A Time of Dread

by John Gwynne

  ‘The Ben-Elim are not master to us giants.’ Alcyon scowled. ‘We are allies. Drassil is our home, built by giants. We agreed for the Ben-Elim to reside here. They are our guests.’

  ‘Seems they are the ones giving all of the orders,’ Jin said.

  ‘Aye, well, the Ben-Elim like their rules. Ethlinn is a diplomatic woman and so would not speak openly against them, unless she deemed it vital; but we will not be ruled.’

  That’s interesting. I thought the giants were another conquered people, like my Clan.

  ‘So, the battle,’ Jin said. ‘You ran off and left the Ben-Elim behind . . .’

  ‘Aye. It was part of the Kadoshim plan, it became clear after the battle, to separate us. The Ben-Elim and White-Wings were attacked separately.’

  He sighed, lost in thought again.

  ‘The Order were overrun when we arrived, their backs to a river and waterfall, beset on all other sides by the Kadoshim and their fanatics. From the trees above, from out of the undergrowth, the very air seemed to seethe with them. I saw many comrades already fallen, friends who had fought and survived the darkness that was the Battle of Drassil. My son still stood, thank Elyon above.’

  ‘What about Varan?’ Bleda asked. ‘Was he with you? Marching from Drassil?’

  ‘Varan? No. He had joined the Order of the Bright Star many years before. We all fight the Kadoshim, just choose who we stand beside when we do it, that’s all. Varan was standing with his brother, Gunil. Much younger than Varan, he was, born after the Ben-Elim came, little more than a giantling, really. But he was fierce, a great warrior. The two of them were standing waist-deep in the river, the waterfall roaring at their backs, Kadoshim slain in a heap about them. I ran to them, but it was chaos. Battle always is, once you’re in it, and if anyone tells you different they’re a liar. It’s no clinical act of strategy, then, though that helps to begin with. But when it comes down to it, it’s blood, steel and muck, stench and guts and screaming loud enough to burst your head, fear and rage and everything else in between, and you keep swinging your blade at the foe in front of you until your arms are numb and there are no more left, or you die.

  ‘I lost sight of Varan, tried to fight my way to him, though moving in one direction in a battle is a hard enough task. The Ben-Elim finally arrived, the White-Wings with them, bloodied by another ambush that had been held in reserve for them. By then the Kadoshim knew they were finished and melted away, back into the forest. By then no one was standing in the river, let alone fighting in it. I waded in, the water thick with bodies and blood, and found Varan, floating face-down. Fallen with a host of wounds.’

  Alcyon hung his head, and Bleda was shocked to see a tear rolling down the giant’s cheek. Jin was staring at him with a look of disgust.

  He would be cast out of the Sirak for such a display of weakness; his emotions his master.

  ‘His brother?’ Bleda asked, wanting to end this display. It made him feel uncomfortable.

  ‘He fell over the waterfall, I was told,’ Alcyon said. ‘A long drop, and then the Grinding Sea.’ He sniffed and wiped his face. ‘So that was Varan’s Fall, and a dark day it was, too.’

  ‘What about the Kadoshim’s lair?’ Jin asked. ‘What happened when you got there?

  ‘We never found it. Perhaps it was all a fiction, the intelligence we received false, all of it to lure us to that ambush. If we had entered into that killing ground together, it would have been much worse.’

  Alcyon looked at them both.

  ‘So. Analyse,’ he said to them. ‘Why did we lose? Or at least, why did we not win?’

  ‘Overconfidence,’ Bleda said.

  ‘That’s right. Good,’ Alcyon said. ‘Many battles and skirmishes have been fought with the Kadoshim since the Battle of Drassil, scores, and we had never lost a one. Varan’s Fall was no crushing defeat, mind; but it was a defeat nonetheless. What else?’

  ‘Planning, scouting, knowing the ground,’ Jin said. ‘Jibril says they are key steps to victory.’

  ‘Aye, true enough,’ Alcyon agreed. ‘The Kadoshim were far better prepared than us, that was plain to see. They knew we were coming. Knew we were two forces. Knew the routes we would approach by, and they laid their ambushes well. And we blundered in, expecting to crush them as we had before. Huh.’ He wagged a finger at them both. ‘Never underestimate your enemy, but especially not the Kadoshim. Their numbers were winnowed on that first day, when Asroth fell, and there are certainly far fewer of them than Ben-Elim, but they are creatures of deep cunning.’

  Like their kin, the Ben-Elim.

  Horns blew outside, echoing in to them.

  ‘Best be off for prayers,’ Alcyon said.

  ‘Are you not coming?’ Jin asked.

  ‘Me? No,’ Alcyon said, a twist of his lips.

  Bleda noted that with interest.

  So, giants are not the obedient slaves I thought them.

  ‘Our thanks,’ Bleda said. ‘You have taught us much today.’

  More than old Jibril ever has.

  Alcyon waved a hand but had that faraway look again. Bleda and Jin rose and left him to his thoughts.

  ‘See, they are not unbeatable,’ Jin said to him as they stepped out into the street. ‘Not like the Cheren and Sirak will be when we are wed.’

  She squeezed his hand and ran for the prayer-hall looking back to grin at the startled expression that cracked his cold-face.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SIG

  I should have gone straight after Keld, not sat at Uthandun waiting for him, Sig berated herself, not for the first time, as she ran through the rain, each drop feeling like a chip of ice flung into her face by a spite-filled wind. She’d left Hammer in the stable at Uthandun, her paw not yet recovered enough for a hard run across the wind-blasted hills of Ardain. At the edge of Sig’s vision she glimpsed Rab, the albino crow flapping stoically onwards, a white blur amidst the sheeting downpour.

  Cullen rode alongside Sig, head down and cloak up against the wind and rain. Sig had thought about ordering him to stay behind, but he was part of her crew. He’d splinted and bound his wounded arm with strips of wood and leather.

  Elgin rode at Sig’s left, grim-faced, a score of men in column behind them. Nara had wanted to come herself, but Elgin and Sig had convinced the Queen of Ardain to remain at Uthandun. Rab had said that he’d found Keld’s hounds, not Keld himself. They’d left as soon as they could after Rab’s arrival, making the most of what day remained before nightfall. Since then Sig had hardly shared a word with the white crow, who had led them north-west, past the hill where the Kadoshim had been discovered, on into foothills that had once separated the realms of Narvon and Cambren, long united now by the marriage of Conall and Edana over a hundred years ago.

  They’d made camp as darkness fell. Rab had disappeared, only rejoining them with a screeching admonishment to hurry up as dawn crept unannounced across the land, a grey, rain-soaked shroud. Now Sig guessed it was close to highsun, though that was hard to tell – a diffuse glow only hinting at a sun beyond the leaden sky. They were climbing steadily into the hills, the terrain a bleak mixture of exposed granite and stunted, twisted trees.

  ‘Sets a good pace, that crow of yours,’ Elgin said.

  ‘Aye,’ grunted Sig, concentrating on the loose rocks and rabbit holes at her feet. To her surprise and anger she was feeling the pace that Rab was setting, lungs burning, legs aching – she, who used to run for a ten-night as easy as rising.

  There’s a lot to be said for riding bears into battle, but I’m going to have to do something about this.

  Ahead, Rab began to circle a spot, spiralling downwards.

  Sig wiped rain from her eyes, saw forms materializing upon the path where it narrowed before a sharp turn. To the right was a sheer rock face, to the left a steep drop to a fast-flowing stream. Sig slowed, loosened the sword sheathed across her back, Elgin and Cullen doing the same.

  Bodies were scattered across the path, twisted in death. Eig
ht, ten, Sig counted, checking them carefully. Keld was not amongst them, though Sig found his huntsman’s axe embedded in the skull of a shaven-haired man. Sig put her foot on the man’s head and wrenched the axe free. All of the dead had shaved heads in common, like those they had found at the Kadoshim’s lair. Many of the death wounds were ragged tears, flesh torn and ripped. One of Keld’s hounds, Hella the brindle bitch, lay strewn across the path, bodies piled around her, a bodiless arm in her mouth, strips of frayed flesh and sinew hanging at the shoulder. A score of puncture wounds crusted dark with blood ranged along the hound’s side, her back leg almost chopped clean through.

  Sig knelt by the dead hound and put her hand on its head a moment.

  ‘Thank you, Hella, faithful hound, for your sacrifice. You will be avenged.’

  ‘Ach.’ Cullen spat. ‘Keld will take this hard.’

  Aye, if he still lives, Sig thought. Keld would never have left Hella like this. He’s either slain or captured. She felt a stab of fear for her friend, quickly morphing into a swell of rage.

  They will pay for this.

  Beyond the dead was a small cabin, situated just around the bend. It looked like a goat-herder’s hut. Elgin and a handful of men approached it, Elgin kicking the door down with one booted foot, sticking his head in.

  ‘Empty,’ he called over his shoulder.

  A squawking drew Sig’s attention. She looked around for Rab, couldn’t see him at first, then spotted the crow down by the stream at the bottom of the slope.

  ‘Come, come,’ Rab was squawking, hopping about upon a rock, bobbing and shaking his head, muttering to himself.

  ‘QUICK!’ Rab screeched.

  Sig made her way down the slope, skidding and sliding on slick, goat-cropped grass, the sound of others behind her.

  Rab had found Keld’s other hound, Fen, lying upon the corpse of another shaven-haired man, a long, bloody knife still gripped in the man’s fist. His throat was a red, ragged wound.

  The hound’s hind legs trailed in the stream. He was covered in wounds, one ear missing, but he was still alive, his big chest rising and falling.

  ‘Poor Fen,’ Rab croaked mournfully. ‘Sig help Fen?’

  ‘Aye,’ Sig grunted, ripping a strip from her cloak and soaking it in the stream, then setting to washing out the hound’s wounds, fingers gently probing for broken bones. Footsteps thudded around them as Elgin and a few others joined them.

  ‘Tracks leading on into the hills,’ Elgin said. ‘My tracker says ten, maybe twelve of them. Looks like your man was still alive then. He tells me they’re maybe one day ahead of us, so we’ve gained on them.’ He looked at the big hound, the shallow rise and fall of its chest. ‘We should be after them.’

  ‘A few moments,’ Sig said. ‘Keld will take his axe to me if he hears I left his Fen to die.’ She was rummaging through her pack, crushing dried comfrey and lavender in her big fists, drizzling honey into the mix and packing it into the hound’s many wounds. Fen whined, lifted his head to look at Sig, then slumped back down. Sig wrapped bandages where she could.

  ‘One man to stay and guard him. Give him water.’ Sig unstoppered her brot bottle and poured some into the strip she’d torn from her cloak, squeezed a few drops into Fen’s mouth. ‘And give him this.’

  ‘One man to guard a dying hound? Can we spare him, not knowing what lies ahead?’ Elgin frowned.

  ‘This is no ordinary hound, as you well know. Storm’s wolven blood runs in his veins, and Keld will not be best pleased if we abandon him while there’s breath in his body.’

  ‘I am not convinced of the wisdom,’ Elgin said.

  ‘Fen one of US!’ Rab squawked, shaking his wings at Elgin.

  ‘Trust me on this, and I’ll not forget the favour,’ Sig said, holding Elgin’s gaze. The battlechief rubbed his bearded jaw, finally nodded and bellowed up the slope to his men.

  ‘Rab, after Keld,’ Sig grunted and the crow leaped into the air, flapping and rising. Sig bent and stroked Fen’s head. ‘Live,’ she whispered, ‘Keld still needs you.’

  The hound whined and then Sig was climbing the slope; Cullen was waiting for her at the top. She handed him Keld’s axe. ‘Look after this for Keld,’ she said. ‘He’ll be wanting it back.’

  ‘I’ll keep it warm for him, maybe crack a few skulls with it before I put it in his hand,’ Cullen said.

  Sig crawled uphill through the grass, doing all she could to hide her bulk, her breath sounding to her as if it would wake a sleeping draig. Four of Elgin’s men were with her, the rest back on the path, waiting for the signal. For three days she’d cursed the rain, but now that it had stopped she wished that it was still falling, knowing it would have served to hide their approach better than the clear sky above her, slipping from blue to purple as the sun sank into the horizon.

  Dusk settled about them, that time when shadows were thick as mist, and up ahead Sig saw the darker shape of a cabin, a handful of outbuildings, a pig pen, judging by the smell drifting down the hill to her. Behind and above the cabin on the hilltop there was the silhouette of a large mound, with patches of the sun’s last rays gleaming through it.

  What is that? An unlit bonfire?

  Rab had returned, after scouting ahead, with the news that Keld was only half a league ahead. The crow had seen Keld dragged by his captors into the cabin that stood before Sig now. Sig’s first instinct was to charge in, screaming death and murder at her enemies, but she knew Keld would be the first to have his throat cut. So she was hoping stealth would serve them better; Elgin and the others were still mounted and waiting a short distance away for the sound of battle.

  What are they doing here? Why is Keld still alive? Why didn’t they just kill him back on the path with his hounds?

  She crawled closer to the cabin, maybe a hundred of her long strides away, then closer still, grass tickling her nose.

  A scream rang out from the cabin, raw and full of pain.

  Keld.

  Sig was on her feet before she realized it, the others a few heartbeats behind her, and then she was running at the cabin, drawing a knife from its sheath at her belt.

  A plan will only take you so far.

  The thunder of her iron-shod boots, every breath loud as a drumbeat in her head, behind her Elgin’s men, running, steel hissing from scabbards. Another scream, long and lingering. The sound of a door opening on the far side of the cabin, footsteps on wooden boards, then mud. Sig pointed; three of the men with her peeled away to circle the cabin. The drum of hooves, distant.

  And then Sig was there, leaping up the wooden steps and kicking at the door. It collapsed inwards, a cloud of dust exploding. As it settled, Sig saw the glow of firelight, faces turned, all staring at her, ten, twelve people, more in the shadows. And Keld, in the centre of the room, strapped to a frame similar to the one Sig had seen inside the Kadoshim’s lair, cross-shaped, his wrists and ankles strapped tight, stripped to the waist, drenched in sweat. Fingers were missing from his left hand, blood streaming down his forearm, dripping to the floorboards, pooling. He was spitting curses at his captors, foam flecking his mouth.

  The closest shaven-haired man to Keld was standing frozen with mouth open, bloody knife raised.

  Sig threw her own knife, the big blade spun, crunched into the man’s face, hurling him halfway across the room. A moment’s silence, then men were rushing her, swords, knives, axes in fists. Sig’s longsword scraped from its scabbard across her back and she snarled a curse at them, striding through the doorway, not waiting for them to reach her.

  ‘TRUTH AND COURAGE,’ she bellowed, swinging her sword, a head spinning with her first blow, the body’s momentum causing it to stumble on into her. Sig shoved it aside, fouling a man’s rush at her, her fist crunching into his mouth, lips mangled, teeth spraying as he dropped on top of the headless corpse. Steel clashed as blows rained upon her, catching some with her blade, others thudding into the shield strapped across her back, or glancing off her chainmail shirt. Then Elgin’s men
were pounding up the stairs behind her to protect her flanks and rear as she forged into the room, carving her way to Keld.

  Vaguely Sig was aware of a door on the far side of the room bursting open: the rest of Elgin’s men that had accompanied her storming in, falling upon the shaven-haired acolytes, and beyond the timber walls she heard the thunder of hooves. But it was all as if through mist, her focus on Keld and anyone fool enough to get in her way. She hacked, stabbed and chopped her way through flesh, bone and steel, men hurling themselves at her, one scratching at her face, raking her with blackened nails, teeth snapping at her neck. She headbutted him with her jutting brow, crushing his nose, grabbed a fistful of his cloak’s hood and slammed his head into her knee, then cast his limp body aside.

  Then she was standing before Keld; his eyes were wild with pain, but he recognized her, mouth moving, words whispered, incoherent at first.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Sig finally heard.

  ‘For what?’ Sig grunted as she tugged at his bonds. They were tied tight, cutting into his flesh. She sliced through them, taking his weight as he fell onto her.

  ‘Failing you,’ he mumbled, spittle and blood hanging from his jaw.

  ‘Ach, my friend,’ Sig said, ‘it is I who has failed you. I should have been here sooner.’

  ‘Better late, than . . . never,’ he said, a twitch of a manic smile. ‘My bairns?’ Keld growled.

  Sig took a deep breath.

  ‘Fen still lives,’ she said, ‘but Hella is gone.’

  Keld’s face twisted, a blast of raw grief, then Sig was turning as an acolyte rushed towards her, sword raised high. Keld slumped to his knees. Sig caught the blow on her blade, but before she could retaliate, an axe slammed into the acolyte’s head, wrenched free in a spray of bone and gore as the man collapsed, twitching. Cullen stood over the corpse.

  ‘Brought your axe for you,’ he said to Keld.

  ‘Good . . . lad,’ Keld mumbled. ‘The message,’ he said, voice trailing off. His head lolled, eyes rolling.

  ‘The message?’ Sig prompted as she and Cullen crouched down beside Keld. His eyes snapped back into focus.