The Riven Wyrde Saga boxed set

by Graham Austin-King

  The sound of a thousand hungry bees announced the fae’reeth before the swarm even came into sight. “Ready the catapults,” Rhenkin told Kennick. “Red flag.” The man had managed to retain control this far but so much depended upon this. The iron weapons were proving that they could shift the balance back from the huge advantage the fae held over human troops. The fae’reeth, however, were another matter.

  The swarm moved slowly, perhaps enjoying the panic they caused as they drifted over the ranks of the fae host and drew closer to the Anlish lines. The fires had lit the skies but Rhenkin couldn’t even guess at their numbers. It was as the scouts had said, they filled the skies. They passed over the Anlish ranks and hung, a mere fifty feet above the heads of those that fought and died below them, and then on some silent signal the cloud disintegrated and the fae’reeth fell upon the hapless Anlish like wolves upon sheep.

  “Sir?” Kennick said, plucking at Rhenkin’s sleeve. The Marshal ignored him, watching the scene as the diminutive creatures howled through the foremost elements of his army. They passed like a black wind, leaving nothing but the dead and screaming in their wake.

  “Sir!” Kennick said, with more urgency.

  Rhenkin nodded to himself slowly. “Now!” he roared.

  The signal passed through the army, long red flags that fluttered in the breeze signalled others in a relay until the message reached the catapults. The contraptions rocked forward against the thick ropes staking them down as they hurled their payloads skyward. Massive balls of cloth shot towards the fae’reeth, unfurling as they flew, and releasing a smoke-like substance that drifted gently downward like a dark cloud.

  The fae’reeth tore through the Anlish ranks causing death and chaos. Where they passed order simply ceased to exist and the fae and satyr took full advantage of this, carving through entire companies in moments.

  “Archers,” called Rhenkin, pointing.

  The gesture prompted a sharp look from Kennick. “Our men, sir?”

  “Are already dead, Kennick,” Rhenkin told him. “Let’s take some of the satyr with them.”

  Kennick shook himself and gave the order.

  The iron filings misted down, hanging in the air just long enough for the fae’reeth to enter the cloud. The result was shocking. Tens of thousands of blue sparks erupted above the battlefield as iron found wings or flesh and the tiny creatures burst into flames. The fae host faltered and fell back and then, as the Anlish began to press forward, they vanished.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The very ground was scorched. What had he really expected? Devin spat into the long grass and looked back to Halther. The scout nodded at him, though Devin had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He was already looking back to the remains of the village.

  Widdengate was a charred ruin. Most of the buildings were nothing more than scorched sections of earth but here and there blackened beams thrust up from the tumbled stones and reached, claw-like, to scratch at the sky.

  Against all odds a single house seemed completely untouched in the middle of the wreckage. Devin frowned at it, trying to remember who had lived there, but with the village burned around it he couldn’t place the building and the failure grated at him.

  “Shouldn’t stand on a hill like that, lad,” Halther told him. “Makes you too easy to spot.” He reached up to touch at his hair, nodding at him.

  Devin nodded, swearing at himself silently at the rebuke. He knew better than that. “That was my home,” he told the man in a low voice, reaching for his hood to cover his bone-white hair.

  Halther glanced down at the village and looked back to him with an unreadable expression. “Time to move,” he told him. “I’ll lead off.”

  Devin followed the scout, hunched down into a crouching walk as they made their way down the hillside and towards the trees where the others waited.

  “No sign of anything,” Halther announced as they drew closer. “Doesn’t look like anyone or anything has been here in months.”

  Riddal nodded, still looking out at the remains. “Judging by the map your home was a good bit north of the road anyway,” he told Obair. “It’ll take longer but I’m not daft enough to walk the road in Bjornmen territory.”

  “They are supposed to be working with us, you know?” The druid replied with a glance back at Tristan.

  Riddal snorted and curled his lip. “Them as sit at the top might be. Your men on the line though? That’s another matter. You argue your point all you like, crossbow bolts don’t tend to listen too well in my experience.”

  It was hard to argue with that and Obair let it go. Riddal and the scouts led them off, north of the village itself, and into the woods.

  Devin walked in silence, though any conversation was a hissed whisper anyway. Obair and Miriam walked together as usual, heads leaning close as they spoke. Devin had avoided speaking to anyone much as they had approached the village. Every clearing and tree stump seemed to be familiar, each telling a tale of the childhood he’d spent here. Having Miriam with him made his memories seem surreal.

  The boy who’d fled into the trees with his mother as they hid from bandits seemed a very different person to the one who’d grown up in the village. Miriam’s presence forced him to admit that they were one and the same and that was not something he could cope with especially well. He’d avoided her mostly, keeping to Ylsriss and Joran or ranging ahead with the scouts.

  For her part she’d left him mostly alone. There had been the occasional time when he’d felt her gaze on him and looked up to find her watching him with a strange look in her eyes, a mix of sorrow and guilt.

  “Do you want to speak of it?” the voice was hushed but full of concern.

  Devin turned to see Ylsriss watching him. He shrugged, “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “I never really knew my mother,” Ylsriss said then. “Sickness took her while I was too young to understand it.”

  Devin winced. “I’m sorry. Some kind of fever?”

  “Not a sickness here,” she said, touching her chest. “A sickness of the thoughts.” She grimaced, touched her forehead. “I don’t have the words.”

  “Of the mind?” he guessed.

  “Yes, good. The mind.” She shook her head, falling silent for a moment. “Your mother was taken from you? By the fae?”

  Devin nodded but she was already speaking again.

  “My mother was taken, too, by this sickness.” She looked away from him, speaking more to the woods around them than to him. “It began as a small thing. She would forget things. Names, places… you understand? Soon, though, she was forgetting to feed us or getting lost. Then one day she left us, my small brother and me, to fetch food from the markets. She never came back. I was five.”

  Devin looked at her. “What happened?”

  “To her?” she shrugged. “I do not know. There are many things in the darker places of Hesk that can take a life. I cared for Egham as best I could but he was not a strong child. The winter took him from me.”

  He closed his eyes in a grimace. The message was clear enough. “You think I’m being foolish?”

  She looked at him, smiling sadly. “I think the fae have taken enough lives. Your mother has been given back to you, do not waste that gift.”

  “I don’t know her, it's—”

  “It is not easy for you?” she asked and he nodded gratefully.

  Her eyes hardened. “Then try harder.”

  He looked ahead to where Miriam picked her way through the trees.

  “Go, foolish boy!” Ylsriss pushed at him and watched him leave.

  “You don’t change, you know?” Gavin told her.

  She looked back at him. “How do you mean?”

  He smiled. “Even after all this time you’re still the little mother of Hesk looking after the lost ones. You probably couldn’t stop if you tried”

  She looked back to Devin as he approached his mother, watching as she smiled at him. “Shut up, Gavin.”

  *** />
  Water still dripped from the trees, though the rain seemed to have stopped for now. The sun peered warily through the clouds, shining from a dozen directions at once as the wet leaves reflected the light.

  Riddal’s hand shot up, clenched into a fist, signalling them for silence. Devin froze, fingering the arrow he held ready as he frowned at the scout. It began as a feeling, but there was nothing he could see or hear. The woods were as still as they had been all day, silent without even a breath of a breeze. The quiet was odd but he’d almost grown accustomed to it. Gradually he became aware of it though, the prickling sensation of being watched. He peered ahead of them, scanning over the trees and bushes, trying not to let his vision settle on anything. A flash of amber caught him but, by then, it was too late.

  The arrow slammed into Riddal and tore its way through his chest, bursting free in a shower of gore as it slammed into a tree with more force than any shaft had a right to. The scout toppled, sinking to his knees without a sound and collapsing to the dirt as blood rushed out to embrace the dried leaves under him.

  Ylsriss was the first to move, grabbing Miriam and dragging her down behind the cover of a stand of birch. The others were quick to follow her lead, seeking shelter from something unseen that had killed without uttering a sound.

  The laughter carried through the trees easily, cutting the silence to tatters. Devin looked to Halther, the closest of the scouts he could put a name to. He reaching for his quiver from where he lay in the dirt he pulled the ironhead free, making sure the scout saw the red marking on the shaft.

  The laughter carried again, a childlike sound this time, and from another direction. An arrow flew from one of the scouts and crashed into the bushes as he swore.

  “Up, and move,” called Halther. “We sit here we’re dead.”

  Devin got a foot under himself and surged forward, passing the scout and racing in the direction the arrow that had killed Riddal had come from.

  “Shit! Not that way, lad,” Halther called in a tight whisper. It was far too late and Devin was past him, darting around the edges of a holly bush as he ran. He didn’t look back but could hear the others following as he ran. The heavy footsteps of the large Bjornman, Tristan, crunching after him. The fae would have moved. Only a fool would have staying in the same place after a kill like that. Devin hoped fervently that the fae who’d fired on them was no fool.

  The sound of the others following behind was thunderous and Devin sank down behind the torn stump of a tree, setting arrow to string and waiting. Halther reached him in moments but saw the plan for what it was and kept going. The others passed him, Obair and Ylsriss giving him worried looks as they fled. Miriam gave only a small smile and what looked like an approving nod as Joran and Tristan helped her along. They had no chance of running. Even if it had been a Bjornman that killed Riddal they would have not been able to outdistance them. Miriam and Obair were simply not able to move at any speed. Against a fae they may as well have stayed put.

  Devin looked back along the path he’d carved into the woods. He held the ironhead in place but without a full draw on the bow, that would just lead to aching muscles and missed chances. The woods were silent again with not a breath of breeze and only the sound of his companion’s passage behind him. The leaves above him rustled in the breeze and he took slow and deliberate breaths as he sought to slow his racing heartbeat. Satyr were one thing but a true fae was something quite different. Ambushing it was tantamount to suicide but then, that was the idea.

  The leaves rustled again and in a moment Devin realised his mistake. He was still thinking like a human. A man hunting quarry would only ever pass over the ground a fae though, with all its grace and power, wouldn’t know that restriction.

  He lifted his head slowly. Nothing draws the eyes so much as movement. The leaves danced gently in the branches ahead of him, sending shafts of sunlight down to the forest floor. He let his eyes wander slowly, scanning the resting canopy. In a flash he understood there was no breeze, and the arrow left his bow barely a second after his eyes shot back to the dancing leaves.

  Blue light exploded in the canopy and the fae trailed flames down as it fell screaming to the dirt. The arrow had taken the creature in the thigh and it clawed at the shaft in a panic, trying to tear it free as the flames spread. The shaft was buried deep though, and in moments the fire consumed it, leaving only a blackened husk that collapsed in upon itself like a burnt out building.

  Devin crouched down behind the stump, listening as his legs shook. If there were others he would be lucky to live through the next few minutes. Arrogance had killed the fae as much as Devin’s arrow. It had probably never even occurred to it that one of them might lay in wait as the others fled. They were humans, quarry, manlings. They weren’t supposed to think like this. The next fae, or satyr, wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  He waited until his legs gave up their shaking and peered out around the stump again. The body of the fae had all but vanished, ashes turning to dust and sinking into the leaves. The faint sound of birdsong drifted through the trees and Devin stood with a sigh, leaning gently on his bow as he closed his eyes.

  The others had stopped in a dry stream bed, tucked in under a mass of roots that reached down from a tree growing on the bank. Devin walked openly, being sure to step into the spaces between the trees so as to be seen. Being shot by his own companions was not something he had in mind.

  “Devin!” Ylsriss called out as he approached.

  Obair clambered out to meet him, grasping his arm as the others clustered around. “I thought we’d lost you, boy,” the old man told him.

  “I’m fine, Obair.”

  “You’re a damned fool is what you are!” His lips were pinched and his eyes flashed as he glared at him.

  Devin blinked. “What?”

  “Why do you think Rhenkin sent men with us?” the druid demanded. “It’s because we needed protection. They’re here to do the fighting, and the dying if need be, because we are too valuable to risk.” He glanced over at the scouts. “Better one, or even all of them, fall than you. You are the only one of us who has an inkling of how to work the stones. How dare you put yourself in danger like that? Don’t you ever do something so stupid again!”

  Devin gaped. The old man was genuinely furious. He stepped back, pulling his arm from where Obair gripped it, his fingers biting painfully into his flesh.

  “He’s right, lad,” Halther told him in a soft voice. “Yours was a good plan and I’m guessing it worked but that’s what the boys and I are here for. We’re only a few hours from this clearing of yours. Leave it to us.”

  Devin looked from face to face but the same admonishment was clear in their eyes. He shook his head in frustration.

  ***

  Rhenkin pulled the tent flap aside as he looked up at the sky. How could it be this close to dusk again? The days had blurred for a time as they’d pushed eastwards but the full moon would return this night and inwardly he wondered if they would be ready.

  “Nerves, Rhenkin?” Salisbourne asked from the camp table with a tight grin. His voice was pitched low enough not to carry but Rhenkin looked around anyway before he spoke.

  “Any man who claims not to feel nerves before a battle is a liar,” Rhenkin said.

  The smile faded from the earl’s face. “That’s true enough. To be honest you look more worried than nervous.”

  “Damn,” Rhenkin said, dropping the flap and going back to the table, resting his hand on the back of the chair. “I thought I was hiding it better than that.”

  Salisbourne snorted a laugh. “I’ve spent too many years in politics not to see things like that, Lord High Marshal.”

  Rhenkin grimaced. “Let’s dispense with all that shall we? It’s a hell of a mouthful and I’m not about to stumble through ‘my lord’ every time I need to speak to you.”

  Salisbourne pushed his way to his feet. “Quite right. I don’t hold with titles on a battlefield anyway. Rank is good and well but ti
tles stick in my mouth.”

  Rhenkin gave the man a look and managed a polite smile.

  “What are you worried about, Rhenkin? Your plan seems as sound as any other.”

  “It’s not so much a worry as it is this not knowing,” Rhenkin admitted. “I feel blind here. Any other enemy and I’d have scout reports, force estimates, a march path. We don’t have any of those things with these damned fae. All we know is that they can return to Haven tonight but where?” He shrugged and walked across the tent to refill his cup. “For all we know,” he said, speaking back over his shoulder, “the blasted creatures might pass us by completely and head straight for Celstwin or Savarel.”

  Salisbourne grunted, reaching inside his jacket. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, Rhenkin, it’s that there’s not much point in worry. Trouble will find you if it comes looking you don’t need to show it the way with worry.” He worked the stopper open on the hip-flask, taking a sip and tossing a wink at Rhenkin. “You should have a nip or two of this. Water’s not going to help you.”

  Rhenkin nodded, ignoring the whiskey. “I’d give a lot to know where those damned Bjornmen are too. This will be short and ugly if they don’t pull their weight.”

  “You’re expecting a major battle then?” Salisbourne asked.

  Rhenkin sighed. “The hell with it,” he said, reaching for the flask and taking a sip. “Not bad, not bad at all.” He sniffed, scratching at one cheek. “Honestly, Salisbourne? I expect them to hit us with everything they can muster. We had one brief encounter with them and they fled. The arrogance of these creatures is endless. We’re the runt that's just kicked the street tough in the shins and slammed the door in his face. As soon as they can get through from wherever hell they come from I expect them to come at us in a giant storm of shit and hate.”

  “You paint a pretty picture, Rhenkin,” Salisbourne joked but his face was solemn.