Too Cold to Bleed

by D Murray

  The body of Grunnxe stepped up to her and hunkered down.

  Evelyne lifted her head and looked into the black eyes before her.

  “You see me,” he said, “you see my eyes, and you know it is I, Balzath, whom you call usurper. It is you, Dajda, who is the usurper, you traitorous cunt. See me, and know your truest fear. You are not fleeing from this mortal child today.” Balzath picked up the shattered end of the knife and slid the sharp edge against the inside of Grunnxe’s hand. He smiled at her as he clenched his fist, and squeezed a stream of near-black blood from his wound into the pool of blood by Evelyne’s left hand. He casually touched a finger in the pool of blood, stirred it about, then lifted a red-tipped finger and flicked it towards Evelyne, speckling her face with dark blood.

  The light faded, clouded over with fear. The sense of calm withered and died. Panic flooded her mind, and Dajda’s silent scream sounded in her head once more. The pools of blood agitated, tremored and then started to flow back into Evelyne’s arms. Warm tears ran down her face as she watched the pools of blood shrink and then finally disappear up into the shrinking cuts in her arms. Purple scars were all that remained of her efforts to strike the life from her, and free Dajda.

  “No, Dajda, I will not let you slip away from me so easily. Not now your host carries our child. The blood of Dajda, and the blood of Balzath. Our power combined, unified and unopposed. This is a glorious day.” Balzath stood and spread his arms wide. “Proclaim it! Proclaim it as such. The day the worth betham unithed–” Balzath stopped talking and turned back to Evelyne, a confused look upon Grunnxe’s dead face as the black eyes of Balzath searched the pallid flesh of Grunnxe’s palms. “Fucth!” The dead tongue stumbled over the words.

  “Your Highness!” a voice sounded at the door. “We found these two running from the keep.”

  Evelyne lifted her eyes and saw a group of soldiers hauling Yara and Missy into the hall.

  “We saw the dining room, Your Highness. We feared the worst.”

  Yara’s eyes held Evelyne’s, tears streaming down her face. Missy’s eyes were closed and the cook was sobbing uncontrollably.

  The body of Grunnxe started to walk forward, dragging the right foot behind.

  Yara’s face contorted as the dead king approached. Even the soldiers' eyes widened, presumably at the sight of the corpse of the king shambling towards them, black eyes searching.

  Grunnxe grabbed Missy by the back of her neck and shoved her sobbing behind one of the pillars, and into shadow. A single scream sounded, and then silence.

  Evelyne’s eyes flicked back to Yara. The woman’s eyes were squeezed shut, and her body shook with fear.

  Grunnxe stepped around the pillar and into the lamplight. Fresh blood streaked his bearded mouth and chin. He was straighter than before, with greater breadth to his shoulders. The skin on Grunnxe’s head seemed wrinkle-free, and tight. “This one, I want you to keep for me.” The chilling voice was restored. “Have her chained and put in a cell below. I’ll come see her later.”

  The soldiers nodded. “Yes, Your Highness,” one of them responded.

  “Your king is dead. I am your master god, Balzath. Speak to me, not to this corpse.”

  “Yes, master,” the soldier stammered, before he turned and began to lead Yara away as she hyperventilated in great sobbing breaths.

  “Now.” Balzath turned and walked back down the hall to where Evelyne knelt. “What shall I do with you, my beloved Dajda, my trophy?” He hunkered down again and smiled, showing off Grunnxe’s bloodstained teeth. “I’ve always been fond of displaying my trophies in the past, be they weaker demons in my younger days, or spirits of the weak gods as I grew in strength. I shall display you to this world. This world that will be mine. Come.” Balzath grabbed Evelyne by the hair and hauled her kicking to her feet. He shoved her out in front of him with a stumble, and led her out of the hall. Under the awful pressure of those black eyes, he led her up the staircase, level after level, and eventually stopped, leaving Evelyne clutching her ever-swelling belly and heaving for breath.

  “What will you do?” she asked, looking up at those terrible eyes.

  He smiled at her and placed a hand on her shoulder, leading her to an iron door. “Open it,” Balzath commanded.

  She placed her hand about the handle and hauled the heavy door open. Behind it was the open air of the night. She looked out and saw it was a cell with metal grid bars rising from a waist-high block wall, ending in a stone ceiling. There were blankets piled in a long wooden box at one end. She turned and looked into the black eyes once more.

  “Yes,” Balzath hissed, “this will be your home, until you bear me this child. This child of Dajda, this child of mine.” He shoved her in, and the door slammed shut behind her, followed by the clanking of locks.

  Evelyne looked down at the milling bodies below, and saw the light escaping from the long-houses. She rubbed at her swollen belly, and recoiled from the thought of Balzath’s blood coursing through her veins. Through her child’s veins. She sensed nothing of Dajda within her. No fear. No anger. Nothing. She slumped against the door, feeling the chill of the mountain air lick her body. Her hands caressed her belly, feeling the child within kick, its growth quickened unnaturally by Dajda and Balzath. She slid down the door onto the stone floor, and wept.

  Thirty-Five

  The Bear Essentials

  “I know she was after me spuds.”

  Jukster’s ugly voice tumbled from his thick-lipped mouth behind Kalfinar. His fantastical tales of bedding, or at least attempting to bed women had provided some small entertainment as they trudged through the cold night. The day had been impossible, with snow falling thick as fog, obscuring their way. With the help of Harvind and the rest of his party, they had dug out a snow-hole and spent a cold few hours waiting for the snow to break.

  “Then the next thing I know, I wake up with the two of them.” Jukster continued with the lurid retelling.

  “He’s full of shite,” Murtagh’s razor-sharp words sounded. “I was there that night. It weren’t the butcher’s daughters he woke up beside, but a pair of pigs he was about to slaughter.”

  A chorus of laughter sounded to Kalfinar’s rear. He afforded himself a smile, and peered ahead in the dark, powdery blue light of night.

  “I found him lying on his back in the pigsty, his trousers round his ankles and the two sows wallowing in the mud beside him.”

  Broden laughed to Kalfinar’s right, and behind him he even heard Jukster joining in with the levity. Their merriment faded, however, as Kalfinar’s eyes sought to focus on the large black spots in the snow ahead. He squinted, trying to make out the hazy sight before him. “Boulders?” he muttered to himself as he walked onwards.

  “What’s that?” Broden asked, sighing as the last of the laughter wound its way from him and into the piercing chill of night.

  “Up ahead,” Kalfinar replied, his eyes remaining focused on what lay ahead. “What do you see?”

  Broden said nothing for a moment. “Boulders. Just looks like a boulder field.”

  “Aye.” Kalfinar lifted his hand into the air and stopped walking. “Let’s wait here a moment.”

  Harvind came alongside. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Boulder field up ahead,” Broden replied. “Think Kal wants to be cautious.”

  “Aye,” Kalfinar replied, dropping the pack from his back onto the snow. He waved Ferdus up towards them. “The three of us and Ferdus will go take a look. The rest can stay back here until we make sure it’s clear.”

  They dropped their packs and headed towards the boulder field. There was something about the shape of the stones that didn’t sit right with Kalfinar. He squinted as they closed the distance, noting snow clinging to unnaturally straight edges.

  “They’re not boulders,” Harvind said in a low voice. A metallic click and grind sounded as he freed the large knife that clung to his belt. “Wagons. There’s something under the snow around them.”
>
  The blood pumping in Kalfinar’s throat quickened. The thumping flush of blood rang round his ears, and he pulled the hatchet from where it hung on his belt loop. In a few more steps it was clear. Dozens of wagons had been abandoned here, at the foot of a steep-sided mountain. The wagons were strewn all over in what looked like an act of abandonment. Kalfinar looked about and noticed small carts, two-wheeled affairs, and larger, four-wheeled wagons. Wagons with caged sides. Slave wagons. He growled as he brushed the snow from around the caged door at the rear of one of the slave wagons. He hauled the door open with a metallic groan and Kalfinar stepped up inside. He cleared the snow away from the floor space and felt a metal ring. From the ring he lifted up a short, heavy chain. A pair of manacles hung open at the end of the chain. “Evelyne was here.”

  “On the right path,” Broden said hopefully.

  “They’ll have travelled up the glacier. Hagra Iolach is at the far end of the next valley,” Harvind said. “We can’t climb up the glacier at night.” He squinted up at the moonlit side of the mountain. “We’re best making camp here for the night.”

  “I’ll fetch the others,” Broden said, making his way through the deep snow towards the rest of the party.

  “We can dig a big hole at the base of a wagon, use the bed as a roof.” Harvind looked about him. “We can pile the snow around the hole and close it in. Good snow for a shelter.”

  Kalfinar nodded, suddenly feeling bone-weary. “Just show me what to do.”

  They dug out a large hollow at the base of one of the larger wagons. Harvind lit a fire of wood from the wagons, long planks set up in a manner so as to feed the fire through the night.

  Kalfinar leaned his head back onto his pack and closed his eyes. He listened to the heavy breathing of those of his party, and let the weight of tiredness bear down on him like he had never known it before.

  Ruah’s hands ached from pressing handfuls of snow against the inside wall of the shelter. After the work, and with hands red and swollen from the cold, she finally pressed the last of the snow into place and sat down next to the fire that had been set in the middle of the space.

  Hal squeezed himself next to her and leaned forward. He placed one hand beneath the heel of his injured right foot and hauled it up and towards the fire. It looked for all the world to Ruah to be a lifeless limb, like something the butchers in Overn Station would slam down on their blocks and carve up.

  “Hurt much?” she asked him in a quiet voice.

  “A bit.” He smiled back at her. His beard hair curled golden and bright in the firelight. “Yours?”

  “Just the usual,” she grunted, and looked back as Tusk shouldered his way between them. Ruah shifted a little, conceding space to the big dog, who dropped to the icy ground, face towards the fire, and sighed a long, weary sound.

  “Tired,” Halpern mumbled, his eyelids closing slowly. His head dropped an inch before he jolted awake.

  “Lie down, get some rest,” Ruah said, her fingers warming up as they played between Tusk’s rusty hair.

  “Aye,” Halpern grunted. He lowered himself to the floor and rolled over onto his side with his back to Ruah and Tusk.

  She looked at his broad back as it expanded out from his steady breathing. About the shelter others had begun to catch what sleep they could. The heat from the fire kissed her, drawing warmth within her, and touching her core for what felt like the first time in days. A weariness hit her then, and she felt the sleep come. She shuffled herself down and rolled onto her back. She watched the warm light of the fire ripple across the ceiling of the shelter and closed her eyes. A warm, sleepy sensation washed over her. It stroked her, and coaxed her into its path. Tusk grunted and kicked out at her, levering himself into a more comfortable position.

  Ruah jolted awake, and realised she had been fully asleep. Tusk was curled in a tight ball in the crook of the space between her and Halpern’s legs. She looked about the shelter to see that everyone was sleeping. Everyone apart from Halpern. His head was turned around looking at her. He levered himself around to face her. She made to speak, her lips parting even as her heart began to race. There was something about his eyes, the fierceness within them, that made her uncomfortable. It made her sick. It made her feel something altogether new, and exciting. She held his gaze, looking into his eyes. Without any thought her hand reached up and cupped the back of his head. His hand fell soft upon her ribs. They pulled each other, and their lips met in an awkward meeting of teeth and rushed breath. But they kissed. Ruah’s fingers twisted in Halpern’s hair and pushed him harder into her lips. She brought her other hand away from where it propped her up and reached it around his head, meeting her other hand as they fell fully to the ground. A wetness streaked from Ruah’s eyes and ran over the bridge of her nose, meeting the other tear, and ran onto the ground. Her stomach churned, and jumped, as a warmth of joy flared within her. She broke from her kiss and smiled as their foreheads pressed into one another's. She kissed him once more, and then laughed quietly. She opened her eyes, and Halpern kissed her forehead and pulled her into a tight embrace. She rested her head on his shoulder, and smiled as sleep wound its way about her again. Warm and tender, and deep with the promise of a better tomorrow.

  Grunting and breathing. Heavy breathing. Wet grunting, and hungry, throaty, heavy breathing. Then screaming.

  Kalfinar opened his eyes to bloody chaos. The huge blood-slick head of a bear bit down on the body of the dead Maracost man at Kalfinar’s side. Blood was everywhere. Bodies scrambled backwards, against the side of the snow wall, and against the wood of the wagon. Hands scrambled for weapons. The great head of the bear looked up from its meal and towards Kalfinar, jaws snapped forward before his face as strong hands hauled him backwards. The bear went back to the ravaged body, its blood-greasy snout burrowing into the stomach cavity and pulling free a worming stretch of purple innards. Black, accusing eyes worked between the panicked bodies within the shelter.

  “Come on!” Harvind cried over Kalfinar’s shoulder. “Get out! Now!”

  Kalfinar glanced over his back to see a hole lit warm and golden by the rising sun. He looked back to the bear, its eyes locked on his despite its jaws working at the ruined body.

  “Come!” Hands grabbed at Kalfinar’s shoulder and hauled him out of the shelter. His chest burned. The amulet around his neck was hot. He didn’t understand. Outside of the shelter, Kalfinar scrambled to his feet. “What do we do?” he asked Harvind as others in the party fled from the scene.

  “We can’t kill it. Best we can hope for is to frighten it off.”

  “How?” Broden asked.

  “Fire,” Ferdus supplied. “We need the burning planks from the fire.”

  Kalfinar looked at Broden, the big man’s eyes widening.

  “I’ll get them,” Ferdus said. Before anyone could react, he ducked down and in through the hole at the base of the shelter. A growl sounded from within, and then a snap of teeth and a raging yell from Ferdus. He backpedalled out quickly. “Here, you have them.” He handed two smouldering planks of wood to Kalfinar. “That was close,” Ferdus said, his face pale and breath rushing in and out.

  Harvind took one of the planks from Kalfinar. The ends were black, with white ash surrounding the ember. “Wave it in a circle, quick now.” He swung the plank around in a circle once, twice and a third time before the ember at the end of the plank of wood burst into flame.

  Kalfinar repeated the action and in a moment also held a burning plank.

  “Need to make as much noise as we can,” Harvind said, encouraging the others to come alongside.

  Bergnon joined them, followed by Ruah, Halpern, Jukster and Murtagh. The Maracost pulled free their weapons and began to shout in their native tongue.

  They advanced in a mass of bodies, siding the rounded wall of the shelter to see the huge white mass of the bear’s hindquarters. They howled, and screamed, and the great beast backed out of the hole it had punched through the wall of snow.

  Its
head and neck were slick with bright blood. Its jaws hung open, showing huge yellow teeth and black gums. It slammed its bloody front paws down with two great strides towards them.

  The urge to drop the flaming plank and run was so strong in Kalfinar that he had to bite down on his tongue to stay the course. Salty, metallic blood welled in his mouth as he strode forward alongside Harvind. He swung the flaming, smoking wood at the face of the bear, causing it to step backwards, conceding ground.

  “Keep pushing!” Harvind yelled. “Keep pushing on.”

  They screamed and roared, their voices and this bloody terror seemingly ill at odds with such a bright and still morning. Kalfinar swung his flaming plank at the beast’s face once more just before a hatchet spun past his head and smashed into the black snout of the beast, slicing it open to pink flesh and bubbling blood before the hatchet rebounded and buried itself head first into the snow. The bear turned and bounded away, blood streaming from its injured nose. It lumbered away with an awkward gait, its heavy hindquarters sparkling in the warm amber light of morning.

  “Dajda!” Broden dropped his hands onto his knees, breath heaving, and retched up a string of bile. He stood up, wiped his mouth and rubbed at his belly. Kalfinar caught his cousin’s eyes, and he remembered Broden’s mountain wolf attack so many years ago, and the more recent encounter in the Hardalen Peaks. Ill omens.

  “Kalfinar, Harvind,” Murtagh’s sharp voice sounded to the rear, “think you'd better see this.” Her voice was grim.

  Kalfinar stepped over to where Murtagh and Jukster stood with their backs to him. “What is it?” As he rounded the two soldiers he stopped and stared at the mess before him. The fresh snow that had obscured the dead body had been pushed aside by Murtagh and Jukster, exposing the ransacked remains of someone. Pink snow surrounded the mass of rags, skin and bone. “What in the hells?”