by Matthew Ward
Another howl, this time further away from the roadside dell. Or did it only seem so with comforting steel in her grasp? Peril always lessened if one had the means to face it.
Every sound, every sensation took on heightened significance. Motes and insects dancing above the fire’s smouldering embers. The rustle of branches in the breeze. Dull pain in her ribs, warning too late that she’d slept atop an exposed root. The soft rumble of the horses’ breath. The stutter of Kasamor’s snores. Even the slow hammer of her own pulse.
A third cry split the air. Distant, this time. Pack or loner, ephemeral or myth, the creature had moved away. Rosa let go of her sword and strove for sleep. It was no good. Kasamor’s arrhythmic snore juddered like the beat of a drunken parade drummer, and the anticipation of the next snorting gasp was somehow worse than the sound itself.
At last, Rosa could take no more. Abandoning all hope of reclaiming her dreams, she sat bolt upright, hugged her knees and stared across ashen embers.
“For pity’s sake, Kas,” she hissed. “Bad enough you wouldn’t let us spend a civilised night back at Callastair. Can you not let me get a little sleep?”
The unconscious contempt of Kasamor’s snore was her only reply.
But the snore was only an excuse, wasn’t it? Even without it, there’d be no refuge from her own thoughts, and the dread of imminent loss. But could you lose someone who wasn’t yours to begin with?
“Why am I even here?” Rosa muttered. “I should have made Viktor come instead.”
But then she wouldn’t have seen for herself. Wouldn’t have the chance to say something – anything – to change Kas’ mind. If she spoke at all.
It was ludicrous. She’d stood the tests of shield wall and cavalry charge without a flicker of fear. But this? Fear was all she had. Fear at what would happen if she spoke her heart’s truth and Kasamor rejected her. Fear at where that course would lead if he did not. For someone who’d long made habit of keeping family and friends at a distance, success provoked as much dread as failure.
Kasamor’s steed snorted and stamped. There was almost something accusing in its dark eyes.
“What are you staring at?” Rosa asked. “I know what I’m doing.”
The horse turned away as far as its rope tether allowed. Rosa wasn’t sure whether it did so out of huffiness, or sated curiosity.
She turned her attention back to Kasamor. He seemed younger in sleep. Less arrogant, but also less burdened.
“I don’t care how sweet she is, nor how storied her line. She doesn’t deserve you. There. I said it.”
“Said what?” muttered Kasamor. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
Rosa’s heart leapt to her throat. She forced a smile. “I promised to come smother you if you kept snoring.”
Kasamor rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t snore. And I’d hope the Reaper of the Ravonn might at least offer me the blade instead.”
Rosa willed herself to relax. “You sounded like a cow in a sewer pipe. We had a wolf pack come close to the fire. Then you started up. One dropped dead of fright, and the rest fled.”
“Some friend you are.” He fidgeted with his blankets. “I never thanked you for coming with me, did I?”
“How could I stay away?”
He snorted. “Everyone else has. Even Malachi. They think I’m making a mistake. But not you. I’m glad you’re here.”
A voice at the back of Rosa’s head urged her to tell the truth. Better to regret words spoken than unvoiced. She’d never forgive herself otherwise.
Kasamor frowned. “Still with me?”
“Of course,” she replied archly. “I was thinking.”
“You were away with the whispering ones. Daydreaming of birch and briar, were we?”
“And maybe I’d go if they called. Anything to get away from your snores.”
“You’d make a lovely thornmaiden. Old Jack would be lucky to have you. Luring lusty young fellows into Fellhallow with your sweet serene’s voice.” He shrugged. “Not how I’d like to go, but I guess they die happy.”
“Can you not stop prattling for a few minutes?” Rosa scowled, recognising that the edge in her voice was meant for herself, not him. “Kas, I . . .”
He held up a hand for silence, his expression thoughtful. “How long’s it been misty?”
Rosa looked at their surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. There were skeins of mist gathering between the trees. Thin enough close up, but the road was already lost to sight. How had she not noticed? Had she been so wrapped up in her own thoughts?
“It isn’t. I mean it wasn’t.”
“I believe you.” Kasamor threw off his blankets and clambered to his feet. “You remember Hosgard?”
Rosa leapt to her feet, sword in hand. “I’m trying not to.”
But it was hard. They’d lost half a company when the mists rolled in. Fifty souls from the garrison dragged into the mists. Those who’d survived until dawn had done so in the circle of blessed light cast by a proctor’s sun-stave.
The last embers hissed out. The horses whinnied, as unsettled as their masters.
Rosa pressed back-to-back with Kasamor. “We should have spent the night in Callastair.”
“I’m sorry I ever argued.”
Straining her ears, she caught a new sound beyond the rustle of leaves. A chatter of scratching, croaking cries. And beneath it, a wild fluttering thrum. Bird voices and wingbeats. She raised her sword.
“What in Queen’s Ashes . . . ?”
The crow-flock hit the dell in a storm front of wings and croaking voices. Rosa yelped as talons tore deep furrows in her leathers and ripped at her face and hair. Kasamor bellowed in pain.
One arm raised to shield her eyes, Rosa struck at the swirling crows. Bodies burst into darkness, the lurid green of their eyes fading into the eddying mist. Breathing came hard, each lungful sucked down through smothered lips. The air stank of things long dead.
The storm abated. The crow-things sucked away like water circling a drain and coalesced into a hooded figure. He stood on the dell’s edge, garbed wholly in black and with nothing but a thin beard showing out of shadow.
Breathing hard, Rosa shared a glance with Kasamor. His blond hair was flecked with blood. Small rents on his sleeves and chest gleamed wetly. Flashes of hot, wet pain told Rosa she looked little better. But Kasamor’s face possessed something hers lacked: a flicker of horrified recognition.
“Your life is over, Kasamor Kiradin.” The hooded man’s sonorous voice rolled across the dell. “Send your companion away, and make your peace with this world.”
Kasamor’s face fell. “Rosa, you need to go.”
“Go?” She kept one eye on the hooded man, who for his part seemed content to wait out his ultimatum. “What is this?”
His face creased. “He’s a kernclaw. He serves the Crowmarket. Leave me. I won’t drag you into the mists with me.”
Rosa stared at the kernclaw, and told herself that she trembled at the cold, not fear. But it was one thing to face Hadari spears, and another to stand defenceless before a witch. And the look in Kasamor’s eye made it worse. She’d not seen it at Hosgard, nor at Yarismark, when the wind shook to Hadari war-horns and arrows had fallen like rain. No, Rosa had seen that bleakness only once. In the alley behind the Silverway, in the heartbeat before Viktor’s arrival interrupted the duel.
Kasamor expected to die.
She reached beneath her tunic and squeezed her sun-pendant tight. The wolves had known what was coming, hadn’t they? She might have noticed had she not been lost in foolish, unrequited imaginings.
Fear melted away beneath defiance. Letting go of the sun-pendant, Rosa hooked a hand around Kasamor’s neck. Heedless of the blood, the regret and her myriad fears, she kissed him. She held him there as long as she dared, a moment of warmth that was all too brief, then stepped away.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Rosa turned her back on Kasamor. Sword levelled, she faced the mist-w
reathed kernclaw.
“I’m a Knight of Essamere; a daughter of Orova. I do not flee, and I will not stand aside.”
The kernclaw’s hood came up. Teeth gleamed in shadow. Metal talons glinted.
“So be it.”
Melanna crouched beside the old yew and clung tight to her bow. Her heart hammered loud enough to rattle her ribs. She glanced hither and yon, desperately seeking movement among the trees, and just as vividly hoping she wouldn’t find any.
Don’t stray into the mists. It was one of the few pieces of her grandfather’s advice that Melanna recalled. He’d delivered it to her in earnest tones in the very heart of the Golden Court. She’d answered with all the gravity a five-year-old could muster and wondered why he’d been so insistent. Only when she was much older did she learn that the mists were a gateway to the Raven’s Otherworld.
But it was one thing not to stray into the mists. It was quite another when the mists strayed onto you. One moment, the valley road had been swathed in a clear, balmy night. The next, it lay beneath a greenish-white shroud, the doorway to the land of spirits crooked open. A land into which her grandfather had now surely taken his Last Ride.
A thunder of wings passed by to the north. Or to what had been the north before the mists had risen. Even direction was suspect now, with flickering echoes of trees long felled crowding beneath the boughs. Past and present blurred beneath the mists.
Screams. A woman’s. Then a man’s.
Melanna clapped her hands to her ears. She pressed against the yew’s trunk, careless of scratches earned from its stiff, spiky leaves. It wasn’t her business. Nothing in the mist-wreathed land was her business. If she stayed small, stayed quiet, the horrors of the night would pass her by.
Except . . . Wasn’t that what men expected of her? Even her father, despite his protestations. That she wasn’t brave enough, or strong enough, to do more than tend hearth and raise children? Never mind that her father’s boldest Immortals would have blanched at the thought of entering the mists. Never mind that there were things in the mist that steel could not vanquish. Or doors that opened onto realms where no sane soul would ever willingly tread.
No. What mattered was that if she hid until the horror was past, warriors would look on her in pity. They’d acclaim it a sign that no woman could ever be worthy of the Imperial throne. After all, it would never be enough for Melanna to prove herself their equal. She had to prove herself their better.
That realisation galvanised courage. Or at least the guttering trace of what might grow into courage. And she was not wholly defenceless, after all. Nor wholly foolish.
Melanna unslung her bow and drew a black-fletched shaft from her thigh-quiver. With numbed fingers, she nocked the arrow.
“Ashana, guide your ephemeral daughter,” she whispered. “For I fear she’s about to do something rash.”
But if the distant moon offered any answer, the mist swallowed it.
Melanna picked her way north along the roadside. She travelled swiftly, but not without caution. Around Tevar Flood, there were more dangers than the purely supernatural. Tressian patrols were lighter here than in the turbulent Southshires, but a chance encounter would end her life as readily as any of the Raven’s minions.
She almost tripped over the woman’s body. She lay face-down by a spent fire, blood glistening at the base of her back and pooling in the dirt below. A sword lay close by – the emerald on its hilt a fit match for the knight’s green surcoat. Melanna swallowed, uncertain how to proceed.
The woman moaned.
Melanna scrambled away, heart in her throat.
The moan came again. The breathy agonies of the severely wounded, not the guttural cry of some grave-woken cannibal. Chiding herself for skittishness, she crept forward.
The mists billowed, revealing another body beside the fire. A man. Above him loomed a shape from Melanna’s childhood nightmares. A black silhouette straight from legend. Crow-voices shrieked through the mists. The thunder of their wings grew louder and nearer.
She scrambled away as the shape reached out, metal talons hooked in beckoning. Blood ran red across his fingertips, and trickled away.
“What have we here?”
Melanna was too far gone to terror to recognise that he’d spoken in the clipped Tressian tongue. Nor did she note that a pale face lay beneath the hood, rather than a revenant’s silver death-mask. Those realisations would come later. In that moment there was only the bow, the arrow and a desperate need.
Her hands shook as the arrow sped away, and the shot aimed for the man’s heart took him in the shoulder. She lost his bellow of pain as the crows swept over her in a crescendo of frenzied wings. Casting the bow aside, Melanna dropped to her knees and covered her head with her hands. She offered a ceaseless, mumbling prayer to Ashana. Wingbeats buffeted her about the head and back. Talons plucked at her hair.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the crowstorm passed. Silence reigned.
Melanna stayed low for a long time thereafter, her hands still clasped over her head. Her breathing steadied, her heartbeat alongside. She risked an upward glance.
The killer had gone, the crows with him.
Rising on trembling feet, Melanna edged towards the second body. He lay on his back, sword still in hand. His eyes stared emptily at the sky from a face spattered the colour of his crimson robes. His throat was a bloody ruin.
“Nothing I can do for you,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”
The mists were thinning. Fading into the night with the killer’s departure. Had he called them into being, or had they summoned him? Melanna shook her head. It was enough that he was gone, and she was alive.
A low moan reminded Melanna that the woman still lived. She turned back . . .
A pair of large, muscular shapes appeared through the thinning mist. Recognising too late the horses for what they were, Melanna scowled away embarrassment. The beasts seemed entirely too calm for what they’d just witnessed, but who knew whether they’d seen what she had? She knelt again beside the dying woman. Shallow breaths and a slow, febrile pulse offered little promise of recovery.
Did that matter? The woman was a Tressian, a warrior and an enemy. Had they met on the battlefield, duty dictated that Melanna strike her down.
But they had not met on the battlefield, so duty had no claim. And honour? Honour decreed that Melanna offer whatever help she could. Glory in victory, fortitude in defeat, and honour always – the warrior’s mantra.
Rosa danced on a carpet of autumn leaves beneath a gleaming manor house. The trees of her uncles’ estate screened the sky, holding the ruddy sunset at bay with upswept arms. She clung tight to her partner as they traced the dance’s spiralling steps, her nose almost touching the beak of his black-feathered domino mask.
She couldn’t think where she’d been before. Nor could she recall what had possessed her to don the bare-shouldered gown whose russet skirts threatened to trip her with every step. There was only the dance, and the music’s slowing beat. And a sense of belonging.
Fiddle strings fell silent. Rosa’s partner arched his arm, inviting her to a pirouette. She gladly complied, and turned a graceful step. She couldn’t recall his name, nor picture the face that lay hidden beneath a mask that covered all save the dark goatee.
At silent urging, she turned another pirouette, as graceful as the first. Partway round, she glimpsed something new beneath the trees. A woman, lying face down in the soil, her clothes stained crimson. Another woman knelt beside her, hands bloody as she sought to stem the flow.
Rosa turned her back on the strange tableau. Flutes fell silent as colour slipped from the sky. Her partner smiled, and they began another spiralling circuit to the lonely beat of a drum.
Melanna sank onto her haunches and busied herself with the fire. She’d staunched the bleeding and applied a handful of precious elvas tincture to the worst of the wounds. All for nothing. The woman was weak, and her breathing ever more fitful.
Th
e fire caught. The first flames flickered skyward. The woman coughed, bright blood spilling from her lips. Melanna swore. Blood aplenty, and none where it belonged. But there was still hope. There was always hope when the moon was full.
And the moon was full that night. With the departure of the mist, its cold radiance filled the dell, a balm to Melanna’s tired spirit. If she could see the moon, then the moon could see her.
She shucked off her quiver and dagger-belt and sat cross-legged before the fire. She’d no magic of her own, but neither did the seers upon whom her grandfather had so relied. Ashana spoke, and they listened. But Melanna at least possessed a gift – when she spoke, the goddess listened. If the goddess was so inclined.
“Blessed Ashana,” she whispered. “I beseech you. I cannot save this woman. Help me do so.”
There was no reply. As ever, Melanna felt foolish for expecting one.
“Blessed Ashana,” she repeated. “This woman lies dying. Help me save her. Please.”
“I heard you the first time,” said Ashana. “And it’s not helping if I’m to do the work.”
Melanna opened her eyes. The goddess – or at least, the only aspect of the goddess she ever saw – stood on the edge of the dell, her fingers slipping through a horse’s mane. She wore the form of a woman scant winters older than Melanna herself. Fair skin – paler even than a Tressian’s – shone silver in the moonlight. Diamond clasps held back long blonde hair, and she wore a green dress almost as dark as the night sky.
“Goddess.” Melanna hung her head.
“I’ve told you before about that.” Ashana drew closer. The trees behind were clearly visible through a form not yet gathered to opacity. She vanished entirely where moon-shadow fell and reappeared once light returned. “An empress cannot bow and scrape.”
The words contained rebuke but were framed by a wry smile. Even after all these years, Melanna had never understood why the goddess needled her so. Then again, she still wasn’t clear why Ashana spoke to her at all.
“I’m not an empress,” Melanna replied. “Not yet, and maybe never.”
