by Ben Galley
As much as she hated him in that moment, he was right. With a cry of rage, Mithrid bounded for the dragon beside the others. Durnus’ spells barely kept them safe while Fleetstar launched herself from the hillside. She had to wheel around forks of lightning before soaring vertically into the air, riding the storm winds Malvus had summoned. Every one of them watched the foul creature diminish beneath them until he and Loki were lost to light and distance.
Mithrid shivered in the grip of the dragon, and not just with the cold of the high winds. The battle still ran through her veins. She cursed every moment, questioning silently why she hadn’t been faster, stronger.
It was to such a churning mind that Mithrid subjected herself until the first pale signs of dawn, breaking over the sea to the west. Fleetstar swooped downwards to taste the heat of the deserts that sprawled beneath them, and to chase the herds of goats that covered the patches of dry grassland.
Not a word had been traded. The mood lay heavy between the passengers. Heads remained bowed and breaths heavy. And yet it became violently apparently the night of horrors was not done with them yet.
The bolt appeared as if from nowhere, slamming into her left wing. Mithrid felt the impact through her bones and the tightening of Fleetstar’s claws, as painful as the roar that split her ears. The iron arrow struck the dragon with such force that it forced her into a plummeting roll that left Mithrid choking on her own heart. The ground spun beneath her as Fleetstar tried desperately to keep flying. Only her curiosity in the landscape had saved them from a greater fall. Crescent-shaped dunes grew larger at a horrific pace.
Fleetstar had the sense to let go of Mithrid and Farden before she struck the summit of a dune. The last she saw before the cloud of sand smothered their eyes was a cartwheel of wings and a thrashing tail. The others had the sense to unstrap themselves to avoid being crushed. They tumbled like cargo from an overturned cart.
The heavy groan of the dragon filled her ears. Mithrid tried to right herself, but her hands refused to stay put in the thick, fine sand. She could feel its grit scraping beneath her eyelids.
‘Well… shit,’ she croaked.
‘That’s the spirit. Up you get,’ said Farden. He looked as though he’d had some experience traversing a dune or two. He helped her upright, and together they staggered for Fleetstar.
The others were shaking sand from their ears and still trying to find their balance.
Fleetstar was enraged. One wing was splayed across the sand like she was an injured bird. Blue blood dripped from the wound. The arrow had torn a hole in the skin and scored her muscle deeply. She snapped her jaws at Mithrid as she tried to approach. Even Farden couldn’t calm her.
‘Who?’ Fleetstar snarled, more animalistic than Mithrid had ever seen her. ‘Who dared to fire this disgusting thing at me?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ll let you eat however many of them you want. Durnus! We need some magick here.’
The vampyre went to work while still coughing sand. His black spectacles had been smashed into two pieces but somehow, both halves still hung from his ears. He set his hands to the iron arrow, melting it with heat spells to save her from the pain of the barb.
Fleetstar roared flame as they took the arrow out. Mithrid hovered about, helpless. She kept a lookout instead, and set her foot to the shifting wall of the sand dune. She hated it within seconds. Sweat dripped from her nose by the time she reached its peak, stared into the dawn-lit desert, and saw the answer to Fleetstar’s question rushing towards them.
‘We have company!’ she yelled shortly before rolling back down to the valley in a dizzying flurry. She almost vomited on Fleetstar’s claws before Warbringer hauled her up.
‘How many? Who?’ she barked.
‘Too many, and I don’t know. They don’t look Cathak, that’s for sure. Soldiers!’
‘From the frying pan into the fire, and then into the furnace,’ said Farden in a bitter tone.
‘Then let us hope not to Hel.’
The mage spun his swords low by his sides. ‘At least it will be good to see my uncle again!’
The soldiers’ approach could be felt in the sand before it was seen. From left and right they came like a pincer, spears low and diamond shields forming fierce walls that bristled. Their pointed helmets each sported an arrowhead. The orders that kept their formations knit as tightly as tapestries were a constant stream, and in the harsh tongue they had heard at the border. Several knights in gold armour marched between the rank and file of chainmail and leather. Their helmets were plumed with dyed bristles of hair that ran down their backs. They had no visors but masks of mail that hung like beards. Their swords were shaped as though the smiths had decided to make a scimitar halfway through a longsword.
The dragon chewed fire as she reared to a lopsided upright and opened her maw for all to see. The archers in the crowd drew their bows, making Mithrid tense, but no command came.
‘Easy, Fleetstar. You’ll get us all killed!’ she hissed.
‘Though it pains me greatly to say this,’ Farden said with a dramatic sigh. ‘I think this is the second defeat of our night.’
To Mithrid’s surprise, it was the vampyre who looked as though he had to be restrained. ‘We were so close!’ he seethed.
She glimpsed a crimson colour in his glacial eyes that had never shown itself before. Perhaps it was burst blood, but before Mithrid could decide, Warbringer stepped in front of Durnus to keep him civil.
‘Who are you?’ Farden demanded of the soldiers. ‘And what do you want of us?’
Mithrid twitched, feeling magick in the crowds somewhere. She wondered if Malvus had already found them again, but it had a stranger edge. Its cause was one of the knights. He had black details of birds across his golden armour. He stared at Aspala as though she were a traitor before marvelling at Warbringer and the dragon.
‘It is you who trespass upon Khandri lands, northerners!’ he brayed. ‘You will lay down your weapons and come with us in peace, or in pieces.’
‘Come with you where?’
‘Why, to our Lord Belerod. He has been expecting you.’
‘Lord who the fuck now?’ Farden spluttered. Something about the name was familiar to Mithrid. ‘We will not give up our weapons. Warrior to warrior, you can respect that.’
The knight cackled. ‘Warrior to warrior, you should know what being outnumbered looks like, and when to shut your mouth and do as you’re told. Weapons. Now!’
The formations closed inwards with a menacing stamp of their feet. Arrows landed in the sand at their feet with puffs of sand.
Mithrid looked to Warbringer. She held Voidaran over her shoulder as if she were about to flatten anyone in sight. Farden shook his head at her emphatically. ‘Please, Katiheridrade,’ he whispered, somehow pronouncing her true name where Mithrid had failed so many times.
‘Would you give up your armour?’ she growled back.
‘I need you alive. This is no fine death. I will not let you or your clan down. I promise.’
Mithrid threw her axe down to catch the minotaur’s eye. Aspala, though it clearly pained her, added her scimitar to the pile.
It was with a solemn muttering that Warbringer surrendered Voidaran. Both she and the hammer sighed deeply as she dropped it to the sand. Even the knight had to stare back at his men as if to wonder how they would carry it.
‘And we were so close,’ Aspala hissed, as Khandri came forwards to bind them.
Mithrid saw the mage staring at her from the corner of her eye, but she refused to look even when shackles slid around her armoured wrists. She knew somehow it would be full of blame.
The knight ripped the satchel from Durnus’ shoulder and threw it on the ground. ‘We know of your spellbooks and sorcery. You can’t trick us, old man.’
Durnus bared his fangs, making the man recoil. To Mithrid’s horror, the inkweld fell from the satchel and opened on the sand. It was only when she was being hauled away she saw the script tumble across its page
s. It said one word only.
Mithrid?
‘Wait! No!’ Mithrid yelled, but they gagged and hooded her before she could put up any complaint.
CHAPTER 29
A WARLORD’S EMPLOY
The secrets of a golem’s construction lie in the stone and the correlating spells used. Each stone has its own tune that the magick must sing also. Limestone, for instance, can suffer from weak binding. Basalt has a tendency to snap under complex spells. Sandstone will crumble at the faintest error. But granite not only holds the magick, it is sturdy to most bindings, even after collapse.
FROM A MANUAL ON HASP “WINDTRICKING”
Rage was a wonderful emotion. All-encompassing. Blinding. Singular. No mortals were themselves when rage soured their hearts and minds. A wonderful excuse for all manner of evil. A moment when the skin of civility is peeled away to show the animal within every creature.
To that analogy, Malvus might as well have bared raw flesh to the night air.
Loki stood by and watched with curious intrigue as Malvus once more levelled his spells against the cliff face. Rock and crystals shattered and tumbled to the sand in a torrent of debris.
‘He was within my grasp!’ Malvus bellowed again. ‘Barely feet away. Curse that whore of a child and her magick!’
‘What did the girl’s touch feel like?’ Loki asked.
Malvus flexed his hands. Dark veins between his tattoos bulged. ‘Poison,’ he breathed. Loki could smell the stink of him from a dozen feet away. ‘To be normal and useless as before. I will crush her skull!’ Anger bubbled up within him again, and Malvus tore a stone from the earth. He hurled it across the wasteland. Gremorin and his daemons had to move to avoid its path.
‘Why did Farden not use his magick?’ snarled Malvus. ‘Why does he seem weak? Years older, as never before?’
The same question had been asked in Loki’s mind. It had intrigued him. Bothered him, in truth. The mage was still necessary. Weakness was precedent to failure.
The silence got to Malvus.
‘Why are you not concerned, god?’ he yelled. ‘Do you doubt me? Trick me!’
Malvus’ chipped and dirt-ridden fingers came reaching for the god, but Loki shifted to the side before he could grab him.
‘I do neither,’ Loki replied, playing calm. ‘As for why I do not seem concerned, I am not. Not in the slightest. Farden’s magick may have been lost to Irminsul’s fire, I would wager, or perhaps the girl’s magick. Or the Weight that brought them here. But it doesn’t matter in the least. He is weaker; you are stronger. This was a skirmish before the true battle. And that lies south, by what I can sense.’ The fools still carried his knife with them.
‘Why would Farden be here? You keep your answers closer to your chest than ever before, Loki, and your tongue has been uncharacteristically still this whole journey. While my ears welcome it, I’m starting not to trust it.’
Loki forced a smile. ‘Quietly confident in you. And as for Farden’s plans, I do not know. Perhaps he is fleeing as far as he can from you,’ he lied, much to the furtive satisfaction that broke the husk of rage on Malvus’ scarred face.
‘You are almost ready, Malvus, to bring the skies crashing down. Your power is almost at its peak.’
Malvus reached to the storming heavens as if to test his powers. Light scorched his skin as the runes and script illuminated. Muscles rippled. Tendons stood stiff as cords beneath his skin. He seemed to stretch the air around him. Loki felt a rare prickle of pain spread through his body.
‘Promises,’ Malvus breathed, when the spell failed him. Instead, he twirled fire between his fingers. The flames licked the air dangerously close to the god. His voice was deep as a daemon’s. Harsh as Irminsul’s fire. ‘Promises are worth nothing without their payment, little god. Farden’s blood will drip from my hands when we next meet, or yours will. And the sky will fall upon your shattered corpse.’
Though Loki hated the daemons’ name for him in Malvus’ mouth, he knew to stow his complaints. He could hear the crescendo of his plan rising like thunder with every mile south they journeyed. A masterpiece he had orchestrated over years coming to a clashing conclusion, private and performed solely for him. But Malvus and Farden wavered the harmony. Sowed discord. And Loki could not have it.
‘To the mage’s blood,’ Loki grinned to Malvus as he poked at that incalculable rage once more. At least that was predictable.
To the crackle of lightning, Malvus broke out across the wasteland, daemons leaving cinders and smoke in their wake.
Water.
Farden had never longed for it so badly in all his life.
He poked his lips between the bars of the rattling cage, gasping like a fish at the breeze. His tongue felt like the sole of an old boot.
The desert taunted him. Every dune looked the fucking same.
The mage had given up wondering how the Khandri knew where they were going. They could have been walking them in circles in some slow, cruel torture. There wasn’t a landmark in sight. No roads behind the one their caravan of soldiers and wagons forged.
The landscape was so monotonous, in fact, and his mind so delirious, Farden was slowly becoming haunted by the thought he was secretly back in Utiru’s clutches, and everything he had seen so far was part of her trick.
Water.
Farden rasped the word at a passing guard once more, only to have a hand thwack the bars. To their credit, the Khandri hadn’t actually laid a hand on any of them besides the dragon.
The mage and sprawled on the cage floor instead. At least there was shade in the cage. He stared at the ceiling of their simplest of abodes and felt the thrum of his wheels under his cuirass.
‘Are you all right, Farden?’ Mithrid asked.
‘Me? Dying rapidly as ever,’ he replied cheerily. ‘I’m surprised you noticed me. A day and a night we’ve been in this cage and you’ve spent all of it looking north. I wonder why.’
She shifted her gaze back to the desert. ‘I wasn’t strong enough. I could have stopped him.’
Farden shook his head. ‘You couldn’t. Not with the daemons and the creatures he’s dragged behind him. Your thirst for vengeance could have got yourself killed.’
‘Next time,’ she muttered. ‘I will break him.’
Aspala’s voice was quiet and subdued. ‘Think he’ll keep coming?’
‘Of course not. Not while I, or you, still draw breath. Or Durnus. He doesn’t like him either.’
The vampyre nodded, eyes closed. The heat was sapping him. His strength had ebbed since the cavern. He rocked back and forth slowly, fangs raking blood from his own lips. ‘Threw me in a prison once. Our best hope is to find the spear and use it to kill both Loki and Malvus at once.’
Mithrid thumped her head against the steel bars. ‘I was thinking our best hope was me.’
‘Sometimes, I wish I had never told you that you were a weapon,’ Farden sighed.
‘Not only do you think me a liar, but you doubt my abilities now, too?
‘I don’t doubt you, Mithrid. I worry. I know the path you walk on.’
Durnus hissed softly. ‘The very weather follows him. I have never seen the like of his tattoos. He outnumbers and overpowers us. Even with your magick, Farden, and with you at his side, Mithrid, I would bet on Malvus against us. And that speaks to Loki’s unthinkable meddling, not to your power. You saved us the other night, that is for certain.’
Mithrid grumbled, dissatisfied.
Farden sighed. If it was all a dream, at least nothing mattered any more. He could almost see Utiru’s appeal. ‘You’ll have your chance, I’m sure of that,’ he told her, sitting up as shouts came down the Khandri lines.
‘The inkweld fell to the sand when we were bound. I saw writing on it, saying my own name. What if it’s lost? How will we find the others?’
‘A problem for after we find the spear, I’m sure,’ sighed Farden. Pushing his head to the bars again, he saw greenery at last. He cheered for the break to the monotony
. Or, at least he tried to cheer. It came out more like the wheezing of old bellows.
‘What is it?’ asked Aspala. Farden had thought her asleep. She had spent the entire time curled up at the edge of the cage, knees to her chin and hating every moment of captivity.
‘I see palm trees. Water, maybe, though I’ve sworn I’ve seen water on every flat bit of sand we’ve passed.’
‘Mirages,’ Aspala nodded knowingly.
A sharp whistled made Farden turn. The knight with the mask of mail had ridden up alongside them on an armoured persnippen bird.
‘Only your best behaviour, you understand? Lord Belerod does not abide cheek!’
Farden smacked his chapped lips. ‘What about impudence? Impertinence?’
The knight thrashed his reins so hard the giant bird unleashed a garbled squawk. ‘No insolence of any kind, or we will make good on our threat.’
‘How could I forget?’ Farden looked behind them, where Warbringer and Fleetstar had been given their very own cages and an extra helping of shackles. The coelos that pulled them along the sands looked exhausted. Alongside their cages, however, two wagons escorted them. Atop each one was a ballista, similar to those of the bookships. Cradled in their taut strings was an iron arrow as tall as he was. The same kind that had already speared Fleetstar once.
If Farden stared at her too long, he felt her frustration and pain washing through him, so heavy to be a rush of nausea. And yet, somehow, the spark of connection kept him awake, and hopefully reassured the dragon in some way.
Warbringer knelt in the shade of her cage. With her heavy brows and her brooding stare, she looked more dangerous than Farden had ever seen her.
‘I have been thinking,’ Durnus muttered. His eyes had crept open. Without the dark spectacles the knights had broken, Farden saw a faint tinge of red to those eyes, at utter odds to the glacial hue he had known for decades. Dark veins gathered at the collar of his robe.
Farden squinted against the sun. ‘Always a bad sign.’
