She might bleed to death right there and then, and if not, it was a slow death from gangrene and infection. Pain and stinking pus, blackened flesh and white weeping. The worst kind of death. Better to be burned out by a Spinner than that.

  Nenn caught me fingering the hilt of my knife. Our eyes met.

  ‘Do it,’ she grunted. She reached out to take my hand, but the touch of her cold fingers against my sweat-slicked skin made me stop.

  ‘No. We’ll get you fixed.’

  ‘There’s no fixing this,’ Nenn said. The blood had welled over her fingers. Her words came stunted, hard. ‘We both know what happens next. Lots of pain. Lots of dying.’

  ‘Saravor can fix it,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Nenn said, voice a wheeze of pained breath, ‘not that bastard. I’m not having that.’

  ‘You hear me giving you a choice? You’re going to live.’

  ‘His price is too high.’

  ‘I got credit,’ I lied. She was right. His price was always too high, but it might save my friend. My sister. I’d find a way. There was always a way if there was no depth you wouldn’t stoop to. I shed morality like a too-warm cloak. Whatever that bastard Saravor needed, he’d get it if he could make my Nenn well again.

  I moved the sword out of Nenn’s reach just in case she decided to turn rebel on me. Everything seemed to have gone quiet. No more drudge had made it up to us.

  ‘I need to see if anyone else is still alive,’ I said. The doorway was still open, but it was silent out there now. The whole station was dark. Whatever Ezabeth had done had drained all the power from the light tubes.

  I went to her, found she was still alive. Conscious, but so weak she could barely move. The lights had dimmed to almost nothing. She’d sapped the whole damn station’s stores of phos to work that magic. I got her to sit up against the wall. She eventually managed to prise her eyes open to look at me, and beneath the cloth mask over her face I thought she was smiling. Even in the madness, with the bodies of enemies all around me, blood not yet dry on my hands and my oldest companion mortally wounded on the floor, those eyes still held me. For a moment I was tangled in their spell, a youth lost in a better time. She couldn’t quite focus on me.

  ‘How very odd to meet you here, Master Galharrow,’ she slurred. ‘Are we going riding now?’ Sounded drunk. She laughed, tinkling, broken. I felt a lump lodge in my throat, a pain deep behind my heart.

  ‘You hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I don’t want to go riding, thank you. I think I will sleep now. Thank you, Master Galharrow,’ she said. She closed her eyes and did just that.

  The garrison had fought, but they hadn’t fought well. ‘Got slaughtered’ served to describe it better. There were bodies all over, some dead where they fell, others slumped up against walls where they’d dragged themselves to bleed out. Some didn’t have a mark on them, like their lives had just been snuffed out. Wasn’t just the drudge that Tanza’s magic had hit. I guess that’s the power you get when a Spinner empties a Range station’s worth of phos in one go. The girl had managed to summon up a force maybe even Crowfoot would have been impressed by. Or not.

  It wasn’t until the lower levels that I began to find the living. Gasping and mewling on the ground floor. Wounded fighters, two of them, both Dhojaran and both beyond help. One was trying to drag himself towards the door on his belly. At the rate he moved he might have made it when spring arrived. I wanted to know how many of my men were gracked before I decided how to kill them.

  Tnota was alive, and so was Wheedle, hiding out with half a dozen cooks and garrison soldiers who’d hidden in the kitchen and barred it good.

  ‘The Big Dog told me you’d make it,’ Tnota said when I let them out. He tapped his fingers to his lips then both eyes, glancing up towards the heavens.

  ‘Sure he did. We got a deal, him and me,’ I said. ‘Who’s not getting back up?’

  ‘Who is? Ida legged it the moment she saw the drudge. Cowardly bitch. Not sure if she got away,’ Tnota sighed. He’d come through pretty unscathed, but he’d probably been first into the pantry. Probably hadn’t even drawn his knife. ‘You see Nenn? I figured she went looking for you.’

  ‘Got shanked pretty bad. Dead soon, probably,’ I said, hardening my voice as much as possible. Bastard words shook anyway. Tnota had been with us longer than most. He knew how thick we were.

  ‘Go be with her,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort this shit here out.’

  ‘No,’ I said with a shake of my head. ‘Get that fancy carriage outside ready. We’re taking Nenn to Valengrad. Going to pay a trip to the Fixer.’ Tnota’s black face darkened. It wasn’t just his religion that said that what I proposed was wrong. He had common sense.

  ‘You don’t want to get in with that creature again,’ he said. ‘He don’t do favours.’

  ‘And Nenn doesn’t do dying,’ I said. ‘Get it ready. We’re leaving as soon as I get her down the stairs.’

  I would have been lying if I said that what I proposed didn’t scare me. I forced it back out of my mind, tried to keep my thoughts on the here and now. I didn’t want to be in with Saravor. He’d charge me all the coin I had and then three times more, and it still wouldn’t be all he wanted from me. But there are some things that, no matter how foolish, no matter how much you know you’re going to regret it, you choose to do anyway. Because it’s the only option you got.

  4

  Saw a lot of people come and go over half a lifetime on the Range. Some of them came and went, some of them came and died, and the ones that did neither weren’t often the kind you wanted around. First time you lose a friend, feels like you’ll never be the same again. Lose enough of them, you realise that you aren’t the same, but you’ve forgotten how to be whatever it was you were before. Sometimes when you read the obituary it’s some arsehole you cheated over the tile board and you’re glad he caught a shiv or got eaten by a dulcher, but sometimes – not often, but sometimes – it was someone you gave half a stale piss for, and you’d tear down the gates of the afterworld to get them back.

  I wanted Nenn back. She was foul-mouthed, hard-hearted and she cut throats like a pirate, but she was my pirate, and I’d be flayed through every level of hell before I’d let some gut wound sap the kill out of her. We stretchered her across to one of the gaudy carriages and the curses we endured would have blistered a priest’s soul. I was only worried when they faded away into gasps and grimaces.

  ‘You need to eat less
cock,’ I said, ‘you’re heavy as fuck.’ Nenn’s snarl told me she’d have made some savage retort if breathing didn’t hurt so bad.

  Tnota pulled the carriage door open. The carriage was massive, enough to seat eight people within its lavender-fragranced interior. Nenn screamed when we lifted her onto the seat. Not the most stable platform to die on but it was the best we had. We needed to go fast and the spring mounting on the carriage was better than any of the military wagons.

  ‘Three days up the Range to Valengrad,’ I said to Tnota. ‘We need to get moving. Find us a team of horses. Anyone tries to stop you …’ I thought of saying to refer them to me, but I had shit to do. No. ‘Shank them.’

  Tnota, despite everything that had happened, grinned. He couldn’t keep that smile off his face for long, not even if the Deep Kings themselves were stomping over the Range.

  Station Twelve was in shock. Surviving soldiers and weeping civilians stumbled about, unable to believe what they’d seen. Couldn’t blame them, wasn’t far from disbelief myself. The chain of command was in tatters. The commander’s remains were still hot to the touch, and nobody in the station had ever fulfilled any serious combat duties. For most of these poor kids it was the first time they’d seen a person killed. Sure, they’d all have slaughtered animals back home, and even the greenest of them had seen dead bodies. Dead babies, grandmas who didn’t make it through the winter, victims of the various summer pestilences that carry off your neighbours. Death was the way of the world. Still, there’s a difference between seeing an uncle pass from a wet cough, and seeing your mates get opened up by grey-skinned monsters born right out of the void.

  I crouched down beside one of the monsters lying dead in the courtyard. No two drudge are totally alike. They all started off as people, before the Kings change them and make them part of their plan. Not much human left in this one. Its face was noseless, smooth as marble, a mottled grey-rust colouring to the skin. The eyes were big, round, almost entirely pupil. The eyes of a thing born in the freezing dark. The drudge still wore the tattered clothes of the person it had been, stained with dirt, sweat and other fluids, but the armour it wore was a recent addition. Good steel, scavenged from some other defeated nation. I prised off its helm, looking for the mark. There’s always a mark. Had to strip it down to find it in the end, cutting away the straps of its breastplate revealed the clammy, flabby flesh of its arms and legs. Turned out this one had been a woman. Found the mark on the small of its back, a glyph far more complex than the lettering of our own script. We didn’t know how they made them, it was neither ink nor brand, but it served the same purpose and each of the Deep Kings marked their creatures in some way. What function it played in the magic, we didn’t know, but the mark told me who’d orchestrated this attack on us. This one bore Shavada’s glyph. None of the Kings has a good reputation amongst the people of Dortmark, but Shavada was probably the most despised. Philon was the most cunning tactician, Iddin the most powerful and Acradius commanded the greatest numbers, but Shavada won hands down for cruelty. I needed to pass the information to Crowfoot as soon as I was able.

  I traipsed back through the station. Blood on the walls, blood on the stairs. Drudge bodies lying slumped where they’d fallen. Empty-eyed soldiers dead on the floor. It all stank, the ripe tang of the drudge thicker than the smell of voided bowels. Back in the commander’s office I ignored the charcoal of softly smoking bones and checked out the communicator. No chance there. The Spinner had sucked all the juice from it and fused all the wires together in the process. I suspected that the battery coils they stored the phos in wouldn’t be in much better shape.

  ‘I have to get to Valengrad,’ Ezabeth said. Her voice was a scratchy whisper, muffled all the more by her mask. I knelt down beside her and went to remove it. She turned her head, made feeble attempts to swat my hand away. ‘Leave it,’ she said, pained. It was stupid, but I hadn’t the energy to argue.

  Crowfoot had sent me here to make sure that she survived. He’d known, somehow, that she was in danger. How had he known? Might as well try to guess the coming of the wind as ask how the Nameless learned their secrets. I’d nearly failed. Was arguable I’d not done much to help at all, and it’d cost me eight men, including a new kid. He’d been scared in the Misery. He should have been scared here too. We’d all forgotten that.

  ‘I’m going that way,’ I said. ‘Besides. I’m taking your ride.’

  She didn’t object. She’d passed out.

  I carried the unconscious noblewoman down to the courtyard. I’d lifted heavier shields. Tnota had worked efficiently. He and Wheedle were getting the horses into their traces, a half-dozen broad-chested beasts with white splashes across black noses. I laid Tanza down on the bench across from Nenn.

  ‘I have to ride with that witch?’ Nenn grunted. Her face was red, sweaty. Bad signs.

  ‘You never cared that Gleck was a Spinner,’ I said.

  ‘And he didn’t care that he was born with silver spilling out his arse. If she starts trying to lord it over me I’m kicking her out.’

  ‘It’s her carriage.’

  ‘It’s my death. I’m not doing curtsies while I die.’

  She looked half dead already. I guess she was. That she still had some fight in her gave me hope we’d make it to Saravor before her own body poisoned her. It was when Nenn got quiet you had to worry.

  Before we left I found the captain who’d refused to admit me to see the commander just a handful of hours ago. He’d survived with a few scratches, had managed to gather some of his soldiers and retaken the gate. By then the drudge had been inside, but it had been the right thing to do. Not as useless as I’d figured him after all. His two best men were already hurtling north to Station Thirteen to request reinforcements and to get a communicator to send a message to Valengrad. Range Marshal Venzer was going to shit chickens when he heard what had happened. Part of me wished I could report it to the Iron Goat myself. Maybe I’d send him a report when I made it to Valengrad. For now I’d leave it to the regulars and see to my own.

  The road was bumpy, the passengers shuddered in pain. I drove the carriage myself, barely rested. We followed the supply road north along the Range. Everything to the west was Dortmark, farmland, towns, forests, life. To the east, the empty red sands and cracked sky of the Misery. We sped along a frontier that divided different worlds.

  One of the horses died in the traces. We cut it free and pushed the remaining five harder. Ten miles from Valengrad another spewed froth, went down and broke the legs of a third. Powerful as they were, three alone couldn’t drag the carriage. A merchant train was passing so Tnota and I took their horses. They gave them over quietly and we didn’t have to kill anyone.

  I lashed the new horses hard. The city appeared, smoke and steam belching from the factories, the night illuminated by thousands of phos lights. Across the great citadel the word COURAGE blazed redly through the smog. East of the city, the poisoned desert pressed close to Valengrad’s vast walls, but for once, the Misery wasn’t the most terrible thing I’d have to deal with.

  5

  Every big city has a Spills. Stuff enough roofs within a set of walls and the crud and the crap will accumulate in one place. The poor, the lame, the foreign, the shunned, they all gather together to seek mutual succour from the successful, who hate them for stirring their compassion. The dangerous, the scarred, the cruel, the cunning, they sit atop the piles of shit and send out their orders like rat-kings, legions of lepers, whores, thieves and scammers milling about in filth-encrusted regiments. You know the places I’m talking about. The kind that need a mission, but even the missionaries think are beyond help. In Valengrad, the great fortress-city that anchored the centre line of the Range, we called that accumulation of damp, poorly built houses and damp, poorly mannered creatures the Spills. That’s where we took Nenn. Where else would you find a sorcerer who deals in flesh?

  The absurdly blue and gold
carriage drew a hundred eager eyes but common sense and the naked steel lying across my lap turned them aside. I drove the dying horses past the butchers’ yards and the stink of new blood into a row of tenement houses. Beggars and out of work mercenaries got out of the way quick enough. I wasn’t slowing our pace for risk of crushing the legs of some scabby white-leaf addict. Minutes were more valuable than gold dust just then. I knew the way to Saravor’s hole clear enough and the big town house loomed up between two blocks of tenements, as out of place in this rat-hole as our carriage. I brought the ride to a standstill and moments later my fist was banging against the front door.

  A grey-skinned child answered. I felt a sudden lurch in my chest and my hand was on my sword’s hilt before I took in that it wasn’t a Darling and certainly wasn’t a threat. Just a sickly, blind child. A bandage was wrapped above his nose, damp patches where eyes should have been. I hadn’t known Saravor had brought children into his schemes. For a moment, the revulsion I felt almost clouded my sanity and I thought about turning away. No, it was no good. There were only a handful of sorcerers in Valengrad and no school-trained Light Spinner could give me what I needed. I didn’t know if what Saravor did was illegal, but it wasn’t going to win him any grand awards at the Lennisgrad University. The child said nothing. Hard to see the purpose of a blind doorman. I told him Ryhalt Galharrow was there to see Saravor and he disappeared into the shadows as silently as if he were one of them.

  When I opened the carriage door, the last doubt I’d had about using Saravor’s dark services was washed away by the wave of foulness that billowed out. The Spills has some pretty vile odours leaking out of its alleyways, but that day Nenn’s gut wound routed them back into the gutters. It amazed me that Ezabeth hadn’t choked on it, cooped up in there. She’d slept nearly the whole journey, which had probably been a mercy.