The woman stepped close, stabbing at me, and when I lashed out with my own knife she ducked under my swing and kicked my wounded leg out from under me. I screamed, rolling away, my movement taking me over the littered arrows. I collected one in my left hand, keeping it concealed behind my forearm as I rose.
She followed, calm as death, eyes like a raptor. Her rage promised a slow demise. She wanted to hurt me before she killed me.
Because I hurt her. I saw it now. The boy was her son, I knew it to be true. I’d killed her child, and now she was going to dissect me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t leave him behind.”
She showed no hint of understanding my words.
It didn’t matter. It was a shit apology anyway.
That razor-sharp knife snaked out, opening a long cut across my ribs, steel on bone. Instead of retreating, I lashed back with my own knife and once again she easily avoided it, swaying back and then leaping forward to leave a line of hot fire across my arm as she cut me again. My knife fell away, spinning to the dirt. But she hadn’t seen the arrow clenched in the other fist, hidden from sight. I stabbed her in the throat, driving the arrow deep. Eyes wide, she gurgled and sputtered, pulling away. I held on to the shaft and the arrow came free, leaving that shard of flint in her. Blood fountained from the hole.
I stood watching, detached and distant, as she fought to stanch the bleeding. She collapsed to her knees, bloody teeth bared in a snarl of hatred as she realized she wouldn’t get to kill me.
“You already killed me,” I told her. “Infection will end me soon enough.”
It was, apparently, no consolation.
She spat harsh consonants, mouth frothing red, and then fell to her side.
I watched until she stopped moving.
Then I collected her knife, and the one I dropped. I had no doubt infection would kill me. Until then, I would walk south.
Something there called me.
I had to move.
CHAPTER FIVE
My wounds healed quickly and I felt better with each passing day. No fever tortured me and somehow, miraculously, infection never set in. Whether this was luck or because of who—or what—I was, I had no idea.
I left behind the ancient arboreal dark of the old forest and found myself in newer, younger growth. The sun rose and fell, cycles of light and dark, warmth and cold. The land around me sank and flattened. Walking from the trees I found myself looking down over sprawling farmlands. Rolling hills, gentle like the curves of a young woman, her hair and eyes in dark contrast to pale skin so unlike the ebony of my own, lips quirked in a knowing half-smile. I blinked and lost the thought.
Who was she? Someone I once knew? A lover? Or was this nothing more than the lonely yearning of a man who’d only met four people in living memory and killed every single one of them? She felt too detailed, too real, to be imaginary. I wanted more, but she was gone.
Much as I would have preferred to avoid humanity, these lands had been well-hunted and I hadn’t eaten anything beyond bugs and leaves in days. Desperate hunger drove me to the first farmhouse I saw. Banging on the door, I backed away, hands held clear of my weapons. A man opened the door, his wife and child peering at me from behind him. All three were pale and pink, hair so blond as to be almost white. I mimed eating and he waved me away, scowling. I turned to leave.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said his wife. “Feed the boy.”
Boy? That stopped me. She was right. I knew I couldn’t be more than nineteen years old, physically, but felt infinitely more ancient. I waited.
“He looks dangerous,” said the farmer.
“He looks hungry.”
She ducked inside, returning moments later with a loaf of bread and a cup of fresh water. Pushing past her grumbling husband, she approached.
“Your family are trackers in the north?” she asked, noting my tattered attire.
I nodded.
“Damned ebony souls,” muttered her husband. He fell quiet when she shot him an angry look.
“You’re alone,” she continued. “No wagon loaded with furs. You’ve had a rough go of it.”
“Yes, Ma'am,” I said, voice raw.
“Strange accent,” she said. “You’re from the islands?”
Was I? I nodded again, not knowing how to answer.
She watched, hands on hips, head to one side as I wolfed down the bread and drank the water. A solid woman, I wasn’t at all sure I could best her in a fair fight. She showed no hint of fear. When I finished the last crumb, she sent her grumbling husband back inside to fetch more food. He refused to look at me, refused to meet my eye. She sent me off with another loaf of bread, a brick of white cheese, and a half dozen carrots.
I cried as I walked, undone by her charity.
The next day I found a well-trod dirt path and followed it south. Around noon, I saw the town. Standing atop a shallow hill, I looked down upon a walled community of no more than a thousand souls. The town had grown beyond the confines of the original wall and houses littered the landscape. A lone stone tower stood within the wall. It wasn’t a defensible position, had no crenellations. Four stories of moss-covered field stones, it didn’t even have windows. A single door of black iron the only entrance, it looked ancient.
I hated that tower, wanted to topple it, to break it to nothing. I wanted to melt the stones to slag.
I wanted to hide from whatever lurked within. I had no idea why.
Forcing myself forward, I descended into the town. The gates set into the wall sat open. Rusting, flaking and overgrown, they looked like they hadn’t moved in centuries. In town, I found the people pink-skinned and fair-haired like the farmer and his family. My black skin and long tangle of midnight hair stood out and they stared as I walked the street, crossing to avoid me. No doubt the fact I hadn’t bathed in a year and my ill-fitting tracker’s clothing, crumbled and falling apart, did me no favours. Armed as I was, hatchet in its loop, a curved long-knife hanging at each hip, I doubt I looked like the kind of person you’d invite to a diplomatic feast.
I stopped in the street. Diplomatic feast? The thought slid away before I could grasp it.
‘Darker,’ I heard someone call me. Others whispered ‘black soul,’ or ‘stained.’
Did they think my skin colour the result of some dye?
Homes of wood and stone towered over me, some even with a second story. My mud shack suddenly felt pathetic and small, embarrassing in its crudity. And people. So many people. Dozens walked the street, shopping or going about strange and unknown tasks. I felt their gazes, their loathing, saw it in the way their lips curled in disgust, the way they pointed when they thought I wasn’t looking.
Trying to ignore them, I continued into town.
A caravan of a dozen wagons lined the main street. Men and women bustled about, loading supplies. Several of the wagons already bore burdens of baled wheat and other assorted grains. Seeing as there was nothing north, it seemed a safe assumption they’d travel south.
It would be a lot safer travelling in a crowd.
I followed the bellowing of the loudest, deepest voice to its source, a fat, balding man standing atop the grain bails piled onto the lead wagon. People rushed about, flinching when he turned his voice upon them.
Standing beneath him, I craned my neck to shout up at him. Not sure what was normal, I settled on a blunt approach.
“I seek employment!”
I had to yell a second time before he heard me over his own booming voice. The fat man scowled down at me, running a hand over the bright pink dome of his head.
“Where you from, boy?” he called.
I gestured north.
“Before that.”
I shrugged.
“Secrets, eh? Fine.” Eyes narrowed, he squinted at me. “Those knives. Show me one.”
I drew a curved long-knife from its scabbard and held it up.
“Where you get that?”
I considered lying, but didn’t know en
ough about anything. “I took them from the people who tried to kill me.”
“You killed two Septks?”
I nodded, deciding not to mention that one was a child.
“You and how many others?”
“Just me.”
He eyed me. “Don’t recognize that accent.”
I shrugged, sheathing the knife.
“You’re a long way from home, I think. And that means you’re running from something.”
I waited.
“Help load the wagons, and I’ll buy you dinner and a pint of beer.”
“Two pints,” I said, the words escaping without thought.
“Fine.”
“And I want to go south with you.”
“I already have enough guards.”
“Not if I kill a few.”
He laughed, a loud, belly-shaking guffaw. “Fine. I pay three bronze a day. If you get drunk while we’re on the road, I’ll leave you there, alone.”
Was that supposed to be a threat? I’d always been alone. “Fair enough.”
“Then get to work,” he said, turning to scream orders at someone else.
I spent the rest of the day loading the last wagons. True to his word, the caravan master—Paulak, he said his name was—bought me dinner and two pints. A leg of lamb and a mountain of mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, the meal dwarfed even the memory of the cooked rabbits. The beer, dark as mud, tasted of burnt oats and left my head swimming.
Paulak sat across from me, waiting until I finished before speaking. “You were hungry.”
I belched, sitting back and resting a hand on my belly. “I haven’t eaten anything but bugs and roots in a week.”
Sipping from his own pint, he eyed me over the rim of the clay mug. “Whatever you were hiding from up there won’t be a problem for me, right?”
I shook my head. “My problems are long dead.” I wasn’t sure if I lied.
“You don’t look old enough to have ‘long dead’ problems.”
I shrugged. “No one is looking for me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Good. You getting a room?”
I laughed.
“That’s what I thought. Sleep on one of the wagons.”
That night I dreamed of flames. A hundred thousand warships, red and white alike, burned. Wreckage clogged the ocean. Floating corpses. Burnt men clinging to the shattered remains of ships. Screams of agony, lonely and forlorn. The elementalists dead and broken, the ocean turned to vent its anger elsewhere. No waves slapped the hulls of those few vessels yet to sink.
This was the death of a dream, the death of an empire.
The corpses of colossal creatures, called from the deep by shamans, floated alongside the blasted remains of slain demons. Sharks and all manner of sea monsters fed on their flesh.
My own vessel, the Habnikaav, was surrounded by white ships populated by ancient men and women in white robes.
They thought they had me.
They thought they’d won.
I laughed. This was not the only battle.
Calling upon my demons, I left my enemies to their hollow victory.
The morning sun found me awake and waiting for the others to rise. Men and women trickled out of the inn and nearby homes, or crawled from under other wagons, stretching and groaning. A big woman, face flushed and pink, bustled about with a tray, bringing strips of dried meat to everyone. It was chewy and salty, but left me sated.
Selecting the wagon at the rear of the train, I clambered aboard to discover a blond woman already sitting up there. She wore armour of boiled leather, a hard vest and skirt, which hung past her knees. A sheathed sword lay in the hay at her side. Her hair was cropped short and brutal. She examined me with pale blue eyes. I guessed she was in her early twenties.
“May I join you?” I asked.
Scratching at her chin with blunt fingernails, she finally shrugged.
I sat a few strides away so as not to bother her. Down below, the teamsters were busy tethering teams of four oxen to each wagon.
“You done this route before?” the blond woman asked.
I glanced at her. Though armour concealed everything, my imagination immediately went to work trying to figure out what might be beneath. It was so strange, to feel so ancient and yet, in truth, be so young. It didn’t hurt that she was easily the prettiest girl I’d seen since leaving my hut. Not that she had much competition.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
She laughed, but I wasn’t sure at what. “I’m Shalayn.” She offered a hand and I crawled closer to shake it.
“Khraen,” I said.
We sat in silence for several minutes before the wagons lurched into motion.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You signed on to a caravan without even asking the destination?”
“I want to be south,” I said. “Beyond that, I don’t much care.” It was a small lie.
“We’re going to Taramlae.”
“Is it big?”
“It’s the capital.”
“Of?”
She stared at me now, eyes incredulous. “What do you mean?”
“What is it the capital of? Some kingdom? A duchy?”
“Everything,” said Shalayn. “It’s the capital of everything.”
“It can’t be. The world…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I knew nothing.
“You grew up in the far north, didn’t you? And no one taught you anything of the rest of the world? Your parents told you nothing?”
“They’re long dead,” I said, remaining carefully vague.
“That’s a strange accent. Where were your folks from?”
Ignoring the question, I asked, “Taramlae is the capital of the world?” The thought twisted something in my gut.
“The Guild rules from Taramlae.”
“Guild?”
“Now I know you’re messing with me.”
“My education has been sadly lacking.” I shrugged, helpless. “And I’ve been in the far north, tracking.”
“For the last three thousand years?”
I didn’t know. How long was I buried?
Guild. I hated that word, but didn’t know why. “What guild?” I asked again.
“The Wizard’s Guild.”
Wizards.
My head hurt. Rage pounded through my veins. Only when Shalayn reached for her sword did I realize I’d bared my teeth in a savage snarl. Closing my eyes, I breathed deep, calming myself.
“Sorry,” I said. “I think I don’t like wizards.”
“No one likes wizards,” she said. “Even when they’re family.”
I opened my eyes to see pain in hers. The wizards had somehow hurt her too. This, I saw, was a fresh wound. She blinked away tears.
To change the subject, I pointed at the windowless tower as we rumbled past. “What’s that?”
“Really?” she asked, eyeing me.
“Yes.”
“It’s a wizard’s tower.”
I wanted to tear it down with my bare hands.
CHAPTER SIX
We spent the day riding the wagon. After weeks of walking, sitting on baled hay as the world passed beneath me was the highest luxury. Once the town disappeared behind us, I realized we were still very much in wild country. A crude dirt path, little more than rutted wagon tracks, wended south through thick forest. Trees crowded our route, hanging over us like looming wraiths. Even with the sun high, the woods remained dark, the heavy growth blotting the sky. Things moved in there, inhuman shapes, following us.
The guards stayed sharp, eyes on the trees at all times.
“That was a frontier settlement,” I said, speaking to myself.
“Chorn,” said Shalayn. “It’s the northern-most settlement.”
Remembering the ancient wizard’s tower, and the homes spilling past the dubious protection of the wall, I said, “But it’s old.”
“Everything is.”
“How c
an a frontier remain the frontier for that long?”
“The Septks rule everything north of Chorn. Only the mad and desperate enter their lands.”
“Which are you?” I blurted. There didn’t seem to be much for anyone who didn’t live there.
“A little mad, a little desperate.” She stared off into the dark of the forest. “I came north with another caravan.”
Of all the people in Chorn, all the other men and women hired on with this caravan, only Shalayn didn’t seem to notice my skin. Only Shalayn looked at me like I was human, a man, and not some foul stain.
That evening the caravan rumbled into a clearing. The trees had been hacked back to create room enough to form a circle with the wagons. The oxen were freed from their harnesses and brought to the centre of the ring. Fires were lit and a fat man bustled about preparing a huge pot of soup. Paulak wandered the camp barking orders and assigning everyone their watch duties. Anyone caught sleeping on their shift, he said, would walk home alone. With the caliginous woods hiding whatever followed us all day, no one wanted to chance that. People went about their chores, darting glances at the treeline whenever something moved in the deep dark.
He assigned Shalayn and I to the same watch. I think the wagon master fancied himself something of a match-maker. I caught a poorly hidden wink tossed in Shalayn’s direction. She blushed pink and punched him in the shoulder. The blow, so fast that neither Paulak nor I saw it coming, sent him staggering. He laughed and wandered away, rubbing his arm and wincing.
“You two know each other?” I asked.
“I’ve done this route a few times.”
The men and women on the other wagons shot hostile looks in our direction. They didn’t like that we stood together, that I talked with her.
Shalayn either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Maybe both.
The sun dropped, lighting the clouds from below and washing the horizon in a gorgeous swirl of orange, purple, and red. A brisk wind blew down from the north. It stank of rot.
When Shalayn saw me huddled against the cold, she dug into her pack and tossed me a heavy cotton shirt. It smelled of woman, something I had not scented in living memory.
Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path Book 1) Page 3