A Time of Dread

by John Gwynne

  He stared at it.

  And then he lifted a hand to the claw about his own neck, gripping it tight and he swayed a little as the truth hit him.

  Because the wound upon his da’s chest was given by a bear with five claws, and the white bear only had four.

  Drem reined in his horse before Asger’s house. It was on the outskirts of Kergard, a sturdy cottage of wattle and daub with a grass-sod roof, a side gate and track running between house and barn. Drem heard the creak and roll of wheels and saw Asger emerge from the barn, sitting upon the bench of a heavily loaded wain, reins in hand, his wife and bairns snuggled up close to him. There could have been a dozen more of them wrapped beneath the folds of blankets and furs they were buried beneath, guarding them against the dawn cold.

  Asger smiled when he saw him, reining in the two sturdy ponies that were pulling the wain.

  ‘I’m glad to see you,’ Asger said. ‘You’re coming with us, then?’

  ‘No,’ Drem said, dismounting from his pony. ‘But I wanted to give you my thanks, for your offer. It was a kind thing you did.’

  ‘Ach, lad, it was more to save my failing back!’ Asger grunted, though Drem saw his wife dig him with an elbow and heard the giggle of bairns somewhere beneath all the furs.

  ‘And maybe a hint of kindness,’ Asger admitted.

  ‘More than a hint,’ Drem said. ‘And I’ll not be forgetting it. Ever. When you came to see me yesterday, I thought I had nothing left to live for, and now I have two. You have a friend in me, Asger. For life.’ He looked the trader in the eye, as his da had often told him to do when you mean what you say, and Asger nodded.

  ‘Sure you want to stay?’ Asger said. ‘Kergard’s not what it was, and I think it’s only going to get worse.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, but I have some things to do. Have to do,’ Drem said. ‘But, there is one favour you could do for me. I’d be grateful.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I know what this favour is,’ Asger said, a suspicious twist of his eyebrow.

  Drem reached into a saddle bag and pulled out a package. It was about the size of a plate, wrapped tight in a cloak of black wool, tied with twine. Drem held it out, but Asger didn’t take it, just stared at it.

  ‘And where would you like me to be delivering this package of yours?’ Asger asked.

  ‘If you’re travelling south, you’ll most likely be passing their door,’ Drem said, his eyes earnest and hopeful.

  ‘Where?’ Asger repeated.

  ‘To Dun Seren. It is to be given into the hands of a warrior of their order. She goes by the name of Sig.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  RIV

  Riv felt a jolt of fear and excitement with every marched step along the eastern road. She’d gone on plenty of patrols with Aphra’s hundred before, protecting a merchant convoy here, escorting state ambassadors there, even to restore peace where some dispute or other had turned bloody between villages or towns, like the incident between Bleda’s Clan and Jin’s. But this . . .

  Kadoshim!

  They might be fighting them, and soon. It was everything she’d trained for. Her whole purpose in becoming a White-Wing. It felt like some kind of lifetime fulfilment.

  And, truth be told, it was good to be away from Drassil. After what had happened to Estel and Adonai, the fortress had felt different, dour and cold – something she’d never felt about the place she’d been born and raised before. Every day away from Drassil and Riv had felt her spirits lift, and the spirits of their company, as well, it seemed. Three units of White-Wings were marching down the Arcona road, the first hundred led by Aphra, the second by Garidas, ever earnest and devout, the third by a stern-faced woman named Lorina.

  Riv was situated at the rear of the column, part of the retinue that travelled with Aphra’s hundred White-Wings as assistants, most of them fledgling warriors within a year of their warrior trials. In reality they performed the bulk of tasks required for a warband on the move. Making camp, digging trenches and latrines, collecting wood and building fires, securing fresh water and filling hundreds of water skins. And then seeing to the needs of whichever warrior they were assigned to, in Riv’s case her sister, Aphra, which included keeping her weapons and armour maintained, clean and polished.

  Behind her rolled two dozen wains pulled by big-boned horses, the wains full of the camp supplies. And behind them two score giants marched rear-guard at the back of the column, Balur One-Eye leading them, the white-haired giant dressed for war in ringmail and leather, his great war-hammer slung across his back.

  The iron-shod boots of the Hundred cracked a rhythm on the flagstones of the eastern road. An embankment fell to either side, the land stripped of trees for a good hundred paces, a task that never ended, having to be performed every year, as the forest was ever trying to reclaim what it had lost. Beyond the cleared space Forn reared tall and brooding, a wall of twisted bark and rustling leaves.

  They could be in there, right now. Watching us.

  It was sections of the forest like this that were dangerous, where Forn Forest had still to be thinned and searched, declared free of Kadoshim and made safe.

  The sky was clear and blue up above, like a bright road between the arching canopy. Silhouettes of Ben-Elim flew weightless circles, guarding above, patrolling ahead, searching.

  Wish I could fly, she thought. The sense of freedom, seeing so much, so far . . .

  Golden-haired Kol led the Ben-Elim, fifty or sixty of the white-winged warriors scattered across the sky.

  ‘Do you think we’re nearly there yet?’ Jost said beside her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Riv muttered.

  I swear, if he asks me that one more time . . .

  A horn blast drifted down to them from above, and suddenly Ben-Elim were swooping low over the column, shouting orders. Riv almost felt feathers brush her upturned face as a Ben-Elim skimmed above her. It was Kol, grinning and whooping. Riv smiled at his exuberance.

  He and Israfil could not be more different.

  More horns blew and the column rippled to a halt, Riv and those with her running to their allocated warriors. She glimpsed Ben-Elim flying ahead, twelve of them shaped like an arrowhead in the sky.

  ‘I don’t need you,’ her sister Aphra said as Riv handed her a water skin. She drank deep. ‘I want you at the back of the column. Protect the wains.’

  ‘But . . .’ Riv said, looking beyond Aphra and the White-Wings to the outline of walls and buildings up ahead.

  ‘Now!’ her sister snapped, voice cold and hard, no give in it.

  No changing her mind when she’s in this mood.

  Riv’s shoulders slumped and she turned to go.

  ‘Stay close to One-Eye,’ her sister called after her. Riv didn’t answer, a petty last victory and protest.

  Riv stomped back down the line, saw Vald checking the straps of his shield and setting himself in line with other White-Wings. He nodded to her and flashed an adrenalin-fuelled grin. She tried to return it, but knew it was weak and forced, her shame at not being part of this, at being relegated to the safe place, again . . .

  Horns sounded and shields came together with a crack, making Riv’s heart leap. She loved that sound, though she preferred it when she was in the thick of a shield wall herself.

  Resignedly, she found Jost waiting for her with the others, gathered about and amongst the wains. Behind them, and curling around the flanks like a protective hand, were Balur and his giants, all with their axes or war-hammers in their hands, their eyes fixed on the walls of the town that the White-Wings were approaching.

  It was named Oriens, a way-point upon the eastern road for those travelling to or from Arcona. Since the Ben-Elim had put down the seeds of civil war between the Sirak and Cheren, trade with the east had flourished. Oriens had grown, from not much more than a feast-hall for travellers and a few wattle-and-daub buildings, into a thriving walled town. Reports had reached Drassil that something was wrong, that travellers had heard sc
reaming and the sounds of battle and slaughter echoing from the walls and instead of stopping had galloped on past. Ben-Elim had made aerial assessments but seen no signs of movement. Something was wrong, and they had decided against entering the town’s walls until they had ground support from the White-Wings. They had learned their lesson after the Battle of Varan’s Fall, where many had died because they had rushed blindly into an ambush.

  Aphra and her hundred had been told little more than that, although the word Kadoshim had been whispered.

  Riv watched as Aphra led her hundred White-Wings out. They marched down the wide road towards the town, keeping their ranks as they trod the sloping embankment and on across open ground towards Oriens’ open gates. No one manned the town’s walls, no curls of smoke marked the air where there should have been many cook-fires burning. All was still, tension hovering like a thick mist.

  Something’s wrong.

  More horn blasts and shouted orders, and Garidas’ second hundred rippled into motion, the crack of their iron-shod boots setting a drumbeat for Riv’s heart. Lorina’s hundred waited in reserve as Aphra’s White-Wings marched through Oriens’ open gates, Ben-Elim swooping low over the walls, one alighting above the gates. Riv’s flesh goosebumped, felt like spiders skittering across her skin.

  Aphra is in there, maybe risking her life. I should be there, too.

  She felt the familiar tingle of anger stirring in her veins, making her bounce on her toes, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  The last of Garidas’ White-Wings marched through Oriens’ gates, disappearing into shadow. Still there was only silence from the town, pulsing in almost palpable waves. A creak of leather and rattle of chainmail behind her; giants were slipping between the wains, Balur striding past Riv as they approached the town.

  And they waited, and waited . . . silence radiating from the town like heat from a fire-pit. Riv’s anxiety mounted with each passing moment as she stared fixedly at the walls, images of Aphra walking into an ambush flooding her mind. Her fingers clenched white around the hilt of her dagger at her belt.

  Worry, fear, shifting into anger at being left behind, at the way Aphra was treating her, her emotions bubbling away inside her.

  As usual the anger burned all else away. Common sense. Her sister’s orders. Thoughts of consequences. Riv could almost feel it spreading through her veins, like ink through water, seeping into her head, whispering to her.

  You should be a White-Wing already, inside those walls with the other warriors, not out here with unproven, untested fledglings. You’re as good as any of them with a blade, better than most, and they only give you a knife!

  Before Riv realized what she was doing, she was running. Not towards the town, because that would take her through Balur and his giants, and even when she was rage-blind she wasn’t that much of a fool. She skidded down the embankment and sprinted across the open space towards the trees of Forn Forest. Dimly she heard a voice behind her, Jost hissing her name, didn’t think to look, and then she was amongst the trees, in an instant moving from bright day to a world of twilight, shadows shifting, branches swaying, vine snagging at her feet.

  She ran on, hardly breaking her stride, flitting through the forest, around trees, becoming one of the shadows herself. Even sound was different within the forest, noise magnified, the crackle of forest litter beneath her feet, the scratching rustle of branches overhead. Her own breath in her head, a drum keeping time.

  Looking to her right, she saw the shadow of walls beyond the trees, veered towards them and burst out into a strip of cleared meadow between the forest and Oriens’ walls. This north-facing wall was not as well tended as the western gates: Riv saw patches of the timber wall covered in great swathes of vine, and further on a giant oak spread a gnarled branch over the town’s wall.

  She sprinted towards the oak, hardly breaking her stride as she reached the twisted trunk of the ancient tree, running up thick roots, gripping ridged bark, clinging like a lizard to a sun-baked wall. A contraction and extension of muscle in calf and thigh and she was leaping, almost felt like she was flying, grinning with the joy of it, and then her hands were clamping around the branch, pulling herself up, getting her feet set and she was upright, running along it, arms spread wide for balance. In heartbeats she had crossed over the wall and was jumping down from the oak onto a wooden walkway.

  She paused and looked around, chest heaving. The town spread before her, a patchwork of thatch and timber. There was a flash of movement to the west and her eyes were drawn to the higher roof and long structure of a feast-hall, what looked like a town square before it. She heard marching feet, rising from a main road that cut from the gates to the town square.

  Aphra’s hundred.

  A shadow flitted across the ground.

  Ben-Elim. Or Kadoshim?

  Without thinking she sprinted down a stairwell and carried on running, into a wide street, then zigzagging into a smaller one. She threw herself against a shadowed wall and twisted her head to look up, searching the skies, but whatever had made the shadow was out of sight.

  What am I doing here? What have I done?

  She stood there, breathing heavily. The thought of going back crossed her mind, but the red mist was still making a fog out of everything; the idea of her sister walking into danger without her was a wildfire fuel. She ran on, through smaller dirt-packed roads, searching for Aphra, thinking she could check on her, ensure her safety and then maybe head back to the wains. The town was eerily silent, shuttered windows dark with shadow, doors closed, dew-filled cobwebs latticed across them. And then the shadow was flashing across the ground again and Riv glanced up, saw the dark outline of wings haloed by the sun. She ran on.

  She burst into an open space, the town square, the long feast-hall of timber and thatch before her. Skidding to a halt, churned mud spraying, legs scrambling, arms windmilling desperately to stop, she just stood there for a frozen moment staring at the scene before her in horror.

  In the centre of the square, placed immediately before the steps to the feast-hall, stood a mountain of severed heads, steaming in the winter’s cold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SIG

  Sig swung her weapon, a swooping curve, from high to low that arced around her opponent’s attempt at a parry. Too late he tried to dance back out of reach, but the length of Sig’s arm with a blade was too far for any man to evade in half a heartbeat. Her weapon crunched into his leg, just below the knee, lifting him from the ground and spinning him a full circle in the air before he crashed to the hard-frozen grass, flat on his back, the air leaving his lungs in one massive whoosh.

  The scuff of feet behind her and, without a second’s thought, Sig spun on her heel, parrying the axe blow aimed at her head, flinging it high and stepping in close to stab her sword-point into the chest of the giant before her. As he stumbled back, dropping to one knee, Sig ducked, air hissing over her head as she spun again, this time chopping her blade two-handed into the waist of another giant, seeing him sway and slowly topple to the ground. Sig took a step forwards, standing over him, sword-tip at his throat.

  The giant on the ground looked up at her, then swore.

  ‘Ach, you’re just showing off for the new bairns,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ Sig replied, lifting her wooden practice blade away from Tain’s throat.

  He smiled then, that infectious grin, even as he was wincing with the pain of moving as his waist twisted and bruised ribs contracted.

  ‘I’m going back to my Crow Tower,’ Tain said with a mock groan, ‘it’s safer up there.’

  ‘Not by the looks of your cloak,’ Sig commented, looking at what was once a black bearskin cloak, now streaked and strained with the arse-end of crows.

  ‘That I can live with, pain’s a much deeper issue,’ Tain grunted.

  Behind her Fachen, another giant warrior of the Order, was climbing to his feet.

  ‘You all right?’ Sig asked.

&nbs
p; He raised a hand to Sig, nodded.

  ‘You’re slowing down,’ he grunted.

  Sig breathed in a long, deep breath, enjoying the sensation of the cold as it seeped into her lungs. They’d already had some light snow, and more on the way, by the smell of it. She was glad to be back. Even though that sense of dread that Byrne had spoken about had not gone, it had faded, and Sig was home in time for Midwinter’s Day. It was a holy day for the Order of the Bright Star, a day of remembrance, for it was on Midwinter’s Day that the Battle of Drassil had been fought, the Kadoshim and Ben-Elim unleashed upon the Banished Lands. The Kadoshim had been defeated, driven from the field, and Asroth sealed within his cage of molten stone. Corban the Bright Star had been central to those events, and it had been on that day that his dear friends, Gar and Brina, had fallen in the great battle. It was also the day when Corban had resolved to create the Order of the Bright Star, both as a legacy to Gar and Brina, and also to continue the fight against the Kadoshim. The festival was on the morrow, a day of sombre remembrance, and in the evening they would feast in the grey keep and drink to fallen comrades. It was important to Sig that they were remembered, honoured for their sacrifice. On the morrow they would gather before the Stone of Heroes, bow their heads and think of their fallen sword-brothers and sisters . . .

  They were upon Dun Seren’s weapons-field: a huge expanse contained between the inner and outer walls of the fortress. Warriors were hard at combat in various sections of the field, training. Some were mounted upon horseback, giants upon bears, elsewhere a hundred or so formed up in the shield wall. The Order of the Bright Star used round shields in their wall, unlike the rectangular ones favoured by the White-Wings of Drassil. That was because, to become a warrior of the Bright Star, a novice had to master all of the disciplines, be able to fight in the shield wall, or upon horseback, or upon their feet all alone, and a rectangular shield was impractical upon a horse or in individual combat. A round shield was more adaptable across the disciplines, and so that was what they used.