Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  ‘You going to come see?’ the youngest asked me. I don’t know where they’d come from. Somehow the Bell had become a home to orphans and those simply abandoned when the walls went down. Most of them didn’t know if their parents had fled west when the drudge swarmed the city, if they lay crushed beneath tons of rubble or if they’d died with a sword in their hand. It didn’t matter anyway. One kind of gone is much the same as another.

  ‘I think I’m better off just resting here,’ I said. The kids looked disappointed. Spirits know why they liked to pester and bother me so. Maybe just because with my leg bandaged and propped up on a chair I wasn’t able to swat at them or avoid their incessant chattering. ‘Why don’t you go and see them arrive for me, and then you can tell me all about it?’ They didn’t quite seem convinced. ‘I expect they’ll bring food with them,’ I said. We were all hungry. That got them moving.

  ‘We’ll bring you something back!’ they called, but they’d forget, because they were just children.

  ‘Might be worth the trip,’ Tnota said. He swayed as he walked, not yet used to the new balance his body demanded. He placed a brimming jug of best quality ale down on the table with difficulty. The tavern’s owner was gone, and we’d more or less moved in. There weren’t many adults left in Valengrad to drink, not that we were stopping the children who chose to tap the barrels. As long as they left the good barrels alone, anyway.

  ‘I’ve seen enough of princes to last me the rest of my lifetime. About fucking time the Grand Prince made an appearance. I hope Nenn spits in his eye.’

  ‘Knowing her, she probably will. Poor Nenn. Big Dog says they ain’t going to like her.’

  ‘Nobody likes Nenn at first,’ I said. ‘But she’s still a General of the Range, and she led the last defence. Your Big Dog hasn’t been so hot on his predictions lately.’

  ‘Can’t expect him to be perfect. He’s a dog.’ Tnota grinned. He moved his lips as if to drink, then realised he hadn’t lifted his cup. Using his phantom arm again. The surgeon had done a good enough job at cauterising and stitching it up at the shoulder, but my navigator was still having to get used to its loss. I’d not believed he would pull through. They breed them more resilient than rats in the south. ‘Think they’ll let her keep the job?’

  ‘They can’t take it away. Wartime promotions stand. Someone even filled in the paperwork and put it up in Venzer’s office.’

  We drank a while. Ten days since the battle for Valengrad had passed. I’d been obliterated drunk pretty much constantly since. In reality, the only thing that had changed was that we weren’t paying for it any more. The kids mostly did the serving and cleaned us up when we passed out. They were good like that.

  The orphans had been building their own little world in the ruins their parents had left them. They found and cared for the blind, the ones who’d stared when Nall’s Engine smashed its judgement down upon the Misery. Most people had looked away, but those too terrified or stupid to turn their heads had lost their sight. We had a few of them in the tavern with us. An old woman with a bent back came by twice a day to ensure we were taking care of them and taught them to knit. We had quite the little production line going.

  The door opened and Dantry entered. He crossed to the bar, poured himself wine. Came to sit.

  ‘How’s the arm?’ he asked Tnota.

  ‘Still gone.’

  ‘And your leg, captain?’

  ‘Doesn’t look great,’ I said. ‘Inflamed. Could be infected beneath the scar. Could go either way.’

  He nodded. At least the spear had missed the bone. If the infection was set in deep, then either my body would fight it off or my flesh would blacken and I’d die. I was a gambling man, and I didn’t fancy betting on the outcome. Only thing to do was leave it propped on a chair and not think about it.

  ‘Anything new out there?’ Tnota asked.

  Dantry drained his wine glass, refilled it, took half of that down as well. Shook his head.

  ‘They have a name for it now,’ he said. There’d been a haunted look about him ever since the first sighting. ‘ “The Bright Lady”.’

  ‘No use chasing ghosts,’ I said. Tried to soften my voice. I knew how he felt. I didn’t feel any better.

  ‘General Nenn is going to greet the Grand Prince?’ Dantry asked. He didn’t want to talk about where he’d been. Every rumour, every whisper of the Bright Shade and he went racing off. If my leg hadn’t hurt like blue fuck, maybe I’d have gone too. In a way I was glad it was keeping me immobile.

  ‘Him and his twenty thousand soldiers. Valengrad’s about to get busy again. I liked it quiet.’

  ‘You should be there. This was your victory as much as hers.’

  ‘Let her have it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to be marshal any more than I wanted a spear through the leg. She’ll have to do some bowing and scraping, then she’ll have to think about money and beans and building walls. I’m too old for all that.’

  I could have gone before the Grand Prince. It had been my order to hold Three-Six after all. There would have been gold, fine uniforms, women, maybe even a progress through the states. I could have looked at my long lost family and spat on them as they bowed. But we had quite a lot of ale and brandy at The Bell and nobody was charging for it, and there wasn’t really anything else I was interested in. No use for money, no use for women. I’d had both in my life and neither had brought me anything other than pain. Well, that wasn’t quite true. In those last hours I’d found something I never thought I’d find again. That only made me all the angrier, all the surer that the bottle was a better resting place than any other.

  Dantry looked harrowed, old. His hair had been singed and his nose had been broken and reset with a kink. He’d lost the softness from his cheeks, the youth from his eyes. The lively young man was gone. Tnota’s hair was coming through grey and he hadn’t fucked anyone since his arm had been taken. We were all of us changed in ways I’d not expected. I told myself that I hadn’t, that I was going to shrug this all away too. One more bottle, one more song.

  ‘I’m going to get some air. Don’t let anyone take over our inn while I’m gone.’

  I took my crutch and limped off into the daylight. It had stopped raining at least, but the Misery was howling her song. She’d grown louder since Nall’s Engine had enacted the terrible vengeance of the Nameless.

  I limped to what remained of the walls. Some parts of the city had burned. Some buildings had been torn down to pack the holes the Darlings had made in the wall. Everywhere the light tubes were shattered and burst. Ezabeth had used them like a network of veins, her lightning the medicine to burn away a fever. Bits and pieces of rotting drudge meat lay ignored in the gutters. Scavengers had mostly stripped them of arms and armour. You could always trust the Spills to send out its legion of picking beetles, ready to turn a profit from some other bastard’s destruction. The surviving three hundred men under Nenn’s command had done a good job lumping corpses into the canals. As a result, the canals weren’t exactly operable any more, but at least there wasn’t plague in the streets.

  Shavada hadn’t just poked a hole to walk through. He’d destroyed a vast swathe of stone. There were probably a lot of bodies underneath the ruins, but Nenn hadn’t the manpower to dig them out. She was doing a good job of keeping order, but then there weren’t a lot of people left needing to be kept in line.

  I couldn’t face the stairs up the wall and instead sat on a huge block of cracked masonry in the gap, rested my crutch across my knees and looked out. The twisted land of the Misery was full of great new craters, scorched and blasted where the Engine had done its work. Nothing of the drudge remained out there.

  I touched my fingers to my nose. A few drops of blood leaked across my skin.

  ‘You don’t look like a man who won.’

  I wiped the blood away. Otto Lindrick – or the simulacrum that had called itself suc
h – stepped through the rubble to take a seat alongside me.

  ‘Do we look like we’re in a city that did?’

  Nall smiled. I’d never liked his smile. There’d always been something about it that set me on edge. He was in a different body, one devoid of the knife wounds his apprentice had put into it. I wondered whether he was conscious in that body alone or whether there were many iterations of him around the world, each slowly winding up the threads of his plans.

  ‘The city is still standing,’ he said.

  ‘No thanks to you.’

  ‘I hardly think that’s fair,’ Nall said with a dry chuckle. ‘It was my Engine that dealt with all those legions up at Three-Six. Philon and Acradius took direct hits as well, although I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them. Not so Shavada, though. We unpicked him right out of reality. I know, from your little point of view on the ground it doesn’t always feel like a victory, but it’s the big picture that we above have to look at.’

  ‘“We above”,’ I said. ‘I guess that’s how you’d see it.’

  ‘And so we do,’ Nall agreed. ‘Crowfoot wanted me to stop by. To say that you did well.’

  ‘He decided not to come in person?’

  ‘Crowfoot has gone to lead a campaign far to the east of here,’ Nall said. ‘Well beyond the Misery, beyond Dhojara. There are other nations at war with the Deep Kings and their empire, Galharrow. The Range has only ever been one front, a single battle line amongst many.’

  ‘He needn’t have bothered,’ I said. I felt the bitterness welling, deep within. A well of darkness and bile. ‘I didn’t do it for you, or any of your plans. Not even for Dortmark.’

  ‘You did it for her,’ Nall said. ‘Of course. We knew that when Crowfoot first sent you to her. We knew that you’d protect her better than anyone else. She was very important to the plan.’

  ‘She was a pawn. She was bait. You used her.’

  ‘Of course. But a pawn that rose to be a queen. You must understand, Galharrow, Shavada would never have dared cross the Misery if he’d believed that there was a chance my weapon could have struck at him. Acradius was barely within range and we dealt him a terrible blow. Would you feel less sour if you’d known the plan at the time? Do you think you could have been more convincing? Do you think Ezabeth Tanza would have proven the impossibility of the Engine to all of Valengrad’s commanders if she’d been aware it was all a hoax?’

  He chuckled to himself. He was right, of course, but that only made me want to hit him.

  ‘The ends justify the means, do they?’

  ‘Come now,’ Nall said. ‘You know they do. They always have. My poor apprentice, Destran? I knew his mind had been poisoned by the cultists before I took him. For five years I had to play the role of an accountant, to ensure the illusion was solid for him. You have no idea how tedious it was.’

  ‘My soul weeps for you,’ I said. ‘I get it. I understand. I can’t like it. It’s war and I grasp that. We just paid too high a price.’

  ‘We? Or you?’

  ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘One allows you to weep for the world. The other means you feel sorry for yourself.’

  I couldn’t argue with that either. The worst thing about the Nameless, worse than the nosebleeds and the headaches and the raven in my arm and the demands for servitude, is that, ultimately, they really do know more about everything than we do.

  ‘So what now?’ I asked. ‘The Lady of the Waves went back to Pyre. What happened to Shallowgrave?’

  ‘Most of the time, not even we know where he is or what he’s doing,’ Nall said. ‘Or what he is. It’s like that with our kind. We bind ourselves to something so powerfully that we lose distinction. Speaking of which, have you by chance seen this “Bright Lady” they speak about?’

  ‘No.’

  I’d avoided hearing about it as much as I could. Dantry was the one racing off at every mention, every sighting. Like I’d told him, chasing ghosts didn’t do so much good. The Bright Lady had appeared like some kind of glowing spirit here and there around the city ever since the Engine smashed the Dhojarans.

  ‘Maybe you should try to catch a glimpse.’

  ‘To prove what? That the Misery is now bleeding into the city? That maybe your weapon did something worse than any of us imagined? Magic started all of this. I’ve yet to see it do anything that I consider worthwhile.’

  ‘Oh, the Bright Lady is no doing of mine. She created herself, in a sense. You know the paradox, Galharrow. Songlope wasn’t wrong. Imagine taking all that light, using it all at once. You didn’t wonder about the backlash? Where all that misspent energy would go?’

  ‘She died,’ I said bitterly. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Death is swift,’ Nall said. ‘But that much power has to go somewhere, and a single woman’s fragile little body can hardly be said to be a fair trade. Of course, if she’d taken it with her …’

  ‘Whatever that shade is, it’s not Ezabeth.’

  ‘No,’ Nall agreed. ‘I’d say that whatever it is, it doesn’t have a name. Not any more.’

  He winked at me. The implication drifted between us. He wanted me to ask. The question burned on my tongue, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me anyway. I let it die behind my lips.

  ‘I have to be going,’ Nall said. He glanced down. ‘Your leg doesn’t smell so good. I’d get it looked at if I were you.’

  The Nameless walked away into the city. I looked out at the bruised bronze sky, listened to her dismal howling. Only one low-slung blue moon looked back at me. Away to the west a fanfare of trumpets had started up, heralding the arrival of the Grand Prince. He’d probably been expecting the streets lined with people to welcome him, as though his late arrival somehow made up for his failures. He’d find Nenn chewing blacksap and little more. That thought at least brought a smile to my face.

  Thousands were dead. Thousands more orphaned. The city was in ruins, the canals clogged with carrion and even if we’d won for now, it was only a temporary respite. I’d seen the great evil of the Deep Kings, seen what they truly were. They couldn’t let such a defeat rest. They would return.

  Of course, they’d have to go up against me again. They were as close to gods as a man would ever meet in the flesh, but they weren’t just up against wizards. They were against the iron-hard Venzers, the steel-willed Nenns, the Tnotas, the Tanzas. They were up against swords and walls and powder and magic, and above them all, the howling of the sky.

  Bad odds.

  Acknowledgements

  This book is for Clare, because she is the best one. However, to see my own fantasy novel in print is the fulfilment of my life’s ambition and significant thanks are also well deserved by:

  Kitty Morgan, without whose feedback and advice you’d be holding a very different book.

  Ben Morgan, my first and most enthusiastic reader.

  Greg McDonald, whose advice proves invaluable both within the both and outside it.

  Andrew Stater, the only other adventurer in a small English town. We may not roll for critical hits anymore, but the dungeons we crawled helped to shape the stories I tell today.

  Henry Williams, sounding board and selfless giver of time.

  My agent Ian Drury, to whom I am immensely grateful for placing his trust in me and sending me tumbling down the rabbit hole.

  My editors Gillian Redfearn, Jessica Wade and Craig Leyenaar for their help and support in trimming and shaping this book into a leaner, punchier model.

  My swordsmanship instructor David Rawlings and all those who have whacked me with sword, spear and shield over the last three years. I can reveal now that I was only letting you hit me for research purposes.

  And finally, the greatest thanks must go to my mum, who from my earliest memory was instilling me with a desire to create and tell stories, and my dad, who put t
he first wooden sword into my threeyear-old hand. My obsession with goblins and dragons may have puzzled you at times, but I hold you both entirely responsible.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Gollancz

  an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2017 by Gollancz.

  Copyright © ECM Creative Ltd, 2017

  The moral right of Ed McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (eBook) 978 1 473 22204 5

  www.edmcdonaldwriting.com

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  www.gollancz.co.uk