A Time of Dread

by John Gwynne

  And from out of the open doors echoed the sounds of battle.

  Asroth.

  Bleda had visited Drassil’s Great Hall on his very first day with Israfil. The Ben-Elim had shown him the iron-clad Asroth and Meical upon their dais before the trunk of the great tree. He had stood quietly and listened as Israfil told the story of the Seven Treasures, how both Asroth and Meical were encased by some dread spell during the Battle of Drassil, maybe alive, maybe dead, forever imprisoned, and under eternal guard. It had just seemed like a faery tale to him, an excuse for the Ben-Elim to enslave the people of the Banished Lands.

  Until now.

  Abruptly, terrifyingly, he entertained the thought that it was all true. That Asroth was real.

  And the Kadoshim are here to free him.

  Bleda ran, then, leaping up the wide stone steps, over the dead. At the open gates he stopped and peered in. The floor of the Great Hall was lit by huge iron braziers, blue flame blazing from giant oil, giving the chamber an eerie, dreamlike quality.

  There was a guard of giants about the statues within, a score of them in ringmail, wielding war-hammers and axes, ranged in a half-circle before the dais upon which stood the statues of Asroth and Meical, and they were beset by Kadoshim, half-breeds, Dark-Cloaks, and . . . other things.

  Some were men, shaven-haired warriors, fighting with a frenzied, heedless energy. But there were also human-like creatures, shambling and disjointed, arms too long for their bodies, nails curved and long as claws. Bleda saw three of them attacking a giant, acting like a pack of wolves, darting in and out with tooth and claw, hamstringing the giant and then ripping at his throat with their claws. As the giant fell, one of them raised his head and howled.

  In the air of the great dome Ben-Elim flew, a dozen of them at least, though they were falling even as Bleda looked on, outnumbered and locked in swooping, spiralling aerial combat with Kadoshim.

  Fear breathed upon his neck once more, a cold fist contracting in his belly.

  This is not your fight. Kadoshim, Ben-Elim, they do not belong here. Let them kill each other, as Jin said, and rejoice in it.

  It is not your fight.

  He looked at the splayed corpse of a Kadoshim close to his feet, dead eyes staring, dark veins mapping its face and arms.

  The Ben-Elim are bad, but these Kadoshim . . .

  They are worse!

  In his mind’s eye he saw the one in the courtyard, sword raised high, malice radiating from its every pore like mist. The thought of them setting Asroth free, of what they would do if they won against the Ben-Elim, sent shivers down his spine.

  He looked over his shoulder, hoping to see Alcyon leading a host of giants and White-Wings into the courtyard. But there was only stillness and silence.

  He reached into his quiver, pulled out three arrows and stepped into Drassil’s Great Hall.

  On the floor below, many of the giants were down, the survivors drawing tighter about the iron-black statues of Asroth and Meical, Dark-Cloaks and the things with them throwing themselves at the giants, Kadoshim swooping down from above.

  Bleda raised his bow, nocked and loosed without thinking; a Kadoshim shrieked, arching in mid-air, then tumbling, limbs loose, crashing to the stone floor. He paused, realizing it was the first time he had shot at a living foe, the first enemy life he had taken. The weight of that shivered through him.

  Screams drew him back to himself. He shook his head and focused. Nocked an arrow and loosed again, a Dark-Cloak stumbling and falling, another arrow, another Dark-Cloak down.

  More arrows from his quiver as he padded down the wide steps that led to the chamber’s floor. Another Dark-Cloak falling with an arrow in his back. Then a Kadoshim saw him, shrieking a warning, and some of the Dark-Cloaks on the ground looked up at him.

  Half a dozen of them, more, turned and ran at him, the Dark-Cloaks screeching battle-cries, the beasts with them disturbingly silent.

  Breathe. Don’t panic. It’s like shooting rats in the salt gorge.

  Nock, draw, release. Nock, draw, release.

  A Dark-Cloak down in a spray of blood. Another doubling over, an arrow in the gut.

  Easier when they’re running straight at me.

  Nock, draw, release.

  Sparks as an arrowhead crunched into stone, his first miss.

  Though the fact they’re coming to kill me isn’t helpful for my concentration.

  An arrow thumping into a shoulder, spinning a Dark-Cloak.

  Nock, draw, release. Nock, draw, release.

  One of the shambling creatures dropped to one knee, Bleda’s arrow lodged in the meat between neck and shoulder. Another arrow skittering on stone, his second miss.

  Jin would laugh to see those shots.

  There was a slap of wind in his face and he instinctively ducked, a Kadoshim’s sword from above just missing where his head had been. He fell, rolling, dropping arrows, desperately clutching his bow. Gasping, he regained his feet and leaped away, running a dozen paces down the tiered steps as the Kadoshim came after him. He tugged an arrow from his belt-quiver, loosing wildly, the Kadoshim veering away, the arrow piercing its leathery wing. Bleda was dimly aware of the surviving Dark-Cloaks and their companions still charging at him. Much closer now. Grabbing at the remaining arrows in his quiver, only a few left, he backed away, pausing to nock and aim, loosing, one shot slamming into a Dark-Cloak’s chest, hurling him to the ground.

  Two figures were still running at him, only twenty paces away, the shambling, loping things the Kadoshim had flown across Drassil’s walls. Bleda starred into the face of the wild-eyed man, if you could call him that. There was a feral, soulless cast to him, teeth bared in a snarl, canines worryingly sharp, nails grown long and black, thicker than they should be, limbs having a stretched appearance, running in a loping, shambling gait, as if its bones had grown overnight.

  Bleda readied himself, nocked and aimed, put an arrow into the man’s chest, at less than twenty paces, the force of it hurling him backwards, head over feet, down the wide steps. Bleda had another arrow nocked and was aiming at the last Feral when he saw the first one rise, stagger to his feet, shake himself like a wounded hound, and then the eyes were fixing onto him. It sent a jolt of fear lancing through Bleda.

  That should have killed him. What are they?

  He adjusted his aim, away from the closer attacker, back to this difficult-to-kill creature, loosed, his arrow leaping from the bow. Bleda knew it was good without needing to see it land, shuffling back to make time for the last Feral.

  His arrow punched into the first creature’s eye, sending it tumbling, limbs boneless. This time, to his relief, it didn’t get back up.

  He nocked another arrow quickly, shifting to aim at the last Feral, but too late. It was upon him, a crunching impact, launching him through the air with a moment’s weightlessness, then a bone-jarring impact as his shoulder slammed into stone. Breathless, he lost his grip on the bow, then the man-beast was on top of him, claws reaching for his throat, scouring his chest, pain erupting like lines of fire; hot, fetid breath in his face as far-too-long teeth snapped a handspan from his jaw. He kicked and punched, pain lancing up his shoulder, writhed and bucked in the thing’s grip, felt those long claws seeking out his throat, moving inexorably closer.

  I will not die like this!

  His grasping hands made contact with a loose arrow on the floor and he grabbed for it desperately, punched it into the side of the creature’s head, into its cheek, ripped it out, stabbed again, saw teeth through the gash. The creature barely seemed to notice. He stabbed again and again before it howled, jaws open wide, its red maw of a mouth all jagged teeth, and bit into his shoulder.

  The pain was shocking, a burning, tearing agony . . .

  Then large hands were around his attacker’s neck, hauling it off, the creature tearing chunks of flesh from his shoulder, as Alcyon held the spitting, snarling thing in the air then hurled it away. It hit stone, rolled, scrambled to its feet far too agile
ly and then it was running at them. Alcyon stepped in front of Bleda with a roar, his twin axes windmilling, hacking into the creature’s shoulder and waist. It collapsed, howling, Alcyon putting a boot onto its head to wrench his blades free. The thing on the ground twisted, tried to bite into his foot, somehow still refusing to die.

  Another axe blow and it spasmed, one foot drumming, then was finally still.

  Behind Alcyon Ben-Elim were sweeping through the wide-open doors, White-Wings beneath them in a shield wall, marching out of the darkness of the courtyard, down the stone steps into the blue-flicker madness of the Great Hall.

  ‘Here, lad,’ Alcyon said, offering the blood-soaked shaft of one of his axes for Bleda to pull himself upright. His shoulder was screaming its pain at him, nausea lurching in his belly, but all he could think of was his bow. He’d dropped it, had glimpsed it skittering across stone.

  There.

  He stumbled down a dozen steps, over halfway to the chamber floor now, and swept it up.

  Someone grabbed his arm, spun him around.

  ‘You could have died!’ Jin said to him furiously, looking as if she wanted to slap him.

  ‘Still could,’ he muttered, pulling his arm free, the battle din echoing loud and furious.

  The new wave of White-Wings, giants and Ben-Elim had hit the battle on the chamber floor, and though the fighting was fierce, it did not look as if it would last long, the Dark-Cloaks and their Feral companions outnumbered and flanked now. Although, even as Bleda stared, he saw the shrinking line of giant guards around the statue of Asroth and Meical fracture and break apart into islands of melee-like combat.

  One figure drew his eye. A tall Dark-Cloak, hood falling back as he leaped onto the dais. Slim and athletic, fair hair shaved to stubble on his head. He drew a sword from a scabbard; something about it was strange, the metal a dull, sheen-less black. The warrior strode to the figure of Asroth and lifted the blade. His lips moved, the clamour in the chamber was too great to hear anything, but again, there was something wrong about it.

  No!

  Bleda reached inside his quiver, only one arrow left, and nocked it. Drew it, an explosion of pain in his shoulder where the Feral had bitten him.

  Black smoke hissed from the sword.

  Bleda gritted his teeth, drew and loosed, hoped his aim was good.

  A moment as he held his breath.

  The arrow struck the man in his shoulder, staggering him, dropping the sword.

  Bleda grinned.

  A Kadoshim alighted beside the shaven-haired man, this one standing out from the others, bigger, a greater sense of menace and power about it. It hauled the warrior Bleda had shot back to his feet, and together they gripped the black sword’s hilt and touched its blade against the starstone metal that encased Asroth and Meical. Then they began to chant.

  ‘Cumhacht cloch star, a rugadh ar an domhan eile, a leagtar aingeal dorcha saor in aisce.’ Though Bleda did not understand their words they chilled his blood. The chanting continued, rising in volume over the din of battle, the same phrase, again and again.

  And then the black sword began to glow, tendrils of red veins spiralling through it, up, seeping into the starstone metal that encased Asroth and Meical.

  ‘AINGEAL DUBH,’ a voice bellowed, Ethlinn striding into the chamber, spear in her hand. ‘Ar ais go dtí an dorchadas, cumhacht réalta cloiche,’ the Queen of the Giants cried, and Bleda swore that for a heartbeat her eyes glowed, a bright flash.

  The Kadoshim and the shaven-haired acolyte swayed, the red seams in Asroth’s tomb retreating, shrinking back into the black sword.

  They redoubled their chanting, the red veins grew again.

  Israfil flew into the chamber, alighting beside Ethlinn, taking up her chant, power emanating from them like a heat haze. The red threads dwindled.

  The Kadoshim snarled, releasing the sword, turning and hurling a spear at Israfil. Ethlinn deflected it with her own spear, sent it skittering across stone.

  The acolyte with the black sword glanced around, saw their war party dwindling, Ethlinn and Israfil marching towards them.

  They are beaten, and they know it.

  Bleda saw something pass across his face, a shouted word to the Kadoshim, who leaped into the air, powerful wings taking it higher. The acolyte swept up the black sword in both hands and raised it high. Brought it down onto Asroth’s arm.

  There was a moment when all sound seemed to be sucked from the room, like an indrawn breath, and then a huge noise, like a tree splintering, followed immediately by a detonation of air that exploded outwards from the dais in an ever-expanding ring, knocking all in its way flat. Bleda had a half-moment to feel fear, and then the wall of air was crashing into him, hurling him from his feet, his back slamming into stone. He saw Jin thrown to the floor as the explosion hit her, heard Alcyon grunt somewhere further up the stairs.

  He scrambled to his knees, just staring at the dais.

  A cloud of dust slowly settled, revealing the two black-iron statues still there, though something had changed. Red veins now ran through the iron, like seams of gold, and for a heartbeat the iron casing seemed to ripple and swell. Bleda thought he saw Asroth move. A twitch of his head, a flare of light at his eyes. Then the red veins faded, retracting through the figures, drawing in to a focal point. Asroth’s right fist. Or, to be exact, where his right fist had been. Now there was a stump, a bright forge glow about it, quickly fading.

  The shaven-haired warrior with the black sword was on his feet again, the snapped shaft of Bleda’s arrow still protruding from his back. He bent and picked something up, black and heavy, put it inside a leather bag.

  Others were climbing to their feet, giants and White-Wings, half-breeds, Ferals and Dark-Cloaks. A Kadoshim screeched and swept down from high in the chamber’s roof, swooping low, skimming heads. The man on the dais lifted an arm and the Kadoshim grabbed hold of him, swinging him around so that he straddled its back between its wings, and then it was banking left, turning a tight circle, wings beating and it powered for the chamber doors, other Kadoshim and half-breeds falling in about it, others snatching up surviving Dark-Cloaks and Ferals, and then they were flying out of the chamber doors like the north wind. Ethlinn threw her spear at one, skewered it through the chest, hurling it against one of the chamber doors, the blade driving deep into wood, thrumming, the Kadoshim slumped, pinned. Ben-Elim swept after the disappearing Kadoshim, a storm of wings.

  Bleda looked back to the statues, the chamber floor littered and strewn with the dead and dying, screams, groans echoing, survivors climbing slowly to their feet.

  Asroth and Meical were in the same positions they had ever been, Meical on his knees, grasping at Asroth, whose wings were spread, trying to lift free, one hand around Meical’s throat, the other drawn back into a fist.

  Except that the fist was gone.

  There was no fire glow now, just a stump at the wrist, the black iron back to the matt-dull that it had always been. No hint of life in Asroth’s eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  DREM

  Drem strode to the centre of his yard and drew his da’s sword.

  My sword, he reminded himself. Da gave it to me, before he died.

  He raised it over his head, gripping it two-handed.

  Stooping falcon, he recited to himself, holding the pose, counting his heartbeats, feeling the slow burn beginning in his wrists, in his part-bent thighs.

  Ninety-nine, one hundred, and then he was chopping down, right to left in one smooth, fluid movement, a hiss of air as the blade passed through it. ‘Lightning strike,’ he murmured, holding that for another count of a hundred, then a powerful stab up with boar’s tusk, into his imaginary foe’s belly, holding that, then slowly, methodically moving through the forms of the sword dance that his da had taught him, muscles and tendons shifting gradually from burning to trembling to exhaustion, sweat beading his brow amidst the snow and ice, his breath a mist about him.

  When he’d finishe
d, he practised sheathing his sword in one move, so far proving harder to master than most forms in the dance. He swore as he cut his thumb, again, and looked around to see not only the two goats but also the chickens standing around the yard, staring at him.

  ‘Not funny,’ he muttered at them, then, at the rumble of hooves, shifted his gaze to look out of his hold’s gates, seeing riders approaching down the track.

  ‘We’re going to kill that white bear,’ Ulf said, looking down at Drem from the back of his horse. Hildith and a score of her lads were with her.

  ‘If you’re wanting some payback for your da, you’re welcome to join us,’ she said to him, sympathy in her eyes softening the hardness in her face.

  Drem rubbed his chin, surprised at how long his stubble of beard had grown. He’d already gone to Ulf and told him that the white bear had not killed his da, that it had been a different bear.

  Ulf hadn’t believed him.

  ‘We all saw the bear, lad. We fought it in that glade,’ Ulf had said to him. ‘Many didn’t leave the glade breathing because of it. Of course it was the white bear that killed your da.’

  Drem had told Ulf his reasoning, but Ulf had baulked at the idea of digging up Olin’s body and inspecting his wounds.

  ‘Disrespectful,’ he’d said, looking at Drem with a little horror and a lot of disgust in his eyes. ‘Don’t need to go digging up a corpse that’s been buried a ten-night, anyhow. Think about it. A swipe with the other paw, a different angle than you remember in your mind.’ Ulf shrugged. ‘It was fast, confusing, and you had a crack on your head, Drem. Easy to make a mistake. Now stop spouting your nonsense theory like it’s fact, and go sharpen your spear. We’ll hunt that white bear down soon enough.’

  Drem had known better than to argue, knowing how men got that look in their eyes and tilt to their head when a discussion had gone past the facts and somehow turned in their minds into a question of who was cleverest, wisest, strongest, most skilled, whatever.

  So Drem had just sighed and left.