Authors: Anthony Ryan
He was led to a large room which served as the mission’s meal hall and ate a plate of stew Brother Artin had brought up from the kitchens. After the meal the Brother Commander unfurled a large map on the table. “The most recent effort from our brother map-makers in the Third Order,” he explained. “A detailed rendering of the borderlands. Here,” he pointed to a pictogram of a walled city. “Cardurin. Directly north will take you to the Skellan Pass, fortified and permanently manned by three companies of brothers. A truly unassailable barrier for any fugitive. The Lonak gave up on it decades ago.”
“How do they make their way south?” Vaelin asked.
“The foothills to the west and east. It’s a long journey and makes them vulnerable to pursuit but they’ve little choice if they want to keep raiding. How can you be sure your brother will venture into Lonak lands?”
He’s my brother no longer,
Vaelin wanted to say but held his tongue. He felt a profound anger whenever he thought of Nortah and it would do no good to voice it. “Is there a safe way in?” he asked the Brother Commander, avoiding his question. “A way a man travelling alone wouldn’t be seen?”
Brother Artin shook his head. “The Lonak know whenever we venture into their lands, alone in the dead of winter or in a full company of brothers in high summer, it makes no difference. They always know. Something Dark about it, I reckon. Make no mistake, brother, if you follow him in there you’ll meet them, sooner or later.”
Vaelin scanned the map, from the solid mass of jagged peaks that formed the northern mountains and the heart of Lonak lands to the Skellan pass, fortified a century ago when the Renfaelin Lord decided the Lonak were a real threat rather than a continual nuisance. It was when he turned his attention to the western foothills that the blood-song flared. His finger picked out a small, unfamiliar pictogram on the map. “What’s this?”
“The fallen city? He won’t go there. Even the Lonak don’t go there.”
“Why?”
“It’s a bad place, brother. All ruins and bare rock. Only ever seen it from a distance and it gave me the frights. Something in the air…” He shook his head. “Just feels bad. The Lonak call it
Maars Nir-Uhlin Sol
, the Place of Stolen Souls. They have plenty of stories about people going there and never coming back. There was a party of brothers from the Fourth Order about a year ago, come in search of deniers fleeing north. It was after the appointment of their new Aspect and our Order’s refusal to assist any longer in the Fourth’s denier hunting. They insisted on going to the fallen city, claimed they had intelligence leading them there, although from where they wouldn’t say. They were deaf to my warnings, ‘Servants of the Faith need fear no savage superstition,’ they said. We only ever found one of them, or rather part of him, frozen solid in the snow three months later. Something had been at him. Something hungry.”
“Perhaps they simply got lost and froze to death. A wolf or a bear could have come upon the body.”
“The man’s face was frozen, brother, in a scream. Never seen such a look on any man, alive or dead. He was eaten alive, by something bigger and far meaner than any wolf. And bears don’t leave marks like these.”
Vaelin turned back to the map. “How many day’s ride to the fallen city?”
Brother Artin’s shrewd eyes regarded Vaelin closely. “You really think he’s there?”
I know he’s there.
“How many day’s ride?”
“Three, if you push hard. I’ll send a bird to the wall for a party to accompany you. May take a few days. You can rest here…”
“I’ll be travelling alone, brother. In the morning.”
“Alone into Lonak lands? Brother, to say that is unwise is a gross understatement.”
“Did the Aspect’s missive contain any injunction against me travelling alone?”
“No. It merely ordered that you be given every assistance.”
“Well,” Vaelin moved back from the table and clapped Brother Artin on the shoulder, “a good night’s sleep, provisions for the journey and you will have assisted me very well.”
“If you go in there alone, you will die,” Brother Artin stated flatly.
“Then let’s hope I complete my mission before I do.”
The western foothills were rocky and barren, broken by a seemingly unending series of gullies through which Vaelin was obliged to navigate his way north. Winter was coming on quickly and a hard, chill rain swept the hills with dreary regularity. Spit was more fractious than ever, tossing his head and snorting every time Vaelin mounted him, his mood unleavened a regular supply of sugar-lumps from the mission house stores. He covered barely fifteen miles the first day and made camp beneath an overhang of rock, huddling in his cloak and resisting the urge to ignore Brother Artin’s stern warning against lighting a fire. Sleep, when it came, was fitful and troubled by dreams he could barely recall on waking to the dull glimmer of dawn. The blood-song was more muted now but still clear, still leading him on to the fallen city where he knew Nortah would be waiting.
Nortah…
The anger returned, fierce and implacable.
How could he do this? HOW COULD HE?
It had been building ever since Dentos related the tale, ever since the sickening realisation that he would have to hunt down and kill his brother. He found himself unable to muster much regret over Battle Lord Al Hestian’s severed hand, it was hard to pity a man intent on venting his grief on helpless captives. But Nortah…
He’ll fight,
he knew with a dread certainty.
He’ll fight, and I’ll kill him.
He ate a breakfast of dried beef and set off through a light morning drizzle, leading Spit on foot as the ground was too rocky for riding. He had gone only a few miles when the Lonak attacked.
The boy leapt from the rocks above in an impressive display of acrobatics, turning over in mid air and landing nimbly on his feet in front of Vaelin, war-club in one hand and a long curved knife in the other. He was bare-chested and lean as a greyhound, Vaelin guessing his age at somewhere between fourteen and sixteen. His head was shaven with an ornate tattoo above his left ear. His smooth angular face tensed in anticipation of combat as he voiced a harsh challenge in a tongue Vaelin had never heard.
“I’m sorry,” Vaelin said. “I don’t know your language.”
The Lonak boy evidently took this as either an insult or an acceptance of his challenge since he attacked without further delay, leaping in the air, war club above his head, his knife hand drawn back for a slash. It was a practised move performed with elegant precision. Vaelin side-stepped the club as it came down, caught the knife hand in mid-slash and knocked the boy unconscious with an open-handed blow to the temple.
His hand went to his sword as he looked around for further enemies, eyes scanning the rocks above.
Where there’s one, there’s more,
Brother Artin had warned him.
There’s always more.
There was nothing, no sound or scent on the wind, nothing to disturb the faint patter of rain on rock. Spit clearly sensed nothing either as he began to nibble at the unconscious boy’s leather-clad feet.
Vaelin pulled him away, earning a near-miss kick from a fore hoof, and crouched to check on the boy. His breathing was regular and there was no blood coming from his ears or nose. Vaelin positioned him so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue and tugged Spit onwards.
After another hour the gullies gave way to what Brother Artin had called the Anvil of Stone. It was the strangest and most unfamiliar landscape he had seen, a broad expanse of mostly bare rock, pocked by small pools of rain water and rocky tors rising from the undulating surface like great deformed mushrooms. He could only marvel at whatever design of nature had produced such a scene. The Cumbraelins claimed their god had made the earth and all it held in a blinking of his eye, but seeing the weather fashioned channels in the tors rising above he knew this place had taken many centuries to reach such a state of profound strangeness.
He remounted Spit and headed north at a walk, covering another ten miles before nightfall. He camped in the shelter of the largest tor he could find, his cloak once again tight around him as he sought sleep. His eyelids were drooping when the Lonak boy attacked again.
The boy raged in his unfathomable language as Vaelin tied the rope around his chest, his hands already bound behind his back. A livid bruise marred his temple and another was forming beneath his nose where Vaelin’s forenuckles had found the nerve cluster which sent him senseless.
“
Nisha ulniss ne Serantim!”
the boy screamed at Vaelin, his bruised face rigid with hate. “
Herin! Garnin!”
“Oh shut up,” Vaelin said tiredly, pushing a rag into the boy’s mouth.
He left him writhing in his bonds and led Spit onwards, careful of his footing in the dark although the half-moon was bright enough to make his way without misstep. He kept going until the boy’s muffled cries were no longer audible and found shelter next to a large boulder, laying down to let sleep claim him.
The next day brought his first glimpse of sunlight, intermittent rays breaking through the clouds to play across the frozen rock of the Anvil, drawing huge shadows from the tors, their weathered surfaces seeming to shimmer.
Beautiful,
he thought, wishing he had come here on a different mission. His heavy heart seemed to forbid enjoyment of simple things.
The Anvil stretched on for another five miles, eventually giving way to a series of low hills dotted with the stunted pine which seemed to proliferate in the north. Spit spurred into an unbidden gallop as soon as his hooves touched the grass, snorting his relief at leaving the unyielding rock of the Anvil. Vaelin gave him his head and let him run. Spit was ever a mean spirited animal and it was a novelty to feel the joy in him as he raced up and down the hills, churning sod in their wake. By nightfall they were in sight of the broad plateau where the fallen city waited. Vaelin found a campsite atop the last of the hills, affording a good view of the approaches and cover from a cluster of pine near the summit.
He tethered Spit to a low hanging branch and gathered wood, arranging it within a circle of rocks, adding pine shavings for kindling. He struck his flint and blew softly on the flames until the fire built, sitting cross-legged, his sword still on his back and his bow within reach, an arrow already notched, waiting. He had become aware of being followed in the early evening so there seemed little point in observing Artin’s stricture against lighting a fire.
Night came on quickly, the clouded sky making the darkness deep and impenetrable beyond the firelight. It was another hour before the soft scrape of hooves on sod told of a visitor. The man who walked into the camp stood at least six and a half feet tall with broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, his chest confined within a bearskin vest which reached to his waist where a war club and a steel-bladed hatchet hung on his belt. He wore deerskin trews and leather boots. Like the boy who had attacked Vaelin earlier his head was shaved and tattooed, an intricate maze-like design which circled his head from temple to temple. More tattoos covered his arms, strange whirls and barb-like shapes stretching from shoulder to wrist. His face was lean and angular, making him difficult to age, but his eyes, dark and hostile beneath a heavy frown, spoke of many years and, if Vaelin was any judge, many battles. He was leading a sturdy pony which bore something slung across its back, something bound in rope which writhed and moaned.
The Lonak pulled the hatchet and war club from his belt in a quick and skilful movement Vaelin almost didn’t catch. He watched the man whirl the weapons expertly for a second or two, feeling the rush of displaced air and resisting the impulse to reach for his sword. The man’s eyes never left his, studying, calculating. After a moment he grunted in apparent satisfaction and laid both weapons on the ground near the fire. Taking a step backwards, hands raised, his expression no less hostile.
Vaelin unbuckled his sword from his back and placed it before him, also raising his hands. The Lonak grunted again and went to the pony, pulling the bound boy from its back and dumping him unceremoniously next to the fire.
“This is yours,” he told Vaelin, his words thickly accented but clearly spoken.
Vaelin glanced at the boy, his mouth securely gagged with a leather strap, eyes dim with exhaustion. “I don’t want it,” he told the Lonak.
The big man regarded him in silence for a moment then moved to the opposite side of the fire, spreading his hands to the warmth. “Among my people, when a man comes to your fire in peace it is custom to offer him meat and something to slake his thirst.”
Vaelin reached for his saddle bags and extracted some dried beef and a water skin, tossing them to the Lonak across the fire. He took a small knife from his boot and cut a strip from the beef, chewing and swallowing quickly. Drinking from the water skin however made him grimace and spit on the ground. “Where is the wine you
Merim Her
love so much?” he demanded.
“I rarely drink wine.” Vaelin glanced again at the boy. “Aren’t you going to let him eat too?”
“Whether he eats is your choice. He belongs to you.”
“Because I defeated him?”
“If you defeat a man and don’t deign to kill him, he is yours.”
“And if I don’t take him?”
“He will lay here until he starves or the beasts come to claim him.”
“I could just cut his bonds, set him free.”
The Lonak barked a harsh laugh. “There is no freedom for him. He is
varnish,
defeated, destroyed, worth no more than dog shit to my people.” The man’s gaze was fixed on the boy now, a fierce implacable glower. “A fitting punishment for one who disobeys
Her
word, who allows his misplaced pride to blind him to his obeisance. Cut his bonds and he will wander here, weaponless, friendless, my people will shun him and he will find no shelter.”
His gaze swung back to Vaelin and he saw something more than anger there, a faint flicker of something hidden, told in the tension of his jaw and the set of his lips.
Concern. He fears for the boy.