Trull looked up.
‘I needed answers of my own, brother. He killed two on that side of the hill, yet lost his weapon doing so. Others were coming, I imagine, and so Rhulad must have concluded he had no choice. The Jheck wanted the sword. They would have to kill him to get it. Trull, it is done. He died, blooded and brave. I myself came upon the corpses beyond the rise, before I came back to you and Binadas.’
All my doubts… the poisons of suspicion, in all their foul flavours – Daughter Dusk take me – but I have drunk deep.
‘Trull, we need you and your skills with that spear in our wake,’ Fear said. ‘Both Binadas and Rhulad here will have to be pulled on the sleds and for this Theradas and I will be needed. Midik takes point.’
Trull blinked confusedly. ‘Binadas cannot walk?’
‘His hip is broken, and he has not the strength left to heal it.’
Trull straightened. ‘Do you think they will pursue?’
‘Yes,’ Fear said.
****
Their flight began. Darkness swept down upon them, and a wind began blowing, lifting high the fine-grained snow until the sky itself was grey-white and lowering. The temperature dropped still further, as if with vicious intent, until even the furs they wore began to fail them.
Favouring his wounded leg, Trull jogged twenty paces behind the sleds – they were barely visible through the wind-whipped snow. The blood-frosted spear was in his grip, a detail he confirmed every few moments since his fingers had gone numb, but this did little to encourage him. The enemy might well be all around him, just beyond the range of his vision, padding through the darkness, only moments from rushing in.
He would have no time to react, and whatever shout of warning he managed would be torn away by the wind, and his companions would hear nothing. Nor would they return for his body. The gift must be delivered.
Trull ran on, constantly scanning to either side, occasionally twisting round to look behind, seeing nothing but faint white. The rhythmic stab of pain in his knee cut through a growing, deadly lassitude, the seep of exhaustion slowing his shivering beneath the furs, dragging at his limbs.
Dawn’s arrival was announced by a dull, reluctant surrender of the pervasive gloom – there was no break in the blizzard’s onslaught, no rise in temperature. Trull had given up his vigil. He simply ran on, one foot in front of the other, his ice-clad moccasins the entire extent of his vision. His hands had grown strangely warm beneath the gauntlets, a remote warmth, pooled somewhere beyond his wrists. Something about that vaguely disturbed him.
Hunger had faded, as had the pain in his knee.
A tingling unease, and Trull looked up.
The sleds were nowhere in sight. He gasped bitter air, slowed his steps, blinking in an effort to see through the ice crystals on his lashes. The muted daylight was fading. He had run through the day, mindless as a millstone, and another night was fast approaching. And he was lost.
Trull dropped the spear. He cried out in pain as he wheeled his arms, seeking to pump more blood into his cold, stiff muscles. He drew his fingers into fists within the gauntlets, and was horrified by nearly failing at so simple a task. The warmth grew warmer, then hot, then searing as if his fingers were on fire. He fought through the agony, pounding his fists on his thighs, flexing against the waves of burning pain.
He was surrounded in white, as if the physical world had been scrubbed away, eroded into oblivion by the snow and wind. Terror whispered into his mind, for he sensed that he was not alone.
Trull retrieved the spear. He studied the blowing snow on all sides. One direction seemed slightly darker than any other – the east – and he determined that he had been running due west. Following the unseen sun. And now, he needed to turn southerly.
Until his pursuers tired of their game.
He set out.
A hundred paces, and he glanced behind him, to see two wolves emerge from the blowing snow. Trull halted and spun round. The beasts vanished once more.
Heart thundering, Trull drew out his longsword and jammed it point-first into the hard-packed snow. Then he strode six paces back along his trail and readied his spear.
They came again, this time at a charge.
He had time to plant his spear and drop to one knee before the first beast was upon him. The spear shaft bowed as the iron point slammed dead-centre into the wolf’s sternum. Bone and Blackwood shattered simultaneously, then it was as if a boulder hammered into Trull, throwing him back in the air. He landed on his left shoulder, to skid and roll in a spray of snow. As he tumbled, he caught sight of his left forearm, blood whipping out from the black splinters jutting from it. Then he came to a stop, up against the longsword.
Trull tugged it loose and half rose as he turned about.
A mass of white fur, black-gummed jaws stretched wide.
Bellowing, Trull slashed horizontally with the sword, falling in the wake of the desperate swing.
Iron edge sheared through bones, one set, then another.
The wolf fell onto him, its forelimbs severed halfway down and spraying blood.
Teeth closed down on the blade of his sword in a snapping frenzy.
Trull kicked himself clear, tearing his sword free of the wolf’s jaws. Tumbling blood, a mass of tongue slapping onto the crusty ice in front of his face, the muscle twitching like a thing still alive. He scrambled into a crouch, then lunged towards the thrashing beast. Thrusting the sword-point into its neck.
The wolf coughed, kicking as if seeking to escape, then slumped motionless on the red snow.
Trull reeled back. He saw the first beast, lying where the spear had stolen its life before breaking. Beyond it stood three Jheck hunters – who melted back into the whiteness.
Blood was streaming down Trull’s left forearm, gathering in his gauntlet. He lifted the arm and tucked it close against his stomach. Pulling the splinters would have to wait. Gasping, he set his sword down and worked his left forearm through his spear harness. Then, retrieving the sword, he set out once more.
Oblivion on all sides. In which nightmares could flower, sudden and unimpeded, rushing upon him, as fast as his terror-filled mind could conjure them into being, one after another, the succession endless, until death took him – until the whiteness slipped behind his eyes.
He stumbled on, wondering if the fight had actually occurred, unwilling to look down to confirm the wounds on his arm – fearing that he would see nothing. He could not have killed two wolves. He could not have simply chosen to face in one direction and not another, to find himself meeting that charge head-on. He could not have thrust his sword into the ground the precise number of paces behind him, as if knowing how far he would be thrown by the impact. No, he had conjured the entire battle from his own imagination. No other explanation made sense.
And so he looked down.
A mass of splinters rising like crooked spines from his forearm. A blackening sword in his right hand, tufts of white fur caught in the clotted blood near the hilt. His spear was gone.
I am fevered. The will of my thoughts has seeped out from my eyes, twisting the truth of all that I see. Even the ache in my shoulder is but an illusion.
A rush of footsteps behind him.
With a roar, Trull whipped around, sword hissing.
Blade chopping into the side of a savage’s head, just above the ear. Bone buckling, blood spurting from eye and ear on that side. Figure toppling.
Another, darting in low from his right. Trull leapt back, stop-thrusting. He watched, the motion seeming appallingly slow, as the Jheck turned his stabbing spear to parry. Watched as the sword dipped under the block, then extended once more, to slide point-first beneath the man’s left collarbone.
A third attacker on his left, slashing a spear-point at Trull’s eyes. He leaned back, then spun full circle, pivoting on his right foot, and brought his sword’s edge smoothly across the savage’s throat. A red flood down the Jheck’s chest.
Trull completed his spin and resumed
his jog, the snow stinging his eyes.
Nothing but nightmares.
He was lying motionless, the snow slowly covering him, whilst his mind ran on and on, fleeing this lie, this empty world that was not empty, this thick whiteness that exploded into motion and colour again and again.
Attackers, appearing out of the darkness and blowing snow. Moments of frenzied fighting, sparks and the hiss of iron and the bite of wood and stone. A succession of ambushes that seemed without end, convincing Trull that he was indeed within a nightmare, ever folding in on itself. Each time, the Jheck appeared in threes, never more, and the Hiroth warrior began to believe that they were the same three, dying only to rise once again – and so it would continue, until they finally succeeded, until they killed him.
Yet he fought on, leaving blood and bodies in his wake.
Running, snow crunching underfoot.
And then the wind fell off, sudden like a spent breath.
Patches of dark ground ahead. An unseen barrier burst across, the lurid glare of a setting sun to his right, the languid flow of cool, damp air, the smell of mud.
And shouts. Figures off to his left, half a thousand paces distant. Brothers of the hearth, the dead welcoming his arrival.
Gladness welling in his heart, Trull staggered towards them. He was not to be a ghost wandering for ever alone, then. There would be kin at his side. Fear, and Binadas. And Rhulad.
Midik Buhn, and Theradas, rushing towards him.
Brothers, all of them. My brothers—
The sun’s light wavered, rippled like water, then darkness rose up in a devouring flood.
****
The sleds were off to one side, their runners buried in mud. On one was a wrapped figure, around which jagged slabs of ice had been packed and strapped in place. Binadas was propped up on the other sled, his eyes closed, his face deeply lined with pain.
Trull slowly sat up, feeling light-headed and strangely awkward. Furs tumbled from him as he clambered to his feet and stood, wavering, and dazedly looked around. To the west shimmered a lake, flat grey beneath the overcast sky. The faint wind was warm and humid.
A fire had been lit, and over it was spit a scrawny hare, tended to bv Midik Buhn. Off to one side stood Fear and Theradas, facing the distant ice-fields to the east as they spoke in quiet tones.
The smell of the roasting meat drew Trull to the fire. Midik Buhn glanced up at him, then looked quickly away, as if shamed bv something.
Trull’s fingers were fiercely itching, and he lifted them into view. Red, the skin peeling, but at least he had not lost them to the cold. Indeed he seemed intact, although his leather armour was split and cut all across his chest and shoulders, and he could see that the quilted under-padding bore slices, here and there stained dark red, and beneath them was the sting of shallow wounds on his body.
Not a nightmare, then, those countless attacks. He checked for his sword and found he was not wearing the belted scabbard. A moment later he spied his weapon, leaning against a pack. It was barely recognizable. The blade was twisted, the edge so battered as to make the sword little more than a club.
Footsteps, and Trull turned.
Fear laid a hand upon his shoulder. ‘Trull Sengar, we did not expect to see you again. Leading the Jheck away from our path was a bold tactic, and it saved our lives.’ He nodded towards the sword. ‘Your weapon tells the tale. Do you know how many you defeated?’
Trull shook his head. ‘No. Fear, I did not intentionally lead them away from you. I became lost in the storm.’
His brother smiled and said nothing.
Trull glanced over at Theradas. ‘I became lost, Theradas Buhn.’
‘It matters not,’ Theradas replied in a growl.
‘I believed I was dead.’ Trull looked away, rubbed at his face. ‘I saw you, and thought I was joining you in death. I’d expected…’ He shook his head. ‘Rhulad…’
‘He was a true warrior, Trull,’ Fear said. ‘It is done, and now we must move on. There are Arapay on the way – Binadas managed to awaken their shamans to our plight. They will hasten our journey home.’
Trull nodded distractedly. He stared at the distant field of ice. Remembering the feel and sound beneath his moccasins, the blast of the wind, the enervating cold. The horrifying Jheck, silent hunters who claimed a frozen world as their own. They had wanted the sword. Why?
How many Jheck could those ice-fields sustain? How many had they killed? How many wives and children were left to grieve? To starve?
There should have been five hundred of us. Then they would have left us alone.
‘Over there!’
At Midik’s shout Trull swung round, then faced in the direction Midik was pointing. Northward, where a dozen huge beasts strode, coming down from the ice, four-legged and brown-furred, each bearing long, curved tusks to either side of a thick, sinuous snout.
Ponderous, majestic, the enormous creatures walked towards the lake.
This is not our world.
A sword waited in the unyielding grip of a corpse, sheathed in waxed cloth, bound with ice. A weapon familiar with cold’s implacable embrace. It did not belong in Hannan Mosag’s hands.
Unless the Warlock King had changed.
And perhaps he has.
‘Come and eat, Trull Sengar,’ his brother called behind him.
Sisters have mercy on us, in the way we simply go on, and on. Would that we had all died, back there on the ice. Would that we had failed.
Chapter Nine
You may be written this way
Spun in strands sewn in thread
Blood woven to the child you once were
Huddled in the fold of night
And the demons beyond the corner
Of your eye stream down
A flurry of arachnid limbs
Twisting and tumbling you tight
To feed upon later.
You may be written this way
Stung senseless at the side of the road
Waylaid on the dark trail
And the recollections beyond the corner
Of your eye suckle in the mud
Dreadful fluids seeping
From improbable pasts
And all that might have been.
You would be written this way
Could you crack the carcass
And unfurl once more
The child you once were
Waylaid
Wrathen Urut
Rolled onto the beach, naked and grey, the young man lay motionless in the sand. His long brown hair was tangled, snarled with twigs and strands of seaweed. Scaled birds pranced around the body, serrated beaks gaping in the morning heat.
They scattered at Withal’s arrival, flapping into the air. Then, as three black Nachts bounded down from the verge, the birds screamed and whirled out over the waves.
Withal crouched down at the figure’s side, studied it for a moment, then reached out and rolled the body onto its back.
‘Wake up, lad.’
Eyes snapped open, filled with sudden terror and pain. Mouth gaped, neck stretched, and piercing screams rose into the air. The young man convulsed, legs scissoring the sand, and clawed at his scalp.
Withal leaned back on his haunches and waited.
The screams grew hoarse, were replaced by weeping. The convulsions diminished to waves of shuddering as the young man slowly curled up in the sand.
‘It gets easier, one hopes,’ Withal murmured.
Head twisted round, large, wet eyes fixing on Withal’s own. ‘What… where…’
‘The two questions I am least able to answer, lad. Let’s try the easier ones. I’m named Withal, once of the Third Meckros city. You are here – wherever here is – because my master wills it.’ He rose with a grunt. ‘Can you stand? He awaits you inland – not far.’
The eyes shifted away, focused on the three Nachts at the edge of the verge. ‘What are those things? What’s that one doing?’
‘Bhoka’ral. Nachts. Name
them as you will. As I have. The one making the nest is Pule, a young male. This particular nest has taken almost a week – see how he obsesses over it, adjusting twigs just so, weaving the seaweed, going round and round with a critical eye. The older male, over there and watching Pule, is Rind. He’s moments from hilarity, as you’ll see. The female preening on the rock is Mape. You’ve arrived at a propitious time, lad. Watch.’
The nest-builder, Pule, had begun backing away from the intricate construct on the verge, black tail flicking from side to side, head bobbing. Fifteen paces from the nest, it suddenly sat, arms folded, and seemed to study the colourless sky.
The female, Mape, ceased preening, paused a moment, then ambled casually towards the nest.
Pule tensed, even as it visibly struggled to keep its gaze on the sky.
Reaching the nest, Mape hesitated, then attacked. Driftwood, grasses and twigs flew in all directions. Within moments, the nest had been destroyed in a wild frenzy, and Mape was squatting in the wreckage, urinating.
Nearby, Rind was rolling about in helpless mirth.
Pule slumped in obvious dejection.
‘This has happened more times than I’d care to count,’ Withal said, sighing.
‘How is it you speak my language?’
‘I’d a smattering, from traders. My master has, it seems, improved upon it. A gift, you might say, one of a number of gifts, none of which I asked for. I suspect,’ he continued, ‘you will come to similar sentiments, lad. We should get going.’
Withal watched the young man struggle to his feet. ‘Tall,’ he observed, ‘but I’ve seen taller.’
Pain flooded the youth’s features once more and he doubled over. Withal stepped close and supported him before he toppled.
‘It’s ghost pain, lad. Ghost pain and ghost fear. Fight through it.’
‘No! It’s real! It’s real, you bastard!’
Withal strained as the youth’s full weight settled in his arms. ‘Enough of that. Stand up!’
‘It’s no good! I’m dying!’
‘On your feet, dammit!’