Frostgrave_Second Chances

by Matthew Ward

  But what could she do? Her dagger was a pitiful weapon against such foes. Kain’s sword lay scabbarded beside its sleeping mistress, but Yelen had no idea if she could heft the thing, let alone defend herself with it.

  Again, the temptation arose to plead with Azzanar, to beg for her help. Again Yelen crushed it down. She’d already proved she didn’t need the demon’s help. She could do so again. Her eyes fell across the second bowl she’d rescued from the darkness, and the spark of an idea formed.

  Yelen all but ran to the bundle of kindling. She selected three of the longest, straightest branches and bound them together with strips torn from Darrick’s bedding, wrapping the cloth thicker and tighter at the far end. She scooped the snow from the rescued corpsefire bowl and drained away the slushy, icy water. She lost some of the mixture along the way, but it didn’t matter – or so she hoped.

  Oil from one of the lanterns joined the mixture, creating a slimy, foul-smelling mulch that she scooped onto the makeshift torch’s padded end. The porous cloth drank in the mixture. Wiping her hand on the remains of Darrick’s blankets, Yelen whispered a prayer to whatever god or goddess might be listening, and thrust the end of the torch into the campfire. Searing white flames burst into life at its head.

  Yelen pressed a hand to her mouth to still the involuntary peal of delighted laughter. Now she had a weapon.

  No longer afraid of the circling wights, she retrieved another of the silent, snow-choked bowls from the perimeter and tossed the mixture onto the fire. The white light leapt to new heights, a promise that it would keep Magnis and Kain safe from the wights’ clutches a while longer yet.

  Taking a deep breath, Yelen plunged into the darkness.

  * * *

  It wasn’t hard to follow her missing companions’ trail. Wights didn’t leave footprints, and four sets led away from the camp. Yelen wondered about that, until she found a fourth set tracking back towards the fire. She’d already accepted that one of her companions had betrayed the others, and this felt like proof.

  Abandoning the returning trail, she pressed on after those that remained. On she trudged, the bravado of her pursuit fading as the warmth of the fire grew more distant. Twice, wights barrelled out of the darkness. Twice, a sweep of the torch sent them back. But she’d come too far to turn back now. Squaring her shoulders, Yelen pressed on, trying not to think about how the torch’s light already seemed dimmed, how the barrow-wisps began crowding closer.

  The tracks divided beyond the low stones of a ghost-fence, two pairs veering off around the side of the barrow, one continuing ahead with ragged, uneven steps. Not really knowing why she made the decision, Yelen hurried after the lone trail, her urgency fed by the dying torchlight, and a horrible premonition of what she’d find.

  Kas sat propped against the plinth of a spread-winged statue, one hand slack in the snow, the other pressed against a ragged wound in his side. The snow around him was dark with blood, and his skin rubbery and pale. But he still lived, if barely, his chest rising and falling in fitful bursts. His sword, the blade unblooded, lay half-hidden in a nearby snow drift.

  The last of Yelen’s newfound bravado faded at the sight. She couldn’t do anything for him. She doubted anyone could. But a wight wasn’t to blame for this. They didn’t need blades to kill, and they wouldn’t have left him alive. No. This was something else. Kas’ assailant had wanted a slow death.

  ‘Kas?’ Yelen crouched beside him. ‘Who did this to you?’

  Awareness flickered into his eyes, violent action hard on its heels. Giving voice to a wordless moan, he flailed at Yelen with his free hand. But there was no strength behind the blind, desperate blows, and his eyes stared blindly past her.

  Yelen seized the flailing hand in hers and held it close. ‘Kas. It’s me. It’s Yelen. I’m not going to hurt you.’ His struggles faded as the words sunk in. ‘Please. Tell me who did this.’

  ‘Led me from the camp.’ His croaked words were little more than a whisper, and Yelen had to strain to hear them. ‘Cut me open. How…?’ His voice faded.

  Yelen leaned closer. ‘How what? Kas? Kas!’

  He gave a last, shuddering breath and lay still, his hand slipping from Yelen’s.

  Yelen wasn’t sure how long she knelt at Kas’ side, her thoughts a whirl of loss and anger. Someone had betrayed them, Kas had all but said as much. All the signs pointed to Darrick – after all, whatever happened, had happened on their watch. Had he disposed of Kas and then… And then what? The memory of the returning footprints surfaced. Staggered back to the camp to die? Why? Darrick had been terrified of the very idea of entering the Lower Reach. Had he offered up his companions to the wights, hoping the trade would leave him untouched? If that had been his plan, it had failed badly. Though Yelen had never seen a wight’s victim before, the mottled blue skin was a common enough feature of delvers’ tales. A wight’s embrace. She and Mirika had even joked about it, not far from where she now stood.

  And if not Darrick, what were the alternatives? Serene? Yelen didn’t think so. She’d seen too much genuine affection between her and Kas. She couldn’t imagine Serene wanting him harm. No. Marcan was more likely. She’d believe almost anything of the squat, brutish fellow. And if the two were together, it hardly boded well for Serene, did it?

  Certainty hardened as the facts fell into place. Marcan had killed Kas. He’d taken Serene, and doused the fires so that the wights would finish what he’d begun.

  The torch crackled. Yelen stared at it in growing alarm. Its light was fading. She’d lost too much of the corpsefire mixture to the snows. The breathy hisses of the wights grew louder, the darkness taking shape as their courage returned with the dying of the light.

  Grabbing Kas’ abandoned sword, Yelen retraced her tracks through the snow. She’d not find Serene before the torch failed, but maybe she’d make it back to the camp. No. She would find her, and they’d both make it back to the camp. And if Marcan had harmed Serene like he had Mirika, she’d make damn sure he’d pay.

  Yelen retraced her outbound footsteps, wights hissing at her heels. The return journey seemed longer, sufficiently so that she began to wonder if she’d somehow gone astray. But no, at last she came to the divergence, hers and Kas’ outbound tracks meeting the two sets that vanished around the side of the barrow.

  Yelen pressed on through thinning snows. Permafrosted soil underfoot gave way to stone slabs. The low stone walls of the barrow approach, once scarcely waist-high, now reached high above her head, held in place by crumbling buttresses. Grotesques peered down from the ridges, their horned faces seemingly delighted with her approach. And there, dead ahead, where the footprints thinned to nothing on bare stone, the looming barrow-gate, its ancient timbers clasped with rune-set iron.

  The night went oddly quiet. Yelen turned around, staring back through the darkness. The wights had gone as if they’d never been. Instinct warned her not to take heart from the sudden development. Azzanar had said that the wights of the Lower Reach were territorial. Yelen suspected she’d crossed into the domain forbidden to her pursuers. The servants of another king, perhaps?

  Or maybe, she thought, her skin prickling at the idea of it, this was the territory of something so terrible it put fear into the cold hearts of the lesser wights.

  Swallowing hard, Yelen pressed on before the implications convinced her to turn back.

  As Yelen grew closer to the gate, she saw that she’d been mistaken, tricked by the melding of darkness and shadows. Of the two great, iron-bound doors, only one was still closed. The other had collapsed, its rusted iron hasps no longer able to support the desiccated timbers. The remnants of the broken door lay at a drunken angle across the threshold, dust thick around it.

  The torch crackled in Yelen’s hand. Though the flame still burned, it increasingly did so with the familiar smoky orange of lamp oil, and not the comforting white blaze of corpsefire.

  ‘This is a really, really bad idea.’

  But even so, she clambered over
the collapsed door and into the barrow.

  The space beyond was scarcely wider than the gateway, the walls dressed with lumpen, uneven black stone. Gold glinted from alcoves as she hurried along the passageway, the metal’s gleam barely diminished by the thick layer of dust. A delver’s fortune, just sitting there, waiting to be claimed, but Yelen ignored it and pressed on.

  Further in, the passageway met another running crosswise, offering three possible routes deeper into the barrow. Fortunately, footsteps showed through the dust as plainly as in the snows above. Two pairs. Still two pairs. Reluctantly, Yelen began to doubt her theory about Marcan’s betrayal. Why would he kill Kas, and then lead Serene into the barrow? Yelen could almost have believed that it had merely been a freak gust of wind that had broken the ring of corpsefire. Were it not for Kas, lying lifeless in the snow, that was.

  The footsteps took the leftmost passage. Yelen followed, eyes and ears straining for any sign of a threat. They found nothing, but that did nothing to set her mind at ease. There was something about the air in the barrow – something pressing on her thoughts. Cold. Malevolent. Say what she liked about Azzanar – and she had – but at least there was always a warmth to the demon’s presence.

  Yelen passed through chamber after chamber. The crude stone gave way to polished obsidian, traced with gold. With each step, the pressure in her mind grew steadily worse. It drove her on as much as it goaded her to flee, repellent and alluring at the same time. Her progress slowed as she began imagining shapes gathering in the darkness. Yelen’s eyes told her there was nothing there; her ears agreed. But her mind would not be convinced.

  Thus when a shadow did move, she almost ran it through without thinking.

  Marcan held up his hands, shrinking back into his hidey-hole between two sarcophagi. ‘Easy, girl. It’s me.’ His voice wavered a tone or two above its normally rich baritone.

  ‘Where’s Serene? How did you get here?’

  Bloodshot eyes stared into hers. ‘I was dreaming, wasn’t I? Except I wasn’t. Woke up with that… that thing looming over me, eyes boring into me. I ran for it, but this place is like a bloody maze, and pitch dark. I’ve been wandering for hours.’

  More like minutes, Yelen judged. ‘I heard you screaming.’

  He shifted uncomfortably, a flush of colour in his cheeks going some way to restoring his formally healthy complexion. ‘Not proud of that, but you didn’t see it. We get out of this, I’m heading back north. I’ll take rangifers and white apes over what’s down here.’ His features contorted in sudden alarm. ‘You do know the way out?’

  ‘Where’s Serene?’

  Marcan shook his head. ‘She’s gone by now. No sense dying too.’

  Yelen pursed her lips. ‘Where is she?’

  He grabbed for the torch. ‘Give me that!’

  Yelen stepped away, and brandished her borrowed sword. ‘I’m not leaving her.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he growled. ‘Don’t make me take that off you.’

  She knew it would ordinarily have been a threat worth heeding – Marcan was far stronger than she. But he was unarmed, his sword presumably back at camp, and his every swaying motion betrayed a body on the brink of collapse. Maybe he’d win, but it’d cost him. ‘You can help me find Serene, and we all walk out of here, or you can take your chances in the dark. What’ll it be?’

  ‘I told you, she’s dead.’

  ‘Then she won’t be hard to find, will she?’

  The beard bristled, and Marcan nodded. ‘Have it your way.’

  Yelen released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. ‘Lead on.’

  It transpired that Marcan’s claim of the barrow being a labyrinth was less than accurate. Even with his meandering attempt at escape muddying the once-clear trail of footprints, they had no trouble retracing his steps through the vaulted chambers. Yelen suspected that between the oppressive presence and the pitch-blackness of the barrow, he’d simply panicked. Not that she said as much. She didn’t know how long the threat of the sword would keep him honest. Even a small provocation might spur him to chance a fight for the torch. Fortunately, Marcan had either recovered his courage, or was too broken inside to consider breaking their agreement.

  Marcan drew up a handful of paces from a partially collapsed arch. ‘We’re here,’ he whispered.

  Yelen had known as much before he’d spoken. It was as much the pounding pressure in her head as the wisps of green mist curling around the base of the arch. A deep, resonant hiss echoed along the passageway, the voice those of the wights outside, but richer, more sonorous.

  Regathering her courage, Yelen pressed her back against the passage wall, and crept towards the arch. She knew the light from the torch would surely give her away long before whatever lurked within caught sight of her, but instinct was instinct. With the insidious pressure mounting inside her thoughts, she welcomed anything that helped her feel concealed, unnoticed.

  Slowly, carefully, she peered around the edge of the archway.

  The chamber beyond was easily twice the size of any she’d seen so far inside the barrow. The walls were lined with alcoves. Each held a stone sarcophagus, some fractured with age, some still whole. And at the far end, beneath the marble gaze of a horned statue, Serene lay motionless on a stone bier, a golden torc at her throat and gemstones in her hair. Whether she was alive or dead, Yelen couldn’t tell. At her side stood a shadow wreathed in green mist – the same mist that hid the flagstoned floor from view. As the hissing chant grew in pitch, a stone dagger glinted in the shadow’s pale hand. Barrow-wisps swirled above, their patterns shifting with each breathy refrain of the shadow’s chant.

  The sight of it made Yelen want to turn and run, to flee for the entrance and the illusory safety outside. The pressure in her mind urged her to lay down torch and sword, to take her place upon the bier beside Serene, and await the knife’s kiss. Choking down both impulses, she glanced at Marcan. He had his eyes pinched closed, his lips working furiously. He felt it too.

  ‘I’ll drive it back,’ Yelen breathed, scarcely crediting the evidence of her own ears. ‘You grab Serene, and then we run for it.’

  He stared at her, face tight. ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Probably.’ She forced a smile. ‘But do you want to die screaming, or laughing?’

  Marcan shook his head and sighed. ‘You are mad. Go. I’m right behind you.’

  Yelen took a deep breath, her nerve wavering now the prospect of action was before her. Then she stepped around the archway, and into the chamber.

  She moved softly, quietly, but still each footstep sounded as loud as the crack of a broken twig in a silent forest. But the wight didn’t turn, its shapeless, shadowy back remained towards her, all of its attention focused on Serene’s motionless figure.

  The creature’s hiss grew louder, more insistent as Yelen approached, the sound finally breaking up into the rolling syllables of some forgotten tongue. Yelen’s arms grew heavy, her thoughts sluggish. Fear replaced by yearning. Was not each step bringing her closer to the one calling for her? To her rightful place upon the bier?

  Yelen scrunched her eyes closed. It didn’t help. The compulsion remained. Sleep. Submit. Join the slumbers of eternity. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, silence the sonorous, breathy voice. But how was she to do that with torch in one hand and sword in the other? So she did the only thing she could. Throwing subtlety to the winds, she screamed a wordless challenge, and charged.

  The wight spun around at once, its creeping chant building into a hiss of rage. Green eyes flared, and the creature twisted in on itself like a waterspout, or a snake suddenly surprised.

  Yelen screamed louder, more to drown her fears than for any effect it might have on her foe. Blood thundered through her ears, driven by a racing pulse. But this was a good thunder, the sort that filled her heart and lungs with courage, with strength.

  She thrust the torch forward. The wight screeched and retreated along the length of the bier, scrap
s of darkness and mist trailing behind. Yelen’s confidence soared. She could do this!

  Another lunge. Again the wight retreated. Yelen didn’t know how long the spirit would remain at bay, but she was determined to enjoy every moment.

  ‘Marcan!’

  Yelen risked a glance behind. Marcan edged forward, eyes on the wight.

  ‘Hurry up! I don’t know how long I can hold it.’

  The wight lunged.

  Her attention on Marcan, Yelen barely saw the spirit move. She responded instinctively, lashing out not with the torch, but with the sword. Steel bit into the swirl of robes. The wight screeched and flinched away, the blow meant for Yelen’s heart instead raking her shoulder. She cried out – not with the pain of it, but the sudden icy cold. The wight hissed in triumph, and surged forward again.

  This time, Yelen was ready. Ignoring the creeping numbness in her shoulder, she thrust the torch into the mass of shadow and mist. The strike was slowed by deadened muscles. But it was fast enough. The wight, unable to check its momentum, fell onto the lit torch.

  Its robes caught light, the brilliant white flame spreading across the desiccated cloth as swiftly as they would across sun-bleached scrubland. A terrible keening wail echoed around the chamber. The wight flailed madly, Yelen forgotten as the cleansing flame took hold. With a last tumultuous howl, it fled for a side passage, and vanished into the gloom.

  The scream faded with distance. Then it rose in pitch and volume, joined by other loathsome voices.

  Her sense of triumph curdling to renewed fear, Yelen glanced back at the bier. ‘Marcan…?’

  He ripped the torc from Serene’s neck and tossed it into a corner. ‘Yeah, I have her.’ With a grunt, he heaved the woman onto his shoulder, spilling the gems from her hair. Without a backward glance, he loped for the archway.

  Yelen glanced at the floor – at the discarded torc and scattered jewels. A king’s ransom, enough to buy passage back to Karamasz, and to find a comfortable life. She wanted none of it – she wanted nothing from the barrow but her life.