Frostgrave_Second Chances

by Matthew Ward

  The big man swallowed, and nodded. ‘You’re right. So what happened?’

  ‘That’s obvious, don’t you think?’

  ‘Mirika.’ Yelen stuttered the word, not wanting to give it voice, but wanting to hear another say it even less. ‘My sister did this.’ She took a deep breath. One way or another, there was worse to come, but she had to be sure. ‘We need to find the others.’

  ***

  It didn’t take long to reach the rest of Mariast’s expedition. Their footprints, previously so measured, so ordered, now left only a mass of disturbed snow in their wake. Kas led the company sure-footedly around the lower slopes of two barrows, and up the gentle rise of a third. As before, the barrow-wisps scattered before the corpsefire, but Yelen barely noticed, too afraid of what they might find.

  ‘Stay together,’ hissed Magnis. ‘One of you strays too far from the corpsefire, you’ll feel an icy hand on your shoulder.’

  Weapons out, the Gilded Rose reached the crest and moved through the jumble of monoliths and barrow-stones. Yelen clutched her dagger tight, more for comfort than out of any expectation it would do her any good if it came to a fight. It didn’t help. Not even a bit.

  ‘I have them.’

  Kas took a long step over the low stones of a ghost-fence, and onto the summit proper, wisps dancing frantically away from his approach. Yelen shrugged off Serene’s restraining hand and followed. She had to know.

  The skirmish below had been as nothing to whatever battle had occurred on the barrow-top. Here, boots had churned the snow so badly that the bare, permafrosted soil glinted in the lantern light. There were ice-locked bodies everywhere, a ghastly tableau of terrified and contorted faces, each one caught in the act of defiance, or of flight. Yelen knew they’d never thaw. More statues to join those already atop the buried tomb.

  ‘I’ve found her!’ Darrick’s tremulous shout echoed between the monoliths.

  Yelen reached his side a fraction after Magnis.

  ‘For the love of…’ The master of the Gilded Rose took a deep breath before pressing on, a little of his customary confidence back in his voice. ‘Keep your voice down, Darrick. We’re risking too much simply by being up here.’

  Yelen didn’t have to wonder what he meant. The darkness had taken on a brooding, almost angry, quality. Bad enough that the living transgressed on the territory of the dead at all, but to defame the summit of a barrow with their presence…?

  Magnis shook his head. ‘Well, that’s another legend brought to a squalid end.’

  Mariast’s frozen remains lay in the snow on heels and haunches, one hand raised up in defence, or perhaps in the act of some last, desperate conjuration.

  ‘Aye,’ said Marcan. ‘She’ll find plenty of familiar faces waiting for her in the frozen hells.’ He shot a glance at Kain. ‘I hope that’s not too disrespectful?’

  Kain glowered at him, but said nothing.

  Serene snorted. ‘No one’ll miss the Green Widow. She’s killed more new blood than the giants of the Grey District.’

  ‘I will,’ said Kas. ‘She still owes me money.’

  ‘More fool you for thinking she’d pay.’ Serene’s tone was light enough, but her eyes didn’t leave Mariast’s glittering face. ‘Your sister did this?’

  Yelen choked back a reply, and settled for a nod. She didn’t know, not for sure, but between the storm that had levelled the Guttered Candle and the way the Nereta’s waters had frozen beneath Mirika’s feet…

  ‘Kas?’ said Magnis. ‘We have any outbound tracks?’

  The tracker extended a lazy hand. ‘One set, leading away down the slope over yonder. Even spacing, bare feet.’

  ‘Then she’s still alive.’ Magnis leaned in close to Yelen, and lowered his voice. ‘I know this looks bad, but there’s no blood, and no sign of the orb. Maybe Mariast tried to take it? I wouldn’t put it past her to have a crack at robbing a lone wanderer.’

  Yelen didn’t answer. Kardish had been bad enough, but this? A dozen dead in all. She couldn’t believe her sister was capable of such a thing. But maybe that was the point? Kardish had died of old age, his tempo stretched to breaking point. There was no sign a similar magic had been used on Mariast’s band. Mirika hadn’t done this. It had merely been her hand that had wielded Szarnos’ magic. Magnis was right. There was still hope.

  She looked up to say so, but Magnis had drifted away to Kain’s side.

  ‘This isn’t what I signed up for.’ The knight spoke softly, her words barely carrying to Yelen’s ears.

  ‘I know,’ he replied, just as quietly. ‘But we’ve come too far to turn back when it’s within our grasp. I’ve already waited long enough.’

  Yelen twisted away, partly to disguise the fact that she’d heard at all, mostly to conceal her disgust at Magnis’ true priorities. He didn’t care about Mirika. This was all just a means to an end.

  She stared again at Mariast’s ice-locked corpse. ‘I’m still coming for you, sister,’ she whispered. ‘Alone, if I have to.’

  ***

  Magnis finally called a halt nearly two hours later. By Yelen’s estimate, they were halfway across the Lower Reach – an impressive achievement owing as much to the surprisingly clement weather as to the decision to press on. She tried not to think about it. Things were bad enough without tempting a snowstorm.

  As campsite, Kas chose the shoulder of a collapsed barrow, partway between two ghost-fences. Some calamity in years past had caused a landslide, burying the entrance of that particular tomb. No one wanted to risk callers, corpsefires or no.

  Magnis placed a ring of a dozen bowls in all, each two or three paces from the next. That created a protected space large enough to house the whole company, as well as a single, conventional fire, lest the cold claim lives even as the wights were held at bay. Twelve brilliant white flames to mark a ring of safety against an uncaring night.

  Barrow-wisps bobbed and wove beyond the fiery perimeter like flies at a window. Yelen peered out into the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of their masters, but saw nothing. It didn’t mean they weren’t there, of course. She felt sure they were close by.

  ‘Delightful.’ Magnis rubbed his hands together, a man well-pleased with his efforts. Not that he ever seemed less than impressed with himself. ‘Six hours to go. Three two-man watches means four hours sleep apiece, and very glad of it we’ll be.’

  He fished in the pocket of his robes and tossed a small hourglass at Marcan. The swarthy man fumbled the catch, cursed floridly and stooped to pick it up from the snow.

  ‘You and Kain take the first,’ said Magnis. ‘Tas and Darrick have the middle, and I’ll take the last with Serene.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Yelen.

  ‘Get some sleep. You had a difficult night, and tomorrow’s a long day. You’ll need it.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I’ll stand my turn like everyone else. I don’t want special treatment, and I don’t need coddling.’

  Marcan snorted, then gasped as Serene drove an elbow into his belly.

  Kain lowered herself onto the remnants of an ancient boundary wall. ‘Never turn down a good night’s sleep when it’s offered. The road stretches on. Your turn will come.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Magnis. ‘Let this lot have a broken night’s sleep. That’s part of what I pay them for.’

  Yelen considered, and nodded. The more she thought on it, the less she wanted to give up what little rest lay ahead. Especially as she expected Azzanar to be waiting in ambush, as she had many times of late. ‘What about you? Who’s paying you?’ The question, spurred on by her recently overheard conversation, came out more arch than she intended.

  Magnis seemed not to notice. ‘Why, providence of course. I aim to leave behind a legend that will awe generations to come, and I’d rather be remembered as a dashing, generous fellow who shared his companions’ burdens. You wouldn’t deny me that, would you?’

  She forced a wry smile. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Good, be
cause it’s your turn tomorrow. I’m not that generous.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Despite Yelen’s fear that Azzanar was lurking, waiting to manipulate her dreams, her slumbers passed without the demon’s honeyed voice. More than that, there were no dreams, no nightmares – just the blackness of oblivion, lit from within by the white light of corpsefires, and of smouldering kindling.

  She awoke twice, stirred from sleep by some sound, or a forgotten fragment of memory, striving to become a dream. Each time, Yelen stared into the light of the nearest corpsefire, drinking in that strange, impossible spring-scent until she dozed calmly off to sleep.

  Then she awoke once more. This time, into darkness.

  The corpsefires were out. And the darkness was alive with movement. Watchful. Patient.

  Yelen licked dry lips, not daring even to breathe lest it draw attention. Her heart thudded against her ribcage, the sound so loud she couldn’t fathom how it hadn’t yet given her away. How could the fires be out? Twelve hours, Magnis had said. Why had no one raised the alarm?

  Slowly, a hair’s breadth at a time, Yelen craned her head. At every moment, she expected the darkness to surge towards her, for the wisps above to enfold her in their sickly green light. How had it come to this? Had the Gilded Rose abandoned her? Was she dreaming? No. It couldn’t be a dream. The ground was cold beneath her, and the hurried thump-thump of her heart too painful for mere imagination.

  At last, a familiar figure crept into view.

  ‘Darrick?’ The whisper crossed Yelen’s lips before she could stop it.

  The big man sat atop the boundary wall, back set against the collapsed barrow. His uneven face – normally so ruddy and full of colour – was a pallid and mottled blue. His mouth lay open in a silent, distended scream. His eyes stared blankly into the darkness. To all appearances, Darrick looked as though he’d died screaming in terror. But how had she not heard him?

  With a breathy hiss, a section of darkness detached itself from the black of night, and surged towards her.

  Yelen instinctively rolled away through the embers of the campfire, too terrified even to scream. She felt a flare of sharp, savage heat as embers burst around her. Then white light enveloped her. She’d been wrong. Not all of the corpsefires were out, only those to her front.

  The billowing darkness screeched as its impetus carried it into the light. Yelen had a brief glimpse of skeletal claws and pale green eyes. Then it was gone, coiling back into the safety of the dark, steam trailing behind it.

  Yelen rolled to a sitting position, taking in the state of the campsite for the first time. Yes, six of the corpsefires still burned, offering a semicircular haven to one side of the fire. She wasn’t sure what worried her more – the four piles of bundled blankets that should have had bodies in them, or the two that were occupied, but deathly still.

  Eyes darting back and forth across the roiling darkness, Yelen crossed to the two occupied bundles – both in what she clung to as the ‘safe’ side of the campsite. She turned the first over, and found herself staring back into Magnis’ taut, wide-eyed face.

  He, at least, wasn’t dead – or not yet. His lips worked feverishly, his eyes twitching like a man locked in a waking dream. She’d seen that expression before, on Mirika’s face after she’d escaped from the barrow, but this was a thousand times worse.

  Something in the darkness hissed, regathering its courage.

  Yelen waved a hand in front of Magnis’ face. ‘Cavril? Cavril, wake up! Please wake up!’

  He offered no response. No indication he’d even heard.

  Abandoning her attempts to rouse Magnis, Yelen scrambled through the snow to Kain’s side. The knight was every bit as senseless as her employer, her expression of dread all the more disturbing for how out of place it looked on a face normally so stoic.

  Mirika had spoken of a wight crawling around inside her head. Talking to her. Embracing her. She’d made light of it at the time, but that’s what Mirika always did. Had the horrors of the barrows, unable to reach their prey still in the light, turned to more insidious methods? If so, why hadn’t she been affected? The answer was obvious. Yelen had one thing that the others lacked: Azzanar. She couldn’t imagine the demon consenting to some mere undead vestige claiming a soul she considered rightfully hers.

  Azzanar. She’d sworn not to seek the demon’s help. But this was different, wasn’t it? This was about more than her. At least two other lives hung in the balance. Maybe as many as five, if her missing companions weren’t already dead. No one would blame her.

  Yelen choked back a sob. One companion dead. Two beyond her reach. Three… gone. But where? What was she to do? What could she do? There had to be something.

  ‘Think, Yelen, think.’

  She could stay in the half circle. She’d be safe there. Or would she? What if those corpsefires went out too? And what then? Mirika. Azzanar. The Gilded Rose. Was she to spend her whole life being saved by others?

  No.

  Yelen wasn’t sure what corner of her soul sparked that defiance, but she clung to it as if it were the most precious of gemstones – as if it were the sole cord that bound her to her absent sister. She didn’t have Mirika’s abilities, she might have been alone, but she wasn’t helpless.

  Yelen peered into the dark, to where the other bowls had rested – had being the operative word. Some had been upended, emptied into the snow. Others were full of snow themselves, their fires doused from within. It wasn’t accidental. Someone had done it on purpose, but who? One of the missing trio. That made sense. Marcan, Kas or Serene. But why? Yelen shook the thought away. It didn’t matter. Not now. The important thing was that if the other fires had been sabotaged, the others should keep burning.

  The darkness surged. Yelen’s heart leapt into her throat. She flinched away, tripping on Kain’s prone body and nearly upending another of the corpsefire bowls. Once again, the wight spiralled away as the light of the corpsefires touched it. But it had come closer this time. So close, its chill backwash rose goosebumps across her exposed flesh.

  Yelen was moving before she even realised she’d decided to act. She dived forward, out beyond the protective corpse-light, fingers scrabbling for one of the extinguished bowls. It tipped, dangerously close to spilling its contents into the snow. Then her hooked fingers caught against the rim, and it was hers. Another moment – another panicked scrabble at arm’s length – and she had a second bowl.

  Out in the darkness, the wight finally realised Yelen had left the sanctuary of the light. Darkness writhing about it, the spirit issued a low, hissing screech and surged to claim her.

  Yelen was already shuffling backwards. As the wight closed, her heel caught on a haversack. She toppled backwards, clutching the purloined bowls tight to her chest so as not to spill their precious contents.

  The fall saved her life. The wight’s claws met empty air above her head. Then it shrieked and withdrew, driven back by the light.

  Breath fluttering, Yelen scrambled to her knees and set the bowls down beside the fire. So far, so good. She tried not to think about the other wights she’d glimpsed as she’d fallen, or how close the first wight’s pale claws had come to seizing her as she’d fallen, and turned her attention to the bowls.

  The contents were sodden, drowned by thawing snow. Sodden, but not useless.

  Yelen glanced at the fire. It had gone untended too long, the dull red embers covered in a thick layer of ash. But that was okay. She could work with that.

  Seizing the haversack that had so lately saved her life, she ransacked its contents until she found the very thing she sought. Numb fingers scrambling at the pouch strings, she tipped the contents into the fire.

  The result was everything she could have wanted. The alchemist’s powder caught light at once, the dying fire bursting into brilliant, furious life. Yelen thrust fresh kindling in the flames. The blaze stabilized, the warmth of it every bit as much a relief as the hope it offered.

  Perhaps sensing c
ircumstances shifting against it, the wight hissed its voiceless challenge and swept towards her.

  Yelen didn’t retreat from the pale claws. ‘The hells with you!’

  Wedging her toes beneath the nearer of her two salvaged bowls, she kicked the contents into the flames.

  The corpsefire mixture crackled as the fire took it. A great hiss of steam joined the leaping flames. Then the air was full of the scent of springtime, and a white light ten times as brilliant as those on the periphery.

  The wight had no chance to evade, and no time to retreat. The rippling darkness of its robes burned in the light like parchment in flame; its pallid, misshapen bones melted like snow in sunlight. With one last, thin wail, it was gone – its spirit at last cast into the frozen hells it had evaded for so long.

  ‘I hope that hurt!’

  The panic of recent moments subsided in the rush of victory. Yelen’s breaths still came hard and fast, but elation now drove them as much as desperation. More. The creatures could be fought. They could be beaten.

  Yelen glanced at the fire, still blazing white. She suspected the corpsefire mixture wouldn’t last as long as it would have in the small bowl, but it offered a reprieve, and she was grateful for it.

  The darkness billowed and hissed, but no wight sought to challenge the light that had claimed its brother.

  Knees skimming through the snow, Yelen knelt beside Magnis. His face was calmer, his breathing steadier. Whatever enchanted dream had claimed him was receding, driven back by the light and scent of the vast corpsefire burning a few paces away. Kain too seemed better. The expression of terror gone from her features.

  A scream split the air.

  A piercing, drawn out wail, it was identifiable neither as a man’s nor a woman’s, a cry of terror or of pain. It lingered, then faded, leaving an aftermath almost as wearing on the nerves as its sudden onset.

  Yelen flicked her eyes across the empty bedding. Marcan. Kas. Serene. She didn’t much care about Marcan, still hadn’t forgiven him for gutting Mirika like a hog. But Kas and Serene had been friendly – certainly more welcoming than she’d have been under similar circumstances.