Gilead's Blood

by Dan Abnett

  Gilead had just sheathed his sword and slung it between his shoulder blades, about to climb down into the hole below the scarcement, when Vintze returned.

  The Reiklander was utterly covered in black mud and slime so only the whites of his eyes showed. Many Maltaners drew back and gasped to see him heaving himself up out of the floor, almost an undead thing covered in mulch from the grave.

  He did not speak until he had rinsed his mouth with wine, spat out several gobbets of mud and then drunk properly. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, revealing it white and stark against his dirt.

  ‘Two full miles, turning west,’ he reported, gasping. Fithvael could see he was tired and out of breath. ‘Then it rises and turns north and comes out in the woods by the shoulder of the scarp, about half a mile west of Maura’s camp by my reckoning, above and behind it.’

  ‘And not easy going,’ remarked Gilead.

  Vintze spat again.

  ‘But it will serve,’ Bruda said, eager.

  ‘Who goes?’ asked Cloden.

  ‘We all do,’ Gilead replied. ‘To take Maura in his camp will take all of us … at least.’

  ‘But what if he attacks in the meantime, while we’re underground?’ Cloden countered.

  ‘Two then, to hold the gate and keep them busy as we move around.’

  ‘Who?’

  Gilead faltered for a heartbeat.

  ‘I remember,’ Vintze said, ‘Nithrom used to draw lots.’

  ‘Then that is what we do,’ Gilead said.

  They pulled straws from the clasped hands of Drunn. Brom and Gaude plucked out the short ones.

  ‘Then those two it shall be,’ said Gilead.

  ‘Those three.’

  They looked around and found Erill standing behind them, Nithrom’s fine elven sword in his hand. He looked pale and weak, and his lost eye and face was bandaged, but there was a measure of courage in his youthful voice.

  ‘I’ll be no good to you down there, but I’ll gladly stand here with Gaude and Brom.’

  ‘So be it,’ Gilead said, his eyes proud. ‘Now, let us about our purpose.’

  BELOW, IT WAS far worse than Vintze had described. A ragged chimney of mouldering stone dropped down into the heart of the mound, wet with mud and other, less wholesome slime. They passed into blackness almost at once, feeling their way down. The chimney itself was treacherous, and all quickly realised the extent of Vintze’s nimble skills. Hand and footholds had to be made blind in the disintegrating stone. After Cloden slipped and nearly fell, Gilead instructed them to take the chute one at a time and call up once they had reached the bottom. He did not want anyone falling and taking another two or three with him. As it was, if anyone fell and broke bones, he doubted they could be hauled back up out of the narrow shaft. Any such person would doubtless die trapped down there, blocking the passage for them all.

  At the bottom, it was lower and narrower still, just a tunnel bored through wet, black sediment. They had to crawl, single file, pushing their weapons and equipment ahead of them. It was humid and airless, and stank of mould and decay. They crawled on, breathless, through the endless dark. Every now and then, there came a distant rumble. None could tell if it was the storm outside, the shelling overhead, or the slumbering growl of great serpents lying far below the earth.

  Fithvael cursed each bone-numbing inch of the crawl. He lost all sense of time and position, possibly for the first time in his long adulthood. The depth, the confinement, the blackness, all overwhelmed his natural abilities to judge distance and place. His mouth and hair were full of clammy soil, and he was filthy all over. This was no place for an elf.

  He had made his long shield into a sled for his weapons and pack, and dragged it behind him by a long strap tied to his waistband. Every few minutes the shield would snag and stop him and he would have to reach around or kick back to free it. He had no contact with the others. Harg was ahead of him, too far ahead to be seen; Bruda, he believed, was behind. He could hear only scrambling and distant dull curses. Occasionally, a low call would float back down the tight tunnel, from Vintze or Gilead far ahead, but he could not make out any words.

  He almost clawed his way into Harg from behind. The Norseman was stationary and moaning.

  ‘Harg? What is it?’

  ‘Who’s there?’ Fithvael had forgotten how poorly humans saw in darkness.

  ‘It is Fithvael.’

  ‘Have care! Canst thou turn?’

  ‘Turn? Around? No! The tunnel’s too tight!’ A cold sliver of panic shivered in his heart.

  Harg cursed. ‘I’m stuck fast.’

  Fithvael felt his flesh crawl. He felt the walls close in. If the Norseman was stuck, then there was no going forward… or back. The thought made his head swim.

  He peered around the bulk of the big man’s legs. The already narrow tunnel was narrower still here, and the roof belled low. He thought of lighting a lamp to see better, but remembered how quickly the flame would use up their scant air. Use up their air… Fithvael tried to bury the fear that clawed at him.

  He dug at the mud around Harg and then pushed against him, hoping that the narrowness was temporary. If it wasn’t, he was wedging Harg more securely into his grave. The northerner did not seem to move at all. They both clawed at the mud. Fithvael could hear Bruda approaching behind now, panting hard as she made her way.

  ‘What is problem?’ she called.

  ‘Harg is jammed tight,’ Fithvael cried back, pushing again at the dead weight of the big man. Damn them all that none of them had thought of this! Harg, the biggest and broadest of them, was not made to slip easily where a lean thief like Vintze could go.

  ‘Push him!’ Bruda exhorted.

  ‘I’m trying!’ grunted Fithvael.

  ‘Let me past! I will push him!’

  ‘There is no room!’ spat Fithvael, clearing his mouth of slime. He rolled over onto his left side, braced his legs against the tunnel walls and heaved again with greater leverage.

  ‘Tis no good!’ Harg moaned, a note of panic fluttering in the edges of his deep, bass voice.

  It would be, by the gods, Fithvael screamed inwardly. He pushed again with all his strength.

  The resistance weakened abruptly and Harg slithered away from him with a cry. Fithvael sprawled nose-down in the slime of the floor and heavy gobbets of mud and chunks of stone tumbled out of the roof.

  ‘Harg?’

  ‘I can move… by’t blessed worldtree! I can move!’ The tunnel had widened again beyond the slump, and Fithvael could hear Harg slithering on.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he called back to Bruda. As he resumed his relentless pace, Fithvael realised suddenly just how fast his heart was hammering.

  FAR ABOVE, IT was approaching the eighth hour of the evening, and the storm gripped the night around Maltane. At every few beats, the sky flashed incandescent with white fire and booming thunder rattled the trees, the tiles, the walls and the ground. Sheet rain had been falling continuously for several hours.

  Wrapped in sodden cloaks, Gaude, Brom and Erill cowered by the gate of the inner mound, gazing down through the deluge at the Tilean lines. The shelling had ground to a stop about an hour and half before, and there was no sign of anything in the storm below except the few pot-fires the mercenaries had lit under lean-tos and awnings out of the rain.

  ‘At least they’ve stopped with the cannons,’ muttered Gaude.

  Brom nodded. He was sitting on an upturned bucket devouring a bowl of stew that he was keeping out of the rain with a fold of cloak spread like a fisherbird’s wing. ‘They can’t set matches or powder in this. But then, neither can I.’ He gestured forlornly to his handgun, shrouded in oilskin, leaning under the lip of the wall.

  Erill was watching with the lightning. Every flash revealed the landscape clearly for a second, stark and blue-white. Staring into the flashes made him blink, and hurt his good eye, but each blink recaptured the fleeting image in negative, burned into his mind. The pain in his wounds ached and throbb
ed intolerably.

  ‘They’ve been a long time,’ said Brom, putting down his bowl. ‘Twice the time it took Vintze to scout, and he went there and back.’

  ‘They’ll get there,’ Gaude murmured.

  Another flash and a roar. Even the heavy rain seemed to wince.

  ‘Movement!’ Erill barked. They leaped up to join him.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Inside the outer ditch, in the town dwellings,’ Erill said, pointing.

  ‘Just your imagination…’

  ‘Wait for another flash.’

  ‘But-‘

  ‘Wait!’ The lad’s voice was certain.

  Lightning shivered across the sky again.

  ‘There!’

  ‘I saw nothing,’ complained Gaude.

  Brom shook his head.

  But Erill knew what he had seen. Dark dots, shiny black in the wetness, glinting in the storm-light below them. And in that latest flash, he realised that some were as close as the foot of the mound.

  ‘Send to the hall. Get the others out here!’

  ‘You’re jumping at shadows,’ Gaude said patiently, and flinched as another hammerblow of light and noise exploded above them.

  ‘He’s not,’ Brom said suddenly, drawing his bow.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw them too that time. Erill, go and get any of the townsfolk capable of fighting.’

  Erill ran off through the storm towards the hall, wading up to his shins in the standing water inside the fence.

  Gaude had his sword drawn by now and was looking where Brom pointed. He made some sense of the dark shapes and blotches in the rain. Things that he had taken to be fences and drain-ditches, or hillocks of grass, were moving: scores of armed men working their way up to the mound silently.

  ‘By the Lady!’ he breathed, and there was real fear in his voice.

  Erill returned with Galvin, Drunn and some twenty-five remaining fighters or would-be fighters; the very last few.

  Brom assembled those with bows along the northern fence and around the gate, where the sword, pike and scythe carriers formed a phalanx with Gaude behind the wall of shields they had stuck in the gate-mouth. Water streamed off fists and noses, helmet-plates, weapons. All were motionless and resolute.

  There came a hissing, pattering sound as if the rainfall had increased in heaviness once more. But it was a blizzard of blue-fletched arrows slicing up the hill. They thudded into shields, fence posts and soil. The farmer beside Erill fell with an arrow through his throat and another in his hip. The man had never even spoken.

  Now dark shapes were running up the mound, dark shapes they could see even without the aid of the lightning. Drawn weapons glinted.

  ‘Stand ready, stand ready…’ Gaude cautioned.

  Another blizzard of arrows. As they buried their metal heads in the fence, they seemed to make louder cracks. Erill smelt the incongruous scent of smoke.

  More arrows came, describing orange arcs in the sky. Pitched arrows set alight, the slick tar burning despite the rain. They hissed and fizzled against the wet logs of the fence, but some caught where the tar spread. Erill knew that now the storm was on their side. Because if the rain let up, Maltane would begin to burn.

  COUGHING AND RETCHING slime, Dolph crawled up out of the stone-built opening in the northern slope woods. He was the last to emerge. The opening was overgrown with gorse and bramble, but Gilead and Vintze had cut the worst of it aside to make the way easier.

  The last part of the long crawl had been the hardest, negotiating a rising tunnel almost as steep as the one they had descended from the floor of the scarcement, but without the benefit of old stone for toeholds. And they were all pushing or dragging equipment and now were weary beyond measure.

  There were no stars to take the time from, and above the rustling trees, the storm was pounding. But Fithvael reckoned it had taken them four or five hours to make the journey. They all stood around, leaning or slumped against tree trunks, breathing hard. Madoc turned his face to the sky and let the pelting rain wash the slime off his features. Harg took a deep drink of wine from the skin in his pack. It seemed as if the last thing any of them was ready for was an armed raid.

  Gilead gave them a few moments to stretch out their limbs and check their packs. With rainwater running down his face and arms, he set his red cloak around him, adjusted the sit of his quiver and bow, and slipped his arm in through the thongs of his long, undecorated shield. Everything set, he drew his sword.

  He strode over to Vintze, who sat with his back to an elm, his face in his hands. Though better equipped for the journey than any of them, he was exhausted by having made it three times in the space of eight hours.

  ‘Vintze?’

  ‘Ready when you are,’ the Reiklander sighed without looking up.

  Gilead turned to the others. Bruda was on her feet again, her sword drawn and her small round shield secure on her arm. Harg had his axe ready. Madoc was tightening the leather thongs wrapping his broadsword’s grip, and nodded to Gilead. Cloden had stripped the coverings off his greatsword and was testing the edge. Dolph had his shield and his mace, not to mention a bulky shoulderpack that he had dragged from the mound with his handgun in it.

  Fithvael set his crossbow, his sword sheathed, his shield cinched across his back now.

  ‘We shall do this,’ he said to Gilead. ‘We have already come so far.’

  Gilead nodded. Fithvael saw a darkness in his look, a darkness that he hadn’t seen so intensely since the long lost days when they had quested after Galeth’s killer.

  It was a look of vengeance. Immediately, Fithvael realised what had driven Gilead this far, what had fired his admirable command of the company. Revenge… for Caerdrath, for Nithrom, for the hope they had symbolised…

  And, Fithvael was sure, sheer bloody-minded rage for the pains and agonies of a lifetime. With great sadness and clarity, Fithvael realised Gilead expected nothing out of this venture except the chance to slake his vengeance, to flirt once more with death. He did not need victory. He did not need to save Maltane. He did not even need to live long enough to see the dawn.

  He just wanted to send Maura, the architect of all of this, and his lieutenant Fuentes, the scum who had slain Nithrom, screaming on their way to hell.

  Fithvael felt ice form in his heart. He had joined Nithrom to find a purpose, and had been overjoyed when Gilead joined them. But it had done nothing except destroy Nithrom and waken in Gilead that dreadful, melancholic urge which had already wasted most of his life.

  They were moving off to clash with a murdering maniac, led by a commander who was not a great deal saner, and whose decisions would be clouded by the worst emotions.

  THE MOTLEY BAND scurried down the scarp in cover of the swishing trees and the rain, closing on the hindquarters of Maura’s camp. The storm did not let up.

  As they paused in cover, they saw darts of fire flying up at the distant inner mound, and in the flashes of the storm, saw dark shapes milling on the slopes. One part of the fence was ablaze in patches.

  Nearer at hand, just below them and the end of the trees and brambles, lay the Tilean camp: a huddle of tents and larger canopies, lit from within by lamps and small fires. To the west were pens of horse and mules, the pack teams of the gun limbers and pack-wagons, and the steeds of the cavalry. All of Maura’s men were moving on foot in the new attack, it seemed.

  To the east of the camp, nearest to them, the Tilean cannon were ranged on the slopes, gunner teams huddled under small awnings, smoking and drinking. A few figures wandered about in the main tent camp, and drums beat.

  With a silent gesture, Gilead waved his line forward.

  They came into the camp from the back. Bruda, Vintze and Gilead, swords sheathed, fell on the gun teams from behind with daggers and silenced them. In twos and threes, the men were left dead without knowing what had befallen them.

  Dolph halted them then and, with Harg’s help, manhandled several of the squat tubs of black pow
der from the gun stacks into a pile. Dolph hauled an oilskin over them, and used his flints to spark up a slow-burning fuse string.

  Gilead seemed impatient, but he waited until the work was done. Then they were moving again, in amongst the tents.

  Madoc cut a slit down a tent’s back with his sword and stepped in, surprising two Tilean officers who were playing dice. He killed them both before they could cry out.

  Bruda ducked under a guy-wire and waited until a sentry came level with her before sweeping out and slicing him down with a sure stroke of her sabre.

  Harg caught another sentry with his meaty paws and broke his neck.

  Gilead slipped towards one of the larger tents and burst inside, his sword ready.

  It was empty. Gilead re-emerged and looked around, searching for another likely target.

  Fithvael, just down the aisle between tents from his old friend, saw the Tilean sentry loom behind Gilead. The man started to cry out an alarm that was cut short by Fithvael’s crossbow. But the hasty shot had only winged the man. He went down, shrieking with pain.

  Gilead turned and slew him, then snapped an angry look in Fithvael’s direction. By then, the camp had already come to life, and blue and white-clad mercenaries were emerging into the rain from all around, weapons in their hands.

  The fight began in earnest.

  AT THE MOUND, the defenders could only keep the Tileans at bay for so long. Apart from extinguishing most of the flaming arrows, the rain was helping them by turning the mound’s slopes into mudslides that caused many of the advancing infantry to fall and slither back. Under Brom’s command, the archers of Maltane quickly learned how to pick off an advancing Murderer near the top of the slope so he would fall back and knock some of his comrades down with him in the dire conditions.