by Jon Sprunk
Living maybe, but hardly alive.
He was a man of advanced age smelling almost as bad as the corpses they’d found. A long dirty beard drooped across his shrunken chest.
“What do we do with him?” Keegan asked with a sleeve pressed over his mouth and nose.
The humane thing would be to put him out of his misery. But looking at the pitiful wretch curled up on the cold floor, Caim didn’t have the heart for it.
“You,” he said to the short outlaw. “What’s your name?”
The boy hunched his shoulders like Caim had yelled at him. “Dongo.”
“Dongo, find something to prop this door open. We’ll gather him up on the way out if we have time.”
Caim and Keegan kept checking cells. They found a few more lost souls, most of them in the same condition as the old man or worse. One woman of indeterminate age, covered in dried blood, huddled in the corner of her cell. She screamed when they opened her door, and went on screaming until they closed it again. Keegan’s eyes were wide as they left that door, but Dongo crept closer as if he wanted to go inside.
“Leave it,” Caim said. “We can’t save everyone.”
Side passages branched off halfway down the main corridor, but Caim focused on the doors. It made sense that a high-profile captive would be kept somewhere convenient.
As they moved down the hallway, Caim saw there was a door at the end. He thought it was only another cell at first, but as they approached a sense of anxiety began to build in the pit of his stomach. While Keegan and Dongo unbarred another cell, Caim realized what was bothering him. The feeling was the same he’d been experiencing since he came north, a powerful presence that wrapped around him like a ghostly tentacle. Here, it was almost overwhelming.
And it came from the door at the end of the hallway.
Caim went up to the door. On the outside it looked like all the others. He reached for the latch.
“Caim!” Keegan called out.
Caim pulled his hand back. With a long glance at the door, he turned and hurried over to the next-to-last cell. Keegan stood halfway out the doorway. His face was ashen.
“What is it?”
“Look.”
The youth held open the door for Caim to look inside. Dongo knelt beside a lump of tangled rags in the middle of the floor. Caim went over to the young man. He stooped down and reached out to the layer of rags covering the lump’s head. Five thick fingers with hairy knuckles snatched his wrist and held it in a viselike grip. Caim yanked hard, but he was held fast. The lump’s other hand pulled the rags from its face, and a pair of ice-blue eyes glared at him from beneath bristly red brows. The face was exceedingly dirty, and ugly beyond imagination.
Caim drew his left-hand knife and put it to the lump’s chest.
“No!” Dongo cried in a feminine voice.
As Dongo grabbed his knife hand, Caim glanced at him. No, at her. Dongo’s hood had fallen back in her rush to stop him to reveal Liana’s features.
“Li!” Keegan yelled from the doorway. “What are you doing here? Where’s father?”
“He left the city. He’s not angry, Keegan. He doesn’t like what we’re doing, but I think he understands.”
Caim sat back on his heels. Keegan hadn’t realized his sister had accompanied them here, and Caim was a little angry at himself for not noticing either. He wasn’t sure what to do. Fortunately, the ugly man’s grip was faltering. Caim pulled free and stood up.
“You know this man?” he said.
Liana nodded. “His name is Samnus. He’s thane of the Hurrold clan. He was at Aldercairn, wasn’t he, Keegan?”
Her brother nodded from his post, but kept his distance.
“He stood up with Caedman against the duke,” Liana continued.
Caim’s gaze traveled across the man’s torso. Splotches of old blood marred his cloak of rags. His left arm was tucked against his ribs; the right foot looked twisted.
“We don’t have time to carry a cripple,” Caim said.
The ugly man growled like a wounded bear. “I can walk, damn you! Let me up and I’ll prove it.”
They stood back, and the man, Samnus, rolled onto his hands and knees. With exquisite slowness, he rose to a kneeling stance, and then got his feet under him one at a time until he was standing before them, albeit with a sway.
“I can help him,” Liana said. “We won’t slow you down.”
“I don’t need coddling, girl!”
Caim stepped up to the prisoner’s face until their noses were a finger span apart. “We aren’t here for you. If you fall behind, we’ll leave you to rot. Understand?”
Samnus grinned and revealed a mouthful of broken teeth. “Why are you wasting time then, boy? Lead the way.”
“We’re looking for Caedman,” Liana said.
The man nodded, and even that simple gesture betrayed the depths of his exhaustion. “The door across the hall. That’s where they’ve been keeping him.”
Caim headed out of the cell, and Keegan moved aside. Out in the corridor, the dark presence from the end of the hall beckoned, like an echo of a bad dream. Tiny quivers ran up his arms and across his body. He motioned for the others to stay back as he headed for the malignant door.
“Boy.” Samnus leaned in the entrance of his cell. “You don’t want to go in there.”
But Caim pushed open the door.
The room beyond was larger than a cell, but hardly spacious. Its stone walls enclosed several tables, a pair of wooden chairs, and braziers filled with dim red coals. Naked bodies occupied the tables and thrones, strapped into place, six men in all. They had been tortured to death. Though his nose was deadened to the stench by his exposure to the noisome cells, Caim’s eyes picked out the worst of the mutilations: flesh peeled away from the faces and chests, hands and feet hacked from their limbs, eyes burned out of the sockets, genitals sliced clean off. A pile of flesh scraps lay on the floor like a dog’s dinner. The professional part of Caim’s mind had to pause in admiration for the handiwork; it was exquisite in its precision, better than any sawbones he’d ever met could do. But that part of him that could still feel quailed at the sight.
The stench of Shadow was thick in the air, lingering around the bodies like the perfume of a departed lover. Pushing through his anger, Caim examined the corpses one at a time. He forced himself to touch them, turn their heads from side to side, lift their handless arms and peer into bloody sockets. Traces of black residue confirmed his suspicion. The memory of Mathias lying dead, a hole cut into his flabby chest, left Caim cold and angry.
A call from the hallway roused him from his thoughts. Caim turned to find Keegan in the doorway.
“We found Caedman.”
Caim pushed Keegan out of the gruesome chamber and closed the door behind him. Samnus stood in the corridor, looking unsteady. The thane cocked his head toward the open door opposite his cell. Inside, Liana knelt beside a pallet, upon which lay a tall man under a swaddle of stained blankets. She had an arm under his head, trying to help him sit up. Caim went in to help her. Together they wrestled the man upright. Then the blanket covering his body slid down, and Caim reconsidered.
“This is the right man?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Caim didn’t see how she could tell. The captive’s face was a mass of bruises; his chest, stomach, and arms were crisscrossed with a hatchwork of incisions and burns. In some places, the skin had been sliced off to reveal the red meat underneath. He was unconscious or dead, and Caim couldn’t tell which would be the better deal. Then the man made a low groan.
“Go … not here …”
Caim looked back. “Keegan, help me with this.”
Liana made room as Caim and her brother wrestled the prisoner off the mattress, although he couldn’t walk. Caim guided them back out into the hall. Liana waited with Samnus, who leaned on her despite his earlier show of bravado. As Caim and Keegan passed them, Samnus spoke up.
“I’ve seen you before, boy.”
“You were at Aldercairn, right? I don’t remember these others, but you were there.”
Keegan yanked free of the grasp. “Yes. I was there.”
“But you weren’t taken,” Samnus pressed.
Caim slid his free hand down behind his back and loosened a knife.
“This is my brother Keegan,” Liana said. “He escaped the massacre.”
Samnus grunted. “You ran, huh? Glad you finally found your bollocks, boy. So what is this about? A way to soothe your conscience?”
Keegan winced as if the man had struck him across the face, but said nothing.
Liana dropped Samnus’s arm. “You don’t know him! He stood up to fight when others would not.”
Caim winced at the volume of her voice. Down the corridor, someone groaned in their cell. Samnus watched Keegan with hard eyes. Caim had seen that look in a thousand other eyes; more often than not they preceded an explosion of violence. But the clan leader made no move to attack the youth.
“You’d be talking about your father, eh?” Samnus’s mouth folded up in a tight smile. “Aye, I know Hagan. From long ago. I came to him before Aldercairn. Did you know that? I asked him to come to the peace-meet, to hear what was said, but he refused.”
“My father isn’t a coward either,” Keegan said, finally meeting the outlaw’s gaze.
The two stared at each other for a long heartbeat, and then Samnus’s smile erupted into a full grin, which only made his face more hideous.
“No, he’s not, boy. He’s just become an old man, and that’s not such a bad thing. I can’t say the same fate will ever befall me.”
Caim glanced between them, and then at Liana. She seemed agitated, but the moment of violence seemed to have passed.
“Are we okay then?” he asked.
“Good as gold,” Samnus replied. “So you can take your hand off that pig-sticker, son.”
Carrying the prisoner between them, Caim and Keegan maneuvered down the passageway with Liana and the thane behind them. Caim stopped to peer down the side corridors. The presence of sorcery had touched a nerve in him. He needed to get out of here. More than that, he needed Kit. He felt like a blind man navigating through this labyrinth without her.
A shadow landed on his shoulder. Caim gritted his teeth and fought not to brush it off as a chill bit into his skin. A picture formed in his head. Men climbing the stairs. A flash of metal. Soldiers.
Caim shoved open the door to the staircase with his elbow and listened.
“What are—?” Keegan started to ask.
Caim shushed him. He heard it again, the sound of clomping boots. He pushed the prisoner into Keegan’s arms as the door on the opposite landing popped open. Ramon and his cousin rushed out and slammed the portal shut behind them. Their weapons dripped with fresh blood.
A moment later, loud voices shouted from below. Caim drew his knives and went to the stairs. Company was coming. A lot of company.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Screeching winds blasted Kit from every direction, making her regret every time she’d complained about Caim’s choices in women, or his attitude, or pretty much anything. The fear that she might never get back to him had lodged behind Kit’s heart as she trudged through this endless nightmare.
She stumbled over a crinkle in the ground and brushed up against the shadow beast. The massive head swung toward her. Kit patted Doggie’s shoulder as she righted herself. After their encounter with the monster of the mists, he had rejoined her looking little worse for wear, and they’d come to an uneasy agreement. He stuck around and kept her safe; in return, she tried not to talk too much. It wasn’t easy for her, but the alternative was even less desirable, so she soldiered on. And thought about Caim. A lot. Once, they had been best friends, but she didn’t know what was wrong with him lately. He was moody all the time. He hardly talked to her like he used to. He was changing, which she had always encouraged on account of his many aggravating habits, but not like this.
It’s been getting worse since we left Othir. I know he misses the mud-woman, but this is different. It’s almost like the bad stuff that he’s done is catching up with him.
Kit let her chin droop to her chest, her eyes half closed against the driving gale. The prickling had gotten stronger, or perhaps she was deluding herself. What if she wound up walking these featureless lands forever? No, she had to get back to Caim. If she did—when she did—she had to convince him to leave those northern lands before it was too late, before they changed him for real and good.
She glanced ahead for a moment. Something glimmered in the mists. Kit shaded her eyes as she peered into the shrieking gloam. There it was again! A few points off to the left. Could it be…? She glanced in the direction of the tingling itch, and then back to the light.
Slapping Doggie on the shoulder, Kit started running toward the glow. The beast kept pace. Side by side they came upon a circle of light glowing in midair. Another portal. But there was something different about it. The circle was dimmer than the other portal. She glanced at Doggie, but it gave no comment. With a held breath, Kit reached out to the circle. Something moved on the other side of the glow, indistinct shapes in its gold-gray surface. She leaned forward and saw a pale oval. A man’s face.
“Caim!”
She rushed forward and yelped when her fingers met a hard plane of resistance. Kit clawed at the portal, but it adamantly refused her. Damned thing. Let me through!
But it was no use. Shaking with frustration, she rubbed her fingers and stared through the window at her mud-man. He was walking through a dark place. She got the impression there might be others with him. Was he in trouble? Most likely. He could never stay out of it whenever she wasn’t around.
She pounded on the hard surface. “I’m here, Caim!”
Kit couldn’t tell if he responded over the howl of the winds. She turned her head and froze as the portal’s view slid sideways. That was odd.
She turned her head the other way, and the perspective shifted back to where it had been before, centered on Caim’s face. With a little experimentation she was able to move the view in the portal in whatever direction she wanted. She turned the image completely around and tried to get a sense of his surroundings. It was a building of stone. A big building. There were people in little rooms. Her throat closed up for a moment. Caim was in prison! She nosed around for more information. Somehow she was able to expand the picture in a dizzying rush until she was looking at the structure from the outside. The place was even bigger than she had first thought. The night was extraordinarily dark, with almost no moonlight. Then she spotted some light. Torches. She swooped in closer and saw they were torches in the hands of big men. Men with armor and weapons, approaching the prison’s main gate. She did a quick count and was confident that Caim could slip away from them. Then the portal’s picture rippled. Kit grasped the cool edges, trying to stabilize it. Its illumination flickered. Not now!
As she tried to take the view back to Caim, Kit saw something on the periphery that made her stop. A curvy shape wrapped in a dark shroud approached amid the soldiers. The tip of Kit’s nose quivered. Oh, no. Caim! She’s coming! Caim!
Kit forced the portal toward the building. She didn’t blink when her viewpoint passed through the gate and into the darkness beyond. All she could think about was warning Caim.
The witch was coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Caim dove into the front ranks of the men coming up the steps. His assumption—that this was a patrol of jailors, maybe two or three at the most, lightly armed—collapsed when he ran into a squad of helmed spearmen. He barely had time to register this as he plunged into their midst.
He dropped two enemies in his first rush and sent another stumbling back into the men below with a kick to the face. Shouts resounded up the stairwell as Caim cut his way through leather and f
lesh. His only advantage lay in surprise and sheer ferocity, but that only lasted a few heartbeats before the soldiers discarded their ineffectual spears and drew smaller arms. Step by painful step they pushed him up the stairs until he was back on the landing. Then Keegan and Ramon’s cousin were on either side of him. Joram attacked like a man possessed, swinging his hammer with a vengeance. Caim scowled as a sword stroke meant for Keegan almost took off his ear. With another thrust, the soldiers pushed them back another few steps, almost to the wall. Joram didn’t retreat with them, but pressed forward by himself. The soldiers fell back before his intensity, but Caim saw the danger.
“Get back!” he grunted between breaths.
But it was too late; the soldiers surrounded the tall clansman, cutting him off from the landing and safe retreat. One moment Joram’s hammer rose and fell like he was pounding metal into submission, the next he and it disappeared under the press of bodies.
“Back!” Caim shouted to Keegan.
Keegan retreated into the doorway with his sister, giving Caim some room to maneuver, but three soldiers were already on the landing, with more coming up behind them. Caim glanced around. How am I going to get out of this?
There was nowhere left to retreat to—they were on the top floor. No windows in sight. And having seen the results of captivity in this horrid place, surrender wasn’t an option. He’d die before they took him alive. If Keegan loves his sister, he’ll kill her the moment my body hits the floor.
Another option buzzed in the back of his head like an angry hornet. His powers. As the soldiers moved to surround him, that final solution loomed larger in Caim’s mind. It was potentially fatal for everyone in the prison—Keegan, Liana, the outlaws, and the scores of men and women languishing in their cells. Then again, some might call it an act of mercy. Damn yourself if you will, but don’t sugarcoat it. Will you kill a hundred people to save your own hide?
The answer lurked inside him, but Caim didn’t want to search for it, afraid of what he might find as the battle-rage bubbled in his chest. The shadows oozed along the ceiling, pulsing with hunger, wanting to be unleashed. Their hunger began to eat away at his concern, and he didn’t know how long he could keep the feelings at bay.