The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  The other man tinkled slightly as he moved—his clothes had tiny golden bells attached, and when they rang, the faeries laughed. “You might be consssidered a good guessst in better timesss,” the figure said. The firelight revealed the inhuman perfection of his face—he was an irk.

  “Do I have the honour of addressing the Faery Knight?” asked the man.

  “You do! The sssmell of your wine drew me asss sssurely asss an incantation and the calling of my true name!” The irk laughed.

  “I don’t know your true name, and I wouldn’t say it aloud if I did,” said the human. “But I was once told that you liked good wine. And Etruscan reds must be a trifle thin on the ground out here.”

  The irk laughed—and drank. “It isss very good. Perhapsss I will let you live—even let you hunt. The caribou will move in a few weeksss. I could ssspare a half million or ssso of them.”

  The man’s eyes moved. “Caribou,” he said aloud.

  The Faery Knight nodded. “Ssso many all move at onssse that no forssse of man or the Wild can crosss their path. Millionsss and millionsss, all trekking north.” He shrugged. “Almossst I could put a name on you. Who told you I liked wine?”

  “The King of Alba,” the man said.

  “Ah. I pity him. A weak man and yet so ssstrong.” The irk shrugged. “I liked hisss father better, but they come and go ssso ssswiftly.”

  The human was sucking on the foul smoke at the bottom of the pipe. He tapped it out on his boot sole.

  “You do not fear me,” said the irk.

  “Should I?” asked the man.

  “Do you want sssomething? The wine isss very good.” He held out the horn cup. “May I have more?”

  “Take the bottle if you like,” said the man. “Though in truth, I’d be cheered by a cup myself. Will you go to war with Thorn?”

  The irk did not betray startlement—but he did move. “I do not dissscusss sssuch thingsss with chanssse met ssstrangersss.” Suddenly the irk was covered in a bubble of fire.

  The man shook his head. “Truly, I mean no harm. Indeed, I’ve come to offer my fealty.” He nodded. “For a time.”

  The red-clad irk let down his shield, poured wine into both cups and held one out to the man. “The lassst time I sssat with a man in thessse woodssss, Thorn attacked me.” He frowned. “I did not come off bessst.”

  The man took a cup of wine from the irk’s outstretched hand. “We must see to it that doesn’t happen again,” he said. “But Thorn is not the real enemy. Thorn is only another victim.”

  “You have sssaid hisss name often enough to invite him to your fire,” the Faery Knight said.

  The human nodded. “He will not come. He will not even attempt to contest my passage. In fact, he can neither see me, nor hear me, even when I say his name.”

  The irk nodded and knocked back his wine. “Then I know who you are. I congratulate you on being alive.”

  The man smiled. “It is rather delightful.”

  The Faery Knight laughed—all the faeries laughed by the stream. “Perhapsss that isss how we will pick up the sssidesss for this fight,” he said. “Not good againssst evil, but merely thossse who find thisss world a delight againssst thossse who find it a burden. Thorn feelsss the world isss dark and grim.”

  “God knows he does his best to make it so. Very human of him,” said the man.

  “In the woodsss, it isss sssaid that you are on the dark path,” the Faery Knight said.

  The human shrugged. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he said. “Perhaps I’m on it. But I have a goal, and an enemy. I will fight until the fight is over, or I am beaten.”

  “Ssso,” the irk said. He poured more wine. “You know the truth.”

  “I know a truth,” said the man who had once been Harmodius.

  They touched their cups.

  “I will ask no vasssalage of one ssso puisssant asss you,” said the irk. “We will be alliesss.”

  Harmodius touched the rim of his cup to the other. “Well met by firelight, my lord. We will be… alliesss.”

  Bill Redmede was preparing for war. He and his Jacks—those who had survived the long march—had to make many things themselves that they’d always bought or stolen. Arrows first and foremost, but also clothes and quivers. Hard leather purses were replaced with softer Outwaller bags and wool hose with leather stockings of carefully tanned deerskin.

  Most still had their white cotes, now stained and worn to a hundred earthy hues.

  Bill watched them work—watched them loft shaft after shaft into the stumps he’d prepared for them, led them on runs through the woods with targets to the left and right. Winter had made them fat. But it had also made them steadier. Most of the men and not a few of the women had found mates among the Outwallers, almost as if a suggestion had been planted among them that they sink roots. Weddings—with no priests—had been celebrated. More than a few bellies were round, since Yule.

  But since the snow began to retreat into the wood lines, and then to melt away altogether—since Nita Qwan’s departure east, and then, ten days later, the sudden breakup of the ice—all the Dulwar and all the other Outwallers who lived around N’gara began to train their warriors, and Bill Redmede’s people joined in with a will. And they learned from the Outwallers, too—how to throw the small axes the Dulwars all carried, men and women, too, and how to make lighter arrows of the cane that grew around the inner sea and at this time of the year was standing, dried and ready to be harvested.

  But Bill had agreed to the alliance. He knew what was coming, and what was expected.

  Most of his men were going to war, and a few women, too. Bess was heavily pregnant, but grimly determined until the whole body of the Jacks voted together that no pregnant woman should come to the war.

  “If’n we’re all killed,” Jamie Cartwright said, “you gels will keep our memory alive.”

  Bess cursed and didn’t speak to anyone for a day.

  Tapio—the Faery Knight—came and sat with her. She was always delighted to see him, as if he was an angel or a god.

  He took one of her hands. “Besss,” he said. “If we triumph you will have misssed nothing but violenssse.” He shrugged. “But if we fail, I promissse you that our enemy will come here all too sssoon, and you and Tamsssin will have your belliesss full of fighting.”

  But even to the Faery Knight, she frowned. “I didn’t become a Jack to get left behind because my body was full of a man’s seed,” she spat.

  “I’m sssure there will be more war, asss sssure asss the sssun will ssshine,” he said with a twisted smile. “All the creaturesss of thisss world make war. It isss what we have in common.” He rose with an elegance no human frame could match, like a sinewy serpent.

  So Bess straightened arrows and made the pine pitch resin that they used to help bind the heads to the shafts, and while the Outwallers did their war dances and Mogon’s wardens came in from the north and Exrech’s people swarmed in from the far west with tales of war and flood behind them, the Jacks completed their preparations, loaded their bags with food, and contemplated their allies.

  Fitzalan had a new beard and a new, more mature manner. He didn’t attack everything he saw anymore. He had an almond-eyed Outwaller woman named Liri from far to the west, where they said there was a river as broad as a lake. Her people were called Renerds, and their skin was a golden red, their eyes and hair much the same.

  Or perhaps she had him. She seemed the more imperious of the two.

  Two nights before the whole of the Faery Knight’s army was due to march east, he held a great council in his hall. Harpers sang of wars from the past. No song was of glory, and most were of defeat and pain, the agony of loss, the despair of a bad wound. The music was haunting and beautiful.

  Bill Redmede sat thinking of his distant brother. And of the Kingdom of Alba.

  Of how little it all meant to him, now. He smiled grimly as he realized what Wat Tyler had known at midwinter.

  To Redmed
e, this hall, N’gara, and its disparate inhabitants, had become home.

  He twisted his mouth and glanced at Fitzalan, who was sharing a long stone pipe with Aun’shen, one of Mogon’s lieutenants. Some of the great wardens smoked. Some also ate their meat raw.

  Living at N’gara was predominantly a matter of not being offended by the alien behaviour of others.

  “The comrades might get more spirit from happier songs,” Redmede said.

  Fitzalan shrugged. “They’re true songs, those,” he said.

  Lady Tamsin appeared out of the air, or so it seemed. “The irks send warriors away with a reminder of where they go and what they leave behind,” she said. “Perhaps for your kind, with the life so short, there is less to lose. Yet this seems to me odd—I would think that with the life so short, your people would be more careful of it.”

  Redmede found it hard to look at Tamsin for any length of time, so he tore his eyes away and looked at the harpers on the dais instead. Behind them, on the tapestry-that-lived, spear-armed warriors were cut down by humans in strange armour. Redmede had seen the armour somewhere before—on old statues outside Harndon. Archaic armour, helmets with crests, big rectangular shields. The legions.

  Just when you thought you might understand the irks, or you thought they were just folks, they’d remind you that the older ones had been alive for a thousand years or so and remembered things that were long forgotten by most humans. Even in books.

  Nor did they remember events the same way.

  Redmede kept his eyes on the musicians. “Few of us are careful of life, my lady.”

  “For your own sweet Bess’s sake, and all her kisses, mortal, the least you could do is bring yourself home.” She smiled sweetly, like all the young women in all the passionate springs of the world rolled into one woman with pointed teeth. “Forget about glory. Go late, fight briefly, leave early and come home alive.”

  Bill Redmede laughed. “Lady, you incline me to desert.”

  Tamsin spread her hands. “War is a monster that eats the sentient races. I would counsel any friend to avoid him.”

  Bill Redmede nodded. “But who will stop the power of the sorcerer? Who will save the bears in the ’Dacks or the serfs in the fields?”

  She nodded at the tapestry-that-lived. “Perhaps they should save themselves,” she said. She raised a hand. “Peace, friend. You can make no argument that will reconcile Tamsin to the loss of her lord to war.”

  But in the council, the Faery Knight stood alone in the soft light on the dais, in his red clothes of leather and spidersilk. He spread his hands for silence, a gesture so evocative that all those in the hall fell silent, the boglins and the marsh trolls and the Golden Bears, the wardens and the irks and the men.

  “Tomorrow we march to war,” he said. The hall was silent. Not a fly buzzed, not a moth moved on silent wings.

  “We do not march to conquer. We will fight only to protect our friends. Speed will be our armour, and silence our shield.” He spread his arms wide and a glowing vision of the hills at the foot of the western Adnacrags appeared as if seen from a great height.

  “West of Lissen Carak is the wall,” he said. “It runs north to south here in the foothills.” He pointed to the towers on the wall. “We will need to pass the wall here. There is a royal garrison, which we will destroy.” He smiled, showing his fangs. “We have never believed that this land belonged to the so-called King of Alba anyway.”

  Some of the Jacks roared their approval. Others looked troubled.

  “Once we pass the wall, we will have to move quickly. Several clanss of bears are moving toward us, and we must cover them and protect them.”

  “Where’s Thorn?” bellowed a warden. She was Mogon’s niece, Tremog. Her blue and white crest stood almost erect on her head.

  Tapio nodded. “It is safe to call him by name here,” he said, and he exchanged a glance with a tall, thin, dark-haired man who sat on a chair on the dais. “Although once we march, I ask that no member of our alliance mention his name. We wish to pass the outer wards of Alba undetected, and his spies are everywhere.” He glanced again at the dark-haired man, who rose.

  He spread his hands and spoke in a soft voice that nonetheless carried to every corner of the hall.

  “Thorn is now marching to the siege of Ticondaga,” he said. “Today he fought a battle on the road his slaves have made. The Earl of Westwall ambushed the sorcerer. Unfortunately, Thorn now has good professional military advice, and the earl’s success was limited. Tomorrow, at the latest, he will invest the fortress.”

  “Will we fight him?” Tremog asked.

  The dark-headed man looked to Tapio, who shrugged. “It is very difficult to see when too many Powers become entangled,” he said with brutal honesty. “We lack the numbers or the hardihood or the sorcery to engage his main army in open battle, but if he chooses to fight us, we will be like coyotes at his heels.”

  Tremog’s crest went down, and she seemed to tremble. Redmede knew that this was a warden sign of uncertainty, not rage.

  “If we lack the force to meet him head to head, why send an army at all?” she asked.

  Tapio nodded. “War is more than battle,” he said. “War is food and drink and disease and patience and anger and hate and cold and stealth and terror as well as sweet silver and bitter iron and the glitter of arms in the sun or under the moon. We take as many blades as we can spare, and as many as we can feed, and as many as we can move quickly. Thorn has many times as many fighters. Can he feed them? Can he control them? Will other forces come into play?”

  The man nodded. “At the very least, we will rescue the bears. Then, perhaps we will withdraw. Perhaps we will seek allies among Thorn’s other enemies.”

  Tremog’s tooth-lined maw spread wide and she gave a roar—what passed for laughter with the wardens. “You mean you do not trust us with your clever plan,” she said. “Just say that and be done. What are we, the children of men, to lie to each other? You are our lord paramount. If you keep your own counsel, so be it. The worst we’ll do is—wander off.”

  Many creatures laughed.

  And Tapio laughed with them. “I have indeed been in too many councils of men,” he confessed. “It is true that I have thoughts in my mind that I do not choose to share. But in the main, this is all of my counsel—that we pass the wall, collect the bears, and see what there is to be seen. Our retreat will be secure, and we have enough force to give Thorn real pause.”

  “You and this man speak as if you can see Thorn’s forces and he cannot see ours!” said the bear. She took her great furry feet off the stone table and sat up. “Thorn is very powerful. How is it that he cannot see us?”

  The dark-haired man smiled. “Suffice it to say that he is unlikely to look anywhere but here for Lord Tapio,” he said.

  “But when he does he will see us very quickly,” Tapio insisted.

  “Hence the secrecy,” Redmede said. “Who is this gentleman?” he asked.

  “I was dead,” the dark-headed man said. “And since I desire not to be dead again soon, I won’t reveal myself just now. But I will in time, and I promise you I won’t betray you, any of you.”

  Tremog nodded. “The promises of men are very weak,” she said. “But men learn wisdom in the Wild.”

  “And what of the west?” Many heads turned, and Liri, the beautiful Renard woman, stood. “I speak for no one by myself—but my people walk in the lakes, and I was sent here with a warning.” She smiled at Fitzalan. “Pleasant as my winter has been—”

  The Faery Knight inclined his head. “Lady of the Renardsss,” he sang in his faery voice, “I have no easssy anssswer to sssoothe you. The whole of the wessst isss moving. Beyond the great river, a hundred hivesss of boglinsss are ssspewing forth warriorsss—”

  The wight, Exrech, rose from his alien crouch by the table and unfolded like a pocket knife to his full height. His white chiton armour and elongated, insectile head were the most alien things in a hall of aliens, and made M
ogon’s great saurians seem comforting and familiar.

  When Exrech spoke, he did so by a mixture of exhalation, like a mammal, and the movement of his joints and wing cases that provided the hard consonants. They also provided popping and scratching noises that were—disconcerting.

  He was unaware of the uneasiness he generated just by—being.

  “I can speak of the west,” he said in his flat, un-human delivery. “Our enemy—our true enemy—works his will on the Delta Hives and leaves our hives alone. Too often has he called on us for war. Our contract with him is expired. I cannot say more. But the west is moving—this war to which we go is only a tithe of what is coming.”

  The Faery Knight bowed. “Of all of us, it is possible that this wight and his people are the bravest, marching all the way east to our support when their own homes are at threat.”

  “Our contract with the sorcerer is at an end. He used a false scent and must be punished.” Exrech seemed to shiver, and his body emitted a rustling sound like leaves.

  “What will protect us here?” Tamsin asked.

  “Sssmoke and misssdirection,” Tapio sang. “And twenty million caribou.”

  Exrech raised his mandibles, a sign Bill Redmede had come to understand was agreement. “The river of hooves!” Exrech said. “No creature of the Wild—not even a thousand human knights—could cut a path across the river of hooves.”

  “Ssso for sssix weeksss, thisss peninsssula isss sssafe,” the Faery Knight said.

  That night, Thorn watched the heavens as Tapio Halij shielded his hold. It was a mighty working—almost as if he was moving his whole fortress into another sphere, the working was so deep and mighty.

  It was a very odd choice, on the surface—a declaration of power that left Thorn in no doubt that the Faery Knight distrusted him and expected attack. But the more he contemplated the action, the more it appealed to his sense of his own power. Tapio was only confirming what Thorn knew—he was the mightier of the two, even if he lacked the power to destroy the old irk. So he drew into his shell like a turtle, secure that he could not easily be attacked.

  “Fool,” Thorn said. “After I take Ticondaga, I will be like a god.” He tasted the moment at which he would subsume Ghause, and he shuddered as the excess of spirit passed down his animated limbs. In as much as the great sorcerer could feel pleasure, the notion of the absolute subjugation of Ghause—her extinction and his accession to her powers—gave him immense pleasure.