A Time of Dread

by John Gwynne

  ‘What is?’ Olin asked, his voice impatient.

  ‘You know the Ben-Elim demand a tithe for their peace and protection. Coin or goods, and flesh?’ Ulf said.

  Olin nodded.

  How is it that Da knows this, and I don’t.

  ‘What do you mean, flesh?’ Drem asked, looking pointedly at his da, who just frowned, avoiding Drem’s eyes.

  ‘I mean people, Drem,’ Ulf said. ‘The Land of the Faithful keeps growing, and there aren’t enough Ben-Elim to patrol it, so they want a tithe of warriors. Course, they’ve got the giants, or most of them, apart from those at Dun Seren, but that’s still not enough. They demand youngsters they can train in their ways of making war, to go out and fight for them.’

  ‘Oh,’ Drem said. ‘That just seems wrong. I don’t like it.’ He felt the urge to take his pulse, fingers twitching, but controlled himself.

  ‘No? Well, you’ll not like this, then. Up till now, the Ben-Elim have asked for a flesh tithe. But now they’re just taking it. Seems not everyone’s happy to send their young away to Drassil for warrior training, and so the Ben-Elim are just taking their tithe, whether people are willing or no.’

  ‘That’s close to slavery,’ Drem gasped.

  Olin glared at the flames.

  ‘You’re not the only one to think so,’ Ulf said, ‘and a lot of those that think the same are ending up here, where the Ben-Elim don’t rule.’

  ‘Good enough reason,’ Olin said.

  Ulf looked at them both a long moment, the room silent except for some wood cracking in the hearth.

  ‘And then, there are the other stories I’m hearing,’ he said.

  ‘And what are they?’ Olin asked. Drem could feel a change in Ulf, even before he said it. A change in his voice, in the set of his shoulders.

  As if he’s scared.

  ‘Well, no one talks about it at first, but my job, well, I see a lot of people and, believe me, I hear a lot of folk’s tales. After a while they tell me things, serious things. And it seems like there’s one thing everyone agrees on.’ He paused, took another drink from his cup. Drem saw a tremor in his hand.

  ‘Go on,’ Olin prompted.

  ‘The Kadoshim are at the heart of it.’

  Drem’s da stiffened at that, a tension in his jaw.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Olin asked.

  ‘I’ve heard talk of a Kadoshim cult arising. And talk of strange rituals. Of sacrifice.’ His voice dropped to almost a whisper, and Drem felt that even the flames and darkness were leaning closer, straining to hear.

  ‘Human sacrifice.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  RIV

  Riv drew the arrow, the yew bow creaking as muscles flexed in her arms and back, until the feathers tickled her cheek. She sighted along the length of the shaft, raised the head a little and loosed.

  The string thrummed as the arrow flew, arcing up across the archery range of the weapons-field, wind snatching at it before it dipped down and thudded into a straw target. It struck lower than she’d intended. She swore.

  If that was my enemy, at worst they’d be walking with a limp now.

  Sword and spear, she was a match for most of those she trained with, but she still had a lot to learn with a bow.

  A chuckle sounded behind her. Riv turned to see the two wards from Arcona, Jin and Bleda, standing at the head of a small crowd.

  ‘You see, Father, they use a bow as long as a spear, and most of them are about as skilled as any five-year-old from the Cheren.’

  Jin’s head was twisted over her shoulder, talking to a man behind her. His head was shaved, apart from his warrior braid, like all the warriors Riv had seen from the east. He was standing with a handful of others, men and women all of a similar appearance.

  The leaders of the Cheren and the Sirak, and their attendants.

  Riv saw Israfil and Kol amidst their ranks. A memory of the half-breed in Drassil’s Great Hall flashed through her mind, Israfil standing over him, face twisted in revulsion.

  Usually he is so calm, so controlled. How deep must be his hatred for the Kadoshim, and for the breaking of Elyon’s Lore.

  The Lord Protector was talking to a woman close to Bleda, and behind them all were two giants.

  Riv had heard of the arrival of this party from Arcona, and news that they were here to discuss a tithe of their warriors had spread through the White-Wings faster than sickness through a camp. Riv had mixed feelings about that, as she liked the way things were at Drassil, and having newcomers with new ways felt like a threat to her way of life.

  Israfil will not allow that. They will have to become like us, followers of the Lore, not the other way around.

  The distinct feeling that she was now being mocked did not ease her concerns. She felt her cheeks flush red, a burning sensation.

  ‘Why don’t you show me how it’s done, then?’ Riv said, the words escaping her mouth before she’d realized they were even there, and at the same time she was throwing the bow at Jin. Riv was a little disappointed at the ease with which Jin caught it, a moment’s surprise flashing across the girl’s face even as she stepped forwards and deftly plucked the bow from the air.

  Jin held it her hand, studying it with her flat, emotionless face as she twisted it from left to right.

  ‘This is not fit for firewood,’ she pronounced with a curl of her lip and passed it to a man behind her, an older man, with a beard the colour of iron. Another Cheren warrior handed Jin a curved bow, already strung, and a bag of arrows. Riv’s eyes flickered to Israfil, saw him staring at her and she quickly looked away, back to Jin, who strode forwards a few steps, pulling a handful of arrows from the bag. She nocked one, the others held loosely in the hand that gripped the bow, drew and released in one fluid motion. Even as the arrow was rising high into the air she was drawing the next one, loosing, and then a third. She let the bow drop to her side and stared at Riv, not even watching to see if her arrows would find their target.

  Riv did, though, and saw the first slam into the chest of the same target Riv had selected, with her arrow still protruding from its leg. The second arrow took it through the throat, the third piercing what would have been a shoulder, the straw man rocking on its base with the impact of the arrows.

  ‘You should close your mouth, it is not a becoming look,’ Jin said to her.

  Riv just stood there, torn between admiration and respect for the feat of skill she’d just witnessed, and a bubbling anger that didn’t take too kindly to being humiliated. An image of her fist connecting with Jin’s disdain-set jaw flashed through Riv’s mind. It was very tempting. But even through the first tendrils of red mist seeping through her she knew that it was a humiliation she deserved.

  Israfil is watching. Show him you have learned a lesson. Show him you have control of your anger.

  ‘That was . . .’ She hesitated, her jaw tight and clamping on what she knew she should say. ‘Good,’ she ground out, not quite what she intended, but better than a host of other responses that were filling her mind.

  ‘Pah,’ Jin said. ‘It is no more than any child of the Cheren could do. Our warriors do the same from the back of a galloping horse. To my shame I am a little out of practice.’

  Riv searched for words to answer that, but couldn’t find any, so she just nodded stiffly and walked away.

  As she stepped onto the flagstoned road that led from the weapons-field she stopped and looked back. The field was alive with activity, as it always was: different cohorts of troops training in shifts throughout the day. There were giants upon the field, now, sparring with wooden hammer and axe, making the ground tremble, and Ben-Elim swooping and diving in mock aerial combat.

  And there was Vald, her friend and, until recently, training partner. He was with the others who had passed their weapons-trial and Long Night. He stood proudly amidst a unit of White-Wings, being drilled on shield wall formations and flanking manoeuvres.

  No, not amongst the White-Wings. He is a White-Wing now.

>   The sight of it twisted a knife in Riv’s gut and she wrenched her eyes away, back to Jin and the others. It looked as if Israfil was showing the two lords from Arcona something of warrior training and life at Drassil.

  The Lord Protector was talking to the man Jin had given Riv’s longbow to. Jin’s father, Uldin, Riv presumed. The others were lined up watching riders galloping at targets with sword and spear. As Riv watched, she saw Bleda amongst the crowd, but he wasn’t watching the riders. He was staring right back at Riv. A woman, Bleda’s mother, leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. Riv remembered her well: Erdene, sitting upon her horse, bloody and bowed. She was still clearly a warrior-born, solid and wiry as a twisted rope, head shaved clean except for a coiled warrior braid.

  Riv saw a jolt go through Bleda at Erdene’s whispered words and he leaned away from her, looking into her eyes, his face twitching with more emotion than Riv had ever seen from him since the day he had been torn from his Clan and kin. Then the emotion was gone, face swept clean as if it had never been there. He gave his mother a curt nod and turned to look at the riders as they galloped by.

  Riv turned and left the weapons-field. She felt agitated, troubled by her encounter with Jin and her resulting humiliation, and something about what she’d just witnessed between Bleda and his mother bothered her, making her frown.

  The streets of Drassil were heaving with activity. Riv walked through a traders’ market thick with the sounds and smells of food and drink, vendors cooking all manner of meat and fish, a blend of herbs and spices mixing into a heady aroma. Close by, fat steaks of auroch and sliced onions sizzled on a charcoal griddle, making Riv’s stomach growl, but she walked on, the streets thinning a little as she left the market behind, the roads changing as she moved through the potters’ district, with all manner of jars, vases, cups and plates on display upon tables before workshops. And then she was through them, passing through the clangour of hammer on anvil, the hiss and steam and rolling heat of the blacksmiths’ quarter, and then, finally, she was standing before the barracks of the White-Wings: a series of stone buildings on either side of a wide street, great arched doorways leading into entrance chambers as big as a keep.

  The military might of the Faithful was split into different disciplines. There were the White-Wings, the infantry heart of the army, masters of the shield wall, of sword and spear. There were the archer units, smaller bands of men and women who scouted and foraged during campaigns and formed solid blocks of archers during any battle. There were light cavalry, skilled with horse, with spear and lance, used mostly in battle for swift flank attacks and the harrying of routed forces. Then the giants, fewer in numbers, who when on foot acted as the shock troops of the army and became the heavy cavalry when mounted upon their giant bears.

  And of course the Ben-Elim, death-from-above.

  There were rooms enough at Drassil for the full strength of the Faithful’s army, in total over twenty thousand strong, the White-Wings alone numbering over ten thousand swords, but the bulk of the army was spread throughout the Land of the Faithful, stationed at outposts and garrisons along the far-flung borders, at the Tower of the Bay at Ripa in the south, at Gulgotha in the east, at Brikan and Jerolin and Tarba.

  So many of the buildings before Riv were empty and dark. At Drassil now there were around a thousand White-Wings, and they were split into ten units, each hundred its own compact fighting force. Riv’s sister, Aphra, was captain of a hundred. Riv remembered the day Aphra had been promoted, her wings presented to her by Kol, one of Israfil’s captains. Riv had thought she would burst with pride.

  Now she walked through the open doors of the hundred that she had been assigned to for as far back as her memory reached. The same hundred that her sister commanded, and the one that her mother had served in before that. Two generations, lives dedicated to the White-Wings and the Ben-Elim. It was all Riv knew. The centre of her life, around which all else revolved.

  The feast-hall was empty, the fire-pit cold, as Riv expected. The whole hundred should be out on guard duty and then training in the weapons-field, so Riv was surprised when she opened the door that led to her barrack chamber and heard voices. A woman, not shouting, but voice raised, in anger or alarm. And another voice, quieter, calmer, deeper. Riv cocked her head to one side, straining to listen. She climbed a few of the stone steps leading up to the chamber she shared with her mam and sister and the other members of their hundred, ten warriors and their attendants, all sharing the same sleeping quarters, bonds forged by a lifetime of eating, sleeping, training, fighting, living and dying together.

  The woman’s voice grew louder, tremored with emotion, the other lower, an edge of iron to it. Both were blurred, the words unclear.

  The door behind Riv grated shut and the voices beyond the closed door at the top of the stairwell fell silent, quick as a snuffed candle.

  Riv paused a moment, only the sound of her breathing, then decided to go on.

  I live here, they’re my quarters, too. And besides, she was intrigued to know who the voices belonged to.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened, a figure was striding down towards her. It was Fia, tall and dark-haired, her sister’s closest friend. She saw Riv and nodded a greeting, though she did not stop, just carried on past her. She was looking away, but Riv noticed that Fia’s eyes were red-rimmed.

  Still looking over her shoulder, Riv entered the chamber, a sizeable room that was home to almost thirty people. It was one long, large room, neat rows of cots along two walls, chests at the bottom of each cot, an aisle running down the middle.

  There was no one else in the chamber.

  Riv frowned.

  Strange.

  The shuttered window over her cot was open and she looked out into the street, but there was no sign of anyone. Riv shrugged and walked to the end of her cot, kneeling before her chest, home of all her belongings, although in reality they were not hers. The White-Wings renounced all worldly possessions, emulating the Ben-Elim in their devout desire to serve Elyon. All that they owned was given to them by the Ben-Elim, every item useful for the furtherance of Elyon’s kingdom on earth. She unlatched the bolt, slid it across with hardly a sound – the White-Wings taught discipline and cleanliness as if it were the path to holiness – and raised the lid, pushing it back to rest against the frame of her bed. Inside was an assortment of items: clothes, boots, a pair of iron-shod sandals, belts, her best cloak, her fire-making kit, knives of various blades and lengths, a short-hafted axe, rags and oils for the maintenance and care of her small armoury. She rummaged through them, reaching deep, and then pulled out an object concealed in a sealskin cloak. She laid it on the floor before her and carefully unwrapped it, revealing a curved bow.

  Bleda’s bow.

  A ripple of guilt at seeing it; it was not hers, had not been allocated to her by the Ben-Elim, and so in a way could be considered as her own possession, something that was forbidden.

  But it is not mine, it is Bleda’s. I have just been looking after it for him.

  She had seen him drop it on the day the Sirak had been cowed, all those years ago, the same day he had been taken by the Ben-Elim as a ward. It had just lain in the dirt long after Bleda had disappeared into the horizon and Erdene and Israfil had moved on to the privacy of a tent for Israfil to talk over the terms and details of the Clan’s surrender. As the sun had sunk into the hills Riv saw the bow still lying there on the ground, and without thinking had picked it up, wrapping it in a cloak and storing it with her sister’s kit. She’d brought it all the way back to Drassil with her, not really knowing why, except that something inside her had gone out to the boy as he’d been held in the air by Israfil, his brother and sister’s decapitated heads strewn upon the ground at his feet. She had thought how she would feel if it was her, with Aphra’s head rolling in the dirt. Not that the Ben-Elim’s actions were wrong, she knew that. The Sirak and Cheren had disobeyed the Ben-Elim’s Lore: to preserve life, to only slay Kadoshim and their ser
vants. And the deaths that day had established a peace that had lasted five years, so Riv was satisfied that they were justified.

  But the look in Bleda’s eyes . . .

  She felt a wave of sympathy for him, because Riv knew that Israfil had punished Kol for the terrible act. Kol should have chained Bleda’s brother and sister and brought them before Israfil for judgement, but Kol had a reputation for taking things into his own hands, for being more spontaneous than most Ben-Elim.

  All this time later and she had never returned the bow to Bleda, even though she had resolved to do so a hundred times. Something always stopped her.

  She brushed the grip with her fingertips, worn leather smooth and sweat-stained from Elyon knew how many hours Bleda had practised with it.

  Hundreds, if he is anything like Jin. To be able to do that, after five years of inaction.

  The bow was about the same size as the one Jin had used with such skill, less than half the length of the longbow Riv had been practising with, significantly shorter even than the hunting bows used by Drassil’s scouts and trackers. There was an elegance and beauty of design in the pronounced curves of its limbs. Riv ran her fingers along them, the layers of wood, horn and sinew smooth and cold to her touch.

  I should return it to him. Perhaps he could teach me . . .

  The slap of boots on stone drifted through an open shutter to Riv, in the street outside, then echoing as they entered the hundred’s barrack. A few heartbeats and she heard the door open and feet pounding on the stairwell. Hastily, Riv wrapped the bow in its sealskin cloak and buried it back in her chest, closing the lid and snapping the lock shut even as the dormitory room opened and her sister ran into the room.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Aphra asked, though she seemed distracted, not even looking at Riv, instead her eyes scanning the dormitory.

  ‘Nothing,’ Riv said with a shrug as she sat on her cot, a cold breeze from the open shutters ruffling her short hair. Aphra marched up and down the central aisle, looking between beds.