The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (59 page)

He jumped a fallen tree, nearly fell headlong, and found himself attacked. Three of them had turned while the others pushed on into the twilit forest. He parried two blows and shuffled back, half his mind on his feet. They were as hampered as he, but Skal had never decided whether a handicap shared would favour the more skilled or the less. Now he thought it might favour them.

He got through one man’s guard and nicked his shoulder…

The world exploded. Skal was suddenly blind and deaf, immersed in a river of light and noise. He couldn’t feel the sword in his hand, couldn’t see the Seth Yarra, couldn’t even tell up from down. It terrified him. Not only did he not understand what was happening, could not begin to guess, but he was fiercely aware that he was facing two or three armed men.

He tried to jump back, but he had no sensation of his own legs and muscles. It was as though he was a disembodied mind, subject to the whims of the torrent that surrounded him, severed from the rest of his body.

The world came back. It rushed in like a bolt of lightning, a flash and he was lying on his back beneath the darkening forest canopy. He barely had time to be thankful before he saw a Seth Yarra spear point descending on him.

There just wasn’t enough time. It seemed that a moment before he had been standing before these Seth Yarra, confident that he was going to kill them, and now he was flat on his back, defenceless. He tried to twist, but it was far too late. He felt the impact of the spear against his breastplate. The man had put everything behind the blow, and the sheet metal burst, the point split his skin, pushed between his ribs and plunged through. He felt it break through his back and bury itself in the ground beyond.

Two thoughts occurred to him at the same time.

How unfair
, and
what a waste
.

Alos Stebbar, master carpenter, patron of the inn now called The Seventh Friend which had once been The Wolf Triumphant, a man whose trade these days was so much in coffins that people called him Deadbox, awoke.

He was alone in his house, and could not say what had awoken him, though he felt uncomfortably warm. The faint sounds of the night time city came to him, a voice singing, a distant shout, a ringing bell, the creak of a wagon passing in the street, but there was no noise from the house. His workshop below was tidy and locked. The apprentices’ rooms were empty, both of his young men having volunteered for war. His wife was long dead. He had no children.

So what had awakened him?

Nothing, perhaps. He was not a young man and often awoke in the night.

But tonight felt different. When he was a child he had awoken to a new day feeling bright and full of energy, and now he felt the same. Sleep did not call to him at all. He eased himself up and rested his back against the wall. His back felt rested, too, and there was no pain. If only he felt like this when he had to work!

He pulled the blankets aside and swung his legs out of the bed, reaching for the lamp that stood ready by the side. He left the lamp lit at night, but turned low and hooded so that it did not wake him. Now he took off the hood and turned it up, flooding his room with yellow light. He flexed his fingers to get the stiffness out of them, and found that there was none. His joints felt positively oiled today.

He stopped and stared at his hand. He knew his hand, proverbially so. He knew the wrinkled papery skin, the three liver spots, two on the left, one on the right. This was not his hand. He looked at his other hand and found that it, too, was an impostor. He pulled up the sleeves of his night gown and found that his arms were smooth and muscular. He flexed his hand again and watched the sinews move, the muscles bunch. This was a young man’s arm.

He stood. He straightened. There was no pain at all. He twisted left to right, right to left, a guarantee of pain in his lower back, but the stabbing sensation never came. With mounting excitement he took a breath, a deep breath, and felt his lungs fill and his chest expand. Gods he felt good.

It must be a dream
, he thought.
I am dreaming that I am young again
.

He pinched his arm, pinched it hard enough to make him wince. Nothing happened. He slapped his face, felt the skin sting and redden, but he did not wake.

On the other side of the room there was a bowl of cold water prepared for the morning, and he walked over to it, dipped his hands in and wet his face. He rubbed vigorously. He caught sight of himself in the mirror.

It must be a dream
.

He went and fetched the lamp from beside his bed, the better to see. He put it beside the mirror.

The man that looked back at him from the glass was familiar, but he had not seen that face in a long time. He stared. It was Alos Stebbar, aged about twenty-five, maybe less. He touched his face, and the young man in the mirror touched his face. He stuck out his tongue, and the young man copied him.

It’s me. I’m young again.

He dismissed all thought of returning to bed. He dressed. He had to find out of this was real. It was not that late. He took early to his bed these days. Usually he finished up whatever he was doing in the shop, locked the door and went for a glass of ale at the Friend. Sometimes he had two. Then it was home and bed. It had been his routine for many years, but since his apprentices had gone to war it was a lonely one. He had friends who he met in the Friend, or acquaintances. They were men who knew his name, at any rate.

As he locked the door to his house behind him and walked the few streets between it and the Friend he tried to find an explanation for what had happened. He had been in his sixties, a man worn down by a life of hard work, bereft of adventure, starved of exception. It had been a very ordinary life. He had married late, seen his wife die failing to give birth to their first child, and he had never married again. He had dreamed of being a soldier, but lacked the courage to enlist. He was a good carpenter, but no more than that. He thought of himself as a good man, but never seemed to be surrounded by friends. He supposed that he was boring.

There had been just one remarkable event in his life.

It had been more than a year ago, in the spring. He had been drinking with his apprentices in the Wolf Triumphant as it then was, and Wolf Narak had walked in. He hadn’t known at first. The resemblance was there. He’d seen the wolf’s image in his temple in the high city, but it was so impossible a thing that he had merely thought it a likeness.

There was another man who frequented the same inn, a man called Tegal who was the worst sort of bully, a man who stole and cheated and threatened. He had threatened Narak and been soundly beaten. It was the manner of that beating that had convinced Deadbox that he was, indeed, Wolf Narak. And Deadbox had been the only one who’d guessed. He’d sat at the god’s table for a good two hours and shared ale with him, and at the end he’d revealed that he knew, and the Wolf was pleased, and had said the five magical words: you are in my favour.

Since that day his health had remained much the same. His back still hurt, but no more than it had before, and he had not been sick a single day.

Now this. The only explanation was the Wolf, but he had never heard of such a thing. It was impossible.

He arrived at the inn and walked in. Since the war there had been no need of a man on the door. There were not enough people to pack the bar as in the old days when Cain Arbak had taken over. Now it was busy, but there was always a seat to be had by the bar. He sat and ordered his usual ale, looking around for a familiar face.

He saw Gordis, sitting at a table with other men he knew. Gordis was not exactly a friend, but he was a fellow carpenter who had offered several times to buy the workshop and house, but Deadbox had always refused him. The place was his only source if income, his pension and his legacy.

He picked up his ale and walked casually towards Gordis and his friends. As he drew closer, however, his steps slowed and faltered. He could not tell Gordis the truth. He could not tell anyone the truth. They would assume that he was lying, and there was nothing Deadbox could do to disprove the assumption. He could lose everything, and there would certainly be trouble, one way or the other.

Inspiration struck, and overwhelmed by an uncharacteristic spirit of bravado he continued to walk towards Gordis, quickening his step. He adopted the posture of his youth, which had a little more swagger that his old man’s body could have coped with.

“Are you Gordis?” he asked.

Gordis looked at him appraisingly. “Who asks?” he said.

“Jerac Fane,” he said. He chose his dead son’s name, the child they’d never had, and his cousin’s husband’s last name.

“And who is Jerac Fane?” Gordis asked.

“You know my great uncle, Alos Stebbar,” he said.

“You’re Deadbox’s kin?”

“Aye, I heard you call him that.” He put displeasure into his voice, but it didn’t seem to bother Gordis.

“Well, sit and join us, Jerac,” Gordis said.

“I’ll not, if it’s all the same. But I have a question: do you still want to buy Uncle Alos’s place?”

Gordis’s eyes sharpened and he leaned forwards. “He’s selling?”

“Aye, he is. He’s gone to his cousin in Hornwood because she’s unwell. Dying perhaps, and he’s asked me to sell up and follow him.”

“You have the right?”

“I have a paper in his own hand that says so.”

“Then we should talk,” Gordis said.

“Tomorrow at the workshop,” Deadbox said. “If you offer a fair price we can do a deal. I’m in a hurry to get home, but if you try to cheat me I’ll be forced to go elsewhere.”

Gordis looked hurt. “Cheat you? Why should I cheat you?”

“Why indeed? Tomorrow then, at the workshop. Come before noon.”

Alos Stebbar left the inn. Indeed Jerac Fane left the inn, quite a different man from the one that had waked in. Plans were forming in his head. He had a second life, a new name, and there would be money. He could buy a small house, or not. He could enlist with the Seventh Friend and learn to be a soldier. He could put his money aside for when, or if, he came back from the war.

His spirits soared. He was drunk with the blessing of youth. Some would have called it a curse. His old life had been taken from him. He could no longer be Alos Stebbar, prosperous but dull carpenter of Bas Erinor. Now he must be Jerac Fane, and whatever that might bring.

As he walked down the street he began to whistle.

The pain was terrible, but Skal wasn’t going to die eas
ily. His sword was still in his hand and he thrust upwards, his point striking home in the Seth Yarra’s gut and on up into his chest. The man was killed instantly and fell on top of Skal’s legs. That caused more pain.

He expected darkness. It should have been like before when he’d nearly died on the wall at Fal Verdan, but darkness wouldn’t come. There was only pain. Well, he might as well be rid of the spear, he thought. Damned if he was going to die with a pig sticker like that in him. He seized the shaft and pulled, wrenching it out of his body, screaming with pain and anger. He flung it away, and to his surprise saw one of the Seth Yarra go down. He hadn’t aimed at the man, and certainly hadn’t struck him with the point, but he seemed to have flattened him all the same.

The pain lessened. It faded quickly and Skal waited for death to follow, but it didn’t come. He didn’t feel as though he was dying. He didn’t feel numb. He felt good. He felt strong.

He kicked the body off his legs and pulled himself up, expecting at any moment to be felled by the agony waiting in his chest, but there was no pain. He took a deep breath.

Alive?

He faced the last Seth Yarra, and the man looked afraid. Skal didn’t think he’d ever seen a man look so afraid. He stepped forwards. He had to admit the man had courage. He faced Skal defiantly, short sword and dagger in hand. He spat on the ground.

“Farheim!” he said. “Death Born!” He dropped his sword and turned his dagger around, driving it into his own chest. Skal was stunned. He’d never had a man kill himself rather than face his blade. But it wasn’t just that. The man had seen him killed, and seen him get up again. It was enough to dishearten the bravest man. Skal himself was having difficulty coping with what had happened.

He’d been killed. He did not doubt it. No man could have survived that blow, not even Narak. Yet here he stood. He put a hand to the hole in his breastplate. The armour hadn’t done its job, but beneath the neat hole that the spear had punched his skin was unbroken.

“Lord Skal! Victory, Lord Skal!”

The few men that had followed him into the woods were heading towards him. None had seen what had passed between him and the Seth Yarra. Back on the road the fighting was over. His plan had worked. There was some relief in that.

But he was greatly troubled by what the man had said to him before taking his own life. Farheim. Death Born. He had spoken Afalel and Skal had understood. He knew the words. Somewhere in his memory they struck a chord, but he was having trouble placing them.

They pushed back through the undergrowth to the road and joined the rest of his men.

“Numbers?” he asked.

“Not yet, Colonel.” His second officer was a captain, Annard, a young man who’d worked in timber yards before the war. “But we’ve lost a few. Between one and two hundred.”

Not good, but it could have been worse. Surprise had been complete.

“Colonel! Horses!”

The cry came from the north end and Skal hurried that way. Men followed, arrows being put to the string, and he saw that his men had formed a defensive rank blocking the road. He marvelled at how well trained they were, these amateurs of the Seventh Friend.

It was Hestia. She had come back down the road when her scouts heard fighting, and brought two hundred horse with her, too late to be of any use to them. Skal walked through the ranks of his men to where she sat on her mount.

“They will not bother you again,” he said.

“You killed them all?”

“All.”

Hestia nodded. “Well, then, we shall all rest easier tonight.” She turned her mount and rode away and all but of few of the Telans cantered after her, leaving Skal standing in the road. Emmar was one of those who remained.

“Do your strategies never fail?” Emmar asked him.

Skal laughed, but there was little humour in it. “Over a hundred of my men lie dead, Captain. For them there is no success.”

“But it is a victory!” Emmar exclaimed.

“Victory comes at the end of a war, not a battle,” Skal said, conscious that he was quoting Cain.

Emmar grinned. “So gloomy, you Avilians,” he said. “Is there no corner of your philosophy that allows you to celebrate?”

“There is,” Skal said. “On the night before a day when there is no march, on the night before the day when there is no enemy left to kill, on the night before the day when I do not need to be vigilant in restraining my allies from folly. On that night I will drink with you until we fall.”

“Until
you
fall, Lord Skal,” Emmar said. “It is well known that Avilians cannot hold their drink.”

“Captain, will you do me a favour?”

“Ask it.”

“Lend me your mount. I need to speak with the queen.”

Emmar slipped from the saddle at once, and Skal reflected that these Telans might be impulsive and reckless, but they made fine friends. The captain held out the reins and Skal took them, climbed to the saddle.

“My gratitude, captain,” he said, and turned the horse, galloping off up the road after the Telans and their queen. He’d remembered the word and what it meant, and he’d seen that meaning in Hestia’s eye. He did not know what he had seen, a light, a colour, a reflection, but whatever it was he had understood it.

He rode quickly, and in a few minutes came to the camp. It was laid out after the Telan fashion, and so he rode to the centre, to Hestia’s tent, and left the horse there, striding for the tent flap. He found his way blocked by two guards.

He could have knocked them aside, but instead he stopped.

“Lord Skal to see the queen,” he said. He said it loud enough for her to hear. One of the guards ducked his head within the tent for a moment.

“She will not see you,” he said, his face set grim.

“She will,” Skal replied. “Ask again.”

The guard looked at Skal and there was uncertainty in his face. This Avilian had been the queen’s champion, had saved her life more that once. Skal could see it all going through his mind.

“Ask again,” he insisted. The guard nodded. His head went back into the tent and stayed there for a moment. Skal knew that he would speak with Hestia, even if he had to go through these two guards. What he had to say could not wait.

“She will see you,” the guard said, and stood aside. Skal was pleased for the sake of the guards. He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped within.

Hestia was seated, perched on the edge of her seat like a nervous child. She did not meet his eyes.

“Speak your piece, Lord Skal. I am tired.”

“Farheim,” he said.

“What?”

“You know your history, I think. What do you know of Farheim?”

“Legends. There is no history that mentions them.”

“Tell me.”

“It is not your place to give orders here, Lord Skal,’ she said. She was avoiding a reply.

“Tell me,” he said again.

“God Mage spawn,” she said. “Creatures with four arms and two hearts, the warrior elite of the mage emperor. Death born, they were called.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Tell me more.”

“They could not be killed by sword or arrow, axe or lance. They lived a thousand years. Only fire could destroy them.”

“The arms and hearts are a myth,” Skal said.

“You think?” Hestia’s voice was sarcastic.

“You know,” he replied. “I see it in your eye.”

“What do you see?”

“Farheim.”

“You talk nonsense…”

“You and me,” Skal interrupted. “When Passerina healed you she did more. She made you something else. Look at yourself! You seem barely eighteen years, and you know you have seen forty. When I threw you from the horse the day Terresh died you broke your neck. One of your men saw it, but a moment later you were up and wielding a sword.”

“No…”

“Less than thirty minutes ago I was killed. I should have been killed.” He released his breastplate and held it out. “This hole was made by a spear. It went through me. Yet here I stand. One of them called me Farheim, and he was right. You and I, we are Death Born, we cannot be killed.”

“It is not true!” Hestia protested.

“You do not believe?” Skal pulled his dagger from his belt and offered her the hilt. “Take it,” he said. “Drive it into my heart and see the proof of my words.”

Hestia took the dagger, but she did not stab him. Instead she put her hand to his chest, touching the place where his tunic was rent by the spear, the cloth stained by his own blood. The touch of her hand on his skin was like amber shock, the magic spark that leapt from a caressed stone. Her touch was gentle, intimate. He felt his body shudder beneath it.

“My lord Skal,” she said.

He looked into her eyes, now so close to his. They were brown pools to drown in. Her skin was white and smooth. Her lips were slightly parted. She was stunningly beautiful.

“My queen. We are the same.” He put his hand out to cup the side of her face, felt her head respond, pressing against his palm. Then she pulled away, abruptly, violently.

“No. It cannot be,’ she said.

“We are Farheim,” Skal said.

“It does not matter.”

“Does not matter…?” Skal said in disbelief.

“I am the Queen of Telas. You are Avilian. If there is a liaison between us it will tear the army apart. My subjects will be outraged. I will lose the throne.”

“Politics,” he said, his tone was sour.

“The war,” she replied. “Nothing means anything if we do not win the war.”

“But we cannot lose,” he said. “We are Farheim, and that means that Passerina is a god mage, the true heir of Pelion. Can Seth Yarra stand against that?”

She shook her head. “I do not know. I know nothing of god mages and Farheim, but I know that I am Queen of Telas. Now leave me. In the morning we ride for the Western Chain.” She turned away.

Skal stood for a moment, frustrated, wanting to say something more, but no words came. He wanted to ask her what would happen after the war, after victory, but he was not at all sure that he wanted to hear her reply. He picked up his dagger from where she had dropped it and resheathed it.

“Until victory, then,” he said, and left her tent.