In exchange for one of you, I will let the others go free.
Skavengard was behind them. But the beast had exacted its price after all.
45
On the far side of the bridge there were pillared corridors, and steps, and smooth-faced statues in the lanternlight. Aren barely saw them. They passed through the dark of the mountain without a word, their hearts heavy as lead, and before long they came to a gate wrought with surpassing craftsmanship that guarded the way to the outside. There they paused, waiting for Vika to deal with whatever sorceries were laid upon it, but she simply motioned at them to go on. They turned the handle and pulled it open.
‘Easier from the inside, hmm?’ she mumbled as she shuffled through.
They emerged into a glassy night, the stars sharp as crystal, the Sisters crescents in the sky. A winding path took them through a narrow channel in the rock onto a pebbly slope. The folded mountains rose around them, snow-capped and silent; a natural silence at last, not the oppressive hush of Skavengard.
They saw nothing ahead to cheer them, and when they looked back, they could no longer find the path through the rock that had brought them here. There was no sign of the dreadknights, or any other pursuit. An immense weariness was settling into their bones as Vika’s brew wore off, but they all wanted to put some distance between themselves and that accursed castle. By unspoken consent they trudged on, breath steaming the air, black thoughts swarming in their minds.
The shock of Osman’s death was beginning to fade, and with it the protective numbness that had kept Aren going. He brushed against the fringes of the grief that lurked in wait. The others, who’d died at the hands of the dreadknights, had been strangers. Osman was different. He’d been a man of kindness and compassion, who’d treated Aren and Cade with respect and friendship from the start. Aren had only known him a short while, but that was enough to feel his loss.
‘Chalk another one up to you, boy,’ Garric snarled as he passed Aren on the slope.
Aren came to a halt, his boots scuffing the gravel. He stared at Garric’s back as he made his way downhill. The casual cruelty of that comment stunned him.
‘Ignore him,’ said Cade.
But he couldn’t. Something fractured inside and set him to boiling, turned his grief to scalding heat.
‘Garric!’ he shouted.
Garric heard the challenge in his voice. He stopped, turned his head slowly. The others slowed to a halt around them, sensing the confrontation to come.
‘Aren, what are you doing?’ Cade murmured, shuffling his feet nervously.
But Aren was past warning now. Osman’s death was the tipping point and he’d be gods-damned if he’d suffer any more of Garric’s scorn. Not after what they’d all just been through.
‘Tarvi,’ he said, the name an accusation. ‘Varla. Otten. Dox. Osman.’ He swallowed against the pain of the memory. ‘Not my fault. Yours.’
Garric turned to face him, fury and death in his eyes. Aren knew he was close to the edge, that they were all ready to break. He shouldn’t push any further. It was dangerous to push this man.
But he wanted to push.
‘I didn’t ask you to come for me,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know who you are! But Osman was a better man than you’ll ever be, I know that much. And now he’s dead.’
Garric was turning back up the slope towards him now. Cade shrank from his side and Aren saw what was coming, but he refused to run from it.
‘I asked nothing of him, and I asked nothing of you!’ Aren spat. ‘His death is not on my shoulders. He died following you! A lot of people die following y—’
Stars exploded across his eyes as Garric’s fist slammed into his jaw. The force of it made him reel and he fell to one knee. He blinked, gasped, let his head clear. Then he got back to his feet.
Garric hulked before him, face red, eyes bulging with rage. But Aren was beyond fear now. The blow hadn’t broken him, but hardened him instead. ‘That’s the best you can do, you coward bastard?’ he sneered.
Garric punched him again, and then again, and then he gave up all pretence of restraint and began raining blows down. Lights detonated in Aren’s head. His ears rang and thought evaporated in a dizzy whirl as he was struck over and over. Instinctively he tried to protect himself with his arms, but he could only flail clumsily. At last, his balance failed him and he stumbled to his knees, but Garric seized him by the front of his coat and hauled him back up again.
‘Garric!’
It was Keel’s voice, snapping through the chaos. Sharp enough to stop the assault, but not enough for Garric to let him go. When Aren’s swaying vision settled down again, he found himself face to grizzled face with the old warrior, close enough to smell his sweat and breath. He looked ready to burst with hate.
Aren’s cheek and ear and eye stung with pain. His lip was thickening and his jaw felt like it had been knocked loose from his skull. He gathered his scattered thoughts, moved his tongue about his mouth experimentally.
‘You think hitting me makes it otherwise?’ he croaked. ‘You’re their leader. Take some responsibility.’
Garric threw him to the ground in disgust. Aren went to his knees, skinning his hands on the pebbly slope. He heard Garric’s boots crunching as he stamped away down the hill.
He could have let him go. He didn’t want more punishment. But it wasn’t finished, and he wouldn’t end this on his knees.
‘Garric!’ he shouted, through lips drooling with bloody spittle. He hauled himself to his feet and stood there, swaying. ‘I’m not done with you yet!’
Garric swung about with a ring of steel and his blade was in his hand, the final argument of his anger. Ruck barked in agitation. Then another blade sang out and Keel stepped in front of Aren, his sword raised to Garric.
‘Joha’s sake, have you lost your senses? He’s just a boy!’
Garric was trembling with rage, facing his friend with the others frozen in horrified tableau around them. His every muscle was taut. Temper and violence had robbed him of reason, and he looked like he might actually attack. For a dozen heartbeats they hovered on the edge of battle, but then the madness passed from Garric’s face and sense returned. He sheathed his sword with one dismissive thrust. Keel stepped aside and sheathed his own warily.
‘You talk of responsibility,’ Garric said to Aren. ‘I’ll tell you something of that. There’s no man, living or dead, I wish I could have killed more than your father. But we were close as brothers once. In that time I swore an oath, that if ever he or his were in peril, I would do all in my power to see them safe. And though I came to loathe him, I have honoured that oath. Would that it had cost my life, and not the five that have fallen.’
‘Who was my father to you?’ Aren demanded. His eye was swelling shut and his puffy lips made the words indistinct and weak, but he didn’t care.
‘That I won’t say, and you should be glad of it. Keep your illusions. You’ll be happier.’
‘I don’t want illusions! I want the truth! Why did he die? Why was I imprisoned? Why are there dreadknights after me?’
Immediately he knew he’d said something wrong. It was on Garric’s face: the flicker of surprise, a moment of recalculation behind his eyes. Fen and Keel exchanged a glance, so they knew as well. And suddenly Aren did, too, and the realisation doused the heat in him.
‘They were never after me at all, were they?’ he said to Garric. ‘They were after you.’
Garric’s expression softened in sorrow, and he sagged. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Now you see.’ He was about to say something else, but it became a sigh of resignation. He had no words that would do anything but make it worse, so he turned and walked away down the moonlit slope.
Aren, mind spinning with the implications, set off after him. Keel put out a hand to stop him.
‘Leave him be. He’s grieving, too. Walk with me, and I’ll give you what answers I can.’
Aren wavered, but Keel was firm and calm, and in the end Aren went with him.
The sting had been pulled from the confrontation. He didn’t feel like chasing Garric down, and doubted he’d get any response if he did.
‘Come on,’ said Keel, putting a hand on Aren’s back. ‘The rest of you, keep going. Fen’ll find us a place to rest. We’ll need time to recover from Vika’s brew, if it’s aught like the last time.’
Cade looked reluctant to walk on with his friend in such a state, but Vika led him away, Ruck at their heels. Fen and Grub followed, leaving Keel and Aren alone on the bleak slope.
Aren looked up at Lyssa, her soft light pinched by his steadily closing eye. His face burned like fire and his neck seemed half broken, yet he felt more of a man now than he had an hour ago. He’d stood up for himself, taken a beating and got back on his feet again. The boy who’d been pushed around by Sora’s brothers in the Shoal Point alleys was buried today. It was Garric who’d lost here, not him. The pain was nothing compared to that.
‘Anything broken?’ Keel asked.
Aren wiped blood from his upper lip, sniffed back more and shook his head.
‘He’s got his reasons for how he treats you. Doesn’t excuse him, but still.’
Aren said nothing to that.
The others were out of earshot, so they began to follow them down the hill towards a crease in the land that would take them eastwards. Aren wondered about the dreadknights. Had they given up, or were they hunting the Ostenbergs for signs of their quarry even now?
Their true quarry. Garric.
You really think the moons and the stars revolve around you. Cade’s words, spoken back in the mine. Like your life is a bard’s tale with you at the centre. What if it ain’t, though? What if all this had nothing to do with you?
‘Salt Fork was the start of it,’ Keel said. ‘Course, it goes further back to when me and Garric met, and further still beyond; but a story’s got to start somewhere, eh? We’d just taken the garrison. Spilled a little blood, but the rest surrendered once they saw the game was up. The town was on our side, revolution in the air. Not many victories to cheer about these days, but that felt like one of them.
‘Garric and me and a few others opened a cask in the officers’ quarters, and we drank. Probably shouldn’t have, but we knew it’d be days before the squareheads could react, and we deserved it, besides. We were well into our cups when I made a slip. Called Garric by his real name.’
Aren spat ropey red phlegm to clear his mouth. Some of his teeth felt loose. ‘His name’s not Garric? Then what is it?’
‘Likely it’d mean nothing if I told you, but still, it’s not my place to do it.’
‘Naturally,’ said Aren, his tone dripping with scorn. More secrets.
Keel let that pass with a warning glance. ‘A man like him has many names. He wasn’t Garric till recently. Laine of Heath Edge, that was how they knew him at Salt Fork. He had other names before that, but I know the one he was born with, and was loose-tongued enough to say it. I passed off my mistake as the drink talking, but one of them recognised the name. Highborn feller called Edric. He waited till the others had gone, then he confronted us.’
Aren rolled his jaw tenderly. ‘What did Garric do?’
‘Nine, it was like a relief to him. A chance to confess. No one else knew but me. He told the lad everything: who he was, who your father was, and a lot else besides. When he was done, he swore Edric to secrecy, and that was that.’
Who your father was. ‘Only it wasn’t,’ Aren guessed.
‘No. ’Cause the people of Salt Fork turned on us, and we scattered, and we never saw Edric again. Thought he’d died with the others, but apparently he didn’t. He was caught, and he talked.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because if he hadn’t, you and Cade would still be at home, climbing trees or chasing skirt or whatever it is boys your age do in Shoal Point.’ He saddened, and gave Aren a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry, eh? Whatever it is they said your father did or didn’t do, whatever you think he died for … Truth is, they killed him to get to Garric. No other reason than that.’
Aren was numbed by the casual simplicity of it. ‘Edric told them about the promise Garric made to my father.’
‘He did. So they murdered your father, sent you to Suller’s Bluff and spread the news in whispers, till your father’s name – his true name – came to Garric’s ears.’
‘His name was Randill,’ Aren said weakly, but already he knew that it wasn’t.
‘He left his real name behind. Had he not, Garric would have found him long ago.’
A memory came to Aren then, sharp and clear. His father in his study, lost in thought with letters open on the table, before lunging at him with a knife, the madness of a cornered rat in his eye.
‘He said he was up near Salt Fork when it all happened …’ Aren said. ‘He told me he was delayed.’
‘Might be coincidence. Doubt he’d have dared go anywhere near Garric.’
But Aren felt the pieces fall into place then. The revolt. The delay. The letters, and his reaction to them. ‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘He was making enquiries. He heard about Salt Fork. He must have guessed Garric was involved and went looking for news.’
Randill had hoped for word of Garric’s death. What he got was the opposite. No wonder he looked so hunted. His nemesis had escaped again.
If you ever see the Hollow Man, you run. You run and you don’t stop. For he’s come to kill you.
‘He said Garric would kill me if he ever found me,’ Aren said.
‘Then I reckon he didn’t know Garric as well as he thought. That man’s got more honour than sense.’
Their boots crunched on the stones underfoot. A chill wind blew around them. ‘Will you tell me my father’s real name, at least?’
‘Were it up to me, I would. But it’s not my story to tell. And five people are dead because I spilled the truth at Salt Fork.’
‘It’s my father!’ Aren cried in frustration.
‘And was he a good one? A good man to you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Then that’s to his credit. Let him remain so.’
Aren felt bile rising. So close to an answer, and yet it was withheld again, because of a man who’d just brutally beaten him, a man he despised with all his heart. He couldn’t believe that he’d almost started to admire him after that night in the sanctum. Now he’d be happy if they never spoke again. And yet to shun him would be to give up any chance of finding out who his father really was.
Visions of Klyssen and Harte sprang to mind, one mole-like and bespectacled, the other tall and haughty and handsome. Harte sliding the knife into his father’s neck. A glimpse of Klyssen in the window of Overseer Krent’s mansion, back at Suller’s Bluff.
‘They used me as bait,’ he said. ‘That’s all I was. Bait for Garric.’
‘They knew honour would force him to come for you, once he heard. They had dreadknights waiting. Fact is, they’d have slain us all with ease if we’d tried to rescue you. It was only because you slipped their notice and escaped that we were spared that end. But the cost was high anyway.’
‘And that’s it, then?’ Aren said. His bitterness was turning to anger again; he couldn’t stop it. ‘My father killed for no crime, Cade and I thrown into the mine, all so they could get their hands on him?’ He threw a gesture towards Garric, who was walking alone ahead of them.
‘There’s Krodan justice,’ said Keel in commiseration.
Krodan justice, Aren thought. Yes, one day there’d be justice for this. For Harte. For Klyssen. And for one other.
He stared at Garric’s back. All his heartache and strife, the ruination of his childhood, his father’s death and Osman’s, too – all of it could be laid at the Hollow Man’s door. However it came about, it came about because of Garric.
He died because of you, Aren thought. One day you’ll answer for that.
46
Fen woke shivering in the brittle hour before the dawn. She sat up with a groan, muscles aching from sleeping on the
hard ground. Grimacing at the foul taste in her mouth, she pulled her blanket tight around her shoulders.
Their fourth night since escaping Skavengard had been as miserable and uncomfortable as the three preceding it. Everyone was strung out and tired, worn down by the mountains. The clear autumn nights brought a cold that sank into their bones, and they were hungry, having found nothing to hunt. Their shelter was a patch of stony ground between two projecting outcrops, offering scant protection from the elements. There had been no fire, for trees were sparse on the eastern side of the Ostenbergs. Those they found were hard and gnarled, too much effort to break up and carry.
The others grumbled, but Fen was no stranger to discomfort and it hardly bothered her. Her da had been taking her out into the forest since she was eight, and even the most skilled hunter sometimes came up empty-handed, or got caught in a storm. Hunger and cold were rites of passage to her. They made her different from the soft town folk, who panicked if they missed their dinner and thought a night without a blanket would kill them. Most people stuck to their roads and streets, never daring to stray a hundred paces from safety. To free yourself from that was to unlock the world.
Pain passed. Hunger passed. Everything passed in time.
She surveyed the campsite with bleak disinterest. The others were still huddled inside their blankets, curled up for warmth. Ruck slept in the hollow of Vika’s belly. Only Garric was awake, sitting watch with his back against one of the outcrops. Their eyes met in grudging salute to the morning, then he looked away again.
She studied him in the gathering light. He didn’t waste words, that was for sure. She’d liked that about him, at first. Less so, these days. Once she’d been happy for him to keep his secrets, but now they were chewing away at her confidence in his leadership.
When she’d met him, he’d called himself Laine of Heath Edge, and the fire of revolution burned in his eyes. He gave her direction, a way to strike at the enemy that had driven her from her home. Now he had another name, and he was a different person: angry, bitter, driven and sometimes cruel. Someone the Iron Hand wanted badly enough to send dreadknights after him. Someone she didn’t know.
The Ember Blade Page 38
