The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  Quick as a blink, it was done. The mote of chaos winked out, randomness became order and there was a new reality inside the pot. She drew her mind back from the Shadowlands and relaxed. Moving as if in a dream, she picked up a rag and used it to take the pot off the heat. Then she let herself rest, and stared into the fire while her mind roamed in strange places and molten ribbons writhed like worms across her vision.

  Some time later, she stirred, aware of herself again. She took the pot and poured its contents into a boiled leather flask, which she sealed with pitch and put in her pack. It was still raining, and the lightning-lit woods hissed and seethed. The puddles on the floor had spread and were creeping towards where Ruck dozed. She put her cloak on again, now dry and warm from the heat of the fire.

  The assault came without warning, an ambush from her subconscious that staggered her with its force. Her eyes went dark and her mind was plunged into greasy blackness. Something cold, cloying and rancid was against her skin, pressing at her face, forcing itself down her throat. She flailed against the slithering movement, choking on foulness.

  The beast!

  The blackness around her became a yawning maw, stuffed with concentric rows of teeth, a slimy gullet into the Abyss. Vika screamed—

  —and found herself on her hands and knees on the floor of the cottage, retching, Ruck barking frantically at her. She gasped, disorientated, the taste of it still in her mouth.

  ‘Peace, Ruck,’ she said, reaching for the water skin from her pack. She took a swig, spat it out and drank the next. ‘Peace.’

  She felt anything but peaceful. Swimming through the beast’s alien thoughts had sent her dangerously close to madness. It had taken her days to heal her bruised psyche and take control again, but still the remnants lingered. Maybe she’d purge herself in time; maybe she never would. That was the price of dealing with ser­vants of the Outsiders.

  She feared more for Keel than herself. She had plenty of experience with madness and knew how to handle it. Keel didn’t, and he’d stared into the eye of that foul thing. She feared he’d carry the scars for ever.

  Something passed by the doorway in the rainy dark outside and she whirled, all senses alert. The potion in her blood had faded somewhat, but her hearing was still keen as a fox’s. She’d heard nothing. But she’d seen …

  Or had she? Nine, it was so hard to know. So hard to pick out what was real, and what was a trick of the brain.

  Ruck had no such doubts. She was stanced ready for attack, snarling at the doorway. Lightning flickered, showing waving branches and thrashing bushes. Thunder barrelled away into the distance. There was a familiar sense of otherness in the air: the taint of the Shadowlands.

  A slow dread soaked into her. What did I bring through?

  She swept up her pack and staff. This place felt suddenly dangerous; no shelter, but a trap. If there were enemies abroad, they could see in, but she couldn’t see out.

  A dark figure slid past the window behind her. She half-saw, half-sensed it, but by the time she turned, it was gone. Ruck barked furiously at the spot where it had been.

  ‘We will not cower in here,’ she said to her hound. ‘Let us see who has come calling.’

  She pulled up her hood and stepped out into the storm. The rain blew against her face and her cloak flapped about her. Keen-eyed, she scanned the trees. The woods were bright to her under the influence of the potion, the colour of steel and silver.

  ‘Show yourself!’ she cried. Ruck padded up alongside her, grey fur plastered to her lean body and her bearded muzzle dripping. ‘Show yourself, shade!’

  There was no response.

  Vika walked into the trees, wary for signs of movement. Anger made her brave. If this was a shade, she’d know its purpose. She was anointed of the Aspects; she’d faced down the beast of Skavengard. She didn’t fear the pale tricks of ghosts.

  That, at least, was what she told herself. Agalie would have counselled caution. Of late, the spirits had become unpredictable, harder to treat with, while reaching the Shadowlands had become easier by the year. Neither change boded well. Some said the Divide was narrowing, bringing the worlds of the living and the dead closer together. Soon it wouldn’t only be the wild and ancient places where the shades came creeping through.

  But that was still rumour as yet. It would take a Conclave to determine the truth of it. If another Conclave was ever called.

  Her senses strained. She could smell and hear nothing but the woods and the rain. Only her prickling instincts and the buzz in her head told her there was something else present.

  ‘Show yourself!’ she cried again, and this time it did.

  It slid out sideways from behind a tree and Vika’s breath froze in her chest. The Torment towered over her, terrifyingly close, its eyes empty pits ringed with tendrils of gangrene, its mouth a toothless puckered O in a white, shrivelled face. The sides of its throat had been slit lengthways, the skin held open in wet red diamonds by a structure of hair-thin metal, exposing the glistening muscle and twitching arteries beneath.

  Ruck flattened herself to the ground, whining like a cur. Vika was paralysed, locked in place as she stared into the void of its eyes, which swelled in her vision as if she was tipping into them—

  —a hulking man clad in black metal, hammer in hand, riding a destrier through the rain—

  —a ragged scarecrow with a longbow, his face a jigsaw of other people’s skin, beetles and worms swarming from his footprints in the turf—

  —a hooded shadow with a metal mask twisted in a grieving howl, hunched in his saddle, the glitter of swords like fangs beneath his cloak—

  —and she was cast back into herself, blinking and shaking. The Torment was gone, if it had been there at all. The storm growled and flashed, the rain drove down from the sky, but the night was only the night again.

  Ruck whined deep in her throat as Vika realised what she’d seen.

  The dreadknights, riding through a wood. This wood. And suddenly she understood the warning, as clear as if it had been spoken aloud.

  ‘They’re here,’ she said, aghast. Then, breaking into a run, ‘They’re heading for the farm!’

  60

  Klyssen hunkered in his saddle and looked down the hill at Fluke’s farm. The rain pounded out of the night, splattering off his wide-brimmed hat and the black overcoat that enshrouded him, and a distant flicker of lightning lit up his spectacles, two white circles in the shadow.

  By the Primus, if I get through tonight without a chill, it’ll be a miracle indeed.

  ‘All’s quiet,’ said Harte, who sat astride a roan mare at his side, sheltered by an identical hat.

  The redundancy of his comment irked Klyssen. ‘It wouldn’t be much of an ambush if it wasn’t.’

  Harte said nothing to that, just mopped his running nose with a handkerchief. His overcoat, like Klyssen’s, was entirely ineffect­ive against the downpour. He, too, was pretending to suffer no discomfort.

  All of us, desperately keeping up appearances. How did we ever get like this? We’re the greatest power in Embria and yet we’re all scared of not measuring up to the next man in case our peers think less of us.

  Sometimes he wondered if the Ossians had it right after all. They didn’t spend their days fretting about how they might seem more loyal and efficient, or sizing up their rivals’ backs for the best place to stick a knife.

  ‘I always had my suspicions about that man Laine … Garric, you say he goes by now?’ It was Lord Jadrell who’d spoken, a short, pudgy man with a piping, nasal voice and a pencil-thin tracing of facial hair to furnish the illusion of a jawline. ‘Given to seditious talk when drunk, as I recall.’

  ‘Then you should have reported him when you had the chance,’ said Klyssen.

  Jadrell panicked and began to bluster. ‘Would that I had been able to, Overwatchman! But the knowledge only reached my ears after he had left Wracken Bay. And Keel! Nobody expected such treasons from Yarren’s boy. He was whaler stock through and
through.’

  Klyssen let silence be his reply. He’d despised Lord Jadrell on sight, and their brief acquaintance had only confirmed his opinion. There was nothing more embarrassing than an Ossian aping his betters. He talked enthusiastically about artists and composers he’d just discovered when most Krodans had long since tired of them, and made laboured references to fashions already ten years out of date. And the things he did to the Krodan tongue! The language of Tomas and Toven wasn’t meant for Ossians, who rolled their r’s like purring cats and threw their words together in a jumble.

  But for all Jadrell’s failings, it was Klyssen’s job to suffer him. The Emperor had decreed that Ossian highborns should be encouraged to assimilate. They should be dazzled with Krodan learning and Krodan culture, steeped in the superiority of their new masters so that they’d aspire to be like them, and their children, too. Conquer them with peace; make them want to be ruled. The Emperor had learned in Brunland that brute force and bloody repression were not the most effective ways to subdue a country.

  ‘The men are almost in place, Overwatchman Klyssen,’ said Captain Dressle.

  Stealthy figures, barely visible, moved through the muddy fields surrounding the farm. They went in threes, with disciplined effi­ciency. The fugitives had a master swordsman among them, but they wouldn’t find the Iron Guard such easy prey as the road patrol they’d slaughtered.

  ‘It is fortunate indeed that I could be of service,’ Jadrell said, with forced jauntiness. The presence of the Iron Hand in his town had made him nervous. ‘If I hadn’t instructed my man to keep a close watch, he might never have seen the cart arrive!’

  ‘If our man is inside, you will have done a great service to the Empire,’ Klyssen assured him dryly. And you’ll be rewarded. That’s what you’re really asking, isn’t it?

  ‘Then let us hope he is,’ said Jadrell, ‘for nothing would please me more!’

  Yes, let us hope he is. And how dearly Klyssen looked forward to catching him, so that he could go back to Morgenholme, and Vanya, and his golden-haired daughters and his silly old cat. It would be a relief to surround himself with people he loved instead of those he loathed. He was so tired of sycophants and back­stabbers, wearied by the endless suspicion. Dressle was the only man in his present circle he didn’t actively dislike.

  ‘May I ask why this man is of such interest to the Iron Hand?’ Jadrell enquired.

  Because my promotion depends on him. Because I swore to Chancellor Draxis that I would bring him in. Because I’ll be ruined and humiliated if I don’t.

  ‘The Iron Hand’s business is its own,’ said Harte sternly, and Jadrell shut up. Klyssen was vaguely annoyed that his subordinate had answered in his stead, but he had bigger matters on his mind right now.

  Garric. Laine of Heath Edge. Whatever name you go by, I know who you really are, Cadrac of Darkwater. And soon you will know my name, too.

  He raised a gloved hand. There was a creaking of harness from behind them and the dreadknights moved into view on his right, sitting astride their enormous black destriers. They halted in a line, waiting for his order.

  Having them so close made his skin creep. His face and chest began to itch, as if there were tiny insects crawling all over him, and his horse pranced and sidestepped uneasily. Yet still he didn’t drop his hand; still he held them back. Let them know, whatever they were, that they were servants of the Empire first and foremost. His servants, for as long as they were assigned to him. He trusted them less than he trusted Harte, and that was saying something. At least Harte was loyal to Kroda, if not to Klyssen. How could he say the same of the dreadknights, when he didn’t know who they were or where they came from?

  The moment stretched out. Plague turned his dead-flesh mask to Klyssen, making a low, quiet clicking sound, a rattle like bones in his throat.

  ‘Go,’ said Klyssen, and he dropped his hand.

  They went like dogs after hares, racing downhill towards the farm. Harte looked from Klyssen to the dreadknights and back again, waiting for a signal of his own, but Klyssen gave him none. He was staying right here. Only fools put themselves in the way of swords.

  He saw realisation dawn on Harte’s face: they wouldn’t be following the dreadknights into battle. The younger man struggled with the concept of obedience for a moment, then his expression hardened. He unsheathed his blade, wheeled his horse and plunged down the hill with a cry.

  Klyssen bit back the urge to swear. Now Klyssen had to follow or look like a coward in front of Dressle and the Ossian prig by his side. With a reluctant kick to his horse’s flanks, he went riding into the folly. So did Jadrell and Dressle, all driven onwards by the fear that they’d be deemed less loyal to the Empire than their brave and stupid fellow.

  Falcons to ducklings. What have we become?

  Down the slope they went, their horses’ hooves churning up the dirt. Klyssen jounced and swung in his saddle, holding on for his life. Lightning flashed, showing Harte hunched over his horse up ahead. He was an expert rider, of course, trained in the saddle from a young age. Just one more advantage to add to all the others his appearance and upbringing afforded.

  The animals went berserk as the dreadknights rode past the outbuildings. Pigs squealed and goats screamed, clamouring in their pens. It would give those within the barn some warning, but not much. It didn’t matter, anyway. If they fled, they’d be met by the Iron Guard hidden among the hedgerows.

  Ruin dragged his horse to a halt and dismounted as he reached the barn, landing on his feet with a crash of metal. Plague and Sorrow slid down to either side of him as Ruin hefted his hammer, swung it in a giant arc and smashed the barn doors open with one blow. His nimbler companions darted inside, and Ruin stamped after them.

  Harte reached the flat ground between the outbuildings and charged onwards. Klyssen followed, his stomach rolling, with Dressle keeping pace to his right and Lord Jadrell whooping and squeaking behind him in polite distress. As they approached the barn, Harte began to slow, his sword lowering uncertainly, and by the time Klyssen saw the towering figure of Ruin emerging from the barn unbloodied, he knew what had happened.

  ‘They’re not there!’ Harte cried as they came to a stop next to him. Klyssen was surprised to hear anger in his voice. The watchman turned an accusing gaze to Jadrell. ‘Where are they?’

  Jadrell’s eyes were wide, shocked and fearful as a child’s. ‘But Endrik saw them going into the barn. They dined here.’

  ‘Their cart is here, but they are not!’

  Klyssen, sweaty and sodden and short of breath, willed ice into his veins. It was time for clear thinking and command. ‘Leave a perimeter and search the outbuildings,’ he told Dressle. He pointed at the dreadknights, who’d all emerged from the barn. ‘You three, search the farmhouse.’

  ‘Every third man to me!’ Dressle roared over the wind. ‘The rest hold fast!’

  His order was repeated in the distance, echoing out for the benefit of those who hadn’t heard it. The dreadknights stalked into the farmhouse as soldiers of the Iron Guard melted out of the dark, gathering round Dressle. He led them towards the stable, leaving Klyssen alone with Harte and Jadrell.

  Klyssen looked inside the barn. Bitter anger gathered in his belly. Their bedrolls had been left behind, as had their gaudy Sard cart and the horses that pulled it. He’d bet that if he peered inside that cart, he’d find it full of possessions.

  Yet their weapons and packs were gone. The fugitives had left in a hurry, taking only the minimum with them.

  ‘Somebody warned them,’ Klyssen said.

  ‘Does it please you, Ossian, to see the Iron Hand embarrassed?’ Harte demanded of Jadrell.

  Jadrell gaped like a fish, searching for any reply that wouldn’t be considered impertinent. ‘I … I acted in good faith—’

  ‘Yes, your kind always has an excuse, don’t you? And yet you always manage to fall just short of being actually helpful. What do they call it, now? Passive resistance?’

  ‘I
am a loyal servant of the Emperor!’ Jadrell protested.

  ‘Yes, this country’s full of loyal servants like y—’

  ‘Watchman Harte!’ Klyssen snapped. ‘Control yourself. You are an officer of the Iron Hand.’

  Harte glared at him hotly, then swept away towards the farmhouse, stung. Klyssen watched him, outwardly calm, inwardly calculating.

  Commander Gossen’s dearest wish was to see Klyssen fail in his mission to catch Garric, so he could install his lapdog Bettren as his replacement; but Harte was furious that Garric wasn’t here. That didn’t square with Klyssen’s suspicions that he was spying for Gossen. Klyssen had assumed his general negativity about their mission was Harte being purposefully obstructive, but it was possible he’d been overly paranoid. Maybe Harte was just bored when he was idle. After all, he’d been enthusiastic enough when he killed the prisoner at Shoal Point. Too enthusiastic, in fact.

  Interesting.

  ‘My information was good, and given gladly,’ Jadrell mewed. ‘I swear by the Primus.’

  Klyssen, whose back was to Jadrell, rolled his eyes. And so it’s left to me to smooth the ruffled feathers. He turned and gave him an unctuous smile. ‘Of course, Lord Jadrell. It’s through the efforts of men like yourself that the will of the Emperor is done. Forgive my subordinate; he’s just excessively disappointed he didn’t get to serve the Empire tonight.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you understand, Overwatchman.’

  ‘Klyssen!’ Harte called from the farmhouse.

  Klyssen clenched his teeth. How long before that insufferable bastard learned to address him by his title? He stored the insult away, adding it to the long list of grievances Harte would pay for when Klyssen was Commander of Ossia.

  Harte was dragging a man dressed in long johns and a roughspun bedshirt out of the farmhouse. Plague walked at his shoulder; the other two dreadknights headed off towards the other outbuildings. By the time the man was pushed to his knees in front of Klyssen, his clothes were soaked through and his dark brown hair hung in sodden curls over his eyes.