The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  Elsa didn’t have the energy to answer. She lay behind the broken altar, sword still in hand, but the fight was gone from her. The mists slowly cleared, rotating around the doma like water draining into a hole. As the walls resolved and Ian’s shadowy form appeared near the door, Elsa realized it wasn’t a metaphor at all.

  The fog was draining from the room, spinning faster and faster, disappearing into the cracked altar. The shaman didn’t seem to notice, but the gheist clasped to his shoulders was caught in the current, as well.

  The collapse was sudden. The gheist’s fists calved, undercut and drawn away from the main body. Shards of bright ice flew into the altar, and then the very essence of the creature began to dissolve. The shaman realized his grip was failing, but half a breath too late. Power flared through his dagger, veins of light that traveled up his arms and wrapped his skull as he pushed everything into maintaining his control, but it was hopeless.

  The gheist fell apart in shrieking horror, its essence sucked into the altar. Or more precisely, to what lay inside the altar. As Elsa and Ian and the stunned shaman watched, a dark shape unfolded from the broken platform, tar-black arms and teeth like hooked daggers rising up, its body shifting like a fountain of pitch. It looked around with an eyeless face, shrieked once, then fled down the aisle and out into the storm.

  “Those weren’t wards at all,” Elsa whispered. “It was a prison.”

  The shaman, robbed of his might, dropped unceremoniously to the floor, falling to one knee and crouching. Once the night-black spirit scampered past, he wasn’t far behind.

  “Ian!” Elsa shouted.

  “I have it,” Ian said, stepping smoothly from beside the door. He held a massive candlestick in both hands. “Best you stopped there.”

  The shaman ignored him, running faster, looking to dodge past. Ian shrugged, wound up and took a hard swing at the pagan’s head.

  A blade came from nowhere and blocked him. Sparks flew, and the shaman ducked past and disappeared into the courtyard. A figure, the blocking sword in his hand, stepped out of the shadows of the doorway and watched the fleeing man.

  Ian turned on this new threat, ready to strike again. The figure threw his hood back. Ian’s face went pale, first in horror, then anger.

  The man’s face was a horror show. It looked like a clean porcelain mask that had been broken, then fitted to a wax head that then melted, pulling the pieces of the mask apart like a puzzle being undone. The flesh beneath was raw and red, and his face shifted strangely as he talked.

  “Peace, Blakley,” he said. “We are on the same path, you and I.”

  “We thought Sacombre killed you at the Fen Gate!”

  “Perhaps he did. This feels like I always thought dying would.” The man turned to watch as the shaman reached the gate. The snows picked up, and the figure disappeared from sight.

  “Why did you do that?” Elsa said. She stumbled toward the door, trying to get a better look at the man with the sword. “Why did you let him go?”

  “If you catch him, it will make following him incredibly difficult,” Sir Volent said. The former knight marshal of Halverdt glanced at them, smiling. The gesture turned his face into a pinwheel of fractured flesh. “And my hunt is not yet finished. Not by a long shift.”

  * * *

  Aedan crawled through the snow. There was blood in his mouth, and the streaks of blackened flesh that ran up his forearms were starting to throb painfully.

  Breaking through the wards at Harthal and then binding the gheist of the blizzard had cost him dearly, but it had been worth it. Hunting down the vow knight who was blood-bonded to the Adair bitch, then defeating her in combat… he had done his duty to the voidfather. Aedan had won.

  And then he had lost, and he was still unsure what had happened.

  Finding the blizzard gheist had been a gift. Some dark spirit moved at the center of that storm. It had taken all of his will to bind it, and Aedan’s control of the god had been light, but still he thought he would be able to hold the spirit together. When the altar broke, though, Aedan sensed a hunger like nothing he had ever known, an endless void that took and took and would never be full. The thing hidden in the altar had fed off Aedan’s bound god and then, replenished, had fled.

  Aedan was lucky to escape. He didn’t know the man who had saved him, couldn’t even make sense of the brief glimpse he had gotten of his face, but he hoped to thank him someday. Now that he was free, Aedan had to return to the conclave and report his failure. If he lived that long.

  He dragged himself to the crest of a hill and looked back down on Harthal. The storm was breaking. Whatever dark spirit had driven the blizzard was gone. There would be pursuit, as soon as the vow knight recovered. The earl of that damned place might even send out his own men. Aedan didn’t understand what had happened there, why such a lonely place had been warded so strongly, but it didn’t matter.

  Aedan looked down at his hands. His flesh was cracked, blood seeping from knuckles and palms, the ache going down to his bones. There were other wounds, deeper and more complicated, suffered when the gheist was taken from him. This must be how Gwen felt—the emptiness, the pain, as though something stitched into his bones had been yanked free. He tried to stand and failed. He lay there for a long time, staring up at the rapidly clearing sky.

  “Too far to go, and I’ll never get there like this,” he muttered to himself. “The voidfather will have to wait.” Blood filled Aedan’s mouth again, and he coughed it out. Bright red against the snow. Aedan tried to laugh, but the pain was too much. “Ah, Fianna. To see your eyes again. I have carried this as far as I can.”

  “Perhaps I can carry it for you. With you.” The voice came from the shadows, from beneath a holly shrub that hadn’t yet bloomed. The sound was silk. Aedan propped himself up on one arm and squinted.

  The shadows gathered, pouring out onto the snow like ink. Talons clicked against ice, and head, smooth and black, only a mouth that stretched and stretched, its teeth endless. The thing that had broken free from the altar.

  “You are of the faithful, yes?” the gheist whispered. “Not one of those calendar priests. I know the taste of you.” Black tendrils slid over Aedan’s head, pressing into his mind. He lay there, agape. “Yes, good. An emptiness, and you know of the iron girl. You even… you hate her. Very good.”

  “What are you?” Aedan asked. He tried to feel out the edges of the gheist, but his thoughts were turned away. He had never known a deeper spirit.

  “I am the quiet,” the gheist said. “The ending. The darkness at the end of every life, a void never to be filled. Let me carry your burden. Let me take you down the road you wish. To Fianna, yes? And the voidfather.”

  “Yes,” Aedan said. His life was already draining out of him. Why not carry his death with him, as well. “Yes.”

  The gheist slithered forward, inky and smooth. The binding was quick, like a shadow falling across a field, like the sun falling into night.

  3

  DEMON NIGHTS

  42

  MARTIN WALKED NUMBLY through the wreckage of LaGaere’s camp. The dead were twisted, their bodies torn open, the wounds smooth and bloodless. The ground was cracked, the tall grasses of the moors burned into ash that drifted in the air. Sacombre lay at Lucas’s feet. The high inquisitor was bleeding from the mouth.

  The witch would come no closer. Fianna stopped at the edge, away from the charred ground and burned grass. She wouldn’t even look at the dead.

  “What happened?” Martin asked. Lucas spared him only a glance before returning his attention to Sacombre’s limp form.

  “He killed them,” the frair replied. “He retains more power than I knew. We will have to keep him bound from this moment forth.”

  “Killed them? The men who were helping him escape?” Martin turned in a slow circle at the camp’s center, taking in the destruction. “But why?”

  “Because he’s a twisted bastard,” Lucas hissed. The priest drew a length of graying rope f
rom his bag and trussed the high inquisitor’s hands. Black iron icons of the church of Cinder jangled quietly from the bonds. He whispered to them, and runes of violet light flashed in the air. Sacombre moaned. “Help me get him to his feet.”

  Martin shook himself out of his stupor and moved to Lucas’s side. They heaved the old man to his feet. He was thin and light, like a bundle of sticks wrapped in mud, but even so Lucas swayed on his feet with the effort, screwing his eyes shut. Martin touched his elbow, and the priest flinched away. Sacombre slumped between them.

  “Are you alright, frair?” Martin asked. Lucas waved a hand, but didn’t open his eyes. Martin waved to the witch urgently. She shook her head, but when he signaled again, she came reluctantly. “Take the high inquisitor.”

  “The bonds…” she whispered. “They burn.”

  “Then don’t touch the bonds,” he hissed. The witch took Sacombre by the shoulders, wincing. Martin turned back to Lucas, gripped his elbow, and led him away from the carnage. “You must rest. We’ll need to…” he looked around the camp. The horses were dead, along with the rest of LaGaere’s force. “None of us will be riding.”

  “No, Sacombre saw to that. He has forced our hand.” Lucas sat heavily in the grass, nearly pulling Martin down with him. “I would rather continue on foot, but we will have to make our way to Gallowsport.”

  Fianna followed closely, Sacombre on her shoulder. When they reached Lucas’s side, she grunted and rolled the high inquisitor to the ground. He fell like a bag of rocks. The impact seemed to wake him, because his red-rimmed eyes snapped open in shock. Fianna sat down beside him, leaving only the young knight on his feet.

  “If LaGaere meant to betray us, he may have allies in the city,” Martin said. “The earl of the Black Isle was always loyal to the inquisition.”

  “Cinderfell has given him enough business over the years,” Lucas said. “I am still a priest of Cinder. Perhaps his loyalty will extend to me.”

  “Over the high inquisitor? I would not lay a wager on that.”

  “The disgraced high inquisitor, traveling to Heartsbridge to be judged,” Lucas corrected him. “Don’t forget that we’re in the right, here. We are bound to Cinder’s justice, not Sacombre.”

  “In the right,” Fianna said quietly. “The priests of Cinder are always so sure they are in the right. It allows them to…” she paused, glancing toward the twisted bodies of LaGaere and his men. “It allows them to justify anything.”

  “Sacombre was certainly willing to bend the truth for his purposes,” Lucas agreed. The witch looked at him with fear in her eyes.

  “And what of you, Frair?” she asked. “Would you do the same?”

  “This was done by Sacombre’s hands,” Lucas said sharply. “He and I are entirely different.” As he spoke, Martin looked between the frair and the witch uncertainly. A heavy silence hung over the trio. Finally, Fianna shook her head.

  “As you say,” Fianna relented. “His heart is certainly dark enough.”

  “LaGaere didn’t feel that way,” Martin said uncomfortably.

  “No,” Lucas agreed, “and look at the cost he paid.”

  The young man was silent for a minute. He looked from Lucas to the crowded dead. “Yes,” he said. “The price of heresy.”

  Fianna snorted behind them, drawing Martin’s eye. She shook her head.

  “I will meet a fine reception at the Black Isle,” Fianna said, “even as your prisoner. The earl of that place only knows one path for heretics.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lucas replied. “We have no other choice. Neither Sacombre nor I are in any shape to walk to Heartsbridge. Gallowsport is our only choice.”

  “You could always leave us behind, Martin Roard,” Sacombre mumbled. The high inquisitor’s voice was dry and his lips cracked, but there was iron in his words. “Go for help. I’m sure the son of Stormwatch would be welcomed in the earl’s court.”

  “No, we all go,” Martin said. “I don’t trust you alone with the frair.”

  “Afraid he might kill me, and escape the court’s justice?” Sacombre said wryly. “Or afraid that I might slip my bonds and disappear into the night.”

  “Both,” Martin said, and Lucas laughed weakly.

  “The boy accounts my taste for vengeance too highly,” he said. “We will rest here tonight, and continue in the morning. On foot, Gallowsport is days away, and we haven’t enough food to tarry.”

  “Then we make for Noosehall,” Martin said. He squinted nervously at the circle of dead Suhdrin knights not twenty feet away. He didn’t fancy the idea of spending the night there, but he also didn’t think the two priests of Cinder could go any further without some rest.

  So he pushed some grass down into a bed, then curled up. He thought the others had already drifted off until the high inquisitor spoke.

  “Die here, die on the road, or die in Heartsbridge,” Sacombre said. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  No one said anything else. There was no talk of watches. All four of them slept where they lay, Sacombre still in his bonds, Lucas leaning against his staff, Fianna between them. Only Martin kept himself a little bit apart.

  In the dead camp, the flames of the campfire flickered until their fuel was gone, then ghosted away into embers and ash. Morning was far away.

  * * *

  The Gallowmoors stretched out before them in soft hills and jagged copses, the lone darkwood pines that gave the region its name towering over the horizon. The winds that swept through the plains and whipped the grasses in swirling waves carried a hint of the sea, though it would be days before they caught sight of the waters of Felling Bay.

  Forming a line through the grass, they fell into a rhythm— march and rest, march and eat, march and sleep. Martin led, with Fianna behind him and Sacombre following her. The two prisoners were bound together by Lucas’s chiming rope of icons. The frair took up the rear of their column, trailing farther and farther behind with each step. Martin was forced to stop frequently to let the man catch up, tarrying longer among the grasses than he liked, in order to let the man rest.

  The sun burned their skin and left their lips cracked and dry. Their food lasted a day, though it was stretched as far as they could manage. Their water lasted longer, but it tasted of silt, leaving a gray coating on their tongues and in their throats. They slept where they fell.

  The sun woke them, and the pain in their backs.

  On the third day, when their journey had stretched longer than Martin expected, Lucas motioned for his attention and led him to the top of one of the gentle ridges that folded through the moors. The old man looked withered.

  “Frair,” Martin said carefully as they crested the ridge. They stopped and turned to look down at the two prisoners sitting glumly below. “Is it safe to leave them alone?”

  “We are past considering what is safe, and what is wise,” Lucas said. His voice was crumbling around the edges. “We must discuss what is to come.”

  “When we get to Gallowsport?” Martin said. “I’m beginning to doubt that we will ever arrive.”

  “Yes. We have slowed.” Lucas sighed. “I have slowed. I am accustomed to having a knight of the vow at my side, to guard my dreams while I slept. The duty is costing me more than I expected.”

  “Have I not served as a worthy guard, my frair?”

  “You have done as well as you are able,” Lucas said, waving off the boy’s concern. “This is my burden, son. Sacombre’s chains weigh heavy on my mind. I should not have mentioned it. We will get to Gallowsport soon. A day, two at most.”

  “Longer than two days, and we will run out of more than water,” Martin said.

  “That will be a kind of justice for the high inquisitor, I suppose. Starvation in the wilds, and his bones cooked to crack in the sun. Summer has its own judgment.” Lucas’s mind seemed to wander, his eyes losing focus for several moments while the wind beat against the two men.

  He shook himself back to alertness. “It will not come to that,”
he said. “I will not let it. We will make Gallowsport, and then our true troubles will begin.”

  “Dying of starvation isn’t trouble enough?”

  “Far from it,” Lucas answered seriously. “Know that we are alone, young Stormwatch. Now, and in the city. We don’t know what allies Sacombre has among the lords, or even in the church.” His voice gathered strength as he talked. “The inquisition is knitted into the fabric of Gallowsport, as much as it is in Heartsbridge and Cinderfell. We depend on the Black Isle to carry out certain sentences, and they depend on us for their trade. There is no question Sacombre has friends there.”

  “The question is whether those friends would commit heresy in his name,” Martin said.

  “Heresy is a slippery concept,” Lucas said. “We can argue about what is necessary and true, but the gods do not always share their will with their servants. Sometimes faith is justification enough. Other times not.” The frair sat down heavily again, as though considering what was to come had at first strengthened him, and then stolen that same strength. Martin stepped forward to offer the frair his hand, but Lucas shrugged him off. “Whatever Sacombre’s allies do, they will believe they are doing the right thing. That’s what makes them dangerous.”

  “You’re worried someone will come for him? I thought we would be able to reach out to the church once we were in Gallowsport. Get an escort, at least, if not another vow knight to see us safely to Heartsbridge.”

  “The vows are spread throughout Tenumbra, in preparation for winter’s season. The gheists have come early this year, and hard. As for my brothers of the inquisition,” Lucas shrugged. “I would have trusted the likes of Frair Allaister with my life, if I had not met him in battle in the Fen. After LaGaere’s betrayal, I don’t even feel comfortable seeking help among the lords of Suhdra. Strange times, Stormwatch. Strange and dangerous times.”

  “So what will we do? There’s no way we pass unseen through the port. Sacombre is known—both his station and his treachery—and the witch…” Martin sighed, nodding down at the prisoners. Fianna was still in her forest clothes, rough leather and tribal icons, but even in Suhdrin clothes she would have stood out. “There will be no disguising what she is. Especially bound in an inquisitor’s chains.”