by Jen Williams
‘What happened to him?’ she asked Dreyda without turning round.
‘No one seems very clear on that point,’ said the fire-priestess. ‘The prevailing rumour is that he did that to himself, or paid someone very skilled with a knife to do it. You see the significance of the red faces on the shields now?’
The broad planes of Fane’s otherwise unmarked face were scored with red, squarish patches, where thick sections of skin had apparently been removed and then the flesh underneath allowed to scar. There was a piece missing from both cheeks, running from just below each eye down to the line of his jaw, a smaller section on his chin, and a horizontal rectangle of scarring on the right side of his forehead. It gave his face an odd, patchwork appearance, as though someone were sewing him together from pieces of old skin and they hadn’t quite finished yet. The sections of raw flesh didn’t appear to cause him any discomfort. As Wydrin watched he turned to trade a joke with the men sharing the space on the platform, and he laughed and grinned just as though he wasn’t missing pieces of his face. He wore black boiled leather armour, turning grey at the elbows and knees from use, and there was a sword at his hip, although that was nothing special; it was the sword of a soldier, sharp and well maintained. In one hand he held a battered half-helm.
‘And what about those two?’ said Wydrin, indicating the men either side of Fane. They looked a lot younger than their employer, no older than sixteen or seventeen. One of them was leaning on the statue in an overtly relaxed posture. ‘What are they supposed to be?’
For a moment, Dreyda didn’t answer, and when Wydrin turned to look at her the older woman pursed her lips, as though she didn’t like to speak the words.
‘What is it?’
‘Ungodly things, is what they are,’ she said shortly. ‘Abominations. The Children of the Fog, he calls them.’
The two young men were certainly nearly as strange as their lord. Clearly brothers or, more accurately, twins, both were tall, as lean as alley cats, and both had long blond hair the colour of honeyed milk. Their armour was light, made from pieces of fine red leather, save for a single gauntlet each, which appeared to be made of a dull black metal. How sweet, thought Wydrin, brothers with matching gloves. They were so nearly identical that the only way Wydrin could tell them apart was by the weapons they carried; one had a pair of straight-bladed swords, and the other had a curled whip hanging from his waist.
‘Why does he call them that?’ asked Wydrin. All three men looked like trouble.
‘They do magics,’ said Dreyda in a tone of voice that suggested said magics were low and filthy things. ‘And they smile while they kill, like cats.’
‘Hey,’ said Wydrin, absently. ‘Cats aren’t cruel, it’s just their nature.’
‘Cruelty is their nature,’ said the Regnisse. Lowering her voice, she took hold of Wydrin’s arm again. ‘Do not stare too long. Come, you said there were supplies you needed.’
Wydrin made to go with the fire-priestess, but a commotion at the edge of the market caught her eye. A number of the black-clad guards were pushing their way through the evening’s crowd, escorting a very familiar pair of figures at their centre.
‘Oh, for the love of all the gods!’ cried Wydrin.
The guards marched Sebastian and Frith and a third man Wydrin didn’t recognise up to the statue, while Fane looked on in lively interest. Around them the people of Pinehold murmured uneasily. Wydrin caught the eye of a young man standing near a fruit and vegetable stall, and he raised his eyebrows at her, as if waiting for her to act. He had untidy brown hair and a finely featured face she was sure she should remember, but she didn’t recognise him. She frowned at him, and shook off Dreyda’s hand.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed the priestess.
‘I have to know what’s going on there,’ said Wydrin, and she slipped to the front of the gathering crowd.
Frith stared at the man who had ruined his life, and found he didn’t know what to say.
They had spoiled everything. When he made his attack on Fane he intended it to be brisk and devastating. He had pictured himself arriving, perhaps at his very own castle, to find Fane relaxed and undefended, secure in the knowledge that he had taken the Blackwood, and then Frith would tear him apart with the elemental forces he now had at his command. Everything he’d inflicted on his family, Fane would suffer tenfold. Instead of that, he had been forced into a confrontation with the man at sword point, in rags, and with little understanding of how the elemental forces he’d taken from the mages worked, let alone how he could best use them against this man. The simmering power he’d felt inside the Citadel was a quiet whisper in his head, and he did not know how to rouse it to a shout. If only Sebastian had kept his mouth shut.
But Fane appeared to have no interest in them. Instead he gestured at Rognor, a broad grin on his face.
‘My friend! You have had enough of skulking around outside the walls of our town, then? I am so pleased you have decided to join us after all.’ He had a warm, affable voice, the sort of voice that might ask if you needed help carrying that pile of firewood.
Rognor frowned deeply, his long face furrowed with anger.
‘I’ll not converse with monsters, I won’t,’ he said. ‘You can ask me whatever you want and I won’t take no notice. I have nothing to say to the likes of you.’
Fane shook his head gently, a faint smile on his face.
‘What did you hope to achieve, my good man?’
‘Just mercy,’ said Rognor. ‘Something a monster like you wouldn’t know nothing of.’
‘Those people, out in the cages, are blessed.’ Fane raised his voice so that everyone gathered in the marketplace could hear. ‘They are offerings to Bezcavar.’ He paused and lifted his half-helm to his face. He kissed the battered metal fondly. ‘They needn’t have been, but they would not give up what they knew and Bezcavar is always hungry. His belly rumbles and we all must heed it.’ He touched his fingers to his scarred face.
‘Ya demon-worshippin’ scum,’ said Rognor. Sebastian muttered a few words at him, trying to get the tall man to calm down, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care. ‘The lowest, a monster, that’s what you are and no mistake,’ Rognor continued. ‘Can’t be telling me any different or no one else here, no—’
Fane waved a hand at one of his lieutenants.
‘Enri, Bezcavar hungers. Make an offering of this idiot.’
Sebastian stepped forward.
‘No, wait—’
Moving with unsettling speed and grace, the slim blond man to the right of Fane grabbed his whip, shook it out, and flicked it. There was a crack, painfully sharp in the evening air, and suddenly Rognor was on his knees, a length of barbed leather wrapped round his throat. His fingers scrabbled desperately at the coils, trying to find purchase. The man called Enri laughed and tugged sharply on his end of the whip. Rognor fell to the ground, making strangled choking noises. Blood ran from his torn throat as his face began to turn purple.
‘Stop it!’ cried Sebastian. The big knight was straining at his captors, a look of utter horror on his face.
‘Bezcavar requires an offering,’ said Fane in a mild tone of voice. ‘But you are right, the night draws in and I have other business. Enri? Stop it.’
The blond man pouted.
‘But I have only just—’
‘Enri.’
The blond man sighed, and placing one foot on Rognor’s shoulder, heaved on the whip so that it tightened violently on the tall man’s neck. There was a moment of pressure, then his throat seemed to burst apart in a torrent of blood.
Frith winced, stepping away as Rognor slumped onto the dirt. The man called Enri took a moment to retrieve the whip, before tying it back onto his belt, still dripping blood. The people at the marketplace had fallen utterly silent, and Frith thought it likely they had seen many such ‘offerings’.
‘What else have you brought me then, Bruger?’ asked Fane. His eyes crawled over Sebastian, disregarding Frith enti
rely. ‘These two do not look like the peasants of Pinehold that I have come to know and love.’
The strange identical-looking men standing next to him laughed softly.
‘The big one reckons he knows where the vault is, m’lord,’ said the burly guard, whose name was Bruger. ‘Caught ’em both outside the gate, antagonising the bears.’
Fane raised his eyebrows. The raw red flesh on his forehead stretched and wrinkled.
‘We can’t have that. The bears here are not to be trifled with, isn’t that right, Roki?’ The slim blond man to his right tipped his head, the briefest impression of a nod. ‘Roki and Enri are rather fond of the bears in this forest. In Istria we have bears, but they are smaller, rather more docile. They only present a danger to the fish in our rivers. So what is this about the vault?’ Fane didn’t pause to let him answer but moved on to another line of questioning. ‘You’re a knight, aren’t you? I recognise the badge. One of those mad mountain cults.’
Casting his voice as low as he could, Frith leaned close to Sebastian.
‘You name me now and you shall wish I’d left you to die at the Citadel.’
Sebastian didn’t even look at him.
‘My lord, I do not know the location of the vault, but I know who does. I only ask that you release the man and woman held in the cages outside the town walls.’
The good humour on Fane’s face seemed to disappear. He took the black helm in both his hands and turned it over in his fingers.
‘Demands? When held at sword point? I thought the Ynnsmouth knights were known for their wisdom.’
Sebastian took a step forward.
‘The man standing next to me is Lord Aaron Frith, the last living heir of the Blackwood.’
There was a flurry of noise from the slowly gathering crowd; gasps, murmurs and questions. Frith thought he heard swearing from someone who sounded suspiciously like Wydrin, although he could not see her.
‘Can it be?’ Fane moved slowly from the statue, coming towards them both. Now his eyes were trained on Frith, and the man moved like a cat hunting something small and warm-blooded. ‘The Friths all died, running from my men like cowards. I cannot tell you the number of arrows we pulled from their backs …’
‘YOU LIE!’ All of a sudden the hot fury thundered back into life, and the guards were straining to hold Frith back. ‘You murdered my father and my brothers. You tortured them to death!’
Fane paused, and a slow grin slid across his face like blood seeping into a bandage.
‘It is you,’ he said, and suddenly all the warm, friendly tones were back, just as though he were greeting an old friend. ‘Bethan said you nearly died in the dungeons but some peasants with delusions of bravery smuggled you out. She assured me that you would have died from exposure in the heavy snows, but here you are – yes, take away that white hair and old Lord Frith lives again. You know, I was most displeased that I didn’t get to Blackwood Keep in time to meet you. How utterly perfect this is.’
‘I will kill you,’ said Frith, no longer shouting. The anger had closed his throat and left him unable to raise his voice. The hot feeling of it prickled all over his skin. ‘That is a promise. I will kill you and tear you to pieces and when I am done I will leave your remains in the forest for the rats to eat.’
‘Roki, Enri, take our young lord here to the Queen’s Tower. I’m sure Yellow-Eyed Rin is anxious for a reunion.’ He turned back and winked at Frith. ‘He has so many new tricks to show you. Guards, kill the big one and don’t be making off with his sword. I like the look of it.’
Several things happened in the space of a few seconds. The prickling heat swarming over Frith’s skin increased in intensity and seemed to combine with the cold churning in his stomach. All at once, an eldritch-green fire flickered into life along his hands and arms. There was a pause, a moment of kindling, and then he was consumed with the emerald fire. The guards holding his arms leapt back, shouting, and there were answering shouts in the crowd.
‘Don’t let him go,’ bellowed Fane. ‘It’s just some conjuror’s illusion,’ but it wasn’t, Frith realised with a sudden fierce joy. The fire leapt from his body and streamed in several directions at once, and what it touched exploded with hot, yellow flame. The guards who had been closest to him were now screaming, their faces melting and their clothes on fire.
Sebastian stumbled away from him, too surprised to reach for his own sword, while the guards who weren’t on fire came to carry out Fane’s wishes. There was a flash of silver amongst the crowd and Wydrin flew out from the front row, her first dagger ripping through one man’s throat as though it were a bushel of hay at harvest time, and her second clashing with a short sword, driving the blow away from the big knight.
‘I will kill you!’ Frith shouted again. The guards were falling away, some of them desperately trying to beat the flames out with their hands. Fane had retreated to the statue again and all that stood between Frith and his revenge were the two men with long hair and identical faces. He would burn them too. Burn everything and everyone.
21
The people were screaming.
Sebastian moved as though he were in a dream. His body fell into the old patterns, the routines he’d spent years learning; they were a part of him now, so entrenched he barely had to think. He parried a blow there, took out a man’s ankle in one low stroke, felt the bones there shatter, and caught another guard under the chin with the back swing. There was blood, and screaming, and the scent of scorched flesh. It was here, and it was real.
She is not here, he told himself firmly, but a cold hand seized his heart and panic started to build. She is not here.
The swarming guards were falling back now, parting to let some newcomers through. The two men from the dais came forward, drawing their weapons. Sebastian pushed his rising fear aside and tried to concentrate on these two, because these two were clearly very different from the poorly trained men that had fallen to his sword so easily. One had drawn a pair of exotic-looking swords – long straight blades with edges that looked sharp enough to slice bone – and the other carried the bullwhip that killed Rognor, still red with his blood.
‘Pair of posers,’ muttered Wydrin next to him.
As he watched, the dull grey metal of their gauntlets began to glow with a soft, orange light, tracing shapes that had previously been invisible. Sebastian blinked a few times, sure it must be a trick of the light, but the glow only intensified. It grew so bright that they were difficult to look at, and then through squinting eyes Sebastian saw the twins double, so that there were four blond men approaching. He shook his head, absolutely convinced for a bare second that his vision had failed him, but when he looked again they were still there; four men where there had been two, a pair with swords, and a pair with whips.
‘What is this now?’
Sebastian glanced at Wydrin, whose face was rigid with shock, and then the men were on them.
Wydrin had perhaps a handful of seconds to process what had happened before she found herself dodging a shining blade as it whistled past her ear. She moved, smooth as silk, light as foam, and brought Frostling up and round to bury it in the blond man’s head, but her dagger passed straight through him and out the other side just as though he were made of mist. He grinned at her, his teeth very neat and white next to his pink lips.
‘I am Roki, little girl. I shall enjoy playing with you.’
Wydrin glanced over to Sebastian to see his own sword passing through another of the blond men. The Children of the Fog, Dreyda had called them.
‘They’re not really there!’ she called to Sebastian and Frith. ‘They’re just made of vapour. Ignore them and go for the big man!’
The words were barely out of her mouth before the blond man called Enri flicked the bullwhip at Frith, the end of the lash catching the young lord across the top of his forehead. In an instant the green flames that surrounded him winked out of existence and he was thrown to the floor, a bloody gash staining his white hair crimson.<
br />
‘Forget I said that!’
She jumped back to avoid another strike from Roki’s blades only for the end of the whip to grab her arm in a viper’s embrace. Even through her leather armour she could feel the burning points of metal digging into her skin. Ashes dropped from her fingers and she could do nothing but watch with horror as the dagger skittered across the cobbles away from her. There was a sharp tug and she was off her feet and on her knees, being dragged towards the grinning form of Enri. Sebastian came at him, the long sword flying in a deadly silver arc, but Roki moved in front and met the giant blade with two of his own. Another tug, and Wydrin could see blood seeping up through the torn leather.
‘Some more of that green fire wouldn’t go amiss, princeling!’ Wydrin pressed the edge of her remaining dagger against the whip and was dismayed to find it barely made a mark on it.
‘Bezcavar enjoys your suffering!’ called Fane from his space between the stalls. He was wearing his black helm now and that was glowing too, with the same strange markings as those adorning the gauntlets of Enri and Roki, but there was still only one of him. What does it do? Wydrin sensed this was an important question if they wished to survive the next few moments. Fane hadn’t even drawn a weapon.
She turned back to see Frith picking himself up from the floor, his face a sheet of blood, and Sebastian working hard to keep back the three identical men, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bunched like grapefruits. As she watched, his sword passed harmlessly through the body of one of the Rokis, only to meet the solidity of the sword with a discordant crash.
‘Bring them in, that’s it,’ Fane was bellowing now. Distantly Wydrin could hear shouts from the crowd, but whether it was encouragement or mockery she couldn’t tell. ‘Keep the girl alive too and we’ll have some entertainment tonight.’
