“What about their daemon allies?” Secca asked.
I looked to Eva, who answered for me. “The breed and number remains unknown to the Arcanum at this time. I expect the Clansfolk will be able to provide more details.”
“Speaking of numbers,” Bryden said. “How many of the disgusting overseas savages do we face?”
“Our seers estimated a Skallgrim force numbering four to five thousand,” she replied. “With at least a handful of halrúna shaman and an unknown number of daemon allies.”
“And how many do we have?” I asked. “Seven magi and a hundred wardens.”
A magus could be worth over a hundred armed wardens at times, but still…ouch.
“Pardon?” Granville said. “I thought the Free Towns Alliance was sending an army?”
Eva unfurled a scroll. “Still ten days off according to the messenger this morning. Doubtless they will not mind us killing each other before they arrive in time to drink up all the glory.”
That silenced us all for a few stunned moments, then Secca spoke. “Their own towns stand directly in the path of destruction should the Skallgrim be allowed to pass through the Clanholds. Why do they still choose to play these petty games of politics?”
Granville scowled and ignored her, “How many warriors can the Clanholds field?”
Cormac answered: “Dun Bhailiol and Dun Clachan are regarded much as we in the Old Town view the inhabitants of the Warrens and East Docklands. The other nearby holdfasts will be unlikely to offer up any sizeable force when they can fortify their own holds instead. Combined, these two holdfasts can field a thousand at most. As for Kil Noth…” He glanced to me, unsure of how to phrase it, given my family name.
“Their army cannot take Kil Noth,” I said with finality. “How can you be so sure?” Eva said, her eye scrutinising me behind that impassive steel mask.
“I’ve been there,” I replied. “No army can take it, not even one backed by halrúna blood sorcerers and daemons. There are worse things than those dwelling in the darkness beneath Kil Noth.” My mother’s ancestral home was a fucking death-trap and the place where the first druí made their pacts with ancient spirits. It was a sacred place inhabited by fanatics.
“They may have more of those devices that brought down the Templarum Magestus,” Eva countered. “If they do, then no fortress can be safe.”
I had to concede the point. Not even ancient holdfasts cut deep into the stony hearts of mountains would survive that. We discussed the known details of the expedition and learned much from Eva’s experience. She was young as magi went, but as a knight she had already seen more conflict than most wardens ever would, and a few summers campaigning with the legions overseas ensured she was one of the very few people this side of the Cyrulean Sea with any actual experience of full-blown warfare. Or she had been before last autumn.
“We are not here to win,” she said as a parting statement. “All we have to do is delay them long enough to allow Archmagus Krandus to take Ironport and advance on their rear-guard. Then the enemy will be stranded in the Clanholds with no base and no supplies, with the Setharii army behind them and the Free Towns Alliance ahead.”
It sounded like a desperate and dangerous plan, but it was all we had. Come tomorrow we would be led into the heart of the Clanholds, and there were only a few on my own side I trusted not to stab me in the back.
Surprise! Nothing ever goes to plan where good things for me are concerned: our guides never arrived.
While I trained my aeromancy, the wardens and my coterie spent their time at weapon practice and working out cramped and stiff muscles. We waited all day, and half-way through the next again before Eva called it. She didn’t even ask for her commander’s opinion, not that I had anything worthwhile to add.
“Something must have happened to them, but we cannot afford to wait any longer – we must advance into the Clanholds under our own guidance. Walker, Cormac, do you know anything about this area?”
Cormac shook his head but I grimaced and gave a hesitant nod. “I might know the way from here to Kil Noth.” The memory was mostly of a blind and bloodied flight to freedom heading in the other direction. “I’d rather head for Dun Clachan or Dun Bhailiol.”
“I’m sure we would all rather be heading somewhere else,” she replied. “But unless you know the way then we have no other option.”
I couldn’t think of any polite and reasonable response, so despite my fears, it had to be Kil Noth. I consoled myself by remembering that I was not the weak and whining man I once was, nor was I wearing the mask of a drunken wastrel that had in truth grown into far more than a mere mask. I had killed a god and destroyed monsters. Surely now I could face down my own grandmother?
I flexed my right hand, testing the increasing stiffness. There would be a steep price for her help. And if she refused, well, then I would just have to force her in my own dreadful way. That malicious viper deserved everything I could inflict upon her.
And so we entered the Clanholds without a guide.
CHAPTER 10
My coterie and I pulled up the hoods of our cloaks and went forward with the scouts, following the course of the half-frozen river that cut through valley floor, deeper snow crumping underfoot. The rest of our force snaked out in single file a long way behind us as the foothills grew into looming grey mountains on either side, the sheer cliff faces appearing as if icy giants had carved passages through the mountains with their bare hands back in the dawn days of the world.
All was still in the valley ahead, with only the gush and gurgle of water and the mournful, distant cry of a lonely hawk to break the silence. It felt good to be away from the bulk of our army, as if a huge mental pressure was dissipating. My coterie’s thoughts were only a muted buzz in the back of my mind, peaceful compared to the deafening hubbub of Setharis or the middle of camp. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be alone with my thoughts, and I picked up the pace to gain even more distance. It was so wearying to constantly keep from clamouring in my head.
The scouts signalled they had found something and led me to a squat stone farmhouse every bit as drab and gloomy as most Clanholds homes. Above the mossy turf roof no smoke drifted from the chimney, and there was no sign of sheep or goats within the fenced garden or barn. The place was abandoned, but signs of recent habitation were everywhere. Iron tools had been left to rust out in the snow by the doorway, something no poor farmer would ever contemplate unless their lives were in immediate danger. A swathe of snow had been cleared from the doorway within the last few days, and footprints led to and from the barn but nowhere else.
I opened my Gift and searched the area for living minds, but found only those I’d brought with me. “Place seems safe,” I said. “Baldo, Coira – check inside.”
Seconds later Baldo came lurching back out. He doubled over and spewed steaming brown gunk across the white snow. Coira merely looked a little pale. “Chief, you’d better eyeball this mess.”
The iron-tang miasma of days-old blood hit me as I ducked under the low lintel and stepped inside. If this had been last year I might have joined Baldo outside. But I’d seen much worse.
My right hand started itching something fierce and I absently scratched beneath the glove while inspecting the wrecked home. A table lay overturned and broken in half amongst shattered pottery and a pool of iced stew. We found the sheep and goats, and the farmers too judging from the gnawed human hand by my boot. Gore and chunks of congealed flesh coated the walls, now frozen solid. It was some sort of beast’s macabre den.
“Send somebody to fetch Magus Evangeline Avernus,” I said to Jovian. “The rest of you stand guard outside.” My people looked grateful for that but the scouts hovered by the door, indecisive. “Well? Spit it out?”
“Begging your pardon, M’lord Magus,” a grizzled veteran in thick white furs said. “We was wondering if we should go on ahead, see what else we can find. Look for ambushes and tracks and suchlike.”
“You’re the bl
oody scouts,” I said. “You know better than anybody what needs done. That’s probably more use than standing around here.”
They were clearly not used to making their own orders, but after a moment’s confusion they bobbed their heads and then resumed their trek up the valley.
Alone in the house, I looked for signs of what had occurred. On impulse I slipped my right glove off and put my palm against the wall, pressing hard. Frost crunched but it was solid blood-ice beneath, and didn’t melt immediately at the touch. The back of my hand was now a hard black mass the colour and feel of wrought iron, and it was spreading up my fingers. As the frozen blood began to melt beneath my palm the itching disappeared and I felt a little faint, and a little hungry. I really didn’t want to think too deeply about what that creepy-as-fuck sensation meant.
Heavy footsteps crunched towards the doorway in a hurry.
I wiped my hand on my coat and pulled the glove back on just before Eva arrived with a naked sword in her hands. The blade was just normal steel rather than her old spirit-bound blade that had shattered on the heart of the Magash Mora – a blade that could cut through normal steel like it was soft cheese was a sore loss for anybody, as I knew only too well. She sheathed it and surveyed every inch of the slaughterhouse, pausing to examine scores and marks in broken wood and walls, and the wounds left in frozen flesh and bone.
“Daemons,” she pronounced. “I’ve seen madmen do much the same,” I said.
She pointed up to claw marks either side of wooden beams. “Did they also hang from the rafters like a bat?”
“Ah. That might explain our lack of local guides then.” Great. Flying daemons were just what we needed.
“Indeed. I will pass the word to watch the skies.” She made to leave but I stepped to block the doorway.
I grimaced and scratched my bristly chin. “I’m sorry for before. Nobody wants to be pitied. I was just lamenting my own lack of power. You’re a bloody fierce fighter and I’d rather have nobody else fighting at my side. I hope we can still be friends.”
Her green eye stared at me, face hidden behind the impassive steel mask. “When did we ever start?” She brushed past me and marched away to reorganise our army. In her wake she left a lingering aura of pain in my head, a weak taste of what she suffered every hour of every day.
What I really wanted to say was how bitterly I regretted what she’d had to suffer through, and how sorry I was that I didn’t, somehow, prevent it. But she didn’t need or want that. What would it solve? No, what she needed was a purpose – what’s the point of enduring all that pain and surviving for no good reason? It also might help if I wasn’t such a ham-fisted clod about it all.
I stepped out and eyed the wooden barn and fencing, then nodded to the farmhouse. “Burn it,” I said to Nareene. She whooped with joy and set about incinerating what was left of those poor bastards’ bodies coating the walls of their home.
The scouts found the remainder of our Clansfolk guides half a league further up the valley. Or at least we assumed the scraps of bone, chewed furs and broken steel laying in red-spattered snow were theirs. There were no other tracks, just the boot prints of three men churned up in a circle. One of the scouts pointed to a line of red stains heading towards the sheer cliff walls, and then continuing straight up sheer rock. Red icicles hung like bloody fangs from an outcrop far above our heads.
That night we set camp uneasily in a moderate blizzard, sipped our ale ration listlessly and slept fitfully. The sentries scanned the sky as much as the valley ahead. Despite our precautions, in the small hours of night I woke with a death-scream ringing in my ears and mind. On my travels I’d long ago grown accustomed to sleeping fully dressed (you never knew when you might have to slip out a window and leg it) so I grabbed my dirk, flung the sheath aside and raced out, magic surging through muscles and into my eyes, a little trick of body magic that granted keener night sight.
Bryden lurched barefoot from his tent, the lanky young git wearing a hideous yellow padded nightgown that moonlight stained the colour of piss. His head whipped to and fro, mouth gawping. Looked like he’d never been in a proper fight in his life!
My Gift located a fading mind all the way up the cliff face.
It was accompanied by something inhuman, and my sharpened eyesight picked out a black shape clinging to the rock, tearing at something with its glistening beaks.
The armoured form of Eva was already blurring towards me, a heavy war-bow fully as tall as herself already strung and an arrow nocked. She skidded to a stop, engulfing me in a wave of powdery snow. “Where is the enemy?”
I pointed to the black mass clinging to the rock far up out of our reach. As a knight, Eva’s physical senses and sight were superior to mine. She grunted. “Bone vulture.” In a single smooth motion she drew and loosed. A distant screech announced a hit. Pebbles clattered down the cliff, followed by a tumbling mass of feathers and snapping beaks. With only a single eye she was a better shot than I would ever be with two.
A shredded human corpse thudded to the earth beside us, the man’s hairy arse jutting naked from the snow. Our missing sentry’s trousers were down around his ankles from where he’d been squatting to dump a shite. It was a fucking embarrassing way to go.
The daemon fell nearby. Eva waved the wardens back, threw aside her bow and advanced on the squawking creature. She didn’t draw a weapon and she didn’t need one. I followed her, keeping her between that thing and me. I was squishy and soft and she was most definitely not.
The bone vulture wasn’t close to being a native animal. The thing’s bones were a hard outer sheath covered in iridescent feathers, and it had vibrant purple knives for claws. It looked more like a four-winged, feathered insect than a bird. One of its two heads shrieked and snapped at Eva, while the other lay limp and motionless with an arrow through its eye.
“They normally appear in flocks,” she said. “Many were summoned during the invasion of Setharis.” She backhanded the snapping beak and it shattered like glass. The daemon bubbled and writhed in the snow.
Before Eva could finish it off I stepped in. “Hold, I want to try something.” It was the first time in my life that I’d had a daemon at my mercy. I’d always been fleeing for my life, always the prey and never the predator. That had to change. Now was the time to see if I could get into their heads like I could with humans. I’d never been able to do it with animals, but this was worth a shot.
I stood motionless and looked inward, probing with my Gift. Its mind was a confusion of half-formed thoughts and slippery as an oiled whore on silken sheets. It was every bit as impossible as trying to get inside an animal’s mind. Perhaps this bone vulture was just an animal hailing from some strange and distant realm.
All the same, I gathered my power and attacked it with crude force, taking a mental battering ram to a nut, again and again in different ways until I found one that appeared to work for these particular daemons. The creature convulsed, stopped moving and lay there drooling green blood and black bile, its mind beaten into scrambled eggs. “I’m done with the fucker now.” It was good to know I could use my Gift in this manner, but frustrating that each type of daemon’s mind would be very different and require unique tactics.
Eva watched me from behind her impassive mask, and I imagined her eyebrow lifted in that suspicious way she used to. She shrugged and kicked the thing. It exploded against the cliff wall in a cloud of feathers and stone dust. “These things are an insult to proper birds.”
That was our first night in the Clanholds. I suspected that warm welcome was just the start of our troubles.
CHAPTER 11
After a hurried breakfast of bread and cheese and a brief spell of morning weapon training, we packed up and hiked through a gentle snowfall up into a wider valley dotted with small farmholds like the one we had passed earlier. All were deserted with no livestock to be seen. Ice-rimmed streams gushed from clefts in the rock face and gathered in the centre of the valley to form a long, narrow lake befor
e taking the lengthy and winding route southwards to reach Barrow Hill and the sea beyond. Tall weatherpitted standing stones jutted from the earth in an apparently haphazard fashion, monoliths left in their ancient seats by superstitious Clansfolk despite taking up prime farmland on the fertile valley floor.
Being geomancers, Cormac and Granville took great interest in the stones, but didn’t have time to do more than a cursory inspection with their magic. Whatever they did find troubled them, and as we marched they remained deep in conversation for several hours.
We kept a wary eye on the handful of bone vultures circling on the air currents high above the valley, watching us. Eva had to restrain our aggravated aeromancer Bryden from using his power to pluck the creatures from the sky. “Not yet,” she said to him. “Never show your hand until you have to.” I caught her glance in my direction as she said it.
I flashed a grin. The mask made it difficult to gauge her expression but she withdrew from my presence and kept her distance. It was probably another mistake, but why should I treat her any different now just because of scars and physical damage? I knew exactly how shallow the flesh was, and I’d liked her. Wasn’t normality what she wanted? I sighed and as we marched onwards I stared up at the fat, drifting snowflakes. If the ordeals of the Black Autumn had taught me anything, it was to cherish every enjoyment you could, while you could.
The valley splintered into four smaller, craggier paths, the widest route heading north east towards Kil Noth and eventually Dun Bhailiol. This was where my knowledge of the geography of the Clanholds ended. Of the valleys and holds located further west and north I had no real idea beyond a handful of names attached to barrels of ale and fine whiskies.
Eva sent scouts racing along every route while we waited, concerned that our larger force might be attacked in the rear by Skallgrim skirmishers. A half hour later word came back that no enemy had been sighted, so we began the advance. Eva and her heavily armoured battle coterie took the spearhead, marching two-abreast through deep snow, followed by Bryden, myself, Cormac, Secca, Granville and then Vincent bringing up the rear.
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