A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  ‘But will this be to your benefit or your destruction? The flamberge has been placed in Bolldhe’s hands, the murderousness awoken in his soul, and the proselytizing efforts of your two priests have so far only made him even more of a god-hater. He has the sword in his hands, but it is he that has become the most volatile weapon – thanks to the efforts of those around him. For though they do not realize it they have, each and every one of them, forged a weapon, to some extent or another, but it remains to be seen how it will be returned to them – hilt first or blade.’

  ‘Bolldhe abhors the flamberge. The sword is the symbol of all he loathes, especially after the Peladane’s mercenary confession in the cave. Yet Bolldhe is also the ficklest of men. He abandoned the quest in the marshes on scant more than a whim, yet returned to them at only the entreaty of a dream. He turned against them a second time, betraying such worthy company to affiliate with thieves and almost doing Appa to death in the process. Yet despite this grossest of perfidies, still he voices no contrition nor begs for absolution, but in his heart seeks yet further betrayals. Almost a third time did he forsake them, tempted as he was to enrol with the Tivor, abandoning the quest in favour of mere adventure.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, the ficklest of men, and such a one is your chosen. Who can tell what fancy might take him at the final moment. He is like a seed blown upon the wind.’

  ‘And one which may even yet find soil in which to flourish.’

  Chance hesitated then replied, ‘Here in this land of frozen stone?’

  ‘Amid frozen stone is Bolldhe in his element. The frozen engram is the key, and the stone beneath, that is Bolldhe’s granite, which may yet see him through.’

  Red Eye sent his sight out all over this northern land, a lighthouse beam piercing the darkness to glimpse those struggling mortals upon whose actions the future of the immortals now depended. Now, however, his attention turned from Bolldhe to Methuselech and Gapp, to Kuthy and Elfswith, and to the thieves of Tyvenborg.

  ‘Unforeseen by me, many pieces have now been placed upon the board, and the game is not what it was. The Peladane’s boy, the Peladane’s friend, the Tivor, and the Tyvenborgers – who among the gods could have predicted that? Who even among the Skela? You, Chance? Or your brother Fate? Even Time?’

  Chance remained silent, its face invisible within the darkness of its grey cowl.

  Red Eye went on. ‘The belief was mine that Methuselech, when he fell – and later the boy too – had been wiped from the board forever. And yet they return.’

  ‘With a vengeance,’ Chance added.

  ‘Assuredly it is vengeance that impels Mauglad on so.’

  ‘And Mauglad who drives on his host body – and the boy.’

  ‘But I wonder how likely it ever was, Chance,’ Red Eye said, looking sidelong at the Syr, ‘that anyone should ever have ventured into the Valley of Sluagh, so remote, so hidden and so fearful. And not only entered, but to have fallen, and survived, yet wounded enough to suffer the spirit that languished there to take hold.’

  Chance, however, remained as inscrutable as ever. ‘Eventually it would have happened. My brother Time is patient.’

  ‘Eventually even mountains turn to dust,’ Red Eye scoffed, ‘but it has come to pass now, at exactly this moment, these days, and to one of Finwald’s mission of all people. Well, whether or not you or your brother Fate admit such abetment in this matter, you have my gratitude. I am even tempted to postulate that it was one of you two who guided young Gapp along his way also, bearing dispatch of Finwald’s occult weapon to Mauglad. Had it not been so, Mauglad would have contented himself with merely finishing his own personal business in the Maw. As it is, however, he now does my work, though he may not consider it thus. Such a catalyst the boy has been! And so nourishing, to boot. Together they have come far – I have come far – and but a little further and Mauglad will be able to drive a pole in the spokes of Fate’s wheels for good. Oh yes, I have much to thank you for, my dear Syr.’

  ‘You have come far indeed,’ Chance agreed, ‘but along which path? It seems to us that the closer you come to the Rawgr, the closer you come to his methods. You do realize what is happening to you, do you not? Pitting a servant of your enemy against one of your own? Finwald, do not forget, is still a good man, and Mauglad is still evil.’

  ‘Mauglad is out for himself, pure and simple,’ Red Eye disagreed, ‘and in this not at variance with Bolldhe. And who can admonish them after such tribulations as they have endured?’

  ‘They are neutral, then, the pair of them. So is that what you finally admit to becoming? The god of neutrality? ’

  ‘Perhaps in neutrality do I have my only hope at this dark hour. In naught can I now have surety.’

  ‘But you are, are you not, the cunnan? Cuna, the knowing god?’

  ‘Yet still just a god,’ Cuna admitted. ‘You can hardly expect me to be omniscient. Unlike you and your council, all I can do is guess, and what now I guess is that mayhap Mauglad will make good if Bolldhe does not.’

  ‘So Mauglad is your Plan B, then?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And where have we heard that before?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Cuna, as he had done on countless thousands of occasions down the millennia, tried to see through the blackness within Chance’s cowl, to bring to bear the full power of his all-seeing eyes on that impenetrable veil, to see for once what expression the Syr might be wearing on its face. To see if there was even a glimmer of irritation there at his chiding. But he knew it was useless. It probably did not even possess a face.

  Cuna knew so little about the Skela: Chance, Fate, Time and the rest. They had not been there when he had first arrived in the world. Nor had needed to be. Cuna had come to a world new with promise, a world of light, of youth, of a multitudinous variety of peoples. He had walked among them, talked with them, and found that he had power – power over people. They looked up to him in fear at first, as they did with others of his ilk: Olchor, Erce, Luttra, all the others. They had called them gods, whatever that meant.

  Cuna had enjoyed the power. But he had not wanted the sort of mastery that was Olchor’s desire. Cuna wanted rather to guide, to mould, to lead the way as a torchbearer. So the wars had begun. The wars of the gods. Even now the evening skies turned red in remembrance of the blood that had flowed in those days. And so the Skela had arrived, the Keepers of Balance. And suddenly the gods found themselves beyond the mortal veil.

  Talking with people had been easy before. But no longer. Now, portents and dreams were the only speech permitted betwixt gods and people.

  If Chance had sensed Cuna’s sadness, it did not show it as it went on: ‘And do not discount Scathur yet, either. He is on the move after all these years of caretaking, hot on their trail. I do not deign to reveal whether he catches up with Bolldhe or Mauglad, but latterly an air of conceit hangs about my brother Fate.’

  Cuna hesitated. Had the Syr’s response been just that little bit trenchant? It had certainly sounded so, but was such a thing possible for one of the Skela?

  ‘What’s this?’ Cuna chided. ‘Was that a hint? Is it possible that, after all the centuries, one of the mighty Skela deigns to— Oh hell, here they come again! Let us be gone!’

  The discussion, such as it had been, was over. The ancient spirits of Melhus were once again issuing from the land, a seething black gout of gaseous effluent that belched from cracks in the turbulent surface and swarmed upward to harangue the alien. Cuna immediately soared away from the rapidly approaching sprites and disappeared, leaving Chance alone.

  ‘Perhaps, indeed.’ The Syr pondered the god’s question as its robes fluttered in the turmoil. ‘Anything can happen.’

  SIX

  The Dead Raise the Living

  TWO DAYS EARLIER, the day before Wodeman had sent Bolldhe into the ramshackle temple of his own soul, Kuthy, Elfswith and Ceawlin arrived at Wrythe.

  As the clawed tips of the Wyvern’s outstretched wings sliced th
rough the cold air, leaving streamers of vortices in their wake, the riders could see coming into view ahead of them the familiar limestone karst towers thrusting up from the dark forest canopy way below. After many hours of freezing, aching flight, this sight truly was a relief. But as they flew on, dropping gently towards where they knew the town lay, and the massed trees came into closer view, an unsettling anxiety began to steal over Kuthy. The treetops now flashing by directly beneath had always appeared black, crooked and mist-laden, as if the whole forest was interwoven with giant cobwebs, but this time there was something else down there knotting his stomach into a tight bunch of dread.

  Kuthy did not like it at all. Something, he could tell, was happening down there in that sick little papule of a town, something important, something big, portentous enough to give him fleeting prescient visions of dragons pouring from the black stormclouds of the world’s last twilight . . .

  He shook his head to clear it of such imbecilic fancies and glanced at his companion. Again he shook his head, this time in annoyance. He had been clinging desperately to the crest running along Ceawlin’s back for several hours, gripping her flanks with his legs until they were well past aching. Even his headgear had wrapped its appendages tightly around Kuthy’s head in an effort to stay put. Yet there was Elfswith, casually sitting side-saddle Ceawlin’s neck as if he were perched on a five-bar gate watching the cows come home on a summer’s eve.

  Cocky little swine! Kuthy thought to himself. Despite his usual nonchalance in all things challenging, he was now approaching the limits of his endurance, so to see Elfswith having such an easy time during this ordeal . . . well, it just wasn’t right, that’s all.

  Then again, I am only human, he reminded himself.

  As they descended further, skimming the treetops, Kuthy could hear the wet slap of slick grey leaves against the Wyvern’s hind feet. They were coming in to land.

  Briefly Kuthy’s mind went back to the Peladane and his funny little expedition. He’d seen so many like them recently: plume-headed errants bound for the Maw, righters of wrong, looters of loot, stirrers of shite . . . Something was definitely up, he had no doubt. He had even toyed a few times with the idea of continuing his travels with Wintus and company into the Maw itself. Might even be something there of advantage to him.

  But no – that place had died centuries ago, and Kuthy Tivor did not care to go sifting through dust like some morbid old grave robber. No, as far as he and Elfswith were concerned the only possibilities in this part of the world would likely be found in the scabrous little hamlet they were flying over right now. There were many secrets here that he and his companion had yet to uncover, so just as well they’d made sure the Peladane and his meddlers would steer well clear of the place.

  As it happened, the day they waved goodbye to Wintus’s band upon the ice bridge leading to Melhus, he and Elfswith had not continued directly on to Wrythe as they had claimed they would. That was just a small white lie, for they still had a few things to arrange before they got there. No, they had only accompanied the travellers to the causeway to make sure the little pests did actually go that way and not later decide to head west to the town instead. They did not want any more daft southerners stirring up trouble in Wrythe and possibly getting themselves killed there – or worse.

  So, after seeing them off, he and Elfswith had flown straight back to the cave, where they spent the next three days finishing off their preparations. Only today had been spent travelling – a long, exhausting day which would take its toll on Kuthy’s old bones (and eardrums) for the next few days to come, he was sure.

  ‘Let’s hope the bathhouses are still open,’ he called out to Elfswith, his voice hoarse above the screaming wind, ‘and the temperature well up.’

  ‘Something’s certainly up,’ Elfswith replied in that scratchy, metallic little voice of his. Without explaining further, the half-huldre pointed down towards the town, whose outlying cave houses and cabbage patches were now coming into view.

  Kuthy followed the little man’s finger, and his innards revolved with fear. He gripped, white-knuckled, the bony crest-plate along Ceawlin’s back so hard his fingers bled. But he did not even notice the blood as it streaked in ragged red lines across the crest-plate like wind-blown raindrops on a windowpane, for his entire attention was upon the birds. So many of them. Wheeling above the treetops as far as the town extended. Screeching in that way birds do when held captive between a predator’s teeth. Flying around chaotically, insanely, terrified.

  Kuthy quickly brought his fear under control and studied the flocks of panicked avians darkly. ‘I never did like the way the birds round these parts fly,’ he murmured to himself, the words instantly whipped away by the rushing wind.

  Though he could not possibly have heard him, Elfswith replied, ‘What, in reverse?’

  Sure enough, many of the birds did indeed seem to be flying backwards in their terror. Ceawlin lazily extended her neck and gulped one up as it came past, disappearing down the Wyvern’s gullet.

  Though his initial fear was now checked, Kuthy could not stem the tide of disquiet still rising in him with every beat of Ceawlin’s wings. It was beneath his dignity to admit to fear, he knew, but on this day he was genuinely scared. He had always known there was something wrong about this place: its twisted, inbred, fungus-licking inhabitants with their drab hessian garments and their dead eyes; the kids, too, who seemed more like devils than humans; those bunkers and storehouses always so closely guarded by the wire-faces. But most of all the Majestic Head, that fish-eyed, burgundy-clad ghoul who ruled from his sepulchral tower on the hill. Something had always been wrong about Wrythe. Yet it was precisely this aberrance, this beyond-the-realm-of-normality uniqueness, that continued to draw Kuthy and Elfswith back here, time and again. They had never unearthed its secrets, and maybe never would, but places like this were Kuthy’s and Elfswith’s business. And so they came.

  But today that wrongness reached out to Kuthy like an enormous threatening hand.

  Ceawlin’s immense tail dipped, the yellow poison sac now pointing towards the town as if in defiance, and her wings turned into the wind, billowing like the sails of a ship. Straightaway the arrested momentum pinned Kuthy painfully against the crest on her back.

  And then they were landing . . .

  Directly below them lay a wide clearing, the frozen mud patch of a cabbage field. As they dropped almost vertically (I wish she wouldn’t do that! thought Kuthy, gripping tenaciously) it could be seen that this field, probably normally as dead and deserted as a cemetery, was a-crawl with moving figures. All over the field silent Oghain lurched, maggot-pale in the late afternoon’s wan light, clawing away at the frozen earth with uncharacteristic fervour. It was almost as if they were controlled by some remote chuckling puppet-master. Around the periphery, lurking in darkness beneath the trees, could just be made out the motionless shapes of wire-faces looking on.

  Suddenly gripped by acute panic, Kuthy almost bawled out to Ceawlin not to land. Within two seconds the feeling had left him, but he wondered at it. He had faced so many dangers in this world (some even outside it), things no ordinary person would even understand, that this inexplicable terror was distinctly odd.

  Wings beating madly, Ceawlin finally touched down. Immediately over a dozen wire-faces detached themselves from the cover of the trees and loped towards them. The three strangers looked about them, neither passenger dismounting just yet.

  The wire-faces formed a rough circle around the newcomers, though they kept out of range of the Wyvern’s stinger. Both Kuthy and Elfswith were more than a little perturbed by their unwelcoming stance. Normally the town’s militia kept out of their way, only keeping an eye on them from a distance as they went about their strange business. The three travellers were well known in Wrythe, though hardly welcomed, but had never before been received in so hostile a manner.

  By now, eighteen guards in all had left the doll-faces to do their grubbing unsupervised, and stood aro
und the three arrivals in a silent circle, red eyes glaring, big hands twitching at the cheesewires held taut between them.

  ‘Yep,’ Elfswith concluded, ‘something’s definitely up.’

  As they were escorted through the town, Kuthy and Elfswith stared at the signs of hurried activity all about. The place was in an uproar. Wherever they looked they could see fields being scrabbled through, timber bunkers unsealed and plundered of their contents, storehouses and stabburs ransacked; and all of this proceeding at a frenzied pace the like of which had probably not been seen in Wrythe since the long-past days of the Fasces. The doll-faces, who normally appeared incapable of emotion, bore expressions that were drawn tight with fear. Not even in the fungus cellars on a particularly damp and fruitful night were they ever this animated. They shuffled about as fast as they could under the unblinking glare of their overseers, hauling their unearthed burdens about.

  ‘Any idea what’s going on, Elfswith?’ Kuthy asked as they were herded along. Both men’s curiosity as to what were being lugged about with such urgency was frustrated by the fact that their escort was guiding them along a route that always kept them well away from the toiling Oghain.

  ‘Well, I really couldn’t say, my man,’ Elfswith replied in a sing-song tone that did not suit the dark mood of the place one bit. ‘Stone pitchers big enough to hold a man, wooden crates the size of a coffin? Oilskin-wrapped bundles suspiciously man-sized? Could be anything, really.’

  Kuthy forced a grin. ‘Yes, these northerners really do know how to have a good time.’