Brogan didn’t care if the bastards lived or died, so long as they stopped hunting him. Numb arm or no, he held tight to the sword and blocked a blow with it. The axe did the bloody work, hacking clean through the soldier’s arm just below the shoulder.
The winds were rising furiously, and his hair snapped like a whip. Most of the enemy’s horses were gone now, running off to avoid the pain of another slap to the ass. The soldiers would be hard pressed to follow them, assuming any of the bastards lived long enough to offer pursuit. A long time ago Brogan had worn a uniform like theirs. It won them no loyalty. They were hunting him. They were the enemy. That was all there was to it.
He’d learned that from a sergeant in Bron’s army. No mercy could be offered to a man fighting against you. It would only get you killed. You could offer mercy to survivors of the conflict, but not to the ones engaged in it.
A bastard with an axe came for him and he barely managed to block the blow with his sword. Metal screamed along metal then cut into wood, and while the axe was occupied with his blade he shouldered the man back and then chopped into his stomach and side. Flesh parted around blade and the man fell back howling. Someone hit him hard in the back and Brogan stumbled. Whatever hit him was bladed but did not cut horribly deep. Lucky, lucky fool.
Before his attacker could try a second time, Harper’s sword opened his throat to the night air. Brogan took advantage to move on to the next enemy.
The enemy were retreating, backing away, most of them bearing frightened expressions. He had no idea why. It made no sense. There were more of them and the ground was level. Even with the element of surprise they shouldn’t have been able to push the bastards back.
The wind roared in his ears and the force of it made his eyes sting.
Around him several of the soldiers were running. A few of his own joined them.
Ah. So they weren’t afraid of him or running from him. That made more sense in his mind.
Brogan squinted against the howling winds and looked around. Left, nothing. Right, nothing. Behind him – a snap of thick leather.
No. He felt his own fear rise and quickly suppressed it.
“Of course.” His voice was a dry croak.
Harper was looking at him from thirty feet away, shaking his head.
Harper would know, of course. He’d met the things before.
The Undying hovered above him, cloak filled with air, edges snapping. The hood full of darkness seemed to stare directly at him.
The Undying.
Brogan looked around again, and saw two more of the things in the air. They were surrounding him. They knew him.
That was all right. He knew them, too.
“You’re the fuckers that stole my family from me!” He shook his head and felt the winds carrying the bastard things blast against his face.
“You have committed sins against the gods, and you and yours must now be punished.”
“You’ve committed sins against me! I’ll gut you like a rabbit, you disgusting beast!”
On both sides of the battle, the men who had been fighting now stood still. Even Harper, who had dealt with the followers of these things before, did not move.
“Insolentblasphemer!”
“Come on then! Come get me!” Brogan spat.
The nightmare dropped to the ground five feet from him and reached into the leathery wings that made its cloak. Brogan had no idea what it might be reaching for and he didn’t care. His axe sailed across the short distance and chopped a divot of meat from the arm and wing of the He-Kisshi.
The sound it let loose was cringeworthy, but Brogan didn’t have time for such matters. The unwounded arm of the thing pulled out a whip with a weighted tip, and Brogan charged. Whips were fine weapons at a distance. Up close they were nearly useless. Truly, the beast was unsettled. It flinched back as if utterly surprised by the notion that someone would attack.
Brogan snarled as he smashed his shoulder into its bulk and sent it backward. The thing wobbled, tried to right itself and fell on its backside in the dirt. Brogan drove his elbow into what he guessed would be the throat, the area directly under the false cowl of the Undying’s face. Up close he could see the small eyes around that cavernous mouth. He could see the teeth and the serpentine tongues. Part of him was terrified, repulsed. Most of him was furious. This thing and its ilk had chosen his family, had taken them away, had stolen from him all that mattered, all that he loved.
It gagged and choked as he rammed his elbow into the hot, furred flesh beneath that monstrous maw and forced his weight down on its body.
Claws. The fucking thing had claws! It scraped at him so Brogan shifted his body mass, driving his knee into the nightmare’s bloated belly. The sword was cast aside. No good this close in, so Brogan sought and found the dagger sheathed in his boot.
Hot red pain dragged down his other calf and scraped at his ankle, and Brogan let out his own gasp of pain. Still, his elbow pinned the creature’s throat. It gagged and wheezed even as the dagger drove through the flesh of the ribs and was hauled down the length of that furry grotesquery.
The sound it made might have been the squeal of a pig if not for the elbow crushing down. Cartilage broke under Brogan’s weight but still he did not relent.
The claw that had hooked his calf before tried again and only caught his boot this time, but that was luck and only luck. The third time that clawed foot could go higher and rip his leg open. Brogan stabbed again and again with the dagger, forcing his arm harder against the thing’s throat until blood vomited from the shadows of the mouth.
“Enough!” One of the other things screeched the word, commanded Brogan to stop.
He looked to Harper and felt a savage smile pull at his mouth.
The spear Harper hurled struck true, driving into the cowl of the screaming nightmare. It fell from the sky and collapsed like a tent as it landed. The soldiers of King Bron backed away, as any sane person would, but they were not hunted. They had not been demanded as sacrifices. They had less to lose.
Harper and three others charged the thing, weapons drawn. It was still strying to dislodge the spear that had pierced its cowl when the first sword came down and slashed another opening.
The third of the Undying rose further into the air, crooning out a mournful noise as it went higher and higher.
Brogan looked down at his victim and smiled. He was still disgusted by the thing, even as it shuddered and died.
Harper stepped back from the other one, pale and shaking. He was panting as if he’d run a dozen miles and sweated nearly as much.
Brogan didn’t take the time to find out why. He rose from his grisly task and grabbed his axe and sword. Bron’s men were not all dead. There were still plenty that would try to take them, and that needed killing. He was sneering as he looked around.
“Which of you bastards is next?”
The answer came from Ulster Dunnaly. “Surrender. You’re as good as dead and you know it.”
“Right then. Come get me!” He started toward the man and saw the briefest moment of panic cross his enemy’s face. Brogan’s smile grew. “That’s right. I nearly forgot. You can’t kill us, can you?”
Ulster did not answer.
“You need us alive. We’re to be sacrificed to the gods.” Brogan shifted the axe and the sword, staring at Ulster. “We do not have that disadvantage.
“All right, lads! Time for us to end this!” Brogan charged at Ulster.
The man was an excellent swordsman. He was, if Brogan was honest, plainly more skilled than Brogan. He was also working with a severe disadvantage and they both knew it.
Ulster blocked the sword blow that Brogan dealt him and stepped back. A flick of his wrist and Brogan’s blade sailed away. Undeterred, Brogan got a better grip on his axe.
Ulster spat and shook his head. “Retreat! Retreat and regroup!”
A fine soldier, a good soldier and, from all he’d ever heard a good man, turned and fled. He had no choice. Neither did
his men.
Brogan called off his mercenaries. Not necessarily as a sign of respect, but because he’d made a promise to the Undying.
The one he’d killed was still dead. He had no idea why they were called Undying. He also had no desire to investigate the claims. His skinning knife started at the broken throat and cut deep into dead, furry flesh. The stench of the thing was hidden by a smell of spices until he sliced deep enough, and then the charnel odors were nearly overwhelming. He pulled flesh away from the seam he’d created. If he could, he’d take the damned hide and use it as a flag to rally his troops.
He peeled the flesh away only to find a different body underneath. There were arterial lines running from the pale, naked body of a dead woman – he suspected one of the slave women he’d sold, by the color – and Brogan cut those apart as he encountered each of them. The furred exterior hide of the thing twitched as each line was severed. That was enough to keep him going.
To his side, Harper watched on, his eyes wide and his breath coming in sharp, harsh pants.
When he’d finished with the first, Brogan walked to the other and repeated his actions, peeling the two parts of the thing, like separating a seed from a fruit.
When he was done skinning the things, he laid them out in the dirt and took coals from the fire left behind by Ulster and his men, and spread those coals across the body of one of them. It should have been dead, but it shrieked as the coals struck and it smoldered then caught fire, the flesh burning and hissing as a thick black smoke rose.
The men backed away, horrified, and Brogan almost joined them. He would have, but he remembered Nora’s death all too well.
As he prepared to do the same to the other one, Anna approached and shook her head. “You should not.” She had two men with her. Between those men was a lovely lass who was struggling until she saw the carnage. Then she shivered and slumped in their arms. Mearhan Slattery.
Laram moved closer to the small group and said something to the girl that calmed her a bit.
“I must,” Brogan said.
“They could tell us secrets from the gods.”
“Well, we now have a scryer to do that for us, don’t we?”
Anna’s eyes grew wide and she turned to look at the woman held by men she’d walked over with. “Her?”
“Aye.”
“That could be even deadlier than I want to think about.”
“What do you mean?”
Anna stared hard and spoke slowly, as if to an addled child. “The gods speak to her? Then ask yourself this, can they see through her eyes to know where she is? Do they follow her ears and hear what she hears?”
Brogan smiled thinly. “Let them. I’d rather have her with us than telling others where to find us. If the gods only speak to scryers and these things,” he kicked the hide at his feet, “then I’d rather her be here. Maybe she can warn us the next time one of the Undying is coming to hunt me down.”
“And maybe she can listen for what you plan to do and tell the gods how you will kill them?”
Without hesitating Brogan reached to his boot and unsheathed the same dagger he’d killed the nightmare with.
He offered the blade to Anna. “You feel the need to see her dead, I’ll not stop you. She means nothing at all to me.”
Anna shook her head and refused to touch the offered weapon. “You take foolish risks, Brogan McTyre, and you risk more than yourself. Consider that. You’ve risked a great deal already, and my man and your friends are slated to pay for those decisions.”
“Where are the hounds? I’d have thought sure I’d hear them by now.”
“Unlike you, I prefer to see problems ended completely and not sent off to find reinforcements.”
That was all she’d say on the matter.
Still, she had her wisdoms. Instead of burning the second hide, he rolled it tightly in on itself, then wrapped it in the belt and whip that he had pulled from the thing’s body. As an added measure, the whole, mostly bloodless hide was tucked into a saddlebag. It was deceptively heavy.
Twelve
Hollum
One thing to know a place exists. Another to see it.
Niall looked down the hillside at the sprawling city of Hollum and frowned. The whole of the place rested under a miasma of smoke, as if the winds and the rain were not enough to remove the stain of the city’s decadence.
He had never been to Hollum, but he’d heard many tales. In his homeland of Giddenland, they called Hollum “the Torema of the poor and wretched”. Giddenland had many wealthy citizens; Torema was a pleasure palace of a city, with every possible vice. He’d once tried coming here when he was younger but his father caught wind of his intentions and beat the notion out of him with a heavy fist. His father, who almost never even raised his voice. When the man was angry, Niall listened. From time to time he had wondered what he’d missed.
Now, he was looking down at Hollum and suspecting he could have anything at all in the town for a price – ad that he’d ignore most of what was offered.
Tully spoke, her voice soft. “We should wait until morning.”
“What? Half a mile more and we can be sleeping in beds tonight.”
“First, we’ve no money. Second, you seem a good man, Niall, but you and Temmi ain’t prepared for Hollum after dark.”
“And I suppose you are?” His pride stung at the thought that she found him too frail to defend himself after all they’d been through.
“I’m from here.” Tully looked over the city. It was mostly made of stone and thatched roofs, near as Niall could tell. He had no idea what she saw when she looked, but her face was knotted with stress and her eyes were hooded at the thought of going there.
“That’s reasonable. Morning is soon enough. Not likely to find a decent map in the night time anyway.”
Temmi sat behind them, cross-legged on the ground. Over the past few days she had taken a small knife and every time they stopped had carved away at a heavy reed she’d found. Now she took it out and played on the homemade flute as she looked down on Hollum. The notes ran together to make a soft, mournful melody. The girl barely spoke at all, but she didn’t need to. Niall didn’t need to know what she thought, it was written clearly on her face. She wanted to find the beast that had killed her family and destroy it. She wanted to stop thinking or feeling. Mostly though, she wanted revenge.
It wouldn’t last, that feeling. That sort of anger could never sustain itself for overly long. Just yesterday he’d caught the girl in a rare moment when she allowed herself a smile. He had to hope that Temmi, the one he had met first, managed to survive all the anger.
“Have we money for a map?” The thought hadn’t really mattered before. They’d had supplies they could have bartered with. Those were long gone along with the horses and the wagon.
Tully shook her head. “I’ll find the money. Not to worry.” With that, she curled in on herself and did her best to stay dry in the constant drizzle.
A short time later, exhausted from a day of walking and half wishing he’d gone down to Hollum anyway, Niall drifted into an uncomfortable sleep. In his dreams Ligel accused him of letting the boy die. There was little he could say against that. Even when he was awake he saw the look on the boy’s face as he went over the cliff.
Niall woke to the sound of flute music. Tully was already up and coming back from washing herself at the nearby creek. He was struck by her looks every time he saw her freshly cleaned and so very different from the night that he watched her escape her chains in the mud and rain.
There were a hundred different stories about how Hollum had come to be, but the most logical was probably right. There was a river and there was land enough for people to move around without obstruction. Also, sometimes people need a place to rest.
Hollum spread along both sides of a very wide river. The buildings nearest the water were built on stilts for when it rained, and currently it had been raining a great deal. Though the houses and shops were still safe from any
flooding, Niall doubted it would stay that way much longer if the rains continued.
Tully looked around and scowled. “Fucking river’s overflowing and so are the people.”
Temmi cleared her throat. “So it’s not always this way?”
“No. Something’s happened. The entire city is full of people, but not like this.” She pointed to the wider roads, where desperate folk had built tents and set up wagons in alleyways, adding to the already considerable clutter. Niall was used to large cities, but he had never seen anything remotely like Hollum. It was an enormous, chaotic, ramshackle structure that seemed to overflow onto itself at nearly every corner. Wooden buildings that were easily twice or more his age leaned against brick and stone structures that were close to ancient if one looked at the dirt that had crusted into the walls. On top of the usual chaos it was impossible to miss the new collections of people and items.
Gods, but the air stank. There was a heavy stench of people, unclean and reeking of body odor. There was the smell of wood fires, some for warmth and others for cooking. The latter made Niall’s stomach rumble loudly despite the fact that most of the meats were likely dubious in a place like Hollum.
The noise of the place was overwhelming after so long in the wilds. They’d heard storms and nature, but this was different, this was the din of people calling out names, hawking their wares, or just talking to each other in the patois of the street people.
A dozen feet from where they entered the city, a man lay in the road, either dead or sleeping off a drunken night judging by his appearance. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
Tully walked right past him and called out to a young man around her age. The man was thin and twitchy. He made Niall think of a starving rat, the sort that would bite if cornered.
Whatever she said, Niall couldn’t understand her question or the rat man’s answer. Neither chatted in the common tongue.
The exchange was fast paced and the rat man came closer, smiling, his eyes narrowed to a squint and his rotting teeth easily seen. Rat man’s skin was pale and had several sores from bug bites. Niall reached for his pouches but grunted when he realized that they were gone. Rat man seemed friendly enough and he could have given him a poultice that would have kept most insects away.
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