The Black Hawks

by David Wragg

  ‘Spiiii-deerrrr …’

  The first chamber was chaotic but warmer, lit by a solitary candle in Foss’s bulky hand. Tarfel was already there, huddled against the wall, trying to cloak himself in a mountain of furs. The mercenaries were in varying states of readiness, from Spider and Foss, fully dressed, weapons in hand, to Rennic and Loveless, who were half-naked, rising from the same fur-bed in the opposite corner. Chel barely processed their shared bedding, but he felt something hot lurch in his chest. Nobody else seemed to notice or remark on it, and there were more pressing concerns.

  Behind him, Lemon was buckling straps and rummaging in a bag of what sounded like iron bars. ‘Where’s Whisper?’ he said, his voice cracked.

  ‘Probably out scouting the path ahead. Usually is.’

  ‘Doesn’t she sleep?’

  Lemon stopped, then withdrew a long, slim hammer with a hooked bill from her bag. ‘Her? Not often.’ She offered a mirthless grin. ‘Didn’t you hear? Sleep’s the curse of the young, wee bear.’

  Rennic’s clothes and boots were on, his face dark and furious in the candlelight. He fixed Spider with a glare. ‘What do we know?’

  Spider grimaced, his teeth long. ‘Fly’s down. Out on the plateau. Archers, short-bow. Half a dozen, top tier.’ He crunched his teeth together. ‘Sadistic fucks.’

  Rennic and Foss exchanged glances. ‘Sounds like our Mawn friends from Sebemir. Hot fuck, they’re tenacious.’

  A low, bestial howl split the night. Chel shivered, and Foss made the sign of the crook and muttered prayers. Rennic sucked air through his teeth and looked back to Spider. ‘Can we reach her?’

  Every muscle in his body rigid, Spider shook his head.

  ‘What in nine hells was she doing that far out on the plateau?’

  Spider’s gaze sought Chel, pinned him to the log wall.

  ‘Just taking a piss.’

  The gaze dared him to disagree. Chel kept silent.

  Rennic growled. ‘Grab gear. We probably have a moment or two before those pricks tire of their game and start thinking about burning us out. The snow won’t hold them long.’

  Something hissed on the roof, and thick drops of water throbbed past the gaps in the log wall. ‘Fucken hells!’ Lemon shouted.

  Loveless was by the entrance, urging them out. ‘Away we go, boys and girls, right now. Grab your packs and sacks, back down the rope before we’re roasted meat.’

  Chel stumbled back into the second chamber, eyes fixed on his supply sack by his discarded fur pile. As his hand closed around it, his resolve failed, and he looked out through the doorway into the frigid night.

  The Fly lay still, a dozen arrows jutting from her body like pins in a cushion, pale steam rising from the snow around her. He stared at her for too long, blinking freezing tears. She and Spider were going to kill him. The knife had been in her hand. He had only pushed her. But still it felt wrong. Still he felt culpable.

  You were supposed to be lucky.

  Another thump on the roof was followed by a familiar hiss. Chel shouldered the sack and fled from the room.

  ***

  It happened fast. Rennic and Loveless went first, whizzing down the rope out of sight before Lemon grabbed the prince and wrapped herself around him and the rope. Then they too were gone, and Foss stooped to sling Chel over his shoulder before they made the drop. The night air bit again, the wind harsh along the escarpment’s sheer face, and as they descended Chel looked back and up at the hatch. Spider stood framed in it, his gaze fixed on Chel, eyes burning with hate and a long knife in his hand. For a moment Chel thought he might cut the rope while they were still on it, but instead he watched them all the way down. Then the rope dropped, and Spider, now lost in the darkness above, began to clamber down the rock face.

  Whisper met them at the bottom. She and Rennic traded hand signals for low words in the moonlight, and she pointed out two bodies behind one of the scattered boulders along the trail, one stuck with the broken shaft of a dark arrow.

  Chel flexed his toes in his freezing boots, willing the feeling back into them. He felt groggy and lightheaded, and overcome with melancholy. ‘What now?’ he said to Foss.

  ‘Now, my friend, we run.’

  TEN

  For hours, they pounded through the deep snow in the moonlight, weaving in and out of dark clusters of tall trees, trying to stay out of the open. Chel and Tarfel struggled along with the others, the snow sucking at their legs, the thin, chill air stinging their skin and freezing every stream from eyes, nose and mouth. Three days of climbing the mountains and half a night of sleep had left them both exhausted, and only the terror of murderous pursuit kept them going.

  With the first fronds of light twinkling in the north-eastern sky, Tarfel caught his foot on a snow-covered rock and crashed head-first into a drift. Chel stumbled over him, ostensibly trying to help, but instead grateful for the chance to collapse one-armed onto the soft snow. He lay face-down, panting into whiteness, his cheeks so numb he no longer felt their burning. There he waited for death.

  ‘Get up, prolapse!’ Lemon stood over them, Foss at her elbow. ‘Fuckers’ll be on us pronto. Not like we’re hard to track in this white shite.’

  ‘I can’t go on. Let me die here.’ It was Tarfel’s voice, but the words could have been Chel’s.

  ‘Oh, aye, I’d love to, but then we wouldn’t get paid, and this whole affair would have been rather a waste of everyone’s time and effort, yes?’ She hauled them over, leaving them snow-dusted and staring at the dark foliage above.

  Rennic’s thumping footsteps drew close. ‘Fuck’s the problem?’

  ‘Princeling wants to die here. The wee bear seems on board.’

  Chel expected an explosion. Instead, the hawk-faced man took a long breath, surveying their wooded surroundings. They were in a shallow, sloping gully, thickly wooded on either side and dotted with the same black projecting rocks that littered the mountains.

  ‘Good a place as any. Dawn’s coming, be quick.’

  Chel sat up. His heart thumped on in his chest, a little faster at Rennic’s words. He bit back the desire to ask what was happening, hating the gormless inquisitor he’d become. If I still had two working arms, he told himself, I’d never have ended up like this.

  He met Rennic’s granite-hard gaze. No, said his inner voice, you’d likely have been dead for a week.

  ‘Get up,’ the big man said, and Chel did.

  The crew arrayed themselves around the gully, concealed behind trees and rocks. Spider and Whisper disappeared vertically, clambering up into the snow-drenched trees and out of sight. Again, Lemon was left to babysit Chel and the prince. They were sent to the top of the slope to lurk behind a ridge and a low ring of boulders, leaving enough obvious tracks on their way up for the whole group. There they waited, traitorous breath fogging in hot columns through their trembling fingers.

  ‘You know,’ Chel whispered to Lemon, ‘you could just let me and the prince go. We’re off on the quiet, you’re no longer pursued, everyone’s happy.’

  She gave him a look of incredulous horror.

  ‘Are you fucken cracked, man? Think our friendly chasers’ll take our word that we’ve sent you on your merry way? And what of our payment for the job? ’Sides, you’d get yourselves murdered by wolves or snow or something inside twenty paces. No, wee bear, we’re rather, you might say, committed to our current venture, eh?’

  Tarfel saw them first, his stifled squeak alerting Chel and Lemon to their hunters’ arrival. A handful of figures had appeared at the gully’s distant base, their forms indistinct against the grey of the snow in the predawn light. They moved swiftly, without stealth, their attention on the deep tracks they followed and the landscape surrounding them.

  Chel clenched inwardly, pressing himself against the frosty rock beneath him. It was one thing for faceless shapes to shoot arrows at you in the dark. It was another to see your would-be murderers approaching with such casual menace. They carried crossbows, heavy in the
ir arms, and maces and axes hung from their belts.

  The figures closed on them, advancing up the gully, fanning out as they did so. Chel counted five. In a few moments more they found the churned snow where Chel and Tarfel had fallen, the criss-crossed footprints where the crew had made their preparations. The foremost was now ten paces from Rennic’s hiding place. Chel could see him, crouched against a dark trunk, his long staff pressed against the bark. He had tied back his hair and was utterly still.

  ‘The fuck is this?’ one said. Her accent was eastern, wetlands. Not a local, then. Looking nervous, she levered back the arms of her crossbow with a grunt.

  ‘Which way did they go?’ This one sounded local. ‘Where are those Mawn-buggers when you need ’em, eh?’

  The lead man stood. ‘Looks like upward. But guards up, could be they left a— Uff—’

  ‘A what?’

  The lead man was swaying on his feet. Chel could see the surprise on his face as he looked down to see the long black shaft protruding upward from his chest. Chel thought of Lemon’s words. Would the man know he didn’t have to lie down and die?

  It was academic a moment later. A second arrow hit the man in the upper chest, sticking up above his cloaked shoulder and sending a hot jet of blood over his face. The man shrieked and stumbled backward, gesturing upward in his incoherence, his crossbow fallen from his hands. The other four crouched and cursed, their bows flashing upward at the treetops, searching for the arrows’ origin.

  Then everything happened at once. A man-shaped rage ball dropped from the branches above them, crumpling the man at the back to the ground and spraying arterial gore in frenzied arcs. Another arrow flashed out of the trees, splitting the eye socket of the non-local woman. She screamed and fired her crossbow, driving its bolt into the fleshy thigh of the man next to her. As he spun and cursed, Rennic and Loveless exploded from the trees on either side, covering the distance faster than the remaining man could react. Two sharp blows from Rennic’s staff drove him from his feet into the snow, a third left him unconscious. Loveless, meanwhile, delivered one killing strike after another, first impaling the man with the wounded thigh on her beautiful sword, then slicing open the neck of the half-blinded woman. They dropped to the snow in succession, the gruesome pink mess at their feet enfolding them like a lover’s arms.

  Rennic knelt and drew a knife from his belt across the unconscious man’s throat, then stood, leaning on his staff, breathing heavily. Loveless tried to clean her sword on an unbloodied scrap of fabric, but one was proving hard to come by. Spider continued stabbing the victim beneath him, his breath coming in halting gasps, his teeth gritted. He was slick with blood from neck to knee in the early light, a true vision of nightmares.

  Rennic grinned and wiped something dark from his bearded cheek. ‘Good work. Now let’s get back on it before—’

  A bright arrow splintered the staff beside his face, showering him with needle-shards of wood.

  ‘Fuck-sticks!’

  Around them branches bucked and rippled as shafts ripped through the foliage. Chel saw flashes ripping through the upper limbs, arcing toward where Whisper hid.

  ‘Down!’

  The crew ducked, Chel slithering down the cold stone of the rocks that lined the ridge. Beside him, Lemon hissed. ‘Sly fucks ambushed our ambush!’

  Heart thumping, Chel risked a swift peek over the rock. Whisper had clambered down from her tree and was ducked behind a meaty trunk while arrows thunked against its side. She looked peeved. Rennic and Loveless looked similarly pinned down, and Spider lay among the corpses. He was so soaked with blood it was impossible to tell whether he was hit or merely playing dead. Chel suspected the latter.

  ‘What do we do?’

  Lemon flicked a gaze over the rocks, then over at Foss who crouched behind a snow-covered thicket along the ridge-line. ‘Aye, right. Keep our heads down, let them think they’re flanking the folks below, then Fossy and I spring the jaws.’

  ‘What about—’

  ‘You stay here, wee bear, and keep yourself and Prince Gobshite well from sight. Yes? You wander off, you’ll get your both selves skinned.’ She fished a short, wide-bladed hatchet and an anvil-headed hammer from her collection. From down the slope, Chel heard something splinter and Rennic’s answering curse.

  The chill dawn breeze blew over them from beyond the ridge, and brought with it a faint, delicate jingling. Something familiar about it nagged at Chel, and he turned away from the rocks for a clue as to what bothered him.

  Two human shapes loomed up over the low ring of boulders, one very much bigger than the other. They were clad in furs and hunting gear, but even in the early light Chel recognized the rust-coloured robes beneath.

  ‘Hurkel,’ he said, throat cracked.

  ‘Whassat?’ Lemon looked over, then turned to follow his frozen gaze. ‘Aye, fuck! Fossy!’

  Tarfel’s shriek carried over the woods, sending hardy birds bolting from the trees at their periphery.

  The blond giant dropped from the outer boulder into the ring with a thud, crushing the snow beneath, then extended one arm, pointing. He was grinning. Behind him, the other confessor made more hesitant progress, sliding down the rock with his mace brandished like a ward.

  ‘Kneel, heretics!’ Hurkel roared. ‘Beg for the Shepherd’s mercy, that you may be spared eternal damnation!’

  ‘Stick it up your bollocks,’ Lemon replied, and hurled the short axe at the oncoming giant. He watched it all the way, then juked aside. The axe whistled past his beefy arm and split the face of the robed man behind him, who collapsed unconscious without a sound, thin sprays of blood fountaining from either side of the buried axe-head.

  Hurkel reached Lemon in three strides, catching the haft of the hammer she swung at him. He towered over her, grinning all the while, as she strained to free the hammer from his grasp, then lashed a kick at his knee. Hurkel grunted, then punched her with his free hand. Lemon wobbled, and as her grip sagged Hurkel wrapped a hand over her face and began to squeeze.

  Chel rolled across the snow. His good hand closed around the second confessor’s discarded mace, and he struggled up onto one knee behind the giant.

  Mustering all his strength on his weaker side, he smashed the mace against Hurkel’s knee. This time, the confessor bellowed and staggered. He flung Lemon’s limp form aside and rounded on Chel, favouring his other leg.

  His close-set eyes widened in surprise, then his grin expanded. ‘Sand-crab! How the Shepherd smiles on loyal servants. I’d thought the chance to dispatch you on your downward journey was long gone.’

  Chel pushed himself to his feet and raised the mace, alarmed by its tremble in his hand. ‘Come on then, you great white prick.’

  Hurkel punched him in the face. It had been a good few days since he’d last taken a blow, and most of his superficial injuries, especially the rough scabs on his face, had been healing up well. Hurkel’s fist rattled the teeth in his jaw, fractured his cheek and split his lip wide. He felt his brain move in his skull, and his vision was at once a mass of yellow and purple. He became only latterly aware that he was falling backward, then snow crunched beneath him and the pain bloom began as his nerves caught up with the damage.

  Hurkel laughed, then looked around, searching for the prince, who was scuttling up the rocks away from him. Chel blew bloody spittle from his ripped mouth and tried to sit up. ‘Is that it, you rancid rat-fucker?’

  Hurkel turned back. ‘Oh, sand-crab, you are thrice-damned and corrupted. You are beyond the Shepherd’s love.’ He raised a boot to stamp on Chel’s head, wincing at the movement.

  Foss launched himself from the top of the rocks, landing on Hurkel’s back and sending him staggering. The boot crashed to the snow beside Chel’s ear, close enough for flecks of snow to spray his ravaged cheek. The two spun and struggled, Foss’s arms wrapped around Hurkel’s neck and chest, the blond giant’s ponderous arms flailing up at him, before Hurkel hooked an arm and pivoted, throwing Foss over his shoul
der. It should have slammed him helpless to the ground, but Foss twisted as he was turned and got his feet beneath him, landing almost upright. He dropped immediately into a wrestler’s pose: knees bent, palms down, one arm extended, the other close to the body.

  Hurkel nodded his head from one side to the other, as if considering, then assumed much the same pose. Even half-crouched, he still had half a head on Foss. The man with the braids might have been the biggest of Rennic’s crew in bulk and strength, but Hurkel looked capable of devouring him.

  ‘So shall the faithless betray the love of their maker,’ Hurkel said, ‘but the faithful shall be blessed with weapons of righteousness, and see the damned riven beneath their feet.’

  ‘The virtue of the believer shall shine from deeds, not proclamations,’ Foss replied.

  The two circled, exchanging the odd half-slap blow, each keeping their distance, then Foss drove forward with his shoulder low, wrapping his arms around Hurkel’s massive thighs and heaving upward. Hurkel staggered backward, but Foss couldn’t get him all the way over and Hurkel began to rain blows down on him, laughing with increasing mania. The confessor reached down and wrapped his arms around Foss’s torso, then with a grunt levered his legs up off the ground until Foss was thrashing in mid-air.

  Lying prone, Chel slammed the mace against Hurkel’s knee. When Hurkel staggered, he swung again, catching him a glancing blow on the kneecap. Hurkel roared and dropped Foss, snatching at the mace as Chel tried for another blow. He grabbed it and yanked it from Chel’s weakened grip, but before he could do much with it, Foss crunched his other knee with Lemon’s hammer.

  The giant howled, clutched his knee and pitched sideways, unable to support his hefty bodyweight. As he fell, Foss scrambled to his feet and pounded the side of his trailing leg for good measure. He reached down and jerked the mace away from the curled and moaning Hurkel, then helped Chel to sit up. ‘Watch him,’ he said, pressing the mace back into Chel’s palm. ‘If he moves, hit him again.’ Chel immediately thumped the mace against Hurkel’s battered leg.