by Stephen Hunt
‘What is going on – what is that devil doing here?’ yelled Benner Landor, aiming his pistol at Nocks.
Leyla ran up to her husband, her voice trembling and terrified. ‘Thank the saints you arrived at last, Benner. Nocks broke into the room looking to rescue Willow. He feared the trial would go against her. They’re planning to escape together, flee north to the pretender and the rebels. These two devils took me prisoner before you arrived. They were going to abduct me for ransom.’
‘Don’t you move, you treacherous dog,’ growled Benner. His gun didn’t waver from the short brute who had once been his manservant. ‘Release my daughter.’
Nocks let Willow go and she gasped as she fell forward, hobbling away from the thug.
‘I intend to see you hung, Nocks,’ her father threatened, ‘but a bullet will serve as well for your payment. You betrayed my house, my trust in you, turned your colours, and for what . . . the chance of further sullying my adulteress of a daughter? You are nothing but a fool and a coward.’
‘What are you talking about?’ wheezed Willow, trying to find her voice. ‘You’ve gone mad. You’re the one who sent Nocks into Rodal to kidnap me.’
‘Hold your lying tongue still!’ barked Benner. He moved back a step and locked the door, as though what he planned to do was so terrible he wished no witnesses to it. ‘You may have been freed from the court’s charges of treason, but you haven’t been released from the bonds of your marriage vows.’
Has he gone insane? ‘I think Duncan did that job for me, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You see how it is, now?’ cajoled Leyla. ‘Willow went crawling back to her husband’s bed. She seduced that dunce William into trying to kill Duncan during the duel. She tricked her brother and husband into murdering each other. She forced Duncan to truly defend his life. And now Willow is widow and heir to all of William’s estate while poor Duncan is dying inside a surgeon’s tent. How neatly Willow’s arranged all the cards to fall in her favour.’
Benner’s cheeks glowed crimson with fury. ‘If you weren’t carrying William’s child, I would order you dragged back to the artillery camp and flogged, and the king’s justice be damned.’
‘But Willow’s already lost her baby,’ lied Leyla. ‘I overheard Willow boasting to Nocks about how she’d never bear William’s bastard child into the world. She laughed herself hoarse after she told Nocks about how easy it was to obtain a mild poison to wash that luckless child out of her womb.’
‘She’s making this all up!’ shouted Willow. ‘It’s pure nonsense. The baby is still mine . . . it’s heart beats within me. I never met Duncan or my so-called husband before the duel. My warning saved Duncan’s life. Whatever wicked scheme is going on here is your cursed wife’s, Father, not mine.’
‘Let your old man have the truth at last, my love,’ begged Nocks, his hands raised out to her in supplication. ‘Please, give ’im the truth so he doesn’t order poor ol’ Nocks shot as a deserter. After all I done for you, you owe me that much at least.’
Willow threw the thug a look of pure loathing. ‘I owe you far more than that, you demon-hearted stealer. And you’ll have it when I plunge a blade in your gut.’
‘Shoot Willow,’ pleaded Leyla. The young woman hugged her husband as she clung beseechingly against his uniform. ‘You know what she is. Please. She’ll take her murdered husband’s title and turn it against us. She’ll find a way to hurt us. Kidnap little Asher, have our child murdered along with both of us. Willow will command Carter and Jacob Carnehan to murder us. Then she’ll claim the Landor house for herself. Kill her now. It’s the only way Asher will ever be safe.’
‘Father,’ implored Willow, ‘the conniving bitch is lying: you must know how insane her story sounds. I wouldn’t hurt my step-brother . . . I wouldn’t harm a baby. Even after everything you and Duncan did to me, I saved Duncan’s life during the duel. I stood for the family.’
‘You provoked Duncan into killing William,’ sneered Leyla, ‘you goaded your brother into clearing your name.’
The pistol wavered in Benner Landor’s hand. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t shoot my own daughter. Whatever evil she’s committed. This is the Carnehans’ fault. That traitorous bandit and his viperous brood corrupted her soul. I will have Willow committed to an asylum. Yes, even if I have to forge the king’s seal on the order. That is what will be best.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Leyla, slipping a wire garrotte around Benner’s neck; her long pale fingers twisting on a wooden tightening choke. ‘I think your loving wife understands what’s for the best.’ Benner stumbled back, dropping his pistol as he gagged and grappled manically. Willow tried to dive for the fallen gun, but Nocks lunged and grabbed her from behind again, dragging her floundering across the floor.
Leyla didn’t have to force Willow’s father to his knees. Benner collapsed forward, desperately trying to loosen the blood-soaked wire; but the same crushed throat deprived him of the air he needed to fight his young wife off him. ‘And let’s face it; two widows will make a far better story than one. The honest, good widow, grieving for her brave officer husband. And then there is the evil widow who cunningly escaped justice, took revenge on her too-trusting father before being shot attempting to escape and rejoin the wicked pretender, trying to reunite with her depraved bandit lover. Yes, that’s a deliciously melancholy tale that will seal my position in society.’
Willow tried to throw her skull back into Nocks’ face, but the devil just laughed, his grip a vice she couldn’t escape. ‘Father! Please, Holten, you don’t need to do—’ Too weak, too slow. Stupid whale. If only my baby was safely born and I could fight unburdened.
‘Don’t keep using that disgusting common name! I am a Lady of the House Landor,’ shrieked the woman, sounding demented. She furiously increased the pressure on the garrotte mechanism and Benner’s hand vainly reached out towards Willow, his fingers fluttering as one final breath escaped his lungs.
‘So—r—ry.’
‘I am the lady,’ Holten screeched.
No. No! She can’t. He can’t!
‘Better,’ purred Leyla, releasing the garrotte and letting the corpse’s weight fall to the floor. She stared at her bloody hands and tutted, kneeling to wipe her fingers clean on Benner Landor’s uniform. ‘I used poison on my previous husbands. A tincture to stop their hearts, but you must measure the dosage precisely. You need to stay up all night with a pillow at hand just to be sure. There is a reassuring certainty that comes with sullying your hands. As long as you have a silly fool at hand to carry all of the blame.’ Leyla came closer to stroke Willow’s face, side-stepping the sharp kick aimed at her.
I’ll tear your bloody face off. ‘I’ll gladly take the blame for your murder, Holten. You killed him!’
‘Now those aren’t the manners the new head of the Landors expects to see, Daughter,’ said Leyla.
Nocks chuckled in wry amusement as Willow struggled wildly, trying to break free of his grip, desperate to throw herself against this she-devil. ‘You should have accepted my offer, Willowy Willow. Taken up with old Nocks. Now see where we’ve come to.’
‘The wire neck-tie was a gift to me from King Marcus,’ sighed Leyla. ‘A small mark of his affection. He enjoys dispatching his enemies with a similar device installed in a chair. The Landor riches will be the king’s next present to me. Although to be fair, I certainly earned them. Childbirth is a torture. I shall spare you such pain, Daughter.’
Willow’s body slumped in the dog’s tight grip, finding the tears at last to spill over her foolish, grasping father. I’ve lost. He’s lost. All that wealth and power gathered up by the house over the decades. And for what? Benner Landor had discovered too late just who he had married. Carter will never know what happened to me. Willow felt her belly throb urgently, responding with the stress. To either of us. And who else is there to care?
‘You promised me the girl,’ Nocks grumbled.
‘Sadly, my scheme has been rearranged by circumstance
s,’ cooed Leyla. ‘But given I now possess all the wealth of the north to console you, I am certain you will rapidly overcome your disappointment.’ Leyla stepped over her husband’s corpse and scooped up Benner’s fallen pistol. Then she returned and rested its cold steel barrel against Willow’s forehead. ‘Yes, I saw you throttle my beautiful Benner. I tried to run to summon the army sentries in town, but you attacked me, Willow. We wrestled across the floor fighting for my husband’s pistol until it pointed at your head. And then it went off !’
‘How many people will die under the clans’ spears, how many lands will fall?’ Carter shouted at Temmell.
‘As many countries as can be ridden across in a lifetime,’ said Temmell. ‘That is the way of the horde.’
‘Then the Gaskald Forests will be overrun after Rodal falls,’ said Carter. He stared at Temmell, but the sorcerer didn’t realize the words were no longer for him. ‘Woodland won’t slow the Nijumeti. They’ll ride through and plunder every town and village, kill every innocent they come across. And if the gasks attempt to flee, Kani Yargul’s skyguard will drop warriors in front of the refugees and slaughter them all to the last child just for a chance of pillaging the refugees’ possessions.’
‘When the Nijumeti ride they are the wind,’ said Temmell, as though this fact should be obvious. He hadn’t yet noticed Kerge moaning in his captors’ grip.
‘I cannot,’ Kerge sobbed.
Yes, you can. ‘You think it will be an easy slaughter, Temmell? The people of the forests are pacifists,’ said Carter. ‘You might say it is in their blood. But the code of the gasks allows them to defend themselves. If they have to. Every creature can do that. Even a sheep backed into a corner by a wolf.’
Temmell looked at the gask struggling and moaning in the grip of his massive blue-skinned warriors and shook with laughter. ‘The witch’s twisted little tent-serf ? That leather-faced runt is a born slave. My wolves feed such sheep steel for breakfast. When we reach their lands it won’t be a battlefield we make there, it’ll be an abattoir.’
Kerge started to keen, a high-pitched screech fit to make Carter’s skin crawl.
‘Bring him to silence,’ barked Temmell. ‘And as for you, turnip, irritate me further and I will withdraw the magnanimous offer of your freedom. You can join Sariel Skel-bane on the stake. I doubt whether your ashes will reform so readily as your master’s, however.’
‘Burn me then, you treacherous bastard! Your blue-skinned cowards are going to murder everyone I love inside Rodal. You might as well plunge a dagger through my heart now too.’
Sariel and Sheplar Lesh joined in the fierce tirade of insults, and the Nijumeti needed no further urging to pacify their insolent captives, the Rodalian pilot’s suggestion about how clansmen ill-used their mounts enough to push them into a murderous fury. The blunt end of a spear smashed into Carter’s face, sending a tooth flying away in a spray of blood. He tasted wet salt as a rain of savage blows fell on him, cracking across his chest, arms, back and head. Carter tumbled sprawling half-conscious over the grass, boots lashing into ribs as he tried to protect his skull with his hands. He hung on to consciousness to hear the gask’s insane screech. The beating’s done its work. The insanity of the gask’s cries joined by sudden strangled croaks as the warriors pummelling Carter collapsed to the dirt. Carter rolled over, staying close to the ground. Accusing Nijumeti eyes stared at him from a rictus death-mask, everybody riddled with gask spines, fatal neurotoxin spreading dark blotches wherever they had pierced the nomads’ skin.
With the hail of death above Carter’s body diminishing he staggered to his feet. Half of their nomad escort were trying to gallop north. The half still left alive. Kerge leapt up on to the supply wagon’s flatbed, arms extended towards the nomads, his muscles cracking like a crossbow as spines fleeted away. Horses fell, Nijumeti spilled out of saddles. Temmell lurched in front of his unearthed casket, too. His body remade as a pin-cushion of deadly quills. The sorcerer yanked out quill after quill, dark bull’s-eyes on his skin fading back to his natural golden colour as he removed them.
‘Kerge wasn’t the wolf in my story,’ said Carter, charging straight towards the sorcerer. ‘That would be me!’ They spun to the ground together. Carter grasped at the sorcerer’s forehead. ‘This was meant for Sariel, but seeing as you want to taste mortality so badly, you can have it . . .’
Carter willed Temmell mortal and his palms seemed to pulse with ice, freezing the two of them together, both of them screaming as Sariel’s gift flowed between Weylander and sorcerer. Temmell tried to coil away, break free, but the power running between them bonded them together in suffering. Contact was only broken as the gift emptied out of Carter. The young Weylander kicked himself away from Temmell’s jerking body before one of the spines piercing Temmell could snap off and stab him instead.
Temmell curled across the ground, embracing his new-found mortality while Kerge’s evil spine toxins coursed through his blood. Blood that no longer held an immortal’s healing magic. He managed to wobble to his feet, tearing off his jacket and unfurling his massive white wings. ‘I am . . . more . . . than you.’ Temmell took two strides forward and tried to launch himself off the ground, but instead toppled to the dirt mewling, his skin blackening below every spine strike. Temmell gazed up with bewilderment at Sariel as the old vagrant stood over his companion. ‘You gave . . . the turnip . . . that.’
‘It was meant for me,’ said Sariel. ‘I deserve it as much as you.’
‘Don’t . . . use . . . the . . . great weapon,’ pleaded Temmell.
‘You wanted to know what it’s like,’ said Carter. ‘Dying. Now you do. Dying is nothing like forgetting, is it?’
Temmell crawled forward, his trembling fingers trying to tug out poisoned spines. But he was mortal now, stripped of his supernatural self-healing. Temmell twisted across the grass, spasms slowing as paralysis set in. ‘Life . . . will . . . out . . . in the . . . end.’
‘But no longer for you, old friend,’ said Sariel, sadness in his voice.
Temmell hissed like a snake and fell still.
Carter nudged the younger-looking sorcerer’s corpse with a boot. He’s gone for good. ‘I think our journey’s finished, Sariel. Your saintscursed friend is dead, along with any chance of assembling the great weapon. We have to ride into Rodal. Find Willow and my father before it’s too late.’
‘And so we shall. But there is one thing you must know first. Temmell may be gone, but not his memories, Lord Carnehan. When you healed Temmell back in the steppes, you did more than unlock his mind, you copied a part of him. The most important part.’
You old fraud! ‘I thought there was more to the healing,’ said Carter. ‘It felt different to the time I restored your mind.’
‘When you reinstate a member of my party, you also claim their portion of the great weapon,’ said Sariel.
‘You did it to me when you healed me inside the sky mines!’ accused Carter. Now the immediate danger was over, Carter was all too aware of the quilt of pain his body had been left by the nomads. How badly he had been used in this affair. By all sides, it seems. ‘You damnable old trickster!’
‘You were halfway there before now, Lord Carnehan,’ said Sariel. ‘When the ethreaal machinery inside the stratovolcano remade you as a key, it knew that the war outside was as good as lost. My party’s arrival was already the last throw of the dice.’
‘When I hold all your great weapon’s segments,’ said Carter, ‘will I not become the very thing that your people are so terrified of ?’
‘I still possess my share of it,’ said Sariel. ‘I would not burden you with that.’
‘And if I pass my segments on to you . . . ?’
‘Then I will have a decision to make,’ said Sariel. ‘And I will need the wisdom of every year of my too-long existence to weigh the balance of what must be done.’
And I will have the power to stop you, thought Carter. To make you mortal too and kill you if I have to. Now Carter understood why
Sariel had given him this unasked for power.
Kerge had recovered control over his body’s murderous impulses. He knelt in the cart, moaning to himself. Carter felt sorry for the gask; guilty for tricking the nomads into provoking Kerge, even if the dirty ruse had spared the four of them. If only pacifism came as easily to the rest of humanity, the world would be a better place. Sheplar stumbled across to Carter, barely recovered from the beating he had received, his face bruised and swollen where the nomads had weighed in on their ancient foe. ‘Temmell may be dead, but his plan lives on. Town after town will fall to the nomads’ skyguard. This invasion by the horde is nothing Rodal has ever faced before.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ grinned Sariel.
‘You dare smile, you old devil! That is my homeland over there!’
‘Your nation, indeed. But I know something about your peaks that you do not know. Nor the Nijumeti, for that matter.’
Sariel explained himself, and as he did so, even Carter couldn’t help but crack a grin at what he heard.
THIRTEEN
FLIGHT OF THE NIJUMETI
Cassandra stared down at the rolling swards of grassland, trying not to let the thrum of the vibrating aircraft’s engine on the biplane’s nose send her off to sleep. She had agreed to let Alexamir take the pilot position in front and guide them through the sky, but only because the nomad’s grasp of navigating from aerial charts was even shakier than his flying skills. But then, Alexamir had been taught to fly by what could best be described as mercenaries whose own kingdoms would have executed the trainers if they’d ever realized they were tutoring their troublesome nomad neighbours in such skills. Combine that with aircraft cobbled together from recovered wreckage and pilots who flew as wildly as they pushed their horses, and Cassandra’s seat within the aerial armada was not exactly a comfortable one. Her eyes were still heavy from the length of time spent in the air. Now they had passed their final refuelling point and were about to enter the mountain ranges of Rodal.