False Dawn: Ageless Mysteries - Book 2

by Vanessa Nelson

  “You should have run, girl,” the leader of the gang said. He was on his feet now, backing away from her, towards the nearest wall, wearing an expression that Thea could only describe as gleeful. “Nothing escapes the arrak.”

  “Is that what it is?” Niath asked. He didn’t sound worried.

  Thea turned her glare from the gang leader to the mage. Niath was watching the giant with interest, eyes shading to dark, the angles of his face sharpening, his other aspect coming to the fore.

  “Any ideas?” she hissed at him.

  Whatever he might have said was interrupted by running footsteps behind her.

  She whirled, raising her sword, only to lower it as she saw a half dozen Watchmen and women approaching. They had cudgels at their sides. Expecting trouble.

  “Officer March!” the lead Watchman said, and then stopped and stared past her. Thea could not blame him.

  “Get as many people away from here as possible,” Thea ordered, her voice sharp with worry. “Go. Now.”

  “Ma’am,” the Watchman said, snapping out of his amazement, and giving orders to the others that had the Watch spreading out, their dark red uniforms distinctive among the more muted browns and greens of the city folk.

  Thea watched the ripple of fear across the market as more and more people saw the giant and turned to flee. They were panicked, running into each other and into the Watch until one of the Watchmen raised his voice and shouted a booming command that Thea could not make out over the crowd, but which settled the people closest to him. Enough that he could get them to move in one direction. And once there was a stream of people leaving, others joined, still trying to run and jostling each other, but heading away from the giant.

  Niath took a step forward, drawing her attention back to the gang and the giant.

  The men that Niath had frozen were moving now. Slowly, but they were moving. Away. Towards Jirkar. The gang leader was standing with his back to the wall of the nearest building, a grin on his face that made Thea feel quite violent.

  “Ideas?” she asked Niath.

  “What languages do you speak?” he asked.

  Thea blinked at him, and clamped her jaw shut before she said something hasty. Like now was hardly the time for lessons. “Common tongue,” she answered, words bitten off. It wasn’t quite true, but the other language she spoke would reveal far too much about her heritage and her past. “Do you think that creature understands language?” she asked.

  “It seemed like a sensible first thing to try,” Niath said, and took another step forward, lifting one hand in greeting. “Good day to you, sir,” he said.

  To Thea’s surprise, the giant actually turned in Niath’s direction. It had crude features, as if modelled in clay by a child, and what might have been its brows seemed to lift. Perhaps startled at being spoken to so directly. Thea could easily imagine that people tended to run away, rather than try to talk to it.

  “Can you tell me your name? I’m Niath. This is Officer Thea March.”

  The giant’s lip curled back, showing blocky, dark brown teeth, and it blew out a breath. A waft of the stench crossed the market place. Thea’s eyes watered.

  It took a step forward, its shadow brushing over them. A trail of ice worked its way down Thea’s back, her shoulder blades prickling. She had her sword, with the magically enhanced edge that Niath had given it. It was barely as long as one of the giant’s teeth.

  “We’d like to talk to you,” Niath continued, apparently undaunted by the creature’s lack of response. Or the smell.

  The giant lifted one arm, another waft of pungent odour assaulting Thea’s nose.

  For a moment she thought that it was copying Niath’s friendly gesture of greeting.

  And then she saw the club held in its fist. It looked like it might have been a complete tree trunk.

  The giant swung the club, far faster than she would have thought possible.

  Niath hadn’t seemed to notice.

  Thea charged him from one side, knocking him to the ground as the club swung over their heads, close enough for her to see the spikes embedded into its head.

  “It attacked us,” Niath said, scrambling back to his feet. He had shifted completely to his other aspect, face a mix of sharp angles and planes, eyes dark, fangs descended.

  “It did.” Thea was on her feet as well, standing next to the mage. “It didn’t want to talk. Perhaps we could try an alternative plan?”

  There was no time, as the giant swung its club again.

  Thea and Niath ducked in opposite directions, the club thumping onto the ground where they had been standing, the spikes leaving dents in the ground when the giant lifted it.

  She looked up at the creature and saw its lips peeled back from those awful brown teeth. It looked happy.

  “Can you distract it?” she asked. “I’ll try to get behind it.”

  “That’s your plan?” Niath responded, shaking his head. “Alright. Don’t blame me when it goes wrong.”

  “Talking didn’t work, did it?” Thea hissed back.

  The mage was apparently too busy working on a spell to answer, one hand held out in front of him, palm up, fingers curled around an imaginary ball.

  Magic appeared between his fingers. Niath’s magic. Warm and compelling. It was a vivid blue, crackling with miniature lightning bolts.

  “War fire?” Thea hissed at the mage. “You made war fire in a city?”

  “You told me to distract it. Don’t worry, I can control the fire,” Niath said. “Off you go.”

  Thea glared at his back, suppressing an impulse to do something violent. The mage didn’t notice, too busy sending a crackle of the brilliant blue lightning towards the giant.

  The war fire struck the giant on the leg and it stumbled, howling with what sounded like outrage and pain. The sound drilled through Thea’s skull, making her bones vibrate.

  She was already running, circling around the giant as Niath threw another lightning bolt at it.

  Closer to the creature, the smell was worse. So bad that she regretted the move. But it did not seem to have noticed her.

  She ran forward and sliced her beautiful, magic-made blade against the back of the giant’s leg. She was not tall enough to reach its hamstring, but could reach its ankles.

  The blade sank through thick, brown fur and barely paused as it cut through bone and sinew.

  The giant roared again, whirling, the club spinning so fast it was a blur in her sight.

  She barely had time to duck under a nearby stall before the club came down, close enough that one of the spikes grazed her arm, tearing through her uniform. She rolled further under the stall, and behind the cart that had been abandoned next to it, crouching in the shadows, watching the giant.

  Her single strike had done some damage. The giant tried to follow her, seeming to sense where she was, and stumbled, its injured ankle giving way.

  “Watch out!” Thea called to Niath. The mage was standing, staring, as the creature wavered.

  Niath moved. Faster than Thea had ever seen him. He headed across the market to her, ducking behind the cart with her.

  The giant tried to follow his movement, and toppled, its ankle giving way. It fell, displacing air, sending out more foul smell, and landed across a row of market stalls, the wood splintering under it, the weight of its body sending a shock wave through the ground.

  Thea was already moving, sprinting for the creature’s head.

  It raised its club again, pushing itself up on its other arm, swinging the club.

  The spikes missed her this time. But she was too close to avoid the club completely. The thick length of it caught her legs, sending her flying through the air. She had enough time to lift her arm, trying to shield her head before she landed with a crash and a crack that spelled a broken bone somewhere.

  No breath. No sight. Blood in her mouth. Everything hurt.

  Move move move.

  Repeated lessons and drills in combat came to her rescue.
r />   She couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe.

  But she made her body move. Scrambling up, moving in the direction her senses told her was away. Away away away. From the giant and the club that thumped to the ground just behind her, knocking her off her feet again.

  She couldn’t stop the cry of pain as she landed. Definitely something broken. Hand or wrist, she thought. Not her sword arm, though. She still had her weapon.

  Up again. Forward again, until she ran into something solid and cold.

  A wall.

  She turned, back to the wall, and held her sword in front of her. Blinked to clear her eyesight, sucked in a much-needed breath.

  The giant was still sitting up, glaring at her across the marketplace. There was blood pouring out of its leg onto the ground.

  There was a dark figure near her. Niath.

  “You’re hurt,” he said. It was not a question.

  “Broke something,” she said. The voice didn’t sound like hers, too high and too thin.

  “That was a good plan,” he said.

  “It didn’t work,” she said, shaking her head, and then wished she hadn’t as the world spun.

  “It’s injured.”

  “Still breathing.”

  “Vulnerable.”

  “How did the war fire work on it?” Thea asked.

  “Not well,” he admitted. “I think it has some magical protection.”

  “So you can’t burn it from here?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  “No.” He blew out a breath. “We’ll need to get closer.”

  Thea’s eyes fell on a stall nearby. A wood carver. There were beautifully crafted wooden bowls and cups scattered on the ground. And a collection of walking sticks.

  “You made me a sword from a fruit knife,” she said slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you make me throwing spears from the walking sticks over there?” she asked, looking across at him.

  He lifted a brow and looked at the stall, mouth curving up as he saw the sticks.

  “I can,” he confirmed. He strode forward and knelt by the sticks, putting his hand over them.

  Thea felt his magic against her skin, and welcomed the warmth of it. She was trembling, she realised. Her hand and arm hurt more than she had realised.

  The giant was trying to get to its feet, roaring with fury and pain, blood still pouring from the wound she had made.

  The smell of it was everywhere.

  She wanted to be sick.

  “Done,” Niath said. He was back beside her with a bundle of spears tucked under one arm. “I made a few double-ended. I wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She stuck the sword into the ground, wincing slightly at the poor treatment of the blade, but there was no time to do anything else, and took one of the spears from Niath, testing its weight.

  As with the sword, it was perfectly balanced for her hand and arm. Even with her injury. She held her injured arm as close to her as she could, trying to keep it still. There was no time to faint or cry.

  She took a couple more steps forward, focusing on the giant. It was still struggling to stand, flailing as its ankle gave way and it fell back to the ground again, with a thump that shook everything in the market, and the buildings around them.

  It was what Thea had been waiting for.

  She drew back her arm, took another stride forward, her feet remembering the patterns from the hundreds of drills she had done, and threw, putting the weight of her body into the movement, biting off a cry as she jarred her injured arm.

  The spear flew, straight and true, across the square, and struck home, biting into the giant’s face.

  “Good throw,” Niath said.

  “I was aiming for his eye,” Thea said dryly, turning to him for another spear. He had one ready, held out for her.

  She took the weapon, feeling the warmth of his magic through the grain of the wood, and spun, ignoring the pain in her arm and the way that her vision was fading at the edge.

  The giant was glaring at her from across the market place, crouched on all fours, as if it was going to crawl forward.

  She met its eyes across the space. Its gaze was flat, fixed on her, lip curling to show its awful teeth again.

  She threw the spear. It flew faster than the one before.

  Too fast for the giant to avoid.

  The spear landed in its eye, striking home with a sound that made Thea’s stomach turn.

  “Another,” she said to Niath, not sure if she could turn to him. The world was wavering around her.

  “No need,” he said.

  He had come to stand by her shoulder, and held a hand out, towards the giant, the faintest spark of war fire in the palm of his hand. He said a word and the fire flew across the square, faster than the spear had done, and caught the end of the spear, burrowing along the length of wood into the giant’s eye.

  “We should duck,” Niath said.

  Thea moved, heading for the nearest stall. At least, she tried to. She only managed one step before her legs gave out and she fell to her knees.

  Niath put his arm around her waist and half-lifted her, dragging her with him to the shelter of the stall.

  There was no time to protest.

  They reached the stall just as the giant burst into fire, blue flames cascading across its body. Thea took one look at it, and the fire spreading across its fur, then hid behind the flimsy protection of the wooden stall.

  The giant howled as it died, a sound that Thea felt she would remember for the rest of her life.

  She shivered, huddling against the stall, eyes closed, her face wet. It had been alive. It had been trying to kill them, but it had been alive. And she had caused its death. She wanted to be sick.

  Then a wave of stench reached her. If she had thought the creature smelled bad before, it was several times worse when it was burning.

  She was sick, stomach cramping, half-blinded by her wavering vision and the pain from her arm.

  It seemed to take a very long time before the stench reduced, and there was nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

  “Here,” Niath said.

  She opened her eyes, realising that she was crying, and scrubbed her face with her good hand.

  The mage was holding out a cloth packet. She took it without hesitation, unfolding it to find one of his oatcakes in there.

  “Wait there for a moment. I want to make sure it’s really dead,” he said, and got to his feet.

  Thea managed to get to her feet as well, without losing her grip on the oatcake.

  The market place was in ruins. The giant had burned where it lay, its great, charred body slumped across what had been market stalls. It was still in one piece, the war fire having reduced it to dried skin and bone.

  She had a vivid memory of the inside of Ambrose Twist’s curio shop, charred and blackened from Niath’s magic, various parts of the escalus scattered across the floor.

  She was equally responsible for this death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “It’s definitely dead,” Niath said, coming back to her.

  She had finished the oatcake without realising it, and was tempted to ask if he had any more. Her vision was clearing slightly, the trembling across her body fading. She held her injured wrist to her chest, glancing down to find that her wrist and fingers were swelling. A bad sign. There was definitely something broken.

  No time to deal with that now. There was still work to do.

  “Should we send for the captain?” the mage asked. He seemed far too cheerful to Thea.

  She said nothing, staring at the charred corpse. Another body on her conscience.

  She looked around for the gang. The hand. The four of them were gathered together not far away, standing against the wall of one of the surrounding buildings.

  They looked shocked. But not defeated.

  Thea’s stomach twisted. There was something else. Something she had missed. Something important. Her
eyes travelled back to the dead giant. It had towered as tall as the buildings it had walked past.

  “Officer March. We won,” Niath said.

  “No, we didn’t,” she said, turning her attention back to the men.

  “What do you mean? The giant is dead.”

  “The stall holders were terrified,” she said slowly, working it out as she spoke. “Before they saw the giant. And I think we would have heard about a giant before now.” There. That was it. The thing she had missed. There was no possible way that the Watch would not have heard about a giant wandering the streets of Accanter.

  “So they were scared of something else,” Niath concluded, face and voice grim as she glanced across at him. “What, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. But I intend to find out,” she said. She took a step towards her sword and her injured wrist twinged, making her bite her lip against a cry. She did not want to show weakness in front of the gang.

  “Can you fix this for me?” she asked Niath, lifting her swollen wrist.

  “I regret not,” he said, putting his hand on his heart and bowing slightly. “Healing is not a skill I have. I can provide a splint for it, though.” It was only then that Thea noticed he was carrying a pair of the throwing spears.

  “Please,” she said, and held her arm out, ignoring the men for the moment. They were far enough away that Thea would have enough warning if they moved.

  Niath produced a strip of heavy linen from somewhere, somehow reduced the throwing spears down to smooth, round pieces of wood the perfect length for her forearm and wrist, and bound her wrist and arm straight. Thea had to bite her lip again to stop a cry, and her eyes were wet when he had finished.

  “I am sorry. I hurt you,” Niath said.

  “No.” She lifted her arm. It was secure. That was all that mattered. “Thank you.”

  She moved to get her sword, pulling it out of the ground and stalking across the market towards the four men.

  Jirkar watched her approach, lips curved up in a smile that set her teeth on edge. As if he knew something.

  “Well done, little girl. I have to admit, you surprised me. You and the mage.”

  The belittling term set her teeth on edge. But there were more important things to worry about.