by Anthony Ryan
* * *
“Snow-daggers, eh?” Verkehla raised an eyebrow in surprise as she chewed on a roasted rabbit. They sat together in a ruined hut, alone apart from the old man and the two children. He had ordered Smentil and Oskin to stay at Elera’s side, although Verkehla assured him they were in no danger. A fire blazed in the central pit that served as a focal point for all Lonak dwellings, a brace of freshly slaughtered rabbits roasting on a spit above the flames. The roof had been claimed by the blaze the night before and smoke rose through the blackened rafters into a grey sky. The children huddled at the old man’s side as they sat in a corner, chewing on the meat Verkehla had tossed to them and staring at Sollis with bright, fearful eyes.
“We call them kavim kiral,” she went on. “Shadow-cats, because they’re so rarely seen, especially this far south. One of many strange occurrences recently.”
“We found no sign of any other Lonak,” Sollis said. “Until now. Also very strange in my experience.”
Verkehla gave a small grin. “They’re all at home, on the Mahlessa’s order. Word came from the Mountain that no war bands or hunting parties were to venture out for a full month.”
“Apart from your Banished Blades.”
“Quite. They are…” She paused, frowning. “Expendable, I believe the term is.”
“It is. You know our language very well.”
“I had a fine education.” The grin disappeared from her lips and Sollis noted a hard cast creep into her eyes. Clearly, this was an unwelcome topic of conversation.
“You said something about me being taller,” Sollis said. “You were expecting us.”
“Just you, actually. The other three are a complication, especially your blonde sister. I can’t imagine what possessed you to bring her into the mountains.”
“We have a mission. And she’s hardier than she looks.”
“She’ll need to be.” Verkehla bit the last morsel of meat from the rabbit’s haunch and tossed the bone into the fire, wiping the grease from her face with the back of her hand. “The Mahlessa, in her wisdom, has foreseen your coming, oh fox of the grey eyes. As she foresaw the coming of those who would wear your garb and do murder in your name. Quite where and when was not revealed to her, and so I and my company of scum were despatched to hunt them down.”
“So your mission is complete?”
“Hardly.” Verkehla let out a sigh and glanced at the children, causing them to huddle closer to the old man. “Not while these two are still drawing breath, at least.”
“They are important?” Sollis asked.
“Apparently. Or at least one of them is. The Mahlessa’s statements regarding the visions she receives from the Gods can be… vague. Like a riddle that needs a good deal of pondering before it’s solved. ‘They come for the child,’ she said, sadly without providing a name for said child. All she could tell me is that they live in this village, and that someone has brought the Dark into these mountains to kill them.”
“Perhaps this child has already perished,” Sollis suggested. “There are corpses of all ages littering this place.”
Verkehla shook her head, gaze lingering on the children. “No. Whatever it is waits nearby, watches. I can feel it. We killed its slave-soldiers, but it’s not done. It’ll come for them. Be sure of that, brother.”
“How?” He squinted at her in bafflement as her gaze swung back to him. “How can you feel it?”
She blinked and shifted her eyes to the fire, remaining silent for long enough to allow Sollis to conclude this was another question she wouldn’t answer. Finally, she said, “You mentioned a mission. Might I enquire what it is? Since you brought a healer I don’t imagine you’ve ventured forth with assassination in mind.”
Sollis pondered the wisdom of sharing his knowledge with her, deciding it couldn’t do any harm. “There’s a place,” he said. “We call it Morvil’s Reach. We need to find something there, a plant with healing properties.”
Verkehla let out a soft snort of amusement. “You came into our lands to look for a plant? The Mahlessa’s riddle told of a quest of fabled proportions. I was at least hoping for buried treasure. Or perhaps a lost, Dark imbued sword from the time of the ancients.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
She shrugged and got to her feet. “No matter. We’ll go with you to the Reach. We call it Trehl kha lahk dehvar, incidentally.”
“The hilltop of the… wrong headed man?” Sollis asked, struggling with the translation.
“The Mad Man’s Stockade,” she corrected, shaking her head. “You certainly have a gift for mangling our language, brother.” She turned to address the old man in Lonak. “Can you still fight, or is it time to leave you out in the snow?”
“I can fight,” he replied, chin jutting in pique. He raised the ragged goatskin in his hand, unfurling it to reveal the markings. “Do you not know who you behold, oh Servant of the Mountain? Do you not know this banner? I am Khela-hahk, the bloody club, the Shatterer of Skulls, last of the Stone Crushers. We who stood alone against the steel-clads at the Black River. We who laid low a kermana of Merim Her in a single day…”
“Never heard of you,” Verkehla broke in. “And since you’re still alive, I’d guess you didn’t do much skull shattering last night. Find a midden to hide in, did you?”
The old man glared at her, bony jaw bunching in suppressed fury as he lowered the banner to draw the two children closer still. “They required my protection,” he said.
“Are they your blood?” she asked, angling her head to survey the infants.
“I was blood-father to their mother.” His fury abated a little as he lowered his gaze. “She died fighting those who wore this one’s garb.” He jerked his head at Sollis. “And you act as if he is not our enemy. You share stories at the fire with a Blue-cloak. What a vile, shameful thing…”
“Word from the Mountain is not to be questioned,” Verkehla snapped, causing the old man to fall into an abrupt silence. “Besides,” she added, turning back to Sollis with a skeptical half-grin, “according to the Mahlessa he’s going to be your whelps’ valiant protector.”
* * *
They departed the village at noon, Verkehla and the Banished Blades mounting up on sturdy ponies and trotting through the ruined gate. The corpses of their fellow Lonak were left where they lay, as was the custom in the mountains. “They belong to the Gods now,” Verkehla said when Sister Elera enquired about Lonak funeral customs. “They will ordain how their flesh is disposed of.” Sollis noticed that the woman’s arch, often cynical inflection disappeared when she spoke of the gods. Apparently, the subject of the divine was one thing she took very seriously.
“I don’t think he relishes our company,” Elera observed, nodding at the old man’s continually scowling visage. He and his two grandchildren were mounted on spare ponies and trotted at the rear of the company alongside Sollis and his fellow Merim Her.
“Too right he doesn’t, sister,” Oskin agreed with a chuckle. “Nothing would make him happier than slitting our throats.” He raised his voice, leaning towards the old man as he asked, “Isn’t that right, you old savage?”
The old man’s lips curled in anger and he spat back with a few choice insults of his own. Much of it was too fast for Sollis to catch, although he did detect the words ‘horse-fucking cock-swallower’.
“Leave him be, brother,” Sollis instructed. “And his name’s Khela-hahk.”
Oskin swung to him with a quizzical frown then shrugged as he saw Sollis’s intent sincerity. “Couldn’t give a rat’s balls for his name, brother,” Oskin muttered, spurring his horse forward. “But as you wish.”
“Servants of the Faith should be beyond hatred,” Elera commented to Sollis, a judgmental cast to her eyes as she regarded Oskin.
“It’s easier to keep to the catechisms when you spend your life in warm rooms under a sound roof, sister,” Sollis replied. “And when you haven’t had to carry a dozen murdered children to the fire and speak the
words for them, because their parents have also been murdered.”
Her gaze swung to him, narrowing yet further. “So you hate them too?”
Sollis frowned, finding it odd that the notion of how he felt about the Lonak had never occurred to him before. “No more than I hate these mountains from which I might fall one day, or the wind that could steal the warmth of my body on a stormy night. The Lonak are simply the most dangerous threat in a place full of dangers. But,” he paused to incline his head at a still glowering Khela-hahk, “regardless of how we might feel about them, they will always hate us. Even the shaman who leads this band. She might speak our language and understand our customs better than any of her kind, but she hates us too. I see it clearly.”
“Then why are they helping us?”
“Perhaps they aren’t.” Sollis looked at the two children perched back to back on a pony. The boy, marginally the older of the two, returned Sollis’s gaze with a fierce, suspicious glower, whilst the girl simply stared back in puzzled curiosity. “Perhaps,” Sollis added softly, “we’re helping them. But to what end I cannot say.”
6
“The Mad Man’s Stockade,” Verkehla said. She reined her pony to a halt, pointing to a steep hill rising from the floor of a shallow valley a mile or so ahead. The stronghold of Morvil’s Reach lay atop the hill, its dark, weather beaten walls more intact than Sollis had expected. Noting that the western and northern approaches were guarded by the hooked bend of a fast flowing river, Sollis concluded that whatever the failings of the unfortunate Lord Morvil, he had at least possessed an eye for a sound defensive position.
“Your people left the stones in place,” he observed to Verkehla who shrugged.
“The Grey Hawks shun the place,” she said. “There are old stories about the spectres of Merim Her wandering the place on dark nights, crying out to be let into the Beyond. It seems the Departed have barred entry, possibly due to the shame of their defeat.”
“You know the Faith?” Elera asked her. Her tone was one of gratified surprise but Verkehla turned to her with a harsh glare.
“Far better than I would like, sister,” she said, baring her teeth in a harsh mutter. Elera blanched a little but didn’t look away, straightening the saddle and forming her features into a neutral mask.
“The Departed are rarely so judgmental,” Sollis said, nudging Vensar forward to place him between the shaman and the healer. “Those who die in honest battle can expect a place in the Beyond.”
“Honest battle?” Verkehla’s expression softened into one of amused scorn as she shifted her gaze to Sollis. “There was a small settlement on this hill before your people came. What do you imagine their fate to have been? Perhaps your Departed simply refused entry to a gang of murderers and thieves.”
“Getting dark,” Oskin said, voice gruff with impatience. “Be best if we got ourselves within those walls and settled for the night, look for the sister’s precious weed in the morning.”
Sollis raised a questioning eyebrow at Verkehla who nodded and spurred her pony forward, barking a command at the Varnish Dervakhim. “Spread out and scout all approaches. I want to know about any track you find, however small.”
As the Lonak fanned out she led Sollis and the others along a mostly overgrown trail that led to the stronghold’s gate. He judged the height of the walls at a little over twenty feet, overlooked by a single tower. The iron braced oak doors lay in rusted ruin, revealing a small courtyard of moss-covered rock beyond. The tower rose from the centre of the courtyard, its unusually wide base indicating it had served a dual role as main keep and lookout post.
Typical Renfaelin design, Smentil signed as he surveyed the structure. Just a good deal smaller than usual.
“Shall we, brother?” Verkehla asked Sollis, dismounting and gesturing at the unbarred gate. She started inside without waiting for an answer. Sollis told the others to stay put and climbed down from Vensar’s back, handing the reins to Smentil before following the shaman inside.
“I can’t see any spectres,” she commented, standing in the centre of the courtyard and scanning the narrow battlements above. “Perhaps it’s a tad too early for them, eh?”
Sollis ignored the jibe, one hand on the hilt of his sword as he moved in a slow circle, eyes probing every shadowed corner of the stronghold’s interior. “You walk into potential danger with no weapon,” he said. “That is unwise. There could be more slave-soldiers waiting in ambush.”
“There aren’t,” she replied with casual certainty. “We killed them all. And trust me brother when I say I am far from defenceless.”
Despite her words Sollis insisted on a thorough inspection of the structure before allowing the others inside. He found himself impressed with the solidity of the place, the precision with which the stones had been laid and aligned told of skilled hands.
“Lord Morvil knew his business in one respect at least,” he commented to his brothers later. They sat together in the base of the tower around a small fire that sent a column of smoke into the skeletal rafters above. He had pondered the wisdom of lighting a fire that would be sure to advertise their presence here. However, the Dervakhim seemed oblivious to such concerns, those not posted to the walls clustering around their own fires as they roasted meat and followed their nightly ritual of sharing stories.
“Or, more likely his masons did,” Oskin replied. “Poor bastards, following their lord to this forsaken place. It’s safe odds they died along with all his knights and retainers. I hope he paid them well in the meantime.”
Sollis’s attention was drawn to the opposite side of the fire by an unusual sound, one he realised he hadn’t heard in these mountains before. The little Lonak girl was laughing, small hands over her mouth as she regarded Elera with wide, delighted eyes. “Sermahkash,” the sister said, smiling in bemusement as this provoked another round of giggling from the girl. “It’s her name,” she said, catching sight of Sollis’s quizzical frown. “At least I think so.”
“Your pronunciation is a little off, sister,” Sollis said. “Sumehrkas. It means Misted Dawn. The way you said it resembled the Lonak word for ape piss.”
“Oh.” Elera laughed and poked the girl gently in the belly. “Are you making fun of me, little one?”
The girl laughed again then fell abruptly silent as Khela-hahk uttered a curt rebuke. He and the boy sat together at another fire a few feet away, the old man beckoning to the girl with a stern frown on his wrinkled brow. She gave a sullen pout and rose from Elera’s side, starting forward then halting as the sister gently took her hand. “We’re only playing…” she began, offering the old warrior a reassuring smile.
“Sister,” Sollis said softly, shaking his head. Elera sighed and released the girl who stomped to the other fire, slumping down with arms crossed and face set in sulky reproach.
“Don’t feel too bad, sister,” Oskin commented, chewing a mouthful of dried beef. “Probably just trying to win your trust so she can slit your throat when you’re sleeping.”
“What a fount of unsolicited opinions you are, brother,” Elera observed with a thin smile.
“We know what these people are,” Oskin returned evenly. “You do not and would do well to listen to experienced counsel.” He jerked his head at Smentil who sat running a whetstone over the blade of his sword. “Ask our brother. They held him for ten days, visited all manner of outrages on his flesh, not to say taking his tongue into the bargain. It astonishes me he can stomach being in their company.”
Smentil’s whetstone emitted a harsh grind as he scraped it the length of the blade, his eyes fixing Oskin with a glare of warning. The older brother flushed a little and lowered his gaze. “Apologies, brother,” he murmured.
“As ever, idle hands make for useless talk,” Sollis said, adopting a brisk tone as he rose, hefting his bow and settling his sword on his back. “Brother Oskin, take your hound and scout beyond the walls. The Lonak didn’t find any suspicious tracks but that doesn’t mean much this deep in t
he mountains. Stay within bowshot of the walls. Brother Smentil will go with you. Sister.” He inclined his head at Elera. “My earlier inspection revealed something I believe may be of interest to our mission, if you would care to join me.”
* * *
Despite being cracked in places, the winding stairs that hugged the wall of the building were another testament to the soundness of the fortress’s construction, remaining intact all the way to the top. Sollis guided their steps with a flaming torch as Elera followed him into the tower’s gloomy upper reaches.
“For all his prejudice,” she said, “Brother Oskin makes an insightful point. Smentil seems remarkably free of hatred towards our new companions.”
“He was always a difficult man to read,” Sollis replied. “Even in the days when he could speak. In any case, the Faith teaches us that vengeance is folly, does it not?”
“‘A vindictive heart stains the Beyond,’” she agreed with a quote. “As set down in The Catechism of Truth. Perhaps Oskin should pay greater attention to its message.”
Sollis resisted the impulse to impart a brief summation of the many trials Oskin had suffered since his deployment to the Pass, knowing it to be an excuse. What is the point of Faith if it is to be abandoned in the face of adversity? he pondered, silently resolving to speak to Brother Commander Arlyn when they returned. Perhaps it was time for Oskin to take up a master’s role at the Order House where he could impart his wisdom to the next generation of novice brothers.
“In here,” he said, pausing at a narrow doorway. He lowered the torch to illuminate the interior, gesturing for her to precede him.
“Hardly a grand chamber,” Elera said, casting her gaze around the room which was ten feet across at its widest point. “You truly think this was where Lord Morvil held court?”
“No, but I’d hazard this is where he slept. Small as it is, it’s still the largest chamber in the whole fortress.” Sollis followed her inside, glancing back at the doorway before lowering his voice. “I noticed something,” he said, moving to the far wall and crouching. “Something I thought it best the Lonak woman didn’t see.”
