by Simon Kewin
She was about to slip the stone to her eye to study the birds when Ran stopped, head cocked, his eyes narrowed.
“What is it?” she said.
Ran waved her quiet, frowning. She looked at Nox, but he only shrugged. The lane stretched out empty in front and behind them.
“Hide,” said Ran. His accent was strong and it took her a moment to grasp his meaning. He leaped onto the bank next to one of the skeletal trees and reached down to offer them a hand. Cait could hear nothing. She scrambled up, grabbing hold of Ran's outstretched hand and the roots of the tree. On the other side lay another perfect green lawn, no undain in sight. She jumped down, Nox and Ran landing beside her. They peered through the tree roots onto the lane.
She could hear something. A distant thunder, growing louder each moment. She tried to still her breathing, keeping as low as she could behind the bank.
Something appeared over the crest of a rise in the lane, moving quickly. A carriage, careering along at speed. At first she thought it was hauled by horses. But no, not horses. People. Undain pulled the cart.
They surged down the lane, the cart's iron wheels just fitting between the high hedges. A boy stood in front of the cart, golden hair streaming behind him. He held thin ropes in his hands: reins to steer the undain. A look of exultation lit up his face as he urged them on, faster and faster. He shouted something but Cait couldn't make out what it was. Metal containers of some sort clanked and rattled in the cart behind him.
The carriage thundered under the trees but didn't slow. The crows in the branches scattered. Steam rose off the undain as they surged forward, eight or ten of them in two lines. Each had a leather harness wrapped around their torso by which they pulled the cart along at breakneck speed. The reins the boy held passed through metal collars around their necks. Their bodies were powerful, thick with muscles. Their pumping legs were a blur and their eyes were wide, full of alarm, like those of panicked horses.
Then, moving before Cait or Ran could stop him, Nox leaped up. He clambered onto the bank, shouting something. Ran grabbed his ankle, pulling him back and pinning him to the ground, covering his mouth with a hand. But it was too late. The nearest undain, spooked by the sudden noise, tripped.
For a moment she thought the creature was going to regain its footing. But it had lost its rhythm. It stumbled, and the other undain, powering along behind, had no chance of stopping. They ploughed into the fallen creature, only to be overrun by those behind. In a moment, the rushing team of undain had become a tangled mass of limbs and bodies.
Her hopes of slipping across the fields without being seen were gone.
3. A Harvest of Bones
The boy screamed as the cart collided with the fallen mass of undain. The impact threw him into the air. The metal churns he'd been hauling, five or six of them, flew after him. The boy's landing was cushioned by the mass of undain bodies, but the metal containers cartwheeled, clanging onto the road. Their caps were jarred free and a clear liquid glugged from them.
On the ground next to Cait, Nox struggled and fought, but Ran was too strong for him. Ran raised his fist, threatening to beat Nox if he didn't stay quiet. Nox got the message and stopped trying to call out.
Back in the lane, the boy had hauled himself to his feet and was wading through the tangled team of undain. He surveyed the wreckage around him, combing his hands through his long hair in a gesture of desperation. He appeared to be oblivious to Cait and the others. The trees had hidden Nox from him. Ran's quick thinking had saved them for now.
The boy screamed, the fury and frustration in his words clear. He hurled furious abuse at the tangled mass of undain. None uttered a sound in reply. Some tried to rise, attempting to struggle free from the mass of bodies, the compulsion to carry out their instructions too strong to resist. One crawled forward to lap at a pool of the spilled liquid, licking it from the road. The boy started kicking this one, an edge of panic in his voice.
Cait reached toward the boy's mind, as lightly as she could. His fury was a mask for something else. Outright fear. He was filled with terror at what he'd done, what was going to happen to him. The metal churns; it was all to do with that. They'd been full of some precious cargo and he'd smashed them. He was supposed to be going carefully but he'd driven the undain too fast and now he'd lost everything. He was in terrible trouble. His fear blotted out everything else.
She could hit him with freezing ice while he was preoccupied, perhaps dash him to the ground to knock him out. Then they could flee and no one would know they'd been there. If anyone found the boy they'd think he'd been injured in the crash. She closed her eyes, readying herself for the pain that would come, focusing on the cold well of magic within, trying to recall how this was done.
She felt a hand on her arm. She opened her eyes. Ran. He shook his head, telling her no. She pulled her arm free but the dragonrider persisted.
“No,” he whispered. He struggled to find the right words. “Not this.”
With an effort she let the magic ebb away. He was right. She wasn't thinking. They had to stay hidden.
Nox struggled again, trying to break free of Ran's grasp, but Ran held him down with a single muscled arm.
On the other side of the hedge, the boy pulled a knife from his belt. He began to saw at the leather straps that tethered the undain to each other and to the cart. He was in tears as he worked. More than once he glanced around as if terrified someone would see what he was doing.
One by one he freed the undain who had hauled the cart. She expected them to flee but instead they stood and waited in a quiet line, oblivious even to their broken limbs sticking out at bad angles.
One of the undain, perhaps the one that had first stumbled, was too badly damaged to rise. It tried again and again, but each time its legs buckled and it crashed to the ground. The boy kicked the creature repeatedly but it made no difference.
The boy turned away in disgust. He shouted words and the standing undain shuffled across to right the cart and collect the spilled churns from the road. When everything was loaded, they lashed themselves together, threading the leather straps through their belts and tying the cut ends.
Within a few minutes they were ready. The boy stood over the fallen undain, who was still trying to rise, hauling itself up by the tree roots on the bank. The boy kicked the creature aside and took a thin tube about the size of a pencil from an inside pocket. He put it to his mouth and blew. A high-pitched whistle screeched from the instrument. The boy blew three times, gazing into the sky as he did so.
Then he climbed into the cart and urged the undain forward. They lumbered down the lane in the direction of the white palace, the empty churns clanging and clanking like broken bells.
Ran took his hand from Nox's mouth when the cart had gone, finally letting him speak.
Cait stood over him. “What the hell were you doing? What were you thinking?”
She'd been so wrong about him. She'd trusted him. Despite everything she'd trusted him, and he'd betrayed her at the first opportunity. Bringing him had been a terrible mistake. Her mistake.
“I told you,” said Nox, making a show of freeing himself from Ran now that the dragonrider had loosened his grasp. “We're not going to survive out here. We can't stroll around Angere as if we're on holiday. It doesn't work like that.”
“So you decided to let them know we're here? That's your brilliant plan?”
“No,” said Nox. “You don't understand. The boy wasn't one of them. Use your brain, Cait.”
It was a phrase more than one teacher had used over the years. It really didn't help her mood. “What difference does it make he was a boy? That's not going to make him our friend, is it?”
“It's very unlikely he'd know anything about affairs in the White City,” said Nox. “The undain wouldn't include him until he became one of them. They don't trust the young until they're converted. He'd see I was a Baron and do what I said. We could have extracted information from him. Then escaped before he told a
nyone.”
She glanced at Ran, wondering how much of this the dragonrider was understanding. “That makes no sense, Nox. They'd know we were out here when the boy told them about us. They'd find us easily.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” said Nox. “I decided to take that chance. He might have helped us. Someone has to do something.”
She had to suppress the urge to kick him. Kick him like the boy had kicked the undain. “You decided? You're not in charge any more, Nox. People don't obey your every word now, don't you see? You're here because I agreed to it.”
She turned and walked away, shaking with fury. What were they going to do with him? She'd hoped he'd be able to help, use his knowledge of Angere. Clearly that wasn't going to work. They had to get away from him. Leave him. Or was even that no good? He could still tell the undain where they were. Buy Menhroth's trust with their betrayal. So did that mean they had to silence him permanently? Kill him. Could they do that?
She threw a glance at Ran. Perhaps he was thinking the same thing: put an end to Nox while they had the chance. Ran would do it if she told him to, most likely. He probably knew a hundred ways to kill someone with his bare hands.
She shook her head, pushing the thought from her mind. Evil as Nox was she could never do anything so vile. She hated to kill anything. She was the one who insisted on capturing and releasing insects rather than swatting them. Which, OK, meant she was going to be a fat lot of use in a terrible war to save two worlds. But there it was. Somehow, they'd have to get by.
Without glancing back at Ran and Nox, she climbed over the hedge into the lane. The undain had crawled a little way along beyond the last tree, where it now lay in a broken heap. It was still alive, if alive was the right word. It watched her with wide grey eyes as she crept near. She expected it to lunge for her at any moment. But it was too broken. It tried to rise but once again its legs buckled and it flopped to the ground.
She hated to kill anything but sometimes it could be a mercy. Once when she'd been young, on a family trip to Wales, a rabbit had run into the road under their car. She could still recall the faint bump as the wheels went over it. They'd stopped to see what had happened, but her parents had told her to stay in the car while they went to see. She'd only been small and had to peer through the rear window to watch what her mother and father did. They stood in the road for a time, as if debating, then her dad crouched down. Cait thought he was going to pick the rabbit up, bring it with them to look after. Instead, her parents returned empty-handed and got into the car without saying anything.
“Was the rabbit OK?” she asked.
“No, love,” said her mum. “It was very badly injured when the car hit it. It wasn't going to survive. It was suffering, you see and…”
“Did you kill it?”
“Yes,” her dad replied. “We had to, Cait. I'm sorry.”
“How did you kill it?”
Her dad didn't want to say, but he couldn't avoid her question. “I broke its neck.”
“With your hands?”
“Yes, love. With my hands. It was the kindest thing to do.”
She remembered the conversation clearly. The hot plastic of the car seats on the back of her legs. The taste of the fruit sweets her mum gave her as they drove off. And her dad, suddenly very silent when, only a few minutes earlier, he'd been singing along to the radio. He was sad because he'd killed the rabbit, she understood now. He was a gentle man, yet he'd made himself do this thing with his bare hands.
She looked down at the undain. She had to do the same. The creature was little more than a beast of burden, resurrected as a slave. A thing. Could it still feel pain? Perhaps. There was something in its eyes. Fear, maybe. Even a glimmer of understanding, like the scarecrow, as if it knew what it had become and what was about to happen. Because once it had been a man, a man like her father. And she couldn't let it lie there in the road, suffering like the rabbit.
Without stopping to think she closed her eyes and let herself sink into the icy waters that lay within her. The other girl was there, somewhere in the blue depths, but she stirred as Cait approached, offering her help. The dead witch-girl understood, approved. They would do this thing between them. It was the kindest thing to do. They would unleash a storm of ice and put an end to the creature's misery.
“Cait!”
She was working the spell when Nox shouted from somewhere behind her, alarm clear in his voice. At the same moment she was aware of Ran's pounding feet. She turned even as he dived at her, knocking her to the ground with a sickening jar. She banged the back of her head hard on the ground. At the same moment, a rush of cold air swept over her, along with a shadow that cast the whole world into brief darkness.
Then it was gone. A stench of decay lingered in the air, as if something long-dead had flown by. She thought of the crow, although this was much larger.
Ran rolled to his feet and pulled her up. Her vision whirled for a moment, then cleared. “What was that?”
“It's coming back!” Nox was perched on the bank, holding onto one of the wintry trees. In the sky, a ragged shape flew in an arc, banking steeply toward them.
“Is that a dragon?” she said.
It wasn't what she'd expected. She'd imagined vast, noble beasts with proud heads and jewelled skin. She'd seen the films, read the books. But this creature was a mess. It wasn't even symmetrical. One of its wings was noticeably shorter than the other as it flapped toward them. Instead of smooth, flowing lines, its body was all lumps and angles. Instead of a roar of flames it made a sound like a load of bones being blended in a mixer.
Ran, standing beside her, shook his head. “Undain,” he said. She thought she caught a glimpse of something in his eyes. It was gone in a moment, but it was a thing she'd never seen in Ran before. Fear.
“Kill it,” he said to her. “Kill it now.”
The creature swept by again, calling its grating call, its head all teeth and bones, its body tattered flesh and claws. Once more it almost knocked Cait over with the rush of its ragged wings. The nearby trees were preventing the creature from getting at her. The stench of its passing hit her again and she had to resist the urge to run.
“What the hell is it?” she said.
“Bone Harvester,” said Nox, still up on the hedge. “One of the undains' attempts to spawn creatures like dragons. The boy must have summoned it with that whistle. To collect the body and take it away to be … recycled.”
The creature banked again, more steeply this time, then half-landed and half-fell. It filled the lane as it limped toward them, mouth gaping wide.
“How do we stop it?” said Cait. “What do we do?”
Ran tried to find the words, then gave up and broke into a stream of his own language.
Nox translated. “He's saying you have to kill it. He said Fer managed it and now you have to do the same.”
“But why don't we just run?” she shouted. “It's come for the undain, not us.”
Nox jumped down into the lane to stand with her. “No. It doesn't work like that. It's been summoned to collect bones and that's what it'll do. I've seen them in operation before. They're very … single-minded creatures. It'll try and take all of us, and it won't care if we're alive or dead.”
Great. Just what she needed. She studied the creature, trying to see into its mind, understand its intentions. But there was only a blank, a void, impossible to read. Was it something like the beast that had flown across the An? The one that had set in motion everything that had happened? Fer had defeated that creature, it was true. But even she'd had no idea how she'd done it.
Working magic wasn't like in books, where all you had to do was shout a few words in Latin and incredible things happened. It hurt and it was difficult. And she had about five seconds to come up with something. She tried to think of a plan. Think of anything. All that came to mind was the urgent need to flee.
The creature stopped when it reached the stricken undain on the floor. It sniffed, nuzzling with its l
ong, bony snout, almost gently, as if the undain on the ground were one of its young. The fallen undain tried to crawl away, understanding on some level what was about to occur. With a sudden snap, the Harvester struck. It picked up the fallen undain and held it, body sagging loose on either side of the creature's mouth. The Harvester shook the undain then dashed it to the ground where it lay, unmoving.
The Harvester croaked its broken roar and turned its attention to Cait and the others.
Ran leaped, his staff whirling. He shouted some battle-cry. The creature lunged at him, mouth snapping, but Ran was too quick. The dragonrider threw himself to one side, swinging his staff at the same time to connect with the side of the creature's head.
There was a cracking noise as Ran's blow broke bones. But the creature wasn't slowed. It roared as it twisted and raked a claw at Ran. Once again Ran danced aside, and once again the staff crunched into the creature's head.
He was playing with it. Distracting it so she could work her magic. She had to do something. Even Ran couldn't keep this up for long, the creature was too powerful. She felt stronger under the shadows of the trees, the cold air making the magic easier somehow. And she'd be safe whatever happened, wouldn't she? The undain wouldn't dare harm her because of her precious blood. She'd be OK.
The creature opened its mouth to lunge at Ran. Instead of leaping aside, the dragonrider waited and then thrust his staff into the gaping maw, hoping to wedge it open. It didn't work. The creature closed its jaws and the heavy staff snapped like a straw.
