Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  ‘Come on, come on,’ I hissed.

  Nenn is very efficient and she wasn’t about to abandon our prize, not after three days of breathing Misery dust. She took out her sword and went to work like a butcher. I fingered the barrel of my weapon, checked the match was rigged to hit the flash pan. In the quiet of the gorge, everything seemed still. Nenn began to slice and saw, arms working hard and fast. I scanned the ground again, but it was just the one footprint. Half the size of an adult’s. Both of the sympathisers had larger feet than that.

  ‘Not fast enough,’ I hissed.

  ‘Got it,’ Nenn said. She yanked her prize free of clinging threads of gristle. She was going to need a bath. ‘They’re always heavier than I expect.’ She held up the heads for me to inspect. All in one piece.

  ‘Don’t wave them around like that. Have some respect.’

  ‘I don’t have two shits of respect for sympathisers,’ Nenn said. She spat on the dead man’s decapitated body. ‘They want to go join the drudge so much, they think being human is such a problem? I’ll treat them inhuman if that’s what they want.’

  ‘Enough. Let’s move.’

  We wrapped the heads in one of the old blankets. The blood might have had time to dry, but that didn’t mean that whatever had gracked them had gone far. Beneath my armour my shirt was wet through with sweat.

  We retraced our steps back to the mouth of the gorge, scrambling across the loose rock. The need for stealth ground against the desire to get clear, the heads bouncing along in the makeshift sack looped through my belt. Nenn was right, they were heavy, but we still scrambled fast through the scree and the desiccated grey roots. I kept an eye behind us the whole way, skittering backwards as often as forwards. My pulse was up, my guts starting to turn sour. Part of me expected that when we climbed out we’d find the company nothing but dismembered bodies. I reminded myself that the blood had dried. The killer had done his work and gone.

  My fears were unfounded. My arsehole soldiers gave a cheer when we climbed out, red-stained sack in tow.

  ‘All smooth?’ Tnota asked. I ignored the question.

  ‘We’re going,’ I called. ‘Saddle up, move your sorry fucking arses. Move! Anyone not saddled in half a minute gets left behind.’

  The good humour evaporated. They were a sorry-looking bunch, but they heard the urgency. Nenn practically vaulted into her saddle. My men didn’t know what had us spooked, and they didn’t need to.

  ‘Think we can get to a Range station tonight?’ I asked Tnota.

  ‘Unlikely. Hard to chart a course, and we’re at least sixteen standard miles in. Red moon’s starting to rise and she’s throwing off the normal lines. I need an hour to plot a good course if you want due west.’

  ‘It’ll have to wait.’

  I kept to my word, put my feet in the stirrups and kicked my horse to a gallop. I lashed the reins, kept my eyes westward and didn’t let up until Dust Gorge had vanished from sight. I drove a hard pace until the horses were near blown.

  ‘Captain, we have to stop or I’m going to lose all reference for positioning,’ Tnota insisted. ‘We get lost out here and you know what happens next. We have to stop.’

  Reluctantly, I allowed the horses to slow to a walk, and then a half-mile on from that, drew to a halt.

  ‘Be quick,’ I said. ‘Fastest course home.’

  Finding your way in the Misery is never easy. Without a good navigator you can travel in the same direction for three days and find yourself back where you started. Another reason I hadn’t wanted to risk Tnota down in the gorge. The only constants in the Misery are the three moons: red, gold and blue. Too far away to get twisted around by all the poisoned magic leaking out of the earth, I guess.

  I went to make some water against a rock. As I laced up, the inner side of my left forearm started to sting. I fastened my belt and told myself I was imagining it. No. Definitely getting warmer. Hot, even. Damn. It was neither the time nor the place for this.

  It had been five years since I’d heard from Crowfoot. Part of me had wondered if the old bastard had forgotten all about me. As he sought to contact me now, I realised what a foolish notion that had been. I was one of his playing pieces. He’d just been waiting for the right time to move me.

  I stepped around behind a dune, drew back my sleeve. My arms carry a lot of ink, memories in green and black and blue. A small skull for every friend I’d lost on the Range. Too many fucking skulls. Couldn’t remember who a lot of them were for, now, and it wasn’t the skulls that were starting to heat anyway. On the inside of my forearm, an intricately detailed raven stood out amongst the crude soldiers’ tattoos surrounding it. The ink sizzled and began spitting black as it grew unpleasantly hot. I yanked off my belt, wrapped it around my upper arm like a tourniquet. Past experience told me I’d need it.

  ‘Come on then,’ I growled through my teeth. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  The flesh strained upwards as something sought to escape my skin. My whole arm began to shake, and the second thrust hurt more than the heat. Steam sizzled from the flesh as it turned red, burned. I winced, gritted my teeth, squeezed my eyes shut as my skin stretched to its limit, and then I felt the ripping as the raven forced itself up and out of me. Big fucking bird, a raven. It came out through the torn flesh, sticky and red like a newborn, hopped down onto a rock and looked up at me with black eyes.

  I clenched my jaws shut against the pain. No use showing weakness. Crowfoot would have no sympathy anyway.

  I bowed my head to the bird. The Nameless aren’t gods, but they’re far enough from mortal that the distinction matters little, and gods and Nameless both like us on our knees. No point in speaking. Crowfoot never listened to what I had to say. I had no idea whether he could hear through the bird or whether it just came to say its piece. The raven’s beak opened and I heard his voice, a growl of gravel and phlegm. Sounded like he’d smoked a bowl of white-leaf every day since the war began.

  ‘GALHARROW,’ it shrieked at me. Furious. ‘GET TO STATION TWELVE. ENSURE SHE SURVIVES. DO NOT FUCK THIS UP.’

  The sticky red raven cocked its head at me, then looked down at the ground as if it were just an ordinary bird looking for worms. Maybe after it gave its message that’s all it was. A few moments later it jerked rigid, its eyes burned with flames, a puff of smoke boiled from its beak and it collapsed dead to the ground. I wiped blood from my forearm. The wound was gone but the pain remained. The raven tattoo was back in place again, faint against the skin like an old man’s ink. The bird would come back to full definition in time.

  ‘Change of plan,’ I said as I rejoined my troop. ‘We’re going to Station Twelve.’

  I received a few puzzled looks, but nobody argued. Good thing too. Pulling rank is that much harder when you have absolutely no idea why you’re doing it.

  Tnota looked up at the moons. Cool blue Clada had sunk down against the horizon. The bright bronze cracks carved the sky into discoloured pieces. Tnota licked a finger, checked the wind, then knelt and brushed fingers through the grit.

  ‘Twelve ain’t the nearest station, captain. Won’t make it before dark,’ he said. ‘Can get us out of the Misery and then take south along the supply road.’

  ‘That the fastest way?’

  ‘Fastest is direct. But like I say, won’t be out the Misery come dark.’

  ‘Fastest course, Tnota. There’s an extra share in it for you if there’s ale in my hand before we lose the light.’

  Tnota grinned. We’d be there.

  2

  The horses were spent, but I didn’t think any were damaged. They wanted out of the unnatural tundra as much as their riders. Smart animals, horses.

  Two moons had dipped down beyond different horizons, leaving only Clada’s slender sapphire crescent to gloss the night sky as we approached Station Twelve. Tnota had cut some strange, risky route through dunes with long s
napping grass, but we’d made it with all our limbs intact. He might not have a shred of violence in him, but the old boy could have navigated for the marshal if he hadn’t been such a degenerate. We left the growling of the stained sky behind us, forsook the bright white-bronze gashes running through it and fell into the more natural night west of the Misery.

  The station was aglow with hollow light, a pair of phos-powered search beams conducting lazy sweeps of the approach. One of them caught us, followed us as we drew near. A lone, half-interested face peered down over the battlements. The fortress was standard design, same as its four dozen sisters spread along the length of the Range. High stone walls, big guns, flags, narrow windows, the smell of manure. Standard fortress stuff.

  ‘A jester’s hat,’ Nenn said as we approached. I arched an eyebrow at her. She pointed upwards. ‘That’s what they always remind me of. The arms of the projectors. They look like the four fronds sticking out of a jester’s hat.’ I followed the line of her finger, high. Four vast metallic arms rose from the top of the central keep, arching spider legs of black iron, illuminated from below by weak yellow phos light. They even had black iron globes at their points, hollow bells silhouetted against the red of the sky.

  ‘I don’t think the projectors tell any good jokes,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t say I agree.’ Nenn grinned. Her eyes had the same gleeful intensity as a cat’s when it gets its claws into a mouse. ‘There’s something funny about all those drudge walking into the Range, getting turned to ash. That count as a joke?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just means you got a twisted sense of humour. Now shut up, I need to work out what I’m going to say to the station commander. And for fuck’s sake, stop chewing that shit.’

  Nenn ignored me and carried on talking through a wad of blacksap. When you’ve ridden around together as long as we had, got stinking drunk together more days than you’ve been sober, you end up having to tolerate a degree of insubordination. Some people wrongly assumed we were lovers, as though scars sought out scars. She claimed to be a hellcat in the sack, but I could never have dealt with either her spitting or her complete lack of regard for manners. With that wooden nose on her face she’d never be asked to sit for an artist, but my own portrait wouldn’t exactly moisten the ladies at court. I’d breathed the grit of a dozen sandstorms, drunk more liquor than most men drink water and if anyone tried to compliment me on having a jaw like an anvil, can only say it’s certainly taken enough of a pounding. I guess I could see why people thought we made a neat pair.

  We had to ride all the way around to the western side of the fortress. No gate faces the Misery. The Range stations exist to keep the east to the east, wardens against the things that used to be men. Spirits alone know what they are now.

  The gate sergeant looked us over, peering through a head-sized window in the gate. He yawned, wine on his breath, but the seal I showed him dashed the insolence from his face. The embossed iron disc told him I was Blackwing. Not a lot of love for the Blackwing amongst the state troops. Some of them saw us as little more than head-takers, bounty hunters, heard stories of innocent men accused and put to the question. They resented that we had no regulation buttons to polish, no drills to conduct and they spat and called us rats when they thought we couldn’t hear them. But mostly they feared that one day the Blackwing would turn accusing, soulless eyes in their direction. Everybody has something to hide.

  ‘You know if there’s any high-ranking women here? Officers? Nobility?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry, sir, so sorry. Only just started my shift. There’s some fancy-looking carriages parked up in the yard, though. Have to belong to the cream I guess.’

  I scowled at him. His uniform was crumpled, like he’d just thrown it on. His belt wasn’t even done up. Standards seemed to have fallen a long way since the last time I’d been down this way. The old officer in me rose past the years of contempt to snap at him.

  ‘Since you’re manning the gates of a Range station, shouldn’t you know who’s here, sergeant?’

  He gave me a bitter look. My seal told him that he had to let us inside, but he didn’t take his orders from me and he didn’t have to put up with my shit. Not unless I had dirt on him, which I didn’t. The guilty are so much more malleable.

  ‘Listen, feller. My little one’s been up all night with the wet cough. Probably won’t last much past the week, and that’s got my wife wallowing in her own self-misery. You want to add to my worries? Go make a complaint to the duty captain.’ He spoke past me to my men. ‘Get in. Mess hall’s through the gatehouse. Avoid the ruby ale. Gave some of us the shits.’

  I hung back, but decided not to point out that it was forbidden for children to enter a Range station. Probably wouldn’t have been helpful.

  ‘Show me the recent arrivals.’

  The duty sergeant shrugged, hugged himself as if to say I was letting cold air into the fortress and he needed to get on with closing up the gate. I took the ledger and leafed through it.

  Whoever had arrived with the carriages hadn’t been written into it. The record was sketchy at best. I scanned the signatures of recent entries. It wasn’t just Crowfoot’s lady I was looking for. I figured I’d know Maldon’s signature by his dreadful handwriting if I saw it, but there was nothing listed but supply caravans, changes of guard units and the occasional doxy signing in and out over the last couple of months.

  Gleck Maldon had been a good friend and a powerful ally before the magic had got into his brain. A good man, far as any man that kills for a living can be called good. He’d ridden as artillery for me a score of times over the years. Then he started barking moonwards so they’d locked him in the asylum, but Spinners of Maldon’s ability don’t find walls a significant impediment. He got loose. Loose, and dangerous. Finding him in the ledger had been a long shot. I asked the sergeant anyway.

  ‘You see a man come through here, tall, about fifty? Brown hair gone grey at the wings?’

  ‘Can’t say I remember anyone like that specifically. He got a name?’

  ‘Gleck Maldon. A Spinner, out of Valengrad. Would likely have sounded a little crazy.’

  The sergeant shook his head and took the ledger back like I was intruding by reading it.

  ‘No sorcerer types here. Not for a long while.’

  I thanked him, though I didn’t feel like it. There wasn’t any reason Maldon might have come this way save that it was south, and south was a direction, and any direction was better than being where he was meant to be: locked in the asylum back in Valengrad. I put Maldon out of my mind. He’d gone to ground. I missed him.

  The doors clunked shut behind me and the gate sergeant began to crank a heavy handle, a portcullis beginning its slow descent. I never like feeling locked into a place.

  ‘Want to buy me a fancy ride like that one, captain?’ Nenn grinned, drawing my attention to the stable block. She’d spotted the spring-mounted carriage, the kind usually occupied by the same courtly ladies that wouldn’t frig themselves off to my portrait. The wheels were meant for the well-paved avenues of city boulevards and looked to be in need of attention after clattering along the poorly tended border roads. Painted blue, chased with golden embellishments, its owner had to be cream. Probably the lady Crowfoot had sent me after.

  ‘When you start listening to my orders, I’ll start buying you pretty things,’ I told the swordswoman at my side.

  ‘Wonder what brings the cream out to Station Twelve,’ Nenn said. ‘Nothing here for nobility.’ Nenn didn’t like the higher-ups any better than I did.

  ‘There’s nothing out here for anyone,’ I said. ‘The food’s shit, the beds are worse and soon as you look east, reality starts getting jumpy. Problem is, the higher up you’re born, the less sense you arrive with. Probably some fool looking to raise a commission, wants to see life on the frontier. One good look out over the Range, a taste of the Misery, should be enough to send her b
ack the way she came.’

  Nenn always enjoyed hearing me bad-mouth the elite. I didn’t have many kind things to say about them. My experiences with the ruling class hadn’t been much better than hers.

  I dismissed the company for the night. They’d find some open barrel to dip and waste the evening singing badly and losing money to each other. As long as they didn’t get into fights or steal anything, I didn’t give a shit. They headed off to drink away the Misery shakes. Getting the shakes was normal, when you got out from under the sundered sky. I figured whatever magic we’d soaked up out there had to leave the body and the shaking got it out, but that was just a guess. It wasn’t as though the Nameless ever chose to let us know why their magic affected us the way it did, and it wasn’t as though we had the guts to ask.

  Crowfoot was to blame for the Misery, if attributing blame to something like him counts for anything. He and the other Nameless are beyond the reproach of us whimpering mortals. Some people formed cults around them as if they were gods, but if Crowfoot is a god then creation isn’t worth spit. For two centuries the Nameless warred with the Deep Kings and their empire, Old Dhojara, and what had been accomplished in that time? A lot of weeping, a lot of bones turning yellow beneath the Misery’s sands. We’d managed stalemate, not even peace – and in the central states they don’t even understand that only the Engine and the Range Stations provide any protection against the Deep Kings at all. They don’t know how close we stand to the gallows, how tight the noose is cinched around our neck. But my master would not stand to be defeated, not if he had to sacrifice every last man, woman and child in Dortmark to do it. Which he would. When he burned the Misery into the world as a last defence, he proved as much.

  A small battalion of administrators, clerks and serving staff got in my way and repeatedly told me that the commander was busy. I ignored their protests, pushed past sputtering officials. Crowfoot’s direct intervention made this urgent. The Nameless don’t waste a drop of their power unless it matters. Hoard it closer than gold. I almost made it to the commander’s chamber before a few soldiers stopped me and I got threatened with chains. I snarled at them some. It didn’t make me feel any better, and it didn’t make them let me through.