Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) (10 page)

“What is your meaning?”

“I have spoken with men
before, of course,” the Stranger continued as if he hadn’t heard, waving a hand
weakly, “but only those worth speaking to. The kings of the herd.”

The Forester gripped the
warm wood of Kreyiss’ haft tighter and edged further around so that, once
again, he was before the figure in the snow. A deep sense of unease settled
upon him. “What are you?”

The Stranger began to
nod, slowly at first and then quickly and violently. Abruptly he stopped and looked
up. “Not of your kind,” he said and whipped back the hood of his cloak with
alarming speed. 

Underneath the cloak was
something like a man’s face, but one curiously stretched from chin to brow so
that it gave him a mournful and lordly appearance. His cheeks were sunken, with
high and sharp cheekbones, leading to piercing eyes that could have been a pale
red. His mouth was sumptuous with feminine lips slightly parted to reveal many
perfect though slightly pointed teeth peeking out from between them. His chin
was long and his jaw strong whilst his brow bled into a widow’s peak, his
blue-black hair hanging down his back in a single braid. Most remarkable of all
were his ears. They rose to a point like those of a forest spirit from a
children’s story and lay very close to his skull. The Forester had never seen
anything like this man in his life.
No,
not a man
. The Stranger had made that clear.

“Not. Of. Your. Kind,”
said the Stranger, relishing every syllable.

“What are you?” the
Forester asked again. He had begun to let his guard drop and Kreyiss hung
loosely in one hand, its killing end pointing towards the ground. Suddenly the
Stranger began to move. The Forester snapped to instant alertness, Kreyiss
flashing to a battle-ready position just over his shoulder as if it weighed no
more than a sapling branch.

Yet his reaction was
unnecessary, for his opponent was only trying — and failing — to
stand. The Stranger stood bent over and clutched at his side. Although he was
not at full height — which must have been impressive — it was clear
that he was a head taller than the Forester at least. For the first time, the
Forester could see that the cold had taken its toll on the tall stranger: his
cloak was frozen stiff at the hem, and here and there patches of frost showed
blue-white on his robes.
What fool wears
robes in the snow?

“Something older,” it
said. The Forester was not sure whether the Stranger’s flesh was naturally so
pale or if he was in the first stages of the heat death that winter brought to
the unprepared. Then he noticed the wet stain that glistened on the Stranger’s
side. Only flowing blood would be warm enough to fight the cold for so long.
Indeed, the Forester thought he could see steam rising from the Stranger’s
robes.

“You are wounded,” he
said and immediately felt like a fool.

The Stranger stared at
him, fighting for breath, and then replied quietly. “Mortally. Even the lower
beings of this world have their weapons.”

“Wolves?” guessed the
Forester.

The Stranger nodded.

“Are they close?”

“They are dead. If not
now, then soon.” He must have seen the Forester’s confusion for he continued.
“My blood is as poison to them and other beasts.”

“What about a deer? Or a
man?” asked the Forester. He saw again the dead deer, frozen to the earth, and
the circle of dead wolves that had tried to feast on it.

The Stranger looked at
him and then laughed, a true laugh. It was rich and throaty, unbridled by pain
and fear. The Forester frowned slightly. The Stranger was entering the final
stages, then. It was premature.

“You did not answer my
question,” he said and gripped Kreyiss tighter.

The Stranger stopped
laughing and sighed. “Which one? There have been so many.”

“Who sent you? And what
for?”

The Stranger spat and
once again stained the snow with blood. “To kill you, Beccorban.”

The Forester blinked.
Beccorban
. He had tried to bury that
name with Kreyiss and his wife yet, like so many other things this day, it had
returned to haunt him.

“You are Beccorban, are
you not? I had it on good word.” An edge of wavering panic entered the
Stranger’s voice. “It would be a strange fate to die here at the feet of the
wrong man.” He shook his head emphatically from side to side. “Of course you
are him,” he calmed and pointed. “You have
that
.”

Beccorban did not need
to look at his weapon. He knew every inch of her, even after all these years,
every mark on her haft, every facet of her killing weight, engraved with arcane
language.

“One more avenue to
wander down, one more hopeful casting of the dice. All to find… to find…” The
Stranger coughed and then turned, as if to walk away. He began to speak in a
low voice, quickly and to himself, pausing every now and again to splutter and
heave.

Beccorban strode to the
Stranger’s side just as he began to sink to his knees. He gripped the tall
creature by the scruff of his neck and held the hammer one-handed near the top
of the haft, a flick of the wrist away from crashing into his opponent’s face.

“Why?” he screamed,
angry at the thought of losing his best chance of understanding. The Stranger
coughed and pawed weakly at his attacker’s scarred fist, but it was to no
avail. “Tell me why!” Beccorban shook the Stranger, fury threatening to
overwhelm his need to know.

“Is… is it not… enough,”
the Stranger heaved for breath, “that I let you live?”

“Let me live?” asked
Beccorban incredulously. He could feel the rage bubbling up his veins and knew
that soon it would swamp him. But it felt good. It felt like letting go. “I
would break you and render your bones dust, o man-that-is-not-a-man. I am Beccorban,
I am your death, I am the Helhammer!”

 He froze and
released the Stranger, who fell coughing and spluttering to the snowy ground.
Is that how quickly he had forgotten who he had been? Forgotten the things he
had done? He took a step backwards and it seemed that the world before him
suddenly lost its red hue.

The coughing had turned
to hissing, and the Stranger rolled to his back. “The fearsome Helhammer
reduced to a squeamish old man. The Mallephiskarii had nothing to fear and
nothing to find. Their words are wind. They have wasted their time and my life,
but I give it gladly to see this!” The Stranger was ranting now, screeching and
clawing at the frozen earth, screaming in a mix of Verian, old Verian and a
musical tongue Beccorban did not recognise. He scrambled over the ground to
Beccorban’s feet, pawing at his boots. “We heard the signal. Though we were far
away we heard it like a whisper in our ear.” The Stranger’s red eyes were wide
and glassy with pain. “It called to us, Beccorban. Told us to return from where
we had been cast out. Now we are returned. We have come in force to seize what
is rightfully ours and your time is done. All will fall. We will find who
called us and all will shatter and fall.” The Stranger wheezed brokenly. “Men
will pay for their carelessness. They will bleed and we shall drink. Run,
Beccorban! Run! For they are coming and your strength is spent. Your world is
finished and all will bathe in—”

He did not finish, for
Beccorban, the man who had once been known as the Helhammer and other things
besides, had heard enough. His was a cool concentration, something he had honed
these last few years, very different to the molten rage that had taken him so
quickly before. As he focused his mind, Beccorban realised that his life had become
more than hiding and waiting to die. Once again he had a purpose, and the last
thing he could do was run from his past. He had to meet it head on and face
that which had made him a killer of men.

But this creature
writhing on the ground before him was not a man. That had been made clear.

And so the great hammer
swung downwards, and for the first time in almost twenty years, Kreyiss drank
again.

From behind, the robed
woman’s silhouette was just another shadow, one more dark shape melting into the
trees. She was very careful, avoiding pools of light as though they would burn
her skin, and stopping every now and then to listen for anybody following. As
he crouched behind a thick stand of thorn bushes, Loster wondered what he hoped
to achieve. He rubbed the shallow depression above his ears. Though he was now
recovered from the pain in his head, he still felt drained.

Helpfully the woman had
been easy to follow at first. After her dismissal from the Great Hall, she had
wandered through Elk like an outcast. People instinctively avoided her, and in
turn she paid them no heed. Loster kept his distance too, and often found
himself ducking into alleyways or behind carts being unloaded to the curious
stares of the townspeople. Even when the woman stopped to purchase some
supplies — dried oats, corn, flour — the shopkeeper had done his
best to ignore her, only feigning interest when she flashed a fat purse. Loster
smiled wryly. As she had said, Malix was no idiot.

Eventually the woman had
grown bored of the small mountain town, and made her way back up the hill to
the Great Hall, striding with purpose. For a terrible moment, Loster imagined
that she wanted to go back and confront Malix. The Lord of Elk had shamed her
and no doubt scared her, but Loster knew firsthand that it was madness to go
after a wolf in its own lair.

Wolf.
He laughed.
He had never thought of his father as a wolf before. Weasel, maybe. Snake. Rat.
Anything poisonous and spiteful.

However, after a moment
staring down the guards by the great double doors, the woman had set off again,
this time aiming for the woods that the Hall back on to. Loster counted in his
head, making sure he left enough time so as not to draw too much attention,
then scurried after her.

The woods were in their
full autumnal regalia: hues of brown and red and gold that should have been a
cause of delight. To Loster they were warning colours telling him to stay away
from the horror that lurked in the mountain. After Barde’s demise, Lord Malix
had forbidden any mention of the hidden Temple Deep. Once, a year ago, a young
priest had come sniffing around. He had offered money to scout the Widowpeak,
but Malix had refused to meet him and moved him on quickly. For days the Lord
of Elk had raged about spies in his hall. Several guardsmen had been made
examples of, humiliated in the stocks for minor infringements painted as acts
of espionage, and in one particularly grisly case, killed.

Whatever arrangement
this woman and her people had with his father, Loster knew he would never be
made privy to it. If he was caught scouting these woods he would be punished,
and it would be so much worse than the last time. A wall came down inside his
mind and he focused on the task ahead of him.
Concentrate
, he told himself.
Don’t
get caught and there will be nothing to worry about.

There were very few
paths in the woods, since there were not many places they could lead, except up
to the roots of the mountain. Even those that did exist were little more than
deer tracks, broken lines of beaten earth that followed no particular pattern
and looped around in all directions.

Yet Loster knew where
the woman was headed.

He felt his stomach fizz
with fear and his arms began to shake.
Do
this, Loster,
he told himself.
Go and
see it. Be free of it.
Loster had not returned to the forest entrance of
the hidden Temple Deep since he had come stumbling out of it years before, an
only child covered in blood. Part of him had wanted to return, but his fear
always won the day, keeping him in the little wooden building, poring over
numbers and manuscripts written in fluid Old Verian. Now he had an excuse, and
if he was being honest with himself, a guide. He would have struggled to find
the hole in the mountain again, but now this strange woman was going to lead him
there. Back into the darkness.

The woods grew thicker
as he followed the woman, though she did not slow her pace. She was walking
without looking, head down, and Loster would not have been surprised had she
been blindfolded. Their route took them down into a dense bowl full of tangled
undergrowth and then out again, making use of a concealed track that skirted
the worst obstacles. Loster made sure to stay low and place his feet carefully,
avoiding any loose twigs or dry leaves. He noticed that the woman he followed
took no such care with her footsteps. Instead she seemed to follow an
instinctual path, her feet guiding her soundlessly through the forest.

Suddenly there was the
clunk of metal on wood, and both Loster and his target dropped to a crouch.

“Don’t do that, Wuun,
you’ll blunt it,” came a voice from beyond the woman.

“It’s blunt already.
Hasn’t been sharpened in weeks.” The man said it with a strange pride, as
though he had achieved something.

Two guardsmen
materialised on the path some distance ahead. Wuun was not a name Loster
recognised, but he knew the other, Ulf, as a long-serving member of Malix’s
guard. Ulf had a gambling problem and could often be found in the house
opposite Aifayne’s schooling room. Loster leaned forward on his hands to see if
he could make out the woman. She had disappeared. He cursed softly.

“Don’t let Jaym find
out, or you’ll be scrubbing armour for the next month.”

The man called Wuun
grunted in response, and their footsteps grew quieter. Loster carefully raised
his head above the obscuring brush. The two men had taken a different deer
track and passed alongside his. Turning his head slowly, he scanned the trees
around him for a glimpse of the robed woman. Nothing.

The sun was high in the
sky and it blazed down like a great eye, searching the forest floor with beams
of revealing light. A bird warbled happily in the trees and Loster frowned.
Back in his bed chamber in the living quarters of the Great Hall, he often used
to lie awake; he had never been an easy sleeper, and often fought it off for
fear of being caught unawares. Lord Malix did not visit as regularly as he had
before — after all, Loster was getting older — but when he did it
was unannounced. Oddly Loster found that he did not need much sleep, and most
mornings he was up with the songbirds, listening to their merry cries and the
greetings they piped at the dawn. As a result, the young heir apparent knew the
voice of almost every winged creature in Elk, and the bird singing its song at
the moment was not one he recognised.

He listened, waiting. It
came again, as he knew it would: a musical burble. He smiled. It was a good
imitation, but not one from a songbird. The call continued, and Loster began to
creep towards the sound. The robed woman had a helper, and he was calling her
home. Loster followed the noise for almost an hour, pausing whenever he was
unsure and picking it up soon enough if he lost the sound. Eventually it grew
louder, and he realised he was moving towards a fixed spot. Whoever was
mimicking the bird had stopped and was waiting for somebody to find them.

As quietly as he could,
Loster pushed through a dense knot of brambles and froze. Ahead of him was a
clearing of long brown grass, and beyond that a door hacked into the side of
the mountain by unknown hands. Time had been kind to the stone and the doorway
still bore its sharp edges, though vines and creepers from the forest floor had
begun to crawl up it in a vain attempt to close off the passageway into the
Widowpeak. Above the lintel of the door was a faded painting: a huge pair of
blazing red eyes, thin and slitted like a goat’s. He was here, back at the
forest entrance to the Temple Deep for the first time since Barde had died.

Loster tried to swallow
and gasped with panic as his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. It stuck
like tar and he fell backwards, clawing at his mouth as his lungs screamed for
breath. A rustling in the bushes to his left made him freeze, and still he
struggled to breath past his swollen tongue. A jagged splinter of pain lanced
into his head. His vision was closing in and he knew that he was in danger of
falling unconscious. Since he had lost Barde, anything that made him feel
uncomfortable or threatened had manifested itself as a headache. Too often it
grew until it became deafening, and then his mind simply gave in and he fell
into oblivion. It was a defence mechanism that had replaced the challenging
voice which led him to the door in the side of the Widowpeak in the first
place. For that he was glad — after all, the voice had made him an only
child — but he could not afford to faint now. If he passed out he would
die.

Loster lay back so that
his head was on the ground, and forced himself to be calm. He reached up and
dug his fingers into his mouth. He tasted dirt and the peaty earth and then his
tongue was free and he closed his lips around his fingers and sucked up what
moisture he could. The edges of his vision began to clear and he blinked
rapidly to speed the process. The bird that was not a bird called once more, and
Loster slowly pulled his feet up so that he was in a ball, as concealed as he
could be in the long grass of the clearing.

The robed woman stepped
out from the trees to his left and walked smartly to the secret entrance. She
paused as she reached the doorway and quickly glanced over her shoulder before
disappearing into the shadow. Loster propped himself up on his elbows and
covered his hand with his mouth as he coughed.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,
said a voice in his head and he
felt bile sting the back of his throat. He tried to look once again at the door
to the Temple Deep but his hands shook with fear and he suddenly felt very
weak. A phantom
clanging
echoed in
his head and his nostrils tingled at the imagined scent of old and new blood
alike.

Abruptly a great feeling
of elation and relief swept over him, because deep in his subconscious the
decision was made that he wouldn’t be revisiting the Widowpeak after all. This
would be the end of his adventure, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Loster picked himself up
and brushed down his clothes.
The others
are right
, he told himself.
You are a
coward.
He spat and turned back into the forest. His feet dragged as he
went, as though his body were at odds with his mind.

Behind him, a pair of red
eyes looked on dispassionately.

They were not the only
eyes that watched him go.

The air seemed to grow
fresher as Loster got closer to Elk. He couldn’t remember how long it had taken
him to reach the door in the Widowpeak but it was still bright, and if he was
careful, he did not think anybody would notice his absence. Maybe he could
sneak back into the kitchens and finally grab something to eat. He felt
famished after his journey, and if Malix was entertaining tonight as Cook had
said, then there should be something ready by now. He came to a fallen tree. It
was a giant, probably hundreds of years old, yet weather had torn it down as
though it were little more than a reed. He didn’t remember seeing this on his
way out, but then it was no surprise that he had followed a slightly different
path back. He knew he was going in the right direction. He was going downhill.

Loster crouched and
ducked under the huge tree, scuffing the back of his neck on the rough bark as
he came up again. He swore and reach up to rub at the sore spot—

—and flinched as a
stone clacked off of the tree above his head, leaving a bright scar in the
bark.

“So close! If the little
prig hadn’t moved I woulda got ‘im good!” Barik stepped from the trees with two
other boys in tow. One was Erdun, the son of one of Malix’s guardsmen, but the
other he had never seen before. “Where you been off to, Lost?”

“Don’t call me that,”
said Loster quietly.

“I can’t hear you, Lost.
Speak up.” Barik cupped a hand to his ear in a mocking salute and the two other
boys giggled.

“Lost has lost ‘is
voice,” the unknown one crowed.

“Gone right and lost it
with his brother,” said Erdun viciously.

“Aye, thinks he’s better
than us. That’s what it is,” snarled Barik. “Doesn’t speak to the common folk.
Just like his father.”

Loster could feel an
ache beginning at the back of his neck. If Barde was here they would never had
dared to speak to him so. Nobody would.
If
Barde was here, they wouldn’t have reason to. They wouldn’t know how much of a
coward you are.
He clenched his teeth as the thought ran through his mind.
His jaw began to shake with the effort and he forced his mouth open.

“Trying to say
something, Lost?” sneered Barik.

“Leave me alone,” he
answered feebly.

“He’s gonna run an’ tell
his papa,” warned the one without a name.

“No he won’t, Prentin.”
Erdun opened his eyes wide in an attempt to look intimidating. With his shock
of fuzzy ginger hair, it made him look comical, but Loster knew this was not
the time to mention it. “Ain’t that so, Lost?”

“Just let me past,” said
Loster, trying to keep his eyes on all three of them at once.

Barik was walking
towards him slowly with his side facing forwards, as though he were hiding
something. Erdun was circling out to the left to cut off any escape, but
Prentin, the one he had never seen before, stayed rooted to the spot. With
theatrical slowness, Barik revealed what he had been hiding: a stout wooden
practice blade from Jaym’s yard.