The Winter Vow

by Tim Akers

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Available from Tim Akers and Titan Books in The Hallowed War Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  1: Threats and Reversals

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  2: The Fickle Flame

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  3: The Longest Night

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  AVAILABLE FROM TIM AKERS AND TITAN BOOKS

  IN THE HALLOWED WAR SERIES

  The Pagan Night

  The Iron Hound

  The Winter Vow

  BOOK THREE OF THE HALLOWED WAR

  TIM AKERS

  TITAN BOOKS

  THE WINTER VOW

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783299522

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781783299539

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: August 2018

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Tim Akers. All rights reserved.

  Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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

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  This one’s for Joshua. Without his patient guidance and wise counsel, this book would barely exist, and certainly wouldn’t be worth reading.

  PROLOGUE

  THE BLESSED FORCES of the celestial church lined the field, banners flowing, rank upon rank of spear and arrow, joined by the holy cadres of inquisitors. The might of Cinder filled them. The glory of their god hung over them like a storm cloud.

  “This will be a good day, Frair Voclain,” the sergeant said. He was dressed in the black and gold of the church’s livery, the mail of his coif as bright as moonlight. The rows of spear and shield stretched off in both directions, the men eager for battle, the priests chanting rites of blessing.

  “It will be a day of judgment,” Voclain answered, his stiff fingers going through the motions of the blessing without thought. He stepped to the next man, a child whose helm settled too low on his brow, and started the rite over again. “Judgment is sometimes good, and sometimes harrowing,” he mumbled to himself. “But it is always necessary.”

  The soldiers ignored his words, their eyes turned to the bright fields below. The army of the rebel houses of Tener perched narrowly on the opposite rise, their thin ranks bolstered by the banners of a few Suhdrin dukes. The forests of the Fen hung black and forbidding in the background, and the Reaveholt loomed to the east. Voclain didn’t see how Malcolm Blakley could lead men to such obvious slaughter. The Suhdrin loyalists, commanded by Lady Bassion, duchess of Galleydeep, outnumbered Blakley’s force nearly three to one. That was before the ranks of the army of Cinder were counted. Blakley’s defeat was inevitable. Still, the man seemed determined to fight.

  “Stubborn,” Voclain said as he finished his prayers and turned to join his brothers at the core of the celestial contingent. He had met Duke Blakley once, at the Frostnight celebration nearly a decade ago. Houndhallow had seemed a reasonable man, faithful to the church and gifted with Cinder’s reason. “The years change a man, I suppose. A pity.”

  A drumroll surged through the valley, calling the army to attention. Voclain took his place among the holy priests of Cinder. The gods’ vengeance would be exacted on Tener. It was a tragedy that would take generations to mend. But there was no other way.

  At the front of the Suhdrin army, a trio of priests climbed the stairs to a rickety platform to address the ranks. They wore simple black robes, but the glint of mail flashed at their hems, and their faces were buried in shadowy hoods. The murmur of steel and leather and the voices of nervous soldiers flowed like a tide over the army, and Voclain was worried that the priests’ words would be lost to the wind. He watched nervously as the tallest of the three priests stepped forward.

  “Odd that he wears no ornament,” Voclain said. “It was the high elector of Cinder who led us out of Heartsbridge. I wonder where Dustasse is?”

  “Probably transcribing Cinder’s Only Law,” Frair Delleux joked at his side. The two had been together since their investiture. Life on the road didn’t agree with Delleux, but the smaller priest still seemed excited at the prospect of battle. “The old man always gets carried away with that.”

  Voclain was about to answer when the priest on the platform started to speak. The words were strangely distant, as though they echoed from across the valley or from the clouds above. The babble of the army quieted as everyone strained to hear what the priest was saying. The silence was eerie. It was unnatural.

  “What is happening?” Voclain asked, but his words died at his lips. He turned frantically to Delleux, only to see that the man was staring with horror down at his hands. Voclain grabbed him by the shoulder. Delleux looked up and started talking, but no words came out of his mouth. A black fog formed at his lips, drifting like smoke from a snuffed candle. The silence was absolute. Even Voclain’s heartbeat, thudding heavily in his chest, was muted.

  Into the silence came a scream. Sharp, tearing, without direction but utterly terrified. Everyone looked up, but the sun still shone, the sky was clear. The scream died out, only to be joined by another, and another, coming from all around Voclain. Coming from his own mouth, passing through him like a wave and then on to Delleux, and the priests beyond. The force of it emptied his lungs, and when he tried to breathe there was no air to fill him. Voclain dropped to his knees.

  Delleux fell by his side, tongue lolling, the blood of his heart pouring from his eyes. Voclain held his friend and watched him die.

  The world rushed in with a crash, the sound of an arm
y’s panic suddenly filling Voclain’s head. Someone stumbled into Voclain, a knight in full plate, treading on Delleux’s throat. There was fighting somewhere nearby, people dying, steel striking steel and flesh and bone. A boy fell down next to Voclain, his chest split open.

  “What is happening?” Voclain asked again, his heart numb. The blood rushing through his head was a drumbeat. He stood up and looked around. People were dying. The army was dying.

  At the head of the army, the three priests stood on the platform, their arms raised in prayer, their voices resonant. An inhuman chant rolled out of their throats, words meant to twist flesh and sunder spirit. Dark gods answered their prayers, tearing into the ranks of Suhdrin faithful.

  Voclain got to his feet and ran.

  * * *

  Each step sent a jolt of pain down Voclain’s spine. Something was broken deep inside his chest, but he pressed on. Gods help him, he had to press on.

  It had been three weeks since the ambush, three weeks spent crawling through forests forsaken by god and man, eating whatever greenery looked edible and still getting sick half the time. Voclain tried eating some meat from a dead deer he found at the bottom of a gully, but the resulting misery ensured he would never do that again. The fact that he hadn’t died could only be attributed to Cinder’s will. Voclain was sure of it.

  He paused on the rocky spine of a ridge. In the fading light of dusk, the dark towers of the Fen Gate loomed grimly out of the forest to the northeast. It wasn’t where he wanted to be. But after the slaughter, Voclain had lost his mind, Cinder’s reason fled. The horror still haunted him, waking and sleeping. Sometimes Voclain was sure the dreams were true, and this daylight ordeal of trackless forests and maggot-ridden meat was the nightmare.

  A shadow flickered down the ridge, and Voclain flinched. The screams of his brothers and sisters lingered in his mind. The look on Delleux’s face as his spirit left, his lungs starved and full of blood. Voclain had not been able to shrive his friend’s soul, hadn’t taken the time to usher the man into the quiet house. He wondered if anyone had. He doubted it. They were haunting him, these bound souls. Bound to him, for running. Bound to him, for his cowardice.

  There was only one way to free himself from them. One way to give the souls of Delleux the rest they deserved. He had to get to the Fen Gate, to tell Frair Gilliam what had happened: that Blakley had used some kind of witchcraft against them, or that they had been betrayed, by priests still loyal to Sacombre, or by their own god. The thought chilled him.

  “The Orphanshield will know,” Voclain muttered to himself. “He will know what to do.” He stumbled forward, shying away from the growing shadows along the ridgeline, refusing to look in their direction. The spirits of Delleux and the others. The spirits of the dead. “He must know. I must tell him.”

  “You mustn’t, actually.” The voice came from the shadows, drifting like fog through the forest. Dreams, again. Dreams among the living. Voclain was beginning to think he was going mad. Better to press on, to flee. But as Voclain hurried away from the shadows, something came out of them. A man, dressed in the glory of Cinder. “We will see to that, my friend.”

  Voclain paused and turned. The man descended from the ridgeline, grabbing at the trees for support as he slid down the steep incline, very like flesh and blood. Not a ghost. He was dressed in black robes and silver armor, and his hood was thrown back. When the setting sun peeked through the trees and found the man’s face, it shone off golden hair and a nose that had been broken more than once. The man smiled at Voclain.

  “You needn’t look so surprised, frair,” he said. “You made it much farther than we thought possible. Most of your compatriots went to Blakley for protection, or tried their luck south, hoping to reach Heartsbridge.” He slowed as he reached Voclain, folding his arms into his robes. “Those who scattered into the Fen are dead. All but you. Frair Voclain, isn’t it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “We still hold a stake in the realm of dreams. Cinder has left us that much, even those who have turned fully toward—” he paused, gesturing emptily toward the sky “— those who have taken another path. I am Frair Morrow.”

  “You are part of Gilliam’s cadre? You look too old to be one of the Orphanshield’s wards,” Voclain said. “Take me to him. He must be warned.”

  “No,” Morrow said. “He mustn’t.”

  Morrow raised a hand. His palm was scored in black, like a wound that hadn’t healed properly, and as Voclain’s eyes lingered, it seemed to change. Dark lines crawled across the skin. They drew Voclain in, until he realized that he had unknowingly walked closer to the mysterious priest. Voclain shook his head and stepped away.

  “What are you doing?” Voclain asked. The sun had set, and shadows filled the forest around them. “Cinder and Strife, what have you done?”

  “What is necessary,” Morrow said. And then the darkness of his palm filled Voclain’s mind, and he fell.

  1

  THREATS AND REVERSALS

  1

  SHARP PAIN BURNED through Ian’s chest. The wound was open like cracked earth, and the edges of his flesh were crusted with blood. Worked into his flesh, the fragments of the voidfather’s amulet pulsed with malevolent red light. Streamers of fog danced up from the wound to tangle with the witch’s fingers. Her eyes were closed in concentration. The only sound was the hum of her chant and Ian’s pained groans. His sweat stained the sheets of the bed, and his fingers dug into the mattress. Finally, he could take no more.

  “Enough!” Ian snapped, turning away. The spell broke, and the pain subsided. “It feels like you’re yanking a fishhook through my ribs!”

  “I don’t understand,” Maev said. Cahl had sent her when he had learned of Ian’s wound, insisting she was the best healer the tribes had to offer, but Ian didn’t think she was doing much good. “Your life energy is strong, but the wound resists me. You’re not dying, though. At least not today.”

  “Very comforting,” Ian muttered. He sat up, delicately running a finger along the edge of the wound. The flesh was hot, and as hard as baked clay. “I’ve always wanted an impressive scar, though this is not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Women think less of scars than you might believe,” Maev said. “It does little for your charm, and speaks to a life of violence and risk.”

  “That’s not what I… Never mind. A pity Fianna isn’t here. She was able to bring my mother back from the brink of death. I have trouble believing that this would cause her any difficulty.”

  “It’s true, Fianna was skilled in water’s gifts of healing.” Maev stood and began packing her instruments. “Though considering it was her father who inflicted this injury on you, I don’t know that I’d seek her aid, if I were you.”

  “So Folam really was her father?”

  “Many whisper that she was to be the voidmother, when Folam set that burden down. If she knew of her father’s betrayal…” Maev shrugged. “Anyway. She’s not here, and I am, and I say that wound can’t be healed.”

  “Thankfully it doesn’t hurt very much,” Ian said, but his mind was elsewhere. What did Fianna know of her father’s sins? Was she part of it? Everything she’d told him about seeking the Hound, about following the old ways of Tener— had all of that been part of the deception?

  “Good. Perhaps your southern gods can heal you. Now that Folam is dead, we may never learn what he did to you.”

  Ian sat quietly for a while, thinking. When he turned, the witch was gone, and he was alone in the room. There was a knock on the door. Sir Clough came in a heartbeat later. She wore a shirt of simple chain over her linens, but looked as ready for war as if she’d been in full plate. Her dark eyes took in the room, checking each corner thoroughly before resting on Ian. Clough settled into a stance of loose attention.

  “My lord, may I have a word?”

  “Does it have to be now?” Ian was trying not to blush under the knight’s steely glare. He barely knew Clough. They were nearly the sam
e age, but her family was from much farther north than his. She had come to Houndhallow to petition for a place in his father’s service shortly before the Allfire last year. So much had happened since then. “Didn’t I leave you in charge of my sister’s safety?”

  “And it is of her safety I would speak, my lord. If I may—”

  “Stop calling me lord. Malcolm Blakley is the lord of Houndhallow, and I’m not sure he would pass the throne to me. Not after…” Ian trailed off, remembering his father’s words at the Fen Gate, the simple dismissal that sent Ian into exile. “This is not my throne to sit.”

  “You are the eldest Blakley present. There has been no word of Lord Blakley since he quit the Fen Gate, so in the absence of his authority, I must make my petition to you.” Clough made the slightest bow, her face placid. “Whether you want it or nay.”

  Ian sighed, but the movement sent a jolt of pain through his chest, causing him to inhale sharply. Clough took a step forward.

  “I saw the witch leave with a smug look on her face. Did she fix you, or did she make it worse?” she asked.

  “No worse, thank the gods. But no better. It seems there’s nothing to be done for me.” Ian stood and nearly lost his balance, catching himself on the bedpost. “It will pass.”

  “Not everything passes. Some things only get worse,” Clough said. “It’s for the better that the witch wasn’t able to help you. I don’t trust these pagans.”

  “I would be dead without their help, and this castle fallen. They may not be the allies we expect, but they are the allies the gods have given us.”

  “I remember standing watch on this very tower at your sister’s side as these same pagans swarmed the walls and crashed our gates. Odd behavior for allies.”

  “Not the same pagans, if Folam and his lot can be called that anymore.” Ian grimaced as he belted on his sword. “The tribes were tricked into assaulting Houndhallow by Folam and his void priests. They lost as many honest souls to Folam’s betrayal as we did.”

  “The souls we lost fell to pagan blades. Sir Tavvish held the door to this tower against the hope of reinforcement, and nearly died with a pagan spear in his gut. He’s only now up and walking, and I swear the wound has changed that man. It was not this ‘voidfather’ who threw that blade.” Clough’s palm brushed the hilt of her dagger. “You can weigh your alliances in trickery and false promises. I weigh mine in blood.”