He seized it, started back for the railing, slipped as the ship lurched again, then managed to scramble across the deck and lean over the side.
He steadied himself, took a deep breath, and then stabbed the pike down with all his force. It speared into the scaly surface of the creature with a wet thud, leaving only a third of its length protruding.
For a breath, nothing, then…
…then the entire ship rocketed for the sky. A frightful wail rent the air, and Theod screamed with it as a head from nightmare shot above the level of the deck. It looked like that of a horse, save there were no ears, it was covered in bright purple scales, and was the size of an entire horse itself.
Purple lips peeled back from rows of squat thick teeth that looked like anvils, and then the head shot downwards, seized a piece of railing between its teeth, and ate it.
Someone grabbed Theod’s arm, and as the sea monster’s head darted downwards again, felt himself being pulled backwards.
The sea monster’s head slammed into the deck where Theod had been standing, and emerged with a mouthful of splintered planks. It chewed, swallowed, then seized the edges of the jagged deck again and shook its head. Several nails pierced its bulbous tongue, but this did not appear to overly concern the creature.
The entire deck began to rise, screaming as wood splintered and nails gave way. The sea monster shook its head, trying to worry the wood free, and Goldman dragged Theod back to the shelter of the cabin, where Hervitius and several of the crew were huddled.
Another head appeared over the side of the ship, and then another, and then a fourth.
“Dear lords of Tencendor,” Hervitius whispered, “it is but the one creature. Look!”
The beast had now risen sufficiently from the waters to show that its serpentine body had four heads snaking from it at various intervals.
“A Sea Worm!” Goldman cried. “But they’re only…”
Only legend, he’d been about to say, but this was, apparently, a time when legends were to be resurrected. Perhaps by whatever demonic influence had penetrated the sea’s depths.
Theod grabbed onto the door frame as the ship rolled over so far it lay on its side. He stared into the sky and prayed for a miracle, or at least the Strike Force.
Even before he’d managed to form the thought, an arrow flew through the air and skewered an eye on one of the four heads. The head shook, weeping pale green blood from its shattered eye. It wailed agonisingly through a mouth full of half-chewed timbers.
The other three heads let go the ship and snapped at the creatures hovering above, but the Icarii kept well out of the way, and continued to rain down arrows.
Two of the other heads had their eyes punctured, and the Sea Worm decided it had suffered enough. All four heads reared back, viciously smashed once more into the deck, then slithered over the side of the shattered railings.
The ship lurched, shuddered, and then fell, slamming into the water in a plume of spray.
It landed, not on its keel, but on its starboard side, and water rushed over the deck and inundated the cabin.
“Jump overbo—” Hervitius started to scream, but the rush of water stopped his words, and hurled him against a far wall…
…hard against a row of spikes meant to hang wet-weather gear on. The initial rush of water receded, and Theod blinked, and rubbed his eyes clear. Hervitius was pinned high against the wall, blood trailing from his mouth, and a vaguely surprised look in his staring, dead eyes.
The ship shuddered once more, then rolled over with a quiet sigh.
Far below in the hold, horses and men screamed.
“Get off this ship,” Theod ordered. “Now!”
Then he knew no more save chaos, and the feel of water flooding into his lungs, the touch of icy hands already drowned, and the cold silence of the deep sea.
Above, far above, a small flock of Hawkchilds whispered and wondered.
“How…interesting,” Rox remarked, blinking as he came out of his semi-trance.
The other Demons, and StarLaughter, did likewise. They were standing in a tiny hut in a small village in the northern Skarabost Plains. The remains of their meal, a middle-aged woman and her teenage daughter, were a blood-soaked and splintered muddle before them. They had been talking about these troublesome and unknown magicians to the south when the Hawkchilds had sent their vision.
“Why would the Acharites be sending a fleet to the north-western coastline?” Sheol asked StarLaughter.
She shrugged. “How could I know? I don’t—”
“Then think!” Mot hissed. “This is an act we should enquire into.”
“There is nothing in those mountains save mines and caves,” StarLaughter said. “Pitiful enough in my time, and I cannot imagine they’d be more beauteous or plentiful now.”
“Mines,” Rox said slowly. “Caves…”
Sheol looked about her companions and smiled. “A fleet…sailing to a place where there are mines and caves…what else can they be doing but effecting a rescue? An evacuation?”
“But where to?” StarLaughter asked.
“Away from us,” Raspu snarled. “Away from our hunger.”
Simultaneously all the Demons bared their teeth, and then equally simultaneously jerked their heads towards the west.
Search! they commanded the Hawkchilds in the area. Watch! Tell!
36
Gorkenfort
By early Hungry-month Drago and Faraday were in the extreme northern plains of Ichtar, now moving directly north along the ancient road towards Gorkenfort and then Ravensbund. The Hawkchilds had troubled them no more, although both spent much of the day anxiously scanning the heavy skies for their sweeping shadows.
Drago had pushed Belaguez as fast as the ancient horse would go. He knew he wouldn’t survive another interview with the feathered horrors.
During the day Faraday’s obsession with finding the lost child faded in a flood of gloomy memories. She had come this way once before, a long, long time ago. Then she’d been, if not exactly naive, then too innocent. Too determined to play her role in a Prophecy that demanded only her death. She had ridden with Timozel and Yr, escorted by Lieutenant Gautier, towards Borneheld.
Borneheld.
Faraday’s arms tightened instinctively about Drago, and he turned his head slightly, feeling the warmth of her body against him keenly.
“Faraday?” he asked softly.
“Memories, Drago.”
“Ah.” Drago was not unaware that Gorkenfort was an unwelcome destination for Faraday, for more reason than that she would have preferred to have gone straight to Star Finger. “Was there no happiness for you in Gorkenfort?”
As Drago had, so did Faraday hesitate. “I don’t think I had much happiness anywhere, Drago.”
To that, Drago had nothing to say.
They saw no person, and no animal, on the final few leagues of road leading to Gorkenfort. The cold, bleak wind had swept the land completely bare; the sense of hopelessness in the air was palpable. During Magariz’s time as Prince of the North, Gorkenfort and town had been re-established as a major juncture of Ichtarian and Ravensbund trade, but now both had apparently been abandoned again. Drago wondered where the people had gone. There was too much horror to the south, and he suspected they may have fled yet further north through the Gorken Pass into Ravensbund itself.
Perhaps the Ravensbund Necklet, the series of curious sinkholes stretching from the foot of the Icescarp Alps to the western coast, might be harbouring more than the Ravensbund. Drago hoped so. He did not think he could bear it if the entire population of northern Tencendor had been lost.
Belaguez plodded on, his nose pointed ever north, his mind lost in the mists of age.
Gorkenfort was indeed deserted, as was the town that spread out beneath its walls.
As they drew close to the town in the late afternoon, Drago tugged at Belaguez’s mane, pulling the horse to a halt.
Both Drago and Faraday stared ahead. Seve
ral months of winter snow had collected in frozen drifts about the walls of the town; one particularly large mound had propped open the gates.
Behind the town rose the black walls of the fort, and behind that, leagues distant, but still so massive they blocked out much of the sky, the sheer cliffs of the Icescarp Alps surged towards the stars. The peaks were lost in mist and cloud, and thicker clouds billowed beyond the alps and streamed through the mountain passes towards Gorkentown and fort.
A gust of icy wind hit them, and Belaguez momentarily struggled with his footing.
Faraday shivered, and clung as close to Drago’s back as she could with the feathered lizard curled between them.
“There’s a storm coming,” Drago murmured over his shoulder. “But we can find shelter enough in the fort, and build a fire to see us through the night.”
“’Tis not the cold that makes me shiver so,” Faraday said.
Drago twisted so he could see her face. Her green eyes appeared abnormally bright in her face, and her lower lip was an angry scarlet where she had caught it between her teeth. Tendrils of her bright hair fluttered in the wind, making her seem even more lost and uncertain.
“Borneheld still lives for you, doesn’t he?” he said.
Faraday blinked, and a tear ran down her left cheek. “I didn’t realise how much I loathed him until I saw this place again.”
“You don’t have to go in—”
“What?” Anger had replaced the sadness in her voice. “Do you expect me to wait out here for you? No, you say we must go inside, so inside we will go. Both of us!”
She slammed her heels into Belaguez’s flanks, and the horse obediently plodded forward.
“Faraday—”
“Don’t say anything,” she hissed. “Just don’t say it.”
Drago held her eyes a moment longer, then he turned back and looked into what awaited them.
Gorkentown was not only deserted, it appeared as if it had been destroyed in some siege. As if by memory, Belaguez took them through the gates, then along the main thoroughfare that wound between gaunt-windowed and gape-doored tenement buildings towards the town square, and then up to the gates of the fort itself.
Not only were the buildings in sad disorder, goods lay in disarray as if piled by inhabitants preparing to evacuate and then fleeing in terror without them. A few walls had half-tumbled down, and the tiles of several roofs were scattered, as if they’d been caught in a spiteful whirlwind.
Although, outside the walls, snow had lain in only occasional drifts, here it lay stacked shoulder high against walls, icicles hung an arm’s length down from eaves and abandoned doorframes, and a thick layer of ice glittered in the late afternoon sun from the spires of the town and the towers of the fort.
Winter had claimed Gorkentown far earlier than it had anything else.
“Something is wrong,” Drago said, leaning to one side to scoop a handful of snow from a door ledge into his sack. “Why is everything destroyed? Magariz rebuilt this town as a major trading point with the Ravensbundmen.”
“We have ridden into memory, I think,” Faraday said. “For this is how Gorkentown appeared when it had been attacked by Gorgrael’s Skraelings. And thus…thus I rode into the town to meet Borneheld.”
“Borneheld is dead,” Drago said roughly. He wondered if she surrounded herself deliberately with the ghosts of dead husbands and dream-children to protect herself from him.
“For you, perhaps.”
Drago wished he hadn’t brought Faraday here, and wondered what he could do to bridge the distance between them.
He tried to push Faraday from his mind—hard when she clung so close to his back—and studied the town. Should it be this sunk in ice? Was it the effects of the Demons? Or the power of Faraday’s memory?
Or she who waited them in the fort?
He remembered the grey-haired woman, sinking her teeth into the spine of the seal, and he shivered himself.
“We have no choice,” Faraday said. “Either of us. Come, let us urge this ancient horse forwards a trifle faster. Night approaches, and I’d prefer to be in the shelter of the Keep when it falls.”
The gates to Gorkenfort stood as open as had the gates to the town. Belaguez halted of his own accord as he approached them, and he lifted his head and whinnied, as if caught in memory himself.
“Your father fought all along this street,” Faraday said, indicating the curved road that ran between a row of tenements and the fort walls. “It was their final line of defence against the Skraelings after a night spent retreating towards the fort. Borneheld…”
She lifted her head and stared at the walls rising high above them. “Borneheld had ordered that the gates not be opened to admit him. He wanted him dead.”
“But…”
“Margariz ordered them open,” Faraday said. “And I sank my hands into your father’s body and healed him. I loved him so desperately. I could not see him die.”
Drago tensed, then booted Belaguez forward.
As the town, so the fort. The inner courtyard was deserted, piles of goods left adrift as if everything had been abandoned in a hurry so terrifying that precious belongings were dropped forgotten as people fled in a thousand differing directions.
Hinges moaned in the wind, and a squall of four or five ravens launched themselves screaming into the twilight air high above.
A door banged, and Faraday jumped and cried out.
Drago swung a leg over Belaguez’s wither and dropped to the ground, slipping slightly in the ice. He turned and held out his arms for Faraday.
“Come—we need to seek shelter. I can smell a storm on this wind.”
She stared at him, as if lost in some appalling memory.
“I am not Borneheld,” Drago said. “Come on. Can you not hear the wind? We have little time.”
Faraday blinked, then leaned down to Drago. He seized her waist and lifted her down from the horse, slapping Belaguez’s rump so that he ambled—apparently totally unconcerned about the nearing tempest—into an open stable door.
The feathered lizard gave a high-pitched cry and slithered over Belaguez’s hindquarters, scampering over the snow and ice-covered paving stones to follow Drago as he carried Faraday inside the door to the Keep.
The lizard scrambled in behind them, and Drago let Faraday slide to her feet, and slammed the door closed.
Then he turned and looked about him.
They were in an entrance chamber, bare save for its ancient, rotted tapestries and banners.
Nothing but cold, damp, dark stone walls and the fungus-encrusted wall-hangings. Not a lamp or a candle, and certainly no gilt-edged explanation.
“Through here,” Faraday said, stepping over to a closed door. “The Great Hall.”
Surely, Drago thought, surely whatever he needed to find would be in here. But the Hall was as bare as the entrance chamber, except for a table and chairs scattered around the massive fireplace at the far end.
The Hall was freezing, far worse than outside, and Drago pulled his cloak tighter about him, trying to repress his shivering.
Faraday stood and looked at the far fireplace.
There Borneheld had stood and stared at her with his frightful, open lust as she’d entered, stunning in an emerald and ivory silk gown that had bared her breasts more than concealed them…
The same gown that Gorgrael, with equal lust, had forced her to wear so he too could—
“No!” she cried and spun about.
Here, in this Hall, Axis had stared at her, believing she’d betrayed him with his brother, and so precipitating, perhaps, his own betrayal of her.
“No!” she cried again. “No!”
Appalled, Drago caught her to him. She struggled blindly, sobbing, and Drago dragged her from the Hall, realising the horror of her memories, even if he was unable to participate in them.
In the antechamber Faraday calmed, although she still shook, and tears continued to course down her face.
“T
here must be a room upstairs where we can light a fire and warm ourselves,” he said. “Faraday, can you—”
“I can walk,” she said, and hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Drago said, but took her arm and led her yet deeper into the Keep.
Up the stone stairwell he found a bedchamber with enough wood stacked into the grate to sustain a hot fire for the night. Leaving Faraday standing by the bed, the lizard playing with the laces of her boots, Drago squatted down and lit the fire.
Fnally he rose once the flames took hold and caught sight of Faraday, completely still, looking at him with her great eyes. Gods, she was so lovely!
“You should wear silks rather than that peasant gown, Faraday.”
“I have had enough of the lies and betrayals silks bring.”
“Why so cold to me, Faraday? What have I done?”
She turned her face away.
“Is it Axis, is that why you refuse to love me?”
She looked back at him, her eyes even more stricken than before. Why had he spoken those words?
“Why should I love you, Drago?”
He winced, and she immediately regretted her words. She fought to find something else to say, and then said the first thing that came to her mind.
“Did you know that this was the chamber of my marriage night, Drago? That this was where Borneheld took my virginity?”
“Are you determined to throw every past lover in my face, Faraday?”
“I am determined never to be betrayed again, never to be hurt again,” she countered.
Drago strode across the room, angry with her. Damn it, why did she deny what he knew existed between them?
He took her shoulders in hands suddenly surprisingly gentle. “I would not betray you, Faraday.”
“And yet you betray this land by refusing to accept what Noah told you, by refusing to accept what I know, and what WingRidge and all his damned Lake Guard knows, and what Isfrael and StarDrifter and Zenith know!”