by Luke Scull
‘Shut up!’ Goldie screeched a second later, when the hubbub didn’t immediately die down. That seemed to do the trick; the tavern quickly fell silent.
‘I’ve got some good news for you, gentlemen,’ Corvac said with an appalling smile. ‘As you all know, the Mistress is nothing if not monogamous.’
‘Monogamous?’ someone shouted from the crowd, sounding amused. ‘That’s not what I heard! She was having it off with half those Sumnians!’
‘Don’t you mean magnanimous?’ someone else yelled.
Corvac’s face flushed red. ‘That’s what I said! Magnanimous! Clean your ears out, you sons of bitches!’
‘He said magnanimous!’ Goldie shrieked, spittle spraying from her mouth. One of the Mad Dog lieutenants leaned in to whisper urgently up to his captain. After a brief moment in which he visibly struggled with himself, Corvac managed to regain his composure.
‘As I was saying… the Mistress is nothing if not magnanimous. Yesterday she sent word to the Trinity. I’m here to relay that message to you now. The White Lady has decided your work here is done. As from tomorrow, you are all free.’
‘Free?’ Smiler whispered, in the stunned silence that followed.
‘That’s what I said. Tomorrow you will all sail back to Thelassa and be granted a pardon from the White Lady. It’s better than you lot deserve, but who am I to question the will of the Mistress?’
At Corvac’s proclamation the tavern near exploded with cries of joy. Cole watched it all like a hawk, waiting for his moment to act. Everything was playing out exactly as Thanates had said it would.
Corvac gestured to the bar, where the serving wenches were busy filling tankards of ale. ‘Since it’s your last evening here, we’ve arranged a proper farewell for you. A reward for all your hard work, you might say. Free drinks for every man!’
‘And free snatch for any man that wants it,’ Goldie added with great sobriety. That brought even more cheers. Cole decided it was time. He took a deep breath, then rose and pushed his way through the crowd towards the table at the centre.
He spoke loudly and deliberately so that he could be heard above the din. ‘I’m sorry, did you just say “reward”? I’d rather bugger a shambler than let my manhood anywhere near this shrew.’
The cheers evaporated almost instantly and the tavern fell silent again. Corvac’s mouth dropped open. He looked dumbfounded that someone would dare insult him so brazenly. ‘What did you just call my girl?’ he whispered.
Cole gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Nothing she didn’t deserve. You’re full of shit, Corvac. These men aren’t being set free. You’re planning to murder them all.’
Smiler flashed a grin that made no sense at all in the circumstances. ‘Murder? What are you talking about?’
‘The ale in those tankards over there is poisoned. Any man who swallows even a mouthful will quickly find his muscles seizing up. The Mad Dogs were planning to slit your throats while you’re helpless.’
‘Who are you?’ Corvac screamed.
‘The White Lady has decided that Newharvest is a failed experiment,’ Cole continued, ignoring the question. ‘After she learned the truth about the magic mined from the Blight she decided to close this place down. She’s going to kill everyone. That includes you, Corvac, once your men have outlived their usefulness.’
There was a thud as Corvac leaped down off the table. The Mad Dog leader’s face was twitching wildly now; he was near bursting with anger. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he roared again.
Cole raised a gloved hand and pulled back his cowl. The man opposite him hesitated only a moment before realization dawned in his hate-filled eyes.
‘Ghost,’ Corvac whispered, his face filled with utter loathing. ‘You son of a bitch.’
Cole’s fingers tightened around Magebane’s hilt. ‘I know you sent Shank to kill me, Corvac. You’re a coward. A coward and a bully.’
‘I should have finished you myself,’ Corvac spat. He sprang at Cole, who was expecting the move and dodged to the side, planting his boot firmly on the Mad Dog’s arse and sending him sprawling face down on the floor of the tavern.
‘You know something, Corvac?’ Cole proclaimed. ‘My friend Derkin said you were a decent man when you first arrived in Newharvest. A lot of you Mad Dogs were. But the Blight is poison to the soul. The Black Lord’s taint doesn’t just twist the land, it affects people too, makes them mean and crazy.’
‘Why would the White Lady do this to us? I thought she was a just ruler.’ The speaker was Floater, the big Thelassan who’d bought Cole drinks the night Corvac and his men had ambushed him.
Cole turned to the burly miner. ‘You remember when you told me you felt more alive here than in Thelassa? The White Lady keeps everyone in the city drugged. Numbs your brains and suppresses thoughts she doesn’t want you to have. The whole city is under her spell. She takes your unborn children, too. Performs experiments on them and erases your memories so that you can’t remember any of it.’
Floater reached up to his head and pressed his fingers against his temples. ‘Sometimes I have this dream. I dream I’m going to have another child, but my wife disappears right before she gives birth. When she comes back, there ain’t a child in her belly no longer.’
Other Indebted were beginning to mutter darkly, staring at the floor with confused expressions or pursing their lips as if trying to think, to remember.
Suddenly, Goldie darted at Cole. Before he could react, she raked her nails down his cheek, leaving bloody scratches.
Rage flared inside Cole, a rage so intense he could barely stop himself from charging at the woman and cutting her to pieces. A memory stopped him. A memory of a kitchen knife plunging into Dull Ed again and again while Cole lay there helpless, the glow-globes above shining a sinister light in Shank’s crazed eyes. He stared at the artificial light on the ceiling above.
It’s the glow-globes, he reminded himself, forcing himself to be calm and remembering what Thanates hold told him. They’re created from magic mined from the Blight. They don’t just radiate light. They intensify negative emotions.
‘Nice work, babe,’ Corvac hissed. The Mad Dog leader had climbed back to his feet and was brandishing his sword at Cole, but before he could do anything more than squeal in surprise Floater grabbed him around the neck with a meaty fist.
‘Does Ghost speak the truth?’ Floater demanded. ‘You planning to poison us? I’m supposed to go home next month. Home to my family.’
Corvac’s answer was to twist around and plunge his sword into Floater’s chest. The big miner gasped softly, and then bloody froth spilled down his chin and he collapsed to his knees.
That was the cue for all hell to break loose.
Cole scampered out of the way as Floater’s friends charged at Corvac. Though they were unarmed, thick muscles bulged beneath their dirty vests, and, as they stormed in, other miners began searching around for weapons. One man picked up a chair and broke it over the head of the Mad Dog opposite him.
Corvac’s lieutenants responded by drawing their swords. Within seconds the tavern had become a seething cauldron of hatred, furious men bludgeoning, stabbing and choking each other to death while shouted obscenities and screams of visceral rage turned the air blue. The Condemned, Smokes, had lit a flame from somewhere and was now skulking around the edge of the melee, trying to set fire to the tavern.
Shit, Cole thought. This wasn’t quite how he and Thanates had wanted things to play out, but it was done now. It was time for the next part of the plan. He made a break for the door and ducked outside. The evening chill caused his breath to mist as he hurried east across town. A few seconds later he ran smack into a patrol of Whitecloaks stumbling in the opposite direction, back towards the tavern.
Do they know about the Trinity’s plans? Cole wondered.
Looking at Captain Priam’s face, at his vacant stare, Cole doubted the man was even fully cognizant. He and the other guards could hardly stand, like Cole when he’d downed a doze
n ales in the Gorgon back in his old drinking days.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Priam slurred. The captain raised a shaking hand and pointed at the ReSpite.
‘The Mad Dogs are attacking the miners,’ Cole replied uncertainly. He didn’t want to believe Priam’s men were in on the plot to murder the workers, but he couldn’t be sure which way they would side.
Captain Priam hesitated for a moment. His eyes were glassy and there was something wet dribbling from his ear. ‘Come on, men,’ he said sluggishly. ‘We need to keep the peace…’ He staggered off towards the tavern, the rest of the Whitecloaks stumbling after him. Cole watched them go, wondering what the hell was wrong with them.
He continued east towards the outskirts of town where the huge metal silos that stored the magical ore loomed like silent sentinels in the night. Once he reached them, he hid behind their dark bulk and waited. He heard the flutter of wings a moment before he saw the tall figure emerge from the night.
Thanates adjusted his tattered black coat and nodded in greeting, then placed his hands on the silo nearest him. ‘We don’t have much time,’ he said sharply. ‘The Trinity will soon arrive. I must siphon as much as I can if I am to defeat them. The Unborn have fed well this night.’
‘Fed?’ Cole echoed, but Thanates ignored him and raised his cloth-bound face towards the night sky.
‘Stand back,’ the wizard ordered. His hands began to glow. Black fire pulsed down his arms, filling him with a baleful radiance. The silo began to shake.
Cole backed away and cast a glance back at town. Thick black smoke was beginning to rise from the ReSpite. Miners and Mad Dogs alike were pouring out, both sides sporting bloody wounds, a few barely able to stand. Corvac was remonstrating with Priam and his Whitecloaks, clearly demanding they help subdue the miners. As Cole watched, more Mad Dogs arrived and began setting about the prisoners. Even more ominously, the fire devouring the tavern had begun to spread to the building next door.
Cole was about to turn to Thanates, to tell him he was going back to help the miners, when he noticed three white flickers racing across the Blight towards them. He felt a shiver of dread at the sight. ‘The Trinity!’ he said urgently. ‘The Trinity are coming!’
Thanates turned just as the trio of handmaidens arrived. For a moment the Trinity faced the two men, as calm as a still lake, no sign of exertion visible on their porcelain faces. They hardly even seemed to breathe.
‘You dare steal from the Mistress?’ said one of the pale women tonelessly. There was something dark streaking her chin and flecking the top of her robes, as if she’d recently been feeding on something, or someone. ‘This land and all the magic within are the property of the White Lady. The punishment for theft is death.’
Thanates’ jaw clenched. ‘I have cheated death for five hundred years. You won’t stop me now, creature. Not when I am so close to discovering the truth.’
‘The only truth you will discover is the cold certainty of the grave.’
Cole heard the wizard’s heartbeat quicken, but from the three handmaidens he could hear nothing. Almost as if they were dead, like the shamblers back at the pit.
An idea occurred to him.
He stepped away from the cover of the silo and raised his arms in the air. ‘I command you,’ he intoned loudly, ‘leave this place!’ He waited expectantly as three pairs of colourless orbs turned from Thanates to regard him. Seconds passed and nothing happened. He began to feel a little foolish, so he decided to try again. ‘I said turn back, dead things!’
The Trinity looked at each other. Cole frowned and slowly lowered his arms. This wasn’t going according to plan. He was about to turn to Thanates and ask the wizard why his powers had stopped working when the nearest of the handmaidens suddenly leaped straight for him. Cole was fast but she was much faster, and as he fumbled with Magebane he knew he was a dead man.
But then there came a flash followed by the sickening stench of rotten meat burning, and the pale woman was on the ground, her perfect alabaster flesh blackened and charred. Despite her terrible wounds, somehow she climbed back to her feet in a strange, jerking motion. Thanates sent another blast of magical energy roaring towards her sisters, but they twirled out of the way with incredible agility and the bolt of energy dissipated harmlessly into the night.
‘Go!’ the wizard snarled at Cole. ‘Help dispose of the Mad Dogs. The Whitecloaks too, if you must – they are thralls to these creatures and death would be a release for them. If I do not return by morning, look for me at the Horn.’ The air seemed to shimmer and there was the sound of something tearing, and then Thanates disappeared… only to reappear a hundred yards away. He disappeared and then reappeared again and again, blinking across the land as the Trinity began to give chase, until both hunters and hunted were swallowed by the Blight.
Cole stared down at his shaking hands. He might be god-touched, but without the wizard’s intervention just then he would be dead. He couldn’t allow himself to grow overconfident in his own abilities. He’d made that mistake before and it had always come back to bite him in the arse.
He hastened back to Newharvest. The miners and the Mad Dogs were involved in a pitched battle on the streets while around them the town burned. The prisoners were hurling debris at their attackers while Freefolk were running to and fro in the chaos, cowering in fear or trying in vain to put out the flames. Cole glimpsed Derkin and started towards him, but a Mad Dog suddenly leaped into Cole’s path and took a swing at him with a bloody sword. Cole ducked under the blade and drove Magebane into the man’s sternum. He felt the Mad Dog’s life force sucked into the dagger as the man died, and a moment later a surge of energy flooded his own body. It was exhilarating. Exhilarating and terrifying and very wrong. He tugged Magebane free and let the corpse fall to the ground in disgust.
‘Derkin!’ he called. ‘Derkin, I’m over here!’ The corpse-carver looked up and Cole saw bright tears in his eyes.
‘They stabbed my ma,’ the little man said. ‘The Mad Dogs came and she opened the door to them and they stabbed her.’
Cole felt a hollow sensation in his chest. Derkin didn’t deserve this. He was perhaps the kindest and most selfless person Cole had ever met. It didn’t matter that he was disfigured and cut up bodies for a living. Derkin was his friend.
‘Is she still alive?’ Cole asked desperately.
‘She’s hardly breathing. I don’t… I don’t know how to make the bleeding stop…’
‘Come on,’ Cole barked. He dashed off in the direction of Derkin’s hut, dodging around groups of screaming men and piles of burning rubbish. He found his friend’s mother lying in a pool of blood inside the kitchen. She smiled up at him through red teeth as he knelt down and examined the hole in her side. It was deep; the Mad Dog had stabbed her right through the liver.
‘She’s going to die,’ Derkin sobbed.
Cole placed a hand over the wound and closed his eyes. He had no idea what he was doing, but he knew he had to try something. Thanates had told him that part of the Reaver’s essence lived within him, that it fed on death. If he could take a person’s lifeforce into his body then perhaps he might also be able to give it back. He concentrated, willing the vitality of the man he had just killed into the body of Derkin’s mother. At first nothing happened and he was afraid he was going to end up looking foolish again, but then he gasped as he felt himself growing suddenly weaker. He glanced at his hands and watched the colour seep from his skin. He became frailer, his body sagging as his breathing became more laboured. It seemed that giving life was harder than taking it. He was feeling faint and close to collapsing when, behind him, Derkin placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘You did it,’ he said, his voice a wet rasp. ‘You saved her.’
‘Babykins?’ said Derkin’s ma, her voice sounding much stronger. She stirred beneath Cole’s hand and, as he finally opened his eyes, he saw that her wound had closed.
‘Ma!’ Derkin cried. He scrambled to her side and threw his
arms around his mother, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Cole tried to rise, but almost toppled as the room swayed. ‘I need some air,’ he gasped. He stumbled out of the house and sank to his knees, listening to the sounds of screams echoing around him, feeling the heat washing off a nearby building wreathed in orange fire. He felt weak; so very weak.
Someone pulled him up, and then Derkin was hugging him tightly. ‘You saved her,’ he said again. ‘I don’t know what you did or who you really are, but thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Cole said. Though he felt a vague sense of embarrassment he returned the embrace, not least because he needed his friend’s support to stop himself from keeling over.
A familiar voice shattered the moment. ‘You two done hugging it out like a couple of bitches? You and me got some unfinished business, Ghost.’
Cole gently disentangled himself from Derkin and turned. Corvac was watching them from across the street, his eyes full of burning hatred. The Mad Dog leader whistled and three of his men abandoned the miner they were busy kicking to death to sidle over and join him. Goldie lurked just behind her man. ‘Kill him!’ she screeched. ‘Kill that tiny dick!’
‘It’s not tiny!’ Cole shouted back, though he immediately regretted wasting his breath as the Mad Dogs fanned out to surround them. Two made a move at the same time, one on either side. Despite his exhaustion, Cole pushed Derkin behind him and somehow managed to dodge a sword thrust. With his riposte he jammed Magebane into the stomach of his attacker – but the effort took most of his remaining strength and while he was recovering the other man’s blade scored a nasty cut down his back, causing him to reel away.
‘Got you!’ the Mad Dog cried. ‘Hey, boss, I got him—’ His words were cut off in a gurgle as Magebane twisted through the air and found his throat, dropping him like a stone. Cole didn’t have time to admire his throw. Corvac and the other Mad Dog were closing on him fast. He could feel the wetness already soaking his clothes from the wound he’d just taken, a deep one that would likely cause him to bleed out in minutes if he wasn’t hacked down first.
