“We just got here,” said Merreas.
“Now is the time. We stop, we need to feed the dracons. We feed the dracons, they fight very badly. We will need them to fight, so we go now.”
Merreas looked around at the villagers, the fear gripping him showing itself in contempt. “This lot of savages wouldn’t have a bread roll to spare anyway. Waste of time, if you ask me. We’ve lost a good man already. Let’s go home.”
Zhinsky moved fast. Merreas did not see him coming, and found himself flat on his back with Zhinsky’s boot on his chest.
“These people are not my people.” He leaned hard on his foot. “But they are my countrymen. Citizens of Khushashia, citizens of the Hundred Kingdoms of Ruthnia. Citizens you are bound to protect. So, you get up and onto your mount, or I not feed it and let it chase you all the way back to the Glass Fort. I do not like cowards, trooper. Do you understand?”
Merreas nodded. “Yes major,” he said breathlessly.
“Good good.” Zhinsky removed his foot, held out his hand and hauled Merreas up. At the last moment he yanked Merreas toward him, unbalancing him again. “You start thinking hard, trooper. This will not be an easy battle. It will be easier if you hold your heart and strength, and not lose them. You wish to live?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then be brave.”
They fitted the sickle-swords to the fighting claws of their dracons. Understanding well what this meant their mounts grew restive. They croaked and called to one another as the men took water from the village well; a spring protected by a conical pile of rocks a little way above the huts and festooned like the shrine with long strings of flags.
Zhinsky asked where Erdgi might be found.
The villagers pointed upwards. The track wound its way through ever-larger crags, past the snowline.
“He is up the mountain,” they said. “He is in the old tower.”
THE WAY QUICKLY abandoned all pretence at being a track and turned into a goat path—narrow, icy, precipitous and strewn with boulders from the higher slopes. But every now and then paving stones exposed by the rain or by landslips hinted at a grander past.
Rel and Deamaathani rode together, and speculated on the road’s origin.
“Morfaan, some other race, creatures from beyond the fences of our world? Who knows? In truth I do not know, nobody does. Nobody probably ever will. This world has buried wonders to fill a million philosophs’ life-times. Who cares for such ragged paths and supposedly Tyn-haunted ruins when the artefacts of the Morfaan and Old Maceriyans can be dug from easier soils?” said Deamaathani.
Rel’s face became numb from the wind. The day grew old early. It was no later than three of the clock and the sun had already hidden its face behind the mountains. Orange and red snowfields suggested it had not given up day’s fight just yet, but they grew more rugose with every second. The Twin was already in the sky, its circle emerging from the dimming day like a ship come out of the fog. Dusk smeared the snow blue and the first stars were out by the time they saw the tower: broken turrets rising over a ridge. They rode through a gap, and came into the glen that housed it. On the far side was the simple fortress, built of drystone courses. Four turrets grouped together into one, giving it the semblance of a stone ants’ nest, or a tall tree stump fluted with buttress roots. Two of the turrets had collapsed, their squared-off blocks mingling with scree frozen off the scarps around the glen. Blackness haunted the open interior, darker than any night.
The wind shifted round, blowing from the northeast where the tower was situated. A carrion stench came to them, rank and pungent, even in the deep chill of winter.
Dramion covered his nose. Merreas blanched, his eyes wide in his face. Their mounts caught the smell and grew eager to feast, and hard to handle.
“He will know we are here soon. Dramion, hobble Wiatra’s dracon and leave it here, well back. Then everyone spread out!” shouted Zhinsky. “Hit and run, no frontal assault. We attack from all sides at once, it is the only way. Do not get too close!”
Zorolotsev and Rel split right, Deamaathani following. Merreas and Veremond formed up in a wide arrowhead with Zhinsky. Dramion was sent far out to the left, Olb at his side.
“Goad him! Bring him into the centre!” shouted Zhinsky. “Deamaathani, prepare your magic.”
Deamaathani tugged off his long gloves with his teeth and stuffed them into his belt. His bronze armour glinted under his robes.
Rel unslung his carbine. He held the reins with one hand, the right gripping the gunstock. He controlled Aramaz with his knees. The creature recognised the shift in guidance, knowing it for a sign of imminent hostility. It dropped into hunting posture, lower to the ground, legs tensed, sickle claws flexing.
Olb leaned back in his saddle. He cupped one mouth to his hand, pointed with the other.
“It’s coming! Up there!”
The creature that had been Erdgi the Lame was not in its lair. It came over the brow of the hill, roaring out a challenge.
The creature was ten feet tall, huge across the shoulders, with a thick hide that was dull grey and lustreless. It had two arms like a man, the size of Rel’s torso and knotted with muscle. One held a small tree stripped of branches as a club. It was naked, its penis grotesquely large, the pink tip of it peeking from under a dark foreskin. The legs were those like a dracon’s or a dog’s, knees high and close to the hip, with the ankle held off the ground. On one foot it walked on its toes, of which there were only two, thickly nailed. The other was warty, a club foot twisted sideways, causing it to move with a shuffling gait. A remnant of the lame shepherd boy.
The changeling’s head was set low on its shoulders on a short neck. Eyes stared with unreasoning fury from beneath jutting brows. The jaw protruded almost as far, lips drawn back to reveal a broad mouth crammed with yellow teeth. A third eye, irregular and moist as a fried egg, was offset from the centre of its forehead. This part of its face was badly formed, the skull warped and skin slack like a half-melted wax bust. Yellow mucous streamed from this third eye. The ear on the left side of the head was lopsided, and hung low. The left arm was held awkwardly. A large tumescence, hairy and painful looking, could be glimpsed under it.
The changeling’s nose twitched at the air. It blinked myopically at the troopers, and roared.
The dracons roared back, dropping their heads and switching them from side to side. Their head feathers stood erect, their scythe claws drew back, blades upon them gleaming with reflected starlight.
The changeling stooped for a rock and sent it hurtling toward Olb and Dramion. Their dracons loped out of way as the boulder exploded into dust and sharp splinters. The creature bellowed and lumbered down the hill after them.
Zhinsky waited for the creature to come into the glen. The changeling chased Olb and Dramion, and Zhinsky spurred his dracon forward, whooping wildly. Veremond and Merreas came with him, lances couched, pennants rippling loudly.
The creature turned as they came at it. It moved with amazing speed, evading Merreas’s lance, and bringing its fist up and down to bludgeon his dracon. With a single blow, the dracon dropped, head crushed, tumbling into a wreck of broken limbs and blood. Merreas was sent flying, landing hard on his shoulder. The changeling advanced on him. Zhinsky’s lance bit deep into the creature’s arm, Veremond’s plunged an instant later into its thigh. Black blood welled up around the weapons. The two troopers released their lances, and rode past, both of the them plucking their second lances from the holders on the saddle behind them. The changeling howled, slapping at its wounds. A raking hand snapped Zhinsky’s lance, leaving the point embedded in its flesh. It snatched the other from its thigh as Olb and Dramion wheeled about and came at it. Dramion’s lance scored the thing’s side, ripping a long, shallow wound along its ribs, the jolt nearly unseating him. Olb missed, and they were past, but the creature turned, and flung Merreas’s lance at Olb as if it were a dart. It flew hard and true, bursting through Olb’s back and out of his front. The Olberland
er flung out his arms and fell sideways. His dracon, uncontrolled and maddened at the scent of blood, turned suddenly, and tore at its dying master.
All of them were galloping now, circling the changeling. It picked up another rock and hurled it hard. The stone split on the rocky ground, a fist-sized chunk nearly taking the legs of Zorolotsev’s creature out from under him.
“It’s quite a good shot,” said Veremond drily.
“This is no good! No good!” shouted Zhinsky.
“It is wounded,” said Rel.
“Yes, and no. We have to be quicker!” He pointed at the beast; the long, bloody tear in its side was closing up.
“Why didn’t you mention that before!”
“Do you think I fight this kind of thing every day? I only have stories to go on, same as you, captain.” He whistled, waving his hand around his head. Deamaathani, Zorolotsev and Dramion streamed into a line.
“Lances!” said Zhinsky. “Drive them deep! Break off the heads if you can!” He turned to Rel. “Now is a very good time to tell me you are a good shot from a moving mount, captain.”
“I am.”
“Shoot it then. Deamaathani, do you have something for me?”
The warlock nodded. He was staring at a sight they could not see, lips moving silently.
The men broke apart again, their mounts stirred to sudden motion as the changeling charged at them. Zhinsky and Zorolotsev galloped away, looped back and came at the creature from two different direction, confusing the changeling. They crossed, both of them driving their lances into it, front and back. Rel marvelled at their precision and grace. They released their lances at exactly the right moment, giving them maximum penetration without danger of being wrenched from their saddles. The changeling swiped, missing both. Dramion and Rel came in next. Rel waited until he came close, determined not to miss, before pulling the trigger of his ironlock. The hammer pin of the mechanism drove deep into the bullet in the barrel, penetrating the soft silver coating the solid glimmer bullet. In contact directly with iron, the glimmer reacted explosively, driving the bullet out of the barrel. The shot caught the changeling in the neck. It gripped at the wound, but swiped with its club, catching Dramion with a glancing blow that sent him tumbling back over the high cantle. His dracon was enraged, and sprang up at the changeling. It drove its running claws into the creature’s side, grabbing on with its long forearms and middle-limbs, and raked repeatedly at the thing with its steel-sheathed murder claws.
Rel snapped open his gun, and slid another silver-jacketed bullet into the breach. He galloped past quickly, coming right under the changeling’s left arm. Changeling and dracon grappled with each other. The changeling had dropped its club and was throttling the reptile. The kicks of the dracon’s claws became weaker, its cries of rage turning into an awful rasping.
Rel rode up, raised his carbine and aimed for the heart.
The creature lifted the writhing dracon high over its head in both hands, revealing the true nature of the growth in the armpit. A wordlessly screaming human head, eyes rolling like a mad dog’s, stared down at him. Its mouth flapped soundlessly open and shut, tongue flapping. Drool ran from its lips but no sound came. The features were boyish. This was Erdgi the Lame.
Rel fired. The bullet slammed home under the chin.
The changeling screamed from both mouths, the human cry of pain by far the most horrible. The creature staggered back, dropping Dramion’s dracon. The reptile fell heavily, screeching. It rolled over and tried to struggle up, but its leg was broken and it shrieked and bit at itself in its agony as the changeling fell to its knees, then its hands. Rel wheeled about and reloaded.
Deamaathani got there first. The air shimmered. The smell of magic grew strong, sharp as lightning. Smoke curled from the changeling’s head. Incredibly, it was getting to its feet.
Rel fired again as the changeling’s inhuman head burst into flame and it began to scream. The fire was no mortal blaze, and burned hotter and brighter than a forge. The howls coming from the changeling turned to bubbling coughs. It fell face forward, rolled from side to side, hands scrabbling at the snow, and was still.
Erdgi’s head did not die. It went on shrieking, and shrieking.
Zhinsky rode up, sabre drawn, and stabbed Erdgi’s face through the eye. It shuddered, and ceased moving. Zhinsky’s sword scraped on bone as he dragged it out.
“Poor bastard. They say some part of them always survives. The mountain folk believe the changelings do it so they can watch them suffer.”
“He could not be saved?”
The others rode up: Zorolotsev, Veremond, and Deamaathani. Dramion was holding onto his arm, his face white with pain. Merreas limped over, less badly wounded. They all watched the riderless dracons carefully. Olb’s had not done with consuming its former master, and Dramion’s was still screaming, repeatedly trying and failing to stand, lashing out at anything that came near. Its fellows clicked and chirruped and watched it intently.
“You think I stab him in the eye if this was so?” said Zhinsky, an undertone of anger in his voice.
“Such a transformation is irreversible,” said Deamaathani, exhausted and pale. “It is traumatic to the stuff of the body and the spirit. Not the greatest of the wild wizards could undo this. Not even Res Iapetus himself.”
“Your fellow magisters?” asked Rel.
Deamaathani snorted.
“Can he be ghosted at least?” said Veremond.
“He cannot be ghosted,” said Zhinsky sorrowfully. He turned away.
The fire around the changeling’s head was dying, having consumed the flesh utterly, leaving nothing but grey bone. “Olb dead, Merreas and Dramion wounded. One dracon killed, and the other...” Zhinsky’s voice trailed off as he watched it squirm pitifully around, screeching.
“The leg is broken,” said Dramion. “It cannot be saved.” His lack of emotion hid deep upset.
Rel loaded another bullet, walked up to it and shot it through the head. The report echoed around the glen. When it had died away, the night seemed colder.
“A bad loss. Two men and two dracons dead on this venture, and there was only the one foe. Let us see what can be done for those who lie dead in its lair. Do not let the dracons eat the changeling,” he said. “The meat is tainted.”
The broch reeked. The smell became unbearable twenty yards out, shit and piss and old blood. Rel knew they would find nothing alive in there the second the stench hit him.
Veremond tossed in a lit torch. Flickering light lit up the interior.
Bones. Flesh. Torn clothing and piles of dung.
“In the stories caves like this are full of treasure,” said Merreas.
“There is only death in there,” said Deamaathani.
“It killed many,” Rel said. “A great many.”
“To see such a creature,” said Deamaathani. “I did not think they walked in the world still.”
“They should not,” said Zhinsky. “This is a thing of the black wastes. It should not be in the lands of men, no matter how remote.”
“Then why did it come?” said Veremond. “Who destroyed the obelisk?”
“Those are the questions,” said Zhinsky.
Some of the corpses were still recognisably human. Bloody bones were jumbled into the mud of the ground.
“These can still be ghosted,” said Rel. “They should be.”
“They will,” said Merreas, a new resolve in his voice. “We will set them out.”
“Can Dramion ride?” asked Rel.
Zorolotsev was tending to him close by. He shrugged. “His shoulder was dislocated. I have reset it, but it will hurt.”
“Dramion, are you up to riding to the village?”
“Aye sir. Just,” said Dramion. He gingerly rotated his arm.
“Take Aramaz. Go for their ghost-talker.” Rel looked at the gory mess. “I will get them out.”
“We will all do it,” said Zhinsky.
The work was grim, and dirty. But necessa
ry. The old woman came in the deeps of the night as they were finishing. The soldiers watched as women wailed and men beat their chests as she coaxed the spirits from the shattered remains and sent them on their way. Most of them were children. Olb’s ghost went with them, guarding them as they streaked skywards with never a look to his living comrades.
Rel, Zhinsky and the rest spent the remainder of the night in Alu-mal. The following day, they fed their dracons on a goat donated by the grateful villagers, and set out home to the fort.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Road to Mogawn
GUIS STARTED AWAKE with terror in his breast. A fleeting sense of shadowed places where no good could be found, something hunting him through glades of black-limbed trees.
A pounding on the roof brought him to his senses with a start. It took him a moment to gather his wits. The driver pounded again. He pulled the cord that opened the hatch on the front of the carriage. A briny wind blasted through the gap. The fulsome smell of dog it carried could not overpower the tang of the sea.
“I apologise for waking you, Goodfellow Kressind,” said the driver, raising his voice over the noise of the carriage and the drays. “We are coming to Mogawn. I have been ordered by the countess to inform all of her visitors when we reach this point so that they can enjoy the approach.”
Guis leaned out of the window. Grey marram whipped by him. They were descending a steep road.
“Stop the coach!” he called. Guis had to repeat himself before he was heard. With a cry of “Whoa! Whoa!” the driver reined in the dogs. They came to a halt. The driver applied the brake.
“Yes, goodfellow,” he said. “We can’t stay here long. I have to hold the brake. It’s mighty steep it is.”
Guis hopped out. The road had dug itself down out of the wind into a trench. Prickly littoral grasses scratched his face as he squeezed his way along the coachwork to the front. He bounded up to the driver’s seat, somewhat surprising the man by sitting beside him.
“I can’t see anything back there, goodman. I may as well respect the countess’s wishes.”
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