Hylas felt the tree’s rough bark digging into his shoulder blades, and Akastos’ marks stiffening on his skin. He smelled charred wood and the stink of ash.
He heard the rushing of wings.
31
Hylas struggled wildly. The bindings held fast. He tried to rub off Akastos’ marks, but his arms were pinioned against his sides; he couldn’t reach.
A deeper darkness sped across the sky.
He searched his memory. He began haltingly to mutter the charm.
The darkness swept past, and the sound of wings faded into the night. He strained to listen. He knew they would be back.
The Angry Ones hunt those who have murdered their kin, and he hadn’t murdered anyone, but he knew that wasn’t going to save him. The Angry Ones don’t care who gets in their way. If you’re too close to their quarry—or if you bear his mark—they’ll hunt you too.
Akastos had known what he was doing. He’d bound Hylas to the tree with knots that couldn’t be undone, and put his mark on him twice, so that there would be no mistake. Hylas was as helpless as a goat staked out as bait for a lion.
A huge shadowy form blotted out the sky. It dropped onto the rim of the gully. It folded its wings with a leathery thwap.
Hylas’ spirit shrank.
More wingbeats. Another shadow lit onto the rim. Hylas heard the clink of claws on cinders. He smelled the stink of charred flesh. He saw the darkness move.
A terrible, listening silence.
From the rim of the gully he seemed to see darkness congeal and snake down, swaying from side to side. Seeking him.
In his mind he felt them. Their flesh was burned black by the fires of Chaos. Their raw red mouths were gaping wounds.
Could they see in the dark? Could they hear his labored breath and the sweat trickling down his sides? Could they smell his terror?
He had no buckthorn to ward them off. All he could do was mutter the charm—but under his breath, in the desperate hope that he wouldn’t give himself away.
At the corner of his eye, something stirred on the ground.
There. At the mouth of the gully. He strained to pierce the blackness, but it was too dense.
Above him, on the rim, the dark was churning, long necks snaking down to find him.
Again that movement on the ground—but closer now, a shadow stealing toward him. The charm stuck in his throat. Dread squeezed his heart…
“Hylas!” whispered the shadow on the ground. “It’s me! Pirra!”
It was so dark that she had to grope her way toward him. If it hadn’t been for his fair hair, she would never have found him.
“Are you all right?” she whispered, tugging at the knots behind his back. They were like granite; she couldn’t undo them.
“Have you got the dagger?” he panted. “Quick! Cut me free!”
She hacked at the rawhide, but it was too tough.
“Hurry! They’re right above us!”
She raised her head. Terror washed over her.
A dark shape wheeled down and settled in the cypresses at the mouth of the gully. Pirra heard the scrape of claws and the leathery crackle of wings.
Again she attacked the rope. Her hands were shaking. The blade bounced off.
“He put his mark on me,” hissed Hylas. “That’s what they sense. I can’t reach it—can you?”
“Where?”
“Brow and breastbone. And he tied his hair around my neck.”
Frantically, she felt for his face and rubbed off the charcoal with her fingers, then did the same for his chest. The hair around his neck was too slippery to untie. She tried to cut it. She’d never imagined that hair could be so strong. At last she managed it and cast the hair aside. As she started on the rope, she remembered the buckthorn leaves in her belt.
“Why’d you stop?” whispered Hylas.
“I’ve got buckthorn—”
“It won’t work, they’re too close!”
Thirty paces away, a shadowy form dropped from the cypresses and hit the ground with an appalling thud.
They froze.
Pirra renewed her attack on the rope. “I can’t,” she muttered. “It’s taking too long.”
“Find a stone,” gasped Hylas, “and a scrap of charcoal. Scratch his mark on it and—and tie the hair around.”
She grasped what he meant. “A decoy?”
“Do it now, untie me after!”
“But—”
“Pirra, if we don’t make that decoy right now, it won’t matter how fast we run!”
She grabbed a stone and snapped off a branch from the poplar. “The marks,” she breathed. “What did they look like?”
“I—I never saw them.”
Her mind raced. “Did he tell you his name?
“Akastos.”
“What did the marks feel like?”
The shadow at the mouth of the gully swayed. Pirra heard a dreadful snuffing sound. Dread darkened her mind.
“It felt like—like a dagger pointing down… and I think—bars at either end of the hilt—”
“I know it, it’s the first sound of his name.” Blindly, she scratched what she hoped was the right mark on the stone. But where was the hair? She scrabbled in the dust. Couldn’t find it. Panic closed in.
Got it. With trembling hands, she tied it around the stone.
“Hurry,” urged Hylas.
The snuffing ceased. The shadow went still. It had caught the scent.
As if at some signal, another dropped from the ridge, whirling down in a gust of foul wind to settle in the cypresses. Then another.
At last the hair was tied. Pirra drew back her arm and flung the stone as far as she could toward the mouth of the gully.
“Cut me loose!” panted Hylas.
The shadow on the ground halted—swayed—and lurched after the stone.
Feverishly, Pirra hacked at the rope.
“Don’t hack,” said Hylas, “saw, like you’re sawing wood!”
She’d never sawed wood in her life, but she grasped what he meant. He twisted and strained. The rope burst.
Leaping to his feet, Hylas grabbed the dagger in one hand and Pirra’s wrist in the other. Together they fled the only way they could: up the gully, into the unknown.
As they ran, Pirra glanced back—and glimpsed winged shapes that would live in her nightmares forever, dropping from the trees and converging on the place where she’d cast the stone.
“Are you all right?” Pirra said quietly.
Hylas nodded.
“You don’t look it.”
“Thanks.”
“I only meant—”
“No, I mean—thanks. For coming to find me.”
“Oh.” With her heel she hacked at the dust. “Well. I wouldn’t have survived very long if I hadn’t.”
Hylas hugged his knees and wondered when he would stop shaking. It had been horrible, stumbling through the gully in the dark, dreading at any moment to hear the Angry Ones coming after them. They’d reached a dead end; then the sky had cleared and in the starlight he’d found a ravine winding west. After an endless scramble it had opened out and they’d glimpsed the Sea, a sheet of dull silver in the stillness before dawn.
As the Sun woke, they’d sheltered under a thornbush and shared what was left in the waterskin—which, amazingly, Pirra had managed to keep with her.
“Let’s go,” she said, wrenching him back to the present.
“You start, I’ll catch up,” he muttered.
She seemed to realize that he needed to be on his own, and headed down the slope.
Numbly, he stared at bees bumping about among clumps of purple thyme, and hoverflies buzzing around yellow thistles. It didn’t seem real. How could all this exist when They did too? Where did the darkness go when the Sun came up? Where were the Angry Ones now?
He could still feel them, like a stain on his spirit. He thought of Akastos, and that haunted look in his eyes. I’ve been on the run longer than you’ve been alive…
He longed for Spirit. He wanted to dive with the dolphin through the shimmering Sea, and feel it washing away the darkness inside him. Spirit would understand without having to be told.
Pirra was coming back. He watched her scrambling up the slope. Something was wrong. He rose to his feet.
“Get down!” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“A ship! They’re just coming ashore. I didn’t stop to look, but I think they’re Crows!”
Hylas thought fast. “Where is it?”
“Like I said, on the beach!”
“Yes but where?”
She pointed south.
“That’s something. I think our camp’s to the north, so at least we don’t have to get past them.”
Together they crept downhill.
Suddenly Pirra pulled him behind a boulder. “There,” she breathed.
The ship was drawn up on the shingle about a hundred paces to the south. Hylas took in its furled sail the color of dried blood, and the men leaping over the sides in long black cloaks and boar’s-tusk helmets. He saw the glint of their leader’s bronze armor. He saw their faces.
He saw their faces.
He swayed. There was a roaring in his ears. He felt as if he were falling from a great height.
One of them was Telamon.
32
The Crows were passing directly beneath them: Pirra counted five men and a boy, each with a bronze dagger at the hip.
They walked purposefully, with their heads down. Pirra breathed out. They weren’t tracking. They were gathering driftwood.
Beside her, Hylas had gone still. “That’s Telamon,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“What?”
“Telamon. He’s a Crow.”
She squinted after the men moving off down the beach. So that was the boy she was supposed to wed.
“A Crow,” Hylas repeated. “Telamon’s a Crow.”
She was puzzled. “Of course he is. He’s part of the House of Koronos. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here! D’you think we can make it over that headland?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said in a low voice.
“Tell you what?”
“That he’s a Crow.”
“Hylas—we have to get out of here!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Something in his voice made her look at him. Beneath the ash and the grime, his lips had turned gray. His tawny eyes were almost black.
Once, in the Great Court of the House of the Goddess, she’d seen a bull-leaper tossed by a bull. He’d been carried off alive, but his face had been as drained and shocked as Hylas’ face was now.
“Why?” he demanded.
“I thought you knew, of course! Now come on!”
The coast was densely wooded, and they found their way over the headland without being seen. No sign of pursuit, but every moment Pirra dreaded to see warriors coming after them.
They plunged into a thicket of chestnut and sycamore that was noisy with sparrows. It gave good cover, and she breathed more easily. Still no pursuit.
Some time later, they stumbled on a spring. As she knelt in the moss, Pirra realized she couldn’t go another step. “I’m spent,” she panted. “I can’t remember when I last slept. How far till we reach camp?”
“I think it’s still quite a long way. Maybe half a day.”
“Would it be safe to stop here for a bit?”
“Nowhere’s safe,” muttered Hylas.
She hesitated. “About Telamon—I really did think you knew. After all, you told me he’s your best friend.”
“Was,” he said between his teeth. “He was my best friend.”
They found a place to sleep under some saplings, and Hylas masked it with branches so that they couldn’t be seen. Pirra went to look for food and returned soon after, saying that the trees grew right down to the shore, and she’d risked a dash to the shallows. She’d brought back a skirtful of sea urchins, which they ate raw, scooping up the rich sloppiness with their fingers. She kept casting him curious glances, which made him angry. He didn’t want her to see him like this.
At last she said, “I always thought it was weird that he was your friend. I mean, him being a Crow.”
He glared at her.
“When you told me he was your friend, I didn’t know if I could trust you. I didn’t know what to think. That’s why I didn’t say anything. Of course I did trust you later, in the caves; but then everything was happening so fast, there was never any time to talk about it.”
Hylas jammed the dagger in the earth and watched it quiver and go still. He felt sick, churning with rage and misery and disbelief. Had they ever been friends, or had it all been a lie? But why?
He thought back to the day after the attack, when Telamon had come looking for him in his father’s chariot. He’d said he didn’t know why the Crows were after Outsiders. Soon as I heard, I went to warn you… I found Scram… I buried him…
Was any of that true? But what would Telamon gain by such lies?
Pirra took the last sea urchin back to the shore as an offering. “No sign of them,” she said when she came back, “but I think I spotted our wreck in the distance. You were right, it’s at least half a day off. Can we rest here till dark?”
He didn’t answer. With his finger he traced the crossed circle on the hilt. A chariot wheel, Akastos had said, to crush their enemies.
It didn’t seem possible that this dagger before him—this plain bronze knife—held the power of the House of Koronos. But deep inside, he knew it was true.
He thought back to what Akastos had said: that the Crows had lost their dagger and wanted it back, and that maybe this was why they were after Outsiders. Did they for some reason think an Outsider had stolen it—and that the Outsider might be him?
“Why do you keep staring at your knife?” Pirra said quietly. Her face was drawn with fatigue, but her dark eyes watched him keenly.
He told her. About finding the dying man in the tomb, and being given the knife, and how it had helped him stay alive when he was adrift, and what Akastos had said.
When he’d finished, there was silence between them. The trees stood stunned in the noonday heat. Even the sparrows had fallen quiet. Only the rasp of the crickets throbbed on and on.
Pirra was the first to speak. “Are you sure this is the one?”
“It’s got the chariot wheel, just like Akastos said.” He looked at her. “The man in the tomb, the Keftian. Do you know who he was?”
She shook her head. “No idea—or why he would’ve stolen it. And presumably they kept the dagger at Mycenae; so how did he get from there to Lykonia? And why?” She chewed her lip. “Until now, I’d never even heard of this dagger, and I don’t think anyone else on Keftiu has either. Which—I suppose—makes sense. The Crows wouldn’t want anyone to know if…” She gasped. “I just remembered. This must be why they asked the Oracle.”
“What Oracle?”
“When we got to Lykonia, we heard that Thestor and Kratos had gone to consult their Oracle. Maybe whatever answer they were given—maybe it had something to do with Outsiders stealing the knife.”
“But I told you, I didn’t steal it!”
“I know, but you’ve got it. It came to you; that’s what counts. And maybe—if the Oracle did say something about Outsiders, and by then Kratos knew you were the only one left in Lykonia—then maybe he assumed that you’d taken it.”
“But I’ve never been anywhere near Mycenae!”
“I know. But whoever stole it—that man in the tomb—he must have brought it from there to Lykonia; and then it fell into your hands, so it comes to the same thing.”
Pulling out the dagger, Hylas held it up. Not a speck of dirt clung to the blade. It was perfect. Beautiful.
He’d come to believe that it was his friend. It had kept him company when he was adrift, and in the storm it had wrapped its tether around the spar and kept him afloat. He’d thought it had been helping h
im, but now he saw that it had only been saving itself. So this was another friend he’d never really had.
He laid it on the ground and wiped his fingers on his thigh. “I’ll get rid of it,” he said. “I’ll chuck it in the Sea. Then they’ll never get it back.”
Pirra frowned. “I don’t think that’d work. I think it knows how to look after itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“That time in the caves, when the snake was after you, and it got stuck in its sheath? Maybe it wanted you to be bitten, so that it could escape. And when you were climbing those fallen trees and it fell out just before that man, Akastos—before he caught you. If he’d found it on you, then he’d have it now. I don’t think it wanted that either. No, Hylas. If you threw it in the Sea, it’d find some way to be discovered. To get back to the Crows.”
Despite the heat, Hylas shivered. He watched the shifting sunlight playing on the blade. He had the unnerving sense that it was listening.
“I just thought of something else,” said Pirra. “I bet Kratos hasn’t told his men that it’s missing.”
“Why not?”
“It’d be a sign of weakness. Never show weakness if you want to hold on to power. My mother taught me that. Yes. Kratos has probably only told his closest kin. Maybe Thestor and Telamon, nobody else.”
Hylas stared at her. “Telamon? Telamon is kin to that man?”
She nodded. “Thestor and Kratos—they’re brothers. Their father is Koronos, High Chieftain of Mycenae. Telamon’s his grandson. He’s Kratos’ nephew. That’s what makes him a Crow. He’s been one since the day he was born. Hylas—are you all right?”
He was back in the mountains, clinging for his life beneath the overhang, while a monster of black and bronze leaned over the edge of the gorge. He saw a powerful hand smeared with ash. He felt a slitted gaze raking the slopes to find him…
Because of Kratos, Scram had been slaughtered. Because of Kratos, Issi was lost in the wild. Kratos, son of Koronos. Telamon’s uncle.