He snatched Bolldhe’s lantern from his hand and used it to scrutinize every square inch of the stair hall they waited in, every glistening and varicose-veined marble surface.
‘Are you sure they even came this way?’ Gapp demanded. ‘Shlepp doesn’t seem to have picked up any scent.’
‘Of course I’m not bloody sure!’ Nibulus shouted. ‘Nobody actually saw where they went, did they!’
‘Perhaps we should go back to the pillar hall where we started, and then allow our redoubtable hound to locate their trail from the beginning,’ Appa suggested rather meekly.
‘Shut up!’ Nibulus hissed, rounding on them all. ‘ “Redoubtable hound”, my arse! What’s the matter with you? You trying to take that traitorous bastard’s place by talking pretentious pox like him? We’ve been walking for hours now and we’re not going back . . . even if we knew the way. So just keep that crumbly little cakehole of yours sealed!’
He slapped the lantern back into Bolldhe’s hand, hefted Unferth again and led the silent company on up the stairway, his mouth clamped shut into an angry little slit.
He realized the truth of what they said, of course, but was too furious to admit it. Once again his anger had got the better of him. What had occurred when they encountered the Tyvenborgers had shaken his already overstretched nerves. Like all of them, he was not used to journeying through ice, fire and the dark places of the Dead. Nor had he been in any way prepared for attacks by undead dragons. But the Finwald incident, well, that was something that just did not happen to the son of Artibulus Wintus. The loss of good comrades was no new thing to him, and hunger, thirst and exhaustion had become familiar companions upon the road of his life. Ambush by the private armies of robber barons had occurred too; and he had grown accustomed to charging headlong into battle against typhoons of arrows, quarrels and spears. But the inexplicable actions of Finwald . . . He still could not quite believe the man was a traitor who had strung them along from the beginning. There had to be a good reason for his actions. There always was . . .
If only Paulus would come back, then maybe all of this could be sorted out.
But he had not returned and, once Wodeman and the two Cervulice had shaken off their chakram-induced paralysis, Nibulus had decided that they could wait no longer. Something clearly had happened to the mercenary, and in his growing impatience the Peladane had lost his temper and ordered the remaining party on. All except the four Vetters and two Cervulice wounded in the thieves’ ambush. They now lay hiding in the shadows near Lubang-Nagar, waiting for their comrades to return, should they ever do so, and meanwhile keeping vigil over the bodies of the slain.
Abruptly, Nibulus was shaken from his cogitation by the changed timbre of Wodeman’s voice. He had not been listening to the shaman and thus did not catch his actual words, but it was the tone of the man’s voice that brought him back to the present so sharply. It was that same tone Wodeman had used when they had heard the fey sounds in the tunnel leading out of Eotunlandt.
As it had then, it chilled Nibulus to the soul once again.
‘I think we’re getting close,’ Wodeman repeated. ‘Can’t you feel the difference in the air?’
Yes. Now he thought about it, the Peladane could. They all could. They had ascended to a much higher part of Ymla-Myrrdhain, and the enchantment here was even more palpable.
‘Stop!’ hissed Nibulus. Englarielle, just behind him and to one side, sent word down the line for his followers to be still. Within seconds stillness there was.
Every ear listened. None even dared breathe.
For long moments they waited, but no sound could be heard. Whatever had caused the Peladane to react so, it was gone now. They resumed their progress along yet another new passageway.
At first the only sounds were those normally to be heard from a marching troop, but then other sounds began to stir around them: mutterings that were barely audible, not heard if one listened out for them, only when not concentrating, like faint movements perceived only from the corner of the eye. Whispers ran along behind the walls to either side; metal squealed across stone; a low voice whistled like the wind gusting through the deep dungeons of a castle; the echo of a slamming door but without the actual slam itself; the sudden flurry of leathery wings; the clicking of talons – or bones – over a marble floor.
But these sounds were only hinted at, and not even the keenest of hearing among them could tell if they came from some distant part of the keep or right beside him, from above, below, in front or behind, or even from inside his own head.
They bunched together more tightly, their weapons gripped in increasingly shaky hands.
A long time passed in trepidation. As has been mentioned, Gwyllch’s Chronicle was not written as a guidebook or set of directions, so it offered nothing specific to go on. It was nonetheless accurate in describing the feel of the place, which was what Nibulus was using to guide them.
Still the strange noises continued, however, and seemed to be getting stronger. Joining them now were the nervous mutterings of the hindmost Vetters. They were very unhappy about something and were beginning to push forward against those in front.
‘Nibulus,’ Wodeman hissed, ‘I think there’s—’
‘I’m well aware something is following us,’ Nibulus enunciated tersely. ‘Believe it or not, I have ears too.’
Everyone in the company was getting jumpy, and something had to be done soon. But Nibulus was unprepared for an enemy such as this. It was not a foe one could tackle with weapons.
‘If only we had some of that pitch-scented cloth—’ Bolldhe whispered.
‘What?’ Nibulus snapped.
‘That cloth Kuthy used when we were leaving Eotunlandt,’ Bolldhe explained, ‘when we heard the ghost battles and that kid screaming. What we can’t hear, can’t scare us.’
Nibulus stared at him with incredulity. ‘That is probably the stupidest thing you’ve said on this entire journey,’ he rejoined. ‘We are not stopping up our ears!’
‘Kuthy knew a lot of wise things,’ Appa pointed out.
‘Not about this place,’ Nibulus retorted. ‘He’d never even been here and—’
The words stopped dead in his throat as they all froze, staring about, each seeking confirmation in another’s eyes that he was not the only one who had heard it. A strange kind of fluttering as before, only this time, unlike the mutterings behind the walls there was a definite sense of physicality to it. Furthermore, they could now make out from which direction it originated: from behind them, just along the passageway.
The enemy was upon them.
‘Down this way!’ Nibulus urged his host in a voice that was not quite a whisper but at the same time not quite a shout, then fled as fast as he could. He was driven partly by the need to find a better place in which to stand and fight, but in his haste there was more than a hint of barely suppressed panic too.
The entire army poured down the passageway after their leader, wild-eyed and snorting with terror, jostling to get past their slower comrades. Soon a kind of wailing could be heard from the unfortunate Vetters to the rear, and this rapidly spread up the line. As the fluttering commotion drew nearer, all control deserted them, and they stampeded in total disorder from the horror that was about to overwhelm them.
The noise, whatever it was, reached the back of the rout, and a chorus of terror-stricken screams pierced the air. Amid a light-show of flailing torches something very large came rushing on over their heads, the beat of its wings felling them in its wake. Like a wind devil, on it came, overtaking the company and heading for its leaders. At the last moment Nibulus and his vanguard flung themselves to the ground with a cry, and the great winged devil soared overhead, its claws missing them only by inches.
‘Stand up!’ Nibulus cried, having used the momentum of his dive to roll over and up on to his feet again, sword at the ready.
‘Get some light over here!’ he snarled at the tangle of bodies around him, then yelled blindly into the darkness a
head, ‘Come on then, you bastards!’
Man and beast scrambled to their feet. Torches were swept up again, and they spaced themselves out as best they could, weapons gripped tightly, ready to stand and fight. There could be no such blind routs again.
They stared into the blackness while Bolldhe fumbled with his lantern and listened to the noises coming from somewhere ahead. It sounded as though the winged devil had flown into a wall but was now coming back for them. Talons clicked, wings ruffled loudly, and a voice that sounded like two voices melded together was babbling in a demonic gibberish.
Then there was a sudden snap, and a great fire-red eye opened before them, bobbing this way and that, drawing closer as if searching them out. Appa moaned in terror.
‘Got it!’ Bolldhe hissed and finally swung his lantern up. The apertured sleeve clicked down, the beam narrowed and intensified, then lanced into the darkness ahead.
‘Oh, sweet Cuna above!’ yammered a hysterical Appa. ‘It’s Rumbletyts of the Three Heads!’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Bolldhe, as he slid his tulwar back under his belt. ‘It’s just Kuthy and his funny friends.’
‘By my god!’ Nibulus panted, his face nearly black with fury as he marched up to confront the Wyvern team. ‘I’ll kill you for that – I’ll kill you!’
‘And it’s terribly agreeable to see you too, Nib,’ Kuthy greeted him amiably, though loosening the swordbreaker from its clasp at his belt.
‘Don’t give me any of that shite,’ Nibulus growled, ‘or, so help me, I’ll give you such a thrashing you’ll never be able to forget what it is to face a Peladane when his dander is up!’
For effect he slammed down the boar’s-head sallet on his helm and blew steam through the snout-vents. But both Kuthy and Elfswith knew it was an empty threat and walked on past the fuming Peladane to greet the rest of the group.
They were met with a mixture of reactions. Whereas Bolldhe and Wodeman simply breathed a deep sigh of relief, Appa seemed to share Nibulus’s anger and was jumping up and down like a frog, speechless in his rage and making some kind of eccentric gesture with his hand as if he were flinging ordure at them. His other hand was, more characteristically, tapping his ring against his amulet faster than a woodpecker’s beak.
Gapp had not met the trio until now and just gawped, chuckling a little hysterically, while reflecting on how understated his companions’ descriptions of them had been. Shlepp, by his side, growled uncertainly.
The Vetters, Cervulice and Paranduzes, however, crowded around with intense curiosity. They had never even heard of a Wyvern before and, once it became clear that these newcomers were not rawgrs after all, swarmed around them like schoolchildren, almost mobbing them in their fascination and eagerness to stare and touch, their terror wholly forgotten.
And, for their part, it has to be said that Kuthy and Elfswith for once reciprocated the curiosity. Though they had heard stories, neither had ever seen Vetters or Cervulice before, and while Ceawlin, cocking her head on her snake-like neck, stalked about eyeing these strange musty beasts cautiously, her riders returned the Tregvans’ scrutiny with mutual interest.
‘Have you ever seen anything like them before?’ Kuthy asked Elfswith excitedly, studying one of the Vetters closely. The Vetters looked from Kuthy to Gapp and back again, realizing with increasing awe that their friend Gapp belonged to the same race as this prodigy who rode fabulous dragons through castle tunnels!
‘No,’ Elfswith shook his head, ‘but we have seen their tracks . . . Take a gander at their feet; look anything like those prints we saw back on the beach?’
‘Got to be,’ Kuthy agreed after studying them carefully. ‘So where are the other two they were with?’
Elfswith nodded, scanning the throng for the desert mercenary Xilva and the esquire, and then suddenly became aware of a furtive little hand beneath his coat. Radkin, the boldest of Vetters, had managed to get in close. Something about Elfswith had caught his eye, and he wanted to make a closer examination. Before Elfswith realized what was happening, Radkin had slipped his hand up inside the coat, wrapped his bony fingers around something encountered there, and hauled out a long and wriggling appendage for all to see.
Cries of amazement and (in the case of the Vetters) approval met this revelation. Englarielle even swept his own out to compare sizes.
Elfswith’s tail had at last been revealed to all.
‘Right, that does it!’ Nibulus snapped and strode right up to the little man. For once he was not intimidated by the tail-flicking Wyvern; they had just recently survived far worse dragons than she. He squared up to Kuthy while glaring down at Elfswith.
‘No more horseshit, Tivor,’ he said levelly. ‘Just tell me straight: who are you, what is he, and why the pox are you both here now?’
Sensing a fight, Englarielle’s army chattered excitedly, and while those nearest drew back to give the humans space, those behind pushed forward eagerly to get a better view.
Kuthy turned from Nibulus to Elfswith, staring down into his strangely flecked yellow eyes with a look of inevitability, as if asking, Are you going to tell them or shall I?
Elfswith glanced ruefully down at his exposed tail, then returned Kuthy’s gaze and spoke to him in a tongue known only to the pair of them: ‘Don’t suppose you know the Aescalandian for “birthmark”, do you?’
Kuthy’s eyes lifted to the ceiling, and he turned back to the exasperated Peladane. ‘He’s a bard. A bard, all right? Of singular lineage.’
The listeners waited silently, expectantly, for Kuthy to continue. Everyone knew what bards were. Solitary wandering minstrels, they travelled from village to village, farm to farm, taking on the most mundane and repetitive jobs imaginable, and were apparently quite content with this toil, and then inevitably moved on. Some said they lived thus in order to retain their close links with the earth while their heads were up in the clouds, for if they did not keep themselves grounded somehow, their souls might fly off and never return. Others maintained the exact opposite was true, that it was the mindless monotony of the work they undertook that allowed their minds to wander free and untrammelled, and thus alight upon whatever inspiration might be floating about in the cosmos.
Yes, bards were familiar to all, but, though they were a little strange, this still did not explain Elfswith’s tail nor any other of his mysterious little peculiarities. It was an explanation of that ‘singular lineage’ that they were now waiting for.
Elfswith nodded. ‘My mother was a Succubus and my father a human. A Lightbearer, actually, from Venna.’
The company was taken aback, yet the truth of Elfswith’s claim was plain for all to see in his eyes. Nevertheless, they were not sure which was the more incredible, the fact that Elfswith was born of a Succubus or that there actually were Lightbearers in the sleaze-pit of Venna.
‘Goes some way to explaining why he’s so mixed up,’ Kuthy confided to Nibulus, ‘so at odds with himself.’
Nibulus just stared at the floor and continued thus for quite some time. ‘So we’re in the company of a huldre,’ he eventually said. ‘This just gets better and better.’
Elfswith picked some dirt from his fingernails then turned to Nibulus. ‘You made it here then, Fatty. Looks like I’ve lost my bet with Kuthy—’
‘Don’t even talk to me, you!’ Nibulus commanded, raising his hand and refusing to even look at the bard. ‘I have nothing to say to you. Nothing at all.’
He gave all his attention instead to Kuthy, and focused on him every last mote of the vexation and grief that was unravelling him from inside. At length he said, ‘I thought you were supposed to be going to Wrythe?’
‘We were,’ Kuthy replied. ‘We did. And that’s why we’re here. Nibulus, listen, we’ve found out something you really ought to know, something about those two friends of yours, the ones you said died down south.’ He looked again around at the company, trying to see if there were any humans here he had not noticed before.
Nibulus grinned
acidly. ‘If you came all the way here just to tell us about those two,’ he said with cold satisfaction, ‘then I’m glad to inform you that you’ve wasted your time. Radnar!’
Gapp, as usual seemingly invisible to the human eye – even the Tivor’s – now stepped forward. Kuthy and Elfswith scrutinized the youth before them closely. That he was alive did not surprise them; the presence here of the Vetters had already confirmed their sea passage had been successful. Nevertheless, there was a glint of bemusement in their regard as they appraised the boy.
Gapp openly returned their scrutiny. Kuthy nodded at him in acknowledgement. ‘So what’s your secret?’ he asked in a tone that was both circumspect and reticent, for he was not sure what to make of this incongruity standing in front of him. ‘Yours – and that of your private little army here? Just how long can you hold your breath?’
Gapp blinked. ‘Beg your pardon?’
‘We trailed you all the way from Wrythe to the Last Shore,’ Elfswith explained, ‘right up to the point where your tracks disappeared into the sea. That’s quite a trick, and it’s not often myself and my friend here are impressed.’
‘Oh that.’ Gapp sniffed. ‘I suppose I have my methods.’
Kuthy grinned. Cocky little tosspot, he thought, seeing easily through the youngster’s affected nonchalance to the glowing pride beneath.
‘Oh right,’ he replied. ‘Forget it then. So where’s your friend? This “desert man” we’ve been hearing so much about? Seems he’s quite in demand these days.’
Gapp rested his machete blade against his shoulder. ‘Splattered all over the sides of that great doorway back there. Why, was there something you wanted to ask him?’ Not quite so clever now, are you, fellows? the boy thought with an inward smile as he perceived the sudden darkening of the two errant adventurers’ expressions.
‘Is this true?’ Elfswith demanded, turning to the Peladane.
‘Redecorating the entrance to Lubang-Nagar even as we speak,’ Nibulus confirmed, sharing his esquire’s satisfaction in pissing on their bonfire. ‘Yes, he blew up, just like that. Spontaneous explosion. Happens all the time, apparently.’
A Fire in the North Page 44
