The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  What does the Hollow Man want with me? He dreaded to guess. The only comfort was that these people were Ossian, and therefore better than the alternative.

  A horn blew again, just ahead of them, then came the ring of steel on steel. The sound of combat tumbled towards him like a wave and suddenly the forest was full of enemies, men and women fighting everywhere.

  Many times Aren had dreamed of facing real combat, but in his mind it was never like this, this wet confusion of huffing breath, thrashing branches, fearful glimpses of metal. The fight swallowed him so fast that he stumbled to a halt and looked about dazedly, trying to locate the threat, to make some sense of the chaos around him.

  Keel was clashing with a Krodan guard nearby. As Aren stared, the Bitterbracker warrior made three swift parries and took the guard’s arm off at the elbow. The guard was still staring at the stump when Keel’s next blow took his head off.

  Grub rushed past, keeping his head down, Osman behind him. The archer halted when he saw Aren and Cade, wide-eyed like frightened rabbits in the rainy dark.

  ‘Come on, friends! Now’s not the time to hang around.’ His accent was highborn, nasal, from the Rainlands in the south. He raised his bow and fired into the trees. ‘Is that a sword at your hip, Aren? Can you use it?’

  Cursing himself for a mudwit, Aren drew the sword he’d taken from the dead guard. Master Orik had trained him for this ever since he was old enough to hold a practice blade. He’d hoped one day to fight in a noble war against the urds or the godless Durnish. Now they were under attack, the least he could do was raise his gods-damned weapon.

  ‘That way!’ Osman said, pushing them ahead of him. They hurried off through the trees, Aren holding his sword tight, Osman slipping watchfully along in their wake. Cade gripped his knife in his fist, eyes skittish in the dim red light.

  The ground beneath their feet sloped sharply and they skidded down through mud. Aren almost tripped over the body of a dead man lying agape among the roots and rocks. Distant lightning flashed and he caught sight of Fen, crouching on a boulder ahead of them, loosing a shot into the darkness. The crack of thunder didn’t quite cover the scream of the man she killed.

  A bush thrashed to his left, loud and sudden. Aren whirled in surprise as a Krodan guard came stumbling through, half-falling in his haste. Aren raised his sword instinctively and braced himself as the guard, unable to check his momentum, plunged forward onto its point. He felt the guard’s leather armour give way, then the awful slithering resistance of muscles and organs as the blade pushed into his chest. His eyes bulged; his cheeks puffed; air hissed through lips pressed tight together. He began to tip sideways, and Aren stepped back and pulled his blade free before it could be yanked from his hand, just as he’d been taught. The Krodan slumped hard to the earth.

  ‘Nine!’ said Cade in amazement. ‘You killed him!’

  Aren wasn’t sure if that even counted. It felt more like the Krodan had used Aren to inadvertently kill himself.

  ‘Move, Mudslug!’ Grub snarled at Aren, emerging from the trees ahead of them. ‘Don’t die yet. Grub still needs Mudslug’s friends.’ He spotted the dead man, grinned nastily as he realised what had happened. ‘Heh,’ he said. ‘Mudslug a warrior now.’ He slapped Aren on the shoulder, then shoved him into motion again.

  The sounds of fighting diminished as they crashed onwards through the branches. Varla appeared, having run out of Krodans to fight; then came bushy-bearded Tarvi with his axes. They reached a shallow hollow where the trees were sparse and the grassy earth was patched with new rain pools, and found Fen waiting there with Otten and Dox.

  ‘Garric and Keel?’ Varla asked.

  ‘Mopping up,’ said Fen.

  Keel pushed through the undergrowth, Garric with him.

  ‘We get them all?’ Keel asked.

  ‘Think so,’ said Varla. She gave the bespectacled youth a worried look; he was wheezing. ‘Alright, Dox?’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Otten, rubbing Dox’s back. ‘His lungs, you know.’

  ‘Everyone here?’ Garric asked, scanning the group, black hair plastered to his brow. His gaze lingered balefully on Aren.

  He hates me, Aren thought. And I don’t know why.

  Garric’s eyes flicked to Fen. ‘You have a way out?’

  Fen pointed with one slender finger. ‘There’s an old rope bridge, crosses the gorge. We can cut it free behind us and the Krodans will be stuck on this side. If it’s still there.’

  ‘Well, I, for one, am keen to find out,’ said Tarvi. ‘So what are we—’

  He was cut short as Garric raised his hand for silence. They tensed, weapons ready.

  ‘You hear?’ he whispered.

  ‘I hear nothing,’ said Keel.

  ‘Exactly.’

  And now Aren understood. The rain splattered and slapped, distant thunder rang across the peaks, but no insect called, no animal stirred, no night-bird squawked at the storm. All the small sounds, so faint and frequent that they usually went unnoticed, had stopped. Aren felt something cold crawl up his spine.

  A sharp hiss to his right. The whip of leaves, a blur of movement and a dull thump. All eyes went to Otten, who staggered back from Dox, looking down in puzzlement at the thick arrow with ragged black fletching sticking out of his chest. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he crumpled to the ground.

  ‘Dreadknights!’ Garric roared. ‘To the bridge!’

  They took to their heels. Keel seized Aren and shoved him after Fen. As he stumbled into a run, he glanced back to check on Cade and saw Varla dragging Dox away, the younger man still gasping for breath, eyes wide with panic behind his spectacles. He was trying to say Otten’s name, but he couldn’t get it out.

  There was a crash of branches and an enormous warrior burst from the trees. He was a giant of a man, clad head to toe in tarnished black iron armour. Aren had never seen the like; it was all hard edges and straight lines, brutality without elegance. A heavy helm covered his head, with horizontal slits concealing his eyes and circular breathing grilles. He held a massive hammer, and as he emerged, he swung it in a great lateral arc.

  Varla yelled and threw herself aside. Dox wasn’t so quick and was swept up by the blow, flung bodily away to slam into a tree with a horrific cracking of bones. Varla was back on her feet in a moment, sprinting towards the others with abject terror written on her face. The giant swung his great head to track her and lumbered after.

  ‘Dreadknights! Joha’s mercy, what are dreadknights doing here?’ Osman demanded, his voice high with desperation as they scrambled and slid through the tight-packed trees.

  Aren wiped sodden hair from his face, panting with fright and tiredness, his heart battering at his ribs. Krodan soldiers and skulldogs were one thing, but this was another level of horror. The sight of the dreadknight inspired some primal reaction in him, his ancestors’ fear of the dark beyond the campfire and the nameless toothed terrors that shunned the sun.

  Keel ran at their side, the brawny Bitterbracker searching the trees as he went. Aren saw glimpses of the others up ahead, shadows among shadows, frantic movement in the glistening rain. An arrow slashed through the air, making him duck, and buried itself quivering in a tree. He looked back as he heard a rustle of branches, but it was only Varla catching them up, having outpaced her huge opponent.

  Then the lightning stuttered again and a cloaked figure moved through the trees beside her, flowing like liquid night. Beneath the black cowl, he saw a metal face frozen by the flash, wearing an expression of anguish, like a mummer’s mask of tragedy. Two thin blades in two gloved hands, one long and one short, glinted cruelly in the red glow of the blood moon.

  His mouth opened to cry out a warning, but the cowled figure lunged and Varla disappeared beneath his flowing cloak. The flash of lightning faded, leaving her lost in the dark behind them.

  ‘Keep going! She’s gone!’ cried Keel over the rumble of thunder that followed, and they ran recklessly onwards, branches lashing their face
s, death at their heels.

  Two shoulders of rock loomed ahead, slick and wet with rain. Angling between them was a narrow stony path, down which Osman and Grub sprinted. Aren, Cade and Keel plunged out of the forest and raced after them, single file along the path, until they were spat out onto a small ledge with sheer walls of rock to either side and the whistling expanse of the gorge before them.

  The gorge, and a bridge to cross it.

  It was fashioned from ropes and planks, tattered with age, and it swayed perilously in the wind. None of that had deterred Grub, who’d somehow managed to be first across and had almost reached the other side. Osman followed him, less surefooted, while Garric and Tarvi stood arguing to one side, and Fen eyed the bridge uncertainly.

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ Garric said to Tarvi. ‘Are you that eager to throw your life away?’

  ‘You’re the fool if you think they won’t catch us before we cut that rope,’ Tarvi said. ‘Our mission is more important than me. More important than all of us. They’ll butcher us in the open, but I can hold them on that path, where they can only come at me one by one. Go! I’ll buy you what time I can. Fen, get your arse on that bridge!’

  Fen jumped at the sound of his voice and did as she was told. Tarvi hefted his axes and headed back the way they came as Keel herded Cade after Fen. At the entrance to the defile, Tarvi stopped and looked back at Garric. His mouth was a grim line, and his gaze held the sorrowful determination of a man going willingly to his end.

  ‘Make this worth something,’ he said, and turned away. Aren saw a look of grief pass over Garric’s face.

  ‘Get moving!’ Keel urged. Aren sheathed his sword and went teetering out over the gorge, both hands on the ropes to steady himself. The drop yawned beneath him, the river at the bottom a dim sparkle, and the wind shoved and pulled, seeking to tip him over. Chilled and soaked and terrified, he could do nothing but forge forwards through the tempest, his eyes fixed to his feet as he went from plank to plank as fast as his nerve allowed.

  Keel was close behind him, Cade ahead. To either side was the gorge, which felt vaster than it ever had when he was on solid ground. The planks creaked beneath his weight, but even though the bridge shivered and swung, it held firm. Osman was waiting at the other end to haul Cade in, and was just reaching out for Aren when they heard a thin cry from the far side of the gorge, carried on the wind. Tarvi’s cry, a sound of pain and terror, for even warriors’ courage faltered when faced with the uncertainty of the end.

  Osman’s lips were pressed tight as he pulled Aren past him, and his eyes were distant with anger and sorrow.

  Keel and Garric were the last to cross. On the far side, where the defile widened to a ledge, a scrawny figure emerged. He was tall and skeletal, wrapped in a close-fitting garb fixed with many belts and straps, and carried an enormous black bow almost as tall as he was. As he pulled an arrow from the quiver at his back, he raised his head. There was something wrong with his features, something off-kilter, but the rain blew between them and Aren couldn’t see clearly.

  ‘Cut the ropes!’ Garric was yelling as Keel reached the end of the bridge. ‘Be ready!’

  Osman threw down his bow and drew his blade as the dreadknight nocked the arrow and sighted.

  ‘Look out!’ Aren shouted, pointing.

  A bowstring thrummed next to him and an arrow shot past, close enough to make him jump. It was Fen. Her arrow flew out across the gorge, wobbled in the wind and struck the ground inches from the dreadknight. A moment later, the dreadknight let fly, aiming for Garric; but whether it was the wind or the distraction of Fen’s arrow, the shot missed its mark and thwacked heavily into a support pole on Aren’s side of the gorge.

  ‘Cut ’em!’ Garric cried as he reached the end of the bridge. Osman swung his blade, and Keel, too. In three or four hacks, the ropes were severed. The bridge slumped and fell free, drifting down into the gorge to slap uselessly against the other side.

  When Aren looked up next, there were three of them on the far ledge: the monstrous armoured man with the hammer, the skeletal archer with the deadly bow, and the metal-masked man with the cowled cloak and paired blades. Three dreadknights, heavy with threat, like predators thwarted of their prey. The gorge lay between them now and the fugitives were hidden by the sheltering dark of the trees, but there was something in the way they stood that said this wasn’t over yet.

  Eight men and women had rescued Aren, Cade and Grub from the Krodans; only half of them remained. Aren felt himself seized by the front of his coat and was pulled face to face with Garric, whose eyes were dark with hatred.

  ‘This is on you, boy!’ he snarled. ‘All of their deaths are on you!’

  He shoved Aren away and raised his head to address the others. ‘We don’t stop till dawn! You can be sure those accursed bastards will be following after us.’

  They obeyed without word or argument, moving off into the undergrowth. Aren felt Cade’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘He’s wrong,’ said Cade. ‘Ain’t none of this is your fault.’

  Aren looked away, full of shock and hurt and anger. Damn you, Garric the Hollow Man. Damn you, whoever you are.

  But the others were leaving now, and for all the loathing and resentment that welled up inside him, there was nothing he could do but follow.

  30

  One foot, then the other. Ain’t no more to it than that.

  Cade stumbled towards the dawn on leaden feet. His eyelids drifted closed, jerked open, slowly closed again. He was drenched and cold and impossibly weary, yet still he drove himself on. He’d hoped to leave this kind of misery back in the mine, but here he was again, half-alive and dreaming of a respite that felt like it would never come.

  One foot, then the other. But it wasn’t that easy. He wasn’t like Aren, who could trudge like a mule until he dropped dead. He didn’t have that kind of determination. He couldn’t go another step.

  And yet somehow it happened anyway.

  The storm had blown itself out, but it had rained throughout the night and a chill wind blew in the mountains. There was no forest to shelter them now; they’d reached the high passes, where icy streams splashed between slopes of dank grass and black flint. Cade had no idea where they were headed, only that they were going there at a punishing pace.

  Dreadknights, he thought. They were only whispered of in Shoal Point. Da said they were just a Krodan lie to keep people in line, and even his ma had thought them myths. But Cade knew the truth of it now. He wondered what else the world had to teach him, and if he’d like any of it better than the lesson he’d just learned.

  Aren coughed at his side. He’d been coughing for hours. At first he tried to suppress it, but soon it slipped from his control and wracked him, leaving him doubled over, wheezing and breathless. The sound worried Cade. He’d heard coughs like that in the longhouse at night, coughs that rattled in the lungs like dice. The kind of cough that killed you.

  ‘Easy now,’ said Osman, a hand on Aren’s back. ‘Here’s Fen. Let’s see what she’s found.’

  Fen was picking her way towards them along the bank of a rain-swollen stream. She was clad in a drab green hooded cloak, her ginger hair the only bright colour in a grey and grim world.

  The faces that surrounded him were grim, too. Barely a word had been spoken since they left the gorge. Garric was a mass of bunched rage, his shoulders tight; Keel was dour and lost in thought; and Osman sorrowed. Grub was silent, too, for once, though his expression was sly and restless. Like Cade, he was wary of this rescue and looked ready to bolt if he had to.

  ‘What news?’ Keel asked as Fen reached them.

  ‘There’s a place up ahead,’ she said. ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘Hear that?’ Osman said to Aren. ‘Not far now. Then we can rest.’

  Aren gave him a grateful glance and a nod. Cade was grateful, too. Of all of them, only the highborn man had showed kindness. Fen was aloof and uncaring, Garric puzzlingly and frighteningly hostile. And Cade couldn’t m
ake Keel out at all.

  ‘One foot, then the other,’ Cade murmured.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Osman. ‘Good man.’

  At the top of the slope, the land flattened into a high, narrow valley dotted with dead trees. Fen led them to a hollow in a cliff face where the stream ran close. There, beneath an overhang, was a patch of earth and smooth stone that had remained relatively dry during the downpour. Cade bundled into shelter with the others, shivering with cold, his legs trembling. Unable to stand any longer, he threw himself down with an arm for a pillow and was mugged by sleep the moment he closed his eyes.

  The pain of a dead leg hauled him halfway back to consciousness. He’d fallen asleep on his side and the hard ground had cut off his circulation. There was a blanket covering him. He didn’t know who’d put it there.

  He rolled over to ease the discomfort in his thigh. Daylight narrowed his eyes, and he heard the splashing of the stream nearby. The rain had stopped, and a fire burned in the hollow directly in front of him. The heat had dried his wet hair, and now his clothes were merely damp and stiff rather than entirely soaked. Lulled, he sank back towards sleep.

  ‘And then?’ said a voice. Keel, the Bitterbracker. He was standing with Garric, their backs to the hollow, looking down the valley.

  ‘And then what?’ grunted Garric in his phlegmy bass.

  ‘Once we’re done with all this business with the boy. What comes after?’

  ‘We go on as planned,’ said Garric.

  Keel spat on the ground. ‘We were scraping the barrel before we started. Otten and Dox were barely old enough to shave. Even with Varla and Tarvi, this was a skeleton crew. Now they’re gone, too.’ He scraped at the spot of bubbled saliva with the toe of his boot. ‘It’s time to go home.’