In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1)

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  “On your feet, laggards!”

  At the bellow, Ellaeva backed away from a guard’s sleeping roll and stole into the shadows of Traeburhn’s pavilion, her dagger in hand. The already restless soldier she’d been about to send into the embrace of her goddess rolled to his feet, rubbing eyes bleary with sleep. Her heart thudded in her chest—from the near miss as much as from fear. What was happening to Lyram?

  Traeburhn emerged from the tent. She stiffened, fighting the urge to run recklessly past the duke and into the shadowed interior. She clenched her hands, driving her nails into her palms until the pain forced the fluttering panic from her heart.

  All the guards stood now, and a few of the servants sat in their bedrolls, staring around in confusion, but the duke didn’t pause to offer explanations. Instead, he cursed at the few unmoving men his soldiers found dead or unconscious in their blankets, the ones who’d woken briefly to the sounds of the fight, and then he swept away into the night in the direction of the camp, waving his men after him. In one hand, he clutched a jingling sack.

  Whatever had happened inside the tent sent Traeburhn rushing back to Bradlin.

  She sidled closer to the tent-flap. Bands of fear drew tight around her chest, forcing her to breathe shallowly. Her money had been on Lyram against Traeburhn, and in the confines of the pavilion she’d dared not try to interfere in the whirling steel dervish of their duel. Had she been wrong?

  The manservant she’d knocked unconscious still lay unmoving on his cot. Her fingers tightened on the sticky hilt of her knife as she advanced into the dimness of the tent, drawn by a rasping, ratting sound deeper in the shadows. Her feet dragged as she scoured the interior.

  “Lyram?” She dared not speak above a whisper, not with so many awake outside now. “Lyram?”

  Only the rattling answered her. She followed it past the camp chairs to the monstrosity of a desk and around the other side.

  She gasped. Lyram lay still on the rugs.

  She dropped to her knees beside him. His breath rattled in his chest, too shallow and too slow. She stretched out her fingers to touch him tentatively, and found sticky wetness.

  Blood. The stink of it filled her nose.

  With feverish intensity, she yanked his shirt from his breeches, pulling the fabric free to expose a hairy chest and the lethal wound, obvious even in this dim light. Ahura. She rocked back on her heels, suddenly numb. It was a small miracle he wasn’t dead already. Even a chirurgeon in her back pocket wouldn’t save Lyram now.

  “Ellaeva?”

  The word was slurred and hesitant. His eyes fluttered as he struggled to focus on her, and his hand groped around for hers. She gave him her fingers. Her heart sat heavy and cold in her chest.

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “Is this... the end?”

  She tried to speak, but her mouth turned bone-dry. Her eyes were dry, too. After swallowing to moisten her tongue, she tried again. “Yes. Yes, I think it is.”

  Her voice broke, and with it the dam in her eyes. Tears spilled down her cheeks, scalding against her skin in the brisk night air. She made no move to wipe them away.

  “Want you to know...” His voice grew laboured, and he struggled for breath. “Want you to know... It’s foolish, but I think... I think I love you.”

  The words went through her with more impact than the arrow she’d taken to her back. Her fingers tightened on his, until he groaned and she let go convulsively. More tears flooded down her face. Why was she being punished so? Was this because she was disloyal to her goddess, if only in her own heart? Ahura was a jealous mistress, but to make her watch helplessly as Lyram died was just cruel.

  He fought to speak again. He blinked, but his eyes gazed sightlessly at the pavilion roof, as though he already looked upon another world. Blood flecked his lips. “I see... a dark shadow. The lady... of the long night... comes. I see... the face of... Ahura.”

  He gasped and clung to her.

  Ahura. Only a small miracle kept him alive this long. A greater one might save his life, if Ahura was willing—if her goddess did not turn away from her.

  Still clutching Lyram’s hand, she rearranged herself to kneel and pray over him as if he were an altar. The rattling of his breath faded into the distance as she sank into the slow wheel of the god’s thoughts.

  Ahura. Ahura, I beseech you.

  After an interminable span, she felt more than heard the goddess reply, the words coming straight into her head, exploding like lights behind her eyes after a blow to the head.

  —What do you seek, child—

  Spare him, please. I beg of you.

  At her knees, Lyram gasped again and convulsed, sending fresh rivulets of blood coursing down the bare skin of his chest.

  —Why—

  The cold demand of the goddess shocked like a bucket of ice water, but she clung resolutely to Lyram and her purpose.

  To thwart the evil men who would kill him to further their own ends.

  —Why—

  He is important to us in our battle against the Rahmyrrim, lady. Please.

  —Why—

  Lyram contorted again, his fingers driving hard into the bones of her hand, pricking tears of pain from her eyes. She struggled to focus through his death throes, to ignore the anguish in her own breast.

  Because I love him.

  —You cannot have him—

  I know.

  —You know the consequences—

  Yes.

  —And there is the price—

  She’d been bitter in her loneliness, but never had she wanted to end it this way. Despite that, she didn’t hesitate in her answer.

  I will pay it.

  The silence among the stars stretched so long the goddess might have gone, except the massiveness of her presence still suffused the space. Ellaeva waited, her breath caught, while the man on the ground at her knees drew his last rattling inhalation.

  —Live—

  Lyram jerked upright, sucking in a huge gulp of air. The red-tinged light from the brazier suffused the pavilion. Immediately, he groped at his chest, finding nothing but whole flesh and unmarked skin beneath his shredded shirt. Had it all been a dream, some kind of horrible nightmare?

  But no, Ellaeva knelt beside him, her hands clasped in an attitude of prayer, and the terrible knowledge he saw in her eyes froze the very marrow in his bones. Memories flooded back, of the things he’d said, and his stomach dropped out.

  “Oh goddess, forgive me, I’m sorry,” he said. I didn’t mean— I should never— Uh, I thought I was—” He stared down at his chest again. “Why aren’t I dead?”

  “Ahura granted mercy.” Ellaeva’s voice rang hollow and empty, and her eyes shied away from him. They were unfocussed, as though glimpsing some future only she could see.

  He hesitated. “You said justice was the province of Ahura—not mercy.”

  “Sometimes she can be swayed. If it is just.” She stood in a fluid motion, holding hard to the hilt of her sword to stop the weapon swinging wildly with her movement. “Come.”

  His leg twisted under him when he tried to bear weight on it, and he almost fell to his face on the rugs.

  Ellaeva caught his arm without comment and steadied him.

  After a moment tottering on his knees, he gestured, and she pulled him swaying to his feet. Once standing, only a hard grip on the desk kept him erect.

  “Why am I so tired?”

  She studied him with a face as inscrutable as porcelain. “Because a few minutes ago you were dead.”

  The starkness of the statement made him balk, unwilling to examine the reality she described.

  Turning, she strode towards the entrance and left him standing alone. A depth of sadness engulfed him, like that he recalled from their early meetings. Her obligations isolated her in ways he could not understand.

  And my dying declaration of love probably only made it worse. With that sour thought for company, he followed her outside.

  Silence and da
rkness shrouded the camp, and most of the bedrolls lay abandoned. Ellaeva didn’t stop, merely waved him to stay close to the pavilion wall and led the way back into the trees.

  Once they reached the depth of the woods, well out of sight of casual passers-by from either camp, she halted and turned to face him. Her mouth carved a severe gash through the stony hardness of her face.

  “Traeburhn has raced back to Bradlin. You should flee while you have the chance. Return to the capital and report this treachery.”

  He stared at her with his mouth agape. “Leave? Abandon my men to their fate?”

  “Traeburhn believes you dead. The siege should be over.”

  Lyram shook his head. “No, this siege is political. A convenient way to end my life, but also a way to put an end to the marriage negotiations—the note Galdron found made that clear. Traeburhn will do whatever he needs to do to lay the blame for my death at Velena’s door, and that includes razing this castle and murdering the Earl Alamus. Possibly even burning and pillaging a town or two. I cannot have those lives on my head.”

  The castle held men, women, and even a few children, and they all depended upon him. She knew this, and yet the gaze that met his burnt like frost as she shook her head.

  “You need to consider the bigger picture. Nothing will undo this plot like you appearing alive and hale at the moment the chancellor announces your death,” she said.

  “But it won’t bring back the innocents he kills.”

  Stars flashed in his eyes, and his head rang as though he’d been inside a bell when it tolled. The blow nearly knocked him from his feet, and he caught himself against a tree, its rough bark scraping his face and chest. His vision cleared in time to see Ellaeva draw her arm back for another punch to the face. Adrenalin snapped him erect, and he caught her wrist before the blow connected. Immediately, she swung her other arm at him, and he caught that in his other hand, so they stood nose to nose, their arms outstretched to either side.

  “Are you a fool?” she grated. “Leave! Run while you can.”

  “I... will... not!” In his weakened state, his arms trembled from the strain of keeping her from him.

  She smashed her head forward into his. Pain exploded in his nose, and he faltered and released her at once. A kick to the groin sent him to the ground, doubled over and writhing.

  “If you will not go out of good sense, I will pummel you until you see good sense,” she said.

  He rolled out of reflex rather than conscious thought, and her boot clipped his shoulder. He seized her ankle and yanked. She twisted in mid-air, but he hung grimly to her foot, and she crashed down into the leaf litter piled high on the forest floor. Her breath whooshed from her at the impact and leaves fluttered high around her. While she strained for air, he scrambled through leaves and twigs and dirt to sit astride her hips, pinning her to the ground.

  Holding her wrists to the ground put them nose to nose again, and her eyes blazed with pure fury. Nothing but exhaustion filled Lyram; he wouldn’t be able to keep her here long.

  “I heard you know the art of the Junjani,” he said. “You could kick me from one end of the country to the other, so why didn’t you?”

  “Idiot,” she muttered. A slow blush climbed her cheeks. “I wanted to chase you away, not kill you.”

  “I can’t leave. If I did, my honour would be as dust, and my conscience would allow me no peace. I’ve obligations to my people, and right now my people are my soldiers and every man, woman and child in that castle.” He studied the colour in her cheeks, and his own face grew hot. What must they look like, with him straddling her? Like two lovers playing wrestling games? Ahura, he even sat on her hips, and she the Battle Priestess of the death goddess! With his face burning, he rolled off her and scooted back a few feet.

  She lay still in the leaf litter, her face inscrutable as she studied him.

  “I’m going back,” he said. “But you don’t need to come with me. I may be an honourable idiot, but you’re no fool, and you don’t have to be a dead Battle Priestess.”

  She smirked at him without mirth. “Where else would I go? This is what I came here for, and the inevitability of my death in service is beyond question.”

  She rolled to her feet, and headed off into the woods, leaving him alone with that poignant sadness again.

  He used a nearby tree to haul himself to his feet, groaning at the residual pain in his groin, and stumbled after her.

  “I suggest we go back the way we came,” she whispered when he caught up. “Through the bog. The camp must be buzzing like a kicked beehive by now.”

  “That will take us the rest of the night.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No.” He fell silent and followed her, careful to place his feet where she stepped to minimise their trail.

  Ahead, the woods ended. Fires blazed and the camp appeared to be in an uproar. Men hauled on armour, sharpened swords and checked quivers of arrows.

  Ellaeva jerked her head away from the camp and cut in that direction, leading them through the woods that skirted the castle perimeter. Slowly, the noise and the light of the camp faded away behind them, and they walked through the trees accompanied only by the sound of crickets and rustling leaves. They saw no one. Any patrols Bradlin had sent in this direction must have been recalled for the imminent attack.

  “What note?” Ellaeva whispered.

  “What?” Lyram snapped his head up as her voice broke the silence.

  “You said Galdron found a note. What note?”

  “I thought you were only feigning sleep when he brought that by.”

  She shook her head. “What does it say?”

  He told her, and where they’d found it. “We don’t know who hid it or why. There seems no reason to keep it, and it would be easy enough to destroy....”

  “I have a better answer.” She ducked under a branch. “Remember, Rahmyrrim use magic to transfer objects—they use the method to get paid, removing payments from agreed on locations without ever revealing themselves. What if the necromancer used a similar method to communicate with Bradlin?”

  “In the barracks?” He lifted a sceptical eyebrow. “Are you suggesting the Rahmyrrim is a soldier?”

  “No.” She laughed softly. “Although he could be. No, this note is recent—very recent. My best guess is that my spell in the catacombs, that massive blast of Ahura’s power, knocked the note astray in transit. It never arrived where it was supposed to go.”

  He mulled that over as they continued in silence. “So does he know it’s missing?”

  “I expect not. To him, it probably looked like there was nothing in the pick-up location awaiting delivery, which means he has no idea we know he’s working with Bradlin.”

  Gradually the trees thinned into the marshy ground at the rear of the castle. Ellaeva pulled a boot from thick, sucking mud with a grimace and scraped the clinging muck off on a tree trunk. Thin, scraggly grass grew in patches in the soaked earth beneath their feet, grabbing at their ankles as they passed. Occasionally, a stunted tree broke the otherwise featureless expanse of empty land as they walked. Several hundred yards away, the dark grassy hulk of the crumbling old wall marked the edge of the bog. Ellaeva pointed.

  “So close, and yet so far,” she said. “We’ll need to pick our way carefully through the mire.”

  A crash resounded through the night, and Lyram jumped. “Catapult. They’ve started bombarding the walls.”

  “When they stop, we’ll know the attack is imminent.” She squatted on the ground to contemplate the wall, and, in the distance, the glow of sunrise. “I don’t think we’ll get inside the keep before the attack, and if we’re caught between the walls with the sun coming up, they’ll spot us for sure.”

  “What do you propose? That we wait here?”

  She nodded, and he crouched beside her with a sigh. She was probably right. He plucked a long stalk of grass from the earth and chewed on it.

  “Don’t suppose you care to
pass the time by filling me on what happened while I was... er... sick?”

  Black eyes weighed and measured him, and then she shrugged. He listened, eyes growing wider, as she told him about the spectres, the sappers, and the lengths she and his men had gone to in order to destroy the tunnels. And about the men and women lost, the bitterness of failure.

  She stopped short of describing the plan she and Everard had concocted to break Leinahre’s hold over him. Thank Chalon. He never wanted to hear that story from her perspective.

  The sun climbed higher into the sky, and the sounds of the bombardment ended. Surely the attack must be coming to an end. Crouching here for hours had caused a cramp in his foot, and he stretched the leg out, trying to ease the pain.

  In the distance, a horn winded.

  “Recalling the attack.” Ellaeva stood, and stretched.

  “Wait.” Lyram scrambled to his feet and caught her sleeve before she moved off. “I have one more question. Saving the life of a mortal man doesn’t seem like the kind of charity I’d expect from the goddess of death....”

  She remained silent for so long, staring off into the distance, that he thought she didn’t intend to answer. As he opened his mouth to try again, she spoke.

  “A Battle Priestess may make certain requests no other can. The goddess decides how she will answer.”

  “That easy, huh? Just ask and you might receive.”

  Ellaeva glanced back over at him, her face set in grim lines. She shook him off and stepped towards the bog. “That, and if she says aye, be prepared to pay the price.”

  Lyram seized her wrist, dragging her to a halt. She half-turned to face him, pulling back against his grip, but he tightened his fingers and held her in place. His gaze bored into hers, heedless of the fact he restrained the Ciotach an Bhais. Her face was inscrutable and her eyes veiled, neither betraying any hint of her thoughts, yet somehow she seemed on edge.

  “What price?”

  Her lips thinned into a hard line. “You are bound to the service of the goddess now, in payment for your second chance at life.”

  “What?” He dropped her wrist and stepped backwards, but she didn’t move. “What does that mean? The temple only takes women into service, surely I—”