by Derek Landy
“I’m sorry?”
“How many towns have you rallied to your cause?”
Ravel smiled. “You’ll forgive me for withholding certain details, I’m sure. Let’s just say it’s more than a few.”
It was a barefaced lie, and Valkyrie wasn’t sure that Griff was buying it.
“In that case,” Griff said, “why would you need us? It sounds like you have things well in hand.”
“There’s always room for more.”
“But not us, I’m afraid. Not with Mandat’s outpost so close. They’ve left us alone for all this time because we have not offered them any reason to interfere. Grand Mage Mandat is not a man to cross – he’s quick to anger and slow to forgive. I’m sorry, our answer must be no.”
Skulduggery leaned closer. “Then we need a way into the research facility. We need to get in undetected.”
Griff laughed. “And you lower your voice to tell me this? Walls have ears, is that it? You have nothing to fear in Wolfsong, my friend. Secrets do not pass beyond the boundaries of our town, you can be assured of that.”
“I wish I could be as trusting as you.”
“Or, if you prefer to stay suspicious, I can do the trusting for all of us.” Griff laughed again. “Nobody gets close to that facility without Mandat’s people being aware of it. The approach is littered with sensors and alarms. To accomplish what you need to accomplish, you would need a guide who has been there and back.”
“Do you know of any such guide?”
“No I do not, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you. Mandat rules his Sanctuary with a heavy fist. So unlike the days of Grand Mage Trebuchet.”
“I knew Trebuchet,” said Ravel. “He was a good man. Fair. Just.”
“Too fair,” said Griff. “Too just. Honourable men are easy targets to people like Mandat. They can never begin to comprehend the depths to which their opponents will stoop to seize power for themselves. It was a sad day for the French Sanctuary when Mandat became Grand Mage and Trebuchet was sent out into the wilds. Well, I say ‘wilds’. He didn’t go very far, if I’m being honest.”
“He’s still alive?” Ravel asked. “He might know a way into the facility. Griff, please, if you can’t help us, maybe he can. Where is he?”
Griff stood, hitched his trousers a little, and nodded behind them. “He’s over there,” he said, and walked away.
The man he’d nodded to sat in a corner with his head down. Grey hair, cut tight. Silvery stubble. A hard face.
“He looks grumpy,” Vex said. “Objectionable. You really think you can get him to help?”
“Don’t worry,” said Ravel, “I’ll convince him.”
They approached Trebuchet’s table, stood there until the old man raised his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Trebuchet said.
“We had to,” said Ravel. “We need your help.”
“My answer is no. Now leave.”
“Do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you, Mr Ravel. There is precious little I forget, no matter how much I might want to. My answer is still no.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”
“It doesn’t matter. When I left the Sanctuary, I left it all behind. Everything and everyone I care about is in Wolfsong. The rest of the world can burn and it would not bother me in the slightest. Leave me now.”
Ravel hesitated, and they all walked back to their table.
“I will never doubt you again,” said Vex.
“Shut up.”
Griff rented them rooms, and Valkyrie fell asleep on a soft mattress and was grateful for it. She awoke with a rumbling belly, like she hadn’t eaten in days. It was still dark outside, but she dressed and went downstairs to find the rest of the Dead Men tucking into a generous breakfast – all except Skulduggery, who only joined them after she had started eating.
“We should get going,” he said.
“Why do you have your hood up?” Valkyrie asked with a mouth full of sausage. “This is a sorcerer town.”
“Yet as a walking skeleton I am still somewhat unique,” he replied. “People tend to stare at things they are not used to. Now stop talking and eat faster. We have things to do.”
They left Wolfsong and the fog started to clear, and dawn streaked across the horizon. Valkyrie looked back at the town, finding it immensely creepy the way the fog just enveloped it completely. She would have liked to stay to see it in the daytime, when the fog retreated, but Skulduggery seemed to be working to his own mysterious schedule.
Two hours later, Valkyrie’s belly was rumbling again.
“I’m starving,” she said.
“Me too,” said Saracen.
“Same here,” said Ravel. “It’s like I never ate breakfast.”
Skulduggery stopped, looked at them all. “What about the rest of you? Are you hungry?”
Vex and Ghastly nodded.
“Complaining is for little girls,” Shudder said. “With no offence to little girls. But yes, I am hungry.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Ghastly.
“I didn’t see any livestock,” Skulduggery said. “I didn’t see any crops. Where are they getting their food? Wolfsong has always been self-sufficient.”
“Maybe they’ve started to trade,” Ravel said. “Or maybe they keep their livestock and crops somewhere else. Why is it such a big deal?”
“I don’t know. Something’s been gnawing at me since we left.”
Valkyrie sagged. “Please don’t tell me we have to go back.”
“I’m not saying that. OK, yes, I’m saying that, but didn’t Trebuchet seem scared to you?”
“He seemed grumpy. Not as grumpy as I am right now, but grumpy.” Valkyrie looked back the way they’d come. “You want us to walk up that hill? We just walked down it, and now we have to walk back up it? Why couldn’t we have just stayed where we were? Why couldn’t we have had this conversation while we were up there?”
Skulduggery started walking back. The others did likewise. Valkyrie glowered, and plodded after them.
They followed the trail through the trees, and by the time they emerged on to the open fields the conversation had died.
Valkyrie’s feet were sore again, and she was tired and starving. No one else was complaining, though, not even Saracen, so she kept her mouth shut, but when the others stopped beside some old ruins, she gladly sat on a moss-covered slab of stone that jutted from the earth like a giant’s broken tooth. She jammed her fingers into her pockets and buried her chin in her chest. A cold wind blew from the mountains in the distance and tried to sneak past her collar to send icy fingers trickling down her spine. The sky was grey and the mud was brown and the ruins were old. Timbers rotted where roofs had caved in. Stone walls crumbled and pitched at odd angles, sinking into the muck. She hadn’t even noticed these ruins the first time they’d passed.
She looked round at Skulduggery, Vex and Saracen as they picked their way slowly through the remains of what had once been a town. Ravel, Ghastly and Shudder stood to one side. They spoke a few quiet words to each other, then stopped and looked solemn. Valkyrie didn’t want to ask a question. Asking a question would lead to an answer, which could lead to a decision, which could lead to more walking. She was quite happy to sit on this slab and rest her feet. But, while she didn’t want to ask a question, there was a question that needed to be asked.
Scowling at herself, she lifted her head. “Why have we stopped? Wolfsong can’t be that far away now. What’s so interesting about a bunch of old ruins?”
Surprisingly, it was Shudder who came forward. He stood beside her, the wind playing with his coat, but didn’t look at her. Instead, his eyes glanced at the darkening sky, then settled on the horizon.
“Night falls early here,” he said. “And the fog is coming. See it? It’s rolling down from the mountains. We don’t have long.”
Despite Ghastly’s wonderful garments, Valkyrie shivered, and reluctantly got to
her feet. “Then we’d better hurry, right?”
“Hurry?” Shudder said. “To where?”
“To Wolfsong. That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?”
Shudder looked at her, his eyes gentle. “Valkyrie,” he said, “do you not think we should have come to Wolfsong by now?”
“What do you mean? It’s up the road.”
“No, Valkyrie. We are in Wolfsong. This is all that remains of the town the wraiths destroyed, one hundred years ago.”
Valkyrie paled. “No. We were in Wolfsong this morning. Wolfsong is a proper town. It has proper houses and people in it. We talked to them. We talked to Griff. We slept in its beds. We had breakfast.”
“We thought we had, but our bellies were fooled along with our eyes and ears. The building we were in is over there. It’s nothing but a few stones and dead grasses.”
“But Griff—”
“Griff is long dead, Valkyrie. They all are.”
he fog rolled in, down from the mountains, and they watched it come. When it hit the ruins, it rebuilt them, walls fading up from nothing, roofs and windows and doors becoming solid as the fog snaked through the narrow streets, and it brought with it people.
At first they were whispers and shadows, half-glimpsed out of the corner of Valkyrie’s eye, and then they were solid, and passing in front of her, smiling and laughing and chatting to each other. When the cold fog covered the whole town, she felt her magic dampen, and she glanced at Skulduggery.
“They don’t look like ghosts,” she said softly, her breath frosting.
“No they don’t,” he responded. He said something in French to a passing lady, who answered him and laughed, and walked on, disappearing into the gloom.
There was a scream, from up ahead.
Valkyrie ran for the source, the Dead Men all around her. There were people running, and more screams. Panic soaked into the air and spread outwards. She could feel her own nerves starting to jangle. Something big came at her and she dodged, stumbled, and a horse galloped by, and someone ran into her, tripped over her, scrambled up and ran on. Valkyrie got to her feet, looked around. The fog quenched the sounds around her, and she couldn’t see more than ten steps ahead. Her hands were freezing. She pulled her gloves from her jacket, put them on, wishing she could summon a flame to warm herself and light her way. A woman ran by, eyes wide with fear, and quickly vanished into the grey darkness.
“Skulduggery?” Valkyrie called. “Ghastly?”
Muffled cries came from somewhere to her left, and behind her in the distance there was a scream that ended as abruptly as it began. She took the stick from her back, but the sigils refused to glow. Scowling, she returned it, and pressed forward. A shape loomed in front of her, big and wide and unmoving. She put a hand to the wall and followed it round till she got to a door. It may have been a ghost door, but the wood felt just as solid as any door she’d ever seen – just as locked, too. She carried on, reached the corner. A man came running and went stumbling. He sprawled through the mud. Someone else stepped from the fog, reached down to help him up. No, not help. Those hands gripped him, either side of the face. The man screamed and the hands twisted his head all the way round. The scream died with the crack of cartilage.
Valkyrie ducked back. The thing, the wraith, so tall and grey – grey skin, grey clothes, like a person who’d had all the colour leached out of him – hadn’t even turned its head in her direction. She slid away, following the wall back the way she’d come, keeping her eyes on the corner, making sure that nothing was coming after her.
The wraith walked round the corner, its eyes shining through the dark. Valkyrie’s breath left her and she turned, scrambling into a run. She ran from mud to grass to mud again, almost into the waiting arms of another cold creature, but a hand gripped her shoulder, dragged her back.
“Other way,” Skulduggery whispered.
They ran towards gunshots, found Vex and Ravel emptying their pistols into an approaching wraith without slowing it down in the slightest. Shudder strode up behind it, thrust his sword into its back. The blade bounced off, but it made the wraith turn, and Shudder slammed the hilt into its face. The wraith caught his wrist, closing its fingers round his bare skin, and Shudder grunted in pain and fell to his knees. Ravel charged, shoving the wraith off balance while Vex pulled Shudder up again. Valkyrie glimpsed Shudder’s wrist as he stumbled past her. His flesh was red and bubbling where the wraith had touched him.
Skulduggery jumped at the wraith, both feet hitting its chest, while Vex swung his sword into the backs of its legs. The wraith toppled, landed in the mud, and Ravel picked up a rock, brought it down on its head. It made a dull thump and muck squelched, and the wraith clutched at Ravel’s ankle. Vex kicked its hand away, allowing Ravel to bring the rock down a second and third time. And a fourth. A fifth. Each time more violent than the last.
“That doesn’t appear to be bothering it too much,” Skulduggery noted, wiping the mud from the back of his trousers. “We should probably go before it gets up.”
Ravel brought the rock down one final time, then cursed in frustration and staggered to his feet. The wraith sat up calmly. Its grey face was old and lined, devoid of expression. It started to stand.
“We’re leaving,” said Ravel, walking quickly. “We need to get out of this fog.”
As they hurried away, Valkyrie took out her mask and pulled it on. She threaded her hair through the hole in the back and fixed the other holes over her eyes and mouth. Vex glanced at her.
“Got a spare one of those?” he asked.
“Sorry.”
He shrugged. “That’s what I get for not being Ghastly’s favourite.”
They stopped suddenly as horses galloped by. A wraith clung to one, brought it crashing down somewhere in the fog ahead. Valkyrie heard its panicked whinnying, and then there was a wet sound and the whinnying stopped.
They adjusted their course. Valkyrie watched a man push his neighbour into the path of a wraith, only to stumble into another who’d been approaching from behind. Their fate was swallowed by the gloom and the fog, and only their screams escaped. They passed a woman sitting on the ground behind a stall. She looked at them fearfully as they passed, but didn’t say a word.
A shape that moved too fast to be a wraith crashed into Valkyrie from the side. Hands grabbed her, pulled her away from the others. She cried out and saw Skulduggery lunge after her, but a moment later there was a wall of fog between them.
“Your fault,” the man said into her ear. His hands were rough and he kept her moving, didn’t give her a chance to regain her footing. “What did you do to bring them back? What did you do?”
Griff’s eyes were wide and his face was pale.
As white as a ghost.
“We didn’t do anything,” Valkyrie said, tried to say, and then he flung her into the mud and stood over her, trembling with fear and rage.
“You brought them down to us. They stayed up there for a hundred years, but you brought them down to us.”
“We were here,” she said. “We were here the whole time.”
“They’re here because of you,” Griff said, eyes flickering to the shapes approaching slowly from all sides. “So I’ll give you to them.” He turned, and ran.
A wraith stepped through and Valkyrie backed away. Scalding hot fingers closed round her head from behind, tightened their grip even as she thrashed. The wraith in front closed in and she tried kicking it back, but it just took hold of her foot. And then another took her right arm, and another her left, and a fifth wraith took her other leg, and she was lifted and stretched between them, like they were going to pull her apart. She screamed, and the scream became a wail that ended in a sob. She could feel the heat through her black clothes, trying but unable to blister her flesh. The wraiths pulled harder and she felt her joints straining to hold together. Though her head was being pulled straight back, she caught sight of another wraith drifting from the gloom. Her jacket had ridden up high, her T-shirt w
ith it, leaving her belly exposed to the cold air. The wraith splayed its hand, brought it slowly down to rest against her.
She screamed again as it burned, a tortured scream that cut through her throat. The wraith pressed harder and then there was the sound of hooves, and two horses burst from the fog, Vex and Ghastly on their backs and a rope tied between them.
The horses passed on either side and the rope hit the wraiths at chest height. Valkyrie dropped as the wraiths were taken off their feet, some of them dragged after the horses, others sprawling in the muck. Skulduggery and Saracen came straight after. Skulduggery scooped her into his arms and Saracen used a pitchfork to shove the nearest wraith back a few steps, then they ran. Valkyrie’s gloved fingertips curled into the skin around the hand-shaped burn mark on her stomach and she bit her lip to keep from crying out with every step. Skulduggery jumped over a fallen wraith and followed Saracen, barely managing to keep him in sight. They rounded a dark corner and Valkyrie heard the footsteps change from mud to a hardened surface.
Saracen stopped ahead of them, turned, looking about. “Can you hear them? Which way did they go?”
A wraith lunged from the fog and Saracen shrieked, hit the creature so hard the pitchfork handle broke in two.
“Do not jump out at me!” Saracen roared, driving the splintered remains of the pitchfork into the wraith’s mouth. “I hate it when people jump out at me!”
Galloping hooves thundered closer, and before Valkyrie knew what was happening Shudder was pulling her up on to his horse. She cried out in pain, but held on as he spurred the horse forward, and they followed the road straight through the gloom. His hands gripped the reins, his right wrist badly burnt. Seconds later, the fog thinned, and then they had the night sky above them and clear air around, and Valkyrie felt magic flood her body.
The horse beneath them wasn’t there any more, but Shudder held Valkyrie and landed smoothly, putting her back on her feet. She faced the fog that surrounded the town of Wolfsong like a great wall, and pulled the mask from her head. Beneath it, she was sweating. She stuffed the mask in her jacket and clicked her fingers. Thanks to Ghastly, that action still generated a spark even through the glove, and she held fire in one hand while the other curled protectively round her belly.