Vile

by Keith Crawford

  “Harran, go up after her,” Anton said. “Ty, get ready, you’re next.”

  Harran handed his torch to Ty. She had to sheath her sword to take it. Harran glanced around, checking the perimeter, then set off up the first rock as if it were a race. Anton took a step back from Ty, who grinned apologetically.

  “What shall I do with these?” she said. “I can’t climb with the torches.”

  Anton wanted to say, ‘I’ll hold them,’ but the words got caught in his stomach and never made it as far as his mouth. He looked across the perimeter, hoping one of the other guards was close enough to take them.

  Something moved in the darkness. A growl slipped between the shrieking of the wind.

  “Nathaniel, look out!”

  Nathaniel, startled by the shout, turned his back on the tundra to face Anton. Suddenly a woman shrieked from up above. Everyone looked at the cliff. Anton grabbed his hammer and stepped forward, but the sudden movement of the torches destroyed his night vision. He couldn’t see where it was, even what it was, and everyone else was facing the wrong way.

  “Harran, get up there and help her!” Nathaniel shouted.

  “You’re supposed to be looking out, you bloody idiots!” Anton shouted back, waving his arm toward the tundra. He couldn’t see anything. Everyone else rushed to the cliff. Despairing, he turned with them.

  Wyn had slipped. She had half an arm over the lip of the cave mouth and her legs dangled in the air. Persephone grabbed her, took her by the collar and her flailing arm, but the two women hung precariously over the edge and Persephone could not win purchase. Harran climbed the rocks as quickly as he could, on hands and knees at first, then jumping up as the wall became steep.

  “The rest of you, gather round me!” Anton shouted.

  “It’s okay, Anton. Persephone has got her.” Nathaniel moved up alongside his brother, his hand up. Anton barely glanced. Harran got to the ledge and helped Persephone haul Wyn up by the shoulders like a sack of potatoes.

  “All of you, backs to the wall, looking out,” Anton commanded.

  “What’s going on?” Nathaniel said. Anton ignored him.

  “Ty, do you have the rope?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you get to the cave, secure the rope and toss it down. Go!”

  “I think you’d better come up here!” Persephone called from the cave mouth.

  Wyn sat next to her, visibly shaking even from this distance. Harran was on his feet and starting into the cave.

  “I think we better had,” Anton said, quietly. He still couldn’t see into the darkness.

  “What’s going on?” Nathaniel said, more urgently this time. The guards were in disarray, some near their perimeter positions, some by the wall, none looking towards the real danger. They hadn’t seen what he had. If the Black Dog attacked now, half of them would be dead before they drew their swords. He cursed under his breath. He’d assumed this was a wild-goose chase. If he’d thought they might actually find the Black Dog, he would have…

  No, he wouldn’t have stood up to his father.

  “Everybody, up the cliff.”

  Nathaniel stared at him. Everybody else stared at him.

  He cleared his throat.

  “In pairs, up the cliff, now! Harran? Relight Ty’s torches when she gets to you, then stick them by the entrance.” He stopped shouting. “Nathaniel, get your fucking sword out.”

  “Anton, answer me! What’s going on?”

  “We found what we came for.”

  The closest of the guards climbed up the rock. Harran skipped over the lip of the cave mouth and held his hand out for Ty, who made quick progress despite the rope and the two torches she had stuffed behind her pack. Anton turned his back on them and stepped towards the darkness, slapping his hammer into his gloved left hand with a satisfying thud. If it comes, give me one good blow, that’s all I ask.

  “Was climbing into a cave your best plan?” Nathaniel said, stepping up alongside him and staring at the darkness.

  “Do you have a better one?”

  “Yes. Stand and fight. Or go get it. What Father sent us here to do.”

  “Is that why he sent us?”

  Nathaniel’s rapier lowered ever so slightly.

  “Point. So, we’re hiding?”

  “Damned right.”

  “You get to tell Persephone.”

  The unsecured end of Ty’s rope tumbled down the cliff face. Edern, the last guard to climb, extinguished his torch, and the dark from the tundra took long strides towards the two men still at the base of the wall.

  “Can you hear anything?” Anton said.

  “Lots of things. What’s your point?”

  “Get up the wall.”

  “Women and cripples first, Anton.”

  They looked out at the falling snow.

  “On second thoughts,” Nathaniel said. “I don’t want you to fall on my head.”

  Anton adjusted his grip on his hammer. Behind him, he heard Nathaniel clamber up the rocks. He had never seen a Kindred. Not for sure. They had stayed on their side of the mountain since the last great invasion. But fear of the Kindred was conditioned from birth. Demons. Destroyers. Shapeshifters. The Black Dog was probably a Kindred thing; what else could it be? It had preyed on them, hunted them, taken women from the town and killed travellers on the mountain. Anton gritted his teeth. If the Black Dog attacked, none of the others were close enough to save him. At least he would die with his hammer in its head. At least he wouldn’t have to see his father anymore. Or Persephone.

  “Are you coming, or do I have to carry you?” Nathaniel called.

  The climb was hard. His damaged left leg was better kept straight. His savaged left hand was poor at gripping rope. At any moment the Black Dog could fly out of the darkness to tear him down to his death in the snow. He walked the wall, hand over hand on the rope, keeping his eyes straight ahead and praying he would not slip.

  He did not slip.

  Hands grabbed him and pulled him over the lip of the cave entrance. Struggling for breath he pushed out his arms and got to his feet, staggering away from the flaming torches.

  “Cosy,” Nathaniel said.

  The cave turned a hard right and extended around fifteen feet into the cliff, a tunnel inserted about a yard below the surface of the bridge. It was high enough for everyone but Persephone and Nathaniel to stand straight, then got narrower as it went farther back. The guards huddled near the entrance, despite the snow and the precipitous drop.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Persephone said, her right hand on her hip. “I didn’t mean you should all come up!”

  “What did you find?” Anton said.

  Ty raised her torch and pointed. The blood on the floor led to some sort of nest. On top of a gathering of rags, junk, and what looked like clothes stolen from a wash line, was the body of a man, dressed in armour, his death grimace veiled by a finely crafted helmet. In his hand lay a bunch of white flowers.

  “I didn’t know Frostbells grew this far down the mountain,” Nathaniel said.

  “That’s not Mabyn. Is it one of his team?”

  “No,” Persephone said.

  She walked over and pulled the helmet from the dead man. It was in the shape of a dragon’s head.

  “Do you recognise it? Is it Kindred?”

  “I doubt it,” Nathaniel said. “The Kindred don’t need steel to take the shape of a monster.”

  “Southerners, then. Mercenaries?”

  “Do you think the Dog killed him?” Nathaniel said. “How the hell are we going to tell Father that it was right here under our noses?”

  “You want me to lie to the old man?” Persephone said.

  “No. I’ll do it,” Anton said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “There’s no need to lie,” Nathaniel said. “But this is stupid. Wandering around blind is not searching.”

  “Is that why you all came up here?”

  “I saw it,” A
nton said. “Out there. In the snow.”

  Persephone was already reaching for her huge sword, as if she had forgotten the need to climb back down. Anton put his hand on her arm.

  “On the tundra, in the dark, we won’t stand a chance.”

  “Then I’ll go alone,” she said, but she did not move. If she got caught climbing the wall, it would rip her to shreds, and she knew it.

  “Are you sure you saw it?” Nathaniel said.

  Anton hesitated.

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I hope there isn’t anything worse out there tonight.”

  The strange look on Nathaniel’s face stayed with Anton for some time.

  Day 2

  19 Ventros 1682

  To return to the capital in time, Elianor must complete her mission and leave Shadowgate within 5 days.

  Chapter 18

  “I sent Begw back to her family in the east. She left this morning.”

  Elianor nearly choked. The brazenness of Senator Vile’s lie, right here in the courtyard of the castle, in front of everybody, but especially in front of a Magistrate, was breath-taking.

  The search team stood in a rough group before the entrance to the Manor, with Persephone and Anton at the front. They looked tired, deflated, the very image of a group who had spent the night hiding in a cave. The guards kicked the dirt and muttered to one another. Anton shivered and shoved his hands in his pockets. Nathaniel came and touched Elianor’s forearm, nodding toward Persephone, who was grinding her left hand against her thigh. The Captain’s face was a flushed, angry red.

  Elianor had kept watch from the window of her chamber since before dawn, her leg dangling over the sill as she fiddled with the broken trigger of her pistol. The sunrise burned away the muggy grey clouds, and the walls of the castle glowed, a shelled sea-creature on an alien landscape. She spotted the search party returning before the watchers of the gate but finding her way through the corridors of the castle defeated her. The route bent left, then right when she wanted to go down. Stairs she thought led to an exit climbed then turned farther away. Finally, she found a door that brought her not into the audience chamber, as she had hoped, but into a small washroom with an open half-gate outside. A series of stone basins along one wall had been cleaned out this morning, perhaps to wash the clothes she had found mended, folded, and dry outside her door. Light steam rose from the metal pipes in the wall and the floor was wet. Her boots trod footprints across the floor. As she walked out into the courtyard, the wind threw grit in her face and made her eyes sting.

  “Over here,” Nathaniel called, stopping her before she could talk to Anton.

  Had it been spotting Nathaniel with the search party that had distracted her? Occam’s razor hardly helped. She had seen him leave with the search party. Then, later, when she’d met him on the rooftop, the logical inference was that he had been sent back to the castle by his siblings. But then how had he come to be with the search party in the morning? The best she could come up with is that he had excused himself with some fabrication—bought the wrong sword, wearing the wrong boots—so he could return to show her Begw being taken by the monks, then rejoined the party, so as to be certain that the castle—perhaps his father in particular—did not know he had been there. But his siblings and the other guards would know. So, where they in on the plot? Conspirators? On which side? And how could they expect a conspiracy to succeed that contained so many people? As the suppositions mounted, her theories became no more reasonable than the simple assertion that Nathaniel was capable of being in two places at once. Which was, of course, nonsense. It infuriated her. He infuriated her.

  The Manor door opened. The wind resisted, strained to force the door shut, then succumbed, catching it again on the way out so it slammed against the wall. Through the door swept Lena, her black leather case pressed against her grey dress. Arbalest Vile came after, still in his chainmail but with a long woollen dressing gown wrapped around it. He stood on the Manor steps, shoved his hands in his pockets, and scratched himself. Then he swept a long, slow gaze across them, eyebrow arched, as if pretending to search for something he knew was not there. Lena, meanwhile, surveyed the Vile children.

  Undeterred, Persephone stepped forward, smartly, ready to report. But before she could speak, Anton blurted out “What have you done about Begw?”, and Vile lied, as calmly as a farmer cuts the head from a chicken. Elianor was caught by an intense sense of déjà vu, as if emerging from a memory.

  “Where is the body of the Black Dog?” Vile said.

  “Being worn by the Black Dog.”

  Anton had again interrupted Persephone. She flashed him a furious look.

  “People have died, Anton,” Lena said. “This isn’t funny.”

  “No, Mother Abacus,” Anton said, his eyes still fixed on Lord Vile. “It isn’t funny.”

  He threw something to the ground.

  “We couldn’t find the Dog’s trail in the dark, but we found this.”

  It was a helmet in the shape of a dragon’s head.

  “What’s wrong?” Nathaniel whispered to Elianor. She cursed herself for letting her feelings show on her face. Anton’s lie had been clear as Vile’s, but why say they had not found the Dog if they had? Why were they lying to each other? Elianor looked round for the Warden. It was not in the courtyard, nor could she see it watching from a window.

  “Nothing,” Elianor replied. “Let me listen.”

  “Where did you find that helmet?” Vile said to Anton.

  “On a body, in a cave beneath the span. I think he was killed by Kindred.”

  The wind stopped. Everybody stared at Anton as if he had slaughtered a kitten in a nursery. Persephone opened her mouth and then closed it again. Elianor watched Anton closely for signs of a lie.

  “This person, whoever he was, was not killed by Kindred.” Vile’s voice was cold, quiet, restrained, but had an edge like a cable about to snap.

  “How do you know?”

  “There are no Kindred this side of the mountain.”

  “How do you know? Magic? A sixth sense? Have you built a telescope in the top tower?”

  “Anton—” Persephone started.

  “No,” Anton snapped. “I want to hear this. We have no guards at the monastery and Mabyn’s patrol is still missing, which means we have no news from the watch post.”

  “I fought a Kindred Prince!” Vile shouted. “I turned them back at Demon’s Pass! To be Lord of Shadowgate is to know the presence of the Kindred.” He raised his arm and thrust his index finger towards his eldest son. “And you, Anton, you don’t know.”

  Anton shook his head, and said, quietly, “Nothing you just said made any sense.”

  Vile waved his hand as if dismissing an unwanted dish at a poor banquet.

  “Fine. Go north and look for yourself. You keep telling me that’s what you want, so that’s what you can do. Take Persephone and check in at Hodri’s farm on the way, find out what happened with her daughter, what’s-her-name?”

  “Seren, my lord,” Lena said.

  “Yes, Seren, Hodri’s daughter,” Vile said. “Go as far as the watchtower. But don’t bother the Abbot. You’ve embarrassed me enough.”

  Anton just knelt and picked up the dragon-head helmet.

  “Nathaniel,” Vile continued. “You and Sergeant Rees will escort the Lady Elianor into town to recover her possessions. Bring the Garn boy back here. He won’t go unpunished for what he has done.”

  “Yes, Father,” Nathaniel said. “Rees, help me with the horses?”

  Vile passed his gaze to Elianor. Was this how a worm felt when watched by a blackbird?

  “If it please you, my lady?”

  “Thank you, Senator Vile,” she said, with some difficulty. Vile returned to the Manor and the search party dispersed. Persephone pulled off her gloves and threw them to the ground before seizing Corporal Edern by the shoulder.

  “Edern, g
et on your horse and go after Begw. Make sure she gets to her mother’s safe and see if Seren is there.”

  “What if she isn’t?”

  “Seren? Or Begw? Either way, you come back and report to me. Directly to me, you understand?”

  “I’ll be pushed to get back before nightfall tomorrow.”

  “Then find somewhere to stay and be back here the morning after. Don’t risk the mountain.”

  Elianor found herself stranded in the emptying courtyard, standing next to a guard struggling to unbuckle her backpack.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” Elianor said.

  The young woman looked too startled to speak. Elianor knelt behind her and pulled the strap straight. The wet had swollen the leather.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I don’t know nothing.”

  Well, that’s certainly true, Elianor thought.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you got those bruises on your face?”

  “Wyn, take that back to the barracks,” Sergeant Rees said.

  Wyn snatched her pack away so hard she fell over, then fled before the Sergeant reached them. Rees led two of the largest horses Elianor had ever seen. The closest was a chocolate brown with silver dapple spreading from a long white mane. The other was grey and had similar patterning. They would have been beautiful if they weren’t so damned huge.

  “Are you ready to leave?” Nathaniel said. “The repairs to your coat were satisfactory?”

  Elianor didn’t respond. She was too busy staring at her horse. Elianor wasn’t even sure she could get her foot in the stirrup.

  “Do you need help?” Sergeant Rees said.

  He had taken off his helmet, revealing greasy shoulder-length brown hair that framed the face of a man who had spent years staring out into wind-carried snow. Clusters of hair sprouted from a crooked nose whose very weight encouraged the mouth below to never smile. She was sure that his nose hairs had grown into his moustache. Was this visceral dislike because of how he looked, or what she had seen him do last night? Was there something monstrous flickering in his eyes, or did it just seem that way because Elianor had watched him hand a prisoner to mysterious monks? She longed for a few minutes alone with him and the butt of her pistol.