And I have to look away.
When outsiders speak of Chrace’s wild and untamed beauty, this is what they mean. This is what they foolishly think they know. I have been a woodsman for a long time; long enough to know that I am the best at what I do. I have seen a wealth of unsettling scenes underneath this canopy; a menagerie of horrors that have actually made me want to run.
But this… this is something else.
Alvantir worries at the plain band of gold around his finger, a wedding ring he could barely afford. The look on his face tells me that his thoughts are awash with worry. He thinks of his stunningly beautiful young wife, and the son who he has tried to shield from the hardships of the forest.
But beneath these thoughts, I know he is also thinking the same thing as I.
There is something in the air; something that lingers between a taste and a smell. It settles on my tongue and gathers at the back of my throat; a copper tang that speaks of old blood, and a musty reek that whispers of burial grounds.
There are too many flies. The drone of the feasting insects is loud, aching my ears and building a pressure behind my eyes. This is unnatural.
Alvantir meets my gaze. Both of us know what did this.
‘They were nobles,’ the lead elf says, breaking the uneasy silence. He hefts an axe that is almost the mirror of my own over his armoured shoulder, the lines and angles of his face tightening. ‘Lothern born and bred.’
‘Why were they here?’ I ask, with genuine curiosity. I know outsiders to be stupid at times, but this…
‘An adventure in wild Chrace? I neither know nor care.’ The words leave his lips laced with bitterness, biting like acid into the still air.
‘And why are you here?’
He laughs, a series of hoarse barks that are anything but genuine. ‘We are their shields against harm; their bulwark against danger. They were our charges.’
Realisation is a shard of ice knifing into my guts. This is why these men are so grim and unwelcoming. This is why they stare out at the forest with narrowed eyes.
‘I am sorry,’ I say, and not because Lothern lost three of its spoiled children this week.
‘Charandis.’ Alvantir blurts out the name because he can hold it in no longer. Four pairs of eyes turn to look at him. Only one grasps the meaning of what is said.
‘What about Charandis?’ This is asked by another White Lion, the one with a sickle-shaped scar blighting his cheek. He sounds as if he is stung by that name being spoken in the presence of such an atrocity.
Every woodsman knows Charandis. He is Thunder, the King of Prides, the Child of Kurnous, the Hunter under the Canopy. A thousand romanticised poems detail the tragic fall of his pride, the clack of his claws upon the rocky mountains, the grace of his every movement, the mercy in his killing blow…
‘Charandis is no longer pure.’ There is no regret in my tone. Not even slightly.
‘A foul wind blew down from the Annulli Mountains last year,’ Alvantir elaborates. He clutches a small wooden token around his neck, a mirror of the one he carved for his boy.
‘You are saying the lion is tainted?’ This, asked by the third White Lion, sallow-faced and hook-nosed.
‘A child of Kurnous does not hunt like this. If this slaughter were pure, then why have only the flies come to feast?’
Silence. Droning.
‘Then our path is set? Thunder dies by our hand tonight?’ says Sickle-Scar.
‘No.’ My reply is coloured by my smile, brought unbidden to my lips at the look on Alvantir’s face. ‘Mine.’
‘I will restore your honour,’ Korhil said, still with that smile creasing his slanted eyes. ‘But more importantly, I will earn my own.’
Alvantir pinched the bridge of his nose, suppressing a heartfelt groan. The silence that met this wondrous announcement was filled by the frenzied buzzing of a thousand flies, ignorant of the staggering stupidity that just left Korhil’s lips.
‘You,’ spoke the senior White Lion, ‘are going to restore my honour.’ His tone didn’t make it a question.
Korhil unfolded his arms – noticeably big, eye-catchingly brawny – and laughed.
‘This is no longer about you. I mean you no insult, kinsman, but you have failed today. We stand in the aftermath of an evil you were duty bound to prevent. I will right this wrong. I will kill Charandis. And I will walk with you to Lothern with his carcass slung over my shoulders.’
So this was it. The glory Korhil had been talking about for years. Korhil did not see a gaggle of bereaved lovers and mourning relatives in the clotting blood of these dead nobles. He did not see lives cut short and ambitions slashed by a sick beast.
This was about the glory.
Bringing him here was a bad idea.
To say the lead Lion looked stung was understating things. White-lipped, he stood speechless for several long moments, his gloves creaking as he tightened and relaxed his grip on his weapon.
Finally, ‘You would stand in defence of the Phoenix King.’
‘I would.’
He sighed, a weary exhalation whispering through his teeth.
‘Then go, Korhil. We will camp nearby for two days. That is how long I will grant you. That is how long I will wait before I come and destroy this beast myself.’
Alvantir cleared his throat.
‘Come, Korhil. I will help you pick up the trail.’
A fool could find where Charandis’s claws had touched bare earth.
Alvantir silences the question about to pass my lips with a withering glare, his brow creasing in ugly furrows.
‘Fool.’
‘I can track him easily–’
‘You insulted Valeth.’
For this, I have no response. Valeth the Wyrmslayer. Valeth the Kinhammer. Valeth the Mighty. Why, I ask myself, do I live to regret insulting his honour?
This… puts things into perspective.
‘You don’t realise, do you? We stood under the gaze of Captain Ironglaive’s second.’ When I don’t respond, he continues. ‘The Phoenix King himself knows his name. This goes straight to the top. This is…’ He gestures weakly. ‘Big.’
I look at my closest friend walking next to me, our boots sinking into wet mud as we leave the White Lions and their charnel scene behind. He sees my perplexed smile.
‘Why is this a bad thing, Alvantir?’
‘Charandis will kill you.’
‘No, he won’t.’
‘What if he does?’
I laugh, and he knows why. He should know better than to say ‘what if’ in my presence. A bad habit of his.
‘Why does Ironglaive send his most esteemed warrior to Chrace, picking up after foolish nobles?’
Alvantir answers with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, ducking under an overhanging branch. ‘It is a different game in Lothern, Korhil. It is political.’
‘Nonsense is what it is. When I stand astride the White Lions, I will march to the defence of worthy charges. Generals, scholars, spellweavers; not spoiled children. Never spoiled children.’
‘They march in regiments, fool. You go where they tell you.’
‘But I’m about to kill Charandis. You think they would damn me to mundane duties like that?’
‘Why don’t you ask Valeth that question?’
I ignore this last remark, lowering my gaze to the ground, focussing on my task. The forest speaks to me in a voice I know well: a patchwork of muddy browns and vital greens, whispering morsels of secret knowledge.
My strength is my axe – it always has been. Tracking is Alvantir’s expertise, but it takes no master to follow the trail Charandis has left behind him. Here, a faded print twice the size of my hand. There, a claw mark, scored into the jutting root of a tree. The clumsiness of the lion’s passing is a testament to how sick the creature is. White lions move with a grace that matches their savagery. That is why the Chracian rite is such a hard test. Usually, finding them is hard enough.
Usually.
‘I hav
e come far enough.’ Alvantir thumbs his wedding ring, giving me a look that I find hard to read. ‘I am not going to convince you that this is folly.’
‘No,’ I agree. ‘Because it is not.’
He sighs.
‘I will go back to Valeth for my payment. Be swift. And don’t die, fool.’
In the shadow of the forest, as the sun sets in crimson fire, we shake hands.
III
At first, he could not move.
This was something new. This was a fresh affliction, added to the dozens that already blossomed in his blood and bred behind his eyes.
It was impossible. His bones were shafts of ice, his muscles frozen in painful stiffness. Breath vented between his locked jaws in volcanic hisses. Dreadful cold was beginning to settle on his guts. The thump of his heart was sluggish, beating without vigour, languishing beneath his ribs.
In the stillness of night, the lion whined.
Perception had steadily become harder to grasp as he awoke from slumber these last weeks. He always emerged from a realm of nightmares – where prey is predator – into a world of threats he couldn’t see, and dangers he couldn’t hear. Being aware of any difference between the two was difficult. So sometimes he would awake roaring, lashing out at shadows with extended claws and yellow fangs.
But not tonight.
Again, a whine escaped his jaws.
Maybe he would slip into prey-sleep. Maybe it would be for him that the ravens wheeled overhead. Maybe it would be his bones that the wolves gnawed upon.
But that didn’t happen.
The prey-scent was faint, diluted by distance. It reached him as a weak spice, hanging loose in the air, drifting at the mercy of gentle breezes. It spoke of something far away, alert yet relaxed; wary, yet oblivious. He tasted flesh, wet and tender, torn from the bones of something taken by surprise. The promise of a successful kill raced through his mind.
Normality. Rightness. Relief.
With a snarl of effort, the lion moved.
It was slow, at first. He clawed trenches into the ground in an effort to crawl forward, his muscles burning red hot under his skin. Agony came afresh with every beat of his heart, coursing fire through his veins, painting his vision in varying shades of murderous red.
But at least he wasn’t cold any more.
At least he would hunt again.
The lion staggered shakily to its feet, no longer mewling meekly at imagined predators. His perception was sharpening again, throwing his world into blade-sharp clarity. His eyes rolled in their gummy sockets, identifying his surroundings. His nostrils flared, sucking in lungfuls of nectar-rich prey-scent.
It was… that way. Beyond the trees. Out of the forest.
He reeled at first, his gait drunken and clumsy. Twice, he stumbled, and both times he vented his aggression on thin air, lashing out at nothing.
He couldn’t hear the soft thump of his shaky footfall as he moved. He couldn’t even hear the blast of his breath, gusting in and out of his lungs. All he heard was a strange buzzing.
Like flies gathered on a carcass.
She fought a rising thrill of panic, straining to see out into the void-black darkness.
Nothing moved. There were no animals out here, tonight. The familiar rustle of fallen leaves as the nocturnal foragers came out to hunt was an absence she sorely wished wasn’t there.
There wasn’t even a breeze. Not even slightly. The treeline was a collection of pale silvers and dark greys, unmoving and soundless in the moonlight. It was an unreasonably close night. The air spoke of thunderstorms yet-to-be, which was hardly ideal, given the situation they found themselves in.
She clutched her boy closer to her waist.
‘We are lost.’ He stated this simple truth without a trace of fear, in a matter-of-fact voice that reminded her painfully of his father.
The father that should have been here. Now. At this very moment.
‘Hush.’
The silence that met this gentle scold told her everything she didn’t want to hear. The boy was young – an infant, even, but he was perceptive beyond his years. She knew that he knew she was scared. But then wasn’t his father always saying she was so easy to read?
‘Where is he?’ This, not so blunt. A tremor of doubt crept into the boy’s voice, making him sound like the child he pretended he wasn‘t. She squeezed his shoulder.
‘I don’t know, dearest. Just keep walking. Please.’
Their feet whispered over the rocky outcrop, their slow advance defined in the soft swish of a silk dress and the gentle creak of the boy’s handmade shoes. The moonlight was dim and worthless, spilling weak silver light across shoulders of jutting rock, casting shadows that made leering faces of mundane features.
They stuck to the line of trees because it was a point of reference. Her instinct was to turn the other way, and be as far from the shadows under the canopy as possible – but that would make them more lost than they already were. She knew that they would find shelter if they walked for long enough, but walking in the dead of night, blind, unarmed, scared…
‘He said we shouldn’t leave the house,’ the boy whispered. She heard his fingernails scrape along the wooden token that hung around his neck.
‘I know he did. But if anyone can find us, it’s your father. You know this.’
He was silent for several moments.
‘What if he doesn’t?’ This question scared her, spoken from the lips of her own son.
‘I said hush. He will. I promise you.’ To her own ears – city ears, as her husband called them – these words sounded empty.
The need to blame someone for this nightmare was a tingling in her fingertips. Her husband, for not returning home tonight. Her, for leaving the house regardless of his absence. This Kurnous-damned wilderness, for its silent promises of danger.
He had enough money. This was what he had told her, yesterday. He had enough money to move them into the city, away from the pointless harshness of life out here. Years of guiding outsiders through the safe trails of Chrace had paid off.
One more errand. That was all he said it was. One more errand, for a wealthy outsider, and then they could leave.
But he had not come home tonight. Why did she leave? Why did she drag her child into this?
‘There is something over there.’ The boy pointed towards the trees.
She squinted until she saw. A gleam of something white moved on open ground, a ghost something big made small by distance.
It looked like it was… running. Bounding, on muscular legs. Straight for them.
‘What is that?’
She clutched him tighter, her slender hands grabbing his shoulders white-knuckle tight.
In the dead silence, she thought she heard the droning of flies.
The lion was galloping.
His claws sought purchase on rock that the great lion prides had claimed as their own for generations. He had run across this very same plateau years ago, before the world had become varying shades of danger and pain. The females of his pride had shed the blood of countless prey, hooved-creature and elf-creature alike, across this highland of rock and tall grass. The land was fat, nurturing his cubs into strong hunters, almost without exception.
Good land. Rich land.
His prey was no different now, even if he hunted for reasons other than hunger. A female, scared and alone with her cub, had spotted him. He didn’t need to see this to know it was true. Prey-scents were rich in the air, the usual cocktail of fear-laced sweat and… something else. Something that stung his nostrils. A curious musk that females often had coating their skin. It would taste vile, but that was not what this was about.
They were running, and he savoured what all but one of his senses told him. He was still deafened by the constant dirge inside his head. He was denied the patter of running feet and the rapid gasp of filling lungs.
He quickened his pace, a bound lengthening into a sprint. Flecks of drool stood at the corners of his mouth, s
praying behind him in sour ribbons as he began to close the distance.
He was probably close enough for them to smell him with their blunted and clumsy senses. The blood that caked his filthy hide was nearly four days old, the gory dappling blighting a mane that had once shone silver under the moonlight.
His moment came all too soon. The female looked over her shoulder as he leapt, his finger-sized claws flexing in predatory menace. Their eyes met before the kill came, as he widened his jaws and bared his leonine fangs.
With hunt-kill came blood.
And with blood, there came relief.
My axe is in my hands.
The haft is two yards of Chracian oak, carved with a screed of flowing Asurii script. The names of my forefathers are tiny grooves against my fingers, reminding me of the weapon’s legacy every time I shift my grip.
The head is a work of art that could shame princes. Subtly enchanted steel catches the dawn’s first rays as I turn the weapon over; as light as a walking staff, and in the right hands, as deadly as dragonfire.
A weapon Vaul himself would be proud to wield.
A blade that could one day save the life of my king.
I bring the weapon to bear because there is something up ahead. The shapes that lie across the rocks tell an ugly story. I know a kill when I see one.
The flies alone are enough for me to be wary as I approach.
The woman’s dress would be pretty if the body it clothed wasn’t lying in a dozen pieces. Her hair is black. Her skin is pale, paler even than mine. There is literally nothing else I can see that identifies her, save for the ring that adorns a hand that would once have been long-fingered and slender.
I blink sweat from my eyes and turn to look at…
No.
Blood of Kurnous, no.
That is a child.
I cannot – will not – look at the ruins of what was once a mother and son. I have seen enough. My boots whisper over grey stone as I stalk around the edge of the killing, my jaw hardening, my eyes watchful for clues.
These bodies are hours old. They died in the hours before dawn. Why they were out here at night is anyone’s guess, but the clues are arrayed before me. I see recent gouges in the earth where something huge propelled itself forward. I see a scattering of tracks that speak of a lethal sprint from the forest. I see bloody paw-prints leading a meandering, drunken path back to the line of trees.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 48