by Ben Galley
It soon became apparent that Farden was nowhere to be seen. While Durnus would never, for a moment, believe the mage would abandon them, the suspicion did slink across his mind. The lower cloud had burned away, but nearer the ridge a canopy of vapour enveloped them.
The vampyre called out. ‘Where has he gone?’
‘Bloody vanished.’
Mithrid was just cupping her hands to her mouth when a hooded figure appeared amongst them.
Farden seized Mithrid’s wrist and motioned for her to be silent. Taking the finger from his lips, he pointed ahead, to where the ridge knifed away into the half-lit murk of cloud. Had they paid no heed whatsoever, any one of them might have gone tumbling down the severe drop.
‘What in Hel are you doing?’
‘It’s called scouting ahead, Mithrid,’ Farden whispered. ‘Keep your voices down and wait for a gap in the cloud. You’ll see. Down there.’
The others hunkered down around him. Though his eyes ached with the light, Durnus stared hard and waited.
It did not take long for an updraft to blow the cloud aside momentarily. Long enough for Durnus to see a swathe of rubble leading to some sort of quarry. Littering the slopes below were conical tents of leather and bright yellow and blue furs. They battled for space between pens stuffed with cows. Figures sat around camp and cook-fires, scythes or spears piled around them. Though far below, they were close enough that Durnus could make out the glitter of silver and copper jewellery, and count the tangles of elaborately matted and braided beards.
‘These again,’ Aspala sighed.
‘Thought I caught the scent of campfires a while back. I thought this would be a quick way down the mountainside. We could have stumbled across each other far too easily.’
‘That wouldn’t have been a friendly meeting.’
Durnus interjected. ‘Clearly I missed something while I was unconscious. Who are they?’
‘We crossed paths with these folks before. Call themselves Cathak. Servants of a so-called Dusk God, apparently. We interrupted one of their sacrificial rituals a short while ago. They weren’t pleased.’
‘Why do I get the feeling that means you have killed some of them?’
‘They demanded a toll. We disagreed.’
‘Only you could insult the local populace so quickly and thoroughly, Farden.’
Farden shot him a dark look. ‘None of this is my fault,’ he hissed.
Faint but harsh laughter ricocheted up the slope to their ears. If Durnus squinted, he could make out four-legged creatures in smaller wooden pens. They were the size of hay bales, sprouting fur between leathery, ochre scale, as though a goat had relations with a lizard. Their backs were ridged with stubby spines running down to short tails.
‘What in Emanes—what are they?’
‘They look delicious,’ Warbringer whispered. The sound of fangs grinding from behind them suggested the dragon agreed.
‘We’ll take a longer path north along this ridge until we’re out of their territory,’ ordered Farden gruffly. ‘No point getting ourselves into scrapes we can’t afford to get into. There must be several hundred down there. And Fleetstar…?’
Hunkered down, it was rather difficult to make out where the dragon’s scales ended and the mountainside began. ‘Mage?’
‘Not a claw out of line. The rest of you keep quiet and watch your footing.’
Farden made it one step before they heard the faint echo of voices. They were smothered by cloud and breeze, but approaching, clear enough. ‘Curse it!’ he hissed.
The vampyre crouched down and almost stumbled flat onto his face. The mage ignored him and looked between the others instead. His teeth were bared in frustration. Weapons had been drawn. ‘Too risky,’ he was muttering.
Durnus put a hand on the mage’s vambraces, confused as to his hesitation. ‘Can’t you hide us with a spell, Farden?’
‘Come here, fools,’ Fleetstar growled.
The sky turned dark as the dragon’s wing swept over them, clouting Warbringer in the horns in the process. Under the scaly canopy, they scuttled and slid into a clump down from the ridge, and let the cold skin of the dragon envelop them. Durnus watched Fleetstar’s turquoise colours fade, not as changeling as Shivertread’s scaleshifter powers, but a pale grey that was enough to blend with the thick cloud at a distance. A thin strand of light crept under the edge of her wing, and Durnus crawled towards it.
‘Stay still,’ whispered the dragon before she sucked in a great breath.
The scent of the winged reptile was somewhat overwhelming when one was squashed flat under their very wing, but still not as unsettling as Warbringer’s musk. Durnus endured, took in a lungful of air, and with the others, waited pensively for the interlopers to pass.
The voices were barely audible over the crunch of rock.
‘I’m keeping it.’
‘Tisn’t for you to decide!’
‘It is so!’
The footsteps drew nearer. Durnus angled his head to the shale, glimpsing beyond their hiding place. One figure could be seen between the haze. A coat of yellow and blue furs dressed him from head to toe. A mask shaped like a picked skull hung at his neck. The rest of his face was beard and pox-scar. He was busy prodding himself in the chest with assured confidence. In his other hand was clutched a knife of silver and gold. A fine piece of weaponry for a man wearing skins and holes in his boots.
Another figure in similar furs trailed after him. Fortunately, they were far too deep into an argument to notice the lump of grey dragon not a stone’s throw away.
‘The Dusk God gave it to me,’ the bearded man was complaining. ‘Fell right from the sky at my feet, did it not?’
‘At the first light of dawn, you heretic! Tis no gift but a curse of the Dawn God. The High Cathak must see it.’
‘You are wrong. A storm brought it, perhaps. Dropped by a magpie. Perhaps that fire-breathing beast—’
‘Don’t! Speaking of it will draw it near.’
Curious gazes spread beneath the gloom of Fleetstar’s wing. Mithrid held her axe tightly and bit her lip. Warbringer looked ready to explode into the light. To the sounds of crunching feet, Durnus saw the boot of the second man tread closer to Fleetstar. Dusty, ragged trails of furs dangled in view. His voice was far too loud.
‘Look at it. That is no Golikan smithing. That is rich silver. Gold of the Burnt South. A strange knife falls out of the clouds days after foreigners emerge from the Bronzewood. Dire omens!’
The second closed the gap on the bearded fellow. ‘You give it up, you hear?
‘You’ll do no such thing. It is my knife. I will tell the High Cathak myself.’
‘I don’t trust you. Give it, Durlok. You’ve got no business with it.’
You’re a damn thief! Back away!’ Durlok slashed the air with the knife as the other fought to get close.
‘What’s gotten into you, man? Give it here!’
The second Cathak retched as Durlok stabbed him high in the chest. Shale sprayed as their feet tangled. Durlok stabbed again and again until his face was spattered with blood.
‘You…’ The man’s last words went unfinished as he teetered backwards. Wide-eyed with shock, Durlok gave up the knife at last, leaving it in his friend’s throat.
Durnus tensed as the body came toppling onto Fleetstar’s wing.
The Cathak might have been in a daze, but not enough for him to ignore the strange colour and bend of the rock beneath the corpse, and, at last, the wing of a dragon pressed against the shale.
‘What by Dusk?’ he spluttered. He recoiled, bloody hands raised, and shuffled precipitously close to the edge of the ridge.
‘He has seen us!’ Durnus warned.
‘Fuck it!’ Farden hissed.
Daylight flooded their hiding place as Fleetstar’s wing retracted.
‘Grab him!’
Farden’s call went unheeded. The dragon swung her tail like a whip; a whip that weighed as much as a wagon for all the muscle a
nd strength Fleetstar put into it. The crack of ribs and sternum was audible as the tail collided with the man’s chest. He did not fall. He flew.
Instead of tumbling down the cliff to horrid injuries, he soared outwards from the mountaintop like a slingstone. The piercing pitch of his wail fell with him as his body disappeared into the clouds, no doubt to land somewhere highly inconvenient below.
‘Curse it, Fleetstar! Why did you do that?’ Farden raged. ‘We could have done that quietly.’
The dragon shrugged her giant shoulders. ‘He was already falling. Might have survived and told the rest of his clan about us.’
On the wind came a rising and incredulous roar from the Cathak camp somewhere below. Durnus could not see where exactly the body had landed, but he bet it was somewhere inconvenient.
Farden pointed down the slope. ‘I think they might have some clue now!’
Warbringer slammed her hammer against the shale. ‘He did fly pretty well for a two-legged pink-flesh.’
Farden pressed his fingers into his forehead. At first, Durnus thought he was cursing them all beneath his breath. It took some time to realise he was chuckling. It was a dry laugh: an exasperated surrender to the dark comedy of the situation.
‘That he did,’ Farden said as he shook his head, prompting the minotaur and Aspala to begin laughing aloud. Mithrid joined. Fleetstar bared teeth and belched smoke. Even Durnus cracked a weak smile. It was a brief medicine, but much in need. Their path felt like a pit of gnashing teeth for all the uncertainty it held. To find mirth built a bridge, however frail and brief, across it. How better to dull the gloom of dire predicaments, lest one submit and lose themselves to them. Upon that shattered mountainside, they remembered themselves and their humanity.
Farden dragged the strange, ornate knife from the dead body. He whipped the blood on the corpse’s furs, spun it in his hand, and put it through his belt. Durnus caught Mithrid and Aspala exchanging curious glances, but no words came.
Hood already up and boots forging a path down the western slope, Farden ordered their departure. ‘We’d best make ourselves scarce. This mountain will be swarming in no time.’
The others needed no encouragement. Fleetstar took to the air and disappeared into the whorls of cloud. Only Durnus trailed behind. Warbringer hovered momentarily to offer help, but he waved her on.
‘As you please,’ she grunted.
With the horns of the Cathak beginning to fill his ears, Durnus stood by the corpse. Although his fangs and the animal within him ached to feed, it was not the blood still seeping from the man that lured him, but rather the persistent thought of the prisoner in Scalussen. The memory of her soul seeping into his veins in place of blood. The lingering charm of the power that had suffused him.
Even now, he felt the soul lingering behind dead flesh. It called to him. He extended a trembling hand, sharp nails crooked and bent. Before he knew it, his hand was inches above the man’s bloody chest. Faint blue vapour emerged from his furs, chased by another wind than the one that blew across the ridge. Durnus felt its icy touch permeate his fingers. He went rigid as power seized him.
‘Durnus!’ came the shout.
He opened his eyes, snatched his hand back, and stood there quivering. Blue vapour trailed from his fangs. He could not ignore the fresh and unusual strength burning in his limbs. It felt far more furious than the effects of mortal blood he was used to. It was more intoxicating than before in Scalussen. He was barely healed, but at least now he could take a step without wanting to crumble into the dirt.
‘Durnus!’
He could make out the rough shape of Farden in the cloud. ‘Coming! Slowly but surely!’ he yelled back.
Overwhelming repugnance brought a sweat to his cold skin as he made his way down the slope. There was only one creature in the lands that drank upon souls in such a way.
Daemons.
CHAPTER 9
DEEPER EAST
Thieves, the lot of them. The Golikans learned their trade from the Destrix to the east. Scruples do not exist in these lands, but thieves, con-artists, and liars there are aplenty.
OVERHEARD IN THE SPOKE TAVERN
The scramble from the mountaintop was completed with little grace and even more haste.
The horns of the enraged Cathak chased them all the way, thankfully growing fainter with every step.
Below the clouds, the survivors of Scalussen found a sloping wasteland of broken rock and timid grass peeking through the rubble. Their legs thrashed it aside as they ran north. Immovable boulders the size of small cottages made them swerve this way and that.
Trying to spit but lacking the moisture, Mithrid slogged on across the vexatious ground. Three times now, she had almost snapped an ankle in the dreaded shale. She wished Fleetstar hadn’t disappeared; she had a powerful desire to be carried at the moment.
It had only been hours, but Mithrid was already exhausted. The brief respite she had gained in Lilerosk had all but disappeared. Her muscles were aflame, her joints hot coals. She stared at the mage ahead, wondering how in Hel he kept going in his injured, weakened state. His steps were dogged and stiff, like those of the dead Durnus had animated. That memory never failed to drive a cold shiver down her spine.
By midday the clouds had drawn back, leaving faint trails across a sky suspiciously tinged with pink and yellow in the west.
‘Smoke,’ Farden uttered.
Aspala was not convinced. ‘Ash from Irminsul, perhaps.’
Warbringer did not stop long to look. ‘Strange lands. Stranger skies.’
Durnus had nothing to say on the matter. In fact, now that Mithrid considered it, the vampyre hadn’t said a word and had managed to keep up for most of the escape, but now he struggled most of all. For some reason, he refused Warbringer’s help, flinching away from her touch.
Mithrid shielded herself from the sun with a hand. Though they were beyond the mountain slopes and halfway around the northern side of the range, they still stood upon their shoulder. The rolling grasslands were below them. From their height, she could see for leagues upon leagues. Mithrid looked west for the first time. She could see faint flocks and herds in the distance, moving like cloud-shadows. Further, plains of grass and earth, spreading to a silver streak of distant water, spearing the thirsty land. Dark mountains formed the very edges of their world, filling the far north and west. Darker clouds hung above them. Colossal, sweeping anvils of charcoal and yellow that had conquered a sizeable portion of the sky.
‘And I did that,’ Mithrid muttered to herself.
Before she turned away, she caught another cry of a horn, so faint as to be a whisper. She scanned the mountains behind them. They had already put twenty miles between them and the ridge. There was not a scrap of blue and yellow fur to be seen. She put her worry to the back of her mind.
As Mithrid’s feet longed for grass and soil instead of bothersome rock, Farden had quite literally stumbled upon a road. An old road, unkempt, polluted by grass and occasional litter, but a road, nonetheless. They followed its path around the northernmost tip of the mountains to a broad, flat table of sandy rock. The pass between the scrub mountains was broad. Ochre grassland surged through it like a river bursting a dam. Their path pressed down and north, cutting across a broad road of dirt and primitive flagstones. The Sunder Road, no doubt. It forged east to an impressive mountain that notched the horizon.
However, it was not the views of sweeping golden lands that stunned them, nor the mountain, but the sword that stood standing on the edge of the plateau.
Ancient, rusted red and weathered black, it stood as a cold and colossal silhouette against the sky, with its point buried and pommel to the heavens. Whomever once wielded it – if that were even possible – would have regarded even Warbringer as nothing more than a pest. Mithrid had to crane her neck to take it in. Its crossbar alone would have made a fine spear.
Long moments passed before she realised it was not the only one. Beyond the plateau, where the earth pl
unged down into grassland, a veritable forest of the giant swords stood silently along the old path. Some of them spread east along the wide road. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.
Mithrid approached the nearest sword slowly. She dug a fingernail into its blade, weathered beyond bluntness. Flakes of rust came away in her palm and stained her pale skin orange. The blade was so old even the graffiti carved into it had been lost to weather. She felt no magick in them. Just a solid, immovable cold.
Not all were as grand as the first, but even the least was twice her height. Every one of them had been buried deep into the earth. Some of the blades had been broken through time’s teeth or vandalism. Their hilts lay half-buried in the dry soil. Grass had overgrown them.
‘Whose swords were these?’ Mithrid asked.
‘I dread to know,’ muttered Farden.
Aspala knelt by the tallest of the ancient blades. ‘There is a sword in Belephon like this one. Perhaps as big. The sword of Shareste. It used to attract crowds long ago, but no more. Half-forgotten, it is a pilgrimage for those who remember the old tales of rathcata.’
Farden was digging into one of the swords with his new knife. Mithrid ground her teeth. ‘What are they?’
Durnus spoke for the first time in hours, so hoarse barely audible. ‘Similar to our trolls, but more of muscle than of wood and stone.’
‘They are stories we hear as children,’ Aspala asserted. ‘I still remember the great ones. Of Neringaë and Paranis who fought the cyclopes and the rathcata back to their caves. And Orestus, who slew the last greatwyrm at the gates of Belephon.’
‘And I thought our stories and eddas were strange,’ said Mithrid.
‘All your pink-flesh stories are strange,’ muttered Warbringer.
Farden fought a yawn. ‘The bones we saw at Lilerosk. Master Boring called them “ogin”.’
‘Well, let us hope there are none left alive in the east.’
Mithrid’s gaze followed the road that coursed through the undulating grasslands. The huge, lonely mountain was black with the sun sloping behind it. Clouds haloed its crooked peak. A faint hint of snow could be seen atop it. In its shadow, there was a glimmer of water, perhaps a river. Upon the road, specks of wagons and beasts inched slowly to and fro. She could almost make out a settlement or a village far in the distance. A flash of blue showed her a distant Fleetstar breaking through the clouds, staying out of sight but always watching.
