The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  ‘I’m pretending,’ Cade said. He tugged at the end of his cape to show Aren.

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Nobody else wanted to.’

  ‘Aren’t you scared of the elaru captain?’

  ‘I’ve been here loads of times and never seen him.’

  ‘What if the tide comes in?’

  ‘I’ll swim?’ Cade said, as if it was obvious.

  Aren smiled. Having some company pulled the sting from his fear, and Cade was reassuringly blithe about the danger. The galleon felt a lot less scary with him here.

  Cade saw his smile and smiled back eagerly. ‘You want to play pretend with me?’ he offered.

  A plan hatched in Aren’s mind and his smile became a grin. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s play pretend.’

  While Aren had been inside the galleon, Ged, Darra and Ham had been squabbling on the beach. They argued and cajoled, whined and threatened, changed their minds and changed them again. Finally Ham went home, walking at first, until Ged threw a rock at him and he took to his heels. Then Ged and Darra picked up their sticks and climbed onto the ridge where the hulk of the Wave Dancer lay.

  ‘We’re coming for you, Aren!’ Ged shouted.

  Cade turned away from the gap in the planking through which he’d been watching. ‘They’re coming for you!’ he said excitedly.

  ‘I heard,’ Aren told him dryly. He pushed a strand of kelp away from his face. ‘How do I look?’

  Cade gave him a double thumbs-up. Aren wasn’t sure his disguise was as convincing as the other boy made out, but his enthusiasm was heartening. He was wearing a ratty rug they’d found near a bulkhead with some empty bottles of wine. His shoulders and head were draped with straggling water-weeds and black, leathery chains of snapfish eggs. Cade’s cloak had been tied around his head in a bundle to secure the cap of oozing kelp in place, giving the impression of long, green hair hanging over his eyes and down to his waist. The costume of an elaru captain was beyond them, but the shambling shade of a drowned boy would do well enough in a pinch. At least, Aren hoped so.

  ‘You’ll be waiting where we said?’

  Cade hefted a rusty chain onto his shoulder, which they’d dug out of the water on the lower decks. ‘Oh, aye,’ he said, hardly able to contain his glee. ‘Reckon I know what to do.’

  They headed off through the galleon to their appointed spots. The day had turned again, and this time in Aren’s favour. Meeting Cade had changed everything. No longer alone, he’d found his courage, and with a willing accomplice at his side anything felt possible.

  Cade had suggested the best spot for an ambush, a dark chamber which Ged and Darra would have to pass through on their way in. It had been a cabin once, but the roof was rotted through, the mattress had dissolved to rags and the bed frame had collapsed. At one end was a shadowed compartment that had once been a wardrobe or a storage cupboard, now empty but for rats’ droppings. Aren made some last-minute adjustments to his costume, which kept wanting to slip off, and then hunkered down in the wardrobe to wait.

  He didn’t have to wait long. They came whispering and hissing to one another, creeping on wary feet with their sticks ready to defend themselves.

  ‘I bet the captain’s already got him,’ Darra said. ‘We ought to go.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ said Ged. ‘He’s in here somewhere.’

  ‘I think I hear the tide coming in.’

  ‘I said clam it, scab-wit!’

  Aren tensed as they reached the doorway. Now it came to it, he felt his bravery ebbing. Maybe he could let them pass by and sneak out when they were gone. Wasn’t that a better plan than confronting them? He watched from his hiding place as they crept into the room and wondered if he’d be able to move at all when the time came.

  The crash of chains from overhead killed his qualms. The game was on, and there was no going back.

  ‘What was that?’ Darra gasped as the two boys turned their eyes to the ceiling.

  He was answered by a shriek of such blood-curdling horror that they physically cringed from it. Suddenly the chamber was full of noise: crashing, howling, stamping. Dust sifted down from the rotted boards overhead as they were pounded from above.

  ‘It’s the captain!’ Darra squeaked.

  But of course it was Cade, who’d watched the boys enter through the holes in the ceiling and was now doing a thoroughly convincing job of playing the spectre. He was throwing himself about and screaming his throat raw. Aren was so impressed that he almost forgot to do his part; but inspired by his accomplice’s performance, he surged out into the chamber.

  Arms raised, moaning like the dead, he stumbled towards Ged and Darra, a mass of weed and rags that was transformed in their minds into a dreadful apparition. They screamed at the sight of him – everyone was screaming now – and stumbled back in abject panic, dropping their sticks. Then there was a loud crack from above and Cade plummeted through the ceiling with a crash of chains and falling timber. Ged and Darra ran, shrieking at the tops of their lungs, back the way they came. They were still shrieking when they reached the beach.

  Cade groaned, sloughing off broken planks as Aren helped him to his feet. He dusted himself down, wincing as new bruises made themselves known, then caught Aren’s eye and began to chuckle.

  ‘Did you hear ’em?’ he said. ‘We got ’em, didn’t we?’

  ‘We got them,’ Aren agreed. He was giddy with victory. Then, on impulse, he said: ‘Do you want to be friends?’

  ‘Alright,’ said Cade.

  And so it was.

  ‘We let Ged and Darra tell everyone how they’d seen the captain and lived, then we let on what we’d done,’ Aren said. He’d lost himself in memories, but now the sounds and smells of the infirm­ary intruded again, and he was reminded of the hunger in his belly and the pain in his muscles. A loud scream came from the surgery as the amputation began. He ignored it and tried to smile. ‘They never lived it down. I swear that was half the reason Ged apprenticed as a navigator, just to get out of Shoal Point.’

  Cade had fallen quiet, and now he turned restlessly in his bunk, eyes roving. Aren gripped his hand and attempted to catch his gaze. His story had done some good, it seemed. He dared to believe his friend had calmed at the sound of a familiar voice.

  ‘Cade? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Icky-picky spit-spat-spot,’ Cade whispered urgently. It was a snatch of a children’s rhyme they used to sing in the plazas. Now the whole thing tumbled from his lips.

  Spit-spat-spot, better poxy than not,

  The old man’s hot to keep safe from the rot.

  Hide in the stables till the bolt gets shot.

  Icky-picky spit-spat-spot.

  The hope in Aren flickered and died. Was this all that was left of his best friend? A witless buffoon, swinging between hysteria and delirium? Had the Krodans taken the last person he loved?

  He shied from that thought, overcome with guilt and the fear of some unknown punishment. But the sight of his friend muttering and babbling made him angry. Say it, he told himself. Say it out loud.

  ‘Krodans did this,’ he said. ‘Krodans put us here. Krodans hurt you.’

  Cade rolled to his side, clutching his sheets, mumbling nonsense. Aren checked if anyone had heard him, but all the patients nearby were asleep or unconscious. To say it was blasphemy. He’d never thought of the Krodan people as enemies before, never dared to. The Primus would hear; the Iron Hand would know. And yet, seeing Cade condemned to idiocy set something boiling inside him, bubbling up till he could taste rancid hate on the back of his tongue. For the first time, he no longer cared what retribution might come. If Cade didn’t recover, he’d never forgive them. He swore it.

  The patient in the surgery was still screaming. He heard Kel shouting from the back of the infirmary: ‘Draccen tears! We need more draccen tears for the pain!’ Other patients groaned for aid as helpers busied themselves among the beds. Aren ignored it all. The world had shrunk to the width of Cade’s bunk.
r />   ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said quietly, and those words pushed tears to his eyes. ‘I won’t let them give up on you.’

  He searched Cade’s face for any sign that he’d been heard, but found none. He hung his head, and slowly let go of his friend’s hand. An immense sadness welled up in him, an ocean of sorrow so deep and wide that he knew there’d be no limit to it.

  Meshuk, Stone Mother. I called on you to save him. I even thought you might have answered me. But you’re just a fiction, like all the other Aspects. Like the Primus, like love, like my father … like every other thing I believed in.

  ‘Aren?’

  His head shot up at the sound of Cade’s voice. Cade was staring blindly upwards, pawing at the air above his bunk.

  ‘Aren, is that you?’

  ‘Yes!’ he cried, and he grabbed Cade’s hand again. ‘Yes, I’m here!’

  ‘I was far away …’ Cade said dreamily. ‘Then I heard your voice …’

  ‘Yes! Yes, I was talking to you! Can you see me?’ He was desperate, eyes glittering, overwhelmed with emotion and exhaustion.

  ‘You’re so dim … like a shade …’ He coughed weakly. ‘Aren …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s something I need to ask you …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I just need to know …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Cade’s eyes focused on him and he raised an eyebrow. ‘When did you become such a blubbering sap?’

  Aren gaped. Cade grinned.

  Then Aren said, very slowly and very clearly, ‘You absolute bastard.’

  Cade whooped with laughter as Aren pounced on him, fending away Aren’s half-serious attempts to beat and strangle him. ‘You can’t hit me! I’m crazy!’ he protested.

  ‘I believed you, you maggot-sack!’

  ‘Sssh!’ Cade motioned for him to keep it down. ‘I am mad. And I’m gonna stay mad as long as they’ll keep me here.’

  Aren stopped assaulting him and sat back on his haunches. He was so relieved that his urge to murder Cade was temporarily forgotten. ‘You want to stay here?’

  ‘Three square meals and I get to lie in bed all day?’ Cade replied. ‘Ain’t in a hurry to give that up.’

  ‘You could have let on earlier!’

  ‘But you were being so nice to me.’

  Cade was making fun of him, but Aren didn’t mind a bit. If Cade was joking again, then his friend was back, and everything that had divided them had been pushed aside.

  ‘Listen,’ said Aren, leaning closer. ‘I understand now. You were right.’

  ‘’Course I was,’ said Cade confidently. ‘Er … about what?’

  ‘We can’t just survive in this place. We can’t just wait it out. No one’s coming to save us. No one’s going to set us free.’

  ‘Well,’ said Cade, his voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘you know how to cheer a feller up, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘That’s why we have to escape.’

  Cade’s face became grave. Suddenly it was no longer a joke. ‘You mean it?’ he said.

  ‘I promise you,’ said Aren. The moment he said it, he was certain. ‘We’ll break out or we’ll die trying, but I’ll be gods-damned if I’ll let us fade away here.’

  ‘You got a plan?’ Cade asked eagerly.

  He was about to say no, but before he could, the plan came to him, springing whole and clear into his mind. With a shock, he realised he must have been thinking about it all along, storing away details and information ever since they’d arrived. He just hadn’t allowed himself to entertain the idea of escape until now; it was an inconceivable act of rebellion for someone who had such complete faith in the Krodan way.

  That faith lay in shreds now. He was taking matters into his own hands.

  ‘I’ve got a plan,’ he said. ‘And I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘Do I have to get out of bed?’

  ‘Luckily, you don’t. You need to stay right here. Do you still have your water flask?’

  Cade shook his head. ‘I lost it in the explosion.’

  ‘Take mine.’ Aren pulled the tin flask from his belt, slugged the last of the water and handed it over. ‘You can hide it somewhere, but they won’t even look inside if they find it. It’s just a water flask; everyone’s got one.’

  Cade studied it, puzzled. ‘So what exactly do I have to do?’

  ‘You have to pretend,’ said Aren. ‘You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Cade, a wicked smile spreading across his face. ‘I can do that.’

  19

  In the shadow of the Ostenberg Mountains lay the Auldwood, spreading thick and dark across the land from horizon to horizon. Its edges were dotted with small settlements and mazed with forester’s trails, but few ventured deeper than that. Among the dense tangles at its heart lay places that hadn’t known the tread of human feet for centuries.

  Wild tales were told of what lay within: beasts of enormous size; shade-touched creatures that spoke as men; malevolent trees that would strangle the unwary or crush them with a falling branch. At the centre, overseeing all, waited something as old as time, vast and unknowable, which jealously guarded its lands from invaders.

  Vika didn’t know the truth of that, but she knew better than to dismiss such tales as nonsense. The Auldwood was enormous and strange, and though she’d walked deeper than most dared, much of it was still a mystery to her. Even for a druidess, who knew the ways of the land, there were dangers.

  Ruck padded by her side as she followed a sunken path between the trees, hollowed out by a long-vanished stream. Knuckled roots poked from the earthen walls and ancient trees creaked and groaned as she passed. It was evening, and the sun was still up, but beneath the canopy it was chilly and sombre.

  She’d travelled far since the Dirracombe, and her journey had done nothing to cheer her. Everywhere the old ways were being forgotten, the signs of the Nine quietly erased. Shedding her druidic trappings, she’d ventured into a town to gather supplies and learn what she could. There she found a temple to the Primus, newly built on a hill overlooking the streets, a magnificent beacon of red and beige stone. There were no such monuments to the Nine, only neglected shrines and a temple falling into ruin.

  Small wonder they were losing the people. The young saw little evidence of the old gods of Ossia, and nothing of the druids who spread their wisdom. The Nine were part of their parents’ world, but not of theirs. The only voice they heard was that of the Sanctorum at Festenday convocation, which taught that the Aspects were primitive gods and denied them.

  She thought of the champion, the bright figure with the sword of light, and then of the nightmarish creatures that had come after, and the vision they’d shown her. Something terrible was approaching. She only hoped she might make sense of what she saw, while there was yet time to avert it.

  The crack of a twig made her stop and raise her head. One hand on her staff, she listened. Something had been tracking them for a while now, something large that kept its distance. Ruck growled low in her throat.

  ‘Be calm, my friend,’ said Vika, rubbing the scruff of Ruck’s neck. ‘We are no enemies of this forest.’

  And yet she wasn’t so sure that mattered these days. The spirits were not welcoming of late. They’d grown resentful and restless, less inclined to differentiate between the druids who sought to protect them and the Krodans who cut down their trees for lumber and farmland.

  Another crack, louder and closer, and now she was concerned. She heard a whuff of animal breath. Birds scattered explosively as a brake of ferns thrashed with the movement of some ungainly beast.

  From the undergrowth at the edge of the sunken path, the brown muzzle of a bear poked out.

  Vika stepped back in alarm as it ambled into the open and down to the stream bed, blocking her path. It snuffled at the air, turned its head towards her and fixed her with a beady gaze.

  ‘Peace,’ she said, raising one hand. ‘We have no quarrel with you.�
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  The bear was in no mood to be pacified. It reared up on its hind legs, towering over them, and its lips peeled back from its fangs as it roared a challenge.

  ‘These woods are not safe, traveller. Haven’t you heard?’

  Vika whirled at the voice. The woman had appeared silently behind her. She wore a thick, tattered cloak stitched with faded red and brown patterns. A voluminous hood shadowed her face, and she carried an elaborately carved oak staff split into a fork at the tip, with the skull of a young goat fixed between the tines.

  ‘I dreamed your coming, Vika-Walks-The-Barrows,’ the woman said in a low, slow voice. ‘You are expected.’

  She raised her staff towards the bear and spoke words in an elder tongue. The bear gave a yawning cry, thumped down heavily onto its forepaws, then turned and plodded away up the path.

  The woman lowered her staff and pulled back her hood, revealing a head of short-cropped silver hair and a face smeared with two vertical streaks of red paint. Her lips spread into a smile. ‘Ten years it has been, my erstwhile acolyte, and now you return an equal.’

  ‘Agalie-Sings-The-Dark,’ said Vika, spreading her arms. ‘I’ve searched long to find you.’

  ‘You are welcome,’ said the older woman, and the two druidesses embraced in a warm clutch of furs and bodies.

  Agalie’s camp was in a glade by a narrow stream, roofed with tangled branches. A tent of sticks and hide stood to one side of the glade, a fire at the other, ringed by stones. The night insects were loud and glowflies danced above the water.

  Vika and Agalie sat together on a tuffet, eating seared doe-meat off the spit and mushrooms and potatoes fried in fat, which they ate from the pan. A skin of sloe liquor lay between them. Ruck gnawed a bone, lazy in the warmth of the flames.

  ‘And what did you see, after the spirit uncovered your eyes?’ Agalie asked.

  Vika stared into the fire, a frown settling on her face as the memories flooded back. ‘The dark figures were gone,’ she said. ‘I was still in the hollow, but it was withered and dead now, and the sky was strange. I went to the edge of the Dirracombe, where it was open to the hills, and saw …’ Her breath shuddered as the sight hit her anew. Ruck looked up from her bone and whined. ‘It was madness, Agalie. An ever-changing wasteland, where the wretched remnants of humanity were prey to monsters from beyond the Divide. I saw an armless creature with a white face like a mask, chained like a beast of burden to a spiked cart overflowing with body parts. Twisted, fanged things lunged and snapped at a ragged woman as she fled across a cracked plain. There was something chitinous and gigantic with a shape part spider and part flea which stalked along the horizon, while behind it a black sun rose vast and close.’