A Time of Dread

by John Gwynne

  My blood.

  She could feel the strength leaking from her, stumbled on a dozen paces and fell into Keld and Drem’s arms as they ran to her, meeting her in the gap in the shattered wall, only a timber post remaining. The two of them could barely hold Sig up, lowered her gently to the ground. Cullen tore strips from his cloak, tied them high about her thigh, took a sheathed dagger to twist within the knot, a field tourniquet. Keld crouched to look at the wound, his face telling Sig everything.

  She knew, anyway. To bleed like that, the shock she could feel tremoring through her body already, it was one of the killpoints, the artery in the groin.

  I’m bleeding out. Nothing will stop it. Haven’t got long.

  Hammer’s scarred head appeared, muzzle sniffing Sig’s face, nudging her to get up.

  ‘Not this time, my old friend,’ Sig said, tugging on the fur of Hammer’s cheeks.

  ‘Go,’ she said to Keld, Cullen and Drem. ‘You must get back to Dun Seren, tell Byrne.’

  ‘There’s no way in all the seven hells of the Otherworld that we’re leaving you here,’ Cullen said.

  ‘I’m dead, boy,’ Sig snarled, a wave of dizziness rocking her. ‘You’ll not give your life for someone that’s already dead.’

  ‘No.’ Cullen shook his head, tears welling in his eyes. ‘No.’ A denial, not a refusal. Keld just stood, head bowed. Drem looked as if his world had just ended.

  ‘Dun Seren. It’s an order. Hammer can take you all. She’s your only chance.’

  Shouts and yells from acolytes and Ferals as they gathered, the beat of wings, a spear hissing down at them, Cullen chopping it from the sky.

  Sig dragged herself to the timber post, began pulling herself up.

  She did not look at her friends, but felt hands helping her regain her feet. It was Drem. ‘Unbuckle my sword-belt,’ she said to him, and he did without question. She threaded it around the post and wrapped it around her waist, cinched it tight.

  ‘Buckle me up,’ she asked, and Cullen did.

  ‘Sword.’

  Keld put it in her hand.

  ‘Now get out of here,’ she said to them, patted Cullen’s cheek and brushed fingertips across Keld’s face. He looked as if he planned on disobeying her last order.

  ‘They need you,’ she said, a whisper. ‘I’m trusting in you, my friend.’

  Tears filled Keld’s eyes and he swatted them away. A twist of his lips as he nodded. Sig squeezed Drem’s hand, then she turned to face the oncoming enemy, her body all but filling the remaining gap.

  The rustle of wings, and Rab alighted upon Sig’s shoulder.

  ‘Poor Sig,’ Rab said. The crow ran a bloodstained beak through Sig’s hair.

  ‘Brave Rab,’ Sig said. ‘Guide them home. Make sure Byrne hears of this.’

  Rab croaked mournfully.

  The scuff of boots climbing Hammer.

  ‘Sig,’ Keld called down to her from the bear’s back, and she looked back at them, her vision swimming.

  ‘We shall never forget,’ he said, clenching a fist over his heart.

  ‘We shall never forget,’ Cullen and Drem repeated.

  ‘My brothers,’ Sig said, a smile twitching her lips.

  ‘Hammer,’ she called, loud as she could, even her jaw feeling heavy. ‘Take my friends home.’

  The great bear lifted her head and roared at the night sky, and then she was turning and shambling into the darkness, breaking into a run. Rab launched into the air, quickly disappearing.

  ‘The trees, where Kadoshim can’t follow,’ Sig whispered, then turned to face her enemy.

  A shape loomed out of the smoke and flame, a shaven-haired acolyte, sword stabbing for her heart. Somehow Sig managed to swing her blade, up, smashing the sword away and opening the acolyte’s face from jaw to ear. He fell away gurgling.

  Two more, one Sig let the weight of her blade smash into his skull, dropping him without a sound. The second one stabbed Sig in the stomach, Sig headbutting her, nose exploding.

  Her fingers were tingling, sword so heavy, and Sig slumped against the belt strapping her to the post. Her head lolled.

  Figures gathered before her: acolytes, Fritha, a Feral, growling as it stalked the shadows. Gulla was there, a bandage wrapped around one eye, stained red.

  Sig smiled to see his wound, felt saliva drool from her mouth.

  Something loomed behind them, taller, broader, a giant stepping close, a bloody wound between shoulder and chest.

  ‘Gunil,’ Sig whispered.

  He stood and stared at her. There was a glimmer in his eyes that spoke of memory, but it was quickly replaced by something else, a sick half-madness, like his bear’s.

  ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘I found him floating face-down at the bottom of a waterfall, closer to death than I thought possible,’ Gulla said. ‘He betrayed you at Varan’s Fall. Hated his brother and so gave you up to us. The ambush was his design.’

  ‘You . . . lie,’ Sig groaned.

  Gulla smiled, too many teeth glistening. ‘He has been a useful tool since then, and no doubt will be again.’

  ‘You could turn her,’ Fritha said to Gulla, her head cocked at an angle, studying Sig. ‘Two giants in your service.’

  ‘There’s no blood left in her to drink,’ Gulla said.

  Sig’s sword slipped from her fingers.

  ‘Very well, then.’ Fritha stepped forwards and rested the point of her black blade against Sig’s sternum. ‘Gunil, help me,’ Fritha said. The giant stepped closer and wrapped his huge fist around Fritha’s, who looked Sig in the eye and smiled.

  ‘Gunil,’ Sig whispered, could barely believe that he was standing before her. It gave her more pain than the thousand wounds her body had taken.

  Fritha laughed, and then she and Gunil pushed on the sword, slowly.

  Sig hardly felt the blade enter her body. She couldn’t feel her hands, arms, legs, everything going numb, drawing in to some central point, deep inside. Her vision speckled, darkened at the edges. She felt some pain, then, grunted with it, saw that at least half the blade’s length was sheathed inside her flesh.

  ‘Hold,’ Fritha said, still staring into Sig’s eyes, savouring her pain, her death. Gunil stopped.

  ‘We shall hunt down your friends. Kill them slowly, like this. Or turn them,’ Fritha said, cold as the starlit night.

  No you won’t, Sig thought.

  She shouted at Fritha, then, as the world narrowed to a single point of light, though it came from her lips as little more than a whisper.

  ‘Truth and Courage.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  RIV

  Riv opened her eyes. She was lying on her back, looking up. Above, she could see the thick timber beams of a roof. A beam of sunlight, motes of dust. She heard birdsong. The familiar creak of branches, scraping, soughing in a breeze.

  Where am I? Not home. Not my barrack. Not even Drassil, I think. Though she was not sure how she knew that.

  And then the weight of memory fell upon her.

  Kol, Israfil.

  Mam.

  Tears leaked from her eyes, rolled down into her hair. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, crying silent tears, but it must have been a while, because the beam of sunlight had shifted when next she looked. Then a new sound, a baby crying. She rolled over, onto her side; her back felt odd. Heavy. Numb. A big feather floated close to her face, speckled grey.

  A feather-stuffed mattress! No wonder I feel like I’ve slept for a moon.

  She stretched, muscles shifting, and ran a hand through her hair. It felt longer. The longest it had ever been.

  A fair-haired woman was sitting close by, half in shadow, a baby wrapped in swaddling held in the crook of one arm, feeding at her breast.

  ‘Hello, Riv,’ the woman said.

  It was Fia.

  Riv tried to sit up, but her back felt strange, as if it were heavier than it should be, dragging her back onto the bed, and then there was the thud o
f boots, and hands were taking hers, helping her up, faces dipping into her vision. Vald, grinning, Jost, eyes wider, odd. Staring at her. She looked at herself, saw she was wearing breeches and a linen shirt, baggy and shapeless.

  ‘Where am I?’ Riv asked, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling light-headed. She blinked them open, realized she felt better, physically, than she had for such a long time.

  The fever is gone. And I feel stronger, full of energy.

  ‘A woodsman’s hut, deep in Forn,’ Fia said.

  ‘Safe,’ Vald said.

  Jost was still staring at her, all white-eyed wonder.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. He was starting to annoy her.

  ‘Wrong? Nothing,’ Jost said. He looked away, eyes almost instantly drifting back to her. No, behind her.

  ‘What is it, then?’ Riv snapped.

  ‘Well . . . you’ve got wings,’ Jost said in wonder.

  ‘Don’t be an idi—’ Riv started. Then she stopped. Another feather drifted idly down to the ground. She looked over her shoulder.

  The arch of a wing reared there, big. She took a staggering step forwards and the wing followed her. Her head snapped around to the other shoulder, another wing there, too.

  ‘I’ve got wings,’ she said, fear and wonder mixed.

  Without knowing how, a subconscious movement, she unfurled them, a shifting of muscle, a ripple of feathers, and her wings snapped wide, almost filling the room.

  ‘Not in here!’ Fia laughed as pots and plates went tumbling and smashing, and somehow Riv furled them back in with a snap. Vald and Jost led her outside, Fia following behind her, and Riv stepped out onto a timber porch, a woodland glade around them. The wings felt heavy upon her back, a shifting of weight and balance that she wasn’t used to. Horses whickered somewhere nearby and she saw a figure sitting on a tree stump, tending to a bow on his lap.

  It was Bleda.

  He looked up at her and smiled, and to Riv it looked like the most natural thing in the world. She smiled back at him.

  Hesitantly, she stepped bare-footed onto cool, soft grass and moss.

  Then she unfurled her wings – My wings! – a smooth ripple of muscles expanding, and looked at herself. Her wings were spread wide, almost as wide as the woodsman’s hut. They were not gleaming white, like the Ben-Elim, but a soft, dappled grey.

  Riv felt a thousand emotions surge through her – amazement, fear, wonder, worry, confusion, a moment of blind terror – all wrapped around the grief of losing her mam, which ran through her like a seam of silver through rock, and then back to wonder again. Because her wings were magnificent. She felt a grin split her face.

  And then she saw a strange thing in the glade before her. Rows of stone cairns, but miniature, as if it was a burial ground for small animals, like cats, or hares.

  Or . . .

  A weight shifted in her stomach, like a snake uncoiling, rippling through her.

  ‘What is that?’ she said.

  ‘Those are the cairns of your kind, Riv,’ Fia said behind her. ‘A graveyard of bairns, offspring of the Ben-Elim and mortals. You are the first of your kind to live longer than one day.’

  Riv looked from the rows of cairns, so many of them, to the baby in Fia’s arms.

  ‘And this is the second?’ Riv asked.

  ‘Aye, he is,’ Fia said, a fierce love in her eyes.

  Riv just stood there, all of it washing over her, through her, and her friends gathered close about her.

  ‘Well, what now?’ a voice said, Vald.

  ‘Now?’ said Riv. She blinked, thinking of her mam and Aphra, of Israfil and of Kol’s betrayal. How her world had changed immeasurably. She looked at her friends, at Fia and the baby in her arms, felt a fierce protection for him.

  ‘We make the world right,’ she snarled, an echo of her old anger. ‘But first, I’m going to learn how to use these,’ and with that her wings were beating, swirling forest litter about their feet and she was rising, unsteadily at first, then faster, more confidently. With a shout of joy she burst through the forest canopy, wind ripping tears from her eyes, and she yelled for the sheer joy if it.

  A TIME OF DREAD

  JOHN GWYNNE studied and lectured at Brighton University. He’s been in a rock ’n’ roll band, playing the double bass, travelled the USA and lived in Canada for a time. He is married with four children and lives in Eastbourne, running a small family business rejuvenating vintage furniture. His debut novel, Malice, won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Debut Fantasy.

  BY JOHN GWYNNE

  The Faithfull and the Fallen

  MALICE

  VALOUR

  RUIN

  WRATH

  Of Blood and Bone

  A TIME OF DREAD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  It’s a wonderful feeling to be back in the Banished Lands for this new tale. As ever, this book did not happen without help. There are many people to thank.

  Always first, I must thank my family. My darling Caroline for her unflinching love and support. She is the engine room that drives the Gwynnes and without her I would never get anything done, and nor would I have the will to do so. My sons, James, Ed and Will. Their passion for the Banished Lands is a constant inspiration, and their desire to dress up like a Viking and stand beside their old dad in the sheildwall is a wonder and a joy to me.

  And of course, my wonderful daughter Harriett, whose courage and radiant smile is a blessing all of its own.

  John Jarrold, my agent, for his wisdom and guidance, which more often than not takes place over a delicious meal in the Mermaid Inn, Rye.

  The always-wonderful Bella Pagan with her constant support and advice, and of course her team at Pan Macmillan who work ceaselessly to spread some love for the Banished Lands far and wide – Phoebe Taylor and Don Shanahan, I’m thinking of you.

  Julie Crisp, my fierce and bloodthirsty editor, for her commitment to the Banished Lands, her ability to see straight to the heart of a story, and of course her red pen.

  Will Hinton, my editor at Orbit US, and his team, your efforts on my behalf are much appreciated.

  My copy-editor, Jessica Cuthbert-Smith, who has worked with me since Malice and saved me from errors far too numerous to contemplate.

  My small band of fearless readers, who have all given their time in a world that seems full of far too many things to do, and whose enthusiasm for this story has been such an encouragement:

  Caroline, who loves the Banished Lands as much as I do, and whose insights and feedback are always spot on.

  Ed and Will, whose knowledge of the Banished Lands seems to far exceed mine, fortunately. Their enjoyment and passion for this new tale with its new characters has been a great source of motivation to me.

  Sadak Miah, my oldest friend and sometime duelling partner. I promise to let you win next time. And I promise there will be dragons, just be patient.

  Mike Evans, reader, friend and advisor on all things military – mostly the details that people should just not know.

  Kareem Mahfouz, a friend who would make the perfect shieldman, and whom I suspect has the blood of Balur One-Eye flowing in his veins.

  Mark Roberson, whose enjoyment of all things Banished Lands has ever been an encouragement.

  Usually most of my research is textual, drawn from the wonderful written page. For this book I tracked down an expert on recurve bows – Steve the Bowman – who provided me with a wealth of information on the construction and use of the Hunnic recurve bow. Of course, I’m writing fantasy, so all errors are my own.

  And of course, I must thank all of you readers who have invested both time and money to join me in this journey through the Banished Lands. It is a constant source of surprise and joy to me that you have enjoyed the tale so far, and I’d like to say a big thank you for your messages and support.

  Whether you are returning to the Banished Lands or this is your first foray into the wilds of Forn Forest, I hope that you enjoy your time in this world.


  Truth and Courage,

  JOHN

  First published 2018 by Macmillan

  This electronic edition published 2018 by Macmillan

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-1296-7

  Copyright © John Gwynne 2018

  Cover illustration by Paul Young

  The right of John Gwynne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Map artwork by Fred van Deelen

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