A Time of Courage

by John Gwynne

  ‘You question my leadership, Vachir?’ Jin said quietly.

  He stared into her eyes, looked about at Cheren warriors, working at stripping the dead, but listening. He stood straighter.

  ‘The leader of the Cheren must be able to do more than slaughter a bound prisoner,’ he said loudly. ‘Skilled with bow, blade and wits, that is what the Clan requires in their king, or queen.’

  A silence settled between them.

  ‘Aye, that is how you slew Erdene, is it not? A sword-thrust from behind, Erdene bound and beaten, on her knees.’ He sneered. ‘My youngest bairn could do such a thing. No great honour in that. No great skill.’

  Others were listening now, Cheren warriors up and down the valley, pausing at their tasks.

  ‘And now you lead us blindly, following this Bleda like an auroch bull with a ring through your nose. Tricked, our kin slaughtered.’ Vachir looked at the Cheren dead. ‘Where are your wits? Where is your skill?’

  Gerel took a step forwards, hand rising for his sword hilt.

  ‘Hold,’ Jin said, a gesture at Gerel.

  ‘I will show you my skill,’ she said quietly, resting a hand on the bow in its case at her hip, ‘if you wish. If you challenge me.’

  He stared at her, silence thick and heavy around him.

  Then he was reaching for his bow, his other hand grasping a fistful of arrows.

  Jin’s bow slipped into her hand, her other hovering over her quiver. She waited, aware of the gradient, the wind, the ground about her feet.

  Vachir’s first arrow was nocked, drawing back to his ear.

  Jin moved as he loosed. She grabbed three arrows, dropped to her left, tucked her shoulder and rolled, right hand in her quiver. Vachir’s first arrow hissed through the space she had been standing in, came out of the roll as the second arrow crunched into the stony ground a handspan from where she knelt. Her first and second arrows nocked, drawn, loosed in quick succession. She rolled again, Vachir’s third arrow skimming her shoulder, mail links tearing.

  A yell, a thud.

  She came out of her roll with her last arrow aimed.

  She didn’t need it.

  Vachir was on the ground.

  She stood and strode up to him, her heart pounding, chest heaving, the thrill of violence and the closeness of death surging through her veins. Gerel was a shadow at her shoulder, Tark and the others following behind.

  Vachir had one arrow in his hip and another between shoulder and neck. It had punched deep, through mail, wool and linen into flesh, just below his clavicle. Blood pulsed from both wounds.

  ‘I lead the Cheren,’ Jin said, standing over Vachir. ‘I have earned that right.’ She drew her bow, aimed her arrow into Vachir’s face, her blood yearning for his death.

  He stared back at her, a brave man facing his end with a snarl.

  She blew out a long breath, loosened the tension on her bow.

  ‘Your life is mine,’ she said to Vachir. ‘Mine to take, mine to give. Death or life, your choice. Will you follow me?’

  He looked up at her, mastering his pain, a change in his eyes, the slow realization that he could live, if he wanted to.

  ‘I will follow you,’ he grunted.

  She slipped her arrow back into its quiver and offered him her hand, pulled him upright. He grunted with the effort, but stood beside her.

  ‘You were close,’ she said, showing him the split links on her mail coat.

  ‘Not close enough,’ he breathed, then bowed his head to her.

  ‘My Cheren people,’ Jin called out, turning to look at her warriors. Thousands of faces, shaven-haired, long warrior braids, a hard, strong people. Her people. ‘I have slain our enemy’s queen, led you into the Sirak lands, crushed and burned every hold, turned their Heartland to ashes. All that remains is to destroy their homeless king and his handful of vagabond followers.’

  She saw pride fill Cheren faces, shoulders straighten and chests puff out.

  ‘I do not know where Bleda has gone,’ she cried, ‘but I do know where he is going. To the Tethys Pass and then Ripa, to meet with his puppet-masters and his half-breed whore. That is where I am going to lead you. And if he has reached there first, then we shall follow him, to the ends of the earth if needs be. Until our victory is complete, until he and his followers are dead, and the Sirak name is nothing more than a bloodstain at our feet.’

  ‘HAI!’ cheered the Cheren.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  DREM

  Drem sat in the hall of Brikan, Keld’s body in his arms. Time passed, people moving before him, crouching, saying things. Drem thought one of them had been Halden, blood-spattered and angry. He was gone now. All Drem could see was Keld’s face, his empty eyes, blood congealing on his lips.

  Like my da.

  Horns rang in the distance.

  Fen lay against Keld’s body, blood crusting in his fur. The wolven-hound was whining quietly, a plaintive, melancholy sound. To one side the white bear stood, head bowed as if he were in mourning, too.

  A hand on Drem’s shoulder, the whisper of wings.

  Faelan knelt beside him, looked down at Keld.

  ‘Ah, but this is a grave loss,’ the half-breed said sadly. He rested a hand upon Keld’s chest, murmured words. ‘You should let him go,’ Faelan said. ‘He is gone.’

  ‘No,’ Drem said. He did not want to let Keld go. It was strange, he had known the man only a short time, but they had been through so much together. Keld had saved his life, countless times over. Without even knowing it, Keld had become a man that Drem loved. Like a brother. Like a father. Like a friend.

  He had had few friends in his life, his da filling that space for so many years, and that had been enough for him. But since the Order had come into his life it had seemed that there was a family about him. It felt strange, and good. And yet they all just kept on dying.

  My father. Sig. Stepor. Now Keld.

  He felt short of breath, a cold fist around his heart, squeezing.

  The flapping of wings, talons scraping on stone and Rab was there.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the bird squawked. ‘Not Keld. Brave Keld, Keld Rab’s friend.’ He bobbed his head, hopped about on the stone, then laid his white-feathered head against Keld’s hand, ran his beak over it. The crow looked up at Drem, hopped up to him, a flutter of wings and he was on Drem’s shoulder.

  ‘Rab sad, Drem sad,’ the crow croaked in Drem’s ear.

  ‘Yes,’ Drem breathed.

  Horn calls again, louder, now, the sound of hooves across Brikan’s bridge and into the courtyard. Voices calling out. Someone shouting his name, and Keld’s.

  Cullen.

  Hooves clattering on the keep’s steps, louder, echoing as a horse was ridden into the hall.

  ‘Drem,’ Cullen cried, the young warrior leaping from his saddle, boots slapping on stone, and he was running, falling to the ground beside Drem, throwing himself upon Keld’s body.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ Cullen was murmuring. He rocked on his knees, cupping Keld’s cheeks in his palms, and looked up at Drem. Tears streaked his cheeks, snot hung from his nose.

  ‘Who?’ Cullen said, face twisting between grief and snarl.

  ‘Gulla, and Morn, his daughter,’ Drem whispered. ‘I tried . . .’ He felt a wave of guilt, that he had not saved Keld. The huntsman had saved him so many times, always watching out for him, guarding his back.

  ‘Where are they?’ Cullen said, one moment terrifyingly cold, the next weeping, grimacing.

  ‘Gone, back into the forest,’ Drem said. In truth he did not know. ‘Kadoshim, half-breeds, Revenants,’ he murmured.

  More people were entering the keep, orders shouted. Drem heard Byrne’s voice.

  ‘Thank the Bright Star you live,’ she said, appearing beside him, crouching and throwing her arms around Drem, hugging him tight. She let him go, looked down at Keld.

  ‘Ach,’ she said, her lips twisting. She stroked Keld’s head, blinked tears from her eyes.

&nb
sp; The sound of feet. Drem realized that Cullen was no longer beside him. He turned, saw Cullen leaping into his saddle, drawing his sword.

  ‘Cullen, what are you doing?’ Byrne cried.

  ‘Hah,’ Cullen shouted, urging his horse into motion, dragging on his reins, and the animal was turning, cantering out of the keep, across the courtyard.

  ‘What is that fool doing, now?’ Byrne snapped.

  ‘He wants revenge,’ Drem said. Gently he lifted Keld’s head from his lap and laid it on the cold stone, then stood.

  ‘I’ll bring him back,’ he said, climbing into Friend’s saddle. The bear lifted his head, rumbled a growl at Drem and then they were moving.

  ‘Faelan, take some of your kin, watch over them,’ Drem heard Byrne call out behind him. Then he was out in the courtyard, the place full of the dead, warriors beginning to gather them. He glimpsed Queen Nara with her battlechief, the two of them lifting a body together.

  Cullen was halfway across the bridge, his horse close to a gallop. Drem leaned over in his saddle and whispered in Friend’s ear. The bear increased his speed, heading for the shattered gateway. People leaped out of the way and then they were on the bridge, a few heartbeats later beyond it, trees rising tall, branches closing overhead, twilight settling about Drem like a cloak.

  ‘CULLEN!’ Drem yelled, but if he heard, he gave no indication of it. Cullen galloped on, guiding his horse down a hard-packed road that led away from the keep, travelling roughly north-east, by what Drem could make out from the sun and his memory of maps Keld had shown him of Brikan and the surrounding terrain.

  Keld.

  A knife in his heart, the pain surging all over again.

  He glanced behind him. Brikan was fading into a pale light at the end of a rapidly narrowing tunnel.

  In front of Drem, Cullen galloped on, bent low over his saddle. But he was riding a horse. Friend was bigger, surprisingly fast when he needed to be. His lurching gait was gaining on Cullen.

  The world was degrees of shade now, the odd beam of light where sunlight managed to pierce the canopy. Something flitted across the ground before Drem, the hint of a shadow. Drem glanced up, saw broad, feathered wings, others further away.

  Faelan and his kin.

  Behind him, faint as morning mist, the sound of hooves.

  ‘CULLEN!’ Drem called again.

  His horse cannot gallop forever, they must slow soon. Gulla and his Revenants must be long gone by now.

  On into the forest they thundered.

  Curls of mist crept across the forest path. Drem felt a seed of worry. His hand went to his belt. His scabbard was empty, sword given to Halden. His axe was gone, lodged in Gulla’s back, only his seax was in its sheath.

  Cullen slowed, then dragged on his reins, his mount skidding to a halt. A moment’s pause as he stared into the forest, and then he was spurring his horse off the path, into the trees.

  ‘NO!’ Drem yelled, but Cullen was already gone. A whispered word and Friend slowed. They reached the point where Cullen had left the road. Dark mist churned sluggishly on the forest path. A fox’s trail ran through thicket and vine. Drem stared into the shadows, thought he saw the hint of movement, heard the drum of hooves. He looked up, saw the silhouette of feathered wings high above.

  ‘Friend?’ Drem said, unsure if the bear could move into the forest here, the foliage so dense. Friend lurched forwards, pulverizing a path into the darkness.

  Well, that was easier than I thought.

  They moved into a twilight world, Friend unexpectedly nimble, threading amongst wide-boled trees, able to find a way through branch and tangled brush, and when he couldn’t, he simply smashed through any obstruction in front of him.

  Not much good at stealth, though. We won’t be sneaking up on Cullen like this.

  There was a flicker of movement up ahead, and then Cullen’s horse came into view. It was drinking at a stream, Cullen gone from its back. The forest grew thicker here, a snarl of thicket and thorn.

  Mist grew denser about them. Now that Friend had stopped moving, Drem noticed a change in the forest.

  It was silent. No birdsong or crow-call, just the rustle and scrape of branches high above. A spot in the undergrowth that had been hacked, a ragged trail. Movement between the trees, what looked like the flash of Cullen’s red hair. And something else, further ahead. A shape flitting through the forest.

  A Revenant?

  ‘On,’ Drem said, and Friend shifted into motion, smashing a line through the dense overgrowth, straight after Cullen and whatever it was that the warrior was chasing.

  They gained, Cullen having to thread his way through the underwood where Friend just walked through it. The thing Cullen was chasing was closer, too. Human in shape, mist curled around it, and it had that stuttered motion that marked it as a Revenant.

  But it moved oddly, though.

  It was limping.

  The forest grew lighter.

  Fifty paces between Drem and Cullen now. Ten paces between Cullen and the Revenant. It seemed to be alone, no wall of mist nearby, no other Revenants moving through the forest here.

  It is injured, has fallen behind.

  It was stumbling through the brushwood, snatching glances back at Cullen, who was shouting and raging, swinging his sword wildly at the undergrowth in front of them, frothing and snarling like a mad man.

  Drem was thirty paces away, now, and then Cullen leaped at the Revenant, the two of them falling, crashing into the bushes. Friend ploughed on, lumbered to a halt a dozen steps from where Cullen had disappeared. Drem slid from his saddle, slipping his seax from its scabbard. He hit the ground running, ready to stab the Revenant and drag Cullen free.

  But they were gone.

  Drem prodded the ground with his seax, could see where it had been flattened. He followed the trail a few paces, and then saw the ground fall away. A steep slope down to a stream forty or fifty paces below, some kind of ravine, a sheer cliff rising on the other side.

  The forest was lighter here, daylight filtering in where the canopy thinned over the ravine.

  Shouts, screams echoed up to Drem. He leaned, peered down, saw Cullen and the Revenant fighting. Then he was scrambling down the slope, his seax back in its scabbard, clinging to roots and vines as he fell more than climbed down the slope. He tumbled out onto the ravine floor and drew his blade.

  The Revenant was dead. More than dead. Cullen was swinging his blade, chopping at the creature as it lay upon the ground, hacking it into something unrecognizable. He was screaming, and crying, his voice hoarse.

  Drem sheathed his seax again, and wrapped his arms around Cullen. The warrior resisted for a moment, then dropped his sword and turned into Drem, hugging him back. His body shook with sobs.

  ‘Keld,’ Cullen said, over and over, as if his name would bring the huntsman back. Drem felt fresh tears filling his own eyes, an ocean of grief swelling inside him.

  He did not know how long they stood there like that, only that eventually Cullen’s sobs quieted, and then they were stepping apart.

  ‘I’ll kill them all,’ he said, wiping his nose. ‘Gulla, Morn, every last Revenant that walks this earth. Pile their skulls at Keld’s feet.’

  ‘Leave a few for me,’ Drem said, in his mind Gulla and Morn looming large, and Fritha behind them.

  And Asroth, the ultimate creator of all of this grief.

  A rumbling growl drifted down to them. Friend was standing at the top of the ravine, peering out through the trees, looking at them.

  ‘Where are we?’ Cullen said.

  ‘Somewhere in Forn.’ Drem shrugged. ‘I just followed you.’

  ‘Forn Forest is a big place. Bigger than a country.’

  Drem looked around, a fast-flowing stream was close by, bubbling around moss-covered stones, the ground soft and green.

  In the shadows of the cliff something dark loomed.

  ‘What’s that?’ Cullen said, bending quickly to pick up his sword.

  Drem st
epped closer, hand on the hilt of his seax.

  ‘It’s a cabin,’ he said, approaching it. He stepped lightly across the stream, boots splashing in water, and then he was on the other side, walking up wooden steps onto a cabin porch. The timber creaked, damp and rotten.

  Footsteps splashing and Cullen was behind him.

  A tree had grown through the floorboards of the timber porch, wood splintered and rotten. Drem could just make out shuttered windows, thick with vine. A door hung half-open, one hinge gone.

  Above the door a skull had been nailed to the timber frame. The bone was bleached by weather. It was human in shape, but somehow different, bigger, the planes of cheek and brow sharper, more angular. And to either side of the door were nailed two wings. Dark, leathery, desiccated and crumbling, only the bone and cartilage of wing-arches intact.

  Even so, it was clear to Drem what it had been in life.

  ‘A Kadoshim,’ he breathed.

  Drem pushed the door open with one hand, peered inside, waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadows, then stepped into the cabin.

  A single room, a table and chair. The air was thick and musty.

  Cullen squeezed in behind Drem, his sword pointing into the corners of the room.

  On one wall more skulls were nailed, all of them similar to the one outside, a dozen Kadoshim.

  ‘Whoever lived here, I think I like them,’ Cullen whispered.

  In the corner was a bed.

  Drem strode over and gazed down at it.

  A skeleton lay upon the bed. Clothes hung in tatters on bones, a rusted mail coat. A book and a longsword lay across the skeleton’s chest, hands that had clearly once gripped the hilt had fallen away.

  ‘The room’s clear,’ Cullen said. Then the pad of footsteps and Cullen was behind Drem, peering around him.

  A gasp.

  ‘It can’t be,’ Cullen said.

  Drem’s eyes were fixed on the hilt of the sword. A-hand-and-a-half grip, the pommel fashioned into the shape of a howling wolven.

  Drem had seen that sword hilt before, on a carved statue that stood in the courtyard of Dun Seren.