by A J Dalton
‘I wouldn’t advise it!’ the youth shouted, although Jillan was not sure what the stranger was referring to. Surely the youth hadn’t heard him from this distance.
Aspin concentrated. ‘The grey … woman is … a good person. She means no one any ill. As for the man … Ouch!’ His hands went to his temples. ‘So many characters. Too many. It’s overwhelming! Can’t make it stop! Help!’ The mountain warrior passed out, and it was only Ash’s perfect timing that saved Aspin from falling into the road.
‘Sorry. I did warn him, though. It’s why I wear one of these,’ the youth called, rapping his helmet with the knuckles of one hand. ‘A bit of water splashed on his face and he should be all right, if a bit groggy for a while. But well met! Come closer and allow us to introduce ourselves.’
There was something seductive and compelling in the man’s voice. Jillan felt as if he was meeting a long-lost friend and wanted to run to him. Even the horses seemed drawn to him, but Thomas kept them back.
‘Who are you and what is it you want of us?’ Thomas asked brusquely, his suspicion clear.
The man-youth spread his hands. ‘Mere common courtesy. Your names perhaps. As a gesture of good faith, I am happy to give you ours, with your graceful permission and a prayer that it will satisfy you.’
‘Your words are as pretty as your looks, stranger,’ Ash answered as he sloshed water over Aspin’s face and waved a hand in front of Jillan’s eyes to break his stare. ‘In fact, you are too pretty. Like my friend the wagon-driver here, I instinctively find I do not trust you. Your appearance seems a deception. I would prefer you more plain, or more like your companion there.’
The man-youth’s smile only became bigger and harder for Jillan to resist. ‘And who might you be to judge prettiness so well?’
‘Me? I thought it was you who was giving the names round here. I am Unclean, if that will satisfy you. I suspect it will not, however.’
A look of distaste flickered across the man-youth’s face. ‘And I suspect you are Ash of the woods, while you others are Jillan Hunterson, Aspin Longstep and Thomas Ironshoe. Your fame precedes you, and it is for that reason that I have come to offer you my help. May I introduce Freda of the north, a most gifted woman and my boon companion? And I am known merely as Anupal.’
‘Anupal?’ Thomas repeated, as if tasting the name and finding it more than a little unpalatable. ‘As in Anupal who is more often referred to as the Lord of Mayhem?’
‘Well, yes,’ the man-youth replied reluctantly, then hurrying to add, ‘but that’s really a bit of an exaggeration. There was this terrible misunderstanding between—’
‘The Great Deceiver?’
‘Er … yes, but that was just those on the losing side who called me that. Sour grapes. Those on the winning side called me—’
‘The King of Lies?’
‘Look, truth is a matter of opinion most of—’ the Peculiar attempted to explain.
‘Abbadon, He Whose Name Is a Curse?’
‘That one was actually more of a joke from a drinking game I played when—’
‘Malmandius, the Friendless?’
‘I haven’t even heard of that one. Surely a case of mistaken identity. Besides, I have lots of—’
‘Morlah, the Untrustworthy?’
‘Now, you see—’
‘Jezziah, the Eternal Mercenary? Targ, the Devil of Durnoch. Miserath, the Traitor God,’ Thomas pronounced, the names passing their own sentence.
The Peculiar took a slow deliberate breath. ‘I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start again, shall we? I have come to offer you my help against the Saviours. On your own you can never succeed and all will end. You must know that to be true. Haven will fall. The Geas will be lost.’
‘You know nothing of truth,’ Thomas spat. ‘You offer us your help? We would prefer you offered it to our enemies, ever-twisting demon! You share none of our concerns, for are you not also the god of chaos and endings?’
‘You know where Haven is?’ Jillan asked.
‘I have a way to find it,’ the Peculiar replied smoothly.
‘Do not listen to him, Jillan!’ Aspin shouted, bow raised, although he had to be held up by Ash. ‘My people know of you, most evil god! He is the forbidden one, the fifth, the dark and betraying brother. Begone from here, fiendish foundling!’
The Peculiar replied through a rictus grin. ‘Stupidity. You would raise a pointed stick against a god? What is this ridiculous posturing?’
‘Everything has a weakness and, you never know, I might get lucky, eh?’
The Peculiar’s eyes narrowed. ‘And will you raise a pointed stick to the thousands of soldiers in Hyvan’s Cross? To the mad Saint himself? Or do you have a way into the city such that you can avoid them all? No? I thought not. Now, can we have an end to these tantrums? You know, I’m not actually that bad once you get to know me. Lest you forget, mountain man, I was worshipped by your people before the Saviours came. And yours, blacksmith. So enough of this. Much as it grieves me to say it, we need each other. Given that unfortunate circumstance, it would be easier all round if we could try to get along, no?’
‘Shoot him, Aspin!’ Thomas urged. ‘Do not delay.’
‘Wait,’ Jillan whispered, and Aspin hesitated.
‘Gah!’ Thomas snarled in exasperation, knowing that the moment to act was lost.
‘Anupal, how will you get us into the city? How will you find Haven?’
The Peculiar now adopted a more relaxed smile and pose. ‘At last, someone with the sense to ask. Why, Freda here can pass through rock as easily as you pass through air, Jillan. She can take you straight through the city walls. And Freda has knowledge of how to find Haven.’ His face became serious. ‘But there is something I must have from you in return, Jillan, for payment must always be made. What I require is for your ears alone, Jillan, and you may not then let others know of the specific terms.’
‘Do not listen to him, I beg you!’ Thomas demanded, facing Jillan. ‘We will find another way into the city.’
‘Say no, Jillan,’ Aspin counselled.
‘Ash, what do you say?’
The woodsman blinked, suddenly the focus of everyone’s attention. ‘I … I do not know. I have never heard of Anupal. But from what you’ve said, would he not also be the god of fickle fate and the impossible? I … Well, I’ll go with what everyone else thinks. But if we really were in peril, wouldn’t the wolf have sensed it and, well, I don’t know.’
‘I will hear you out,’ Jillan said to the Peculiar and climbed down from the wagon.
‘Idiot!’ Thomas barked at Ash. ‘How could you conscience this?’
‘I always knew there was some weakness in you,’ Aspin sneered, pushing Ash’s hands away from him. ‘Would you side with the dark and betraying brother? Coward! Truly you are Unclean!’
Something in Ash snapped and he snarled back at them, ‘What? Am I to be asked about conscience by one who uses his own daughters to lure strangers into the clutches of a gnomish wizard? Am I to be called coward by a pagan people who hide in the mountains, fornicating with the Chaos as they do their own mothers?’
Shouts of outrage. Hands went to weapons.
‘Enough!’ Jillan roared, and made the air close with his magic. ‘What is wrong with you? Who needs the Lord of Mayhem with the three of you like this? If you bear me any love, you will stay at peace while I hear what he has to say, and then I will make up my mind without apology to anyone or anger on any part!’
Jillan returned to his friends and looked up at them. ‘They will travel with us. All three of you were right in your own way, even Ash. Do not be angry with each other and do not worry for me, please. They will help us, I’m sure of it.’
‘If that smug overweening worm comes near me …’ Thomas promised, veins bulging in his neck and forearms.
‘Or makes the mistake of falling asleep while I am still awake …’ Aspin averred.
The two pagans looked at Ash, absolutely no forgiveness i
n their eyes, then back at Jillan, their disappointment plain. Then they turned away.
Dusk was falling. The Peculiar had chosen to make himself scarce, though no one knew where he’d gone. Jillan picked his moment to go and talk to the rock-grey woman. He crouched down next to her, barely coming up to the top of her craggy knees. Even so, she shuffled away and watched him nervously.
‘Thank you for helping me,’ Jillan said. ‘You have not asked for anything in return.’
Mutely, she shook her head.
‘I have something for you,’ the boy said, holding out his hand. ‘They’re nothing really, but my father gave them to me. I thought you might like them.’
She tentatively held out her palm and he deposited four stones into it. She stared and stared at the stones. No one had ever given her anything before.
‘To keep?’ her mouth crunched.
‘Of course.’ The boy smiled.
Not even Norfred had given her anything for her own. Nothing, the boy called them! She’d never had anything so valuable in all her life. A green, a red, a blue and a yellow stone, just like the ones in the temple of the rock god. Tears came to her eyes as she set them into her skin around her neck.
‘Pretty.’ The boy nodded.
She gazed at him. She liked him far more than her friend Anupal, although she would never dare tell Anupal that. She hoped he would not be able to hear that thought either.
Freda’s eyes drifted down to the gold symbols on the boy’s armour. She couldn’t decipher all of them, but the ones she could told her he was steadfast.
‘I will take you to Haven if I can,’ she ground out. ‘Do you know anyone called Jan?’
‘Sorry, no. But if I meet someone of that name, I’ll tell you.’
‘Thank you.’
The wind changed direction and the boy raised his head. ‘Do you hear that moaning?’
‘Friend Anupal says it is the city.’
‘It sounds like it’s in pain.’
‘Yes,’ she quietly agreed.
CHAPTER 12:
And always too late
They all heard Hyvan’s Cross long before they saw it. Its shrieking and moaning in the wind was so loud they had to shout to hear each other.
‘The air funnels up this narrow valley and plays the hollows and depressions like a flute or pipe. We get the same where I live. One of our peaks is named the singing mountain and on certain days is heard from one end of the range to the other,’ Aspin told them.
Freda shook her head. ‘It’s more than that, I think. I hear snatches of a tortured voice on the wind. It stopped me sleeping properly last night.’
‘I had strange dreams,’ Aspin added. ‘Fortunately, I forgot most of them as soon as I woke up, but I do remember experiencing a feeling of great relief once I was free of them. What about you others?’
Jillan shrugged, but he had to wonder what nightmares he might have had if he hadn’t been wearing his armour. He looked at Thomas, but the blacksmith had had bags under his red eyes since they’d left Linder’s Drop, so probably hadn’t been sleeping anyway.
Ash held up his empty flask. ‘I was kept entertained by my homebrew last night, which no one else seemed to want to share. Slept like a baby, though.’
The Peculiar, who’d been walking ahead of the wagon in which the rest of them travelled, dropped back a bit and shouted up to them: ‘The voice is Wayfar’s. When the Saviours took the city from his followers, the Saint shattered Wayfar with a blast from a terrible horn of sun-metal. Poor Wayfar was literally blown and thrown to the four winds, but still rails around Hyvan’s Cross as he tries to reform himself. But his power is broken and so he must suffer this fractured existence forever more … or until he fades away.’
‘That’s awful!’ Jillan said in shock.
‘Not that Miserath looks overly concerned,’ Thomas added darkly. ‘But it suited your purposes to see your brother undone, did it not, Miserath? You were probably party to it, weren’t you? Tell us, what is the right punishment for deicide?’
The Peculiar’s face remained unchanged. ‘You do not know of what you speak.’
‘But Wayfar is not entirely undone,’ Aspin interrupted. ‘In the mountains he is the greatest of the gods to many of our warriors. He is far from broken and blesses the faithful with powers over the storm.’
The Peculiar nodded. ‘Beyond the Empire the old gods still hold some sway. Within the Empire, however, they are no more than haunting ghosts, movement glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, imagined voices and bad memories that will not go away. They are the restless dead. Wayfar is a cold, wailing wind who cuts right through you, but he is easily defeated by a thick coat, a raised collar and gloves.’
‘Wouldn’t mind some of those right now,’ Ash complained through blue lips, his hands under opposite armpits. ‘I won’t be able to hold a weapon steady at this rate.’
‘I’m hoping you won’t need to,’ Jillan replied.
‘Nothing good can come of this,’ Thomas warned. ‘We are being led by the worst traitor ever known into a snowy and barren hell of the Saviours.’
‘I thought you wanted to help free my parents,’ Jillan challenged him. ‘I do not have any other choice. If you’ve changed your mind then—’
‘Peace, Jillan! I have sworn to help you, and help you I will. I still think it would be wise to remain cautious, however, for I cannot believe everyone here also wishes to help.’
The Peculiar yawned. ‘You have not always helped Jillan, though, have you, blacksmith? There is a word for someone like you: a hypocrite.’
‘Oh dear,’ Ash sighed.
Thomas’s face began to turn red.
‘Stop it, all of you!’ Jillan yelled. ‘If we’re fighting among ourselves when there are just six of us, what hope can there be that the people will ever come together to fight the Empire? Perhaps the Saviours, Saints, Ministers and Heroes are a good thing if they stop us all fighting. Left on your own, you’d end up killing each other before you ever got to Hyvan’s Cross. What use would that be, eh? My parents would never be rescued. No one would ever be rescued. Everyone would just end up dead.’
‘I’m afraid that contrariness and self-division are an essential part of mortalkind, Jillan,’ the Peculiar replied. ‘I am the god of division, remember, and used to be worshipped for it.’
‘Used to be!’ Jillan stressed. ‘Not everyone is like that. It doesn’t have to end with everyone dead.’
‘We will see, Jillan, we will see.’ The Peculiar shrugged. ‘Now is the time our group should be divided, though, for the city is coming into sight and soon there will be eyes upon us.’
At the top of the valley a large crag loomed out of the towering snow clouds. The way the soft stone of the crag had been moulded made Hyvan’s Cross look like the horned and monstrous skull of an immense ice dragon. A high wall like a spiked collar had been built around the base of the crag. The dragon’s cold breath came howling down the valley and blasted them harder than ever.
Ash’s teeth rattled. ‘Ye gods, who would want to live here?’
‘Actually, it’ll be far better once we’re out of this valley,’ Thomas told him. ‘Several sides of the crag are out of the wind. And once we’re through the gate, there’s fairly good protection from the elements.’
‘You’re sure you can get us through?’ Aspin asked.
The blacksmith nodded. ‘I was here a year or so ago, to sell weapons. There are several markets a week in the city and plenty of traders come and go. There’s always demand for good weapons in a place this big. With so many Heroes here, not all of them will have sun-metal, you see. There’s a fair chance some of the guards will remember me for the quality of my weapons. And there is no reason why they would not believe you and Ash are my apprentices. People tend to keep their hoods up round here anyway, so your fairer hair shouldn’t show up too much, Aspin.’
‘Then Freda and I will leave you here,’ Jillan said. ‘Er … how do we do this, Freda?’
<
br /> ‘Follow me, friend Jillan,’ she replied, helping him down from the wagon and leading him over to the slope of the valley. ‘Stay close behind me or I will not be able to keep the rock from crushing you.’
The rock woman began to sink into the side of the valley and Jillan stepped in after her. In a few blinks of the eye, they were gone.
‘Miserath’s gone too,’ Ash commented. ‘Vanished into thin air.’
‘Good riddance,’ Thomas breathed.
Ash shuddered and nodded his agreement.
In the village of Godsend Captain Hamir coughed into his handkerchief. He took the cloth away and examined it. Specks of blood. He prayed to the Saint and the blessed Saviours that he was just coming down with a seasonal chill. Fully half of his five hundred men had been taken by the contagion already, and more were reported each day. They’d tried everything to halt the spread of the illness, most recently filling the hospice with the sick, sealing it up and burning it to the ground. It had been a dark and grisly deed, far worse than anything he’d had to do fighting in the eastern region. It had always been his duty to protect the People, but now he was slaughtering them. He’d heard the screams of the dying in his mind every night since his order had been carried out and been unable to find sleep. Who was to say his dreams would have been any better than this living hell anyway?
Even worse, the torching of the hospice had done nothing to stop the plague. The physicker still reported as many new cases each day. Whether it was because the smoke from the hospice had carried the plague with it or whether it was because the town really was cursed – as many now whispered – nothing seemed able to keep death back. They said it was proof that the blessed Saviours had withdrawn their protection against the Chaos, as a punishment for allowing Jillan, his parents and Samnir to flourish among them, as a punishment for not having listened better to the warnings of their Minister, whose wisdom was now justly taken from them.
The one peculiarity to it all was that none of the children of Godsend – those who had not been Drawn, blasphemers liked to point out – had been affected. Parents had tried keeping their children next to them at all times, as a charm against the Chaos, but that had not saved them. Captain Hamir had heard of people bathing in children’s urine and bleeding them for their protective humours, but that had not saved them either. Whenever a child was seen in the street, adults would come flocking and beg for a blessing and forgiveness. But the continued deaths said it was too late for forgiveness.
