The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  “I see the son of hounds has found me,” the voidfather whispered. His voice carried through the doma like smoke, quiet but everywhere. “Very well. Let’s see what my daughter taught you.”

  “Daughter? How would I know your offspring, pagan?”

  “Oh? She never mentioned it, I suppose.” Folam nodded thoughtfully. “The witch Fianna is my blood, Ian of hounds. She was sent to you. I understand she made quite an impression, and you certainly seem to have been an able student.”

  The Suhdrins shifted nervously, turning some part of their attention to Ian. Bruler looked at him with a hint of accusation in his expression.

  “I need nothing of the pagan craft to end you, Folam,” Ian said, shaking free of the confusion that had gripped him. He motioned to Bruler, and the men spread out behind him, lining the wall. “You made a mistake in attacking Houndhallow.”

  “I never attacked you, Ian. Even now, as you stand before me with blade bared and Suhdrin dogs at your side, I hold back.” The pagan guards shifted uneasily, like wolves on the leash, impatient to blood their jaws—but they came no closer. “My daughter led you safely through the Fen, and saved your mother when none other could. If I wanted you dead, you would have ended in the river, given to the water.”

  “Is that why you lay siege to Houndhallow? I had nothing to do with her arrest.”

  “Think who your allies are, Ian of hounds,” Folam said. “Think more on what the church has asked of you, and the trouble it has brought.”

  “I’m not here to match words with you,” Ian snapped. “Release your god, or yield to me. Do not make me take your surrender in blood.”

  “I have surrendered more than blood to this struggle,” Folam said. “I will not yield now.”

  “You heard the man,” Bruler muttered. With hardly a wasted move, he slid forward and attacked the nearest pagan guard. Despite the obvious threat, the man seemed shocked at the assault, and barely got his spear up in time. The wrapped haft of the weapon absorbed Bruler’s blade. The counterstrike came quickly.

  For a breath, Bruler and the pagan were the only figures moving, locked in a desperate battle of swing and riposte, the bright blade of Bruler’s sword cutting hunks out of the leather, blocking the wicked strokes of the spear’s head, both weapons ringing off stone as their masters danced around, whistling through the air and filling the doma with their song.

  “Tenumbra!” Ian shouted, and he leapt into the fray. The rest of his followers were a half step behind. They joined with the pagan guards in a clash of steel and shouted battle cries.

  Young Knox fell quickly, staggering back to the far wall, only to be saved at the last second by one of the Suhdrin knights. Ian found himself across from a pagan girl barely old enough to carry the spear. The sides of her head were shaved, and the top bound in narrow plaits. She wore no ink on her face, but had smeared her eyes in a band of ash that made her look feral. She sidestepped his best attacks, pricking his chest with light strikes from her spear that failed to pierce the steel of his chain. They knocked the wind from him, though, and bruised his ribs, as well as his pride.

  She smiled at him fiercely as they danced.

  “Not as fast with your blade as you are with you tongue, hound?” the girl spat. “A pity. Brother Aedan failed to kill your vow knight, but I will not fail to kill you.”

  “I have faced gheists and gods,” Ian said. “I won’t fall under a child’s hand.” The girl grimaced, but answered with renewed fury. Ian was hard pressed to defend himself. He was about to retreat when Bruler, his sword already bloodied, stepped behind the girl and put the flat of his blade across the back of her head. She stumbled away, rolling behind her brothers before Ian could strike a fatal blow.

  “This is no time for flirting,” Bruler growled. “Kill them or kiss them, but not both.”

  “You could have killed her,” Ian said.

  “Aye,” he said. “That I could have.”

  Then they were pressed again, pagans swirling around them like the sparks that still floated up from Folam’s spear. The two men stood back to back, defending themselves from the onslaught. Slowly they worked their way to the wall, joining half their number in defense of the door.

  “Weren’t there more of us than them?” Bruler asked. Knox had rejoined the fight, though the boy’s face was pale and blood spotted his shirt. “They fight like bears, half starved from their winter’s sleep, and angry.”

  “Gods bless they don’t raise a gheist against us,” Knox said.

  “I don’t think they can. By Gwen’s word, the power of the vow and the inquisition are useless against Folam Voidfather. We must meet him with steel. Perhaps the other pagans are just as limited,” Ian said. He paused as a group of opponents fought their way closer to the door, as though they meant to break out, but just as the door was in their reach, the black-garbed guards fell back to the voidfather’s side.

  Bruler snorted in frustration.

  “We take the word of one pagan heretic, to aid us in our battle against another pagan heretic,” he said. “Gods help us if the inquisition tries to untangle this one. We’re probably being played by both sides.”

  “I do the will of the gods,” Ian said, though even he was unsure of which gods he meant, or how he was supposed to know their will. “They keep falling back. Why?”

  “They mean to hold us here,” Knox said. “Distracted.”

  “Distracted from what?” Bruler wondered. He glanced at the door, but immediately had to turn his attention to a new assault. Moments passed—moments spent dodging spears and dancing across the smooth stone floor of the doma. When that attack had been repulsed, he looked again to the door.

  “There’s something outside,” he said.

  Before Ian or the others could react to Bruler’s words, the stained windows of the doma shattered, and pagans poured through the gaps. The door buckled and flew open. Beyond the walls, the night-shrouded forest was filled with torches.

  “Forward!” Ian shouted. “We’re not here to live! We’re here to fight!”

  “We’ve got to get to their leader,” Bruler responded. “For Tenumbra!”

  Ian led the charge, and his men formed into a narrow spear behind him. They punched through the pagan defenses, pushing past the ring of spears that protected the voidfather, overwhelming them just as the pagans thought the battle won. It was a suicidal effort, abandoning any hope of retreat in their press to strike.

  His sword crashed through spear haft and chain, spattering blood and splinters in his path as he charged forward. Yet the closer to the center of the room he got, the more the sickness returned, until the floor was pitching under his feet and the air hung fetid with sickness.

  Like a sailor in a storm, Ian stumbled forward, keeping his feet moving even as the world spun around him. Even the pagans seemed caught in the illness, standing stunned as Ian brushed past them, offering little resistance. He knocked them aside with his blade, sparing lives when he could, taking them when he had to.

  The girl’s face floated past him, eyes wide in the streak of ash, her hands empty. He pushed her down and stepped over her limp body.

  Folam hadn’t moved—wasn’t moving. He was the only solid point in the doma. The room spun around his spear, a top balanced on the iron point of the blade. Ian took another step and the world settled into silent balance. All around him the battle continued, but it seemed as though he stood at the center of a storm, just his blade and the voidfather.

  He swept his sword high over his head and stepped forward.

  “Far enough,” Folam whispered, his voice again drifting through the air as though the stones themselves had spoken. The singing stopped, and the world slowed. “You have done well, child. Now. Come with me.”

  Folam’s spear tilted toward Ian, and the doma fell into darkness.

  * * *

  He stood blinking in the new darkness. The doma’s walls were still there, but it seemed as though they existed on the other side of a confoun
ding dusk, the sparks from Folam’s spear settling into a night sky of constellations.

  The smooth floor underfoot bent into a bowl, cobbles curving toward the horizon like distant mountains. Folam sat at the middle, a hood hiding his features, his spear stretching to the sky. Ian felt as if he was floating in a dream, the gauze of sleep wrapping tight against his head.

  “What would you do, Ian?” Folam asked with surprising calm. “What did you come here to accomplish?”

  “I’m here to stop you,” Ian said. He shook the gauze from his head and strode forward. The priest looked enormous, yet far away, as though the space between them stretched to the horizon. No matter how quickly he walked, Ian didn’t feel like he was getting any closer.

  “I’m here to end this, Folam.”

  “I would have you end it. End the work my daughter started in you. It is a seed, and the time has come to harvest it.” The voidfather stirred, his eyes cracking open beneath the voluminous drape of his hood, bright lights in the shadow. “What can be drawn from your flesh, to feed my furnace?”

  “You and Sacombre are too alike for my tastes,” Ian growled. “Talking, and threatening, and looming against a shadowy horizon. It gets old.” He stopped walking and bent his will against the voidfather’s illusion. If this man was truly Fianna’s father, then Ian knew the nature and depth of his power. Suddenly, the distance between them snapped short, like a rope yanked against its tether. The sparks of light still floated around them, but they no longer looked like stars.

  “All show, no fire.”

  “I have fire enough,” Folam said. The old man unfolded, standing gracelessly, old bones seeming to protest the effort. For an instant he reminded Ian of Frair Lucas, frail of flesh but hard of spirit. He tightened his grip on his sword.

  “Where are we, pagan?” Ian demanded. “What have you done with my people?”

  “We are tangled in the god, now. The god of nothing, so we are nothing, I suppose. Twisting in the void.” Folam coughed into his hand and winced. “Nowhere, really. Best not to die here, if you can avoid it.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Ian said. Then he stepped forward and thrust his blade into the voidfather’s chest. The steel passed easily through, cracking ribs and parting flesh. Folam looked down at the blade and started to laugh.

  “You misunderstand. Dying cannot be done. Not in that way, at least,” Folam said. He gestured with his hand, and the blade left his body, squeezed out like a splinter. The wound it left hung raggedly open, bloodless. “Walls within walls, Ian. The empty god is immune against the weapons of Cinder and Strife. Pagan, as well, and my body is proof against steel. Long have I dwelt in the house of the empty god, and I am not going to fall to mortal devices.”

  Ian stood holding the sword, looking down at the tip of the blade. It was clean, as bright as though newly forged.

  He recalled something Elsa had said. “Every gheist has its rules, voidfather,” he growled. “This one has its limits—I simply must find them, and break you against its walls,” he said. He raised his sword and sliced, wincing as the steel met bone, drawing it back again and again to hack and chop at the old man. Wounds opened in Folam’s flesh, but they neither bled nor healed. The bones poked through the severed skin like jagged teeth.

  Folam trembled, but stood fast.

  “This god is the limit of all other gods, the boundary of their power, eternal and unbroken. The pagan elders bow to my rule. Do you know why?” Folam produced a pendant from his robes, dangling on the end of a leather thong. It looked heavy, as though the entire room tipped toward its weight. “Mine is the god that can not be filled. The end of every ending.”

  “It hurts, though. Doesn’t it?” Ian said. “Your voice betrays that much.” He swung to cut the thong, and Folam flinched aside. The blade cut into his arm, leaving it puckered and white. “Yes, it does. If I can’t kill you, then I can make you regret living.”

  “No,” Folam said, and fire filled the wounds. Some internal heat singed the voidfather’s flesh, flames jetting out to scorch the stone and drive Ian back with their heat. “Emptiness has no regrets. It has no pain.”

  “Then you aren’t empty,” Ian said. “I know rage when I see it. Rage enough to sacrifice your daughter to the church, and throw away whatever love you held for Tenumbra, all to serve your bloody vengeance!”

  The heat began to parch his skin, even through the leather and steel of his vambrace, and he covered his face with his arm, chopping blindly again and again. Folam howled, and a gout of flame lashed the ceiling, causing Ian to flinch. When he looked again, a brilliant light was erupting out of Folam’s ruptured chest. The man’s hood was wreathed in smoke.

  “There’s fury still, and fury can be cut, even if it’s wedded to the void!”

  “You keep fighting us, Ian—you and your father—but you have no idea what you’re fighting! You act like this is a war, and you’re the hero of some great ballad. But this is no war! It’s a fire, and you are nothing more than fuel!”

  “Yet it seems as if the flames have just about consumed you, voidfather,” Ian said. “So let’s put an end to your guttering!” He pushed against the waves of heat and brought his sword down on Folam’s head. The blade passed easily through his skull, the bone crumbling like ash, and sparks blossomed into the air. The sword continued down, parting ribs, belly, leaving the body at the hip and not stopping until it struck stone.

  There was a flash of light, then sharp pain in Ian’s shoulder. He stumbled back.

  Folam’s arm came with him, the dead man’s fist holding the pendant. The tip was as sharp as a knife, and it stuck in Ian’s shoulder. As he stared down in horror, the pagan’s arm crumbled into dust, cracks that filled with flame and then collapsed, until only the pendant remained.

  The pain was blinding. Ian went to his knees, dropping his sword among the ashes of Folam’s body. He clawed at the pendant, but the stone was hot to touch, and burned his fingers. Finally he hooked a finger into the trailing thong and wrenched it free. Though the wound was shallow and the stone smooth, when it pulled out it felt as though barbs had been buried deep in his flesh. Ian gasped in pain and nearly passed out.

  He stared down at the wound. It hung open, bloodless, empty, the flesh inside as empty as the void.

  * * *

  With a crash, the battle of the doma resumed around him. Ian knelt over Folam’s body, the voidfather’s flesh a ruin of torn flesh and punctured bone. Blood soaked the floor beneath him. Folam still held the pendant, and a smile faded from his lips as he died.

  The wound in Ian’s shoulder hung like an open mouth, screaming silently without blood, without pain, a hole in his flesh that would not close.

  EPILOGUE

  HOUNDHALLOW WAS A ruin.

  Groups of men and women moved through the forests, picking corpses from the ash, cutting down trees that were cinder and stacking stones that had once been houses. It was an exhausting task, and every person who joined in the effort remained forever scarred by the experience.

  There remained three nobles of Tener. Gwen Adair, Ian Blakley, and Nessie Blakley disappeared into the keep to nurse their wounds, and try to figure out what had become of their world. Sir Volent stood guard outside the great hall, with Sir Bruler his constant companion. There was an air of quiet about the place, as though the mortal world was still trying to figure out how to cope with the presence of the gods.

  The great hounds remained. They emptied the kennels without the master’s permission, breaking the locks in their great jaws and leading the duke’s packs out into the forests to hunt. The one Gwen had ridden led the way, his fur of matted iron glinting between the trees whenever the pack was near. Their howls carried through the night, though no one seemed to mind. It was as though an old song had been remembered and sung anew, bringing comfort to those who had forgotten the words.

  At the end of the first week, one of the crews ranged far from the village. They came across a pillar of ash, vaguely in the form of a
woman. She stood with a sword above her head, feet spread wide, mouth open. Curious, one of them took a hammer and cracked the shell. A splinter of ash fell away, and then another. A woman tumbled out. Her hair was burned away, and the color of her eyes had dulled to verdigris. She went to her knees and took a long, dry breath. When she spoke, it was around a mouthful of dust. They couldn’t understand her words, because these were simple men, who knew nothing of the hidden rites of the Lightfort.

  Sir Elsa muttered the summoning prayers of Strife, but nothing came. No light, no warmth, no fire. Summer had left her.

  Her god had left her cold.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SECOND BOOKS IN a trilogy are interesting. A writer often has a clear vision of how a story begins, and how a story ends, and several important steps along the way. The first draft of this book was a good book, but it wasn’t the second book in a trilogy, or even the second book in a series. It was only through the wise and steady advice of my agent, Joshua, and my editor, Steve, that the book you’re holding makes any sense within the context of the rest of the series. It’s an open secret that good writing is really done in revision, and great writing is done in the re-revision of the rewritten third draft. If that’s true, then this is going to be a tremendous book.

  Through it all, my wife has stood by me, making sacrifices of time and financial comfort that shouldn’t be necessary. She’s the best. She’s better than the best. She’s exemplary.

  I would say more, but I have a third book to write. And re-write. And revise.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TIM AKERS WAS born in deeply rural North Carolina, the only son of a theologian, and the last in a long line of telephony princes, tourist attraction barons, and gruff Scottish bankers. He moved to Chicago for college, and stayed to pursue his lifelong obsession with apocalyptic winters.

  He lives (nay, flourishes) with his brilliant, tolerant, loving wife, and splits his time between pewter miniatures and fountain pens.