by Leo Carew
The heather waved and bowed beneath the wind, prickling its snow blanket, and a herd of students on the slope below spotted him and hurriedly removed their crude hare-skin slippers. They should have been barefoot, but Salbjorn did not care. He had done the same in his own time here. They were harvesting heather to combine with the shed wool which drifted over the mountain, and lay down as bedding. They stopped to stare as he passed above, and Salbjorn felt an embarrassing gratification to be here without Leon. The students obsessed over his mentor. They had all heard of him, heard of his sword, Silence, and stared at his Prize of Valour. Only a few of the older boys had heard of Salbjorn, who had been a guardsman for just two years.
The path passed the course for the Trial: one of the holiest and most fundamental exercises at the haskoli. Salbjorn had attempted this challenge more times than he could count and to his lasting pride, succeeded once. Most never finished it. He had not understood its purpose in his time here. It was Leon who explained it to him when he first arrived in the Sacred Guard. The Trial did not assess any particular athleticism or skill. It was just hard. You were made to try this near-impossible feat again and again, shouted on by your tutors and contemporaries who crowded round to watch, and compelled by the example of the impossible few who completed it. There was no explanation for why you were asked to do this unreasonable, unachievable thing: you just had to try, again and again and again. And ultimately, with one attempt and then another and another, it just became something Salbjorn had to do. He ceased to question why. He reached the stage where failure seemed a small thing, but conceding, even in the face of the impossible, had become unthinkable.
That was the purpose of the Trial.
It taught asappa, an Anakim term which translated roughly as: You must live with it. It implied sympathy, and was also in some way dismissive: intended to undermine any tendencies towards self-pity. It conveyed responsibility: that this was your lot and nobody else’s. Most importantly, it implied inevitability: this cannot be stopped, or run from. You must face it. It was among the most important concepts imparted at the haskoli. That was why the students faced cold-water immersion when they failed at their tasks. Asappa. That was why you were punished or rewarded as a group: regardless of your own performance, you might still suffer. Asappa. That was the purpose of this academy and of this unreasonable, arbitrary test. To develop people who did not complain, did not give up and paid no heed to their own suffering.
Salbjorn remembered the triumph of his own success, after years of trying. He remembered the disbelief he had felt a few years later when he had heard a young student, who had started just as he left, had equalled the record of completing the Trial on just his fourth attempt. He had even remembered his name: Pryce Rubenson.
He hobbled the steep path up the cliff, and arrived to find Inger sitting contentedly by the edge. She must have heard him approach, but was perfectly still, staring into the billowing snow. “Do you enjoy sitting here?” asked Salbjorn, dropping heavily to one knee, as close to the edge as he dared.
She nodded, smiling out at the mountains. “Yes,” she said simply.
“For any particular reason?”
“It reminds me of my days in the freyi. The treehouses are high off the ground and have no railings. And the void clarifies things, gives a little focus.” She shrugged happily, Salbjorn marvelling that within this freewheeling mind was enough insight to have achieved the esteemed rank of Maven Inquisitor.
“Any progress, then?” he asked.
She nodded. “I think I’ve identified an inconsistency in a couple of the tutors’ stories. I’ll re-question them.”
“Good,” he said. “One of the boys we were speaking to has just revealed he’s seen smoke coming from between two mountains a couple of leagues away.”
“Did he indeed?” She glanced at Salbjorn, smiling. “I fear you are in no state to investigate, my tracker. And Leon needs to guard the boy.”
“I wondered if Leon might go, and take the boy with him,” Salbjorn suggested.
“Do you think that would be safe?”
Salbjorn smiled. “There are perhaps two men in the entire kingdom who might stand a chance against Leon in a fight. I very much doubt our assassin is one of them.”
“Do you think he’d approach Leon head-on?” asked Inger, mildly. “Do you think he’s working alone?” She left a silence there which made Salbjorn shiver. “Our little team is weakened already with your injury. Let’s not send Leon and the boy off in a blizzard to pursue a phantom.”
Embarrassed and frustrated by his own weakness, Salbjorn muttered his agreement and turned to go.
“Don’t let the mountains seduce you on the way back,” Inger called after him. “They’ve almost got me.”
The snow lifted briefly that evening. The winds dropped. The clouds dispersed, save one to the east. It rose as a column from between two mountains: Skafta and Vatni. Salbjorn stared from his upstairs window, fixated on its origin, until darkness hid the peaks.
Though Inger’s manner might suggest she was drifting absently through this investigation, she was meticulous, and it was another three days of questioning before she summoned Salbjorn to her dark interview room. He entered to find Inger seated opposite a black-cloaked tutor. Her round, pale face was fixed on him as he entered, hovering like the moon against her midnight backdrop. “Good timing,” she said, giving a smile. “I’m done with our friend here,” she indicated the Black-Cloak, “would you fetch the next one? And perhaps stay with me after.”
Salbjorn stood aside so that the tutor could leave. She had never asked for company before. “Does this mean you’re about to interview your primary suspect, lady?” He did not need to call her lady. Sacred Guardsmen and Inquisitors were of equal status, but Salbjorn had never met a Maven Inquisitor before and could not shake the feeling that she was invested with powers he did not understand. There was the silver angel on her chest, the white raptor feathers flecking her hair and the undoubted ease with which she conducted this investigation.
Inger twinkled at him. “I have my suspicions. For now, though, we don’t know that he’s done anything. It’s a tutor by the name of Hagen, and we must keep an open mind and assume he’s innocent until we know otherwise.”
Salbjorn bowed. “Absolutely. I’ll go and get the guilty bastard.” He left, limping through the courtyard, where it was still snowing, seeking this new adolescent to be interrogated by the kindly Inquisitor. He returned with Hagen at his side, shutting the door behind them and leaning against it. Hagen glanced nervously over his shoulder at Salbjorn. He was small, brown-haired and pale-faced. There was something frayed about him, a little frantic and a little distracted.
“You don’t seem at your ease for someone who’s been meditating,” observed Inger kindly. “Relax, relax.”
Hagen tried to drop his shoulders, but his eyes still darted about the room.
“It must be an upsetting business, having this investigation occur in your home,” continued Inger. “Confusing too, it seems.” There, she let a pause stretch, which sharpened Salbjorn’s attention. The effect it had on Hagen was far more pronounced, the tutor turning to look wildly at Salbjorn, blocking his exit. Nobody Salbjorn had yet met could use pauses quite like the Inquisitor.
“Confusing?” asked Hagen, eventually.
“Yes, confusing,” said Inger, leaning forward. “Remind me what you were doing on the night that the assassin appeared most recently within the school?”
“I was in the storehouse,” said Hagen, miserably.
He’s crumbling already, thought Salbjorn.
“Doing what?”
“Taking an inventory of the food supplies.”
“Alone?”
“Yes,” he said, voice slightly raised.
“So it must have taken you a while?”
“Yes. But it’s usually done alone.”
“So did anyone walk in and find you doing this?”
There came another pause. “No.
”
“Nobody?” asked Inger, with the air that she had stumbled over this inconsistency by accident.
“No one.”
“I’ve just been speaking to your friend Tarla. He has confessed to entering the storehouse for birch syrup that evening.”
“He’s lying,” said Hagen. “I saw no one.”
“Well one of you is lying,” agreed Inger, her vague manner falling away. “But it’s not him, is it?”
“It’s him!” said Hagen defiantly.
“Then why were you seen leaving this longhouse, just ten minutes before the fire overwhelmed ours? When you claim you were in the stores?”
Salbjorn tensed a little, waiting for what was to come.
“Who saw me?”
“You don’t deny it,” observed Inger.
Hagen was silent.
“Why were you seen emerging from the opposite longhouse, earlier in the day? What business did you have there?”
Hagen still said nothing.
“You were stealing a torch,” concluded Inger. “Which you used, first to signal to the assassin, then set the fire in our longhouse. You signalled to the assassin where Ormur was sleeping, but then Leon spoiled that by going to sleep outside. So you panicked. You set our longhouse ablaze, partly as a diversion to draw Leon away from the boy, and partly to be rid of us.”
Suddenly, Hagen moved. He sprang up with an energy that caught Salbjorn completely by surprise, and jumped at the guardsman, attempting to rip him aside from the door and run. Salbjorn did not even register Inger’s cry of: “Stop him!.” Unprepared though he might have been and still injured, he was a Sacred Guardsman, the tutor merely a half-trained teenager. Salbjorn did not even think, and it was no effort at all to hurl him to the stone floor where he landed with a crunch.
“Well done,” said Inger, who was on her feet. “Pick him up, please.”
Salbjorn bent stiffly to seize Hagen’s cloak and drag him into a seated position, while Inger crouched down in front of him. “That was foolish,” she said. “Now you’re going to tell us everything. You will help us find the assassin.”
“I can’t!” howled Hagen, tears welling over his cheeks. “I can’t! Please! He’ll kill me!”
“Who? Who will kill you?”
“The Ellengaest!”
8
The Trials of King Gogmagoc
The Unhieru laughed. It was a slow noise of grinding rock and sand that filled the dark cave and disturbed Roper profoundly.
Pryce seemed in no mood to delay. “Let’s go,” he said, curtly, using the cord of Unhieru hair he clutched as a leash and dragging the creature towards the exit. His giant captive was forced to follow in a stoop, wary of Pryce’s sword still held beneath its chin, and together they shuffled for the mouth of the cave. Roper glanced at the other Unhieru, which had seized his ankle, only able to perceive its gleaming eyes.
“After you,” he said, gesturing with Cold-Edge. The creature seemed to consider him for a moment, then he sensed its massive bulk shamble past. Roper followed, holding the sword just short of the creature’s spine, not at all sure that he would be able to stop it if it chose to turn on him.
They advanced up the passage, the cave growing lighter until suddenly Roper emerged squinting into the blessed light and space of the valley. Around him sprawled Vigtyr, Tekoa and Aledas, each crumpled on the floor, and evidently only recently released by the Unhieru that stood behind each of them. Including the two that had just emerged from the cave, there were five of them, and only now that they were in the light could Roper assess these people properly.
Their skin was clouded grey, their flesh naked, and each head surrounded by a dark matted mane. Their faces were flat, intelligent, and eerily beautiful, with robust cheekbones and wide-set eyes and mouth. In composition, each was reminiscent of a bear. Not lean, but massive and so powerful they moved with a hypnotic grace. At fully nine feet tall, the one whom Pryce held captive was by far the largest, and possessed arresting eyes of a soft, honeyed gold. His mane was bigger than any other Unhieru present and stretched from brow to low back; the broad face beneath hairless, smooth-skinned and indecipherable. Roper had an idea that this captive was the leader of the Unhieru band. Though they could easily overpower the Anakim, the giants dared not act while Pryce might cut their leader’s throat at any moment.
Tekoa got to his feet, rearranged the ruffled feathers of his cloak, and threw a filthy look at the Unhieru standing behind him. “Gilius?” he asked Roper.
Roper looked pointedly at the Unhieru who had held onto him in the cave. Its fingers were stained rust red, with gore encrusting the broad, flat fingernails, and the chest streaked with blood. Tekoa followed his gaze, then looked up at the Unhieru with a look of pure spite. “You damned bastard,” he said softly.
“What now?” asked Vigtyr, on his feet, sword flicking from one giant to another.
“This one takes us to Gogmagoc,” said Pryce savagely, jerking the cord of hair in his hand. “Send the rest on their way.”
“How?” asked Vigtyr. “We can’t communicate with them.”
“Yes we can,” said Aledas, his voice flat. The attention of both Anakim and Unhieru turned to the ranger as he bent to extract the bow from his pack. Without particular urgency, he produced a twist of sinew from the side of his boot, strung the bow and fitted an arrow. Then he swung the weapon towards the blood-stained Unhieru, drawing the string back to his ear.
Roper had no time to stop him.
The bowstring snapped straight with a wicked crack and the arrow, fired point-blank, buried itself up to the fletching in the Unhieru’s throat. Its great maned head snapped back, it tottered for a moment, hands flying up to the black feathers. Then it toppled backwards, landing with a crash and beginning to roll down into the valley. “For Gilius,” said the ranger, cold as a knife. He reached for another arrow, and the other Unhieru began to scramble away. They broke into a loping trot and fled down into the valley, all except the golden-eyed leader, held fast by Pryce.
“I enjoyed that,” said Tekoa savagely.
“And now,” said Pryce, tugging on the hair he clutched in a fist, “Gogmagoc.”
They led their captive down into the valley, where they found the body of the Unhieru felled by Aledas. They sawed at its thick mane with swords, and used the hair to bind their captive’s hands behind its back. Eyeing the enormous arms, Roper kept winding locks around the wrists until the creature had no hope of freeing itself. Then they pushed it before them, Aledas and Vigtyr standing on each side with an arrow nocked to their bowstrings as it led them up the valley.
They walked in silence for a league, the party observing the valley’s edge in case the banished Unhieru should try and return. But more likely, and more disturbing too, they had gone on ahead to inform their giant king that one of their number was dead, and another captured.
Tekoa slowed a little to join Roper at the back. “This may be the time to turn back, my lord,” he murmured. Vigtyr heard and glanced briefly at them, too slow to disguise the look of hope on his face. “I doubt Gogmagoc will look kindly on our delegation now that we’ve killed one of his people. And that’s if he even understands us any better than those we found in the cave. They had no interest in talking. These creatures are not our allies.”
Roper smiled at Tekoa. “I don’t know how this ends, Tekoa. I don’t know how we make Gogmagoc understand us, or convince him we’re worth befriending. But we’ve come too far to turn back now. They know we’re coming. Those others have gone before us, and doubtless reported our presence. Our horses are gone, and with them our chance of escaping before we’re overhauled. We’ll not escape Unhierea now until this task is done.”
Pryce had been following the conversation. He stopped to dig in his pack, and produced the Silver Wolf-Head of the Black Lord, which he fixed on his unstrung bow and held above the party as a banner.
Their captive led the party on, and soon they came upon more bramble enclosures, st
oppered with long-thorned bushes and sheltering flocks of dark sheep. From some concealed source beyond the brambles rose a great column of smoke. The captive looked down at Roper, now walking at the lead of the party, and back at the smoke. “Hokhmakhoc,” it choked.
There came a distant, ear-splitting howl.
It echoed and re-echoed down the valley, so loud that the Anakim shrank together as one, halted dead in their tracks. To Roper’s ears, it sounded like a terrible cry of pain: a shriek as might come from some stricken monster of the sea. And in response to this call, immense, ashen-skinned people began to emerge from the bushes before them. With them were shaggy, cream-coated hounds, each three feet at the shoulder and barking frenziedly as they surged out towards the Anakim.
Roper drew Cold-Edge and took a step back, holding his hand out to Pryce. “Give me the banner, Pryce.” The sprinter obeyed, and then drew his own sword, holding its blade at their giant prisoner’s throat once more.
“Gogmagoc!” Roper bellowed. The hounds were tearing towards them, fifty, forty, thirty yards distant, with a growing crowd of wild men and women swelling behind them, and baying every bit as savagely. “Gogmagoc!”
Another drowned howl cut across them all, and the hounds slowed, no longer barking but growling. The crowd of Unhieru, of whom there were now seventy or eighty, began to slow, and Roper could see a figure pushing towards the front.
Out before the crowd stepped a giant among giants. A cauldron-bodied beast, whose dark braided mane reached down to the small of its back and was entangled with shards of bone. It had the same honey-gold eyes as their captive Unhieru, but was broader by far. It prowled towards them; the flat, eerily beautiful face fixed on Roper, eyes moving slowly between him, and the prisoner with Pryce’s sword held at its throat.
