by Tim Stead
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Bren Ashet, Third Rank,” a voice said. The pitch was too high, and the vowels seemed to whistle, but he understood perfectly.
“A messenger?”
“Yes.”
He turned to look at the creature. How it had entered Wolfguard was one more mystery, but that would have to wait. He was sure that it had entered before, that it had left the note. He tested the theory.
“I received your note,” he said.
“I know this,” the Bren said. It stood close to the wall of the lair in a place where he was certain to have seen it just a few moments before. He had walked past the spot where it stood, candle in hand, and there had been nothing. It was shorter than a man, and naked except for a belt about its waist and a length of cloth folded several times and draped over one shoulder. The cloth was held in place by the belt. It was skinny, pale skinned, large eyed. Its eyes were like a man’s only more so. The whites were peripheral, the iris large and the pupils small; a creature of the darkness. It was troubled even by the few candles he had here.
“Who sent it?”
“That is not to be revealed at this time.” It spoke with very little movement of its lips, which was disconcerting, as though the voice came from elsewhere. In a sense this was true. The Ashet were simply messengers. He had seen them before. They had no names, and very little personality, but acted simply as the mouthpiece for the sender.
“Why are you here again?”
“It is thought that you need more help.”
“By whom?”
“The one who sends this message.”
“And what form will the help take?”
“Information.”
“What is the information?”
The Bren closed its eyes and began to recite. They were little more than perfect memories, Narak reflected; machines for remembering and repeating, incapable of aggression or self defence. They were not a threat.
“Dark hulled wind ships, of the type Seth Yarra, have been seen in each of the last fifteen years in increasing numbers. They have been landing on the shores of Terras for the last three years, though the purpose is not known. They have been seen in the waters off all the kingdoms of men. Ships sail singly or in groups of no more than three. More have recently been seen off the coast of Avilian and Berash. They touch land in places where men are scarce, and at night.”
“And nobody thought we needed to know until now?”
The Bren stopped talking at the interruption and opened its eyes for a moment. It said nothing. After a few seconds it closed them again.
“The Bren consider the Seth Yarra to be a threat, and when all is ready the Bren will attack the Seth Yarra. This will not take place before the spring after the one that comes. This message is given in accordance with the laws of Pelion.”
It opened its eyes again and looked at him.
“That’s it?”
“That is the message. However, there are more facts that I am permitted to divulge.”
“And they are?”
“The number of the Seth Yarra, in the place in which they dwell, is believed to be twenty million. The number of Seth Yarra under arms is thought to be over a quarter of a million, and may be rapidly increased. The number of wind ships upon the sea in the service of the Seth Yarra is believed to be three thousand.”
Twenty million? That was more than ten times the number in all of Terras, and the kingdoms could not muster a fifth of Seth Yarra’s armies, even if they could be persuaded to send all their men to the battle.
“How can we prevail against such numbers?”
The messenger looked blank. He did not have an answer to this question.
“How many can the Bren bring to battle against the Seth Yarra?”
“An exact answer is not permitted, but the sender allows that there will be sufficient, but not before the spring after the one that comes.”
So they must last a year and a half until help came from the Bren. He had seen Bren warriors, the Bren Morain, during his time with Pelion. They were the most insect like of the Bren, protected by dark, hard, bony plates – a natural armour – and each limb a weapon liberally supplied with sharp edges and deadly spikes. They were fast, too.
He had been with Pelion for six months, but even in so long a time he had learned very little about the Bren. There were many kinds, and all quite different from each other. He had no idea if there were male and female Bren, how they bred, what drove them. It was certain that Pelion commanded them. They did as he wished without hesitation, but beyond that simple fact he did not understand them at all. This one had mentioned Pelion’s Law, and he had no greater understanding of that than he had of Seth Yarra table etiquette. He didn’t even know what the Bren ate.
“Do you have warriors that you can send to help us if we are attacked before then?” he asked.
“The Bren will attack the Seth Yarra when all is ready,” the messenger said.
“And not before. I have one more question. How did you get into Wolfguard?”
The Ashet blinked at him. He was asking something that was not part of its message, something on which it had no guidance. “The Bren are creatures of the rock,” it said. “We are creatures of below. I came from below.”
“Where did you enter?”
“Here.” It blinked again. Blinking was a sign of discomfort, he remembered that much.
“You came through the floor exactly below the place you are standing?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Blink. “There is no word for it in your tongue. I opened the rock, and then closed it.”
A useful trick. “Is that the way you will depart?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
“It is not time to depart.”
That was interesting, and surprising. The message was delivered. “When will it be time to depart?” he asked.
“I do not know. It has not yet been revealed.”
“You will be staying here?”
“I am to stay within this structure, or by your side. There will be further messages, and I am to say what they are.”
“I do not understand. How will you receive the messages if you are here? Will another come?”
“No. If the sender tells Bren Ashet, third rank, then I will know the message if it is intended for you.”
“There is another Bren Ashet with the sender?”
Blink. Blink. The Bren remained silent. He had said something wrong, something that it did not understand. He had thought for a moment that the Bren could communicate in some way over distance without speaking, but it was more than that, he realised, and his appreciation of the strangeness of the Bren was raised still higher.
“There is only one Bren Ashet,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you are in many places at the same time.”
“Yes.”
A single creature with many bodies. A single mind. A perfect messenger indeed, and as long as one of them lived no message was ever lost. How old must such a creature be, and how wasted such a surety of immortality on a thing so dull witted?
“You will stay here, in this chamber,” he said. “It is the place where I am most often, and I cannot have one of the night folk trailing me about the kingdoms of men. It would simply distress them too much, and the sunlight, I am sure, would bother you.”
The Bren said nothing. It just stood and accepted his words.
“Tomorrow I must go again to Avilian,” he went on, and then stopped. He was explaining himself to a messenger with the intelligence of a child. Did he really want all his actions and intentions to be common knowledge among the Bren? Tomorrow he would go to Avilian. Tomorrow he would put things right in the city of Bel Arac. The Marquis was not just an enemy to the Benetheon, but in the light of what the Bren had told him he was a traitor to his own people, an ally of the Seth Yarra.
He left the room and made his way to his sleeping chambe
r. He didn’t use it often, but he was uncomfortable with the idea if sleeping in the lair with a Bren’s strange eyes watching over him.
In the morning he sent Poor to find his armour. It was rare for him to wear it. In fact he could not remember ever having used it in anger. It had been a gift. The finest armourers in Telas Alt and made it for him as a gift, and he had tried it on, worn it until he had felt they had seen enough and were assured that he was suitably grateful, and then he had removed it and told Poor to store it.
Poor knew where it was, of course, and Narak was almost disappointed to discover that his steward had kept it polished and lightly oiled for four hundred years – just in case.
It was beautiful workmanship. Even now it looked sleek and dangerous. He watched as Poor and two others brought it piece by piece into the great hall. He had publicly moved into the great hall because the Bren was still in the lair, even though he was not overly fond of the room. It seemed a little too cold and a little too richly ornamented for his current taste.
It was a broad chamber, laid out as a throne room. At the lower end a pair of double doors gaped wide enough to allow more people to enter than had ever been in Wolfguard. They were eight feet high and twelve wide, panelled in a selection of woods from across the great forest. The pillars and lintel of the doorway were carved in the form of trees and branches, and the pillars that supported the roof continued the theme so that it was like an ordered forest. The ceiling itself was painted in great detail as a canopy of leaves, but the illusion had always failed for Narak, despite the exquisite quality of the workmanship. The light was wrong. There was no way that lamps and candles could adequately capture the dappled daylight. He preferred it poorly lit. It could seem almost like the forest at night with just a few flames to stand in for stars and a lamp for the moon.
He had removed the throne from the dais centuries ago, when its arrogance began to annoy him, and the space was curtained off. Behind those curtains were doors leading to a suite of private rooms, and these, too, were rarely visited.
The armour was red. He had no idea how they had done it, and it was said that the secret had died out among the smithies of Telas Alt over two hundred years ago, because it was not painted; the metal itself was the colour of fresh blood. It was all curves and smooth planes with no place for a point to stick, the joints being the only weak points, engineered for ease of motion more than complete defence.
He needed armour. He was going to confront the lord of Bel Arac in his fortress, and Bel Arac was a man with a lot of blood silver. Narak was all but invincible with a sword, but arrows bothered him. You could not cut ten arrows from the air at the same time, let alone fifty.
He was certain that Bel Arac would have plenty of warning of his arrival. He could attempt to sneak into the building, to avoid being recognised, but the though of that offended him, and if he was discovered in such a low act he would have the same problems to overcome. If he was Bel Arac he would have fifty archers with their arrows tipped in blood silver waiting for the word to shoot. In such a case he would be hit many times, and was loath to rely on a shield for protection. Arrows could come from many directions at once.
It embraced him like a second skin. The day he had been given it, the armour had been a perfect fit, and nothing had changed. Each piece was carefully placed on his body and strapped into place. It closed about him like some great lobster shell, waiting to be peeled away, and he waited patiently until they were done. He disliked having to rely on others to dress him for battle. It seemed weak, and made him feel somehow incomplete.
When they had finished he shooed them away and drew his swords. The action seemed easy enough. He moved, spinning, cutting, slicing the air to ribbons. His red carapace was surprisingly light. It made him a shade slower than he was without, but he adjusted to it easily, and after a few minutes he was as fluent in his movement as he had dared hope.
“It will do,” he said to Poor.
“It looks very warlike, Deus,” the steward said, and though his tone was neutral Narak knew that Poor was disapproving by his choice of words. Warlike was a disparagement in his mouth, just as much as peaceable was a blessing.
He did not reply. His business that day would be the killing of men. He did not doubt it. And the armour was surely suited to the business. He hadn’t been sure if the colour of the armour was a joke or a compliment when they had presented it to him, but he decided it was the latter, simply because they would not have dared to offend him. He was the bloodstained god, bathed in the gore of his enemies. It was a name they had given him after Afael when he had indeed been painted red from head to foot in the blood of Seth Yarra.
Wearing the armour brought back the nausea he had felt after the battle, the sudden desire to bathe, to be elsewhere, to forget. He draped a heavy cloak over his shoulders.
“I will go now,” he said.
He ran out of Wolfguard, warming his muscles, driving the unwelcome memories from his head with deep breaths and the clean feeling of power in his body. He had no problem with killing. He’d never had a problem with death. His father had been a hunter, and so had he before Pelion. But there was something wrong about that day in Afael. There had been something wrong with him. His mind had not been clear, and the killing was done badly, without respect; cutting weeds, not corn.
He stopped when he was in the forest and out of sight of the entrances to Wolfguard. He picked up leaves from the forest floor and crumbled them in his hand, inhaling the scent. He let the pieces fall and closed his eyes.
He opened them elsewhere. He was on a slope about a quarter of a mile above the gates of Bel Arac. The forest was thick enough to conceal him from anyone who might glance up this way, and he stood in the shade of a tree for a while and watched the city. There seemed no unusual traffic, no extra guards on the gate. From this point he could see the fortress at the heart of Bel Arac. It was as pretty a piece of architecture that ever rightfully bore the name of castle. Five towers showed the shape of the curtain wall, each able to support the towers on either side so that there was no place that you could assault the walls where you would not be attacked from two directions by numerous bowmen. Within the curtain wall stood the keep, a circular tower. The only entrance was twenty feet up one side, and the wooden stair that led to it was easily burned or broken, making it difficult to assail.
The entire building and the walls were made of a smooth, grey local stone with a crystalline structure, and it caught the morning light, glittered like polished metal, or like a myriad of jewels set in lead. The gap between the city gates and the curtain wall was no more than three hundred yards and from the curtain wall to the keep was another thirty. Not far, but the distances worried him.
There was no point in putting it off. Every moment increased the likelihood of Bel Arac being warned of his presence, of learning that his mining operation had been discovered. Narak strode down the hill. He did not run, but long strides carried him quickly to the gate. The guards, and there were only two of them, seemed startled to see him. One look was enough to tell them that trying to stop him would be a fatally bad idea.
The road between the city gate and the curtain wall was busy with people, but it was straight. He could see the guards there and they could see him. He saw a man run off, probably to the keep to warn the Marquis. It seemed a very short time before he reached the gate and found his way barred by three men. They had not drawn their weapons, which surprised him.
“What business…?” one of them started to say, but Narak didn’t break his stride, burst through them like a tide through a wicker dam. One of them cried out, but he did not look back, and did not hear any of them follow him. He reached the wooden steps to the keep and took them three at a time. At the top his way was barred by an officer of Bel Arac’s guard, sword drawn, face pale.
“Deus,” he said. “You must stop.”
For a moment he did. He had not yet drawn his swords.
“Stand aside,” he said.
&nbs
p; “I am bound by my oath to protect my lord the Marquis,” the officer said. It was a brave thing to stand before Wolf Narak, braver still to stand alone.
“Your oath is voided. Your lord is a traitor. If you do not stand aside I shall judge you guilty of taking arms against your king.”
The officer hesitated, but Narak could see the shock in his eyes. This one did not know. What he did know was that the wolf god would not lie about such a thing. If Wolf Narak said that Bel Arac was a traitor… The guard put down his sword and stood aside.
“Good man,” Narak said as he pushed past. He ran up the grand staircase. The plan of this keep was simple enough, and he knew that if the Marquis was here he would be in the great hall, or in the private chambers behind it. He knew the way well enough from other visits, long ago. It was unnervingly similar to the layout of his great hall in Wolfguard.