A Time of Courage

by John Gwynne

  A few moments silence and then the screaming began.

  The crack of shields breaking, torn from arms, swords stabbing. Jin knew the sound of steel punching into meat, and of blows, the tearing and rending of flesh. Screams rose in pitch, fear-laced, and the shield wall was rippling, fracturing into a hundred pieces.

  There is no holding back those . . . things.

  The mist swept on, fragmenting, roiling into the street that led to Drassil’s Great Hall.

  ‘This is done: the courtyard is ours,’ Jin muttered to Gerel. He nodded, eyes fixed on the mist-shrouded carnage, streaks of blood punctuating the air.

  Jin clicked and her horse moved on.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Gerel called after her.

  ‘Looking for more White-Wings to kill,’ Jin said.

  ‘Gulla said to take the gate and hold it,’ Gerel reminded her.

  ‘I am not his whipped hound,’ she snapped back. ‘He is my ally, not my master. Besides, the gate is taken, there will be no coming back from this. And I have not killed nearly enough of my enemies.’

  Gerel nodded at that and urged his horse after her. Cheren warriors followed, their hooves mixing with the sound of battle.

  Jin reined in, staring.

  Wide streets led away from the courtyard to all parts of Drassil’s fortress. The heaviest fighting was filling the street that led to Drassil’s Great Hall, where Asroth was held in his iron prison. But Jin had seen something in one of the other streets, one that headed eastwards. A group of White-Wings, running across, away from the Great Hall, away from the battle. Some were limping.

  One of them had stopped, was staring aghast into the courtyard. She had dark hair, cropped short like all of the White-Wings, but Jin recognized her, had watched her training in the weapons-field for so many years. There was a confidence and fluid economy in her movements that only the finest warriors possessed.

  ‘Aphra,’ Jin whispered.

  The figure turned and ran on with her companions, disappearing from view.

  ‘If I cannot kill the half-breed bitch right now, then I will make do with killing her sister,’ Jin said, with a savage grin.

  She touched her heels to her mount.

  CHAPTER THREE

  RIV

  Riv swayed in the sky as her wings powered her, one hand carrying a dazed warrior through the air. All about her Ben-Elim and Kadoshim were locked in battle, a savage aerial conflict that filled the sky with blood and feathers.

  She swung her short-sword at a Kadoshim who flew too close as he stabbed and slashed at a Ben-Elim. Her blade sliced through the meat of his wing and sent the demon tumbling towards the ground.

  The Ben-Elim she had saved gave her a curt nod, then his eyes widened at what she was grasping in her left hand.

  Not what, but who.

  Another Ben-Elim, long black hair tied at the nape, a series of scars running across his forehead and down one cheek.

  Meical, once High Captain of the Ben-Elim, though for more than a hundred years he had been locked within a cage of starstone metal, none knowing if he were alive or dead.

  Riv had rescued him from Drassil’s Great Hall, where Gulla and his Kadoshim had been moving to slay the newly awakened Ben-Elim, and now they were in the air above the courtyard beyond the hall. Bodies littered the ground, combat swirling in knots below them.

  Meical had been dazed when she grabbed him and carried him from the hall.

  Well, a sleep one hundred and thirty-eight years long would do that, Riv thought.

  Now he was gazing around, eyes more focused, taking in the carnage. He looked at Riv, his lips moving, but Riv could not hear what he was saying over the din of battle echoing around them.

  ‘Where’s Corban?’ Meical shouted louder to her.

  Riv blinked. It wasn’t a question she’d expected.

  Corban? The founder of the Order of the Bright Star?

  ‘He’s dead,’ Riv called down to him.

  Confusion, shifting to grief. The sense of pain and loss emanating from the Ben-Elim’s eyes was so acute that Riv’s breath caught in her chest. ‘For nearly eighty years,’ she told him.

  ‘No.’ She saw his lips make the word.

  Behind them a cloud of Kadoshim burst out of the doors of the Great Hall, Gulla leading the charge, larger than the other Kadoshim. His face was twisted in a rictus of hatred, head twitching like a predatory bird’s as he scanned the courtyard.

  He hunts Meical.

  Riv closed her wings and dived, settling upon a rooftop and dragging Meical under an overhang and into deep shadows.

  ‘What do you mean, eighty years?’ Meical said.

  Riv peered out into the sky, saw Gulla leading his Kadoshim south-east, towards Drassil’s main gates.

  She looked back at Meical and sucked in a deep breath.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for one hundred and thirty-eight years,’ Riv explained. Of course, the day he had been frozen had been a day of battle, much like this.

  She waved a hand at the conflict all around them. ‘This isn’t your Day of Wrath, when the Kadoshim were defeated and you and Asroth were encased in starstone metal. That happened a long time ago.’

  Meical rubbed a hand over his eyes and pinched his nose, processing Riv’s words. He sighed and let out a long breath.

  A lot for him to take in, but I don’t have time for this. Riv needed to find Aphra, and below that emotion was a deeper, darker pool tugging at her, that ever-present current of rage whispering to forget all else and just kill every enemy she encountered. There were Kadoshim and their followers everywhere, and they needed to die.

  A hand gripped her shoulder.

  ‘Tell me,’ Meical said, his eyes focusing on Riv, his confusion and grief of moments before gone, the pain in his eyes shut away.

  ‘The Kadoshim have attacked Drassil,’ she said quickly, ‘released you and Asroth from your gaol.’ She thought about that. ‘They set Asroth free, and you were just a by-product of that.’

  Meical nodded. ‘They were about to kill me,’ he whispered, eyes distant, remembering.

  ‘Aye,’ Riv agreed. ‘They still might, if we don’t get out of here.’

  ‘Who leads the Ben-Elim?’

  Riv shrugged. ‘Kol, if he’s still alive.’

  ‘Kol? What of Israfil?’

  ‘Israfil’s dead.’ She held a hand up to Meical’s questioning look. ‘There’s no time,’ she snapped, the screams of battle still loud. ‘Drassil is fallen, our only hope is to escape. Now!’

  ‘Flee?’ Meical said, his lip curling.

  ‘Yes, flee,’ Riv growled. She didn’t like the thought of running away, either – it left a bad taste in her mouth – but living was better than dying. With a beat of her wings, Riv shrugged off Meical’s grip and rose into the air, hovering above him. Meical’s eyes took in her dapple-grey feathers.

  ‘You are not Ben-Elim,’ Meical said, eyebrows knotting. ‘What are you?’

  ‘I told you, there’s no more time for talking,’ Riv said, her patience fraying, thinking of Aphra out there, fighting, needing her. ‘If we get out of here, I’ll answer all your questions, but right now we need to get moving.’ She twirled the short-sword in her fist. ‘I’m leaving. You can stay and die, or fly and live.’ She beat her wings, climbing higher into the air, and looked down at him.

  Meical stared at her, then looked beyond her, at the battle-stained skies.

  ‘Give me a sword,’ he snarled.

  She grinned back fiercely, threw her short-sword to him and drew her other blade from its scabbard.

  Meical caught the sword, hefted it for balance, then crouched and leaped into the air. His wings were wide and bright white – a pure-bred Ben-Elim, unlike her ‘tainted’ half-breed blood, as the others considered her.

  The courtyard below was a swirling maelstrom of combat, clusters of White-Wings in their shield walls still holding against the Kadoshim’s acolytes swarming around them. Here and there Riv glimpsed da
rker groups of the pale-faced, sharp-toothed things that she had fought in Forn Forest. They were shaped like men and women, but they fought like nothing Riv had ever seen before, an unfettered ferocity that was more animal than human. And they were hard to kill, decapitation seeming to be the only way to put one of them down permanently.

  Riv had seen three war-hosts of these creatures swarming towards Drassil’s walls. She knew there was no standing against them – they were too many.

  In the air about them Ben-Elim fought with Kadoshim and their half-breed offspring. Riv twisted and turned through the combat, part of her desperate to wade in and spill the blood of her enemy, but she had helped Aphra and a few score White-Wings fight free of Drassil’s hall, and now she feared what had become of them since she had turned back to rescue Meical.

  A blast of turbulent air was her only warning. She twisted, seeing the leathery wings and flat features of a Kadoshim half-breed, the glint of steel as a sword stabbed at her. With a few strong wing strokes, she halted her trajectory and defended. Sparks flew as she deflected the blade, but the half-breed’s momentum carried him on. He crashed into her and they spun through the air together, locked in battle, snarling and spitting in each other’s eyes as they fought to be the victor.

  Riv wrapped one arm around her attacker’s waist, dragged herself closer and slammed her forehead into his face. Cartilage shattered, blood spurted, but the half-breed just spat curses at her and tried to smash his sword hilt into Riv’s skull.

  She turned, felt air rush past her face as the hilt skimmed her. A twist of her arm as she drew back her own weapon for a killing thrust.

  The half-breed suddenly stiffened, eyes and mouth wide with surprise, a tide of blood bubbling from his lips, his lungs pierced and flooding. Then he slumped, plummeting to the ground.

  Meical hovered in the air, his sword red, his face cold and hard with hatred. He threw Riv’s short-sword back to her, another, longer sword in his fist now, plucked from the half-breed’s dying fingers.

  ‘I had him,’ Riv snarled, resenting Meical for taking her kill.

  ‘You said we need speed,’ Meical reminded her.

  Aphra.

  Riv bit back an angry retort, sheathed her swords, tucked a wing and turned northwards.

  The main gate into Drassil was on the western wall, and that was where the fighting had been fiercest. Cheren horse-archers, led by their traitorous queen, Jin, had taken the gate and held it for the Kadoshim’s acolytes, allowing them to pour into Drassil, and close behind them had come the cloud-shrouded monsters from Forn Forest.

  There would be no escape for any on foot through those gates.

  But, for those with knowledge, there were more ways out of Drassil.

  Riv beat her wings faster and soon the air was clearing of fighting Ben-Elim and Kadoshim. A glance over her shoulder showed that Meical was close behind. She veered right, twisting and diving low, speeding along mostly empty streets, buildings rearing either side of her. Here and there people were running, not warriors – the White-Wing barracks were all situated to the south of the fortress – but traders and their families. Riv’s heart went out to them.

  How can they defend themselves against the Kadoshim and their host?

  ‘MAKE FOR THE EAST GATE!’ Riv yelled to them as she sped over their heads.

  A turn southwards, the sound of screams drifted on the air, growing louder, the clatter of hooves. Riv’s gut instinct was drawing her to the sounds of battle, but with an act of will she veered left, down another empty street, heading eastwards.

  Again, the sounds of battle faded and Riv gave herself to her wings. They beat a storm, speeding her through Drassil’s cobbled streets, whipping up a trail of leaves and dirt in her wake. The speed ripped tears from her eyes, sending her fair hair streaking in the air like a wind-whipped banner. Fear for Aphra, her sister – no, her mother – gave her wings even more strength, buildings passing by at a dizzying pace.

  The thought of Aphra lying in a pool of her own blood with a Kadoshim standing over her would not leave Riv’s mind.

  A riderless horse jolted her back to the present. A warrior’s foot was tangled in the stirrup, his body dragging along the ground.

  One of the Cheren. Riv recognized the rider with his shaved head and warrior braid. Battle-cries echoed from the direction the horse had appeared. Riv swept on, turned a corner, and the street and buildings disappeared as Drassil’s weapons-field opened up before her. Riv had grown up in Drassil, and most of those seventeen years had been spent on this field. It was the place she loved most, the place she had learned to become a warrior, and even though much violence had been practised here, it had always felt like a place of safety, of camaraderie.

  And now it was filled with blood and screams.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DREM

  ‘Drem,’ Byrne called, and he hurried past the bulk of Balur to walk alongside his aunt. To either side, carved out of the cave walls, were more open cells, iron bars rusted. Here and there a smaller tunnel branched off. At each of these one of Byrne’s guards stopped, a guardian against any hidden foes creeping up on them out of the darkness.

  This is not a good place to be caught in an ambush, Drem thought.

  Balur stuck his head inside one of the open cells, holding a torch he’d taken from the wall and lit with Keld’s. He wrinkled his nose and spat.

  ‘When you came here before, did you enter this place?’ Byrne asked Drem.

  ‘No,’ Drem replied. He had been to the mine twice: once on his own, searching for his father’s murderers, and once with Sig, Keld and Cullen. ‘I did hear . . . things, in here, though.’

  ‘What things?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Ferals, I think,’ Drem said, straining his memories. ‘It was the night Sig fell. We were fighting, out there.’ He nodded back towards the circle of daylight disappearing behind them. ‘Cullen was standing on the table, I was with Sig.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Keld opened the cages in the cliff face, letting the Ferals who weren’t loyal to Fritha out. It was chaos, you understand, but I can remember hearing howling, like a storm, deafening, echoing out of the tunnel mouth.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Byrne said. ‘Ferals.’ She nodded, looking either side of them. ‘A lot of empty cages.’

  ‘They’re not here now, though, more’s the pity,’ a voice said behind Drem. Cullen, he realized.

  Byrne looked at Cullen and frowned. ‘So, where are the Ferals now?’

  ‘Food for crows,’ Cullen said, grinning. ‘We carved them all up back in the Desolation.’

  Drem shook his head. ‘There are a lot of cages down here,’ he said.

  Byrne nodded. ‘We fought many Ferals, but this many?’

  Ahead of them the torch stopped moving. Keld was standing and staring at something ahead. Drem saw Fen take a few steps ahead of Keld, muscles tense and coiled, as if he was hunting something. Ralla, the red-furred hound that had belonged to another hunter lost in the battle at the Desolation, paced forwards with a deep-throated growl, to stand beside Fen.

  The group moved to join Keld, staring ahead to where the tunnel entered a large chamber. The scuff of their boots on stone echoed into the dark. The path curved left and right into the darkness.

  A cavern?

  A terrible smell pervaded the air. Decay, faeces and urine.

  And before them was a drop, their torchlight flickering down into what looked like a pit, the sides too uniform to have been made naturally. It was deep, but in the dim light Drem saw shadowed shapes on the ground, utterly still. Without thinking, his seax was in his fist.

  Balur stepped to the side and raised his torch to a sconce in the wall, lighting another torch, its flames crackling into life and illuminating more of the room.

  Cullen slipped past them and walked along the left pathway, taking the torch and lighting others set into the walls.

  Light slowly seeped into the chamber. Drem saw that the motionless shapes in the pit were cadavers, piles of skin
and bone. Misshapen skeletons with long claws and too many teeth, elongated spines, sometimes a clump of fur.

  ‘Ferals,’ Utul said.

  ‘Dead Ferals,’ Cullen said, looking down into the pit with interest. ‘Anything that did walk or draw breath is long gone.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Or long dead.’

  A sound drifted out of the darkness.

  A scraping and wheezing.

  The sound was coming from the pit.

  Something crawled out of the shadows, human-like in shape, in that it had a head, two arms and two legs, but there were patches of fur on an elongated skull, its lower jaw was distended, teeth like tusks curling out over its snout, and its hind legs were bunched and misshapen with muscle. With one long-clawed hand it reached forwards to dig into the hard-packed earth and drag itself along. The other arm was twisted tight to its body, like an old, arthritic man’s. It made a snuffling, rasping sound from deep in its throat.

  Fen and Ralla’s growling grew deeper, more malevolent.

  A Feral, Drem thought, though it didn’t resemble the creatures he had fought in the Desolation. They were all mutated, twisted beings, animals and humans merged with dark magic. But the animal part of most of the creatures Drem had fought resembled wolven. This thing before him looked more as if it had started life as a boar.

  ‘I’ll put it out of its misery,’ Cullen said, with a grimace.

  Before Byrne could say anything, Cullen had jumped into the pit. He threw his torch behind the crawling thing, revealing an empty space behind the creature.

  Cullen’s sword hissed from its scabbard.

  The thing on the ground had seen or smelled Cullen and dragged itself towards the red-haired warrior. It left gouged tracks in the ground behind it, and in its wake some kind of dark fluid moistened the hard earth.

  It crawled to a stop before Cullen, taking deep snorting breaths, apparently exhausted.

  ‘Poor beast,’ Cullen said.