Too Cold to Bleed

by D Murray

  “Aye, I see it.”

  “Good. Move along to the other loop. Mark it, if you see something move after I shoot, drop it.”

  Thaskil drew in and released two breaths, and nocked an arrow. He drew a final deep breath and pulled back the bowstring, taking aim. He breathed out half of the breath, and released. The arrow flew straight through the narrow gap of the loop and sped towards the pale cornerstone, where it hit something with a grunt. As Thaskil squinted through the loop, he saw a shaft fly from the other arrow loop. He followed the arrow and saw it bury itself into the shadowy form stumbling below. “You,” Thaskil called to a young private with a purple birthmark across one half of his face. “Get this around the battlements. I want a dozen spotters up here working with the archers. All the troops on the upper battlements are to stay back from the outer edge until we’ve taken care of our little friends out there. Clear?”

  The young lad nodded and set about his duty.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Thaskil said to the archer. “Any more of them move, drop them. I’m going back up top.”

  “So they’ve split their forces?” Subath asked the gathered officers.

  “My lord,” Lucius responded, “it appears the engines have been largely allocated to the southern walls. There’s much more cover leading to the western gate, what with the dockside buildings, ruined or standing. It may make it easier to get troops and ladders forward without the use of the towers.”

  “And troops. What are we seeing in terms of allocation?” Subath asked, scoring down the engine locations on a map of Carte and the surrounding lands.

  “Seems to be a fairly even split at this point, from what we can tell,” Lucius replied.

  Subath marked down some figures on the map and placed down his quill. He strode over to the window of the tavern room he’d made his command centre, and craned his head out of the door and up to the sky. He grunted, “Rain’s coming in.” The clouds had closed over the sky not long after midnight, strangling any moonlight. “Latest on the towers?”

  “Looks like they’ve engineers at it presently, my lord,” Major Skeldon replied. “We’ve engineers observing from the south wall. They’re estimating the Cannans will have the towers up by sunrise.”

  “That so?” Subath replied, returning to his map and lifting his quill. “Captain.” Subath looked up from the map and peered at Thaskil.

  “My lord,” the young captain replied.

  “You’re the most senior-ranking Pathfinder officer we have.” Subath looked across at Lucius, noting the urge to speak squirming across the man’s face. “Come now, Lucius. Get serious. You may wear the darks of a Pathfinder, but come on.”

  Lucius’ mouth snapped shut, and he nodded obediently.

  “Captain,” Subath continued. “I want you to take two dozen Pathfinders and get out of the city. There’s a sally port here,” he pointed to the corner of the southern and eastern outer walls. “I want you and your team to head out at this point, and make your way to where the Cannans are building their towers. I want them lighting the sky before the sun rises. Get yourselves back before sun-up. I’ll be having the tunnel to the sally port sealed up by then. Can you do that?”

  “Aye, my lord. We’ll see it done.”

  “Good lad. Get it done, and get back here. The real fun’s behind the walls, not in front of them. Off you go.”

  Subath returned Thaskil’s salute, and turned his attention to the map as the young officer slipped out of the tavern. “Lucius,” Subath continued. “I want you to take command at the western wall until Thaskil returns.”

  “My lord.” Lucius nodded his agreement.

  “Major Ferah,” Subath looked to the Cannan officer, “you and your exiles support the western wall with Lucius. Don’t let us down.”

  “My lord.” Leilah nodded, her mouth set in a hard line.

  “Skeldon.” Subath looked up at the major from Enulin and stopped himself shuddering at the ghoulish sight of the man. “Arrange for one-third of the troops at the southern gate to go to the western. They’ll be waiting for the towers to be built before they try anything at that side. If they’re coming before sunrise, they’re coming with ladders under the cover of the city, or what’s left of it, by the western wall. Have another third of the southern allocation standing by and ready to support the western at a moment's notice.”

  “My lord.” Skeldon saluted.

  Subath scored the numbers down to the left side of the map. “Get the oil heated. Make sure there’s rubble piles ready on the battlements for tossing. I want all the arrows and bolts we can muster on the walls. Again, one-third increased allocation of each to the western wall. I don’t want any soldiers at this task. Have the civilians at work. And if the civilian wants a place on the wall, see they have a meal, a sword, and a space to swing it.” He looked up at the gathered officers, scanning their faces. They were nervous, bold, mad, terrified, and one right ghoulish-looking bastard. Fuck me, Skeldon, but you’re one haunting bastard.

  Subath dropped his eyes from the faces before him and studied the hands and fingers of the men. For the most part they were filthy. For the most part they trembled. “Make sure the rest of the troops are fed,” he said, straightening up and placing his hands on his hips to mask the tremble of his own hands. No time for the blood-yips. Not now. “This is a time for bold deeds. Go on, now. See them done.”

  Thaskil stumbled in the darkness of the tunnel. Shitting hells. He pressed his palm against the cold, damp wall of the sally port tunnel and steadied himself. He heard the muffled curse of the Pathfinders behind him as he led them, without light, to their exit point underneath the outer walls of the city. He stumbled on, cursing the uneven and water-soaked tunnel floor, and walked right into a wall. He grunted, and felt at his forehead. There was no blood.

  “Careful of the wall dead ahead,” he whispered to Lieutenant Steele behind him. He heard the whispers as Steele and the others passed the warning along. Thaskil palmed his way along the wall, finding a narrow space between the side of the tunnel and the wall end to squeeze past. He stumbled on and finally came to another wall. The gap around it was even tighter than the first. He squeezed through, and froze as the shadowed forms of men turned to face him.

  “Captain,” one of the guardsmen stationed by the sally port entrance greeted him. “Had word to expect you. Find your way in the dark?”

  “Well enough,” Thaskil grumbled. “Hard to go wrong with a tunnel, as long as you're facing the right end.”

  “Many more?”

  “Couple of dozen.”

  “Just slip out the side of the wall there.” The shadowy form of the guard pointed to the gap between a final wall at the front of the small space. “Not much room, as you can see.”

  Thaskil slipped past the last wall. The outer-facing side was the same rough stone as the walls of Carte. He made his way forward, and into the open ground where the southern wall met the eastern. He hugged the outer wall and edged along a few feet before crouching down. The clouds remained dark and heavy with rain, blocking out any moonlight. Thaskil looked down at his soot-stained hands and the dark green of his Pathfinder uniform. Perfect for skulking in the night.

  The rest of the two dozen troops made their way out of the sally port and joined him in a crouch.

  “We skirt north around the eastern wall and peel off at the halfway mark. There’s enough cover with the markets and tanners' yards. We get around the Cannan encampment, circling east then dropping south, and coming in on them from the rear of their camp. The engines are being built towards the back of the encampment. Steady as you go, and mind for scouts.” He darted off and along the eastern wall, keeping low, and moving quick in the dark.

  Thaskil moved quickly as the rain began to fall in a fine mizzle at first, and then in great slaps. The large bladder of fire oil tied across his back wobbled and sloshed as he moved. He skirted the stock pens of the market, and then past the stinking tanners' yards. Even after having been abandon
ed by their owners, they still reeked. Their smell brought on the memory of the panic for some reason, maybe the smell of death, and Thaskil felt his throat tighten again. No. Not now, you bastard. Hold yourself together. He focused on the lights of the Cannan encampment over to his right. He could hear the dense thump, thump, thump of wooden mallets at work. He crept on, fighting to direct his mind away from the swirling sense of fear that crept slow and sure up his body and into his mind. He remembered his sword cutting through the pissing raider in Apula. Dressed up as a city guard, and readying to blow a hole in the city walls. He remembered how he had made to take him alive, but then how the fury rose up in his belly like a sickness that had to spill. He'd cut him down and sprayed the man’s life about that little alcove by the wall as if it were nothing.

  Thaskil shook the thought. How long before I’m split from shoulder to belly as though nothing but meat? Maybe tonight.

  No. Not now.

  He crept on, past the tanners' yards and around to the midden. He silently swallowed the rush of vomit as he smelled the waste of the city’s tanners. Rotting meat and festering shit. Hells! The smell. He indicated to the soldiers behind him that they should speed up, and doubled the pace to escape the most pungent sections of the wide midden.

  They skirted it and came around to the south, arcing back on the Cannan encampment.

  Thaskil’s mind drifted back to the panic snaking in his belly, cold and insidious. He remembered the Ravenmayne’s blade biting into his left side, just above his hip. Felt the metal in him still. Close, that one. Close to ending it all. He could see the shock in the Ravenmayne’s eyes as Thaskil drove his sword point into its throat, and the wet retch it made as he freed it. How close will it be this time? He stopped moving, and dropped to one knee.

  “What is it?” Steele’s whisper hissed over his shoulder.

  Thaskil’s heart hammered against the wall of his chest. His tightening chest. He closed his eyes and sucked in a slow, deep breath.

  “Sir, did you hear something?” Steele pressed.

  Thaskil breathed again, and squeezed his eyes shut. He opened and closed his fists, squeezing, squeezing, strangling the fear away.

  “Sir?”

  The tremor grew in his fingers, in spite of him clenching his fists. It grew and ran up his arm, converging with the tightness in his neck. It slid its way around, tight and certain. Coldness ran up the back of his skull and the fear had him.

  “What’s wrong?” another voice asked from behind Steele.

  “Silence,” Steele's whisper sounded at Thaskil’s back. Steele’s hand touched Thaskil’s shoulder. “Breathe. Just deep breaths. Remember?”

  Thaskil sucked in the breath through his nose. He worked to ignore the ghosts of screaming men, the bleating of dying men in the breach of Apula. He swallowed another shuddering breath and held it a moment. He blew it free, and sucked in deep through his nose. The air flushed away the stench of the burning bodies in the oil-fire trench before the walls of Apula. He sucked the breath in deep and clear. The air was fresh. Cold. Clean.

  “Keep breathing. It will pass.” Steele squeezed Thaskil’s shoulder.

  The wails of the dying muffled and then faded away. Thaskil freed the breath and felt the tightness ease about his neck. His heartbeat steadied off and settled. He opened his eyes, and felt moisture about his eyelashes. The light of the Cannan encampment caught his eye to the south. The towers are what matters, not your fear. The towers must burn. Burn. Burn like those men running from the trench in Apula? Burn like those mounds of bodies? No! No more!

  “Are you ready, sir?” Steele asked over his shoulder.

  Thaskil turned, seeing the soot-stained face of his lieutenant, and nodded. “Aye. Let’s go.” He made to move off, but stopped, and turned. “Thanks.”

  Steele dismissed the thanks and waved the waiting troops on.

  They raced south, keeping well back from the Cannan encampment, before dropping to their bellies in two ranks of twelve. They crawled onto flat ground. Once given over to grain, two failed harvests had led to it being dominated by marshy grasses. The land was now saturated from the rain and snowmelt. They crawled forward into the boggy ground and towards the light. They crawled through the chill, with rain slapping down on their backs and the filth of the boggy grassland soaking into them from below. They moved to the cadence of the mallets working. Thump, thump, thump. Forward, forward, stop.

  Sentries.

  Pockets of four sat spread out in a line and facing out into the night. Rain-soaked blankets were pulled tight about heads and shoulders, sparkling like cloaks of crystal in the light of the encampment.

  Thaskil crept backwards, keeping his movements slow and careful, until he was alongside Steele and the second rank of Pathfinders. “We need to take one of the sentry groups out. We move forward, spread out in front of them, and get close. I want to be close enough to smell them. We wait. Someone will need a piss sooner or later. When they do, we drop them. Whoever does it, take the sentry's blanket and move back. Three more move in close, and take the rest of them down. Pose as the group, and hold the post as the rest of us move forward through their line. Clear?”

  The group nodded their approval, and they moved out.

  Thaskil crawled forward towards the sentries. He looked to his left, and watched the near-invisible movement of his crew. They were close now. He could smell them all right; pipe leaf and the tang of unwashed bodies. Hope we don’t smell as bad as them, or they’ll have our position in no time. He brought his hand down to the knife sheathed at the small of his back and pulled it free. He brought the blackened steel blade around and held it in front of his face. Only a matter of time before one of you needs a piss. Only a matter of time. He waited.

  Thirty-Eight

  Eye On The Prize

  Kalfinar had traced the marks of travel left by the party as they moved up the glacier through the snow. The tracks edged off the glacier and veered upward onto a snowy, rocky plateau. The snow had thickened, spinning lumps gusting into his face as he followed the fading footprints.

  He heard them before he saw them, their hushed voices swirling towards him through the spinning volleys of snow. As he came through the grey haze he saw them huddled behind a huge square boulder on the leeward side, catching their breath.

  “Kal!” Broden called out, stumbling towards him, sword drawn. “You’re all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “The beast?” Broden looked behind Kalfinar, doubtless searching the fog of snow behind for any shadow betraying the beast’s advance.

  “Gone.” Kalfinar patted his cousin on the shoulder and stepped up to the boulder. “You two all right?” he asked Ruah and Halpern. The girl’s head was nestled against Halpern’s chest, her hood drawn up about her face.

  “Aye,” Halpern replied.

  “Ruah?” Kalfinar asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Doesn’t look fine,” Kalfinar mumbled, turning away from the two teenagers.

  “The bear took her dog,” Bergnon said, stepping around to the leeward side of the boulder, tying up his trousers. “She’s taking it sore.”

  “What do you mean ‘it’s gone’?” Harvind asked, following up Broden’s question. The Maracost was huddled against the boulder, seal fur hood pulled over his head and sword across his knees.

  Kalfinar stepped over and hunkered down between Valus, Harvind and his remaining eight Maracost fighters.

  Valus offered him a small smile as he sat down.

  “It’s dead?” Jukster grumbled across the space from where he sat next to Murtagh and Ferdus.

  Kalfinar pulled his hood tight at the neck and shrugged. “Chased me down the glacier. I went off the route we had been following and ran onto the frozen crust of snow over a crevasse. The weight of the bear cracked it through. I nearly went in myself but for my hatchet. Damn bear went down into a rushing melt river. Doubt it’ll be coming out of that any time soon. Dead or not, who knows. How dead can a
spirit get?”

  “The flesh is dead. If the bear fell into the melt-water, it will be in the frozen-over lake. The spirit will search this land for something new to inhabit.”

  “Good enough for me,” Harvind grunted, and pulled his hood tighter over his face.

  Kalfinar looked at Valus a moment. Every word she spoke was with confidence. He had never heard a thread of doubt in her voice. “You said something a while ago about how the land is haunted by them. What did you mean by that? Are they creatures of Balzath?”

  “No,” she replied, pulling her knees up close to her. “This land is special, Kalfinar. The Great Corruption saw many of the so-called lesser gods cast out and abandoned to these barren lands. Those who worshiped them for the most part also. Whilst the Maracost and others like them thrived, and adapted to their environment, others did not. Many of those peoples have since died, and have been lost to time. Their gods too have fallen away and are now lost.”

  “And the spirit?” Broden asked. “The one in the bear. What of that?”

  “As a god withers, it can draw less elemental power from the world around it. Those who worship are granted lesser gifts, and are less able to protect themselves. It’s a slide that’s hard to arrest. Without worship, a god withers yet further, and the people too become weaker. Eventually, once all the people are gone, the god fades, and is naught but memory. All that’s left, aside from that memory, are the spirits. With no god to serve, the spirits haunt this land now, angry, vengeful, and without purpose. They have descended into savagery, and take form where they can.”

  Broden rolled up a ball of snow in his gloved palm and tossed it into the darkening distance. “Dajda. This must truly be the frozen hells, then.”

  “It is,” Valus replied. “This place is the origin of the phrase.”